Sitting of 22 March 1910

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Private Bills (Standing Orders not previously inquired into complied with)— Mr. Speaker laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:—
North and South Shields Electric Railway Bill.
Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
Wear Navigation and Sunderland Dock Bill,
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
Surbiton Urban District Council Bill,
Reported, with Amendments, from the Local Legislation Committee; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
Mr. CHURCHILLpresented a Petition from 5,000 electors of Dundee, praying for a Measure for the enfranchisement of women by granting to them the Parliamentary franchise on the same terms as is or may be granted to men.
RETURNS.

  ALLOTMENTS (SCOTLAND).
  Return ordered, "showing (1) the proceedings of parish councils in regard to allotments and common pasture under Section 26 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1894; and (2), the proceedings of county councils in regard to representations by parish councils for orders under the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1894, Section 26, authorising land to be taken on lease compulsorily for allotments,
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  from the year ending the 15th day of May, 1906, to the year ending the 15th day of May, 1909; the particulars to include a statement of cost of acquisition and legal and other expenses connected therewith in each case."—[Mr. Eugene Wason.]

  LOCAL CONTBIBUTIONS (IRELAND).
  Return ordered, "of all Moneys contributed out of the rates by the county council and other local bodies in each county in Ireland, during the financial year 1909–10, for the purposes of schemes under The Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act, 1899 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 269, of Session 1909)."—[Mr. Ginnell.]
  PEBSONS BOYCOTTED (IRELAND).
  Return ordered, "showing the number of Persons in Ireland returned as Boycotted during the four years ended the 31st day of December last, who had been, in addition, the victims of overt crime, and indicating the acts of outrage committed in each case, without specifying the names of the individuals attacked."— [Captain Craig, for Mr. Lonsdale.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Royal Arsenal (Woolwich).
  Major ADAMasked the Secretary of State for War whether the privileges of medical and surgical treatment given to men employed in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich had been curtailed; and, if so, whether he could see his way to have medical and surgical attendance reestablished on a broader basis?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane): The privileges of the men employed in the Royal Arsenal as regards medical and surgical treatment have not been curtailed, but it has been found necessary to restrict the Government hospital at the Royal Arsenal to accidents for which it was established, and not allow it to become a general hospital.
  Major ADAMasked whether he could say on what date the discharges of lads at the age of 21 from the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, would cease; and whether, seeing that these lads had never been warned of this termination of engagement at 21 years of age, he could see his way to mitigate this hardship?
  Mr. HALDANE: At the age of twenty-one lads employed in the Royal Arsenal officially become men, and are then, if retained, entitled to the minimum rate of 23s. a week. As long as it is necessary to absorb all vacancies due to wastage, there are no vacancies for boys reaching the age of twenty-one to be entered as men. No date can at present be assigned for absorption of wastage to cease. The lads are well aware of their liability to discharge at the age of twenty-one.

  Army Commissions.
  Mr. O'GRADYasked whether the plan suggested by Lord Kitchener to the Australian Commonwealth of granting commissions for military efficiency instead of by means of social influence has been under consideration by the War Office, with a view of applying the plan to the British Army generally; and, if so, whether an opinion has been expressed that the West Point system is the best for training aspirants for such commissions?
  Mr. HALDANE: The hon. Member is incorrect in his suggestion that social influence controls the granting of commissions in the British Army. As I understand it, nomination is an essential feature of the West Point system, whereas entrance to the British Army is in the main by open examination.
  Viscount CASTLEREAGH: May I ask whether it is not the fact that when a soldier in the ranks wishes to attain commissioned rank, he is assisted to do so by the military authorities?
  Mr. HALDANE: We encourage it in every way, but it is not everybody who will take a commission in the Regular Army.
  Mr. JOHN WARD: Can the right hon. Gentleman inform us in what way they encourage the ranker to go in for a commission?
  Mr. HALDANE: Whenever anybody is recommended by his Commanding Officer for a Commission every encouragement is given to him at headquarters to get it.

  Parsee Rustomjee's Case.
  Mr. O'GRADYasked the Undersecretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention had been called to the statement of Parsee Rustomjee, sentenced to a second term of six months' imprisonment on the 11th August, 1909,
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  for recrossing the border after being deported, and who complained of the treatment he received at the Diepkloof prison; whether the treatment complained of was that always given to offenders under the Registration Law; if so, would representations be made to the Transvaal Government, that the offences under the Act should be considered as political offences, and that those convicted should be considered as first-class misdemeanants, and should not be subjected to rigorous hard labour treatment?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Colonel Seely): We have been in correspondence with the Transvaal Government, but as the reply is very lengthy it will be most convenient to the House to circulate it with the votes. —[See Written Answers this date.]
  Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: Have the Government any intention of laying papers?
  Colonel SEELY: Does my hon. Friend mean in this particular case or on the general question?
  Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: All correspondence?
  Colonel SEELY: I will consider that. I do not know that anything fresh has occurred in the last few months, but I will consider it. and perhaps my hon. Friend will ask a question on it.

  East African Syndicate.
  Mr. CATHCART WASONasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the fact that some 3,000 people, 15,000 cattle, and 250,000 sheep were formerly on the land granted to the East African Syndicate, and that at the present time there were six Europeans and 80 Africans and 15,200 sheep and 135 other stock, he could state if the conditions under which the East African Syndicate obtained the land had been fairly carried out; and, if not, whether proceedings would be taken to cancel the concession in a similar manner as had already been decided on with reference to another concession granted to Captain Grogan?
  Colonel SEELY: I would refer my hon. Friend to what I said in the House on the 10th of June, 1909, when a similar question was asked by him. The statements which I made on that occasion were communicated to the Governor, and I have no

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  reason to suppose that, as far as possible and within reasonable limits, the conditions under which the East African Syndicate's concession was made are not being fairly carried out.
  Mr. C. WASON: May I ask whether we can be assured that all Concessionaires in East Africa will receive equal terms in administration as regards forfeiture?
  Colonel SEELY: Yes; I promise to be strictly impartial.
  Mr. WATT: Was not a promise given to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme that no long concessions of land would be given in East Africa?
  Colonel SEELY: I do not know that this arises out of this particular question. What I said then I adhere to now.

  Sedition Offences Ordinance (Southern Nigeria).
  Mr. CHARLES BUXTONasked the Under-Secretary for the Colonies whether any limit had been placed to the fines which may be proposed under the proposed Sedition Ordinance for Southern Nigeria; whether he was aware that the Ordinance was stated by the Attorney-General of the Colony to have been drafted at home; whether this statement was made in order to meet the objection made locally that the Ordinance, while possibly suited to India, was unsuitable to the African hinterland; and whether, during the fifty years which had elapsed since the Lagos district was ceded to the Crown, any seditious act or acts had been proved against any members of the Yoruba tribes?
  Colonel SEELY: The fines which may be imposed under the Seditious Offences Ordinance are not specified in the ordinance, but, as in this country in such cases, are left to be determined in each case, subject to the proviso that they shall not be excessive. The statement of the Attorney-General that the Ordinance was drafted in England is correct, but I should add that it was not passed until the draft had been considered by the Governor of Southern Nigeria and his legal advisers, and until certain amendments suggested by them had been approved by the Secretary of State. It would not be strictly correct to say that there has been no hostility between the Government of Lagos and any of the Yoruba tribes since 1861, the date of the cession; but I have

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  no hesitation in saying that the loyalty of the people generally is beyond dispute, and gives no cause whatever for dissatisfaction. The Ordinance referred to is a codification, for local purposes, of the common law of England, which was already in force in the Colony, but which was not readily ascertainable on the spot by the local inhabitants. The penalty of transportation for life, which is provided by the Indian penal code, has not been included in the Southern Nigerian law. I may sum up the matter by saying that this legislation is simply the translation of the existing law of the Colony, that is the Common law into Statute.
  Mr. CHARLES BUXTON: Will an opportunity be given for further consideration in this House before the Ordinance is finally approved by the Colonial Office?
  Colonel SEELY: The question can be raised on the Colonial Vote. But I think there is a misapprehension in the matter. There is nothing new in this Ordinance; it is simply a codification of the existing law, and, as far as that goes, it is to the advantage of the people of the Colony, showing them what the law is.

  Robert Simpson (Conviction at Glasgow).
  Mr. WATTasked the Lord Advocate whether he could now see his way to recommend the liberation of Robert Simpson, Glasgow, who was convicted in 1907 of conspiracy to defraud certain newspapers, in view of the facts that the conviction rested largely on handwriting, and that further doubt had since the conviction been placed on the opinion of the handwriting expert?
  The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Ure): I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave regarding this case to the hon. Member for Bridgeton last week.
  Mr. MORTON: Has the Secretary for Scotland considered this case?
  Mr. URE: Yes.

  Illegal Trawling.
  Mr. DUNCAN MILLARasked whether, having regard to the number of cases in which masters of trawlers convicted of illegal trawling go to prison so as to avoid payment of the fines imposed, procurators-fiscal would press in all cases for the confiscation of the trawl gear belonging to such trawler?
  Mr. URE: Under the existing practice the gear is seized at the time of detection, wherever it is practicable to do so, and is sold on a conviction being obtained. This practice will continue to be observed.
  Mr. CATHCART WASON: Will steps be taken to secure that the gear is sold in some centre of population, and not at the spot where the conviction has taken place; because when the latter course is followed, the gear is often bought back for a mere song, so that the offender receives practically no punishment?
  Mr. URE: I will communicate with the Fishery Board and see if it is practicable.
  Mr. MORTON: Is it not a fact that some of the sheriffs in Scotland have stated that the penalties attached to illegal trawling are not sufficient to prevent the continuance of the illegality?
  Mr. URE: I am not aware of that.

  Small Holdings.
  Mr. WINFREYasked how far the Small Holdings Commissioners had proceeded in securing land for the applicants at Newborough; and, seeing that it is now two years since the men applied for land and nine months since the Soke of Peterborough County Council refused to sanction the proposal of their own small holdings committee for the compulsory purchase of a certain farm, whether the Board of Agriculture could hold out reasonable prospect of the Commissioners securing this land before Michaelmas next?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Edward Strachey): The Board deferred taking any further action in this matter until the new County Council had been constituted and its Chairman and other officers appointed. The Board now propose to bring the matter urgently to the notice of the Council and they will do everything in their power to expedite a satisfactory settlement. It is not, however, possible at this stage to say whether the land can be actually acquired before Michaelmas next.

  Small Holdings (West Riding).
  Mr. LANE-FOX (on behalf of Mr. Edward Wood)asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether his attention had been drawn to the hardships and pecuniary loss to the present occupiers of land at Whixley, near
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  Harrogate, owing to the circumstances under which the West Riding County Council were proposing to take their land for small holdings; and whether, in view of the constant recurrence of similar grievances, the Board of Agriculture could see their way to secure reasonable compensation in such case to farmers affected?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: No representations have been made to the Board by the occupiers of the land in question. With reference to the latter part of the question, perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to refer him to the reply given yesterday by the Prime Minister to the hon. Member for Barkston Ash.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: Will the Board make inquiries into this case?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: With pleasure. If the hon. Gentleman puts down a question we will inquire into it, if he desires us to do so.
  Sir RANDOLF BAKERasked how many schemes involving the raising of loans for adaptation or equipment had been submitted to the Board of Agriculture by the various county councils under The Small Holdings Act, 1908, and how many of these schemes had been approved by the Board?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The number of schemes submitted to the Board, in which provision is made for expenditure on equipment or adaptation is 284, of which 270 have been approved. It does not, however, necessarily follow that every such scheme involves the raising of a loan.

  Sheep Diseases (Investigations).
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked whether the Board had, since the issue in April, 1906, of the Report of the Departmental Committee on Louping Ill and Braxy in Sheep, prosecuted any further investigations into those diseases along the lines indicated in such Report; and, if so, when they would make public the results of such investigation?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: Further investigations have been carried out by the members of this Committee since the date of their Report, but they were interrupted for a considerable time by the long illness and regrettable death last spring of Professor Hamilton. The Board hope to receive a further Report on the subject in a few months, and will consider the advisability of publishing it.

  Sheep-worrying.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked whether the Board of Agriculture had during the last six months received many complaints in respect of sheep-worrying by dogs; and, if so, whether those complaints came from any particular district or districts, or were fairly general throughout the country?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The reply is in the negative.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURST: Does that mean that no complaints whatever have been received from any part of the country of sheep-worrying by dogs?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: I should not have replied "No" if that had not been the case.

  Board of Agriculture (Report ofIntelligence Department).
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked when it was proposed to publish the Annual Report of the Intelligence Department of the Board of Agriculture for 1909?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: Part I. of the Report mentioned will probably be issued in about six weeks. Part II., which will include information to the 31st instant, cannot be issued until June or July next.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURST: Is it quite impossible to have both parts of this Report before the Vote for the Board of Agriculture is taken?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: We do not yet know when the Vote is to be taken.

  Food of Birds (Investigation).
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked whether the Board of Agriculture were carrying out any systematic investigation as to the food of different species of birds, other than the very limited investigation of Mr. Robert Newstead, to which reference was made in a supplement to the Journal of the Board of December, 1908, in order to ascertain definitely which British birds are harmful on the farm and in the garden and which are beneficial?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The British Association for the Advancement of Science appointed a committee in 1908 to investigate the feeding habits of British birds. The Board are represented on the committee, and are giving a contribution towards the expenses.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURST: Will not the Board consider it worth its while to pursue its own separate investigations in so important a matter, in the interests of those who cultivate the soil?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: What is being done at present is sufficient. If the Board were not satisfied of that they would not have made a contribution.

  All-Red Route.
  Mr. FELLasked the Postmaster-General if any progress had been made in completing the arrangements for the All-Red Route, and when he expected it would be at work; and if the new steamers now being constructed for the Pacific service by the Grand Trunk Railway would be available for use on that route?
  Colonel SEELY: The matter of the All-Red Route is still under consideration, and I am unable to say when a decision will be arrived at. In those circumstances it is not possible to give any reply to the last part of the hon. Member's question.

  Limerick Post Office (Female Officers).
  Mr. JOYCEasked the Postmaster-General whether his attention had been called to the fact that female officers had been recently employed at the public counter at Limerick general post office, contrary to the Departmental instructions issued in 1907 forbidding their employment at the postal side in the absence of cloak-room accommodation; whether an objection had been lodged by the female staff on these grounds; and whether he would consider the advisability of cancelling that arrangement, in the interests of the public and staff, pending suitable provision being made?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The Departmental instructions issued in 1907 did not forbid female officers being employed at the public counter on telegraph duties, and had no relation to the question of cloakroom accommodation. Those instructions reserved the postal duties for the male staff in order to enable them to have as frequent relief from night duty as possible. No objection has been lodged by the female staff on the grounds suggested, but I will inquire into the question of accommodation to which the hon. Member has drawn my attention.

  Leigh-on-Sea Post Office.
  Mr. KIRKWOODasked the Postmaster-General whether A. E. Fergusson, for seven years an employà in the postal office at Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, who had since been dismissed on account of being reported as medically unfit, was examined in person by the medical officer on whose report the dismissal was based; and, if not, would he consider the advisability of ordering another examination to be held?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: A. E. Fergusson was a telegraph messenger who applied for appointment as an assistant postman. He was personally examined by the local medical officer, and on account of a physical defect disclosed by his report, the Chief Medical Officer advised that Fergusson was not physically fit for the appointment.

  East Africa (Mail Service).
  Mr. CATHCART WASONasked the Postmaster-General, whether, in view of the fact that direct steam service was now provided to East Africa by the Union Castle Line viâ the Cape, he would ascertain on what terms that company could complete the round trip viâ the Suez Canal; whether the sum of £9,000 was still paid by the Post Office for the conveyance of mails from Aden to Mombasa; and if he would state what saving to the Post Office would be effected if the Aden-Mombasa mails were conveyed by German or French steamers?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I have ascertained that the Union Castle Company is not at present prepared to make the arrangement suggested. The sum of £9,000 per annum is still paid to the British India Steam Navigation Company in respect of the service maintained by them between Aden, Mombasa and Zanzibar in both directions. If all the mails conveyed on this service were carried by French or German Packets there would be a saving to the Post Office Vote of £7,200 per annum.

  Fermoy Postmastership (Residence).
  Mr. WILESasked the Postmaster-General if he was aware that an advertisement appeared in the Post Office Circular of 1st March last with reference to the vacant postmastership of Fermoy, stating that there was no official residence at Fermoy, and that, as houses suitable for a postmaster were difficult to obtain, the appointment was only suitable for a
  936
  bachelor or a married man without a family; and whether, seeing that such a restriction unduly handicaps suitable applicants, he would consider the advisability of overcoming the difficulty by providing an official residence?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I will look into the matter, and will communicate with the hon. Member.

  Great Britain and France (Penny Post).
  Mr. MORTONasked the Postmaster-General whether he could state the estimated cost to the British Post Office that would occur by the adoption of the penny post between this country and France?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The initial cost of penny postage to France is estimated as £82,000 a year, and it is calculated that the correspondence would need to be multiplied sixfold in order to recoup this sum. If penny postage with France were held to involve the extension of the penny rate to the other countries of Continental Europe, there would be a further initial loss of £243,000 a year.

  Elementary Schools (Air and Floor Space).
  Mr. O'GRADYasked why the air and floor space per child in the elementary schools was not the same as that of the secondary schools?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Runciman): I presume that the question refers not so much to the fact as to the Building Regulations of the Board, which are more stringent in this respect as regards secondary schools than as regards elementary schools. If that is the case, the answer is that the Board are compelled to bow to considerations of economic practicability. The Board's requirements in respect of public elementary schools represent the irreducible minimum consistent, in their opinion, with the preservation of the health of the children and the efficiency of the schools. The requirements in respect of secondary schools approach more nearly to the ideal which the Board would gladly see applied to all schools of whatever type, but the enforced application of this standard to all the 20,000 public elementary schools in the country would entail an enormous outlay in new or extended buildings.
  Mr. O'GRADY: Are we to understand that there is preferential treatment in the secondary schools?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: There is no preferential treatment, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, there is a different standard set up for elementary and for secondary schools.

  Census (Religious Denominations).
  Sir JOHN ROLLESTONasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he will give instructions to the officials conducting the approaching decennial Census to obtain, amongst other particulars, the religious denomination of the population?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Herbert Lewis): The Census Bill does not provide for the taking of a religious census, and, as I am desirous of avoiding all points of controversy, I do not propose that it should.
  Mr. CHARLES M'ARTHUR: Is it not a fact that as regards the Irish Census that this information is to be given?
  Mr. HERBERT LEWIS: As regards Great Britain there never has been a religious inquiry in the Census. The Government are following the precedents of 1890 and 1900.

  Roman Catholic Church, Moorthorpe.
  Mr. LANE-FOXasked the President of the Board of Education whether any application has been made to the Board for the building of a Roman Catholic school at Moorthorpe, in the township of South Kirkby, in the West Riding of Yorkshire; and whether, if such application is made and is opposed by the local education authority, he will cause a public local inquiry to be held before giving his decision?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: On the 31st December, 1909, the Board received a printed copy of a notice of the intention of certain persons to provide a new public elementary school for about 120 children at Moorthorpe, in the rural district of Hemsworth. The notice states that religious instruction will be given in the proposed new school in accordance with the doctrines of the Catholic Church. On the 17th March, 1910, an appeal against the proposal was received from the local education authority. The Board have not yet received formal evidence of the publication of the notice, in accordance with the provisions of Section 8 of the Education Act, 1902. As soon as this evidence is received the Board will proceed to consider the pro-
  938
  posal, and the appeal against it. I am not yet in a position to say whether a public local inquiry will be necessary.
  Mr. JAMES HOPE: If the appeal is in order, is the right hon. Gentleman not bound to grant a local inquiry?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to know about this particular case he had better put a question on the Paper. I have given all the information I can give at present.

  Burnt Yates School, West Riding of Yorkshire.
  Mr. LANE-FOX (for Mr. Edward Wood)asked the President of the Board of Education whether the scheme which the Board for some years have been considering in connection with Admiral Long's Charity and the Burnt Yates school, in the parish of Clint, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is approaching completion; and, if not, whether he will consider the hardship to the ratepayers caused by the fact that the moneys derived from the endowment are accumulating instead of going in aid of the education of the parish?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: In view of the recent appointment of a Departmental Committee to inquire into certain classes of Educational Endowments, and specially those in rural areas, the Board have thought it desirable not to proceed with the preparation of a scheme for this Charity at present. In the meantime, I understand that arrangements are being made, with the approval of the Board, for the payment of a substantial sum out of the income of the Charity to the Local Education Authority for application by them in relief of the local rate under Section 13 of the Education Act, 1902. This application of a part of the income can properly be made under the existing Trusts.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: Do I understand that the income is actually being paid to the Local Education Authority?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: No, Sir; I said part of the income.

  Land Registry Office (Junior Clerical Staff).
  Mr. MALLABY-DEELEYasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware of the discontent amongst the clerical staff of the junior ranks in the Land Registry Office in relation to the constitution of the office and their pay and

  939
  prospects; and whether His Majesty's Government will appoint a Departmental Committee to inquire into and report upon the constitution of the Land Registry Office with especial relation to the pay and prospects of the clerks in the junior ranks of that office?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir William Robson): My right hon. Friend has asked me to say that he is not aware of discontent among the junior staff of the Land Registry Office as suggested in the question; and he does not think there is any occasion to institute an inquiry.

  Duties on Tobaccos (India).
  Mr. BURGOYNEasked whether, as the result of the protective duties levied on tobaccos and cigarettes imported into India, between 1,000 and 2,000 hands employed in this country are being thrown out of employment?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): I have no official information as to whether or to what extent employment has been affected by the duties levied on tobacco and cigarettes imported into India. The new duties came into operation on 25th February last.
  Mr. BURGOYNE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that one large London firm has during the past fortnight dismissed between sixty and seventy hands; a Liverpool firm has dismissed 300 hands; and a prominent Bristol firm—
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is giving information, and not asking for it.

  Steamship "Strathesk" (Provision Scale).
  Mr. BOTTOMLEYasked why the scale of provisions set out in the First Schedule to The Merchant Shipping Act, 1906, was not supplied, as required by Section 25 of that Act, to the twenty-four Chinamen engaged as the crew of the steamer "Strathesk," of Glasgow, on 13th September, 1909, at the mercantile marine office, Poplar; and by what authority the Board of Trade superintendent sanctioned a smaller and cheaper scale, called a Chinese provision scale, to be embodied in the agreement of the crew?
  Mr. BUXTON: As I stated, in reply to a similar question by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough on the 16th instant, Subsection (5) of Section 25 of the Merchant
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  Shipping Act, 1906, provides that the scale of provisions set out in the First Schedule of the Act shall not apply in the case of Lascars or natives of India or others not accustomed to a European dietary with whom an agreement is entered into providing an adequate scale of provisions suited to their needs and uses. The scale of provisions sanctioned in the case of the steamer "Strathesk" was, I was informed, that usually adopted for Chinese crews.
  Mr. BOTTOMLEYasked whether the steamer "Strathesk," of Glasgow, engaged a crew of twenty-four Chinamen at the mercantile marine office. Poplar, on the 13th September, 1909; that nineteen of these Chinamen stated their birthplace to be Hong Kong; that seventeen did not produce continuous discharge books; that fourteen stated they had previously served on foreign ships; and that no qualified able seaman was carried; whether he could state what evidence of birthplace, previous service on British or foreign ships, and ability to efficiently perform their duties as sailors and firemen was produced; and what steps were taken by the Board of Trade surveyor to test the seaworthiness of the ship, having regard to the composition of the crew?
  Mr. BUXTON: No evidence of the seamen's statement of birthplace being produced, they were examined in regard to their knowledge of the English language, and satisfied the superintendent of the mercantile marine office that they possessed a sufficient knowledge of it to understand the necessary orders which might be given to them in the course of the performance of their duties. It was not necessary for the Superintendent to refer the case to the Board of Trade Surveyor.

  Tin-plate Production (Great Britain and United States).
  Mr. RICEasked what was the number of tons of tin-plates produced in this country and the United States of America respectively for the years 1891 and 1908
  Mr. BUXTON: The only official statistics available of the production of tin-plates in this country are those compiled in connection with the Census of Production, which show that in 1907 the quantity of tinned and terne plates and sheets produced was 529,000 tons. No corresponding figures can be given for 1891 or 1908. As regards the United States of America I have no available figures for 1891. In

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  1908 the quantity produced was 537,000 tons.

  Labour Exchanges.
  Mr. FELLasked how many names of unemployed have been received by the Labour Exchanges up to the present time, and in how many cases has work been found for the applicants?
  Mr. BUXTON: I gave the information asked for by the hon. Member to the House on the 18th instant so far as available, and explained the position of affairs in Debate. As I informed the House on Friday last, statistics of the operations of Labour Exchanges will be published periodically in the "Labour Gazette."
  Mr. T. E. HARVEY: Has the attention of the President of the Board of Trade been called to statements published in a London newspaper purporting to give detailed statistics of the operations of the Labour Exchanges in the London district, and may I inquire whether these statistics are correct?
  Mr. BUXTON: My attention has been called to these statements. They are entirely unfounded, and the figures, both in total and in detail, bear no resemblance whatever to the facts. I may say that the number of situations filled in London has been more than three times as great as the total stated in the newspaper paragraph.

  His Majesty's Dockyards (Fair Wages Rexsolution).
  Mr. CHARLES DUNCAN (for Mr. George Roberts)asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that the wages of rivetters, platers, and iron-caulkers in His Majesty's dockyards range from 24s. to 28s. per week, whereas the minimum rates prevailing in private yards range from 33s. 9d. to 40s.; and whether he will cause inquiry to be made into the matter with a view to bringing the wages of these men more in harmony with the spirit of the Fair Wages Resolution?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKenna): In His Majesty's dockyards there are no mechanics classed as rivetters, platers, or iron-caulkers. The scale of wages in His Majesty's dockyards alluded to in the question is that of skilled labourers, and ranges from 22s. to 28s. per week. This scale is now under the consideration of the Board. Where skill is concerned in the operation of plating, shipwrights are employed in His Majesty's dockyards.

  Marine Artillery and Light Infantry.
  Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked when the last officer was entered into the Royal Marine Artillery and into the Royal Marine Light Infantry; and how many officers have left the corps since those dates?
  Mr. McKENNA: The last officers who joined the Royal Marine Artillery and Royal Marine Light Infantry were appointed second lieutenants in the Royal Marines on the 1st September, 1907. Since the date mentioned the number of officers removed from the list is thirty-one, but ten officers have been absorbed on return from seconded list.

  Destroyers (1909–10 Programme).
  Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked on what dates the destroyers for 1909–10 were laid down?
  Mr. McKENNA:
  2 are not yet laid down.
  5 were laid down in February, 1910.
  3 were laid down in January, 1910.
  9 were laid down in December, 1909.
  1 was laid down in November, 1909.
  It may be observed, however, that these vessels were all ordered in October of last year, and that the contract dates for completion run from the date of order, and are not affected by the date of technically laying down.
  Mr. MIDDLEMORE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the two which are not yet laid down will be laid down?
  Mr. McKENNA: Yes. Our officers report to us that they do not think there is any danger of these two boats not being completed within eighteen months from the date of the order.

  Floating Dock (Medway).
  Mr. WHELERasked whether there is any condition in the contract for the floating dock to be placed in the Medway that the dock shall be in a position, ready for possible use, by the end of the year 1911?
  Mr. McKENNA: The contract date for completion is such as to provide for this condition being fulfilled.

