Sitting of 22 July 1913

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Provisional Order Bills [Lords] (Standing Orders applicable thereto complied with),—Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, brought from the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, namely:—
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 6) Bill [Lords].
Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 7) Bill [Lords].
Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.
North Eastern Railway Bill [Lords],
To be read the third time To-morrow.
Arundell Estate (Closing of Arundell Street and Panton Square) Bill [Lords],
Central London Railway Bill [Lords],
Edinburgh Corporation Bill [Lords],
Grays and Tilbury Gas Bill [Lords],
As amended, to be considered Tomorrow.
Bournemouth Gas and Water Bill (by Order),
Order read for consideration of Lords Amendments.
Mr. JAMES HOGGE: I object.
Mr. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member has any real objection to the Bill he is entitled to make it; but if he is only objecting because he objects to some other public Bill, it is rather hard on the promoters, for every time a Bill is objected to and has to be put down again it involves a considerable amount of expense.
Mr. HOGGE: I was on the Committee which considered this Bill, and the Lords
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inserted a condition which we wanted to keep out.
Mr. SPEAKER: That is all right. Of course, if the hon. Member has any real objection he is entitled to make it.
Consideration of Lords Amendments deferred till to-morrow (Wednesday).
Great Northern Railway Bill (by Order),
Order read for consideration of Lords Amendments.
Mr. MARTIN: I object.
Mr. SPEAKER: I again make the same appeal to the hon. Member who has objected to this Bill. Of course, if he has a real objection he is entitled to make it. But if he is only objecting to it because of his objection to some public Bill, it is really hardly fair to do so because of the additional expenses in which it involves the promoters.
Consideration of Lords Amendments deferred till this evening, at a quarter-past Eight of the clock.
Rhondda Tramways (Railless Traction) Bill (by Order),
Consideration of Lords Amendments deferred till this evening, at a quarter-past Eight of the clock.
Oxford University (St. Edmund Hall and Gatcombe Rectory) Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Third Reading deferred till Friday.
Manchester Ship Canal Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Third Reading deferred till this evening, at a quarter-past Eight of the clock.
Ascot Authority Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till To-morrow.
Leicester Corporation Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Metropolitan Water Board Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Watney, Combe, Reid, and Company Bin [Lords] (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till this evening, at a quarter-past Eight of the clock.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Third Reading deferred till this evening, at a quarter past Eight of the clock.
Trade Boards Act Provisional Orders Bill (by Order),
Consideration, as amended, deferred till To-morrow.
Gas and Water Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Thursday.
Post Office (London) Railway Bill,
Reported from the Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence.
Special Report brought up, and read;
Report and Special Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 218.]
Bill, as amended, recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House for To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 275.]
Local Government Provisional Order (No. 18) Bill,
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
Commons (In closure and Regulation) (Elmstone Hardwicke Common Fields Inclosure),
Report from the Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence relative thereto, brought up, and read;
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 221.]

CHINA (No. 2, 1913).
Copies presented of Reports from His Majesty's Minister at Peking respecting the Opium Question in China [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
LOCAL TAXATION RETURNS (ENGLAND AND WALES).
Copy presented of the Annual Local Taxation Returns for 1911–12, Part IV. [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 219.]

EAST INDIA (PROGRESS AND CONDITION).
Copy presented of Statement exhibiting the moral and material Progress and Condition of India during the year 1911–12 and
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the nine preceding years. Forty-eighth number (being the fifth decennial Report) [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 220.]

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Copy presented of further Correspondence relating to a Bill to regulate Immigration into the Union of South Africa; with Special Reference to Asiatics [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—
Blyth and Cowpen Gas Bill, without Amendment,
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 8) Bill,
Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill,
Pontypridd and Rhondda Joint Water Board Bill,
Mexborough and Swinton Tramways, (Railless Traction) Bill,
West Bromwich Corporation Bill, with Amendments,
Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill, with an Amendment.
Amendments to—
Halkyn District Mines Drainage Bill [Lords],
Hove Corporation Bill [Lords],
Metropolitan Railway Bill [Lords],
Tynemouth Gas Bill [Lords], without Amendment.
Amendment to—
West Hampshire Water Bill [Lords], without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill intituled, "An Act to consolidate, simplify, and amend the Law relating to forgery and kindred offences." [Forgery (No. 2) Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the construction of a new in substitution for an existing bridge over the River Shannon; and for other purposes." [Limerick Harbour Commissioners Bill [Lords.]
And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the Alexandra Park and Palace Trustees with respect to the temporary closing and use of the park and palace for exhibitions; to extend the

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period for which portions of the park and palace may be let; and for other purposes. [Alexandra Park and Palace Bill [Lords.]
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 8) Bill,
Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill,
Lords Amendments to be considered Tomorrow.
Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill,
Lords Amendment to be considered Tomorrow.
Limerick Harbour Commissioners Bill [Lords],
Alexandra Park and Palace Bill [Lords],
Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

FORGERY (No. 2) BILL [Lords].
Read the first time; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 277.]

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).
Mr. FENWICK reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added to Standing Committee B the following Fifteen Members (in respect of the Public Buildings Expenses Bill): Mr. Rupert Guinness, Colonel Hickman, Mr. Kerr-Smiley, Mr. Nicholson, Mr. Arthur Strauss, Colonel Warde, Sir Godfrey Baring, Mr. Wedgwood Berm, Mr. Gordon Harvey, Mr. Towyn Jones, Sir Maurice Levy, Mr. Hay Morgan, Mr. Doris, Mr. Patrick Meehan, and Mr. Pointer.
Report to lie upon the Table.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Euphrates and Tigris Navigation.
  EARL of RONALDSHAYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will state during how many years the navigation of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers has been conducted by the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company; whether the company is a British company flying the British flag;
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  whether the company, with the approval of His Majesty's Government, entered into negotiations with the Turkish Government in 1909 with a view to the foundation of a new Turkish company, under its management, to take over the Turkish Government steamers plying upon the rivers; whether, with the approval of His Majesty's Government, the scope of these negotiations was subsequently enlarged so as to include the British company and a resolution passed by the Ottoman Chamber authorising the Turkish Government to conclude the transaction with the British company; whether this resolution has been given effect to and, if not, for what reason has it not; will he say if His Majesty's Government are seeking to make it a condition of their assent to an increase in the Turkish Customs Duties that a monopoly of the navigation of these rivers shall be granted for a period of sixty years to a new Anglo-Turkish company distinct from the existing British company; and, if so, will he say for what reason it is sought to take the formation of the proposed new company out of the hands of the existing British company?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir E. Grey): The reply to the first question is that the company named has, under strict limitations, participated in, but not conducted, the whole navigation of the Tigris since 1862; the reply to the second question is in the affirmative; the reply to the third question is in the negative for His Majesty's Government were not aware of the commencement of negotiations in 1909; the reply to the fourth question, in so far as concerns the attitude of His Majesty's Government, is that the negotiations for the fusion of the British and Turkish companies were entered into by Mr. Lynch in 1909 without knowledge of the Foreign Office, who, in that year, first obtained information on the subject from the late Sir G. Mackenzie of the British India Steam Navigation Company; he had been negotiating, with the approval and support of His Majesty's Government, since the year 1901 for control over the Turkish line of steamers. In June, 1909, Sir George Mackenzie agreed to withdraw for the time from competition, and he induced other British firms in Mesopotamia to withdraw active opposition to the Lynch fusion scheme, and from then, until the breakdown of negotiations in July, 1910, British diplomatic support was given to Mr. Lynch's scheme. The answer to the

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  fourth question, in so far as concerns the resolution of the Ottoman Chamber, is in the affirmative. The answer to the fifth question is that the resolution stipulated that there should be no financial liability, as proposed under the scheme, upon the Turkish Treasury, and the Turkish Government declined to proceed with it because considerable opposition to it was manifested in Baghdad and Bussorah, and a strong feeling against it developed in the Turkish Chamber in view of that opposition. The answer to the sixth question is that the proposal is to form an Ottoman company with British participation, and at the same time to safeguard and confirm the rights actually enjoyed by the existing British company, of which Mr. Lynch is chairman. The answer to the last question is that I am concerned with the general interests of British trade in those regions rather than with the particular advantage of an individual firm; that., with this object in view, I do not consider it the most desirable solution that the existing British company should have a monopoly of and control over the whole navigation. The arrangement contemplated would secure to the existing British company the confirmation of its existing separate privileges, and the offer of participation in the capital of, and a fair working agreement with, the proposed new Ottoman company.
  EARL of RONALDSHAYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the nature of the assurances which he has received from the German Government on the subject of the navigation of the Tigris and Euphrates; and will lie give the House an opportunity of considering the terms of the proposed Convention with Turkey, together with the cognate arrangements with the German Government, before the Convention is actually concluded?
  Sir E. GREY: I cannot at present make any statement respecting the negotiations on this subject which are still in progress. The arrangements when completed will be laid before Parliament, but it would not be usual or practicable to make their conclusion dependent upon previous discussion in the House.

  Lord Kitchener's Dispatch (Alexandre Adamovitch).
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked the Secretary for Foreign Affairs whether he will call for proof of the allegations made in
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  Lord Kitchener's dispatch [Cd. 6874] against the prisoner Adamovitch, particularly those alleging that he is a well-known revolutionary who had instigated strikes among the crews at Odessa, and that he was in the habit of boarding Russian ships at Alexandria for the purpose of carrying on revolutionary propaganda among the crews; whether he is aware that Adamovitch was tried and acquitted on the charge of having incited the Russian marines to take part in a revolutionary strike, and that the only purpose of his visits to Russian ships at Alexandria was to enrol the seamen as members of the Russian Seamen's Union, a practice common at most shipping ports; and whether, under these circumstances, he will take action to protect Adamovitch until the real facts of the case have been ascertained?
  Sir E. GREY: I have no power under the Capitulations to take the action suggested by the hon. Member in Egypt.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Has the right hon. Gentleman any power to prevent false statements being circulated through official documents, and will he ask Lord Kitchener to state on what authority he makes the statements set forth in his dispatch?
  Sir E. GREY: I do not believe there are any false statements whatever in the dispatch. The hon. Gentleman does not specify any false statements.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: If the right hon. Gentleman reads my question he will find that the statements which it contains, and which are false statements, are extracts from the report.
  Sir E. GREY: I do not agree for one moment that any of the statements in the report are false statements.
  Mr. MORRELL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Foreign Office Vote is going to be put down again this Session, so that we may have an opportunity of discussing this matter?
  Sir E. GREY: As the hon. Member knows, that does not rest with me.

  War in Balkans.
  Mr. NOEL BUXTONasked the Secretary of State fol. Foreign Affairs whether the population of the province of Monastir is predominantly Bulgarian in religion and sentiment?
  Sir E. GREY: I am unable to say with any certainty. The answer to such questions generally depends upon the sympathies of those who are asked them.
  Mr. NOEL BUXTONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he would urge that, before the final settlement of the frontiers of Servia, Greece, and Bulgaria, steps shall be taken to ascertain by plebiscite under European direction, or otherwise, the wishes of the population?
  Sir E. GREY: I fear that the political conditions of the regions in question are not such as to make resort to a plebiscite a practical measure.
  Mr. NOEL BUXTON: In view of the statement of the Prime Minister last night that the Powers will now reserve their judgment as to the settlement between the Balkan States, may I inquire whether the matter will be referred to the Conference of Ambassadors in London?
  Sir E. GREY: I cannot say whether the matter will be reserved for the Conference of Ambassadors in London in particular. The Prime Minister's statement was to the effect that the Powers will reserve their judgment upon the settlement as a whole. By what method they will take that into consideration is, of course, a matter which they will decide when the time comes.

  India (Churches and Government Contributions).
  Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether any of the Christian places of worship in India receive maintenance grants; and whether any of the bishops, Anglican or Roman Catholic, or any other ecclesiastical persons receive salaries or allowances from funds provided by Indian taxation?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Montagu): The answer to both parts of the question is in the affirmative.
  Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for India how many Roman Catholic places of worship have been erected in India since 1905 towards which the Government have made contributions; what is the total cost of the erection of all such Roman Catholic places of worship; and what proportion of the total cost, including cost of site, has been contributed by the Government?
  Mr. MONTAGU: From the list already communicated to the hon. Member, it appears that twelve Roman Catholic places of worship have been erected in India since 1905, towards which Government have made contributions. The Government of India have promised to furnish information in regard to parts two and three of the question as soon as possible.
  Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for India how many Christian places of worship are now under construction in India towards which the Government have given, or have promised, contributions; what is the total amount of the contributions promised; and whether the whole of these contributions are borne upon the general revenues of India towards which Hindus, Mohamedans, and other non-Christian inhabitants contribute?
  Mr. MONTAGU: All Government contributions towards churches are borne upon the general revenues of India. The Government of India have promised information in regard to the number of churches now under construction towards which Government contributions have been promised, and the amount of such contributions.
  Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he will explain the conditions under which Government grants have been made for railway churches in Bombay, Burmah, and the Punjaub; whether these railway churches are available for all employés of the railway who may desire the use of them for organised religious services; and whether annual grants are made towards the upkeep and administration of these churches?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The conditions under which Government grants are made for railway churches are contained in Rules 12 to 15 of the rules regulating grants for the building of churches. A copy of these Rules can be furnished to my hon. Friend. The Government of India have promised information on parts two and three of the question.
  Mr. KING: Will the right hon. Gentleman send me the Rules to which he refers? Will he also see that the Government of India reconsider the whole of the policy which is referred to in these questions, especially in view of the fact that several

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  members of the Government protested against the policy now being carried out before they got into office?
  Mr. MONTAGU: I shall certainly send my hon. Friend the Rules; but I am not prepared to give an undertaking on behalf of the Secretary of State to re-consider the policy.
  Sir J. D. REESasked the Under- Secretary of State for India (1) whether the proceeds of taxation in India, or any portions of such proceeds, are administered in view to the advantage exclusively of any one of the different religions obtaining in that Empire; and, if so, of which of such different religions; and (2) whether the Government of India recognises Hindus and Mohamedans as coming within one and Christians as coming within another category of religion; and, if so, upon what religious or other principle such discrimination depends?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The answer to both is in the negative, except that Government has recognised the necessity of helping to provide religious ministrations for its Christian servants, civil and military, whom it has brought to India, and who, unlike adherents of certain other faiths, find no indigenous religious organisation at work in the country. I might mention, however, that religious instructors are attached to the majority of native Infantry regiments.
  Sir J. D. REESasked the Under- Secretary of State for India how many Nonconformist places of worship have been erected in India since 1905 towards which the Government has made contributions; what is the total cost of the erection of all such places of worship; and what proportion of the total cost, including cost of site, has been contributed by the Government?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The Government of India has promised to furnish the information asked for as soon as possible.

  Indian Mails.
  Sir J. D. REESasked the Under- Secretary of State for India whether the Government has under consideration the provision of two mails a week for India, and will entertain this suggestion when the contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company comes up for renewal this year?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The suggestion mentioned in the question is not before the Indian Government, and it is not possible to say whether it is one which could with advantage be brought by that Government to the notice of the Postmaster-General, with whom the making or renewing of contracts for mails rests.

  Mr. Channing Arnold.
  Mr. MORRELLasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether Mr. A. W. Buchanan, the sub-divisional officer at Victoria Point, Burma, who issued the warrant for the arrest of Captain McCormick in the case which led to the imprisonment of Mr. Channing Arnold, was first transferred to another district and afterwards superseded; and, if so, for what reason?
  Mr. MONTAGU: Mr. Buchanan was transferred to another district nearly two years ago, because it was thought desirable to post an officer of higher status at Victoria Point. In May last he was passed over for promotion to a higher grade by an officer junior to him, under the general rule that promotion is by selection and not by seniority in the higher grades of the Provincial Civil Service. But he has not been reduced either as regards pay or grade.
  Mr. MORRELL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say that Mr. Buchanan since this case has been in no sense departmentally punished?
  Mr. MONTAGU: Yes, these events have taken place wholly independent of the other reasons which the hon. Gentleman has in his mind.
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: Did Mr. Buchanan support Mr. Channing Arnold?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The hon. Member has heard this question discussed in the House of Commons.

  Criminal Law (India).
  Mr. MORRELLasked the Under-Secretary of State for India when he expects to receive from the Government of India the promised Report as to the desirability of amending the criminal law in the matter of confessions of guilt with a view to preventing torture by the police; or, if he has already received it, whether he will lay it upon the Table of the House?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The Government of India have been unable to send their dispatch as soon as they hoped, but I have just received a telegraphic summary of a very full dispatch which left India last mail. This is under the consideration of the Secretary of State. The dispatch and the opinions on which it is based will be published as soon as practicable.
  Mr. MORRELL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the original dispatch which is expected by mail will arrive?
  Mr. MONTAGU: It left last Friday.

  India (Government Servants).
  Mr. WEDGWOODasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether it is a rule in Bombay that Government servants are not allowed to express an opinion upon any principle approved of, or action taken by, the Government; and, if so, in what manner can legitimate grievances be brought to the notice of a Government thus debarred from learning the bonâ fide desires and aspirations of their officials, so as to avoid the growth of hidden unrest in India?
  Mr. MONTAGU: My hon. Friend misquotes, and evidently misunderstands, one of the Government Servants' Conduct Rules in force throughout British India. The rule, as it stands at present, is that a Government servant may not publish in his own name any statement of fact or opinion which may embarrass the relations between Government and the people of India or any section of the people. This rule as to public speeches and writings does not in the least impair the freedom of direct representations to Government by officials.

  Delhi.
  Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the agreement binding the selected architects for the New Delhi has been settled and signed; whether it provides for payment by commission on the cost of buildings to be erected; and whether it provides for annual visits of the architects to Delhi until the works are concluded?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The terms of the agreements with the selected architects have not yet been settled.
  Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the early
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  erection of any buildings in the New Delhi is intended other than those to be built by the selected architects; and, if so, whether such buildings will be given to architects chosen by competition?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The Secretary of State has no exact information as to the intentions of the Government of India in the matter, but he assumes that the erection of other buildings cannot be entered upon until the alignments of the streets and roads and other pending questions have been finally settled by the Delhi Executive Committee. The Government of India have stated their wish to adopt competition in some form or other for these buildings.

  BRITISH ARMY.

    YEOMANRY (PERMANENT STAFF).
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEasked the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the increasing tendency of supplying Infantry noncommissioned officers to the permanent staff of the Yeomanry, it can be arranged for such non-commissioned officers to receive Cavalry rates of pay while actually attached to Yeomanry and doing Cavalry duty, more especially as the employment of Infantry non-commissioned officers is a source of profit to the War Office, so far as their successors are concerned in the Infantry?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Tennant): I am not aware that there is an increasing tendency in this direction, but my right hon. Friend will consider the Noble Lord's suggestion.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he knows that the practice is—quite rightly—to appoint in some cases Infantry non-commissioned officers to Yeomanry Regiments. But in that case the Infantry non-commissioned officer who has the same work is paid at a lower rate than the Cavalry noncommissioned officer on the staff of the same regiment. This occasions grumbling. It is a difficult question, perhaps, but it is rather hard on the men concerned.
    Mr. TENNANT: My right hon. Friend will consider that suggestion.

    TROOPS ox MANŒUVRES (FOOD SUPPLY).
    Sir JOHN JARDINEasked the Secretary of State for War what arrangements

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    are made for supplying food to the troops when out on manœuvres; and whether they extend to the officers?
    Mr. TENNANT: On manœuvres troops are supplied with food under arrangements corresponding as far as practicable to field service conditions; free rations of bread and meat are provided, supplemented by grocery and vegetable rations for which the troops pay out of their messing allowance. Officers on manœuvres at home make their own arrangements for food supplies.
    Sir J. JARDINE: And pay for them themselves?
    Mr. TENNANT: Yes.

    Income Tax (Insurance Companies).
    Mr. HOAREasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether certain insurance companies are allowed to pay annuities without deducting Income Tax, whilst other insurance companies are compelled to deduct Income Tax; and, if so, what is the reason for this differentiation, and which are the companies that are allowed to pay the annuities without the deduction?
    The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George): The matter referred to by the hon. Member is being considered with a view to discontinuing the practice by which certain American companies have been allowed to pay annuities in full, tax being subsequently assessed direct on liable recipients.
    Mr. HOARE: Will the right hon. Gentleman give me the names of the com-panics that have this privilege?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: If the hon. Gentleman puts that question down I shall see if it can be done.

    Inland Revenue Department (Glasgow).
    Sir JOHN JARDINEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he has received a memorial from the Corporation of Glasgow, the Chamber of Commerce of Glasgow, the county councils of Lanark, Renfrew, and Dumbarton, and other incorporated bodies, praying for the establishment of a fully-equipped branch of the Inland Revenue Department in Glasgow under the direct supervision of the Board at Somerset House; and if he can state
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    what action he intends to take anent this matter?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative, and the matter is under consideration.

    Temperance Hotels (Scotland).
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEasked the Secretary for Scotland whether the by-laws of Crieff were passed mainly in terms of the Burgh Police Act, 1911; whether when submitted to the sheriff substitute it was recommended to exclude bonâ fide temperance hotels, but such exemption was refused by the Secretary for Scotland; whether, in consequence, certain temperance hotel proprietors were recommended by the town council to register as keepers of places of public refreshment and have now been prosecuted for contravention of the Act; whether the intention of the Secretary for Scotland is to prevent the travelling public on Sunday visiting temperance hotels and to force them to patronise liquor bars; whether he will so amend the by-laws as to make it possible for temperance hotels to provide meals on Sunday; and whether, if they cease to register, they will be subject to prosecution?
    The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. McKinnon Wood): So many questions are included, and the answer is necessarily so long and technical, that I must ask the Noble Lord to allow me to circulate the answer with the Votes.—[See Written Answers this date.]
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he will also include in his answer if there is any method of allowing temperance refreshment places to provide food for the benefit of travellers, so that they may not be driven to public-houses if they require food?

    Board of Agriculture (Assistant Commissioners Scotland).
    Mr. JAMES HOGGEasked the Secretary for Scotland whether before making any appointments to the new posts of Assistant Commissioners to the Board of Agriculture he will advertise the same; and whether he will consider the advisability of excluding factors from such applications?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I am satisfied from the number of applications received

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    that these vacancies are already sufficiently well known; and I cannot agree to fetter my discretion or that of the Board in the selection of the best men available for the appointments.
    Mr. HOGGE: Will the right hon. Gentleman not consider this point: that the.only way to make these appointments known is through the newspapers? And will he also bear in mind that Members of Parliament ought to be protected from all kinds of applicants who apply to them and ask them to use their influence with the Secretary for Scotland on their behalf?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I am only too anxious to protect Members of Parliament as far as I can from that sort of trouble, but it is extremely difficult.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Have Members of Parliament any influence with the right hon. Gentleman?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I should not choose a worse man, because he was recommended by a Member of Parliament instead of a better one recommended by somebody else.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: Is it not a fact that there is only one factor on the Board, and he is a Radical?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I think there is only one factor, but. I do not know he is a Radical.

    North Uist (Roads).
    Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Secretary for Scotland whether he has received a memorial from the inhabitants of Claddach Carinish, Cleit Feora, and Knockguien, which townships are two, three, and one mile, respectively, from the terminus of the main road at Carinish Inn, in North Uist, deploring the conditions under which they suffer for want of a road and urging the necessity of help in this direction; and whether, in consideration of the hardship entailed, especially in winter, he will consider what steps can be taken to remedy the matter?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD:I received this memorial a few days ago, and have referred the matter to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland for consideration.

    Damage to Fishing Nets (Wick).
    Mr. MUNROasked the Secretary for Scotland whether the Fishery Board have
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    now been furnished with the name and number of the trawler which recently destroyed the nets of the fishing boat "Mafeking" off Wick; and whether he can state what steps he proposes to take to secure the punishment of the offending vessel?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The Fishery Board have been furnished with the number of the trawler. I am investigating the question whether it is possible to take such steps as are suggested in my hon. and learned Friend's inquiry.

    Meat Inspector (Scotland).
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEasked the Secretary for Scotland if he will say why a professor of pathology holding no veterinary qualification has been appointed veterinary inspector under the Local Government Board for the purpose of meat inspection; whether there was no veterinary surgeon in Scotland qualified for the post and whether, in point of fact, applications for the post were sent in by highly-skilled veterinary surgeons; and if he will say also what technical qualifications the above-mentioned gentleman has got to qualify him for the post?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: As regards Dr. Leighton's technical qualifications I would refer the Noble Lord to replies given to the hon. Member for the Wilton Division on 24th June, where these are fully detailed.

    Small Holdings.
    Sir JOHN JARDINEasked the Secretary for Scotland if he will state how many applications for small holdings have been received from persons in the parish of Ancrum, in the county of Roxburgh, and, in particular, whether that sent by Mr. Harvey has yet been disposed of?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The number of applications from the parish of Ancrum is thirteen in all (eleven for new holdings and two for enlargements). It is hoped to provide a holding for Mr. Harvey under a scheme for which negotiations are now in progress.
    Sir J. SPEARasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether the Board repay to county councils their costs incurred in connection with the raising of loans for land purchased for small holdings and decline to pay similar costs incurred

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    for buildings on the lands purchased; if so, will he state why this distinction is drawn; and will he take steps to abolish the distinction?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The term of loans for the purchase of land is eighty years, but the Board were advised that the Public Works Loan Commissioners could not sanction a longer term than fifty years for the repayment of a loan raised to cover the cost of raising a loan for the purchase of land. In view of the inconvenience caused by county councils by this distinction, the Board applied to the Treasury for authority, which was granted, to repay out of the small holdings account the costs incurred in raising such loans. The same difficulty does not occur in the case of loans for the acquisition of buildings, as the term of those loans is fifty years.
    Sir J. SPEAR: Do I understand that in future part of the expenses incurred by the county councils for buildings will be allowed?
    Mr. MONTAGU: It is a little bit intricate, but when the hon. Gentleman reads the answer I think it will be clear.
    Mr. MORRELL: May I ask whether the Public Works Loan Commissioners have full discretion or whether they are subject to the Treasury?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I am afraid I cannot answer that.
    Sir J. SPEAR: May I ask, having regard to that fact, that the small holdings system is to encourage people to live upon the land, how can we do that unless they have houses, and is it right to penalise public bodies for using money to provide houses?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The cost of raising loans for the acquisition of land will be paid out of the small holdings account; the cost of raising loans for the acquisition of buildings will not. The hon. Member's question was to find out why there was that distinction; the difference is caused by the fact that the Public Works Loan Commissioners require a different period for the cost of raising the loan than the other loan does.
    Sir J. SPEAR: That does not answer the question. I want to know whether part of the expenses will also—
    Mr. SPEAKER: Better wait until the President of the Board of Agriculture is in his place, and the hon. Member can then cross-examine him rather than his substitute.

    Herring Fishery (Steam and Motor Craft).
    Mr. MORTONasked the Secretary for Scotland whether, with a greatly increased catching power of steam and motor craft, there was from the 1st April, 1913, to the 12th July, 1913, a decrease in the herring fishing of 260,379 trans landed in Scotland compared with the same period last year (1912); and whether that decrease is due to trawling for herring?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The figures relating to the catch for the periods mentioned are correct. It may be added, however, that no sound deductions can be drawn from figures relating only to one season, and especially to a part only of the season, and that the total quantity of trawled herrings landed in Scotland last year was only 5,714 cwts. out of 5,200,300 cwts., or 0.1 per cent. of the gross catch, and it is difficult to see how so insignificant a result could have had any injurious effect on the fishing.
    Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that as this steam trawling increases it inflicts great hardships upon other fishermen and that there is a great deal of feeling about it in Scotland?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I know there is a great deal of feeling on that subject and a very important question has arisen as to how far steam trawling destroys immature fish. This is being investigated by a Committee of which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is in charge.

    Cottages in Rural Areas.
    Mr. EDWARD WOODasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he can publish the calculations on which it is estimated that it would be possible for the State to recover all the charges involved in the provision of cottages in rural areas by a rent of 3s. a week per cottage?
    Mr. MONTAGU: My right hon. Friend asks me to say that the Government have not at present formulated in detail any

    1847
    scheme for the provision of cottages in rural areas, and that he cannot make any authoritative statement on the subject.
    Mr. WOOD: Can the right hon. Gentleman say on what ground the President of the Board of Agriculture based his recent speech?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I will tell my right hon. Friend that the hon. Gentleman wants to know.

    Admiralty Arch (New Scheme).
    Mr. BIRDasked the hon Member for St. George's-in-the-East, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, if he is in a position to make a statement as to the progress of the negotiations in connection with the completion of the approach to the Admiralty Arch?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN (Lord of the Treasury): Several conferences have taken place between the representatives of the London County Council, the Westminster City Council, and the First Commissioner of Works. They have agreed to a scheme which meets with the First Commissioner's approval, and His Majesty's Government has undertaken to contribute one-third of the necessary cost. The scheme and proposed architectural design will shortly be submitted to the two local authorities for their consideration and approval. The First Commissioner hopes to be able to place a model of the proposed design in the Tea Room at an early date.

    Employment of Children Bill.
    Mr. HOAREasked the Prime Minister whether he intends to proceed further with the Employment of Children Bill; and, if so, upon which day he will ask the House to take the Second Reading?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith):
    I fear that the exigencies of Parliamentary business will not allow of further progress being made with this Bill.

    Sir Stuart Samuel Indemnity Bill.
    Mr. RUPERT GWYNNEasked the Prime Minister if he can now say on what day it is intended to proceed with the Second Reading of the Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel Indemnity Bill?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am not yet in a position to name a day.
    Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: Does the right hon. Gentleman know that opposition to such a Bill is unheard of for generations in this House?
    Mr. GWYNNE: Is it the intention to proceed with that Bill?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am going to make a statement presently.

    Coast Erosion (Cliffs in South of England).
    Mr. GWYNNEasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the erosion of the cliffs in the South of England; whether it is intended to introduce legislation embodying the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion; and, if so, when?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The Royal Commission on Coast Erosion in their final Report deal with the state of things which they found on the South coast of England as on other parts of the coast of the United Kingdom. This Report is receiving careful consideration, and my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade hopes to introduce a Bill on the subject next Session.

    Vaithanatha Pillai (Appeal to Privy Council).
    Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the recent judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council quashing the conviction of Vaithanatha Pillai for murder, from which it appears that the expenses involved in the appeal are to be borne by the man who had been unjustly convicted; and whether, in the circumstances, seeing that the man has passed months of his life under the shadow of the gallows, he will consider the possibility of the costs being borne by the Crown?
    The PRIME MINISTER: It is not the practice of the Courts to make an order for costs against the Crown in such cases, but if the Crown thinks proper to pay the costs ex gratia, or any part of them, it is free to do so. I will request my Noble Friend the Secretary of State for India to consider the point in council. But I cannot pledge the Secretary of State in advance, since he is vested by law with the final control of Indian revenues.
    Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: Is the right Lon. Gentleman aware that this unfortunate man paid 5,000 rupees alone for the telegram to be sent to the India Office to have his sentence reviewed while the India Office were considering it, and more-over, that the Government of Madras instructed counsel to prevent his appeal to the Privy Council, and in these circumstances will every consideration be given.
    The PRIME MINISTER:I have said so.

    East India Accounts.
    Sir JOHN JARDINEasked the Prime Minister if he will say on what date the consideration of the Indian accounts will be brought before the House?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I cannot yet fix a date.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.

    INSURANCE COMMISSIONERS.
    Mr. FREDERICK HALL (Dulwich)asked the Prime Minister if he will consider the advisability of constituting the Insurance Commissioners as an independent department, in order to divest their work as far as possible of political bias, and also to enable the Treasury to criticise the financial transactions of the Commissioners from a more impartial point of view?
    The PRIME MINISTER: If the hon. Member's suggestion is that the Insurance Commissioners or the Treasury are actuated by a political bias in the performance of their duties under the Act, I must altogether repudiate it. As regards the rest of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. and learned Member for West St. Pancras, on the 14th of April last.

    MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS.
    Mr. F. HALLasked the Secretary to the Treasury the estimated annual cost of the arrangements recently made for hearing complaints against medical practitioners under the National Insurance Act; 'how the expenditure will be borne; if such complaints will be made direct to the Insurance Commissioners by the insured person or through the insurance committees; if the names of the persons to form the committees of inquiry have yet been decided upon; and, if so, will he submit a list of them?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN: The cost of the arrangements referred to will be pro-vided for in the Votes of the separate Commissions, under the head of Special Inquiries and Services, for which estimates amounting to £5,250 for the four Commissions have been laid before Parliament. If any representations are made to the Commissioners by an insurance committee or a local medical committee that the continuance of a practitioner on the panel would be prejudicial to the efficiency of the medical service of insured persons, the Commissioners must, and if any similar representations are made by any other body or any persons they may, hold an inquiry. The inquiry committee will not, as a rule, investigate complaints made by insured persons until such complaints have been investigated by the medical service sub-committee of the insurance committee. For the purpose of each inquiry an inquiry committee composed of two practitioners and one barrister or solicitor in actual practice is constituted by the Commissioners. The English Commissioners have appointed Mr. J. Fischer Williams, Dr. H. W. Langley-Browne, and Dr. C. H. Milburn to act as the first inquiry committee.

    PANEL DOCTORS.
    Mr. F. HALLasked the Secretary to the Treasury how many doctors have been placed upon the panels of medical men under the National Insurance Act in England; and how many of them have been furnished with a register of insured persons for whom they are responsible in order that they may check applicants for medical treatment?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN: The number of medical practitioners on the different panels is about 18,000. I am unable at present to say how many of these doctors have received final lists of the insured persons for whose treatment they will be responsible. Such final lists cannot be supplied until the process of allocation of insured persons who have not chosen their doctor has been completed. In the meantime the doctors have no difficulty in checking applications for treatment from insured persons who have already been accepted by them.
    Mr. F. HALL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the list is likely to be issued?
    Mr. BENN: No, I cannot say when, but the London Insurance Committee will deal with the matter.
    Mr. GWYNNE: Are we to understand that in the meantime no doctor has more patients than he can attend?
    Mr. BENN: I think I have answered that question. The whole matter is dealt with by the insurance committees who will see that no doctor has more patients than he can manage.

    UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that it has been recently decided in certain industrial districts that the men engaged in certain sectional trades must come under the provisions of the unemployment part of the National Insurance Act though they were not compelled to do so last year; whether he knows that in their cases the men are called upon to pay arrears from the commencement of the Act, which in some cases amount to 2½d. a week for fifty-two weeks; and whether, in view of the hardships inflicted on the men in this way, it can be arranged that they should only pay from the date on which they actually came under the Act?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Robertson): The decision whether contributions are payable under Part II. of the National Insurance Act in respect of any workman or class of workmen rests with the Umpire appointed under Section 89 of the Act. These decisions are given upon application being made to him; and where a decision that contributions are payable is given in the case of workmen in respect of whom no previous application has been made, such contributions are payable from the date on which the Act came into operation. In the absence of full knowledge of the particular cases which the hon. Member has in mind, it is not possible for me to give a definite reply to the point raised in the latter part of the question as to the payment of arrears in such cases. I am, however, sending the hon. Member a copy of the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Tower Hamlets on the 19th June last on a similar point. I would add that, as the workman's claim to unemployment benefit is proportional to the number of his contributions, it is, generally speaking,
    1852
    to his interest that arrears should be paid.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: If a workman is compelled to come under the Act five years after the passing of the Act, would he have to pay five years' arrears?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: No, I think not.

    SANATORIUM BENEFIT.
    Mr. ASTORasked (1) what number of beds is being used in the Northern Hospital, Winchmore Hill, for sanatorium treatment under the National Insurance Act; what is the maximum number of beds in that hospital available for that purpose; and what acreage of land not covered by buildings is utilised in connection with that hospital; (2) what institutions belonging to the Metropolitan Asylums Board are being used for the purpose of sanatorium treatment under the National Insurance Act; and (3) what number of beds in the Downs Sanatorium is being used for the purpose of sanatorium treatment under the National Insurance Act; what is the maximum number of beds in that sanatorium available for that purpose; and what acreage of land, not covered by buildings, is utilised in connection with that sanatorium?
    The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): The institutions belonging to the Metropolitan Asylums Board which are at present used for the purpose of sanatorium benefit are the Downs Sanatorium at Sutton and a part of the Northern Hospital, Winchmore Hill; the former has 372 beds, of which 296 were in use yesterday; the latter has 200, of which 171 were then occupied. The area of the site of the Downs Sanatorium, excluding that covered by buildings, is seventeen and a half acres; at Winchmore Hill the airing courts and exercise fields at present available for the patients amount to eight and three-quarter acres, but there are nearly thirty-six acres attached to the whole hospital.

    Supply (Interruption by Private Business).
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANSasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that on five days during the present Session, namely, on 10th April, 24th April,

    1853
    12th June, 26th June, and 16th July, being allotted days in Supply, the discussion of the Estimates was interrupted at a quarter-past eight and resulted in a loss of time devoted to the discussion of Estimates equivalent to two Parliamentary days; and whether, in any arrangements for business during the remainder of the Session, he will restore the time lost, so that the restricted opportunities now prevailing for the discussion of Supply may not be further restricted?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am sorry that the necessary discussion of Private Bills took so much of the time of the House. The Government, however, were not responsible for this, and we propose to give an extra day for Supply.

    Road Board (Investments).
    Mr. HOAREasked the Secretary to the Treasury what was the amount of the investments held by the Road Board first at cost price, and secondly at the market price of the last Stock Exchange settlement?
    Mr. W. BENN: I understand that in addition to £819,937 short term bills the Road Board holds securities costing.£1,782,589, whose market value on the 11th instant was £1,780,131. These prices include accrued interest, and the difference in value is partly due to the different dates on which the stocks were purchased and valued respectively.
    Mr. HOARE: Can the hon. Member say what is the depreciation, exclusive of interest?
    Mr. BENN: No, Sir; I have not got that information.
    Mr. HOARE: Will the hon. Member obtain that information for me?
    Mr. BENN: Yes; if the hon. Member will put a question on the Paper.

    Labour Exchanges (Strike Meetings).
    Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has issued instructions to divisional officers and managers of Labour Exchanges to the effect that trade unions that hold their meetings at Labour Exchanges must not, if they are on strike or locked out, be allowed to hold any meeting in connection with the strike or lock out on the premises of a Labour Exchange?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: No general instructions have been issued in the sense suggested. In accordance with the statutory Regulations made by the Board of Trade under the Labour Exchanges Act, applications for accommodation: within the premises of a Labour Exchange may be granted only for such purposes and on such terms and conditions as the Advisory Trade Committee for the district may approve. A number of Advisory Trade Committees have recommended that accommodation be granted' to trade unions and other bodies, subject to certain conditions; and the Board of Trade have usually accepted their recommendations. The conditions laid down, by some of these committees contain provisions to the effect indicated in my bon. Friend's question. I am causing copies of' the various conditions laid down to be sent to my hon. Friend.
    Mr. TYSON WILSON: Could the Board of Trade issue regulations so that we shall not have some districts applying conditions that trade unions cannot hold meetings in the Board of Trade Labour Exchanges while some districts can do so?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: It seems preferable to leave the matter to the discretion of the Advisory Committee, whose judgment ought to count for something in the matter.
    Mr. TYSON WILSON: Is the hon. Member aware that the Board of Trade through the Labour Exchange managers and other officials have pressed trade-unions to hold their meetings in the Labour Exchanges instead of in public-houses, and now when disputes take place, they drive them back to public-houses?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: That shows that the Board of Trade is perfectly favourable to, the process.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: If the Advisory Committee recommend that Labour Bureaus should be used, then the Board of Trade will not object to that recommendation?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: I do not say that absolutely. We have accepted the recommendations of the Advisory Committee.
    Mr. TYSON WILSON: Does the decision rest with the division officer?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: No.

    Children Act, 1908.
    Sir JOHN SPEARasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to several cases where infants received for nursing and maintenance, within the meaning of Part I. of the Children Act, 1908, have been handed over to the Poor Law authorities in consequence of failure on the part of the parents of such infants to carry out the financial arrangements made between them and the persons by whom the infants have been received, the parents having disappeared as soon as the infants have been received; and whether, as a means to prevent parents thus avoiding their financial responsibilities, he will introduce a short measure requiring that a person placing out an infant for nursing and maintenance shall give at least forty-eight hours' notice, before the infant is placed out to nurse, to the local authority of the district from which the infant is to be sent, and also to the local authority of the district to which the infant is about to be sent for nursing and maintenance?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): I am aware that cases of the nature mentioned have occasionally occurred. Such cases were brought to the notice of my right hon. Friend when the Children Bill was passing, but it was not found possible to frame any provisions to deal with them. I cannot undertake to introduce a Bill, but I will consult with the President of the Local Government Board as to whether anything can be done when there is an opportunity for legislation. It is not clear that the adoption of the course suggested would be an effectual remedy.

    Assaulting the Police (Conviction at Marlborough Street Police Court).
    Mr. WEDGWOODasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the case of Mrs. Mary Wyan, who was sentenced at Marlborough Street Police Court to twenty-one days' imprisonment on a charge of assaulting the police; whether he is aware that she was convicted on the evidence of one constable, though this evidence was denied on oath by the prisoner; and whether, as her friends are anxious to bring a charge of false imprisonment against the constable, the Home Office will state the constable's name and number?
    Mr. McKENNA: My attention has been called to the case, and I have consulted the magistrate He was satisfied, after hearing the evidence given and the prisoner's own statements, that she was guilty of obstruction and assault, but, as she said she did not intend to injure the officer, he was willing to release her on her own recognisances. As, however, she refused to be bound on her own recognisances, he had no alternative but to commit her to prison. If her friends desire to have the name and number of the officer, they should apply in the usual way to the Commissioner of Police.
    Mr. MORRELL: Will that be given as a matter of course?
    Mr. McKENNA: I think so. I see no reason why it should not be given, and I assume it would be given in this case.

    Imperial Wireless Chain.
    Mr. JOWETTasked the Postmaster-General whether the principal patent of the Marconi Company expires in April, 1914; whether, in view of the fact that the Admiralty in a letter to the Post Office have stated that even at the present time it is believed that the use of Marconi patents is not essential to the Admiralty design for a long-distance station, he will say if he regards the provision in the proposed contract with the Marconi Company that that company is to receive 10 per cent. of the gross receipts of any station so long as any Marconi patent is used in that station as a reasonable one; and whether, with such a provision in the contract, the Government reserves complete freedom in its own hands to change the system if necessary?
    The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): One of the principal patents of the Marconi Company will expire next year, so far as the United Kingdom is concerned, unless renewed; but other important patents will be used in connection with the Imperial stations. If it is the case, as suggested by the hon. Member, that all Marconi patents of importance will expire in the near future, then the royalties payable to the Marconi Company under the proposed agreement can also be terminated in the near future. The answer to the last part of the question is in the affirmative.
    Mr. JOWETTasked the Postmaster-General whether he has been advised as to the original cost of the plant which

    1857
    would have to be removed from any of the proposed Marconi stations in order to make that station free of any Marconi patents; and what proportion such cost represents of the total estimated cost of the station?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I am advised that the cost of the plant covered by Marconi patents would probably represent about 16 per cent. of the total estimated cost of each station, excluding buildings. Some additional cost might be involved in altering the aerial.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: Is that the advice given to the right hon. Gentleman by his expert advisers or does it come from the Marconi Company?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: From my own expert advisers.
    Mr. JOWETTasked the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the fact that the Marconi Company have refused to agree to a proportionate reduction of royalties on discontinuance of the use of their patents, which was stipulated for as an essential condition by the Imperial Wireless Committee, by the Treasury, and by the Advisory Committee, he will consider whether the possibility of withholding further licences from the Marconi Company might be used as an argument to induce the Marconi Company to agree to this requirement, especially in view of the fact that the Postmaster-General on the 30th January, 1911, arbitrarily revoked the Cullercoats licence, which was the only commercial licence possessed by the Poulsen system?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I cannot agree that the facts are correctly stated in the first part of the question, the Treasury and the other Departments represented on the Imperial Wireless Committee having assented to the royalty proposals embodied in the contract, and the opinion of the Advisory Committee not being accurately quoted by the hon. Member. Nor did I arbitrarily revoke the Cullercoats licence. My prodecessor decided in 1909 that ship-and-shore wireless stations should be worked by the State, and purchased the Marconi and Lloyd's coast stations. The representatives of the Poulsen Company, who held the licence for the only remaining privately owned station of that class, were informed at that time that the licence could only be
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    temporarily renewed. The licence was accordingly terminated in 1911, but the plant of the station was purchased by the Post Office at a price agreed upon and approximating to that asked by the vendor. I am not prepared to adopt the suggestion made by the hon. Member with respect to the Marconi Company. Apart from other considerations, it would not be likely to have the results desired, while it would involve the possibility that this country would lose the advantage of being the chief European centre of long-range wireless telegraphy, to the profit of other countries.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked on what date Mr. Llewellyn Davies was appointed one of the solicitors to the Post Office; whether he advised the Postmaster-General in relation to the Marconi Contract; and whether up to the date of his appointment he was a partner in the firm of solicitors who acted for the "Matin" newspaper in the recent libel action?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Mr. Llewellyn Davies was appointed solicitor to the Post Office on the 1st January, 1912. He was not consulted and did not advise me in relation to the negotiations prior to the signature of the Marconi Agreement of July, 1912, but the formal agreement was drawn up by him. It is the fact that the firm which he left in January, 1912, and with which he had no subsequent connection, acted for the "Matin" newspaper in the action in March last, but I fail to see the relevance of that fact.

    Potted Shrimps (Boracic Acid).
    Major WHITEasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he intends to carry out the recommendations of the Southport health committee, laid before him in May last, with regard to the fixing a maximum to the amount of boracic acid used in potted shrimps; and if he is willing to take action on the further resolution of that body to the effect that it is desirable that the amount of boracic acid used in potted shrimps should be declared on the label as is done in the case of cream?
    Mr. BURNS: The question of preservatives in foods is under consideration by the Local Government Board, and I am not at present in a position, to say what action will be suggested in the matter.

    Studland Bay, Isle of Purbeck (Provision of Cottages).
    Sir A. GRIFFITH -BOSCAWENasked what action has been taken in regard to the demand for cottages at Stud-land Bay, in connection with which a public inquiry was held nearly a year ago?
    Mr. BURNS: The inquiry into a coin-plaint made under Section 10 of the Act of 1909 as to the alleged failure of the rural district council of Wareham and Purbeck to exercise their powers under Part III. of the Act of 1890 in the parish of Studland was held on 11th November, 1912. As a result of that inquiry the Local Government Board pressed the council to build twelve cottages in that parish, and the council have agreed to do so, and have submitted proposals and applied for sanction to a loan. The inquiry into their application will be held as soon as possible.

    London University.
    Mr. KINGasked the President of the Board of Education whether the Grants to London University are conditional on any developments and changes in the policy of the university being approved by the Board; and, if so, whether he will give an undertaking that no new site for the buildings of the university shall be acquired without Parliamentary sanction?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Trevelyan): The reply to the first part of the question is in the negative; the second part of the question does not, therefore, arise.
    Mr. KING: Are there no means by which the Board of Education can take cognizance of these proposals for a new site for the London University, and are they watching the subject which is now being so much discussed?
    Mr. TREVELYAN: They are certainly watching it.

