Sitting of 20 July 1911

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Great Northern Railway Bill,
Lords Amendments to be considered Tomorrow.
Marple Urban District Council Gas Bill,
Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
Penllwyn Railway Bill [Lords],
London, Tilbury, and Southend Railway Bill [Lords],
Barry Railway Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to:—
Land Drainage Provisional Order (No. 2) Bill,
Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill,
Bristol Tramways Bill, without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Education under the Education Acts, 1870 to 1907, to enable the London County Council to put in force the Lands Clauses Acts."—[Education Board Provisional Orders Confirmation (London) Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Blandford Water, Gisborough Water, North Pembrokeshire Water and Gas, Sheringham Gas and Water, and West Gloucestershire Water."—[Gas and Water Orders Confirmation Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under The Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Busby and District Gas, Longford Gas, Preston Gas, and Uxbridge Gas."—[Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 4) Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under The Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Cannock Gas, Clay Cross Gas, Hythe and Sandgate Gas, Lichfield Gas, and Witney and District Gas."—[Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 2) Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Electric Lighting Acts, 1882 and 1888, relating to Chopping Wycombe (Extension), Harrow and District, Sandwich, Deal and Walmer, and Sevenoaks."—[Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [Lords.]
And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act for transferring to the South East Kent Electric Power Company, Limited, certain of the powers of the Kent Electric Power Company; and for other purposes."— [East Kent Electric Power Bill [Lords.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 10) BILL.
As amended, in Committee, to be printed.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES (IRELAND) (QUALIFICATION OF WOMEN) BILL.
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee A.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed.
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration To-morrow, and to be printed.

PUBLIC ROADS (IRELAND) BILL.
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee A.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed.
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration To-morrow, and to be printed.

SHOPS BILL.
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee C.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed.
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration upon Monday next, and to be printed.

NEW WRIT.
For Middleton Division of South-East Lancashire, in the room of Sir William Ryland Dent Adkins, K.C. (Recorder of Nottingham).—[Mr. Illingworth.]
SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE ACT, 1875.
Copy presented of Order in Council, dated 5th July, 1911, amending the Order in Council of 2nd August, 1910, relative to the Circuits of the Judges [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
WINTER ASSIZES ACTS, 1876 AND 1877.
Copies presented of Seven Orders in Council, dated 5th July, 1911, constituting Winter Assize Counties Nos. 1 to 7, for the purpose of the ensuing Winter Assizes [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
EXTRADITION ACTS, 1870 TO 1906.
Copy presented of Order in Council, dated 5th July, 1911, applying the Extradition Acts, 1870 to 1906, to the Republic of Paraguay [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
NAVAL AND MARINE PAY AND PENSIONS ACT, 1865.
Copies presented of Five Orders in Council, dated 5th July, 1911, made under the above-named Acts [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Anglo-Japanese Treaty.
  Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 12th August, 1905, which has been revised and renewed for a period of ten years from the 13th instant, was concluded the day after the prorogation on 11th August, 1905, of a Parliament which never met again, but was dissolved six months afterwards, the treaty being thus kept before its conclusion from the knowledge of Parliament and after its conclusion from being the subject of the expression of Parliamentary opinion, favourable or otherwise; on what grounds has the recently concluded Anglo-
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  Japanese Agreement been kept from the knowledge of Parliament and concluded without its sanction, and why were the representatives of the nation precluded from the expression of their views on its merits and deprived of the gratification of being factors in its achievement; and, having regard to the fact that the revision of the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 1905 effected by the recent agreement has in the main been rendered advisable and advantageous by the fact that Great Britain is negotiating a general arbitration treaty with the United States, which will not be concluded without the approval of the Senate of the United States and of the House of Commons, what is the reason for the taking of the House of Commons into confidence by the Government in respect to the proposed arbitration treaty with the United States and keeping the House of Commons in the dark with reference to the revision of a treaty rendered necessary by the arbitration treaty as a condition precedent to its conclusion; whether he has any, and, if so, what, explanation to make of the concealment till its conclusion of this treaty from the House of Commons and the committal thereby of these countries, without their sanction or knowledge, to grant international liabilities or obligations; and what is the reason for this practice of secrecy, having regard to the new Imperial policy of admitting the Prime Ministers of the Dominions to complete confidence by submitting to them the general foreign policy of the country inaugurated at the Imperial Conference?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): I can add nothing to the very exhaustive answers given to the hon. and learned Member on the 11th May, and what I have previously said this Session about the constitutional practice in concluding treaties. We have observed constitutional practice; the hon. Member desires that we should depart from it.
  Mr. MacNEILL: Is not this constitutional practice of keepng the House of Commons in the dark with reference to treaties comparatively of very recent origin indeed?
  Sir E. GREY: It has obtained as long as. I have been in the House of Commons.
  Mr. MacNEILL: Yes, and as long as I have been in the House of Commons, but certainly not in Gladstone's early days; and he protested against it.
  Mr. KING: Might not it be modified from time to time?
  Mr. MacNEILL: Can the right hon. Gentleman reconcile the fact that this House is going to have full power of discussion over the Anglo-American agreement with the fact that we have had no power over the other?
  Mr. SPEAKER: That is an argumentative question.
  Mr. MacNEILL: I am afraid it is so.
  Viscount WOLMERasked whether the draft of the recent Anglo-Japanese Treaty was shown to the Prime Ministers of the over-sea Dominions at the Imperial Conference; whether they approved of it; whether the Dominions are thereby committed to the treaty in a greater degree than merely as parts of His Majesty's Empire; and whether the Japanese Government were informed as to what course of action would be pursued by the Dominions should Great Britain be involved in a war under Article 2 of the treaty?
  Sir E. GREY: I must refer the Noble Lord to the reply given by the Colonial Secretary to a question on this subject yesterday. The action to be taken by the Dominions in any war in which His Majesty's Government may be engaged is a matter to be considered by His Majesty's Government in consultation with the Dominions, and is not one for discussion with any foreign Government.
  Viscount WOLMER: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Anglo-Japanese Treaty represents the foreign policy of the Dominions as well as of this country?
  Sir E. GREY: The Colonial Secretary said yesterday that the question of the treaty had been discussed with the representatives of the Dominions, and that they had unanimously agreed to it; and that is the case.

  Consul-General in Egypt (Viscount Kitchener's Appointment).
  Mr. MacNEILLasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Lord Kitchener's appointment to the position of British Agent and Consul-General for Egypt, in succession to Sir Eldon Gorst, will, as in the case of Sir Eldon Gorst, be a purely civil and diplomatic appointment, or will it in any way, and, if so, in what sense be military in its character and duties; if
  1258
  the appointment is in the nature of a military appointment, what provision, if any, will be taken to prevent the recurrence of the strained relations between the Khedive and Lord Kitchener, when Sirdar in 1894, which led Lord Kitchener then to offer to resign his position, the incident being closed by a reluctant and enforced apology from the Khedive, and the promotion to higher rank in the Army of Lord Kitchener; whether the appointment of Lord Kitchener to this post is a preliminary step to his holding with the consul-generalship a position of a distinctively military character; will Lord Kitchener continue to hold his public company directorships; whether, having regard to the feeling aroused by the grant of £50,000 to Lord Cromer on resignation of this office; and to the fact that Lord Kitchener has already received two grants of £30,000 and £50,000 from the public funds, will he say whether there is any intention to propose further contributions from the taxpayer to the Noble Lord for services in connection with this office?
  Sir E. GREY: In answer to the first three paragraphs, Lord Kitchener will hold the purely civil and diplomatic appointment of His Majesty's Agent and Consul-General in Egypt in succession to the late Sir Eldon Gorst. The appointment is in no sense military in its character, nor is it a preliminary step to his holding a military appointment in conjunction with that of His Majesty's Agent and Consul-General. With regard to the fourth question, Lord Kitchener will not hold any public company directorships which would be incompatible with the proper performance of his duties. The reply to the fifth paragraph, is that no proposal is being made for contributions from the taxpayer in connection with Lord Kitchener's appointment, except what were given to his predecessor.
  Mr. MacNEILL: With regard to company directorships, as the right hon. Gentleman knows that, having regard to financial questions in Egypt, this is very important, I would ask who is to be the judge whether any of Lord Kitchener's company directorships are incompatible with his position?
  Sir E. GREY: I do not up to the present moment know whether Lord Kitchener holds any directorships, or, if so, what they are. I cannot give any more explicit reply on the point until I know what the facts are.
  Mr. MacNEILL: Does not the right hon. Gentleman know that he was, with a great flourish of trumpets, made a director of the South-Eastern Railway Company?
  Sir WILLIAM BYLES: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the appointment of Lord Kitchener precludes a transference of military power to Egypt, and a movement of troops from Malta, and a concentration of forces in Egypt?
  Sir E. GREY: I have already answered that the appointment does not involve any change of general policy in Egypt, and is not of a military character.
  Mr. KING: Will the right hon. Gentleman assure us that those qualities of conciliation and concession which Lord Kitchener exhibited so successfully in the case of the Peace of Vereeniging will also be brought into requisition in the case of Egypt?

  Arrest of Miss Malecka in Russia.
  Mr. MORRELLasked what reply has been received from the Russian Government to the representations made by the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg with regard to the imprisonment of Miss Malecka at Warsaw; and whether any particulars of the charge against her have yet been supplied?
  Sir E. GREY: I must refer to the answers given yesterday.
  Mr. MORRELL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this lady has now been fifteen weeks kept in strict solitary confinement in Warsaw, without trial and receiving all that time—
  Mr. SPEAKER: This does not arise out of the question on the Paper.
  Mr. MORRELL: Would it be in order asking leave to move the adjournment of the House?
  Mr. SPEAKER: We will wait and see.

  Arbitration Treaties.
  Mr. JOHNasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is in any way cognisant of the reported negotiations for a treaty of absolute arbitration between the United States of America and France; and whether negotiations of a similar character are proceeding between this country and France?
  Sir E. GREY: I cannot make statements about negotiations between other Powers
  1260
  to which we are not a party. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.

  Teachers' Pensions (Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he will say, besides the 970 pensionable teachers who left the service of the Irish Board of National Education from 1900 to 1910, inclusive, on reduced pensions, and the 1,098 who left on full pensions, how many other teachers that had also been on the pension list left the service in that period?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hobhouse): Apart from the 2,068 teachers referred to in the question, 2,971 teachers left the service under the pensionable age without pension. I understand that a large proportion of these retired in the early years of service and on marriage.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. DANIEL BOYLEasked what steps-have been taken by the Congested Districts Board towards acquiring the estate of Mr. H. N. Bushby, Ballycroy, county Mayo, and to have the same distributed amongst the congested holdings of the district?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The necessary documents have been lodged to enable the Congested Districts Board to have this estate inspected with a view to deciding whether they will make an offer for purchase, and the property will be inspected as soon as practicable.
  Mr. MEAGHERasked if the Danesforth, county Kilkenny, estate of Christopher Cavanagh, esquire, 5, Elm Court Temple, London, is about to be vested in the tenants; if so, what steps, if any, have been taken with a view of restoring to her holding Miss Kate Maher, representative of the late Michael Maher, who was evicted from a holding on this estate about six and a-half years ago; and will the Chief Secretary impress upon the Estates Commissioners the desirability of restoring this person to her holding, which is still derelict, before the purchase money is entirely paid over to the vendor?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners inform me that the holdings on this estate in respect of which the tenants signed purchase agreements, have been vested in the purchasing tenants. As re-

  1261
  gards the former holding of Maher, the Commissioners furnished the owner with an estimate of the amount which they would be prepared to advance with a view to selling it to the former tenant's representative, and they are approaching him again in the matter.
  Mr. JOHN ROCHEasked the date upon which the Congested Districts Board first sent their inspectors to value the Clanricarde estate; how many weeks have they been employed upon the estate; the number so employed each week; the number of days per week each inspector has been at work there; and whether the Chief Secretary can give any idea of when the Board will be in a position to make an offer for the estate?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Congested Districts Board inform me that the first valuer reached the estate on the 3rd May. There are four valuers and two surveyors engaged on the valuation, and the valuers have worked forty-six, forty-five, thirty-eight, and thirty days respectively. The surveyors have worked fifty and thirty days respectively. The Board hope to be in a position to make an offer for this estate in September.
  Mr. KELLYasked if the Congested Districts Board have concluded negotiations for the sale of the Hayes estate, Convoy, county Donegal; if so, what are the terms which have been agreed on; have all the tenants agreed to the terms; and has any arrangement been made as to arrears?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Congested Districts Board have not yet agreed as to the terms of purchase of this estate, but it has been arranged for a representative of the Board to confer with the tenants this week and discuss the matter.
  Mr. KELLY: Can the right hon. Gentleman state the date when the Conference takes place?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Some day this week.
  Mr. KELLY: What day?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I will endeavour to find out.

  Old Age Pensions.
  Mr. DANIEL BOYLEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he is aware of the hardships inflicted on a number of persons over seventy years of age in Ireland by being deprived of the benefits of the Old Age Pension Act owing to their inability,
  1262
  through no fault of their own, to produce documentary proof of age; and is he prepared to recommend and carry into effect such changes, either in the Act or in its administrative machinery, as will enable such persons to come within the benefits of the Act?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No persons are deprived of the benefits of the Old Age Pensions Act merely owing to the fact that they cannot produce documentary evidence of age. Any satisfactory evidence—whether documentary or otherwise—that a claimant has attained the statutory age is received, and it would not be possible to dispense with evidence on that point.
  Mr. DANIEL BOYLEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland why the old age pension claim of Patrick Smyth, Mullabawney, Attymass, county Mayo, has been disallowed on appeal by the Local Government Board, although six times sanctioned by the Ballina pensions committee; if disallowed on the grounds of income, what are the items constituting the income of the claimant as arrived at by the Local Government Board; for what reasons do the Local Government Board refuse to inform pensions committees how calculations as to claimant's incomes are arrived at by the Board; and whether he will endeavour to arrange an understanding between the Local Government Board and county pensions committees on this question, so as to remove the cause of many appeals and of much friction and misunderstanding in the administration of the Act?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Local Government. Board have on four occasions disallowed a claim of Patrick Smyth to a pension on the ground that his means exceeded the statutory limit. The case was specially investigated by one of the Board's inspectors, who on visiting the farm found three cows, two calves, a yearling bullock, two pigs, and about a score of fowl. A cow and the bullock were alleged, however, by claimant's wife to be the property of her younger son. The crops consisted of one acre of potatoes, one acre of oats, two roods of hay, and one rood of turnips. The Board would find it quite impossible to enter into a correspondence with all the pension committees throughout Ireland as to the basis of calculation of the income of every claimant in whose case an appeal is lodged on the ground of means. As the appeal is from the decision of the Pension Committee to the Board, their decisions must be based on independent consi-

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  derations and calculations, and not upon any agreement or understanding with the committees whose decisions they are required to review.
  Mr. GINNELLasked, having regard to the decision of the Delvin old age pension sub-committee, supported by the declaration of a person seventy-eight years of age, that Thomas Smyth, pension appeal X1419, is entitled to a pension, and the absence of his name from the Census Returns and the parish register, for which he is not responsible, whether the Irish Local Government Board can have the claimant visited by an inspector to judge of his age?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The declaration referred to is a statement on oath of a belief that Thomas Smyth is over seventy years of age. The claimant himself did not know the date of his birth nor did he furnish any evidence of age, and he could not be traced in either Census Return. The Board determined on the 3rd July that Smyth was not entitled to a pension, and the question of sending an inspector to visit him can therefore only arise in the event of the case coming before the Board again on appeal.
  Mr. GINNELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman suggest any method by which a person over seventy years of age can obtain a pension, if his name is not in the Census Return or on the parish register; and will he accept the affidavit of an older person than the claimant?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Certainly. Sometimes the affidavits of older persons are accepted when they disclose means of knowledge which are sufficient to satisfy a man of ordinary intelligence. I am quite willing to give anybody the benefit of the doubt as to being over seventy years of age, but the hon. Member starts by assuming that a person is over seventy years of age, and then asks me what evidence I would take of that fact. I would consider any evidence as to a person being over seventy years of age, only there must be some evidence that the person making the affidavit has particular sources of information which may be satisfactory or may be entirely worthless.
  Mr. GINNELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman in this or similar cases consider affidavits presented by older persons than the claimants?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I will consider the affidavit of any older person who has had an opportunity of judging, and shows in his affidavit the reasons why a person may be regarded as being over seventy years of age.
  Sir JOHN LONSDALEasked if the Chief Secretary can state the reason why the Reverend S. H. Orr, Protestant clergyman, of Dungloe, has been removed, without explanation, from the old age pensions committee of the Dungloe district; if he is aware that this committee now consists of six Roman Catholic clergy and three Roman Catholic laymen, and has not a single Protestant upon it; and if he will make representations on the subject to the Donegal County Council?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I have no power in this matter, as the appointment of a pension sub-committee rests with the local pension committee for the county, which is a committee appointed by the county council.
  Sir J. LONSDALE: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that a fortnight's absence on holiday justifies the reverend gentleman's removal from the committee on which he had been a most useful member and most regular in attendance?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I do not know the particular circumstances of the case, but in connection with these sub-committees the members are appointed by the county council for a particular period, and on the effluxion of that period they cease to be members. I can only presume that the effluxion of time happened during the reverend gentleman's holiday, and that, not because he was away, but because his time of office had already expired, somebody else was appointed in his place.
  Mr. MacNEILL: Having regard to the religious intolerance which is shown in this question, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that two out of the four members, including myself, for this division are Protestants closely connected with Irish Protestant families?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I have no doubt that is so. I understand the complaint was that this Protestant clergyman was excluded from the committee. That is not altogether met by the hon. Member's being a good Protestant.
  Mr. KELLY: Is it not the fact that this gentleman was removed from the pension committee at his own request, and that

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  the reason why he requested to be removed was that in his opinion, and that of his own co-religionists, they were not interested in the pension question, as they constituted something less than 2 per cent. of the population of this union?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I do not know, but it is inconsistent with the letter I received.
  Mr. DAWESasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the case of Charlotte Fiveash, an old age pensioner, who about three weeks since was obliged through illness to enter the West Ham infirmary, and was thereupon compelled to hand her pension book to the collector for the West Ham guardians with an authority to collect the pension, which he has done, and applied the pension to the maintenance of the pensioner in relief of the rates; whether the local pension officer has applied to the guardians for the surrender of the pension book and has been refused; and whether he will give instructions to the guardians that if the case is a chronic one the book must be 'given up, and, if not, the pensioner is entitled, on leaving the infirmary, to all arrears of her pension?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I find on inquiry that the pension officer has not applied to the guardians for the surrender of Charlotte Fiveash's book of pension orders. I understand that the pension is being drawn by an officer of the guardians as agent, in pursuance of an authority given him from time to time by the pensioner herself. So far as the law and regulations are concerned, there is no obligation on the pensioner to give such an authority; but in any case the agent is required on each occasion of drawing an instalment of pension to give an undertaking that he will at once pay the money over to the pensioner. The local pension officer has been instructed to call the agent's attention to this fact.

  Royal Irish Constabulary (Retired County Inspector).
  Dr. ESMONDEasked the Chief Secretary if he received early in April a complaint from Mr. Galway-Foley, a retired county inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, of the manner in which he had been treated by Sir Neville Chamberlain, inspector general; whether he has inquired into the charges made, and, if so, how and when; and, if not, whether he "will now do so or cause an independent inquiry to be held?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I received a complaint of the nature indicated from Mr. Galway-Foley, a county inspector, who has been retired from the Royal Irish Constabulary in circumstances precisely similar to those in which many county inspectors have been retired. He is over sixty years of age and had attained the maximum pension. His retention in the force would have had the effect of blocking the promotion of junior officers. Having fully considered the statements of Mr. Galway-Foley, and having made all necessary inquiries, I am satisfied that he was not subjected to any unfair or exceptional treatment either on retirement or while serving in the force. I see no reason for any further inquiry.

  Cattle Diseases (Ireland).
  Sir JOHN LONSDALEasked if the Chief Secretary is aware of the loss experienced by Irish farmers owing to the prevalence of red water and other diseases among cattle; and if he will state what steps are being taken, by moans of scientific research, to ascertain the best means of preventing these diseases?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I am informed that red water in cattle is prevalent in many districts in Ireland. An annual grant is made by the Department of Agriculture to the Royal Veterinary College of Ireland for scientific work in connection with this and other diseases of livestock, and an investigation regarding red water has been specially undertaken by the College. Reports on this disease have been published in the Department's Journal, and experiments in its prevention have been made on some of their farms, and are still in progress. A leaflet dealing with the symptoms and treatment of the disease has also been issued for the guidance of stock-owners.
  Sir J. LONSDALE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware in connection with this disease of red water that at least £200,000 a year is lost to Irish farmers?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The information I have received is that the losses from this disease among livestock are very considerable and of a lamentable character. I am quite aware of that.

  Labourers' Cottages (Ireland).
  Mr. LYNCHasked whether, in regard to the construction of labourers' cottages in West Clare, the Chief Secretary can state whether the contractor has been paid for a cottage in the Querin division of the Kilrush rural district?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Local Government Board have no information as regards the matter referred to.
  Mr. LYNCHasked the reason of the delay in completing certain labourers' cottages in the Kilrush rural district, West Clare, one of them, in Doonaghlery, in the Kilferagh electoral Division, having been left unslated for many months; and one, in Doonaha, in the Moyarta Division, having been left uninhabitable although the applicant is in urgent need of the cottage; why no mention was made of these cottages in the report of the engineer, Mr. Sheedy, read at the meeting of the Kilrush District Council on 15th instant; when these cottages were contracted for; what date was fixed as the limit for the completion of each contract; what was the amount of the loan; and what loss the council has sustained by non-completion of the contracts?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Local Government Board have not yet received the minutes of the proceedings of the Kilrush Rural District Council on the 15th instant, and have no information with regard to the matters in connection with the carrying out of the scheme for labourers' cottages in that district to which the hon. Member refers. The specification allows a period of six months for completing a cottage from the date on which the works are laid out, and a loan for carrying out the approved scheme was sanctioned at the rate of £170 per cottage and plot.

  Cyprus.
  Mr. STEWARTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the post of Colonial Secretary to the Government of Cyprus is outside the ordinary course of promotion from within the Colonial Service; was it recently given to a captain in the Royal Artillery owing to there being no Colonial Civil servants capable of doing the work; and, if not, why are the whole of the Colonial Office Civil Service passed over?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): The officer recently appointed to this post was a member of the Colonial Service, having held the office of Resident in Northern Nigeria for more than seven years.

  Colonial Railway Construction.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked what orders for rails, fishplates, sleepers, or other railway construction material, have been placed, and are now being executed, with
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  the firm of Guest, Keen, and Nettlefold, at any of their Welsh firms, for railways in any of the Colonial dominions?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Orders have recently been placed with the firm of Messrs. Guest, Keen, and Nettlefold, for 4,560 tons 60-lb. British standard specification Bessemer acid steel rails and angle fishplates on behalf of the Federated Malay States Railway, a similar order for 430 tons has been placed on behalf of the Trinidad Railway, and an order has been placed on behalf of the Southern Nigeria Railway for 413 tons steel sleepers and keys. I am unable to state whether any orders have been placed with this firm on behalf of the Governments of the self-governing dominions.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE:Has the right hon. Gentleman satisfied himself that the Fair-Wages Clause is observed in this contract?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I cannot say. The contract was made by the other authorities.

  Southern Nigeria.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked what was the revenue of Southern Nigeria for 1909–10, and what was the revenue from the importation of spirits for the same period; also from what countries the imports of spirits came, and what was the amount of the imports from each country severally, in gallons and in values, including duties?
  Mr. HARCOURT:

  In 1909.

  In 1910.

  Total Revenue

  £1,362,000

  £1,933,000

  Revenue from duties on spirits

  £639,000

  £1,000,000

  The spirits were imported from the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, France, and other countries. The details as to importation asked for by the hon. Member are too voluminous to be given in a verbal reply. They are contained, together with other useful statistics, in the published Trade Report of the Colony for 1910, a copy of which I shall be glad to communicate to the hon. Member if he so desire.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked whether the Colonial Secretary will state what is the present duty on spirits imported into Southern Nigeria; what recent increases of duty have been imposed; and how such increases of duty have affected the importation of spirits, say from 1900 to 1910, inclusive?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Since the 15th of January, 1909, the duty has been 5s. the imperial gallon at a strength not exceeding 50 degrees by Tralles' alcoholometer, with an additional duty of 2½d. for every additional degree of strength, and a reduction of 1½d. for every degree below such strength. The minimum duty is 4s. per imperial gallon. It is not possible to say how the increase of duty has affected the importation of spirits, as the latter is governed by other conditions, affecting trade generally, as well as by the duties. Full information as to the importation of spirits into Southern Nigeria, including the alterations in the duties which have been made from time to time, will be found in the annual reports from the Colony, which are laid before Parliament. The, last report is Cd. 5467.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked what was the value of all imports into Southern Nigeria for the year 1909–10, and what was the value of cotton imports for the same period?
  Mr. HARCOURT: In Southern Nigeria the calendar year is used for statistical purposes, not the British financial year. I assume that the words "all imports" are intended to mean commercial imports —that is to say imports exclusive of Government imports and specie. On this assumption the figures are, to the nearest thousand:—

  1909.

  1910.

  All imports

  …

  £3,205,000

  …

  £4,114,000

  Cotton goods

  …

  £1,075,000

  …

  £1,307,000

  Financial Relations Commission (Great Britain and Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Secretary to the Treasury, having regard to the doubt cast by the majority of members of the Financial Relations Commission upon the justice of the process whereby the Treasury revise the sum of revenue collected in Ireland, describing a portion, only as true revenue and giving Ireland no credit for the remainder, whether any independent financial authority, having examined the process, agrees with the Treasury in that use of the term true; whether the un-credited revenue was applied to Irish or to other purposes while Ireland was paying a surplus over Irish expenditure; whether the committee now investigating this subject have examined or will examine a representative of the Treasury on the revision in question; and whether the House will, before the end of the present Session, be furnished with a memorandum ex-
  1270
  planatory of the process worked out in the actual figures for the last completed financial year?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The error to which reference is made in Section 27–28 of the first Supplementary Report, signed by five members of the Financial Relations Commission, was discovered and corrected in 1893 (see House of Commons Return No. 248 of that year), and as steps were immediately taken to correct it, it cannot be said to detract in any manner from the value of the late returns. The replies to the hon. Member's substantive questions are:—(1) The returns have been subject to general public criticism for a long series of years, and so far as I am aware no serious objection has been taken to the basis upon which they are compiled. (2) Revenue collected in Ireland but contributed by other portions of the United Kingdom is treated in the returns as having been applied along with the other revenue contributed by those portions in defraying the local expenditure of the respective portions, and, in so far as it has exceeded the amount necessary for that purpose, as having been devoted to general Imperial expenditure. (3) I understand that the returns in question have been under consideration by the Committee, and that they have taken evidence from a representative of the Treasury on the subject. (4) The process by which the calculations shown in these Returns are made is fully explained in the earlier issues, and there is nothing which can usefully be added to what is there stated. (See House of Commons No. 329 of 1891, No. 93 of 1893, No. 248 of 1893, No. 305 of 1893, No. 225 of 1904, and No. 313 of 1894.

  British Museum (Books Published Abroad).
  Mr. LYNCHasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the fact that it is often impossible to obtain at the British Museum literary and scientific works of high value published in France, in Germany, in Italy, or in the United States; and whether the advisability will be considered of making arrangements, either by a system of exchange or by purchase, whereby such works will become available at the British Museum without undue delay?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The British Museum spends a considerable sum every year in the purchase of foreign books, and a book is kept in the reading room, and examined daily by officers of the Department, in

  1271
  which any reader can enter suggestions as to desirable acquisitions, and private advice on the same subject is readily attended to. It may be said, in general, that the British Museum contains a more complete collection of the books of any foreign country than any other library except the national library of that particular country. Indeed, foreign visitors have often stated that they have been able to see in the British Museum books published in their own. country to which they have been unable to obtain access in their own country's libraries. If the hon. Member has any specific cases in his mind in asking the question, I should be glad if he would bring them at once to the notice of the British Museum authorities, who are always grateful for advice and suggestions from competent persons in their efforts to keep their collections complete.

  Mountain Ash (Assessor and Tax Collector's Office).
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether an office for the use of the assessor and tax collector has now been opened as promised at Mountain Ash; if so, what is the address thereof; and what are the hours for the transaction of business?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The office in question is in Oxford Chambers, Oxford Street, Mountain Ash, the hours of attendance being from 10 to 1, and 2 to 4 o'clock, on Mondays.

  New Postage Stamps.
  Mr. TOUCHEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the practice of the former contractors for the supply of postage stamps of manufacturing the necessary machinery largely in their own factories has been followed by Messrs. Harrison; whether any provision was made in the contract with Messrs. Harrison as to the employment of British-made machinery, or does part of the machinery now in use come from Germany?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: No provision was made in the contract with Messrs. Harrison as to the employment of British-made machinery. I am informed that some part of the machinery in use was obtained abroad.
  Mr. TOUCHEasked whether the saving of £40,000 on the contract for postage stamps represents the difference between
  1272
  the prices previously paid and the new prices to be paid, and not the difference between the latest tenders of the former and the new contractors; and will the saving of £40,000 relate to any work other than stamp production and executed by other firms than the former stamp contractors?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The figure referred to (which should, however, be £45,000) represents the difference between the prices previously paid and the new prices to be paid for postage stamps. The reply to the second part of the question is in the negative.

  Customs and Excise Amalgamation.
  Mr. TOUCHEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the delay in issuing the Report of the committee of inquiry into the Customs and Excise amalgamation and the effect of the present situation on both branches of the service, he will consider the desirability of stating a date to which any benefits conceded to the staff will be antedated?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE:I regret to be unable to make any statement in anticipation of the Report of the committee in question.
  Mr. TOUCHEasked the Secretary to the Treasury if he can say what has been the total reduction in the effective establishment of the Customs outdoor department occasioned by retirements and other causes since the date of the Customs and Excise amalgamation, 1st April, 1909; and what are the numbers of new entrants appointed since that date to the Customs and to the Excise branches, respectively, to provide for retirements and deaths, increase of work, and other causes, if any?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Since 1st April, 1909, the assistants of both services have been employed on the Customs or the Excise sides as required, and it would be a matter of some difficulty to ascertain how many assistants have at one time or another been employed on purely Customs work; but all Customs' vacancies have been filled as and when required. As regards the higher ranks of the Customs there has been practically no alteration since the date in question.
  Mr. TOUCHEasked the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state what was the comparative approximate volume of work in Customs and Excise warehouses, respectively, before the amalgamation; whether the system recently introduced

  1273
  into the Customs service has been found more complicated than the one which has been superseded; what increase of staff was requested by collectors of Customs and inspectors in London to cope with the additional work involved when the new system was introduced; whether the Customs system of accounts was defective; and, if not, why it was not applied to the comparatively few Excise warehouses, thus effecting economy and avoiding disturbance in service and commercial circles?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: It would involve a very large expenditure of time and trouble to prepare the information asked for in the first part of the question. The introduction of the Excise system of warehousing accounts into Customs warehouses was not due to any defect in the Customs system, but to the necessity for establishing a uniform system in a joint service under the control of one Board. It was adopted by the Board of Customs and Excise with the approval of the Treasury, after prolonged and careful consideration, as more satisfactory and economical than the adoption of the Customs system in Excise warehouses.

  Alleged Illegal Practices (North Louth Election).
  Mr. AUGUSTINE ROCHEasked the Attorney-General for Ireland, with reference to the postponement of the trials of the persons accused of illegal practices at the North Louth election, whether the usual, if not the universal, practice of the representatives of the Crown in Ireland in criminal cases is to give private notice of their intention to apply for an adjournment, if such intention exists; whether any such private notice was given to the representatives of the accused in the cases mentioned; whether, in the absence of such notice in those cases, useless expense was incurred by the accused which otherwise would not have been necessary; and whether, under these circumstances, the Government will consider the propriety of recouping the accused the amount of money unnecessarily expended by them in consequence of the action of the Crown?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Redmond Barry): There is no practice in Ireland of the kind indicated by the hon. Gentleman. In the case in question I do not think any avoidable expense was incurred. The defendants opposed the application for adjournment, and for that purpose counsel would in any
  1274
  event be engaged. It would be impossible to assume that the defendants would acquiesce in the adjournment; and, lest the motion should fail and the trial proceed, it was necessary for the defendants to be present with their witnesses. The ordinary course was followed, and I do not think there is any ground for recouping the accused.

  Provisional Order Confirmation Bills (Lords Amendments).
  Mr. MOONEYasked the Chairman of Ways and Means whether, in view of the fact that Provisional Order Confirmation Bills are really Private Bills attached to a Public Bill in the form of a schedule, he can take steps to provide that, in all cases where amendments are made in such Provisional Order Confirmation Bills by the other House, printed copies of such amendments shall be laid in the Vote Office or Library of the House of Commons, as in the case of ordinary Private Bills, before the time set aside for the consideration by this House of such amendments?
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS (Mr. Emmott): I need hardly remind my hon. Friend that Lords amendments to Provisional Order Confirmation Bills are, as a rule, of the nature of drafting amendments and are rarely important. To print them in all cases would involve a useless expenditure of public money, but in cases in which important amendments are made they will in future be printed. In reply to the latter part of the question, if the amendments are printed they will be circulated with the Bills in the usual way.

  Aerial Navigation Act (Henley Regatta).
  Mr. BOYTONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will consider the desirability of bringing the navigation of an aeroplane over the Henley Regatta course during the progress of the regatta within the purview of Section 1 of the Aerial Navigation Act; and whether he will take action under Section 2 to prevent in future any aircraft from navigating the Henley course after it has been cleared for racing by the Thames Conservancy?
  The TREASURER of the HOUSEHOLD (Mr. Dudley Ward): If the matter is brought to the notice of my right hon. Friend by the proper authorities before the next regatta, he will consider whether an order should be made under Section 1 of the Act.

  Vaccination (Netherton Training School).
  Mr. FENWICKasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that a boy named Ralph R. Silson, aged fourteen years and ten months, was committed to Netherton training school on 22nd February last; whether he was vaccinated in the institution without the consent of the father having been asked; and whether, seeing that the law only compels the vaccination of children up to the age of fourteen years even in the absence of conscientious objection, he will say under what powers the school authorities acted?
  Mr. DUDLEY WARD: My right hon. Friend is informed that this boy was vaccinated in accordance with the instructions of the medical officer of the school, that all boys must be vaccinated after admission, unless they are in an unfit state of health or have very recently been vaccinated. The boys are committed by the court to the custody of the managers, who are for the time in loco parentis; and it is their duty to safeguard the health of the inmates of the school.

Business of the House.
Mr. LYNCHasked the Prime Minister whether, in allotting the time of the re-mander of the Session, he will take into consideration the fact that a full day has not yet been allowed for the Debate on the Education Estimates, and that, whereas in France and Germany efforts are being made to develop not only technical education but higher scientific education and research, these subjects have been barely touched upon in Parliament this year?
Mr. MORRELLasked the Prime Minister if he can yet state when the Foreign Office Vote will be taken?
Mr. HADDOCKasked the Prime Minister if he can state when he proposes to take the Second Reading of the Finance Bill?
Mr. JOHNasked the Prime Minister if he will state when the Vote for the salary of the President of the Board of Agriculture will be taken; and whether, as Members representing Welsh constituencies are anxious to discuss the administrative action of the Board in Wales, he will arrange that opportunity for such discussion may be afforded at an early date?
The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): I will consider the various claims that are being put forward, and make an announcement later.
Mr. CHARLES BATHURST: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the Debate on the Education Vote the President of the Board occupied exactly two and a quarter hours, and a private Bill occupied one and a-half hours, leaving three and a quarter hours only for the discussion of national education on one day in the year, apart from any departmental or local grievances?
The PRIME MINISTER: These facts are familiar and will be taken into account.
Mr. MORRELL: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any assurance that the Foreign Office Vote will be taken?
The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir, I cannot give any assurance.
Mr. WEDGWOOD: In view of the extravagant demands made by Germany and France, would it not be well that the House of Commons should have an opportunity of discussing the Foreign Office Vote or that the Foreign Secretary should be given an opportunity of making a statement?
The PRIME MINISTER: I do not think it desirable that matters of that kind should be raised by way of supplementary questions.

Telephone Service.
Mr. TOUCHEasked the Postmaster-General whether he was aware that at some of the country exchanges the Post Office charged an extra 3d. for a telephone trunk call after 8 p.m., with a further fee of 3d. on calls put through after 10 p.m., whereas the National Telephone Company at similar exchanges had made no extra charge for late calls, but, on the contrary, give subscribers the right to speak for six minutes, instead of three minutes, at late hours of the evening without additional fee; would he explain why the Post Office treatment of its customers was so much less favourable in this respect than that of the company; and could he hold out any prospect of approximating the practice of the Post Office to that of the company?
The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The hon. Member is under a misapprehension in supposing that the use of the Post Office trunk lines is granted to the subscribers to Post Office exchanges on less favourable terms than to subscribers to exchanges of the National Telephone Company. It is the uniform practice to allow all subscribers after 7.0 p.m. to speak for six minutes on any trunk line for the same fee as is

1277
charged for three minutes during the day. The Post Office has established over one thousand exchanges outside the London area, and the great majority are in small places to which the National Telephone Company's system was not extended owing to the small amount of business to be obtained. Wherever it is reasonably practicable to do so a continuous service at night and on Sundays is given to subscribers without extra charge, but when this is not possible it is an advantage for subscribers to have general facilities for night calls on payment of moderate fees for the occasional calls actually made, and such limited arrangements are as the business grows changed into a continuous service of the ordinary kind. It is not intended to alter arrangements for continuous service now in force at exchanges either of the Post Office or of the National Telephone Company, or to limit the extension of such arrangements in future.

Tuberculosis (Examination of Cattle).
Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether, in the light of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Human and Animal Tuberculosis, the Board would, as in some Continental countries, make it compulsory for all cattle whose milk was sold to the public to be examined periodically to ascertain their freedom from transferable tuberculosis as evidenced by emaciation or visibly tuberculous udders, without necessarily employing the sometimes misleading tuberculin test, and thus produce a national register of sound cattle the milk of which could be purchased with confidence by the public?
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir E. Strachey): In view of the fact that there are over two million cows in milk in Great Britain, the proposal made by the hon. Member is one which might impose a heavy charge upon the local rates, and therefore requires very careful consideration.
Mr. C. BATHURST: Is there a prospect under the proposed tuberculosis Order of throwing this charge on the Exchequer?
Sir E. STRACHEY: That also means a very heavy charge on the taxes.

Foot-and-Mouth Disease.
Mr. C. BATHURSTasked whether, in view of the measures always taken by the
1278
Board of Agriculture upon the occurrence of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease to isolate the area in which it occurs, the large trade in pedigree stock carried on between this country and Argentina, and the constant prevalence of the disease in many parts of the latter country, the Board would request the Foreign Office to approach the Argentina Government with the object of limiting its restrictions upon the importation of British stock to animals coming from the actual area which had been scheduled as infected by the Board, instead of extending them to the whole country to the detriment of such trade?
Sir E. STRACHEY: No, Sir. The Board do not see their way, under the circumstances which unfortunately exist at the present time, to adopt the suggestion of the hon. Member.
Mr. C. BATHURST: How can the principle advocated in this question be affected by any particular outbreak?
Sir E. STRACHEY: The present state of things affects the whole question.
Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he has any fresh information to give to the House with regard to the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in Middlesex and Sussex; whether any fresh outbreak has occurred; to what extent are animals upon or in the neighbourhood of the infected premises being slaughtered to prevent the spread of the disease; and whether the origin of any of the recent outbreaks has yet been ascertained?
Sir E. STRACHEY: In the first place, may I correct a mistake in the report of what I said yesterday in answer to the right hon. Member for the Strand. What I said was that I was aware of the strong feeling on the opposite side of the House in favour of slaughtering out, but that there was also the same feeling on the Government side. There has been no further outbreak reported in the Middlesex area. The fullest inquiries have been made as to the possible source of origin of the disease in that area, and as to whether any foreign feeding-stuffs, hay, or straw, or other material likely to carry infection have been brought on to the premises, but no evidence has been obtained which suggests that the outbreak was due to such articles, and up to the present its cause remains unknown. As regards the outbreak in Sussex, the Board have decided to order the slaughter of the whole

1279
of the stock, which number approximately 2,300 sheep and lambs, eighty-six cattle, and four swine, remaining alive on the three farms on which disease has been found. These animals are now being valued, and slaughter will commence tomorrow. Owing to the number of animals involved the operation of slaughtering them must extend over several days. The veterinary examination of the stock in the neighbourhood is being continuously carried on by a staff of six veterinary inspectors. Six other inspectors are engaged in securing the observance of the restrictions imposed, and in making arrangements for the slaughter of the animals. Up to the present time the veterinary inquiry has not revealed any other centre of disease, but the disease has spread further amongst the stock on one of the affected farms. The origin of this outbreak is not yet known, but a searching investigation into the possible causes of the outbreak is being made. It cannot be ascertained that any foreign feeding stuffs have been brought on to any of the farms.
Mr. C. BATHURST: I would like to ask the hon. Baronet whether it is not a fact that a very serious difficulty is being experienced on the Rye Marshes in effectively circumscribing the infected area, and in slaughtering the animals within it?
Sir E. STRACHEY: I do not think that is so. I think all we are doing is being done very effectively at the present moment.