  Finance Bill, 1909–10.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Prime Minister if he was now in a position to say, for the convenience of Members residing at a distance, when the Finance Bill of 1909–10, or any Resolution in lieu thereof, or giving effect to its proposals, will come before the House of Commons?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): No, Sir, I am not at the moment in a position to answer the hon. Member's question.
  Mr. GINNELL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say if this business will come on before 5th April?
  The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir, I cannot say so definitely. I think it is extremely improbable.
  Mr. NEWDEGATEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he intends to postpone collecting Death Duties for Budget purposes as well as postponing collecting Income Tax1?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Payment of the Death Duties may be made, at the taxpayer's option, either at the statutory rates or at those proposed in the Finance Bill of last Session. Note is taken of any case in which the lower rates are tendered, with a view to recovery of the difference when the rates proposed in the Finance Bill are confirmed.
  Mr. PETOasked the number of cases in the years 1906, 1907, and 1908 in which Income Tax payers have had to be sued to recover the amount of the tax; and if he has formed any estimate of the increase in the number of such processes that will be required owing to the collection of two years' Income Tax in the coming financial year?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The number of cases for the years referred to in which writs were issued for the recovery of Income Tax was as follows:—

  1906

  …

  …

  …

  1,784

  1907

  …

  …

  …

  1,950

  1908

  …

  …

  …

  1,921

  The answer to the second part of the question is in the negative.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the event of the Finance Bill of 1909 becoming law without further change, and continuing law for ten years, what does he estimate that the aggregate increase effected by it in the taxation of Ireland will amount to in the tenth year?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I must refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend yesterday to a similar question by the hon. Member for Mid-Armagh.
  Sir JOHN ROLLESTON: I desire to ask whether any of the applications for the position of valuer under the Finance Bill
  944
  of 1909 have been considered, and whether any appointments have been yet made?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: All applications of the character in question are noted and receive careful consideration, but no appointments have been made in view of the Finance Bill of 1909 not having yet passed into law.
  Mr. GINNELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman state all the Stamp and other duties to which an ordinary agricultural farm in Ireland of the capital value of £1,000, and subject to a purchase annuity for that sum, would be liable on the death of its owner, on conveyance to a member of his family, and on sale, respectively, if the Finance Bill of 1909 become law, as compared with the similar liabilities of the same farm before purchase and before the Finance Bill?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: On the assumption that, by the statement that the farm is "of the capital value of £1,000," it is meant that it has that value over and above the redemption value of the purchase annuity, the Stamp Duties payable before purchase under the Land Acts and before the Finance Bill would be, on conveyance to a member of the owner's family, 10s., and on sale for £l,000, £5. After purchase, but before the Finance Bill, these sums would be 10s. (assuming there were no covenant in the deed to indemnify against the liability for the annuity) and £10 (if sold for £ 1,000) respectively, the increase from £5 to £10 on the conveyance on sale resulting from the creation of a charge upon the property and the consequent application of Section 57 of the Stamp Act, 1891. After the Finance Bill, the Stamp Duty on the conveyance to a member of the; family would be £10 in respect of a gift of the value of £1,000, with £20 on the conveyance on sale. No statement is possible in regard to Death Duties in the absence of more specific information. In no other respect would the Finance Bill affect the property, seeing that the farm, being stated to be an ordinary agricultural farm, would presumably, on the occasions in question, have no higher value than its value for agricultural purposes only, and therefore on sale would pay no Increment Value Duty whatsoever, no matter how large a price might be paid for the farm by the purchaser.
  Mr. MACMASTER (on behalf of Mr. Worthington-Evans)asked what amount

  945
  was received into the Exchequer in respect of Income Tax from 1st April, 1909, to 12th March, 1910, and how much of this was in respect of assessments made for the year 1909–10?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The amount paid into the Exchequer from 1st April, 1909, to 12th March, 1910, was £12,782,000.
  This amount is approximately made up of—

  (i.) 1909–10 Assessments

  £10,600,000

  (ii.) Arrears of Previous Years

  2,182,000

  £12,782,000

  Mr. FELL: Can the right hon. Gentleman state when the Income Tax on profits for the past year will be levied on traders and professional men, so that they may have reasonable time to arrange for the payment?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: As to the date when the Budget of last year will be introduced into the House of Commons, I must refer the hon. Member to the statements made by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am unable to admit that, on the passing into law of the Finance Bill for 1909–10, there can be any hardship involved in the immediate collection of Income Tax which, but for the rejection of the Bill by the House of Lords, would have been payable on or before 1st January last.
  Mr. FELL: May I ask if the collection of the Income Tax will not entail the withdrawal of a large sum of cash from the Money Market, and whether that will not cause a great disturbance in the market?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The collection of the Income Tax always draws a large sum of money from the market.

  " Dreadnought" Building (Thames Contract).
  Mr. BOTTOMLEYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that the Thames Ironworks Company, in order to complete the construction of the "Dreadnought" for which a contract has been placed with it, has found it necessary to order a special floating crane, and that such order has been placed in Germany, notwithstanding that a British firm of standing and experience had tendered for it; and, seeing that its erection will be largely contemporaneous with that of the "Dreadnought," and will involve the
  946
  employment of Germans with access to the building yard during the construction of the battleship, what steps he proposes to take to safeguard British interests.
  Mr. McKENNA: The Admiralty have no power in the matter of the purchase by shipbuilding firms of their plant, and have no knowledge whether the firm in question is obtaining alternative tenders for the floating crane from Germany and from British firms. The contract contains a clause securing all necessary secrecy.
  Mr. BOTTOMLEY: May I ask the right hon. Gentlemen did he read the whole of my question, which is: "Whether or not the Thames Iron Works Company had actually placed an order in Germany for a special floating crane, and whether or not its erection will be largely contemporaneous with that of the 'Dreadnought,' and will involve the employment of German workmen and supervisors and allow them to come into the shipbuilding yard?"
  Mr. McKENNA: My hon. Friend supposes the "Dreadnought" is now under construction in this yard. He is in error. We have no knowledge at the Admiralty— and I have made inquiries on the point— we have no knowledge whether the crane in question has been ordered from a British or foreign firm, but should it have been, ordered from a German firm—a fact which I do not know—every precaution will be taken to ensure secrecy, and, as a matter of fact, there is a clause in the contract which absolutely secures secrecy.
  Mr. BOTTOMLEY: I am sorry to press the right hon. Gentleman, but what I want to ask is this. Accepting, as he will for the moment from me the statement that the crane has been ordered from a German firm, and that German workmen will supervise its erection contemporaneously with the commencement of the "Dreadnought" in the shipbuilding yard, is it not a fact, then, that the work and conditions are such, that these workmen may take the fullest information of the details of the construction of the "Dreadnought"?
  Mr. McKENNA: My hon. Friend has overlooked the fact that the crane in question is part of the plant for building the "Dreadnought," and it will have, therefore, to be completely erected before the "Dreadnought" is advanced any distance at all in its construction. No German workmen can be admitted to the dockyard at a time when anything secret is being done.
  Mr. BOTTOMLEY: Is it not a fact that the contract placed with this German firm provides that the German firm shall by its own workmen and supervisors erect the crane when it arrives in this country in parts in the shipbuilding yard in a certain position which is in communication with the yard in which the "Dreadnought" is being built contemporaneously?
  Mr. McKENNA: Assuming the statement made by my hon. Friend to be accurate that this crane has been ordered from a German firm, the crane will have to be erected before the "Dreadnought" is built. The crane is for the purpose of building the "Dreadnought."
  Mr. BONAR LAW: Are we to understand that the right hon. Gentleman says distinctly that the "Dreadnought" will be laid down upon its slip only when the crane is completed?
  Mr. McKENNA: Oh, no, Sir, I said nothing of the sort. There is no secrecy about a slip or the laying of the keel upon a slip. As the hon. Gentleman knows very well, such secrecy as there may be in the construction of a ship only arises at a far later stage.
  Mr. BONAR LAW: No.
  Mr. McKENNA: Then the right hon. Gentleman does not know. There is no secrecy in the keel of a "Dreadnought."
  Sir FORTESCUE FLANNERY: Docs the right hon. Gentleman not know that in erecting a ship the frames and other parts which will be handled by this crane disclose the whole of the design?
  Mr. McKENNA: The frame and other parts handled by the crane can only be handled when the crane is erected. The crane having been erected, the German workman, if they are there—I have no knowledge, but assuming that German workmen will be employed there—they will have disappeared before the ship is built.
  Sir FORTESCUE FLANNERY: Will not the parts be there alongside the slip before the keel is laid.
  Mr. McKENNA: No German erecting a crane nor anyone else can in the least discover the design of a ship from the parts of a ship laid one over the other.

  Prize Money (Capture of Chinese Destroyers).
  Mr. BURGOYNE (for Lord Charles Beresford)asked whether it is the intention of the Admiralty to grant, prize money to those officers and men who took part in the capture of the four Chinese destroyers on 17th January, 1900?
  Mr. McKENNA: The question of taking steps for the award of prize bounty on account of the captures referred to was fully considered in the spring of 1901 by Lord Selborne's Board, and the decision was that no such action should be taken.
  Mr. BURGOYNE: Is it the intention of the Admiralty to alter the policy of giving prize money in the case of a capture of that sort?
  Mr. McKENNA: No, Sir; the Admiralty have no intention of altering the decision come to by Lord Selborne's Board in 1901.

  Local and Imperial Taxation (Rateable Property).
  Mr. LANE-FOXasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can state approximately what is the present proportion of local and Imperial taxation, respectively, paid by rateable property in this country; and, if not whether the calculation has ever been made officially in the past, and with what result?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: An attempt to classify Imperial and local taxation on the basis suggested in the question was made in a Return presented to the House of Commons by the President of the Poor Law Board in 1870 (House of Commons 470 of 1870). It would not be difficult to apply the method of classification therein adopted to the figures of local and Imperial revenue for any subsequent year down to the present, but it has now for many years been generally recognised that such analyses provide no real indication of the comparative incidence of taxation as between the owners of different kinds of properties.

  Taxation of Ireland.
  Mr. GINNELLasked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer has noticed that the excessive taxation of Ireland, estimated by the Financial Relations Commission at nearly £3,000,000 a year, has since been increased by £2,500,000, making the present taxation of Ireland about £5,500,000 a year more than its propor-

  949
  tionate share, and more than the entire government of Ireland would cost in Irish hands; and whether, in any future financial proposals, so long as the Act of Union is maintained, he will give Ireland the benefit of the exemptions and abatements to which she is entitled under that Act?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The Financial Relations Commission made no estimate of the absolute taxable capacity of Ireland. The only aspect of the question dealt with was that of relative taxable capacity as compared with Great Britain. On the basis of one-twentieth suggested in the Majority Report, the proper contribution of Ireland to the total revenue of 1908–9 would have been £7,073,000 as against an actual contribution of £9,250,000 or £2,177,000 less. The corresponding excess on the figures for 1895–6 was, as pointed out in the question, nearly £3,000,000. Thus, on the basis of the one-twentieth standard, the excessive taxation of Ireland has, instead of being increased by £2,500,000, as suggested in the question, actually been reduced by about £750,000 in the thirteen-year period. The latter part of the question touches upon a subject which is of far too controversial a nature for me to deal with in a reply to a Parliamentary question.

  Export Coal Duty.
  Mr. NORTON-GRIFFITHSasked what would have been the revenue which would have been received from the export duty on coal, if it had not been taken off, during each of the past four years, and assuming that the export trade had not been affected by such duty?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Under the conditions specified the revenue that would have been derived from the export duty on coal during each of the four years, 1906 to 1909 inclusive, is estimated at—

  £

  Year 1906

  2,500,000

  Year 1907

  3,150,000

  Year 1908

  3,100,000

  Year 1909

  3,050,000

  Old Age Pensions (Vote on Account).
  Mr. NEWDEGATEasked whether, as the old age pensions fall due at the end of the month, he will take measures to collect Income Tax to pay the same instead of borrowing money?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Ample provision has been made by the Vote on Account to pay
  950
  the old age pensions which fall to be paid weekly and not monthly as suggested by the question.
  Mr. NEWDEGATE: Will the Government arrange for the regular weekly payments of old age pensions in the event of the General Election taking place?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The payments now made will undoubtedly and unquestionably be continued weekly as heretofore.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: May I ask the Prime Minister whether it is his intention to support and vote for old age pensions whenever proposed and by whatever Government?
  The PRIME MINISTER: There is no question whatever about the payment of old age pensions.

  Boards of Agriculture (England and Ireland).
  Mr. STANIER (for Mr. Courthope)asked what are the amounts of the grants in the Session of 1909 and the Estimate for 1910–11 for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, respectively; why the grants and estimates for the Irish Department are so much greater than those for the British Board; what accounts for the increase of £181,500 for the Irish Department; and why a similar increase of vote is not asked for for the Board?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The figures are as follows:—

  Net grunts in the Session of 1909.

  Estimate 1910–11.

  Board of Agriculture and

  £

  £

  Fisheries

  173,169

  185,710

  Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Ireland

  234,817

  416,356

  The Estimate for the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction contains provision for institutions of science and art, for the geological survey of Ireland, and for grants for schools and classes of science and art and technical instruction and for day secondary schools, the corresponding provision to which in Great Britain appears in the English and Scotch Education Votes. Approximately £110,000 is taken in the Estimate for the Irish Department for the above objects. I should also explain that there is included in the Vote for. the Irish Department the grant-

  951
  in-aid of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland, which now amounts to £169,750, having been largely augmented under Section 49 of the Irish Land Act, 1909. The principal items of which the increase of £181,500 is composed are £163,750 under the above Section, of which £144,750 is for the Congested Districts Board and £19,000 for the Department; £9,100 for equipment, etc., of the new Royal College of Science, Dublin; £4,000 for grants to schools; and £2,810 for increase of staff.

  Stamp Duties.
  Sir JOHN ROLLESTONasked whether the stamp duties chargeable in respect of marketable securities under Section 76 of the Finance Bill, 1909, will be retrospective if the Bill becomes law, namely, will marketable securities which have already been duty stamped have to be stamped with the increased duty the first time they are assigned or in any manner negotiated in the United Kingdom?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: No, Sir.

  Tobacco Growing (Scotland).
  Mr. MORTONasked whether the right hon. Gentleman would make provision for a grant-in-aid of experimental tobacco growing in Scotland of £6,000 per annum for five years, as is now provided for Ireland?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: My right hon. Friend thinks, in view of the Development Act of last Session, that this is a question which should be brought before the Development Commission when it is constituted.
  Mr. MORTON: Is it not a fact that the grant made to Ireland was made out of the ordinary fund?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Yes, that is so, because the Development Commission was not then in existence.
  Mr. MORTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already promised to do the same for Scotland as he has done for Ireland?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Again I must point out that that promise was made before the Development Act was passed.

  Surveyors of Taxes (Clerks' Notice).
  Mr. O'GRADYasked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer's attention has been directed to the fact that 70 per cent, of the clerks employed in the offices of Inland Revenue surveyors of taxes are un-established and liable to have their engagements terminated at a week's notice, on the ground that their duties were of a routine character; whether he is aware that the main consideration in framing the list of established clerks was the class of the district in which they happened to be employed at the time the Treasury scheme of April, 1908, took effect; whether he is aware that the clerks employed in the lower class districts are discharging duties of a confidential and responsible nature, similar in character to those of established clerks; and, if so, whether, having regard to the interests of the public, he will consider the advisability of placing the whole of the clerks employed on this work upon the establishment?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am informed that the question of the further establishment of clerks in the offices of surveyors of taxes is the subject of a petition which is now before the Board of Inland Revenue, and I am unable at present to express any opinion on the matter.

  Advisory Committee (Government Stocks).
  Mr. MALLABY-DEELEY: Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer prepared to appoint a Committee, consisting of Treasury officials, leading bankers, and other gentlemen conversant with finance, to advise and report as to whether a scheme can be advised for the consolidation into one stock, at a uniform rate of interest, of all the existing Government Stocks, namely, Consols, Irish Land Stock, the War Loan (to be provided for on 5th April), and a possible Naval Loan, with a view to greater convenience and at the same time towards raising the status and the value of the premier securities of Great Britain both at home and abroad?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: My right hon. Friend does not think that the appointment of such a Committee would serve the purpose anticipated by the hon. Member.

  Tobacco Workers (German Budget).
  Mr. JAMES PARKER (on behalf of Mr. William Thorne)asked whether his attention had been called to the fact that the Budget Committee of the Reichstag had

  953
  voted a further sum of £37,500 for the relief of tobacco workers thrown out of work in consequence of the increased taxation imposed on tobacco by the German Budget of 1909; and if, when he was framing his Budget for 1910–11, he would take the Tobacco Tax into consideration?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: My right hon. Friend is aware of the facts stated in the first part of the question. As regards the latter part, he will be glad to consider any representations which my hon. Friend may wish to make to him in regard to the Tobacco Duties.

  Treasury Bills Outstanding.
  Mr. MACMASTERasked what was the amount of Treasury Bills outstanding on 11th March, 1909, and what amount was paid in interest thereon; and what are the corresponding figures for 11th March in each of the years 1905 to 1908, inclusive?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The amount of Treasury Bills outstanding on 11th March in each of the years 1905 to 1909 inclusive, and the amount of interest paid thereon, was as follows:—

  Amount of Treasury Bills outstanding 11th March.

  Amount of Interest paid on thereon.

  £

  £

  1905

  …

  21,133,000

  …

  393,298

  1906

  …

  20,633,000

  …

  331,352

  1907

  …

  12,713,000

  …

  223,971

  1908

  …

  12,213,000

  …

  229,834

  1909

  …

  15,000,000

  …

  145,190

  The interest figures represent the amounts issued from the Consolidated Fund upon the respective issues of Bills, as explained in the reply my right hon. Friend gave to a question by the Noble Lord the Member for Maidstone on the 15th instant.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he will say at what rate of interest the advances for the Grange-more portion of the Magan-Topping estate, Westmeath, are to be repaid; and whether all the untenanted land comprised in it will be distributed among the suitable congests on the estate and in the immediate neighbourhood who are anxious to get it and willing to pay its full value?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): If the Estates Commissioners acquire the lands, which are the subject of proceedings for sale to
  954
  them under the Irish Land Act, 1903. the annuities on resale will be at 3¼ per cent. The matter referred to in the second part of the question will be considered when the estate is being dealt with by the Commissioners.

  Old Age Pensions (Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELL: In view of the fact that many persons who, on the evidence of the Census Returns, have got old age pensions would not have got any but for that evidence, and of the inability of many applicants to have those Returns examined, will the right hon. Gentleman have that examination made for them in the cases in which it has not yet been done; when a, name is not in those Returns, and the pension officer and committee disagree on the point of age, which opinion is adopted; and whether there is any class of cases of applicants in which he will have the applications reconsidered as a result of the Debate on the 18th instant?
  Mr. BIRRELL: In all cases in which no other sufficient evidence of age has been produced, it is the practice of the Local Government Board to require search to be made in the Census Returns, this being done free of charge by officers employed by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise. The committee decide the question of age in the first instance, and, if the pension officer appeals, the Board come to a decision on the evidence and do not adopt the opinion of either party. The answer to the final paragraph of the question is in the negative. If any persons; wish to have their cases reconsidered, and think they can furnish further evidence, they must make fresh claims.
  Mr. GINNELL: In a case in which the local committee have voted the pension, and it has been disallowed by the Local Government Board, because they say they do not know whether the name is in the Census Returns or not, by whose authority is the pension suspended?
  Mr. BIRRELL: It is suspended by the Local Government Board, because they are of opinion that the applicant has not made out a case, and the onus rests upon him of proving that he is seventy years of age.
  Mr. MacVEAGH: On what principle do the Local Government Board decide this question when there is no entry in the Census Returns?
  Mr. BIRRELL: We go a good deal by appearance.
  Mr. GINNELL: Is it a case that, so far as these poor people are concerned, the Debate of last Friday was a mockery?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Oh, no.
  Mr. HUGH LAW: Are we to understand that the Local Government Board interview these persons? Is it not a fact that they never see the applicants?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Local Government Board do not see them themselves, but they see them through their inspectors.
  Mr. HUGH LAW: Can the Chief Secretary state the ground of withdrawal of the old age pension of Patrick M'Dermott, of Barnes Upper, parish of Kilmacrenan?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The pension officer raised the question that M'Dermott had not reached the statutory age, as he was shown by the Census Returns to be only one year old in 1841 and eleven years old in 1851. On appeal, the Local Government Board have decided that the claimant will be entitled to a pension from 1st April next.
  Mr. HUGH LAWasked the Chief Secretary if he could state the grounds upon which the old age pension granted to James Doherty, Kilmacrenan, county Donegal, has been withdrawn?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The. pension in this case was discontinued as the result of a question raised by the pension officer as to the pensioner's age, which was recorded as seven years in the Census Returns of 1851. His name does not appear in the 1841 Census Returns, and no satisfactory evidence that he had attained the statutory age was produced.
  Mr. HUGH LAWasked the Chief Secretary if he could state the grounds upon which the old age pension received by James Boyse, Meenacross, Milford, county Donegal, since January, 1909, has been recently withdrawn?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The pension in this case was disallowed as the result of an appeal by the pension officer to the Local Government Board on the question of age. Boyse's age is recorded in the Census Returns of 1851 as ten years; his name does not appear in the Census of 1841, and no satisfactory evidence that he had attained the statutory age was produced.

  National University, Ireland (Extern Students).
  Mr. CHARLES CRAIGasked the Chief Secretary whether, in view of the admission of one class of extern students, namely, the students of Maynooth, to the right of competing for a degree of the National University in Ireland without having the qualification of residence in the university, he will take steps to have the same right conferred on another class of extern students, namely, the national school teachers of Ireland?
  Mr. BIRRELL: There is no power under the Irish Universities Act to permit extern students to enter for the university examinations save in the case of students of the late Royal University. Students in recognised colleges are not extern students.
  Mr. CHARLES CRAIG: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered the last part of my question—whether he will take steps to have the same right conferred on another class of extern students, namely, the national school teachers of Ireland?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, Sir; the students of Maynooth are not extern students, because they are resident at a recognised college. I do not propose to take the steps suggested.
  Mr. CHARLES CRAIG: Is it not a fact that the extern student must be a qualified resident in the university?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The extern and the intern students are what they are declared to be by Act of Parliament.

  Labour Recruiting (Angola).
  Mr. CATHCART WASONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Decree prohibiting the recruitment of native labourers in the Province of Angola for labour in the cocoa plantations of San Thomé and Principe is still in force; and if he can say whether the cocoa planters have recently engaged a large number of free labourers from Mozambique for work in the plantations?
  The UNDERSECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. McKinnon Wood): The Decree of 22nd November, 1909, prohibited recruiting in Angola until 1st February last. I understand that it was decided that recruiting should not be resumed until the new regulations were properly introduced. It is at first only to

  957
  be allowed in the districts of Quillenges, Bailundo, and Jinga de Ambaca. With regard to the second part of the question, recruiting of labourers from Mozambique has been proceeding for some months, but I am not aware whether a large number of labourers have been engaged recently. I am asking for reports from the Consul to get the latest information on both these points.

  International Arbitration Movement.
  Mr. JAMES PARKER (on behalf of Mr. William Thorne)asked the Secretary for Foreign Affairs if his attention had been called to a discussion in the German Reichstag on 15th March, when a unanimous resolution was passed that a sum should be inserted in the next Estimates in support of the movement for international arbitration; and if he was prepared to recommend to the Government that a grant be made to further the international arbitration movement?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No report has yet reached me of the Resolution said to have been passed in the Reichstag on the 15th instant. As regards the second part of the question, the principle of international arbitration is viewed with sympathy by His Majesty's Government, but I cannot promise a Government grant such as is suggested.

  Liquor Shops (India).
  Sir HERBERT ROBERTSasked the Under-Secretary for India whether he was in a position to state to what extent the Resolution of the Government of India, dated 15th August, 1907, directing that local opinion in regard to the number and sites of liquor shops should be consulted more systematically and recorded more definitely had been carried out; in how many towns and municipalities local committees had been set up for this purpose; the extent to which non-official opinion was represented on such committees; and whether, in the event of the information not being immediately available, he would call for a Return giving the necessary particulars?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY Of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Montagu): From the Excise Reports of the different provinces for 1908–9, and from other sources, the Secretary of State has obtained the following information as to the progress made in
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  forming local committees and as to their constitution. In Madras committees have been sanctioned for all municipalities; in the United Provinces for those with populations exceeding 20,000, in Bengal for 28, in Bombay for 20, in Burma for 10, in the Punjab for 7, in Eastern Bengal for 3. In the Central Provinces, where there are few-large towns, the formation of such committees is considered unnecessary, and the ordinary municipal committees will be consulted on licensing matters. The constitution of the committees varies in the different provinces, but the most general type is a committee of five or six, of whom three are officials and the rest non-official representatives of the municipality.

  Alleged Conspiracy (Thurles).
  Mr. NEWMANasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he can state approximately the number of years during which it has been impossible for Mr. Charles Clarke, of Graiguenoe Park, Thurles, to visit the town of Thurles without police protection; how many police are at present detailed to protect his person and property, and how many of these sleep in his dwelling-house; whether he can state the nature of the offence committed by Mr. Clarke which renders it impossible for the authorities of the United Irish League to allow any person in Thurles to have dealings with Mr. Clarke; whether he is aware that Mr. Clarke has been for some years compelled to purchase and bring all the necessaries of life from Dublin, a town eighty miles distant; and if he can state what measures, if any, the Government have taken in the matter?
  Mr. BIRRELL: From November, 1908, to May, 1909, Mr. Clarke could not visit Thurles without a police. escort. Things have since improved, and the arrangements for his protection have been modified Five police are at present detailed to protect his person and property. None of them sleep in his house. The hostility shown to him arose from his refusal to sell certain lands to the Estates Commissioners for distribution. He has been obliged for the past sixteen months to obtain his supplies for the most part from a distance, but I understand that certain local traders are now willing to supply him. A charge of conspiracy is pending in connection with the agitation against him.

HOUSE OF LOKDS VETO.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I beg to ask the Prime Minister a question, of which I have given him private notice, namely, why the Resolution, which was to make it plain, that the proposals of the Government with regard to the Veto of the House of Lords were "without prejudice to, and contemplate in a subsequent year, the substitution in our Second Chamber of the democratic method of representation," does not appear on the Notice Paper, and when it will be communicated, to the House? For the language of my question, I am indebted to the Prime Minister's speech.
The PRIME MINISTER: The right hon. Gentleman, I think, has not studied my language with perfect care. I have refreshed my own memory, and what I said on 28th February was this:—
" We skill present our proposals in regard to the relations between the two Houses of Parliament in the form of Resolutions."
I went on to say:—
" These Resolutions will. T hope and believe, he both few and simple. They will affirm—I am speaking now in general terms—the necessity for excluding the House of Lords altogether from the domain of finance. They will ask this House to declare that, in the sphere of legislation, the power of Veto, at present possessed by the House of Lords, shall be so limited in its exercise as to secure the predominance of the deliberate and considered will of this House within the lifetime of a single Parliament."
Then I went on in most carefully chosen language, because I have become very careful in these matters in the use of language, for I have had a kind of lesson this Session, to say, not of the Resolutions, but—
" Further, it will be made plain that these constitutional changes—"
that is the changes contemplated by the Resolutions—
" are without prejudice to, and contemplate in a subsequent year, the substitution in our Second Chamber of the democratic method of representation."
That language was carefully chosen in order to leave the Government with a perfectly free hand, either to embody that proposition in a Resolution or to make it plain in some other way.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Are we then to understand that the Government do not propose to submit to the House, even in outline, any suggestions for the reform of the Second Chamber?
The PRIME MINISTER: No, certainly not If the right hon. Gentleman will be good enough to wait till this day week, when I am going to propose that the House shall resolve itself into Committee, I shall carry out the pledge I then made and make perfectly plain what the position of the Government is.
Lord H. CECIL: No resolution will be proposed?
Mr. ASQUITH: No.