    School Accommodation (Ewell, Surrey).
    Mr. KINGasked the President of the Board of Education whether His Majesty's inspector condemned the school at Ewell, Surrey, in his Report for the year ended 30th April, 1904, and instructed the managers on 29th June, 1904, to make improvements without delay; whether these condemnations have been repeated frequently in subsequent years; whether in January, 1908, the local education authority
    1860
    informed the Board of their willingness to provide a new school; whether the Board of Education decided in November, 1909, not to recognise the school in its existing premises after 10th April, 1911, and to pay no further Grant; whether the school still continues in exactly the same condition as was condemned ten years ago; whether it is still recognised and the Grant paid; and what explanation has he to offer for the injury inflicted on the children of the parish?
    Mr. TREVELYAN: His Majesty's inspector reported unfavourably upon the premises of the school in 1904, and recommended the managers to submit a scheme for their improvement without delay. Similar reports were made in subsequent, years. The statements contained in the remainder of the hon. Member's question are substantially correct. In 1911 the Board informed the local education authority that they would raise no objection to the school continuing to be conducted in the existing premises for a, limited period after the 30th April, 1911, pending the provision of further school accommodation, and have paid the Grant. Plans have been approved for adapting the premises as a school for boys, and the Board are now pressing the authority to provide the accommodation required for girls and infants.
    Mr. KING: Are we really to take it that this school was seriously reported on in 1904, and that no improvements have taken place up to the present time?
    Mr. TREVELYAN: There is a prospect that by the end of the year the school will be put right.
    Mr. KING: Cannot the hon. Gentleman face the question fairly. Was not this school in 1904 condemned, and why have nine years been allowed to elapse without anything having been done?
    Mr. TREVELYAN: Objections were taken by the Board to the condition of the school, but we cannot cure defects in the school premises all over the country in a year, or even two years. There are a good many cases in which a considerable amount of time is required; in this case the school will be put right in the course of the next three or four months.

    Tuberculosis Order, 1913.
    Mr. DELANYasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland), whether his attention has been drawn to a resolution passed at the

    1861
    last quarterly meeting of the Queen's County Council, requesting the Department to recognise for the purposes of the Tuberculosis Order, 1913, the veterinary inspectors appointed by the sanitary authority under the Dairies, Cowsheds, and Milk Shops Order, 1908, instead of confining the duties to one inspector working under the Diseases of Animals Act; and can he say, in order to avoid overlapping of duties and consequent extra cost to the rates, whether the Department is prepared to comply with the request made in the resolution?
    Mr. RUSSELL (Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture, Ireland): The resolution referred to has been received. No decision on the request therein has, however, been reached yet. Pending further experience of the working of the Order, which has been in operation only for a little time, it appears undesirable to determine whether the sanctioning of additional appointments thereunder would be of advantage.

    Land Purchase (Ireland).
    Mr. BOLANDasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether, in view of the statement made by the Estates Commissioners that they have no knowledge of the promises made as to turbary when the Rowland-Blennerhassett tenants purchased their holdings under the Ashbourne Act, and have no power to interfere, he will institute inquiries in the offices of the Land Commission, or of such other department as was in control of land purchase operations at that period, with a view to securing to the tenants the carrying out of the promises then made by the landlord's representative?
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The sales to the tenants of the late Sir Rowland Blennerhassett referred to in the question were carried out under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act; 1885, by means of conveyances by the vendor to the tenants, and not by Vesting Order of the Land Commission. There is no reference to turbary in these conveyances, nor in the agreements to purchase signed by the tenants upon which the conveyances were based. The Commissioners have no evidence of the existence of any undertaking of the vendor's representative as to securing a supply of turbary for these tenants, and they have no power to intervene for the purpose of securing for the purchasers the rights of turbary which they now claim.
    Mr. BOLAND: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at the present moment the Estates Commissioners have in their hands the turbary of this estate, and, in the circumstances, will he make further inquiries to see if as a matter of fact the vendor's representative did make these promises?
    Mr. BIRRELL: Of course, if the Estates Commissioners have the turbary in their hands, I will ask them to look into the question, but obviously it is too late to correct these conveyances.
    Mr. DELANYasked whether in the sale of the Warburton estate, Garryhinch, situated in the King's and Queen's Counties, and carried out between the tenants and the Land Judge, it was agreed that the untenanted land known as the Pullock meadows should be divided up amongst the small holders on the estate; whether the receiver, Mr. Mathew Franks, still retains those lands on his hands and has advertised the meadows for sale on the 15th instant; who receives the money for those meadows; and whether the Estates Commissioners approve of the whole transaction?
    Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners understand that when the sale of this estate was being negotiated it was arranged that the Pullough meadows were to be sold to them for the purposes of distribution. The question of the acquisition and distribution of these lands by the Commissioners will be considered by them when they are dealing with this estate. Until the lands have been acquired by the Commissioners it is the duty of the Receiver to continue his arrangements for the user thereof.
    Mr. BOLANDasked whether the landlords who have sold their property in the Mastergeehy district have also sold the sporting rights; and whether the Congested Districts Board will negotiate with Sir Morgan O'Connell with a view to having his property, inclusive of the sporting rights, sold to the tenants?
    Mr. BIRRELL: The Congested Districts Board do not keep their records of estates by districts, and cannot therefore give the information asked for in the first part of the question. The Board have decided that they will not make an offer for the estate referred to unless the tenants agree that the sporting rights will be reserved to the Board or to the vendor.

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.

    TROOPS IN IRELAND,
    Mr. F. HALLasked if any arrangements have been made, or are in contemplation, to increase the number of troops stationed in Ireland in anticipation of disturbances arising should the Government of Ireland Bill become law; and if the cost of the same will be a charge against Trish revenue?
    Mr. BIRRELL: The answer is in the negative.
    Mr. F. HALL: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether his attention has made drawn to the statement recently made that the bursting of shrapnel over the heads of the people of Ulster might be the best cure, and does the right hon. Gentleman agree with that suggestion?
    Mr. BIRRELL:No, Sir, off-hand I do not.

    Evicted Tenants (Ireland).
    Mr. PATRICK MEEHANasked if the case of Edward Foley, who was evicted from a holding at Ballyadams, Queen's County, on the Kemmis estate, has been considered by the Estates Commissioners; and whether they have taken any steps to provide him with a holding?
    Mr. BIRRELL: Foley's application has been noted by the Estates Commissioners for consideration in the allotment of untenanted land acquired by them.

    Bandon Petty Sessions.
    Mr. AUGUSTINE ROCHEasked if at the Bandon Petty Sessions, held on the 30th June, 1913, a Unionist named William Williams, and locally known as Carson, was fined for drunkenness 2s. 6d.; why, though he has not as yet paid the fine, he is still at large and under the eyes of the police; whether at the Petty Sessions held at Bandon on the 7th July last a Nationalist labourer named Hartnett was fined 2s. 6d. for a similar offence, and though he there and then asked for time he was curtly refused and taken into custody and conveyed to the Cork male prison by the next train, though there were several other trains during the day that he could be taken by; and, seeing that on the way to the station the police escort met Williams, why Williams, who should have been taken a week previous, was not arrested?
    Mr. BIRRELL: The police authorities inform me that at Bandon Petty Sessions, on the 30th June, William Williams was fined 2s. 6d. for drunkenness, but that the warrant to enforce the penalty was not executed as he promised to pay the fine in a short time. In cases of this kind, to avoid hardship and to save expense in conveying prisoners to prison, it is usual for the police to allow defendants a certain latitude where they are satisfied that the fine will be paid, and that there is no danger of the defendants absconding. On the 7th instant Hartnett, who is described by the police as a man of bad character, having no fixed residence, was convicted of a similar offence, but as he made no application for time to pay the fine the magistrates issued a warrant for his committal in default. He was conveyed to Cork by the first available train so as to enable the escort to return that evening. The escort did not meet Williams on their way to the station, and the politics of the men are not known to the police.

    Secondary Education (Ireland).
    Mr. O'DONNELLasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether, seeing that several public bodies in Ireland have expressed their approval of his scheme for improving secondary education, he will place the Grant immediately on the Votes, leaving it to be availed of by such schools as comply with the conditions?
    Mr. BIRRELL: I have nothing at present to add to my replies to the questions on this subject asked by the hon. Member on the 17th instant.
    Mr. O'DONNELL: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman, as this matter has gone on for an extremely long time, When he will make up his mind and decide finally in regard to it?
    Mr. BIRRELL: It is not a question altogether of my mind; it is pretty well made up. It is a question of other people's minds, but I hope soon to come to a decision.
    Mr. HORNER: Having regard to the great necessity for more money, can the right hon. Gentleman give us any reasonable objection why some of this money should not be given to those schools willing to comply with the conditions?
    Mr. BIRRELL: I do not know that I can, but I am anxious that as many schools as possible should benefit in the scheme.

    Passenger Steamers (Survey).
    Mr. COOPERasked the President of the Board of Trade whether Passenger steamers, other than those regulated by the Emigration Act, are surveyed by the Board's engineer surveyors who, in addition to inspecting the machinery, also inspect the life-saving appliances, boats, lights, charts, compasses, and other equipment; if so, whether he is satisfied that this class of surveyor is competent to inspect the nautical equipment of the vessels; whether he has received any complaints or suggestions that defective equipment has been responsible for recent accidents; whether he will inquire if any dissatisfaction exists among the Board's nautical surveyors on the subject; and whether he will in future limit the duties of the engineer surveyors to the inspection of machinery?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): The main survey of all passenger steamers is in general conducted by the class of engineer and ship surveyors, with the assistance, where necessary, of surveyors of other grades. All the Board of Trade surveyors undergo a period of training, and are, I believe, competent for the duties they have to perform. I am unable to identify the complaints or suggestions with regard to recent accidents to which the hon. Member refers. I should be glad if he will give me particulars as to the cases he has in mind. If any class of the Board of Trade staff consider that they have any grievances which they desire to bring to my notice, ample means exist for the purpose.

    Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act, 1906.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the President of the Board of Agriculture how many local authorities have during the last twelve months applied to the Board for its consent to prosecute alleged offenders under the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act, 1906; in how many eases has the Board given its consent; and in how many cases has a conviction resulted from such proceedings?
    Mr. MONTAGU (for Mr. Runciman): Thirteen local authorities applied to the Board for their consent to prosecute in twenty-two eases. In nine cases consent was given, and in one case the question of giving consent is now under consideration. Where consent was given, in seven cases there was no conviction, because in five cases the local authority did not prosecute
    1866
    and in two cases the magistrates dismissed the charge. In regard to the two remaining cases the Board have not received any information since their consent was received by the local authorities.

    Agricultural Education.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the aggregate amount expended by the Government upon agricultural education in France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, respectively?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The types of education included under the general head of agricultural education, and the methods by which they are aided, vary so much in different countries that my right hon. Friend regrets that it is impossible for him to make any precise statement in reply to the hon. Member's question.

    Sheep Scab.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked whether the length of the pupal stage of the acarus of sheep scab has yet been ascertained as the result of scientific investigation; if so, whether there is now a prospect of stamping out this disease altogether in Great Britain; and, if not, what, steps are being taken by the Board to prosecute further investigation and research into this matter?
    Mr. MONTAGU: My right hon. Friend is advised that there is no pupal stage in the life-history of the acarus of sheep scab. The habits of the acarus are being carefully investigated at the Board's laboratory, and although progress has necessarily been slow there is good reason to hope that the disease will be eradicated.

    Rothamsted Experimental Farm.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the President of the Board of Agriculture what Grants have been made during the last twelve months to the Rothamsted experimental station at Harpenden, Herts, in respect of capital outlay and maintenance expenses, respectively; and whether, in view of the importance to agriculturists of the investigations now being conducted there on the subject of partial sterilisation of soils and the effect of lime in promoting their fertility, he proposes to make a substantial additional Grant for the efficient prosecution of this work?
    Mr. MONTAGU: A Grant of £2,500 is made towards the cost of maintaining the

    1867
    Rothamsted experimental station, and a capital Grant of £3,100, payable as expenditure is incurred, had been sanctioned for new buildings. The Board have received no application for any additional Grant.

WAR IN BALKANS.
Mr. NOEL BUXTON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs a question, of which I have given him private notice, namely, whether he can give the House any further information as to the action proposed by the Concert of Europe to prevent the violation of the Enos-Midia frontier by the Turkish Government, as fixed by the Treaty of London?
The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Acland): There is nothing to be added to the answer given in the House yesterday and to the speech made by the Prime Minister.

SITAPUR MURDER TRIALS.
Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for India a question of which I have given him private notice, namely, whether the India Office received by the last Indian mail, which arrived on Saturday, the Papers in relation to the Sitapur murder trial which Sir John Hewitt said was necessary in order to enable him to give his explanation. If the Papers had been received, will they be laid together with Sir John Hewitt's ex-plantation?
Mr. MONTAGU: Yes, Sir, the Papers were received from India by the last mail. Sir John Hewitt's explanation has also been received. Everbody concerned is most anxious that they should be published as soon as possible, and the Papers are now being dealt with with a view to being printed.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  BILLS PRESENTED.
    ISLE OF MAN (CUSTOMS) BILL.
    "To amend the Law with respect to Customs in the Isle of Man." Presented by Mr. MASTERMAN; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. Mill 274.]
    EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL,
    "To continue various Expiring Laws." Presented by Mr. MASTERMAN; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 276.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
The PRIME MINISTER: I beg to move, "That, during the remainder of the Session, Government business shall not be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the Sittings of the House, and may be entered on at any hour though opposed; at the conclusion of Government business each day Mr. SPEAKER shall propose the Question that this House do now adjourn, and if that Question shall not have been agreed to, Mr. SPEAKER shall adjourn the House without Question put not later than half-an-hour after the conclusion of Government business; and on Fridays the House, unless it otherwise resolves, shall at its rising stand adjourned until the following Monday."
This Motion is one which is always made at this stage of the Session, generally, I think, a little earlier than I am proposing it this year. It is in the customary form, but it is convenient, however, to take the opportunity of indicating to the House, as specifically as possible, the intentions of the Government so far as their proposals of legislation are concerned. First of all, I had better begin with what is the most painful part of my task. If hon. Members will take the Orders of the Day, they will be able to follow the names of the Bills which it is not proposed shall be proceeded with. They are the Employment of Children Bill, the Inebriates Bill, the Milk and Dairies Bill, the Milk and Dairies (Scotland) Bill, the Hops Bill, the Bee Disease Bill, the Horse Breeding (Ireland) Bill, and the Irish Creameries and Dairy Produce Bill. Then I come to the Duchy of Lancaster (Mining Leases) Bill, and 1 am afraid there will have to be added the
1878
Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Bill. But upon this latter I will not pronounce definitely at this moment. I can only say that I am afraid its fate trembles in the balance. These are the Bills which the Government have definitely decided at this stage of the Session to abandon. On the other hand, there are certain Bills which belong to the opposite category, which we shall ask the House to assent to, and if assent has not already been obtained in another place, we shall send them to the House of Lords. They are the Mental Deficiency Bill, the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill, the Finance Bill, and two Bills which my right hon. Friend has just introduced, and which are always necessary Bills at the end of the Session—the Isle of Man Customs Bill and the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. These, in any events, we shall hope to pass into law.
With regard to Supply, as I have already said in answer to a question put earlier in evening by an hon. Member below the Gang-way, we propose, in addition to the twenty days required by Standing Orders, to allot one additional day for Supply. I have to mention the case of a Bill which has just appeared on the Paper—the Insurance Bill. The Committee has already begun on that, and we hope to get the Report stage through in such time as will enable the measure to be included in the category of Bills we hope to pass. There are two other Bills to which I have to make special reference, namely, the Revenue Bill and the Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel Indemnity Bill. With regard to the Revenue Bill, as hon. Members will perceive, it is a Bill proposing to make certain concessions which have been demanded largely from the other side of the House, and also by some hon. Members on this side, in regard to what are called the Land Taxes. The Government believe that these concessions are of such a nature and that they have been so carefully worked out in consultation with persons interested, that they might well be treated as non-controversial. If they are so treated we hope the Bill may go through by consent as an agreed measure. But I am bound to add that, if there is any opposition to the provisions of the Bill, or if its introduction is made the occasion for an attempt to enlarge its scope so that it will not be possible to give it consideraion at this stage of the Session, the Government will, with great reluctance, be obliged to withdraw it.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that that is the only Bill on which we can have, this year, the ordinary liberty of reviewing the general finances of the country. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean by the limitation which he has just imposed to deprive us of that opportunity to discuss and review financial matters?
The PRIME MINISTER: There will be a Second Reading.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: It is by that Bill and that Bill alone that the Resolution we have already passed and with which the right hon. Gentleman is familiar—the Resolution for the general amendment of the law in relation to finance—can be given practical effect.
The PRIME MINISTER: Yes, Sir, I quite agree. We are most anxious that that opportunity should be afforded, but if we are to have on the Paper a dozen, or twenty, or fifty new Clauses—I think there were a hundred last year—that would obviously make the discussion of the Bill as a practical measure impossible. That is what happened before. I hope it will not happen again. The Government are certainly most anxious to pass it, and to give an opportunity for the discussion the right hon. Gentleman desires. The other Bill to which I specially refer was the Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel Indemnity Bill. With regard to that, I hope there will be something in the nature of a general agreement on both sides. The Government are certainly quite prepared to consider—I see there is an Amendment of which notice has been given by the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil)—any suggestions that are made with regard to a modification of the detailed provisions. We cannot, at this period of the Session, afford time for anything in the nature of a lengthy or controversial discussion, and I shall look forward to hearing, through the ordinary channels of information, what is the general state of opinion with regard to that matter. With regard to the rest of the Bills on the Paper to which I have not made any specific allusion, I think the House will find that they are all either Bills which have already received the assent of the House of Lords or Bills which are of an entirely non-controversial and, in most cases, of a Departmental character. Perhaps I ought to exclude, for the moment at any rate, Order No. 34—the Industrial and Provident Societies
1880
(Amendment.) Bill—which I am most anxious to see passed, and with regard to which I hope we may now arrive at something in the nature of a general concordat. I do not think there are any of the others, with a single exception to which I will now refer, which require special treatment. The exception is Order 37, which is not "starred" and appears below the Government Orders—the Extension of Polling Hours Bill. That is a Bill which has now passed through both Houses. Certain Amendments have been made in it by the House of Lords, but so far as I know they are Amendments which will not give rise to any difference of opinion or any serious difference of opinion, between the two Houses; therefore, I hope we may treat that as a measure which will pass into law. I shall be glad to answer any questions hon. Members may wish to put to me.
Lord HUGH CECIL: Is the right hon. Gentleman going to star any other private Bills?
The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir, not as at present advised. I know of none.
Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: Do the Government intend to proceed any further with the Irish Land Purchase Bill?
The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir, not this Session.
Lord HUGH CECIL: Or the Education Bill?
The PRIME MINISTER: That is going to be introduced shortly, but will not be further proceeded with this Session.
Mr. T. M. HEALY: Will the Irish Land Bill be printed?
The PRIME MINISTER: Certainly.
Mr. SPEAKER: Hon. Members must wait to ask their questions until the Question has been put.
Mr. BONAR LAW: As the right hon. Gentleman has said, such a Motion as that he has just moved is common at this stage of the Session, but it is rather interesting, because this is the first time for many years that this Motion has been made at a normal time. This may be a normal time, but we have had by no means a normal Session. The Session, as everyone knows, has really consisted in carrying out the automatic process of which the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) has spoken, and the whole in-

1881
terest has been centred in Bills which have not been discussed in this House at all. The result of that, in my opinion, has been that there never has been a time when the House of Commons took less interest in its own proceedings than during the present Session, and, partly as a consequence of that, there never was a time when the country took less interest in the proceedings of the House of Commons. I think that everyone has regarded this Session as more or loss of a play—rather a dull play—and we shall all be glad when the curtain rings down and we are allowed to depart. Evidence of that was given even in the short speech of the right hon. Gentleman. There were expressions of dissent when he mentioned the Bills that were to be dropped, but I think they were not very sincere. I think they rather expressed gratification than otherwise. It will be in the country more than in the House that regret will be felt that particular Bills—such, for instance, as the Hops Bill, which I am sorry is to be dropped—that particular Bills have been dropped. The real sentiments of the House were expressed far more clearly in the faces of hon. Gentlemen when the right hon. Gentleman named the Bills he still intended to carry through. Even that list is a pretty formidable one, and seems to indicate that we shall be kept here much longer than hon. Members expect, or that we shall have to do without much sleep for what remains of the Session. I am only going to refer to two of the Bills the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
In the list of the Orders of the Day there is a Motion in the name of the Prime Minister to the effect that the Committee on the Insurance Bill is to be permitted to sit after four o'clock without any special Order from the House of Commons. All I am going to say about that is that it seems to me that what is proposed for that Committee is something which makes proper discussion either in Committee or in this House impossible. I am told that the suggestion is that the Committee should sit every day in the week, and that, in addition to sitting every day in the week from eleven o'clock, it is liable to sit until ten o'clock the following morning, which is implied in the Resolution. I think that is putting a strain upon Members of this House, which it is impossible for them to bear and which is absurd. I do not think there is any reason for it. I can see no reason in the world why this Bill should not have been introduced at an earlier period of the Session, and at
1882
such a time that, however great the congestion in this House might be, there would at least have been the certainty that the Bill could be considered under reasonable conditions in Committee upstairs. I do not think there is any explanation which can be given which will be satisfactory to the House on that point. Wih regard to the Motion, I have only this to say: I think it would be absurd to propose to pass the Resolution as regards the time of this Committee—which might have been done under the Resolution we are now debating—after eleven o'clock at night. I urge the right hon. Gentleman to see that at least a proposal so drastic and, as I believe, so inadvisable, is discussed under proper conditions and at a proper hour in this House.
The PRIME MINISTER: Which Motion is that?
4.0 P.M.
Mr. BONAR LAW: The Motion referring to the Committee on the Insurance Bill. I think that is not an unreasonable
request, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will accede to it. As regards two Bills to which he has referred, I must say a word or two. The first is the Revenue Bill. I think the way in which he has treated it shows that he is absolutely unacquainted with all that happened earlier in this Session in regard to that Bill. In my judgment that is not a Bill which by any possibility can be treated in the way in which the right hon. Gentleman treats it. Look what it means. We have altered our system—the whole system on which the finance of this country is discussed in this House—and we have altered it at the request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, as everyone understood, with the intention that no privilege that we enjoyed should be taken away, but rather that further opportunities should be given us for reviewing the finance of the year. What is it that the right hon. Gentleman proposes? This Bill is treated as something which is not to be gone on with unless the House as a whole allows it to pass almost as uncontroversial; it amounts to this: that the House of Commons will have abandoned absolutely all power of criticising the administration of finance or suggesting any Amendment of any kind to any part of the finance which is not proposed as new taxes. I think that is an absolute outrage. It is something which would never have been dreamt of by any Minister who occupied the place of

1883
the right hon. Gentleman before. It is abandoning one of the chief functions of the House of Commons, and it is more than that. It is this aspect of it to which I referred when I said the right hon. Gentleman was not acquainted with what took place earlier in the Session. I have not the extracts with me, although two have been handed to me at this moment, but I have most clearly in my mind the distinct promise made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the change which he was making would give private Members in all parts of the House every opportunity to which they had been accustomed to deal with the whole of the financial questions in a way in which they have been dealt with previously.I am quite sure that promise was given, and I am quite sure that when the right hon. Gentleman looks into the facts he will see that the course he now proposes is one which he cannot take without departing from what was the clear belief of every Member of the House at the time the proposed change was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Two extracts have been handed to me, and I think they bear out what I say. The first is the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself:—
"There are certain Amendments we ourselves propose to the licensing provisions of the Act and to the land valuation provisions. I have no doubt there are several other Members of the House who would also like to try their hands at amending these provisions."
And for that purpose the Revenue Bill was introduced. Then in addition to that, the Financial Secretary said this:—
"It is because we think it fair to give hon. Members the opportunity for criticism that they desire that we have brought this Resolution,"
It is in order to give them the opportunity of criticism that they brought it, and now they propose to drop it and not to give them the opportunity of criticism which they themselves said they should have. Even from the point of the Government, I do not see how they are justified in the course they take. If they believe, as the speeches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer show, that some Amendment is necessary in order to prevent the subjects of the Crown suffering injustice, they are bound to have these Amendments carried out now. He told us that one of these Amendments which was necessary was in regard to licensing, but, strange to say, when you look up the Revenue Bill there is no reference to this Amendment which he promised, and which he considered necessary, but there are references to
1884
Amendments of the Land Act; and not only did they introduce these subjects, but they consider that they are necessary in the interests of justice, and I think, however anxious the Government may be, or the House may be, for their holiday, they are not justified in leaving their own work undone in that way. Whatever view they may take of their proposals, it is clearly in the highest degree unfair that the House of Commons should be denied the opportunity which they were definitely promised of criticising the whole finance of the year upon the Revenue Bill. That is all I desire to say upon that, and I think, whether I have said it fairly or not, the facts are forcible enough to make it necessary for the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider his position.
The other Bill to which he referred was the Indemnity Bill of the hon. Member for Whitechapel. The position in regard to that matter, as everyone who followed the Debate in this House on the purchase of silver last Session knows, is that the firm approached the India Office and urged them to give them an order to buy silver. The India Office complied with the request, and thereby placed the firm in this peculiar position, that if they chose to deal in silver themselves the knowledge that they received of what the India Office meant to do made it perfectly certain that they could deal with the absolute certainty of making any amount of profit they chose. I said at the time this subject was under discussion that I did not believe this firm would take that course, and up to this point I am sure every Member of the House will agree with me that it would be in the highest degree improper for anyone who requested and obtained a confidential position of that kind to use it in order to make profits for himself. I think—and this is where there is room for dispute—that when this House is asked to pass a Bill which will free a member of that firm from a penalty which has been incurred, the House has the right to be satisfied that use was not made of that confidential information in order to make profits for themselves while they were confidential brokers and advisers of the India Office. I know—and I admit there is some force in it—that it may be said that this is suggesting an unworthy suspicion. I have said that I do not think they would make that use of their opportunity, but no one doubts that the temptation would be great and that there are many people, both in this House and out of it, who suspect that additional profits have been made. Surely it is in

1885
the interests of everyone—of the Government and of the firm itself—that some steps should be taken to make perfectly certain that use would not be made of it for their own private advantage before the House of Commons is asked to take the step of freeing a member of that firm from the penalty which has been incurred I think that is a reasonable view. It is the view which the Opposition take, and all I say further is that if the Government suggest any method—and I rather think, though I am speaking now from recollection, that a member of the firm himself invited it—of satisfying themselves and the House of Commons that the use which I have suggested has not been made of the privilege, they will find that we are not difficult to come to terms with as to the way in which this inquiry should be made.
The PRIME MINISTER: Will the right hon. Gentleman make a suggestion?
Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not think that is my place, but I am quite ready to consider it either with the right hon. Gentleman or with any one else. I only wish the course taken which I think is right and which I believe the House of Commons ought to take, and I shall put no difficulty whatever in the way of having that course taken in what seems the best and most effective manner. I do not think I need go over any of the other points which were raised by the right hon. Gentleman. The most important are the two to which I have last alluded, and especially the Revenue Bill. I ask hon. Members opposite to remember that parties change. Sometimes one party sits on these benches and sometimes another, and, in my belief, the precedent which is now being set of practically preventing the House of Commons from discussing the finance of the country is a precedent which should not be permitted by Members of the House in whatever quarter they sit.
Colonel WILLIAMS: Will an opportunity be given to the House of going into the public accounts of the nation?
Dr. CHAPPLE: When the right hon. Gentleman said the Mental Deficiency Bill was to be proceeded with, did he also mean to include the Scottish Mental Deficiency Bill?
Mr. T. M. HEALY: The course the right hon. Gentleman has taken is reasonable as regards most of the measures to which he has referred, but I certainly endorse every
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word which has fallen from the Leader of the Opposition in regard to the Revenue-Bill. There are matters connected with administration in Ireland which I desire to draw attention to by means of Amendments, and I do not think the Government would really resist them. They are not matters of very first-rate importance from the point of view of the revenue which they bring to the Government, but they are matters of essential importance to those who have to pay that revenue. They largely affect certain increment which the Government are insisting on getting from tenants in towns, because the question of tenant right in towns has been hit by certain Clauses in the Budget in a way I am satisfied the Government never intended. Then, again, there was the question of site values, which they are insisting upon in spite of a promise which has been made that agricultural land should be exempt. These are points which are not of very great moment from the point of view of the Government and yet unless we have an opportunity by means of the system of finance, we shall have no check whatever upon the system of tax collection in Ireland, which is much more rigid and much more sweeping and razor-like than tax collection is in this country. I wish to enter my protest against any suggestion that we should agree to an attenuated discussion so far as this Revenue Bill is concerned. There are two or three matters which me certainly wish to bring forward and I hope we shall have an opportunity of doing so. May I also express my disappointment at the failure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to keep his undertaking with regard to the licensing proposals? Undoubtedly there are licensing anomalies to which his attention has been called. He gave the House a distinct assurance that one of the subjects which would be dealt with in this Revenue Bill was the question of licensing. I read his Memorandum this morning, and I read the Bill this morning, and to my surprise the question of licensing has not been touched upon, and I understand that, is due entirely to the initiative of the right hon. Gentleman himself. I heard through the ordinary channels of information that Clauses were being drafted to deal with these provisions. Why these Clauses have been struck out of the Bill I cannot understand. Confining myself that Bill, I certainly say we should not be asked in any way to restrict our debate upon it.
Mr. PRINGLE: I think a large number of Members on this side of the House sympathise with the view which has been so strongly stated by the Leader of the Opposition that an opportunity should be given this Session to review the whole finance of the year by means of a discussion on the Revenue Bill. After all, one of the main functions of this House is the control of finance. During the General Election before last we were told that that was the peculiar prerogative of this House, and surely, after having made that case, we are not going to abandon what we so strongly asserted then to be our prerogative! It is very interesting to observe the measures for which we are now being asked to suspend the Eleven o'clock Rule during the rest of the Session, and it is mainly to call attention to these measures that I rise. We find that these measures are the two Mental Deficiency Bills and the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Am I to understand that the Scottish Mental Deficiency Bill is abandoned?
The PRIME MINISTER: No. I hope we may take it, but I have not included it in the list of necessary measures.
Mr. PRINGLE: I understand then that there is no pledge to pass the Scottish Mental Deficiency Bill. As a Scottish Member, therefore, I have no objection to that, but I think I am in a stronger position in appealing to the right hon. Gentleman to withhold this benefit from England, if indeed it be a benefit. What I wish to ask is, if the right hon. Gentleman opposite is desirous of getting a full discussion of the Revenue Bill, which he indicates is the most important thing of all, why not let him appeal to the Government to withdraw the Mental Deficiency Bill, and the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill? There would then be time for a full discussion of the financial position of the country, which is done in every Session in this House, and if we fail to have it this year, the House of Commons will have abandoned one of its chief duties.
Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I wish to ask what are the intentions of the Government with respect to the Soudan Loan Bill, and the Highlands and Islands (Medical Service) Bill. I should like also to know what are their views in regard to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Consolidation Bill?
Dr. ADDISON: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what are the intentions
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of the Government in regard to the Public Health (Prevention and Treatment of Disease) Bill? The right hon. Gentleman did not mention it in his speech.
Lord ROBERT CECIL: I wish to say a word about one of the Bills on the list. The right hon. Gentleman did not say anything about the Children (Employment Abroad) Bill. That is a Bill which, I am sure, the Prime Minister would agree with me in saying is of a very urgent character. I trust that whatever else happens nothing will interfere with it.
Mr. MOLTENO: May I ask the Prime Minister what are the intentions of the Government with respect to the Local Government (Adjustments) Bill?
Mr. G. H. ROBERTS: I am sure everybody will understand that the Government must embrace the opportunity given on an occasion of this sort for stating their programme for the remainder of the Session. We have to regard it as a regrettable necessity that some of the cargo has to be jettisoned. I wish to put in a plea on behalf of those portions of the cargo in which I am specially interested. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. Jowett) has for two or three Sessions introduced a small Bill entitled the Provision of Meals Bill, to enable school authorities to feed poor children even when the schools are not in session. I understand that the opposition to the measure is very small. I do not wish to disparage the opposition offered by the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir F. Banbury), but if I am correctly informed there are very few Members of the House who are opposed to the measure, and therefore I respectfully suggest that the Prime Minister might very well afford the necessary facilities for the Second Reading. The Bill would occupy very little time in Committee, and I am sure the passing of it into law would give general satisfaction to a large body of people in the country. I was pleased to hear the right hon. Gentleman state that it is his desire to pass into law the Industrial and Provident Societies (Amendment) Bill. I hope that he will conform to that intention, for there is a very great desire in almost every part of the country that the measure should be passed. I understand that there is comparatively small opposition to it, and I feel sure that if the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to afford facilities for the Second Reading, he will find that the opposition is almost of a negligible character. [HON.

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MEMBERS: "No."] Those who object to it would have an opportunity of making their opposition manifest, and there would be an advantage even in that. I am assured that there is not much opposition to it, and if opposition were demonstrated, those interested in the measure in the country would know whether the promises made to them are being fufilled in the House. So far as I have been able to ascertain the opposition is not very serious. I understand that, irrespective of party, there are a considerable number of Members who would gladly see the Bill passed into law. I wish to say, in the absence of my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Labour party, that he understands -there is a desire to discuss the Report of Lord Kitchener. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is in contemplation that time shall be given for this purpose, or whether the Foreign Office Vote is again to be put down, and whether, in his opinion, that matter can be properly discussed then or on the Appropriation Bill? These are points I wish to put to the Prime Minister on behalf of those with whom I am associated.
Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: May I ask whether the Prime Minister can tell us upon what date he intends to take the Scottish Estimates? He promised to tell us to-day.
Mr. BOOTH: I think it would be convenient if the Leader of the House would indicate at what period he hopes the. House will adjourn for the holidays after completing the programme which he has sketched out. I wish to make an appeal to the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition voiced to-day a reasonable desire, in my opinion, for a discussion of the finance of the year, and I associate myself with some of the remarks which came from hon. Members below the Gangway as to the desire that, at any rate, the critics of the Government finance should have a fair and reasonable opportunity of putting their case before the House. At the same time, I would say to hon. Members opposite that when a minority on this side wish to discuss certain measures they should not always swoop down upon them without hearing a word of what they have to say. The suspension of the Eleven o'clock Rule at this stage is almost entirely in the interests of the Government, which wishes to carry measures not, of a party character—that is to Gay, so far as those on its own side of the House are concerned. The principal contentious measure of that kind
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—the Mental Deficiency Bill—is one that I have not the same concern to fight now as I had last year. Considerable concessions have been made which have altered entirely the tone of my opposition to the measure. But there are other matters, and what do we find? We find that when there is a considerable body of opinion on this side of the House against a measure, and when hon. Members venture to criticise the conduct of the Front Bench, a Closure. Motion is almost invariably proposed. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, that is done both in Grand Committees and in this House. I venture to say that the great majority of the Opposition would vote for closuring discussion on the Mental Deficiency Bill. I, therefore, suggest to them that I do not think they will get the Session over any quicker by taking that course. My own view is that when a minority feel seriously on a question, it is much better to let them express their views. If they are allowed to do so in the earlier days of a Bill, the sooner will it be got through. In spite of the claim from the opposite side of the House that there should be full discussion and free speech, I think we shall witness again that the course taken by hon. Members will be entirely opposed to that claim. They will come in and vote down the small minority on this side of the House who are pleading for what they consider matters of right for their constituents. We shall give them their claim for free speech and fair discussion when they are prepared to exercise it on the Bill which they strongly advocate, and which they have, by some mysterious means, thrust on the affections of the Government.
Sir FREDERICK BANBURY: The hon. Member for Norwich (Mr. G. H. Roberts) stated that there was very little opposition to the Industrial and Provident Societies (Amendment) Bill. I have received a circular from shopkeepers in my Constituency stating that the shopkeeping class as a whole are strongly against the measure. Under these circumstances I have to say that there will be strong opposition to the Bill. As to the Bill to provide free meals for school children, I have to say that it is of a most controversial character. It has been introduced by the Labour party for seven years, and, so far as my memory goes, it has never obtained a Second Reading. It is perfectly absurd for the hon. Gentleman to say that that particular Bill, which has not

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yet passed the Second Reading, should be proceeded with. I wish to say a word about the Finance Bill and the Revenue Bill. We were told that the arrangements in regard to financial legislation will not prevent the House as a whole having a proper discussion of the Revenue Bill and the Finance Bill in the form in which we used to discuss the old Finance Bill. I think the hon. Member for North-West Lanarkshire (Mr. Pringle) expressed the feeling of a great number of Members in the whole House, and certainly on this side, when he said that two or three years ago this House constituted itself the sole authority in finance, and that we ought, at any rate, to have an opportunity of discussing the subject. What have we had during this Session? This is 22nd July, and the Revenue Bill has not been read a second time, while the Finance Bill has only had a short Debate on the Second Reading, and the Committee stage has not yet been taken. When I came into the House it was inconceivable that the Budget should not be passed before the end of July, and I venture to say that it will be a great blow at the prestige and usefulness of this House if financial discussion is to be burked in future. I cannot hold out any hope that if we do get a discussion on the Revenue Bill it will be a short one. I wish to ask the Prime Minister whether he will kindly inform me if he proposes to give a day for the discussion of the Marconi Contract?
The PRIME MINISTER The PRIME MINISTER indicated assent.
Sir HERBERT ROBERTS: I quite agree that the present situation should not be allowed to interfere with our having a general discussion on finance. I think there will be fairly general agreement when I say, having in view what the Prime Minister said in regard to certain difficulties which have arisen in connection with the working of the Act in connection with building operations and the housing problem, that the Clauses in the Revenue Bill substantially meet the main difficulties. When they become law a great many of the misconceptions which have arisen will be swept away. In the general interests of the community I trust that the Government may be able, with the general consent of the House, to pass the Bill.
Mr. COOPER: I desire to draw attention to the fact that as I read the Motion
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moved by the Prime Minister the Five o'Clock Rule on Friday will be suspended
In this connection, if you are going to sit probably one or two whole nights in the week, and certainly late on most nights, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman if he can give us some assurance that we shall be able to get away in reasonable time on Friday evening?
Mr. CASSEL: May I remind the Prime Minister, in connection with the Revenue Bill, of what he himself said in November, 1910. I am sure that he will not depart from it. No one has expressed more eloquently or forcibly than he himself the importance of giving the House of Commons the opportunity of reviewing the whole financial situation and giving private Members the opportunity of moving Clauses on the Revenue Bill. In November, 1910, the right hon. Gentleman, who was in the position of having to shorten discussion on the Finance Bill, came here and said that it was under very exceptional circumstances, and on the eve of a Dissolution. On the 21st of November, 1910, what he said was:—
"Nor do we intend, as it appears from what I have already said, to deprive the once of Commons of the power which it possesses and should always possess whatever may be the new taxes of the year, to take into consideration the general scheme of the taxation of the country, and proposing, if occasion requires, modification of taxes which are already on the Statute-Book and which may he done by the machinery of new Clauses."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st November, 1910, col. 205.]
Does the right hon. Gentleman still think that it is important that the House of Commons should possess that power? He goes on to say:—
I think the House should maintain that control The only question is how and when it should be exercised."
In that particular case he promised at the very commencement of the new Session that the first thing that should be done would be to introduce a Resolution that it is expedient to amend the law of Customs and Excise, and that was done. I submit that at this stage of the Session this year it would be departing from what he said in November, 1910, if he were to deny to the House of Commons that opportunity, more particularly having regard to the fact that we have had in this Session as specific pledges of Amendment of that Bill as could possibly be given. If he gives a pledge for next Session, he could not possibly make it more specific than the pledge which he has given for this Session. At the Leicester by-election leaflets were issued, professing to be based

1893
on the highest authority, promising amendments in the Revenue Bill. I submit that it would be contrary, both to principle and to his own utterances, if he were not to proceed with the Revenue Bill and give a fair opportunity to the House of moving new Clauses on it.
Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: I would like to join in the appeal to the Prime Minister to make room for the Revenue Bill and to make the necessary adjustments in the other part of the programme to enable him to do so. The Revenue Bill is important not merely from the point of view of opportunity for discussion which it may give rise to, but from the point of view of its merits. Many of my Constituents are interested in the concessions granted in this Bill, and I think that it, will be found to the advantage of the Government that it should find an opportunity for granting the concessions winch are there given. But when I look at the Bills for which it is proposed that this should be sacrificed, I think that the case is all the more urgent. Unlike several of my hon. Friends, I am not opposed and have not been opposed to the Mental Deficiency Bill. I am in favour of it, but; if it comes to be a choice between the one and the other, I think that this House would be fulfilling its duties better by proceeding with the Revenue Bill, and I find that even more emphasised by the discrimination which has been made between the two Mental Deficiency Bills, the Bill for Scotland and the Bill for England. I am in favour of both, and I am just as much in favour of one as the other. If the Mental Deficiency Bill is important, as I believe it is, why should the Scottish Bill be sacrificed rather than the English Bill? I believe that this Bill is accompanied by Grants of public money. Naturally, we Scottish Members are interested in that subject. I do not see any adequate reason with reference to this question of Mental Deficiency, which is very important, why public money which has been voted for the solution of the problem in England should not be simultaneously voted for the solution of the problem in Scotland. I think that there is no case for the differential procedure with regard to these two countries. If one is to be sacrificed, both should be sacrificed, and I would suggest that in the choice between that and the Revenue Bill preference should be given to the Revenue Bill.
Lord HUGH CECIL: In response to the very courteous reference which the right
1894
hon. Gentleman has made to me about the Sir Stuart Samuel Indemnity Bill, apart altogether from the question raised by my right hon. Friend, which goes to the root of the matter, I should be very glad to fall in with the suggestion with the view to seeing whether the discussion could be shortened. Coming to the Mental Deficiency Bill, we are often told that the House of Commons would work very well if it was not for the bitter party feeling and if matters could be adjusted in a friendly spirit by appeals to the good feeling of the House. I hope that the Prime Minister will use his influence with the Home Office to inspire them with the spirit of conciliation upon that Bill. It is a very long Bill and I am not sufficiently familiar with it to know whether the criticisms which have been addressed on it have been fully met in Committee, but it is precisely the sort of Bill which might easily be passed if handled in a very conciliatory way and which would be very difficult to pass if it is not. I may express the hope that the Government will meet the reasonable criticisms on the Report stage of the Bill, in which case it might be allowed to pass through. I may call attention to what does seem to me the extraordinarily humorous way in which the Government and the Liberal party have handled the great constitutional question of the Money Bill. Three years ago they proceeded to a great constitutional revolution. They were indignant with the House of Lords for rejecting the Budget of 1909.
Coming to the effect of the constitutional revolution in respect of Money Bills, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that it was desirable to bring in this Revenue Bill separately because its contents would not fall within the definition of a Money Bill, and, therefore, it was necessary to separate it from the Finance Bill, which was a Money Bill. The upshot of the matter is, therefore, that the House of Lords retains, under the Parliament Act, substantial power over this Revenue Bill and all similar measures of the kind, showing that, even under the Parliament Act, it would have been able to reject the 1909 Budget, and that, therefore, the whole purpose of Clause 1 of the Parliament Act is not secured. Instead of killing the pigeon, they have killed the crow. It is the liberties of the House of Commons that have been destroyed and not the liberties of the House of Lords. The upshot in the House of Commons is that we are kept until the

1895
third week in July before we enter on the details of finance at all, a procedure which, as the hon. Member for the City says, is absolutely without precedent in the finance of previous Governments. Earlier in the Session, while you were discussing these matters, it was universally agreed that it would be a great abuse of the forms of the House if the finance of the year were kept over to what we call the dog days. I never could quite make out what they are, but I understand them to mean the end of July and the beginning of August, which is precisely the time when, if we are to discuss it at all, we shall have to discuss it. We are told that if we discuss it at all, we must discuss it under a penalty.
We are told that the House of Commons, whose rights were vindicated three years ago, would have the opportunity taken away from it altogether. We are treated like a person who is likely to over-eat himself, and if he helps himself too freely from the dish, it would be taken away from him and he would be left hungry for the rest of the day. If the Government were really zealous for the liberties of the House of Commons, the very last liberty which it ought to take away is the liberty of revising the financial arrangements of the country year by year. Under this new system, if this precedent is to be followed in future, it will rest with the choice of the Government of the day to say whether we are to have any voice in financial revision from year to year. Everyone knows that the Government always has a congestion of business in the middle of July, and always has to drop a great deal, and unless we make a stand now the powers of reviewing finance will seldom or never be allowed to the House of Commons in future. It will very soon become an ordinary custom for the Leader of the House, whether Liberal or Unionist, to get up and say, "The House is accustomed to the statement at this period of the Session that there will be no opportunity of reviewing the general finances of the Session. We regret that we cannot introduce a Revenue Bill this year, but we hope that next year we shall be more fortunate." The truth is that the Government does not care and never has cared two straws about the rights of the House of Commons. It cares for nothing but the party convenience of the moment. It attacked the House of Lords two years ago in the name of that party convenience, and now it is
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treating with contempt the ancient historic rights of the House of Commons.
Mr. JOHN WARD: I understand that the business before the House is the question of the allocation of time during the remainder of the Session and the selection of the subjects to be discussed. I am interested in one subject for which, so far, no opportunity for discussion has been found this Session, though I have put questions to the First Lord of the Admiralty upon it, and I should like that in the allocation of time an opportunity should be found for discussing it. I am referring particularly to the administration of the Fair-Wages Clause by the Admiralty Department. I do not think that there is any serious objection to the way in which any other Government Department administers that Clause. I have been present on almost every occasion during the discussion of Naval Estimates this Session and I have tried to raise on several occasions the question of the administration of the Fair-Wages Clause by the Lords of the Admiralty, but I have failed. We are generally discussing the preponderance of shipbuilding in this country as compared with other countries. We are discussing all the subjects under the sun except those subjects which, after all, apply to the most vital interests of the working people of the country. The House of Commons has passed Resolutions that fair, decent wages should be paid to workmen employed by Government Departments, and there is no particular hostility to that Resolution on the part of any other Government Department. But on the part of the Admiralty there has been open and inveterate hostility. They have tried to shirk their responsibilities in every way, and yet, so far, riot five minutes has been devoted to that side of the administration during the whole of the Session. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is giving an extra day for Supply. In answer to the hon. Member for Colchester, he did not state to what Supply that extra day was to be devoted. I would ask that the Vote relating to construction of works and buildings should at any rate be put down for an hour or two once during the Session, so that this peculiar and interesting subject might be properly considered. Every other party who comes before this House for rights and privileges in the construction of public works, has now to toe the line by the Standing Orders of the House. The=
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Admiralty are the only people who can construct these great works without passing special Bills before a Committee of the House. That being the case, we should at least once during the Session have an opportunity of discussing the way in which the Admiralty apply and enforce the Resolutions previously passed by the House of Commons. I enter a protest against the time being so allocated, either by misfortune or by design, that one of the most interesting topics from the Workmen's point of view, namely, the recompense for their labour when employed under the Admiralty, stands no chance of being considered this Session.
Sir ALFRED CRIPPS: The Revenue Bill deals with a variety of topics in regard to which, if they are not dealt with, the subject will be left in the matter of taxation in what the Chancellor of the Exchequer admits is an unfair position. The terms of the Revenue Bill are very complicated. Anyone who has studied the Bill and knows the whole question of the Land Taxes must be aware that that Bill cannot be passed without a considerable amount of discussion. But what is the position in which we stand? The Government have admitted through the Chancellor of the Exchequer that reforms in the matter of revenue are necessary, in order to secure that fair treatment to which the subject has a right in matters of this kind. On the other hand, it is common ground that the Bill cannot be passed without discussion. I suggest, under these circumstances, that proper time ought to be given to a Bill which ought to be passed, but which in its nature is such that there must be considerable discussion in order that the terms may be properly adjusted between the Treasury and the Government on the one side and the subject on the other. This subject was discussed at another part of the Session when we introduced the new principle of giving legislative authority to mere Resolutions of this House. When the House adopted that system, to which I was throughout opposed, it was on an undertaking, given in terms by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the opportunity of this House for full discussion of all financial matters, particularly those contained in the Revenue Bill, should not be curtailed, and that the discussion should not be put off to an impossible period of the Session. What is the position now? We are told that this Bill, if it is to be properly discussed, cannot be proceeded
1898
with. If we adopt that attitude, we are giving up our principal duties as the House of Commons, namely, those in regard to revenue and finance. Whatever is done with regard to any other Bill, this particular Bill ought to be brought forward, because its introduction is an admission that there are existing injustices, and it must be properly discussed if those injustices are to be put right in proper form. Therefore, I urge the Prime Minister to allow an opportunity for the discussion of this Bill, because it deals with one of the primary duties of this House, namely, the proper adjustment of matters of finance and revenue.
Mr. R. D. HOLT: I desire to join in the appeal to the Prime Minister to reconsider his decision in regard to the Revenue Bill. There is a strong feeling in this part of the House that that. Bill ought to be proceeded with seriously, and that we should be given a proper opportunity for a complete review of the financial position of the country. If the Government knew what was in the hearts of their supporters, they would find that there are many hon. Members on this side who think that their dealings with financial questions in the last year or two have been of a rather off-hand character, and that finance has not been treated as what it really is—the primary function of this House. It has been relegated far too much to a back seat, and to the fag end of the Session. Many of us would like to see these matters dealt with at a much more suitable period of the Session, namely, some weeks earlier than this. At the same time, I hope we May make an appeal to hon. Members opposite, that the opportunity given by the Revenue Bill should not be in any sense of the word abused. Everybody knows that by the needless multiplication of Amendments, you can spend a great deal of time; but if the privileges of this House are abused, sooner or later they must be withdrawn. That is a fact which no one who watches what goes on in the House of Commons can possibly deny. It is impossible for us to get through our business properly unless we do our best to do it expeditiously.
Mr. WATT: I desire to call attention to the extraordinary choice of measures to be proceeded with. The Prime Minister has sacrificed the good and retained the bad. He has rejected the Revenue Bill, the Employment of Children Bill, the Milk

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and Dairies Bill, and the Milk and Dairies (Scotland) Bill. Goodness knows, we much needed the last-named Bill. While rejecting these, what have the Government retained? The Appellate Jurisdiction Bill, under which two new judges are to be appointed at £12,000 a year. The Government are prepared to devote some of the remaining time to that Bill, instead of dealing with the other measures which I have named. There are already on the Paper four and a half pages of Amendments, many of them standing in the names of four or five Members. I estimate that the measure will occupy two days of the time of the House. I think the right hon. Gentleman would have made a much better choice if he had sacrificed that Bill and given the time so saved to the Revenue Bill, which is so much needed.
Mr. RUPERT GWYNNE: I desire to point out that in every case Bills dealing with agricultural interests have been thrown overboard. The Milk and Dairies Bill, the Milk and Dairies (Scotland) Bill, the Hops Bill, the Bee Disease Bill, the Irish. Creameries Bill, and others have been sacrificed. I would appeal to the Prime Minister to reconsider his decision with regard to the Bee Disease Bill. It is fashionable to laugh when that measure is mentioned, but it deals with a matter of the utmost importance to agricultural districts. Bee disease is spreading, and there is no means of dealing with it. The President of the Board of Agriculture is constantly telling us that he is most anxious to pass the Bill, and I believe that everybody who knows the real state of affairs is anxious that something should be done to, stamp out this growing evil. I do not think the Bill would be very contentious, and I press very strongly that, as agricultural interests have been sacrificed in every other case, the Prime Minister should give way at least in regard to this Bill.
Sir J. TUDOR WALTERS: I hope that the Prime Minister, in reference to the Revenue Bill, is not forgetful of the very strong feeling in the country in respect to certain aspects of the land taxes. The only point I want to mention now is the effect on housing. We talk a great deal about rural housing. I venture to say that we are rapidly approaching a famine in houses in the towns, apart altogether from the rural districts. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is thoroughly seized of the im-
1900
portance of this question. I have had the privilege of discussing it with him on many occasions, and he has taken great pains to draft Clauses in the Revenue Bill, which I think would do a great deal towards solving the housing problem. It is largely a matter of restoring confidence. It is not so much that anything in the land taxes has actually injured the building trade or the property market; it is the fear of what those taxes may do—the suspicion of their operation. In the Revenue Bill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made perfectly clear the scope of the operation of the land taxes so far as builders' profits are concerned. He has made it quite clear that no Lumsden case can ever occur again; that builders' profits will not be taxed; and that the only thing that will be taxed is the unearned increment in land. If once we can get builders, property owners, and those interested in the provision of houses to realise that nothing but unearned increment in land will be taxed, it will not matter how much the Opposition croak and wail, whine and mourn, it will not have the least effect; they will be prepared to go on investing their money in the erection of houses. This matter is so serious that you cannot afford to let it remain over for another Session. Even if you have to stop here a week beyond the time now expected, in the interests of this great question of housing, which is of such vital importance to the working classes, you must deal with the Revenue Bill, and you must give it full and free discussion. You cannot burke the discussion. You cannot say that these Clauses satisfy the necessities of the case, unless you hear the arguments and answer them. Unless you give a fair consideration to all the interests involved, you cannot restore confidence or reinstate the housing problem in the position in which it ought to be. Therefore I very strongly urge on the Prime Minister that no consideration of time should prevent these questions being fully and freely discussed, so that the justice promised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer might be effectually done, and the Finance Act amended in these most important and necessary particulars.
5.0 P.M.
Mr. MUNRO-FERGUSON: I do not think that the Prime Minister's list this year has been quite so well drafted as usual. The reasons for taking the Revenue Bill are sufficiently obvious, whereas the reasons for proceeding with one or two of the other Bills are not quite so obvious.