Swine Fever.
Mr. RUPERT GWYNNEasked whether swine fever had diminished in England during the last three years, and, if so, to what extent; and whether it was diminishing at the present time as the result of the Board of Agriculture's restrictions?
Sir E. STRACHEY: The number of outbreaks from swine fever in Great Britain fell from 2,070 in 1908 to 1,652 in 1909 and 1,577 in 1910. During the present year there has been unhappily a recrudescence of the disease, the number of outbreaks confirmed during the twenty-eight weeks ended the 15th instant, having been 1,461, as compared with 1,268, 1,000 and 823 respectively in the corresponding period of 1908, 1909 and 1910.
Mr. C. BATHURST: Does not the serious recrudescence of the disease this year show that the very severe and vexatious restrictions are wholly unjustifiable?
Sir E. STRACHEY: I do not think necessarily so.
Mr. RUPERT GWYNNE: Can the Board attribute the large increase this year to any special reason?
Sir E. STRACHEY: There is no special reason.
Mr. R. GWYNNEasked whether any compensation was paid to owners of pigs for financial loss suffered in consequence of the restrictions placed upon their movement, owing to the occurrence of swine fever on their own or on neighbouring premises; and, if not, why no such compensation was paid?
Sir E. STRACHEY: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. The Board are only empowered to pay compensation for swine slaughtered by their order in the public interest.
Mr. R. GWYNNE: Will the Board consider the propriety of getting power to pay compensation?
Sir E. STRACHEY: It would require legislation.

School Accommodation (Chorley).
Mr. HIGHAMasked the President of the Board of Education if he had received a petition, signed by about 1,500 ratepayers of Chorley and stating their case for the erection of a council school; and if he had arranged for an inquiry to be held?
The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Runciman): Petitions, purporting to be signed by about 1,300 ratepayers and householders in favour of the erection of a council school, have been received by the Board. These, with other petitions on the same subject, are now under consideration. No necessity for holding an inquiry has yet arisen.
Mr. SILVESTER HORNEasked if a Wesleyan school was to be closed at Chorley, and, if so, what would be the reduction of school places in the borough; and what steps were being taken to provide adequate council school accommodation for the children in question??
Mr. RUNCIMAN: The Board have provisionally fixed the 30th September, 1912, as the date on which the recognition of the Wesleyan School at Chorley will terminate. The school has recognised accommodation for 404 children. The average attendance, according to the latest returns, is 326. The Board communicated their decision to the local education authority little more than

1281
a week ago and requested them to give early consideration to the needs of the case.

Holmes Circular.
Viscount WOLMERasked the President, of the Board of Education whether he circularised certain newspapers requesting them to refrain from commenting on the incident known as the Holmes Circular?
Mr. RUNCIMAN: No, Sir.
Viscount WOLMER: Will the right hon. Gentleman lay on the Table of the House the Circular itself?
Mr. RUNCIMAN: I said there was no Circular on that subject. I communicated with some journalistic friends of mine, as I had a perfect right to do.
Mr. KELLAWAY: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think, in view of his experience of the way in which his permanent officials kept him in ignorance of what took place in regard to the Holmes Circular, they may have acted in a similar way in regard to this matter?
Mr. RUNCIMAN: I do not know to what my hon. Friend refers.

Castlecomer Pensions Officer.
Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIENasked whether Mr. D. O'Carroll, pensions officer for the Castlecomer union, who issued an appeal to the old age pensioners of his district for subscriptions to the fund of the Irish Parliamentary party on the ground that it was they who obtained the Old Age Pensions Act, and publicly sent the subscriptions thus obtained to the treasurers of the Parliamentary Fund, was paid out of Treasury funds, although locally appointed, and acted under the control of the Local Government Board; had the Government no power of restraining pensions officers paid by them from turning their position to partisan electioneering account; and, if not, was it open to pensions officers of different politics to Mr. O'Carroll's to exercise similar pressure upon old age pensioners in the interest of their own parties?
Mr. MEAGHER: What authority has the hon. Member for making grave insinuations against a public officer?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: The person referred to in the question is not a pension officer but a clerk to a local pension committee, appointed and dismissable by the committee. He is paid out of the amount allowed to the committee for expenses
1282
under Section 10 (4) of the Old Age Pensions Act, but is not subject to the disciplinary control either of the Treasury or the Local Government Board, and the question of withholding the whole or a part of the committee's allowance for expenses would only arise in the event of the committee or of its officers neglecting to discharge the duties out of which the expenditure which it is designed to cover arises. In cases of improper conduct by clerks to pension committees, it rests with the committees to whom they are responsible to take such action as may be necessary.
Mr. W. O'BRIEN: Has the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for whose heavy labours we make every allowance, expressed no word of censure upon this particularly cruel form of official pressure on these poor people by an official who is now avowedly paid out of Treasury funds?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: The whole point of my answer is that the official is not under the control of the Treasury in any way. He is appointed and dismissable by the local pensions committee.
Mr. T. HEALY: Would the right hon. Gentleman allow without censure old age pensioners in England to have sums deducted from their pensions in the interests of the Primrose League by a Tory official?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: As far as I am able to ascertain, no sums have been deducted from the pensioners' payments. If pensioners out of their payments choose to make voluntary payments we have no control either in England or in Ireland.
Mr. W. O'BRIEN: What is the reply to the last part of the question on the Paper?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: I have already pointed out that we have no disciplinary power of any sort or kind over officials of the local pensions committees; therefore we have no power in this or any similar case.
Viscount WOLMER: Will the right hon. Gentleman direct the attention of the Gladstone League to this matter?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: The Gladstone League deals with real cases of intimidation.
Mr. O'BRIEN: In reference to the reply of the right hon. Gentleman and his remarks as to cases of real intimidation, is it only when Irishmen are members of the

1283
All for Ireland League that the Treasury can exercise any control whatever over their own payments?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: I can only remark that it does not appear that this case was one of real intimidation.

House of Commons (Eleven o'clock Rule).
Sir RANDOLF BAKERasked the Prime Minister whether he could see his way to abolishing the Eleven o'clock Rule, seeing that the Government, by moving its suspension eight times out of the last twelve Parliamentary days on which it would have taken effect, had practically shown its failure?
The PRIME MINISTER: The answer is in the negative. As a rule, at this period of the Session the Eleven o'clock Rule is suspended every night.

Naming of Warships.
Mr. INGLEBYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the part played by Norfolk men in the naval history of Great Britain, he would give recognition to the fact by naming one of the new warships the "Norfolk"?
The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKenna): This name will be considered with others when selecting names for vessels to be constructed.

NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL.

  FRIENDLY SOCIETIES AND VOLUNTARY HOSPITALS.
  Mr. EVELYN CECILasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can give any information as to the extent to which members of friendly societies have in the past had medical attendance at voluntary hospitals instead of, or in addi to that of, their club doctor; and whether such claims upon hospitals are likely to be reduced or increased by the National Insurance Bill?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I fear no such information is available. I think the hon. Member is in as good a position as my right hon. Friend to estimate the probable effect of the Bill in the direction indicated.

Officers' Training Corps (Women's Voluntary Aid Detachment).
Major BARINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether permission has now been granted to the Winchester Voluntary Aid (Women's) Detachment,
1284
Hants Company, No. 36, to join the camp of the officers' training corps on Salisbury Plain and supply a clearing hospital on field days?
Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN (Lord of the Treasury): As it is found that arrangements had been completed and local sanction accorded some months ago without reference to the War Office, on this occasion the Army Council will not refuse sanction for this camp. But such sanction must not be regarded as a precedent, as the Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments have no place in association with troops in fighting or training formation.

Territorial Force.
Viscount WOLMERasked the Undersecretary of State for War what is the percentage of members of the Territorial Army to the population in Wales, Scotland, England, and Ireland, respectively?
Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN: The percentage to the total male population on 1st July, was as follows:

England

…

…

…

1.25

Wales

…

…

…

1.53

Scotland

…

…

…

2.03

There is no Territorial Force in Ireland.

Customs Examining Officers.
Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the announcement that it was intended to introduce a scheme for Customs, examining officers and assistants which would render more hopeful the claims of that deserving class, and that the questions still remaining to be decided by the Customs and Excise Amalgamation Committee are extremely complicated and require most careful consideration, he will give immediate effect to the provisions of the scheme proposed for that class?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: I regret to be unable to make any statement on this subject, in anticipation of the Report of the Committee in question, which is practically complete.
Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the committee of inquiry into the amalgamation of the Customs and Excise Department had been informed of the recent large number of promotions of assistants to second-class officer, second to first-class officer, and of other ranks in the Excise branch of the service; whether the committee of inquiry had

1285
given its sanction to these promotions; and whether, in view of the dissatisfaction prevailing in the Customs branch owing to differentiation in the treatment of the two branches, he will cause all promotions or appointments in both branches of the service to be suspended until the report of the inquiry committee is issued?
Mr. HOBHOUSE: The promotions in question have been made by the Board of Customs and Excise in the ordinary course of administration, and I am not prepared to take the action suggested.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. WALTER LONG: Would the Prime Minister tell us the programme of busines3 for next week?
The PRIME MINISTER: Monday we leave free for any proceedings that may be necessary when the Parliament Bill returns from another place.
On Tuesday, as at present advised, we will take Supply—probably the Inland Revenue Vote.
On Wednesday, the Indian Budget will be taken. I am afraid I cannot go beyond that.

MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
Mr. MORRELL: I desire to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House to call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance—that is, the imprisonment for more than fifteen weeks in a gaol at Warsaw of Miss Malecka, a British subject, and the failure of His Majesty's Government to take effective steps to obtain from the Russian Government any particulars of the charge against her, or, failing that, an order for her release.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have already pointed out to the hon. Member that this Motion is premature. After the answer which was given yesterday by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, I am rather surprised that he should have raised the matter again. The Under-Secretary then stated that our Ambassador at St. Petersburg had been instructed to take action with the Russian Government, and to ask for particulars of the charge against this lady, and, failing to receive them, to ask for an order from the Government for her release. These are the very things to which
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the hon. Gentleman desires to call attention. Surely he must wait and see whether the Foreign Office Vote is taken. If so, that will afford a reasonable and suitable opportunity for him to raise the question. On the other hand, if the Foreign Office Vote is not taken, then it will still be open to him to raise the question.
Mr. MORRELL: May I respectfully point out that the Prime Minister stated expressly, in answer to me, that he could give no assurance that the Foreign Office Vote would be taken this Session. For fifteen weeks this lady's friends have been waiting to obtain particulars of the charge against her in order to apply for bail; failing that, to obtain her release. Through the Ambassador several requests, as I understand, have already been made for particulars of the charge. I asked this question more than a week ago. The lady's health is suffering. I respectfully submit to you that under all these circumstances the case has now become urgent.
Mr. SPEAKER: I must say that I think it would be a very false step if the House were to discuss this matter whilst the Government had instructed its Ambassador to make application to the Russian Government. Pending a reply from the Russian Government, I could not conceive anything more discourteous to that Government than for this House to discuss the question.
Mr. WEDGWOOD: May I, on a point of Order, ask whether it is not certainly a matter of urgent public importance that a British subject—and a woman too—should be kept in a Russian prison without any charge being formulated against her?
Mr. SPEAKER: It is no good going back over the old ground. The Secretary of State has instructed our Ambassador at St. Petersburg in the sense I have indicated.
Mr. MORRELL: How long ago?
Mr. SPEAKER: Yesterday.
Mr. MORRELL: No.
Mr. SPEAKER: An answer was given yesterday! Surely we must wait four and twenty hours for a reply? It is no good going over the ground again.
Mr. MORRELL Mr. MORRELL rose—
Mr. SPEAKER: I have decided the point.

NOTICES OF MOTION.
Sir ALBERT SPICER: On going into Committee on the East India Revenue accounts to call attention to the system of education in India and move a Resolution.
Sir GEORGE POLLARD: On going into Committee on the East India Revenue accounts to call attention to the system of education in India and move a Resolution.
Colonel GREIG: On going into Committee on the East India Revenue accounts to call attention to the present finances of India and to move a Resolution.

BILLS PRESENTED.
  MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS (TEMPORARY BORROWINGS) BILL.
  "To enable municipal corporations to borrow money temporarily," presented by Mr. HARMOOD-BANNER; to be read a second time upon Tuesday, 15th August, and to be printed.
  MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH SUPERANNUATION BILL.
  "To provide for superannuation allowances to Medical Officers of Health employed by local authorities and for contributions towards such allowances by those officers; and to make other relative provisions," presented by Dr. HILLIER; supported by Mr. Henry Forster, Sir Clement Hill, Colonel Hickman, Mr. John Robertson, and Mr. Barnes; to be read a second time upon Friday, 28th July, and to be printed.
  GAME BILL.
  "To amend the Game Act, 1831," presented by Mr. HARRIS; to be read a second time upon Friday, 28th July, and to be printed.

SUPPLY.— [17th Allotted Day.]
Considered in Committee.
(IN THE COMMITTEE.)
[Mr. EMMOTT in the Chair.]

SUPPLY.— [17th Allotted Day.]
  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1911–12.

    COLONIAL OFFICE (CLASS 2).
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £38,616, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the
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    year ending on the 31st day of March, 1912, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, including a Grant-in-Aid of certain Expenses connected with Emigration." [NOTE.—£21,000 has been voted on account.]
    Sir GILBERT PARKER: I beg to move to reduce Sub-head (a) (salary of Secretary of State), by £100.
    Events of such singular importance to the Empire have occurred during recent months, that matters purely Colonial have been overlooked by the public generally and by this House, although that statement may not show fidelity to facts when we remember that the Imperial Conference was sitting for over a month. But public attention was so diverted by what might be called the picturesque and emotional side of our national life, that the business done by the Colonial Conference has either slipped from the public mind or received little attention either from the Members of this House or the country generally. This afternoon I should like to review very briefly the work done by the Conference, presided over, I think, for the first time, by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This important step of making the Prime Minister president of the Imperial Conference at once elevates the business of the Conference on to a higher plane and gives it a significance which previously the Colonial Conferences which were held did not possess. The first Colonial Conference was held in 1897, and we have had altogether five, but I do not think a great deal of progress was made in regard to questions to be solved, but during the last five or seven years, however, and during the last two Conferences, considerable progress has been made. The Conferences generally, even the earlier ones, represented an attempt at Imperial organisation, and showed that something was being done to co-ordinate the efforts of this country, and of the Colonies and the over-sea Dominions generally, to make the best use of all these benefits of Empire which should naturally flow from the relations of the Dominions to the Crown. I think the chief result from the first two or three Conferences was the importation of the personal element, the personal equation into Imperial affairs. It was no longer Downing Street, as the Colonial Secretary said at the last Conference; it represented not Imperial concentration, but Imperial co-operation, and the first Conference

    1289
    represented an effort to get away from that Imperial concentration represented by Downing Street in the old days, and to get into the wider area of alliance, of interest, co-operation, and mutual action on things that made for the benefit and progress of the Empire.
    During the last reign the dominating element was foreign alliances and the permeation of our national life of a desire to arrive at a better understanding with foreign peoples. I think the problem of this reign will be, not foreign alliances, but Imperial co-operation. I am bound to say when I read the reports of the conferences of 1907 and 1911 I came up short against the spirit which does not seem to me, in spite of certain accomplishments by this Conference, to represent absolute sympathy with the greatest of the problems which perplex us. For instance, the Prime Minister said at the Conference of 1907 that it was impossible to treat our oversea Dominions better than we treat foreign countries. I suppose that really is the reason why this Government is willing to give to Japan remission of duties that may be imposed in the future, while she will not give to our Colonies, though it has been brought before us, in one of the most important conferences ever held, the remission of duties existing at present. That, to my mind, is a concrete expression of Goethe's phrase, "the spirit that denies.'' The Government's hands have been tied a lot at this Conference in dealing with the greatest of our Imperial questions, for the two greatest are the attempts to establish an Imperial Council and the attempt to establish preference in trade, or to call it by another name, reciprocal trade relations. With regard to the Imperial Conference, the Government's hands have not been tied, except for the difficulties that beset the situation. Regarding the other they have tied their hands themselves. They have denied themselves the privilege of looking at these questions broadly. Therefore they were obliged to say to those Colonial representatives who came in 1907, "No, we can do nothing; we will do nothing." The Prime Minister rather rigidly, and the Home Secretary rather more boisterously and bad-manneredly, told the Colonies that they must not come to this country making pleas for reciprocal regulations' upon any basis that would alter the fiscal policy of this country. That same spirit affected the Prime Minister, the Colonial Secretary and other Ministers of the Crown when they came to deal with questions of grave
    1290
    importance affecting the commercial relations of the Colonies and the shipping trade of this country. At the last Conference the Prime Minister of Canada moved a resolution based upon a motion put forward by the Prime Minister of Australia which asked for the interest and action of this Government in regard to the Shipping and Navigation Laws, and the removal of certain difficulties which stand in the way of the Australian Colonies, giving a preference to British goods. The resolution which was moved by the Prime Minister of Canada was in these terms:—
    "That His Majesty's Government should be approached with a view to the appointment of a Royal Commission representing the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland, with a view to investigating and reporting upon the natural resources of each part of the Empire represented at this Conference, the development attained and attainable, and the facilities for the production, manufacture and distribution, the trade of each part with the others and with the outside world, the food and raw material requirements of each, and the sources thereof available. To what extent, if any, the trade between each of the different parts has been affected by existing legislation in each, either beneficially or otherwise."
    The Prime Minister of Canada moved that resolution in order to cover the ground laid out by the Prime Minister of Australia, and to open the way to a clearer understanding of the difficulties between Colonies and this country, and towards the removal of those difficulties, but the Colonial Secretary was very quickly on the spot. His eye was on the hustings, or rather on the ballot-box. The Colonial Secretary, with "the spirit that denies" behind him in all things referring to preference or the advantages of reciprocal trade through customs duties, came to his feet and said in effect that that Resolution would meet with the view of the Government if the following Clause was added:—
    "And by what methods consistent with the existing fiscal policy of each part, the trade of each part with the other may be improved and extended."
    I should like to ask the Colonial Secretary whether he believes that that addition to the Resolution eliminates from the reference to that Commission—which I assume has not yet been appointed—any consideration of existing legislation in the Dominions giving a preference to the Dominions themselves to this country. The Prime Minister of Canada has been attacked in this country in certain quarters for not having brought forward the resolution suggesting, as he did suggest in 1907, reciprocal commercial relations and preferential relations. He suggested this in his speech when he moved this resolution, plainly showing that his object was

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    by this Commission to have an inquiry, not alone into the products and the resources of the Colonies, but also into the legislation which would affect the trade of the Mother Country and the Dominions by reciprocal preferential relations through the Customs duties. He began his speech by saying that legislation which they had passed in Canada had been passed in order to give this country advantages in trade. He went on to say that one of the objects of his resolution was that Australia, which had not been able to arrange preference with Canada, or Canada with Australia, should be able by this Commission to do so. He said: —
    "We have been trying to get mutual preferential treatment, but we have not been able to do so, and I strongly hope that such a Commission as I have indicated would find it possible to come to the end which we have not been able to reach up to the present time."
    That resolution which the Prime Minister of Canada moved was to secure an inquiry into the products and resources of that country and also an inquiry into all legislation which would affect the development of trade between the two countries, and did not exclude preferential customs arrangement. I want to know if the Colonial Secretary believes that that excludes from the purview and work of the Commission a preferential arrangement with our Colonies. The right hon. Gentleman speaks of methods consistent with the existing policy of each part. I should like to ask him whether the granting of a preference on corn, wine, sugar, tea and tobacco, which is the only preference the Colonies have asked for, would be inconsistent with the present fiscal policy of this country. We know that it would not be. We have had a registration tax on corn, we now have taxes on wine, tea, sugar and tobacco, and it would not be inconsistent with the fiscal policy of this country to reduce those taxes already imposed in favour of our Colonies. Therefore, if this Commission is not to be absolutely futile and purposeless, it will have to review all the circumstances of trade, the possibilities of development, and it will also have to review those things which would make for development.
    4.0 P.M.
    The Colonies resolved at any rate that a wise tariff system carefully adjusted, with a preferential arrangement, does make for the development of the resources of the Empire. If you were going to divide the Colonies of this country to-morrow, if you were going to take a poll of them as constituting the whole Empire, you would find a majority in favour of a preferential
    1292
    system of duties on these very things I have mentioned, and you would also find that the tariffs already existing in this country would amount to at least £14,000,000, because it would represent practically all the people of the Colonies, I should think, as against the small majority, but certainly the majority standing for the principles which I and my friends with me hold in this country. While making this denial and making this addition to the Resolution, freezing out as it were, or attemping to freeze out, the only thing that could have made that Imperial Conference conspicuous in the late national events, the conference has, I am frank to say, done some good. It has cleared up some things and has opened the way to others, but the progress that has been made is not nearly so great as the progress that would have been made the spirit of the Colonies is not so satisfied as it would have been satisfied, and the people of this country will not have the benefits they otherwise would have had if the Government had been able, without altering their fiscal policy, to have given the Colonies something, not for nothing, but for something, and that which would have come to us, would, in my opinion, have been greater than that which would have gone to them. I said certain things were done at this conference which were satisfactory.
    What have we got out of the conferences since they were started? We have got cheaper cable rates. That is all to the good. We have got cheaper postage, and I give the Government credit for having actively got that concerning Canada. We have got Trade Commissions. We have also had the development of the Colonial Navies and the Imperial Staff for the Army, but those arose out of the action taken by the Government which sat upon that bench seven years ago. The source of that development lay in the Defence Committee more than in the conferences themselves. We have by this last conference had the way opened to laws of naturalisation, and we have got a new Imperial Court of Appeal. That is all to the credit of the Government. They have—I will not be so rude as to say for shame's sake, because I believe they wanted to do something—in these lesser things certainly achieved something, but there are a good many things left undone and unfinished. There is the All Red Route. There is the question of co-operation in emigration unsettled. I read the

    1293
    debate on emigration with a good deal of amusement. Here was the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Burns) going to the conference and telling them that 80 per cent. of 300,000 emigrants from this country went to the Colonies in 1909, and pointing to the Emigration Office as as example of what was being done to assist emigration. Does any real sensible person think the Emigration Office next door, as it were, to this Chamber have had much to do with emigration to Canada? No, it was rather that splendid advertising system of Canada herself. It was the invitations which she has made and the successful result of the hundreds of thousands of invitations that have gone before. The Emigration Office had as little to do with it as I had, and probably not so much. Then we had a proposal from the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Sydney Buxton) with regard to the Labour Exchanges. The President of the Local Government Board would have nothing to do "with it. It was all right. The fact was too many people were going from this country to the Colonies. The President of the Board of Trade took the other view. He wanted the Labour Exchanges to provide emigration for the Colonies. They promptly said that was futile. It was ill-prepared, and, indeed, that is just the trouble I find with the whole conference. There was no constructiveness on questions which were raised.
    The Colonies, at any rate, made some attempt to think out the questions they raised beforehand, but this country left out questions that obviously ought to have been raised, and, in dealing with questions they did raise, they treated them, as I think, with scant ability, and at any rate with scant power of constructiveness. Take the proposal for a Standing Committee which the right hon. Gentleman offered as an alternative for the Imperial Conference proposed by the Prime Minister of New Zealand. I believe he knew it would never be accepted. He proposed a Standing Committee composed of officials of his own Department and of High Commissioners from the Colonies. It was a Standing Committee which would only increase the circumlocution and the red tapeism which affects all communications with all Governments, whether colonial or foreign. Such a committee could have had no real influence except to stereotype the views of the Department of which the right hon. Gentleman is the head. He might, for instance, have raised the ques-
    1294
    tion of the sale of liquor to native races. It would have created a vast deal of interest throughout the Empire, and, if some conclusion had been come to, it would have removed a dangerous element to the future of those races. There is no question to-day which is as acute in regard to the future of the native races for which the right hon. Gentleman is the trustee than that question of the sale of liquor to them. There are in our self-governing Colonies, such as Canada, the Cape Colony, the Union of South Africa, and Australia, the most rigid regulations concerning the sale of liquor. In Rhodesia, in Northern Nigeria, on the Gold Coast, in Nyasaland, and in the British East African Protectorate it is prohibited, as it should be. I do not believe you can do your duty to the natives over whom your flag flies and for whom you are responsible—you the parent and they the children—if you rather help them to vices by enabling them to obtain liquor which, as in Nigeria, they use as currency and which they use to pay fines in their courts and for bartering their children. All these things have been proved. As for the fines in court, I have the facts here in the Report of the Royal Commission. Fines are paid in the courts of Nigeria in gin.
    It may be the right hon. Gentleman, if he touches the question at all, will presently say they must have revenue. Are the resources of civilisation exhausted? Would not the Government be doing a wiser and better thing to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire by what means taxation, can be raised? It has been said by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors that revenue must be raised and there is no other way of raising it because the natives would not stand a direct tax. We have heard that before. It was said in Rhodesia and in the British East African Protectorate. It has been said in every Protectorate for whom we have been responsible. The right hon. Gentleman has given figures to show that over fifty per cent. of the revenue of Southern Nigeria is paid by the natives for gin. The figures have not increased, and that is represented as a reason for continuing what I think to be a very dangerous and evil practice. Members on that side of the House call themselves the Temperance party. I wonder what they think. Here is a brilliant Government possessing all the talents and here is a little country called Southern Nigeria, with a revenue of from £3,000,000 to £4,000,000, and they cannot

    1295
    find the means of raising that revenue except by taxing the natives for gin. I think the Members of the party opposite ought to unite with me in asking the Government why they did not at the conference bring forward this grave question which involves the interest of the native races for the future. I think I can give the answer. The Government excluded it from the consideration of this conference, because it was difficult, just as the acute question of fiscal and preferential arrangements with our Colonies was difficult. They did things because they had to be done, and not because they ought to be done. If they had come to that conference in a spirit, not of denial, but of constructiveness, they would have come with better prepared proposals and with schemes that would have stood criticism much better, and the results would have been infinitely more beneficial. The conference, it is said, has been successful because out of it came one thing, and that was the inclusion of the Ministers of our self-governing Dominions in the inner circle of the Cabinet on questions of foreign policy. I say frankly at once that that is an achievement for which this House, as well as the Government, must have its share of satisfaction and credit, because it was in this House—I do not know whether the Government bad thought of it before—that a proposal was brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. Lyttelton), and approved of by the whole House embodying this idea. I think my right hon. Friend never made a speech in this House which created a greater impression than the one he delivered on that occasion. I am absolutely certain it had great influence with the Government. Let us all, therefore take credit for this thing. Let us say that the conference has been a success because of that one thing. But that one thing could have been had, and the rest we could have had as well at this conference, had the Government been willing, because the conference was held at a time when enthusiasm was greater than it had ever been in the history of our Empire, and when the feelings of men in the furthermost corners of our Dominions were aroused to the prospects of the future, and were alive to the consideration of questions which now perplex us, and without the solution of which we shall not make the best use of our opportunities.
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    I honestly believe that this Government missed an opportunity which is not likely to occur again for many a year. The atmosphere in which they move, and in. which the people of this country and the people of the Empire move, was so magnetic with sympathy that anything could have been done. You had a business-like but pathetically apathetic discussion of questions which kept leading up to the one big question, yet never got there, because every single question raised led up to the one question in which is the formula which will solve our Imperial relations, and until that formula is adopted, we shall never get a true understanding with our Colonies, nor the real benefits that should come to our Empire. We went up to the question again and again, and retreated from it because every Colonial orator knew it could not be dealt with, and their hearts were not in it because they remembered that almost the last words the Prime Minister used in 1907 were to the effect that they must not bring their proposals to this country for Imperial preferential relations, because his reply to them was a non-possumus. So it was in 1911, and so it will be, I suppose, until with well-achieved dignity they retire to well-merited opposition. That time will come. Probably the next Colonial Conference will see a Government in office which will do all that the Government did at this Colonial Conference and infinitely more. The 1907 conference was a live conference, full of stimulating things, because it represented a conflict of ability and a conflict of argument. The Government presented their case with great power, the Colonies presented their case, as we think, with greater convincingness. But nothing came of it. Now we have to look back upon a conventional conference with one outstanding result of great merit, and, for the rest, a small movement forward which does not represent the five years that have-passed since the last conference, nor the opportunities which were before this Government when they summoned the 1911 conference. I venture to say, in conclusion, that nothing I have uttered this afternoon has had any bitterness in it, yet everything I have said has behind it the feeling that the nation missed its opportunity, and missed it because the Government missed it.
    Sir MAX AITKEN: I gathered from what the hon. Member for Gravesend said that, in his opinion, the most important deliberation at the Imperial Con-

    1297
    ference was concerned with the resolution introduced by the Prime Minister of Canada. That resolution, as presented, would have served a very great purpose if it had resulted in bringing to the attention of the Empire at large the enormous resources of the Colonies and the enormous opportunities for the development of those resources in the interests of the British people in all parts of the Empire. The alteration in the resolution presented by the Colonial Secretary necessarily changed its scope. It will be impossible under the Amendment to inquire into the possibility of developing parts of the Empire by a system of trade relations. When the Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the trade relations between Canada and the British West Indies, that Commission was not restricted in the manner in which the new Commission will be. There was ample opportunity to inquire into the benefits of preference, and, as I read the Report and recommendations of that Commission, they would necessitate a change in the fiscal policy of some of the British West Indies. If a change can be suggested in the fiscal policy of the British West Indies by a Royal Commission, I cannot see why an Amendment proposed by the Colonial Secretary should exclude the possibility of suggesting a change in the fiscal system of Great Britain. Then again it appears to me that the Colonial Secretary, who is peculiarly guardian of the Crown Colonies, has been guilty of a dereliction of duty in not including the Crown Colonies in the scope of the proposed Commission. The population of the Crown Colonies is twice as great as that of the Dominions, and I think that the British West Indies has a population greater than that of New Zealand and Newfoundland combined. I am familiar with the British West Indies to some degree, and, consequently, I take the liberty of referring more particularly to those Colonies in making the points I wish to lay before the Committee.
    The United States Government has developed its Colonial system along lines which are at least worthy of investigation by the Commission which the Imperial Conference proposes to set up. The United States has developed her Colonies by Imperial, or, if you choose to use another word, by Republican preference. I remember ten or twelve years ago, when the West Indies, including those islands which did not belong to Great Britain, were all practically in the same
    1298
    position—a very demoralised condition. About 1903 Cuba gave a preference of 20 per cent. to the United States, and in return the United States gave a preference of 20 per cent. on Cuban produce. Since then the development of Cuba has been very rapid, and as a consequence of that preference the sales of the United States goods in Cuba have increased from 23,000,000 dollars to 46,000,000 dollars, or nearly half the trade which Great Britain does with Canada. The island of Porto Rico was transacting very little trade with United States when the United States scheme of colonisation was carried out. Since then it has developed with even greater rapidity than Cuba, and in 1910 the United States sales to the island amounted to about 28,000,000 dollars; the trade has doubled within the past six years under this system of colonial preference and there is every reason to suppose that it will again double in the next six years.
    The Philippines are not situated in the West Indies, but, under the Colonial system of the United States, they also have doubled their purchasing powers from the United States in the past six years, while British trade has declined by about one-half. On the other hand, Trinidad and Demerara, territories just as fertile and capable of development as the colonies affiliated with the United" States, have made very little progress They are not permitted to sell their products in the United States markets at all, and in the English market they compete-on equal terms with the surplus produce of Cuba and Porto Rico. There has been, a considerable shipment of produce from Cuba to Great Britain, the sugar bounty having been removed. It is said that the improved conditions of preference given by Canada have resulted in the sale of as much as 80 per cent. of Demerara sugar in Canada, and had it not been for that preference it would hardly have been possible for Demerara to hold her own. These two Colonies, however, are at present buying a very small quantity of manufactured goods. If the scheme of Imperial preference or some similar scheme of preference on those articles which are at present taxed in England could be carried out, we could look forward to a very largely increased buying power on their part. The field requires to be tilled if good results are to be obtained, and it seems a great pity that the American Government should go on tilling its tropical

    1299
    field, while Great Britain fails to do so. An opportunity arose to complete the Report of the Commission which inquired into the relations between Canada and the West Indies, by enabling the present Commission to inquire into the relations between Great Britain and the West Indies, but it was not accepted. Had it been taken advantage of, and had a Commission similar in character to the Commission which inquired into the relations between the West Indies and Canada been appointed, it is fair to assume that that Commission would have recommended some preference on the articles which are already taxed in Great Britain. In fact that would be in accordance with the fiscal system already existing in Great Britain, and the fact that the resolution as amended by the Colonel Secretary would still permit, if the Crown Colonies had been included, of inquiring into the trade relations of Great Britain and the West Indies makes it to be regretted to a very much greater extent that the Crown Colonies were not included. I should like to bring the attention of the Colonial Secretary to the certainty that after the United States has completed her reciprocity agreement with Canada she will make overtures to Newfoundland, and after that she will enter into negotiations with the West Indies, and unless the Government takes some steps to keep the situation in hand it is practically certain, I think, that the West Indies will be compelled to accept those overtures.
    Mr. MARTIN: I am not at all surprised that the hon. Member and other advocates of Colonial preference should be profoundly disappointed with the recent conference, because the Colonial Premiers quite appreciated the fact that the conference is not intended for the purpose of advancing the political fortunes of any party in this country. The hon. Gentleman seemed to think it is a great loss to the Empire that the Colonies in this conference, should not join with him and other advocates of the Tory party in this country in endeavouring to bring about what to him no doubt is really the most important thing that could happen to the Empire—the restoration to power of the Tory party in this country.
    Sir G. PARKER: The Dominions are with us.
    Mr. MARTIN: That is just what I got up to deny. The hon. Gentleman made the very wide statement that the Colonies
    1300
    were all for Imperial preference. I shall not say anything with regard to any Colony except Canada, but with regard to Canada I say that statement is just about as far from the truth as it is possible to get. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen laugh at me, but no public meeting in Canada—I do not care whether it is composed of Conservatives or Liberals, because it is not a party question there in that sense—would laugh at me in making that statement. I should be very glad indeed to meet hon. Gentlemen opposite on that question in any part of Canada. I have discussed it in nearly all parts of Canada, at meetings which were certainly not Liberal, but at which I believe the large majority of the audience were Conservatives. I have lived in Canada all my life till I came here, and have taken an active part in politics there, and I state without fear of contradiction that only a very small minority indeed in Canada are favourable to the policy known here as Imperial preference.
    Mr. BONAR LAW: Is it the fact that in Canada the Government in no way represents the people?
    Mr. MARTIN: The right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity after me of pointing out in what way the Government of Canada have adopted or advocated, or in any way recognised as part of their policy, the Tory policy here of Imperial preference. If the right hon. Gentleman is referring to what is known as British Preference in Canada I tell him that it has no relation whatever to what is known as Colonial preference here. British preference in Canada is a Free Trade measure just as clearly as Colonial preference here is a Protectionist measure. I rather fancy, from the interruption and from the manner in which that statement was received on the other side of the House, that hon. Members really think that British preference as it is known in Canada is the same thing as what they advocate here under the name of Colonial or Imperial preference. May I refer to the fact of how it came about that British preference was given in Canada in order to show that it is a purely Free Trade measure? In 1892 a private Member of Parliament—at that time the Conservative party was in power—introduced into the Parliament of Canada a resolution practically putting forward the Imperial preference doctrine as it is understood here. The Gentleman's name was Mr. McNeill, and he represented one of the western constituencies of Ontario. That

    1301
    motion was met by an amendment moved on behalf of the then Liberal Opposition, and that amendment embodied the present policy of British preference. The difference between the two was that Mr. McNeill's motion suggested that there should be a preference between Canada and the United Kingdom based upon a mutual reduction of tariffs. That is to say, whatever Canada gave to Great Britain should be reciprocated by some favour to be given to Canada by Great Britain. The Motion of the Liberal Opposition was the direct contrary of that, and suggested that Canada should give a preference in its tariff to Great Britain without any consideration whatsoever. That Amendment received the entire Liberal vote, and the Conservative Members all voted against it. I hope hon. Gentlemen opposite will not overlook that.
    The next thing that occurred was that the Liberals came into power four years later, in 1896, on a policy of Free Trade as it is in England. I am sorry to say that since they have been in power they have not carried it out. [Laughter.] Do hon. Gentlemen opposite think that is a proper thing for a party to do? It is in accordance with their custom of suggesting a certain policy to the country before an election, and, when the election is over, coming back and carrying out a contrary policy. To my mind that is just about the worst kind of thing that any honest, decent political party can do. I am quite surprised that the action of the Liberal party in Canada meets with approval from hon. Gentlemen opposite on that ground. However, with regard to this question, they carried out their pledge in full. In the short Session of 1896 nothing special was done, but in 1897 the Liberal tariff changes were introduced, and the principal one was what was known as British preference. In the first place that preference was 25 per cent. There was no suggestion of it being put upon the Statute Book, to be taken advantage of by Great Britain when Great Britain was prepared to pay something for it. It was a plain Statute, providing that, while the general tariff should be so much, with regard to imports from Great Britain it should be reduced by 25 per cent. Again that policy was opposed by the Tory party. They had no use for it. They said the people of Canada were fools for being willing to give a preference to Great Britain, because Great Britain was not prepared to pay for it.
    Mr. AMERY: They stand for mutual preference.
    Mr. MARTIN: That is the Tory idea here, I understand. But the Canadian idea, as represented by the Liberal Government there, is not mutual preference, but a preference given freely to imports coming from Great Britain without any consideration whatsoever. That preference was later on increased to 33⅓ per cent. Again it was opposed by the Tory party, and it has always been opposed by them till within a very short time past. Why was it that the Liberal party committed itself to this policy and carried it out? It was for the purpose of giving cheaper goods to the people of Canada, and that is what I call a Free Trade measure. I am not going to say that the Government of Canada introduced and passed into law that preference for the purpose of helping our British manufacturers. Far from it. The Government of Canada, whether administered by Conservatives or Liberals, will always be administered in the interests of Canada and not of Great Britain or any other country whatsoever. That is a proposition in which hon. Gentlemen will probably agree with me. The idea was to make cheaper goods for the people of Canada. It was a Free Trade measure. Incidentally the Canadians recognised in that measure that they were a part of the Empire and, having a benefit to give away so far as outside nations were concerned, they were very willing to give to their own Mother-country.
    Colonel YATE: Would not a preference on corn give cheaper corn to the people of England?
    Mr. MARTIN: It might be an advantage to the Canadian people to artificially increase the price of corn to the people of Great Britain through Tariff Reform—
    The CHAIRMAN: This is an occasion when we are supposed to deal with Colonial policy, but it is rather desirable not to discuss the theory of free trade more than is necessary for the purpose of the argument. We are really dealing with Colonial relations.
    Mr. MARTIN: I was only going to answer the hon. Gentleman's question. Now, as I was saying, the policy of British preference in Canada is not as the hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to think a policy of Colonial preference, such as has been indicated to-day. A large majority of the people of Canada would welcome the

    1303
    abolition of the protective tariff altogether in Canada. The hon. Gentlemen opposite think that because Canada has a protective tariff that represents Canadian opinion. But this is a question probably beyond the limits of this discussion. I merely make the assertion that a considerable majority of the Canadian people are Free Traders in their hearts.
    An HON. MEMBER: And in their pockets?
    Mr. MARTIN: Yes, in their pockets. I make the further assertion that if the people of Canada could get Free Trade in Canada, the progress of Canada would go up by leaps and bounds. As far as the statements apply to Canada, it is quite incorrect to say the Canadians are in favour of Colonial preference. I will make that clear if I can. In order to have Colonial preference it would be necessary that there should be a tax on the food of the people of this country. Whether, having established that preference against corn coming in from all countries, it would reduce the price of food is a moot question here for me. But I do not wish it to be understood for a moment that by my silence I agree it would have that effect. I say this, that while the tariff policy of Canada will always be conducted by every Government in power for the benefit of the people of Canada, there is a very strong reverence for the Mother-country. I say that sentiment leads the people of Canada, without regard to their politics, to be opposed to any arrangement between Canada and the Mother-country which would necessarily bring about increased cost of food to the people of the Old Country. I put that proposition at I large public meetings from one end of Canada to the other. The people in Canada who would be affected by any increase in the price of Canadian wheat would be the farmers of Canada. Now the farmers of Canada are the most prosperous people at the present time. They have not always been so. I lived. in the north-west when the farmers had a very hard time. In recent years they have got along well. [An HON. MEMBER: "Under Protection."] I do not think Protection has anything to do with it. They have become prosperous in spite of Protection. Protection in Canada does not increase the price of a single thing the farmer grows or produces. He is outside the effects of the tariff. No tariff in Canada can increase the price of
    1304
    meat or wheat sold in this country; no tariff can increase the price of the products of the mines sold in the United States market. Whatever the tariff has done for the manufacturers (it has made a great many millionaires) it has not done anything whatever for the farmers. The riches of the farmers, and the position of She farmers, arises from the great natural resources of Canada. These farmers are well off and, having put the question at meetings, I know they are aware of the great poverty in the Old Land. [An HON. MEMBER: "Under Free Trade."] Yes, and it would be worse under Protection. The Canadians are aware of the condition of things in this country. They know there are millions of people in the Old Land who are to-day not sure of where they are going to get their meals to-morrow. And, even though I grant that Colonial preference might increase by three or four cents a bushel the price of wheat, I do not believe there are 100 farmers who would not say they would rather be without it. That money would burn in their pockets if they knew it had been taken out of the poor, poverty-stricken people of this country by increasing the cost of their food. I say that I am representing accurately and truly the real opinion of the people of Canada with regard to this question. The question whether the right hon. Gentleman for the City of London (Mr. Balfour) shall be the Premier of this country, or whether the Prime Minister shall continue in that office, is not a question which is considered in Canada at all. The questions which are considered there are the questions which affect Canada. I say that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Gravesend (Sir Gilbert Parker) never made a more inaccurate statement than when he undertook to suggest that Canada—I say nothing with regard to the other Colonies—was in any way in favour of this doctrine of Colonial preference which he put forward. The hon. Gentlemen opposite assume to themselves the monopoly of patriotism and Imperialistic ideas. I am an Imperialist. I am here to-day, after having lived the far greater part of my life in Canada, to assert Imperialism in the sense we do by coming over here, claiming the right of being a citizen here as I was in Canada, and having the right to become a Member of this historic House. I say you will never have a real Imperialism, in the proper sense of the word, so long as one political party undertakes to appropriate to their own private uses any great