" DREADNOUGHT"' BUILDING(THAMES CONTRACT).
Mr. BOTTOMLEY: I beg to ask leave to move the adjournment of the House to call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the proposed erection by a German firm, by German workmen and supervisors, of certain works incidental to the construction of one of His Majesty's ships, a "Dreadnought," in such circumstances as will involve the presence of these foreigners in close proximity to and during the construction of such battleship.
Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member will have an opportunity to-morrow, on the Motion for the Adjournment, to raiséthe point. I can hardly say the matter is so urgent between to-day and to-morrow as to make it absolutely necessary to take the matter to-day. I think the hon. Member will have ample opportunity to-morrow.
Mr. BOTTOMLEY: Of course, if that is your ruling, I at once bow to it, but with great respect may I submit that there are restrictions to the opportunity to-morrow, especially when we may have something else to talk about, of taking the opinion of the House on a matter which a Member of the House pledges himself to establish, namely, something contrary altogether to the assurance given by the Minister.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have to consider whether the matter is urgent or not within the meaning of the Ruin, and I was really "letting the hon. Member down easily" in suggesting that he should raise the discussion to-morrow. If he presses me very hard, I should have to say the matter was not urgent within the meaning of the Rule.
Mr. BOTTOMLEY: There may be a blocking Motion, Mr. Speaker.

NOTICES OF MOTION.
Mr. JOHN TAYLOR: I beg to give notice that to-morrow three weeks I will call attention to the political disabilities of trades unions, and move a Resolution.
Mr. W. E. HARVEYgave a notice in like terms.

PRESENTATION OF BILLS.
The following Bills were presented, and read the first time:—
DEATH CERTIFICATES (CHARGES) BILL.
" To provide for a reduction in Charges for Death Certificates in certain cases," presented by Mr. GIIX. (To be read a second time upon Tuesday, 5th April.)
ROAD TBAFFIC BILL.
" To provide for the better regulation of Road Traffic," presented by Mr. GILL. (To be read a second time upon Tuesday, 5th April.)
CONVEYANCING BILL.
" To amend the Conveyancing and Law of Property Act, 1881," presented by Mr. HILLS. (TO be read a second time upon Monday, 11th April.)
SETTLED LAND BILL.
" To amend the Settled Land Acts, 1882 to 1890," presented by Mr. HILLS. (To be read a second time upon Monday, 11th April.)
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Ordered, That the Proceedings on the Consolidated (No. 1) Bill, on the Resolution relating to the Supreme Court of Judicature [Salaries, etc.], on the Supreme Court of Judicature Bill, and on the East India Loans (Railways and Irrigation) Bill, if under discussion at Eleven o'clock this night, be not interrupted under the Standing Order (Sittings of the House), and may be entered upon at any hour though opposed.—[The Prime Minister.]
SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE.
Ordered, That this House do meet Tomorrow (Wednesday), at Twelve of the clock.—[The Prime Minister.]

ARMY (ANNUAL) BILL.
Considered in Committee.
[Mr. EHMOTT in the Chair.]
(IN THE COMMITTEE.)
CLAUSES 1, 2, and 3 agreed to.

CLAUSE 4.—(Amendment of s. 46 of Army Act with respect to Powers of Commanding Officers.)
With a view to reducing the number of cases which have to be sent for trial by courts-martial owing to the limited powers of punishment exercisable by commanding officers, the maximum period of detention which may be awarded by a commanding officer who deals with a case summarily shall be twenty-eight days, and accordingly "twenty-eight" shall be substituted for "fourteen" in Paragraph (a) of Sub-section (2) of Section forty-six of the Army Act, and Sub-section (4) of the same Section shall be repealed.
Viscount CASTLEREAGHmoved, as an Amendment, to omit "twenty-eight" ["shall be twenty-eight days, and"], and to insert instead thereof "fifty-six," the object being to extend to fifty-six days the maximum period of detention to be awarded by a commanding officer.
Mr. JOHN WARD: On a point of Order. Will the moving of the Amendment of the Noble Lord preclude my Motion for the deletion of the Clause?
The CHAIRMAN: No. Later on I will put the Question that the Clause stand part of the Bill.
Viscount CASTLEREAGH: I have no desire to delay the Committee unduly, but I feel sure the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War will bear with me for a few moments, especially in consideration of the fact that he and I on more than one occasion have spent the evening and probably most of the night in discussing Bills of this nature. My proposal is to increase to fifty-six days the jurisdiction of the commanding officer. This Bill already increases it, and I do not quite know the reason the right hon. Gentleman found it necessary to propose the increase. There is one objection which may be paramount in some minds, and that is that if wider jurisdiction is accorded to commanding officers it may have the effect of causing the private soldier to have more recourse to the option of being tried by court-martial. But my experience in the Army

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is that the private soldier prefers to be dealt with by his commanding officer instead of claiming a court-martial. The question I want to raise under this Amendment is the responsibility of the commanding officer. At the present time I do not think sufficient scope is given him to enable him to deal responsibly with the unit under his command. Present conditions cannot, under any circumstances, be considered satisfactory. When an officer joins the Army he has to go first through the drudgery of the subaltern; he obtains a little more scope as captain; and a little more as major. But when he at last reaches the position of commanding officer he will be well on the road to fifty years of age; and I hardly think this is the most efficient way of obtaining the best men to command units in this country. The whole system resolves itself into this: the colonel is so hidebound by the time he attains the position of commanding officer—he is so bound in red tape that he has no initiative and no individuality.
4.0 P.M.
I believe the remedy lies to a certain extent in my Amendment, which will give additional scope to the commanding officer and encourage him to take responsibility, then he will become a more efficient asset for the whole Army. This is a question in which I have always taken great interest. I believe that at this moment the present Secretary for War, who is perhaps the only man on the Government Bench on whom praises and congratulations have been showered from all sides of the House—and he is certainly fortunate in that respect—will desire to make his Army into a reality. Therefore, this is the proper time to raise this question. I have already alluded to the position which the commanding officer occupies. I have no desire whatever to make any attack on commanding officers; in my opinion they are a most deserving body of men. They deserve praise and commendation for the fact that they have gone through the drudgery of regimental life, and have withstood the temptation of obtaining greater scope for their energies and activities by the far more attractive method of either going abroad or obtaining appointments on the Staff. We cannot disguise from ourselves the fact that the energetic young officer who is full of individuality does not aim at the command of his regiment; he prefers to leave it at an early stage and go on to
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the Staff. I am of opinion that the command of the unit is essential to the well being of the Army. No matter how small the unit may be, the command should be the training ground and the stepping stone to the higher grades in the Army. I know that there is the question of age at the present moment, and that there is not a sufficient opportunity for the young man in the prime of life to obtain what is the highest ambition of a man in the Army, and that is the position of a regimental officer. It is a great encouragement to the individual to think that he will have the responsibility in his own hands of controlling a unit, and I believe that such control would to a very large extent assist in making the officers of the Army efficient.
When we consider that the Duke of Wellington in his campaign in the Peninsula was only thirty-six years of age, and that on him was the supreme responsibility to his country, it does seem strange to say that it is practically an impossibility for an officer in the Army at the present moment to command a unit which he joins as a subaltern at the age of eighteen before he has reached what I may call the mature age of forty-eight or fifty. That is the reason why I have moved this Amendment, but. of course, it is not my intention to take a Division upon it. I should like, however, if the right hon. Gentleman would say if in his scheme for the perfecting of the Army, and in order to make the Army a reality, he will begin upon a scheme which will encourage the individual officer at an early age to undertake responsibility, which, I believe, would help in the formation of character and in making that officer an efficient asset to this country in time of need. When we compare the conditions of the Army with those in the Navy, I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me that a great deal more responsibility is placed upon naval officers at an earlier age than is placed upon military officers of the same stamp. There is no need for me to go into all the details of the duties of the midshipman, the sub-lieutenant, the lieutenant, and the commander in the Navy, and the responsibilities which they have to undertake, but if we compare these with those of the respective officers in the Army we find comparatively young men in the Navy occupying precisely the same position and undertaking far more responsibility than an officer of the same age who is a regimental lieutenant in the Army. It is quite true that

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some officers have risen to high rank who can claim the experience of having commanded a regiment, but it is almost a unique experience, and what I want to point out to the right hon. Gentleman is that all those inducements for education, such as the Staff College, of which I am a firm supporter, and other facilities, prevent the energetic young officer from desiring to command his unit, which should certainly be one of the ambitions of a lieutenant and of every officer. It is for this reason that I move the Amendment, and I should like to hear the views of the right hon. Gentleman, which are based upon practical experience in regard to it.
The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane): No one can complain of the Amendment which the Noble Lord the Member for Maidstone has brought forward in his desire to do everything which can be done to put responsibility upon the junior officer in the Army. The point I take in replying to his arguments is the occasion which he has chosen for bringing them forward. We are here dealing with the administration of justice, which is a very difficult thing, and my attitude does not express any doubt in regard to the young officer of whom I have the very highest opinion, but when you are dealing with a question of liberty and of punishments you have to move with the utmost care. For our judges we require people of mature years and tried position, and you must extend the rules which obtain in civil life in order to deal with the problems of the Army which we have before us. We propose on this occasion to raise the punishment which can be awarded from fourteen days to twenty-eight days, but there is nothing in the Noble Lord's Amendment which would enable these punishments to be awarded with any sense of responsibility by junior officers, because the King's Regulation 493, which deals with summary punishment and detentions, provides that the power to award detentions exceeding seven days, but not exceeding fourteen days, cannot be exercised by a commanding officer under the rank of field officer. That is to say, we do not entrust this limited power to anyone less than a major. I should like just to explain what is the procedure in this matter, and to say that it is not the interests of the officer that I can take into account in regard to it. I must deal with the interests of the Army as a whole. At the present time there is great progress being made in the improve-
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ment in the position of the soldier. There is a great drop in the number of courts-martial, which has gone down since 1901 some 40 per cent., and that is due, I think, entirely to the better feeling in the Army, the better position of the soldier, and to the fact that he is a far more educated man than he used to be, and is in closer contact with the civilian population from which he comes.
There is no doubt that the soldier is a steadier and more responsible person than he used to be, and nothing marks that more than the great drop of 40 per cent, since 1904 in the number of courts-martial, and also by the drop since that period in the length of sentences. In 1904 the daily average amounted to 1,540, but last year the daily average was 656, or a decrease of 58 per cent. Consequently last year we were able to relieve the Estimates by the closing of twelve Army detention barracks, and that marks no falling off in discipline, but that the soldier has got to be a better man, has a better sense of responsibility, and there is less necessity for punishments. What we propose to do on this occasion is somewhat to increase the power of the commanding officers with the rank of field officers. We propose to enable them to award not imprisonment, because that is not given except in bad cases, but we propose to enable them for minor offences to deal with cases up to a sentence of twenty-eight days' detention. We safeguard the right of the soldier, because we say to him that we give him the option of either being tried by his commanding officer, and being sentenced within those limits, or of going to a court-martial. We tell him that if he wishes to go to a court-martial he has a perfect right to do so, but if he elects and prefers to be tried by his commanding officer he can take that course, and we propose to give the officer power to try a considerably larger number of cases than he can at the present time. At present he cannot give a sentence of more than fourteen days, and he is bound to send a case to be tried by court-martial if he thinks that that is the suitable punishment. That is very unfortunate, because a court-martial brands more or less, and if a man has been tried by such a tribunal he can never be the same as he was before, whereas in the case of ordinary offences in the Army, for which a man is condemned to be confined to barracks or is reprimanded, nobody is any the worse in the long run, and a man's character is sustained unless he is convicted of

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some offence which can be regarded as serious.
In the circumstances what we feel is that, at any rate for the present, twenty-eight days is far enough to go in this matter, and what we propose to do will cut down the number of courts-martial by 25 per cent. If any soldier is charged, however, as I have said already, he may ask for a court-martial, but if he is sensible, as the bulk of our soldiers are, he will prefer to be tried in a summary fashion by his commanding officer, and my opinion, from experience, is that a man gets off very much more easily before his own officer than if he goes to a court-martial. The feeling existing between the officers and soldiers leads to a very great sense of comradeship, and the commanding officer does not like to see his men get into trouble. I know of no more satisfactory tribunal for these minor offences than this, but, of course, in the case of more serious offences a different course is desirable. As to the genesis of these proposals, I would like to say it rests with the Adjutant-General Sir Ian Hamilton, than whom, I think, no man takes a greater interest in soldiers. He has worked almost all his life among soldiers; he has been in contact with them in every part of the world, and he is strongly of opinion that we have reached the time when this advance might be made which would reduce the number of courts-martial materially. We have consulted the most experienced commanders-in-chief, and they gave an opinion in each case in favour of the change. General Smith-Dorrien, General Douglas, and other officers feel that the time has come when these things may be dealt with more on the analogy of civil life where an offender gets off much more easily than he does in the Army. For my part, I regard this change as entirely in the interests of the soldiers, and one which ought to lead to a still further improvement in the condition of the soldier who, I may point out, is exactly as well off as he was before because he has a right to the other tribunal if he chooses to demand it.
Mr. JOHN WARD: I will take this opportunity of reiterating the opinions to which I gave expression last night, especially and more strongly because of the remarks that have been made by the hon. and Noble Lord opposite. He has led us to believe, if his argument amounts to anything, that you can
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only get responsible men as officers in the Army if they are allowed to tyrannise over all these men under them. He suggested that taking away the right of the officer to impose any other punishment than fourteen days is tantamount to reducing the status of the officers, and practically to reducing their position in the Army. So far as I am concerned, instead of increasing the sentence which the commanding officer can impose upon his men, I should think that any advance should be in the direction of reducing the power ot the commanding officer. I object to this proposition for increasing the sentence. I much prefer to leave the maximum punishment as it is, at fourteen days. I should prefer an advance in the direction of reducing the fourteen days to seven or ten. The proposition that we should go beyond what has been proposed by the reactionary Army Council over which the right hon. Gentleman presides and increase the twenty-eight days to fifty-six days is one which I do not suppose the Noble Lord himself really intends seriously. I suppose it really is the outcome of those long conversations he says he has had with the right hon. Gentleman on the subject, with the idea of forestalling the probable reduction after a full Debate in this House.
Viscount CASTLEREAGH: I had no long conversation with the right hon. Gentleman, and I never said I had.
Mr. JOHN WARD: I understood the Noble Lord in his opening remarks said he had talked military affairs over considerably with the right hon. Gentleman.
Viscount CASTLEREAGH: What I alluded to was the all-night sittings in which the hon. Member and myself have taken part on more than one occasion.
Mr. JOHN WARD: If they are the only conversations I must confess that I had quite as long conversations with the right hon. Gentleman. I wish to refer specially to the statement that is constantly urged by the right hon. Gentleman, and which is put in the preamble of this Clause. It does not look like a clause of an Act of Parliament at all. "With a view to reducing the cases of courts-martial," and so on. It is like the preamble of a new law relating to the Military Code. I do not think that is a desirable way of introducing the subject, because it does not in any way mitigate the suffering of the private soldier. In many a case in which at the present time the commander deals

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with his man and sentences him to a minimum detention of fourteen days without going to a court-martial, if the officer even in the days which have gone, had had the power to give him twenty-eight days, that would have been the sentence. Therefore, instead of relieving the danger to the private soldier by granting this additional power to the commanding officer, you may very likely be doubling his sentence for even the most trifling crimes or breaches of military law. There are detentions even under courts-martial showing clearly that some of the cases which are dealt with by courts-martial at present are so trifling that they are not serious cases at all, but the court finds that its discipline is amply maintained by a sentence of slight detention even then. You must not necessarily assume, as the right hon. Gentleman does, that when a man prefers, or is taken before a court-martial, he must get a more severe sentence than the commanding officer would give him. I only wish the right hon. Gentleman had served in one of the line regiments as a private, say twenty years ago, for a little while. I do not think he would be so sanguine about this advance. For instance he gives the opinion of officers of great standing in the Army in favour of this innovation, men whom one knows perfectly well, especially one of them, who does everything he can to mitigate the hardships of the soldier's life. I admit that, but officers are not the best judges of the way in which a private soldier should be punished as a rule. It is only necessary to go back to about the seventies. Twelve months ago, when I was contesting with the right hon. Gentleman on the Army (Annual) Bill, I looked through the Debates with reference to flogging in the Army, and I noticed that nearly every soldier of any standing as a commanding officer declared that it would be utterly impossible for officers to maintain anything like discipline or even to hold the Army together, even in face of the enemy, unless flogging was maintained. If we had taken the advice of the ordinary professional soldier we should never have allowed our humanity to step in and prevent flogging in the Army. If it had been left to the Army officers themselves we should flog soldiers to-day for the slightest breach of discipline. There are some officers who even now think that the Army would be much better if the commanding officer was allowed to flog a man occasionally before breakfast or for breakfast according to his whim or requirements. The opinion
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of the officer as to what is the best punishment and the best method of dealing with breaches of discipline on the part of the man is not always the best advice, as has been proved on many occasions before. Hence I protest against this statement being put forward as a sufficient justification for making the lot of the soldier more difficult than it is to-day. Very often, I have no doubt, in spite of the intention of the commanding officer to weigh the facts of the case and to deal justly with the man, he largely has to depend upon his subordinates, upon his non-commissioned officers, for all the information that he gets relating to the conduct of the private soldier, and even sometimes upon his fellow commissioned officers.
MARQUESS Of TULLIBARDINE: I do not think any modern officer, at all events, is of any use at all unless he knows more about his men than any man in his regiment.
Mr. JOHN WARD: In the majority of cases they know a great deal about their men, and they know them personally, but as to the incidents upon which charges of insubordination are made, I think the Noble Marquess would agree, to a great extent the commanding officer has to rely upon information supplied by non-commissioned officers, and even of men in almost the same position as the private himself. A non-commissioned officer may be prone to take personal pique arising out of incidents in the barrack room, and a charge may very soon be trumped up against the private soldier, and his position in the Army and his life generally can be made a positive burden to him. There is not the slightest doubt about that. In addition to that the officer is bound to support his non-commissioned officer. If he did not, the corps could be scarcely held together. I should think there is hardly ever a charge made by a non-commissioned officer against the private soldier of insubordination or want of attention to his duties that is not maintained and punished at once, as a matter of course, on the information of the non-commissioned officer. I should say it is done regularly, and that the commanding officer acts on this principle that if he wants to maintain the discipline of his regiment it is a thousand times better for him to be a little more severe on the private against whom the charge is made than to lower the authority of the non-commissioned officer in the eyes of the ordinary private of the regiment. I understand why it is done, but

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at the same time I know how irksome and degrading and how unfortunate it is for a private soldier who happens to find himself a scapegoat. A court-martial is not an ideal place for sifting evidence, and you cannot get law or justice, or anything of the sort. You get a sort of rough justice, but anything approaching what you would expect in a civil process is out of the question. But, rough as it is, as long as you have a chance of establishing a court and hearing evidence properly you may, and the commanding officer does occasionally, sift the evidence and the charges sufficiently to ensure acquittal. But that is only in a few cases. Some 6,000 men in the year before last lost their liberty by courts-martial of one kind or another. Of the 6,000 who were tried only 130 or 132 escaped conviction, showing it is almost certain that if once a charge is brought against a man, it will be sure to be carried home. The suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman that this extension of the power of commanding officers is an advantage to the men is one I cannot for the life of me see. The right hon. Gentleman must admit that when my Friends here were refusing him support in respect to the Territorial Army I stood behind him the whole time. I championed the cause right through from beginning to end, and I got into serious difficulty with my Friends for it. It is not from any envy or ill-feeling towards the right hon. Gentleman that I object to this extension of power; it is only because I believe that if you make it possible for a commanding officer to impose increased punishment, you are going to add greatly to the punishment of the men against whom charges are made. The commanding officer must rely always on his subordinates for information with reference to matters of this description. The "Notes on Clauses" of the Bill are unfortunate. It is said it is for the purpose of reducing the number of courts-martial. If it does not decrease the punishment on the men, what is really the use of lowering the proportion of courts-martial1? I think myself I would much rather not go before the commanding officer if a case were trumped up against me in the corps to which I belonged out of prejudice on the part of the non-commissioned officers who had been constantly in attendance on me, and who might have a grudge against me. I dare not even say I am not guilty. I would rather remain absolutely silent and get a sentence of twenty-eight days' imprisonment, or whatever it might
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be, because, if I had denied the charge, when once the commanding officer has decided that I was guilty, that again is another offence in addition to the one of which I had been convicted. As a matter of fact, everybody in the Army knows that if the King's Rules, or the Queen's Rules, as we used to call them, were insisted upon by every commanding officer, and if the men had to obey them, they would not be able to breathe. Those who understand the strictness of the Code wish that the rules should be made more generous, and that the amount of punishment which commanding officers are able to inflict should be restricted.
Colonel WARNER: I have had some experience on this subject. A commanding officer relies, in the first place, as the court-martial does, entirely on the evidence before him. Any evidence can be produced before a commanding officer in exactly the same way as before a court-martial. In the second place, I would point out that the term of fourteen days is not a minimum; it is a maximum, and the commanding officer is quite entitled not only to dismiss a charge, but also to give a very light punishment indeed. Let me point out to the Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Mr. John Ward) that the very case he quoted is one where the proposal in the Bill will be of advantage to the men, because where there is a non-commissioned officer fond of raking up charges against the men the colonel will know that noncommissioned officer's character, but a court-martial might not know it. Therefore in that particular case it will be a distinct advantage to be tried by the colonel instead of by a court-martial, because the colonel would discount the charge made by an officer who was in the habit of making charges against the men. I do think that the Amendment to extend the power to fifty-six days would put rather too much on the commanding officers. I do not think the men would object to it. The first question which is always asked is: Do you wish to be tried by court-martial? If he does, there is no slur cast upon him for choosing that course, but there is this disadvantage, that if he is convicted the sentence is likely to be greater than if he had been tried by the commanding officer. It would be some advantage, therefore, to get the punishment given by the commanding officer instead of by the court-martial. That is a small point. I think at the same time that no commanding officer wants to be made

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judge in really serious eases, such as would be punished by anything more than twenty-eight days' detention. I think if the limit was fifty-six days, it would mean that cases would be brought before the commanding officers which they would not like to try themselves. I do not think it necessary or wise to adopt the Amendment. There would be a feeling if a man got a long punishment from a commanding officer that he was not the right person to try the case, and that it ought to have been tried before a formal court. I think that under any system cases ought to be tried before a formal court, such as a court-martial, where heavy punishment is given. The object of the extension of the commanding officer's power, proposed in the Bill, is to enable him in certain cases which are near the margin to be able to give as much as three weeks' imprisonment instead of sending a man to a court-martial, where he would, as a rule, get a heavier punishment than if the case was dealt with by the commanding officer. The men, as a rule, prefer to be tried by the commanding officers of their regiments, because they generally get lighter punishment. In fact, when a commanding officer wishes a man to get a heavy punishment he sends him to a court-martial. I think it is an advantage that the men should have the option of being tried by commanding officers, even if they should get a little more punishment than can at present be given.
Colonel HICKMAN: I cannot let this occasion pass without saying a few words in defence of the character of the officers of His Majesty's Army. It has been distinctly aspersed by the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Mr. J. Ward). I wish to support as strongly as I can the Amendment proposed by the Noble Lord, because I feel very deeply that the interests of the soldiers, the officers, and the Army at large are very much involved in the Amendment. In my experience of something like thirty years in the Army I have always found that a private soldier, when he has been given an opportunity of saying whether he would be tried by court-martial or take the award of the commanding officer in ninety-nine cases out of 100 he prefers to be dealt with by the commanding officer. I think that is the best possible proof that soldiers prefer to be tried by officers who know them and who know all the circumstances instead of going before a court-martial, which may be composed of officers of other regiments who have no specific knowledge of the men
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and of the circumstances of the case beforehand.
I should like to back up what the Noble Lord has said as to the great advantage it would be to the Army and also to the officers to widen the scope of the responsibilities of the younger officers, beginning at the beginning and continuing on until they reach the higher ranks. In my experience I have found that young officers are always trying to get away from their regiments to go to Nigeria, Uganda, Egypt, and in fact all over the world, solely and particularly that they may be put in positions where they may hold higher responsibilities, gain experience, gain some confidence, and thereby improve themselves as officers, so that when the time comes they may go back to their regiments well fitted to give service in fighting for the King. If I understood the right hon. Gentleman correctly, he said he was raising the punishment from fourteen days to twenty-eight days. So far as I remember he is raising it from twenty-one to twenty-eight days.
Sir CHARLES DILKE: The hon. and gallant Member is referring to the provision in a Section which is struck out.
Mr. HALDANE: That is struck out.
Colonel HICKMAN: I should like to repudiate the statement made by the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent that there are officers at the present time in His Majesty's Army who are willing to bring back flogging in the Army. In the whole course of my thirty years' service I have never heard an officer say that lie wanted to see flogging brought back. The hon. Member has made aspersions against commanding, officers in stating that they must necessarily take what the non-commissioned officers tell them about a man before they form an opinion as to the justice of an accusation. When a commanding officer hears a case he is in the position of a magistrate or a judge. He has to sift the evidence and give the best judgment in his power. He has to question the non-commissioned officers because they are witnesses. That is the reason why he asks them to give their evidence. The best proof we have that there has been great improvement where commanding officers' power of punishment has been increased is to be found in the words of the Secretary of State for War. The right hon. Gentleman told us that during the past few years there has been such

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a great improvement in the discipline of the Army that there has been a reduction of forty per cent, in the number of courts-martial.
Mr. GIBSON BOWLES: I entirely sympathise with the Noble Lord (Viscount Castlereagh) and the hon. Member who has just spoken in their desire that greater responsibilities should be put upon the officers in the Army, but I would point out that it is impossible that officers of the same age in the Army could ever have the same responsibilities as officers in the Navy, for the simple reason that the Navy is always at war with one of its two enemies, and that one the greatest, namely, the sea. It is because naval officers have to combat with the sea from an early age, and that at the age, possibly, of fourteen or fifteen years a lad is put in command of a boat's crew and sent away by himself. In this way naval officers learn to exercise discipline in time of peace. The Navy is always in active service against its worst enemy, but the Army has only against it a sham enemy in time of peace. I observe that the Noble Lord and others who have spoken on behalf of the officers on this occasion are in favour of giving them greater power of punishment. I do not think that is calculated to improve them as regimental officers in the fighting line. Other qualities are required than those. If you give them ampler powers of punishment it can only tend to increase their sense of arbitrary power, but I do not think you will improve their fighting power.
I really rise to make a very sincere, may I say an almost heartrending, appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to press this Clause. Let me remind the House of what has happened? And in this connection I venture to submit that commanding officer does mean the officer who commands a detachment away from his regiment in time of active service. Seventeen years ago there was a power in the commanding officer to give twenty-one days' imprisonment. And although imprisonment is now termed detention, it is imprisonment all the same. Confinement to barracks is imprisonment in a limited area. Seventeen years ago, less two days, we passed an all-night sitting in this House in the attempt to reduce the power of the commanding officer from the power of giving twenty-one days' imprisonment to the power of giving fourteen. We were defeated upon that occasion by the late Sir
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Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was then in power; but the force of the arguments so impressed the right hon. Gentleman that when the Bill got into the House of Lords the very Amendment which we proposed, and which was rejected here, was inserted by the Government itself. The Bill came down here on the 24th April, 1893, with that Amendment inserted by the Lords, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman moved that the House of Commons should agree to the Amendment. The result of that was that the power of commanding officers to impose sentence was reduced from twenty-one days to fourteen days, and it has so remained up to this day.
Now the right hon. Gentleman proposes to raise it to twenty-eight, and I may remark that he has destroyed his case for any attempt of the sort. He says that courts-martial have decreased and the sentences upon soldiers have decreased. I rejoice to hear it; but if that is so surely that is a reason not forgiving the commanding officers greater powers, but rather for giving them less powers, or at any rate for leaving things as they are. The language of this Clause 4 is remarkable. It begins in a way I have never known a clause of an Act of Parliament to begin before—" With a view to reducing the number of cases." You never insert a motive in a clause of an Act of Parliament, and it recalls to me the famous words of one whom the Secretary for War will certainly respect, Sir Edward Coke, who talks of "Acts beginning with false, flattering preambles." I think this is rather a false, flattering preamble; and when the right hon. Gentleman tries to make out that a soldier is going to be better off if somebody has the power of imprisoning him for a longer period, I really cannot accept that line of argument. It is said that there will be fewer courts-martial and more sentences by commanding officers. The truth is this: The commanding officers have now only a power of fourteen days, but under this Clause they are to have a power of twenty-eight days detention, as it is called. My belief is that this tendency to imitate the arbitrariness of some Continental nations, and to give more and more arbitrary powers to commanding officers, is detrimental to the interests of the Army. I would rather see a development in the English way.
Our Army we are always told is inefficient. No War Minister comes into power but he attempts to make radical changes,