1901
I certainly think that the Agricultural Bills mentioned by the hon. Member opposite are more pressing than the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill or the Mental Deficiency Bill, at any rate as far as Scotland is concerned. The last Bill that I named has been pretty fully considered in Committee, but it is one of the most imperfectly conceived Bills, especially as regards its financial Clauses, that I can recollect coming before a Committee, and certainly it would be none the worse off being postponed for another year. I think it is not a good selection to proceed with the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill or the Mental Deficiency Bill, and in preference to taking the Revenue Bill in the first instance and one or two other Bills.
Sir RYLAND ADKINS: I desire to associate myself with some of my hon. Friends in regard to the appeal which has been made to the Prime Minister and to the Government with regard to those Clauses of the Revenue Bill which would so greatly improve the operation of the Land Taxes. I will not trouble the House by going into details, but some of them certainly do affect, and affect very much for the better, the conditions of life in South-Eastern Lancashire on the one hand and parts of rural England on the other. It. would be a thousand pities if they were not passed into law this Session. Of course, we all know that in debating matters of that importance it is perfectly easy for the Opposition to so discuss them as to take up time that would make it impossible for them to pass I do ask the Government, to put the Revenue Bill in the forefront of that which now has to be done, and to allow so much time for it that if it does not pass the responsibility is not with them and their supporters, but with those who would rather not have these improvements unless they can have other alterations as well.
The PRIME MINISTER: I have a, considerable list of topics to deal with, but I will not intrude longer on the time of the House than I can help. First of all, let me refer to one or two points which were made by some of the last speakers. An hon. Member opposite said that we had abandoned the Bills that had been put forward on behalf of agriculture. We have passed two already this Session. Although I regret that time cannot be found for the Bee Disease Bill, the importance of which I fully recognise, everybody in my position has to sacrifice a
1902
great many things he would rather see passed. We must bring as far as we can a certain sense of proportion to bear on the question of what should be retained and what surrendered. With regard to what my hon. Friend said just now with regard to the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill I was very sorry to hear that. The Appellate Jurisdiction Bill is introduced in response to a definite pledge given by this country at the Imperial Conference in 1911 to the representatives of our Dominions, and it is absolutely essential that it should be passed, and that the Supreme Tribunal of the Empire should be properly manned if justice is to be done to India and all the self-governing Dominions. I speak with a full sense of responsibility when I say that both from the point of view of public honour and public expediency, there is no measure in the whole of this programme of legislation which is more urgent. The opposition is confined, as far as I can see, by the Amendments on the Paper, to some four or five Members, I am sorry to say, sitting on this side. We intend to carry that measure through, and it shall receive the Royal Assent before the House rises. That is all I have to say on it.
I come to the other statements, and particularly to the points which were raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. First of all, with regard to the Revenue Bill, I listened with great respect to what the right hon. Gentleman said, and to the remarks in the same sense which have been made by hon. Gentlemen from both sides of the House. Let me say with reference to what the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) said, there is no desire or disposition on the part of the Government, and never has been in any way, to curtail the rights and privileges, and discretion of the House of Commons in respect to finance. If he had examined the matter he would know that during the present Session we have devoted six days already to the discussion of the finance of the year, three days on the Resolution in Committee, one day upon Report, and two days to the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, and, in addition to that, a seventh day has been given to the discussion of the financial administration of the country upon the Inland Revenue Vote. Therefore, we have seven days already in this Session devoted to this purpose, and we still have the prospect before us of the Committee, Report, and Third Reading

1903
stages of the Finance Bill. Upon the Second Reading of the Finance Bill we entered, and I remember it well, for I took part in the debate myself, on a general review of the taxation of the country. I argued at considerable length the whole question of the relation between direct and indirect taxation as ingredients in national finance. I have never heard a debate, and I have prolonged experience of financial debates in this House, which ranged more widely and more freely over the whole domain of national finance than that which took place on that occasion. Therefore, it is a total misconception of the facts to say that the House has not had up to this stage of the Session at least as much opportunities as those which are habitually offered for the discussion of general question of finance.
If the right hon. Gentleman, I say "if" because it is not a question of hypothesis, desires that we should have—and he has quoted expressions and declarations from the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Ministers which certainly ought to be taken into account—a renewal of that discussion, or a fresh opportunity on a large scale, I am quite prepared, perfectly prepared, to do so. We attach very great importance to the Revenue Bill. We think that the provisions which have been very carefully thought cut in its Clauses would mitigate such hardships as exist with regard to what are called Land Taxes, and would simplify and make more just the equality of our present system of national finance. It is all a question of time. If the House is ready and anxious to give time to it, I am perfectly content that they should, but I must at the same time enter this caveat. If opportunity is to be taken on these proposals for Amendment, which, in principle, are virtually, if not universally, accepted on both sides of the House, to enlarge the scope of the measure to an extent which makes it unreal and impossible, then, of course, the House, as master of its own procedure, may feel that it should curtail discussion within reasonable limits. Subject to that qualification, I am perfectly content, in response to the appeal made to me, to give to the Revenue Bill adequate and reasonable time. In regard to another measure to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, and that is the Bill for an Act of indemnity to Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel, I quite recognise the spirit and tone in
1904=which he approached that subject. I am sorry, of course, that it should enter into anybody's mind that there are grounds, or may be grounds, for suspicion in regard to the conduct of the Government on the one side, or the person who enters contract with the Government on the other. The right hon. Gentleman did not say he entertained those suspicions himself, but that there ought to be an absolutely clear conviction in all quarters of the House that there was no ground for any suspicion of the kind. I think that is what the right hon. Gentleman said.
I asked him to make a suggestion, but perhaps it was not his business to make suggestions, and if he will allow me to do-so, I will myself take the initiative of entering into communication with him as to this matter which affects the House as a whole and is not party business. Members on both sides are equally interested in settling on the precedent which our successors can follow. I will respond to the right hon. Gentleman's invitation, and I will make suggestions which I hope may provide some satisfactory mode of procedure which will set at rest one -way or the other any ground of suspicion there may be. If we can arrive at a satisfactory agreement on that point, then I should' hope, subject to what the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University said—
Lord HUGH CECIL: I assented.
The PRIME MINISTER: That we might come to a general decision and remove the measure from the list of contentious Bills. The right hon. Gentleman put a question to me with regard to a Motion which stands in my name as to the Committee on the Insurance Act Amending Bill. I will not make that Motion to-night; we will wait and see how the proceedings in the Committee develop, and we earnestly hope it will not be necessary to go outside the ordinary procedure which is provided under the Standing Orders.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman go a step further, and if he unfortunately should think it necessary to renew the Motion and place it on the Paper at a later date, will he give us the assurance that we shall have a reasonable opportunity of discussing it?
The PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I will put it down as the first Order, but I hope it will not be necessary. I think in substance those are the points which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the

1905
Opposition dealt with. Now I come to a variety of considerations which have been touched on by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House. I ought to have included among the Bills which the Govern-merit think it necessary to pass the Bill for the Soudan Loan and the Bill for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Both of those we regard as essential parts of our programme. I omitted to mention, in dealing with a great quantity of matter, that my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General thinks it desirable and important to bring forward a proposal to empower the Post Office to borrow money for the purpose of developing and completing our present telephone undertaking. I hope when this proposal is put forward that it may be of such a kind as to secure general assent. Subject to that exception, I have nothing to add in regard to the Bill which the Government themselves will take up. The Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord Robert Cecil) referred to the third Order on the Paper, a Bill with regard to the employment of children. We hope very much to carry that, and we certainly have not abandoned it. We believe there is a general feeling on both sides of the House that it should pass into law. Then, with regard to other matters which have been mentioned, I did not intend to say in regard to the Mental Deficiency (Scotland) Bill that the Government proposed to abandon it. On the contrary, we hope it will be passed, and it has only been put into the category of Bills not absolutely essential to complete the work of the Session. I hope it will be passed this Session, and I have not abandoned hope, and we shall do what we can to pass it into law. The same remarks apply to Order No. 18, the Public Health (Prevention and Treatment of Disease) Bill, which deals with tuberculosis. I hope that the House may be disposed to allow that Bill also to be passed into law without any prolonged discussion. With regard to the contract of the Post Office in reference to Wireless Telegraphy, papers will be circulated to-morrow, and we propose to have a discussion on that matter, provisionally, on Friday of next week. My hon. Friend below the Gangway referred to three topics in which he and his Friends take particular interest. One is the Bill for the Provision of Meals for Children. I am, as he knows, a very strong supporter of that Bill, and I very much regret that it has not yet passed into law. It is a private Member's Bill, and has not advanced very far, and the Government cannot, in
1906
view of their own legislation, which they are about to make, take it up this Session. Perhaps next Session they may be in a better position to do so. In regard to the Industrial and Provident Societies (Amendment) Bill, I have already made a statement. I am sorry the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London opposes the measure, but if there were a conference between its supporters and opponents it might result in the Bill being again presented in a form in which it would be generally acceptable. I hope that the hon. Baronet would not then declare a ruthless or protracted war against it. I have already dealt with the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition in regard to the Motion which stands in my name on the Paper, and which I shall not move tonight. Finally, I must express a very strong hope that the House will allow us to take Order No. 33, the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Bill. That is a necessary, almost a necessary, complement of the proposed legislation with regard to mental deficiency, and I think our work in that respect will be incomplete if we do not pass that Bill in addition to the other.
Mr. BOOTH: Can the right hon. Gentleman say anything as to the length of the Session?
The PRIME MINISTER: As to the length of the Session, it is our hope, a. hope which is not yet abandoned, that we may be able to bring the Session to an end towards the close of the week which terminates on the 15th or 16th August. It may be in consequence of the elasticity with which I have dealt with the suggestions made on the other side to-day, that the date will have to be a little postponed. I hope not. I hope, without unduly calling upon the House to sit up late at night at this time of the Session, that the comparatively modest and for the most part non-controversial part of the programme before us may be realised, and that the House may attain its long-desired and well-deserved holiday not much later than the date I have mentioned.
Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the Scottish Estimates will be taken?
The PRIME MINISTER: Some day next week.
Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman tell us nearer than that?
The PRIME MINISTER: I will say on 'Thursday what day next week.
Dr. CHAPPLE: Can the right hon. Gentlemen say whether the Local Government (Adjustments) Bill will be applied to Scotland?
The PRIME MINISTER: No; that would be outside the title of the Bill.
Question put, and agreed to.
Resolved, "That, during the remainder of the Session, Government business shall not be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order regulating the sittings of the House, and may be entered on at any hour though opposed; at the conclusion of Government business each day Mr. SPEAKER shall propose the Question that this House do now adjourn, and if that Question shall not have been agreed to, Mr. SPEAKER shall adjourn the House without Question put not later than half an hour after the conclusion of Government business; and on Fridays the House, unless it otherwise resolves, shall at its.rising stand adjourned until the following Monday."—[The Prime Minister.]

EDUCATION (No. 2) BILL.
The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. J. A. Pease): I beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill to amend the Law with respect to Grants in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fitting up elementary schools."
The Bill which I now ask leave to introduce contains one Clause which, if the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, will enable the Board of Education to give some immediate financial relief to local education authorities. The Government believe that relief to the local education authorities is long overdue. I admit that the sum of £150,000 which I have now to offer them is merely preliminary recognition of the necessities of the local education authorities. I ask the House, therefore, to regard this relief, not as a substitute for, but as an introduction to a very comprehensive measure which we hope to introduce in the next Session. This Bill initiates a new policy, and therefore I am going to ask the Chair to allow me not merely to give an explanatory statement of the Clause, but also to include in my statement some reference to the future policy which is initiated. The Government think it is time that we should propose a definite
1908
scheme of educational development, and we hope that the main features of our financial and administrative policy will be accepted by all parties in the country, and especially by those who are interested in the development of progressive education. I think Members of the House will agree with me that it is far better that we should endeavour to adopt a policy which has been well thought out, rather than to endeavour to meet the necessities of each year by a mere tinkering process. I am authorised to say in connection with medical treatment and medical inspection that, for the purpose of the Grant, we intend for the future to regard those two services as one.
Therefore, I shall place upon the Supplementary Estimates a sum of £50,000, which enables practically a moiety of the expenses connected with the medical service in the country to be met out of Imperial funds. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is that in addition?"] That is in addition to the £80,000 which is estimated for in connection with the medical treatment, and which has already been presented to the House. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is that included in the £150,000?"] That is included in the £150,000; but £100,000 will also be placed upon the Supplementary Estimates, and that will be distributed during the current year under regulations which are now in draft, and which I will circulate to the House at once. That Grant will be in aid of loan charges for educational purposes incurred in the year 1913–14, but it will be assessed on the actual money received in respect of loans sanctioned during 1912–13. I anticipate that the loan charges will approximate this year to £200,000, and, therefore, we anticipate that we shall practically give a moiety of the loan charges in the distribution of this £100,000. I desire, particularly, to call attention to this Grant, because, for the first time, the Government adopt the principle of contributing this aid to the charges on local loans, which have been previously discharged entirely out of the rates. In order that we may have power to distribute the £100,000 it is necessary for me to introduce this one-Clause Bill. The Bill repeals Sections 96 and 97 of the Act of 1870, and is limited to that object. Section 96 provides that no Parliamentary Grant can be made in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fitting up any elementary school. This money which we are about to distribute is not a building Grant, but is

1909
a Grant-in-Aid of charges incurred for building, and it is esteemed better that we should remove by legislation any scruple that might possibly arise under that Section in regard to the distribution of this money. Section 97 provides that the conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in order to obtain an annual Parliamentary Grant shall be those contained in the Minutes of the Education Department in force for the time being, and no such minute shall be deemed to be in force until it has lain for not less than one month on the Table of both Houses. But times have changed, and this Section is not very applicable to-day, and we thought it better to repeal it, in order to remove any doubts as to its application and put beyond all question that the Board of Education should have power to distribute this Grant.
Sir W. ANSON: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to repeal the whole Section or that part which forbids a differentiation?
Mr. PEASE: Sub-section (1) of Clause 1 of the Bill says:—
"The provision contained in Section 96 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, making a Parliamentary Grant in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fitting up an elementary school shall cease to have effect."
And Sub-section (2) is as follows:—
"A Parliamentary Grant made in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fitting up any elementary school shall not be deemed to be an annual Parliamentary Grant within the meaning of the Education Acts, 1870 to 1911."
It is eleven years since the Act of 1902 was passed by this House, and we are now in a position to sum up the advance which has been made. Many of us have thought that there were serious defects in that Act of 1902, but no one who compares the position of to-day with what it was eleven years ago can deny that a very great advance has been made in the education of this country. This advance I wish us all to bear in mind. I bore it in mind when I introduced the Estimates this year, and was somewhat criticised by the right hon. -Gentleman the Member for the City of London, who asked that if our state was as flourishing as my remarks indicated, why was it necessary to make any change? My answer, I think, is to be found in the fact that there are certain aspects of education
1910
to which I did not then allude, for they were out of order, but which can and must be the subject of legislation. It is to these particular aspects that I desire to call the attention of the House this afternoon.
The defects of our so-called national system are two. It is not national, and it is not a system. On one side we find educational activities hampered by considerations, some sectarian and some social. There are difficulties of denominationalism and difficulties of class feeling, which have, or ought to have, nothing to do with education. On the other side we find point after point in which large gaps and deficiencies exist which prevent us from getting that value out of education which does exist. There is a lack of co-ordination and completeness in the system. This must be taken in hand if we are to avoid stagnation or reaction on the one side, and to enter into healthy rivalry with other nations on the Continent of Europe and possibly across the ocean, who, at any rate in regard to higher education, are further advanced in their educational systems than we are. A well-organised system of education is the most powerful means we have of developing the social life of the nation. If the present generation can attend to the physical condition of their children, enlarge their occupations, widen their sympathies, increase their intellectual freedom, and encourage them to use their gifts in mutual service, it will have done the best thing it can do to ensure the peace, the prosperity, and the independence of our country. When education is regarded from such a national standpoint, surely those religious difficulties which have loomed so large in the last ten years assume smaller proportions! It is true that certain limitations have been brought about by the dual system of control which sectarian difficulties have imposed, and these must be dealt with by legislation. I do not propose this afternoon to dwell at any length upon the details connected with the religious controversy, which has unhappily existed in the past few years, nor do I propose, on the present occasion, to dwell on the unduly early age at which compulsory attendance at school ceases under the existing law. What can be said of a system which at the age of from twelve to fourteen allows the children to leave school, the large majority of whom in three years' time have forgotten nearly all they have learnt in the elementary

1911
schools of the country? That is a point of vital interest and concern in our education. That I do not think we can afford to neglect. It must be the subject-matter for legislation next Session.
I now come to the principal object of our legislation, which is to organise intermediate education by extending the powers and duties, and adding to the resources of the local education authorities. When I allude to intermediate education I want the House to realise that I am alluding to all classes of education between the elementary school and the universities. I refer to secondary and higher elementary, to technical, to trade schools, to evening classes, and to continuation classes. All these I include under the word which I am going to use a few times in the course of my remarks as relating to intermediate education. In order that it may be quite clear, I feel impelled to invite the House for a few moments to review with me the educational administration of the country as it is to-day. Under the Act of 1902 there are seventy-six county boroughs, which, for elementary purposes, as well as for all other purposes, have autonomous powers. There are sixty-two county councils which have autonomous powers in relation to elementary education. They also have their Whisky Money, and up to the limit of a 2d. rate for higher education. There are 132 boroughs with a population of more than 10.000, and forty-eight urban districts with a population of more than 20,000, which also possess autonomous powers connected with elementary education, and which have full power of rating up to the extent of a penny. In addition to these, there are 318 larger local education authorities, and there are 878 smaller boroughs, and smaller urban districts which have no power at all in connection with elementary education, but which possess concurrent powers for higher education. These also are limited to an expenditure of a penny rate. As a matter of fact, 200 of these authorities have never attempted even to exercise the powers which were conferred upon them by the Act of 1902. We have 1,196 authorities of one kind and another with varying powers, and with powers of rating and for controlling the higher grades of education.
The way in which the majority of educational authorities have worked in connection with the difficult and responsible duties which we imposed upon them, I
1912
think, command, or ought to command, our admiration. In the local education authorities the nation now possesses a tradition of zealous, enlightened, management, a fund of knowledge and experience, which it would be wasteful and ruinous for us to discard. The local authorities cannot escape further burdens. No one else is so well-fitted to carry these burdens; but they have established an unanswerable claim that further duties shall be accompanied by further and substantial assistance from the State. Out of £29,834,000 which we now spend on education, £14,186,000 are drawn from the rates, and £13,648,000 from Grants-in-Aid from the Exchequer. These figures are in respect of the year 1911–12, the last figures available. I take 1905–6, the first year, which was a complete year under the conditions imposed by the Act of 1902. Look at the increases of expenditure drawn from the rates and from the taxes during the interval of six years. I find that the increases amount to £3,500,000 out of the rates, and £1,000,000 out of Grants-in-Aid. In other words, out of every £9 of additional money required in these six years, £7 have been found by the ratepayer, and only £2 by the taxpayer. It would, therefore, be idle for the Government to hesitate to admit the great demand, which the ratepayer has for further relief from the taxpayer.
We are irrevocably committed as a Government, and I think as a nation, to the municipal basis in educational administration. History, considerations with regard to local pride—which has done so much for us in England in connection with local educational affairs in the past and which has been the mainspring of our administrative efficiency—has convinced us that it is neither possible or desirable to make any change of importance in the area, or to diminish in any way the powers of the local education authorities. The idea of consolidating areas has unquestionable attractions, but it will not work. It will be perhaps within the recollection of the House that in 1896, Sir John Gorst endeavoured to deal with the problem, and failed. Therefore, I do not feel inclined to advise the House to deal with any alteration of areas. Our proposals leave the areas of the local authorities substantially as they were fixed by the Act of 1902. But, after all, local education authorities are machinery. It is of the children we ought to think. We ought to think of them first and last, and all the

1913
time, whether it be in the period in which they are attending the elementary schools or in the period that they go to the intermediate school or in their maturer years, when they go into training colleges or to the universities. Whatever the period be, I shall have a few words to say upon it. First of all, I want to deal with the children of the elementary schools. I think we are bound to think of the child from its very earliest age, even before the actual birth—and I refer here, of course, to the necessity of mother-craft. If the State makes education obligatory it seems to me that we have a great responsibility placed upon us to see that the child is physically fit to receive the education which is forced upon it. A healthy motherhood and a healthy infancy, a healthy school life, are progressive and interdependent steps to a healthy citizenship in later years. But it is the school life that more concerns my Department. The system of compulsory education gives us a unique opportunity for extending and organising the public health service of the State. The education of the young child is primarily physical and not primarily intellectual.
I think we may take credit to ourselves as a nation that, in connection with the physical training in our schools, we have gone further than any other country up to the present time. In 1907 there were brought into existence a wholly new set of conditions and wholly new machinery. We have nearly one thousand medical officers in the medical service of the schools, and we have over seven hundred nurses. Side by side with the school medical service we have ninny developments—developments of sanitation, physical training, Swedish drill, instruction in habits of health, provision of baths for the children, and provision of special schools for delicate children and defectives. All these developments lie at the root of educational progress, and are things of which we may be justly proud. It is in recognition of this that we are now giving to local education authorities the additional £50,000 this year, in order to help them to meet their expenses in connection with the school medical service. If the first condition of sound education is the physical fitness of the children, I think the second indispensable condition is the intellectual and moral fitness of the teachers. A constant supply of teachers in our schools is a matter which never ceases to engage the
1914
attention of the Board. It would be very easy, by lowering the standard, to attract more into the profession, but if we did such a thing we should go far to undo the good work that three generations of devoted teachers have already accomplished. The solution of the problem does not rest, I think, with the Board of Education. We can do something to mitigate their difficulties and to improve their prospects, as we did last year by increasing their pensions scheme. But I think their future position and the improvement of the condition of the teachers really rest with the local education authorities themselves. I do not think we could at this time of day undertake to call upon the Government either to fix the salaries or to contribute a share of the salaries of the teachers who arc appointed by local education authorities, because, if we attempted anything of that kind, we would have to remodel nearly the whole of our system of education. But generally speaking in connection with elementary education, I think that we may feel that when compared, at any rate with other nations, we have already reached a standard of which we need not be ashamed.
I want to look at the other end of the ladder and to speak of the deficiencies which are more obvious in connection with building up a system of higher education in the universities. It is already full of promise. We have two ancient universities and we have fifteen provincial universities, including the five parts of the University of London, which five parts we hope may be consolidated, but which can only be consolidated, I think, by legislation. Closely associated with these universities are sixty-two training colleges for teachers in elementary schools; forty-four of these are supported out of private funds and eighteen are supported by local education authorities. In addition to these of course we have got higher technical colleges, and we have agricultural schools. These are the higher kinds of education nearer to university training, and I am glad to say, in passing, that already the real university spirit is springing up in these institutions. The growing improvement of university life seems to me to be a feature of hopeful promise. The public mind appears to be alive to the educational necessities, and the university mind seems to be alive to public necessities also. If I might take an illustration, I take the case of the leather industries of the University of Leeds. There you

1915
have already obtained teaching in an industry on a scale of great practical importance which really has secured to itself a commanding position not only in this country but abroad. The old relations between the men of science and the men of commerce have in recent years been radically changed, and we see the union of science and of industry bearing fruit in discoveries and inventions and in the opening up of new markets, and we see it in our universities in an increasing degree and perhaps in no place better than in the Imperial College of Science and Technology, where a great movement has been going on, uniting science with industry.
No year passes that we have not to record or chronicle some great benefaction from some eminent men of business to our universities, and if the universities are to serve the needs of the country, if they are going to meet the growing demand for training the mind, to which our complicated activities give rise in modern life, the university must look both to the State as well as to generous contributions from private donors. We hold that under the national system of education such as we are advocating it is possible that what has been done for scholarship, what has been done for law and what has been done for medicine, the university can do for citizenship also. There has been another interesting movement which perhaps illustrates what I have been attempting to explain to the House. Ten years ago there was a movement between the representatives of Oxford and the representatives of the workers, and it has been a most remarkable movement—I allude to the Workers' Educational Association. They have brought to the workers the university curriculum and a great deal of work which was almost unknown before by the working classes. Instruction in political science, instruction in political economy, literature, history, and the institutions of the country have revealed a capacity and an intellectual endeavour and determination in the working people to acquire knowledge which was unknown certainly ten years ago. These people want nothing but the best, and those whom I may call the croakers and the pessimists, who pretend that the defects of our national education are due to lack of character in our men, have the lie given to them in connection with the work which has been going on in
1916
the Workers' Educational Association. And I am glad to bear my tribute to the fertile union between the old and the new system, which, I think, gives us very good hope for the future. We want to build a road from the schools to the universities, and that road must be formed firm enough to be travelled by thousands, and the State hopes to profit by the capacity in thousands which to-day is wasted and unrevealed, and I think that this experiment proves that much more may be done in the future in the direction of combining work and industry with science in the university system which had not previously obtained.
I come now to the third portion of my statement. I have alluded to the children and to the elementary schools, and I have alluded to the universities. What we feel is that in the middle stages this road to which I have just alluded is carried on a large number of broken arches, and that between the elementary stage and the university lies a confusion of intermediate work. In connection with the teachers, a man may be ever so distinguished at his college, he may leave the university with a great record, but that does not necessarily qualify him to become a good teacher in the secondary schools of this country, and one of the great gaps which I think we have to supply is to see that the teachers in our elementary schools, and especially in our secondary schools, shall not only possess knowledge itself, but shall also be trained so that they may impart that knowledge to their pupils to the best possible advantage. And here again, if the position is considered, what do we find? We find in the most thickly populated industrial areas a large number of secondary schools of all grades, some higher elementary schools, some for industrial training, some junior day schools, some senior day schools, evening education classes, and technical schools of all kinds. The choice is very large, and the present condition of the relations of the different schools to each other, and to the whole, if they exist at all, can only be explained by some educational expert, and are not within the knowledge of the average man. Nor am I in a position to help. It is quite impossible to say how many secondary schools there may be in the country. There may be 10,000 or 15,000. I cannot say. What they are doing in these schools, unfortunately, even I have no right to ask, but from what I hear, too little attention is given

1917
to what will become of the children after they leave school, and after they have taken the course given them in these various schools. Hitherto, a good deal of attention has been paid to the brilliant scholar, but not very much attention has been paid to the great majority of children. Again, if the parent is unfortunate enough to be in a district where there is no real good secondary school class, his child has to be content with what we term in the Board of Education, a "Cavendish Academy." Its record, of course, and story may be found in Mr. Well's novel, "Kipps." 'Cavendish Academy is fiction, and I expect my own inspectors to give me facts, and it is my belief that the "Cavendish Academy" was an outstanding fact in our intermediate educational system.
6.0 P.M.
An inspector told me, the other day, that some hundreds of schools existed in Middlesex outside his purview, but in connection with the register of teachers, Teachers' Registration Council, he was invited to inspect some of these schools, and he reported to me on the condition of some of the schools he inspected, at their request. In one case he reported:—
"There are sixty-six boys in the school. The school was dingy, dirty, poor, and ill-lighted, and the light was so defective that the gas was burning at a quarter to three on a tine afternoon. The ventilation is also probably very defective, but the school had the advantage of a broken window. The only cloakroom was a dark cupboard-like place with twenty-five pegs for sixty-six boys. There was only one convenience in the whole school end one wash-hand basin for all the boys. In another school four classes are taken in an old tin church, while the lowest class is held in an adjoining club-room in the space between two billiard tables. The instruction was not unworthy of the premises. There were no desks or equipment and instruction was given anyway. In another school there were twenty-two boys between the ages of eleven and eighteen in one class. In another school the anxiety of the mistress for the physical well-being of the children was such that she considered ten minutes stretch of the arms on a blackboard so important that no matter what lesson was going on, two girls must always be at the blackboards, which gave the impression of a crucifixion of two at the end of a long school-room. When their ten minutes was up, they gave place to another two girls, who left their seats and took their places, and this went on all day long."
There is nothing further from my mind than to speak slightingly or to reflect upon the teachers' profession. They do their duty nobly, although their ways and equipment may be somewhat antiquated. If education is compulsory, it does seem to me to be only right that the parents should have some guarantee as to the sanitary character of the schools as well as to the way in which the children are being taught. Apparently some parents are
1918
quite contented with an education which has what is regarded by them as a sort of social distinction about it given to their children, when they send them to schools of the type which I have been describing. May I give just one more instance. In one school which came to my knowledge, there was a girl of fifteen engaged as a whole-time teacher, and the proprietor resorts to the well-known trick of giving a prize for French at the end of the first term to a backward girl, and the deluded parents quote this as a proof of the excellent teaching received. By false pretences like this, the school helps to keep down the numbers in the excellent county school. I have touched on these points because I want the House and the country to realise that among a certain section of the community there still exists a certain amount of unenlightened public opinion in regard to intermediate education. I do not wish to exaggerate the significance of the Cavendish Academy system. The real defects of our system would still have to be faced if there were no Cavendish Academies in our land, but I emphasise this point because I want the House to realise that a better organisation of our system is absolutely essential if we are to have a truly great national system of education.
Sir PHILIP MAGNUS: Does the President suggest that all secondary schools are such as he has described?
Mr. PEASE: I have already said that I have no knowledge of some 10,000, or there may be 15,000, or even more of these schools. All I know is that my inspectors were invited to report upon fifty schools not very far from where we are now sitting, and among those schools I received those reports which I have read from my inspectors, and hon. Members may draw their own conclusions. I believe there are many excellent schools among them, but I think there are many that need to be brought up to a higher standard than they have hitherto attained; and for what they are worth, I gave one or two, illustrations to show how some of these schools may be run under our present system.
Sir RYLAND ADKINS: Who invited the inspection?
Mr. PEASE: They invited inspection with a view to having their names placed upon the Teachers' Register. If we are to prepare the children for the work of life and for the higher training

1919
in technical colleges or universities, we must really organise and co-ordinate our system in a way which has not been done in the past. We must train a girl or a boy for the best service which their varying capacities aye able to give to the community. We must see that provision is made not only for the exceptional child, but for the normal and the backward children as well. I believe the average boy or girl at the present moment loses half the benefits, either because there are no means to enable them in their own families to go forward or because there.are no schools for those children to attend. I know the difficulty in connection with the parents, and how difficult it is to appeal to parents on this subject, to whom the economic interest must necessarily be paramount when the children attain the age to become potential wage-earners. I believe the reason parents do not take full advantage of secondary education is partly due to the lack of thorough organisation in our system, and these schools are not brought within the reach of all parents. I want those schools and the private schools made available to the particular industries of the particular localities. After the enumeration of the powers, which I have already given the House, which are to be vested in the local educational authorities, hon. Members will realise how difficult it is for us to introduce a system at the point where elementary and higher education is considered to be wholly unsatisfactory. There is no specific duty placed upon any local education authority, and even those which are more enlightened and progressive find themselves in various directions limited by Clauses and portions of the Act of 1902.
I will give an illustration. There are eighty-one urban districts in Lancashire with concurrent powers for higher education, and there is a great deal of friction and almost chaos in this system even in a progressive county like Lancashire. Adjoining districts have different scales of fees and different conditions in regard to admission. Sometimes two adjoining districts teach the same subjects to very small classes, with probably underpaid and not very brilliant teachers, whereas if they combined they could have obtained a really efficient teacher and secured additional Grants. Allow me to take another case within a hundred miles of London. There was no secondary education there, but the county council surrendered their portion of the whisky money to
1920
the borough with a view to enabling a secondary school to be established. A secondary school was established of a sort, but it was so inefficient that the county council intervened and announced their intention of providing a secondary school for the borough. The borough at once gave notice to the county council to quit the premises, and the county council then retaliated by dismissing the teachers, and for the last eight years that feud has lasted, and we have been obliged to suspend all our Grants, and we have ceased to recognise that school, and for eight years proper provision for secondary education has been in abeyance. The sole cause is the inability of those two education authorities to agree.
I think the House will have anticipated the changes which the Government are about to announce. The municipal basis of our education will remain unchanged, and we shall make no considerable changes in connection with our elementary education system except by dealing with single school areas, and, as far as may be necessary, to extend the compulsory school age. We shall not interfere with the freedom or independence of the universities or the government of training colleges or technical colleges. The principle of our legislation will be the obligatory provision of intermediate education for all who desire it, in order to bring it within the reach of all classes. We shall co-ordinate such provision between authorities to prevent overlapping and waste. In our proposals next year we intend to impose upon the council of every county and county borough the duty of providing accommodation for the development and maintenance of a complete and progressive system of education in their area, and we shall impose upon them the duty of affording opportunities for the children obtaining instruction of an advanced character. The local education authorities' resources will have to be extended, and many of their limitations to which I have alluded must be removed. We shall propose to repeal those Sections which place a limit upon their being able to raise money by the rates. We shall propose to repeal Section 18, which compels the local authority to place from half to three-quarters of the burden upon the parish where the new school is erected for the benefit of the parish, when the school does not even become the property of the parish. We shall restore the liberty which the Cockerton judgment to a very large extent deprived the local

1921
education authorities from exercising. The Board of Education will take power to decide what is and what is not education. We shall confer powers on local education authorities to provide baths, playing-fields, nursery schools, and we shall simplify the procedure in connection with obtaining sites for schools. We shall also take power to provide meals on Sundays and to enable local education authorities to provide meals on Sundays and during the holidays, such as has been proposed by the hon. Member for Bradford.
We shall take power to enable local education authorities to prosecute for offences of cruelty to children under Section 12 of the Children Act, 1908, and we shall make the law clear in regard to the teaching of special subjects, such as handicrafts, house-crafts, cookery, and other domestic subjects. With a view to co-ordination it will be the duty of the Board of Education to review the various schemes made by the various authorities to secure the maximum of economy and efficiency with the minimum of waste. We shall create advisory provincial councils in grouped areas who will be empowered to undertake such administrative duties which may be delegated to them by the various local education authorities. These will include many problems, not merely of local interest, but such questions as the training colleges, the control of examinations, the co-ordination of work in higher technical schools and universities, with the creation of centres, the work of secondary schools, and all this kind of work which we believe can be more efficiently done by groups of local education authorities, and we shall take power for the delegation of such work to provincial councils. We shall take powers to exercise control over higher education by smaller authorities and conversely to raise, where necessary, the larger boroughs or urban districts to complete autonomy. We shall lay on the local authorities the duties of doing for intermediate education what the Act of 1902 required them to do for elementary education. We shall take to ourselves the power to co-ordinate and systematise the various local education authorities to advance these operations. No doubt fresh burdens will be imposed upon the local education authorities, who have reached their financial limits of what they can do without further State assistance.
I have done what I could during the last few months to get assistance in a certain
1922
direction by increased Grants for trade schools, bursaries, the Imperial College of Science, and contributions for pensions, both for secondary teachers and elementary teachers, and I have obtained money for the medical treatment of children and other matters. Still, I realise that kind of help is quite inadequate to meet the necessities of the case, and, therefore, I now come to what is the most interesting part of what I have got to say, namely, the question of finance. We estimate that to give effect to the measure which we propose to introduce next year and to give reality to our policy, whether it is or is not affected by the measure which we shall propose, we shall want a large and substantial additional sum, which will rise progressively in the second and subsequent years. It is premature for me to-day upon this Bill to give details of our proposals, but we shall include—we have already included in our forecast—provision for universities, provision for the reconstitution of the London University, and provision for the increased maintenance of our secondary and technical schools. Naturally, however, a very large part of the money which will be given to local education authorities will be given in connection with elementary education. The Government policy is a large one. It will be expensive, but we shall be prepared to foot the Bill. Our eight present Grants are not only in our judgment inadequate, but they are distributed under a wrong system. They are inequitable, they bear no relation either to the expenditure or to the poverty of the authorities, they are complicated, they require a great deal of verification, and they involve altogether disproportionate labour both in the offices of the Board of Education and of the local education authorities. The Grant system is at present in operation is not expansive. The most enlightened administration does not attract a larger Grant. The most lax administration cannot be penalised unless we define or abolish altogether the Grants which we are paying. Therefore, the first step we propose in connection with the new primary Grant we are about to establish will be to change the Grant-earning unit from the school to the area, and average attendance will be calculated on all the children in the area and not in each school.
The new Grant system must fill three principal conditions. It must differentiate between areas of comparative wealth and

1923
of comparative poverty; it must be a Grant in relief of the poorer ratepayer; it must differentiate between areas where administration is liberal and enlightened and those in which it is unprogressive or lax; it must enable the Board to stimulate the backward authority and to enforce a national minimum. We can give effect to these conditions by adopting the plan which was recommended in the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation of 1901. Our plan, therefore, will comprise three Grants—a principal Grant guaranteed to each area that secures a minimum standard of efficiency, provided that area raises a minimum rate. It will be so worked out that the poorer the area is in assessable value the larger will be the Grant. There will also be a supplementary Grant bearing a fixed proportion to that expenditure in excess of the standard minimum. The effect will be that we shall have a more progressive and more liberal system. These two Grants combined will take fairly into account the two factors of assessable value and the expenditure incurred in the locality. They will be Grants-in-Aid of elementary education, but there will be a third Grant, and that will be in aid of loan charges. This Bill enables us to give a Grant for the present year in connection with new loan charges, but we shall also propose that there should be a Grant-in-Aid of all loan charges, both new and old, incurred in connection with all kinds of education throughout the country. These three Grants, we believe, will be a great reform, and I trust that they will minimise to a great extent the amount of excessive office work which our existing system places upon local education authorities.
In conclusion, I must admit that next Session we shall be bound to redress that balance between parties which was, in our judgment, so heavily weighted on one side by the Act of 1902. We consider that, for the present, voluntary schools should remain part of our educational fabric, but we recognise that if a parent desires the freer atmosphere of a provided school, either the school shall be brought to the child or the child to the school. We feel strongly that, at any rate, the grievance felt in single school areas cannot wait for indefinite settlement, and we shall propose to deal with it in our measure next year. I trust that the proposals which I have placed before the House will, at any rate, command
1924
the approval not only of all persons interested in the.progress of education, but also of those who are determined to see grave injustices removed. I will not say anything more at this moment in connection with the religious question. I do not wish at this moment to provoke—I never desire to do that—or to create any excuse for a premature and misdirected controversy in which the true purposes of our proposals would be lost to view. We are anxious that this House and the country, and both the taxpayer and the ratepayer, should look at our proposals as a whole, and that in the interests of education itself they should be judged in the spirit in which the have been framed. The House and the country, I think, can agree that we are laying the foundations of a national system which is well worth some sacrifice, and which is fitted to employ the gifts of good men of all parties and of all creeds.
Sir W. ANSON(who was imperfectly heard): We have in the very interesting discourse of the President of the Board of Education to which we have listened somewhat lost sight of this little Bill, but I understand that £50,000 is to be handed over at once for the purpose of medical inspection, and that a supplementary estimate will be taken, and that £100,000 is to go in aid of loans incurred by local authorities for the purposes of elementary education.
Mr. PEASE: And all other education.
Sir W. ANSON: The right hon. Gentleman spoke of repealing the Clause in the Act of 1870, which forbids any differentiation in the Grant on the ground of giving or not giving any particular religious teaching, and I take it that the regulations will make it clear that the apportionment of these Grants will be irrespective of the denominational or undenominational character of the buildings in respect of which the loans are raised. I take it that a loan may be raised for a training college or for a secondary school, as well as for an elementary school, and that no account will be taken of the fact that religious teaching of any particular kind is or is not given. As to the financial proposals which the right hon. Gentleman has promised next year, I think that they must be relegated to a future discussion. If I understood him rightly, an Aid Grant will take the place of the existing Grants which at present cause considerable confusion both at the Board of

1925
Education and with local authorities, and that a further Grant will be given for all purposes. The right hon. Gentleman suggested another Grant for universities and secondary schools, but I was not clear whether that came in the general financial scheme which he foreshadowed. These financial questions, however, are in the future, and we are discussing them on a statement which it may not have been easy to follow in all respects. These proposals which we have heard to-day are the outcome of the reforms indicated by the Lord Chancellor in a speech which rather startled us all. We have been accustomed to listen with some feelings of congratulation which we did not attempt to disguise to statements from successive Presidents of the Board of Education, describing the advancement of education in its various aspects throughout the country, but in January the Lord Chancellor informed us that the state of education in all its branches was chaotic, that. a step forward must be taken on no small scale, and that the leaders of the party—he mentioned several eminent Members of the Government; in fact, I think almost every Cabinet Minister, except the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Churchill), as being passionately interested in these reforms—were going to make a great effort. In March the Lord Chancellor spoke at Bristol to the National Union of Teachers, and he then took a rather different view. He said that when the scheme was divulged it should be divulged by the President of the Board of Education and not by himself, and that at that time there was no scheme to divulge. He went on to admit that a great deal of good work had been done under the Act of 1902. He dwelt on the great efforts made by the Board of Education and by local authorities to smooth the passage of children from elementary to secondary schools, and he suggested that we should reorganise our education from the top—that is, from the universities downwards.
We then came at last to something practicable—something that we heard from the Secretary of State for India, in April, and a good deal of it has figured somewhat more precisely, and at greater length, in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to-day. A readjustment of area I take to mean that certain local authorities are to be empowered, and in certain cases to be compelled, to act to-gather where it can be done to the advantage of the area. Medical inspection is a matter which needs to be further
1926
developed. In regard to the half-timer, I take that what the right hon. Gentleman said about the extension of the school age referred to the half-timer, and from the remarks of the Secretary for India I gathered he would admit half-time, coupled with some form of higher education, running concurrently with the work done by the boy in the workshop. The religious difficulty has been dealt with by the right hon. Gentleman. I understand that the voluntary system will be recognised as necessary in our elementary education, and that some steps are being taken to limit the number of single school areas. At present that is as much, I suppose, as the right hon. Gentleman cares to say, and certainly I do not myself care to say more on the subject.
Then there is the question of the registration of secondary schools, giving some indication of the comparative merits of those schools. The right hon. Gentleman told us about the difficulties of a national system of education. A national system of education, in some people's minds, seems to be something which may result in something very much to the detriment of education generally. If, by a national system of education, you mean that every boy or girl is to have access to every grade of education, from the elementary school to the technical school, and thence to the university, at the smallest possible cost, or free of charge, then I think you must either lower your standard or raise your taxation. We all know what the right hon. Gentleman has described as the sham secondary school. He took his illustration from private schools. I have no doubt there are some very bad and some very good private secondary schools. I recollect instances of secondary schools started by local authorities which were really elementary schools with a small addition of staff, and, perhaps, a laboratory thrown out at one end. Practically, there was no real difference in the character of the education given. Certain qualifications of teachers involved a certain impression being conveyed to the parents of children attending them, that they were getting something different from what they got in the elementary school. It would be a very unfortunate thing if, in order to cheapen education and make it accessible you watered your capital or debased your currency, or by lowering the standard, debased the character of the education given. I may say the same with regard to universities. It would be an unhappy thing if, in the desire to afford everybody