    1305
    doctrine of Imperialism. They put forward as true Imperialism that there should be tariffs in all parts of the Empire; that there should be this Colonial and Imperial preference. We have had in the past few weeks an illustration of how to approach these Imperial questions —the way in which they have been approached by the representatives of the Colonies and also by the representatives of His Majesty's Government who attended the Imperial Conference. It has been a most successful conference, because it has not been in any way used to help any party to appropriate to their own party uses the great interests of the Empire at large.
    Mr. MACKINDER: I rise to support the criticism with regard to the action of the Government at the late Imperial Conference, which has been placed before the House by the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir Gilbert Parker), and in a maiden speech, I believe, by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Sir W. M. Aitken). The House will feel that in that maiden speech he gave evidence of knowledge which will be of value to this House. There is one small point to which I would like to direct the attention of the House; and we all welcome it in whatever part of the House we sit. Three hon. Gentlemen who have addressed this House up to this point are from the Dominions over the seas. It is a striking evidence of the modern times to which we have come, and a hopeful and fine augury for the future of our Empire. I am not going to follow the hon. Member who has just sat down into what is no doubt a very learned disquisition on the history of Canada, and the views of the people of Canada. The hon. Member could give us no documentary evidence as to the views of the people of Canada. The hon. Member was questioned as to whether he must not accept the views of the Canadian Government as representative of the Canadian people. His argument was the argument which I have put forward, that Canada established a one-sided preference for Canadian objects. That does not touch the fact that we have the memorable utterances of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as to concession for concession. I would direct the hon. Member to a single passage in the speech of the Canadian Prime Minister. It was at the end of a speech bearing upon the proposed Royal Commission, in which he said:—
    "We have been trying to get mutual preferential treatment with regard to Australia, but we have not been able to do so."
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    Here we have the clearest evidence from the Prime Minister of Canada, elected by the majority of the people of Canada. The hon. Gentleman opposite has held a conspicuous position in Canada. He had in Canada the evidence of the Canadians—
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: Has the Prime Minister of Canada said he was in favour of Free Trade?
    Mr. MACKINDER: The Prime Minister of Canada is in favour of freer trade. He is theoretically in favour of Free Trade with the world. But in this House we are not discussing economic text-books: we are discussing practical politics. The Canadian Prime Minister here makes a statement as to efforts for mutual preference.
    Mr. MARTIN: Can the hon. Gentleman who talks about preference adduce any statement made on behalf of the Government of Canada that they desire to see a Protective policy adopted here in order that they may have preference?
    5.0 P.M.
    Mr. MACKINDER: I can only refer the hon. Gentleman to the resolutions passed at conference after conference. They were only omitted from the recent conference owing to the fate they met in previous conferences. The representatives of the Colonies know what these resolutions contain, and they can bide their time. I think, perhaps, I should say that although I do not consider that those who have spoken on our side have in the least degree transgressed, we in criticising what was done at the recent conference have no idea of criticising in any way whatever the action of the other parties in the conference. We are bound to follow closely what our own representatives did at that conference, but the last thing we want to have suggested is that we have been endeavouring to criticise the representatives of the Overseas Dominions, which are not so great as this country in population at present, but which are equal in status round a conference table. I am going to confine my remarks to the action of the present Government. [Cheers.] I notice that an hon. Gentleman cheers that remark. I think he will find plenty of material in the action of our own Government deserving of criticism, without going into what happened in the case of others. I think we are entitled to consider whether the issue of that conference would not have been something far more valuable if

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    it had not been for the action of our representatives. From that point of view we are bound to consider what took place at the conference as a whole. The hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker) referred to matters in regard to which our Government did good at the recent conference. The hon. Gentleman opposite seemed inclined to load on us the charge of using the Empire for party purposes.
    We recognise the very great fact that the chief representatives of the Dominions overseas were taken into confidence in regard to foreign affairs. There is one thing which we are really anxious about. We trust that the situation in Europe—that the position of this country in regard to the balance of power in Europe—was duly weighed in the discussion which took place with closed doors on that occasion. In regard to the Imperial Council, we recognise the difficulties, though we think that possibly a little more thought beforehand might have resulted in putting forward more hopeful and practical proposals. We do not wish to concentrate discussion upon that. We believe that no harm was done in that matter by waiting a short time. In regard to the question of naturalisation, we recognise the difficulties which the Government had to face in view of the position of the natives of India and other dependencies. We do not blame the Government for their caution in that matter. But it seemed to me that there was a little lack of sympathy, judging from the debates which took place in regard to two smaller matters. There was a non-possu-mus attitude which seemed a little unnecessary in regard to the question of coinage and the question of a court of appeal for the whole Empire. As to a court of appeal, we recognise that some advance was foreshadowed, but there was a tendency to put forward technicalities, instead of welcoming the proposal and doing the best that could be done to get over the technicalities, and to set up what all the Dominions desire to see—namely, a court to represent the whole Empire in the realm of law. In regard to coinage, it does seem to me that the inquiry might have been left open instead of giving the very curt answer which was given, entirely from the point of view of this country.
    Now I turn to what after all is the great question on which we wish to lay stress to-day, namely, the Royal Commission to be set up to inquire into the resources and commerce of the Empire. It appears to us
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    that one thing was asked and that another was achieved. I venture to say that the whole matter, as we read it in the debates reported in the Blue Book, has been left in a state of the utmost confusion which, unless it is dealt with with great care, may lead to serious differences of opinion in future. Let me remind the Committee of what took place in these debates. We have before us the resolution which was-proposed and the resolution which was carried. It is important to look at the commentary, because the Secretary of State drew attention to the fact that some might read the resolution which was passed and not read the debate which took place, and that misunderstanding might result. Therefore we have to look to the discussion that took place in order to interpret the resolution which was formally passed. I have no doubt that, with his usual courtesy and suavity, the right hon. Gentleman spoke very pleasantly to those round the table when he referred "to what extent, if any, the trade between each of the different parts has been affected by existing legislation in each, either beneficially or otherwise." That was Sir Wilfrid Laurier's resolution. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to say something about the embargo on cattle and cognate subjects which have given some inconvenience in Canada. I venture to say that, although that might have passed muster in the conference when the words of Sir Wilfrid Laurier were no longer before the conference, it will not pass muster when we come to read the utterance of Sir Wilfrid Laurier which preceded it. The subject of the embargo on cattle only occupied a small part of the speech, which to a considerable extent was occupied with questions concerning Colonial preference. I notice that in the early portion of his speech Sir Wilfrid Laurier said:—
    "We passed some legislation ourselves in 1897. which has been followed by, and, I think, his been productive of good results, when we grave a preferential tariff to the products of the Mother Country."
    Then comes the statement which I have quoted in regard to a preferential arrangement with Australia. The whole tendency of the speech was in that direction, and I venture to say that when Sir Wilfrid Laurier referred to the embargo on cattle he was really referring to the question of Protection. Sir Wilfrid Laurier no doubt would be perfectly fair in regard to the position taken up by the right hon. Gentleman, who stated that the reason why we maintain the embargo is for totally different purposes, namely, reasons of sanitation, and so forth, in regard to our herds.

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    But the innuendo of his speech was that that reason would not bear investigation. Therefore, the whole tendency of his speech was to request that a Commission should be appointed to consider questions concerning Protection, and with reference to general policy. If you look at the wording of the Resolution which was passed, it is clear, I think, that the whole preliminary portion has reference to the concluding, and, if I may say so, operative Clause. What we want to know is what exactly is going to be the reference to this Commission? Is the reference to the Royal Commission going to be the words of the Resolution as amended and passed by the Conference, or some words to convey what the Government believe to be the intention of that Resolution, having regard, no doubt, to their own utterances in the Debate. The matter is really very important. I would ask the attention of the Committee to the conflict of suggestion there is in the last two Clauses as they stand. The last Clause but one, as originally proposed by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, runs in this way:—
    "To what extent, if any, the trade between each of the different parts has been affected by existing legislation in each, either beneficially or otherwise."
    Clearly, it would be impossible for the Royal Commission, looking at only the words before it, not to go into questions of fiscal legislation. Then there comes the rider proposed by the right hon. Gentleman, and which runs:—
    "And by what methods, consistent with the existing fiscal policy of each part, the trade of each part with the others may be improved and extended."
    Of course, the Government laid stress on the words "consistent with the fiscal policy of each part." The Commission is asked to recommend methods, but in the preceding sentence the Commission is asked to investigate the effect of existing legislation, beneficial or otherwise, on the different parts of the Empire. While the Commission are not to dictate to the different parts or to the whole of the Empire any policy, they are distinctly asked by the Resolution, as passed by the conference, to make a close investigation into the results of legislation, and, of course, that means fiscal legislation. We want to know whether the Resolution as passed by the conference is going to be the reference to the Royal Commission, or whether the Government are going to re-edit it and refer to the Commission something which will prevent them from investigating those results, which may be damaging either to the views of the Government or to us on this side, and which must have a very great
    1310
    effect on the legislation of the future and on the proposals put forward by the Governments of the different countries.
    It seems to me that the Government missed a very great opportunity. The Government, I assume, have full faith in their opinion. If they have, what harm would result to them from any investigation? May I point to the fact that this very spring the, Association of Chambers of Commerce unanimously, I understand, passed a resolution asking for a Royal Commission to investigate questions of Tariff Reform. A unanimous resolution passed by such a body is not a thing to be flouted. Here is the opportunity of a Royal Commission, not of all parts of the Empire but of the-self-governing parts. The weightiest possible utterance would be the result of that commission. If the Government have faith in their Free Trade opinions what better way in the world would there be of laying for generations to come the whole of the proposals brought forward by our party than to present them as condemned by such a Royal Commission. After such a condemnation there would be no hope for the policy inaugurated from our side. But I would ask this question. How can we have an investigation into the trade of all parts of the Empire represented at this conference with a view to the beneficial effects on the different parts of the Empire as a whole without taking into account the greatest part of the Empire, namely India? Are we to understand that this Royal Commission, which is not to make recommendations of particular policy which would be inconvenient to different Governments, but simply to investigate the effect of the policies of the past and the present resources, will be free to go into the question of the trade of dependencies as it relates to other parts of the Empire under the head of the United Kingdom?
    I notice that the Royal Commission, representing the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Newfoundland, is to investigate and report upon the natural resources of each part of the Empire represented at this conference. Are we to understand that the Government of the United Kingdom was the representative, in fact, of India and the dependencies of that type? If so, in appointing the Royal Commission will it be made clear, from the composition of the Commission, that this Imperial Government recognises its responsibility, and

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    that if any advantages are to be obtained the Commission may direct attention not merely to fiscal advantages but to other advantages, with regard to communication and so on to be obtained from the investigation, for India and other parts of the Empire? Is the Imperial Government going to make sure that that advantage shall be secured for India? What is this Royal Commission going to do if you limit the reference or seek to interpret the reference established by the resolution of the conference by bringing in the discussion that took place? I think the right hon. Gentleman is looking forward a little and anticipating difficulties in those words of his which I have quoted, and is giving himself an opportunity for limitation. Then what is the Royal Commission going to do? Is it going to rove about the Empire and obtain statistics which can be obtained in a far more effective way than by sending a certain number of great persons to different parts of the Empire? Is it to go to hear evidence? If it is to hear evidence, then is it to make up its mind upon certain questions? In Others words, is it merely to be educational? An hon. Member opposite referred at Question Time the other day to the cost which this country had incurred in educating Lord Kitchener. Are we to incur great cost in sending away statesmen of the future or of the past—because those of the present will be too busy to go—simply to obtain an education in what are the relations of the different parts of the Empire?
    That can hardly happen. An investigation into the results of policies as embodied in past legislation cannot but be the outcome of such a reference as this. The result will be that limit the Commission as you will there will be obvious from the report of the Commission certain consequences, even though those consequences be not put out tersely and in black and white. It seems therefore that all the efforts of the Government to limit and burke this inquiry will be fruitless. But if they find at the end that they have effectually limited the inquiry, and that by their reference they make perfectly sure of that result, I venture to say that there will be very considerable ill-feeling in regard to what was decided by the Prime Ministers of the Empire, and that they will have done harm instead of good by the action they have taken. The questions which I want to ask are whether the reference to the Royal Commission will be the resolution as passed by the conference with no
    1312
    further comment, or whether it is the intention to have that resolution edited in order practically to incorporate the right hon. Gentleman's share of the discussion. And further, whether it is the intention of the Government to interpret the responsibility of the Government of the United Kingdom in this country, as including responsibility for the dependencies of this country which they were taken to represent at that conference?
    Sir WILLIAM BYLES: I do not propose to refer to the subject which has been dealt with by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I desire to deal with a totally different matter and one of no less importance. I speak of the condition of the black population of our Empire I am associated with the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, which has a long and honourable record. A few months ago that society sent out the Rev. Mr. Harris to Southern Nigeria to inquire into the conditions of alleged slavery in the Protectorate. Charges had been made both in England and in Belgium as to the native population, who, it was stated, were not far removed from the condition of slavery. He went out to find out what was the truth in these charges. He had the advantage of discussing the matter with the authorities and with leading natives and chiefs of the colony and visiting the natives through the country. I quote from his letter. He says:—
    "On February 15th last Mr. Harcourt, in reply to a question addressed to him in the House of Commons by Mr. King, said: 'The status of slavery is not recognised in Southern Nigeria."
    "If calling a slave by another name in English is sufficient to abolish a system, then slavery does jot exist in the Eastern and Central Provinces of Southern Nigeria. If. on the other hand, loss of personal liberty, the denial of freedom of contract, the break-up and transfer of the units of a family to other and different owners- if those conditions and other repugnant concomitants constitute slavery, then there is something very near to that condition in Southern Nigeria."
    This is the result of quite a recent inquiry by an entirely competent investigator. What disturbs me is that these conditions so described arise apparently from an ordinance under which the authorities administer the Government of the country, an ordinance which was introduced into the Administration only ten years ago. That ordinance set up or, at any rate sanctioned what is known as the native house system, which hands over the natives to the chief as parts of his family or household, which denies to them liberty to sell their labour where they will, and imposes upon them many other re-

    1313
    straints. I suggest that if British subjects are to be free as they are reputed to be free all over the Empire, they ought to be free, at any rate, to serve what master they will and to buy themselves out of servitude, either by money they are able to save or by their labour.
    At present a trader arranges for a supply of labour not with the individual men themselves, but with the chief, who says, "I will let you have a certain number of men, a hundred carriers, to do this, that, and the other thing." These men must go where they are told, and must work at what wages he determines, and they are punished if they hire themselves to any other employer. I want to ask my right hon. Friend what his view and what the view of the Colonial Office is in regard to this native house system? Perhaps he will also tell me what is this trade tax of which I hear and read which is imposed apparently upon thrifty members of the population, who perhaps are saving money for their own emancipation. I can produce evidence from District Commissioners in that country who describe this house system as one of slavery, who allege that girls can be bought and are bought and sold with the sanction of the Government into a state in which they are really, though not technically, slaves. They are men who recognise as abominable the ordinances which they themselves have to administer and the decisions which they themselves are obliged to give. A young man going out from this country as a District Commissioner after a short experience writes home: "People in England would be horrified if they knew the decisions which are given in these courts." Is it possible that we can see these decisions? Why cannot they be put on the Table of the House? After all we are responsible.
    Mr. MEYSEY-THOMPSON: Are we still dealing with Mr. Harris's letter?
    Sir W. BYLES: I quoted Mr. Harris's letter and I finished with him. I then went on to say that there is evidence, which I can produce and will produce to the hon. Gentleman if he desires it, as to the District Commissioners out there, who have to administer the Ordinance of 1901, under which these Colonies come. I have told the Committee what some of these gentleman at any rate have said about that Ordinance, and about the decisions which they themselves are obliged to give under it.
    Mr. MEYSEY-THOMPSON: I am obliged to the hon. Member for his explanation. I only wanted to check it.
    Sir W. BYLES: I ask my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether it is possible for the House of Commons to see some of the decisions given by the District Commissioners, decisions which are causing disquietude even to those who administer them. If that is impossible, I would ask him whether the Colonial Office sees these decisions and reads them. I think that if the system is at all approaching what I am endeavouring to describe, in accordance with information I have received, it ought not to continue, and I believe that if the House of Commons knew all its effects, it would not continue. There is one other matter I desire to bring before the attention of the Secretary of State. I have had sent to me a copy of the "Southern Nigeria Gazette Extraordinary," "published by authority." It is dated the 2nd May, of this year, and it sets out a Bill entitled, "An Ordinance to confer upon the Governor the necessary power for the detention and deportation of one Overami, ex-king of Benin." The provisions of this Ordinance—I really do not know whether it is yet an Act of Parliament or not, or whether this House still has any control over it—appear to me to be extremely drastic and contrary to all our ideas of what ought to constitute the law under which free British subjects are to act. It gives a dangerous increase of power to the Colonial Governor. I think that in itself is a dangerous thing to do. I do not know whether it is desirable or not that Overami should continue to be detained. He has been detained for over thirteen years, and I am not able to give a judgment on his conduct or the wisdom of still keeping him in detention. Whatever may be the reason, I do not think there is any reason for such drastic provisions as are contained in this Ordinance. Let me tell the House, very briefly, what the Ordinance says. In Clause 1 it says:—
    "All acts done, permitted to be done, or sanctioned by the Governor" (before a certain date), "with respect to the arrest and detention of the said Overami, ex-King of Benin … are hereby declared to be legal and valid as if the same had been done, permitted to be done, or sanctioned under the authority of the Legislature of the Colony."
    That is to say, that the whole of the past, however bad it may have been, is wiped out. At any rate, the Legislature of the colony has no control. Then it goes on to give permission to the Gover-

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    nor to imprison this man where he likes, for as long as he likes, and to do whatever he chooses with him. I will not describe in too much detail the seventh Clause of the Ordinance, though I must say its provisions will come as a shock to those who love the principles of liberty:—
    "No writ of habeas corpus or other process calling in question the legality of the arrest, detention or deportation of the said Overami, ex-King of Benin, or of any other matter connected therewith respectively, shall have any effect within the Colony or Protectorate."
    Really I do think that that is going a long way in this, the British Empire, which is supposed to be an Empire of freedom. I think this conception of the Governor of a distant colony, which, so to speak, is out of sight of the British people who are responsible for it, this conception of a Governor above all law, will do, and has done, great mischief in many places besides Southern Nigeria, as, for instance, in Natal, where a similar power was given. Here you have absolute indemnity for all this Governor has done. You give him the power to do anything he pleases, and you say that no writ of habeas corpus should run to protect his victims, as I may call them. I want to know what is the Legislative Council. Where does it come in? What is the good of having a Legislative Council at all? Also I want to know whether this House of Commons is to approve or is expected to approve this establishment of an autocracy, for it is literally the setting up of an autocracy within the Empire, an autocracy, let it be noted, which is over the Colonial Office, outside the power of the Colonial Secretary, and outside, apparently, the British Parliament. We heard talk about the man on the spot. Upon my word it is a strong thing to make the man on the spot more powerful than the British Parliament, or the Colonial Secretary himself. I suppose this Southern Nigeria is called a Protectorate. It is a very nice name. It appears to convey that the British Government claim and exercise some protection over the native inhabitants of that territory. But instead of that, they are giving one man the power to exploit them and to grant concessions to white traders.
    A great deal might be said about the condition of the black population. I would like very much to see the whole question of indentured labour which obtains in a great many of our Protectorates and Crown Colonies thoroughly discussed in this House. It cannot be discussed here
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    to-day, I fear. But let me remind the House of what was said here by a man who used to sit below me, and who had always the interests of the black population of this Empire at heart, who raised a strong voice in their favour, and who was a strong friend of the dark-skinned population of our Empire—let me remind you of what he told us every year that he stood up here, namely, that the King reigns over black and white. The King who has just been crowned has far more black subjects than white. They are not represented here. But I hope there will always be some voice raised on these benches to speak for them, and to claim for them not only decent treatment but liberty—that liberty which Englishmen all pretend to give to all the subjects of the Empire. I believe that at this moment, at any rate, we have a high-minded, just, and unprejudiced chief at the head of the Colonial Office. I hope he is impregnated with some of the old ideas of Liberalism, some of the old ideas of Englishmen, and not of Liberalism only. These ideas are not quite dead—love of personal liberty and of personal rights, regardless of race or colour. We have heard a good deal from the other side about Imperialism. That is the real Imperialism.
    Sir CLEMENT HILL: I wish to switch the wire off from one side of the continent to the other, and raise the question of the land in East Africa. The Protectorate of East Africa stands under very different conditions from those of most of our African Colonies and Protectorates, because when it was taken over by this country in 1895 there were no settlers in it, and no British developments whatever. When we at length endeavoured to administer the country land laws were introduced in 1897, but still there were few, if any, settlers to whom they could be applied. It was foreseen, however, that there would be-more occupation, and accordingly these land laws were drafted, and the Ordinance of 1902 was introduced just at the time when the railway was completed. The completion of the railway naturally attracted more settlers, and the demand for the land at the end of 1901 and in the early part of 1902—I believe up to that time confined to one demand for 104 acres by the Italian Colonial Trading Company, sprang up very considerably, and kept on increasing. The principle on which the Ordinance of 1902 was founded was that there should be a ninety-nine years' lease, and a certain power of freehold. The

    1317
    only criticism of that Ordinance for some considerable time was by the Commissioner, who considered that the Ordinance was not liberal enough to settlers, and who advocated greater freedom of trade and greater grants of free land. Nothing, however, was done in that regard so long as the Protectorates were under the Foreign Office. But when they were handed over to the Colonial Office in the early part of 1905 apparently the question was more discussed and more looked into.
    In the early part of 1907 notification was issued in the Protectorate saying that land might be granted for a twenty-one years' lease, plus twenty-one years at the end of that time, at the rent prevailing at the time of the settling of the grants. The total period of the grant was forty-two years, but it was received in the country with great disappointment on the part of the whole population. We learn that from the reports which were sent home at the time. The agitation in East Africa increased, and was very considerable. I put a question in this House in August, 1907, and shortly afterwards instructions were sent out by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to East Africa that the authorities there were to consider whether it would be possible to grant leases for twenty-one years, plus seventy-eight years, and the rent should be fixed on certain terms. The present Home Secretary, who was then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, visited East Africa at the time and dealt with the question more or less, but he instructed the Governor there that it was desirable that leases for grazing land should only be granted for twenty-one years, with an option for renewal under certain conditions. Meantime certain local proposals had been made. A new Director of Agriculture had gone out, and had made suggestions, founded upon some Cape analogy, that there should be a perpetual quit-rent over the land, with the power of redemption at twenty years' rent of the lease. The Government of the day and the Director of Agriculture did not go so far as that, but they took the line that it would be necessary to give ninety-nine years' leases, with a certain power of purchase of the freehold. These proposals were sent home, and they were discussed and considered by the Colonial Office, and Lord Elgin sent out a reply on 19th March, 1908, in which he laid down that individuals should not accumulate great tracts of land owing to the principle of free transfer, but that the Government
    1318
    should from time to time have a share in the new areas of unearned increment. Therefore revised proposals were made to the local government authorising the offer of ninety-nine year leases, with rentals on a revisable basis of 5 per cent. of the unimproved value of the land, at the thirty-third and sixty-sixth year, subject to a maximum rent, on its development. The maximum rent was 3d. per acre, the maximum area being 5,000 acres. This works out, without giving all the details to this, that some was classified in Class I., 900 acres at 18 cents., which was a rent for the first thirty-two years of £10 16s.; at thirty-three years. £33 12s.; and at sixty-six years, £101 8s. That was in the Highlands.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: May I ask whether that is the maximum?
    Sir CLEMENT HILL: That is the maximum. In another case of different quality there were 5,000 acres at 3 cents, for the first thirty-two years at £10; in. thirty-three years, £186 13s. 4d.; and in sixty-six years it rose to £563 6s. 8d. The result of that despatch was that an ordinance vas drafted in the Protectorate and was approved by the Legislative Council and was sent home in 1909, but it contained no provision for a revision of the rent at thirty-three and sixty-six years, nor did it deal with the question of a graduated Land Tax as suggested by the Government. The present Governor, Sir Percy Girouard, urged that ordinance upon the present Secretary of State, personally, whilst over in this country, and set forth to him his views on the hostility of the settlers to the Government scheme, but without success, and in a despatch published in the "Official Gazette" on March 1st, I see that instructions were given to adhere to Lord Elgin's despatch, and to draft an ordinance in its terms. So far as I know no ordinance has been sent home in these terms. The fact is this: you have got a Colony or Protectorate which you can see working in its infancy, a Central African Colony where health conditions are still very uncertain, and you are not at all sure what the result of the experiments will be in cereals and farming and so on.
    They have an ordinance imposed on them which is extremely distasteful and objectionable to all the officials and settlers. That country has to compete with the attractions of the other older Colonies, such as Canada, where liberal grants are given, although Rhodesia nearer to it is a better example. There extremely liberal

    1319
    terms are offered to settlers, and I may mention the recent grant of 400,000 acres of land in Rhodesia for the purpose of feeding cattle, and the option of 2,000,000 more acres. East Africa has to contend with such conditions as these, and by these offers she is put into a very difficult position. We find therefore that the ordinance which is likely to be imposed upon them is thoroughly distasteful, and that they wish to have more liberal terms, and we are brought up against the opinion, it seems, of the Government. I think, looking at the conditions under which East Africa was obtained, it really did not come to this country as a country which was looked upon merely for the purpose of commercial development and land hunger. We took it under international conditions by which we were pledged under the Brussels Act against the slave trade and slavery. As to the first part of the work of the Government of East Africa, all that was done was done simply and solely with that object. What has grown up from the preparations made by the Government, and upon the success of the Government operations in that Protectorate is a system of enabling white settlers to go and get land there on fair terms, and it is hoped the results will prove to be good for that country in the future. The primary object was not commerce, and I think, if the Government really considered this question, they might endeavour to look into this subject with greater liberality and see if they cannot make some effort before it is too late to more or less improve the chances of settlement in accordance with the views expressed by the local Government.
    I would like to ask, in connection with the same Protectorate, what has been done in regard to the question of the settlement of Asiatics? A Committee recently sat under Lord Sanderson, my late chief, and went into the whole question of Asiatic settlement, and they came to the conclusion that, owing to the great hostility of the settlers in East Africa, it would not be desirable to have Indian emigration; that it should not be encouraged in the uplands at all events, although in the lowlands it was possible land might be found for the purpose. In the more distant Protectorate of Uganda, it might be possible to supply them with advantage. The other Protectorate in which I am interested is what is known as the Nyasaland Protectorate. I hear extremely good accounts from Nyasaland
    1320
    of the growing of cotton. In the first place they paid more attention to the growing of coffee, but I hear now that they have got cotton in such a condition that they have the utmost hopes of growing it to a very large extent and of producing it in very paying quantities, if they could only get better methods of transferring it. They formerly used the Shire River, but it has altered of late years, and they cannot now trust to water transport, because it has shifted so much, and the river is unequal to the work. I should like to ask the Secretary of State whether His Majesty's Government would consider it possible to assist local enterprise by building railways and by giving greater facilities for transport of cotton, not in the interest of individual firms, but in the interests of the growing of cotton, which is obviously of importance, both to the Protectorate and to the Mother-country.
    Mr. CATHCART WASON: I think the Committee will agree that it is somewhat unfortunate that the question of the details of the tenure of land in East Africa should have been brought up upon this occasion, because it is perfectly certain that there is a very limited amount of knowledge at our disposal with regard to it, although in the minds of some hon. Members the amount of knowledge is much larger. I think the subject might very well have been left alone where it is in, the hands of the Colonial Secretary and the Governor of that great province. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] Because surely the whole of the land tenure of East Africa is not a very nice question to raise upon the floor of this House. The hon. Baronet has just said that commerce was not the primary object of our control over East African affairs. The railway he asked us to make was to be built solely for the purpose of getting the country into communication with the hinterland in Uganda and stopping the slavery which was then prevalent. What the Government did find was that when the railway was made it was pressed upon them from some quarters upon the Foreign Office, that they would hand over great tracks of the country to syndicates and speculators. And that is what East Africa is suffering from at the present moment. Not very long since the Under-Secretary for the Colonies, who is now Under-Secretary for War, gave me an answer to a question which I put to him in this House with regard to the population in certain lands of the East African Syndicate at the time they were

    1321
    taken over and at the present day. I did not bring the figures with me, but if I had they would astonish the Committee, for they would see that some thousands and hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle and natives have all been swept away, and that the country was then practically a desert. How far the conditions under which the East African Syndicate hold their lands have been carried out I do not know, but after some years these conditions have not in any way whatever been fulfilled.
    6.0 P.M.
    Not only is that the case, but enormous areas of land have been granted to individuals, great areas which are far more than any individual could possibly work, and now complaints come from the settlers that they are not to have equally large areas granted to them. I say it is a very unfortunate case both for East Africa and for ourselves and also for the people who are now in that country. It is a difficult question, the whole of this East African land question. We gave to these large syndicates and holders enormous tracts of land, but it is doubtful whether they will make very much money out of them. The whole problem of white settlement there is difficult. What we have seen is that the natives have been removed. I am not unduly criticising the Government or the Colonial Office for that, but they have been removed to other land in the south. It was also proposed by the Foreign Office to hand over great tracts of land with the natives in the country to persons from Central Europe for political purposes, but that calamity, by the Grace of God, was averted. These were people from whom we were desirous of getting some reciprocal advantage. In these circumstances I think the remarks of the hon. Gentleman opposite were a little unfortunate. In Sir Percy Girouard we have a Governor who is doing, as every Governor has done, very much to promote the prosperity of the country. The railways which he has suggested will be of enormous benefit. The prosperity of East Africa does not depend so much on a few white men making a little money here and a little money in land speculation there, as it does upon the small cultivator, the man who, with his own family and a few boys, is doing a little bit of work for himself. Still more does it depend upon the great native population. For example, the native sheep have absolutely no wool at all, but I noticed, a year or two ago, that by a judicious intermix-
    1322
    ture and crossing, they have managed to raise a wool which commands a fair price in the market. Other operations of commerce also are going on. The point I want to make is that the prosperity of the country depends solely upon the native population and the manner in which we treat them. There are still large numbers of these natives, and there are also settlers, whom we should do all we could to help, to promote their prosperity and comfort, to enable them to earn a livelihood, and to do something for themselves. I believe their is a great future before the people of that country.
    If I ventured any criticism at all on the administration of the Colonial Office, it would be with regard to the position they have taken up in reference to the mail service. For more years than I like to remember, we have been doing our utmost to get an improved mail service to East Africa. Thanks to the energy of the Union Castle Line, that has now been attained. But the Government are still paying something like £9,000 a year for the conveyance of mails simply from Aden to Mombassa. I contend that that money is absolutely thrown away. If it could be handed over for the purposes of the Governor, it would be an extremely desirable thing to do, because along the very fertile belt on the coast much could be done. The development of railways will increase commerce, and I believe that with a direct service every manufacturing industry in this country would profit. A little while ago we were discussing Canadian Imperial preference, but I am rather glad that the Debate has been switched off that subject, at any rate for the present. The amount of raw materials that this country requires for its industries must show us what an enormous advantage it is to us to have these great possessions in East and West Africa, in order to supply the necessities of the people of this country. If we want to promote the prosperity of East Africa, Uganda, Northern Nigeria, or Southern Nigeria, the policy we must strictly adhere to, and to which the Colonial Office have adhered, is that of seeing that the native population is properly and fairly treated, and has every consideration given to its desires.
    I was somewhat sorry to hear the remarks of the hon. Member for Salford (Sir W. Byles) with regard to affairs in West Africa. I am sure from personal knowledge that they are nothing like so bad as he would have the Committee to understand. I do not for one moment think that in

    1323
    either Northern or Southern Nigeria there is any system that can fairly be described as slavery or anything approaching it. My hon. Friend complains that it is difficult to make a bargain with an individual native, and that you have to make your bargain with the chief. That is true, but it has always been the case there. The rule of the chiefs is the whole foundation of the government of the country, and if we once upset their rule and sway over the people it will be a very serious matter indeed. To show what has been done to restore confidence in the natives, I may mention that not very long ago a native was granted a concession of a forest. He seemed to have been extremely hardly treated. Pressure was brought to bear on the administrator, and for two or three years the native was kept out of his concession. He was almost in despair of ever obtaining the property which had been given him, but the matter worked out quite fairly in the end. It went to the court of the country, and, despite all the influence that the traders could bring in the way of manufacturing evidence, the court awarded the native the concession to which he was entitled. That will show the Committee that the natives in Southern Nigeria, at any rate, have very little to complain about. From a question answered to-day, Members will see that a vast amount of the revenue of the country is derived from the taxation upon spirits. We all agree that that is a regrettable fact, but it is not a circumstance over which we have the slightest control. If the Colonial Secretary, by a wave of the hand, could to-morrow order that spirits should not be imported into Southern Nigeria, it would not have the smallest effect on the consumption of spirits in that country. Spirits would simply pour in from other parts—from Germany and from France—and, in addition, the consumption of native liquor would increase to an enormous extent. The natives of West Africa have never been a drunken people, or anything approaching a drunken people. They take a certain amount of gin, which is much less deleterious than their own produce, but to say that they are a drunken people or that the amount of spirits they consume has a deleterious effect upon them is absolutely incorrect.
    With regard to another question that was raised, I brought the matter before the House a good many years ago, and there was a strong feeling that the time had come
    1324
    when the King of Benin, who had undoubtedly been responsible for a system of atrocities, might very well be restored to his own country. To say that he is in prison is an absolute absurdity. He is going about as free as any of us, and with more wives than anybody here can command. No doubt the Ordinance is simply for the purpose of giving power to the Governor of the country, who is a most distinguished administrator, and one of the kindest-hearted men in the whole Civil Service. We ought to be absolutely proud of the gentlemen whom we send out to administer our provinces in East and West Africa, and similar countries. They are absolutely above suspicion in every possible way. They are not paid extravagant salaries, and they do their work in a manner which ought to command the admiration of everyone. One other point to which I wish to refer has reference to the insurance of persons engaged in administration in these countries. Insurance falls very heavily indeed upon them, and the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor in this House promised that the matter should be looked into and the most favourable terms possible secured. Hon. Members will recollect a somewhat painful incident which occurred a few years ago, and the then Under-Secretary for the Colonies pointed out very properly that, in such countries as East and West Africa, it was most desirable that every encouragement should be given to ladies to go with their husbands. There, I think, he was absolutely right, and he certainly gave me the impression that he would be very sympathetic towards any proposal to assist the wives of these officials to come home for an occasional holiday. It is beyond doubt that white people cannot live in countries of this kind without coming home every year or two. It is certainly very hard on a young man who is married and who is doing fairly well out there, that he should not be able to save enough money to bring his wife home. I think something ought to be done in that direction. I understand that in both the German and the French Colonies alongside ours in East and West Africa they make more liberal arrangements in regard to the wives of officials accompanying their husbands.
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: One cannot help remarking that it is somewhat extraordinary, both on this occasion when the Colonial Office Vote is under discussion, and I suppose it requires no prophet to say it will be the same on Wednesday next, when the Indian Budget will be

    1325
    before the House, that there should be so few Members belonging to an Imperial Parliament in their places. [An HON. MEMBER: "The all-night sitting."] It does not say very much for their Imperialist enthusiasm if they cannot sit up until five o'clock in the morning and then turn up in the afternoon to take part in the discussion of Imperial affairs. I make that remark very seriously, because I think that on no occasion is there a better opportunity for meeting in friendly conflict with each other to hammer out and discuss the large questions of policy which underlie the exceedingly difficult problem of governing our Empire.
    I want this afternoon not to traverse any broad field, but rather to raise one small point, upon which I regret exceedingly I am in conflict with my right hon. Friend. I refer to the way in which the Northern Masai have been treated by the Government of the East Africa Protectorate. I daresay we all remember with much delight that book of Joseph Thomson, entitled "Through Masailand," when, in the pages of the book, many of us for the first time in our existence came across this delightful tribe. Many things have happened since. One of the things is that the Masais have become a peaceful people. They have amassed much wealth in the shape of cattle. They also have become the neighbours of a somewhat aggressive community of white settlers. As my hon. Friend above me hinted, he did not exactly say so, the history of land tenure in those quarters had better be passed over in silence, if at all possible.
    Since 1904 we have committed this great crime. The Masai were divided into two sections, northern and southern. The northern section was surrounded by, or at least had as neighbours, white settlers on land outside the confines of the reserve on the map—or at any rate as allotted on the plan. A strange thing has happened, and I cannot help thinking that my right hon. Friend might have prevented it, to the honour of his office and to the benefit of the East Africa Protectorate. I would like to draw the attention of hon. Members to the correspondence in the White Paper upon which I base my case. There is a very interesting admission on page three of that White Paper. It must be remembered that the two sections of the Masai were settled by Sir Donald Stewart. When that settlement was made Sir Donald reported
    1326
    to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who was then responsible to the Government for that part of the country:
    "The Laikipia lands are well known to the Masai, and will suit them well."
    These northern lands—lands which were possessed by the Northern Masai—
    "are also a good long way from the railway, and not tempting to the present settler—"
    Sir Donald knew human nature—
    "Though"—
    This is even more significant than the point I desire to draw the attention of the Committee to—
    "Though in the future it is quite possible that when the Masai have grazed down the grass, and got it sweet, envious eyes will again be cast on their lands, and so I cannot express too strongly to your Lordship the absolute necessity of making these Laikipia lands an absolute native reserve for the Masai."
    Very well. What has happened? This White Paper shows what has happened. Apparently in 1909 there was some communication between the East Africa Protectorate and the Colonial Office, but that communication is not published in this White Paper. The first despatch that is published here is from Mr. Jackson, who was acting-Governor in the absence of Sir Percy Girouard. Without going through the despatch it is necessary to refer to it in order to make a complete story. The point of it is this: Suddenly, apparently without any warning, or consultation, of any orders, and without any conferences, Mr. Jackson reports:
    "That the Governor is eager that the Northern Masai should be moved from their lands down until they become the neighbours of the Southern Masai."
    He gives his reasons, saying that the great paramount chief, who lives in the southern reservation, finds, or he thinks he finds, that his authority is somewhat weakened in the north. He wants to reestablish his authority, and he wants the northern men to come down and be with him, so that they may be one tribe. Then, the Governor—I suppose it is Sir Percy Girouard himself—at any rate, his acting-governor—informs the Colonial Office that the transference has actually commenced. He states a little bit later on that, if any obstacle is put in its way all sorts of evils will be perfectly certain to happen. He then refers to conferences having been held. He does not refer to them in a very definite sort of way. It is very difficult to see how the conferences were held, but he informs us that they—
    "were strikingly unanimous in their decision in favour of going south, and that the proposal to go south was received with enthusiam."