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and every succeeding War Minister finds that his predecessors made big blunders. And so it has gone on ever since I have known of an Army or read of it. There is another force from which the right hon. Gentleman might take some lessons. The English Army which conquered France and brought credit to England were what were called Sevenpenny Men, and the Welsh among them were only Fivepenny Men, men with only 5d. a day. They found themselves and lived upon the enemy. Those men fought bravely, but when they came home they returned to their wives and families. They were a sort of ancient foreshadowing of that most admirable of all forces, the Metropolitan Police, who are ready to fight and go anywhere, but who live at home, and are always on hand, and the result is the admirable force that all the world admires of the blue angels who guard our streets. I am talking of the method of dealing with the Army. I am comparing the method of segregating a man from his fellow-subjects, keeping a man in barracks and depriving him of his civil rights in the ordinary sense, and, let it not be forgotten, subjecting him to all sorts of special punishments, and then attempting to increase the severity of those punishments, and I am contrasting that with the method which was found quite sufficient for the men who won Crecy and Poitiers, or who later on won Waterloo, aye, and even for the Metropolitan Police, who after their duty go home to their wives and families. I was only suggesting that that might be the ideal rather than the Continental, I will not say German, ideal, which we seem to be trying to pursue, almost since the time of Frederick the Great.
I do make this appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to persist in this Clause, and I make it because I cannot vote against it. If I did vote against it I should be helping to provide an opportunity for the return to power of a Protectionist Government, so that I must support the right hon. Gentleman, as I regard him as the sole barrier against that Protection which I believe would ruin the country. I believe he is taking the wrong method with regard to the Army. I believe, with him, that the Army is so improved that it will need not more drastic but less drastic powers of punishment, and if I am to compare the individual commanding officer, whatever his rank may be, with the court-martial, I think I would prefer the court-martial. If I was on my trial I would prefer a jury of my countrymen,
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even if it was only a court-martial. The commanding officer is not a jury; he is a judge. He acts according to his discretion, and the right hon. Gentleman knows that the discretion of a judge is only another name for personal tyranny. Commanding officers differ, but when you have a court-martial you get the average common-sense just as you do on a jury. When the right hon. Gentleman asks me to prefer an individual, and to give that individual a double power of sentencing me, I would certainly prefer a court-martial. I again repeat my appeal. I am quite helpless in the matter. I am in the right hon. Gentleman's hands, and I would ask him to temper justice with mercy.
Mr. SANDERSON: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman is it not a fact that the sentence and proceedings of a court-martial are subject to review by the Judge Advocate-General, and that the sentence and proceedings before the commanding officer are not subject to any review at all? And if that is so, and if this Clause is passed, does not that mean that the benefit of the revisal by the Judge Advocate-General would be withdrawn in a great many cases from the private soldier?
Mr. HALDANE: By Section 43 of the Army Act the private soldier has a right to complain against anything whatever done by the commanding officer, and that power is, in fact, used; and if anybody complains of the sentences an opportunity is given for reviewing them.
Mr. SANDERSON: Do not the sentences of the court-martial, as a matter of course, in every case come before the Judge Advocate-General?
Mr. HALDANE: Yes.
Mr. SANDERSON: While the sentence of the commanding officer does not come as a matter of course before the Judge Advocate-General, but only if the private soldier takes it into his own hands and has it brought on?
Mr. HALDANE: Yes.
Mr. SANDERSON: If that is so, and this Clause is passed, are you not taking away from the private soldier a very great benefit that may be of great use to him, namely, the revisal by the Judge Advocate-General, in the ordinary course of proceedings against and sentences passed upon him?
Mr. HALDANE: I do not think so, because, first of all, if he wants to go before a court-martial, he can go to a court-martial just as now. If he goes to a commanding officer, he chooses to go to him, and if he thinks he has been unjustly treated, he has only got to complain, and the practice which exists now will be followed, the matter will be investigated, and he will have redress.
MARQUESS Of TULLIBARDINE: The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ward) made a most extraordinary statement, that he thought all the officers of the Army were in favour of flogging.
Mr. JOHN WARD: I would like to say, in answer to the Noble Marquess and to another hon. Gentleman who put words into my mouth, that I did not say anything of the kind. All I said was that when the subject of flogging was under discussion in this House every officer who spoke upon the subject advocated flogging, and I therefore suggested that commanding officers were not necessarily the best judges of the right way to inflict punishment upon private soldiers.
MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: The point of the hon. Gentleman is that at that time the commanding officers were in favour of flogging. Since then the good sense of the House has shown that they were wrong. Is there any particular reason why the good sense of the House should not be at this moment correct? It was correct before, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War is correct on this occasion. We have got several Service members on both sides of the House, and I think that while the hon. Member for Stoke certainly was speaking with an honest desire for the best from the point of view of the soldier, other Members are doing the same. I think you must grant that we have also some experience in the matter, and are most anxious to do what we can for the welfare of the soldier. I think he thought that the Secretary of State for War was increasing the powers of the commanding officer for punishment, and that therefore there would be, in fact, more punishment for a man to get. The right hon. Gentleman, however, has the opposite point in view. Though it seems, oil the face of it, to be increasing the powers of the commanding officer with regard to the punishment of the men, the reason is to give the men a chance of not having to be sent to a court-martial for offences which really
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should not go before a court-martial. When a man who has been in the Army wants to get a place and you look up his record and find he has got court-martialled at any time, you will have nothing to do with him; but you never ask has he come before the commanding officer. One is, in fact, a goal bird, and the other is not. By increasing the power of the commanding officer you simply increase the number of cases dealt with by him which otherwise have been sent to a court-martial.
5.0 P.M.
The soldier may ask to be tried by court-martial, but I have never yet known a man prefer to go before the court-martial rather than before his commanding officer. There are some cases in which the fourteen days is perhaps too little, and in which it might be said that a rather heavier punishment should be given, and if a man went to a court-martial he would probably get a very much more severe sentence than would be imposed by his commanding officer. A court-martial has no feelings, it cannot have feelings, it is simply in the position of a judge, and it does not take into consideration whether the soldier accused has a wife and children, or anything of that sort. Its duty is to inflict the statutory punishment, and it is not supposed to know anything about the soldier, as does a commanding officer, who takes all the circumstances in consideration when he is considering the punishment to be inflicted. A court-martial does not make the punishment fit the individual; it acts by rule of thumb. I do think that the right hon. Gentleman is giving extended powers to the commanding officer in order to save the man from worse. That is a reason why I am thoroughly in accord with the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman. I should not, however, be altogether in favour of so drastic a change as that of increasing the period to fifty-six days. I think, if you were to substitute fifty-six days you would be giving the commanding officer rather more power than would be perhaps wise. Speaking from personal experience, I think the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right in bringing forward this Amendment, which, I think, is framed in the right spirit.
Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: This matter has been discussed on a good many occasions with reference to the maintenance of discipline in the Army. The first glance at the Clause proposed by the Government seems to be in the direction of humanity. It certainly is desirable to pre-

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vent poor men who have committed mere trivial offences from being sent before a court-martial, and from having convictions recorded against them and their characters practically destroyed. That is the argument for the Clause. On the other hand, my own instincts, at all events, are against the Clause. I have known some commanding officers who are little better than bullies—I do not say I have known many of them, but I have known some. If this Clause should pass there are some commanding officers in the Army who, I believe, would give a man, a few days after hi had come from detention, another month, and would practically keep him in detention all the year round, and that without a chance of his going to a court-martial. To put to a private soldier whether or not he will go before a court martial is a very serious proposition to place before him, because he would find himself eventually punished if he had availed himself of the alternative. I think it has been found that the more reasonable and the more humane you make punishment the better discipline you eventually get. You do not get better discipline by flogging people; you do not really vindicate the law or improve society by brutal punishment, and it seems to me that the power to give fourteen days' detention is quite enough for any offence which is a mere trivial one. If a private soldier has committed a more serious offence, then it is time that he should go before a court-martial. We have on several occasions with you in the Chair, Sir, discussed for a great many hours this question of punishment from all points of view. I am not going to repeat any of those arguments that were formerly used, but, personally, I cannot allow the Debate to a close on a question of such importance without saying a few words upon it. I do think that the power of the commanding officer to order fourteen days' detention is quite sufficient, and if a man has committed an offence deserving a longer period of detention then the proper way in which to try him would be by court-martial, whose decision would inevitably, and as a matter of course, come up for revision by the Judge Advocate-General, and before whom there would be more chance of the man getting substantial justice. The Army is a place where men are particularly liable to be bullied, and I oppose this Clause, which simply gives the officer twice the opportunity which already exists to inflict punishment. Hon. Members who look at the matter from the opposite point
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of view say that the object of giving this increased power to the commanding officer is to keep men from the courts-martial, but if we only look at the subject from the point of view of the man himself and from the point of view of the actual discipline of the Army, it will be seen that to increase the power of the commanding officer would be a mistake.
Viscount CASTLEREAGH: My only object in bringing forward this matter is that I do not think the commanding officers or the men of the Army as a whole have sufficient responsibility. In bringing forward this Amendment, I had distinctly in view the idea that more responsibility should be placed on every member of the Army. I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. JOHN WARDmoved to omit Clause 4.
I think if I get no one else to tell with me if I go to a Division, I shall have the services of the hon. Member for one of the divisions of Liverpool (Mr. Watson Rutherford). I daresay the Noble Lord (.Viscount Castlereagh) will agree with me that I have not even suggested one-quarter of what was said by the hon. Member behind him. I think I dealt in a gingerly manner with the subject compared with him. I propose the deletion of this Clause because I believe it is against the whole policy of military affairs in Europe. In almost every country at present the tendency is to relax the severity of the military code. In France, and I believe also in Germany, the power to inflict punishment without trial is gradually disappearing. I believe that to be the case with every army in the world except our own. It is unfortunate, at all events it is unfortunate from my point of view, that this tendency to increase the penal code in our Army should come at a time when a Liberal Minister has charge at the War Office. I do not know whether the things were planned before the right hon. Gentleman took possession of his present office, but I must say I do not think it is very creditable to a Liberal Minister to be constantly asking this House to stiffen up and tighten the power of a commanding officer over the soldier in the way suggested, not only on this occasion, but on other occasions also. I believe, as a matter of fact, that in the case of every Army Annual Bill brought in by the right hon. Gentleman he has done something in

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this direction. I believe that on the occasion of every Army (Annual) Bill since I have been a Member of the House, and since the right hon. Gentleman has been Minister of War, some new burden has been placed on the private soldier—some new difficulty added. Last year we had the question of billeting—
The CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is supposed to be speaking against the Clause, and he is travelling over the whole subject. He must confine his observations to the Clause itself, and tell us how it adds to the disabilities of the private soldier, and he is not in order in going over the whole field.
Mr. J. WARD: Excepting in the last words which I used I have dealt absolutely line by line with the Clause, and nothing else. I admit I was unfortunate in mentioning billeting. This Clause, if it becomes part of the Bill, will again carry out this tightening process that has been going on for a long time. Here we propose to allow the commanding officer power, without trial, as the hon. Member (Mr. Watson Rutherford) has pointed out, to inflict still greater punishment in the future than he can inflict at the present time. I say this Clause is absolutely tightening up the whole process of punishment. It is not a party question, and hon. Members opposite, I am sure, are just as interested as any hon. Members on this side in protecting the interests of the private soldier. The hon. Member below the Gangway a moment ago put a most important problem with reference to this Clause to the Minister for War, who never attempted to answer it. Under this Clause the punishment is inflicted, and there is no appeal unless the soldier himself appeals in some way or makes a complaint. If he makes a complaint, and if it is a wrongful complaint, he can be given another six months, I think. There are peculiar sections in the Army Act, and even in the copy the right hon. Gentleman sent to me there are some very ambiguous sorts of crime. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Liverpool, by this process the soldier may point out that there is something wrong about the sentence of his commanding officer, and I daresay there is some way of rectifying it. But as the hon. Member also pointed out, if the man goes before a court-martial, then there is an officer properly appointed, and with all the powers and
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authority and all the necessary qualifications for investigations of this kind, who automatically inquires into the sentence, and you get an automatic rectification without the soldier being called on to make a charge against his commanding officer, a thing he is not likely to do, no matter how severe the sentence may be. Under those circumstances, if I can only get one to tell with me, I am certainly going to take a Division against the Clause. I move it be deleted.
Lord CHARLES BERESFORD: The question under discussion is a very interesting one; but the point to consider is the case of the man, as it is the man who is going to be punished. When a man receives summary punishment it is over in a very short time. He is not kept waiting, and there is none of that irritation caused by keeping a man waiting for punishment, and generally he gets a fairer punishment from the officer than he does from the court-martial. May I give some instances which happened to me? As a captain I had a sergeant-major of Marines who had served twenty-onxe years, with great credit to himself and with great credit to his country. He went ashore and he got drunk. It was not his fault, as he drank some filthy stuff that made him drunk. I had to disrate him. He was a very valuable man, and in a very short time I gave him his rating back. If I tried that man by court-martial he would have lost all that service which he had given to the State. He was a splendid man, an excellent non-commissioned officer, respected by everybody, but he would have been disrated, and have lost all that service, and lost his pension, and he would not have got employment on shore, because, it must be remembered, that the court-martial goes down on the conduct sheet. I had another excellent man who through carelessness put his helm in such a way as to lose two men's lives. I had to disrate him. It was carelessness, and one, of those mistakes which we are all liable to. But on active service in the Navy you have got to think of every little finger of your men, and to see that nothing is done of any sort or kind to lose men's lives, and a little error of judgment might have that result. If this particular case had been tried by court-martial there is no doubt that the man would never have got his rating back again, which would have affected him in his whole career. I only mention these circumstances on the point as to whether a commanding officer should have the

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right of punishment, or whether he should refer the matter to courts-martial. It is a very difficult case I admit, but I am thinking only of the men.
Mr. JOHN WARD: If the Noble Lord tried all the cases I would submit them to him without courts-martial.
Lord CHARLES BERESFORD: I am much obliged for the compliment. In the old days in both Services the rigour of discipline was, "Do not ask" and "Do not speak." In these days the whole, of the sympathy of the officer is with the men, and I am sure I speak for the sister service as well as for the one I know so well. The effort is not to try and run a man in, but to try and get a man out and give him every chance. As for non-commissioned officers or petty officers irritating the men and running them in for offences against discipline or making irritable remarks to the men, that is known at once, I am sure, to every colonel of a regiment and captain of a ship. They know it from the other noncommissioned officers. I myself am certainly only thinking of the men. Do not let us think of the officer's power but of what is best for the men. My humble opinion is that the right hon. Gentleman's idea of giving the officer more power with a view to getting rid of courts-martial is certainly best for the men, and I shall vote for the right hon. Gentleman's proposal.
Colonel IVOR PHILIPPS:I do not think the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. John Ward) represents the views of the soldiers of the Army, because I am firmly convinced that the soldiers of the Army know that it is not to their benefit for minor cases to go to courts-martial. The hon. Member talked as if a man who was brought before his commanding officer had to appeal against the decision. There is no such thing. What happens to the man is that the case is inquired into, and then the commanding officer says, "Will you be tried by me or by court-martial?" and the man says whichever he prefers. If he thinks the commanding officer has a "down" upon him he says by court-martial, and if he thinks the commanding officer is a man who will deal fairly with him, he says, "I will be tried by the commanding officer." There is no question of any unfairness. I do not think it should go out from this House that during the tenure of office of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War that the Army Act has been stiffened up. I believe that it is entirely
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the other way, and I believe the whole tendency of the Army Act has been to make military law more suitable for the soldier and to benefit the soldier. I am quite certain that the soldier thinks so too. I say with every confidence that the remarks of the hon. Member for Stoke do not represent the views of the soldiers. I am certain that the officers will say the same thing. They do not advocate these proposals to add to their power. These proposals give more power to the soldier who can be tried either by his officers or by court-martial, which ever is most beneficial in his opinion. I certainly do not think it should go out from this House that we are tightening up the Army Regulations.
Mr. REES: I heard with the greatest pleasure the remarks of my hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Philipps). I agree with him, and I am convinced that the picture drawn by the hon. Member for Stoke of antagonism between the private soldier and his officer is a figment of that hon. Member's imagination. I do not say that he himself may not have seen such things, but if it is so, then I think the cases have been exceptional, and he has been particularly unfortunate in his experiences. The hon. Member said that the Question before the House was not a party question, and neither is it. He proceeded, by way of showing how it was not a party question, to attack the Secretary of State, and to ask how could a Liberal Minister propose to stiffen up discipline in the Army, and how could a Liberal Minister do this, that, or the other. If the hon. Member really believes that this is not a party question, how can he suppose that there is anything Liberal or Conservative in the action of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War? I suppose that the Secretary of State, whether he happens to belong to the Liberal or Conservative party, acts on the advice of distinguished soldiers on his council. I do not suppose that in a matter of this kind he lays his own views before the House of Commons. The hon. Member commented on the thin House in which this has been discussed. I believe there is very good and satisfactory explanation of that, and I believe it is that the Members of this House know that the private soldier is in good hands, and that he can be trusted to his officer and to the War Office, and that he does not require all this defending. What the hon. Member says is very different to my experience, not as a soldier, but as one who has been

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a judge and a magistrate in cantonments. I remember that officers have said to me that when they got into command they must be considered by their brother officers and by their men either to be fools or to be tyrants. They always have that unfortunate alternative before them. If they try to do their duty somebody accuses them of being tyrants, and if they are too lenient they are accused on all sides of being fools. I venture to make these few remarks because I confess I heard with some indignation the speech of the hon. Member, reflecting upon British officers.
Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill Reported without Amendment; read the third time, and passed.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 1) BILL.
Considered in Committee; Reported without Amendment; to be read the third time to-morrow.

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE BILL [LORDS].
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a second time."
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir W. Robson): This is a Bill providing for the appointment of two additional judges in the High Court of Justice to be attached to the King's Bench Division. The staff of the High Court Judges on the King's Bench side consists now of fifteen puisne judges and the Lord Chief Justice. This Bill must not be taken as providing permanent additions, because it contains the proviso that: "Whenever, after 1st January, 1911, the whole number of such puisne judges amounts to upwards of fifteen, such vacancy shall not be filled unless and until an Address is presented by both Houses of Parliament representing that the state of business in the King's Bench Division requires that such vacancies should be filled." So that if, after 1st January next a vacancy occurs, that vacancy cannot be filled up unless this House and the other House take the state of business into consideration and present an Address to the Crown asking that the vacancy should be filled. The findings of the Committee ap-
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pointed to consider this Question was that the congestion in the King's Bench Division is serious. I do not think anyone with any knowledge whatever of the state of business in the courts would doubt or dispute that statement for a single instant. Not only is the congestion serious, but I think it may very fairly be said to have become chronic; and it causes delay in the administration of justice, especially in the cases of poorer litigants, in which, perhaps, the money sought to be recovered is vital to their business or subsistence, which amounts very often to an absolute denial of justice.
The Committee had before it a great mass of tables and statistics, with which I do not propose to trouble the House, tending to show how great the congestion is, but I think the House would desire that I should put before them one or two figures of the least disputable kind to show the necessity for the Bill. In 1876 the common law side of the court was under the administration of eighteen judges. In that year three of the judges were removed to form the Court of Appeal, along with the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls. That, of course, made a very serious drain upon the strength of what is now called the King's Bench Division, and what was then the common law side of the High Court; but the Legislature, instead of making good that important diminution in the number of judges, proceeded to lay an additional strain upon the judicial staff. In 1883 the Legislature transferred to the common law side the jurisdiction in bankruptcy. In 1888 they formed the Railway and Canal Commission, and recently we have had constituted the Court of Criminal Appeal, which has made very substantial demands upon the judicial resources of the King's Bench Division. These matters, however, are comparatively small, and I do not think they would themselves have called for this Bill. For the really substantial and important considerations we must look elsewhere. In 1873 the population of the country under the jurisdiction of these judges was something over 22,000,000; today it is 34,000,000 or 35,000,000. Moreover, there has been a far more than corresponding increase in the commercial and manufacturing business of the country; and it is impossible to suppose that in 1910 the courts could cope with that enormous increase in commercial and manufacturing business with a judicial staff, which is not only not greater than it was in 1876, but which has suffered positive diminution.

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The extent to which the business has increased Members may well imagine for themselves. It is not that the number of cases to be tried is larger. That is a matter upon which statistics may very easily mislead. You may easily have—and you have had—a very great increase in the work of the courts at times when there has been a steady diminution in the number of cases. For instance, two causes—and there are others—which have operated to reduce the number of cases are the extension of county court jurisdiction and the extension of the process known to lawyers as "Order XIV.—Proceedings"— proceedings by which a defendant who is resisting a claim, but has no sort of substantial defence, is called upon to state what his defence is; that defence is then considered, and, if it is found to be trivial or not to form adequate legal grounds, judgment is entered against him at once without trial. That, of course, greatly diminishes the number of cases to be tried. Thus we have reduced the lists very considerably by the removal of cases involving small amounts, which are in themselves generally small cases, and also of cases as to which there is no substantial defence. The cases, therefore, that are left are long cases, which come to court by compulsion, often cases where the amount is unimportant, but which are very keenly fought. We have also an immense number of great commercial cases which cannot be disposed of by arbitration between the parties, although it is now increasingly found that commercial men entering into contracts insert a clause providing for arbitration. But disputes do not arise merely between those who are directly parties to the contract. They arise between persons who are connected with the contract without being actual parties to it, and for such persons there is no recourse except to the courts, unless they can agree with their opponents upon some other course of action.
In arbitration cases themselves, greatly as they have operated to relieve the courts, there is now beginning to be a just source of complaint and grievance. Commercial men are beginning to discover that they are not always a perfectly economical tribunal. They are generally so, but they are not always economical tribunals, and where they have to deal, as in nearly every case they do, with some point of law, they are not expert tribunals. I have seen, and all those connected with the law have seen, cases where you have had a great array of solicitors
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and counsel arguing before a layman, who perhaps has expert knowledge of the subject matter of the dispute from a commercial point of view, but who is not able to guide and control the controversy from the legal point of view. Why is it that there should be this great expense in order to employ an inexpert arbitrator? It is said that justice is supposed to be freely and gratuitously administered, and that in cases where they are compelled to employ counsel and solicitors they ought to be able to have an expert judge. But they do not get one because of the delay that ensues before a case comes on for trial. That delay is often referred to as being a hardship to the poorer litigants, but it is also a very great hardship on the wealthier business people. You have cases involving large sums of money, sometimes amounting to many thousands of pounds. A short time ago I was talking to a distinguished counsel, who was giving me, from his own recollection, instance of cases where great sums have been justly claimed, in which the defendant put up some technical defence, and the plaintiff has said:—
" I am claiming £12,000. There will be a long interval before we can get the case ready for trial; then when it is ready for trial I shall be lucky if it is tried within six months: I cannot afford to stand out of this money for all that time."
Therefore he is compelled often to make a very inequitable compromise involving a substantial surrender of his rights. These are grounds which will appeal to everyone as making it reasonable that in the commercial interests of the country, and in the interests of justice generally, there should be an adequate staff of High Court Judges.
One of the reasons for the block in the courts is the increasing length of cases from the point of view of time. It was stated before the Commission that judges in olden times disposed of a large number of cases. That is an observation which ignores what I have just pointed out. In the olden times they had an immense number of undefended cases, and cases of the kind which are now transferred to county court jurisdiction, and it was, before Order XIV. proceedings were known. There was also another reason operating to give judges in olden times an appearance of greater rapidity than they possess now, namely, that cases were continually stopped on some technicality. Prosecutions in criminal cases were continually stopped upon some trivial flaw in the indictment; pleadings were subjected to the most meticulous examination, and

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powers of amendment were sternly exercised; so that case after case was ordered out of court upon some purely technical ground, by no means to the general interests of justice between the parties. Now-a-days cases are tried with much greater freedom from these technicalities. There is a much more generous discovery and production of documents, with the result that the heavy cases which come to trial are undoubtedly tried at greater length. Some people talk about the greater verbosity of counsel, but I do not think that counsel are more verbose than formerly. There are other causes which have tended to occupy the time of the court. For instance, there is the Poor Prisoners' Defence Act, a most just and beneficent Act. Another great cause for the increased length of criminal cases is the right of prisoners to give evidence on their own behalf. That has greatly lengthened criminal trials. Formerly, cases were continually disposed of on technicalities. Now every criminal ease is much more carefully tried. I am bound to admit that the institution of the Court of Criminal Appeal, whether or not it has increased the care with which prisoners are tried, has certainly increased the length of the trial. The note is much more carefully taken; it has to be sent up to the Court of Criminal Appeal; and every point on which a question of law might arise is much more fully thrashed out. All these things tend to increase the length of criminal trials. There is also an increasing number of trials. Between 1903 and 1908 the number of criminal trials increased from 2,500 to 3,192.
This, it has been estimated, means 25 per cent, added to the time that it takes to get the work done. The result is a block of a very serious character. It has caused sittings for months longer, and with much longer hours. I notice, not at all with any great surprise, that the great mercantile communities of Liverpool and Manchester have been protesting against the very long hours the courts have been sitting. The judges on circuit have been accustomed to sit very long hours indeed, and the protest raised is against the hardship to witnesses and other parties concerned, who are kept hanging about the courts. It is impossible for those concerned to do any portion of their ordinary work. I know some people say that the judges might sit longer, but they are the very first to protest at long sittings.
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Various remedies have been suggested. One is that there should be a grouping of the circuit towns, and so time be saved on circuit. That proposal, ever since I remember the courts, has been before the country. There has always been somebody advocating it as though it had never been heard of before. There is no objection on the part of judges and counsel to the grouping of certain towns. Why, then, it may be asked, is it not done? Because you have these small circuit towns which for long have been the centre of a large agricultural area and population. The removal of the court does not so much matter in the case of civil business. But if you take a prisoner from such an area and try him at some distant town or large commercial centre, he feels a sense of injustice. For instance, if all the Welsh towns concerned are to be deprived of their circuit business, and it is sent to. say, Cardiff, what is the first lament of the persons sent for trial? It is: "We can prove such and such facts in defence, but we cannot, of course, bring our witnesses the distance." It is in the interests, of the prisoner, and certainly not in that of the commercial, professional, or judicial people, that the grouping of the circuit towns cannot be carried much further than at present.
There is the suggested increase of county court jurisdiction. All I can say to that is that the pressure of work in the county courts has become as serious, and is going to raise questions as serious, as the block of business in the High Court. A county court is intended to be the poor man's tribunal, but the poor man finds now that his case is delayed from court to court in order that what is really High Court work should take precedence. If you increase the jurisdiction of county courts much further you will have to increase the salaries of the judges. There are sixty-four judges, and the addition to their salaries which has been suggested is £500 per year each, or £30,000, which is as much as six High Court judges will cost. You will also have to raise their clerks to the High Court scale of pay. Hence you gain nothing in point of economy, but you will be laying a great and continued strain on the county court. What have the courts been obliged to do? They have been obliged to act by Commission. The Lord Chancellor has appointed commissioners to go round in the absence of certain judges. The judges themselves are also entitled to call upon counsel to give them assistance, and this has been done. I see