1927
an opportunity for universal education, you sent people to the universities with teachers at small salaries where the plant is inadequate, and the instruction given, therefore, far from satisfactory.
I remember two catch phrases often used, one, "equality of opportunity," and the other, "co-ordination of studies." You cannot get the one without the other. Unless you can co-ordinate your studies, so as to make one course of study for all, and the path from the elementary school to the university plain and clear, you can have no co-ordination of studies and no equality of opportunity so that the best qualified may obtain the best education available and suitable. But I take it that the right hon. Gentleman is alive to the difficulties which I am suggesting. He dealt with the question of the universities. He referred to the increasing hold which universities are taking on the life of the country and to the increasing desire, if not for university life, for at all events university teaching for all classes. That has been brought out most conspicuously by the Workers' Educational Association. It is difficult to speak too highly of the single-hearted zeal for education with which that society has gone about its work. They have, by their efforts, brought to the homes of the working classes the best education in a variety of topics of special interest to those classes which the university can produce and place at their disposal. The universities are being made more accessible, not merely by the system of classes or by scholarships, but by other forms of endowment which enable poor men go to the university. I believe it is a great mistake to suppose that many scholarships for colleges and universities are held by men who can afford to do without them. A careful examination was made by a gentleman of my university a short time ago of the means of the various holders of scholarships in the various colleges attached to the university, and, as a result, it was found that hardly any scholarships were held by persons who were not in actual need of that kind of assistance to enable them to go to the university.
Then we come to the secondary schools, or rather intermediate education, that which is provided, not merely in secondary schools, but in higher elementary schools, technical institutes, and continuation classes. I think, perhaps, it is too much to
1928
say that there is chaos in our intermediate education. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of it as being in a bad state, and he gave a description which in part correspond with that given by the Lord Chancellor at the beginning of the year. Intermediate education always involves this difficulty, that you have to consider the needs of the child leaving the elementary school. Those needs are not always easily ascertainable. It is not always possible to make out or ascertain without difficulty what form of intermediate education is most suitable to the future of the Child, because very often the child and its parents have not made up their minds as to what that future is going to be. All one can hope for is that the various opportunities of intermediate education available shall be made known to them as far as possible. There should be some system by which it can be made known to all parents what forms of intermediate education are available for their children, and in that way it may be possible to secure a smooth passage from the elementary school to such further types of education as may be most suitable to the future well-being of the child. We have a great variety of these types of education, and a great variety of effort to ensure that the child gets what he wants. All we need from the Department is the ascertainment of the supply available for the child in a given area, and to see that there is a sufficient system for it to be made known to those who want the education, what kind is available, if they choose to avail themselves of it.
Our elementary schools are, of course, the basis of the fabric of our educational system, and recently I read a passage, very forcibly written, in the report of the Workers' Educational Association which said that educational work must fail unless elementary schools turned out children as well as they could be turned out, receive them in a fit state to be taught, and taught them properly, and in such a manner as that they could appreciate the higher education which was open to them. If that is so, surely the crisis of our whole educational system at this moment is urgent, and that crisis will be found in connection with the supply of teachers in the elementary schools. We build schools and laboratories, we build institutions to train teachers. We found universities. We endow scholarships, but the difficulty is that the teachers are not here to man the schools or laboratories, or to instruct=
1929
the children who are to receive this higher education. The difficulty is acute, and the position for some years to come will be very serious indeed. Look at the figures showing the number of candidates for bursarships and other appointments in secondary schools. In 1906–7, the number was 11,016; in 1900–10, it was 7,191, and in 1912–13, it was 4,355. That points to a dearth of teachers in our schools in the future. It is complained in the Board's Report in regard to secondary schools, that the great majority of the teachers are untrained. Elementary teachers pass in considerable numbers into the secondary schools who are trained, but they have not always that wide reading or scholarship which is necessary for a high class secondary school. Secondary teachers who come from universities, or from the large secondary schools, although they have the necessary knowledge, lack capacity to present the subject in a suitable manner to youthful minds. In our elementary schools, therefore, teachers are not forthcoming, and therefore, the outlook is serious.
Among the other matters mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman was an invitation to the local authorities to offer suggestions. There was also reference to an increase in the maintenance Grant, and to a certain relaxation of rules as affecting pupil teachers. Then there is the question of the standard required of the candidate up for examination. That standard need not be so good. In fact last year, it was not, and, owing to the dearth of teachers, the Board was unable to advance the standard, and had to accept an inferior quality of work. I think that is very serious. One has to ask what is the cause of it. I suppose that partly, as is stated in the Report, it is the attractions of business, of the Civil Service, and of the Colonies, also the long time which the teacher has to spend in preparing for his profession before it becomes remunerative. There is also, undoubtedly, the small salary which a teacher receives for a long period, and, it must be added, the fact that the profession has become unpopular. I think it has become unpopular, for apparently fewer teachers are forthcoming for the elementary schools. What have the teachers themselves done? I confess I was profoundly disappointed in reading the speech of the President of the National Union of Teachers, delivered at the end of March or the beginning of April this year. He said some very true things
1930
about the inadequacy of the arrangements in some of the elementary schools, but in speaking of the position of the teacher I think he was not fair to his great profession. He said:—
"For one, thing the teacher, after being prepared in this way, was forbidden to cross the portals of the secondary school."
The Report of the Board of Education shows that a great number of the teachers in secondary schools come from the elementary training colleges. Any of us who has had any experience in these matters knows that that is so, and that there is no barrier interposed between the teacher, after he has been trained for an elementary school, and his passing into a secondary school. The inspectors say that they prefer the elementary trained teacher, at any rate for the lower classes, to men with higher knowledge in some respects, but who are not so well prepared for the teaching profession. I think the statement I have referred to tends to discourage young men and women from entering the profession. Again he says:—
"Children from the elementary schools are excluded toted from the secondary school."
That I think would discourage a teacher to hope that he will be able, if he goes into an elementary school, to prepare his pupils for something higher. As a matter of fact, one of the most satisfactory features in the Report of the Board consists in the description of the various ways in which children are promoted from the elementary to the secondary school. Whether by bursaries or maintenance Grants, or the age at which it is desirable to change the child from one school to the other, the mode of selection, whether by written or oral examination, the whole matter is carefully gone into, and every effort is made to secure that the child who is capable should go by the road, should be discovered in the proper manner and should get the proper sort of instruction. As a matter of fact, compared with the figures of ten years ago, there are some 50,000, as compared with 5,000, who are now enjoying the benefits of secondary school teaching. Again, the president of the National Union of Teachers complained that when a teacher was trained and certificated he had to compete in the elementary school with another system of teachers. Naturally so, because there are not enough certificated teachers to go round. There are more certificated teachers in the elementary schools than ever before, but there are still not enough to go round the schools. It is not a fair

1931
complaint, and it is discouraging to an intending teacher to be told that he will have to enter into competition. It is not competition; it is merely an effort to stop a gap, caused because you cannot get certificated teachers, with someone not so well qualified but still qualified to take the place of a teacher. I feel sure that more might be done by the teaching profession itself to encourage these young men and women to enter a profession which, apart from the question of salaries, is a high profession.
Too often it is impressed upon the teacher that his business is simply to keep discipline and expound certain subjects. I am quite sure of this—I speak from long experience in the matter—that if you simply go on expounding a subject, however clearly or well arranged your way of putting it may be, you weary yourself and successive audiences because the life of it has gone out. There are two things only which keep teaching alive. One is that the teacher must always be a learner and adding something to his existing knowledge of the subject, so keeping his own interest alive. If he does that the chances are he will keep alive the interest of his class. The other is that he should be taught that those whom he teaches are human beings, that every one of them has probably a different individuality and is capable of looking at the subject in a different way. If he bears in mind that there is an ever-fresh human interest in the process of teaching, then I think he will be willing to enter into what I believe to be one of the noblest professions. Apart from the question of teachers, there is another matter upon which the President dwelt at no undue length—that is the condition in which the child comes to the school. The first thing to bear in mind is that you cannot get a teacher if you do not provide him with an adequate salary. If you leave the salaries to be provided by a local education authority, having regard to the heavy incidence of the rates, you will make education unpopular throughout the country. I was very sorry to hear the President say that he did not propose to assist local education authorities in the matter of teachers' salaries.
Mr. PEASE: Not directly.
Sir W. ANSON: If in any other way the money is to be forthcoming, I shall be glad to hear of it. Unless this difficulty is met,
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all our schools and laboratories are of little worth. We must get the children into the schools in a proper condition. I do not wish to go into the question of feeding or medical inspection at any length. What we want is not merely to give these advantages to the children from outside. A great deal of medical inspection and medical treatment might be avoided or rendered unnecessary if parents were instructed in the rudiments of health and medical knowledge, and if they were able to take ailments in their inception or when they have made but little progress. A great deal of the necessity for feeding the children would be got over if housekeeping were worked on a better scale and the parents took more interest in the condition of a child. Anyhow, the child is put at a disadvantage with better-to-do children if he has not a comfortable and decent home to work in. It is a consideration well worth looking at, when we are dealing with the question of elementary school teaching, that the number of hours spent in the school are only a very limited portion of the day, and that the rest of the day is spent in the home. If the home is dirty, untidy, crowded, and insanitary, if the child is allowed to be out at a late hour, is ill-fed, ill-housed, and sleeps in unwholesome surroundings, then elementary education will never prosper, because the child will never be in a fit condition to receive the teaching which is offered. Above all, one wants to enlist the interests of the parents, not merely in the physical well-being of the child, not merely by nurse-craft—or, as the President called it, mother-craft—but in the teaching of the child, and to see that the child is the better for it in all respects than he was before. If we can get the people of this country to believe, not merely in the importance of keening their houses clean and their children in good condition to receive the instruction that is given to them, but of giving instruction as part of the education which is to build up the future of the child and ensure, so far as they can, its prosperity in life, our children will become, as they ought to be, worthy citizens of the Empire.
7.0 P.M.
Mr. GOLDSTONE: The President of the Board has to-night brought us to the top of Mount Pisgah to view the promised land with all its good things. My regret is that we are not to-night crossing Jordan and entering more fully into the land of promise which the President has laid before us. I

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hope sincerely that nothing may intervene to prevent the President laying before the House next Session the Bill he has just outlined for us. I think all educationists, including probably some on the other side, would deplore the loss of the opportunity, no matter what they may think of other topics, to the President to give us his idea in the form of a Bill of a national system of education. Before I venture to enter upon the President's speech, may I deal briefly with some of the points raised by the hon. Baronet the Member for Oxford University (Sir William Anson)? The hon. Baronet ventured to criticise some of the remarks made in a speech by the President of the National Union of Teachers last Easter. I note, for example, that he differed as to the correctness of this statement:—
"The teacher was forbidden to pass the portals of the secondary school."
If the hon. Baronet will recall his own experience at the Board of Education, he will probably agree that there is more in that statement than meets the eye, and that it is true that teachers in elementary schools have been forbidden to cross the portals of the secondary schools. There are many governors of secondary schools who refuse to have any teachers who are of elementary school origin. It is true that a few years ago certain inspectors, representing the Board controlled by my right hon. Friend, were not disposed to look with favour on the inclusion in the staffs of certain secondary schools of what I might call well-equipped teachers in elementary schools, and the thing obtains in part to-day. There are certain heads of secondary schools—their number, I know, is on the decrease—who do not favour the inclusion of their staffs of men of whom they talk in private as having an elementary taint. The complaint of the President of the National Union of Teachers was well founded when he said that certain teachers to-day have to enter into competition with uncertificated teachers already in the schools. It is the fact. Perhaps the hon. Baronet has forgotten the number of certificated teachers who wanted positions a little time ago, and there are some of them still anxious to get positions as certificated teachers, who have been forced by the condition of the teaching market to take posts as uncertificated teachers, though possessing the diploma of a
certificated teacher; so the President of the National Union of Teachers
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was stating the facts quite moderately. The fact is that the Board of Education itself has been somewhat to blame in the matter. They have allowed uncertificated teachers to go on in their ordinary course without placing any time limit on their employment as uncertificated teachers. They might, it seems to me, by regulation have insisted that a time limit be placed on the recognition of the uncertificated teachers, thus compelling such uncertificated teachers to gain higher qualifications. But I blame more, certain of our local education authorities, whose interest has been largely the cutting down of expense and not that of staffing their schools with the best grade of teacher.
Let me recall the circumstances to the House. You have certain teachers who, anxious to improve their educational and professional qualifications, pass to the training colleges. Their places are filled by certain local education authorities with uncertificated teachers, and when a certificated teacher comes out of college he finds himself in active competition with an uncertificated teacher, and in adverse competition, because the local education authority has filled his place with an uncertificated teacher and, naturally, is loth to turn this uncertificated teacher adrift. I find that certain local educational authorities are so keen on the saving of twopence halfpenny that they will spend almost the difference between the salary of au uncertificated and a certificated teacher in advertisements for a teacher of an uncertificated grade, and that has compelled certain certificated teachers coming out of the training colleges to take positions probably equal to what they held in the last year before they entered a training college at all. In my opinion the statement of the president of the National Union of Teachers, having regard to the facts, which cannot be disputed, was well within the mark. I associate myself with what the hon. Baronet said with regard to the necessity of improving the home surroundings of the children who go to our elementary schools. He is quite correct when he states that the influence on the child is, so far as home is concerned, a longer influence in point of time than the influence of the school. We are bound to recognize, and I am glad that it is recognised in all quarters of the House, that education is really one of the factors which tend to social betterment, but a sound educational system must be allied with a sound housing system. If we are to get these con-

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ditions, that is, reasonable food for the people, sleeping accommodation and conditions which will allow their parents to leave children at school instead of sending them off into the workshops at too early an age, is not all this associated with finding some means of supplying the parents with a reasonable wage, which will allow them to bring up their children in decency and self-respect? Is it not associated with schemes for the better housing of the working classes? In fact, I think we are all agreed that education is but one element in social betterment, and that we must associate with education better housing and better wage conditions for our working population. Therefore, I think all sides may join in approval of what the hon. Baronet has said in that regard.
May I now turn to the speech of the President of the Board of Education; and first, let me congratulate him on the lucidity with which he has stated some very difficult propositions. I think a national system of education really is one which makes provision in all its grades for children to pass from grade to grade provided they have the necessary ability to profit by the instruction in the higher grade. A national system of education, properly administered, will take no heed of the financial disabilities of the child. The hall mark will be mental ability to profit by the next grade, not the amount of income of the child's parents. Then we shall get thrown into the mental and intellectual resources of the State, its best developed material, and that, it seems to me, is what we must look to the schools to provide. We are now going to throw upon the local authorities the duty of making adequate provision, not only for elementary but for higher education, and this should be co-ordinated with elementary education, and with university education; in my view a step in advance on which we may congratulate the President, and indeed the House and the country. Of course, the matter is one primarily of finance, and I would that we had been given a little more of what I termed, in the Debate on the Estimates the financial lubricant this year. We have had much of promise; I would there had been a little more of performance in the current year. The local authorities have been looking to the Treasury and the Board of Education for more assistance than they are likely to get in the immediate future, and they
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will look, so far as substantial easement is concerned this year, almost in vain. They will hope, no doubt, that what the President has said will mean the fructification in the next year and in succeeding years of amounts considerably in excess of that which the President has suggested for to-day. I got out a few figures which corroborate what the President has said with regard to the increase in the amount which the localities have had to find for education, and going back a year or two, the amount which has been found from the rates is shown up even in more glaring contrast. I looked up the figures for the year preceding the adoption of the Act of 1902. There were some good things in that Act. It certainly co-ordinated all forms of education under one and the same authority, and to that extent, it was an excellent improvement. It co-ordinated secondary technical education with elementary by placing them all under the same authority.
Mr. KING: May I ask whet her it put secondary and elementary education under the same authority in all districts?
Mr. GOLDSTONE: That is another proposition. It does not do that, but it has given us, I think, the basis on which the more complete scheme of co-ordination already outlined in the speech of the President can be built. But the increase in the rates is the direct outcome of that Act, and it is no use to try to deny it. In the year 1901–2 the amount drawn from taxes in England and Wales was £9,869,000, representing 60 per cent. of the total expenditure on elementary education. The rates found £6,485,000, or 40 per cent. The disparity between rate-aid and State-aid, of course, has grown considerably, and now we find that the rates produce something like 50 per cent. broadly speaking, while the State finds the other 50 per cent., but the local authorities have to find £8,500,000 more than they had to find in the year previous to the passing of the Act of 1902, Though I welcome what was done, the chief element in the cost arose from the placing on the rates of the voluntary, or non-provided, schools of the country. The staffs in those schools had to be brought up to the level of the staffs in the provided schools, and of course since that time there have been new duties thrown upon the local authorities which have not cost a great sum, and there has been the necessary rise in the quality of the teaching staff employed in all types of schools,

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whether non-provided or provided. The consequence has been that while the State has not found the same proportion as in 1901, the localities have been drawn upon to the extent of £8,500,000 in excess of what they had to find in the pre-1902 days.
The question has been touched upon of the supply of teachers, and I agree that this is a very pressing problem. The number of entrants to the teaching profession tends to diminish, and there is every prospect in the next year or two of a dearth of certificated teachers. Some of the reasons for this dearth I have outlined in replying to the hon. Baronet. The number of bursars and pupil teachers in the year 1906–7 was 11,018. The number has dropped in the year 1912–13 to 4,325, so far as England is concerned. The decrease is almost as great for Wales—from 940 in 1907–8, to 609 in 1912–13. But it must not be assumed for one moment that a Grant of £10,000 in the shape of bribes for bursars by the Board of Education will solve this difficulty. It will not. The parents who are looking abroad for a profession or occupation for their children are not determined by the immediate prospect of £5 or £10 for a child at sixteen or seventeen. The type of home from which our teachers come is ruled in the main by a person who is looking at the ultimate prospect for his boy, and the problem is largely one of boys. The girls are coining forward, almost in numbers equal to what they did in 1906–7. The problem is one of a diminution in the supply of the male certificated teacher. The parent of such a person is attracted, not by the immediate payment of £10 bonus. He is probably prepared to sacrifice the cost of the training of his boy in college, and therefore the immediate subsidy of £5 or £10 is not material to him. It may be welcome, but it is not material. It is not the deciding factor. The deciding factor in the supply of certificated teachers, particularly of men, is the ultimate prospect, considered, if you will, from the point of view of promotion and financial considerations. Until the Board of Education stimulate authorities like Herefordshire to do their duty in this matter it seems to me that this dearth of teachers will continue. The right hon. Gentleman says that he can do little in the matter, but, as a matter of fact, he has solved the difficulty in the secondary schools by action which I recommend to him in the elementary schools.
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His inspectors in the case of the secondary schools have pointedly drawn attention to the lowness of the salaries paid to the masters in them. I would that his inspectors would do in Hereford and in some of the black spots, so far as the supply of teachers is concerned, what they have done in regard to the secondary schools. If they could do that with regard to the staffs of the secondary schools—and there they have done it with considerable success—they could do it with equal success in regard to the elementary schools. I hope the right hon. Gentleman when disposing of the Grants outlined, will consider whether authorities like that of Hereford and others are failing in their duty, and whether they are doing their best to provide a sufficient teaching supply by providing sufficient emoluments. The right hon. Gentleman is taking power, wisely, I think, to vary the Grants. These aid Grants have not worked successfully, and I think the time has come for their consolidation and redistribution on a better basis. The basis outlined by the President of the Board of Education may well meet the case better than the present basis, but surely he will consider whether he will award varying Grants to authorities which fail in their duty in the matter of providing sufficient emoluments. The varying of the Grants may be a means of stimulating backward authorities to provide a sufficient supply of qualified teachers.
There is one feature of the right hon. Gentleman's speech which, it seemed to me, was of the utmost importance, namely, that in which he outlined the determination of his Department to suggest the raising of the school age. In this connection I think it will not be out of order if I draw attention to action which is desired by the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce and other authorities in Lancashire. They desire the Government to take action with reference to something that has happened in America bearing directly on the school age of children in this country. I understand that in the American tariff it is proposed that all goods shall be excluded from America which are manufactured wholly or in part by children under the age of fourteen, and it is really suggested by a Chamber of Commerce in this country that our Government should be appealed to to petition the Government of the United States not to put that particular item of its tariff policy into operation. Are we so far to forget our national

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dignity as to suggest that we should appeal to the United States to vary this rule against child labour? Our record is none too clean in this matter. Sir John Gorst pledged the British Government at Berlin in 1878 to raise the age of exemption from school attendance to thirteen. That pledge remains to be fulfilled to-day, and is it now suggested by a Chamber of Commerce, forsooth, that we shall petition another Government to allow goods to be exported from this country the profits on which are made by the spoliation of young lives? I hope the Government will lend no ear to such a suggestion. I hope they will rather encourage the American proposal. It will kill the half-time system in Lancashire, and place England where she should be in this matter. This half-time system is a degradation to our national life. We spoil the children in physique, and I am afraid in moral fibre also, by transferring them to the mills at an age when they ought to be at school. I welcome the provision outlined by the right hon. Gentleman in which he proposes to raise the school age, and I hope it will be fourteen at least.
I have statistics which show that in height and in weight the half-timer of Lancashire is less than the average school boy in the elementary school, and considerably less than the average weight and height of the public school boy, and as the half-timer and the public school boy get older so does the disparity increase. In conclusion, I wish to congratulate the President of the Board of Education on what he has outlined, and to express the hope that he will not on any account allow the provisions he contemplates in his Bill to be whittled down. I wish him success in his proposals, and if he can persuade the Treasury to give more money this year, so much the better for the local authorities in the important work they have to do.
Mr. HAYES FISHER: The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goldstone) said that we had arrived at the proper Pisgah to-night. I think the Lord Chancellor arrived at the proper Pisgah when he made his famous speech on education at the Manchester Reform Club. Many of us have been looking to the speech which the Lord Chancellor made, and looking also to the many grandiloquent speeches made since then by various Members of the Government, including the President of the Board of Education. We have been waiting
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patiently and with much hope for the outlines of the Bill which we should be asked to consider this Session. We have got no Bill, except a very small Bill. The Lord Chancellor informed us, and indeed the President of the Board of Education has borne out his Lordship in every respect, that it was a colossal undertaking to which the Government was about to commit itself. The Lord Chancellor slyly said that this Government was very expensive, and would prove very expensive. Most certainly if any Bill founded on these proposals outlined by the right hon. Gentleman's speech to-day is proposed this Government will be the most expensive Government that has ever held office, not only in the matter of education, but in many other things. It is very difficult indeed to criticise mere proposals. I think we shall have to wait with our criticism until we see them in the Bill. To almost all these proposals one could give a more or less general assent. What one was constantly asking himself when the right hon. Gentleman was speaking, was, where is the money to come from? How is the proportion of expenditure going to be borne between the Exchequer and the local ratepayer? I feel sure that the proposals were made after consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. When the President of the Board of Education made this very glowing speech and promised some millions of money from the Exchequer in relief of the local ratepayer, I did happen to recollect that the Lord Chancellor when he made his grandiloquent and splendid speeches, said he was not making these speeches lightly or casually, but that they were made after consultation with the Prime Minister, and also the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a more important person still, and that they would undoubtedly involve the country in very largely increased cost for education.
The ratepayers have long been complaining of the immense proportion of taxation they have to pay for this great national service of education. The President of the Board of Education has told us that out of the extra £9 spent during recent years the ratepayers have found £7 and the Exchequer only £2. Let me give the figures. Out of every 12s. 6d. spent, the ratepayers have found 12s. and the Exchequer only 6d. If you take the case in London, out of every £100 spent on education, the ratepayers find £72, and the Exchequer only £28, and yet this great measure, as outlined, is going to throw many more millions of expenditure on

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somebody. We shall want to know who is the somebody? That is the question which we shall apply to every one of the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman when they are put forward—many of them admirable in themselves if only we could afford them—admirable if only the expenditure is fitted to the right shoulders. After all, we have to look not so much to the proposals outlined to-day in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman under remarkable circumstances, but to the very small Bill which is the outcome of all these deliberations. That is the only thing we are actually to see this Session. It is a small Bill, and I will not say myself how I would treat the proposals which the right hon. Gentleman is going to make. I want to see the Bill. I wish to hear from him on what basis the new Grants are to be made. There is to be a new Grant of £150,000, and £50,000 is to be distributed to those authorities which have adopted some system of medical treatment. I should like to know on what principle that new Grant is to be apportioned. At present the apportionment of such Grants put in the estimates for medical treatment lies entirely with the Board of Education. No regulations have been drawn up so far as I am aware. No principle has been laid down yet for the administration of that medical treatment Grant. It is almost the only Grant which is not allotted on any principle whatever, except what is known to the right hon. Gentleman and his Department.
We shall want to hear from the right hon. Gentleman on what principle this new Grant is to be allocated. The sum of £100,000 is to be given for building Grants. The last were given in 1907. There was £100,000 voted then, and of that £58,000 was actually granted between 1907 and 1911, and the larger proportion of that amount was given to Wales. It was given, I think, on the principle generally of helping only those areas where there was a single school, and where there was deficient accommodation. I question whether that was quite fair. You were shutting out areas which might have made great self-sacrifice, in order to provide themselves with full accommodation. We shall have to ask on what principle this new building Grant is to be distributed. I do not know whether it is to be distributed on the same principles as the Government distribute the Grants in necessitous areas. We have heard nothing to-day about necessitous areas. When that subject is discussed I
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will have a good deal to say for the claims of London as regards necessitous areas, because London has for some years past come within the definition of expenditure exceeding that provided by a 1s 6d. rate. If the principles originally applied to that Grant, when made seven years ago, were applied now in their fulness, London would receive very large sums indeed from the Grants in aid of necessitous areas, London would have been entitled in 1911–12 to £50,000, equal to three-tenths of a penny; in 1912–13 to £170,000, equal to nine-tenths of a penny; and in 1913–14 to £312,000, equal to one and two-thirds of a penny.
But London, like some other areas, is shut out from a share in this Grant, because the Board of Education have determined that no local education authority should be entitled to participate in this Grant unless it had participated in the previous year. To them that have—not a very palatable doctrine at present in London. Before I can say, for my own part, what reception I will give to the right hon. Gentleman's Grants of £150,000, I must know a great deal more than I know to-day as to the basis on which these Grants are to be distributed. That is all one need say about the actual Bill itself. But the speech outlined a great many proposals, some of which are completely novel. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman attaches enough importance to a subject to which I called attention before—that is, the dearth of teachers. That is one of the most acute problems at the present moment of a financial character in connection with education, and this very Bill which the right hon. Gentleman outlines—not the little Bill which he is bringing in, but the big Bill—must accentuate enormously the situation in which the country is likely to find itself. The right hon. Gentleman very properly, to my mind, is endeavouring to institute the policy of cutting down the numbers in the classes. He said nothing about it to-day. It is going to be a very expensive proposal, but also a proposal which must necessitate a larger number of teachers. Every single proposal which the right hon. Gentleman outlines to-day, increasing the age of those who remain at school, trying to attract them to remain at school, dovetailing your secondary education into your primary education, must entail an enormous demand for teachers, teachers of a higher grade, better teachers.

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I was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman dismissed the subject of the salaries of teachers in almost one sentence—that he could not possibly conceive that any Government would ever pay anything directly towards increasing the salaries of teachers. They would not take them over, and they would not do anything directly towards increasing the salaries of which I thought the right hon. Gentleman might have mentioned is the question of increased pensions for teachers. Something must be done. The present system is unfair. London has a very advanced system of pensions for teachers. The consequence is that London will attract to its area probably the best of all teachers. London is trying to treat its teachers fairly in this respect. I admit that the right hon. Gentleman has done something. I think that he will have to do a great deal more, and certainly the greatest problem which he has to face, in view of the large proposals of the measure for next Session, is to attract teachers of a high character of efficiency to the teaching profession. One thing which he must attend to is to enlarge the value of the bursaries, and spread them over a greater number of years so as to make it more possible for parents to maintain their children in the years when they are studying for the teaching profession. Many things will have to be done in order to meet the undoubted competition which is going on at the present moment among the particular class, if I may call it so, who are attracted to the teaching profession. The right hon. Gentleman spoke very much about co-ordination. That is a famous word, which means very much or very little. But as one who has taken a great deal of practical interest in technical education for a great number of years, I do want to utter a word of caution against over co-ordination. There is a tendency at the present time, certainly in London, to set examinations for those who desire to continue their education on technical lines. There is a tendency to too great co-ordination, and to rather shut out from actual practice in manual experience and instruction those who have not passed, and, perhaps, cannot pass an examination in theory. I am certain, from considerable observation, that there are a great many youths of fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, who will pick up the theory by the actual practice, and I see a tendency to shut those lads out from technical schools.
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I want our system, while co-ordinated, to make great allowances for those young people who never pass or could pass the examination in theory at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, but who, if they are given a chance of applying themselves in the technical schools and laboratories, will build up the theory by means of practice. There are many thousands of these, and they are some of the very best material in our polytechnics at the present moment. The right hon. Gentleman laid down certain conditions on which the Grants would have to be based in the future, and two great conditions were, first of all, that it would be by areas and not by schools. I think that would be a change for the better. Then, that the rich areas would have to be treated separately from the poor areas. I do not know how far he is going to carry that. What I want him to recollect is that sometimes a low rateable value is due to a low valuation, and, above all, I want him to recollect that a high rateable value is not always a test of the wealth of the community that lives in that highly rated area, and the high rateable value may be counterbalanced by the very high cost of sites of building and salaries of teachers in these schools. While I think that on both sides of the House there are many true educationists who desire most sincerely to advance education in a practical way and truly believe that the nation will be prosperous according to the number of well-trained and well-equipped citizens whom it prepares for the great commercial race of life, yet we must cut out our coat according to our cloth, and we must see that in the expenditure upon education, which, after all, is a national service and which the right hon. Gentleman admits in its early stages is primarily physical, must in the main be paid for more by the taxpayers than by the ratepayers, because the burden is more equitably distributed among the taxpayers than among the ratepayers. This reform is long overdue, and ought not to wait another year, but ought to be proposed in the very next Budget which is brought forward, either by the right hon. Gentleman or by any other right hon. Gentleman representing him, so that the ratepayers will get some substantial relief from the great burden which they have to bear for this national service.
Sir JAMES YOXALL: I wish for nothing better than to endorse and adopt the very able piece of criticism and the admirable statement of the real educational necessi-

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ties of the time to which the House has just listened from the right hon. Gentleman opposite. I think that that statement and criticism have been made in an entirely educational spirit, from which the party spirit was completely absent, and have put very clearly what needs to be done and what must be done. The speech of the President of the Board of Education may be compared in its two parts to a very large overcoat on a very small peg. The peg itself, the Bill which is to pass into law this Session, is so small as to be hardly worthy of much attention or much criticism, except in so far as it does, I suppose, indicate the establishment of new principles and new practices in the educational world. When one dons the overcoat and examines it very carefully, one discovers that it is a very large garment indeed, a very well-designed garment, which will bring about a great amount of comfort and help to great numbers of people in this country if they could only put it on. But, after all, the chief value of it will depend upon having it well lined. The lining is of a financial nature. It will take a great many bank notes to line that overcoat. We have not got it clearly this afternoon that the supply of bank notes will be forthcoming in due course. One need not be in the House very long without discovering that we must turn our attention, not to conditions as they ought to be, but to what is and what can be; not to those things which you would like to bring into existence if possible by means of an incantation, but to those other things which must be brought into existence by a long series of Bills and proposals. As far as I know the situation, the plans of the right hon. Gentleman for the future do meet the situation, and I only hope that before long they will pass into law. But I wish to repeat that the one essential thing in all this matter, of which we have not yet been given any clear glimpse, and of which we have not yet had any definite promise, is a very large subvention indeed, a totally new subvention over and above what has been paid hitherto. A subvention not arising in any degree from the rearrangement of the basis of Grants, but a large additional sum per year from the National Exchequer is the most essential requirement, and without such this scheme cannot work, and no scheme can work, and until one sees in figures what the amount is likely to be it would be premature to discuss the details of the plans for the future which were laid before the House to-night.
Sir ALFRED CRIPPS: It is difficult to discuss the First Reading of a Bill when the Bill is not in print. I agree with the hon. Member opposite that we have had the promised land sketched, but the question is how that promised land is to be obtained, and how we can derive the benefits of the immense advantages in the educational life which the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out. I have been long enough in the House to hear the advantages to be obtained from a perfect system of education described in glowing terms nineteen or twenty times by the Ministers for Education for the time being. We always agree with them; we all want the results which are described; but my experience is that we stop at the description, except in the case of the great Act of 1902, for which we are indebted to my right hon. Friend the senior Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour), and which is the only practical proposal that has really carried forward in a substantial manner educational reform in this country. What is the position? In 1902 a Royal Commission reported that national education was mainly a national service, and that the main part of the expenditure ought to come from taxes and not from rates, the reason being that if it comes from rates, about two-thirds of the wealth of the country is exempted from contribution for the educational system, because a penny on the rates produces only about one-third of the yield of a penny on the Income Tax. Can you possibly justify starving any national service, such as education, and making it unpopular as regards expenditure, because you deliberately exempt two-thirds of the wealth of the country from the contribution that it ought to bear in reference to this and all other national services? It is not so much a question between rates and taxes, as a question why you should let off people of large wealth, who ought to contribute to a proportionate extent to the cost of such national services as education.
We are told that since the Royal Commission reported, the charge on the rates has gone up by no less than £8,500,000. Since 1906 £3,500,000 has been added to the rates, as against only £1,000,000 added to Grants from the National Exchequer. Having regard to those figures, is it not an inadequate farce to come forward with a Bill suggesting an increase of £150,000 a year from the Exchequer to deal with a problem of this kind? How is that £150,000 to be used? Fifty thousand

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pounds is to be used in relation to an expenditure which has come into being since the Royal Commission reported, namely, for medical treatment. According to all principles the whole cost of medical treatment ought to be placed upon the National Exchequer. It makes no difference to the principle that for purposes of convenience the money is expended through the medium of the local education authority. That leaves only £100,000 a year, which is to be dealt with in connection with building Grants. In view of the largely increased expenditure out of the rates, that is a ludicrously inadequate attempt to deal with one of the great underlying financial problems, and unless that problem is dealt with, you cannot expect the future of education to be satisfactory. On the next point I differ entirely from the views of the President of the Board of Education. He deprecates, as I understand, the salaries of teachers being put either directly or indirectly upon the National Exchequer.
Mr. J. SAMUEL: They are at present.
Sir A. CRIPPS: In my belief they are not; but I will not argue that point with the hon. Member at present. I think the teachers are inadequately paid, and that that is one of the reasons for the dearth in the teaching profession. I speak from a considerable practical experience in educational matters when I say that there is a growing dearth of properly certificated teachers at the present time. If you are to have a national service such as education, the level at which you maintain it entirely depends upon an adequate provision for the teaching staff. It has already been pointed out that it is no good having buildings or systems, or using the word "national," or any of those high-sounding epithets which we have heard this afternoon, unless when we come to the details of the practice of education we have adequate teachers of competent authority in order to carry out such a system as we desire. If the level of our national system depends on adequate teachers, adequately paid, and if we are to have a proper differentiation between local and central expenditure, one of the items in our educational system which ought to be put upon the National Exchequer is the expenditure, whatever it may be, for providing sufficient salaries and pensions to attract to the teaching profession an adequate number of compe-
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tent persons. Training colleges are a necessity if you are to have an adequate supply of competent teachers. I suppose that the right hon. Gentleman does not desire to increase unnecessarily the expense of training colleges. If that is so, he ought to allow denominational training colleges the same advantages and the same position in reference to their principles as the undenominational colleges enjoy. My view is that immediately you seem to differentiate between denominational and undenominational principles, you bring in the very sectarian element which, I agree with the right hon. Gentlemen, we ought to keep out of educational matters altogether.
In these matters the State ought to adopt a neutral attitude. There are various people who look upon religion, whether denominational or undenominational, as an essential part of any educational system. They may be right; they may be wrong; I am not discussing that; but it is the duty of the Government as regards Grants and the rendering of assistance to put out of sight altogether either denominational or undenominational principles, and to hold the hand of the State quite neutral. You cannot seek to differentiate in the way in which I understand the right hon. Gentleman desires to do without introducing the sectarian spirit into our educational system. It is just the same as regards single school areas. Speaking as a Churchman, I say that if he would give us the same advantages where there are provided schools that he is seeking to obtain where there are non-provided schools, that is quite right and fair. You ought not to differentiate between the two. Just as every Nonconformist parent ought to have the opportunity of sending his child to a school where he can obtain the religion desired, so also you ought to give the same opportunity under similar conditions to every Churchman. You simply want to hold the hand of the State neutral and not give any advantage either to the one side or to the other. It is in that way, and in that way alone, that you will finally get rid of the sectarian question in the educational system of the country. That is what for some time now Churchmen have been seeking to bring before the Board of Education, this House, and the country. There should be absolute equality. A child ought not to be under any disadvantage because its parents belong to one denomination or another. As regards teachers,

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as far as I am concerned, they, like any other Civil servants, ought to be qualified in reference to the public duty they are required to perform, and, in my opinion, no other test ought to be applied. In applying that test—which, of course, means that you should have teachers who can supply the religious teaching which the parents require—you ought to treat everyone alike, whether he belongs to the Church of England or to the smallest. Nonconformist community in the country, and put on one side the constant quarrels about sectarian matters, which can only be done on the basis of fair treatment and equality between the two systems. With regard to intermediate education, it would be quite impossible, having regard to mere outline, which was all the right hon. Gentleman could give us, to attempt to criticise in any detail the proposals sketched to the House to-day. But is not the right hon. Gentleman rather unwise, when he knows that expense is one of the main factors in developing the higher educational system, to make an attack on the private venture schools?
Mr. PEASE Mr. PEASE was understood to disclaim having made any attack.
Sir A. CRIPPS: I understood, from the illustrations which the right hon. Gentleman gave and from the accounts which he said his inspectors had given of particular private venture schools, that he intended that all such schools should be superseded by some general State or local authority system.
Mr. PEASE: No: nothing of the kind.
Sir A. CRIPPS: I am very glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that, and, of course, I accept his statement at once. I think that on every ground we ought not to discourage the private venture school. First of all, it gives poor parents the same opportunity that better-to-do parents have as regards selecting a school. It brings in a certain variety. We do not want all our schools on one cast-iron system. It introduces what, to my mind, is a right principle, that parents who can afford to pay for their children by selecting private venture schools should not only not be deprived of that advantage, but should be encouraged to take that attitude if they desire to do so and think it best for the future of their children. Take, as an illustration, the school in which I was educated, and of which I am a member of
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the governing body now. That is a well-endowed school, under neither the State nor the local authority. Are you going to sweep away the special facilities which these great schools give in order to carry further what I agree with my right hon. Friend is co-ordination run mad? I agree that you want to give everyone an opportunity. That opportunity ought to be within the reach of everyone; but you ought not to discourage the existing facilities for intermediate education which, in a large number of instances, is being adequately provided at the present moment.
8.0 P.M.
As regards the cost of this intermediate education scheme sketched out by the right hon. Gentleman, everyone who has any knowledge of education, or who has dealt with secondary or elementary schools, must realise that to attain quarter or half of the ideals put forward by the right hon. Gentleman, very large expenditure would be required, and I am talking of millions, and not of hundreds of thousands. What we want to know, and I do not know whether we shall hear it from the right hon. Gentleman, is approximately what he considers the cost would be of this system of intermediate education which he has sketched out. I want to know, also, given the cost, how he proposes to allocate it as between the rates on the one side and the taxes on the other. He may depend upon it that this is a matter which even idealists in education will have to study and to think out in order to make a proposal of this kind seem fair to the ratepayer and the taxpayer of this country. Elementary education is mainly a national service, as laid down by the Report of the Royal Commission, but I think intermediate education between the elementary school and the university is almost wholly a national service, and ought to be paid for substantially by the National Exchequer. I am glad the hon. Gentleman opposite agrees with that. When you start from that principle, without you are prepared to find the money, I say there is really no bearing in holding out the promised land if it is impossible under the conditions that any of us should enter into it, or, rather, that any of the children of the country should enter into it. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Minority Report as the basis on which he may redistribute Grants for the purpose of intermediate education. I have not got that Report by me, but did the Minority Report make any special proposals as

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regards intermediate as distinct from elementary education? The right hon. Gentleman probably can tell me, because he has got it in his memory. My recollection is that they did not. I am not aware that they made any special proposals such as he has referred to applicable to intermediate education as distinct from elementary.
What the right hon. Gentleman was doing was this: He was sketching out what must be a very large additional expenditure, not only as regards education, but as regards meals, washhouses, and playgrounds. By all means, let us have all those great social reforms, but I think it is putting the cart before the horse to hold out a picture of this kind without you tell the people of this country where the money is to come from. You must in the long run come back to the financial problems, and realise that the ratepayers of this country do not intend, if they can help it, to bear a heavier burden for education than they are bearing at present. In fact, I go further, and say that at the present time they are asking, and rightly asking, for relief from the burden which they are staggering under, having regard to those figures of increase given by the right hon. Gentleman. I do not propose to go further now because I do not propose to go into what was a mere sketch, but I say that the proposals of this Bill, looked at as a relief to the taxpayer, are ludicrously inadequate. A sum of £150,000 as against an addition of £8,500,000, and that having been put on at a time when the Royal Commission said that the ratepayers were already overburdened, I say that that is ludicrously insufficient. As regards the sketch for the future, I desire to say nothing until I know from what source the funds are coming, and in what way they are intended to be applied by this system.
Sir RYLAND ADKINS: I agree with a good deal of what has fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just spoken, but when he takes the opportunity in referring to the shortage of teachers, of making excursions on the attitude of neutrality, and the attitude of adopting differentiation between one kind of religion over another in this country, the House will remember, I am sure, that one of the things which leads to the shortage of teachers is the fact that the headships of half the schools in the country are closed to nearly half the country because of their conscientious belief. Any
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neutrality so-called, or want of differentiation which works out in that way shows a blot on the educational system which must be met by this or some other Government before education can work smoothly in this country. We have heard to-day a small Bill introduced and great schemes sketched out. I desire to say a word on each. With regard to the small Bill introduced, I do not quite understand the motive of the criticism of the hon. and learned Member who last spoke, and the right hon. Gentleman behind him. We agree, and the whole House agrees, that what this Bill proposes to do is a mere trifle compared with what ultimately must be done towards the proper financing of national education, but I hope I did not understand either of them, therefore, to say that they would not support this Bill or that they would do anything to hinder it from becoming law. The case of the ratepayer is so overwhelming that any pittance given even as an acknowledgment of the debt is a valuable thing to have, and at the earliest possible moment.
Mr. HAYES FISHER: How is it to be distributed?
Sir R. ADKINS: Even if it were distributed in a way open to legitimate criticism, yet to get £150,000 from the Treasury to be spent on national education, small though it be compared with what we all want, still is something. I hope I understood my right hon. Friend correctly when he spoke as to the method by which the £100,000 was to be distributed. I understand that is to take the place of half the loan charges throughout the country. Therefore, where so much money was being paid on interest and reduction of loans throughout the country, this is intended to halve that annual expenditure, and that, therefore, every education authority in the country will, in proportion to its loan charges, share in this £100,000 of my right hon. Friend's Bill. If that be the case, it is of value as an acknowledgment of the claims which the ratepayers have upon the Exchequer, and I desire to say at once that I hope my right hon. Friend and the Government will make every effort to see that this small Bill does become law in this Session. The irritation of the ratepayers throughout the country at the constant and chronic disregard of their just claims will not, of course, be satisfied by this, but it will be a palliative for which they will be glad, and, at any rate, will indicate that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues do