    1327
    But the whole situation is given away in the very last sentence of the dispatch. Mr. Jackson says:—
    "I may say at once that although the question of throwing open the present Northern Masai Reserve to white settlement has been before the Government for some years, I was in no way actuated in the present negotiations or decision by any consideration of this kind."
    All I can say is that every letter which was received from the Colony for some time before informed us that such a design was on foot; informed us who was behind the design, informed us how it was to be accomplished, and also informed us what excuses were to be sent to the Colonial Office in order that the sanction to its accomplishment might be given.
    In those days the Noble Marquess, the Earl of Crewe, reigned at the Colonial Office. He had at his right hand my right hon. Friend, who is now the Under-Secretary of State for War. As soon as Mr. Jackson's dispatch was received a telegram was, without loss of time, sent out, telling him that the thing must be stopped. Action, it was stated, must be suspended. A dispatch, it was said, was following. In this dispatch two observations were made. The first was that the Northern Masai should not be asked to move until there was a formal abrogation of the agreement of 1904, on which the settlement had been based; and also— and this is a very important point in view of the ease with which the Colonial Office has since accepted certain reports sent from the East Africa Protectorate—it was pointed out that there were contradictions in the dispatches sent home. The suspicions of the Colonial Office were very properly aroused by certain discrepancies in the statements, and certain hints and allusions, and the check to the first move a little over twelve months ago was made. Certain correspondence followed. A very significant thing—and I hope none of these points have escaped the notice of my right hon. Friend when he was considering the whole situation and when he became responsible Minister—is that the dispatch that Sir Percy Girouard then sent contained this exceedingly suspicious suggestion:—
    "That the newly created Masai reserve was going to be put under trustees."
    Again, responsible Ministers said at once that there was to be no trustees for this sort of thing. The Government, and the Government alone, was the trustee of land reserves for native tribes. Sir Percy Girouard came home. We do not know
    1328
    what happened. We did know by correspondence what he said before he came home. We know that he delivered a speech to a pastoral association, I think it was—at any rate it was an association of settlers—before he came home, and he informed them that he was going to do his very best to get certain things in which they were interested straightened out. He hoped he would return having accomplished his object. He came home, and then he went back, and the dispatches began again. He begins by informing my right hon. Friend that the old chief (Lenana) had died. He says that from his death-bed he sent a message to the people of the Northern district that they should be good children and obey the British Government, and go South.
    That is very nice. It is much more like a Sunday School story than anything else. However, we will assume that it is correct. It probably is correct. But the merit of it is very much taken away when we remember that this chief was a salaried official of the British Government, and that he held his authority under the protection and with the approval and support of the British Government. The British Government provided him with a certain amount of money to allow him to keep up a proper state of chieftainship. The next move is conferences of the chiefs, and then on the 18th of April of this year—I am trying to shorten the story—a dispatch, is published in which we are informed that a conference had been held in the previous May, that's May of 1910, and that there was a very strong opposition on the part of at least one chief, perhaps two, to the Government; and that emissaries had been dispatched to view the offered districts to the South. The report given of the district which was offered to the Northern Masai if they would go south is epitomised in these sentences:—
    "The two men from the Northern Reserve who accompanied the party were both nominated by Legalishu, and when they returned to Laikipia in August, they reported that the proposed area was too small, that there was an insufficiency of water, and that the Sotik would steal their cattle. This report was accepted by the Chief and the Elders of the Northern Section, who-informed their District Commissioners that as their paramount Chief (Lenana) wished them to move, they were ready to go if the Governor ordered them to do so, but that they did not wish to leave Laikipia."
    That is from the White Paper. This, White Paper was presented to the Houses, in June of this year. One of the curious things of this report is that you do not get your story by reading right on. You have to fill in the blanks and compare the dispatches in order to see exactly what is

    1329
    going on. Let us follow the details further. Sir Percy Girouard comes to the point when he reports to my right hon. Friend that he has had conferences with the chiefs, that he has put the case fairly before them, that they have understood the proposition which he had made, and that they are willing to go south. My right hon. Friend, believing that he had fulfilled the conditions of the Crewe dispatch of this year, gives his sanction, and the whole thing is done. I am bound to confess that I profoundly regret, and I believe the friends of the natives out there, profoundly regret the decision of my right hon. Friend. The natives only accepted the arrangement under the very greatest pressure.
    Let me fill in the blanks in these dispatches. As I said the Crewe dispatch stopped the first migration, and just before Sir Percy Girouard came home he informed the settlers he was going to do his best to get the whole matter opened up. He did not say so in definite language, but in the general language he used he indicated that in a general way to his hearers and they understood precisely what Sir Percy Girouard was at. The second point was this. Last year there was a very short rainfall in the district of the Northern Masai. It was always the custom when grazing was bad in that district for the chiefs to apply to the Governor to allow them to graze their cattle beyond the reserve border. The usual application was made, but the Governor refused it. As soon as that was done word went abroad amongst the Northern Masai that they had incurred the grave displeasure of the Governor, and that the refusal was an indication from him that they ought to go south. The third step was that a special tax was imposed upon the cattle. I am not quite sure from what my correspondent sends me whether the tax is actually now in operation. At any rate, the tax was proposed, and again the usual thing happened. Everybody who knows the natives knows how these things are done. Suddenly, as if by magic, one does not know how or why, you discover one morning that everybody is talking about something. A rumour gets abroad that this tax was going to be imposed by the Governor as another mark of his displeasure, because the Masai had not gone south. Then pressure is brought to bear upon the District Commissioners to agree to the movement, and then behind it all there is a substantial increase in land speculation, so very much so that a farm which was
    1330
    bought from the Government for £55 at the beginning of this year was sold very shortly afterwards for £500.
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): Would my hon. Friend give me an indication of what farm that was?
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I was in correspondence with the right hon. Gentleman upon that very subject and offered, if he so desired, to give the name of the farm and the proprietor and full particulars to satisfy his wishes. He did not, in answering the letter I wrote him, refer to that matter, so I am sorry to say I am still vague, but I will undertake, as my informant is a most reliable person, to supply my right hon. Friend without any delay with the name of the farm, the proprietor and the whole circumstances of the sale, as my correspondent has empowered me to make such a statement. I will put a question to my right hon. Friend as soon as I have the information, and will fulfil the pledge I have given. Now, the final thing is, as soon as all this was done and the migration has taken place, the following paragraph appeared in the "East African Standard," dated Saturday, 10th June, 1911. This paragraph appears with several headings. The first is "Free-Grazing Land," the second is "Removal of the Masai," and the third is "Chiefs: Willing," and the paragraph reads as follows:—
    "We are officially informed that His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the Colonies has. at the-request of the Masai, sanctioned their moving from the present Northern Reserve to the extended Southern Reserve. For this we have to thank His Excellency, the Governor, who placed the matter so clearly before the-Masai, so as to cause them to realise the advantage to them of settlement on one reserve. A fine area of grazing land is now open for white settlement."
    That looks all very innocent, I am bound to say, and if I did not know something about similar conditions, I, too, might have been taken in by the innocence of the White Paper and the innocence of a paragraph such as that I have read. But there is one incident that throws a flood of light upon the whole spirit of what is going on there just now. I refer to an incident which ought to make us all feel ashamed of ourselves. I mean the Cole murder case. What are the facts? This white settler goes out one day—I am giving his own statement made before the High Court where he was tried for his life—and he imagines that three boys whom he sees have been stealing his sheep; he shoots one and he confesses he knew he struck the boy. He reports nothing-

    1331
    but leaves him as we would hardly leave a wounded rabbit on the ground. Nothing is said about it. The two boys who escape go home to their village and report the circumstances there. The circumstances so reported have to be sent back again to the place where the occurrence took place. The body of the dead boy was found after a search, a trial was instituted, and the facts were admitted. There was no defence. The jury retired and after an absence of a few minutes—I think that is the expression of the report of the trial— they returned a verdict of "Not guilty."
    I confess, although sometimes I have been classified as amongst those always willing to say and think evil things of my fellow countrymen abroad—a very unfair and unjust accusation—that incidents like that do make one feel rather ashamed, and that incident throws a searching flood of light upon the whole of the transactions to which I have directed the attention of the Committee. I sincerely regret that I hold views very strongly in opposition to my right hon. Friend in these matters. I wish he had been a little more stiff-necked than he was. I wish he had asked for more particulars before sanctioning the transfer. I wish, if I may say so, he had been a little more suspicious, because I feel perfectly certain, I may be wrong, if he had approached this problem rather in that tentative and suspicious state of mind, he would have got more information and he would have come to a conclusion different from that which he has reached. I think he has made a great blunder, I am sorry for it, and I take this the very first opportunity I have of bringing it before this Committee when my right hon. Friend is present.
    Mr. LYTTELTON: We have heard presented to the Committee by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, two serious cases. I confess I think his inference was somewhat hasty, from the incident he last adverted to, in seeking to impute to the Governor of the Colony certain things. I think if he had as much experience as I have had of the erroneous character of the reports of trials he would have hesitated before delivering so very serious an attack upon a man who is not here and upon a jury who are not here to defend themselves. The hon. Gentleman should have waited before doing so for the arrival of the official documents dealing with the
    1332
    case, because it is a grave thing to say that any jury in any colony would have absolutely acquitted a man on the report which the hon. Gentleman has read out, of the accuracy of which of course I have no knowledge whatever, but which if accurate would show that the accused was guilty of a very grave crime.
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I do not want any misunderstanding upon this point. I did not associate Sir Percy Girouard with this. I only mentioned the case as throwing a light upon the general state of feeling in the district. I should be very sorry if in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else I seemed to associate Sir Percy Girouard with the incident.
    Mr. LYTTELTON: I confess I see no relation between the two incidents mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. I am sure the hon. Gentleman or any other man ought not to reflect upon an acquittal by any jury until they know all the facts that were before them. I agree with regard to the Masai that it would be incumbent upon the Secretary of State to have before him a very strong case indeed before he sanctioned the removal of the Masai from the Northern Territory, because Sir D. Stewart, the Governor in my time, gives the reason on page 3 of the White Paper for their settlement there. He says:—
    "The Laikipia lands are well known to the Masai and will suit them well. They are a. good long way from the railway, and not tempting to the present settler, though in future it is quite possible that when the Masai have grazed down the grass and got it sweet, envious eyes will again be cast on their lands, and so I cannot express too strongly to your Lordship the absolute necessity of making these Laikipia lands an absolute native reserve for the Masai."
    That is a very strong statement, and gives reasons for its strength, and it is incumbent upon the Governor and the Secretary of State to satisfy us that there has been a very strong case for departing from that reserve. It is stated at the end of this White Paper that the representatives of the northern section of the Masai tribe have now expressed a unanimous desire to move to an extended southern reserve, and have submitted a formal agreement abrogating the agreement of 1904. The whole point of the case rests upon whether that unanimous agreement was come to, and come to in the manner which entirely satisfied the men who had to deal with it. I have not the least ground for saying, and do not intend to convey any doubt that this unanimity did not exist as stated to the Secretary of

    1333
    State for the Colonies, on the authority of the Governor, but I think in such a matter as this it would be well before the natives were called upon to give up a reserve about which a former Governor has used language such as Sir D. Stewart did, that the Secretary of State ought to satisfy himself not merely that they had unanimously resolved to abandon their existing rights, but that they did so under circumstances which fully satisfied him that they knew what they were about, that they were perfectly satisfied, and arrived at the agreement without any duress or pressure whatever. I think the Committee is entitled to ask for these assurances from the right hon. Gentleman. For myself, let the right hon. Gentleman not think that by pressing for these assurances I am for one moment suggesting that these steps have not been taken. But I think that after what has been said it would be satisfactory to the Committee that these assurances should be given at this stage. I go back to the point with which my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend opened this Debate in a speech of great interest. All those concerned with Colonial affairs have naturally had their minds largely concentrated upon the doings of the Imperial Conference. No word of criticism has passed from the mouth of anyone on this side of the House during the currency of that conference, nor, indeed, until the full report of its proceedings were laid before us. Although I have some observations of a critical character to make in regard to one important matter, I have nothing but praise to give to the Colonial Secretary for the courtesy and suavity with which he presided when he did preside over those debates. My disappointment arises from the exceedingly jejune and exiguous results of the conference. Many important proposals were made. I do not complain that they were not accepted by the Government, but many of them were asphyxiated in an atmosphere of bland inaction. There were many subjects which were untenable in the form they were brought forward, but no one seemed able to pick up the fragments, and the hand that one would have expected to have picked out the good points from the débris and formulated them into feasible and practical proposals seemed always to fail, and nobody attempted to piece them together.
    One or two suggestions were made by the Secretary for the Colonies himself, but with regard to the Standing Committee he damned his own proposal with faint
    1334
    praise. I know the difficulty and delicacy of these discussions, and how desirable it is not for a moment to try and ride such a conference under a high hand. But there is a difference between the sort of suave indifference and courtly passivity that was shown on these occasions and the courtesy which still retains the desire to persuade. People will not carry your proposals unless you show some little interest and determination. There was one exception, which I gladly recognise, and it was the exception of the discussion upon foreign policy with closed doors. That was urged from the Government in a debate initiated by two Friends of mine below the Gangway, and the Under - Secretary for the Colonies gave a reply which I do not think was quite satisfactory, and I accordingly pressed the Colonial Secretary very hard to give a categorical pledge to this House to meet our friends behind closed doors and give them full information with regard to international questions. A most full and fair promise was given by the Colonial Secretary that he would do so, and I have every reason to believe from what I have heard from the Prime Ministers of the Dominions that that promise was fully carried out. I congratulate the Government upon it, and I think it marks a most important epoch and it is certainly a most important departure for the future. I say that this question was most important. It was very important that such a conference should take place, and that has been proved by some of the speeches which were made at the Imperial Conference itself. What did the Prime Minister himself say in regard to the relation between the Imperial Government and the Dominions in matters of foreign policy? Speaking with regard to Sir Joseph Ward's proposal, which admittedly was premature, he said:—
    "It would impair, if not altogether destroy the authority of the Government of the United Kingdom in such grave matters as the conduct of foreign policy, the conclusion of treaties, the declaration and maintenance of peace or the declaration of war, and indeed all those relations with foreign powers necessarily of the most delicate character which are now in the hands of the Imperial Government, subject to its responsibility to the Imperial Government."
    And I would also ask the House to note these words:—
    "That authority cannot be shared, and the coexistence side by side with the Cabinet of the United Kingdom of this proposed body—it does not matter by what name you call it for the moment—clothed with the functions and the jurisdiction which Sir Joseph Ward proposed to invest it with, would, in our judgment, be absolutely fatal to our present system of responsible government."

    1335
    Therefore you have the Prime Minister taking up the position at the Imperial Conference itself that in all matters of foreign policy the Imperial Government decline altogether to share any portion of their authority with the Dominion Parliament. What did Sir Wilfrid Laurier say in the same debate. When Mr. Fisher brought up a resolution enforcing the necessity of consulting the Dominions before any important question of foreign policy was entered upon, or before any important instrument was signed. Sir Wilfrid Laurier deprecated that Resolution on the ground that if we consulted them the Dominions themselves would, by assenting to the policy, commit themselves to any war which might be its consequence. Sir Wilfrid Laurier said:—
    "No, we come here to discuss certain questions; but there are questions which seem to me to be eminently in the domain of the United Kingdom We may give advice if our advice is sought; but if your advice is sought, and if you tender it, I do not think the United Kingdom can undertake to carry out this advice unless you are prepared to back that advice with all your strength, and take part in the war and insist upon having the rules carried out according to the manner in which you think the war should be carried out."
    The Committee will see that the British Prime Minister proclaimed that he was not desirous of giving any share whatever to the Dominions in regard to our foreign policy, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier practically said that he was desirous of avoiding any such share if it was proffered. It is only fair to say that that attitude has been energetically repudiated in Canada, but I think this only shows how strong and how acute the necessity is that our Dominions should have before them a full view of the international situation, because when that is explained to them thoroughly, as I believe it was at the recent conference, I think they will see that the position taken up cannot be maintained. I think the Prime Minister will see that this is a position which cannot be maintained, and that we cannot seek for any assistance from the Dominions unless we give them some voice in the determination of our foreign policy, and, on the other hand, they cannot avoid the responsibility of making some sacrifice if they became partners with us in the foreign policy of the Empire.
    With the exception, and it is a very important exception of the foreign policy with which I have just dealt, little was accomplished at the Conference. I must say that I thought there was a sufficient weight of opinion—and I believe there was a sufficient weight of opinion if the matter
    1336
    had been energetically pressed—in favour of the formation of some standing, committee or secretariat in which all the members of the conference should be represented in order to continue this business between the conferences. As many hon. Members know, a proposal to that effect was brought forward by the last Government in a despatch written by me in 1905, and a proposal of this kind was mooted in 1907 and was very strongly supported by Mr. Deakin, Dr. Jameson, and Sir Joseph Ward. It was simply a business suggestion; I pointed out, and it was pointed out by many others how lamentable it was that during the intervening time between the sessions of the conference many important matters, not highly controversial, but extremely complicated, should not be worked out by continued effort. One of my hon. Friends said that many of the subjects placed before the conference were not prepared carefully, and why were they not prepared? Simply because during the interval between the conferences-no body of persons exists to arrange these questions. The result is that you have this extraordinary unbusinesslike arrangement. You have men coming from, all parts of the world immensely busy and heavily burdened by hospitalities and ceremonies, they meet together in the morning for perhaps three weeks and the business is absolutely congested. If you only chose to accept the businesslike suggestion that a body of industrious and able men without any executive or advisory authority should meet together for the purpose I have suggested, they might be able to boil down and digest into a proper form for discussion by the conference the many subjects with which they ought to-deal, and which are not at all controversial. A mere glance at some of the resolutions passed at the recent conference reminds one somewhat of the proceedings in this House on a Friday afternoon, when mere vague resolutions without any decision or form in them are discussed. Take this resolution, for example:—
    "That it is desirable that the attention of the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the Dominions should be drawn to the desirability of taking all practical steps to secure uniformity of treatment to British shipping, to prevent unfair competition with British ships by foreign subsidised ships, to secure to British ships equal trading advantages with foreign ships."
    7.0 P.M.
    The same applies to the resolution dealing with uniformity in law of copyright, patents, trade marks, and companies. Passing resolutions of this kind has not

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    taken the matter an inch more forward, and they have been before almost every conference that has taken place, and yet we are treated with these resolutions every time. They serve no useful service except that of passing away time which might be more, usefully employed in dealing with matters which do affect the Empire and which show some prospect of attaining the aspirations which are embodied in them. I could give many more of the kind, but I will not weary the House. Hon. Members have only to look at the resolutions at the beginning of this volume, and they will find nine or ten of them fail to carry the subject one inch further than it was carried in 1907. I suggest once more, without unduly blaming the Colonial Secretary, in reference to his own proposal—I do not approve of that proposal myself; it was simply a proposal for a Standing Committee from the Colonial Office with Agents-General, and I do not think it would do—that if he had pressed that proposal with some real arguments and with some modifications giving representation to the Dominions he might have had more success.
    I come now to the Commission. I am very anxious to reinforce the request made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow (Mr. Mackinder) for some definite information with regard to the reference. I assume, until I hear to the contrary, the reference will be in the form of the resolution. I wish to know whether any alteration of that resolution is to be suggested, and I also want to know whether, if no alteration is suggested, in the right hon. Gentleman's opinion the Crown Colonies are included in that resolution. I want to know, in other words, whether there is to be any obstacle placed in the way of the Royal Commission making the investigations which are entrusted to them in the Crown Colonies as well as in the Self-governing Dominions. I think that is a matter of great importance. It is useless to do these things piecemeal; you should do them once and for ever. I do not myself attach quite so much importance to the proviso at the end, timidly inserted by His Majesty's Government, as some of my hon. Friends have done. I am sure that everybody must welcome the entry into our Debates of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Sir Max Aitken), for his speech was packed with knowledge and suggestion upon this matter, and it was also extremely brief—two things which
    1338
    make any speaker popular in this House. I quite agree with him it is rather singular that His Majesty's Government, having appointed a Commission to deal with the relations between the West Indies and Canada, with a reference which enabled them to report upon methods of preference and having received from admitted Free Traders, looking at the matter on its merits, a report which did advise His Majesty's Government as to methods of preference, and having seen the great converting effect of. real facts even upon free traders, should endeavour to exclude from their Commissioners on this occasion a full opportunity of reporting unbiassed and unfettered. I confess I do not attach very much importance to it. I remember very well what used to be said by Mr. Benjamin Constable, when he had a good case: "I do not care who presents the arguments, so long, my Lord, as I am allowed to state the facts." Depend upon it, once these Commissioners—of course, I assume they will be impartially chosen—come, as Lord Balfour of Burleigh did, to breathe an air less obsessed by Free Trade doctrines than the air of this country, they will, when they find the facts, place them in their report before this House in such a way that the inference can be readily and properly drawn from that report. I think that is clear, but I also attach great weight to the atmosphere they will breathe when they go to the great Dominions. I do not know whether it is worth while referring to the statement made in their debate, but Sir Wilfrid Laurier was opposed to the policy of preference, but, of course, anybody who has studied the Blue Books knows that for years past at all conferences resolutions in favour of preference have been passed by the Canadian Government, among others. Sir Wilfrid Laurier is reported in "The Times," in this very year, when speaking upon this very subject, to have said:—
    "Canada's policy was set forth at the Imperial Conference of 1902, when the Dominion Ministers announced that they were prepared to give Great Britain a preference on manufactured goods in Canadian markets, if Great Britain gave Canada preference on natural products in her market."
    A more distinct declaration or advocacy of preference could not possibly be made. I take it the good side of this Commission will be that it will get on the spot and have the great facts of trade before its eyes. It will get away for a time, I trust, from the prejudices which are naturally current in this country, and, though it may not be able by its

    1339
    Reference to actually recommend the methods, it will be able to state the facts from which those methods and those remedies can be easily inferred. I trust there will not be an enormous delay either in the appointment of the Commission or in the prosecution of their work. There have been delays in some very important matters already. The All-Red Route has been referred to this Commission, and may be hung up another three or four years. I would also remind the House and the Colonial Secretary that shipping and the conditions of trade have been the subject of elaborate reports in almost all the countries over which the Commission will go, and there are a good many changes in those conditions constantly occurring. I dare say the Panama Canal will vitally alter the conditions on the Continent and in countries over seas. I trust this Commission will get to work early, and that the Colonial Secretary will give me an answer to the question originally put by my hon. Friend behind me, and which I have enforced and will allay our feelings as to whethere there is to be any change in the resolution adopted by the conference.
    I do not take the dark view of Imperial matters, but I hope we may, at all events, get a good way removed from that nebulous and unreal optimism which has been rather prevalent of late. We have all become aware that we are members of an Empire consisting of nations wholly independent, at any rate, in their local affairs and practically independent also in all other affairs, but we have, I hope most of us agree, a capacity to develope a common policy. That policy, as a late distinguished man said, and I think His Majesty's Government agree, ought to be to work together, to co-operate, and not to concentrate. I have always endeavoured ever since I have had anything to do with these matters, to ensure and to promote co-operation so far as possible in small things as well as in great, but I must say a perusal of this Blue Book and a study of all the conferences which have taken place convinces me that, though in small matters we may do something, cooperation becomes more and more difficult in an Empire which consists of many protected States and of one non-protected State. It is especially so when the non protected State holds, under the guidance, and I think the deplorable guidance, of His Majesty's Government, far more rigid doctrines of Free Trade than ever
    1340
    did the illustrious founder of Free Trade himself. The fact emerges as we study any one of the reports of these conferences. Whenever you come, as one of my hon. Friends behind me said, to the really important point you are headed back by the Government, not by practical considerations but by narrow, theoretical dogmas, long since really exploded, even in the minds of those who are Free Traders by theory, but who see in the changed condition of things the necessity for a more elastic and enlightened doctrine. I think this creed or dogma should not arrest co'-operation between the States of an Empire and that we should have more opportunities of working together. I am sure His Majesty's Government wish we could work together. My own belief is that not until the Government get a clear mind—a less rigid, dogmatic mind, on these subjects—can a really effective co-operation be worked.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I think the office which I have the honour to occupy should at least be congratulated that, in a Debate of more than three hours and a half, so few should have been the subjects of serious attack or criticism upon the administration of any of the departments of that office. Both the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker) and the right hon. Gentleman who has just concluded have endeavoured, I think with some want of success, by a mixture of blessing and of damning to water the praise which they felt, otherwise compelled to bestow on the Imperial Conference. Both of them had to admit, which, indeed, was clear from all the statements by the Prime Ministers of the Dominions, that we have made a great, probably the greatest step forward in the direction of Imperial co-operation which has ever been taken in the history of this country or of the Colonies. The hon. Member for Gravesend said we had tied our hands over preference. Our hands were willing to be tied, but they were not tied by us; they were tied by the votes of the Constituencies in two elections since the last conference was held. It was, perhaps, under those circumstances, hardly surprising that no suggestion of preference was made at any time or by any person to the conference which has just closed. We have known very well that these Dominions are anxious and have asserted their anxiety at home not to impose any added or fresh sufferings on the poor taxpayers in this country. I can understand hon. Members may have felt a little disappointment at this part of the conference,

    1341
    and I do not grudge them their natural desire to give the old nag an airing when they get a chance on an afternoon like this. We have had the old arguments, highly concentrated, in favour of preference produced to-day, although at the conference itself preference was never alluded to.
    Sir GILBERT PARKER: It is a policy at any rate supported by a very great body of the people of this country.
    Mr. HARCOURT: That may be so, but I would suggest that it has become rather groggy in the legs after the last two General Elections. The resolution for the Royal Commission on Imperial Trade was moved by Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the amendment which I suggested to it was readily accepted by Sir Wilfrid, it being felt, I think, by all the Premiers of the Dominions who took part in that discussion, that my additional words were just as necessary from their point of view as they were from our own.
    Mr. LYTTELTON: They did not say so.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I will give the right hon. Gentleman the quotation which will perhaps satisfy him. Mr. Fisher said:—
    "It (the Royal Commission on Trade) ought not to dogmatise as to the right way for each and all of them to conduct their own affairs."
    That was a particular allusion to the amendment I have moved. Sir Joseph Ward said:—
    "I think the suggested amendment is one that is essential to enable us to arrive at a unanimous decision upon a question of this kind…. We are committed to our respective fiscal systems, and I think no Commission should be empowered to suggest to any of us what our fiscal policy be."
    Sir Wilfrid Laurier, later on, said the speech of Sir Joseph Ward showed how necessary some such addition as this was to the resolution. The resolution does not bind any Dominion not to carry any legislation it may choose, but it does bind the Commission not to make recommendations as to the fiscal policy of any part of the Empire, and the members of the conference were just as anxious that this Commission should not waste its time in suggesting Free Trade to Australia or Canada, as we were that it should not waste our time by suggesting Protection to us. I was asked by one of the speakers whether a tax on corn would be inconsistent with the instructions to the Commission. Certainly a tax on corn, whether preferential or not, would be contrary to the present fiscal system of Great Britain,
    1342
    and I cannot imagine that the proposed Commission would have any power to enter into such an inquiry. It was not our intention, at any rate, in constituting, the Commission, that it should undertake such work.
    Sir GILBERT PARKER: What about the taxes on tea and tobacco?
    Mr. HARCOURT: My observations apply equally to tea and tobacco taxes, if there be any preferential element in them. But I will not be drawn into a general discussion on these matters at a moment when I have so many other subjects to deal with. I have been asked as to the terms of reference to the Commission. I had always assumed, speaking generally, and without absolutely committing myself, that the terms of the resolution would roughly be the terms of reference. It is only, in fact, the acute suspicions given utterance to by hon. Members opposite that have put into my mind the idea that the wording of the resolution may want tightening up, and if I find that an inquiry into the fiscal policy of different parts of the Empire may still slip through on a reference drawn in the exact terms of the resolution I shall not hesitate to change the terms of that reference. The Commission, of course, applies only to those Dominions represented at the conference and to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It does not apply either to India or to the Crown Colonies, and it has never been suggested that the inquiries of this Commission should be extended to those dependencies of the Crown. The object of the Commission is admirably stated in Sir Wilfrid Laurier's speech, and it would not be difficult, if any extended reference were-necessary, to get it from that document.
    The right hon. Gentleman opposite said just now that in the intervals between conferences there was much work which might be done if only we had the machinery to do it. But the right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten that the machinery has been set up and is at work, and the secretariat, of the conference has given so much, satisfaction to the members of the conference that they apparently do not wish for any improvement on it. You cannot expect the Premiers of the Dominions to send over here to the secretariat rough drafts of the resolutions which they want framed. It would be an impertinent thing to suggest that they should have their resolutions framed here. But when the right

    1343
    hon. Gentleman says that we want a working body to boil down the material for the conference he makes a great mistake, because the secretariat has already been at work two years in making a digest of the material for the conference, and I would commend that digest to his attention. I cannot admit the reference made by the right hon. Gentleman to the West Indian Commission. I will not enter at length on that topic now, but the right hon. Gentleman treated that report as if it were in favour of Preference, as part of the policy of Tariff Reform. I went into the recommendations of the Commission, and I should say that in the main they were exactly the reverse of the policy of the party opposite. The recommendations are for cheaper flour and dearer rum. That is certainly not the policy of the party opposite for this country.
    Any attempt to measure the accomplishments of the Imperial Conference merely by the resolutions passed must give inadequate results. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the results of the conference as having been jejune and exiguous. Perhaps they may be so if only measured by the resolutions, but in fact they certainly are not so. The right hon. Gentleman said something about the Emigration Information Office, and he put words into our mouths which we never used at all in regard to it. We are supposed to have told the conference that the Emigration Information Office here had produced a large increase of emigration. We never said anything of the sort. We said that that office had, on the whole, with great success, directed the stream of emigration to our Dominions as against foreign countries, and we also stated that it had amply fulfilled the object for which it was created, which was to give absolutely true and accurate information to intending emigrants.
    Next the right hon. Gentleman dealt with what he called my Standing Committee. It was a mistake to refer to it as an alternative to the Imperial Council, which was first suggested by Sir Joseph Ward. My Standing Committee was an attempt to meet the New Zealand Resolution No. 3, moved by Sir Joseph Ward, which is to be found on page 3 of the Blue Book, containing the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Conference. It did in effect meet the views of Sir Joseph Ward, and of the representatives of Australia, but it did not appeal to the other members of the
    1344
    conference, and, therefore, could not be proceeded with. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that I tried to damn my own proposal. I did nothing of the sort. He must remember the position in which I was. I was endeavouring to lead the Premiers on to a greater advance than they were willing to make, and the ultimate position was: "No. Steady, young man, you are going too fast." I had to accept that position—a position in which no British Minister has ever been before, in offering to the Dominions a greater amount of consultative power than they themselves sought.
    Mr. LYTTELTON: But at the very outset the right hon. Gentleman spoke so lightly of his proposal as to produce that attitude in the minds of the Premiers.
    Mr. HARCOURT: That is a wholly imaginary opinion. It certainly is not my own opinion, nor is it, I think, the opinion of the Premiers, who, on the contrary, thought at one time that I was unduly pressing on them what was only intended as a concession. My case was put forward strongly, and had there been anything more I could have done with advantage it certainly would have been done. I willingly accepted the decision of the conference, however, that at present they would not go as far as I was prepared to go. The hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Mackinder) seemed to be under the impression that the Dominions were not satisfied with the arrangements made for the Court of Appeal. I think he cannot have read the Paper on that subject by the Lord Chancellor, which only came out in a volume published the day before yesterday, and which states that the proposed strengthening of the Court of Appeal has given ample satisfaction to every Dominion represented at the conference. The consultations in the Committee of Defence have been of great value. It is quite true I made a definite promise in this House early in the year that such a course would be taken. I said at the time, but the right hon. Gentleman seemed to doubt our intentions that we had always intended to take these Dominions into our confidence in that way. In the course of his remarks the hon. Gentleman (Sir G. Parker) suddenly branched off into the liquor trade in Nigeria. I do not really know why Nigeria was introduced into that part of his speech, as it had no relevance to the conference.
    Sir G. PARKER: The question of the treatment of the native races very properly comes within the purview of the Imperial Conference.
    Mr. HARCOURT: I will deal with the hon. Gentleman's statements as to Nigeria and the spirit trade. He told the House that fines are paid in the courts in gin. That is a statement which has been made for a long time, and has been constantly contradicted, and it is very difficult to dispose of it. The payment of fines in gin has been, for something like ten years, illegal in Nigeria. They have never been paid in Government courts in gin. It was only a few years ago that some isolated cases in native courts were discovered where the fines were paid in gin. The moment it was brought to the attention of the governor the practice was put a stop to, and there is nothing of the kind in operation, and there has not been for some years.
    Sir G. PARKER: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman does not want to go back upon the report of the Commission appointed by his Government. That report says the attention of the Commission was called to the fact that five native courts in the Brass district had imposed pecuniary fines which had been paid in gin. This was contrary to the instructions of the Government in 1901, which appeared to have been overlooked in consequence of the rapid change of officers. Moreover in backward districts, where gin was the only available means of exchange, considerable hardship would be inflicted on the defendants if the native clerk of the court had refused to accept payment of fines in the only available means of exchange.
    Mr. HARCOURT: That is exactly what I said. It was only in the native courts that it happened, and it was put a stop to immediately.
    Sir G. PARKER: Are not the native courts under the jurisdiction of the crown?
    Mr. HARCOURT: That is quite a different thing from the Government courts. Of course, they are under the jurisdiction but they are not under the management of the Government in the same way that the Government courts are. I suppose the hon. Gentleman accepts my assurance that the payment of fines in gin has absolutely stopped.
    Sir G. PARKER: This is only two years ago.
    Mr. HARCOURT: It has absolutely stopped since that time. The discovery that it was going on in some of these native courts was new to the Governor, and was certainly new to us here. In order that we shall give them a better currency than gin every step has been taken to encourage the use of coin there. You cannot change the habits of a people merely by proclamation, but during the last ten years eight millions sterling of silver have been absorbed by Southern Nigeria for the purpose of coinage, and last year alone £600,000 of silver went into the country, greatly to the advantage of the Exchequer here. I think temperance advocates in the House ought to be not ungrateful to the Government of Southern Nigeria for the fact that we have now put the duties on spirits up to 200 per cent. of their value. It is quite true that the result may be to yield a larger revenue, and then we are attacked because it is wicked to obtain a revenue from spirit duty. You cannot have it both ways. If the duty is removed it will come in free, and that will lead to a much greater consumption. But we have done more than that; we have given great encouragement to the importation of a much weaker kind of spirit by putting 2½d. a gallon more duty on spirit above 50 degrees and reducing the duty when it is weaker than 50 degrees. There is an impression that the amount of alcohol that goes into Southern Nigeria is greatly increasing. It would not be surprising if it did, because, of course, the population is increasing, and trade of all kinds is spreading all over the country. But when you translate the gallons of spirit now brought into the country into gallons of proof spirit, and compare them for a series of years the result is really satisfactory for those who are interested in temperance in this country. The average imports of proof spirit for the years 1902–4, were 8,900,000 gallons; for 1905–7, 8,700,000 gallons; and for 1908–10, 8,600,000 gallons; so that although the fluid gallons introduced into the country, because the spirit is weaker, are much larger in quantity, the actual amount of alcohol is considerably smaller than it was ten years ago. I shall certainly continue to take every available step which I can take to increase the sobriety of a people which is already not an uncover one.
    Sir G. PARKER: Would the right hon. Gentleman say on what policy the prohibition of the sale of spirits is founded in other Crown Colonies?
    Mr. HARCOURT: Each Colony, of course, has to be dealt with according to the type of its natives and the circumstances of the Colony. In Southern Nigeria we found the liquor trade there when we went there. In many of the other Colonies—in most, I believe, we did not find the liquor trade, and we took early steps to keep it out. The hon. Member (Sir W. Byles) spoke of the native house rule policy. It only applies to the eastern province of Nigeria, and it was a legacy from the Protectorate which we took over there. It was introduced originally to abolish the difference between domestic slaves and members of the house and to give the former the full rights of the latter, but at the same time still to confirm certain tribal and chieftain authority which is still necessary for the execution of local government there. The system, I believe, has worked on the whole fairly well, but it is not one which ought to be maintained. It is a system which is essentially temporary and transitional. As my hon. Friend knows, the officer administering the Government in Southern Nigeria has already been asked for a report on the subject. There has been a great deal of difference of opinion over the matter, and the final report has not yet been received. I think I ought to wait for the report, obviously I must, before I can take any action on the matter. The hon. Gentleman also spoke of the king who was exiled from Benin. A technical doubt has arisen as to the long past action of the Governor of the Gold Coast in relation to the king and this ordinance is to validate it There is no idea of setting up any form of autocracy there.
    Sir W. BYLES: When you say validate you mean indemnify?
    Mr. HARCOURT: I mean to validate past action. I believe myself that the ordinance was unnecessary, but it is only intended to clear up a technical doubt, because I believe the ex-king has suddenly taken, under legal advice, some technical point as to past action. I do not know whether my hon. Friend knows the circumstances well. The king was deported to Calabar by order of the Consul-General in 1907. That was after the expedition to
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    Benin to avenge the cruel and horrible massacre of Consul-General Phillips and his party.
    Sir W. BYLES: Sir Henry Johnson describes it as very rash.
    Mr. HARCOURT: The expedition may have been rash, but I am informed it was unarmed, and certainly I do not think we need waste any sympathy upon this individual, who, I am informed, was the cruellest chieftain that ever existed in our territories; nor need we fear that he is under specially unpleasant circumstances just now. He has never been a prisoner. He is more in the nature of a pensioner. He receives £180 a year and lives in his own house. But he cannot be allowed to go back to Benin, which is now becoming a sort of model town. It has its own national council and enjoys the luxury of paying a water rate.
    The hon. Gentleman (Sir Clement Hill) spoke at some length on the East Africa Protectorate in relation to land. He pointed out that there have been several policies there in the past. There was first of all the policy of giving anyone who wanted it a freehold and letting them have it pretty cheap. There was a second policy of giving leases for ninety-nine years, and there was a suggestion of leases for twenty-one and forty-two years, and lastly there is the policy, on which he quite rightly says I have insisted, of a lease of ninety-nine years revisable at intervals of thirty-three, and sixty-six years on a basis of 5 per cent. of the unimproved value, of course with a maximum of 9d. per acre in the thirty-third and 2s. 3d. in the sixty-sixth year. There will also be brought into operation a graduated land tax to check excessive accumulation, and provision is being made against dummying, which has been all too common. The hon. Baronet seems to think that these terms are so unsatisfactory that they may check the development of the country. Lord Kitchener thinks them so good that he has recently become a leaseholder in East Africa. The policy in East Africa permits of ample and sufficiently rapid expansion and development, but it does at the same time secure to the Government some fair but small return in the future for the improvements they have made and are making.
    I was asked a question as to the Indian policy in the East African Protectorate. Indians are not encouraged in the Uplands, though they are not legally prohibited from

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    going there, but undoubtedly Indians can live well in the lower parts, whereas the Uplands are essentially the white man's country of the East African Protectorate. In regard to the hon. Gentleman's remarks on transport in Nyasaland, the Shire River, as he knows, is only available for the passage of shallow boats for six months in the year, and, owing to this, the trade on the whole of the route is suffering very severely. I have been doing what I can; I have been hurrying out a motor-lorry which the Government thinks would be of the greatest possible assistance. I will not say anything at this moment about railway extension, because there are matters in connection with it which if mentioned would only defeat the object which the hon. Gentleman and I and the whole House have in view. The progress of Nyasaland has been most encouraging during the last three years. In 1908–9 the tobacco grown was 500,000 pounds. In 1909–10 it was 1,000,000 pounds, and in the following year it was 2,000,000 pounds. It seems to go on in geometrical progression. Cotton was last year 1,700,000 pounds, which was exactly double what was produced in the previous year. I do not think anyone would doubt the desire of the Colonial Secretary to assist such booming prosperity which must bring so much advantage to the Protectorate itself and its neighbours.
    The hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) made, with all his adroitness, what seemed a very formidable case against me and the Colonial Office on the question of the Masai in the East African Protectorate. The right hon. Gentleman opposite said quite fairly that the case, made in that way, should be met with a full explanation of the circumstances under which the movement had been authorised. I do not want to weary the House, because they have been given the story in the form of correspondence, but I wish to state the facts in my own way. The Masai have been spoken of as if they were the only native inhabitants of the country. Of course, there are millions of others, such as the Wakikuyu and Wakamba. The Masai are only quite a small tribe, numbering about 30,000. The proposal for the move from the northern territory was made to them through Sir James Sadler. In 1909 he found the paramount chief in favour of the move, because any division of the tribe made the control of the paramount chief more difficult. The essential difficulty involved is that about
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    every four years the divisions of the tribe have to join together for the ceremony of the E-unoto, or circumcision. Last time Lenana brought the tribes down to the Southern Reserves. But there is difficulty in keeping open the road between the Northern and the Southern Reserve, although it was promised that such a road should be kept open. It is well known regarding this question of the Masai that they go about the country with their flocks and herds. They are not dealers in cattle, they are collectors of cattle. It was found impossible to keep this half-mile-broad road open between the Northern and Southern Reserves owing to the necessary quarantine against stock fever and other things. Consequently movement was impossible over the supposed road. It was essential to have one paramount chief, and, as had been mentioned, Mr. Jackson, who was Acting-Governor, in a despatch in March, 1910, gave a description of a meeting he himself had with the Masai. At that meeting there were also present, Mr. Collier, who had been in charge of the Laikipia Reserve, Lord Delamere, who gave up some of his northern land to help to make that reserve, and Mr. McClure, District Commissioner of the Southern Reserve. According to Mr. Jackson's account, which no one will doubt, the Masai came to a unanimous and even enthusiastic decision to move to the Southern Reserve. I may allude, in passing, to the size of the new Southern Reserve.
    It is proposed to add to the old Southern Reserve area 8,920 square miles, and the reserve they are coming from is only 4,770 square miles in extent. The additional land provided in the Southern Reserve is double the area which they had in the north. When this report came from Mr. Jackson, we very properly, in April, 1910, drew the attention of the Governor to the old arrangement of 1904. Lord Crewe said he would only give his consent on clear proof of the wish of the Masai to move. Lord Crewe also laid down that the new document must have equal formality with the old; that there must be a calling together of the chiefs of the tribe; that the agreement must bear the signatures or marks of the chiefs; that the agreement must be interpreted and explained to them, and that it must be made clear to the Masai that they were under no pressure by the Government. Lord Crewe said that if this was done it would be