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that in 1908 there were something like twelve commissioners requested to act by judges, in addition to those sent on circuit by the Lord Chancellor himself. These twelve gentlemen sat for about forty-one days of five or six hours each. They gave their assistance effectively, but it is not a satisfactory method. These gentlemen have to be called from the Bar, and, after adjudicating upon cases, they take their place again among counsel, which seems rather contrary, I think, to sound principles of judicial administration.
These are the reasons which have induced the Select Committee to recommend that these two additional judges should be appointed. The Bill suggests that, after the appointment of such judges, any vacancy occurring among the puisne judges of the King's Bench Division, shall be filled, provided that after January the whole number of such judges amounts to upwards of fifteen, such vacancy shall not be filled until an Address is presented from both Houses of Parliament. The Bill will allow us to test whether this block is a temporary or a permanent one. If it is found that the business has increased in proportion to the appointments, which I think will very likely be the result, then it will be in the power of Parliament to make these appointments permanent. On the other hand, if the delay is a mere temporary delay, due to exceptional cases, then Parliament will be able to exercise its discretion; and I am sure no Government will desire to continue the appointment of judges that experience has proved to be unnecessary. I beg to move.
Mr. RAWLINSON: I should like to congratulate the Government most heartily on introducing this Bill, which is not only necessary now, but has been necessary for a large number of years. This matter has been brought before the House, in season and out of season, by various Members, including myself, for the last two or three years. I am not going over the arguments which have been frequently put before the public, probably no more strongly than by the present Solicitor-General at a public meeting held last spring, where the whole of the arguments were thoroughly reviewed and gone into by him. It is not necessary to go into them for this reason: The Government last year appointed a Commission, which I think I am entitled to say was certainly a strong Commission, at all events from the Government point of view, most members having been connected more or less intimately with the Treasury at one time and another. It
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could not have been said that that Commission was too sympathetic with the demands of the legal world, and the business world, so far as the appointment of more judges was concerned. The Commission came to the unanimous decision in favour of the speedy appointment of two more judges, and that proposal is incorporated in this Bill.
The Attorney-General has referred to one or two different matters, and has given various reasons why there is a necessity for more judges. Speaking personally, the Criminal Appeal Act alone is sufficient ground for the appointment of further judges. We were promised when that Bill was before Parliament that extra judges should be appointed in case they were needed, and the Government are only carrying out their pledge. Having cordially supported the introduction of this Bill by the Government, may I ask them for one small favour with reference to it? This Bill, as the Attorney-General pointed out, so far as the two judges are concerned, will only exist to the end of this year. If one or more judges of the King's Bench Division die or resign or leave their appointments after 1st January their vacancies will not be filled up unless further steps are taken by Parliament. That is a very short period indeed in which to give this Bill a fair chance. The Attorney-General said that in a year or two we should be able to see how the Act works, and to see if the block of business is merely temporary or permanent. That, I think, was the intention of the Committee. I think a fair interpretation of what the Committee meant was what the Attorney-General said to-day, that there should be a proper and sufficient breathing time to see whether on the appointment of these two judges the arrears, which exist now to such a terrifying amount, will be really worked off by the end of this period or not. I venture to submit to the Government that that period should be longer than 1st January of next year. The very least I think that ought to be would be to put the period to the Long Vacation of next year, so that we shall have at least more than one clear year's work to see the operation of the Act. I will press this point more strongly in Committee, where I hope the matter will get careful consideration, having regard to the possible risks of work between now and 1st January next, in the shape of election petitions and similar work which will take the judges away from their proper work. Having said this much I heartily support the Bill.
6.0 P.M.
Mr. RENDALL: The Government in taking action in this matter have given the go-by to the general agitation for other reforms that there has been in the legal profession for the last generation. The appointment of two new judges is a very easy way out of the difficulty. But it is at the same time piece-meal legislation. It takes no account of the enormous exertions for reform that lawyers of all kinds have been making, and not for their advantage but for the advantage of the commercial classes generally; nor does it take account of the hard work done in trying to get the county courts enlarged powers. It says nothing of work which in the future as in the past will have to be brought to London. The whole difficulty in regard to the increase of the powers of the county court and giving to the county court more jurisdiction lies, I believe, with the Bar. The difficulty, I understand, that the Lord Chancellor had in dealing with his County Courts Bill, has been that the Bar strongly object to the county courts having larger jurisdiction given to them unless they have the preferential right of pleading in those courts. It is really this attitude which has stood in the way of the county court getting those increased powers which, in my humble opinion, would be very much to the advantage of the commercial community generally, and would lessen the cost of litigation. The alteration of the circuit system is quite ripe for settlement. I am certain that people generally throughout the country long ago desired to see cases brought from the small county towns to the larger towns, if it was a fair and convenient distance, and especially Laving regard to the railway communication having vastly improved in recent years. I say, therefore, that whilst I certainly support this Bill because I believe it absolutely necessary, it is an easy way out of the difficulty, and it at the same time errs on the side that it takes no account of the work which the more enlightened of the legal profession have been doing for years in trying to meet the public need in favour of less costly and more convenient methods of law. One other reason must be named. This Bill has been produced because we have no age limit in regard to the judges. At present a judge may sit and go on sitting, whether he is seventy or eighty, and until he is dead. Of course, I fully agree there are cases of exceptional men. But these exceptional men may have exceptional rules applied to them.
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Speaking of ordinary men, I think we must admit that the allotted days of a man's usefulness are completed by seventy years of age. I quite agree it does not seem to be possible to introduce an Amendment to that effect, but the Government ought to take up this question of limiting the power of the judge to sit upon the Bench after seventy years of age. If that were done a good: deal of the block of business in the courts might be done away with. It is quite true that an old judge is often speedy, but he is not the most careful, and it is the old judge that necessitates most appeals very often, and in the long run it would expedite business if he were not permitted to sit on after the age of seventy. I think the system of allowing judges to sit after seventy ought to be put an end to. We do not allow admirals or generals or ambassadors to work after seventy years of age. It may be thought a judge requires less physical strength to do his job than the other people I have mentioned. Personally I do not think that is so. I think it requires more physical strength to sit in a chair all day long and to pay attention to legal arguments than it does for other classes of work. Those of us who sit in this House for any length of time have discovered there is nothing more straining, physically, than sitting still and listening to other people's speeches.
The real difficulty that stands in the way of judges retiring is that they have to retire upon £3,500 a year, whereas their salaries are £5,000. That is a difficulty, but it could be got over by saying to a man, "You are seventy years of age; you must retire whether you have earned your pension or not." At present if a judge is raised to the Bench at sixty he cannot get his full pension until after fifteen years, and therefore he must sit up to the age of seventy-five. If he was, appointed at sixty-five years of age he has to sit up to the age of eighty before he gets his pension. All these things arc very prejudicial to the general good of the community. One way out of these difficulties has been very often to make a judge a peer. Lately a number of judges have been made peers, I am sure to the advantage of everyone concerned. But the real difficulty at present is that, in order to get rid of a judge who is past his duties, you have to make him a peer. They will not retire otherwise; that is a serious matter, because when you make a judge a peer you give him the power to sit in the House of Lords

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and hear appeals from judges who are abler than himself.
If under a statutory enactment a judge had got to retire at seventy in the ordinary way you would have accomplished a great deal. In exceptional cases where you had a judge of unimpaired power and ability and strength you could make an exception, so that the State would not lose his valuable services by enabling him to sit in the House of Lords. There need be no difficulty in enabling him to do this. Any Act of Parliament carrying out these things need not prevent an ordinary judge from being sent to the House of Lords. I see no difficulty in allowing such a man to act as a judge because of his exceptional powers and abilities. The real difficulty we have to face is from the lawyers. These learned gentlemen at times have to appear before all sorts and kinds of people, and therefore they are the last to take the slightest trouble to try and get reforms of this kind carried out. That is perfectly natural. Lawyers can hardly be expected to stand up in this House and say judges are too old at seventy when in a few days they will he practising before, these very judges. If any alteration of this kind is made it will have to be made through the pressure of laymen. The chief reforms that might be brought about are—firstly, that all judges should be entitled to a pension at seventy years of age whether they have been fifteen years on the Bench or not; secondly, there should be a statutory provision which should terminate a judge's appointment at the age of seventy; and, thirdly, in the case of men of exceptional ability when they get to the age of seventy and the State requires their service still further they should be transferred to the House of Lords. If these things were done a very great advantage to the community generally would be obtained. With regard to this Bill, I do not think it is possible to oppose it because it is perfectly clear there are arrears, and these arrears must be cleared up, but the Attorney-General might have held out a hope that the Government would do something at an early date to deal with these matters. I trust if the hon. and learned Gentleman makes any further remarks later on he will hold out some such hope.
Mr. L. SANDERSON: I rise to support this Bill simply and solely on the ground of public interest, because it is in my opinion a matter of public interest that the very highest judicial standard possible
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should be attained. I need not say a word about the details and figures to which the learned Attorney-General has referred. It is a matter of common knowledge how the work in the King's Bench Division has increased, and it is also a matter of common knowledge that the delay is due to the shortage of judges. It is almost impossible to overstate the inconvenience and the anxiety which is caused to suitors, and the injustice which is caused to them through delay. I should like to answer some of the arguments, put forward by the hon. Member opposite who has just sat down, in regard to the county courts. If anyone will take the trouble to look at the reports to which the hon. Member for Cambridge has referred he will see that that was all thrashed out before the Committee, and was very fully thrashed out. I think I am right in saying that, and I think I am right also in saying that if the Committee could have seen their way to meet this difficulty by putting extra work upon the county courts they would have only been too glad to do so. I will just mention one or two matters that seem to me conclusive against the argument of the hon. Member. I do not think that this Bill is intended to stop county court extension at all. There is no reason why county court extension should not go on if this Bill is passed. Let the hon. Gentleman remember that county court extension means this: That if you put heavy cases to be tried in the county courts you will oust the poor suitor for whom the county courts were instituted, and you will compel him to have his case tried, not by the county court judge but, in all probability by the registrar. In my opinion that will be a very serious thing. You cannot have too high a standard of judicial administration, however small the case or the suitor, and if you are going to do that you must not only oust the poor suitor but you must enormously increase the number of the county courts because the county court judges are as hardworked as possible, and you will have, in all probability, to raise the salaries of the county court judges and the salaries of the registrars. Therefore from the point of view of cost it will be much worse than the appointment of two additional King's Bench Judges.
The delay, of course, is a matter of common knowledge, but in my opinion the delay in very many cases really operates as a total denial of justice. I may instance the case of a poor man on one side and a rich man on the other. The rich man may

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be able to call to his assistance the delay in the Law Courts and the poor man is kept out of the debt to which he is perfectly entitled. Take the case of a man who has sustained some injury, and who is entitled to some compensation. If he can get it at once it may mean the saving of him; if the remedy is postponed it becomes stale and is no use to him. Therefore, I say that in many cases the delay is an absolute denial of justice. If you have a shortage of judges, as we have at this moment, you not only cannot do your work in London, but you cannot do your work on circuit also. We have had a very good instance of that at the beginning of this term. There was a proposal that a new rule should be made which would have resulted la cutting down the facilities for civil trials in small circuit towns such as Appleby, which I have the honour to represent. We opposed it, and I hope we shall hear no more about it. We opposed it upon this ground, and upon this only: The Attorney-General mentioned that judges ought to go to these towns for the trial of criminals. Quite rightly; and we said, if judges go down for the trial of criminals, why should they not try civil cases as well? The desire to curtail facilities for trying cases in small towns is simply and solely because the judges are doing their best to do with fifteen judges the work which would require seventeen or eighteen judges to do properly. They are sitting long hours on circuit, and yet find it difficult to do the work properly. There is another matter, and perhaps the most important of all. Assizes have to be regulated according to the judicial strength that is available, and I think everybody who knows circuit will say that the intervals in some cases between assizes are too long. It sometimes happens that a man who is charged with an offence committed a short time after an assize has been held has to go to gaol if he cannot get bail and has to lie in prison for some considerable time without trial. That is a great blot, in my opinion, upon the administration of justice in this country, and it should be avoided at all costs, and it is one of the things that may be avoided by the appointment of additional judges. I think the whole of the ground has been well covered by the Attorney-General. I am speaking simply and solely from the point of view of the public interest in this matter. I know it may be said that I speak as a barrister, but I am not putting this forward as an advocate of the interests
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of the Bar, That which is best for the public is also best for the legal profession. This question is one of very serious moment not only for the business community, but also for the proper trial of criminal cases and the proper administration of justice throughout the length and breadth of the country.
Sir FREDERICK LOW: As I have not intervened in the Debates before, perhaps I may be permitted to say a word or two upon this measure, which is one of considerable importance to the public as well as to the legal profession. I say that with a considerable amount of trepidation, because one of the first things I heard on coming into this House was that a Debate in which lawyers were chiefly concerned is the dullest of all possible Debates that take place in this House. I think, however, there is some excuse for an hon. Member belonging to the legal profession speaking on this Bill when he has had some knowledge of the subject which is being inquired into. I should like to bring to the attention of the House the fact that in the present position of things in the King's Bench Division of the High Courts of Justice practically the working days upon which important cases can be taken have, by the operation of the Criminal Appeal Bill, coupled with the fact that circuits go on at the same time as eases are being tried in London, really been reduced to four days a week. Practically there is only Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday upon which jury cases and other work can be taken, and on Fridays and Saturday the work is practically at a standstill. I do not think the legal work of the country in the courts of justice can go on with any satisfaction to the public so long as this state of things continues.
The question of the retirement of judges has also been alluded to. It does not appear to me that this is very germane to the discussion, but I should like to say that a long experience in various capacities in the courts of justice has convinced me that the mere matter of age, as counted in years, is of very little importance in this connection. I can call to mind some judges who certainly have been quite old enough at very little over fifty years of age, and I remember other judges who have been perfectly able to administer justice with the greatest possible efficiency when they were approaching four score years of age. I think most of those who have had any real acquaintance with

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the profession would deprecate the drawing of any hard and fast line at which the retirement of judges ought to take place. The hon. Member who introduced this question seems to think that, however old a judge might be, and however incapable, he is quite young and capable enough to sit in the Supreme Court of the House of Lords.
Mr. RENDALL: What I said was that in the case of exceptional men of great ability and strong health it might be desirable to put them into the House of Lords in order to give their services in the Supreme Court to the country.
Sir F. LOW: I think it is introducing a most dangerous doctrine into our judicial system to lay down that the Government of the day should have anything to say in regard to the termination of the service of a judge. I think one matter, above all others, which should be kept out of the hands of the Government of the day is whether a judge should or should not continue in his judicial office. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for the Cambridge University, I cordially agree with his suggestion that a longer trial should be given to this Bill, or, rather, to its effective provisions. At the present moment there are two judges away from their duties on account of ill-health, and the appointment of two additional judges will practically only have the effect of filling up those two vacancies arising from necessity, and from circumstances over which the learned judges have no control. If the matter is only to be tried to the end of this year we should remember that we are now getting well on to the Long Vacation, and I think the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member for Cambridge University that this extension of the judicial strength of the King's Bench Division should have a longer trial than merely to the end of this year, should receive the most earnest attention of the Attorney-General.
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I took upon myself last night the responsibility of preventing the Attorney-General getting this Bill through without a word of discussion. I think, after the very able speech which the hon. and learned Gentleman gave us to-day and his interesting exposition of the grounds upon which this Bill had been brought forward, he ought to be grateful to me for the action I then took. Not only have we had a most interesting speech from the Attorney-General, but we have
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had important contributions from all quarters of the House as to the reasons why this Bill has been brought forward. It appears to me, in the first place, that there are a great number of arrears, so far as civil actions are concerned, both in London and throughout the country. It also appears to me that the learned profession and all classes connected with it are strongly in favour of this Bill. I must confess that I have not been fully convinced as to what the cause of the arrears is. There are many different views, and the reason why I took the responsibility of providing an opportunity for this Bill to be discussed was that I was very much interested in the evidence given by the Lord Chancellor, because if there is anyone to whom laymen ought to go in regard to advice as to the policy of this measure it surely is to the head of the law in this country, the Lord Chancellor. I was anxious to know exactly the position of the Lord Chancellor in regard to this matter, and I found that when the Lord Chancellor was before the Committee which inquired into this matter he was absolutely positive that there was no ground whatever for this Bill. I will read to the House an extract from his evidence. He said:—
" I must say for myself, and for the reasons that I will tell you in a minute or two, I was not able and I am not able to advise that the two judges or any judge should be appointed."
That, surely, is very strong evidence coming from the Lord Chancellor. He goes on in his evidence to say that there has been a great diminution in the number of cases that have been tried in London and Middlesex during the last ten years. He said:—
"In London and Middlesex there has been a great reduction during the last ten years, and last year was almost the lowest with regard to the number of cases which had been actually tried."
I think we are entitled to ask what the reply of the Government is to the views expressed by the Lord Chancellor? He further says:—
"On these grounds I myself feel, and I ought, to say so, that in a country where people are in the habit of doing their full share of work, and where there are full holidays of nearly four months in the year out of the twelve, there is not a case for making new judges."
I think we are entitled to ask whether the Government have the cordial and enthusiastic support of the Lord Chancellor in bringing forward this Measure. I should be glad to hear the reply of the Attorney-General on this point. Perhaps he will tell us if the Lord Chancellor is now in favour of this Measure, and, if so, state the reasons which have induced him

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to come round to his present view? The Lord Chancellor consented to the inquiry into this matter, in the first place, because of strong and influential representations which were made to him by all branches of the law, and he had no other alternative. Nevertheless, we have it on record in the evidence given by the Lord Chancellor that he was strongly against the appointment of two new judges, and I should like the Attorney-General to tell us what has occurred to change his views. I should like to know also if the Government intend to accept an Amendment providing that new judges shall not be appointed after they are sixty years of age, and that they should retire compulsorily at seventy years of age. These are both very reasonable proposals, and this is the time when the Government have the opportunity of showing that they sympathise with that view.
Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I am going to ask the House to listen to a very few words from me. I had the privilege of serving on the Committee which has been referred to, and I cordially say that the reasons given by the Attorney-General when he introduced this Bill certainly represent the views of those who signed the Report. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down (Sir Henry Dalziel) has asked the Government to tell us whether the Lord Chancellor has changed his opinion in regard to the appointment of two additional judges. The Committee listened with great attention and respect to the views which the Lord Chancellor put before them, but we had in opposition to his views the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Channell, and other judges, and this greatly discounted the Lord Chancellor's evidence, much as we respected his views and valued his opinion There is no doubt that the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice, and especially of Mr. Justice Channell, is very strongly opposed to the view of the Lord Chancellor as to whether more judges were required or not. I think there was no difference of opinion in the Committee finally that there was a congestion of business which must be removed, because that congestion of business which exists amounts almost to a denial of justice. We agreed upon that point, and then came the question as to whether these judges should be acquired for any particular period or for all time, and, fortunately, we were able to agree upon a compromise such as is suggested in the Bill. We were
1004
in that way able to get a unanimous Report.
We listened very carefully to all the arguments which were addressed to us with regard to increasing the jurisdiction of the county courts. Speaking as a member of the Committee, I can say that I. and I think many of my colleagues, were firmly convinced that the county courts have as much work as they can possibly get through. We then wont into the question as to whether the place of a judge could efficiently be taken on circuit by a commissioner, and we came to the conclusion that assize towns would think it more or less a denial of justice if a gentleman came down in a black gown instead of a High Court judge. There is no doubt a prejudice in favour of being tried by a High Court judge. There can be no doubt that the judges are wanted to deal with this congestion of business, and we shall no doubt have an opportunity at a later stage of considering the point raised by the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Rawlinson) as to whether we can get an efficient trial of this new system in about six months. I venture to think that a little longer period might have been given, but, being a party to that unanimous Report, I should not separate myself from my colleagues on that Committee. I suppose an Address could be sent up if we found there was no congestion. I venture to hope that this Bill will receive the unanimous assent of the House, because I am perfectly certain there is a great-demand for these new judges in the country for the quicker despatch of business. We considered all those questions as-to the length of the holidays and whether the judges work longer hours each day and sufficiently long on Saturdays, and we came to the unanimous opinion that the time had arrived when more judges were required to relieve the congestion of business.
The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane): I am substantially in agreement with all that the right hon. Gentleman opposite has said about these conclusions, but there are just one or two phrases in which he put his reasons which I should like to qualify in my own way. The position of some of us who sat on that Commission was this: We agreed that there was a block in the business—it was clearly proved—but we, were not, I think, all of the same mind as to whether that block was permanent, even with the existing staff of judges. Some of us certainly

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thought that temporary means might be adopted for disposing of it so as to leave us free to see how the experiment works of carrying out certain changes which we suggest as regards sittings and arrangements of business. I do not think I dissented from the view of the Lord Chancellor, or that the Lord Chancellor does anything but welcome this Bill, nor was I convinced by the whole body of testimony which was brought on the other side. There seemed to me to be two views: one, that nothing could be done without a permanent addition to the establishment of judges, and the other that there was no cause for any addition to the establishment of judges or for making any great change. Between these views the Committee came to a unanimous conclusion. I think possibly there were different shades of opinion among us, but I certainly did not dissent from the view of the Lord Chancellor, and we felt strongly and unanimously recommended that these administrative changes—they are not expressed in this Bill—should be carried into effect. I regard them, in addition to what is in this Bill, as part of the machinery for getting rid of the difficulty we are in with regard to the block.
As regards the Bill, this is the way the matter was dealt with. We said, first add to the establishment, but add temporarily; then, when you have cleared the block and made the experiment, you will be in a position to see whether you need a permanent addition to the existing establishment. Do not fetter the House of Parliament in the matter. Let Parliament have the opportunity of dealing with this matter in a definite way. Let no permanent addition be made to the establishment. That being so, we seem to have hit upon a means which certainly, at any rate, made the situation more hopeful than before. I wish emphatically to say that these administrative changes which the Committee recommended are an integral part of our plan and that we do not look to the Bill alone to accomplish what has to be brought about. I only rose to put forward my own view and to express my agreement with the Lord Chancellor in what he said and to obviate the impression that the Committee has come to a decision as between the two contending views entirely on one side or on the other.
Mr. GIBSON BOWLES: This Bill commends itself to me, as a layman, because it is in fact a compromise, as the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has
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practically described it to be. I am sorry that the only other Member of this Committee who has spoken—it has constantly been incorrectly described as a Commission—thought it necessary to say that he attached more importance to the evidence of common law judges than he did to that of the Lord Chancellor. I think that is unfortunate, coming from him as a Member of the Committee. I attach great importance to the evidence of the Lord Chancellor, and I believe his opinion as to the time the judges are on holidays and the time they spend in court, and all the rest of it, was absolutely well founded. This, as I have said, is a compromise, and a compromise on two points. First of all, let me inform the hon. and learned Gentleman who spoke from this side of the House (Sir F. Low) that this is not a Bill which will appoint two judges till next year. It appoints two judges, making eighteen in all, who will go on until some one of the eighteen judges either retires or dies. That may be next year or the year after next, but we hope it may be long before it will be necessary for any of these emiment persons to retire or before any one of them dies.
I think there can be no doubt as to the existence of the arrears. Various causes have been suggested. I believe members of the Junior Bar believe it is because judges are not appointed until they are too old to be good judges, and they suggest that young men should be called to the Bench. It is not for me to criticise that. It has also been suggested, though it would not be in order to debate it here, that some judges are not so able as they might be. I think it would only be possible to discuss that if one were prepared to move an Address in this House, to be followed by the moving of another Address in the other House for the removal of a judge. It would not, therefore, be appropriate to entertain the idea now that any judge sitting on the Bench is not of the fullest possible capacity for conducting business. The arrears are there. How are they to be dealt with? There have been most important suggestions of administrative changes. Those proposals were entertained by this Committee, and they are an integral part of their recommendations. The House, I think, must thoroughly well understand that, if it is called upon to agree to the appointment of two new judges at £5,000 a year with a retiring allowance of £3,000 a year, it is on

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the distinct understanding that those administrative changes are to be considered. I should like to ask by whom are they to be considered. I presume by His Majesty's Government at the suggestion of the Lord Chancellor, who, after all, is the principal legal adviser of His Majesty's Government.
I principally rose in order to impress upon His Majesty's Government the absolute necessity of not treating these recommendations of the Committee which constitute a condition upon which they recommend two extra judges, as something they may take or leave, but as a matter with which it is their bounden duty to deal. It is impossible to read the evidence before the Joint Committee without coming to the conclusion that the Long Vacation is very long, that the sittings of the court are very short, and that in a very high office of which the members take sixteen weeks holiday in the year there is room for a little more work on the part of the existing judges. That is the impression left upon me, not only by the evidence of the Lord Chancellor, but also by that of the Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Channell, and Mr. Justice Grantham, whose evidence the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Akers-Douglas) prefers, although I do not, to that of the Lord Chancellor. I believe it would be possible for the judges to sit half an hour per day extra in the courts, and I believe it would be perfectly feasible to shorten the Long Vacation, and perhaps the Easter Vacation. Those are some of the things which were in the minds of the Committee when they made this recommendation, on the condition of which they agree to the appointment of two additional judges. I am extremely glad these are not to be two permanent appointments. They arc appointments which will only subsist until the judges fall down to sixteen again. They are essentially temporary appointments. I trust they will be such as will deal with and clear off the arrears, and I still more earnestly trust that when those arrears are cleared off, whether by working longer hours or by appointing temporary judges, no such arrears will be allowed to accumulate again, because they do, in fact, amount to a denial of justice.
Mr. H. E. DUKE: With regard to what has just been said with respect to the sittings of the court extending over longer hours, I am quite sure the hon. Member for King's Lynn will appreciate that the
1008
whole of the business of the judges is not done in court. A very great deal of work has to be accomplished in connection with cases tried in court of which the public have no knowledge, but which would be most seriously interfered with if the judges had to sit for longer hours than those which have been settled after a great deal of experience. I hope the hon. Member will quite understand why one who has practised in the courts for a great many years thinks it only fair to say this with regard to the sittings of the judges. For my part I am very glad that the Government have made this an ad interim measure, and have not attempted to deal with it by way of a permanent settlement. The whole of this business is transitional. There has been a great deal of discussion with regard to the future relations of the various courts which make up our judicial system, and we really cannot tell what in a few years' time will be the judicial establishment of this country. These matters will have to be worked out after, no doubt, a great deal of controversy, which will include, of course, the claim for the maintenance of something like the existing provincial assize system. It does not seem to me that there is any practical utility in bringing into operation the Address to the two Houses so early as the beginning of next year. You will have no substantial change in the condition of our judicial system during this year; the arrears which exist cannot possibly be worked off in the course of this year.
At the present time a very great strain is put on the judges by temporary causes, and also by the permanent operation of the Court of Criminal Appeal, the effects of which have not even yet been fully foreseen. I would suggest that a really practical time would be the first round period at which you should stop—i.e., three years. Everybody knows that changes must inevitably take place before very long which will affect some of His Majesty's judges who have given a long period of service and have attained a considerable age. I suggest it would interfere less with the working of the system if the Government stopped at the first round period of three years, and then brought into operation the Address to the two Houses. One other question I wish to put, and that is why the Government, in the administrative changes which the Secretary for War insisted upon as being necessary, would not consider a point which is constantly a subject of discussion

1009
with those who had experience in the courts before the present system under the Judicature Acts was established, and that is the restoration of the distribution of the business of common law between judges in separate divisions, each having a separate president? If you have a body of judges, be it sixteen or eighteen, dealing with the multifarious business of the Common Law Courts as well as the circuit system, it surely is clear it imposes a burden in the matter of administration on the learned judge who is president of the one division and who also has a great variety of other duties. This is a matter which is common knowledge to the Law Officers of the Crown. They know the strong views entertained upon it in favour of returning to something like the old system. If there are to be administrative changes, I sincerely trust the Government will consider whether they may not probably increase the efficiency of the Common Law Courts by restoring something like the old emulation which existed when there were three divisions, each with its president. It would involve no additional expense and might be productive; of very considerable benefit in the working of the courts.
Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time," put, and agreed to.
Motion made and Question, "That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House "—[The Attorney-General]— put, and agreed to; to be considered in Committee upon 29th March.