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admit the debt and are prepared to take measures to reduce it from time to time. It would be a thousand pities, and it would, I am certain, increase the embarrassment of educationists throughout the country if a Bill brought in mentioning a specific sum, however small, did not become law. When I turn from the Bill which, for the reasons I have given, I hope may become law promptly, to the large scheme outlined by my right hon. Friend, I, for one, desire to thank him heartily for that, because it is something to have the education of the country pegged out and to have a responsible Minister referring to the various matters which have to be considered, and if, of necessity, part of his speech could be but little more than a glossary of reforms which are needed, at any rate now that he has spoken they are all on record, and we have the field of educational reform reopened, and it is easier for all those individuals inside this House and out of it who take an interest in education, and try to work it, to apply their criticism to the sketch which my right hon. Friend has made.
There are one or two things to which I should like to refer. I begin, as all speakers have begun, or most speakers, with reference to the financial part of it. The right hon. Gentleman said, as I understood him, that the idea in future is to alter the basis of Grants both for elementary and for intermediate education. There is to be a general Grant, I understand, for elementary education, and there is to be a subsidiary Grant dependent on the resources of the area and upon the way in which the authorities of the area are doing their duty or neglecting it, and those are to be for elementary education alone. Then, as I understand, there is to be a third Grant which has special reference to buildings, whatever part of education those buildings belong to. Is there to be any Grant for intermediate education besides this Grant which has reference only to buildings and to loans, because if there is to be no Grant for intermediate education, as well as the two Grants for elementary education, then the last stag of intermediate education will be worse than the first?
Mr. PEASE: In almost the closing words of my speech I alluded to a forecast in which substantial money would have to be devoted by the Exchequer to various purposes of education. I alluded to the
1954
universities, and I alluded to the work connected with the amalgamation of the various forms of universities which exist in London, and I then went on to say that sums would have to be devoted to technical and intermediate education, whilst the great bulk of them no doubt would be given over to elementary education.
Sir R. ADKINS: I am very much obliged, and for this reason, that the right hon Gentleman's speech will be read to-morrow by thousands of persons in this country who are now trying to administer the existing Acts, and certainly in most English counties, and in not a few English boroughs, there is more difficulty in getting public support for intermediate education than for elementary. People are now used to the fact that elementary education is compulsory, while intermediate education is not compulsory, and many of us have the greatest difficulty in getting adequate support from the public and the ratepayers in carrying out the wishes of the State in matters of intermediate education. The Grants which are adumbrated for elementary education may if they do not reduce the elementary education rate, and will no doubt retard its growth, as it ought to be retarded, but it is most important when you put alongside that a proposal to make intermediate education compulsory, and to take away the twopenny limit, and when every pressure would be used, and no doubt rightly used, by the Board of Education to encourage the development of intermediate education, it is essential that it should be known to-night on the occasion of the adumbration of this scheme, but the further development of intermediate education will be helped to a very large extent from the Treasury on the grounds which have been referred to by several speakers. One thing certainly all educationists will agree on, and that is that intermediate education is even more of a national character than elementary, which is conditional on local interests to a large extent. There are two other matters to which I should like to refer, and one is the question of the area of co-ordination.
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 the Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY BILL (By Order).
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Lords Amendments be considered."
  Mr. BOOTH: This is the first opportunity I have had in the House to ask.a question as to whether these Amendments—which in this case are substantial, and which were inserted in another place—have been before the Chairman or any Members of the Committee of this House? It would alter my whole attitude to the Bill if such an assurance could be given.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS (Mr. Whitley): I can give the hon. Member the assurance for which he asks, and I think it due to him to say that it was on his initiation that this impovement in our practice was instituted I think a year or two years ago. It is the case that those Amendments made in the other House are always submitted to the Chairman of the Committee in this House, and also to myself and to the Speaker's counsel, so that they have investigation before they are brought into the House.
  Question proposed, "That the Lords Amendments be now considered."
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: On a point of Order. I desire your ruling, Sir, as to whether a further Bill can be put down on the same day as it has been proposed at 2.45 p.m. On the 9th August, 1905, this question came up:—
  "Mr. Caldwell said he would put the Bill down again at the evening sitting. The hon. Member for Dublin County (South) asked if it was in order to put a Bill down for the same day, and was it not bound to go over until another day. The hon. Member for North Louth argued that the fixing of the date was a question open to debate, and that when a private Bill was objected to it lapsed altogether for that day, and could not be put down again in the same sitting. Mr. Speaker ruled that it was within the province of the Chairman of Ways and Means, on whose behalf the hon. Member for Mid-Lanark was acting, to fix it for the evening sitting. Sir Joseph Leese (Lanarkshire, Accrington) drew attention to the fact that the Rathmines and Rathgar Bill had been placed on the Order Paper for the morning sitting. The Bill had been objected to, and the hon. Member for Mid-Lanark, acting for the Chairman of Ways and Means, put the Bill down fur consideration that evening. Objection was taken to that course of action, and the question was whether the Bill could not be taken to-morrow. Mr. Speaker read Standing Order No. 8, regulating the days on which private business should be set down for consideration. The Chairman of Ways and Means now informed him that it had been decided to take the Bill to-morrow."
  Basing myself upon that change in postponing the Rathmines and Rathgar Bill from the evening to the next day, I ask
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  you, Sir, whether this Bill, which was objected to at 2.45 to-day, can, in accordance with the rules, be taken at 8.15 tonight, and whether it ought not, rather, to be taken again to-morrow, or at 8.15 in the evening.
  Mr. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member will look at the ruling which I gave on that occasion, and which he quoted, he will find that I ruled it might be taken. It is true that towards the end of the discussion an arrangement having been come to, the Bill was postponed until the next day. The ruling given by the Speaker on that occasion was that the Bill could be taken that night. It is obvious that it is so. If the hon. Member looks at Standing Order 8, Sub-section (2), he will find that private business shall be postponed until such time as the Chairman of Ways and Means may determine. The question lies with the Chairman of Ways and Means, if he wishes to postpone business. The occasions on which this has been done was on the 29th October, 1908, the 22nd November, 1910, and the 26th June, 1911. Those were the three occasions. I think there can be no doubt about the matter.
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: I am much obliged for your ruling, Sir.
  Mr. BOOTH: While I do not wish to contest the point that the power does vest in the Chairman of Ways and Means, yet it is a very unusual thing. I am not objecting to it, but I take it that, if there were serious opposition in some quarters of the House, which would be shown on the Order Paper by hon. Members having put down Motions or Amendments which would indicate that there was serious opposition on the merits, the Chairman of Ways and Means would take that into account. I submit that as the case now stands there should be some distinction drawn.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS: I think I can tell the hon. Member that I quite recognise that this power given to the Chairman of Ways and Means is only to be used in rather special circumstances. I hope the House will recognise that there are rather special circumstances on the present occasion. It will be in the recollection of hon. Members that yesterday and to-day something like ten or a dozen Bills, I think, were objected to and their progress was prevented. I am charged by the House with the care of the private Bills in this House. They have to conform to the rules which we ourselves have made. Every time a Bill

  1957
  is set down and it makes no progress, it involves very considerable cost to its promoters. Ever since I have occupied my present position in this House my endeavour has been to cheapen the cost of private Bills. It is already a very heavy burden, particularly upon the ratepayers in the promotion of Municipal Bills, and I have felt bound on this occasion to take unusual action. I think that I am only fulfilling the duty I owe to the House in marking my sense of what I believe will be the feeling of the House as a whole that to block private Bills by the dozen is not a fair use of our procedure. I have made it my practice to meet every hon. Member who desires to put to me any point raised in connection with a private Bill. I hope hon. Members will use that opportunity rather than occupy time in this House.
  Mr. MARTIN: I quite appreciate what the Chairman of Ways and Means has said with reference to these private Bills, but it seems to me that Members of the House have some rights as well as the promoters of private Bills, and I must say in regard to the Great Northern Railway Bill, that I have been completely prevented from making the remarks which I would like to have made upon it by reason of my having to rise on so short notice. I understood that if the Bill was opposed today it could not go on. I could not make any remarks about it earlier, but I wanted to criticise some of the Amendments. I understood that it would go over until a subsequent day. I had a lot of material which I could not get at short notice, and which I have been unable to get at on account of this very summary proceeding. I am not in the habit of blocking private Bills. I do not think I ever blocked one before, with perhaps one exception. Why I should be punished so severely in the matter, having done it for the first time in regard to a, Bill affecting my own Constituency, does appear to me to be a little hard. I have to apologise to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House, for not being able to present my case in the way I should like to do if I had a fair opportunity of doing so.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: You have blocked four Bills to-day.
  Mr. MARTIN: I do not know that that is any business of the hon. Baronet.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: You said you never blocked one before.
  Mr. MARTIN: I never did block one before, except perhaps one. The hon. Baronet is very much concerned with the duties of every Member of this House except his own. He gets up and makes speeches in which are the wildest and most erratic statements.
  Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order.
  Mr. MARTIN: The hon. Baronet has no business—
  Mr. SPEAKER: Will the hon. Member kindly address himself to the point now before the House, which is that the Lords Amendments be now considered.
  Mr. MARTIN: The Amendments to which I objected are two.
  Mr. SPEAKER: We have not reached the Amendments yet.
  Question, "That the Lords Amendments be now considered," put, and agreed to.
  Clauses inserted by the Lords for the protection of the Lincoln Corporation, the London Electric Railway Company, and the Hendon Urban District Council, agreed to.
  The Lords had amended the Preamble by inserting the word "books," instead of "a book" of reference.
  Mr. BOOTH: I have here a list of the Amendments to the Great Northern Railway Bill, and I do not see anything about "books." The first Amendment on the Paper supplied to me is one concerned with the protection of Lincoln Corporation. I think that the Clerk is reading the wrong Amendment.
  Mr. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member (Mr. Martin) will indicate which Amendment it is from which he dissents, and from which he proposes to ask the House to disagree, we can have that one specially read out.
  Mr. MARTIN: That is what I was going to do.
  Mr. SPEAKER: Where is it?
  Mr. MARTIN: It is Clause 19.—(For Protection of St. Pancras Borough Council.)
  "Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or shown on the deposited plans and sections the following provisions for the protection of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors of the Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancras

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  (hereinafter called 'the Council' and 'the borough' respectively) shall unless otherwise agreed between the Great Northern Company and the Council apply and have effect (that is to say):—
  (5) The provisions of the Section of this Act the marginal note whereof is 'Power to deviate in construction of new railways railway widening and works' shall not apply to the alterations of the gradients of Wharf Road and Cambridge Street authorised by this Act but the gradients of the said road and street shall be altered in accordance with the lines shown on the deposited sections relating respectively to the said road and street."
  Mr. BOOTH: May I point out that the difficulty has arisen, because the Paper is printed wrongly? The White Paper with which we had been supplied from the Vote Office shows that page 97 relates to the Great Northern Railway Company, and 98 and 99 relate to some other matters.
  Mr. SPEAKER: Is it Clause 19A to which the hon. Member objects?
  Mr. MARTIN: It is Clause 19.—(For Protection of St. Pancras Borough Council.) It commences, "Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or shown on the deposited plans," and so on.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS: Perhaps I may explain to the hon. Member. I think he is misled as to the White Paper. He appears to think that the other House has inserted a new Clause for the protection of the St. Pancras Borough Council, whereas what they have done is in the Clause only to insert two words, "new railways," and that is the Amendment now read out.
  Sir F. BANBURY: The hon. Member has stated what he objects to. The Borough Council Amendment was put in in this House, and not in the Lords.
  Lords Amendment: After Clause 19 insert Clause 19A.—(For Protection of Gas Light and Coke Company.)
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: I would like a word or two about this new Clause put in for the protection of the Gas Light and Coke Company. I think it is most undesirable that these Amendments, of which this is a sample, should be put in in another place.=1960
  If we are to put Amendments into Bills of this sort for the protection of various vested interests, it ought to be done in the House of Commons, or in Committee, and not reserved for another place. We have in these Amendments no less than four Clauses put in afresh for the protection of different vested interests. This one in respect to the Gas Light and Coke Company appears to be the most remarkable of them all. As the Bill was originally passed through the House of Commons Committee certain powers were given to the railway company to make deviations from the plans and to make alterations in the height of roadways. They were allowed, amongst other things, to close up a certain road called Battle Bridge Road. There are underneath Battle Bridge Road some mains belonging to the Gas Light and Coke Company. No objection was taken to the closing of this road by the Gas Light and Coke Company before the House of Commons Committee, or if any objection was taken it was overruled as of no importance, but directly the Bill gets up to the House of Lords, the closing of this road is made a, ground for the obtaining of pecuniary compensation from the Great Northern Railway Company. These mains presumably run underneath this road, and I fail to understand how the closing of that road can make it necessary, as it is made necessary under this new Clause, for the railway company to buy up these mains, and to put the gas company to the expense of changing the line of route, and making further connections. It seems to me that if there is any good claim upon the railway company, it ought to have been made in the House of Commons, instead of waiting for the House of Lords to consider it. It is easy enough for the Chairman of Ways and Means to urge us to cheapen the process by which Bills are got through the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
  I entirely sympathise with what, was said by the Chairman of Ways and Means, but I protest against these changes, and so long as it is possible for vested interests, that may be affected by these railway company Bills, to fight these Bills both in the Committee of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and to get changes made in the House of Lords, the expenses of passing these Bills must be enormously magnified. We find page after page of new provisions put in to protect vested interests, and I think that is the way in which most of the money of the promoters

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  of these Bills gees. Here you have a claim on account of the blocking up of the roadway, but the public, whose right of way is stopped, get no compensation; but the Gas Light and Coke Company, whose mains run under the road, make that the subject of a claim upon the railway company. That may be a just ground for compensation. But, if it is, the claim should be made before the House of Commons Committee, and not reserved for the House of Lords. Vested interests, I agree, stand a better chance of having their claims recognised by the House of Lords Committee, bat it is better that they should be made before the House of Commons Committee.
  Question, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment," put, and agreed to.
  Further Amendments made.

  CLAUSE 39.—(Power to Great Northern Railway Company to Purchase Lands Delineated on Deposited Plans.)
  Lords Amendment: Leave out the words "delineated on deposited plans," and insert instead thereof, the word "additional."
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
  Mr. MARTIN: I am not responsible for the White Paper, but it is the only means I have of following what is going on, and I object to the change made here. I object to the word "additional" being put in before "lands," and, secondly, to leaving out the words "delineated on the plans." This question about the enlargement of the railway premises is a most important question in East St. Pancras. I do not say it is not necessary; of course, railway companies must have facilities for doing their business, but it does seem to me this is going beyond everything that can be considered reasonable and fair. In the Committee of this House provision or power was given to the Great Northern Railway Company to purchase lands delineated on the plans. That was taken up by the borough council and dealt with, though not at all satisfactorily from my standpoint. I think they dealt with it very unsatisfactorily to the people of East St. Pancras. Now, as I understand it, the proposal is that they shall not simply take the land that they have designated and marked upon the plans, but that they shall
  1962=take additional land without describing what they are, and I submit that the House should not agree to an Amendment like that proposed in the House of Lords. I think it is most unreasonable. What they are being allowed to do in this particular case is to take away lands lying along Regent's Canal. That may be necessary and reasonable, but surely it ought to be done in the way that this House allowed them to take these lands, and that they should be first put upon the plan.
  Mr. SPEAKER: I must point out to the hon. Member that the cause of the Amendments is only an alteration of the marginal note which appears in the previous Act. If he looks at the Clause he will see the proposal in this Bill is to alter the marginal note and to insert the word "additional" and leave out the words "delineated on the deposited plans." It is only an alteration in the marginal note.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS: May I suggest that if the hon. Member will be good enough to honour me with his company in my room to-morrow, I will be able to explain to him why the Lords Amendments are printed on this way. He appears not quite to appreciate the effect of what it is the House of Lords has done. They have only made an alteration in order to bring the Clause inserted in this House into line with the marginal note. It is purely a verbal alteration and not one of any substance whatever.
  Mr. MARTIN: Not perhaps in regard to this Act but in regard to some other Act. I have had the matter brought before me, and I know there is a great deal of feeling with regard to it. It may be this particular Amendment is only in regard to the marginal note, but that is the whole point. The Section has been misrepresented to the people on account of the marginal note as if they were only to take certain land.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The marginal note has no statutory validity. It is only inserted for the purpose of reference.
  Question, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment," put, and agreed to.
  Further Amendments made.
  Mr. J. J. MOONEY: I want to raise a point of Order. I do not object to the Bill proceeding at all, but in the White Paper I have in my hand, the Amendments are all mixed up. I think I was the first

  1963=person to raise the question that when serious Amendments were made to Bills in the House of Lords, they ought to be set out upon the Paper. I submit, with all respect, we would get on much better if these proceedings were printed in the same way as they are on the Paper which the Clerk has got before him, and if you, Sir, would be good enough to give instructions to the Parliamentary agents to have the Amendments printed in the same form on the White Paper, I think it would facilitate procedure very much.
  Mr. SPEAKER: I could have the Amendments printed in the way in which they are put from the Table. That used to be done, and objection was taken because it was said that hon. Members did not see the effect of the Amendments, and it was to meet the views of hon. Members that the White Paper was printed in accordance with Standing Order 220, to show the effect of the Amendments made in the Lords. If the hon. Member will look at the White Paper he will see that it is designed to make clear what the effect of the Amendments are which have been inserted in the Lords. We could do what the hon. Member thinks is desirable, but I am afraid that it would only lead to more confusion.
  Mr. MOONEY: I only intervened in the interests of procedure. When a Bill is being discussed like this, we ought to know exactly what the Clerk at the Table is reading.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS: Perhaps I may be permitted to make a suggestion, and it is that the hon. Member and any other hon. Members interested might confer with me on the subject. It was found that the present method is an improvement on the one which previously obtained, and the present system was adopted at the request of private Members. I should be glad to take the view of hon. Members on the subject.
  Mr. BOOTH: Even so, my point is that there has been a mistake in printing this particular Bill. We start off with page 18, then pages 41 and 54, and then we come back to pages 2, 5, 13 18, 31, and so on. When we get to that point the clerk read out something which caused us to turn back to the Clause which we seemed to have passed. I think there has been a mistake somewhere.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The new Clauses came first. If the hon. Member will take his page 101 of his Paper, he will see on page 50 that Clause 39 is set out. He will see it stated that the words to be omitted are included in brackets and underlined, and the Clause, words and figures to be added are printed in italics. The Clause as set out on page 50 of the White Paper shows the effect of the Amendment coming from the Lords. That is the one we have discussed just now, which is an alteration in the marginal note. The hon. Member will see that we are not discussing the whole of this Clause, because the Clause as a whole was not amended, but it is set out to show the effect of inserting the words.
  Mr. BOOTH: I quite follow that. What I was pointing out was that we go to page 54 and then back to page 2 on the White Paper.
  Mr. SPEAKER: That is a new Clause, and new Clauses always come first. It is printed in italics to show that it is a new Clause. We took the Lords Amendments in the order they are made in the Bill. The Amendments are set out in the method this House has adopted, and we have taken the new Clauses first.
  Question, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment," put, and agreed to.

  RHONDDA TRAMWAYS (RAILLESS TRACTION) BILL.
  Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.

  MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL BILL [Lords].
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
  Mr. BOOTH: I think this is the proper time to ask the Manchester Ship Canal Company and the Manchester Corporation how far this joint venture of theirs should be pursued. I am not challenging this Bill. I think it is in the interests both of the City and the Ship Canal Company, but I want to point out that we have travelled a very long way in an unexpected direction, and I do not know whether it is part of any settled policy. I rather think that not much thought has been given to the general direction which has been pursued. We have arrived at a position in which the Manchester Corporation and the Manchester Ship Canal Company have

  1965
  intertwined their interests in such a way as I do not think appertains to any other city. It is a matter of some moment, but it would not be convenient to the House to go into this matter in detail. I may point out to hon. Members that there is a joint board, and that a number of councillors and aldermen of the Corporation are elected on the Ship Canal Company. Although there is no remuneration for a councillor or alderman as members of the corporation, those councillors and aldermen who are elected to this joint board receive remuneration from the company. I am not challenging that, but I want to point out that Manchester has gone a very long way in this direction of mixing up the interests of the community and the ratepayers with that of a private company.
  I cannot see where this kind of thing will stop, or whether the city fathers of Manchester have thought it out. I do not know whether the company will repay its obligations to the corporation in the shape of loans which the corporation has secured for the company when its own credit was not sufficient to obtain those loans. It may be that they will not appear before this House for some time, but I hope, when the company come before us again with a Bill of this magnitude, someone on their behalf will be able to say what the ultimate solution of this extraordinary position is going to be. I do not propose to interfere with what is considered to be a very advantageous thing for Manchester. I do not know whether the points I have raised have been considered, but I know that there is no parallel in the whole of the country to the position and the entanglement' into which we are getting with regard to the relations of this private company with the corporation of Manchester. I suppose that there was no other way. I remember that when the first Bill was before this House the heads of the city of Manchester were in great concern. The rateable value had begun to go down, and they were afraid that the population was about to decline. They made superhuman efforts to get this canal in order to have competitive rates with the railway company. They achieved their object; and, although the ratepayers did not get a good investment, Manchester gained through the railway company no longer having a monopoly. That was years ago, and, by degrees, the city has become involved in large sums with the fortunes of this com-
  1966
  pany, and I do suggest that, if they come forward again asking for powers, I shall be entitled to some general statement as to what the ultimate issue of that policy will be.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS: I can assure the hon. Member that the Committee upstairs, of which I happen to be the Chairman, went very carefully into the matter to which he has referred, not into the origin of the Ship Canal, but into the present position, which is the actual matter dealt with in the Bill, and they were satisfied that the proposals in this Bill were an advantage to the citizens of Manchester.
  Mr. KING: I think that we ought to be grateful to the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) for bringing this very interesting subject before us. I only rise to call attention to the fact that there is not one single Member for the city of Manchester in his place. I think that is a great disadvantage, because they, no doubt, would be in a position to enlighten us on the very important issues which have been merely sketched, and I hope that on a similar occasion, if it arises, they may be here to enlighten the House.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: I venture to submit that the city of Manchester and the local authorities there know far more about their business than either the hon. Member for Pontefract or the hon. Member who has just spoken.
  Mr. KING: Or the hon. Member for Mansfield.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: The hon. Member for Mansfield knows nothing whatever about the Bill. The corporation bring forward a Bill which is unopposed by any single person from Manchester, and I think the hon. Gentlemen are merely wasting the time of the House and preventing us getting through to-night measures which are so important in the interests of those who have private Bills here.
  Question, "That the Bill be now read the third time," put, and agreed to.
  Bill read the third time, and passed.

  LEICESTER CORPORATION BILL.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.
  Ordered, "That Standing Orders 211 and 236 be suspended and that the Committee have leave to sit on the Bill To-morrow."—[The Deputy-Chairman.]

  METROPOLITAN WATER BOARD BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  9.0 P.M.
  Mr. JOHN WARD: There is one subject I should like to mention, and to which, especially, I should like to draw the attention of the Chairman of Ways and Means. It is the question whether this Bill complies with Standing Order 183. This is a Bill promoted by the Metropolitan Water Board for extensive constructions in certain districts of Kent and Surrey. We have a Standing Order which directs that the Committee, when considering these Bills, do take into consideration the question whether proper provision is made for the housing and hospital accommodation for men employed on the works. It is only proper, as this may be an unopposed Bill and as under no circumstances would representatives of the workmen be allowed to attend before the Committee, that I should try and get a promise from the Chairman of Committees on this subject. There is the duty thrown upon promoters of legislation of this kind to provide housing accommodation satisfactory to the medical officer of the locality for the men employed on such large works and hospital accommodation for possible emergencies, and I should like to ask the Chairman whether he will take it upon himself, whether this is an unopposed or a contested Bill, to draw attention to the requirements of the Standing Order, so that the subject may be properly considered.
  The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS: The hon. Member for Stoke has made this subject his own, and he has been so successful that he has got it embodied in a Standing Order of the House. He need, therefore, have no fear that any Committee which has to deal with this Bill will not give the matter due consideration. As far as I am concerned as Chairman of the Unopposed Bill Committee, it is always a matter to which we devote the most painstaking attention, and I am sure that the hon. Member has by his efforts in many respects improved the condition of the navvies who carry out our great waterworks, and he need not watch individual Bills, because, as I say, it has been put into our Standing Orders, and it is the duty of every Chairman of Committees to see that he carries out the spirit of those
  1968
  Standing Orders in making his inquiries into the Bill.
  Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time," put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL [Lords]. (By Order.)
  Bill read the third time, and passed.

EDUCATION (No. 2) BILL.
Postponed proceeding resumed on Question, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill to amend the Law with respect to Grants in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fittng up elementary schools."—[Mr. J. A. Pease.]
Question again proposed. Debate resumed.
Sir R. ADKINS: I was venturing, when the Debate was interrupted, to comment on that part of the speech of the President of the Board of Education in which he spoke of the necessity, in the Bill to be introduced next year, of dealing with areas, of increasing the number of autonomous local authorities, and of dealing with that part of our educational administration which is concerned with local authorities and their inter-relations. We all know how important that is. We all know that no wide or extensive Education Bill could fail to take cognisance of that problem. There are two things on it which I hope will be borne in mind by the Government when they deal with the matter. One is that, whatever be the merits or demerits of the Act of 1902, it has had the great disadvantage that it has, in some parts of the country, killed popular interest in education. You do not now get, in many boroughs which are not county boroughs, and in many smaller places, that keenness of interest in education which in some such places formerly existed, and which ought to exist in all such places. I hope when the Government are dealing with the question of machinery, and are considering the question of area, they will remember that devolution in English counties has not been carried to anything like the length it should be carried, and that where you are dealing with a population of small extent it is most desirable there should be enough autonomy to rekindle that spirit of popular interest in education, and to

1969
make people feel that they really have power over it and can make their wishes felt.
The other part is also a question of machinery. It is to consider more carefully not the simple problem how the local authority can be made autonomous, but what are to be the relations between the different local authorities. I hope the Government may not, in this Education Bill, seek to provide that kind of uniform system which may apply to towns but does not apply to rural districts, and that there may be due flexibility corresponding to the various circumstances of administration in different parts of England. The right hon. Gentleman referred, with two or three most interesting anecdotes, to the position of private schools. Everybody wishes that private schools should have as high a standard as possible. Undoubtedly the standard of public health is becoming more and more a matter of agreement. There have been speeches by the Lord Chancellor and others in which there have been some indication that the Board of Education, in its healthy and vigorous zeal for supervising education, may really be aiming at getting all the education in this country, including education in private schools and in public schools that seek no Grant, into one system. In that direction lies great danger. You require a variety of education even more in intermediate education than in primary. Where you have schools, be they small private venture schools or great public schools, of wide fame, if they do not seek public money in any form, I hope the Government will be very careful before it brings them under public regulation, and tries to take away that variety and initiative which is their strength. I am sure the Government Will get support in tactfully and carefully helping to raise the standard of hygiene and equipment in private schools, but I trust they will find a way of doing it without impinging improperly or unfairly on their independence, and doing it in a way which recognises there is room and necessity for private enterprise in education as well as for wide Government supervision.
These matters, though they properly formed the greater part of the speech of the President, and must fill a greater part in the present Education Bill, are not matters which, it seems to me, can or ought to have precedence over some other things, all of which point to the growth of enlarged conceptions of education and increased resources for education. While that is right
1970
and proper, even before that comes the duty of removing, if possible, from education any sore, any disease, or any injury from which it is suffering. That which has been referred to as a grievance—the single school area—a religious difficulty—is just such a sore and injury to public education in this country. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend say that the Government propose to deal with the grievance of the single school area. I am confident I am expressing the opinion of many outside this House in all parts of the country when I say that there is great anxiety on this question. For many reasons, in the last few years, no honest attempt has been made to meet that grievance, but I hope that the meeting of the grievance will now be full, fair and adequate, and that no temptation to grandiose schemes will lead the Government to lose sight of it, to put it at a disadvantage, or allow it to be smothered among many other admirable projects which are not quite so pressing. I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman alike in the magnitude of the task before him, and in the spirit in which he approaches it, and I hope that, as far as possible, this task may be undertaken by the Government and the House with a minimum of party feeling, and with the greatest amount of enthusiasm for education. This is a particularly small instalment of financial justice to education which is embodied in a one-Clause Bill, and I end as I began by urging the right hon. Gentleman and the Government to use every effort to pass it into law this Session, because the smallest instalment of a longstanding debt is both a witness to the fact that the debt is acknowledged and an indication that will be prized throughout the country that the Government do mean to deal with the problem which is the more difficult and the more pressing because, on the one hand, education is suffering from a want of funds, and, on the other hand, the ratepayer throughout the country is exasperated by the delay in securing a long-desired relief.
Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: We
have had presented a very small, short narrow Bill, but we have also had a very comprehensive and, if I may be allowed to say so, a very interesting speech from the President of the Board of Education. I wish to say only a few words with regard to one or two points both with regard to the Bill and with regard to general principles. As to the Bill, I understand it to

1971
be merely a small Bill dealing with buildings and extensions of schools and with medical service. May I say that the Bill will cause a great deal of—
Mr. PEASE: Perhaps I should correct that expression, because it has fallen from one or two other speakers. The Bill itself does not deal at all with the Grants in connection with medical inspection. The Grant of £50,000 for medical inspection will appear on a Supplementary Estimate, and also the £100,000. But it is not necessary to pass this Bill in order that the £50,000 may be handed over to the local education authorities.
Sir R. ADKINS: Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say we shall get the £50,000 whether we get the Bill or not, but that we cannot get the £100,000 without the Bill?
Mr. PEASE: I do not want to use any threats, but that is my intention.
Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: As far as the Bill is concerned, then it only deals with the building and extension of schools?
Mr. PEASE: It deals with Sections 96 and 97 of the Act of 1870, which enabled Parliament to hand over to local education authorities, through the Board of Education, £100,000.
Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: The point I want to make is this: I think there will be very great disappointment, especially in necessitous school areas, that that question is not dealt with. The position is really a very difficult one and a very pressing one. Let me take the case of the Constituency I represent. That borough has a very low rateable value, and by the Necessitous Areas Bill a special Grant is made if the elementary education rate exceeds 1s. 6d. in the £. The right hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that three-quarters of the difference between whatever the rate stands at and 1s. 6d. is or should be paid by the Government. There is this difficulty, the amount of money was apparently fixed and it is not sufficient now to go round entirely. That is not all. In the case of those places where the education rate was not above 1s. 6d. in the £ when that Act was passed, they get nothing at all. What is the position in respect to the borough I represent? Our elementary education rate has gone
1972
up to 1s. 11d. in the £. We do not get three-fourths of the 5d. that we ought to get—we get nothing at all. You are really penalising those places which have been economical in the past, but which, thanks largely to the demands made upon them by the Board of Education—they may be perfectly reasonable demands, and I am not saying that they are not—have increased their rates above 1s. 6d. in the £. Those places are getting nothing whatever towards their elementary education, although their rate happens to be a great deal above 1s. 6d. in the £. I venture to think it will be a very great disappointment to every one of the poorer districts in the country if this question is not dealt with at the present time. It is a point that has been pressed upon the Government over and over again. During last year I asked a question of the predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman, pointing out that those places where the rate has gone up above 1s. 6d. since the Act was passed get nothing. The answer I then received was that until the Committee which is inquiring into the relations of Imperial and Local Taxation has reported it was impossible to deal with the question. I do not know when that Committee is going to report. None of us know, and it is put off from year to year. I certainly did think, and these necessitous districts thought, that when a small Bill of this sort dealing with money in connection with education was brought in that grievance would be dealt with, and it will be a great disappointment if it is not dealt with at the present moment.
I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, with regard to these extra Grants that are being made towards the building or the extending of schools, on what basis they are to be made? Is there to be a fixed proportion between the amount found by the local authority and the amount to be provided by the Government? If so, that again presses with great hardship on the poorer areas. I can explain that very easily. I will take a place like Bournemouth and a place like Dudley, which I represent. A penny rate in Bournemouth brings in five times what a penny rate produces in Dudley. If you say that the local authority is to pay one-half or one-third or any other proportion you like to fix, obviously it is a much easier task for them to raise their proportion in a rich place like Bournemouth, which I merely take as an example, than it is in a poor place like Dudley, which I

1973
take for another example; therefore, it is an important matter that we should know on what principle this new Grant is to be made towards building or any other purpose, including medical service; because unless you set up some sort of sliding scale whereby the poorer districts get more than the richer districts you will continue to inflict a very great hardship upon the poorer districts.
Turning for one moment to the more general aspect of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, I reciprocate the view he expressed that he does not want to provoke the religious difficulty. I cannot help warning him that if he is going to deal with the single school area question upon the lines he apparently indicated in his speech, he will raise the religious difficulty and provoke it in a most acute form. What did the right hon. Gentleman tell us? That he would accept the principle of the wishes of the parents to some extent, but only on one side; that if the parent was in a single school district where there was only a denominational school, then the parent might express a desire, and his desire should be gratified to have his child educated in an undenominational school, and that facilities will be given for the building of new undenominational schools in single school areas of that sort. The right hon. Gentleman failed entirely to deal with the wishes of the parent where there is now only one school, an undenominational school. Surely if the parent is to have the right to choose an undenominational school in the one case, he ought to have the right to choose a denominational school in the other case. If you are going to give facilities to the parent to have his child educated in an undenominational school in the single school areas where there is only a, Church school or something of that sort now, you ought, at the same time, to give to the parent an equal right to demand that in an area where there is only an undenominational school he shall have the opportunity of sending his child to a denominational school.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE: At the State expense?
Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: Certainly. There must be equal treatment all round. Our system has been built up, and I hope it will continue to remain, upon the principle that the State recognises both denominational and undenominational
1974
schools. If you are going to make special provision for the parent whose child can now only go to a denominational school, you must also make provision for the parent who is now in the position that he can only send his child to an undenominational school. That is absolutely fair and just. I did not quite understand what the right hon. Gentleman meant by, I think, a chance expression that the parent should have the chance of sending his child to the clear air of an undenominational school. Personally, I think that the air of a denominational school is far clearer.
Mr. PEASE: I said a "freer" air, not "clear."
Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN:I think it is equally free in a denominational school. At all events, the parents should have the freedom of choice in both cases. I am the last man who wishes to raise the religious difficulty in any acute form. I fully feel the force of the objection sometimes made that the religious difficulty might stand in the way of educational progress, but the right hon. Gentleman must recognise that there are many of us in this House, both on these benches and I was going to say upon the benches below the Gangway, although I am afraid I cannot say that at the present moment, who hold that the building up of character is the most important part of education, and that the building up of characer can only be effected by means of definite denominational teaching. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] That is the view I venture to put forward, and I know there are many other Members who also put it forward. I do not believe in a State-taught religion, still less in a county council form of religion. I think you must recognise the denominational principle, and allow the Churches to teach that religion to the children whose parents want that particular religion taught to them. I put that forward, not because I want to raise the religious question now, but only as a warning to the Government that if they are going to deal with what I fully admit is the difficulty of the single school areas, they must deal with it fairly on both sides. If they do not, they will be up against a storm of opposition and criticism which may go far to wreck their Bill next year.
The hon. Baronet (Sir W. Anson) spoke of the necessity of better housing going hand in hand with educational progress. That is absolutely true. You can ex-

1975
pect children brought up in horrible homes really to be fit to receive proper education, and I hold very strongly that housing reform, at all events, is really part of educational reform. May I point out one way in which by a little more co-operation the two things may be accomplished hand in hand in a way they are not now. Let me give an example of what often happens in London. There is frequently a demand for sites for new schools. The education authority in London has at present scheduled sites which will displace no fewer than 5,000 people. This applies, not only to London, but to other big towns. The authorities very often take a piece of good property where there are no slums. Close by there may be a horrible slum, and after the education authority, at great cost, has bought a good bit of property, perhaps two or three years later the housing committee of the same county council has to clear a slum in the immediate neighbourhood. If you could have more co-ordination between the sanitary authorities and the education authorities, you could kill two birds with one stone, and by clearing the slum, would obtain a site for your school without the waste and expense that goes on now. I know from my own experience of the county council that waste frequently takes place now. It is all due to the fact that the education authority, although in a sense it is part of the county authority, is distinct from it, and the rates are distinct, and, of course, in many cases the education authority is one body and the sanitary authority is another. By judiciously selecting the points you want for your new schools, you could very often get rid of some of the worst slums and the worst pieces of housing in the country, and thereby enable housing reform to go hand in hand with education. I am disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman has not dealt with necessitous areas, but we are all buoyed up with good hopes, and I trust that matter will he fully dealt with when we come to the more comprehensive measure next year.
Mr. LEACH: The hon. Gentleman has made a most interesting speech, and if the House remembers that he made it without hearing the speech of the President—
Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: I missed the first three minutes.
Mr. LEACH: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I am sorry I cannot agree with the speech he has made. He and I
1976
approach the education question from entirely different points of view. He is a strong Churchman, and advocates the interests of Church people. I, on the other hand, am a Nonconformist asking only for freedom and for fair play all round. I desire to congratulate the President of the Board of Education most heartily on the very excellent and comprehensive speech which he has made. It sounds to me, an educationist, like a great national scheme which he has outlined, and I only trust that all the parties in the House may assist in carrying into law what he has foreshadowed. It is rather difficult to criticise a Bill which does not actually exist, or to say much about what one has not seen. Of course, the father of a, Bill will make the best of it and will put before the House the points which are likely to create least opposition, and I think the President has done that very remarkably. No one will be led away to believe that he has got a very easy task before him. No one who understands the condition of education in this country can believe that the President, or any member of the House, would introduce a Bill and carry it without opposition of some kind. I agree with him entirely that the Act of 1902 is neither national nor effective. Speaking for myself, the sooner some of its conditions are altered the better it will be for those with whom I usually associate. It has created most of the difficulty we now have in education. But I think local authorities will welcome the speech which the President has made. No doubt large numbers to-morrow will read his speech with a good deal of interest. It is true that local authorities have almost reached the limit of what they can bear, and I am quite certain we shall all be very glad to hear that larger Grants are to come their way, and educationists will welcome this speech and will welcome the Bill if it follows the line of the speech.
Organisation of education is long overdue and, as we have it now, it is not satisfactory to any party which believes in good education, and especially is that true as it applies to secondary education, of which I have had some experience in the working—indeed, I have served on a great school board and also had some experience in connection with secondary education. This scheme, as outlined by the President, promises better things all round. The educational ladder, according to what he has told us, will have its foot in the elementary school and its head in the university. As far as I can under-

1977
stand his speech, what he proposes, if carried into law, will give ability on the part of boys and girls a better chance than ability has yet had. There are many pupils, especially in secondary schools, whose ability far transcends the ability of their parents to pay for such education as they may be called upon to pay. I think, further, what he has outlined, carried into actual effect, will tend to lessen the class distinctions among us which are so very hateful to some of us. I should like to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman proposes, in connection with this Bill, to destroy religious tests for teachers? Unless he does, I can promise him that there will be not a little opposition to this Bill. I can only speak for myself, but if it does not destroy tests for teachers in schools maintained by public funds, he will have more difficulty with his Bill than he has yet imagined. I should rather judge from what he has said that by and by we shall have some reference to the education difficulty, and if he has found a way out of it, I shall most heartily assist, as far as I can, in carrying this Bill into law. And I believe, from the way he has dealt with the matter, that he thinks he sees his way out of the difficulty, and, if so, he is on the highway to peace in education.
Sir HENRY HIBBERT: I should not have intervened in this Debate, except that as chairman of a large education authority with a considerable amount of experience, particularly in the working of the 1902 Act, I thought it was my duty so to do. I regret exceedingly that the denominational question has at all cropped up in this Debate, because it appears to me that we are dealing simply with a Bill of one Clause, the subject of which is money, and money only. I suppose we ought to be thankful for small mercies. Therefore, I am thankful that we have got £150,000 out of the Treasury. Whenever I have gone to the Board of Education for more money, it has always been the Treasury who would not grant it. During the short time I have been in this House I have often wished that there was some means of getting at the Treasury. I presume there is, but I have not yet discovered it. The President of the Board of Education promises a Grant of £100,000 towards loans for the cost incurred in the building of schools. When I tell you that the commitments of the Committee of which I am Chairman amount to something like £760,000 on capital account
1978
for elementary schools, and £240,000 on account of secondary schools, you will see that our share of the Grant will be an exceedingly small one. Therefore, while I welcome very much indeed this very small mercy in the shape of a
£100,000 towards loans, I regret exceedingly, as representing a large county council, that the Grant is not infinitely greater. I also notice that there is to be a Grant of £50,000 towards medical inspection. I take it that it is partly for medical inspection, and partly for after care. At any rate, that in itself is a substantial addition to the amount which the right hon. Gentleman announced on the Education Estimates. Therefore, for that we are grateful.
A great deal of the talk of the Debate in the earlier part of the day hinged upon the question of the supply of teachers. It seems to me that there is a dearth of teachers mainly from two causes: The first is money, and the second is want of sense. There is want of money in consequence of our huge commitments on education account. We are, therefore, unable to pay larger salaries to the teachers. The second reason is that the National Union of Teachers have themselves discouraged children from going into the teaching profession, because they said they would not get the remuneration which they deserved. I do not presume to criticise that opinion. A third reason is that we do not get the class of girls, particularly from the secondary day schools which, when we instituted the bursary system, we expected. The girl who goes as governess at a salary of £20 or £30 a year, the amount paid to a third-rate cook, and occupying positions like Mahomet's coffin, could, if she went into a day school as a teacher, get fair remuneration and lots of holidays, but unfortunately they have no position. Personally, I regret it exceedingly, because the secondary schools would have been magnificent recruiting ground for children who have not a sufficiency behind them, and at the same time it would have raised the atmosphere in the elementary day schools to a considerable extent. One would gather from the speeches made to-day that the elementary system in this country was somewhat of a failure. Well, I do not believe that. I consider that the elementary teaching in England and Wales is quite equal to anything given in Europe, but where we do fail undoubtedly is in our secondary education. It is not the system which is at fault at all. You cannot get students

1979
to stay sufficiently long at school. Yesterday I presented to the Lancashire Education Committee a statement of the duration of school life in our secondary schools, and it will perhaps astonish Members of this House if I say that in twenty-seven schools, entirely financed by the Lancashire Education Committee, the duration of school life among boys over twelve years of age was as follows:—One school, one year and eight months; one school, one year and ten months; one school, one year and eleven months; one school, one year and two months; two schools, two years and one month; one school, two years and eleven months; and three schools, three years and nine months. You cannot possibly get the full benefit of secondary education in our schools unless the children remain at school longer. I think that is one of the reasons why the ratepayers in this country say so much about the exorbitant amount of money we are spending on education. It is simply because we are not getting a fair return for what we spend, and I am bold enough to say that if children from the elementary schools who go to secondary schools are not prepared to stay longer than two years, it would be infinitely better if they never left the elementary day schools. What is the cause of this? The cause is the apathy of the parents.
Mr. JOHN WARD: Their want of means.
Sir H. HIBBERT: It is not want of means. In the secondary day schools in Lancashire, 88 per cent. of the children attending them come from the elementary day schools. Between a third and a half are there by scholarships and exhibitions, which pay for their education from twelve years of age, so long as they remain there. In spite of the fact that they enter with free exhibitions, and that the fees, even if they had to pay them, are not large, we cannot get the children to attend for the length of time they ought to do. I say that is owing to the apathy of the parents. It seems to be characteristic of the English nation, and there is no use burking the fact that education is not popular in this country. I was on a committee which took evidence in Glasgow and other places. We found that out of 110,000 children in average attendance, only fifty-two left before fourteen years of age. Is it any wonder at all that so many of the good positions
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in this country are occupied by Scotsmen? It is simply because fathers and mothers in Scotland attach infinitely more importance to the education of their children than parents do in this country. It is a hard and painful thing to say, but it is true. I am an Englishman, and I believe in my country, but until the people of this country take greater interest in education we shall not get that benefit out of education which we have a right to expect. As to the salaries of teachers, we are face to face with that difficulty in Lancashire in the same way as all over the country. In order to meet the difficulty we were dealing only yesterday with certificated teachers in small country schools where the average attendance is under 100. We gave a small increase in the salaries. That increase will cost £17,563 per annum, and there is no doubt that we shall have to follow up the increase. The rates will not stand it. Here I come back to the original proposition. Although the Education Department may not make Grants for increasing salaries, if they make Grants at all they will release other money and enable us to pay larger salaries to teachers, and to staff our schools properly. Until we do get larger Grants from the Board of Education it is absolutely impossible to do better work than we are doing to-day.
Mr. ALEXANDER HARVEY: I am very much gratified to be able to follow in this Debate the hon. Member for Chorley. He and I have discussed educational matters and joined in the administration of great educational problems for many years, and with most of his views to-night I am in agreement, though there are one or two points on which I may differ and I may be allowed to refer to those points later on. The hon. Member for Bucks earlier in the evening spoke about the difficulty and embarrassment which he felt in discussing a measure outlined as one of great importance of which he had not seen the details and which in its full scope he ventured to prophesy would not see the light of day. The President of the Board of Education has initiated an admirable method in the course which he has pursued. The action which he proposes to set on foot is action of a very grave and important character. Though all of us who desire educational advancement desire to see it soon I think that we are even more anxious to see that it should be on right lines, and I venture to predict that during the coming winter

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the President will receive as a result of his statement much valuable criticism from many people all over the country, who will have the opportunity of studying the outlines which he has placed before us. He indicates a very great advance in the education of this country, and we know perfectly well that the advance that he proposes can only be carried out at enormous cost. I do not think that the parents of this country will grudge that cost. At any rate those who understand the country's needs will be quite willing to subscribe thereto.
The President has been told again and again that his financial proposals are utterly inadequate. So they are; but at any rate the proposals which he makes and the financial assistance which he indicates are a recognition of the great needs of education in this country. I venture to hope that it will be followed up by more substantial ones later on. It is quite time that something was done to improve the education of our children, to open up the highways of education for the great masses of the people. The President of the Board of Education talked about the broad road over which many people could travel to great and improved educational results. I hope he will not forget that it is necessary to establish, not only one road, but several roads. It is not one broad road that leads to every place that is desired, and there are several places of arrival which it ought to be our ambition that the children of the country should reach. The universities are not the only apex of the educational system. I have not a word to say against the admirable secondary schools of this country, except this: that they have no right to the title of secondary school at all, because they are in no way secondary establishments of our elementary schools, if you consider these as primary schools. I rejoice that the President of the Board of Education has indicated that the result of some of his proposals will be a substantial rise in the standard of our elementary schools. Those elementary schools are the schools of the masses of the people of this country and always will remain so. The aspiration of that type of school was checked, as we all know, by the Cockerton judgment, and killed by the Education Act of 1902, and I rejoice to think that the best types of those schools are to be revived under the proposals of the Board of Education.
What we ask is that those schools of a high type should be made a great deal
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more general in the future than they have been in the past. From my experience, I am convinced that the secondary schools can never be the institutions in which the great bulk of the children of the country will receive a higher education. It is an economic impossibility to plant secondary schools within reach of every child in the country. It is a geographical impossibility that every child should reach and use the secondary school which the most generous. Chancellor of the Exchequer could agree to find. Very often the secondary school is quite ineffective for the purposes of the higher education of the elementary school child. The elementary school child of twelve years of age does not readily assimilate with the child of the same age in the secondary schools who has been there from the commencement of his educational career. I am not talking of class distinction or anything of that kind, but the method whereby these two types of children have been trained up to the age of twelve years has been entirely different. The elementary school child of twelve has been hurried along his educational progress with the view of making the best of a very short school career, because it has been expected that he would have to leave school and go to employment perhaps at the age of thirteen or fourteen. But the secondary school child who has been in a secondary school from the commencement has been much more leisurely and tenderly dealt with. The result on those two children has been quite different. I should say that the elementary school child of twelve is the better instructed child, while the secondary school child of twelve is the better educated child. The elementary school child knows more and the secondary school child is better educated, though perhaps less instructed in many subjects. The hon. Member for Chorley has told us that education in this country is unpopular and he laments the apathy of the parents, perhaps he would say almost their dislike or mistrust of education. I do not think that if the parents came into closer touch with the schools they would have this apathy which the hon. Member now laments, and I do not think they would oppose even the raising of the school age if they had more belief than they have in the education that we are giving.
There have been proposals before this House to raise the age of school attendance, and I, although I claim to be an educationist, have opposed them. I have