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    a conclusive answer to those who said it is done in the interests of others than the Masai. All these things have been absolutely fulfilled. The proposal which was mentioned—to place the Masai Reserve in the hands of trustees—was vetoed by the Colonial Office as the Government must remain responsible trustees for this. I came to the Colonial Office in November of last year. I delayed, intentionally, taking action in this matter. I was ill at the time, but I saw the Governor, and I had a long discussion with him as to the exact situation of the Masai, the opinions of the individual chiefs, and the performance of these ceremonies. I talked with him about the tribal control, the cattle diseases, and the quarantine, and I came to the conclusion that the concentration of the Masai in the Southern Reserve was greatly to be desired; that it would be to the advantage of the tribes in the East Africa Protectorate; that it would be to the advantage of the Protectorate; and that it would be to the advantage of good government and the progress of civilisation. I told him quite plainly I would not consider the matter without Lord Crewe's provisions being absolutely Fulfilled to the letter. He left knowing what my views were, and in order to prevent the movement of the Masai when he was at sea I sent the telegram, which appears in the White Paper, to say that no movement was to take place as the Governor was on his way.
    A month later the Paramount Chief died. He is reported to have made a dying speech, ordering the Masai to the Southern Reserve. I would not be surprised if he made that speech, as he had attached much importance in life to the subject of the move. But I am not moving the Masai into the South Africa Protectorate on the strength of a dying speech. The death led to a meeting of the representatives of the whole tribe, both of the north and south, on. 2nd April of this year. They unanimously appointed Segi as successor to Lenana. He was only thirteen and they therefore, necessarily, appointed two regents. They appointed a cousin of Lenana's for the south and, for the north, Legalishu. These were probably the two strongest and most powerful men in the whole of the tribe. At that meeting a desire was expressed on behalf of the Northern Masai to move to the Southern Reserve. Legalishu expressed this wish to the people who were present at the
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    meeting. They were told by Mr. Lane (the Provincial Commissioner) and Mr. Hollis that if these were their opinions they must go to Nairobi and see Sir Percy Girouard. They came to Nairobi and he said to them that if they moved it must be an absolutely free and voluntary move. He told them they were completely free to accept or reject the amendment, and that if they rejected the proposal made to them we adhered absolutely to our past pledges as to the territory they were in. Legalishu said it was their own wish they should be allowed to move south. Sir Percy Girouard met the Masai chiefs again. He had with him the members of the Executive Council of the East Africa Protectorate and his Provincial Commissioners. He asked the Masai if they wished to move to the south. They said "Yes." They said they wished the water supply to be improved, and so anxious were they to move that they gave some of their bullocks as a contribution for the improvement of the water supply. They asked the few Europeans who were on the Southern Reserve to be removed, and that they should have some protection from Sotik raids. Sir Percy Girouard said he would do what he could for them in these matters. The treaties were then translated and explained to the Masai chiefs. Eighteen of them eventually signed it, and it was attested by ten European witnesses who were present. So careful was the Governor to get the assent of all the Masai that the treaty was actually sent to two old chiefs, including Masikondi, who had not been able to come to Nairobi for the discussion. The treaty with the covering despatch reached me on 16th May, and I gave it a fortnight's very careful consideration. I knew that a move could only be made in the early summer, and therefore I gave my assent to moving the Masai to the Southern Reserve on the 29th May.
    It was absolutely impossible that I could take any other course but move the Masai to the south. That action has the approval of many of the past and of the present Governor. It has the approval of the Provisional Commissioner, the Secretary for Native Affairs, and, in addition to that, all Lord Crewe's conditions have been, as I have shown, absolutely fulfilled. The removal was desired by the Masai themselves. I am also able to tell the Committee that the treaty was approved by the missionaries who had been working in the country, and who had been good friends of the. natives. It had the approval of the

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    late Dr. Scott, who had charge of the Church of Scotland Mission in East Africa, and of the Rev. C. Hulbert, of the Africa Inland Mission. It has the approval of Bishop Allgeyer, in charge of the Catholic Mission of the Holy Ghost at Nairobi, and of Bishop Peel, of the English Church at Mombasa. I do not think a more complete case of justification of the very anxious work which was undertaken could possibly be made. At all events, I think the Committee will see that the decision has not been come to without the closest consideration and anxiety for the natives in that part. I would like to allude to the unhappy case of the acquittal referred to by the hon. Member. There is a full report coming home of this case, and, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, we should defer our consideration of the case until we get the full report. I telegraphed at once when the trouble began, to inquire if an appeal could be made under the procedure of the criminal code. The hon. Gentleman thought I had made a legal blunder. I quite admit that we English view an appeal against an acquittal as a horrible thing, but it is possible and necessary in certain cases under the Indian code. The finding of the jury was on a matter of fact, and therefore no appeal was possible. If I find that the system of trial by jury in the East Africa Protectorate leads to constant miscarriages of justice, I should consider what further steps I should take for the maintenance of the administration of justice.
    Mr. G. STEWART: It may seem ungracious after the speech of the Secretary for the Colonies to offer some of that criticism which he seemed to look for. I propose to devote my remarks to what I consider an injustice which is being inflicted on Hong Kong in connection with the suppression of the revenue from opium. I do not propose to go into the question of the merits or demerits of the opium trade beyond saying it has been a recognised source of revenue ever since the place was taken. The conditions which have prevailed in connection with that trade are things for which the Government are essentially responsible, and they must take good steps to control the traffic. If the Government derive a good revenue from opium, it means that the article becomes dearer and the consumption is thereby reduced. In regard to this particular question the House is in this position. This House makes the laws,
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    and the Colony pays the Bill. I am sure the House does not wish to lay itself open to the charge of interfering injuriously with an unrepresented place. The revenue from opium amounted a few years ago to 2,000,000 dollars, now it is about 1,000,000 dollars, and as the opium trade is doomed it will shortly amount to nothing at all. If you take the period of twenty years and reckon the revenue as amounting to 1,000,000 dollars, or £100,000, you produce a capital value of £2,000,000, and this House admits that it has some responsibility in regard to the suppression of this great revenue. You offered £9,000 in 1910, £12,000 in 1911, and £12,000 in 1912. Therefore you are giving them a total sum of £33,000 for the loss of a revenue which has been in existence for seventy years, and which has oscillated between £100,000 and £200,000. From the method of taxation levied on the colony, the grant you nominally give is absolutely nullified by the way you collect your military contribution. It is 20 per cent. of the gross revenue of the colony. It is quite right and proper that people who enjoy our protection should pay for it, but you collect 20 per cent. on the credit side of the Government account. There is one item which I happened to come across in the Colonial Blue Book which I think must convince any man that a change is called for in the present system. That is the post office, for which the colony receives 400,000 dollars, but you will find that the colony has to expend 460.000 dollars to run the post office, and therefore there is a loss of 60,000 dollars. I am sure the House will recognise that that is a most unfair and unbusinesslike transaction to charge 80,000 dollars, or £8,000, a year on a department which is worked at a great loss already. I am glad to see the Under-Secretary for War present, for I know that he has taken an interest in this matter. He closed the opium divans. I admit that they were somewhat unsightly places, but at any rate they were under the close supervision of the police. When the right hon. Gentleman locked up the divans, he no doubt felt that he had done a good stroke of business, but it did not stop opium smoking. He took up the position rather of the sanitary engineer who proceeded to close up the old cesspools before making new drains. What happened was that the deleterious matter which used to be collected in these places leaked all over the town and contaminated the whole locality. The opium smokers provided themselves with clubs, or they

    1355
    debauched themselves at home. At any rate, the police, who were very much overworked already, had to devote themselves to the suppression of opium smoking, and the criminal population, of which there are many, became very active, and assaults on the person and burglaries increased to a most, surprising and deplorable extent.
    Mr. THEODORE TAYLOR: Does the hon. Member say that assaults on the person increased in consequence of the closing up of the divans?
    Mr. G. STEWART: What I mean is that the police who were chasing opium smokers were unable to give to the rest of the population the protection they used to have. There is a difference between Hong Kong and India in this matter of opium. India has been compensated by the enormous accession in the price of the raw article. Hong Kong does not deal in the article at all. It merely exercises a benevolent supervision over the consumption of the noxious drug. The legislation of this House has forced upon Hong Kong the creation of a preventive service, in addition to new taxation. It has happened at a most inopportune time in the financial position of the colony. Those who take an interest in Chinese railways know, that in order to secure that, the terminus of what will be the greatest trunk line in all China, the line between Hong Kong and Pekin, should be in British hands the colony pledged its credit for £1,000,000 to buy out the Belgians and provide that terminus. The colony has created its own railway as far as the British border, but owing to the want of through traffic at present the colony has to face a large deficit of revenue. It is also a most inopportune moment for the colony, because its prosperity is distinctly on the down grade owing to the prohibitive tariffs, which the French, American, and Japanese Governments have lately put on their trade with Hong Kong. In fact, so much does it suffer from the shipping subsidies, and the navigation laws of some of its neighbours, that it is a sad fact that a shipping company, which from its inception was a British enterprise, has recently had to transfer all its steamers to the American flag. It is a fair thing to compare the attitude which the Foreign Office adopts in its treatment of China with the attitude which the Colonial Office adopts in respect of Hong Kong. The Foreign Office is most considerate to the Chinese in every possible way. Whereas when the Chinese come under the
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    British flag and reside in our colony their old-time enjoyments are interfered with, and we make them pay for our moral experiments.
    And it being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further proceeding was postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  SAINT MARY, PRESTWICH, RECTORY BILL. [Lords].
  Order read for consideration as amended.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now considered."

  CLAUSE 3.—(Conditions as to Conveyance of Advowson.)
  The price to be paid for the said advowson shall be six thousand three hundred and ninety pounds and the fee simple of the advowson when purchased shall be conveyed upon condition that the right of nomination or presentation to the said rectory shall for ever thereafter belong to and be exercisable by a body of trustees consisting of the Bishop of the diocese, wherein the parish of Saint Mary, Prestwich, shall for the time being be situate, the Archdeacon of the Archdeaconry wherein the said parish shall for the time being be situate, the Mayor of Oldham, the chairman of the urban district council of Prestwich, and that one of the churchwardens of the parish of Saint Mary, Prestwich, who shall have been elected churchwarden by the parishioners in vestry assembled (hereinafter referred to as "the trustees") or by the major part in number of the trustees. Provided always that in the case of every lay trustee he shall before joining in the exercise of the right of nomination or presentation make a declaration in writing that he is a member of the Church of England as by law established and that any lay trustee not being a member of the said church may appoint a nominee to act in his place on any such occasion, such nominee being a lay member of the Church of England and making the declaration aforesaid, and provided further that after such conveyance and assurance the said advowson or right of nomination or presentation shall never be sold.
  Mr. BOOTH: I move to leave out Clause 3.

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  That is the Clause which records the changes made in the Bill since it was before the House last. It may be that if a satisfactory explanation is given on one or two points that I could see my way not to press my objection, but even to support the Bill. The main points that hon. Members will see mentioned in this Clause are the purchase price, which is now £6,390, the district to which it applies, and the selection of the trustees. In the previous Bill there was a provision made for a pension of the present occupant, but that has been withdrawn, and I think I would not be in order in discussing it. That will explain why I am not making any reference to the pension. Taking the other three main points I am pleased to see from this Clause that £2,310 have been saved to the Church of England as the result of this re-arrangement. That is to say the trustees of the Earl of Wilton receive a smaller sum for the advowson by that amount. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset (Mr. King) will be delighted to see that his proposal has been incorporated in the Bill, and three years' purchase substituted for a much larger sum of £8,700, which was primarily in the Bill. It is quite true that in paying that amount for the advowson an evil act in my jugdment is taking place. I do not want anything I say to be interpreted as a withdrawal from my previous position that a transaction of this kind contains an element of immorality and simony, but the position anyway is a difficult one, and we have to choose between perpetuating a system that we do not like and doing an injustice to the living itself and the parishioners, or sanctioning a transaction of this kind, which is repulsive in the extreme.
  After all one must make the best of the situation, and I feel inclined just for the time to try to repress the natural indignation I feel at a review of the transaction for the good of the parish. Particularly so when I believe that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners themselves as well as the Rector feel equally strongly about the nature of the transaction. But to accomplish the reform in a matter of this kind it seems to be necessary. If I thought for a moment that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners reveled in a transaction of this kind or thought it was a Christian act my attitude would be very different. But so far as I can see I have no no complaint to make regarding the action of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in this matter. The area to which any benefit
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  derived from this Act may apply has been confined. I think the representatives of the district felt strongly on this, that there should be no funds taken away from this district to any other portion of the country. That is important because it is almost entirely derived from ground rents. That is to say, the increased value of the living has been produced solely by the growth of the community and it would be a little unfair for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to use the money in a distant place. I am pleased to see that they quite see the appropriateness of confining the benefits derived from this transaction to the neighbourhood where the property exists.
  Then I come to the very important matter where we are dealing with the Trustees. It is here that I want a little further enlightenment before I can see my way to ask my friend to support the Bill. Trustees are to have the patronage of this living in future. It is a little inconsistent with the title of the Bill, but I do not raise this technical point of objection against it, because it undoubtedly is a great reform. The object of the Bill, as clearly shown by the title, was to pay this large sum of money to the Earl of Wilton without any condition, except that the patronage was transferred to the Bishop of Manchester. There are many Members on the opposite side of the House, as well as on this, who are entirely opposed to increasing the patronage of the Bishops of the Church of England. We have no objection whatever to the Bishops giving their assistance in the right selection, but we have a very strong objection to the Bishop alone being able to decide presentations to a living in a case like this. The proposal in this Clause is that two clergy and three laymen would be the trustees. The Bishop of Manchester, we are told, most probably would take the chair. There is no objection to that. Then there are the Archdeacon, the Mayor of Oldham, the chairman of the Urban District Council of Prestwich, and the parishioners' warden. I would prefer instead of the archdeacon to bring in the other warden. As far as I can gather, I think there is a good reason against it, but I would like it to be given to us. That is a point upon which I would require a little satisfaction before I can withdraw my opposition.
  I think it would have been better to have had four laymen with the assistance of the bishop so that at the Board meetings the

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  laymen might be the judges of the suitability of the new entrant into the duties of this rectory. But still I do admit that in the main this proposal of three laymen with the bishop and the archdeacon removes a great deal of the objection which we raised. I would like to bring before the House a letter from the rector which was addressed to me. It, more than anything else, has led me to take up the attitude which I have now adopted. For the first time in this letter there is clear evidence as to who is the promoter of this Bill. In the last discussion the House was put to great inconvenience. No one knew who the promoter was, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners themselves were not able to enlighten the House. We broke through that discussion as best we could with the idea that there was a promoter somewhere. I am very pleased that I have found him out. As far as I can judge, this letter shows that he is a person to whom we ought to pay the greatest deference. I do not know that I ever received a letter which gave me a greater feeling of the admirable character and high tone of the writer than did this letter. Instead of making any further speech, I will read a portion of this letter to the House. There is a passage which refers to the way in which the income is got. I have some hesitation in reading it in the presence of the hon. Member for New-castle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood), I am afraid it may disturb him, but if he will undertake to receive it in the proper spirit, I will venture to read it. The letter is from Mr. F. W. Cooper, who, I understand, is the present rector. He writes to me:—
  "Dear Sir,—I understand that you do not think, as some others seem to have thought, that this is a purely selfish conspiracy on the part of the Bishop and myself. It is I who am the promoter of the Bill, both technically and actually. I have long been uneasy in my position here as a landlord and owner of rents and ground rents of increasing value. It is not a position that a clergyman ought to occupy, and I would have been glad at any time to hand the revenues over to the Commissioners, receiving a fixed stipend of a smaller amount."
  I say a conscientious man like the rector does seem to me entitled to the utmost admiration. He could not conscientiously take his income in connection with rents of increasing value, and he prefers to give it up for the good of the Church. I am sure I need only say that to insure the support of the hon. Member for New-castle-under-Lyme. The latter goes on:—
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  "I had no idea, until Mr. Leach pointed it out, that the Bill would make it possible for me to retire whenever I liked. I have now insisted that the pension clause shall be omitted from the Kill. I told the Commissioners from the first that I did not wish for it. When the proposed changes in the Bill are effected, the only possible objection to it is that which you yourself put so strongly, that the House would be sanctioning the evil of the sale of advowson… If I stay here another ten or twelve years, I shall probably have provided all the purchase money myself; and if I am prepared to do this with entirely disinterested objects, it does not seem right that I should be forbidden to do so…. The purchase of human beings as slaves is abominable, but if I saw a brother of mine in the slave market and there was no other way of releasing him, I would readily pay £8,700 if I could afford it. So, I venture to think, would you. If you can do anything to help in bringing down the high price that is proposed to be paid, I should indeed be thankful, and I trust it may be possible to do so."
  That is a most honest and straightforward letter, and it has had the effect, with the reforms that have been made in the Bill, of causing me to assume the attitude rather of a sympathiser with this great reform than an opponent.
  Mr. ROBERT PEARCE: My objection to the Clause is almost entirely to the first two lines, "the price to be paid for the advowson shall be £6,390." The reduction of the amount is very satisfactory. The letter from the rector shows that he-is a high-minded man, and indeed, that was apparent on the last discussion, when it appeared that he was himself giving up part of his income in order that the advowson might be acquired in the way proposed by the Bill. I have nothing but praise for the scheme as it stands, if it were not for the one solitary circumstance that money is to be paid for the cure of souls. That is the whole of my objection. In the various transactions that I have had through my hands, in relation to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, they have, to my knowledge, for very many years transacted the affairs of the church entrusted to them in a way that demands the respect and admiration of all those who know what they have done. I am glad they are represented in this House by a distinguished man, and I am quite sure they would not lend themselves to any transaction which they thought was to be condemned upon any grounds at all serious. But I am opposed to the payment of money for the cure of souls. The history of the growth of advowsons is not a long one. Originally the advowsons were put into the hands of the bishop of the diocese, and he appointed the clerk who had to administer all the parishes of the district. The payments made were divided into four parts. One was charged with the maintenance of the bishops and

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  for the hospitality to curates and clergy who lived with him in his house. The second was for the repair of the churches in the diocese; the third was for the poor; and the fourth was for those clergy who were appointed to administer particular churches in the diocese. In the earlier centuries appeals were made from time to time to the feudal lords and other wealthy territorial people to assist by tithes and in other ways in the establishment of the parsons, and that was accompanied with the privilege to the lords of nominating or presenting to the bishop the clerk for admission to the living if he should be qualified. In that way the patronage became established, and that system has lasted until practically the present time. In fact, Mammon led them, but Mammon is the least erect spirit that fell from heaven.
  Although the general tendency of feeling in regard to this matter has become more and more acute, especially in. the case of advowsons and the purchase of advowsons, there still remains in our law the embodiment of that curious relic of feudal arrangements for the maintenance of the Church. The sale of a cure of souls, arising in that way, I suppose no one would justify, or attempt to argue in favour of it at the present time. It is a thing which is regarded somewhat in the light in which the purchase of commissions in the Army was regarded when it was abolished some years ago. I apprehend that no one now would defend this particular practice. Indeed, in this particular case it is stated in some papers issued by the promoters of the Bill, who, I am glad, are the respected solicitors of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that arrangements have been made in this Bill in regard to Clause 3 which will prevent the sale or resale of the living, and the appeal is made to us in regard to this transaction that, as it is the last, we ought to consent to it on that ground. But I think, with all deference, and subject to correction, that those who make that statement have forgotten 19 and 20 Vic, Cap. 50, in which it is expressly indicated that the sale or resale of an advowson may be made, when it is vested in trustees for the parishioners, as in this particular instance happens to be the case, on some subsequent dealing with the parish in which the advowson is situated. I do not see anything in the Bill which prevents the re-sale of the advowson. If there is such a provision I shall be glad to be shown it.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: Look at the concluding words of Clause 3.
  Mr. R. PEARCE: Yes; "provided that after such conveyance and assurance of the said advowson, or right of nomination or presentation, shall never be sold." I am glad I have that pointed out. It at once removes it from the operation of that particular law. This Clause says that this payment shall be the last payment, and that is perhaps the right way of doing it; but on general grounds in the present state of public feeling I think that even that sale should be postponed until Parliament has had an opportunity of discussing the general question. I had an idea in my mind that when the Parliament Bill was through it would be a wise thing to bring in a short Bill for preventing the purchase of advowsons. I do not mean the sale, because if you can prevent the purchase there will be no seller. It would be like the case of Hudibras, who had only one spur, well knowing that if he could get one side of his beast spurred on the other would not lag behind. If we can stop the sale of advowsons by a general Bill of that sort it would be a good course, although such sales might still be acceptable for the purposes of jockeys and bookmakers who had to buy an advowson to preserve a racecourse, an incident which was not long ago spoken about in the House of Lords. I cannot reconcile to my mind the action of bishops, archdeacons, churchwardens, and other laymen, who are to make a declaration that they are members of the Church of England as by law established, and who lend themselves to sanctioning a Bill to carry through a transaction in the sale of the cure of souls. I appeal to these gentlemen with the more confidence, as the rector, who, so far as he has dealt with the matter, has shown himself a high-minded and spiritually minded man, and has shown the spirit of true religion, feels all that to be incompatible with the transaction to which he is a party and in which he himself practically provides the money for the purchase. I think the sale for the sum of £6,390 should stand over until a general law is passed prohibiting the purchase of livings, and for that reason I second the Motion for the deletion of the Clause.
  Question proposed, "That the words-proposed to be left out down to the word 'Provided' ["Provided always that in the case"] stand part of the Clause."
  Mr. CHARLES LEACH: I think, Sir, if you will allow a fair amount of latitude in this discussion it will save time, because although there are two Bills the discussion practically would be one. I should like to be permitted to say that great changes have been made in the Bill, serious and radical changes, and I cannot help feeling very glad that what was said on the last occasion has led to these great modifications, and I think I may claim that the modifications completely justify all that was said by those who took part against the Bill last time. The most remarkable change in this Bill, to my mind, is that which has been made by the letter of this good clergyman who, it seems now, is the author and the mover in this matter. It is a great pity we did not know that before. The letter he has sent to the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) justifies fully what I said about him in the last debate. I then said:—
  "I am told he is a very good man, I do not question that for a moment, I have no right to question it."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th June, 1911, col. 322.]
  I think that letter proves he is a very good man. I want to know how it comes to pass that this gentleman did not know that under this Bill he was to draw a pension of £500 until he read it in my speech. It seems a very strange proceeding.
  Mr. SPEAKER. There is nothing about a pension in this Clause. The hon. Gentleman must confine himself to the Clause.
  Mr. LEACH: I shall continue by discussing the committee under this Clause. I am delighted to leave the clergyman, but I only wanted to bear testimony to the very generous way in which he has dealt with the matter. I go on to the committee, or the Trustees, who for the moment I call the committee. I do not think there is very much in the change. He is a poor clergyman who cannot influence three laymen at any time. I say, after an experience of thirty or forty years, that I do not believe I ever found myself with a layman whom I could not influence in my direction. There are two clergymen amongst these trustees, and that practically means that the Bishop of Manchester will have the controlling voice. I should have been glad to have seen more laymen among the trustees, in addition to the churchwarden. It appears that the price of the right of presentation after this Bill is passed is reduced by £2,310. May I ask the representatives of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in this House if that is a genuine reduction? I should like to be
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  assured of that because I find in the legal agreement in the Schedule on page 12 that the old sum of £8,700 still stands. If I am not mistaken, and I am no lawyer, that is the legal agreement, and if it be passed without that figure being altered there might be some difficulty. May I understand, Mr. Speaker, that the £6,300 in the Bill will be the real figure?. I understand now that is so, and I will say no more about it. But my objection to the principle of this Bill remains unmoved. I am still opposed absolutely to the sale of the cure of souls. I do not think that any man ought to betray his sacred trust in the way that trust is being betrayed. I said on the last occasion, and I repeat it that, as I understand it, the right of presentation is a sacred privilege and ought never to be sold for money. Therefore, my objection to the principle of the Bill is not in the least moved. I still call it irreligious and a piece of bad simony. There is only one ground on which I could be led to abstain from voting against this Bill. Nothing that could be said would lead me to vote for it. Even if it cost me my seat in this House and all I possess, I could never bring myself to vote for the sale of a cure of souls for money. There is only one consideration that will cause me to refrain from voting against this Bill, and that is that if the Bill passes, these livings, at any rate, can never again be sold for money. They will pass into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who, I presume, will see that never again is there any scandal. I regret very sincerely that the House of Commons by passing this Bill will give its assent to a transaction which I regard as so very irreligious; but, as the Bill probably will pass, all I can do is to make my protest, which I do in all sincerity and honesty.
  Sir F. CAWLEY: I am glad that all personalities have been kept out of this discussion. As has been pointed out, when this living has been once bought for the Church and put into the hands of a committee it can never be sold again. The present rector is really paying for the living and presenting it to his Church. The price is £6,300. The rector is giving up £630 per annum, which at his age may be taken at a capitalised value of £7,700. The rector, in fact, says: "I do not want to see this living hawked about. It might be purchased for speculation and then sold again. Possibly in the course of the next twenty years it might be sold three or four times over." The present rector does not want that. He does not want anybody to

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  buy the living or a relative. Above all, looking to the fact that this rectory carries with it the presentation to nine other cures of souls, I think the rector does not want it to get into the hands of any particular branch of the Church who, by buying the presentation to these other livings, might perpetuate their ideas as to how the Church services ought to be conducted. It is quite easy to imagine any particular body in the Church who wish to have a high ritualistic service, and who by buying the living would have the presentation to nine other livings, giving a very good price for it. The rector has removed all danger of that, and I think the House will do well to support him. The very considerable revenue that will accrue after the purchase price is paid off will go to help the daughter churches, which are really in need of assistance. If this Bill fails to pass because somebody has great objection to it, the incumbents of those thirty-four daughter churches, who are poor men, will not be very pleased twenty years hence that the House of Commons opposed the Rill and thereby caused them a loss of income of perhaps £30, £40, or £50 a year. I hope the House will pass the Bill.
  Mr. CHARLES NICHOLSON: Everybody has been much impressed by the letter read by the hon. Member for Pontefract, which, I think, settled the whole question so far as this Bill is concerned. We could not accept the Amendment, because if the Clause were omitted it would practically kill the Bill. We are all glad that we have been able in the course of negotiations to knock off so large a sum from the price to be paid. Nobody dislikes the sale of advowsons more than I do, but this is an opportunity for preventing anything of the kind being done again so far as this particular living is concerned. Some hon. Members may think it a great sin to enter upon a transaction of this kind at all, but, at any rate, it will be the last time it can happen in regard to this particular living. We are also very glad that the surplus funds will be applied for the benefit of the thirty-four daughter churches. I have been asked, in regard to the body of Trustees, why we have taken three lay members and two clerics instead of four laymen and one cleric. The reason is that under the original proposition the majority of the votes would have rested practically with the inhabitants of Prestwich alone, who would have had three representatives on the board of
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  trustees. We thought it unfair that they should have such a large preponderance in deciding who should be the new vicar; therefore we selected the body now named in the Bill. I think there is very good reason for including the archdeacon, because one of his duties is to visit all the parishes in the archdeaconry, and therefore he is fully cognisant of the needs of the particular parishes. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Leach) asked if the price was really to be £6,390, instead of the price named in the Schedule. That I can assure him is the fact.
  Mr. LEACH: May I ask how it happens that this clergyman did not know about the transaction to which I referred? It was part of the Bill, and yet he says he did not know about it until he read my speech.
  Mr. SPEAKER: That is not relevant to the Amendment before the House.
  Mr. KING: We have had a very delightful little speech from the hon. Gentleman the Member for Doncaster. It was particularly delightful to me, because it was entirely inconsistent with the speech which he made on the Second Reading of this Bill. In fact, the hon. Gentleman has learned a good deal of his duties as an Ecclesiastical Commissioner during the interval, and he has learned it, I am proud to say, from myself. I moved the rejection of this Bill on the Second Reading, and I did so very largely on the ground that the price to be paid was excessive. What did the hon. Gentleman the Member for Doncaster say in reply to that? He told the House, in effect, that he was an Ecclesiastical Commissioner of large experience, and that instead of three years' purchase, which I suggested as the right term, that six-and-a-half years was proper.
  Mr. C. NICHOLSON: Four years.
  Mr. KING: No, no; six-and-a-half years. You will find it in the OFFICIAL REPORT of 26th June. I need not read it, because it would only show the hon. Member up even in a worse light. No sooner does the hon. Member go to the quiet seclusion of the unopposed committee room than he finds that three years is quite sufficient, and he also finds that everybody else is pleased with the reformed price. This opposition that we have led to this Bill, and the result of which has been such very striking reforms in the provisions of the Bill, ought to teach the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that when they want to bring private Bills of this character before the House, there

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  is someone in the House who is able to meet them. I may point to this fact, that the opposition has not been merely obstructive. It has not been ineffective. Moreover, it was not undertaken in the spirit "that those people were Radicals and refused all ecclesiastical reform." I am in favour of "root and branch" treatment of ecclesiastical questions, but I am also in favour of getting reforms by instalments where possible.
  I want to call attention to one aspect of this Bill as it now stands, which I think ought to be replied to by the right hon. Gentleman who is the other Ecclesiastical Commissioner. I mean the fact that the Preamble of the Bill, at the bottom of page 2, says:—
  "Whereas it is desirable that the contract for purchase should be confirmed."
  9.0 P.M.
  The Second Schedule gives this contract to purchase, and gives the terms which have already been agreed upon in this contract. In line 30 of page 12 we find that the price is to be £8,700. Now, if the Preamble states that the contract is to be confirmed, and the contract as recited in the Second Schedule gives the price as £8,700, how is that matter going to be met? Is it effective enough to recite the price here in the Third Clause of this Bill as £6,395? I want it to be made quite clear to the House that the price in the Third Clause will be the price strictly adhered to, and the contract which has already been entered into, and which this Bill definitely says it is going to confirm, will be carried out. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly ready to answer all legal questions of this kind, and I hope he will answer my question so as to satisfy the House that this is a bonâ fide reform which can be carried out and against which no legal objection can be taken. If that is done I shall be very glad to allow the Bill to go through.
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Whitley): I think I can satisfy the hon. Member as Chairman of the Unopposed Bill Committee that dealt with this Bill. I gave particular attention to it, and took legal advice upon it. In Clause 2, and in the fifth line of the Clause, it says "subject to the modifications therein made by this Act." These are the operative words. Therefore there is no doubt whatever that the sum is the reduced sum.
  Mr. BOOTH: I ask leave, to withdraw my Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. HARWOOD: I beg to move to leave out the words, "Provided always that in the case of every lay trustee, he shall, before joining in. the exercises of the right of nomination or presentation, make a declaration in writing that he is a member of the Church of England as by law established, and that any lay trustee, not being a member of the said Church, may appoint a nominee to act in his place on any such occasion, such nominee being a lay member of the Church of England, and making the declaration aforesaid, and"—
  It is certainly in no spirit of putting unnecessary obstacles in the way that I desire to draw attention, and if possible to remove what I consider is a great and servious drawback in the Bill. I am glad that in the previous discussion I was one who objected to the patronage being vested entirely in the hands of the bishop. I acknowledge the handsome way in which that objection has been met, and I am perfectly satisfied on that point. But there is one part of this Clause to which I think the House ought to give very serious attention, because it is introducing a principle than which none is more important, and one which this House should be very careful about sanctioning. I move to omit the words that I have read. I do so because in perfect friendliness to the Bill, I consider this is a most serious drawback, and an impossible principle to admit into any Bill in this House. In the first place it is most retrogade. This practice of requiring a declaration of religious belief has long been exploded. From the time of Charles II. the experience of our country has proved that it was a mistake to insist upon it, and we have gradually given it up. To ask now for a declaration in writing that a man is a member of any particular church or it not a member, is pushing intrusion into the domain of private belief in a way that I think is distinctly dangerous and distinctly improper. Another thing is that it is absolutely useless.
  What has been the experience in regard to all this kind of thing? It is universal that the men who are ready to sign things and accept tests are the men who are quite worthless. The really good men,, whom you want to get, will firstly not submit to a test, and secondly, certainly will not sign a document about belonging to this church or that. I know the kind of men who are

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  mayors of Oldham and chairman of its district commissioners. I have the honour of knowing several of them in this particular connection, and—I am speaking of Lancashire men—they are the very last men to do anything of the kind. If you go to this class of man and say to him "You must sign a declaration that you are a member of the Church of England before you can exercise this function," he will absolutely refuse to do anything of the kind. They are not in the habit of signing declarations about their religion; they are not in the habit even of asking questions about it; the temper of the public mind is happily against these intrusions into the realms of religious feeling. The consequence is you would be deprived of the services of the very kind of men you want because the kind of men you want are the very men who would never for a moment make such declarations, whether they were members of the Church of England or not. There are thousands of the best supporters of the Church of England who if they were asked to sign a declaration that they were members of the Church of England would not do so. I venture to say it is a new departure to ask for a declaration of this kind. It has been done in days gone by, but it has not been done for a long time. There are some cases where it is required for a particular legal office, but it is never required for an office of this kind, and to put such questions in connection with a parish in a place like Manchester and in a county like Lancashire would be to damage your cause and to bring about angry feeling. Not only is it useless and mischievous, but it is quite unnecessary.
  We do not ask for such a declaration from the Prime Minister who makes bishops and dignitaries of the Church. We do not ask him to declare that he is a member of the Church of England; we trust his common-sense and the responsibilities of his office. And if you do not ask the Prime Minister these questions, how ridiculous it is to ask mayors of the boroughs and chairmen of county councils. Not only is it retrograde and unnecessary, but I venture to say it is mean. I speak as a very amateur lawyer, but I want to put the truth about this matter, and it is a question that may concern many Bills that may come up in this House. I think we are all interested to know what exactly is meant when we use the phrase "Church of England." That phrase has no legal meaning whatever. I put the question to one of the most profound lawyers yesterday, and he agreed with me
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  that legally there is no such thing as "member of the Church of England." How are you going to get at it? Are you going to have tests, and if so, what are the tests of membership of the Church of England to be? Is it baptism? Everybody allows, not only the Church of England but the Catholic Church, that baptism is legal and proper when performed by a layman. Is it confirmation? Nothing of the kind. The phrase member of the Church of England does not occur in the Prayer Book or in any of the formulae of the Church. It is not a phrase used by the Church of England herself, and the Church of England does not use the phrase because the Church of England in its wider and broader days knew the phrase had no meaning whatever, and she absolutely abstained from using it, and it is because we have got a little bit wrong in our ideas of our conception of the Church that we use that phrase. I think we have gone back from what the ideas of our forefathers were. I think the church has allowed herself to get a little too much of the conception of a church which is based upon nonconformity. I am not disputing that conception, but I say it is not the right conception of the Church of England as the national church. The conception of a nonconformish church is that of a private society, the conception of a national church should be that of a great public institution.
  The Church of England is not a testing body at all, it never professed to separate the sheep from the goats. The Church of England has never said that she meant to separate the good from the bad. The whole basis of the Church of England is that of an offering church, offering religion freely to all. That is the business of a national church, and that is the only conception of a national church by which you can define it democratically. It is exactly like a public drinking fountain, the water is there for those who require it. A glass of cold water may be refreshing to one man; it may make the next man very ill. He must judge for himself. The Church says: "There it is, for everyone who wants to take it." There is no legal meaning in the term "Church of England," it applies equally to nonconformists. The nonconforming member of the Church of England is the true conception of nonconformity, because a man is a nonconformist who is not fulfilling her rights, but because he does not go to church he does not lose his rights. I belong to one or two clubs

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  I never frequent, but I can go to them if I like, and I do not cease to be a member because I do not go to them. So with the Church of England. That was John Wesley's idea. I happened to look up his life the other day, and I find in one of his last letters the words:—
  "I die as I lived—a member of the Church of England."
  The fact that you choose to go to chapel and join in the service of a private society does not in the eye of the law deprive you of your rights as a British citizen. You can come back at any time. Let me remind the House of what the law is in regard to this matter, and it may shock some people in their rather sacerdotal conception of the church—as far as I understand the position the law gives a man a right to seek the church, not as a favour but as a right. Any man who is a parishioner in a parish can come to the church, and if there is a seat there after the service has begun he has a legal right to take it. The Church of England goes much further—it may shock some people—but I would remind them that the law of the Church of England allows a man to demand, unless there are moral grounds against it, the Communion, even though he professes not the belief. To ask a man, ''Are you a Member of the Church of England?" is a retrograde step. Of course, he is a member of the Church of England. He may not be an active member, he may be a dormant member, but one never knows when he may become an active member, and I protest with all the strength I can command against anything that would take away that right from him. There is another question, and it is this: We hear much of Disestablishment. It is in the air, and perhaps as one—and I believe the only Liberal Member on this side of the House—who declined to vote for Welsh Disestablishment, and who has struggled for thirty years to fight for this conception of a national Church, I recognise that the Church is doomed unless she can adapt herself to the exigencies and the spirit of the times. No institution can live now that does not rest upon a democratic basis. The basis of the Church laid down by our forefathers was truly democratic and of the broadest possible character; that is the basis of British citizenship. Whether you use your right or not is your business, but there it is, and I beg the House not to pass a retrograde narrow Clause like this. I have made many sacrifices for the Church, and I am prepared to
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  make many more; but I feel certain that the Church will be doomed unless she rises to a conception of her great function. It is the democratic spirit that ought to animate the Church.
  I oppose this Clause because it is dead against that democratic spirit. You are now asking a new thing. You are asking that a man shall, first of all, make a declaration of his religious belief, and, secondly, that he should make it in writing. My hon. Friend may say that the Nonconformists do not want to take part in the choosing of the clergy. In a matter of this kind may I say to the promoters of this Bill your wisest plan is to trust to the good sense and modesty which marks Englishmen generally in matters of this kind. I once lived in a country parish where the only places of worship were a church and a Unitarian chapel, and by an amicable arrangement it was agreed that one of the churchwardens had always to-be a member of the Unitarian chapel. The Unitarians, as well as the other members of the Church, voted in the choice of the clergyman, and there never was a parish where there were better people. Three successive vicars were most admirable men, and the whole spirit of that parish is a model to any religious community. As a Churchman who knows nearly all the churches concerned in this Bill pretty well, I do ask hon. Members not to put in a Clause of this kind.
  Mr. KING: I desire to second this Amendment, although I do so on different lines to the hon. Member for Bolton, who, in his very sensible and sincere speech, must have touched the whole House. At the present time there is no legal objection to a Nonconformist, that is to say a Presbyterian or a Wesleyan and so forth exercising the patronage to a living, although there is a statutory objection against the Roman Catholic. Why should you in this Bill cast a slight on Nonconformists? Why should you set an objection against the Wesleyans, the Congregationalists, or the Baptists which does not exist in law? I think it is most unsuitable that a Bill like this, which I hope will go through with the assent of all parties, should contain a slight upon Nonconformists. They can perform the action of appointment to livings, and why should they be debarred by this Clause. The hon. Member for Norfolk, who is a well-known Nonconformist, told me that he is sorry he is not able to be here to support this Amendment. He was some time back the Mayor for the City of Norwich, and in

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  that capacity he exercised the right of presentation to a living. Legal opinion was taken up at the time, and his right was established, and he tells me that no objection or difficulty was ever raised against the appointment which he made.
  Mr. FLETCHER: I agree with the hon. Member opposite who said that the only possible means of preserving the Church is that its door should be left wide open for all those who desire to return to it. In the parish of Hampstead, which I represent, one of the churchwardens is a Nonconformist, and I believe that is one of the reasons, and perhaps a very considerable reason, why there is such a happy and friendly feeling between the ministers of the Church of England and other denominations in Hampstead. If Nonconformists were allowed to exercise and fulfil the position of trustees and take part in the nomination of ministers I am certain they would display commonsense and would be as earnest in desiring to obtain the best possible man for the post as any Churchman could be. The argument which the hon. Member opposite has used about the patronage exercised by the Prime Minister should be a sufficient argument in favour of the Amendment, which have great pleasure in supporting.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: We all admire the views of the hon. Member for Bolton, but. I hope the House will not be led to follow him in the discriminations he has sought to draw in this case. These words are not a new departure. What we have adopted is a well-known form of words embodied in Acts of Parliament which have been followed for many years, which have been acted upon for a long time in the history of the Church, and have never been challenged in any court of law. More than that, this particular form of words has been copied into many patronage trust deeds constituting a patronage trust, such as we are constituting under this Bill. Under these circumstances I hope the House will allow these words to stand. Taking the hon. Member's own test, he says he does not wish to cast a slur upon Nonconformists. May I point out to the House that but for the words in this Bill the rights of the trustee might be exercised not only by a person who need not be a Protestant, but by a person who need not be even a Christian. I think, without going too far back into history, or without inquiring too far into the question how far the Church of England, as a corporate body, is recog-
  1374
  nised by our law, if there is a kind of general feeling in such a case as that, it would be desirable that persons so named in the Bill should appoint some nominee to act for him. I welcome one thing said by the hon. Member most heartily. I feel perfectly certain no man who could rise to the position of chairman to the district council of a great city like Oldham would act otherwise than conscientiously in a trust like this, and, if his conscience prevented him signing this declaration, he would find the right man to act for him. The hon. Gentleman wishes to see the Church of England rest on a democratic basis. That is the very basis which is satisfied by this Bill. Your mayor or chairman of the district council is a man who cannot discharge the duties of trustee unless he has gone through the fire and proved himself qualified, by the confidence of his fellow citizens, to rise to that distinguished and representative position we wish to see. At the bottom of our proposal in this Bill is the desire to get for the exercise of this high duty someone who has that knowledge of the district which will prevent him placing as vicar of Prest-wich someone unsuited to the position. Whenever I have had a chance of intervening in these Debates about Church patronage, I have always said you want some solution by which you will not have a square man put in a round parish, or a High Churchman in a low parish, and we believe we have in this case secured that local knowledge which is essential to the choice of a man fit to discharge the duties.
  Mr. R. PEARCE: I should like to ask the hon. Member representing the Ecclesiastical Commissioners whether he would be willing to put in words to make it a declaration in writing that he is a Protestant Christian member of the Church of England? That would carry out exactly what he described to be the kind of man he desires to have a voice in the nomination of the incumbent of this living. I have to say, with reference to nonconformity in the Church of England, that every Englishman, as I understand the. law—and I have had to consider the matter on various occasions and advise upon it—is a member of the Church of England, though he may be a nonconforming member. This declaration, therefore, is of no use at all, because every Nonconformist and every Catholic and every Hebrew may declare in writing that he is a member of the Church of England by law established. It is, therefore, serving no

  1375
  useful purpose, and leaves the suspicion that there is a tinge of intolerance in this Bill. I should like to see the Clause struck out, because it does bring into the mind of the parishioner that there is a kind of limitation not known in our law at all. There is no church, national or otherwise, as an entity or corporation which interferes with the right of every parishioner, be his religious opinions what they may, to have a voice in this particular matter. Although you have chosen trustees who are not described as parishioners, I understand it is because the parish of Prestwich so in
  cludes the areas of the urban district council and of Oldham as to make them practically parishioners of St. Mary of Prestwich. I have no objection to that part of the Clause on that account. I entirely agree with the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. Harwood) that this particular proviso should be struck out as the last little symptom or tinge of intolerance in relation to this matter.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  The House divided: Ayes, 73; Noes, 78.