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE. [SALARIES, ETC.]
Considered in Committee.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of the Consolidated Funds, of the salaries and pensions of two additional judges of the High Court, who may be appointed under any Act of the present Session."—[The Attorney-General.]
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I should like to repeat the questions I put a short time ago but which have not yet been answered: Are the Government to pay any consideration to the question of age in the appointment of the new judges? I would suggest that to appoint men over sixty years of age—
The CHAIRMAN: I do not see how this point arises. It is purely a money Resolution.
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I presume I shall be in order in asking what salaries are to be paid to the new judges, and whether a pension will be provided, seeing that this arrangement is only of a temporary character?
Sir WILLIAM ROBSON: The provision with regard to salaries and pensions will be exactly the same as in the case of ordinary judges—a salary of £5,000 and a retiring pension of £3,500. As to the age of the judges to be appointed, that is rather beyond the scope of this Resolution, and the Government have no proposal to make in that at all.
Mr. WATT: May I ask whether the system recently initiated of pensioning a judge before he has fulfilled the full period of service is to be continued? I was told, in reply to a question I recently put, that a judge had retired on a pension based on a medical certificate. Anyone with experience of medical certificates knows how easily they can be obtained. In my own lifetime I have for half-a-guinea got a certificate excusing me from attending an examination. I desire to ask whether the judges to be appointed under this Act are to have the advantage of retiring after a comparatively few years' service on getting a medical certificate that their health is not good?
Sir WILLIAM ROBSON: The judges will be appointed on precisely the same terms as the other judges, and they may be excused further service if they fall into bad health. I do not think medical certificates in such cases are given upon such terms—in point of money or principle—as the hon. Member appears willing to suggest. Retirement on a medical certificate is not at all a common circumstance in the case of judges, and I know of no case in which there has been a retirement except on good grounds. Judges in any case are not in a hurry to retire. At any rate, whatever the law is in regard to ordinary judges, it will apply to these new judges.
Resolution agreed to; to be Reported 29th March.

EAST INDIAN LOANS (RAILWAYS AND IRRIGATION) BILL.
Order for Third Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a third time," put, and agreed to.

LONDON ELECTRIC SUPPLY BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the second time."—[Mr. Tennant.]
Sir F. BANBURY: There was an understanding that this Bill should not be taken to-night.
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Tennant): I was unaware of any such arrangement, but I am quite ready to explain the purposes of the Bill if the hon. Baronet desires.
Sir F. BANBURY: I think the Bill should not be taken to-night.
Mr. TENNANT: I am afraid there has been some misunderstanding. The Bill is two years overdue. It is a harmless Departmental measure, which I am prepared to explain if the hon. Baronet desires.
Sir F. BANBURY: Go on, certainly.
7.0 P.M.
Mr. TENNANT: This Bill is introduced in pursuance of a pledge given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, when he was President of the Board of Trade. When the London Electric Bill of 1908 was introduced it linked up the various companies of London for the purposes of supply. There were, however, five companies to which it was impossible to give these powers at that time, and they unfortunately were left over until a later period, and it is now proposed to deal with them. This Bill makes the purchasing authority of electric lighting undertakings the London County Council, and if the hon. Member has any doubt about the making of that body the purchasing authority, I should like to inform him that the borough councils cannot become such a purchasing authority of the electrical undertakings in their districts, because two or three of them have already given up these powers and transferred them to the London County Council. It is very important that the London County Council or some authority should be responsible for the whole electric lighting of London at some future time, and therefore in 1931 these arrangements will take place, and the purchasing authority will become the London County Council. There are only two electric lighting authorities involved of any importance, only two borough councils involved, and I should think that
1012
this would be found to be a useful Bill, because it will simplify the work of the authorities which now supply electricity to London. I do not know if the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City (Sir F. Banbury) would like any further information on this Bill which deals with a very complicated subject. I think there are sixteen borough councils authorised to supply electricity in London, and besides that there are fifteen companies. Surely it is in the interests of the consumers and in the interests of the public as the industry depends upon motive power, that some large body should deal with the undertakings, with a view to cheapening production.
Sir F. BANBURY: I daresay the Bill is a very good one, but it has come on unexpectedly, and as I see the Parliamentary Secretary on the Treasury Bench, may I appeal to him to assent to this Bill standing over?
Mr. TENNANT: If the hon. Gentleman insists I cannot avoid it. But it is a little hard upon the Board of Trade.
Sir F. BANBURY: I move, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.
Debate to be resumed to-morrow.
Mr. FULLER (Vice-Chamberlain)moved "That this House do now adjourn."
Mr. J. F. REMNANT: On this Motion may I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and ask him whether some facilities cannot be granted for bringing on the Police Weekly Rest Day Bill at an early period? All the Government Amendments are in the Bill, and there is no opposition whatever, although we should like to see it extended. As the Bill stands to-day it will not be opposed, and we are of opinion that one day's rest in seven should be granted to policemen. This is the second night upon which we have been ready to pass this Bill, and I will ask the hon. Gentleman whether he will undertake very early after Easter that he will give us an opportunity of doing so?
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: Before the hon. Gentleman replies, I should like him to bear in mind that the Bill as it stands will encounter some little opposition, although the feeling of the House is generally in favour of it as far as it goes. The opposition to it arises in this way, that as far as

1013
the Bill was originally drafted it applied to Scotland, but as the result of a representation from the Scottish office, Scotland has been excluded, and that is what generally takes place. Therefore Scotland is not to get anything at all. Unless the Bill is restored to what it was when it was brought forward, we cannot ensure its being passed without opposition. I fear if it is maintained in its present condition of excluding Scotland some little opposition may be offered to it.
Mr. SCOTT DICKSON: I hope the Government will reconsider the question as to whether this Bill should not be restored to its original condition. I certainly will not be a party to preventing the English police getting what the Bill gives them, but I see no reason why Scottish constables should not have the same advantage as the English.
Mr. A. H. SCOTT: I should like to impress upon the Government that all the municipalities in the country are favourable to the objects of this Bill, and would desire that it should become law, but they want this House to take into consideration the question of expense, because as now drawn the whole of the expenditure would fall upon the ratepayers, and nothing is granted from the Imperial funds towards meeting this increased cost. We are not anxious—I am sure the House is not anxious—that this expenditure should be met by giving increased work to the police.
Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not entitled now to go into the details of the Bill. We are not discussing the Bill, but whether the House should adjourn.
Mr. W. E. HARVEY: May I associate myself with what has been said? I was one of the Committee which inquired into this Bill, and in consequence of the startling evidence given before us, we decided it was an essential necessity that the policemen should have some consideration at the hands of this House. I associate myself entirely with the request that the Government will attempt to bring about the requirements of the Committee.
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Master of Elibank): I will convey to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary the views which have been expressed by Members, and I will also mention to the Secretary for Scotland what has been said by my Scottish col-
1014
leagues. To-morrow I will tell hon. Members the decision arrived at.
Mr. WATT: I desire to associate myself with the remarks which have been made with regard to the Scottish police. There is no desire on the part of the Scottish Members to kill this measure for England and Wales, but they are desirous that the privileges granted to the constabulary in those countries should be extended across the Border. When the bill was introduced, as an hon. Member has stated, Scotland was included, but in some mysterious manner—due, my hon. Friend suggests, to the Scottish Office—Scotland has been dropped out. Whenever a boon is to be given to England and Wales Scotland is always in this extraordinary manner excluded. I have inquired among Scottish Members to-day as to their views, and I have ascertained that they are unanimous in their desire that Scotland should be reinstated in the position which it originally held in the Bill.
Colonel GREIG: I desire to associate myself with my colleagues from Scotland, and I see no reason at all why the law should not be the same in Scotland as in England.
Mr. MORTON: I wish to complain to the Parliamentary Secretary that he has no good reason for adjourning this House at all at this time to-day. Of course, I know very well when the two Front Benches arrange about these matters that there is very little hope in regard to the business of private Members, but it does seem unfortunate that when we have the time, as we have this evening, to assist forward private Members Bills, that the Government should make these arrangements, and shut us out of the advantage which we might have obtained. Private Members do not get much advantage in this House, and there are a large number of Bills— twenty-one, I think—down on the list, some of which might have been taken with advantage. I have to complain especially, because I have two Bills down, the Return Tickets Bill and the Sea Fisheries (Scotland) Bill. Both of them are important, the latter being especially so to the people of Scotland, because it deals with their means of carrying on their legal business. I will not, however, touch upon the merits of the Bills, but generally I want to express my great regret that the Government should join in opposing these

1015
Bills when on an occasion like the present we have the time for considering measures which ought to be considered.
Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at Thirteen minutes after Seven o'clock, until to-morrow, at Twelve o'clock Noon.

  Deer Forests, Highland Crofting Counties.
  Deer Forests, Highland Crofting Counties.
  London Customs Watchers (Excise Committee).
  London Customs Watchers (Excise Committee).
  Board of Trade (Estimates).
  Board of Trade (Estimates).
  Customs and Excise Officers.
  Customs and Excise Officers.
  Land Registry Office.
  Land Registry Office.
  Customs and Excise (Amalgamation)
  Customs and Excise (Amalgamation)
  Stamp and Tobacco Duties (Ireland).
  Stamp and Tobacco Duties (Ireland).
  Irish Breweries (Output).
  Irish Breweries (Output).
  Land Tax and House Duty.
  Land Tax and House Duty.
  Old Age Pensions (Ireland).
  Old Age Pensions (Ireland).
  Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways (Cost).
  Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways (Cost).
  University College, Dublin.
  University College, Dublin.
  Shannon Floods.
  Shannon Floods.
  Royal Naval Volunteers (H.M.S." Buzzard").
  Royal Naval Volunteers (H.M.S." Buzzard").
  Woolwich Arsenal (Viewers and Examiners).
  Woolwich Arsenal (Viewers and Examiners).
  Disabled Soldier's Claim.
  Disabled Soldier's Claim.
  Ceylon. Legislature (Commission).
  Ceylon. Legislature (Commission).
  Parsee Rustomjee's Case.
  Parsee Rustomjee's Case.
  Execution of Warrants (Native States,India).
  Execution of Warrants (Native States,India).
  Inland Wireless Telegraphic Stations, India.
  Inland Wireless Telegraphic Stations, India.
  Public Health Amendment Act, 1907(Rural Districts).
  Public Health Amendment Act, 1907(Rural Districts).
  Tatsfield (Surrey) Roads.
  Tatsfield (Surrey) Roads.
  Cigar Factories, Great Britain.
  Cigar Factories, Great Britain.
  Railway Companies (Special Private Goods Classification).
  Railway Companies (Special Private Goods Classification).
  Head Postmaster, Limerick.
  Head Postmaster, Limerick.
  Sub-Post Office, Meenacrosh, County Donegal.
  Sub-Post Office, Meenacrosh, County Donegal.
  Wages of Postal Viewers.
  Wages of Postal Viewers.
  Hop Substitutes (Colonial and Foreign Legislation).
  Hop Substitutes (Colonial and Foreign Legislation).
  Foot and Mouth Disease, Edinburgh.
  Foot and Mouth Disease, Edinburgh.
  Lincoln Bishopric.
  Lincoln Bishopric.

LORD ASHBY ST. LEDGERS.
The Right Honourable Ivor Churchill Guest, Paymaster-General, having been created Baron Ashby St. Ledgers of Ashby St. Ledgers in the county of Northampton—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
Several Lords Several Lords—Took the Oath.

MATLOCK BATH AND SCARTHIN NICK URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
TRENT RAILWAY AND BRIDGE BILL. [H.L.]
GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
MANSFIELD RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
WIMBLEDON AND SUTTON RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
Report from the Committee of Selection, That Lord Muncaster be proposed to the House as a Member of the Select Committee on the said Bills in the place of the Duke of Northumberland and that the Duke of Wellington be Chairman of the said Committee; read, and agreed to.

ABERDEEN CORPORATION WATER BILL. [H.L.]
Presented, and read 1a.

MORECAMBE TRAMWAYS BILL. [H.L.]
NATIONAL PROVIDENT INSTITUTION BILL. [H.L.]
ASSAM RAILWAYS AND TRADING COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
SOUTHEND WATER BILL. [H.L.]
STANDARD LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
PROVIDENT ASSOCIATION OF LONDON BILL. [H.L.]
CHARNWOOD FOREST RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.

FARNHAM GAS AND ELECTRICITY BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed and sent to the Commons.
GOWERTON GAS BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.

WATER SUPPLIES PROTECTION BILL. [H.L.] [SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD DESBOROUGH: My Lords, I rise to move, very briefly, the Second Reading of this Bill. There are three reasons why I should be brief. The first is that as recently as August 5 last year your Lordships were good enough to give a Second Reading to this Bill; the second reason is that I have no wish to occupy the time and attention of the House in view of matters of greater moment which are to come before you; and the third, and perhaps the most important reason is that I understand that His Majesty's Government take a more favourable view of this Bill on this occasion than they did last year, and are willing to adopt one of the suggestions thrown out at that time and allow the Bill to be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses. This Bill, which is exactly the same as the one to which your Lordships gave a Second Reading last year, has three objects. The first is the adoption of the clause which has already been inserted in some forty Water Bills and which goes by the name of the Lord Chairman's Clause. The second is to amend the law with regard to underground water by providing that wherever private supplies are injured by the abstraction of water for public supply, by means of future works, the owner shall be entitled to compensation; and the third object is to provide that where, by means of future works, water is taken from any district for supply to communities outside that district, the district whence the water is taken and through which it is conveyed shall be entitled to demand a share of such water for its own needs upon terms to be agreed or fixed by the Local Government Board. I beg to move the Second Reading of the Bill.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Desborough.)
THE EARL OF VERULAM: My Lords, I do not wish to stand between the House and the important business which is coming on but I do desire most strongly to urge your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this

453
Bill. I know from my own experience that in my own county, the county of Hertfordshire, the whole of the water supply has been reduced by an amount practically exceeding one-half during the last thirty years owing to the pumping operations of great companies. I trust, therefore, that your Lordships will see the important nature of this Bill and give it a Second Reading.
THE EARL OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, the Government thoroughly agree with the general principle of this Bill. They are only anxious, while attempting to redress this evil, that other difficulties should not be created. The Government have no intention of raising any objection to the Second Reading of this Bill, on the understanding that it should be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses, which would be able to consider the matter generally. It is recognised that in this way the points at issue, which are of very great importance, will be carefully reviewed, and it is hoped that the result of the consideration of them by this Committee may lead to some practical proposals being made to put the matter on a satisfactory footing. I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will read the Bill a second time and acquiesce in the appointment of a Joint Committee to consider it.
LORD BELPER: My Lords, I am extremely glad to hear that the Government propose to take this course. I think it is one that I was partly responsible for suggesting during the discussion last year. This question is a very difficult one. A great many points arise with regard to the whole question of underground water which it will be necessary for the Committee to inquire into, and I am satisfied that the method proposed is the only satisfactory way of arriving at a solution.
On Question, Bill read 2a.
Then it was moved, That it is desirable that the Bill be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament (The Earl of Liverpool); agreed to: Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Commons to communicate this Resolution and to desire their concurrence.

ANCIENT MONUMENTS PROTECTION BILL.
Read 3a (according to order), and passed.

THE TERRITORIAL FORCE.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU had the two following Questions on the Paper viz.:—(1) To ask the Under-Secretary of State for War what additional cost would be incurred by granting separation allowance to all Territorial non-commissioned officers and men during the period of annual training; and whether he would consider the advantage of such a concession in view of the facts that the Territorial Force is at present largely composed of lads under twenty-one years of age; that the majority of working men, with wives and families, cannot afford to come out for fifteen days at one shilling a day, and that the younger married men, who would impart a certain amount of stability to the various units, are thereby lost. (2) To ask the Under-Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that great difficulty exists in drilling outlying companies and sections of Territorial battalions recruited in country districts owing to the present deficiency of sergeant-instructors; and whether, without laying down a fixed scale, it would not be possible to deal more liberally in respect to the provision of permanent staff to scattered units, taking each case on its own merits.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I desire to ask the noble Lord who represents the War Office in your Lordships' House whether he can give us any information as to the two Questions which I have placed upon the Paper. The first question affects the class of men who enlist in the Territorial Force. I think the time has arrived when some consideration should be given by the War Office as to whether they could not grant separation allowances to privates as well as to non-commissioned officers. At the present moment separation allowances are given to non-commissioned officers, who, as a matter of fact, are generally in a better position to provide for their families than are privates in the ranks. To the ordinary private the separation allowance is of great importance, and I hope the noble Lord will be able to inform us that the matter will be considered by the War Office. The second Question relates to the supply of non-commissioned officers of the permanent staff for the training of units. In a town you can manage with a small permanent staff, but in country districts with scattered battalions more instructors are badly wanted. I trust that the noble Lord will be able to state that the number of instructors will be increased.

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I hope he will also be able to tell us, in reply to a Question of which I gave him private notice, whether the War Office will consider the desirability of increasing the amount now allowed to enable outlying sections to travel in to attend drills. I am certain that unless some consideration is shown to men attending drills after they have done a day's work, it will have a disastrous effect on recruiting.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD LUCAS): My Lords, with regard to my noble friend's first Question, I am sorry that I have no means of obtaining information as to what it would cost to give separation allowances to all the married men in the Territorial Forces. We do not have any return either of the number who are married or of the number of children the married men have, but I can assure the noble Lord that it would cost a very large sum indeed. It would also lead to increased expenditure in another direction, because we do not give separation allowances to the privates in the Special Reserve, and I think they would be entitled to them and would eventually get them if the Territorial Force were granted these allowances. It is quite true that the non-commissioned officers who get the separation allowance are very often a class of men who are in much better circumstances and require the allowance much less than the privates, but we give it to the non-commissioned officers for a particular reason. We realised very clearly when the Territorial Force was first formed that we should have to exact a rather higher standard of efficiency from the non-commissioned officers than most of them had attained at that time, and we give a separation allowance to non-commissioned officers as a payment to them for what we expect to get from them, and what, as a matter of fact, we are getting from them, in the way of increased efficiency. We expect the non-commissioned officer to be a regular attendant at camp, to attend the whole fifteen days, to be prepared to go through courses and other forms of instruction during the non-training period, and generally to be prepared, even at a certain amount of sacrifice of his time, to make himself as efficient as he possibly can in the circumstances. I would point out that, after all, it is not altogether desirable, from any point of view you like, to have too many married men in a military force. If the Territorial Force does have to go to war, it is obviously desirable that you should cause as little
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dislocation of business and as little distress as possible, and you do not want to have more men with wives and families dependent upon them falling in a war of that kind than you can help. Therefore you do not want to encourage a large number of married men to enrol. I agree that a certain number of married men are desirable. You get them whether you give a separation allowance or not. But as to encouraging a large number of married privates, I think that is an undesirable thing. Even in the Regular Army, where we do give separation allowances, there is a certain fixed establishment of married privates allowed. In the Infantry it is very small indeed, only three per cent., and it is only the men who are on the married establishment who get the separation allowance.
With regard to the second Question, which deals with sergeant-instructors, we are quite aware that difficulties do exist in certain places with regard to these matters, and if we had nothing to consider but simply the drilling of these men it would be desirable in many ways to give more sergeant-instructors than we do at the present time. But there are certain very cogent reasons why we should not. Sergeant-instructors, taking into consideration their pay and allowances and the non-effective vote as well, cost, roughly, £160 a year each, and therefore we cannot be indiscriminate in serving them out. We have, as a matter of fact, had a Committee sitting on the question and considering very carefully all the cases that have been brought before us. We have revised the permanent staff no fewer than eight times; we have in the last two years increased the number of permanent staff allotted by nearly 400, and we are prepared now to reconsider any case which is brought to our notice by the military authorities with their recommendation that it should be considered. There is another objection. After all, we have to see that the man who goes for service on the permanent staff does not run any risk of deteriorating, and I think if you have a man who is told off for a considerable time in charge of a very small detachment which does not occupy anything like the whole of his time, who is away from his headquarters, as he would be in the case of an outlying detachment, and who is, therefore, not under supervision, you at any rate run the risk of that man deteriorating and not being so fit a soldier as he ought to be if he is to return to the Colours. But we do

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realise the importance of drilling these men who join outlying battalions. They are usually countrymen, whom it is very desirable to enlist. We sanction now drill stations where you can have headquarters and accommodation for anything over twenty men, and you can have drill stations, where expense of accommodation is not incurred, for almost any number you like. We leave that to the County Associations.
We have taken another step in advance. I refer to the payment which is given to the County Associations to enable outlying sections to travel in to drill. We have in that carried out a promise which we gave to the Council of County Associations last year who brought this question to our notice. We have asked every County Association to inform us how many men they have at a distance from their headquarters. We have taken different distances. We have asked them for the number of men at a distance of from three to five miles, from five to ten miles, and so on, and having got these figures we have taken each county separately and given them a payment based on allowing each of those men to travel in six times a year to the headquarters of the squadron, or battery, or whatever it may be, for the purpose of drill. That comes to the same thing as giving more instructors, because it means that if the instructor cannot travel out to the men we are enabling the men to travel in to the instructor. In the case of each county that figure is a different one, based on the actual returns supplied by the county. I hope that the giving of that grant will enable the County Associations to bring these outlying men in to drill and will relieve the difficulty of adequately instructing men in outlying districts.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, with regard to the noble Lord's answer to the question as to the separation allowance, I should like to inquire whether he could not ask the Secretary of State to take into consideration the question of granting separation allowances to a certain number of men in every battalion. There is very great difficulty in the Territorial Force in getting non-commissioned officers, and we are losing a great many men who would fill these ranks with very great advantage to the force by the fact that they leave on account of their being unable to get a separation allowance. While it might be inadvisable to give a separation allowance to every married man in a battalion, it would,
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I conceive, be a very great advantage if a certain percentage besides the non-commissioned officers who have it at present were allowed the separation allowance, so that you might retain some of the men to whom I have referred. I hope the noble Lord will lay this point before the Secretary of State.
LORD LUCAS: I will certainly do so.
LORD AMPTHILL: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord who replied was speaking for himself or for the War Office, but if it was the latter I think that some of his remarks are of a singularly disquieting character. He said that if the Territorial Force ever had to fight—and remember the only possible circumstances in which they could fight would be the event of invasion—the object of the authorities was, I understood him, that there should be as little inconvenience and as little disturbance of business as possible. Now, does the noble Lord or do the War Office really imagine that in the event of invasion it would not affect every man, woman, and child in this country? Do the War Office really imagine that if we were invaded it would not affect and dislocate the whole of the trade of this country? I think the matter is of importance, because if those are the views which are held officially they are views which must cause us very grave anxiety and concern.
LORD LUCAS: I leave the noble Lord to draw his own inferences from what I said; but one thing is obvious, and that is that every man who has a wife and several children depending upon him and goes into the ranks and fights will cause more want and distress than if that man's place was filled by a single man.
THE DUKE OF NORFOLK: Then if there are vacancies, is it suggested that married men had better not apply?
[No answer was given.]

COLLECTION OF INCOME TAX.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I think I shall be consulting the wishes and convenience of the House if I postpone the Question that stands in my name—viz.:
"To ask His Majesty's Government why they do not pass the usual Resolution authorising the collection of Income Tax in anticipation of the Budget Bill, as has been the invariable practice for many years past."

REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
House again in Committee (according to order) to consider the best means of reforming its existing organisation so as to constitute a strong and efficient Second Chamber.
[The EARL OF ONSLOW in the Chair.]
Debate on the Motion of the Lord Rosebery (E. Rosebery) to resolve, That a necessary preliminary of such reform and reconstitution is the acceptance of the principle that the possession of a Peerage should no longer of itself give the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords resumed.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, I venture to ask the indulgence of the House for a few minutes while I attempt to explain the reasons why I intend to vote for the Resolution of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches, although I have no doubt that personally I should be one of the first persons who would be swept on to the dust-heap in consequence of the legislation founded on that Resolution. But, my Lords, I am no sudden convert to the cause of the reform of your Lordships' House. I am not seeking refuge under the noble Earl's umbrella because I am frightened at the rumble of the approaching storm presaged by the Resolutions announced by His Majesty's Government for destroying all the existing powers of this House. I am supporting the Resolution of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches because I am one, I believe, of a very large number of noble Lords on this side of the House who have for many years past, or for a good many years past at all events, been convinced that a moderate reform of this House was an essential to enable us to retain in the country the full respect of the electorate and to act as that strong and efficient Chamber, a faith in which your Lordships pledged yourselves to unanimously under the second Resolution that was passed yesterday.
In common with a very large body of opinion throughout the country, I am convinced that in order for this House to remain strong and efficient two things are necessary—first, that an element of further strength shall be added; and, secondly, that an element of existing weakness shall be removed. The best, and, indeed, I venture to think the only, way of securing further strength to this Assembly is to add life Peers in large and considerable numbers
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to the existing hereditary element. I put on one side the suggestion that county councils should be entitled to elect Peers to this House, for I think that if there is one matter on which people who have been engaged in connection with county councils on either side of politics throughout this country for the past twenty years have been more united than another, it is that politics ought not to enter into the qualifications of those who are elected to the county councils or into the business of the county councils. In the county council on which I have sat for years past the one point on which we have all been agreed is that whatever candidates come forward for the county council they shall bar politics, and I think that is the case with the majority of county councils throughout the country. As to elections ad hoc throughout the country for securing the election of Peers to be added to this House, I think it has been abundantly shown that there are too many elections taking place already, and that, to use a common expression, the country is rather fed up with elections. I dismiss altogether, therefore, in considering the best way of reforming your Lordships' House, any system of election by county councils or of election ad hoc of Lords of Parliament.
The only remaining means, it appears to me, of giving additional strength to your Lordships' House is to allow a considerable number of life Peers to be added. The existing source of weakness in our House I think we are nearly all agreed consists in a number of Peers retaining their powers of legislation although they are unable or unwilling, except on very rare occasions, to come here and vote. Could there have been a more striking proof of that, if proof were needed, than yesterday, when only 187 Peers attended, or at all events took part in the Division? It was, I know, a Division on a minor issue, and a Division that may not have been expected by noble Lords who are present here to-day. But I am not sure that there are more than 187 Peers present in the House to-day. At all events, it was within the knowledge of every member of your Lordships' House, even those who inhabit the deepest and the darkest recesses of those backwoods which are supposed to be the places where so many noble Lords dwell, that Resolutions of the utmost importance were going to be brought up for consideration yesterday. Yet, as I say, only 187 Peers attended.
LORD NEWTON: Only 167.
LORD HYLTON: That strengthens my case. It appears that there were only 167, I thought the number was 187. I would not be so impertinent as to criticise the reasons why so few noble Lords were present, but I repeat that in the country it will be regarded as showing a considerable want of appreciation on the part of many noble Lords of their duties in this House when on so important an occasion only something between a quarter and a third of the members of the House attended. Excluding the noble Lords on the two Front Benches, I do not think there were more than a quarter of the members occupying hereditary seats in this House present yesterday. It may be—I daresay it will be—argued that when a general revision of the constitution of this House takes place, such a revision as will be implied by a Bill based on the Resolutions of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches, the constitution of the House of Commons should not be exempt from the general stocktaking, as it were, of the Constitution; and I am not at all sure that I for one do not think that a revision of the constitution of the House of Commons should proceed pari passu with the revision of the constitution of this House.
We know, for the noble Earl the Leader of the House has told us, that unfortunately there is a state of war between the two Houses. The two Houses have come, into collision. The blame is put on the House of Lords. I will not venture to quote to your Lordships so old and trite a fable as that of the wolf accusing the lamb of muddying the waters when the lamb was drinking below where the wolf was drinking, but I think it is a parable that is rather applicable in regard to the accusations that have been hurled against us that we are alone responsible for the state of war and collision that has occurred between the two Houses. I should not dream of voting for the Resolution of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches if I thought that the continuity of the hereditary principle in this House was to be thereby abandoned; but I do not understand that the third Resolution which we are now discussing abandons that principle at all. As I understand, the rights of hereditary Peers in this House will probably be restricted by legislation based on these Resolutions to a representation among their own members—that is to say, they will not all in future have the right of direct representation.
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On this side of the House we were certainly afforded a great treat yesterday when noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite twitted the noble Earl on the Cross Benches with the ambiguity of his Resolutions. The ambiguity of the noble Earl's Resolutions compared with the ambiguity of the Government's proposals—I am not alluding to the Campbell-Bannerman Resolutions but to the reforms that are some day to be proposed to us by His Majesty's Government—is as light to darkness, and I am sure that many noble Lords on this side of the House when they heard noble Lords on the Front Government Bench twit the noble Earl on that subject thought of Satan reproving sin. I owe my seat in this House to the operation of the hereditary principle, and I am no opponent of the hereditary principle. And this I should like to say in favour of the preservation of the hereditary principle, restricted as the noble Earl on the Cross Benches proposes, as I understand, it should be restricted. I think I am justified in saying that nearly every noble Lord, either on these Benches or on the Benches opposite, who owes his seat to the operation of the hereditary principle has been brought up and trained to consider the exercise of that right, not as a personal privilege, but as a trust, in the same way as heirs to large landed estates in this country have been brought up and trained to consider that the possession of those estates, should they ever succeed to them, is to be regarded as a trust and not as a personal privilege; and I do not believe that the people of this country have considered, or consider now, that the way in which those estates have been administered or the way in which the hereditary votes have been exercised in this House has shown that the holders of those rights and those estates have exercised them in a manner unworthy of the way in which they have been trained and brought up to exercise them.
But, my Lords, what is the existing state of things? The constitution of your Lordships' House is a structure of the thirteenth century, or at all events of a very early and remote period. Are we in the twentieth century—I do not want to introduce politics into this question and therefore I will not say whether we are Liberals or whether we are Conservatives—are we Peers of the United Kingdom to say that a structure that dates from the thirteenth century is incapable of improvement in the twentieth? I believe that it is foolish to say that such a