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done so for this reason: I do not think it is right that we should compulsorily retain children in schools for a longer period than heretofore unless we are prepared to find for those children during that extra period better teachers, more apparatus, and a higher type of education. The parents of Lancashire—and I am sure the hon. Member for Chorley holds them in as high respect and esteem as I do—are often accused of being very selfish and grudging in this matter. It has been said that they value the few shillings that a child can bring in far above the educational advantages that the child might receive at school. There are no doubt such parents, but to label all parents in this way is to do them a grave injustice. I firmly believe that the reason why a parent, as a rule, wishes to get his child away from school is that he does not believe in school. A parent, of course, believes that the child ought to be taught reading, writing, and a little knowledge of common, ordinary things. These, from long custom, have come to be considered essential, and so they are. But beyond that the parent does not believe in our schools. He says, "My child will have soon to go out into the world and make his living. I do not see what good the school is going to do to promote his future prosperity." I think that in the mind of many parents there is a fixed idea that it is wrong and dangerous to waste the child's time, that the child ought to get to work as soon as possible lest he should sink into that great army of unemployed and unemployable which the parents of working-class children see every day before their eyes.
10.0 P.M.
If the suggestions of the President of the Board of Education for the improvement of elementary schools can do something to link up the education of the child with its future career, a great deal will be done to remove this distrust and disbelief in education. I believe that the elementary schools ought to be improved for this purpose, and that then the school life of the child ought to be extended. It ought to he the rule that in every elementary school of 500 children, or over, there should be a "top"—exstandard classes, with good teachers and good apparatus, so that a child might be trained to fulfil its future destiny and become a prosperous citizen. I suggest further, that in every area of small schools one school ought to be selected
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at which this "top" could be placed, and the children should be drafted from the other schools in the area to the central school where they could receive this higher education. With regard to the teaching profession, I heard Lord Haldane make his speech some time ago, fore-shadowing the great policy about which the President of the Board has spoken to-day, and I feared that he was taking a view of the teaching profession which perhaps was not altogether desirable. At any rate I hope that nothing the President does will tend to separate the teaching profession, as a profession, from the class which uses the elementary schools. I think that that touch of the teacher with the children among whom he or she has been born is very valuable for both teacher and child. I hope that nothing will be done to remove the profession of teaching to what I might call the higher walks of life so that it becomes separated from the class of children who use the schools. I share in the desire of my hon. Friend (Sir Ryland Adkins) that something may be done to revive the local enthusiasm for education, which was killed when the small school boards were abolished, and that some little autonomy and sense of responsibility may be given to the smaller areas in the country.
Mr. CHARLES BATHURST: I welcome, as every member of any local education authority must welcome, any proposal to increase the amount of Grant passing into the hands of the local education authorities. There is, however, one feature in the larger scheme adumbrated by the right hon. Gentleman which I most sincerely regret, and that is that once again what I have always described as the religious squabble question is to be mixed up with the educational problem. If we are to consider next Session a great national scheme of education, let it be a scheme of education pure and simple. Do not let us revive all those ancient controversies which in the past have done more than anything else to hamper education as such and to cause division amongst ardent educationists who desire true educational progress. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that his present proposal will provide £50,000 towards the medical service of local education authorities. I suppose that that is in addition to the £60,000 provided last year for medical treatment—that is to say, there will be a sum total of £110,000?
Mr. PEASE: One hundred and thirty thousand pounds for this year.
Mr. BATHURST: I warmly welcome that. I only wish it were double the amount, because during the last few years the medical inspection of children has more and more disclosed sundry serious physical defects which render a very large proportion, something like 50 per cent., of the children in our elementary schools more or less unfitted for the education upon which the country is expending such an enormous amount of public money. To my mind it would be true economy and produce untold educational results if we endeavoured to remove this serious blot—to my mind the most serious blot now existing upon our elementary schools—by providing a sufficient sum out of public funds—and there could be no service more properly described as national—towards securing that the children should be not merely efficiently inspected but properly treated, so that they might so far as possible be rendered fit for the education provided for them. Reference has been made to the apathy of parents. It is a most unfortunate fact that working-class parents, as a rule, are apathetic about the education of their children. But I think we ought to look a little below the surface and consider why parents are apathetic. There are two main reasons. In the first place, the education in the past, at any rate, has not been sufficiently practical and has not borne sufficiently upon what is known to be the necessary work of the after-life.of the children to convince parents of its utility. Anything which the right hon. Gentleman can do to develop the practical side of education, particularly in the rural districts, will receive very warm sympathy so far as I and my rural colleagues are concerned. There is another fact which I should like to press on the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, and that is that parents who in that walk of life send their children to schools periodically receive reports as to the progress of those children, and are induced thereby to take a much keener and more real interest in their educational progress than they would otherwise do. As a rule, working-class parents receive no report whatever from the schools in order to enable them to realise whether their children are progressing or not. I should like to see the Board of Education impress on the local authorities—or, indeed, make it compulsory on the local authorities—to
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insist that at least once a year a report upon every single child in the elementary schools should go to the parents of that child, so as to enable those parents to realise the progress or otherwise of the child. I am quite sure it would aid greatly to remove a great deal of the existing apathy with regard to the education of working-class children.
The right hon. Gentleman has referred to intermediate education, as the particular group towards which he proposes to direct his main efforts. Speaking as a governor of three different secondary schools, I should like to say that I welcome most warmly the suggestion that he has made that in order to render this royal road of educational progress really effective, some-thing has got to be done to make good the insufficient link between the elementary school and the secondary school. A certain distinguished statesman has laid considerable emphasis outside this House on the importance of the university. To my mind, the importance of the university to working-class children is very small indeed. A very small proportion of the whole of the children being educated in the elementary schools are unlikely under any circumstances to receive the benefit of university education. But, considering that we are spending nearly £30,000,000 of public money upon our elementary education, surely it is sheer waste of money if you do not ensure that something more than a paltry 5 per cent. that now passes to a higher grade of education should have the benefit of something which is more really education than anything they will find in the elementary schools. What does the elementary school do? It teaches the child to learn, and practically nothing more, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and just at the time when that child is taught how to learn, its education ceases altogether. There will be real waste of public money unless, and until we provide compulsory secondary education for all those children who are really capable of benefiting by it. Reference has been made to class distinction. I am very sorry to say my experience is that you cannot, although very desirable in theory, banish all class distinction, unfortunately, altogether from your secondary schools, and the class that you would imagine is least likely to emphasise those class distinctions is just the very class that is very largely responsible—I refer to what is vulgarly known as the lower middle class. Amongst that class those social distinctions are

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emphasised to a far greater extent than amongst the class which a large number of Members of this House belong. I do not see how you are going to get over it. I wish I did.
The right hon. Gentleman has pointed out that something like 15,000 secondary schools, though I am not quite sure of the figure, exist of which the Board have no knowledge whatever. He went on to illustrate the defects of some of those schools as the result of a partial local inquiry which had been instituted, with his knowledge. I would like to point out that in a large number of those private schools of which there is no official knowledge most excellent training is given to the children in those schools, and they are largely manned, particularly so far as headmasters are concerned, with a particularly able and well educated body of men. But I quite agree with him that it is utterly impossible to tackle this secondary school problem until the Board of Education gains greater access to those schools and knows more of what is going on inside. How is he going to do it? He suggested that because education is compulsory, and children are brought before the magistrates if they are not being educated somewhere, and have to satisfy the magistrates that they are being educated somewhere, that therefore that would be sufficient excuse for opening the doors of those schools to admit His Majesty's inspectors. At least that is the way I understood his argument. That is all very well, but I am afraid that, in fact, he will find that there will be considerable resentment against any access except as a condition of a Grant.
Mr. PEASE: Several hundreds of schools already give access such as Harrow any many others, which have no Grant.
Mr. BATHURST: I am perfectly well aware that there are a large number which voluntarily submit to inspection. I wish a larger number did. The larger public schools, Harrow for instance, are sensible enough and liberal-minded enough to realise that they will benefit rather than suffer from inspection by His Majesty's Government inspector; but if the right hon. Gentleman imagines he is going to get those 15,000 schools to follow the lead of Harrow without any Grants from public funds as an excuse for right of entry, I am afraid he is destined, to some extent, to
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be disappointed. I should like to express my regret at the position adopted by the right hon. Gentleman when he says that the matter of the position of the teachers rests with the local education authorities. There is no department of educational work which, to my mind, should rest to a great extent with the Board of Education than the position of the teachers in our elementary schools, because there is no department upon which the Board encroaches to a greater extent, or about which it, to a greater extent, limits the discretion of the local education authorities. The Board of Education says what size the classes should be and the grade of the teachers teaching in the schools, and whether they should be certificated or uncertificated or otherwise, and in effect forces the local education authorities to pay higher salaries than it is possible for them to do with the present heavy rate burden to pay. It is not fair to the teacher with the steadily increasing cost of living. There is no class in the whole country—and I say it with considerable knowledge of that class—which suffers to a greater extent from the inadequacy of their remuneration than the school teachers in our elementary schools throughout the country. They deserve a social position, considering the importance of their work and the way in which they are looked up to in every village in the country—a much higher social position than they can attain with the small salaries which are being given to them. Why does not the Board of Education courageously step into the field and say, "We will relieve the local authorities altogether of this branch of expenditure, about which we are so dictatorial, and we will simply leave upon their shoulders the other expenses which they have to bear in the field of education." It would be an extremely popular suggestion with the local education authorities, and it would be very popular to teachers themselves, and would avoid that perpetual friction which goes on between the local authorities on the one hand, and the National Union of Teachers on the other. It is that friction which does more to cause a lack of harmony in matters of education in rural districts than any other fact. I am very glad that at last the basis of the Grant to elementary schools is at least going to be altered in regard to the average attendance at schools. Personally I should like to see that basis of the Grant abolished altogether; I think that

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the average attendance is a wholly wrong basis, but, if we are going to have an average attendance basis let us have it, as the right hon. Gentleman now suggests, over a large area, and thereby not put the premium that you are to-day putting on having in your schools children who are physically unfit to receive the education provided for them. To my knowledge a large number of children in my own county are being kept at school—though sometimes they are really the cause of an epidemic—simply from fear of the school losing the Grant owing to reduced attendance. Therefore, I welcome any alteration of that plan, and I hope that before next Session the right hon. Gentleman will alter it altogether by abolishing average attendance at the school as the basis of the Government Grant.
Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: I should like to join in the congratulations of the President of the Board of Education upon the introduction of this Bill, and also upon the wider statement he has made upon the future outlook of education. As a Durham man, I feel proud of the fact that the President of the Board of Education is also a Durham man, and I am quite sure that all those in my county who are interested in educational matters will be delighted at the prospect of an education scheme next year. Before I deal with the Bill, I should like to call attention to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South Bucks (Sir A. Cripps), who severely blamed the Government for not giving larger Grants to the local authorities towards the cost of education. Almost every speaker to-night has devoted his attention to denouncing the Government for not giving larger Grants towards the cost of education. The hon. Member for South Bucks pointed out that a sum equal to eight and a half millions more is now raised—and I believe that the hon. Member for Sunderland also pointed out the same fact—than was raised before the Act of 1902 became law. Why is it that hon. Members do not put the blame on the right shoulders? That is the thing which surprises me. Every man who speaks as coming from an educational authority, like the hon. Member for Chorley, who is chairman of the Lancashire County Education Committee, knows as well as I, who formerly was a member of the Durham Education Committee, that the greater cost of education is due to the Act of 1902, and is not due to the present
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Government. I hope to give some very interesting figures to prove what the facts are under that great Act of 1902; I call it a great Act, because I believe that, although it has cost a great deal, it has done a great work in providing better education, especially in the higher branches of it. The hon. and learned Member for South Bucks went on to suggest what I regard as a most extravagant system of education, and one which I hope the President of the Board of Education will not accept. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman rather foreshadowed what would happen in the future—I refer to single school areas and transferring the whole case of education to the Exchequer. I am one of those who believe that if you have dual schools in every parish, it would be a most costly system of education. That, in my opinion, would be a most suicidal policy. Great educational authorities that now are accounted progressive are endeavouring, as far as possible, to consolidate these small schools, thereby saving the cost of double staff and double cost; not only to the ratepayers, but also to the Exchequer. It would be most certainly suicidal on the part of the Government to put down a new school where you have an existing school. The hon. Member who spoke last suggested that sectarian bitterness should be set aside in the forthcoming discussion. I quite agree with him. I do think this, that all, especially on the Protestant side, those who believe in the Protestant religion—that is to say, the Churchmen and the Nonconformists—should unite. There is no reason why they should not unite in providing one school where either Churchman or Nonconformist could send his child.
Let me illustrate what I mean. In the county of Durham since the 1902 Act came into operation in 1904, we have transferred to the county no less than 45,000 children who were formerly in Church of England schools. I think that is the largest transfer of any county in the country. I can say, having been a member of that county education committee, ever since the time I refer to, that there has not been a single complaint from a single parent in the county—not one! I have made the statement before in the House that not a single complaint has come from any parent before the committee in relation to that transfer from Church to Council schools. In fact the parents are, I feel quite certain,

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all more or less delighted to send their children to better schools, which are better equipped, and where they will receive on the whole a much better education. So far, therefore, as the Protestant children are concerned, I am certain that there would be no difficulty in providing one school for the whole of the Protestant children in one particular parish. It would be a most suicidal policy to have the doubling of your schools, and all the extra cost. Let me call attention to the statement of the hon. Member for Rochdale in which he made, I think, a very practical suggestion—one which I hope the Board of Education will take into consideration—in regard to the connection between the elementary school and the secondary school. I quite agree with him that if you are to have a larger number of boys and girls going from the elementary to the secondary schools, you must establish in all the principal centres—and I am glad to say some local education authorities are doing so, and in the county of Durham they are doing it—one of two things. You must have a higher elementary school in every populous centre, or you must have upper standards schools, where you will concentrate all your best boys and girls from the elementary schools. I believe by that means you will have a very large number of boys and girls going from the elementary to the secondary school; more so than you have at the present time.
We must understand this, that before 1902, in many of our large counties and many of our large towns, we had not 1 per cent. of the boys and girls in the secondary schools. We have now in some counties as many as 6 per cent. going to the secondary schools, which is a great advance. I should like to refer to the question of the teachers' salaries. I do not agree with the last speaker, that we should transfer the cost of the teachers' salaries to the Exchequer, and for this reason: If you transfer the cost of the teachers' salaries to the Exchequer the local authorities cannot have that control over them that I think is desirable. The Government propose to give an extra Grant, but I think as long as you have that dual control with the local education committee managing the work, you must have them as far as possible regulating the appointment and the dismissal of teachers. If you were to transfer the whole cost to die State I am afraid the control, which I
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regard as very essential, would be very much mitigated. With regard to the present Bill, I am bound to say I am disappointed with the proposals of the Government. We have to be content with small mercies. I am very much surprised that the Government should consider it necessary to give a Grant towards medical inspection, because I regard the cost of medical inspection as being very insignificant and infinitesimal. I will give the figures for the county of Durham, which are important because they have been analysed. In six years the cost of education in that county has gone up per scholar from 53s. 11d. to 73s. 7d., or an increase of 19s. 8d. Medical inspection has cost only 6d. out of that increase of 19s. 8d., and, therefore, the increased cost of medical inspection is infinitesimal in comparison with the others. The cost of teachers has gone up 10s. 11d. per scholar, the loans charges have gone up 4s. 3d., and maintenance has gone up 3s. 4d. So the great increase in the county Durham, and I believe you can say the same of every other county and town responsible for education, is due to the cost of the increase of salaries now paid to teachers in voluntary schools, which have become a charge upon the rates, and the increased salaries we are now compelled to pay to the teachers. I think the present Grant of £100,000 is totally inadequate to meet the requirements of the country, and I should like to suggest to the President of the Board of Education that in the scheme for next year, instead of giving a general Grant, the Board of Education ought to adopt the same plan with regard to the building of public schools, both elementary and secondary, that they have now with regard to training colleges.
To the training colleges the Government contribute 75 per cent. of the cost of the building and the land, and there should be a similar contribution to the cost of building elementary schools and secondary schools; I do not say the same proportion, but the same principle should be adopted, and then we should have a very large addition towards helping our local authorities to build those schools. There is another very important matter which arises from the operation of the Act of 1902, and that is the Necessitous Grant. That is a Grant which I hope the President of the Board of Education will abolish because it cannot stand under the existing law. It is based on Section 10 of the Education Act of 1902,

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which provides that where the penny rate does not produce 10s. per scholar in average attendance then there is a decrease in the Grant, or otherwise that particular town will only get the 4s. and not the additional Grant. In the town I represent that works out in this way. The town I represent estimated that under this Grant they were going to receive £2,200, but owing to the fact that the assessable value is based upon the county basis instead of the borough basis, the Grant produced £897 instead of £2,200. That has been a very serious charge upon the town. With this decrease in the Necessitous Grant of something like £1,300, plus the cost of extra schools which the town has been compelled to build, the education rate rose last year from 1s. 8d, in the to 2s. 1d. How is it possible for a town to go on paying 2s. 1d. in the £ for education, when other parts of the country are perhaps paying 5d. or 6d. in the £, or even less? The fact is that where a town is progressive and where they have to build new schools and provide for the growth of population it becomes a very serious charge upon that town and county. For these reasons I think that the Grant which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to give under this Bill is totally inadequate. I hope he will reconsider this matter and give extra Grants to those towns where the penny is producing upon the county basis slightly above the 10s. I think that is a very hard case where the ratepayers are crying out against this demand. I congratulate the President upon the great scheme which he foreshadows for next year, and I express the hope that he will again be at the head of the Education Department to launch his scheme in the form of a measure, which I hope will be a success not only in this House, but in the country.
Mr. RAWLI NSON: Most of the speakers this evening have expressed their gratification that a Grant of £150,000 is going to be made for educational purposes. Why should it be necessary to have Grants of this character now, and why were they not included in the Estimates at an earlier period of the Session? Why has it been found necessary to bring in Supplementary Estimates. It does seem to me that when you are making such an important departure from the ordinary financial custom, somebody ought to take note of it and protest against the financial wrong which has been done. The right hon. Gentleman, of course, gave
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us an exceedingly interesting speech, though it was possibly somewhat sketchy of the reforms we are to have in education next year. He said, quite rightly, that it is useless spending money upon buildings and various other matters unless we see that the teachers are properly remunerated, but there has been a matter before the President of the Board of Education for a considerable period, and that is the pension scheme for secondary teachers, about which there has been considerable delay. Before I am going to be led away by those castles in the air which the right hon. Gentleman has been building for my edification this afternoon, I want that overdue matter of reform dealt with at once and speedily. I see by "Whitaker's Almanack," which I believe is sometimes submitted to Government Departments before it is published, that there is this statement:—
"So far as concerns schools in receipt of a Government Grant; the provision of a pension scheme is virtually secured by the promise of the Chancellor of the Exchequer given to a deputation of secondary teachers in May last, but it is not certain that private and preparatory schools will also be included, Under this proposal teachers would pay £7 yearly towards an annuity, and the State would give £1 to the annuity for each year of recorded service. After thirty-five years it, is expected that a teacher would secure a pension of at least £100. This scheme lets yet to be approved, but the Government stands pledged to £1 yearly for each year of recorded service."
I should very much like to know whether that statement is correct: and whether the Government is pledged to £1 yearly for each year of recorded service. I should he even more grateful for an occasional £1 in the hand than the chances of very much larger sums next year. A Committee has been appointed which has really caused very gross delay in dealing with the matter. Apparently, the powers given it were scarcely understood by anybody, and the services of the Committee were rendered nugatory. I do hope that when dealing with these large sums this small matter may at least be effectively dealt with. I wish every success to the wider schemes of the right hon. Gentleman, but I am afraid that the wide road which he suggests everybody should treat will only lead to destruction if he does not look after the interests of the teachers.
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Trevelyan): I do not know how soon the House will wish to give my right hon. Friend leave to introduce this Bill, but perhaps I may make a few remarks now. With regard to the question put by the last speaker, the same Grant is going to be

1995
given to secondary schools as well as to elementary schools. But we cannot give the details at this moment, as a Committee is dealing with the matter. I hope, however, there will not be undue delay. My right hon. Friend may, I think, be satisfied with the general reception accorded to his proposals. The Debate has, in the main, shown a sense of relief that there is at last some realisation, after a long period of demand, of certain concessions to the local authorities. There is no complete satisfaction. Some of my hon. Friends who represent necessitous areas still remain markedly discontented, but I should like to point out to them that, although their case is not met this year, there never was held out any hope it would be met this year, and, as far as it goes, they, as well as the other local authorities, are getting this new money altogether unexpectedly—they are getting their share of it. Still, I do not press this too much. After all, this £150,000 which is being provided by the Government is a very real Grant. One of the chief complaints which we have been subjected to during the last few years has been with regard to medical inspection and treatment. We have had deputation after deputation, and demand after demand, that we should pay a large part of the expenditure which has fallen on local authorities for medical inspection and subsequent medical treatment. I do not think any of the demands put forward by local authorities have been higher than that we should pay a half. Approximately we are proposing, under this Bill, to pay one-half of the whole of the expenditure, and the £100,000 towards loan charges is, I think, one of the best ways for helping local education authorities—at any rate, it is one of the ways in which they have most frequently requested that it should be made. Above all, I would point out to the House that my right hon. Friend has made it clear that these Grants are only an instalment of a much larger one that is coming next year. To my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, who is particularly interested in necessitous school areas, I may point out that the system foreshadowed next year by my-right hon. Friend will in effect abolish necessitous school areas and deal with them in a more effective way. Indeed, the dealing with poor districts is an essential part of the new system—there will be dealing with poor districts on a far more
1996
systematic basis than the casual and temporary system hitherto applied.
Mr. COOPER: I wished to speak for necessitous school areas, but no one has had an opportunity so far of doing so.
Mr. TREVELYAN: One hon. Member has, I think, referred to them. With regard to the large question which has been under general discussion to-day there are two main aspects—two main lines of change to which my right hon. Friend is looking forward. The hon. Member for Chorley (Sir H. Hibbert) emphasised the fact that the great gap in our educational system was in the secondary or intermediate part of our education work. I believe that there is a great possibility of advance in this direction, which has been proved by our experience during the last few years. I notice one very marked thing in our experience during the ten years since the Act of 1902 was brought into operation. The local education authorities have had no absolute obligation to deal with secondary or intermediate education. Nevertheless, and in spite of the pressure upon them not to extend the rates, they have, almost uniformly throughout England, shown a very great eagerness to use their powers within their limited means. During these ten years we have made in secondary education a far more remarkable advance than most people are apt to acknowledge. The number of schools on the Grant list has gradually more than doubled. The number of schools provided by the local education authorities has more than quadrupled. If you take the number of girls' secondary schools, there are three times as many on the Grant list and aided by local authorities than there were ten years ago. That represents a great advance, and an advance which has been made by these authorities in spite of the difficulties they have had with their constituents, showing a real willingness and keenness for education on the part of the authorities which have been established under the Act of 1902.
There is another thing, these ten years have proved to encourage us. We have had conclusive proof of the success of higher education in the case of children who come from the public elementary schools. Probably some ten years ago there was some lingering old notion that the poorer classes could not really benefit by higher education. My right hon. Friend to-day dealt with

1997
that very remarkable development, the Workers' Education Association, but I will take the secondary schools. To-day you have got one-third of the children in these State schools who' are free placers coming originally from the public elementary schools. You have this further fact, which strikes very remarkably those at the Board of Education who have to administer the Grants and watch the inspection of these schools, that whereas frequently when we have insisted that in return for the State Grant there should be a large number of free places in the schools, and whereas, in the first instance, there was often shown the greatest resistance from the local managers and the governors of schools, that opposition almost invariably tends to die down, because, in the first place, if the school has peculiar traditions and if what is known as the tone of the school is high, that is not seriously injured by the introduction of these free places; and, secondly, almost universally, we find that the actual industry of the school is greater. These things are a happy augury to the large advance which my right hon. Friend will be asking the House to undertake. There are, of course, very serious obstacles. One of them was referred to just now by the hon. Member for Chorley in the very interesting speech he made I think it is the greatest difficulty which the advance of education has to face in England, that is the difficulty of getting children to stop long enough in the schools to make their education worth while. I am glad to see a great county like Lancashire adopting a course which the hon. Gentleman (Sir H. Hibbert) has asked it to adopt, requiring parents, if they send their children to secondary schools, to keep them there for three years in order that the education which they get may be really effective, and really leave them better and more educated young people than they would be if they had simply stayed in the elementary schools. I can assure hon. Members who feel dangers of a great advance of this sort without due precautions, like the hon. Baronet (Sir W. Anson), who said we must guard against lowering the standard, that we are most anxious, in making any such great advance as this, that in no sense shall the standard be lowered as the result. We do not merely want members; we want quality as well. We want to build up where the Act of 1902 was incomplete. It was incomplete inasmuch as it did not effectively deal with the stage
1998
of life between the years of fourteen and eighteen in the life of the young people. There are not yet enough schools. My belief is that if only you provide schools, you will find that the children will go to them. There is not yet enough variety of schools. There is not yet enough distinction made to provide for all the different kinds of education which children want. It is not only literary, it is not only a practical education, and it is not only tecnhical education that you ought to provide. Not enough money is offered to enable the local authority to act boldly in the provision of all these kinds of education. There is not enough attention to the physical training of the children who have left the elementary schools, and there is not nearly enough money provided for the ordinary management of the schools in order to provide effective teachers. An Act of Parliament cannot do all this, but the two ideas which are outlined in my right hon. Friend's speech point the way, first of all, his determination to provide more money, and, secondly, his proposal that each authority shall, in the sphere of intermediate education review the whole position, with the assistance of the Board of Education, and provide a scheme which will really go into all these questions and make the intermediate and advanced education in their district thoroughly efficient and thoroughly satisfactory.
There is another defect in the Act of 1902 which has left a condition of ill feeling and discontent. I rejoice that in this Debate almost the only thing that has been said on the other side with regard to the religious question is what was said by the hon. Baronet (Sir W. Anson), that he admitted the grievance of the single school areas. That attitude of mind on the part of the Opposition is certainly a hopeful augury. Although undoubtedly there must be over the religious question whenever we deal with education some controversy, I think ibis likely to be more fairly dealt with if it is part of a national settlement in which a vast number of men take a profound interest who are not primarily interested in the religious topic. The local authorities have during the last ten years shown themselves to be extremely impartial administrators of the Act, except in a few cases on one side or the other. Generally speaking, they have been impartial administrators, and I am bound to say that I think if the local authorities take an interest in this

1999
reform which my right hon. Friend has introduced, they are very unlikely to allow his project to be wrecked on the religious question. The more general the interest there can be in the reform, the less likely we are to have wreckage on that thorny question. As a matter of fact, there was one thing which the hon. Member for the Chorley Division (Sir H. Hibbert) said which I do not at all agree with. He said education in England was unpopular. I do not believe it. During the past four years when I have been going about the country, sometimes opening schools and meeting people in the localities on education platforms, I have been struck with the fine assemblies of citizens of all classes, parties, and creeds, which you get at any education function. It is the same all over the country—in Essex and Lancashire, in Northumberland and Glamorganshire. It is one of the greatest interests upon which you can find spontaneous, real, and warm enthusiasm among people of all kinds who show a desire to do real public service. I think it is the most unifying interest that exists at the present moment in our English life. If anyone says to me that the English people do not care for education, I think he says what is not true. What the Englishman dislikes is paying rates for education, but my firm belief is that, if only the nation is liberal in the matter of finance, if only the financial projects of my right hon. Friend will be allowed to materialise, we are on the eve of a very great advance in education which will be shared in by all classes and all parties.
11.0 P.M.
Mr. COOPER: I wish to express the views of the old necessitous school areas. There are many of us who are grievously disappointed with regard to the action of the Board of Education as to these Grants. I wish to make it quite clear why we feel disappointment. There was, at any rate, an understanding—I might describe it as a pledge—that certain necessitous areas throughout Great Britain would get what was equal to three-fourths of any excess over a 1s. 6d. rate, and for some time that principle was followed. In 1909 I think it was recognised, and perfectly rightly, by the Beard of Education that there were other districts which had not originally been given the advantage of these Grants, but which were fully entitled to consideration, and they were very properly brought into
2000
a share of those Grants. But on the other hand, as a result, instead of the Grants being increased for the purpose of meeting these additional areas brought in the sum total of £350,000 was not altered, with the consequence that these older necessitous areas after receiving the Grant for some years suddenly found the total cut shorter and shorter. In my own particular Constituency the shortage within the last two years from the Grant that they were promised years ago, is a loss of a 2¼d. rate. That happens to come at a time when the ordinary education rate of that borough has been necessarily increased by 2½d. to meet the normal increase in the expenditure mainly due to a very wise and necessary increase in teachers' salaries. So this year in this borough we require a 4¾d. additional rate on top of a two shilling rate. In this case, which I believe is representative of other districts in the country, it is a burden that the district cannot stand. Eighty per cent. of the people in my Constituency are purely working class people. Out of 19,000 houses there are only 500 whose rent is over £20 a year. A penny rate brings in only £900.
Simple facts like those must make it clear to the Government that such areas as that cannot possibly maintain the burden of education which is now thrust upon them. What action are such districts driven to in order to save their own skins? In my own Constituency—unwisely as I told them—they have made up their minds that they are going to obviate in this coming autumn and in the next twelve months the permissive part of the Education Act. As hon. Members know, that means that in a purely industrial working class constituency when technical education is arrested, as I am sorry to say I understand that they absolutely have got to do, the next seven years are not going to pick it up again. There is no use in our talking in this House and boasting about the importance of education and bringing up the poorest of the people, if you are going to starve these districts to which I have referred in this particular manner. The President of the Board of Education has met us in a very sympathetic manner, and I do not want to express my feelings too strongly, but when we have' urged this matter upon him and his colleagues—and this is my complaint with regard to his speech and the One Clause Bill which he has brought in—when we have met him and his colleagues we have been received with the fullest sympathy. Our claim has not been disputed.

2001
We have been met by the statement, with which I am sorry to say we were more or less satisfied for the time being, because we believed it, that the Government could not find any additional money and were not going to do so. I need only remind the House that the Budget this year provides, under very doubtful circumstances, a margin of only £185,000. In view of that fact I could quite understand any representative of the Government legitimately pointing out that we were only one of a number of bodies who have appealed to them for relief, and that it was obviously impossible to make small doles here and small doles there. But when we find that last Friday the Scottish Members were able to get £42,000 for medical attendance in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland—no doubt it is very necessary—and that to-day without any pressure the Government voluntarily offer this £150,000 for additional medical treatment and building and construction work, while all we wanted was some £80,000 to carry out a pledge of the Government, can Ministers find much fault with us if we on.this side begin to ask ourselves "When are we to believe what a Minister says?" Hon. Members who have spoken to-day, no doubt with sincerity, about the importance of education generally cannot ignore such cases as those which I have mentioned. I only hope that the facts I have stated may have the ultimate result of compelling the Government at the earliest possible date to find a proper means of giving relief.
On the general subject the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Goldstone) made what T regard as one of the most inportant contributions to the Debate. He emphasised the fact that in putting forward an ambitious ideal scheme of education it is unpractical for the President to confine his ideas entirely to his own Department. If we want to attain the highest practical ideal in education it is impossible to ignore the general social difficulties which beset the children who are to receive that education. The hon. Member for Sunderland referred to the advance made by the United States as compared with this country in the matter of education, and gave as an illustration that the United States, in furtherance of their system of combining social reform with education, have precluded the importation into their country of labour from those other countries that is carried out by children of fourteen years or under. An hon. Member appealed to the Govern-
2002
ment, and I join willingly with him in that appeal, that they should not listen to the Chambers of Commerce in this country, if it was a fact that any Chambers of Commerce have made an appeal—and I can hardly believe it is possible, and I saw a number of them last night—to the Government to withstand this regulation of the United States, and all I can say is if that request has come from the Chambers of Commerce, I sincerely hope that the Government will turn it down with a very polite refusal.
The last point to which I wish to refer is one which gives me a great deal of difficulty and that is in trying to frame in my own mind what the Government is going to do with regard to education as outlined by the President of the Board to-day. In the first place most hon. Members have been so congratulatory to the President for what he has outlined, "this great policy" "reform" and coming down to the Parliamentary Secretary who described it much more truly, as ideal, but we have no proposals. The right hon. Gentleman appealed both to this House and to the country to look at his proposals as a whole. I have heard no proposals. It is not a policy to express broad ideas as to what we should generally like to attain as regards education. I do not believe that ninety-nine people out of a hundred people would differ from the main part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but when he or any other hon. Member of either party comes to translate those ambitions into practice, that is when they come to frame a policy and definite proposals, that is a very different matter indeed. I think the President of the Board himself cannot be oblivious of the fact that three of his colleagues and by no means undistinguished Members of the Government, have lamentably failed in trying to translate those great ideals into action, and one cannot help feeling that he is a little bold in supposing that he can sail to complete success where those three Members of the Government failed so disastrously in 1908 and 1909.
The thought that would naturally occur to anyone listening to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to-day is, why is it that the Government suddenly want to bring in a one Clause Bill dealing with one small part of the problem of education? Why do they not permit the head of this Department to go and wander over the whole field of education? Are they going to put

2003
up one head of a Department after another to outline the great ambitions that this Government have as to performances.during the next or some following Session? There is only one possible interpretation that we can put upon this extraordinary action to-day, and it is this, that the President of the Board of Education is put up by the Government because they realise they have been frittering away the time of the House and of the country for some years when they ought to have been dealing with this problem they tackled in 1908 and so lamentably failed in carrying to a conclusion. It is an electioneering speech, and I suppose education is to take its part in a campaign, in time to be followed by a General Election next April or May. [An HON. MEMBER: "June."] Or June—some time next year. What other interpretation can we on this side of the House put upon the fact of such a mean Bill of one Clause dealing with education being used to go into the whole area of education? For any Members of the House to suggest—if the speech of the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon is followed by a General Election—that there is a mandate for the Government's dealing with the great and serious problems which underly the whole of education, is travesty, and in my opinion is allied to their bold suggestion that the Government have at the present time a mandate for Home Rule.
Mr. KING: There are several aspects of this case which I think entirely satisfactory. First of all there has been no speech from the other side which has not expressed some approval or other of the President of the Board of Education and of his Bill. I think that is satisfactory.
Mr. COOPER: I did not express any.
Mr. KING: The hon. Member for Walsall said that he went to the Board of Education and that he got a great deal of sympathy. That is a great deal more than he deserves. There is every appearance that though this Bill was not contemplated in the King's Speech at the beginning of the Session it will pass into law. I hope it will. I think it ought to be an encouraging thing to the Government to go on, not with small instalments of a policy, but with a large policy and a bold policy in this as in other things. Another thing I should like especially to call attention to in connection with the Debate
2004
this evening, is that we have actually had a debate on education without any bitterness at all, especially any religious bitterness. Reference has been made to the religious question, but it has been done in a way, in my opinion, quite proper. I shall try and follow on the same lines. I want to begin by pointing out that the Government evidently has a great belief in the budget and of its expansive powers, because although the Chancellor of the Exchequer's budget speech foreshadowed a very small surplus, yet the Government, already in connection with the additional expenditure on the Navy, and the additional expenditure on National Insurance, and now this additional expenditure of £150,000 on education, which, added up make a sum of about £600,000, I am not certain myself where the money will come from, but it is quite possible that it will be found to have been produced at the end of the year without there being a deficiency, and it is quite possible we shall find that no extra taxation is necessary in next year's budget. I hope it will be so.
At the same time this is a question that has not been touched upon, and it is to my mind a question to cause anxiety. I do not want particularly to see additional taxation, but I would sooner have it than starve the education of the country, and that has been done recently in more ways than one. There was one serious omission in the speech of the President of the Board of Education. He made no reference that I heard to removing, either in this Bill or the Bill to follow next year, to the question of the removal of tests for teachers. I endorse the remarks of the hon. Member for Colne Valley on this subject. Until you grapple fairly with, and settle finally, this question of tests for teachers you will not have a satisfactory condition of education in the country. In 1906 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham made a most eloquent and powerful appeal in this House for the total abolition of tests for teachers. I trust very much that those who follow his lead, though he is not now amongst us, when the Bill comes up next year, will help towards a unanimous feeling on both sides of the House for the abolition of tests for teachers. I am quite willing to consent to certain modifications in connection with the appointment of teachers, and the appointment of a certain class of teachers, in limited numbers, to a

2005
certain class of schools. But the principle of tests for teachers must go if we are to have any finality and freedom from friction in the working of our educational system. Let me assure the President of the Board of Education that this is a very serious matter in connection with the training of teachers.
I could point to families from whom many teachers have come, fathers having sent their sons and daughters into the teaching profession, who now, being Nonconformists, declare that the outlook for teachers is so extremely poor that they will no longer send their children into the profession. As soon as you abolish tests for teachers you will have a rise in the status of the profession: you will encourage entry into it, and you will do a great deal towards removing the shortage of teachers that is now evident. Let me point out in this connection how this matter now works in most of the large educational authorities. They only appoint as head teachers in large schools those teachers who have already been head teachers in small schools. The usual rule is you find all large schools are council schools and small schools are Church schools, and it is only Churchmen who are eligible for head teachers in small schools, and therefore by the ladder of progress adopted by these educational authorities from small schools to large schools it is practically impossible for Nonconformists to become head teachers at all. I could quote figures on this point to show that with large authorities where the great mass of the people are Nonconformists, teachers who are Churchmen get five or six times the chance in these favoured localities of becoming head teachers that the Nonconformists get. That is obviously unfair and makes it very unattractive in these circumstances for Nonconformists to enter the teaching profession.
Another failing I observed in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman was the way in which he treated the local authorities. Apparently with few modifications he anticipated that very little change will have to be made in the power and in the distribution of power amongst the local authorities. At the present time as he pointed out there are several different classes of local authorities. You have those local authorities that have power over elementary education and secondary education; you have local authorities that have power over elementary education
2006
and no power over secondary education; you have those that have power over elementary education and very partial or restricted power over secondary education. Then you have large authorities, and a great deal too large to be handy, and some that are so small that they are really quite inadequate for proper administration, and they are also because of the small size extremely costly to the ratepayers. I hope when the Bill next year comes before us we shall find that this point is largely developed on the lines I suggest, and that it will contain provisions a great deal more advanced than those indicated by the President of the Board of Education.
I proceed to deal now with one or two other matters which in my opinion are very great failings either in the administration of the Board of Education or in the Act of 1902, and which I think ought to be certainly remedied before long by legislation. The first of these is one I have already referred to before in this House, and I shall continue to do so as often as I can, even at late hours, because it is a crying scandal. I mean the way in which the Fee Grant is administered and the way in which very poor children even in rich towns are turned away from school unless they bring a penny with them on Monday mornings. It probably will surprise many hon. Members to know that although it is something like twenty-five years since school fees have been abolished, there is no less than £70,000 collected every year from school children in schools where the Fee Grant is paid. I consider that to be a great scandal. It is all the more a scandal because the proceeds do not go in relief of the rates but to the relief of the managers' subscriptions. The money which is handed over from the school pence is not devoted to the relief of the ratepayers. Next to London, Liverpool is the richest city in our Empire, and yet in that city they take £12,000 a year from the poorest quarters to help the managers of voluntary schools. Birkenhead and Salford each raise about £2,000 in this way, and Manchester about £2,500, all raised in the very poorest quarters. I again protest against this system, and I do so because it is in the power of the Board of Education to stop it, and they refuse to do so. When the right hon. Mr. Acland was President in 1903 he issued a circular to every local

2007
authority, and it began with these words —
"Every father and mother in England and Wales has a right to free education without payment or charge of any kind for his or her children between the age of three and fifteen."
That circular ought to be issued again, because it would settle questions winch are crying out for solution. There are something like 250,000 parents paying school pence, and most of the children between three and five have been turned out of school altogether. The children between thirteen and fifteen who were in the school have also been turned out to the extent of about 250,000. We have fewer children in our schools this year than last year. The President of the Board of Education and the Parliamentary Secretary have been praising their own work—I always admire the man who praises his own work, although he may do it not quite fairly—but I invite them when they speak again on the later stages of this Bill to give us sonic hope that we shall not see a further steady diminution of the number of children in our elementary schools each year. What is the good of offering greater facilities for secondary, higher, intermediary, and university education while you are turning more and more children out at the ages of twelve and thirteen than you were before. It is perfectly obvious that unless you are going to make elementary education better and more advanced and a more continuous process than it is at present the promise of higher, intermediary, and university education, and the talk about compelling every local authority to present a scheme by which any child can go up from one stage to another is a mere farce. It is perfectly unreal and insincere and if it was not that then the speech we have listened to was based upon an ignorance of the facts.
This leads me to point out another fact which I greatly deplore. The President of the Board of Education on the Estimates introduced a number of increases in the different Votes. Of course, there was a large increase for administration—for the inspectors and the staff. I should not have grudged him an increase in his own salary, but I do grudge the increase for the multiplication of officials under him. Let him put less trust in the officials of his office and strike out more on the lines of the democratic sentiments which I am sure he feels, and then none
2008
of us will grudge him an increase of salary. I protested against some of the Estimates this year. They included a number of increases for inspectors and others and a decrease of £60,000 in the Grant for elementary schools. I suppose the real reason we have had this Bill at the fag end of the Session is that the local authorities have awakened to the fact that with greater and greater demands upon them—demands always being made but never really seriously pressed—and with increasing rates it is quite absurd for the Board of Education to give them £60,000 less for the elementary schools. I want especially to take this opportunity of protesting against the way the Board of Education have got of allowing local authorities to overcrowd their schools, and fail to build for the necessities of the children. I should not wonder if in a few years we had a large increase of crime, and if we have I shall attribute it to the one fact that a large number of children are now never able to go to school at all. There are many districts in London where the local authority tells their Attendance Officers not to press children, poor little things who are running about the streets, because there are really no schools for them to attend, and the existing schools would be overcrowded and the Grant imperilled.
Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: What districts?
Mr. KING: I have brought these districts before the notice of the President of the Board of Education by questions, and if the hon. Member will look at them, there are about two dozen, he will find the districts all specified. I take this problem of overcrowding and lack of accommodation as it exists in the city of Liverpool at the present time.
Mr. SPEAKER: That does not seem to be relevant to the Bill. The latter part of the speech of the hon. Member appears to be more relevant to the Education Estimate.
Mr. KING: May I most respectfully point out that one provision in this Bill is to give a Grant for the loan charges for building schools, and what I am trying to explain is the need for these loan charges in almost every town in England. This is, as far as I can see, the one point on which I actually come to the context of the Bill, and I am sure the House will recognise

2009
that it is pertinent when I have submitted a few figures. It will not take very long. We have not the latest figures available so the Board of Education. The volume for the year now due is in course of preparation. Therefore I am going on figures a year old. According to these—which are the latest available, 20 per cent. of the children in Liverpool are in overcrowded schools. There are 132,000 school places in Liverpool, and there are 131,000 children on the roll, so that really there is only a margin of a little over 1,000 places for those who are not on the rolls. There are always a number who should be on the rolls but are not. So long as that margin is so small, the Attendance Officers will do little to bring the children into the schools because they are afraid of overcrowding the buildings. Let me put it in a different way. If you allow the maximum number of children in a class to be sixty, you mill find there will be 2,210 classes in Liverpool—
Mr. SPEAKER: These are matters which can properly be raised on the Education Vote.
Mr. KING: I will not pursue that argument any further, but perhaps I may be allowed to say that it was generally agreed between the Front Benches that the Debate this evening- should cover the ground of the extra day promised us for education.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have no knowledge of that agreement.
Mr. KING: I only offer the remark as an excuse. But there are one or two other points which certainly ought to be considered in connection with the approaching Bill, and one upon which I must insist is the way in which the Board of Education at the present time does everything it can to keep from the knowledge of the public and of the ratepayers the way in which their money is being spent. This is extremely important because up to July, 1902, every ratepayer had a statutory right to see every document in the office of the School Board. If an inspector visited a school and made a report upon it, as soon as that report was received by the School Board any ratepayer might go to the office and peruse and take a copy of it.
Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: What has that got to do with the Bill?
Mr. KING: It has to do with the Bill, and it is a very important matter. Let me give the House an illustration. There is at the present time a strange strike by parents and children at one of the schools in Hampshire. The parents have absolutely unanimously applied to the Board of Education for an inquiry into the management and condition of the school.
Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: What has that to do with an Education Bill?
Mr. SPEAKER: That is really a question which is concerned with the administration of the Board of Education. I fail to see the relevance of it to the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman is seeking leave to introduce.
Mr. KING: May I point out that the right hon. Gentleman covered the whole ground of his Bill for next year as well as the Bill for this year.
Mr. SPEAKER: The right hon. Gentleman said nothing about a school in Hampshire. I have warned the hon. Member twice or three times, and I give him a final warning.
Mr. KING: I am very sorry, Sir. I have no wish for one moment to question your ruling or refuse to obey your suggestion. I will therefore very briefly say, in conclusion, that this is a large scheme which the President of the Board of Education has foreshadowed. He must not pick and choose easy points to put through, and leave severe, difficult and grievous ones unamended. I could indicate a great number of severe and oppressive conditions which have been introduced by the Act of 1902. I believe the public have had many rights taken away from them. I cannot go into those now. Certainly there is one set. of grievances that has grown up in connection with the Act of 1902. I mean the rights in connection with charities, and the peculiar rights which were given to foundation managers and to managers of voluntary schools by that Act. I have brought to the attention of the President of the Board of Education on several occasions cases of teachers who have been dismissed by managers without any ground whatever being given to the public. I have brought to his attention the cases of teachers who are now starving because of the cruel and, I believe, unjust treatment

2011
they have received from the local authorities. On behalf of those teachers, whose names and cases he has had, I must protest against any Bill that is introduced which does not give the teachers some security, some appeal and some justice which at present they do not receive. Whether I say any more or not, I must most emphatically put it to the President that no Bill will be satisfactory which does not do away with some of the injustices I have brought to his notice.
Lord HUGH CECIL: I desire to ask you, Sir, a question upon a point of Order. I am unable to understand why this Bill is not begun by a Resolution in Committee. It seems to be the practice of the House that a Bill such as this, of which the main purport is to throw a charge upon public funds, ought to be begun by a Resolution in Committee. I would remind you of the precedent of 1897, which is in my recollection and is also in yours, for you were Chairman of Ways and Means at the time, when the Elementary Education (Increased Grant) Bill, a Bill in strict analogy to the present Bill, which was entitled—
"A Bill to amend Section 97 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870."
—that is one of the Sections the right hon. Gentleman said he was going to amend in this Bill—was begun by a Resolution, which ran—
"That it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys to be provided by Parliament of an addition to the Grant payable to school boards under Section 97 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, by increasing to the sum of seven shillings and sixpence—"
Then it goes into elaborate financial details. This Bill ought in a similar way to have begun in Committee of the Whole House when the Resolution recommending the expenditure of moneys to be provided by Parliament should have been submitted and a Bill brought in on Report of the Resolution from the Committee.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have not seen the Bill yet and do not know what the contents of it are. I understand it is a one Clause Bill to repeal Clauses 96 and 97 of the Act of 1870. I am afraid I am not in a position to judge. After the Bill is circulated and I have had an opportunity of seeing it if the Noble Lord will raise the point again, I will consider the suggestion
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he has made and I shall be in a better position to give him a reply.
Question, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Law with respect to Grants in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fitting up elementary schools," put, and agreed to.
Bill brought in by Mr. J. A. Pease, Mr. Trevelyan, and the Attorney-General Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Friday next, and to be printed. [Bill 278.]

INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND) BILL.
Considered in Committee and reported without Amendment; and read the third time, and passed.
GOVERNMENT OF THE SOUDAN LOAN BILL.
Read a second time, and committed to Committee of the Whole House for tomorrow.—[Mr. Gulland.]
CHILDREN (EMPLOYMENT ABROAD) BILL.
Read a second time, and committed to Committee of the Whole House for to-morrow.—[Mr. Gulland. ]
EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
INEBRIATES BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
MILK AND DAIRIES BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
MILK AND DAIRIES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
HOPS (No. 2) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
BEE DISEASE BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
HORSE BREEDING (IRELAND) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
IRISH CREAMERIES AND DAIRY PRODUCE BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER (MININGLEASES) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read, and discharged. Bill withdrawn.
The remaining Orders were read and postponed.