  Division No. 294.]

  AYES.

  [9.32 p.m.

  Allen, Charles Peter (Stroud)

  Dawes, J. A.

  Paget, Almeric Hugh

  Ashley, W. W.

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Peel, Hon. W. R. W. (Taunton)

  Balcarres, Lord

  Eyres-Monsell, Bolton, M.

  Peto, Basil Edward

  Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)

  Fell, Arthur

  Pryce-Jones, Col. E. (M'tgom'y B'ghs.)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Ferens, T. R.

  Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)

  Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

  Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Beale, W. P

  Goldsmith, Frank

  Samuel, J. (Stockton)

  Beauchamp. Sir Edward

  Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)

  Shortt, Edward

  Benn, W. (T. Hamlets, S. George)

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'l, Walton)

  Booth, Frederick Handel

  Grant, J. A.

  Spear, Sir John Ward

  Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-

  Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)

  Stewart, Gershom

  Boyton, J.

  Gulland, John William

  Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)

  Brocklehurst, W. B.

  Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry

  Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

  Burn, Colonel C. R.

  Hillier, Dr. Alfred Peter

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Toulmin, Sir George

  Carlile, sir Edward Hildred

  Hunt, Rowland

  Valentia, Viscount

  Cautley, H. S.

  Kebty-Fletcher, J. R.

  Verney, Sir Harry

  Cave, George

  Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement

  Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)

  Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)

  Long, Rt. Hon. Walter

  White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)

  Cawley, Harold T. (Heywood)

  Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)

  Whitley, Rt. Hon. J. H.

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo. Han. S.)

  Williamson, Sir Archibald

  Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.

  M'Micking, Major Gilbert

  Cripps, Sir C. A.

  Molteno, Percy Alport

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Stuart-Wortley and Mr. C. Nicholson.

  Crooks, William

  Needham, Christopher T.

  Dalziel, D. (Brixton)

  Neville, Reginald J. N.

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Dublin Harbour)

  Hayward, Evan

  O'Doherty, Philip

  Adamson, William

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Higham, John Sharp

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs., Leek)

  Byles, Sir William Pollard

  Hinds, John

  Pointer, Joseph

  Chancellor, H. G.

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Radford, G. H.

  Chapple, Dr. W. A.

  Hudson, Walter

  Raffan, Peter Wilson

  Clough, William

  Hughes, S. L.

  Rainy, A. Rolland

  Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

  Cotton, William Francis

  Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)

  Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)

  Dalziel, Sir James H. (Kirkcaldy)

  John, Edward Thomas

  Roche, John (Galway, E.)

  Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

  Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)

  Rutherford, W. (Liverpool, W. Derby)

  Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

  Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

  Scanlan, Thomas

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

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

  Simon, Sir John Allsebrook

  Doris, William

  Jones, W. S. Glyn- (Stepney)

  Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

  Duffy, William J.

  King, J. (Somerset, N.)

  Spicer, Sir Albert

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-In-Furness)

  Kyffin-Taylor, G.

  Sutton, John E.

  Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)

  Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

  Wadsworth, John

  Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

  Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

  Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay

  Esslemont, George Birnle

  Macpherson, James Ian

  Watt, Henry A.

  Farrell, James Patrick

  Martin, Joseph

  Whyte, A. F. (Perth)

  Ffrench, Peter

  Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

  Wilkie, Alexander

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Mond, Sir Alfred M.

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  Goldstone, Frank

  Morrell, Philip

  Young, William (Perth, East)

  Hackett, J.

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Yoxali, Sir James Henry

  Hancock, J. G.

  Nolan, Joseph

  Hardie, J. Keir

  Nuttall, Harry

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Harwood and Mr. Fletcher.

  Haslam, James (Derbyshire, N.E.)

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Mr. BOOTH: Will the promoters of the next Bill (St. Mary, Radcliffe, Rectory Bill) give an undertaking to insert a similar reform to that decided upon in the case of this Bill?
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: Yes, the alteration decided upon in the case of the Prestwich Bill before it came before the House this evening will also be introduced into the Radcliffe Bill.
  Bill to be read the third time.

SUPPLY.— [17th Allotted Day.]
Considered in Committee.
(IN THE COMMITTEE.)
[MR. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

SUPPLY.— [17th Allotted Day.]
  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1911–12.

    COLONIAL OFFICE.
    Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question proposed on consideration of Question,
    "That a sum, not exceeding £38,616, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1912, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, including a Grant-in-Aid of certain Expenses connected with Emigration." [NOTE.—£21,000 has been voted on account.]
    Which Question was, "That Item A (salary of Secretary of State) be reduced by £100.—[Sir Gilbert Parker.]
    Debate resumed.
    Mr. G. STEWART: On the 9th May the Secretary for the Colonies gave some details as to the military contributions of the Crown Colonies, and I should like to know upon what principle these contributions are arranged. Ceylon, with a revenue of two and a half millions, pays £101,000, or about one twenty-fifth of its income; Hong Kong, with a revenue of £611,000 pays £120,000 odd, or one-fifth of its income. Ceylon is prosperous; but at this moment the trade of Hong Kong is being strangled by the hostile tariffs of its neighbours, and although the garrison of Hong Kong is bigger than that of Ceylon it must be remembered that Hong Kong is a rendezvous for troops and ships which go there for Imperial and not for
    1378
    local purposes. Yet it is the only place on the China coast which pays a farthing towards Imperial defence. I should like next to draw attention to the moral side of this complex opium question. When you stop, the trade with India you will not entirely stop the consumption of opium. By violent political action you cannot change human nature, and at this moment substitutes are taking the place of opium. Drink is being indulged in more freely; the consumption of morphia and things of that sort is on the increase; cocaine for the first time appeared in the list of imports of last year, and when unofficial members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council asked the Government to assist in stopping these evil things at the source they met with a refusal. The answer was "If we do not do this trade somebody else will." I think it is a great pity we should protect the manufacture of these evil drugs. They are mostly made in Edinburgh and shipped from London, yet this Government will not take any steps to exercise supervision at the source. If there were voters in the Colony to be conciliated and seats in this House to be won there would be much' better treatment accorded it than at the present moment. The highest ideal of Colonial administration should be to impart in the breasts of those at a distance the feeling that their interests are as equally safeguarded as though they were close by, and I would suggest that the Council of Hong Kong should know where they are financially, and the Government should accept an annual contribution of a million dollars. The present form of contribution has this very wrong effect. If there is an outburst of plague and extra charges are incurred; if there is a typhoon and the Colony has to put its hand in its pocket for repairs and that sort of thing, the present system of military contribution has this very evil effect, that the greater the Colony's troubles the more profit you make from it, and you are really making a profit in matters in which you ought to treat it with every consideration. You are making a profit out of their misfortunes. At present the Colony is at a crisis of its development. It requires consideration, or you may have it on your hands as a permanent invalid. I would plead for more consideration for Hong Kong in regard to the opium question, because I am quite sure this House is able and willing to pay for any moral experiments it may choose to undertake.

    1379
    I should like to say a word on another point. The appointment of a military officer to the post of Governor of Mauritius. I approach this in a spirit of inquiry. I have no personal feeling in the matter at all. I have not the slightest doubt that the fortunate officer who has been pitch-forked into the Governorship is a very able man, but at the same time I know a great many most deserving Colonial officials, and I know exactly how they feel in a matter of this sort. It must be remembered that owing to the consolidation of South Africa, four governorships have been lost to the Colonial service, and now to this is added a fifth post. Those who know anything about Mauritius must know that the post of Governor is one which requires very great experience and most tactful management. The financial position is bad and the place is full of racial trouble. It seems to me that a position of that sort requires a man with a certain amount of Parliamentary experience, just the sort of experience that the Colonial Secretary in many colonies gets in his connection with the legislative council of his particular colony, and Colonial Secretaries are naturally accustomed to deal with men of all races and all beliefs.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: Whom have they made Governor of Mauritius?
    Mr. STEWART: It has been in the Press lately. It is Major Chancellor, an Engineer major. It is not as if you were getting another class of man. You have men in the Colonial Service who have entered by competitive examination, men who have come out on top and have chosen Colonial appointments. To all these men it must be a very great disappointment to think that their services do not qualify them for positions of this sort. Then from the military point of view, if you wanted a military Government, as you did in 1886, it might be as well to appoint the general. Having appointed a junior officer you are putting the general in a somewhat invidious position where he has to salute a man very much junior to himself. It must be borne in mind that if this country were at war and two steamers loaded with cement were dropped in the Suez Canal, the position of Mauritius would become all-important as a strategical point. In peace the appointment of a junior officer is a slight upon the Colonial Service, and you inflict a slight on the commanding officer if
    1380
    the new Governor is sent there for warlike purposes. It is a double-barrelled appointment which inflicts injuries on two services. Then, if you are going outside the Colonial Service, how is it that the Army gets all these appointments and the Navy gets none? The officers of the Navy are second to none in this country. Our whole existence depends upon them. Here you have appointed a gentleman with the equivalent rank of a naval lieutenant of eight years' standing. What would be said if you suddenly appointed a naval lieutenant of eight years' standing to be Lieutenant-Governor of an Indian province? The Indian Civil Service would make its resentment so felt that I do not think you could hold to it, and this House would be so staggered that it would certainly ask questions about the matter. The thing that has happened in this particular Colonial appointment is, analogous to that. I should like to appeal to the Colonial Office. I know the right hon. Gentleman has only been there a short time; and he is tremendously occupied with the great questions which have been before him. But when gentlemen have spent their lives in the junior ranks of a service, it seems only fair that they should get some of the higher posts as they get on in life. It is only by giving them some encouragement of that sort that you can hope for an efficient and effective service.
    Mr. T. TAYLOR: The hon. Gentleman made a very temperate and interesting speech from the Hong Kong point of view, and I am very glad we have their wishes and opinions so well voiced as he has voiced them to-night. He wound up, however, with one of those sayings which are short and terse, but not applicable, "We must not pay for our morals with other people's money." In the matter of governing the Crown Colonies we are responsible for their morals as well as their money, and I am very glad the hon. Gentleman has not defended the vice of opium smoking. It used to be defended in this House, and there are people yet in high quarters who defend it. The mode of raising revenue by selling an injurious article and interesting the people at large in the revenues derived from it is either right or wrong. Almost everyone now contends that a Government Revenue derived from opium smoking, which all the great nations of the world now are gradually coming into line to denounce as a vice, cannot be right. I am

    1381
    not competent to judge as to the amount of claim that the Colony of Hong Kong may have upon the Home Exchequer— £12,000 or £13,000 has been granted hitherto in lieu of the revenue that they formerly got from opium—but they have not at all stopped the opium traffic there. We all said beforehand that if you stopped the opium divan, or public house as you might call it, you would not thereby stop the opium traffic, and it is still going on. I think the Government have taken it into their own hands, though I am not quite up to date in this. They farm the sale of it, and do not allow it to be smoked in public places. I quite agree that cocaine and morphia are equally dangerous. Some strenuous measure should be taken to bring opium smoking under control, and I know of no effort that is being made. If they have been accustomed to take one kind of stimulant, they take another, and it is for us to see that what they take is reasonable alcoholic or nicotine stimulant, and not drugs. We cannot discuss our allowing the opium vice to go unchecked—and the Hong Kong Government to make a part of its income from it—without contrasting it with what the Chinese Government is endeavouring to do. In many cities of China they have been trying to stop the retail sale, and we have granted them power to do this by a recent agreement. If we have allowed the Chinese Government to stop the retail sale of opium and the smoking of opium, it does seem a very curious thing we should allow in Hong Kong a very considerable traffic to go on. Is this good for our prestige in China?
    Our Home Government has proved its sincerity. I do not think there is much occasion for sneering at the action of the Government of India. The British Government, and the House of Commons, and public opinion in this country are entirely solid now that it is wrong to derive revenue from opium smoking. If we are making a sacrifice in India, surely the Government in Hong Kong can find other means of raising revenue. Hong Kong is the freest port, as we have been told, in the world. Every one who goes to Hong Kong must know the advantages of the port. Surely there are other ways of raising revenue. The value of land in Hong Kong is rather high, and land duties could be paid without robbing anybody. It is inconsistent with our duty for the Government to go on receiving a considerable part of its revenue from the
    1382
    sale of opium, while all around in China most heroic, and most costly efforts, are being made to put down this vice. It is only those who cannot buy tackle and opium pipes or who cannot meet with friends to lend it to them (there are some very poor coolies in Hong Kong); it is only these who are really prevented from smoking. We want to go to the roots of this traffic. I said myself in 1908 when we discussed this question that the only satisfactory end of this traffic would be the entire termination of the use of opium without medical control. "The Times" is not a very bigoted, fanatical journal, but "The Times" only a few months ago said it was equally imperative that British Colonies in the East should not continue to countenance the vice which China is trying to extirpate. The Colonial Secretary should tackle this question in the same way as other nations have tackled it. It has been tackled in Australia, Mew Zealand, Canada and South Africa.
    These great self-governing colonies, though afflicted only to a small extent by this vice, imported by the Chinese, have imposed most stringent laws against the sale of opium and apparatus and against the smoking of opium by people in their own houses. In Japan the laws are most stringent. They include imprisonment with hard labour for three years for anyone smoking opium; five years for anyone selling an opium pipe, and seven years with hard labour is the law against anyone selling opium. I think anyone may take it that this is a most dangerous, most ruinous vice. There are people who do it in moderation, of course, but China would not make such sacrifices if from experience it was not known that this vice was a most injurious one. Sir Frederick Lugard in a memorandum regarding opium in Hong Kong—about three years ago—gives as one reason why we should go slowly in stopping opium smoking in Hong Kong— that China was still producing seven-eighths of the opium consumed there. He said that 66 per cent. was grown in Sz'echuan. In March last Sir Alexander Hosie reported that he was satisfied that opium growing had been suppressed in Sz'echuan. The reason Sir Frederick Lugard gave has thus gone. I myself have never pressed for the immediate stoppage of the dens or of opium smoking, though there has now been a very fair advance since the drastic telegrams were despatched on 5th May, 1908, when the right hon. Gentleman's prede-

    1383
    cessor sent word that the opium dens must be summarily stopped. That, perhaps, was rather drastic at the time. At all events there has been three years' notice that the traffic must cease.
    The opium dens came to an end eighteen months ago. We have a dispute going on in other Colonies of a similar character. There was a report from Ceylon on which our Government is now acting, and I wish to ask the Colonial Secretary some questions about this. I will recite the six provisions which were recommended for Ceylon, and which the Governor (Sir Henry McCallum) endorsed, with the exception of the fifth. The provisions are: (1) That the licensing of opium houses be abandoned; (2) that all opium shops be closed at the expiry of the existing licences; (3) that the import distribution and sale of the crude drug become a Government monopoly, and that for every opium shop closed the nearest Government dispensary be made available for the drug to all habitual users; (4) the registration of opium users; (5) that the use of the drug be entirely prohibited after a certain period; and (6), a system of careful inspection of the establishments. I wish to ask the Colonial Secretary whether the fifth provision has now been adopted. I do not press for anything unreasonable. The Anti-opium Board, of which I have been a member for five years, consists of representatives of all the anti-opium societies in this country. They are the best-informed men on this subject in the world. Many of them are ex-missionaries, and people who have lived in those countries. We do not want anything unreasonable, but we do want measures which, to use a phrase of the late Under-Secretary, will secure that Hong Kong must act up to the standard set by China.
    That is very little to ask, and we have pressed for it before. We want it, not only for Hong Kong, but for the Straits Settlements, and for every one of the Eastern Colonies where opium-smoking prevails. We want the Government to keep the trade in its own hands, not with the object of raising revenue, but with the view to the early extinction of the habit. We ask also that in the meantime no fresh smokers should be registered. The Under-Secretary said three years ago that steps would be taken to stop the opium dens in Hong Kong, and he added that difficulty would be felt in regard to the stoppage of the revenue, not from the opium dens
    1384
    merely, which he said was a relatively small matter, but from the opium trade as a whole. I think the vested interest of the farmers is done with now, but if there is any farming going on it will expire in a year or two. Hong Kong is worse than any other part, because it makes such a contrast with China. When I was in the Straits Settlements four years ago there was a commission of inquiry into opium questions. They have done little to stop the sale-there. They have now got the trade as a. Government monopoly, but they are deriving still, as appears from the latest statistics, large revenue from it. In 1909 their finances were very good. They had an overflowing exchequer, and they seemed naturally to cling to this monopoly. In 1909 in the Settlements two-thirds of the revenue came from opium and alcohol licences, and a large proportion of that—equal to half of the total revenue—came from profits on the sale of opium. I do protest that this reform is not going quickly enough. Three years ago we had a report, and I believe there is nearly as much opium being sold there as ever. I would impress upon the Colonial Secretary that this is not a question of opium only, but of other dangerous drugs as well. There ought to be a restriction in the sale of morphia and other drugs, the danger of which the people of this country do not know. The non-medical use of these drugs should be clone away with in the British Empire. In the self-governing Colonies they have been put under strict medical control. I ask that in our Crown Colonies opium smokers should be registered, and that as in China, Japan, the Philippines, and elsewhere, the opium smoking habit should be entirely prohibited after two or at most three years.
    Mr. MACMASTER: There were one or two remarks made by the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Martin) of which some notice should be taken. We have both had some experience in some Canadian affairs. There was some diversity of opinion with regard to the fiscal policy of Canada. Some years ago the present Prime Minister of Canada advocated a distinctly different policy. He advocated a policy very-similar to that adopted in the Reciprocity Agreement. That policy fell through, and, as an alternative, he adopted the policy of British preference—preference to the Mother-country. There were some who at that time thought he adopted that policy in order to get rid of the suspicion that he favoured a closer

    1385
    commercial connection with the United States. When it was brought before the House of Commons in Canada the first question raised was whether, if a concession of the kind were granted to the Mother-country, it would not be equally available to all the other countries that had the benefit of the favoured-nation treaty. Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Government and the Finance Minister contended it would be only applicable to the Mothercountry, whereas Sir Charles Tupper and others-contended that it would be applicable to all countries that had the benefit of the most-favoured-nation arrangement. It went through, and within a year it was discovered that the other nations could claim the benefit, so that there was a revocation of that part of the concession. It is not a question of whether one party pursued one party policy in Canada and departed from it, when the other party pursued another policy and departed from it. Even if we assume that the Conservative party in Canada had withdrawn their opposition to British preference and adopted it, to which they now adhere, it makes no difference one way or the other. It makes no difference that the present party in power in Canada once were Free Traders, and when they came into power, like wise men they abolished their own views, for practical purposes, and adopted a policy of Protection, which prevails there from that day to this.
    It is immaterial to draw fine distinctions between what is Imperial and British preference, because while Canadian parties are quite willing that British preference should be maintained, that is to say, a reduction of duties which Canada imposes against all the world in favour of Great Britain, at the same time they are both highly favourable to the view that we could benefit by mutual preference with our trading. There is no doubt whatever, when Sir Wilfrid Laurier proposed before the conference, that there should be a Commission issued to inquire into the resources and trading conditions of the Mother-country and the different Colonies as regards each other, that he had in mind trade questions implying tariff questions, and questions of mutual preference, because at page 340 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, he says:—
    "We are endeavouring to obtain all the information possible as to the trade conditions that exist now between the United Kingdom and the self-governing Dominions—"
    1386
    The trade conditions of necessity must imply tariff or non-tariff—
    "not only with respect to the trade we have with the Mother-country, but the trade which there is with the different Dominions amongst themselves. By way of illustration I may say here that our relations in Canada with our brothers from Australia are not as satisfactory as they ought to be. We have been trying to get mutual preferential treatment, but we have not been able to do so and I strongly hope that such a Commission as I have indicated would find it possible to come to the end which we have not been able to reach up to the present time."
    Looking at the resolution and at those words in support of it, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that he was anxious to come to a mutual trade agreement, not only with the Mother-country, but with the other countries of the whole Empire. I do not go into the comparative merits of one system or the other. That is a question which in itself is a very large one. The Secretary of State for the Colonies thought that to investigate the question of tariffs would open a wide door. Probably he is quite right in thinking that. He gives his adherence in very polite terms, but in a form which was very familiar to us, that of "banging, barring, and bolting the door." But I do not think it was intended to act, or that it would act as a bar, because it admits of a negative determination on the part of the Commission. Under the fiscal conditions which exist it would not be impossible, with free and open scope left to them, for the Commission to determine what should be done. I am quite at a loss to understand why this Commission should go all over the world unless it has some object. Surely the door ought not to be barred against a consideration of what may be beneficial. Whatever Commission is appointed by His Majesty's Government I am sure it will be fairly representative. I am sure it will not be one-sided, but that both sides will be well represented. I have a strong conviction that in the result they will take rather an Imperial and larger view than that which may obtain in the Mother-country or in any one of the individual Colonies.
    We have an example in that respect in the commission which went to the West Indies. That commission was composed of men of broad views and open mind, notwithstanding their particular fiscal ideas, and they saw the means by which different countries could benefit themselves by trading between each, even with different tariffs. While that is so it may be a question whether an absolutely free-trade country could ever make as advan-

    1387
    tageous a trade arrangement with a protected country as protected countries can with each other. A word or two with regard to the Imperial Conference. Both sides of the House, I think, asked that the Declaration of London should be referred to that conference, and that was done. But my point is this: In my humble opinion I do not think the Declaration of London was ever explained to the Colonial members of the conference. I have taken a great deal of trouble in reading up all the points that have been made at the conference. I do not find that there was a full exposition made to the Colonial members of that conference, as I think should have been made, in order to enable them to come to a right conclusion. For example, it has been one of the crucial questions, what was the significance of the basis in Articles 33 and 34 of the Declaration of London. In Article 33 conditional contraband is liable to capture if it is shown to be destined for the use of the armed forces or of a Government Department of the enemy. That is the old policy, and the Leader of the House, in explaining the position with regard to the point, stated as appears on page 112 of the Minutes of Proceedings:—
    "With reference to something Sir Edward Grey said. I do not think it has been sufficiently noted that Article 34 is merely commentery upon and interpretative of Article 33. Article 33 is the governing Article, and nothing is liable to capture unless it is shown—etabli —to be destined for the use of the armed forces or of a Government Department of the enemy."
    That is a limitation which is extended by Article 34 of the Declaration, and that extension was not put before the conference by the Prime Minister or by the Foreign Secretary. Article 34 does not refer to Article 33 only as was presumed—
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is re-debating the Second Heading of the Naval Prize Bill. Only one day is devoted to the Colonial Office Estimates as a rule, and I think the discussion should deal directly with Colonial administration.
    Mr. MACMASTER: I bow to your ruling, but I am merely pointing out the character of the statements made before the conference, and reference has been made to the report of that conference. I say a full statement was not placed before the conference as to what constituted the basis of conditional contraband. One minister stated that there was no definition of the
    1388
    basis, whereas we know there is a definition as a basis of operations and supplies. Then there was the extraordinary statement made in the conference that this country might be at war and its Colonies might have the right to decide whether or not they would take part in the war.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I really do not think the hon. Member is making quite a legitimate use of the discussion on the Colonial Office Vote. It seems to me he is in an indirect way rediscussing a matter to which two or three days have been devoted already. I am sorry if he was not heard on the merits of the Bill on that occasion.
    Mr. MACMASTER: Several other Members have made reference to what took place and to what is contained in the Report of the conference. If I have transgressed I am sorry. I do think that as to the substantial result of the conference, and the advancement of the principle of co-operation between the Mother-country and the Colonies, if it did not accomplish all that was intended at this particular time, it probably laid the foundations by which that work may be continued. As to what I regard as the substantial accomplishment, namely, the appointment of this Commission, if the Commission has full scope, is properly composed, and goes about to the different parts of the Empire to ascertain correctly what are their resources, capabilities, and opportunities of trading—if that is successfully accomplished, as I hope it will be, great benefit will result not merely to the Mother-country, but to the different portions of the Empire.
    Mr. HAMAR GREENWOOD: In reference to the argument that because the Prime Minister of Canada advocated a preferential treaty between Canada and Australia, therefore it follows that he wanted preferential treaty between Canada and England, I would point out the great difference between those two ideas. First, we are a Free Trade country, and it is impossible for us to make a preferential treaty with the Dominions unless we raise a tariff and then break it down here and there to suit the preferential arrangement. It is quite a different matter for two protectionist countries to make a preferential arrangement. I think it is quite unfair to try to bring the Prime Minister of Canada into this House as if he were attached to the party opposite,

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    and advocated their views, when he has said over and over again that he is a Free Trader of the school of Gladstone and Cobden. One other point. Whenever Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Canadian people wish to make clear their views on any question they do it through their Parliament. Twice, and on both occasions the party opposite were in power, the Canadian Parliament expressed the unanimous view of the people of Canada. The first occasion was when the Canadian Parliament asked the late Conservative Government to remove the embargo on Canadian cattle, and the second was when both Houses of the Canadian Parliament unanimously passed a resolution in favour of Home Rule for Ireland. When right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite urge us to pay particular attention to the views of Canada, it is well to note that on the two occasions on which the Canadians have spoken through the proper body, namely, their Parliament, their views have not been received with enthusiasm, but have, in fact, been ignored, by the party opposite when in power.
    Mr. MACMASTER: Is the hon. Member aware of the answer that Mr. Gladstone returned to the resolution passed by the Canadian Parliament in regard to Home Rule for Ireland?
    Mr. HAMAR GREENWOOD: Yes, and exactly the same answer was made by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham when he was Colonial Secretary to the second resolution unanimously passed by the Canadian Parliament. The resolution—to which I do not object—was that in these affairs each part of the Empire must act as it sees fit. But from 1903 to the present time we have had a cheap form of noisy Imperialism advocated on a thousand platforms and placarded on a thousand walls, and attempts made to persuade the people of this country that the self-governing Colonies wished the adoption of Protection in the Home-country. There is not a tittle of real evidence to show that the Canadian or any other Colonial people have asked the people of this country to adopt Protection in the interests of the Colonies. On the contrary, at the last Imperial Conference not a word was said about Protection, not a speech made for preference. The five Dominion Prime Ministers, with the Prime Minister of the Home country and the Colonial Secretary had a most successful conference—a conference in which differ-
    1390
    ence of opinion was never acute, a conference that brought the self-governing Colonies with all their might and power as fighting units of the Empire into the international arrangements of the Home-country, a conference that was so successful in spite of the many speeches made outside this House—not always speeches like those of this afternoon; in spite of the "roaring propaganda" that has gone on since 1903; there was no one to vote for preference if the matter had gone to a Division. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his success as a Colonial Secretary. I congratulate him and the Empire upon the success of the Imperial Conference, whilst I feel sorry for many of my hon. Friends opposite whose ammunition is all spent without bringing any gain to them. I am bound to confess I feel—speaking now as a Colonial myself—that the greatest danger that the Empire has ever passed through is past, and the risk of trying to bind together these great and growing democracies with the miserable and paltry bonds known as preferential trading has passed away for ever.
    Mr. MONTAGUE BARLOW: I have to refer to a small matter of criticism and administration of the Colonial Secretary during the past year. But if it is a small matter, I have the consolation of knowing that I am dealing with a matter not of imagination, like the last speaker, but of fact. The matter is one in connection with the engagement of certain constables for service in Ceylon. In my opinion the grievance is a very serious one. In June of last year efforts were made in this country, on behalf of the Ceylon Government, to engage a certain number of constables. Some twenty or thirty picked men were invited to go out, on condition that they were to become sergeants and receive higher wages. There can be no question that the men were engaged as sergeants, not as constables. I have the contract here, if there is any question about it. The matter is of peculiar interest in the North of England, because efforts were made to secure for the Ceylon Civil Service some of the hard-headed, capable representatives of the North; some were invited from my own Constituency, and from Manchester and Salford.
    The men were engaged, and duly proceeded to Ceylon. There were some difficulties—not very great, and I do not propose to say anything about them—on the voyage out. But on arrival there were very

    1391
    considerable difficulties, because these twenty or thirty constables who had been definitely engaged to work as sergeants found that their position was extremely unsatisfactory. They could not get their duties fixed, and when duties were definitely allotted to them they were such, as it has always been admitted, white constables should not be put to do. They were put to work in the blazing sun, work that is always allotted to native constables. They were given the same duties as native constables, and treated as such, and not as men of the white colour. That is not a very satisfactory state of things. From every point of view I should have thought the Colonial Secretary, who had some strong language to use some years ago on the subject of Chinese slavery, would not have encouraged that state of things under the present Government. Naturally, the men felt it. They made representations, but they were assured they got all they contracted for, that their positions of sergeants were only nominal, and that they could call themselves sergeants or what they pleased, and that they were to do constables' duty.
    Speaking as a representative of a northern Constituency, I say the men not unnaturally declined to sit down under that sort of treatment. They made complaints in a perfectly proper manner in a petition which they signed. A point of Order was raised about their sending in a joint petition, and then they sent in petitions individually, but they got quite unsatisfactory answers. The points they raised were that they should be paid proper rates of wages, that they should be given duties according to their rank—and that was the main point—and that proper pension rates should be secured. They were assured in answer that the two first points, which were the important points, could not be granted, and in regard to the third point they were told it would be considered. Having got these petitions, the authorities apparently thought the best course would be to get rid of the men altogether. Pressure was put upon them to resign or to sign arrangements agreeing to resign. One man, for instance, was interviewed by the Inspector-General, and something of this sort, according to my information, took place. He was asked whether he desired to cancel his agreement. The answer was, he was quite prepared to consider the question of returning home if his passage was paid and
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    if proper work was provided for him in this country. He was told the Government would not find him employment, and he said "Very well. I am not prepared to break my agreement." He was then told he might, if he liked, give two months' notice under the Ceylon Police Ordinance, which is applicable to the case. He refused to do so; he was told he had much better do so, and if he did not—I do not profess to use the exact words—it would be made unpleasant for him in Ceylon. He still said, "I am prepared to do my duty, and I can stick a little ill-treatment like anybody else." That interview took place in the morning, and in the course of the day some unsupported charges were preferred against him of being a defaulter, and he was fined half a day's pay. Seeing the screw was going to be put upon him so severely, he thought he had better reconsider his position. If after all he was going to be branded and his character taken away he concluded that he had very much better see whether it would not be advisable to sign the agreement to withdraw and accept, as he understood, either two months' notice or payment in lieu thereof and return home. He evidently did so, and then having done that, he was told that he had in fact resigned, and that he would get no payment in lieu of two months' notice. He was told that he was discharged and must at once make his way home. No arrangements were made for paying his passage home. The matter was taken up by the Ceylon Press, and the Government of Ceylon, realising that this might make them unpopular, made arrangements to pay the passage of these men to this country. Apparently they were classed as undesirables simply because they protested that they had not been fairly treated. I asked the responsible Minister a question with regard to this treatment, and the answer I received was:—
    "A number of English police constables were engaged as police sergeants in Ceylon. Some of these men were for good reasons employed on duties which a constable should perform, but none were employed on any duties which a sergeant could not legitimately be expected to do."
    According to my information that is entirely and indignantly denied. It has never been expected that white men should perform point duty in the blazing sun, and certainly not sergeants. The crucial point is that these men were engaged as sergeants. The policemen in Ceylon are now natives, but it was then considered desirable that European officers should have a higher rank, though

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    this should not debar them for employment on the special duties intended. The unfortunate thing is that they were not given sergeants' duties when they got to Ceylon. I have only taken the case of one man, but there are others in the same position. It is quite clear that these men have got a case for compensation.
    Mr. BOOTH: Are we to understand that all this relates to one man only?
    Mr. MONTAGUE BARLOW: No, I have only given one case, because it is the one with which I am more particularly concerned, but there are ten or twelve others in the same position, and they were all sent home under similar conditions. The argument I am urging for compensation applies to them all. These men were forced to sign, or perhaps voluntarily, signed agreements to resign under the Clause of an ordinance which gives them either two months' notice or compensation in lieu of notice, but not one of them has been paid anything in lieu of notice. They were induced to sign these agreements to resign, and directly they had signed them they were told, "Very well, you are discharged, and you have no claim for compensation or for two months' wages in lieu of notice." In the first place, as the pay for a sergeant is £100 a year, they have a claim for £17 in lieu of notice; in the second place they have a claim on the ground of loss of wages for a breach of contract on the part of the local authorities; and, in the third place, they have a claim for loss of work until they get employment again in this country, and a further claim for the loss of so many pensionable years' service. Those are the grounds upon which I suggest that they have claims for compensation. I would ask the Colonial Secretary whether he could not do something to meet the case of these men—a case in which they and their supporters in this country feel very strongly, and in which, I think, this House will feel very strongly now it has been brought before it.
    Mr. LYNCH: I listened with great attention to the speech of the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker), who compared the Colonial Secretary with Mephistopheles. After all, Mephistopheles had his good points, those of suavity, persuasion, and a knowledge of the world, and in those excellent qualities the Colonial Secretary excels. There is a quotation from a French source: "Ou sont les neiges d'anton"—where are the snows of former years—and, when I heard the hon.
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    Member for Gravesend, talking in the style of nearly a generation ago, trotting out his half-forgotten formulæ, I was compelled to say: "The snows of former years are here. "The most important event in the Colonial world is undoubtedly the Imperial Conference, and my impression of the Colonial Secretary was never higher than when I listened, not to his own speech, but to the speeches of those who attacked him, because I saw the number of pitfalls into which an inferior man might have fallen. You remember the anecdote of the Abbe Sieyes, who, when asked what had he ever done in the world, said, "I survived the French Revolution." The Colonial Secretary has survived the Imperial Conference, and that, in view of the speeches that have been made by the hon. Member for Gravesend and the right hon. Gentleman who was former Colonial Secretary (Mr. Lyttelton) is no mean achievement. His path was strewn with pitfalls in one direction and in another. Perhaps the most dominant note with regard to the whole conference was that the self-governing Dominions are determined to follow their own line. They are determined to brook no interference of any kind whatever, and they are determined to claim what is almost invariably denied in this House, that they are not subordinate, but co-ordinate, countries. The only way to preserve the great Condominium is not by trying to relegate them continually to a subordinate position, but to recollect they are now, at any rate, in every possible circumstance, quite co-ordinate members of it. Take, for instance, that which was put forward in favour of wider terms of reference to the Imperial Commission, or the proposal in favour of forming a permanent Standing Committee to regulate the affairs of the Empire. Let us consider, for instance, what is in the way of a permanent Standing Committee. One of the greatest difficulties is that it would be in the air, and that, however admirable its work might be, there would be no means of giving any sanction to its decisions. There is considerable difficulty in the way of the proposal of the hon. Member for Gravesend to widen the terms of reference to the Royal Commission, because every question brought up affecting any one Dominion affects them all, and some of them unequally. So that the only possible way of making a working permanent body such as a standing committee would be to do the impos-

    1395
    sible and to endow it not only with legislative but with executive powers. What has underlain the arguments advanced by that great party has not been the direct point of attack but the ultimate objective. The party represented by the hon. Gentlemen is on its last legs. It has made the most desperate efforts to prop up its fallen fortunes; it is making almost absurd efforts to prop up the tottering fabric of mediævalism and feudalism which is falling about its ears, and the most absurd attempt is being made to rope in the Colonies. It shows how far they are from touch with the opinion of the great self-governing Dominions when they expect what they call the Colonies to support the tottering fortunes of the Conservative party—when they propose to rope in the most democratic states on the surface of the world to be the bastions and buttresses of British Toryism. If the Colonial Secretary wishes to live without friction and to have the best record of all Colonial Secretaries let him make no history. Let him remember that the men with whom he comes in contact are men of as high calibre as himself and quite as competent, and perhaps more determined, to carry on their business in their own way. The best hope for the future is to shake off the shackles of medievalism. England herself should shake off all the impediments and shackles that have come to her from mediaeval times, and march boldly forward in the first line of advance and to the democratic tune set by the great Dominions over the sea.
    Mr. KING: I should like to express my sense of confidence in the Colonial Secretary and his staff. I cannot say the same of all Departments, and especially of the Board of Education. I feel the right hon. Gentleman has a great advantage in that respect. I wish to say a word or two as to the Southern Nigeria house ordinance, and to assure the right hon. Gentleman that opinion in the Colony is entirely in favour of the strictest amelioration of the conditions of life for the natives. If the promised report from the Governor should afford any justification whatever for action in this matter, I hope it will be taken at once.
    And it being Eleven o'clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
    Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next, 24th July.

PACIFIC CABLE [MONEY].
Resolved, "That this House to-morrow resolve itself into Committee to consider of making provision out of the Consolidated Fund and monies to be provided by Parliament for the construction and working of the new Pacific cable."—[Mr. Gulland.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Gulland.]
Mr. BOOTH: What other business will be taken to-morrow, in addition to the Indian High Courts Bill?
Mr. GULLAND: The business will be on the Paper in the following order:—Indian High Courts Bill, Government of India (Gratuities), Committee; Naval Prize (Money Resolution), Salford Hundred Court of Record Bill, Poultry Bill, Commitee; Isle of Man (Customs) Bill, Third Reading; Small Landholders (Scotland) Salaries, Report. They are mostly small Orders, and I do not think they will take much time.
Sir F. BANBURY: I presume if the hon. Member is sanguine enough to hope he will get these Bills he will be contented with them, and that he does not want any more.
Mr. GULLAND: They will be placed on the Paper in their order.
Lord BALCARRES: I think the Money Resolution and the Scottish Land Bill could be conveniently taken earlier.
Mr. GULLAND: Yes, I think so.
Sir F. BANBURY: It will save a little trouble if we understand that that is all the hon. Gentleman wants.
Question put, and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at Five minutes after Eleven o'clock.

  Civil Service (Assistant Clerks).
  Civil Service (Assistant Clerks).
  Customs and Inland Revenue (Amalgamation).
  Customs and Inland Revenue (Amalgamation).
  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Instruction in Irish.
  Instruction in Irish.
  Irish Training Colleges.
  Irish Training Colleges.
  Margarine Prosecutions.
  Margarine Prosecutions.
  Rateable Value (England and Wales).
  Rateable Value (England and Wales).
  Teachers (Superannuation and Disablement Allowances).
  Teachers (Superannuation and Disablement Allowances).
  Appointment of Magistrates (Advisory Committees).
  Appointment of Magistrates (Advisory Committees).
  Sub-Lieutenants (Royal Navy).
  Sub-Lieutenants (Royal Navy).
  Royal Marines.
  Royal Marines.
  Officers (Naval Service).
  Officers (Naval Service).
  Swine Fever Orders.
  Swine Fever Orders.
  Trade Union Funds (Post Office Savings Bank).
  Trade Union Funds (Post Office Savings Bank).
  Sorting Clerks and Telegraphists (Dublin).
  Sorting Clerks and Telegraphists (Dublin).
  Mail Service (Drimoleague and Cork).
  Mail Service (Drimoleague and Cork).
  Supernumerary Park-keepers (Royal Parks).
  Supernumerary Park-keepers (Royal Parks).
LORD MOUNTGARRET OF NIDD.
Henry Edmund Viscount Mountgarret in the Peerage of Ireland, having been created Baron Mountgarret of Nidd in the West Riding of the County of York—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

LORD ASHTON OF HYDE.
Thomas Gair Ashton, Esquire, having been created Baron Ashton of Hyde in the County of Chester—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that, the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

Chiswick Urban District Council.

St. Helens Corporation.

Also the Certificates that no Standing Order is applicable to the following Bills:
Land Drainage Provisional Order (No. 3).
Port of London (First Election of Members) Provisional Order.
And also the Certificates that the Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have not been complied with:
Salford Hundred Court of Record.
The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE.
Report from, That the Standing Orders not complied with in respect of the
Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corporation Bill
ought to be dispensed with, and the Bill allowed to proceed.

LONDON AND SOUTH-WESTERN RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
Commons Amendments considered, and agreed to.
SALFORD HUNDRED COURT OF RECORD BILL.
Examiner's Certificate of non-compliance with the Standing Orders referred to the Standing Orders Committee on Tuesday next.
BELFAST CORPORATION BILL.
The King's consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 8) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 9) BILL.
DRAINAGE AND IMPROVEMENT OF LANDS (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (GAS) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (GAS) (No. 2) BILL.
Reported, without amendment, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 5) BILL.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 11) BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.
KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES BRIDGE BILL.
The King's consent signified, and Bill reported, with Amendments.
BRISTOL TRAMWAYS BILL.
Read 3a, and passed.
EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (DURHAM, &c.) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
CHESTER WATER BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.
PARLIAMENT BILL.
Petitions against; of persons signing (2); read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (LONDON) BILL. [H.L.]
GAS AND WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL, [H.L.]
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 4) BILL. [H.L.]
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 2) BILL. [H.L.]
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL, [H.L.]
Amendments reported (according to order): Then it was moved that Standing Order No. XXXIX be considered in order to its being dispensed with, and that the Bills be now read 3a, agreed to: Bills read 3a accordingly, and passed and sent to the Commons.

PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 3) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to order) and Bill to be read 3a on Monday next.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDER (NO. 5) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read, and discharged.
LAND DRAINAGE PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 2) BILL.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
  Read 3a (according to order), and passed.

PARLIAMENT BILL.
Order of the day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (VISCOUNT MORLEY): My Lords, I suppose no important Government Bill before ever came to the stage of the Third Reading under more singular and remarkable circumstances. I am respectfully inviting your Lordships to give a Third Reading to the Parliament Bill which has been so changed—I am not saying rightly or wrongly—in its course through the Committee stage that it is our Bill, of course, no longer. And yet enough of our Bill survives, after all these operations in Committee, to excite the mortal dislike of noble Lords opposite, and to excite, also, a similar dislike among our small minority who sit behind me. That constitutes a very remarkable state of things.
The Bill that is now before us is not the Bill that was submitted to the judgment of the country. It is not the Bill that was passed by a great majority in the House of Commons. It is not the Bill to which your Lordships were good enough to give a Second Reading without a Division. It is this transformed Bill which, in spite of all these mortal aversions on one side and the other, will, I hope and believe to-night receive the Third Reading, because, though it is so disliked in both its forms, we are all alive, on both sides, and must o be alive, to what would follow its rejection here to-night—namely, a tremendous dislocation of Parliamentary business, great exasperation of Parliamentary and political opinion and temper, and the necessity of immediately setting to work, once more, to tread the same thankless and wearisome journey all over again.
I will now try to tell your Lordships what the Bill, as it now stands, really is. It need not be a very long description. On November 23 last year the noble Marquess who leads the Opposition propounded and explained to the House a broad and comprehensive scheme of which he said—
"It is the best substitute that we can find for the scheme provided in the Government Bill."
It was thus formally set forth as the official Opposition alternative to the Government policy; and it was perfectly

573
well understood that in case the elections, then approaching, turned in favour of noble Lords opposite and they were to cross the floor of this House, they would be bound, and would willingly accept the obligation, to present and pass through this House a Bill modelled on the Resolution which the noble Marquess then proposed. What happened? Did the electors favour the policy of the Parliament Bill, or the policy of the noble Marquess set out in the comprehensive framework to which I have referred? I do not believe that any noble Lord who follows me in this debate will, for an instant, say that there was a majority in favour of the alternative policy and against the policy of the Parliament Bill. That being so, I think we had a right reasonably to expect that noble Lords opposite would follow the precedent which they had themselves set and prescribed, in terms, in the case of the memorable rejection of the Budget of 1909. What was the Motion on that occasion? It was that this House would not be justified in giving assent to the Finance Bill until it was submitted to the judgment of the country. I am not offering any remark upon that proceeding. But then, when the judgment of the country was ascertained, this House, in conformity to its sagacious traditions, set by many eminent Conservative leaders, accepted the verdict of the country as final and the Budget was passed.
Now see what has happened here. You have had the same, sort of circumstances. There was an alternative scheme propounded by the noble Marquess to the Parliament Bill of the Government. The electors rejected the alternative scheme and accepted the Parliament Bill. And now, instead of following the precedent of January, 1910, and accepting the Parliament Bill which the country ratified, you have boldly taken that Bill out of our hands. That is what has been done by some, at all events, of your Amendments. I should have supposed, from the precedents of great Conservative leaders, that if noble Lords opposite found, at a critical moment, that they were bound to accept some change which was unpalatable and unwelcome to them, they would at least have said they would make as little change as they could and not as much change as they could. The present leaders of the Conservative Party have taken exactly the opposite line. Instead of making as little change as they could, in the cir-cumstances
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cumstances produced by what they themselves had done in 1909 and 1910, they have made, not as little change as they could at a critical moment, but as much change as they could. During the French Revolution, if I may refer for a second to that, somebody said, "Why, in six years we have lived six centuries." I think anybody who looks at the position of things, say, 20 months ago, may exclaim "We have lived through the changes and proposals of change of 20 years." The noble Marquess said truly that the proposal of the Bill which has been read a second time would deal a death-blow to this House as it now exists. Well, I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that the effect of one or two of the Amendments made in the Bill in the course of its going through Committee, while not a death-blow to the House of Commons—that is a difficult House to kill—would impair the authority, prestige, and powers of the House of Commons, And this change is made on a Bill which everybody understood—I am sure I thought noble Lords opposite understood as thoroughly as we did—was meant so to adjust the relations between the two Houses that the House of Commons should have its powers unimpaired, made clear and definite, and that your Lordships' power should be limited and also made definite.
Now, broadly, what does the change amount to? The Bill that your Lordships read a second time retained the old practice and privileges of the House of Commons in regard to Money Bills, with the added abandonment of the right of rejecting Money Bills which your Lordships had practically conceded. But to-day the Bill takes away from the House of Commons the power of deciding what is and is not a Money Bill, and transfers that power from the House of Commons—a power which it possesses now—to a new tribunal. Under the second clause the Bill provided that if a Bill passed the House of Commons three times and was three times rejected in this House over a period of two years, that Bill became law in spite of its rejection by your Lordships' House. But now the Bill to which we are going, I hope, to give a Third Heading excludes from the operation of that clause a certain number of measures and insists upon their being passed away from Parliament by way of Referendum. That is an enormous change. The Government and the

575
supporters of the Bill hold by the principle of national opinion working through Parliamentary machinery. But you introduce a great innovating principle with most innovating machinery. You say that certain questions are only to be dealt with under the protection of safeguards, differing from such protection as is provided in ordinary legislation. I rather think subjects were mentioned by the noble Marquess in November, such as Tariff Reform, compulsory service, disestablishment of the Church—of course, Home Rule, and, for all I know, other matters. Those were taken out of the operation of the Bill which was read a second time. But that is not all. In fact, that is less important than what I am now going to mention.
The proposals in the Bill now set up a small tribunal—Parliamentary, it is true—which is to decide in each case whether a given Bill which has been read three times in the House of Commons, and rejected three times here, is a measure to call for special treatment. This Joint Committee, to decide whether a given measure is so great, so serious in its gravity, and moreover so little understood by the electors that there will be no assurance that they know what they are about and that they had studied the measure—it is that tribunal which is to supersede the Ministers of the Crown, to oust tie Ministers of the Crown, to override and supersede and put away the House of Commons. It is to have the right of calling a Referendum into existence in reference to a given Bill. It has the right of doing what your Lordships no longer claim, in terms at all events—the right of causing a Dissolution. Because, say what you will of a Referendum, I think most of us who have studied the working of a Referendum will agree that we shall be saved none of the troubles, expense, and turmoil of an election. This tribunal is not to consider what the House of Commons thinks, it is not to consider what the Ministers think, but it has to decide on any question referred; their decision in any question referred to them shall be final, and their conclusion for all purposes shall not be questioned in a Court of law.
I saw that some writer in the Press looked upon that proposal as being as bad as the Venetian Council of Ten. I wish I knew more of the Venetian Council of
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Ten than I do, but I am perfectly sure that to compare it with this tribunal which the noble Marquess is erecting is not entire nonsense. But, though it is not the Council of Ten, it is a most remarkable new organ and instrument of government to introduce into our old system here. I do not feel sure that in all the speeches that we heard from that Bench even those noble Lords who made those speeches had fully realised what an extraordinary piece of machinery this is. I put this to you with all respect and with no desire to say anything that would irritate anyone. Say what ill you please of the Parliament Bill, nobody will pretend that the change from an absolute to a suspensory Veto, which is the change proposed by the Parliament Bill—and where there has been, let us mark, a large and sweeping opportunity for the full play both of Parliamentary and of general public opinion upon a given measure—nobody will pretend that that change is comparable in its magnitude, in its risks, and in its I possible dangers to the death-blow, if I may so call it, which the noble Marquess's proposals would be to the prestige, the authority, and the responsibilities of the House of Commons.
I suppose we have all asked ourselves very often during the last 20 months what the country probably expected—what sort of steps towards a settlement the country probably expected. Roughly my own impression is that a great many expected that this House would accept the Parliament Bill. They did not look forward—in my view; it may be wrong—to all these tremendous operations of reconstruction. They certainly did not look forward in a serious and expectant frame of mind to a broad supersession of our Parliamentary system by a Referendum. What do they expect now? I dare say they are at this moment somewhat bewildered. I should think, if you asked the ordinary steady voter—and I really do not much care on which side—what he would think a fair way out of the present difficulties, he would say, "Well you had better try the Parliament Bill. It will be worked under a most vigilant supervision; it will be worked under hostile and unfriendly eyes; but try it." That is my rough-and-ready expectation of what I believe to exist in the mind of the ordinary and what I call steady voter.

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It is true, if you like, that the consequences of the Parliament Bill may be grave, and they will be grave [Opposition cheers] but they are intended to b grave; but nobody with the shadow of a sense of responsibility can hide from himself, looking not merely at what may happen to-night but later, and later even than that—later even than next week—nobody with a sense of responsibility can hide from himself that the consequences of the rejection of this measure will be in themselves far more grave, be they what they may, than any consequences that I can imagine following from it—grave, though I admit those consequences may possibly be. What I would desire would be that this inevitable Parliamentary and political operation should be carried through without anything like a social shock—I do not mean a superficial shock, but a real and wide-reaching social shock.
I have been exposed, and the Government have been exposed to a stereotyped kind of reproach that we have shown an obstinate and stubborn refusal to make any compromise. That is the ordinary view among noble Lords opposite, but let us look at it for a single moment. I put it in a very concrete shape indeed. Suppose a conference took place between leading men, responsible men, on the two sides. It is no doubt conceivable that the Ministerial negotiators might go a certain way towards meeting the views and appeasing the fears and apprehensions of noble Lords opposite in the harmless and comparatively secondary changes that have been made and proposed in the Bill as distinguished from others. Your Lordships are very angry with us for not conceding, but I have seen no sort of sign of any tiling like concessions from the noble Lords who sit; on the opposite Benches. It is unreasonable, you think, that we should be obdurate, but it is perfectly natural and in accordance with the fitness of things that the noble Marquess should be unyielding. I do not believe that the country would take that view at all; but, to be quite frank, I do not expect—and I am sorry for it—that if there were such a transaction as I am pointing to, the noble Marquess and his colleagues would throw overboard his excepted list, his proposal of the Joint Committee settling the matters of great gravity, and of the truly extraordinary powers given to the Joint Committee. But if you are going to talk of conces-
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sions, if you are going to reproach us for not compromising, perhaps the noble Marquess will indicate to us where there might be a concession—if not, at all events he might hold out the chance. Every rational politician would desire that the two political Parties should travel together, at any rate as far as ever they can, along I this very difficult and stony road; but this new transformed Bill, to which I hope the House will give a Third Reading to-night, interposes, I fear, a fatal barricade.
I will not go over any of the ground again that has been well discussed in Committee. I can only say that those discussions in Committee struck me as fair and in excellent temper on both side, but it was a serious discussion directed, as I am bound to think and I regret to think, to most unfortunate ends. Surely all the turmoil and mischief, whatever else you may say of it, that followed the rejection of the Finance Bill in 1909 warns noble Lords opposite of the tremendous fallacy, the horrid fallacy, of supposing that because you believe you have a right, therefore it must be patriotic statesmanship to assert and exercise that right. History swarms with examples of the disaster and ruin that have followed that fallacy. I wish they would allow me to suggest, that they should put in gold letters over the room where the noble Marquess and his friends assemble the well known quotation—"Things are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be. Why, then, should we deceive ourselves? "I humbly and respectfully commend that piece of wisdom to the attention of noble Lords opposite.
What you want in this crisis is not heroics and it is not logic. We are not afraid of either. We are capable, I dare I say of taking heroic action, and we will do the best we can to defend our action by logic; but this is not a case for noble Lords or people outside to say our right is so and so, and we are bound to vindicate it. In a phrase that fell the other day from the lips of the most rev. Primate in his supplications he asked for a renewal of the "Spirit of wisdom and government." That is what is wanted now amongst us all, and not logic and not heroics. I will only say this further—to pass this Bill to-night and to allow the real Bill to pass by-and-by is not surrender to the

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House of Commons, it is not surrender to the Government; it is a surrender to the verdict and the judgment of the country at the last General Election.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Viscount Morley.)
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, it is sometimes said that it is not a bad thing to see oneself as others see us, but I think we may well be rather slow to see ourselves on this side of the House exactly as the noble Viscount who has just sat down sees us. He has given an account of our dealings with this Bill which I can only describe as something like a parody of the proposals which we have made and as a violent exaggeration of the effects which those proposals are calculated to produce. What the noble Viscount in effect suggested to the House was that your Lordships, having decided to read this Bill a second time, had proceeded afterwards to transform—I think that was the expression he used—and to convert it into a Bill which was "our Bill" no longer. I am prepared to maintain that our treatment of the Bill has on the contrary been scrupulously correct and Constitutional, and I should like in the few words which I propose to address to the House to make my statement good with regard to each of the different stages through which the measure has passed since it came to this House.
Your Lordships gave a Second Reading to this Bill, profoundly though most of you disliked it, for I conceive two reasons. We were all, or nearly all, of us committed to the view that some readjustment of the relations between the two Houses had become inevitable, and we were, therefore, ready to discuss any proposal which His Majesty's Ministers might desire to urge upon us for that purpose. Apart from that, I think, the noble Viscount is entirely warranted when he claims that we could not do otherwise than have regard to the fact that this Bill was before the country on the occasion of the election in December, 1910. We have, of course, never admitted that the Bill had been fully explained and discussed at that time, nor, again, do we admit that the verdict of the electorate was an entirely conclusive verdict with regard to everything that the Bill contained, because we know—we have had it very recently admitted by noble Lords opposite—that this Bill was by
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no means the only matter before the electorate and that the election, according to their statement, turned also upon the question of Home Rule and upon other questions.
I understand, however, that in the view of the noble Viscount the fact of our having given the Bill a Second Reading carried with it the obligation to pass the Bill through I the Committee stage virtually unaltered. I take it that he would have allowed us to correct a few inelegancies of drafting or anything of that kind, but so far as the main provisions of the Bill are concerned it is quite clear that he disputes altogether our right to deal with the Bill. We on the contrary maintain that it was our Constitutional right, our duty, to go through the Bill and to revise it, and to send it down to the House of Commons with such alterations as seem to us essential in order to remove its worst defects. We discharged ' that duty to the best of our abilities, quite unaided by anything that was done on the Benches opposite, and encountering an attitude of uncompromising resistance which, I must say, seemed to most of us wholly at variance with the expectations held out to us as to the manner in which the measure would be treated.
Well, my Lords, is it the case, as the noble, Viscount has told us, that the Bill in its present form is virtually unrecognisable and, something wholly different from the Bill as it left the House of Commons? There are virtually two clauses only—two clauses of primary importance—in this Bill. There is the clause dealing with the rights of the House of Commons over finance, and there is the clause dealing with the rights of this House in regard to general legislation. It was over the claim of the House of Commons to deal with finance that this great controversy first arose. The noble Viscount very properly traced it back to the reservation of the Budget of 1909 by your Lordships. Now we have in effect conceded the principle of the first clause. Upon that clause, even with our Amendments, is writ large the supremacy of the House of Commons in matters of finance. We do not challenge it. We have, it is true, ventured to suggest a change in the words defining a Money Bill. What does our suggestion mean? We have suggested an alteration in the language of the Bill taken from the mouth of the Prime Minister himself, from a passage which we have again and again

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quoted, and which noble Lords opposite have entirely failed to explain away. The noble Viscount said just now that there had been no yielding on our part at any point. I think he is mistaken. Throughout the discussion of these Amendments we endeavoured, whenever our proposals Were taken exception to, to recast them in a shape which would remove those objections and meet the views of noble Lords opposite. This was conspicuously the case in regard to the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Cromer, which was completely recast in deference to what was said by the noble Viscount and others in reference to it. And let me say that if you have further criticism to offer we are even now ready to consider whether the language of that Amendment might not yet further be improved. Then we have left the Speaker in the clause in spite of the overwhelming arguments that were brought forward on this side of the House against imposing these new duties upon that distinguished official. I am sure the House has not forgotten the weighty observations of Lord Peel upon that subject. In spite of that, the Speaker remains in the clause, and all that we have done is to give him the assistance of a carefully-constituted Committee of high authority, of complete impartiality, to relieve him, who is, after all, an official of the House of Commons, from the responsibility of discharging single-handed this new and onerous duty of arbitrating between the two Houses of Parliament. Is there, then, in our treatment of the first clause, anything deserving of the description given by the noble Viscount? Yet I find the noble Viscount describing our changes in that clause as involving a death-blow to the prestige and the authority of the House of Commons.
VISCOUNT MORLEY: I did not mean to apply that to the Money Bill clause only, but to the whole operation.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: At any rate, so far as the first clause is concerned, I hope the noble Viscount will not press his observation that anything that we have done can be legitimately interpreted as a death-blow to the prestige and authority of the House of Commons. We desire to take nothing from the House of Commons. We desire to assume nothing for ourselves except such powers over finance as we ought to possess, as we do possess, and as the Prime Minister himself admits we ought to possess.
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I pass to Clause 2. Our position with regard to Clause 2 is a somewhat different one. In the region of finance the members of this House are always regarded, and perhaps naturally, as being trespassers. Any interest that we take in financial questions, any desire that we evince to interfere in financial matters, is always resented as an encroachment upon the sphere of the House of Commons. But in the case of Clause 2 no such question arises. We are not dealing with finance at all. We are dealing with general legislation of which this House is every whit as much seized as the of her House of Parliament. The Constitutional powers which you are going to take away from this House under this clause are powers which have been exercised, which have been admitted to be Constitutional powers, and which, after all, are the solitary safeguard which the people of this country have against ill-considered and hasty legislation, pressed forward by an impetuous Minister, with an equally impetuous House of Commons at his back. This clause strips us, in regard to general legislation, of everything except the meagre opportunities afforded to us by a delay of two years. And yet that clause, in spite of; the noble Viscount's complaints, remains in the Bill, and that clause, despite anything we have done, will operate over by far the greater part of the whole area of general legislation.
Now what are the reservations which your Lordships have asked permission to make? We suggest that legislation dealing with the Crown and the Protestant Succession should be dealt with exceptionally, and should not be undertaken without a reference to the people of this country. Is that a very serious encroachment? The noble Viscount told us, when he was dealing with this matter the other day, that in his view it was inconceivable that there should ever be a House of Commons less loyal to the Crown and the Protestant Succession than the present House of Commons—I am not sure that he did not say than this House. Then if, as a measure of precaution, we press for this change, can the noble Viscount seriously contend that we are very materially altering the scope of the Government Bill?
What is our second reservation? It is directed to prevent the present Government from tampering with the Union until the people of this country have had an

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opportunity of expressing their views upon the subject. The country has twice expressed its views in a very unambiguous manner. The noble Viscount, I think it was—though it may have been one of his colleagues—said the other day, "Oh, but the question of Home Rule is now looked upon in a very different light by the people of this country." Perhaps it is. All I can say is, if the people of this country have changed their minds give them an opportunity of telling you so. At any rate, do not, when this immense question comes up for decision for the third time, cheat the people of this country of the opportunities that they have had on former occasions of telling you whether they desire the change or not.
I come to our third reservation, the reservation of capital questions in regard to which there is reason to believe that the opinion of the country has not been adequately ascertained. So far as I can make out, this proposal filled the mind of the noble Viscount with especial horror. To hear him speak, one would have thought that under our clause this House was claiming for itself the right of disposing of these reserved matters. It cannot be said too often that this House makes no claim of the kind. All that our clause contains is a proposal that if the Government of the day, or if either House of Parliament, or if the Speaker of the House of Commons has reason to believe that, in a grave case, the judgment of the people has not been ascertained, the Committee which we propose to set up should have the opportunity of investigating the matter, and, only if it is satisfied, of sending the issue for judgment, by a Referendum of the people. It is not this House which would decide. It is not the House of Commons which would decide. It is not the Speaker. It is the people of the country who, if there is a doubt, will have the last word in regard to such matters as these. Our proposal, expressed in a single sentence, comes really to this, that we desire that the Government of the day should not be able to do behind the back of the people what they could not do if it was done in the face of the people. That is all that this tribunal, which tills the mind of the noble Viscount with alarm is able to secure, and in our view, if the time has come for curtailing, as you propose to curtail, the rights and opportunities of this House, it is inevitable that as a safeguard you should introduce into your measure some precaution of this kind.
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Are these, then, such very unreasonable reservations? Do they deserve all the hard things that have been said of them by the noble Viscount? I should like to remind the noble Viscount that in the important Divisions which have taken place during the Committee stage of the Bill he has only found about thirty of his independent supporters to go into the Lobby with him in regard to these matters. Out of a total minority of forty-eight, I think between fifteen and twenty were official members of the Government, and I may say in passing that it will interest us extremely—I do not know whether there is likely to be a Division to-night—to see whether the noble Viscount's appeal, which we all noticed with a certain amount of sympathy, is responded to by his friends.
Now we come to the Third Reading. I have heard not very well supported rumours of proposals for putting an end to the existence of the Bill at this stage. I can scarcely credit them. It seems to me that, having passed the Second Reading of the Bill, and having spent, as we did, a considerable amount of time in amending it, to interrupt our course at this stage and to put an end to the measure by rejecting it on the Third Reading would be a step which would render this House almost ridiculous in the eyes of the people of the country. The noble Viscount made, I thought, a somewhat singular suggestion to me in regard to our Amendments. He said very naturally that they varied in importance, and he asked. Cannot the noble Marquess indicate to us to-night whether he is prepared to make any concessions, and what kind of concessions those might be? A more extraordinary suggestion. I suppose, never has made. Surely, whatever opportunities there may be afterwards, and the noble Viscount knows better than I do whether there will be such opportunities, for considering whether any of these proposals of ours should be pressed or not for me or for any one else, on the occasion of the Third Reading, to announce that we were ready to throw overboard any part of the changes which we, have deliberately introduced into the Bill would be, to say the least of it, a very unusual Parliamentary manŒuvre. But I am quite ready to say one thing to the noble Viscount, and that is that in our view some, at all events, of the Amendments which we have introduced into the Bill are so essential that we should

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certainly not be prepared to recede from them in substance so long as we remain free agents. But we are ready to pursue this controversy upon Constitutional lines, and in that conciliatory spirit which the noble Viscount invited just now.
May I be permitted in that spirit of conciliation to ask the Government to consider for a moment what is really the situation with regard to this group of Constitutional problems, of which we are discussing after all only a fragment this evening. The ultimate goal which you have in view on that side of the House, and which we have in view on this side, is a reasonable reconstitution of the House of Lords. And may I be permitted once again to remind noble Lords opposite that we have shown that we are in earnest in this matter by the introduction of the Bill to which the noble Viscount referred in his speech—a contribution to the solution of the problem which seems to us, at any rate, very much more substantial and useful than the only contribution which, so far as I am aware, His Majesty's Government have made. I mean the meagre and nebulous reference to House of Lords reform which is to be found in the Preamble of the Parliament Bill. The noble Viscount will recollect that he himself described our Bill as a helpful contribution to the consideration of the subject. Then there is the question of the reform of procedure as between the two Houses. That matter has been constantly referred to during the course of these discussions, and we are all perfectly well aware that there are suggestions, useful suggestions, that have found favour on both sides of the House, suggestions for resort to conferences between the two Houses, for joint sittings, and finally for the Referendurn. The noble Viscount described the Referendum a moment ago as involving the broad supersession of the Parliamentary system, quite forgetting that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, and many of the noble Viscount's colleagues, are perfectly prepared to accept the Referendum in special cases as a useful adjunct to the Parliamentary system.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Not to introduce it into the Constitution, but to allow it to be used in a special Act of Parliament dealing with a particular subject. I have never consented to admit it into the Constitutional system.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Surely the difference is only one of degree. I admit that the noble and learned Lord's dose of Referendum is a very homeopathic one, but what we care about is the principle of the Referendum, and whether it be employed in the manner suggested by the noble and learned Lord or in a more liberal manner is a question which may very well be discussed.
Then finally, we have this Bill upon the Table upon which for the time you are concentrating your attention, wrongly we think, because we are persuaded that you should have begun at the other end and not begun where you actually have. But even with regard to this Bill, dangerous and bad as we think it, we have beyond all question gone a long way to meet you. If it is possible to slate these things in the shape of a fraction, I should have said we have gone five-sixths of the way to meet you under our proposals embodied in this Bill. At any rate we are convinced and shall remain convinced, that this Bill will leave this House in a shape in which it will or certainly ought sufficiently to serve your purpose, and in that shape we send the Bill down to the House of Commons, asking for it—I do not know whether we shall ask successfully—that it may be treated in accordance with the ordinary decencies of Parliamentary warfare. My Lords, we believe, that you have ready to your hand all the materials for an honourable settlement, and, therefore, it seems to us almost inconceivable that His Majesty's Government should prefer to resort to other methods, methods which have been condemned by statesmen of both great political Parties, and which seem detestable in the eyes of all right thinking men.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I ask leave to interpose a few words on this very grave occasion. It is proverbially difficult for those who are themselves engaged in important affairs to estimate aright the true proportion of the events in which they are taking part, but after making all allowance for that, I venture to believe that the next few days may loom large in the history of England. The historian who 100 years hence recounts what took place in the opening year of the reign of George V may have to regard these days as being among the most momentous in their issues of any which the Constitutional

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historian has to record. If that be so, it is eminently desirable that we who are making history should be sure that the country understands, if not in full detail, yet as clearly as may be, what are the actual points at issue, and where the fight is now being joined in these strenuous days by protagonists in the affairs of State.
It may seem a strange and presumptuous assertion to make, but I make bold to say that the average elector up and down the country does not to-day realise with any approach to truth what are actually the points at variance. We have had in this House nine or ten days of high debate—the noble Viscount who leads the House has referred in laudatory terms to the spirit and tone of those debates—and on every day we have had, at the least, some speeches of great power, permanent interest and solid argument, but they have been very little before the minds of the people at large. Those who in the House of Commons or in the country outside follow our proceedings in a few of the great newspapers are, no doubt, privy to what has been happening, and have shown their interest in many ways; but I am persuaded that that is not the case with regard to the mass of the people outside that range. Our discussions have been weighty and important—I can say it without affectation as I have taken no practical part in them—but they have been very little noticed by people generally. It would be out of place to go now into the causes. Certainly I am not blaming journalists as such, for though it has other and higher functions, a newspaper is in the main a business concern, and gives its readers what its readers want. I have had the curiosity to turn up the files of the last few weeks of the newspapers on either side of polities that circulate most widely among the less leisured, the less literary, the less studious portion of the public. I looked specially to see what account was given of three speeches, those of Lord Courtney, Lord Peel, and Lord Weardale. None of those speeches were of the Party kind, which can be more or less taken for granted on such occasions. Each of them dealt carefully with the practical difficulties which might arise under the Parliament Bill as drawn up by the Government. I was prepared to find them reported briefly, but I was not prepared to find only a few lines given to such
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speeches, while the descriptive accounts of the debate were such as to make one doubt whether the writers had really been present at all. I believe the outside apathy and listlessness at a great juncture in our history is in part due to the unfamiliarity of average men in an old Constitutional country with the study of Constitutional problems. They have been under the impression that these things, so to speak, take care of themselves, that they do not practically concern the individual in his daily life, or at all events that they do not press upon him or call for his immediate attention or consideration. I venture to think that before we are very many years older there will be a different view taken by the average elector about Constitutional questions. I think this unfamiliarity with the subject explains in part the apparent apathy with which a good many of these discussions have been received.
That apathy is also partly due to the fact that the average elector is satisfied with the belief that the issue was decided at the last election, and that the question of victory or defeat upon the large principle which underlies this Bill was settled then. Ask the average voter in the tram-car or in the railway train and he will say that it is going to be decided in a week or two whether a House whose members sit simply by hereditary right is to be allowed to prevail over the elected representatives of the people, and is going to maintain its power to reject Budgets. Not only will you find such an opinion on the lips of the average man, but in the leading articles of the evening papers to-night you will probably find, though in more guarded or clouded language, the same sort of account given of what is happening. Now notice that that is simply a total misapprehension of the facts. The real fact is absolutely and entirely different, as the noble Marquess who has just spoken has made quite clear. Notwithstanding what Lord Morley said, it is certain that the big issue on which the opinion of the country was taken is no longer at stake. On those larger questions the House of Lords has, rightly or wrongly, fallen in with the views of the House of Commons, and has accepted what was, as I at least am ready to maintain, the verdict at the last General Election.
The point now at issue is a different one. You can only get at it by comparing

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the Bill as it was introduced with the Bill as it is now. We have already been reminded by the leaders on either side of what from their point of view the differences are. I should myself put it that the Bill is altered by in the first place an attempt to make more explicit what is a Money Bill, and to prevent that indirect tacking to which reference was made in the House of Commons and here, the Speaker being helped by a Committee in deciding such questions. In the next place the Amendments enact that on certain great Constitutional questions the House of Commons shall not be able, until the country has been consulted, to overrule the reiterated objection of a reformed House of Lords, the appeal to the country being by the Referendum. The next is that the House of Commons shall similarly be restrained from independent or single-Chamber legislation on certain other issues of great gravity on which the opinion of the country has not been definitely ascertained. It is then provided that the advice or decision as to the need of submitting a matter to the country shall rest with a Joint Committee to be appointed in such a way as best to ensure impartiality.
I have tried to express in a cold-blooded manner and as fairly as I can the changes which this House has suggested in the Bill. If that is a fair account of the Amendments, the issue now before Parliament is—Can these changes in any form be accepted by those who are responsible for the original Bill? I do not argue at all whether they are good or bad proposals, but it does seem to me to be an unfair use of language to speak of these changes as "wrecking Amendments." The main principles of the Bill are untouched. There are suggested safeguards, suggested checks in the working out of these large principles. If the cheeks go too far, suggest modifications and let us hear how far in the way of check or curtailment of absolute one-Chamber freedom you are prepared to go. For example, in regard to the Joint Committee, the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, has said two or three times during these debates that he welcomed suggestions from any quarter as to how a Committee can be so constructed as to ensure impartiality. That is surely a moderate mode of suggestion, and to describe it as a wrecking Amendment would seem to, me to be a straining of words. Similarly, with regard to the Referendum,
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there are many possible ways of varying the manner in which it is here suggested that the opinion of the country should be taken, and we have yet to learn that friendly suggestions would not be welcomed as to some better way of ascertaining the opinion of the people on questions on which they have not yet been adequately consulted.
The debate throughout has been in one sense hampered and in another sense helped by constant references to Home Rule, and to the question whether or not the country was consulted about it. That was inevitable, because the Home Rule question is the chief object-lesson of difficulty raised by such a Bill as this. Home Rule may be right; it may be true to say that it would now be supported by former opponents, and many voters may have realised in December that Home Rule was involved in the Parliament Bill. Still, I seem to have recollections of phrases about the bogey of Home Rule, of the red herring of Home Rule, and so on, and the Government reminded us repeatedly that the real question before the country was the Parliament Bill and the powers of the House of Lords. Will anybody contend—the noble Viscount has not contended—that a specific or definite scheme of Home Rule was before the electorate in December? I do not mean a detailed Bill, but a specific and definite scheme in large outline. Obviously the House of Commons cannot beforehand submit to the country the details of a complex measure, but were even the large principles of the next Home Rule Bill before the country? I understood the noble Viscount to say the other day in reply to Lord Lansdowne, that "We wait to draw up our Bills till the time approaches for laying them on the Table." If it be true that the supporters of the Government and possibly even the Government themselves are absolutely unaware what the large provisions of the Home Rule Bill are, can any one say without an abuse of language that the Home Rule Bill was in its large principles before the country at the last election? We know nothing about retaining the Irish members at Westminster or about the financing of Ireland from England; and upon such questions as these it depends what Home Rule means, so widely apart are the different ways of dealing with the subject. It is surely a strain of language to say that the present House of Commons has authority to deal by itself with the

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whole matter exactly as it likes without the intervention of this House. But I did not mean to enter on the Home Rule question.
My one point is that the differences between Lords and Commons now turn mainly on the mode of safeguarding the working of this Bill from abuse. Nothing in the debates that we have listened to justifies us in doubting that these matters are capable of arrangement if there is good will on both sides. But if across the questions of statesmanship which we have to weigh there conies in the petty question—petty in such a context—of Party triumph or defeat, disaster must be the outcome whichever way the issue goes. There is always a peril for all of us that in hours of conflict and difficulty our treatment of great questions is unconsciously swayed by considerations which are quite alien to the large problem which is at stake. A master of contemporary thought some time ago read a paper on the way in which personal feelings or prejudices were apt to sway a man at times of great public crisis. He called it a matter of temper, "that weakness or defect which we know by the name of temper, whether irritable or querulous or acrimonious, or despondent and gloomy." The thought comes in, "You are out, we are in, and we mean to use the power of conquerors as we have the right and power to do. We will strain every Constitutional or unconstitutional right rather than spoil our triumph." It is the vae victis of old Rome, the "hands up" of South Africa. Disaster awaits the land or the Government or the Party so led. I feel that more deeply than I can say. Is a great element and factor in our national life to be mishandled in that way, contrary to every high tradition of English Constitutional history and progress? Is it not contrary to every high tradition of English Constitutional history and progress to deal with these things by a mere coup de main?
It is extraordinarily difficult now to see any waterway into a calm haven. Contrary to the rule of natural science heat in Parliamentary discussion induces hardening, and I imagine there is hardening on either side in more ways than one. Yet even now I dare not myself quite despair. I believe in the power of conference among men of good will. I have been rather surprised to hear so little reference made to the great speech in which Sir Henry Campbell-
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Bannerman introduced his Resolution on this subject in 1907. If any of your Lordships will refer to that speech you will find frequent reference to the value of repeated conference. If men of responsibility will have courage to resist the thraldom either of Party temper or of a tyrannical group which subordinates the well-being of the country as a whole to the thought of its partisan ends, an outcome which would, if I may use the expression, "save the face" of both sides ought not to be unfindable.
I am not in the secrets of either Front Bench, but if rumour, which is very often false, speaks truth for once, a mode of outcome, honourable to both sides and different from that which the Bill suggests, was on the verge of common acceptance among a good many leaders not so very long ago. The opportunity is still yours of shaking off the trammels which have hampered you, and of reaching a solution which shall genuinely effect the great change which the Government desires, and which the country has supported, and yet effect it in a manner which could be accepted, I will not say without dislike or apprehension, but without any sense of humiliation by those who are sitting opposite to the Government to-night. I noted the eloquent words in which the noble Viscount referred to the prayer of which I was allowed to be the mouthpiece in Westminster Abbey a week or two ago, that "the spirit of wisdom and government" might be given to our rulers wisely to govern the Kingdom. If that could yet he done our country would add another to the examples she has given to all lands of her power of settling a great and thorny question with mutual consideration and respect, with high public spirit, and with common sense.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY: My Lords, I have not troubled your Lordships during the course of these debates, because I must admit that I was not in sympathy with some of the concessions made by my noble friends on this side of the House. I do not admit that it was not the right of this House to reject the Budget of 1909. That which gave point to the objection entertained in respect of that measure was that it embodied the whole scheme of the year grounded upon innovations which dated back only to 1860. At one time there was a Standing Order in your Lordships' House which prevented the introduction of what was called "multifarious-

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ness"; but on the difference that arose between the two Houses on the repeal of the Paper Duties the Chancellor of the Exchequer decided to introduce for the first time in our history a Budget which contained all the financial calculations and provisions of the year. That was a great innovation, and it ought to have been resisted, though since 1860 it has, I admit, been proceeded with in that form. The effect was that the House of Lords was deprived of any control over the finance of the year, of that control which undoubtedly it possessed by a Statute which I have quoted more than once—the Statute of the 25th of Edward I. It was not a musty and unknown Statute, but one which was referred to in the Petition of Rights, where it was expressly recited as one of the Statutes guarding the liberties of the people. Therefore, do not let anybody suppose that it must be taken for granted, because for a long series of years this House did not exercise its power, that therefore we had superseded the Act of Parliament. I say in the presence of my noble and learned friend—and I challenge a denial—that the disappearance of an Act of Parliament by desuetude is unknown to the English law. Every Act of Parliament has a right to command the obedience of the subjects of this Realm, however old it may be, and the only mode of getting rid of it is to repeal it; and here now the attempt is being made to repeal this Statute.
I want to say one word by way of protest, because I do not think we ought to admit, as some of us have admitted, that we have no right to deal with finance. If you refer to ancient practice and are so regardful of it that you will not interfere with it, then I ask, What are you doing now? Is this kind of legislation a showing of reverence for ancient practice? On the other hand, if we are to turn over a new leaf, to begin a new system of government and to have everything at large, what reason is there why Peers should not interfere in questions of finance? The Peers have to pay a good deal. I should like to have a calculation of how much of the Budget is made up of contributions from the Peerage. I snake this protest because I think that we are getting into the habit of taking things too much as a matter of course. I am not going to suggest that there should be any new legislation on the subject, but I absolutely deny that the Peers did any-
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thing wrong, or that they were not perfectly within their rights, in what they did in 1909. They would have neglected their duty if they had not done what they did then. They took precautions that the country should be consulted before the extraordinary measures of finance which were then propounded were passed into law. After listening to the most rev. Primate cannot help feeling that your Lordships have an object-lesson of what single-Chamber government would be. We have seen the mode in which the highly-gifted and eloquent Peer before me (Viscount Morley) has treated our Amendments. What may we expect from those who are not so highly gifted and not so moderate as himself?
I deprecate one observation of the noble Viscount. What did his language mean? Is it not from beginning to end a threat of what will happen if your Lordships' House does not submit to this Bill—of the things that will follow, the terrible disturbances that will arise, and so on? It is veiled in quite decorous and Parliamentary language; but I want to tear that veil aside, and to see what is meant. Does it not mean that your Lordships are to be overwhelmed, with small respect to the Sovereign—to whom, in my Parliamentary experience, it was rather indecorous to refer at all—and without respect even to this extent, not that he has been consulted or will be consulted, but that it is a foregone conclusion? Some of those newspapers to which the right rev. Primate referred are sufficiently decent not to put it in plain terms, but they use such expressions as "it is surmised," "it is supposed," and so on, so as to conceal the grossness of the contemplated action. But it is suggested that His Majesty has been applied to, and has agreed to make as many Peers as will be necessary to force this Bill through the House. I want to deal plainly in this matter, and I say that that is a gross violation of Parliamentary decency. Everybody knows what has been said, and the allusion is enough; but let us, at all events, consider whether there is not something due to His Majesty, to whom we all profess loyalty.
I deeply lament that the principle of heredity has been given up. I am not an ancient and bigoted old Tory who cannot recognise new things, but I think I could quote good authority why the principle should not be given up. Does any noble

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Lord remember what Lord John Russell said on this subject? He said—
"If the hereditary privileges of the Peers are overthrown the hereditary prerogatives of the Sovereign will also be sacrificed. 'Do not,' said an accomplished orator in the House of Commons many years ago, 'hang the Crown upon the peg of an exception' The Sovereign does not inherit wisdom any more than the Duke of Norfolk. Let me add what is, perhaps, the most important security of all. The prospect of any great democratic change would shake public credit and bring the nation to its senses; so that. I cannot say I feel any alarm lest events should lead to the abolition of the House of Lords, involving, as no doubt it would, the fall of the Monarchy."
It may be said that the House of Lords is not to be abolished. It may or may not be so in words, but it would be the same thing. You may not say that this House is abolished, but I should like to know what man, with the spirit of a man in his heart, would consent to sit in an Assembly mocking the actuality of debate when, at the end of it, he is obliged to submit to what the Minister for the time being thinks proper to dictate. I do not believe that any of your Lordships would consent to belong to such an Assembly as that.
I will give the noble Viscount a little information. But for the existence of these Amendments which my noble friends have introduced I would myself have moved the rejection of the Bill on the Third Reading; and I can tell the noble Viscount now that unless these Amendments are accepted in substance, in meaning, and in operation I will myself never consent without a Division to the passing of this Bill. I do not believe the people of the country understand what is going on in Parliament. They do not know that the Constitution of the country is in peril. I doubt whether they would believe it if they were told. But the Constitution is in peril. The passing of this Bill un-amended would mean the destruction of the Constitution and threaten the destruction also of the liberties, aye, and the lives of His Majesty's subjects wherever they are. It is the most momentous piece of attempted legislation I have ever known in the course of my long life. I have been in politics more than sixty years, and I have never witnessed such an attempt to abolish the Second Chamber and to obtain supreme power, not so much for the House of Commons—for it is idle to pretend that House is independent—as for the Minister in power and the political caucus. It is not a question merely of Party division.
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It is a question of life and death to the Constitution.
This Bill is a bad Bill in every sense. It possesses every vice that a Bill could possess. It is unjust and oppressive. It is tainted with Party spirit—I had almost said Party spite. One can hardly conceive that men familiar with Constitutional principles should have contrived such a mass of unconstitutional, bitter, and selfish proposals. Are we to submit everything now to the House of Commons in its present condition? Is the House of Commons in its present condition an independent body? Let any man who has views of his own in the House of Commons attempt to express them and see what will happen to him—what has happened in our recent experience. I can only say that I regard the present situation as the most momentous that has arisen in the whole of my political life; and if an attempt is made to force this Bill through without the safeguards that my noble friend behind me has provided against injustice and tyranny, especially the tyranny of the political caucus, I should regard myself as a coward and unfit for the position I hold if I submitted to it without challenging a Division. I should certainly vote against the Bill, and in so voting I should believe that I was doing no trifling service and incurring no trifling obligation, but I should regard it as a duty, and a solemn duty, to God and to my country.
THE EARL OF DURHAM: My Lords, I am very glad that I do not share all the misgivings of the noble and learned Earl who has just spoken. I am also glad that he has told us he does not intend to-night to force a Division, because in that case it would have been my duty to have supported His Majesty's Government. I am no enemy of the House of Lords even as it at present exists, and I am a strong believer in a Second Chamber. But we have to consider the present situation. It rests with your Lordships and not with His Majesty's Government whether we are to have a political crisis of the most serious and painful kind. In this year of all years I should have thought we would all have tried, if possible, to avoid what would be a national disaster and disgrace and certainly a mockery to our recent loyal declarations.
We have to decide now, not what the House of Lords has done in the past or