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structure, dating from such remote times, is incapable of improvement at the present time. I shall vote for the Resolution of the noble Earl because I believe that reforms based on that Resolution will be conservative reforms in the best sense of the word, and because I am willing and anxious to co-operate in remedying the defects and the failings of a very ancient structure, and to sweep away the cobwebs that have accumulated through all these centuries.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY: My Lords, the speech to which we have just listened is the strangest confession of faith on which to found a vote in favour of the Resolution I have ever heard. The noble Lord has given us a very favourable account of the mode in which the privileges of this House have been exercised and the spirit in which people have been educated in order to exercise them. The noble Lord has professed a belief in the hereditary principle and yet he concluded by saying that he was going to vote for a Resolution which, to my mind, condemns the hereditary system, though I am aware that it does not in actual words say so. I have asked more than once, when we have been discussing these questions, what is to be substituted for that which is, in itself, the most inoffensive, and, according to very high authorities, the most enduring system you could have. This is no new system. The Throne is hereditary, the succession to landed estates is hereditary, and in various forms and in various parts of the world that system is known and understood.
I have said before, Is it not practical wisdom to know what is going to be substituted for it? No one has ever yet suggested what is to be done with what are called the undesirables. I do not believe in the existence of the undesirables in the sense in which, through the election, that word has been used. Bankrupts and lunatics form, apparently, the majority of this House according to statements made in various election speeches. That is a statement which, I suppose, the House will hardly acquiesce in, but allow me to say, as a matter of law, that bankrupts are excluded from this House. Over and over again I have heard in election speeches the loose general statements that are so easily made—that they are all bankrupts and that there is also a certain number of lunatics in this House, but I pledge myself to the fact that bankrupts and lunatics are both of them incapable of exercising a vote in this House.
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I am afraid you can never extinguish an absolute mis-statement once it has been allowed to run riot, as it has all through the election, but I desire to emphasise this, because it has been made use of very frequently in different parts of the country.
Getting rid of that particular allegation, I want to know what is the meaning of the sort of phrases we hear. The truth is that in these times we live upon caricatures and slang phrases. What is the meaning of "Wild men?" Does it mean everybody who is not diligent in attendance, and that these persons ought to be excluded? I want to know, before we rashly, as I think, undertake this crusade against our own House, what is to be done, what is to be put in its place. I can well understand that we might arrange that, if a man did not attend for so many years or months, or what not, he should not be entitled to vote, though I doubt very much whether we would have any legal right to enforce that Resolution if we did. But, be that as it may, that is not what we are dealing with now.
We are dealing with the reconstitution of this House and with the reconstitution of the country, for I presume it will be admitted that the House of Lords is an integral part of the Constitution—indeed, one of the Resolutions which the noble Earl has moved affirms that very clearly. Then why is the House of Lords to be seized upon as that part of the Constitution which is to be amended, and, if amended, in what respect is it to be amended? There are too many people in it—that is the only allegation I have heard agreed upon by those who are attacking it. Is not that true of the House of Commons? Does any one say that the present number in the House of Commons is not more than they can reasonably do business with? And if that is a reason for diminishing the numbers in this House, why is it not a reason for diminishing the numbers in the House of Commons? Has the noble Lord who spoke last ever even looked at the Division Lists of the House of Commons and observed how many of the large numbers in that House fail to take part in Divisions? I think that if the noble Lord did so he would find that the proportion who take part in Divisions in the House of Lords is not so very unreal in comparison with the other House of Parliament. But that is part of the attack on this House.
I must appeal to the noble Earl who initiated the discussion as to whether his

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impression of the House of Lords and of the necessity for the revision of its constitution remains the same now as it was when he addressed his fellow-countrymen at Bradford on October 27, 1894. I am bound to say that that address was of a most bellicose character. The Ironsides were appealed to as parallels, and the noble Earl's statement then was that, in his view, it was the paramount duty of the Government to proceed to put down the House of Lords; and, although I quite admit that the noble Earl then said, as he said the other night, that he was not in favour of a Single Chamber, yet his denunciations of the House of Lords left very little to be desired by a person who wished to destroy it altogether, if his allegations against the House of Lords were true. All I can say upon that is that I had the pleasure of hearing the noble Earl the other night at the banquet to Mr. Harold Cox, and he then described what seemed to me a model Chamber. It was the only place in this country where free speech obtained and where unpalatable truths could be spoken, and the noble Earl went on to say it was a most remarkable state of things that that should be the only place where these attributes obtained. It is natural to inquire, if that is an accurate description of the House of Lords, what do you want to alter it for, what has it done wrong? This debate is not really concerned with the constitution and powers of the House. It is an electioneering debate. I suppose it is intended to get rid of something that has been said against the House of Lords. But, surely, no one who had really at heart the question of the constitution of the House would begin with preliminary Resolutions. If you want to amend the constitution of the House, or supply a new one, why fetter your hands by preliminary Resolutions? I confess I am in despair when I look around and see that unexplained phrases are put forward to take the place of deliberate and considered intentions. I do not say, and I have never said, that the House of Lords is not susceptible of improvement. It would be rash to say that of any human institution. But I ask again what has the House of Lords done that its present constitution should be altered. No doubt noble Lords on the Ministerial Bench would say it was because this House had upset the financial arrangements of the country. But if the Budget of last year had but followed the ordinary course of all Budgets there would have been no difficulty about passing it. Had not the authors of the Budget proclaimed that by it a new era
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of legislation was being inaugurated? Can it be said then, that the Second Chamber is not entitled to consider whether the question of beginning a new era of legislation under the guise of the Budget should not, as a matter of prudence and equity, be submitted to the people?
I also desire to ask—How are you going to arrange the method by which the chosen hereditary Peers would take their seats in the House under the new arrangement? I have never been able to get any one to tell me that. Are you going to institute a system of entrance examination? In some of the United Stales of America no man is allowed to vote unless he can read and write, do the rule of three, and give a short account of the American Constitution. Are you going to adopt such a system? It is suggested that the Peers should elect representatives from among themselves, like the Scottish and Irish Peerages. But the Scottish and Irish systems were initiated at the unions of the Legislatures of these countries with the English Parliament, when it became necessary to limit by selection the number of Irish and Scottish Peers to sit in the United Parliaments. I therefore think that no analogy is afforded by the Scottish and Irish cases. The system of selection under the new arrangement should be made clear. Vague phrases about "improving" and "reforming" will not suffice. I submit that until we have a complete system before us we have no right to decide to take people's rights away. We have a House in which freedom of speech exists and the rights of property are respected, and it would be a serious experiment to destroy that House and then trust to being able to supply something better in its room.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I rise to express the opinions of one who sits on the Back Benches of your Lordships' House. I fear that I must ask your indulgence because I have no way of wrapping up my words in pretty phrases, or putting my opinions diplomatically. I can only tell you the view of one who lives in the backwoods but who holds very strong opinions on this subject. I am afraid I must disagree with what many noble Lords have said during this debate. I cannot help thinking that when noble Lords express a desire for the reform of this House they feel very differently in their inmost hearts. It seemed to me when this debate started that

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these proposals were the most far-reaching and the most revolutionary that had been put before the House for many a long day. There is evidently a certain feeling now among noble Lords that this is rather an academic debate—that real business is not meant. I have heard that it is merely brought forward for some tactical reasons.
What are the reasons for this great cry for the reform of the House of Lords? I cannot help thinking that it originated with the Socialists, who are strongly opposed to this House. Then the Irish joined in the cry. They have taken up the question of the Veto, for the reason that so long as the power of this House exists there is no possibility of Home Rule for Ireland. In this connection I should like to quote what was said only two nights ago by Mr. Redmond—
"This question of the Veto is the supreme issue. For us it means Home Rule for Ireland. To it we are willing to subordinate everything, any number of Budgets, any conceivable issue that can be raised, and our interest is to see that the struggle for the settlement of the Veto question is conducted on lines of courage and determination."
Further on in his speech he offered terms for the settlement of the Budget. My Lords, it strikes me that had it not been for the action of the House of Lords in referring the Budget to the people, Ireland would have been suffering at the present time from those proposals which have been criticised so strongly.
When the Irish also took up the cry of the Veto, the Radical Government saw at once their chance of making a political gain of this, and that is the way in which the matter has advanced and been put before the country. The Welsh also know that so long as the House of Lords exists they will never see the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales. Then when this great cry was started it occurred to politicians on this side of the House to start something as a counter-stroke to that policy, and at once everybody began to talk on this subject, and every paper began to write on the question of the reform of this House. The effect of advertising is well known. If a particular kind of soap or hair-dye is but advertised enough, the whole country will come to the conclusion that the particular soap or hair-dye is the very best. I contend that this cry for the reform of the House of Lords is only a well-advertised cry. Everybody has been reading or writing about it, and they believe now that it must be necessary. The result is the Resolutions which have been brought
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before your Lordships' House by the noble Earl who sits on the Cross Benches.
Is it a very sound position for us to take up to say that we do not in our heart of hearts believe that reform is necessary, but that because the Government have taken up the cry of the Veto, and because unscrupulous agitators have brought it forward, we think the best means of retaining our powers is to offer to reform ourselves on democratic lines? It seems to me my Lords,—and this has been pointed out during the debate—that if we reform ourselves on those lines this House will be much stronger than it is to-day. That is not what we want. I contend that this House suits the state of our politics better than any manufactured House possibly could. There is more elasticity in it, and in former days it has always passed those measures which the country really wanted. Moreover, even if we do manufacture a stronger House it will not satisfy anybody. There will still be that cry from the Irish, from the Radical Party, and from the Socialists. They will not be satisfied until they have brought in their Veto proposals, and until they have reformed the House on their own lines. My Lords, it will be a bad day when somebody else brings in reforms of this House instead of ourselves.
My chief objection to the reform of this House is that it is tampering with the Constitution, and if we once admit that it is possible to tamper with our Constitution we do not know where it will stop. If we manufacture a strong House now it will be a precedent for others at some future date to reform it again, until our power and our prestige will have gone for ever. The greater number of the speeches which we have heard from noble Lords are to the effect that we must reform this House. I wish most strongly to protest against that. I believe also that this cry for reform comes from those members of the other House who are afraid that when they go back to their constituencies they will lose a certain number of votes, especially in the North of England and in Scotland. In Scotland they have this elective principle already. The Peers of Scotland are elected by their fellow Peers, and there is great dissatisfaction in Scotland from this elective principle. On no grounds whatever can I bring myself to vote for this Resolution.
Before I sit down I would beg the House to consider the important changes which

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this Resolution may involve another day. I would ask those noble Lords who sit on the Back Benches—descendants of noble Lords who have in former days occupied great positions in the State—to reflect what they would say if their forefathers had lightly sold their birthright and disabled them from sitting and voting in the House to-day. I ask those noble Lords who sit on the Front Benches what will their children say of them if they lightly give away their inheritance? I would ask all noble Lords, before voting for this Resolution, to beware lest they take an action which may call upon them the bitter reproof of their descendants of the third and fourth generations for giving away so lightly that which their forefathers had so hardly won. I shall certainly vote against the Resolution.
THE EARL OF GALLOWAY: My Lords, although I am a pretty constant attendant in this House it is rarely that I address your Lordships, but I should like to do so on this occasion. The Resolution before us is, I fear, one of the most drastic ever submitted to this House, and if it is carried in its integrity most of us will probably turn round to the noble Earl on the Cross Benches and say, in the famous words of the Gladiator, Ave, Cœsar, morituri te salutant. Few of us will feel inclined to do this although we may admit that some reform of this House may be beneficial. We have heard that the size of the House is getting unwieldy, but the reason is very palpable. It is due to the leaders on both sides constantly adding to the number by introducing, with the consent of the Crown, many of those who have supported their political policy, and the present Government are the worst offenders in that respect, and consequently the Resolution of the noble Earl can have but a very transient effect in diminishing the numbers. I think, however, most of your Lordships will agree with the moderate proposals of the veteran Earl, Lord Wemyss, whose long experience in both Houses of Parliament is known to everybody. My Lords, the question of absentees may be dealt with when considering the reform of this House. There are those who will not, or cannot on account of ill-health or other causes, take part in the debates. I think this House would not be unreasonable in expecting that in a future Parliament those noble Lords should not occupy the position they do now.
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Then, again, your Lordships may welcome the idea that the Leaders of both Parties should try to obtain from their Sovereign a promise as to future life Peerages as against hereditary ones—that they may be more numerous. The reward given for political services is the cause of the enlargement of this House, but the revolutionary and unconstitutional character of recent legislation has had the effect of bringing the two sides of the House into such a position that on one side you will see perhaps 150 votes recorded, and on the other side only thirty. This Resolution, if carried, will, I think, be a recommendation to exclude certain members from this House, a proposal which I understand was made almost unanimously—the only exception being the noble and learned Earl, Lord Halsbury—by the Select Committee. Several noble Lords objected to Lord Killanin's Amendment, that the Resolution should only be carried out in the case of future accessions to the Peerage, and indeed the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, advised him to withdraw it on the ground that, if it were passed, the action of your Lordships' House would be misunderstood in the country. Does it not occur to the members of the Select Committee that their own position is absolutely analogous? The Resolution would not affect them personally although they unanimously voted for it. They recommend your Lordships to declare that for the future an hereditary Peerage shall not necessarily carry a seat in this House as a Lord of Parliament, but they declare at the same time that it shall not affect their own personal position as such. I would point out to your Lordships the absurdity of such a recommendation. Possibly many of them would be elected if their fellow Peers thought it would be an advantage to the House to do so. Surely you must know many cases, however, within your own personal knowledge where, for political reasons, offices have been given to those who have been universally considered failures. Indeed, in many cases they have been raised to your Lordships' House or given high appointments under the Crown because they were failures. If you are going at all to abolish the hereditary principle it stands to reason that it should be done universally—that is to say, everyone must be placed in the same position; you must do it without favour or affection, or you will be committing an act of gross injustice. Many of these exceptionally favoured

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individuals would never have had a chance of distinguishing themselves by holding office but for their original positions as eldest sons. Again, there are plenty of hereditary Peers who have not risen to high rank in the Services and yet have done good service to the State both in peace and war, as well as in their several districts where they are always recognised as men who have tried to do their duty to their King and country, and yet none of them have received the well-paid rewards for political Party services.
The more you examine into the question the more I am sure you will see the un-wisdom of the action proposed. I will not detain the House longer, except to point out that your Lordships have been recognised throughout the country as a territorial influence, and this is one of the points which does not seem to have been very much borne in mind in the course of this debate. A man possessed of a large income in Funds or Stocks can any day leave the country and spend his money elsewhere, but a man who holds a large territorial position must stay here. The whole of his income comes from the land. He is obliged to do his duty by that land, and he does it. I am quite certain of this, that everybody will agree that the landlords of this country deserve well of their country. Go down to their districts and find out what is thought of them there. It is not there that the House of Lords is looked upon as an evil. It is in the great towns, where the people do not see them. All I can say is this, that the people wish noble Lords who have seats in this House to move amongst them and to be at the head of every movement, and I feel certain that a great many of those whose absence from this House we deplore are kept away by the duties which they carry out so faithfully in those parts of the country where they live.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, I did not intend to take any part in this debate, but I cannot help thinking that even in passing this Resolution, which seems to be necessary in any reform, we seem to be putting the cart before the horse. It seems that we have been discussing the necessity of reform of this House without deciding beforehand the question upon which the necessary amount of reform will depend. It appears to me that the question of deciding in our own minds and in the minds of the country what is to be the ultimate machinery for settling differ-
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ences between the two Houses of Parliament is an essential preliminary to any proper reform of this House. There have been published to-day the proposals of the Government for that purpose. I need hardly say, my Lords, that those are not proposals to which we should for one moment submit. They may be forced upon us hereafter, but they are not the kind of proposals which this House with any sense of dignity or of its responsibility to the country could accept. If we could abandon in this House the right of rejecting Bills of first importance, and if we could have the power of referring such Bills to the unbiassed judgment of the people of the country by way of referendum, I should think we might in that way provide a system under which the old Constitution of the country might go on for many a long year to come, and in that case the reform needed by this House would be very small. While I quite agree that we ought to diminish the numbers of this House, it is useless if the Government continue to reward their supporters and people whom they wish to get out of the House of Commons by giving them seats in this House. If we could get that diminution I think there would be a very hopeful outlook for the future. As far as I know, there are only two other systems which might be tried. You might, as has been suggested, diminish the numbers of this House so greatly that the two Houses might meet in one Chamber and vote upon a question. That is not an amendment of the Constitution to which I should be willing to submit, for I believe it would be practically putting an end to the powers of this House and merely making a fictitious arrangement intended to perpetuate the power of the House of Commons. You may, on the other hand—and there is some little hope for that in the proposals of the Government—reduce the length of Parliaments, and restrict the power of this House to reject Bills to one Parliament. You may in that way, I believe, make a compromise which might be satisfactory to the people and honourable to this House. I firmly believe, while I am going to support the noble Earl's Resolution because I think it is an essential preliminary to any reform, that it is foolish of us to proceed to any reform of this House until we have settled what is to be the mode of adjusting differences with the House of Commons after that reform has taken place.
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: My Lords, I would ask leave to detain you for a few moments while I make one or two observations on the Resolution now before us. It appears to me, and I think I shall be echoing what is the feeling of every member of this House, that in considering the reform of your Lordships' House we should be very careful about adopting principles which are dangerous in themselves and incompatible with the whole history of the House in the past. I think, therefore, that any reform which is to strengthen your Lordships' House must be a reform which does not impair that sense of continuity which binds your Lordships' House of to-day to your Lordships' House of the past. It seems to me that a reform which enables the King to summon to the House of Lords for any Parliament such persons as he thinks likely to promote the welfare of the Empire would be quite in accordance with the original principles on which the House of Lords exists. It is true that a Writ of Summons to the House of Lords once granted has been held to be hereditary, but I imagine that that hereditary right is due to the feudal system rather than inherent in the original constitution of the House. It can hardly be denied that there are many persons outside your Lordships' House who for various reasons would be the kind of persons the King would have originally wished to summon to his Councils, and that there are members of your Lordships' House who perhaps not very perfectly fulfil the conditions which, would have originally led to their being summoned. There are two other matters which I think ought to be considered. Your Lordships' House represents the Lords spiritual and temporal, and I cannot think that any reform of this House which destroyed that character could possibly be a reform which did not destroy our continuity with the past. And I think also, to go back for one moment to the hereditary principle, that though the hereditary principle may not be, strictly speaking, as I think the noble Earl on the Cross Benches mentioned when he introduced the Resolution, an inherent part of the constitution of the House, it has been so long connected in popular estimation with the House of Lords that to sacrifice the hereditary principle or to destroy it would be a fatal mistake; and were it so destroyed nobody in the country would look upon this House as anything but a brand new body
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created ad hoc, and not the old House of Lords.
To apply these preliminary remarks to the present Resolution, it seems to me that your Lordships, by election amongst yourselves, could very well limit the number of hereditary Peers so as to make room for a greater number of life Peers summoned by the King, and that you could take effectual steps to exclude from this House Peers who, for whatever reason, ought not to have a vote. Your Lordships might also suggest the sort of persons who, as life Peers, would in your opinion add strength and weight to the councils of this House. These and such like things, if they are thought good, might be very well done in perfect harmony and consistency with the original character and constitution of this House. That would not, I think, in any sense be inconsistent. But—and this is the point I wish earnestly to impress upon your Lordships—if you gave assent to any principle of election from outside and endeavoured in that way to give this House a representative character, it appears to me it would be absolutely inconsistent with the existing constitution and the past history of this House. We are told that we ought to consider public opinion. Public opinion, however, is a shifting and changing thing, and I think we have first of all to consider whether public opinion is well-informed, and next whether in endeavouring to satisfy it we may not be endorsing principles which a little later will prove fatal to the maintenance of an Upper Chamber at all.
In this connection—and this is the last thing I have to say—may I insist that there cannot be a greater mistake than to speak as though the House of Commons were alone representative. The House of Lords is also representative. It is co-ordinate with the House of Commons as a factor in the representation of the people, and as such it has its own distinctive and invaluable function—the function of representing aspects of national life which are not represented, or are imperfectly represented, in the democratic House. Any attempt, then, to reform your Lordships' House ought to aim at enabling this House to discharge this function more perfectly, rather than to attempt to reform it upon a democratic basis, which can only make it either a formidable opponent of the House of Commons or a pale reflection of it. To adopt that principle is simply to play into the

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hands of our opponents; and to accept principles which in the long run mean that you cannot be representative unless there is election from outside to put you in touch with public opinion, would deprive us of our power and would reduce this House to impotence.
LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, my rising has reference to the remark of the noble Lord who opened the debate this afternoon with regard to the poor attendance of Peers yesterday. I should like to say that when we left on Thursday in last week I fully understood that, very properly in my opinion, the consideration of this important Resolution would be postponed until after Easter, and that opinion, I believe, was held by a great many Peers in this House. Speaking for myself I went away to Scotland, and I quote myself as typical of a great number of Peers and of their actions. They have numerous duties to perform not only in this House but outside. Saturday I spent with the Yeomanry; on Monday I was engaged in county business; and these are duties which the Leader of the Opposition said accounted for the absence of a number of Peers from this House. We have numerous duties which call us away from Westminster. Not only on this but on every occasion Peers have their local duties to perform in various parts of the United Kingdom, and many of them are also engaged in military and naval services. Some have important posts abroad throughout the Empire; and I venture to say that any Peer who has had a seat in the House of Commons will frankly allow that in the matter of attendances the attendances in this House compare very favourably with those in the other House. On a big night in the House of Commons the House is crammed, but as soon as two or three important speakers have finished the attendance evaporates; and on the occasion of an important discussion on Indian matters or on the Estimates you will see the House with only a handful of members present. It is not fair that it should be bruited about that to consider this important topic yesterday there was not a proper attendance of Peers. I did not intend to make a speech on this occasion, but I am in hearty accord with what has just fallen from Lord Halifax. I think that we ought to proceed with great caution. I do not believe in surrendering a great principle. It seems to me the worst tactics in the world to give up a big position to the enemy and not think that he will not
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afterwards also occupy the less important position. It is a matter of tactics. If the nation at large wishes to see elected members sitting alongside of us so as to bring us more in accord with popular feeling, it is for the nation itself to express that opinion. I hope that full support will be given on the lines laid before us by the noble Marquess the Leader of this side of the House.
THE EARL OF DENBIGH: My Lords, as one who took a somewhat active part in what was known as the "Peers' Campaign" prior to the General Election and met a good many audiences of various complexions I do not like to give an entirely silent vote on this important question. I merely wish to say that I cordially support the Resolutions which have been put forward by the noble Earl on the Cross Benches. While it is perfectly evident that a great deal of the opposition and the supposed indignation against the House of Lords is manufactured for Party purposes—deliberately manufactured by most unworthy and what I might call pestilential literature distributed in the great industrial districts where your Lordships are least known—yet there is no doubt a feeling of what I may call restiveness amongst those who constitute the great body of moderate and reasonable opinion in the country, who think that a change in the constitution of your Lordships' House is desirable. There is no getting away from that fact. And there is a great deal of restiveness not only amongst moderate opinion, but amongst our own supporters in the country. I feel certain, if we were to adopt the line suggested by some of your Lordships who have opposed all reform whatever, that one of these days, and before very long, we should bitterly regret it. I am perfectly well aware of the fact that no sort of reform will satisfy those supporters of His Majesty's Government who are desirous of reducing the proceedings of this House to an absolute farce—a farce such as is represented by the Government's Resolutions which have appeared in the Press to-day. I am also aware of the fact that nothing in the way of reform could satisfy that other body who wish to do away with anything in the shape of a House of Lords or a Second Chamber at all. But I do give my most cordial support to the Resolutions of the noble Earl because I believe they will have a very great effect upon that moderate and reasonable opinion of which there is such a very large force in the country, and which it is impossible for

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us to ignore. The exact methods of effecting reform can be considered afterwards. The noble and learned Earl below me (Lord Halsbury) laughs. I know he considers that the whole matter hangs upon the details. At the same time I think there is no getting away from the fact, as was stated so well by the noble Lord behind me a few minutes ago, that the Resolutions of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches ought to be supported because they are an absolutely necessary preliminary to any reform which can be undertaken. Therefore I shall certainly support the Resolution, and I feel quite undeterred by the lurid prospect held out by the noble Lord behind me (Lord Bathurst) of our ghosts being cudgelled by an outraged posterity.
THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY: My Lords, as this appears to be a day for those who sit on the Back Benches, I ask the indulgence of the Committee while I make a few remarks on the question now before us. I want to repudiate, to start with, the suggestion that the action that the House of Lords is preparing to take at this moment is due to what is to happen, or to what has happened in recent times. We must remember that in the minds of a great many of your Lordships the necessity for a reform of the House of Lords has been ever present. It has been in the mind of the noble Earl who sits on the cross Benches since 1884, and I think it is quite evident that we are not acting as a result of pressure which has been brought at the moment, but because we are convinced that for the good of the country something must be done to strengthen the House of Lords. Undoubtedly the idea of reform has been hastened by what has taken place in more immediate times. The result of our action upon the Budget has turned the attention of people in the country to the position and to the authority of the House of Lords, and therefore the moment has come to see whether something cannot be done. What is really wanted, in my opinion, is to strengthen the authority of this House in the minds of the country. Therefore if it is a question of reform or no reform, I am an unhesitating supporter of the reform of the House of Lords, and for three reasons. First, because we want to strengthen the authority we possess for the action that we may take; secondly, because this Chamber is really becoming too unwieldy; and, thirdly, because we
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must, if possible, try and eliminate the too strong partisan element that has accrued in this Chamber. To-day we have before the Committee the question whether we shall surrender privileges which we have hitherto enjoyed. If it is a necessary preliminary to reform I will unhesitatingly support the noble Earl when he goes into the Division Lobby; and if hereafter we have to think out a scheme—the question is, I admit, bristling with difficulties—I hope ample time will be taken, and that nothing will be done in too hurried a manner. I am quite certain that we must for the good of the country surrender privileges which we have hitherto enjoyed; and nothing appealed to me more than the words of the noble Earl when he asked noble Lords to consider the good of the nation and the necessity of doing something to strengthen this House. I am not going to discuss whether the elective principle is necessary, or how far it is to be adopted. I am satisfied that we must abandon the hereditary principle. I will also say this before I sit down, that if we are not to have the elective principle—and I do not advocate it myself—I am very much in sympathy with what fell from the noble Marquess in his eloquent speech, namely, the possibility of finding some way of getting rid of the partisan element by a system of nomination.
LORD HARRIS: My Lords, like my noble friend below me I feel that, having taken part in the debates in this House for many years it is impossible in this, the most momentous debate that has ever taken place during that period, to remain altogether silent. I am going to vote for the Resolution of the noble Earl. I will confine my remarks to giving my reasons for so doing, and I will not discuss or estimate what is to follow. I confess that I shall give my vote for the Resolution only after much mental anxiety and even now with very great apprehension. But before doing so, I think one is justified in acknowledging one's regret at taking a step which is to deprive one of a privilege which one has enjoyed for very many years, and a responsibility which one has regarded as a great honour and a great duty. And not only is it depriving one's self of that privilege; it is depriving those with whom one is allied and those who will come after of that privilege, perhaps for ever.