WAR IN BALKANS.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Gulland.]
Mr. NOEL BUXTON: I should like to ask the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs a brief question arising from the rather disastrous news from the Near East. A report dated 5th July from Salonica shows that very exceptional distress exists there, and I should like to say a few words to indicate the urgency of the case. The Foreign Office is in communication with the Red Cross Society, and that society may be very glad of suggestions arising out of the peculiar knowledge which the
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Foreign Office possesses. This report, from a well known correspondent at Salonica, says:—
"The cost of these victories has been very great, and there are already (before war has been declared) over eight thousand Greek soldiers lying wounded here The hospitals are overflowing, being far fuller than at the time of the occupation. Then the inmates were suffering more from exposure and dysentery, but now from wounds. As only about twenty wounded Bulgars have been brought in here, it is appalling to think of the sufferings of those lying uncared for on the battlefield. The remainder of the army having fled in disorder, it can only be supposed that their wounded were left behind to their fate.….We have already between 2,000 and 3,000 Greek refugees in this town, and there are some 15,000 more collected in the neighbourhood not allowed to come in. On the other hand, the Greeks are bringing in all the Bulgarian peasants from the near districts and deporting them straight Mt by steamer. It is sad to see the old and young driven like cattle through the streets and along the quay on their way into exile: and, after all, it is really more humane than the wholesale slaughtering attributed to-the Bulgars. What will become of the women and children left behind? Truly, European statesmanship has nothing to be proud of."
I think I am in order in raising this question of the Red Cross Society which has been very busy dealing with the refugees. Commandant Radcliffe did splendid and useful work for several thousands or these refugees. Therefore, the society has concerned itself not merely with the relief of the wounded, but with the needs and the-destitution resulting from the inevitable evils from which combatants suffer in time of war. I venture to hope that the Foreign Office will impress on the Red Cross Society the extreme need that exists not only in Servia and Greece, to which I understand the society has already despatched contingents, but also in Thrace. As we know from the correspondent of the "Times" and others in Bulgaria, it is desirable that a contingent should go at the first possible moment.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE: May I repeat the question which I asked last night of the Under-Secretary, whether he has received any information as to the condition in Adrianople, and whether the Turks have entered the city, and whether there was any fighting?
The UNDER-SECRETARY for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Acland): I may answer the last question first. We have not received any official information. Previously during the war we have always got early information of what happened at Adrianople from our Consul there, but at present, owing to the state of war between Bulgaria and Servia, the ordinary telegraphic service is not available and all telegrams have to come around by Odessa, which may account for the delay in having

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exact news. We do not, of course, in any way control the operations of the Red Cross Society, but I will see that my hon. Friend's words are conveyed to them. But I am rather inclined to think that they have already taken action and that an expedition has either already started or is about to start for Salonica in addition to the expeditions that they have sent to other places in the Balkans. At any rate it must be obvious to everyone that for
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some fortnight or so past the number of persons to be looked after in the neighbourhood of Salonica must have been very great, and I am sure that any aid that can be given by the Red Cross Society will be of inestimable service to that neighbourhood at the present time.
Question put, and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at Two minutes, past Twelve o'clock.

NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.
  MEDICAL BENEFIT.
  MEDICAL BENEFIT.
  Royal Irish Constabulary.
  Royal Irish Constabulary.
BRITISH ARMY.
  FIELD BATTERIES.
  FIELD BATTERIES.
  ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY.
  ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY.
AIRCRAFT.
  MONOPLANES.
  MONOPLANES.
  ROYAL ARMY FLYING CORPS.
  ROYAL ARMY FLYING CORPS.
  Loans to Fishermen.
  Loans to Fishermen.
  Temperance Hotels (Scotland).
  Temperance Hotels (Scotland).
  India (Council Drafts).
  India (Council Drafts).
  Lawrence Wilfred Carder (Irish Companies).
  Lawrence Wilfred Carder (Irish Companies).
  Postmen's Wages (Folkestone and Sandgate).
  Postmen's Wages (Folkestone and Sandgate).

Preamble
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificate from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have been complied with:

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 12).

The same was ordered to lie on the Table.

METROPOLITAN ELECTRIC TRAMWAYS (RAILLESS TRACTION) BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 14) BILL.
Reported, with an Amendment, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 9) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 10) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 17) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 19) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 20) BILL.
Reported, without amendment, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

HEATHFIELD AND DISTRICT WATER BILL.
Reported, with Amendments.

DOVER HARBOUR BILL.
The KING'S consent signified, and Bill reported, with an Amendment.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
Moved, That the Order made on the 22nd of April last, "That no Private Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Thursday the 19th day of June next," be dispensed with, and that the Bills be now read 2a: agreed to: Bills read 2a accordingly and committed.

SOUTHGATE URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS) BILL.
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the Five Lords appointed a Select Committee on the Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 13) Bill do form a Select Committee for the consideration of the London County Council (Tramways and Improvements) Bill; read, and agreed to: 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.

ALDBAR TRUST ESTATES BILL. [H.L.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE): My Lords, I desire to announce that all petitions, if any, against this Bill should be deposited by Monday next at 3 o'clock. Also it is my intention to put a Motion on the Notice Paper suspending the Standing Order which makes it necessary that all Estates Bills should wait for ten days between Second Reading and Committee. This being a House of Lords Bill it is desirable to shorten that period a little, and I shall at the proper time ask your Lordships to reduce the period from ten to seven days. The Notice will appear on the Paper in the usual course.
Bill read 2a.

ESTABLISHED CHURCH (WALES) BILL.
Debate on the Amendment moved by the Marquess of Salisbury to the Motion that the Bill be now read 2a, viz., to leave out all the words after ("That") for the purpose of inserting the following Resolution, viz., ("this House declines to proceed with the consideration of the Bill until it has been submitted to the judgment of the country") resumed (according to Order).
LORD DYNEVOR: My Lords, although we have seen this Bill before I can hardly describe it as an old friend. It is most unwelcome, and, with all due deference to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, I say it is most unpopular. Why has the Church out of the numerous denominations that exist been especially picked out for this attack. I suppose I shall be told it is because she is Established. I hold that the word "Established" has the same meaning now as it used to have—that is, "recognised"; but I am quite willing to allow that in modern times the word has taken a wider meaning and that it may include one or all of the following definitions—toleration, legislation, supervision, or control by the State. Every one of those definitions apply to all Nonconformist denominations as well as to the Church. I need hardly remind your Lordships of the famous judgment delivered in 1767 by Lord Mansfield, who boldly declared that the Toleration Act of 1689 established all Nonconformist denominations, and as far as I am aware that judgment has never been reversed.
Just consider the number of Acts of Parliament that have been passed by the State on behalf of Nonconformists. I will not enumerate them all; they are far too many; but I will allude to one or two which I think are the most important. There is an Act which allows Nonconformists to acquire sites for their places of worship; there is another Act which allows marriages to take place in Nonconformist churches—that is very much of a State establishment; there is a third one which, I think, is the most important of all, which allows the Charity Commissioners, who are paid by Parliament, to appoint and to give legal advice to the trustees of trusts in the hands of the Charity Commissioners. There are hundreds and thousands of Nonconformist trusts in the hands of the
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Charity Commissioners. What a boon and a blessing it must be to those Nonconformists to get the whole of their legal advice free, at the cost of the State! That is not only supervision and control by the State; it is endowment by the State. But have not the Nonconformists at any time received even more direct endowment than that which I have just mentioned? Surely your Lordships remember that from 1722 to 1852 Parliament used to vote grants of money to necessitous Nonconformist ministers and their widows. For England and Wales the amount so voted, I believe, was £216,000. Similar grants were given to the then Nonconformists of Ireland, the Presbyterians, and when the Irish Church was Disestablished and Disendowed those grants ceased, but in order that the Non-conformists of Ireland should not be losers, Parliament handed them over the lump sum of £750,000, which, at 4 per cent., brings in £30,000 a year, and I am glad to think they are enjoying that sum to-day. What between the Parliamentary grant and this lump sum Parliament gave to the Presbyterians in Ireland £2,600,000.
If it is right to take away from the Church in Wales money which was not given to her by the State, surely it would be more right for Parliament to turn her attention to these large sums of money which were given by the State to the Nonconformists. There is one sum of money which the Church in Wales enjoys, which I candidly own was given to her by the State. It brings in £5,800 a year, and it came to the Church in exactly the same way as the slims of money I have just mentioned went to the Nonconformists—namely, by Parliamentary grant. But it is rather curious that under this Bill the Church in Wales is allowed to retain that £5,800 a year. I suppose the reason is obvious. The Government must have felt that if they called upon the Church to give up that sum, they would, in all justice and fairness, at the same moment have to call upon the Nonconformists to return every farthing of Parliamentary grant they had received. There are some, I know, who hold that a Church should not rely on its endowments, but should practise the voluntary system. I agree in principle that the voluntary system is an excellent one. I would like to see every individual, never mind to what denomination he or she belongs, giving

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as much as he or she can afford to their own church; but the Nonconformists, like the Church, have already found out that the voluntary system will not bring in a sufficient amount. I do not think I am overstating it when I say that Wesleyans have a capital endowment sum of over £10,000,000. The Congregational Union, so the Baptist Times tells me, has a sustentation fund of £143,000, and your Lordships may have noticed a short time ago in the Press the great appeal that went up from the Baptist Union for a sustentation fund of £250,000. I understand that they have been fairly successful in their endeavours. I am delighted to hear it, for I know from personal experience how very inadequately many Nonconformist ministers are remunerated. But will those Nonconformists who hold that the Church is better off without endowments put their principles into practice and disendow themselves?—I say "disendow themselves," because we Churchmen have no intention of taking one single farthing away from them.
Why is the Church to be Disendowed? The usual argument is that the Church's property is national property. If that is so, why do the Government bother to bring in a Bill? Why do they not go straight to the Law Courts and demand what they consider to be their own? They obviously will not do that, because they know there is not a single Judge in the United Kingdom but would hold that the Church's property belongs to no one but the Church. Now the Bill of 1895 laid down that all the Church's property prior to 1703 was to be treated as national property. This Bill puts back the date to 1662. When addressing your Lordships' House six months ago on this very Bill, I put a question to the Government. I asked them what was it that had occurred between those two dates that made the Government come to the conclusion that they were wrong in 1895 and right in 1912? I received no answer. Therefore I put the question again in the hope that I may receive one this time. I may be told that the year 1662 has been chosen because in that year was passed an Act of Uniformity. That I may say will not be an adequate answer to my question. The Act of 1662 was not the first Act of Uniformity; it was the fourth. But His Majesty's Government, I know, will not take the first
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Act of Uniformity, because that would leave to the Church more of her own property.
For we have heard that there is money in this question, and that that is the only sort of programme worth having. I know there are some who hold that Henry VIII took away money from one Church and gave it to another Church. I do not hold that view myself, and I am glad to think that the present Prime Minister does not hold that view either. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, of course, holds his own view. He said that this money was given by Catholics to Catholics for Catholics. That, I may say in passing, hardly sounds like national property; that sounds to me more like a private benefaction. But let me, just for the sake of argument, and for the sake of argument alone, acknowledge that Henry VIII did take away money from one Church and give it to another. What, then, are those who hold that view admitting? Why, that the Church has held her property for over 300 years. If 300 years possession does not make a good title, then I want to know what does. If 300 years possession and more by the Church makes a bad title, then how many years must the Nonconformists show before they become entitled to their endowments? In 1844 Parliament passed the Dissenters' Chapels Act, which lays down that if a Nonconformist denomination can show she has used her endowments and her chapels, never mind to whatever other denomination they may previously have belonged, for twenty-five years, twenty-five years makes a good title. According, therefore, to the Liberationists' own argument 300 years possession by the Church makes a bad title, but twenty-five years possession by the Nonconformists makes a good title. The Home Secretary said that he wanted to give "equal treatment." Those are the words he used, but if the Government want to put the Church on any equality with the Nonconformists all they have to do is to bring in a Bill which will say that if the Church shows she has used her churches and her endowments for twenty-five years, twenty-five years will be a good title. Then what will become of the Disendowment clauses of this Bill?
Then as to tithe. There are some who hold that tithe is a tax. I thought the late Sir William Harcourt finally destroyed

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that argument in the House of Commons when he said tithe is not a tax; it is a fallacy to call it a tax. What is tithe? It is a rent charge on some lands; not all lands, but some lands. Do not the Nonconformists themselves own any rent charges on land I know of two or three cases in Wales. I will give your Lordships one. There is a farm in Cardiganshire which belongs to a Churchman. He let the farm to a tenant who is also a Churchman. The sent of the farm is £100 a year. There is a charge on that farm of £52 a year for the ministry of the neighbouring Nonconformist chapel. Every Sunday a deacon of that chapel calls upon the Church tenant and asks him for a sovereign. The tenant gives him the sovereign, and when his rent day comes round, instead of giving his landlord £100, he deducts the £52 he has already paid and gives his landlord £48. So it is the landlord and not the tenant who is paying the rent charge. But do you suppose that the Churchman objects to paying that rent charge to the Nonconformist? Of course not. He pays willingly and cheerfully. Why? Because he knows that that rent charge belongs to the Nonconformist and does not belong to him. I have heard it argued that because the State enforces the payment of tithe, therefore the State gave the Church the tithe. But what would happen if this Churchman refused to pay that rent charge to the Nonconformists? The State would force him to pay it. It could be recovered in a Court of Law. Are we to understand, then, that the State gave that rent charge to the Nonconformists? If you or I make a will and we leave our money to our wives and our children, when we die the State will enforce the payment of that money to our wives and our children. Is anybody going to be so foolish as to argue that therefore our wives and our children have been endowed by the State?
I do not know whether noble Lords sitting opposite have realised the full effect of what this Bill will mean should it become law. Have they realised that in many districts in Wales, especially up in the mountains, they will be depriving the people there of their resident clergyman? The people who live in these districts are very poor; they could not possibly afford to find a stipend for their clergy. Owing to a small amount of endowment they have a resident clergyman in their midst. Nonconformists, and I am sorry to say it, have
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already found the greatest difficulty in a number of parishes in those districts in providing a resident minister for themselves. Pass this Bill and you will be depriving those people of the one man who is there, who is the encourager of the healthy and the comforter and solacer of the sick and the dying. What is the crime that the Church has committed that she is to be dismembered? What is the sin that she has committed that she is to be treated in this way? I think I am entitled to ask the Government to formulate their charges. This Bill dismembers the Church, but we know that the Nonconformists in Wales have taken the strongest objection to any suggestion for themselves being dismembered. Why was it they refused to set up a National Free Church Council for Wales instead of a National Free Church Council for England and Wales as at present? The reason was, as they said, that nothing but good can come of the uniting of England and Wales in one solid force. If nothing but good can come to the Nonconformists of Wales and England from being united in one solid force, why, I ask, is it supposed to be good to sever Churchmen in Wales from Churchmen in England.
The Prime Minister a month ago, speaking in another place, tried to draw an analogy between what was clone to the Irish Church and what it is proposed to do to the Church in Wales. He said that every argument used against this Bill had been used against the Irish Bill, with one exception, and that was the question of dismemberment. That he owned was peculiar to this Bill. I have read the Prime Minister's speech through very carefully, and I came to the conclusion that what he said on this point was not nearly so important as what he did not say. The Prime Minister did not point out that before the Irish Church was dealt with a religious census was taken. He did not point out that before it was dealt with a General Election was held which turned very largely on the question. I was very much indebted to the noble Marquess who leads the House for informing us during the debate on the Home Rule Bill about those Resolutions which were brought into Parliament before the General Election of 1868. The Prime Minister did not point out that the Irish Church after Disendowment was left richer than the Church in Wales is before Disendowment.

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Let me return for one moment to the question of a religious census. I remember well, as I was a member of the House of Commons then, that in 1910 the Government brought in a Bill to take the ordinary census. Many Unionists pressed them strongly to add another column to the Census Paper, in which people might, if they liked, write down to what religious denomination they belonged. That was most strongly opposed by the Government, and by the Welsh Radical Members. Why? We were told that men's consciences would be affected if they wrote down on the Census Paper to what denomination they belonged. I have not a very high opinion of the religious convictions of a man or a woman who is ashamed to put them on paper. The Government, having settled that question to their own satisfaction—namely, by refusing to do this—immediately afterwards brought in a Bill to take a religious census in Ireland. I have yet to learn that the consciences of Irishmen are more elastic than the consciences of Welshmen. The noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, when addressing your Lordships six months ago on this question, alluded to the fact that existing life interests of incumbents are preserved by the Bill. I am not aware that anybody has denied that. But is that such a very great point? After all, what is the life of one individual in the life of the Church?
The Home Secretary delivered a speech in the beginning of 1912 at Queen's Hall, and he is reported to have said that—
"They had no quarrel with the Church of England; they had no thought of sacrilege, or robbery, or spoliation, or any of the crimes with which they were charged."
If they had no quarrel with the Church, why did they bring in this Bill? If they had no thoughts of spoliation or robbery, why do they take away from the Church the tithe and the glebe and the ancient churchyards? I prefer to judge a man by his actions rather than by his words. Then the Home Secretary went down to Wales a short time ago and addressed a meeting at Holyhead, and he is reported in the Radical Press to have said that he knew of no reason in justice for any alteration in the Bill as it now stands. If this Bill in the eyes of the Home Secretary spells justice, then all I can say is, God help the prisoners under his charge! This Bill dismembers the
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Church, grants it a new constitution which the Church has never asked for, and cripples it in its resources. It is the old story, the old order, "Continue to make bricks," but the Government take away the straw. May we not, therefore, ask the Government who bring in this Bill, in the words of the Solicitor-General, "Why did you do it?"
LORD ASHTON OF HYDE: My Lords, after the interesting speech to which we have just listened I feel that I ought to apologise to the House for drawing it off for a few moments from the main question in the Bill to a matter which might be called a detail, though I think it is a considerable one. I probably should not have raised the point on this occasion had it not been that I presume there will be no further occasion in this House on which I could raise it. I do not propose to discuss the merits or the demerits of the Bill as a whole, but I wish to put forward an argument with regard to the treatment of endowments under this Bill. It is not necessary for the purposes of my argument that I should discuss or weigh in the balance whether the Church when Disestablished is or is not to receive a fair share of those endowments. It does not affect my argument. What I wish to put before the House is that, in my humble opinion, the nation should not part with those funds entirely, as is proposed under the Bill. The Bill lays down that these funds shall be placed in the hands of three Welsh Commissioners, but that their powers are to cease after they have distributed the funds. I should like to argue that it would be infinitely preferable that they should be made a permanent body, that they should not only distribute the funds for the three years, but should retain those funds and distribute the income, subject always, as they would be, to Parliament.
In dealing with the question of the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church in Wales, one ought to look ahead a little. Though I do not think it will be in the near future, yet it is distinctly possible that the time will come when the question will arise of the Disestablishment and consequently of the Disendowment of the Church in England. I think that that question is further off than it was 30 years ago, but looking at it from the general point of view of the growth of opinion all over the world that State connection with

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the Church is not a desirable one, I cannot help feeling that the time will come when that question will have to be faced in this country. Therefore in dealing with the endowments of the Church in Wales we ought to look ahead and realise that the way in which we deal with this matter now may form a precedent for the time when we may have to deal with the endowments of the English Church. The endowments of the Welsh Church are, perhaps, a comparatively small matter; they are not large. But the endowments of the English Church are enormous, and few people who think the question over would say that it would be safe for the State, in case the question of the Disendowment of the Church of England came, to hand over those endowments to any private body of people. I therefore wish to argue that in this case we should not form such a precedent, but that we should retain these funds in the hands of Commissioners, subject to the control of Parliament. We ought to look upon these endowments, in spite of what has been said by the noble Lord opposite, as national property—national property, I admit, which has been given by the donors originally for specific purposes; and I quite hold with those who desire that so far as is possible the wishes of those donors under the altered circumstances of time should be carried out.
The endowments of the Church fall mainly into two great groups. There are the modern endowments, which it is proposed, and I think rightly proposed, should be retained by the Church when it becomes Disestablished; but, after all, those endowments, though they have been given to a specific Church, have been given to that Church as a national Church. Therefore I think it is right that the nation, looking upon the matter as the trustees of these funds, should see that they are dealt with as probably the donors, under the altered circumstances of the present day, would have wished if they had lived. If you hand the capital of these funds over you part with it to what will be practically a private body, away entirely from that national control which it was the intention of the donors should exist.
Were the Church always going to remain exactly as it is to-day, there would be no great harm in this from that point of view. But we all know that Churches change and that religions change. It was only 400 years ago that we were a Roman
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Catholic country. Who knows when this Church is disestablished what is going to be the religion of those into whose hand these funds may come years hence? I am not sure that even within a comparatively short time there may not be considerable differences between the members of that Church, for we know how great is the difference between those who hold High Church views and those who hold Low Church views. Therefore you cannot be sure that the religion of those who are going to have possession and control of these funds to-day will be the same some years hence. My belief is that these funds ought to be kept subject to the control of Parliament, that Parliament standing for the nation that owns these funds should be able, if it became necessary, to decide to whom the funds in future days ought to belong.
I will take one case. You might have a case exactly as we had in Scotland, where practically the whole of the funds, owing to differences haying arisen in Churches, came into the possession of a very small number—what is called the Wee Church. You might have a Wee Church case. I put that forward as a reason why, even in the case of the modern funds of the Church, the nation should not lose its grip of the custody of those funds. In that way it would act as the trustee for those who have given these funds for the purposes of a national Church. The rest of the funds—far the larger part, I presume—are the old funds which have been inherited from the old Roman Catholic times. It is not in the least necessary for my argument to say whether or not the Church to-day is the same Church as it was 400 years ago. The Church has those funds which at one time were used for Roman Catholic purposes, and in my opinion rightly has them, because they are used for the purposes of a national Church and the nation has a right to say how those funds should be utilised. But, my Lords, what were those funds originally given for? They were given undoubtedly for the Roman Catholic religion to some extent. But in those days, as we all know, the Church stood for all that there was, not only in religion, but in works of charity and for what little education there was, and for whatever was done practically for the moral improvement of the people. We have not allowed, and we could not allow, the dead

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hand to govern the disposal of funds for ever and ever. We have not allowed it. The Charity Commission is evidence of that. There is therefore, in my opinion, no reason why we now, looking at the uses for which this money was given, should not utilise it for the various purposes for which it is proposed that these funds should be utilised, subject always to their being used for the moral improvement of the people in such a way as the donors would probably have wished them to be used had they been living at the present day.
It is true that it is proposed to give some of these funds to the Church; it is proposed to give some of these funds for educational purposes, and I believe for libraries. Those purposes would probably, if the donors lived to-day, be well within their wishes. But I observe that some funds are to be given in bulk to the county councils of Wales practically without any reservation as to the uses to which they are to be put. I confess I think the uses, even if the money is given to the county councils, should be limited to the moral improvement of the people. But for my own part I do not think it is wise to hand over the funds to the county councils at all. These funds, as I have said before, are subject to the control of the nation, and in my opinion it is the nation and not the county councils who should decide how they are to be used in the future. The impression that is made upon my mind by the clause in the Bill which gives this money to the county councils is that the Government had a large amount of money to dispose of and did not exactly know what to do with it, and so they have laid the responsibility of spending it, for good or for evil, upon the county councils. I do not think that is wise. There may not at this moment be subjects on which they can say that money should be spent from a national point of view, but the time is sure to come when those objects will arise, and if this money had been left in the hands of the Commissioners not to be used immediately but to roll up for a time no great harm would be done. But even if it were left in the hands of the Commissioners subject to the control of Parliament, Parliament could at any time say in what way for the moral and intellectual improvement of the people that money could be utilised. Therefore I strongly urge that these moneys, instead of being given up absolutely by the nation, should be retained in the hands of Commissioners
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subject to the will and the control of Parliament. The nation would then see to it that the money was spent for national purposes. It would also see that the money was not squandered, as I am afraid it may be if it gets into the hands of the county councils. In this way we should display foresight for the future, and cause the funds to be used to better purpose than would be the case under the provision in the Bill.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: My Lords, I had always looked forward to hearing this Bill defended by Lord Loreburn, whose great ability, courtesy, and fairness gave his words here and in the country a unique weight, but the noble Lord, as far as I am aware, has never spoken or voted for this particular measure. I must therefore address myself to the speech made yesterday by his successor on the Woolsack. The noble Viscount began with idealism and then with facts. I will venture to reverse the process and begin with his facts and end with his idealism. He stated that under the Act of Uniformity of 1662 some of the best clergymen in Wales suffered most severely and that there arose around them a band of people who increased more and more and that there grew up a generation of men who still clung to the Church of England down to the middle of the eighteenth century. Now, my Lords, I will venture to give the facts. There was only one clergyman of distinction in Wales who left the Church in 1662. Philip Henry, who held a cure in my own diocese, said that he "would studiously and prayerfully" consider that Act, and having done so he came to the decision that he must of his own free will resign his cure. He did resign his cure, but on the following Sunday he attended the services of the Church conducted by his successor. Philip Henry left no following or succession in Wales. I ask the House to remember this one fact, which can be established beyond all question before any impartial tribunal in this country. During the Commonwealth Wales was Royalist and the hand of the Puritans with their Act of Propagation fell fiercely upon Wales and reduced the Church for the next 100 years to abject poverty. Now the essential fact was this. In the year 1700 there were no Nonconformists in Wales at all. By the middle of the century there were only 263 Nonconformists in my diocese, and in the year 1800 the whole of the Nonconformists in

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Wales numbered less than 5 per cent. of the population. The religious revivals of the eighteenth century were by Churchmen and for Churchmen, and it was not until the year 1811 that the great Methodist schism took place.
Now I turn to the noble and learned Viscount's disquisition on education. "Wales," he told us, "owes almost everything in education to Nonconformists," and Bishop Thirlwall, of St. Davids, had told the clergy what would happen if they refused to accept the Act. Now, let me ask the House to consider very carefully these words spoken in 1872 by Bishop Thirlwall—
"The Act of 1870 is still on its trial. We are not grieved to hear that it is a complaint of our adversaries against the Act that in the six months' grace which it allowed grants were asked for 2,852 Church schools, nor is it painful to us to learn that there are now thousands of parishes amply provided with school accommodation entirely in the hands of the Church. We do not consider it either as a calamity or a reproach to the Act that it has enabled the denominationalists to cover districts with schools which will render School Boards unnecessary. We ate glad to receive witness to the fact that the Church has not been unmindful of the duty which is laid upon her. It is saddening to find that so many (Nonconformist Ministers) have been induced by their hostility to the Church to enter into an unnatural alliance with persons from whose principles they must recoil with abhorrence and to join the secularist party in its endeavours to exclude all religious teaching from schools aided by the State."
And this quotation is added from a declaration made by a general conference of Nonconformists at Manchester in 1872, who "were bold to say that the Nonconformist Churches had not done their part sufficiently in the past in reference to the greater matter of religious education." Those are the words spoken by Bishop Thirlwall in 1872. In my own county of Flintshire in twenty years after the Act of 1870 the number of children in the Church schools was inure than double that of all other schools.
I now pass to the Intermediate Education Act of 1889. The noble and learned Viscount said this was "essentially a Nonconformist movement." Here, again, I venture to trouble your Lordships with the facts. The Bill was passed by a Unionist Government; it was drafted and proposed by Churchmen, and its passage was secured by the aid of the Welsh Bishops, and in that step I was privileged to take some part. I pass to the third
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charge in the indictment of the noble and learned Viscount. He stated that the University Charter was rejected in the interests of Lampeter College. Here, again, we will have the facts. The Bishop of Chester moved a Motion in this House that Lampeter College should be included in the Welsh University. This inclusion, so far front indicating disapproval, showed the desire of Churchmen to co-operate and share in the Welsh University.
Now let me turn to one other aspect of this question. In Wales the Church, and the Church mainly, provided by the generosity of Churchmen elementary education for the working man before the working man was armed with a vote. They sacrificed their own endowed grammar schools after 1889, and the President of the Welsh University in North Wales at the present time is Lord Kenyon. Now the point I wish the House to note is this: all these departments of education have been chiefly supported by the voluntary contributions of Churchmen. I will give one instance. The University College of Aberystwyth, of which the first Principal was a Nonconformist Minister, and which was mainly a Nonconformist institution, was built before the Education Commission of 1880. The Report of that Commission, presided over by Lord Aberdare, stated that 33 per cent. of the subscriptions to this Nonconformist University College were given by Churchmen. The Non-conformists in Wales have been generous to education, but it has always been generosity with public funds. They themselves did little or nothing for elementary education. The sites and buildings of the secondary schools were largely given by Churchmen.
The noble and learned Viscount quoted Sir Harry Reichel, for whom I have the greatest respect, upon the advantages of the education given in the colleges and contrasted unfavourably the clergy and the Nonconformist ministers. The Arts degree in the Welsh University is valuable, and some of the best candidates I have had for ordination have taken this degree. But here is a remarkable fact which I have upon the authority of a distinguished Nonconformist Minister, who told me—and I know it is true—that the most distinguished graduates who join the Nonconformist ministry leave Wales for England as soon as they can, because the stipends offered

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to them in Wales are so small. I think I can speak with knowledge on this question, and I say without hesitation that the clergy in Wales to-day, educationally and ministerially, need fear no comparison with the ministers of any other denomination. From education the noble and learned Viscount came down to phthisis. I almost expected to hear him say that phthisis was wholly confined to Churchmen and wholly cured by Nonconformists. Now, what are the facts here? A colliery proprietor—a Nonconformist—a man of colossal wealth, started this memorial, although the movement had previously been inaugurated by Churchmen in South Wales. He appealed to Churchmen for their support They have given him that support ungrudgingly. I myself have attended the meetings on this subject. What has the noble and learned Viscount done? He has stepped down from his exalted position to hinder that co-operation and to pour the venom of sectarian spite and division into this great work.
One more point. This Bill takes away £158,000 a year from the Church in Wales. That proposal raises questions of title, of honesty, of justice. Have we not a right to expect from the head of the Judiciary of this great kingdom some words of justification for such a proposal? The noble and learned Viscount passed the whole of this subject over in silence. The noble Viscount talked of Welsh idealism. There are varieties of idealism. In Wales, as in other places, there is the variety which logicians call "productive imagination," and the specimens of this variety pale before the performance of the noble Viscount yesterday.
I now turn from the Lord Chancellor to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, in his latest speech on this subject, said that "it was unfair to attribute motives to either side in this controversy," and he "deplored the exhibition of a bitterness of partisanship and an uncharitableness of temper which in purely secular controversies we are able to avoid." The last reflection, if I may say so with all respect, hardly rises to the dignity of a commonplace. Assuredly, any man worthy of the name will contend to the bitter end for his honour and the faith upon which that honour is built. You cannot touch the deepest things in life without arousing intense feeling and even passion. Motives
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are alike difficult accurately to analyse or to avow. The authors of this measure at the outset assured the world that "it was inspired by no hostility to the Church in Wales but by an earnest desire for her welfare." I remember some 18 years ago hearing the noble Viscount, Lord St. Aldwyn, describe this statement in another place as "nauseating cant." That motive has now been discarded, and the Under-Secretary of State, with laudable candour, gave in a coarse and concrete form what seems to be the real motive for this measure—"there is money in it." And there I leave the question of motives.
Without incurring the Prime Minister's censure, I may discuss the conditions and the methods under and by which this Bill is being passed through Parliament. In a remarkable letter written in 1896, Professor Goldwin Smith points out that "in this passion-tost democracy a House of Commons unchecked by a Second Chamber would vote us to ruin." At the present moment the pledge given of a reconstituted House of Lords awaits fulfilment, and meanwhile measures of far-reaching importance are being pressed through Parliament with a ruinous disregard of consequences. By what methods was this Bill driven through a reluctant House of Commons? By the aid of a section of Nonconformists co-operating with an over-represented Ireland with the added help of the new power of what a Member of the Government calls "four hundred solid arguments." What precedent for such a situation is there? I can only think of that discreditable period in English history when King James II endeavoured to play off the Irish Catholics and the Nonconformists against the Church of England, with dire disaster to himself. Then, as now, there were noble men among the Nonconformists and the Catholics who would have nothing to do with that base compact.
The essential fact in the present situation is that this Bill is being passed against, we believe, the wishes of the people of England. The Government do not, I believe they dare not, submit this Bill as it stands to the judgment of the English people. A few days ago Mr. Birrell, with characteristic candour, described the British public as "a fool with long low, ears" I do not know whether this estimate of the British people is widely entertained by the members of this democratic Government?

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Altogether apart front the particular measure we are discussing, I view with dismay the Government's method of legislation. In plain language, it means that laws of the first importance are being forced through Parliament which are not clothed with the moral sanction of the people of this country. In the ultimate resort such a procedure creates a spirit of lawlessness. Let me be quite frank. If this Bill were passed after it had been submitted to and approved by the people of this country, I, at any rate, would acquiesce loyally in their decision and make the best of it, but if this Bill is to be hustled through Parliament without the sanction of the people, then there will be a bitter and abiding sense of injustice and oppression in the heart of every Churchman.
One curious feature in the evolution of this controversy is the fact that the first supporters of Welsh Disestablishment sought for their evidence in arithmetic. The earliest speeches in Parliament in favour of Welsh Disestablishment were replete with statistics. The first speeches which nearly twenty years ago the present Prime Minister made on this subject were littered with figures—front Wales. So universal was the statistical argument that the Disestablishment Party had reduced religion in Wales to a vulgar fraction. For some years they fed on figures; perhaps the food proved unnutritious, perhaps there was some error in the cooking. All that is changed now, and the controversy during the last two years has passed from arithmetic to history. I should have thought that fair play would demand that tile Church in Wales should be judged by what it is and is doing to-day. Our opponents have thought otherwise. They have been delving in the past for the grievances which they cannot find in the present. Nothing has been more remarkable than the way in which the advocates of this measure have treated the historical record, particularly the Welsh Members. They have made riotous incursions into the 18th century, mutilating and trampling under foot all the facts, and I can only liken their incursion to that of a herd of wild cattle bursting into a well-ordered flower garden.
This strange historical chapter was opened by the Home Secretary, who, you will remember, in discussing the endowments of the Church, regaled the House of
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Commons with fragments of Latin imperfectly translated, combined with fragments of history more imperfectly remembered. Quite recently he told his listening followers in another place that—
"the history of the Church in Wales, with the exception of the last two generations, is a history of neglect and misrule. The Nonconformist bodies gave them (the Welsh) education, taught them the Bible in their own tongue, and brought religion back into the country."
By the side of that statement, let me put these words of Mr. Gladstone, spoken at an Eisteddfod in Wales—
"The mass of the people believe the Welsh to have been a religious people for about 150 or 120 years, and there are a great many who are in the habit of saying that before that time the Welsh were a very godless people. Will you allow me to say that I do not believe a word of it. I believe they were a religious people from the time when they harboured the old Christian religion in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The translation of the Bible (by a Bishop of St. Asaph) into Welsh formed the stay and central prop for the Welsh language all through the country."
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech marked by moderation, asked, "Why was John Penry executed?" Apparently, although the language is a little obscure, the Chancellor connected John Penry's fate with the Establishment in Wales. As a matter of fact, John Penry, a fanatic who swung round from Romanism to extreme Calvinism, was put on his trial in 1593 for feloniously printing at Edinburgh words designed to excite rebellion in England. All this had nothing to do with the Church in Wales. Coming to a later date, the Chancellor referred to a distinguished clergyman in my diocese who was not made a Bishop owing to his broad and liberal proclivities. The clergyman in question, for whose memory I entertain deep respect and admiration, was not appointed to a Welsh See when his name was brought before Mt. Gladstone, but the reason why he was not then or afterwards appointed to a Welsh See had nothing whatever to do with his supposed Liberalism. As a matter of fact, his son was the Conservative Member for the town of which he was vicar.
One more example of these historical oddities may be given. The Prime Minister described the founders of Welsh Nonconformity as "driven out of the so-called National Church." The Chancellor, on the other hand, said that "the fathers of Nonconformity left the Church reluctantly

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and simply came to the conclusion that remaining inside the Anglican Church was quite incompatible with doing the work they desired." There is a formidable difference between these two statements. Was it expulsion, as the Prime Minister says, or voluntary withdrawal, as the Chancellor puts it? I desire to speak of the Prime Minister with sincere respect for the courtesy and the fairness with which he has discussed this Bill, but I ask in wonder from what sources he takes his Welsh Church history. If any one will take the trouble to collate the historical references to I he Church in Wales made by the Prime Minister during the last eighteen years, he will observe that one by one the Prime Minister has jettisoned nearly all his old historical arguments against the Church in Wales, and it may be fairly said that to the remnant left of these arguments in his latest speeches the addition of water would add strength. The Prime Minister is a strong man, but it seems to me that whenever he reaches Wales or Ireland he travels with a season ticket on the line of least resistance.
The one solid argument upon which the Chancellor of the Exchequer built up his case for Disestablishment was that of nationality. The Welsh people are a nation. It is no easy matter to define a nation. Mr. Masterman defined a nation as—
"an entity, mystical and immortal, comprised of varieties of race, language, sentiments, manners, hopes and dreams, to which all the transitory generations contribute, but which transcends the transitory generations."
When I read this I wondered whether I was amid the altitudes of philosophy or groping in the regions of rodomontade. Be this as it may, the plain man recognises that although Wales has never in her history possessed a united, organised, and sovereign government of her own, she still does satisfy, in a measure if not universally, such main tests of nationality as language, race, custom, homeland. Wales is a small country numbering little more than half the population of London. The Chancellor of the Exchequer thus formulates the national demand—
"The management and control of its own religious and spiritual concerns is a matter for Wales and for no one else."
To that demand I say "Yes" with all my heart. But has Wales not got that right
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and that power and does she not use both to the full? But how for his purpose does he define Wales? By language? Half the people of Wales cannot speak a word of Welsh. By race? How many could prove a pure Welsh descent? By religion? Less than half the people of Wales are Nonconformists. By representation? If we count voters and not Members, in 1895, the only time this question was put as a specific issue to Wales, 43 per cent. of the votes recorded were against Disestablishment and Disendowment. The demand for this Bill is not made by Wales but by a section of Wales, and it is even doubtful whether that section on Disendowment could count upon a majority. Patriotism is an enlarged egotism. England has no nationalist party, always asserting its nationality, and there is in these assertions what Burke calls an "upstart insolence." I do not, however, wish to fortify my argument by a niggardly recognition of Welsh nationality, but I do feel that a nationality, admittedly indeterminate, is a very insufficient ground for the dangerous precedent of sectional legislation; nor can I claim that Wales has any more right on the ground of nationality to mutilate the Church of England than it has to dissever itself from allegiance to the Crown of England.
I have dealt with the only arguments specific to Wales. I now turn to a general argument equally applicable to the Church of England as a whole. This Bill is asked for in the name of religious equality. I assume that religious equality in its true meaning represents the claim for religious liberty, and religious liberty consists not merely of toleration, but of the abolition of religious disqualifications. The Statute Book of this country, even during the last fifty years, is replete with Acts abolishing one religious disqualification after another. But the claims of religious equality in our own day have taken on another colour. Religious equality means, not merely the removal of disqualifications, but the abolition of differences. I believe that the really impelling motive is not so much the abolition of disqualifications as of differences. I take the Church in Wales. It is the only national institution Wales possesses; its history goes back beyond that of thrones and parliaments. For at least fifteen centuries it has preserved the Ark of the Covenant, and those centuries have clothed it with traditions, with associations, with a dignity and a prestige.

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Now it is just these historic and social pre-eminences which chafe those outside and actuate the main movers in this agitation, but their object is idle and unattainable. Parliament can no more abolish these things than it can free a man from the advantages or disadvantages of his ancestry. In verity this type of religious and social equality can only be realised in a community which has sunk back to a barbarism where all start equally nameless and naked. But there is a truer interpretation than this of religious equality. I can imagine no equality more sane and wholesome than that under which religious denominations enjoy an unfettered freedom in developing the idea and ideals which gave them birth, and in no country has a larger measure of this freedom been realised than in our own. If this measure became law, so far from enlarging that freedom, it would impoverish it by embittering the whole national life, and instead of the area and influence of religion being broadened we should find that within being enclosing iron shroud of competition the area of liberty would grow narrower and still more narrow. In Ireland the result of Disestablishment was not to increase religious equality, but, as the late Archbishop of Armagh said, "to increase aloofness, to intensify differences, and to make different denominations more conscious and assertive of any superiorities they imagined themselves to possess."
Let no one be led by the use of such phrases as "religious equality" to regard this Bill as an enfranchising measure. There is freedom for all in Wales at the present moment to choose their own religions and to exercise them in whatever form and under whatever conditions of domestic organisation they think fit; but this Bill, which is not only confiscatory but disenabling, says to a large section of the people of Wales, "You who have belonged to the Church of England shall no longer be members of that body. You may make a Church for yourselves as like as you can to that from which we thrust you out, but of the old Church you shall by no means be members." This the Bill says in the interest of religious equality. Little need be said on the question of Disendowment. Our opponents like it not. They scarcely mention it. The noble Viscount passed it over in silence; the Chancellor of the Exchequer passed it by in silence; the Prime Minister scarcely
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dared to touch it; a large section of the Liberal Members are heartily ashamed of it; the country loathes it. Indeed, one of the Welsh Members, evidently conscious of this, told the House of Commons that this Bill gives only two-sevenths of the Church's endowments to the nation and gives back five-sevenths to the Church. Amid a vast amount of competition, this statement by the Member for the Carmarthen Boroughs may fairly claim to be regarded as the least veracious statement made in the course of tins controversy.
There are only one or two things I desire to say about the Church's endowments. First of all, there is a new theory that those endowments are national property. This involves a question of title. If the nation can prove its title to these endowments, let it do so, as Mr. Meyer, the President of the Free Church Council suggested, before a body of experts. For myself, I would be willing to submit the case to any jury of honest men. The first Bill introduced by the present Prime Minister fixed the limit for modern endowments at 1703. The present Bill fixes it at 1662. If it is so certain that the Church's endowments are national, why this shifting line of demarcation? Tithe, we are especially told, is national property. Dean Gabriel Goodman, of Westminster, endowed in 1588 with tithe a grammer school, a church, and almshouses at Ruthin in my diocese. This Bill disendows the church but leaves the school and almshouses untouched. Why so, if tithe is national property? Once more, the parish of Ruabon is endowed with tithe, so is the daughter-parish of Rhosymedre. Every penny is to be taken from Ruabon and not a penny from the daughter-parish. Why? Because Sir Watkin Wynn, the owner of lay tithes, endowed the daughter-parish with a portion of these lay tithes. But if tithe is national property, why is it not taken away from the daughter-parish and from the lay tithe owner
We are told that this is a generous Bill. It safeguards vested interests, but what are the interests concerned in this matter? The freehold of existing incumbents represents an interest which a very few years must see ended. The interests of the present clergy are short and transitory. There are other interests which let me make clear with a simple illustration.