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any question as to its faults or virtues, but whether or not the Parliament Bill shall receive a Third Reading. I think it is absolutely necessary, in the interests of the House of Lords itself, that you should give this Bill a Third Reading. As I have said, I am no enemy of the House of Lords. I should like very much to see your Lordships' House strengthened by some fresh Constitutional measure. But if there is a Division to-night I shall vote for this Bill. I will explain later why I voted the other day against the noble Marquess's Amendments. Some of my noble friends told me they were surprised and shocked at my action. I hope they have recovered from their surpise and are not still suffering from shock. After all, my Lords, this Bill is the result of some five years of somewhat barren conflict between the two political Parties in the State; and I much regret that the House of Lords has forced upon a Liberal Government the necessity of bringing in a Bill to enable them to carry on the business of the country. I cannot blame any Government, a Liberal Government or any other, which says, "We cannot carry on the business of this country unless we are safeguarded from capricious interruption of our work and our duties." They naturally would claim such safeguards. If there were a managing partner in some business who had a junior partner hostile to him, who could at any moment interrupt and stop his operations, would that managing partner long remain in his position? I am afraid he would soon resign; and, my Lords, if you wish the present Government to resign, what Government, I wonder, will you find to take its place? For my part, I am afraid, unhappily, I cannot think of a better one.
I would like to refer to the Amendments which the noble Marquess moved and carried in Committee. I hope, in doing so, that I may be allowed to express my admiration of the speech he made on that occasion. In tact, demeanour, courtesy, and dignity it was the best speech I ever heard; and yet the very next day I read in a Radical newspaper that the noble Marquess had uttered "bitter invective" against His Majesty's Government. In a crisis I do not trust newspapers or extremists. I would much rather rely on the commonsense opinion of both Parties in the State. It is for that reason that I hope we shall hear, perhaps not to-night but in the near future, that His Majesty's Government are going
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to be conciliatory in this matter. The noble Marquess challenged them, and said that so far all the concessions had been offered from the Opposition Benches. I can hardly agree with the noble Marquess there; but I do confess I should be glad to hear that His Majesty's Government can see their way to consider the noble Marquess's Amendments carefully, and perhaps separate portions of those Amendments and state what they could accept and what in their opinion would be fatal to the Bill. The noble Marquess's wishes as regards the Crown and the Protestant Succession must meet with the approval of every loyalist. I can conceive of no objection to them. The Home Rule question, of course, is a different matter. Although I have not the alarm on that subject that some noble Lords feel, I think that when a Home Rule Bill is produced the real difficulties of His Majesty's Government will commence. There are other portions of the noble Marquess's Amendment, however, which I confess I do not like, and that is the reason I voted against it.
I quite agree with the noble Viscount in his opposition to the Referendum. I think it is a matter which requires far more consideration by the country than it has received up to the present. I also object to giving to the House of Lords the power of referring some of the Bills to which the noble Marquess referred, and which might seem to be of importance, to the proposed Joint Committee, and, through them, to a Referendum. If you consider the matter impartially it comes to this, that it is to be in the power of noble Lords opposite to make almost any Bill one of paramount importance by offering determined resistance to it. If you absolutely refuse to accept a Bill from a Liberal Government, you might make that Bill in the eyes of the Joint Committee of such importance that they would send it to the country by means of a Referendum. So that it would really be in the power of the opponents of the Liberal Government, under Lord Lansdowne's Amendment, to resist legislation and force an appeal to the country whenever they wished. That I cannot support as a member of the Liberal Party, though by no means a partisan of the present Government. In my opinion this Parliament Bill is not so dangerously revolutionary as some people represent. I certainly cannot regard the noble Viscount in charge of the Bill as a bloodthirsty revolutionist, and I do not

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detect, looking upon the noble Lords who support him, that lean and hungry look which betokens dangerous men. I can only hope that this Bill, which is in a measure a temporary one, will not be used bitterly and tyrannically by His Majesty's Government. I cannot conceive that any English Government would be so forgetful of the interests of the country as to put such a Bill into operation in a tyrannical manner. At the same time, no Government with a sense of dignity could consent to conduct the business of the country subject to the approval of the Opposition in the House of Lords.
I think, further, that it was a mistake on the part of the noble Marquess and others opposite to analyse the Division List upon the Lansdowne Amendment. Forty-six Liberal Peers voted, of whom I was one. It is quite legitimate criticism to twit the Government with the paucity of their supporters, but you invite retaliation, and I would like to ask the noble Marquess whether he could analyse quite satisfactorily the composition of Ins own supporters. The noble Marquess brought in a scheme for the reconstruction of the House of Lords. It was introduced under what I might call pro-consular patronage, and amongst the provisions in that Bill specially supported by Lord Curzon and Lord Selborne was the proposal that Peers should possess certain qualifications to enable them to sit and vote in this House. As Ministers have been twitted with the composition of their minority on the noble Marquess's Amendment, I should rather like to ask, What of the composition of the majority? Can the noble Marquess go to the country and defend the majority by which he carried his Amendment? He would be obliged to admit that he and other noble Lords on the Front Opposition Bench had declared that most of the noble Lords who constituted that majority were not qualified to sit in a reformed House of Lords. What weight in the country could the names of the noble Lords who supported the noble Marquess have under those conditions? The noble Marquess has given away the whole case by proposing to sweep away many members of the House of Lords in the reformed Second Chamber and by at the same time using the enormous majority of the existing House of Lords to thwart the Government Bill.
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I have no desire to say anything hostile or controversial. My sympathies are far more with noble Lords opposite than with the Government over this Bill. At the same time I do plead for calm consideration of this Bill, and I would ask the noble Marquess to consider before the Bill is sent back to the House of Lords whether it is not possible for him to drop some portion of his Amendment. I do not know whether His Majesty's Government would meet him half-way. That is no affair of mine; I am not in their secrets. I have only risen to-night to ask noble Lords on both sides of the House whether we cannot get through this crisis with as little bitterness and friction as possible. In my opinion it will be a serious misfortune for the House of Lords if the Third Reading of this Bill is not carried now, and also if the Bill is not accepted by your Lordships when it is again sent up by the House of Commons.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: My Lords, the noble Earl who has just sat down will, I am sure, not contradict me when I say that he and I have been very intimate friends from our earliest days. He mentioned that a good many of his friends had looked askance at his voting in support of His Majesty's Government against the Amendment of my noble friend behind me. No one looked more askance at his so voting than I did. I will tell the noble Earl why. The noble Earl left his Party and joined us in 1886 on the question of Home Rule, and he and I worked together in the County of Durham for the Unionist cause. Therefore I thought my noble friend would at any rate have supported the Amendment of the noble Marquess inasmuch as that Amendment was drawn in order to shield the country from Home Rule. As Home Rule was to my mind the most important part of that Amendment, I withdrew the Amendment that stood in my name, which safeguarded us from Home Rule without au appeal first being made to the country. It is quite possible that my Amendment would not have been in order. I accordingly withdrew it, and I and my noble friends behind me from Ireland devoted our speeches to that part of the noble Marquess's Amendment which dealt with the question of Home Rule; and I do not think any one will contradict me when I say that we who represent Irish Unionists in this House dealt very fully with that question.

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I made a long speech on the subject myself, in which I asked various questions of His Majesty's Government when portraying the dangers that I thought would ensue if Home Rule were granted. I asked the Government how they proposed to maintain the present prosperity of Ireland when a Home Rule Parliament was established, and no one contradicted me when I said, that Ireland was never more prosperous that it is at the present moment. We have always asserted, and we assert again, that a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland will mean ruin, bankruptcy, and, in all probability, civil war. I pointed that out on the last occasion, and I asked if capital were withdrawn from Ireland how His Majesty's Government proposed to maintain the present prosperity of that country. I hope I shall get an answer to that question. I should like to know who is going to follow me, as it is very difficult to get answers from noble Lords opposite. I have asked the question before but leave been unable to extract any reply. To have this important matter of Home Rule, for which this measure is brought forward, carried through your Lordships' House without any answer to the dangers that I have pointed out is to my mind absolutely without precedent. Do you intend to smash the Constitution at the dictates of Mr. Redmond? You propose to bring ruin and bankruptcy to Ireland, and when we from Ireland bring this matter to your Lordships' attention not a single member on the Front Bench opposite takes the slightest notice of our remarks. We have but one conclusion to draw from that—either that noble Lords opposite and the Government cannot dispute our statements, or else they dare not do so for fear of displeasing the noun who makes them toe the line; that is, their real leader Mr. Redmond.
Now I wish to say a few words to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. He will remember that when he was speaking on the Second Reading of this measure he drew attention to the speech I made on that occasion. From what he said he seemed to consider that I put forward more than anything else the question of Home Rule. The noble and learned Lord then stated that he considered that the antagonism to Home Rule was weakening, and that there was not the same opposition to Home Rule at the present time as there was in the year 1893. I drew attention
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in the speech I made on the Amendment of my noble friend behind me to that statement of the noble and learned Lord, whose absence from the debate on that day I thought at the time was very remarkable.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I express my great regret to the noble Marquess if I in any way disappointed him by not being present. But on that day I was obliged to devote no less than twelve hours to dealing with an accumulation of arrears of work which demanded my attention and could not be postponed, and I was at work in my room from early in the morning until late at night on that particular day. I need not say that I would leave been only too pleased to have been here had it been possible.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: I am sure the noble and learned Lord with his usual courtesy will forgive me for having referred to the matter, and perhaps he will not mind if I address the same remarks to him now as I addressed to noble Lords opposite on that occasion. I pointed out then, and I point out again, that although the antagonism to Home Rule is not quite so apparent now as it was in 1893 owing to a new generation leaving arisen which wants educating with regard to the dangers of Home Rule, there is still a deep-rooted objection to it throughout the country; and if the time ever comes when a Home Rule Bill is introduced into Parliament the Government, notwithstanding their talk of the "Home Rule bogey" and their idea that the opposition to Home Rule is dead, will have the rudest awakening that any Government ever lead. I have recently visited the North of Ireland, and was present at the greatest demonstration I have even seen of any sort or kind. I refer to the demonstration which took place at Belfast on July 12 last. I was present at the great march past in 1886, when Lord Randolph Churchill was a leading spirit in Irish affairs, and I was present at the great march past Mr. Balloter in 1893; but, important as those great gatherings were, they sink into insignificance when compared with the great demonstration of July 12 last. I only wish that your Lordships could have been present, and, more than all, that the members of the House of Commons could leave been there. They would then have realised that, so far from there being apathy with regard to the

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question of Home Rule, Ulster was up and determined. Ulster has shown by its meetings and the resolutions it has passed that it will not have Home Rule.
Let me describe what I saw. I saw in Belfast a gathering of upwards of 200,000 people, and in other parts of Ulster large demonstrations were held varying in numbers up to as many as 30,000 people, and at each of those meetings a resolution was passed calling upon their leaders to adopt all necessary measures for resisting any Home Rule Government that might be forced upon His Majesty's loyal subjects in Ireland, and solemnly assuring their leaders that they would stand by them loyally in any action they might have to take and in any danger they might have to face. My Lords, I have spent a long period of my political life in the North of Ireland, and I can tell your Lordships that those men are neither braggarts nor boasters. They are determined that they will not have Home Rule, and speaking as one who has seen those great demonstrations in Ulster and who knows the feeling of the country there I warn your Lordships that if a Home Rule Parliament is established on College Green the most serious consequences will follow. I remember Lord Randolph Churchill's well-known saying—
"Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right."
A truer sentiment was never uttered. Ireland does not possess a more law-abiding subject than myself. When I went to Ireland in the year 1886 as Lord Lieutenant there existed there a condition approaching to anarchy, but in three years, by enforcing the law, we restored order, and it would be the saddest day for me as an Ulsterman if I saw lawlessness again taking place in the province which I love. But if a Home Rule Parliament is established on College Green there will be not only lawlessness and disorder, but bloodshed; and if blood is shed it will be upon the heads of His Majesty's Government. I say that with a full sense of responsibility.
I have merely risen to warn His Majesty's Government that if they establish a Parliament on College Green they will ruin Ireland, bring it to bankruptcy, and in all probability create civil war. And why do they propose this? Not because a great many of the supporters of the Government want Home Rule. They were careful to keep Home Rule in the background at the
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last General Election, and if the Government had had a majority independent of the Irish Party I am confident that we should never have heard of Home Rule at all. But they have to toe the line to Mr. Redmond, and obey his orders. It is because North of Ireland people feel that they would not obey the orders of Mr. Redmond, or of the Nationalist Party, or of a Hibernian Parliament on College Green, that they are determined, if the worst comes to the worst, to fight in order to protect their rights and liberties, civil and religious; and, speaking on behalf of the loyalist Unionist population of Ireland, I beg His Majesty's Government to consider very seriously before they refuse to accept the Amendment of my noble friend behind me.
THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN: My Lords, it certainly is neither my business nor my province to reply to any of the questions that my noble friends behind me have asked His Majesty's Government, and I have no desire to do so. But I might be allowed to remind the House that I, too, have the honour and privilege of corning from Ireland, and with regard to the opinions expressed by my noble friends behind me as to Home Rule I utterly and entirely differ I from them. At the same time—it may sound paradoxical—I sincerely hope, though I am afraid the hope does not rest upon very solid ground, that the Bill will find its way on to the Statute Book substantially in the amended condition in which it is in your Lordships' House now. I confess I was astonished to hear the noble Viscount opposite, in moving the Third Reading, describe the Bill as having been so completely changed as to be practically a different Bill and not the Government Bill at all. Surely, my Lords, His Majesty's Government have got the Bill in its entirety? There have been additions made to which they take objection, but they have the Bill without anything subtracted from it. They have it absolutely in its entirety, and, amended as it is, it satisfies, as far as I can see, all the demands His Majesty's Government have made and all the requirements of the case.
This Bill, as we all know, is a temporary measure—an expedient to enable His Majesty's Government to carry on the business of the country. What are the alleged difficulties that the Government have had to contend with? If I may put it in this way, What are the counts of the

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indictment against this House? Apart from all the rubbish that was put forward at the last two General Elections, the two real counts were that this House had invaded the privilege of the House of Commons, by referring the Budget to the people, and that this House, being so largely Conservative, consistently refused to pass Liberal legislation. Surely as regards Money Bills His Majesty's Government have got in the Bill as now amended all they ask for? This House relinquishes all power to deal with Money Bills. That is what His Majesty's Government desired, and what His Majesty's Government have now got. It is perfectly true that the Opposition have said that some safeguard must be introduced against tacking direct and indirect, and that some authority must be set up to decide whether or not a Bill is a bona fide Money Bill, and His Majesty's Government agree to that. The two Parties are absolutely in accord as to the necessity of setting up some authority to decide that question. The only difference, therefore, lies in this—there is a difference of opinion as to how that authority should be constituted. His Majesty's Government propose that the Speaker of the House of Commons, an official whose duty, I might say whose primary duty, it is to uphold the privilege of the House of Commons, should be the arbiter in a case of dispute between the two Houses on a matter of privilege. The Opposition propose a Joint Committee. The noble Viscount opposite denounced that Committee as a complete innovation. Bat is it not equally totally new to impose on the Speaker of the House of Commons the duty, not of giving his opinion as to a matter affecting the privileges of the House of Commons, but of giving a final judicial judgment as to whether a certain action on the part of this House is an infringement of the privileges of the House of Commons? It is noble Lords opposite who are guilty, if anybody is guilty, of innovations, and they surely must not complain if in order to make sonic of them as innocuous as possible an innovation, such as the constitution of this Committee, is proposed on this side of the House. I do not press that matter. My point is that it is absolutely unthinkable that a great crisis, with all the consequences that may ensue, should be forced on the country upon such a comparatively trivial matter as the exact constitution of the authority which is to decide what is and what is not a Money Bill. His Majesty's Government have really got all for which
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they asked, for as regards Money Bills this House relinquishes its rights.
Now as to the other count of the indictment—that this House invariably rejects Liberal legislation, and that His Majesty's Ministers, having during their somewhat long wanderings in the wilderness accumulated a great mass of legislative proposals, do not find that they have a fair and reasonable opportunity of placing them upon the Statute Book. I submit the Government cannot make good their case. It would require the fingers of many hands to count the Radical measures passed. Half the fingers of one hand would suffice to count the Radical Bills rejected. But let that pass. Assume the complaint to be justifiable. Have you not got all you want in that respect also? You complain of this House rejecting your measures. Under the Bill as amended this House can no longer reject your measures. You can pass over the heads of this House every Bill of yours that this House has ever rejected, and any new Bill on any and every subject without the assent of this House, and I cannot conceive what His Majesty's Government require more than the absolute satisfaction of the demands that they themselves have made. They complain of the operation of the Veto of this louse. This House has, temporarily at any rate, put aside the Veto. It is perfectly true that the Amendment of the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, reserves certain matters for the judgment of the people. What are those matters? They are questions connected with the Crown and the Protestant Succession. You can pass measures affecting the Crown and the Protestant Succession if you want to over the heads of this House, but the Amendment says that you shall not pass them without the consent of the people. I need not argue that point except to say this, that the only reason His Majesty's Government have adduced or can adduce against that part of the Amendment is that it is impossible to suppose that this Ministry or any Ministry would wish to interfere with the Crown or the Protestant Succession. I dare say that is so; but at the same time this House cannot in a matter of this gravity consider personal characteristics of Ministers. It is impossible to imagine that His Majesty's Government will really seriously object to that part of the Amendment which reserves to the judgment of the people

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any question relating to the Monarchy or the Protestant Succession.
The other questions which are reserved to the people are the setting up of Statutory Parliaments in the United Kingdom with legislative functions. Under this Bill as it stands amended you could pass any Home Rule Bill for England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, and set up any body you please with whatever administrative functions you please over the heads of this House and without consulting the people, and all that the Amendment of the noble Marquess says is that if you desire to set up Statutory Parliaments with legislative functions the opinion of the people must be asked. I cannot understand what real objection His Majesty's Government can have to that part of the Amendment either. The House will understand that there is no question of the merits or demerits of Home Rule involved. My noble friend Lord Londonderry did go into the demerits of Home Rule and its possible effects. I do not propose to follow him, because that is not the question before the House, further than to say this. I disagree with every word my noble friends from Ireland said on the subject in Committee. With the facts staring them in the face I cannot understand how they can argue that Ireland has prospered under the Union, or that the administration of Ireland is, economically or in any other respect, satisfactory. Nor can I conceive how any man can be blind to the fact that the root of all the troubles besetting us lies in the impossibility of Parliament dealing with all the business that comes before it; and that in devolution the only possible cure for congestion is to be found. I would beg the House to remember also that there is no question involved as to the rights and powers that this House ought to have to ultimately reject a Home Rule Bill. The whole question around which really the trouble is centred and out of which the quarrel arises is the very simple question whether so great an organic change as would be involved in setting up a Parliament in Dublin with legislative and administrative functions ought or ought not to be submitted to the judgment of the people. His Majesty's Government, as I understand, say it is not necessary, because the people of the country knew perfectly well that Home Rule formed part of the general programme of the Govern-
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ment and that having been returned to power at two General Elections they clearly have a right to deal with the Home Rule question in any way they please. But, my Lords, what kind of Home Rule? Home Rule is a most indefinite and elastic term. It may mean anything and it may mean almost nothing. Only noble Lords opposite have the slightest idea of what they mean by Home Rule. If a Bill had been debated in Parliament and was therefore before the country, or if definite Resolutions on which a Bill was to be founded had been before the country, I could understand there being sonic strength in the arguments of noble Lords opposite that the result of the last two elections gave them practically a mandate to carry Home Rule. But there is not an elector in the country who has the faintest idea of what you mean by Home Rule; and surely to say that because you have been returned to power after two General Elections—in which about a dozen questions were involved, and in which, as we all know perfectly well, the electors swallowed some half-dozen questions they did not like at all in order to get the other half-dozen which they earnestly desired, and which elections every one must admit turned principally on the Constitutional question and the relations between the two Houses—you have therefore a right to bring in and pass without consulting the people any measure of Home Rule of any sort or kind you like, is pushing the theory of representative government almost to an absurdity.
Then as to the Referendum. I wish the Referendum did form a part of our Constitutional outfit. As a matter of fact the Referendum has only been referred to to meet the requirements of this temporary Bill. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack does not object to a Referendum if introduced in a Bill for a defined specific purpose. I wish he would bring in a short Bill for the purpose of using the Referendum for solving this very question which is now agitating the two Houses, and which is the real root of the trouble between us. I wish he would ask the people of this country the simple question whether they think that the question of setting up a Statutory Parliament in Ireland should or should not be submitted to them. That would settle the whole matter. The demands of His Majesty's Government as regards the

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rejection of Liberal measures in this House and the exercise of your Lordships' Veto have been met. The Veto is gone, and the demands of the allies of His Majesty's Government, the official Nationalist Party in the House of Commons, have been met also. They have over and over again said that the only obstacle in the way of Home Rule is the Veto of the House of Lords. Well, the Veto of the House of Lords is set aside. Therefore not only should His Majesty's Government be satisfied, but the Nationalist Party in the House of Commons should be satisfied also.
I confess I cannot see why His Majesty's Government should be so reluctant to submit this question of Home Rule to the judgment of the people. His Majesty's Government say that a great change has conic over the spirit of the people in regard to Home Rule. I quite agree. A great and salutary change of opinion has manifested itself in spice of all obstacles in Ireland, and has reflected itself upon public opinion in Great Britain. I feel convinced in my own mind that if a sound and wise Home Rule measure were submitted to the electorate they would approve of it and accept it, and I do not know why His Majesty's Government should be so reluctant to consult the people with regard to it, unless it is that perhaps my faith is a little more robust than theirs on the subject. His Majesty's Government say they are satisfied that the majority of the electors of this country would accept a Home Rule Bill. The Nationalist Party in the House of Commons are of the same way of thinking. In a letter which I saw in The Times yesterday Mr. Redmond, speaking for his Party, said—
"I am quite convinced that Home Rule for Ireland has at its back the goodwill of the overwhelming majority of the British people."
If Mr. Redmond and the Nationalist Party are absolutely convinced that the overwhelming majority of the electors of Great Britain are in favour of Home Rule, and if His Majesty's Government are convinced also, as they say they are, that the great majority of the electors in Great Britain are in favour of Home Rule, then why in the name of commonsense should they object so strongly to asking the people the direct question and so settling the matter? I would ask noble Lords opposite to consider this in connection with a remark made by my noble friend Lord Londonderry
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in Committee on this Bill. My noble friend was arguing in favour of asking the, opinion of the people on this subject, and he said that if an appeal was made to the people and the people were in favour of it, although he and his friends believed that Home Rule would be fatal to Ireland, they would only have one thing to do—bow to the will of the people,. That was a most important, and, I think, wise and statesmanlike and eminently Constitutional pronouncement. You are perfectly convinced that the great bulk of the electors would approve of your Home Rule Bill; Mr. Redmond is absolutely convinced that the overwhelming majority of the British people would approve of your Home Rule Bill; and my noble friend behind me, speaking for the most strenuous opponents of Home Rule, says that if the people approve of your. Bill they will make the best of what they consider a bad job and cease from their objections and accept it. That is the situation, and there you have, as it seems to me, all the elements necessary for an amicable and final settlement, and why the opportunity of an amicable and final settlement should be lost I cannot conceive.
I think His Majesty's Government have made a great tactical mistake. My noble friend behind me has taken up a much stronger position than he occupied before, if he will forgive me for saying so, upon Home Rule. I do not think its opponents can make a strong case at all; but in shifting his ground completely and taking up the line, not that the opponents of Home Rule will oppose Home Rule of any kind to the bitter end but only until they know that the will of the people is in favour of it, my noble friend Lord Londonderry has taken up a very much stronger position, and one which will give the opponents of Home Rule a great advantage which I deplore. I do not wish to weary the House by talking about Home Rule, or giving my reasons for being a Home Ruler. I will only say that I believe it to be absolutely necessary, not only for the welfare of Ireland but for Great Britain and the British Empire. But to be beneficial it must be subject to certain conditions. It must, of course, be a workable scheme in itself. It must be generally acquiesced in—I do not say generally approved of, as that, perhaps, is impossible to expect—but acquiesced in as, it may be, a necessary evil. It must

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be framed on federal lines, and the Constitutional question must be settled before it or along with it. The power to a Home Rule Parliament must, of course, be a delegated power. A statutory Parliament using delegated powers, unless those powers are derived from a stable and central authority, would not have a chance of carrying on its business successfully. Any number of examples can be adduced where federation and delegation have worked admirably, but federation has always been to or delegation from a strong central authority, and if a statutory Parliament in Ireland is ever to have fair play and a chance of success it must derive its power from and be under the supremacy of a strong and stable central form of government here. In any reconstitution of your Lordships' House a strong Second Chamber is absolutely essential. It is essential to any scheme of Home Rule. I do not believe in trying to frame a Constitution for Ireland out of the wreckage of the British Constitution. I do not believe that a statutory Parliament in Ireland would have a chance of carrying on its business if it was under the authority of a Parliament in such a state of chaos as the Parliament of this country is now in. I am, perhaps, singular in those ideas—I am sure I am singular in this House—but I can assure His Majesty's Government that I am not singular in holding those views as far as Ireland is concerned. I can assure the Government that the vast majority of the people of Ireland would infinitely rejoice if any means could be found whereby these inseparable questions of Home Rule on federal lines and the settlement of the Constitutional question here could be raised above the burden and heat of Party politics, and could be settled as such pave questions ought to be settled, coolly, dispassionately, and by way of conference, compromise, and methods leading to common consent.
I have tried to give your Lordships as shortly as I can the reasons why, not in spite of the fact that I am an ardent Home Ruler but because I am an ardent Home Ruler, I approve of the Bill as amended and hope it may take its place on the Statute Book in very much the same shape as it is in now. I am quite sure that your Lordships' House in doing what it has done in the way of amending the Bill is justified by the circumstances of the case, and that the whole duty and object of the House or
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of any similar legislative body is to see that the will of the people shall prevail. It is absurd to pretend that the present Ministry, or any Ministry, are gifted with such infallible insight, as to be able to know what the will of the people is about any Bill that has not been definitely before them; and although this House has gone dangerously near unconstitutional lines, I think justifiably, in putting aside the Constitutional check which it has exercised and ought to exercise, I say that if it consented to abolish all checks, to make Ministers absolutely supreme, and not to insist that the people should have Constitutional means of expressing their opinion on matters of vital interest to the country, it would be guilty of a grave dereliction of duty which I do not believe the country would ever condone.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: My Lords, as some impression seems to have prevailed, perhaps on account of something I may have said in the Committee stage of this Bill, that I was going to ask your Lordships to reject the Bill on the Third Reading, I would like to take this opportunity of telling noble Lords opposite that for the present, at any rate, they need not be afraid, and that the measure, for the moment only, is in comparatively smooth water. I say this because there has evidently been a considerable searching of heart in the Radical camp in the last two or three days and in that agreeable and refined Press identified with the Party of noble Lords opposite. Listen to the Star—
"It is rather a grotesque bit of irony that Lord Morley should be forced to beg Liberal Peers to save the Bill from Lord Lansdowne's rag tag and bobtail."
Other newspapers as well have been good enough to suggest that I was going to move the rejection of the Bill on Third Reading, and though I wish entirely to associate myself with everything Lord Halsbury said, I do not propose to take that course.
I must say that when the noble Viscount opposite painted in such gloomy terms the formidable consequences that would ensue from the rejection of the Bill it became very tempting indeed to move its rejection. He did not say to whom the consequences would be formidable, and whether or not he was really thinking of himself and his Party in the position of George Stephenson's cow that got in front

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of a railway train I am sure I cannot say. But for the present we will leave the consequences to take care of themselves; we shall have an opportunity of discussing them at a later stage when the Bill comes back from the House of Commons. I would gladly have supported the rejection of this Bill on Second Reading and I took the opportunity of telling your Lordships that extremely interesting piece of news at the time, but other counsels prevailed and it was agreed to proceed to the Committee stage. Two Amendments were put down to the Bill—one proposed by the noble Marquess and the other by myself. I will not be guilty of the impertinence of comparing the relative value of those two Amendments. I may be allowed to retain my own opinion with regard to that. But after the exceedingly generous way—too generous in my view—in which the noble Marquess drafted his Amendment I cannot follow the statement of the noble Viscount opposite that there has been no disposition to yield on the part of the noble Marquess. I am not finding fault with the Government's attitude of no compromise. It is the only thing about the Radical Party that I thoroughly respect. They do not give way, and they do not attempt, outwardly at any rate, to alter their views to suit their critics, or to whittle away any part of their policy in order to gain the votes of those who disagree with them. I deplore the tendency to look at the British Constitution after the manner of a valetudinarian and to be constantly feeling its pulse and examining its tongue. I think the vitality of the Constitution will survive the attentions of the doctors who are trying to do so much for it at the present moment.
I will not now enter into the wisdom or propriety of altering the Bill in Committee, but I may be permitted to say that the process has given noble Lords opposite an opportunity of criticising our proposals instead of defending their own. I have not heard in these debates at any stage of this Bill any satisfactory defence of the proposition that the British House of Lords ought to have less power than the Second Chambers of all other civilised countries. I do not believe there is an answer, but if there is I should be very happy to hear noble Lords opposite give us one. They wrap up their proposals in speeches destined to show how exceed-
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ingly moderate the Bill really is. Lord Durham, in the speech which he delivered just now, spoke in that strain. It is very much the same frame of mind as an Oriental potentate adopted towards one of his victims whom he had condemned to be executed. He informed him that the State executioner performed his duties with such consummate skill and such an exhibition of art that to have one's head cut off by him was really more of an honour and a pleasure than otherwise. When the victim laid his head on the block the executioner made some preliminary flourishes with his sword and retired. The victim then asked when the execution was going to begin, and he was informed, "If you will just shake your head you will find it is all right," and when he did so it fell to the floor, so skilfully and painlessly had the operation been carried out. That, my Lords, is the sort of painless execution that is proposed by the noble Viscount under this Bill.
Another argument that has been hinted at, sometimes on this side of the House, not as a reason for accepting the Bill but as a reason why legislation of some kind is necessary, is that the people of this country at the last two General Elections decided, according to the view of noble Lords opposite, in favour of the Parliament Bill, and, according to the view of other noble Lords, that some alteration in the Constitution is required. I will not deal with the latter view. But with regard to the Parliament Bill, this Bill is a totally different class of measure from any other measure which is capable of being judged by the ordinary rules of Party politics, such as a Budget, or a measure for national defence, or the whole category of measures for the social welfare of the people. This Bill may justly, without any rhetoric, be described as a revolution. I think it was rhetorical to describe the Budget of 1909 as a revolution. But this Bill is absolutely a revolution in terms. I believe my definition will be accepted by noble Lords opposite just, as much as by anybody else. It is a revolution to effect by main force a radical change in the Constitution of the country when at least half the people are strongly opposed to it; and you ought only to be allowed to effect your purpose of bringing about this revolution by main force. We on this side have extreme reluctance to consent to it, and I say we have neither the right nor

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the power as trustees of the British Constitution to compromise in any single particular with regard to this Bill. We think that the whole essence of this revolution, if you intend to bring it about, is that you ought to be compelled to bring it about by main force—it may be by the creation of Peers, which is just as much main force as if you did it by ships and men and guns, or as if you brought into this House a regiment of Guards to sweep out noble Lords who sit on this side.
With regard to the Third Reading, I shall be sorry in a sense when this Bill has left the House of Lords and we have no longer control of it. At the same time I am not going to oppose the Third Reading, but I want to make my position clear. I am only withholding opposition to the Third Reading on the distinct understanding that the essence and substance of the noble Marquess's Amendment to Clause 2 is the irreducible minimum which we can possibly accept on this side of the House. We will not consent to any arrangement of any kind conceivable by which that Amendment would be whittled away in any sense whatever; and we would be absolutely failing in our duty to the people of this country if we did not insist, no matter what the consequences may be, on the retention of this Amendment to the bitter end.
THE EARL OF MAYO: My Lords, I quite agree with what Lord Willoughby de Broke has said with regard to his not moving the rejection of the Bill on Third Reading on the strict conditions which he has mentioned. I am entirely with him, and I think many others are with him there also. But I rise principally to refer to the speech made by the noble Earl, Lord Dunraven. He has every right as an Irishman to speak as he did, but he said that he differed from his noble friends behind him on the question of Home Rule and yet hoped the Bill would pass as amended. I must ask him why he comes and tells us this on the Third Reading of the Bill, and why he did not come during the Committee stage and help us with his opinions in the debates on the different Amendments that were put forward, especially the noble Marquess's. He says it depends entirely upon what sort of Home Rule we are to have. I can only say this, that we do not want any sort of Home Rule at all in
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Ireland, nor do we want any form of Devolution either. I was glad to hear, however, that the noble Earl approves of the Referendum with regard to Home Rule. We are in complete agreement with him there. But the Government do not wish for a Referendum, because they are pledged to the Nationalist Party to grant Home Rule under this Bill whether it be a sound or wise measure or otherwise.
Then the noble Earl said he hoped there would be an amicable and a final settlement with regard to Home Rule. I cannot see how you can have an amicable or a final settlement of Home Rule on any lines whatever. If the matter was left to the Referendum and it was fully assured to go to the country and we could explain what Home Rule was when we had the Bill before us, I should be prepared to give way if the decision of the country went against us; but till that time comes I do not think there is the least likelihood of there being an amicable or a final settlement of Home Rule. The noble Earl said also that the opponents could not make a strong case against Home Rule, and he went on to say that Home Rule was absolutely necessary for the welfare of Ireland. I ask the noble Earl, What about the financial part? He and I fought together on the question of the financial relations between the two countries, and as has been said the difficulties of the Government will commence when they bring in a Home Rule Bill. The real difficulty that will face the Government will be the question of finance. They know that as well as I do. I regret that the Committee which was appointed has not yet reported. As I said before, we are still in the dark with reference to that Committee. Lord Dunraven said there should be a strong Constitution in this country coupled with Home Rule. But what do the Nationalist Party care about a strong Constitution in this country? They do not care for a strong Constitution. All they want is Home Rule for Ireland according to their lights, and the Constitution of this country may go into St. George's Channel for all they care. We do not want any sort of Home Rule whatsoever in Ireland, and much less any form of Devolution.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I do not approach this question in any Party spirit. I look upon this Bill as a plain man of business, and I ask myself, Is it going

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to be for the advantage of the country to pass it? I feel strongly that when the history of this campaign comes to be written the verdict will be that no case has been made out for such a fundamental change in the Constitution of the country. To listen to noble Lords opposite one would think that no Liberal legislation had been passed by this House. On the contrary, the present Government have passed more Bills than any other Government in the same time. Out of over 250 Bills, there have been only four postponed. The first of these has since been passed. The second was introduced into the Budget, and the other two were dropped because, I suppose, they did not receive the support of the country. In the course of the debates in Committee I challenged noble Lords opposite to produce a single case in which your Lordships' House had insisted on your Veto in opposition to the wishes of the country. The noble Earl Lord Russell, said lie would give us an instance, and he referred to the Reform Bill of 1832. Even if that had been a case in point, I think that if he could not produce a single instance except one that happened eighty years ago it was a strong confirmation of the argument I used. But the illustration was not in point, and the noble Earl did not show so much knowledge of English history as I should have expected from one of the Russell family, because, after all, though your Lordships' predecessors did their best to defeat that Bill, they still finally passed it.
Then I ask myself, How is it that so many of our countrymen are prejudiced against the House of Lords? In my judgment it is to a very great extent because the Government and their supporters have embarked on a campaign of calumny and misrepresentation against this House. If a tenth part of what has been said were true, the case would, I admit, have been serious. But it is not true. I do not include in that indictment noble Lords opposite who have spoken much more moderately and courteously than some of their colleagues, although I think they have in many cases greatly exaggerated their case, as the noble Viscount, Lord Morley, did in his speech this afternoon. But I have here a whole sheaf of potations from Ministers' speeches attacking this House in most unmeasured terms. I think, however, that at this period of the evening I shall best consult your Lordships'
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wishes by not reading them. I should, however, like to read one quotation from a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Llanelly on December 22, 1909. He said—
"I am a Welshman, and when I go to the House of Lords sometimes and stand by the Throne listening to questions affecting my fellow-country-men being scoffed at, my blood boils within me. Remember this, Wales is only a laughing stock in the eyes of the house of Lords."
Could there be a greater misrepresentation than that? I should like to know of any case in which your Lordships have scoffed at Wales or the Welsh people. I will undertake to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not be able to produce a single case of the kind. But, unfortunately, Liberal Ministers go about the country setting rich against poor, North against South, England and Scotland against Ireland, and Wales against all, as far as they can possibly do so; and it was to a great extent on these misrepresentations of your Lordships' House that the result of the last Election depended. But although misrepresentation may succeed for a time, truth will prevail in the long run, and I have no doubt that the time will come when the country will do justice to your Lordships' House.
Before I sit clown I should like to say a few words on the question of finance, because on that point I cannot go so far as my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition in this House. We hear a great deal about the privilege of the House of Commons with regard to finance, but I venture to think that it is a misnomer. It is founded On a Resolution of the House of Commons passed in 1678, but I believe I am correct in saying that that was never agreed to by your Lordships' House. So that it is not a question of a privilege but a claim. No doubt the House of Commons in matters of finance must be the predominant partner, but policy and finance are so closely interwoven, as we have already seen in these debates, that if we give up our power over finance altogether it will be a very serious matter for the country. There are a considerable number of countries under single-Chamber government, but their finances are in no case in a satisfactory condition. Among those engaged in trade and commerce there are very grave apprehensions in this country in regard to what would be the result of handing finance over to a single Chamber. I believe that in expressing that opinion I shall be supported

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by the overwhelming majority of the business men of this country. They feel great objection to this Bill, and I believe that those who constitute the educated classes in this country are also opposed to the Bill. But as Lecky said some time ago—
"It is curious to find in modern England that extreme enthusiasm for education is combined with an utter disregard for the opinions of the educated part of the community."
I suppose this Bill will now pass. But I cannot think, as the most rev. Primate pointed out in his impressive and admirable speech this afternoon, that our countrymen generally realise the extreme gravity of the change that is being effected, and I cannot believe that this Bill, even if it be now passed, is destined to become a permanent part of our Constitution.
On Question, "That the Bill be now read 3a," a noble Lord on the Cross Benches said, "Not content," but on the LORD CHANCELLOR'S declaring "The contents have it," he did not persist in his opposition.
Bill read 3a accordingly with the Amendments.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, I move, to follow Clause 5, a new clause providing that in this Act the expression "Public Bill" does not include any Bill for confirming a Provisional Order. This is merely explanatory of what a Public Bill means, and the terms have been drawn up by the authorities of the House and submitted to the Lord Chancellor.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 5 insert the following new clause—
. In this Act the expression "Public Bill" does not include any Bill for confirming a Provisional Order.—(The Earl of Camperdown.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Your Lordships may remember that this Amendment was dealt with in Committee. I have since made inquiry, and I understand that the authorities in this House consider that the term "Public Bill" would include a Bill for confirming a Provisional Order. On the other hand, in the House of Commons the term "Public Bill" would not be held to include a Bill confirming a Provisional Order. I think that if the point is to be raised the way in which the noble Earl has raised it is a satisfactory way. The Government did not intend that the description "a Public Bill" should include a Bill for confirming a Provisional Order.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT MORLEY: I now move that this Bill do pass.
Moved, That the Bill do pass.—(Viscount Morley.)
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.

SMALL HOLDINGS (TENANTS ACQUISITION) BILL. [H.L.]
Amendments reported (according to order).
RIGHTS OF WAY BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to order), and passed and sent to the Commons.
GREATER LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
The Order made on Tuesday last appointing certain Lords the Select Committee to consider the Bill, discharged.

GREATER LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the following Lords be proposed to the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bill; (viz.),

E. Leicester,

V. Gough,

L. Newton (Chairman),

L. Crawshaw,

L. Mountgarret (V. Mountgarret);

agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly: The Committee, to meet on Wednesday next, at Eleven o'clock; and all Petitions referred to the Committee, with leave to the Petitioners praying to be heard by Counsel against the Bill to be heard as desired, as also Counsel for the Bill.
House adjourned at twenty minutes before Eight o'clock, till Tomorrow, half-past Ten o'clock.