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The expression "vested interest" was used by a noble Lord last right. I do not think that is a very happy expression. A more correct and happier description of the duty of a Peer would be that he was obeying the commands of his Sovereign. I had the honour recently of standing at the Table when a new Peer was taking the oath, and I listened with close attention to the words used in the Patent of Nobility. The words were that that noble Lord was commanded by the Sovereign to attend here for the purposes of legislation. It is his duty; there is no question of a vested interest. There is the command of the Sovereign that he should attend here. Therefore what we are asked to give up by this Resolution is not only that which appertains to ourselves and to those who come after us, but we are actually asked to take away something which has been hitherto the privilege of the Sovereign. In such circumstances I submit one may approach a Resolution of this kind with the gravest hesitation. But I have made up my mind to vote for the Resolution for several reasons.
In the first place, I feel that this House has grown numerically abnormally large. In the last one hundred years—a short space in the history of your Lordships' House—our numbers have nearly doubled. That, it seems to me, is too rapid an increase and has constituted a part of the present danger. If things were to go on as they are I do not know that that increase might not continue. Therefore I think the time has come when some effectual check is necessary upon an increase in the number of Peers. In the second place, I feel that I shall be echoing the feelings of the greater part of my neighbours. I do not profess to know the opinions of those outside my own immediate neighbourhood, but for thirty-eight years I hold that I have represented my neighbours in this House, not by election it is quite true. I know them intimately; they come to me on many matters, and I have always regarded it as a great honour to consider myself one of their members of Parliament, and I would relinquish that position with regret.
As regards numbers, I feel most strongly, more strongly than anything else, that the abnormal majority on this side of the House is a great danger to the State. It was not ever thus. In earlier days,
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as was pointed out by the noble Duke, the Duke of Northumberland, the numbers on each side were fairly equal. As he said, it was the policy pursued by Mr. Gladstone which gradually brought over members from the other side to this side, and that movement was increased with dangerous rapidity by the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. To rectify the inequality is, of course, the great difficulty, but it has to be done. The perplexity which marks the replies of every noble Lord whom I have questioned on the subject does not lead me to hope that anything practical can be done at very short notice, and I sincerely hope that a change will not be made at short notice. We have taken many centuries to build up the constitution of this House, and it is not to be expected that in one short session we are going to adapt to an old building of this kind something that will be both architecturally pleasing to the eye and at the same time useful for habitation within. For these three reasons, which seem to me very important reasons, I have made up my mind to vote for the noble Earl's third Resolution. At the same time I honestly confess I do so with considerable apprehension, and only because I feel that there is less danger in voting for this Resolution, which deprives us and those who come after us of certain privileges, than in leaving things as they are.
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, I cannot help thinking that there is a good deal of misunderstanding in the minds of those who are opposing this Resolution. In two or three of the speeches it has been described as the most drastic proposal that has ever been laid before this House, as a proposal revolutionary in character, and I think a noble Lord below me said that it amounted to a confession of our own un-worthiness; and then the noble Lord who has just spoken, although he is going to vote for the Resolution, tells us that he will do so with the greatest possible apprehension. I deny the accuracy of the descriptions which have been given of the nature of the Resolution, and I say most emphatically that it contains no condemnation of the hereditary principle, and that it is an absolutely necessary and indispensable preliminary to any change in the composition of this House. The noble and learned Earl on the Front Opposition Bench tells us that until a complete scheme of reform has been laid before this House it is unfair to ask your

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Lordships to pass such a Resolution. That attitude was like that of one who refused to go into Committee until he knew all the details which might be submitted to the Committee. Whether the scheme of reform hereafter to be proposed be good or bad, it surely is quite impossible to reduce the number of members or to prevent an undue increase in the future unless this House is prepared to consider some modification of the hereditary principle.
I am no critic of the hereditary principle. I am prepared to defend the contention that it is much better to breed members for the Second Chamber titan to elect them by ballot; but your Lordships are not called upon to defend the hereditary principle at this moment because there is no condemnation of the hereditary principle in this Resolution. I doubt if the title by which noble Lords sit and vote in this House is sufficiently realised. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, has just reminded the House that that title is based on a Writ of Summons from the Crown. True the distinction of our ancestors and accident of birth render us eligible to receive that Writ of Summons, but the title by which we sit and vote in this House is the possession and receipt of that Writ of Summons. There is nothing inconsistent with that in the proposed Resolution. Even supposing that the Resolution is accepted by the House, and the spirit of it subsequently guides legislation, the accident of birth to which I have referred will still make noble Lords eligible to sit and vote in this House. The only modification of it, perhaps, would be that the selection from those persons so eligible would proceed according to certain accepted principles. Surely it cannot be denied that the hereditary principle will be strengthened and that the title of every Lord of Parliament will be increased if, in addition to his birth, which has rendered him eligible for membership, he also sits and votes either on account of his services to the State or because he has been selected by his Peers. That, surely, would be no condemnation or weakening of the hereditary principle. Later on we shall come to discuss the suggestions—I have no doubt many will be made—as to the principles which shall govern that selection; but at the present moment all that this House is asked to do is to pass a Resolution signifying its willingness to agree that the possession of an hereditary Peerage shall not of itself and unaccompanied by any other consideration give
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the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. My Lords, that is not a tremendous revolutionary proposal. It is an indispensable preliminary to any reform, and no one can vote against this Resolution unless he is prepared to say, not only that there shall be no reduction in the number of members of this House at present, but that at no future time should any check be placed upon its unlimited increase. I hope, therefore, that the Resolution will be passed by an overwhelming majority.
LORD LANGFORD: My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships very long, but I would like, as one of those who sit here as an elected Peer from Ireland, to say a few words. I shall support very cordially the Resolution of the noble Earl. I believe it is suggested that our number, which is now twenty-eight, should be reduced. I am quite prepared as one of the number of Irish Peers to retire into the backwoods with several of my noble friends and to take my chance, but I do hope we shall have in the future, as we have had in the past, a representation of Irish Peers in this House. Situated as we are in Ireland, we require support in this House. We look forward to coming here and getting assistance from our own side, and I should regret very much indeed if our numbers were cut down to any great extent. Personally, like many noble Lords who have spoken to-night, I am very much in favour, and always have been, of a reformed House. I feel that our numbers have grown too large, and that the only way for us to deal with this matter is by the Resolutions which the noble Earl on the Cross Benches has put on the Paper. I do not think we are giving up anything, and if we are it is only fair and right that we should have the nation's interests at heart. Our object should be not to weaken this House but to strengthen it in every way we can, and to bring it, if possible, into closer touch with public opinion outside. I am not one of those who took any part during the late election on the hustings in my own country, although as it turns out the Budget proposals which your Lordships referred to the country are not very favourably entertained in Ireland. I daresay if one had gone out and spoken one would have received a very favourable reception at the hustings on those lines. I cannot help thinking that although the matter before the House is one of very great importance and one which appears to me to bristle with difficulties, a way will be found out of them

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if we approach the question with due caution and not stand too much at the present moment on detail. I do not share the apprehension expressed by Lord Harris. I feel confident that the action which your Lordships will take will strengthen and perpetuate and popularise this House which we all honour so much, and which has been for so many years a help and guide to the nation.
THE DUKE OF NORFOLK: My Lords, one or two noble Lords in addressing the Committee have referred to the way in which they are going to vote. I do not know whether the noble Earl on the Cross Benches intends to divide on the subject, but I sincerely hope that course may not commend itself to him, because I cannot but feel that if he does divide he will be giving a somewhat fictitious importance to the special work we are engaged upon to-night. We have before us a task which will eventually require an Act of Parliament, and when we come to framing the clauses of that Bill we shall have to be careful as to what exact limits we commit ourselves in any direction. I venture to suggest that that is not what we are doing now. At present we are merely preparing by a series of Resolutions a platform on which we are going to build, as we trust, a lasting edifice. These Resolutions are only preparatory to the work we have to do. To attach importance to them now as if they had the binding influence of an Act of Parliament would be altogether misleading and fettering ourselves in a way which is most undesirable. We have been reminded that in the Peerage of Scotland and Ireland this condition of affairs exists, and the noble and learned Earl told us that it was because a compact had to be entered into and conditions had to be drawn up. But he did not say that on account of the contract and conditions in connection with those Peerages, the hereditary principle had been renounced. The noble and learned Earl also told us that a bankrupt Peer was unable to sit in this House. Therefore the actual possession of a Peerage does not, even now, of itself entitle anyone who holds it to sit in this House. I cannot but think that we are giving a strained and somewhat dangerous interpretation to the Resolution now before us. It is almost universally admitted, keenly as we may regret it, that it will be practically impossible to carry out a reform of this House which will enable all those Peers who now have seats in it to remain and
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vote. In order to bring about any change which would meet that unfortunate necessity, we should approach the matter from the spirit of the third Resolution. I think it is only fair and right that before this House is invited to go into the discussion on this great problem it should be made clear that the probable result will be that we shall have to come to some self-denying ordinance. How far the exact limits of that sacrifice must go, what exact limitations it will be desirable to impose, and what safeguards an Act of Parliament must have in it in order to prevent a misinterpretation of what we are doing, are points which I submit are premature at the present moment. We are now merely passing the Resolution for our own guidance and suggesting the direction in which our work must progress; and it would be unfortunate if we gave the country the impression that we regarded the matter in so serious a light that we thought it necessary to divide upon the proposition. I believe there are a great many who sympathise with those who look upon this matter with apprehension and it would be painful to go into the Lobby against them; but as one who cannot share their fears, believing them to be strained and unnecessary, I shall certainly support the Resolution moved by the noble Earl.
LORD BOSTON: My Lords, I trust I may be pardoned for intruding in this debate for a few moments and thus breaking through the custom which obtains in this House that members who sit on the Back Benches should not on ordinary occasions unduly obtrude their opinions upon your Lordships. But as this is not an ordinary occasion, but one which specially affects the more humble members of this Assembly and upon which a free expression of opinion on their part seems desirable, I venture to ask your Lordships to bear with me for a few moments. A noble Lord who sits upon the opposite side of the House (Lord Willoughby de Broke) in the entertaining speech he made a few nights ago, stated that he addressed your Lordships as one of those members of this House now termed backwoodsmen. I do not think the noble Lord did himself justice in so labelling himself. But even it he can, by a stretch of the imagination, be described as dwelling in the outskirts of those sylvan shades, I can at any rate be said to hail from their innermost recesses, from a district the gloom and monotony of which is happily relieved by the existence in an extensive clearing of one of

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the feudal residences of my noble friend the Minister for Agriculture. I sit here not by any merits of my own, but simply, as the phrase goes, as the son of my father. I am one of those hereditary Peers whose type is usually portrayed by our foremost political cartoonist as a decrepit and senile old gentleman seated with his feet in hot water or swathed in bandages and by his side a nauseous black draught labelled "Liberal Mixture," which a group of gentlemen is about to administer to him by force. This group usually consists of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Home Secretary, but to these I think must now be added the noble Marquess who leads the Opposition and the noble Earl on the Cross Benches, who has taken so prominent a part in brewing the mixture which the hereditary Peers are now called upon to take. I have sat in this Assembly for something like thirty years, having become a member of it without a chance of seeking a seat elsewhere, and I have taken part, I think, in nearly all the Divisions on matters of moment which have engaged the attention of the House during that long period, and have brought to bear upon those measures such limited intelligence as a backwoodsman and a hereditary Peer can be supposed to possess. I have endeavoured to perform the same operation in the case of the Resolutions now before the House, and have arrived at the conclusion that as a complete reform and reconstitution of this House appears to be generally desired in order to bring it into closer harmony with modern conditions and with the new ideas of thought and action which are springing up among the people, we hereditary Peers who have no particular public services to place to our credit must not allow any selfish considerations to stand in the way, but must be content to surrender our right to sit and vote here. Upon the further questions which will arise as to the best methods of creating a Second Chamber acceptable to the nation, I express no opinion. Neither do I express any opinion upon the somewhat drastic proposals of His Majesty's Government, which we have seen in this morning's papers, for limiting the powers of this House. No proposals beyond those of the noble Earl are now before the House, and when any further proposals are submitted they will, no doubt, be adequately discussed and criticised. My Lords, I would only express the hope, if I may do so without presumption, that if this House is to be reconstituted, whether by one Party
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or the other, it will be placed upon a basis which will render it more sympathetic to the legitimate aspirations of the people, less dominated by an element drawn exclusively from the ranks of the wealthy and leisured classes, and lastly, less under the control of one political Party in the State.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My lords, I have already on one occasion at least made to the House my profession of faith with regard to this Resolution, and I have neither the right nor inclination to repeat that profession of faith this evening. But I want, if I may, before we go to a Division to say one word with regard to the scope of the Resolution itself. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lytton in thinking that there is a certain amount of misunderstanding with regard to the effect of the Resolution. We have already resolved that a strong and efficient Second Chamber can best be provided by the reform and reconstitution of the House of Lords, and we are now asked to go one step further and to say that it is a necessary preliminary to such a reform and reconstitution that the possession of a hereditary Peerage shall not of itself—and I lay great stress on those words—give a right to sit and vote in your Lordships' House. That Resolution has been represented as if it was equivalent to a repudiation of the hereditary principle. My Lords, I do not at all so read it. I will even go the length of saying that it would be possible for one of your Lordships to vote for this Resolution with the full intention of afterwards proposing that this House should consist entirely of hereditary Peers. All that we are really invited to do by this Resolution is to say that a hereditary Peerage by itself is not to give the title to sit and vote.
I ask your Lordships whether that proposition does not lie at the very threshold of this question. Whatever reform of the House of Lords we may have in contemplation, no matter how moderate that reform may be, it seems to me that the acceptance of this Resolution is a preliminary condition without which we cannot hope to obtain the desired result. Take two or three of the suggestions we have been discussing. Some of your Lordships think that it would be desirable to relieve a certain number of members of this House who may be unable or unwilling or unqualified to take part in our business of their functions as Peers of Parliament. How can

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you do that unless by means of some such preliminary step as that which we are now asked to take? Take another kind of reform which, I think, received the general commendation of your Lordships. I mean the proposal that the numbers of this House should be reduced so as to render it less unwieldy in its dimensions than it is at present. How can you effect a change of that kind unless you harden your hearts at any rate to the extent of admitting that the possession of a hereditary Peerage shall not be sufficient to entitle the possessor to come down and take part in the work of this House? And the same, of course, is true when you come to other suggestions, such as those for taking steps to remove the regrettable disparity in numerical strength which now exists between the two political parties in this House. Therefore, my Lords, I for one regard this Resolution really as the gate, so to speak, through which we must pass before we can enter upon any of the roads along which we are asked to travel towards the goal of House of Lords reform. I must venture, therefore, to dissociate myself entirely from those who regard the Resolution as anything in the nature of a crusade against your Lordships' House. I think, on the contrary, it is the step most needful if we really intend to show by our action that we mean business, and that we are determined to deal seriously with the question of House of Lords' reform. For that reason, my Lords, I say again that I shall vote without a moment's hesitation with the noble Earl when the Resolution is put from the Chair.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE): My Lords, I rise merely to say that we desire to offer no opposition to this Motion. The noble Marquess stated, and stated, I think, with perfect truth, that the carrying of some Motion of this kind is a necessary preliminary to any reform or alteration of the constitution of your Lordships' House. Although, as the House is aware, we propose to adopt a different course, and to deal, first, with the relations between the two Houses, yet we have never set aside the question of the reform of the constitution of this House. Indeed, as your Lordships are well aware, we definitely contemplate undertaking, if circumstances make that possible, a scheme for the reconstitution of this House, and as the wording of the third Resolution is such as
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to enlist the sympathies of those who desire merely to make the faintest alteration in the present constitution of the House, and also is compatible with the views of those whom the noble Marquess described as crusaders against the House of Lords, we have certainly no desire to oppose this third Resolution of my noble friend.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: My Lords, I do not desire to interpose for more than a moment in so extremely satisfactory a discussion as that to which we have listened. My noble friend opposite has just made the interesting announcement, of an academical character, that he and his colleagues do in time contemplate, have in definite contemplation—I am not quite sure of the words—the reform of this House. I think from what we have seen of the policy of the Government, as announced in this morning's papers, it will be wisdom on the part of this House to accept suggestions of reform rather from those who are friendly to it than from those who propose to proceed on the lines laid down in this morning's Press. My Lords, I was, I confess, a little depressed at one period of the discussion this evening, because it seemed to me to proceed very much in layers. There was no alternation of opinion, but a thick layer of opposition developed itself in successive speakers under the inspiration of the noble and learned Earl behind me, Lord Halsbury. I was gratified to find that that did not represent the overwhelming opinion, but that it was followed by an equally thick layer of Peers who were favourable to the proposition.
The noble and learned Earl behind me made, as he always does, a very interesting, a very vigorous, and a very humorous speech. He did not indeed quote the circular which he has sent round to the more promising members of your Lordships' House, among whom, I am sorry to say, he did not reckon me, calling them with the voice of a trumpet to oppose this Resolution. But there was one remark he made which I do think deserves particular notice, because I think it more derogatory to the character of this House than anything which has been said by its greatest enemies. He said that this was a rare piece of electioneering. For my part, I beg emphatically to deny that statement. If there is one person in this House who ought to be considered

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innocent of any electioneering ambitions or devices it is the humble individual who now addresses you. But electioneering is a very wide phrase. I suppose that every measure that is introduced into either House of Parliament is, from some points of view, a measure of electioneering, because, I presume, no one wishes in this House, or in the other House either, to do that which is repugnant to the great mass of his fellow-countrymen. As I think Lord Denbigh said, many Peers going in and about the country during the recent crisis, having discovered that the process of reform undertaken by your Lordships yourselves as against the process of reform suggested from outside would be gratefully received by the country at large, have been stimulated to come and vote in this House for these three preliminary Resolutions.
There was another expression in the noble and learned Earl's speech which I thought also a little derogatory to the character of this House. He quoted me as saying that it was the one place in Great Britain where unpalatable truths might be uttered without interruption. I entirely maintain that statement, and, as the noble Marquess behind me, Lord Salisbury, said in his speech the other night, no one has tested that amiability and courtesy of your Lordships more than I have myself. But I would remind the noble and learned Earl that a legislative Chamber does not exist entirely for the utterance and acceptance of unpalatable truths. It has functions very considerably above and beyond those, and it is to the strengthening of the authority of the House of Lords in the exercise of those functions that I frankly and freely admit these Resolutions are aimed.
After this third Resolution is passed, as I sincerely hope it will be, if a Division is thought necessary, by an overwhelming majority, we have to look a little into the future. The noble and learned Earl asked more than once what was the plan that was to follow these Resolutions. I think that indicates a certain misapprehension of the proceedings to which I have pledged myself. Those who desire the reform of the House of Lords have distinctly avoided framing a definite Bill or a definite plan because that is not our purpose in the proceedings to which we are accessory. Our idea, at least if I interpret the mind of my friends
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rightly, is this, that the House of Lords should, with great deliberation, I admit, but with deliberation, adopt and lay down certain broad principles on which this reform might well proceed. Beyond that, I have no idea whatever of inviting the support or the consent of your Lordships to any plan or scheme whatever. I think that to do that would be to go beyond the functions of an Opposition, much more beyond the functions of a Cross Bench, and that any definite and detailed scheme must come from a Government in power and not from any private member or even any leading Opposition member of this House. Therefore, what I should propose to your Lordships is that, after the Easter recess, we should take one or two or three or more Resolutions gradually and deliberately, that those should not indicate an exact framework for a new Second Chamber, a task from which I should recoil, but should simply lay down broad and general principles on which we think as a House of Lords that reform should proceed. I venture to express my firm belief that, if those principles, or anything like them, represent the general tendency of your Lordships' mind, they will act as a very agreeable and acceptable alternative in the minds of the great mass of the nation as compared with those that are produced in the newspapers this morning.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD LOREBURN): My Lords, perhaps your Lordships will suffer me to say a very few words in regard to the statement, which is, I think, completely new, although I do not say it is inconsistent with his former declarations, that has fallen from the noble Earl. As regards what we have done, we have affirmed three propositions. I hope I shall not incur the displeasure of the noble Earl by saying that no one is committed to anything by any one of those propositions. There are three methods by which you can compose a Second Chamber—the hereditary, the nominative, and the elective. It is compatible with those three Resolutions that this Chamber should consist of all hereditary Peers, of all nominated Peers, or of all elected Peers, or in any of the numerous possible combinations between those three. There is no numerical parity, or disparity or proportion which is also not completely reconcilable with every one of those three propositions. Under these circumstances,

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my Lords, I did venture to suggest at an earlier stage of the debate that it might be desirable to know a little more. I do not presume to pry into the secret wishes of the noble Earl, into, perhaps, his undeveloped and immature views of some of the details, but that we should know what on earth it is he really wants at the end of it all. I am glad to learn from the noble Earl that he proposes after Easter to bring forward Resolutions, and if we shall be able to know who will sit, or what class of persons will sit in the House under any scheme proceeding from those Resolutions, then I quite apprehend that we shall come to some effectual business conclusions. But at present, with all respect to the noble Earl, I really do think that what the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, said is perfectly true, that we ought not to attach a fictitious importance to the Resolutions we are asked to accept.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: The noble and learned Lord has addressed a direct
appeal to me on the ground that I said something just now which is totally inconsistent with what I previously stated.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: No, what I said was that I thought what the noble Earl said was new, although I did not think it was inconsistent with what he had said before.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: The noble and learned Lord will find the statement I refer to in the speech in which I introduced the Resolution.
On Question, That a necessary preliminary of such reform and reconstitution is the acceptance of the principle that the possession of a Peerage should no longer of itself give the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 175; Not-contents, 17.

CONTENTS.

Canterbury, L. Abp.

Leicester, E.

Ampthill, L.

Loreburn, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Lichfield, E.

Annaly, L.

Crewe, E. (L. Privy Seal.)

Lindsey, E.

Armitstead, L.

Liverpool, E.

Ashbourne, L.

Norfolk, D. (E. Marshal.)

Lucan, E.

Ashby St. Ledgers, L.

Argyll, D.

Lytton, E.

Atkinson, L.

Bedford, D.

Malmesbury, E.

Avebury, L.

Devonshire, D.

Mount Edgcumbe, E.

Barrymore, L.

Northumberland, D.

Munster, E.

Basing, L.

Rutland, D.

Northesk, E.

Belper, L.

Wellington, D.

Onslow, E.

Biddulph, L.

Plymouth, E.

Blyth, L.

Camden, M.

Shaftesbury, E.

Blythswood, L.

Lansdowne, M.

Stradbroke, E.

Boston, L.

Linlithgow, M.

Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

Bowes, L. (E. Strathmore and Kinghorn.)

Salisbury, M.

Waldegrave, E.

Brodrick, L. (V. Midleton.)

Albemarle, E.

Althorp, V. (L. Chamberlain.)

Burghclere, L.

Brownlow, E.

Churchill, V.

Burnham, L.

Camperdown, E.

Cobham, V.

Carew, L.

Carrington, E.

Falmouth, V.

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Cawdor, E.

Halifax, V.

Chesterfield, E.

Hampden, V.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Chichester, E.

Hardinge, V.

Clinton, L.

Clarendon, E.

Hood, V.

Clonbrock, L.

Cranbrook, E.

Hutchinson, V. (E. Donoughmore.)

Colebrooke, L.

Cromer, E.

Collins, L.

Dartrey, E.

Knutsford, V.

Cottesloe, L.

Denbigh, E.

Morley of Blackburn, V.

Courtney of Penwith, L.

Derby, E.

Peel, V.

Curzon of Kedleston, L.

Devon, E.

Ridley, V.

Dawnay, L. (V. Downe.)

Doncaster, E. (D. Buccleuch and Queensberry.)

St. Aldwyn, V. [Teller.]

De Mauley, L.

Templetown, V.

Denman, L.

Eldon, E.

Desborough, L.

Fitzwilliam, E.

Exeter, L. Bp.

Dunmore, L. (E. Dunmore.)

Fortescue, E.

Lichfield, L. Bp.

Ellenborough, L.

Guilford, E.

Winchester, L. Bp.

Faber, L.

Harewood, E.

Farrer, L.

Howe, E.

Abinger, L.

Fermanagh, L. (E. Erne.)

Lauderdale, E.

Addington, L.

Gage, L. (V. Gage.)

Glantawe, L.

Monson, L.

Sackville, L.

Gorell, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

St. Levan, L.

Granard, L. (E. Granard.)

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Saltoun, L.

Gwydyr, L.

Newton, L.

Sanderson, L.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Northcote, L.

Sandhurst, L.

Harris, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Sandys, L.

Heneage, L.

O'Hagan, L.

Saye and Sele, L.

Hindlip, L.

Oranmore and Browne, L.

Seaton, L.

Hylton, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Shaw, L.

Kenmare, L. (E. Kenmare.)

Pentland, L.

Shute, L. (V. Barrington.)

Kesteven, L.

Poltimore, L.

Silchester, L. (E. Longford.)

Kinnaird, L.

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Somerhill, L. (M. Clanricarde.)

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Ranfurly, L. (E. Ranfurly.)

Stanmore, L.

Lamington, L.

Rathmore, L.

Stuart of Castle Stuart, L.

Langford, L.

Rayleigh, L.

Sudeley, L. [(E. Moray.)

Lawrence, L.

Reay, L.

Sudley, L. (E. Arran.)

Leith of Fyvie, L.

Redesdale, L.

Tennyson, L.

Lovat, L.

Revelstoke, L.

Vivian, L.

Lucas, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Wandsworth, L.

MacDonnell, L.

Rosebery, L. (E. Rosebery.) [Teller.]

Wigan, L. (E. Crawford).

Manners, L.

Worlingham, L. (E. Gosford).

Marchamley, L.

Rothschild, L.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Ailesbury, M.

Bagot, L.

North, L.

Hertford, M

Byron, L.

Stewart of Garlies, L. (E. Galloway.)

Crofton, L.

Bathurst, E.

Killanin, L.

Templemore, L.

Cathcart, E.

Leigh, L.

Wemyss, L. (E. Wemyss.) [Teller.]

Halsbury, E. [Teller.]

Mowbray, L.

Lovelace, E.

Muncaster, L.

Resolved in the affirmative accordingly.
House resumed.
House adjourned at a quarter past Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter-past Four o'clock.