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A Welshman, anxious to show his gratitude to the great English town where he had made a fortune, built and endowed in that town a hospital for the sick and poor. Now imagine in the distant future some yet unborn McKenna coming forward and saying, "We have decided to take away all its endowments from this hospital. But we mean to be generous. We shall observe vested interests, and you, the doctors and hospital staff, as long as you remain in your present positions, will draw your full salaries." But what is the real vested interest? That of the sick and poor for whom the hospital was endowed. Just so, the interest of the parishioners in every little country parish despoiled under this Bill is the great vested interest, and that interest this Bill entirely ignores. Nor, be it remembered, is that interest limited to the present generation of parishioners. A modern writer says that the greatest good which social reform is working out is the good of the social organism as a whole. If, then, the greatest good of the greatest number be our goal, the greatest number in this sense is comprised of the members of generations yet unborn for whom we today are trustees. Now this, the largest and the most sacred interest of all, is absolutely disregarded by this Bill. Mr. Balfour called this Bill a "mean Bill." Yes, it is both mean and selfish; it is ungrateful for the heritage of the past and regardless of its obligations to the future. But people who will not look back to their ancestry will not look forward to their posterity.
In considering such vast proposals as the Disestablishment and the Disendowment of a Church, wise people will endeavour to compute the gain, if any, and the loss. We are told that Disendowment will do the Church good. You will have the voluntary system with all its evoked enthusiasms and self-sacrifice, and so on, but what has this system done in Wales? True, it has dotted the Principality with chapels, built on loan and loaded with debt. The unwholesome competition bred of this system has provided seating accommodation vastly in excess of what is required. Throughout Wales the cry goes up from every Nonconformist denomination that they are unable to provide for their ministers even the wages of a skilled mechanic. This is a fact of importance, for be it remembered that the one real
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force at the back of this movement in Wales is that of the Nonconformist ministers. Who that is human can blame them? The Nonconformist minister, living on an uncertain pittance, dependent upon the goodwill of an often ignorant band of chapel-elders, looks across the road where the parish clergyman, poor though he be, is secure in home and tenure and can speak the truth without fear or favour to peer and peasant. Compared with the tyranny of the chapel deacon, that of the squire is a benevolent and rigidly circumscribed influence.
Test also the unaided voluntary system in its actual working. The ministry of I the chapels, you are told, is maintained by the pence of the poor. Yes, but where there are no pence there is no ministry. The Bishop of Oxford committed himself to the amazing statement that the religions of the poor are the religions for which they have to pay. Why, my Lords, some years ago the wealthiest denomination in Wales attributed a declension in their numbers to neglect of the poor, and this year the President of the Congregational Union in Derbyshire frankly admitted that they failed to attract the poor and the working class. In Wales, as in your great English towns, the poorest—that is, those most needing the aid of a constant Christian ministry—depend only upon the ministrations of the Church. But the voluntary system is not the monopoly of Nonconformists. In Wales there are no more generous givers, not only to the Church and to every charitable object, but even to Nonconformists themselves, than are Churchmen. The only difference is that the voluntary system in the Church is buttressed and steadied by endowments, the value of which is attested by the strenuous efforts made by the Nonconformists to accumulate such endowments. Our endowments, small as they are, help to give to the work and workers security, continuity, independence, order, discipline.
To turn for a moment to Disestablishment. In this connection there are two ways of regarding the State. There are those who regard the State as a soulless institution, whose business it is to provide its citizens with material prosperity without any regard to their moral or religious well-being. Another and a more excellent way regards the State as a God-given institution through which the Will of

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God may be furthered in the world. If this view be true, then religion is just as much the concern of the true nation as of the true man. It is cheap and easy to belittle the idea that Establishment consecrates the State. Last week the Under-Secretary of State said that at the investiture at Carnarvon Castle the Church was there by right and the Nonconformists by request. But given Disestablishment, there would have been no one there at all to represent religion.
I recognise that when all arguments are exhausted there remains the question, What next? Suppose this Bill is rejected, are we prepared to face the possible prolongation of an embittering strife? That is a fair question. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke with sympathetic sadness of Welsh Bishops careering through the country in defence of the Church. Let me, after some experience, assure him that it is not pleasant to lay down the staff of the Shepherd and to be driven to take up the mud-rake of controversy. Necessary duties are often unpleasant. Man of peace as the Chancellor is, he would not hesitate to defend his own home against a burglar. We are defending not ourselves but a sacred trust. When I am asked about the future, I answer thus. This agitation is in Wales not fifty years old; it is sectional, not national; it represents not a deep-seated, chronic malady, but a passing and subsiding inflammation, and the reasons for this are clear. There are honest and reasonable people in Wales, who see, as the Prime Minister said, that the Church is nobly and successfully doing her work. These are the people in Wales who think and don't talk, and reap the harvest of a quiet eye. They mark the tremendous changes coming over Wales. They know that the doctrines and the differences over which their forefathers fought fiercely are cold and dead. They see too well that the younger generation of Welshmen, trained in schools and colleges, yield but a scornful audience to the old and pious peasant-preacher whose creed and teaching and character reflect the gloom and the terrors of Calvinism and whose thirst for political righteousness can still be slaked with the "thin sour wine" of the Manchester School.
The Celt is sensitive to new influences. Higher education has diffused culture among the younger generation of Welshmen. It has quickened the faculties of
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intellectual appreciation and awakened reverence for the past. To such a generation this sordid Bill, with its bourgeois ideals, appeals less and less. I confess that my greatest fear, if this Bill passed, would be not for the Church but for the demoralising effect it would have upon the character of the Welsh people. I cherish high hopes for my countrymen. I believe that they are capable of rendering in the fields of thought and action splendid service to this land and Empire. They are a people quickly kindled to enthusiasm and heroic effort, and it is for their sakes that my hope and prayer is that those ideals which have called forth in the past what is best in the Welsh character may take no detriment and suffer no eclipse. Wales needs the saving and renovating power of a great ideal. Through the long centuries the Church in Wales, in spite of the shortcomings inevitable, because human, of her children, solely and firmly has held and still holds aloft the one true ideal that alone gives purity in word and action, that can ennoble wealth and dignify labour, that keeps guard over the poor man's cottage and looks down upon his humble bed, that alone can teach all men "the sanctity of weakness and suffering and the supreme majesty of compassion and of justice."
LORD ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, having spoken on this Bill only last year I am reluctant to again obtrude myself on the same subject upon your Lordships' notice. My apology for doing so must lie in the fact that there are very few of us on this side of the House who are qualified, even in the very least, to put forward the views and the feelings of the majority of the people of Wales. That, my Lords, is the reason, and the only reason, why I have got up to speak twice within twelve months upon the same subject. In these circumstances I will, as little as I can, put forward remarks of my own which might be only an amplification of what I said before in this House, but will endeavour to confine myself to the best of my power to answering points that have been raised by speakers who have preceded me in this debate.
I do not propose to follow very closely the remarks of the right rev. Prelate who has just sat down, because I do not think it would do much good to discuss who is most responsible in the Principality for bringing about the religious bitterness which does exist, but I have a very strong

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belief myself that it would be quite easy to prove that the religious bitterness was at any rate not wholly caused by the promoters of this Bill. There is one argument I might use as to the lack of necessity for answering the right rev. Prelate very closely, and that is the obvious bias that he showed in some of his remarks. You may hold two views, or you may hold a dozen views, about the present Prime Minister, but taking him on his very weakest line of argument and taking the worst speech that he has made since he entered Parliament, could anybody truly say of it that if you added water to it you would add strength to it? That was said by the right rev. Prelate who has just sat down. He also said that this Bill had been hustled through the House of Commons. So far from that being the case, the Bill was discussed in the House of Commons for twenty-six or twenty-seven days altogether. I think this House flatters itself that on the rare occasions when it goes into Committee on a Government Bill it does its work well. I am sure that it does it thoroughly; yet I do not think this House has ever spent half that period in discussing any one Bill. I do not think, therefore, it can truly be said that this Bill, as regards time, has been hustled through Parliament.
It was said by the last speaker that this Bill is unpopular. That was said also by the noble Lord opposite, Lord Dynevor, who opened the debate to-day. It was also said by Viscount Halifax last night, and by the noble Marquess who moved the rejection of the Bill. It is wonderful how we always find the things we dislike are unpopular. I noticed that the noble Marquess thought that the two most unpopular things in the country were this Bill and food taxes. I know he would like this Bill to go to a referendum, but I wonder whether he would like food taxes to go to a referendum also. It is curious how all of us, without distinction of Party, always seem to think that anything we ourselves do not like ought to go to a referendum. Just now noble Lords on the other side of the House think that on this Bill the country ought to be consulted. A few years ago when the Conservative Party were in power I dare say I shared the same opinion about some of their measures, and I have no doubt that I shall share the same feelings again when the Party of noble Lords opposite
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is next returned to power. In other words it comes to this, that the call for a referendum simply means that you do not like a particular proposal that is being laid before Parliament by somebody or other at the time.
As to the unpopularity of the Bill, the noble Viscount, Lord Halifax, last night said he had been attending a great many demonstrations against this Bill, and that the Bill was enormously unpopular in the country. I do not know what sort of intellectual food the demonstrators were fed on, and I think it all depends on thate For instance, the noble Lord last night asked that the Bill should be postponed. He said it could do no harm to anybody if the Bill were put off for twelve months, and that if that were clone these poor Welsh clergy would be left to draw their incomes for twelve months longer. If people have been going about the country saying that when this Bill is passed all the Welsh clergy are going to be turned out to starve, I do not wonder that the Bill is unpopular amongst those who are fed on such unwholesome intellectual diet, for every one knows that if the Bill is passed the Welsh clergy will be compensated for the rest of their lives.
THE EARL OF POWIS: Is the noble Lord referring to the curates? He is implying that every Welsh clergyman in the Church in Wales will receive his income for the rest of his life.
LORD ST. DAVIDS: I beg the noble Lord's pardon; it is my mistake. I ought to have said every beneficed clergyman; that is what I had in my mind. The next point I should like to refer to was raised last night by the most rev. Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said that this Bill had never been fairly put before the country in all its details, and he pointed out that before the Parliament of the day came to a decision in favour of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church the case had been amply discussed in the House of Commons on Resolutions that had been drawn up by the then Government.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: Not by the Government of the day. The Resolutions were drawn up by Mr. Gladstone in the spring of 1868,

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and they were discussed on Mr. Gladstone's Motion as against the Government of the day. They were then followed by the Suspensory Bill, which was introduced by Mr. Gladstone. That Bill was again debated in Parliament and was before the country at a General Election, which election went against the Government of the day. Therefore the whole proposal of what Mr. Gladstone was going to do was, in my judgment, amply before the country. That was my point.
LORD ST. DAVIDS: I do not in the least wish to misrepresent the most rev. Primate. I quite understand the sense of what he says, and it is perfectly relevant to my own argument. He argued, with perfect fairness, that in the way of being discussed on Resolutions before the Bill was brought in, the question of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was put before the people in a way in which in a certain sense this Welsh Bill was not. I quite agree, but I would point out this difference, that this is not the first Welsh Disestablishment Bill that has been introduced. The Prime Minister himself was in charge years ago of a Disestablishment Bill in the House of Commons, a Bill which went through certain stages there, and was discussed at length in the House. Everybody knew about it, and to a certain extent at any rate it was the subject of discussion in the country, and until the present Bill was introduced that Bill held the field. What I mean is this. In discussions in the country and in Wales on Disestablishment and Disendowment everybody on both sides used to talk of the features and of the principles contained in the old Bill. Everybody knew more or less what a Disestablishment Bill would be, and I would like to point out in connection with that that in most particulars this Bill is far less drastic from the Disestablishment and Disendowment point of view than the first Bill. Therefore I do not think it can quite fairly be argued that the country did not know what a Disestablishment and Disendowment Bill was going to be like when it was introduced.
There is another point that was raised by one of the speakers last night on which I would like to say a word. That was dint the Bill had been saved in Committee more than once by Irish Nationalist votes.
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They mean, I think, that the Irish Nationalists do not profess any overwhelming interest for or against Disestablishment—at least a great many of them do not; and that their voting in the House of Commons, and more or less avowedly so, was first of all to get Home Rule. To a great extent I dare say that is true. But is there nobody else who is voting in the House of Commons on a Bill like this from some other point of view than the point of view of whether he does or does not like Disestablishment or Disendowment? There are Irishmen in the House of Commons besides the Irishmen who vote with us on the Liberal side of the House. There are a hundred Irishmen in the House of Commons, and eighty of them voted for the Government and twenty for the Opposition, and the twenty for the Opposition would be the last men to say that Home Rule was not the principal thing they were voting about. They are not discussing in their meetings to-day in the North of Ireland Welsh Disestablishment, yet they vote on it. It is an extraordinary claim to put forward as debatable matter in this House that the eighty Irishmen who vote for the Liberals ought not to have their votes counted and that the twenty Irishmen who voted with the Opposition should have their votes counted. If von took out of the narrow Divisions in the house of Commons all the Irish votes and all the Irish pairs from both sides, I do not think you would find one single Division on which this Bill had been saved by Irish votes.
In this debate last night the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of Llandaff raised a point as regards his own diocese which was raised last session by the Bishop of St. Asaph. The Bishop of St. Asaph put forward in a most moving way the case of the parishes in his own diocese which would be left wholly and entirely without any endowment whatever if this Bill passed in its present form. I do not doubt for a moment that the right rev. Prelate put forward his case perfectly accurately. I assume he did, but I must point out now, as I ventured to point out when this matter was raised by the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of St. Asaph last session, that to educate people like ourselves it is not very good argument. It is quite a good platform argument to say, "You are going to take

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every penny away and make no provision at all," but we know perfectly well that if you find some parishes from which all is going to be taken you find five or six others from which nothing is going to be taken at all. And the really relevant argument is how much is to be taken and how much is to be left, because what is left is to be pooled, and it can be divided equally over every parish in Wales or in proportion to the population in every parish. It is not a relevant argument to take the hard eases only. I do not say whether it is too hard or not hard enough for the purposes of my argument, but I do say where the whole of the money has to be thrown together and then divided it is not a relevant argument to address to this House that in certain parishes all is taken away, without pointing out at the same time that in other parishes nothing will be taken away at all.
Then I turn to the noble Marquess opposite who moved the rejection of the Bill last night. He said, and no doubt truly, that there were a number of parishes in Wales without any resident Nonconformist minister, and he therefore left it to be inferred—I do not think he put it in so many words—that if you passed this Bill as it stood, and if in those parishes it was impossible to maintain under the new state of things a resident clergyman, there might not be any organisation for religion there at all. I do not think that is putting the case quite accurately. Let us see blow the matter really stands. The parish area was a very old area, one of the oldest areas for the purposes of administration in the country. It is, I believe, supposed to have been founded in early Norman days, in Wales at any rate, and it is an area which for administrative purposes is undoubtedly out of date. In the days when the parish was made the area the population of Wales must have been wholly dependent upon agriculture.
Things have changed, and everybody knows that the population of Wales to-day is in the great mining districts, in the great industrial districts, in the big towns, and in the watering places along the coast; the population has drifted away from the agricultural centres. The parish area as an area, even for Church purposes, has
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to be kept to under the present law; but it is undoubtedly out of date. The Nonconformists naturally, because they are a much newer body, have organised their system in a more practical way. I am bound to say that I do not know much about their organisation, but most of them make their area, not having regard to the parish, but haying regard to the county; and though there may not be a Nonconformist minister actually living there, I believe it is true to say there is no part of Wales which is not covered by a Nonconformist organisation that will prevent any parish from being without religious ministration. In other words, I believe the Nonconformists can serve every district. But I go a great deal further than that. So can the Church. Even if this Bill is passed, does anybody really believe that the Church is not going to cover with its ministrations every part of Wales as it does to-day? To begin with you will have, as I said just now, the enormous advantage of being able to use the funds that are left to the Church to the best advantage freely without being tied down to one particular area. I would never pretend to say for a moment that it is anything like a compensation for the loss of the big sum which will be taken away, but I do say that the freedom that will be gained is a substantial compensating advantage. I feel sure that Church people in Wales who have not subscribed hitherto to anything like the extent that Nonconformists have subscribed for the maintenance of their religion will put their hands in their pockets, and that the Church will be able to carry out its work in Wales even in the first days, which will be difficult days, as actively as it is carrying it on to-day.
Then there was a remark made by the noble Viscount, Lord St. Aldwyn. He pointed out that he was one of the mildest of men in this House, that he was never for extreme courses, and that he always liked a compromise if he could get it. But he pointed out that under present circumstances he was all against compromise, and he gave us his idea of what he meant by compromise. He said that if this Bill was submitted to the country and was approved by the country, then he would like to compromise. Is not that a little peculiar? Suppose you go to the country with a definite Bill all in black

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and white, a Bill which has been discussed many days and which everybody has heard about and one that has been agitated all over the country, and the country says, "Yes, we are in favour of this Bill," can anybody imagine that the successful Party who have fought the thing inch by inch for years are then going to compromise with the other side? If we have come to times when the mildest people hold such an idea of compromise, then, my Lords, I think all idea of compromise in this country must have passed away.
You say that the Bill is unpopular. I never pretend to know whether a thing is popular or not before an election, but you say the Bill is unpopular and you hold the view that you will defeat the Bill. I hope you are wrong. I hope the Bill will pass into law. But supposing that you get a General Election before it becomes law. You go to the country and get a majority on something or another—we none of us ever care on what any Party gets its majority—and you succeed in upsetting this Bill. The right rev. Prelate who has just sat down said he did not want the venom of sectarian strife and bitterness introduced. Do you think you are going to stop sectarian strife and bitterness by rejecting this Bill? It means this in Wales. It means that the whole thing will have to be started again from the beginning, and that the bitterness which has gone on year after year, spoiling life in Wales, is to go on again. I can only say that I, for one, shall most sincerely regret it if any such thing happens.
I noticed in the debates in the House of Commons one remark made by a very strong opponent of this Bill, Colonel Williams. Colonel Williams was speaking, I think, in the sense of advising Nonconformists that Disestablishment and Disendowment might not lead to their benefit, and he said this—
"If this Bill is passed, the term 'Free Churchmen,' of which Nonconformists are so proud, will become a misnomer, because then the Church in Wales will be the greatest Free Church of them all."
That is absolutely true, and it is because I know it to be true that I want to see this Bill passed. I want to see the Church in Wales start free of all the bitterness that has accumulated during this controversy. I believe the Church as a free Church will take a place in Wales which she has never
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taken in modern times, and that in five years the Church in Wales will have attained to a position that nobody dreams of to-day. I believe that it will be the beginning of her career; and that, my Lords, is one of the main reasons why I want to see this Bill pass into law.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, the noble Lord who happens to be my namesake indulged in a prophetic peroration. As I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, I will ask him to take the Prime Minister's advice and "Wait and see." He will excuse me from following him into his main argument. He said, I think, that certain remarks he made were upon things about which he knew nothing—he said that he knew nothing about Nonconformist organisation.
The position of His Majesty's Government in opposing the noble Marquess's Amendment is this. The Government claim that they were given at the last General Election a free hand to pass the Parliament Act, including the Preamble, and a free hand to use it to pass any measure they pleased, however great its gravity, without further reference to the country, and with as little Parliamentary discussion as they pleased. Now in supporting the noble Marquess's Amendment I take the Government on their own ground, only assuming that they will allow me to add one proviso—namely, that the measures which are to be passed under the Parliament Act should be measures in accord with the recognised Liberal principles professed by the Government. May I say, to clear the ground for my argument, that I presume no Liberal will challenge my assumption that a principle does not cease to be a Liberal principle merely because it is also accepted by the Unionist Party and by every reasonable being.
My case against the noble Earl, Lord Beauchamp, is this—that this Bill contravenes five fundamental Liberal principles. When the country returned the Government to power in 1910, it returned them as men professing, inter alia, these five great Liberal principles which the Bill contravenes—the right of public discussion, religious liberty, redress of grievances, Parliamentary representation, and justice. I challenge the noble

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Earl who is going to sum up for the Government to show, if he can, that this Bill does not contravene those five Liberal principles. Let me take the first, public discussion. The noble Marquess who leads the House, and to whom I wish to refer with most sincere and profound respect, will bear me out when I say that the first leader to go to the country and raise public discussion on a great question was Mr. Gladstone. I think he did that largely on account of the enlargement of the franchise which took place in 1867. Mr. Gladstone put his proposals in regard to the Irish Church fairly and squarely before the country in 1868. No contrast can be more complete than that between the discussion of the question of the Irish Church in 1868 and of the question of the Church in Wales in 1910. All that the Prime Minister did was to make a curt reference to a Welsh Disestablishment Bill in his speech at Hull. Neither he nor any other Cabinet Minister, nor, as far as I am aware, any single Liberal candidate anywhere, devoted a single speech to this question during the last General Election.
What happened in Wales? Less than a third of the Welsh Members who support the Bill thought it worth while to mention it in their election addresses at the last General Election, and to the best of my knowledge not one of them devoted a single speech to it. What took place in Wales at the last General Election was well described a few months afterwards in a Liberal newspaper by a Welsh Nonconformist minister who is a prominent Liberal and a supporter of this Bill. His words were—
"When a speaker during an election campaign mentions Disestablishment he will dismiss it in a sentence something like this, 'Disestahlishment was settled forty years ago; I need not touch upon that.' What madness. There are thousands of us in Wales of thirty and under who could not pass a simple examination on a subject like the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the English Church."
I venture to think that those who are impressed very much with the united voice of Wales have reason to modify their opinions in view of that testimony which I know myself to be perfectly true. In its general application the question was not seriously discussed even in Wales at the last General Election. "Disestablishment was settled forty years ago, I need not touch upon that" precisely describes the
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Prime Minister's own attitude at the last General Election.
I might draw attention to the utter absence of any real analogy between the cases of Ireland and Wales, but I will pass the point by with merely this observation. There is no excuse for, but rather a condemnation of, the Prime Minister's failure to discuss this measure in the country in 1910 to be found in the fact that Mr. Gladstone discussed a different measure before a different electorate forty-two years before. Three such weighty Liberal authorities upon the Irish Act of 1869 as Mr. Gladstone, the late Duke of Argyll, and Bishop Thirlwall emphatically maintained that no analogy at all could be fairly drawn between the two cases of Ireland and Wales; and Mr. Asquith himself in the House of Commons this session confessed that the Irish Act set no precedent for Church dismemberment, which is admittedly in point of principle the distinctive essence of this Bill. It is idle, therefore, for him to plead the Irish precedent of 1869 as releasing him from his obligation as Prime Minister, upon Liberal principles, to secure the public discussion of the Welsh Bill in the country before asking Parliament to accept it.
I say, first, that as a matter of fact there was no public discussion of this measure in the country at the last General Election. No one in your Lordships' House can contradict that statement. In view of all these facts, a measure of this far-reaching gravity to England as well as to Wales cannot be passed into law without violation of Liberal principles until the country shall have had an opportunity of passing judgment upon it in the light of public discussion. The Prime Minister is not entitled to assume that the electorate to-day would take the same view of the breadth of State responsibilities and of the relation of the duties of property to its rights as was taken in the widely different atmosphere of 1868 by the mid-Victorian electorate.
The second Liberal principle which this Bill of Church Dismemberment violates is the fundamental principle of religious liberty. There are some who suppose that this Bill will promote religious liberty. The Home Secretary and Under-Secretary have stated most distinctly that the dismemberment of the Church is the very essence of the Bill. Logically and in point

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of principle they are right. Upon any conceivable definition of religious liberty the question whether the administrative unity of the Church in England and Wales is to be maintained or not is a question for Churchmen and not for the Government or Parliament to decide over our heads against our will. For the Government to propose to break up the administrative unity of the Church into two parts against the will of Churchmen by an Act of Parliament is nothing less than an audacious act of tyranny. The Government's plea that no serious practical injury would be inflicted upon the work and of the Church by dismemberment is irrelevant. Churchmen take a very different view of the effect of dismemberment. The question is not whether the Government or Churchmen know best what is the value of the administrative unity of the Church, but whether it is not an audacious defiance of the principle of religious liberty for the Government to override by force the strong convictions and earnest wishes of Churchmen in regard to the internal arrangements of the Church. The supposed wishes of a local political Majority in Wales cannot reconcile an act of tyranny with Liberal principles. There is no precedent for the dismemberment of any religious body against the will of its members to be found in the history of this Kingdom or of any other civilised State in modern times. Since the Government received no authority at tire last General Election to use the Parliament Act to pass a measure so essentially repugnant to its own professed principles, it has no right at all to force this Bill into law without first taking the judgment of the country upon it.
I want to appeal to noble Lords who represent the Government in this House, and, if they will allow me to say so, I appeal to them with the most sincere respect. I want them to consider and to come to a conclusion as to whether the essence of this Bill is, or is not, in accordance with religious liberty and with the principles on the profession of which you hold power. You may say that what you are doing you are doing so that good may come. But whatever your motives are, I challenge the noble Earl when he speaks to deny that what you are doing is going directly contrary to the principle of religious liberty, which holds, perhaps, the highest place among the professions by which His Majesty's Government were
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returned to power. I say that if you force through under the Parliament Act a Bill the essence of which is directly contrary to the principles you professed at the polls, you are abusing the Act.
Now to take the next point. A third principle with which the Liberal Party is honourably associated is the redress of grievances. The plea is sometimes urged that the method of piecemeal Disestablishment, though irrational and unfair on the face of it, ought nevertheless to be adopted even at the cost of dismemberment because Nonconformists are alleged to have grievances in Wales which they have not in England. If it could be said to be true that this Bill is required in order to redress Nonconformist grievances in Wales, then. I do not think the Chairman of the Welsh Parliamentary Party would have been obliged to admit, as he did last December, that this Bill had met with determined opposition by a section of the Liberal Party. The Under-Secretary was good enough on one occasion to attempt to justify piecemeal Disestablishment by an enumeration of four specific Nonconformist grievances in Wales. It is fairly well known that that attempt was a notorious failure. Two of his four grievances are left untouched by this Bill; a third turned out to be no grievance at all; while his fourth grievance is to be redressed by the Bill through the substitution of four English Bishops in place of four Welsh Bishops in this House. I should have thought they would be glad to see more Welshmen in this House, even though they were Bishops; but, at any rate, whatever the dimensions of that grievance may be, it may, I think, very well be left to be dealt with by the Prime Minister in his Bill recently promised for the reform of this House.
It is not surprising, in view of the futility of the Under-Secretary's list of special Nonconformist grievances in Wales, that Welsh Members should have to come to the conclusion, to quote the words of one of their leaders, that after all "Disestablishment without Disendowment was not worth asking for much less fighting for," being an "anaemic policy" and an "academical and infinitesimal reform." In the view of Welsh Churchmen, on the other hand, Disestablishment is the most serious feature of the Bill because it would mean not only for the Church the

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overthrow at a stroke of all its existing legal organisation, but also for the nation its surrender of the national recognition of religion which has been the most conspicuous characteristic of Welsh national life from its very beginning. To inflict upon the Church in Wales three such great wrongs as dismemberment, the overthrow of all its existing legal organisation, and the eventual confiscation of three-fifths of its endowments for the sake of giving the promoters of this Bill what they themselves regard as merely an "academical and infinitesimal reform" is not a method of redressing grievances which is in accord with Liberal principles and common sense.
It has now become a fourth principle of Liberal policy cherished by the Government, that no Bill specially affecting any part of the United Kingdom ought to become law without the approval of a majority of the Parliamentary representatives of the part concerned. The Minister in charge of the Bill in this House, Earl Beauchamp, frankly acknowledged in a speech at Alton last year that "the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales was only the first step towards the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church in England," and other Cabinet Ministers have made similar admissions. This Bill, therefore, is a flank attempt to lay down in advance the terms of English Disendowment. The part of the Kingdom specially affected by this measure for the dismemberment as well as piecemeal Disendowment and Disestablishment of the Church of England is clearly not Wales alone but England and Wales together. The division lists of the House of Commons show that as far as the votes of the Parliamentary representatives of England and Wales together are concerned there was a majority against the Government upon this Bill last session of twenty-four on the First Reading, of sixteen on the Second Reading, while on the Third Reading the votes were equally divided. This session the majority from England and Wales together against the Government upon this Bill was six on the Second Reading and fifteen on the Third Reading. When the terms of Disendowment were under consideration in Committee of the House of Commons last session the Parliamentary representatives of England and Wales, taken together, gave a majority against the Government of forty-two for leaving the Church
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all its endowments except tithe, of fifty-two for giving compensation to curates, and of twenty-seven, which went up on Report to fifty-two for leaving the Church its glebe. On these four crucial divisions upon the terms of disendowment, primarily for Wales but ultimately for England, the Government was saved from defeat solely by the votes of Irish Nationalists.
LORD ST. DAVIDS: Has the right rev. Prelate reckoned the pairs? You have to reckon the pairs as well as the votes.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVIDS: Do the Irish Nationalists pair?
LORD ST. DAVIDS: The Unionists do.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVIDS: On four crucial divisions on the terms of Disendowment the Government was saved from defeat by the votes of Irish Nationalists, whose numbers according to the Home Rule Bill are to be largely reduced in the next Parliament. This is indeed making hay of the Church while the sun shines. It is immoral to throw the security of religious endowments, which ought to be a pure question of equity, into the scramble of Party politics. But if the preservation of trust property is to be made a question, not of equity, but of votes, then on the Home Rule policy professed by the Government the terms of the piecemeal Disendowment of the Church of England ought not to be settled against the wishes of a majority of the Parliamentary representatives of England and Wales taken together without an appeal to the country.
I presume no Liberal will challenge my assumption that, justice still keeps a high place among the Liberal principles professed by the Government. The real question therefore is, this Bill for the secularisation of religious endowments just goes to the root of the claim of the Government to pass it under the Parliament Act without an appeal to the country. This is not an abstract question but a concrete question of what the Bill actually does, and whether what the Bill actually does ought to be done. The representatives of the Government in their speeches in Parliament have been too fond of discussing this concrete question of justice as if it were a mere abstraction. They have yet to learn that they are cutting 2 to the quick into the tenderest feelings and deepest convictions of Church people.

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What are the Disendowment proposals of this Bill? Let me first take the case of churchyards. The Bill takes away from the Church in the diocese of St. Davids 421 churchyards situated in 307 incumbencies. In only seventy-seven of these incumbencies is the churchyard the only burial ground. There are in these incumbencies 130 Nonconformist burial grounds which the Bill does not touch. The position at present, therefore, is this. In these 307 incumbencies Nonconformists have not only 480 burial grounds of their own, but also the right—and I am glad they hayed burial in the parish churchyard by a Nonconformist minister with a Nonconformist service under the Burials Amendment Act of 1880. If this Act needs amendment let it be amended, but in view of the facts the alienation of its churchyards from the Church to a secular authority proposed in this Bill is not a redress of Nonconformist grievances but a wrong wantonly inflicted on the Church, which is no less a wrong for being falsely called by the fine name of religious equality. The churchyards are the sacred precincts of our churches, and to alienate them from the Church without just cause will be a permanent affront of which Churchpeople will be reminded each time they go to church. The most tender feelings of the living are associated with the hallowed resting places of the dead. To alienate these hallowed spots from the Church without just cause is an outrageous in-justice to the feelings of Churchpeople and most repugnant to Liberal principles as well as to the courteous considerateness for the feelings of neighbours which is a fine feature of Welsh character.
There is no precedent, I would remind Lord St. Davids, in the Irish Act for this outrage. What excuse had Mr. McKenna to offer? Nothing but the abstract pedantry that public rights of burial should be in the hands of a public authority. The facts stultify his pedantry. In the diocese of St. Davids, out of 421 churchyards affected by the Bill at least 117 have been enlarged by private benefactions in modern times. If the Home Secretary is to be relied on—a large assumption—the modern enlargements in these 117 cases is left under the Bill in the hands of the Representative Church Body while the ancient part surrounding the Church is alienated to a secular authority. The sole reason for these modern enlargements was
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that there was no room for burial in the ancient part. What the Bill therefore does in these 117 cases is to stultify his pedantic excuse by leaving to the Church the part of the churchyard where there is a public right of burial and taking from the Church that part of the churchyard where there is none. The churchyards clause represents, indeed, the whole spirit and conception of this mean little Bill.
The Endowments clauses of the Bill in the wantonness of their injustice match its churchyards clause. No benefit of any kind would accrue to Nonconformists out of the money taken from the Church. Under the Bill no tithe-payer is to be relieved from the payment of tithe, nor, according to Mr. McKenna, is any ratepayer to be relieved from the payment of rates. Neither education nor public health in Wales will gain from the Bill. What the Bill does is to take Church money to pay for education and public health when all now recognise that it is the duty of the State to pay for these two secular objects out of its own large resources. The wealthiest State in the world has no need to cripple the poorest dioceses of the Church in order to pay its way. The ultimate effect of the Bill when vested interests expire would inevitably be to relieve the pockets of Imperial taxpayers, most of whom live outside Wales, by a miserable dole equivalent to less than one-fourth of a farthing in the pound on the Income Tax. Religious trust property is thus misappropriated to private profit under the Bill. Two eminent Welsh Nonconformists—Mr. Henry Radcliffe and the Rev. Dr. Cynddylan Jones—understated the truth when they said that under this Bill all the ancient religious endowments of Wales "would disappear like snow in the sunshine and eventually become as ineffective as a bucketful of water in the Bristol Channel." The only conclusion to be drawn from this waste of Church money under the Bill is that it is taken away from the Church, not for the good of anybody or anything, but merely for the sake of taking it away from the Church. Is this idle waste of religious endowments in accord with Liberal principles.
Among the many strange sayings of members of the Government about this Bill the most amazing is their delusion that by the wanton alienation of churchyards and the wanton secularisation of Church.

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endowments they are sowing the seeds of good will in Wales. Both Welsh Churchmen and Nonconformists alike are men encompassed with infirmities. The memory of wanton injustice would not of itself be a help to Churchmen to do their duty, and the man knew the human heart well who wrote—
"Forgiveness to the injured cloth belong,
They ne er can pardon who have done the wrong."
I can only conclude that amidst the many measures which the Government has in hand its eminent members have been too busy to think out the practical consequences of what they are doing. Why do they do it? Their plea is that at any cost the Chinch in Wales must be deprived of its ancient endowments because they belong to the State and not to the Church. If so, they must belong to the State either by legal title or by moral right. According to the high authority of the Solicitor-General (Sir J. Simon) the legal title of the Church to its ancient endowments is "good and solid." The case of the Government for wasting the ancient endowments of the Church and for sowing seeds of bitterness in England as well as Wales is thus reduced to the abstract proposition that the endowments in question belong to the State of moral right. It is, indeed, a heavy burden of injurious consequences to the cause of religion as a whole which the Government places upon a mere theory which it has failed to prove, and which so strong a Liberal as the learned Professor Freeman did not hesitate to denounce as "horrible folly" and worse.
What practical men who love justice want to know is, not what are Mr. McKenna's abstract theories, but what is wrong with the work of the Church in Wales that it should thus be severely crippled in its lawful resources for service? The Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the work of the Church in Wales, and in its Report there is not a word of censure upon the work of the Church in any respect. The Prime Minister has borne repeated testimony that he thinks the work of the Church in Wales has been during the last 70 years worthy of high praise. How, then, can the Disendowment clauses of this Bill be just? Let me give a concrete illustration from my own diocese of the injustice of the Bill. It takes away in the diocese of St. Davids every penny of the endowments of 48 in
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cumbencies, all being country parishes except three which are in small towns. In this group of 48 incumbencies the percentage of Easter communicants to the population was last year more than twice the corresponding percentage for the whole Church in England and Wales, being 14·19 as compared with 6·7; and the percentage of Sunday scholars was also well above the average for the whole Church, being 11·31 as compared with 8·92. This group of incumbencies has on the average an area of 7·7 square miles, a population of 659, and an endowment of £229 a year. It is clearly unjust to confiscate the modest endowments of this well worked group of incumbencies to the private profits of Imperial taxpayers.
It would be impossible for these proposals of wanton injustice to become law under the written Constitution of the United States. An attempt was made in 1801 by the legislature of Virginia to confiscate the endowments of parish churches there as a consequence of Disestablishment, but it was disallowed by the Supreme Court. In a memorable judgment delivered by the eminent jurist Mr. Justice Story, the Supreme Court, while allowing Disestablishment, held that the property was "not forfeited because the churches had committed no offences," and the Court went on to say—
"We have ourselves no hesitation, standing upon the principles of natural justice, upon the fundamental laws of every free Government, upon the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States, in deciding that the local statutes were not operative so far as to divest the Episcopal Church of the property acquired previous to the Revolution by purchase or donation."
The Court regarded the property as a perpetual inheritance of the Church, and held that—
"This principle is equally consonant with the common sense of mankind and the maxims of eternal justice."
Since justice still holds its place among the Liberal principles professed by the Government, this unjust Bill ought not to be passed into law by means of the Parliament Act without an appeal to the country.
Let me sum up my argument in support of the noble Marquess's Amendment. It is not necessary for my purpose to criticise the Parliament Act; it is sufficient to show that the Government is employing the Act contrary to Liberal principles. If the Act

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were employed in accord with Liberal principles, measures meant to be passed under its provisions would be divided into two classes—first, those which had been seriously discussed in the country at the previous General Election; and, secondly, those which had not been so discussed. Upon Liberal principles only those measures which had been previously discussed in the country would ever be introduced into any Parliament during its first two sessions, while those measures which had not been so discussed would always be reserved for the two closing sessions. Upon Liberal principles no Government would presume under the Parliament Act to ask for the Royal Assent to any measure, especially a measure of great gravity, which had not been previously discussed in the country at a General Election. To employ the Parliament Act in order to evade public discussion in the country upon a measure of great gravity is to violate Liberal principles and to abuse the Parliament Act to suit the exigencies of a temporary coalition. His Majesty's Government holds power by the support of a coalition majority, but it obtained power on its profession of Liberal principles. If the Parliament Act be used to pass, without an appeal to the country, this far-reaching Bill which violates at least five prominent Liberal principles, then I take leave to say that in so forcing it into law behind the backs of the people the Government will have abused its power and betrayed its trust.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: My Lords, I ask the indulgence of the House for a few minutes, and I promise they will be very few; but I should like to refer to something that fell from the most rev. Primate in the speech which he made in your Lordships' House last night. I hope I am quoting him correctly. He said—
"We"—[that is, the Bench of Bishops and noble Lords opposite]—"are asked to say we will join with you without further appeal to the country, if you will give us a little more money for the Church or modify some of the provisions which seem to us to be harsh."
And he went on to say—
"I believe that such action would be wholly wrong. I believe it would be bitterly wrong … to those who come after us. The property, the position, the privileges, and the responsibilities of the Church belong to us in trust for our children …"
Well, my Lords, there always is, it seems to me, a precedent for everything, and as
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the most rev. Primate said those words my thoughts went back to the time when the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill was before your Lordships' House on Second Reading.
I well remember that debate. I was sitting in exactly the same place as I am sitting in to-day, and upon the Bench behind the Archbishop of Canterbury, where my right rev. friend the Bishop of Hereford now sits, rose Bishop Magee, the Bishop of Peterborough, and he made one of the most moving speeches on ecclesiastical matters that probably has ever been made in your Lordships' House. It was a very strong speech; it was a very decided speech; but I am bound to admit that in tone, in temper, and in language it was very different from the speech to which your Lordships listened from the first right rev. Prelate who addressed you this evening. The speech had a most extraordinary effect on the House, and when the Bishop of Peterborough sat down some moments elapsed before Lord Kimberley got up to reply to that great oration. I happened to be sitting next to a noble Lord who is now dead, and who carried great weight in this House and was very kind to us young Peers. I said to him, "Good heavens, the thing is all over now; how can any one after that speech vote for the Second Reading of the Irish Church Bill?" and he said, "Oh, pooh, don't talk non-sense. There is no danger whatever about the Second Reading; the noble Lords opposite will allow the Second Reading to pass, but the danger will lie later in Committee. The Bill as it stands will not be allowed to go through without some compromise, especially on the financial clauses." That is to say, in the language of the most rev. Primate, more money would have to be given to the Church and some of the provisions which seemed to the Bench of Bishops to be harsh would have to be modified. Every one knows what happened. The Second Reading of the Bill was passed with a majority of thirty-three. In the Liberal majority, strange as it may appear, there were eight Dukes and eight or nine Marquesses, and I am glad to say they were giants—that is to say, Liberal giants.
I need not take up the time of the House in describing what happened. The compromise was effected, both sides of the House came together, and the Irish State

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Church was a thing of the past and disappeared for ever. Now I ask any member of your Lordships' House—I most respectfully ask the Bench of Bishops themselves—is there any one man in this House who would wish to see the re-establishment of the Church in Ireland? Will any one say that the Church in Ireland is weaker or poorer than it was when it was part of the Establishment? I think the reverse is the case. I will take one instance, if your Lordships will allow me, and that is in the excellent speech which the Marquess of Londonderry made on the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill. The noble Marquess told us that what struck him inure particularly when he went over to Belfast on that notable Sunday was a sermon that was preached by the Bishop in the cathedral. He told us that he was very much moved by this sermon, so much so that at one moment he said that he was very much inclined to repeat the sermon to your Lordships' House.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: I do not think I ever made such a bold remark as that. What I said was that I should have liked your Lordships to have heard it.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: I accept the correction of the noble Marquess, and I join with him in the regret that your Lordships did not hear this great sermon. But it is a very open thing in my mind whether that excellent ecclesiastical speech or homily, or sermon, would have been as strong as it undoubtedly was, to suit the taste of the congregation, if the speaker had been dependent for his emoluments on a Church that was by law established. And now, my Lords, I should like to ask one question. I hope I shall not be thought too inquisitive. But how is it, and why is it, if it was considered right in 1869 as regards the Irish Church—because if it had not been right no one would suppose that your Lordships' House with your high ideals would ever have allowed that Bill to go through this House—if it was right in 1869 to pass the Irish Church Bill with a compromise, how in the name of fortune can it be bitterly wrong in 1913 to go through exactly the same performance as regards the Welsh Church?
It may be said, and it may be true, that there are technical differences in detail between the two cases. I am not able to
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discuss that, and I would not take up the time of the House in venturing to do so. But it seems to me that after all, supposing there are technical differences in detail between the two cases, that is to a certain extent only special pleading. The principle is exactly the same. The Irish nation got rid of a State Church in 1869; the Welsh nation mean to get rid of a State Church in 1914. I do not argue whether they are right or whether they are wrong. I only say that this is the fact, that they intend next year to get rid of what is called the National Church, the Church that—I will not say is repudiated, because that would be too strong a word—but the Church that is certainly not accepted as the National Church by at least two-thirds of the population of Wales. Perhaps it will be said, "Who on earth are you to get up and give us your ideas about what is right and wrong in this matter?" It is true that I have a certain family connection with Wales, of which I am very proud, but that is not my excuse for venturing to make a speech on so great and important a subject as this.
My excuse for saving a word or two on this subject is that I had the honour and the privilege of being appointed Chairman of the Welsh Commission on Land in the early 'nineties. That Commission worked very hard for three years. We visited every portion of the Principality; we went to almost every town; and the Commissioners slept in eighty townships in the Principality during those three years. Now I do think that that gave the Commissioners a great insight into the inner life of the Principality, not only the agricultural, but the political, the moral, and the spiritual life of the Principality. There were three members of the Unionist Party on that Commission. There was my noble friend Lord Kenyon and two great landlords in Wales of whom I can only say that they acted up to the reputation of the landlord members of your Lordships' House. I cannot put it higher than that. My noble friend Lord Kenyon will correct me if I am wrong, hut, I think I may fairly say that all of us on that Commission found a generous kind-hearted people. We found a nation, the chief characteristics of which were deep religious feeling and most passionate devotion to the land of their fathers. On one of the Sundays during our travels I was in a place in North Wales—I will not mention the name for fear of hurting the

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feelings of the incumbent of that place—and in the morning I visited the church of the Established Church of England. I found a very nice church, and the congregation consisted of that mystic number of "two or three that were gathered together." I cannot say that it was a very inspiriting service, but it was what they call a very nice service. In the afternoon I went to the Calvinistic-Methodist chapel to see what was going on in that temple of devotion. The place was packed, crammed, jammed full of enthusiastic people; they sang hymns as Welsh people only can sing them, and there were several prayers, and we had a sermon of an hour's duration which was most attentively followed. Individually I did not catch much as it was in the Welsh language. The only two words that I understood were "Gladstone" and "Home Rule." I asked afterwards what the allusion to Gladstone was, and was told that it was a tribute of respect from a body of Nonconformists, or Dissenters as they might be called, towards one of probably the greatest and finest Liberal Churchmen that ever lived; and the reference to his name was most sympathetically received. As regards Home Rule, that represented the intense desire of the Welsh nation to have local self-government, so as, if possible, to avoid what is the nightmare and the bugbear of tenant farmers in the Principality, the threat of being turned out of the homes in which, in so many instances, their families have lived for generations and generations. It was the prayer to Almighty God, "Save us from eviction."
If the Welsh nation who are asking for this boon to be granted to them were a lot of materialists, if they were a lot of atheists, if they were men who derided religion, there would not be one Liberal on this side of the House who would not go into the Lobby with you and most resolutely refuse to allow that this request should be granted. Of course we should; but the misunderstanding in this House, which is composed entirely of Churchmen—there is not a single Nonconformist or Dissenter, as far as I am aware, who is a member of your Lordships' House—[Oh!]—perhaps I am wrong, but there are very few—is due to the fact that the great preponderating influence of this House, backed up by the Bishops, is the Church of England. I honestly feel that Welsh aspirations and hopes are quite imperfectly understood, and that misunder
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standing is the cause of the resolute attitude that noble Lords have taken against the wish of the Welsh nation. May I quote one sentence out of the unanimous Report which the Land Commissioners issued. They said that the Welsh possessed "distinctive characteristics which separate them from the rest of the United Kingdom." They had aspirations consistent with the union of all the Dominions into an Imperial State, and at the same time they were national in the highest and best sense of the term. I may be wrong, but it does seem to me that you are refusing to recognise Wales as a nation when you absolutely put your backs against the wall and refuse in any shape or form to grant the national demands.
We all respect the deep feeling which urges the Bench of Bishops and noble Lords opposite to follow the course which you have mapped out for yourselves with regard not only to the Welsh policy but to the Irish policy as well. You have taken your side; we deeply deplore it, and I feel perfectly certain of this, that it is the feeling of every man who has gone into the wide world, it is the feeling of every man who has been in the British Dominions and into the Colonies beyond the seas, that you are laying the axe to the roots of British greatness if you destroy the collective individuality which is the secret of England's common strength. I have now completed fifty years of consecutive service in the Liberal ranks in both Houses of Parliament. I have voted during those fifty years for all sorts of reforms. I have voted for political, agricultural, social, military, naval, and ecclesiastical reform; and, my Lords, on my honour I can say that I never regret one single vote that I have given in the course of that long life. It is with the clearest conscience, and in the full belief that it is in the religious and the highest and best moral interests of the Principality, that I shall with all my heart record my vote in favour of the Second Reading of this Bill.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I will not attempt to follow the noble Marquess who has just sat down in his entertaining account of his peregrinations in the Principality. We learn from him that he found a generous and kindhearted people devoted to the land of their fathers; that he was greatly impressed by their singing, and by a sermon which he was

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not able to understand, and which he apparently cited in order that he might pit it against the rival sermon which my noble friend behind me (Lord Londonderry) was ready to cite in the argument to which we listened from him the other evening. But what those impressions of his Welsh tour have to do with the Bill upon the Table, I am really not able to conjecture.
My noble friend who moved the Amendment which we are now discussing reminded the House, at the beginning of his remarks yesterday, of the debate which we had upon this subject last session, and he complained, as many of us complained at the time, of the somewhat meagre contribution made to that debate by noble Lords sitting on the Front Bench opposite. On this occasion His Majesty's Ministers have been true to their traditions. If their contribution was meagre last session, it has been even more exiguous on this occasion. The course of the debate has really been remarkable. The noble Earl who has charge of the Bill was not even at the pains of introducing it with a few prefatory words. My noble friend Lord Salisbury followed with a closely-reasoned speech, and he in turn was followed by the noble and learned Viscount upon the Woolsack in a speech eloquent and interesting, full of facts, of which a good many seem to be disputed, and containing arguments a good many of which did not appear to us quite relevant to the subject that we were discussing. The noble and learned Viscount sat down at about six o'clock yesterday afternoon, and since that hour not one single speaker from the Front Bench opposite has addressed a word to your Lordships.
We have had an eloquent speech from my noble friend Lord St. Aldwyn; we have had a series of most interesting speeches from the most rev. Primate and his brethren; but we have had no attempt at a reply from members of His Majesty's Government. And of the comparatively rare speeches delivered in support of the Bill from the Back Benches opposite, two at least were characterised by a note of very distinct dissatisfaction with the Disendowment proposals of the Bill. The noble Earl will, of course, presently make his reply, but we shall have no opportunity of meeting his arguments if they seem to us unconvincing. I can assure your Lordships that I am not for a moment going to suggest that it should
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be our business to apply a foot-rule to the columns of Hansard, and that one side has a grievance if the other side does not contribute an approximately equal number of columns to the record of the debate. That is not at all what I mean. But what I do suggest is that our debates in this House are deprived of their reality and of their educative value if they are not carried on with a certain amount of give-and-take as between at all events the two Front Benches.
Silence has its advantages, and much has been said and sung of the advantages of silence, particularly when your case is not a very strong one. I am sure the noble Marquess who leads the House is familiar with Pope's famous "Ode to Silence." May I trouble him with a very short quotation from it. The poet, apostrophizing the goddess of silence, describes how, when "oppressed with argumental tyranny "—the sort of argumental tyranny that we listened to in the speeches of the right rev. Prelates who addressed us this afternoon—"routed reason finds a safe retreat in thee"; and then he goes on with these three lines which I cannot resist quoting to the House. He describes what takes place in the "Senate" —I presume he had the House of Lords in his mind—and he writes:
"Yet speech even there, submissively withdraws From rights of subjects, and the poor man's cause:
Then pompous silence reigns, and stills the noisy laws."
That is not an inadequate description of the Bench which I see opposite to me. I do not think your Lordships could wish for a better illustration of the effects of the Parliament Act upon our debates in depriving them of that reality which they used to possess. I am almost tempted to pair with the noble Marquess who leads the House and to observe the silence which he is going to observe, but there are one or two small matters to which I should like to call attention, and to which I hope the noble Earl will address himself when he follows me presently.
In the first place, I want to say one word about the form of my noble friend's Amendment. It has not been much criticised in this House, but it has been a great deal criticised out of doors. The kind of criticism that we encounter is something of this sort—"You have asked

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for a General Election for the Home Rule Bill. You also ask for a General Election for the Welsh Church Bill. You cannot have two General Elections; therefore you will have to be content with one election, if you can get it, for both Bills, and the result will be a blurred and inconclusive verdict." I think that is in a sense a just criticism, and it would be true if one went further and said that even so far as those two important Bills are concerned the verdict of the country would no doubt be influenced by other considerations also. My Lords, these difficulties are inherent in our representative institutions. The verdict of a General Election is always a somewhat rough-and-ready verdict, but it is, nevertheless, not a bad guide as to the movement of public opinion, and at any rate it is the best guide which is available.
Let me remind the House that we have intimated as plainly as we could that if His Majesty's Government take exception to this suggestion for a General Election, we should be perfectly ready to see these Bills referred to the country by way of a referendum—a course which would focus the attention of the electors upon the points which we really desire to have put before them. The noble Viscount opposite, the ether evening, rather complained of me for having expressed myself favourable to the referendum. He said I was suggesting plebiscites and referendums and what I think he called foreign or un-English contrivances. But, my Lords, the noble Viscount had forgotten, or had not listened to, the admirable speech previously delivered during the debate by my noble friend Lord Chelmsford, who was able to tell the House from personal knowledge how the referendum worked in one of our great Colonies, and he might have gone further and told how it works not only in that particular Dominion with which he has had to do, but in several of the great Dominions which form the British Empire. We, at any rate, are prepared to accept the result of either reference as conclusive, and we insist upon that, because it is impossible not to notice the kind of conundrums which are being constantly put forward, conundrums which are generally directed to asking us exactly to what extent we should desist from our opposition in case the verdict of the country should be unfavourable to us. Our meaning is perfectly clear to all those
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who have paid attention to what we have said on that subject. We may be politicians, but we are also men of honour; and when we say that we desire an appeal to the country and that we are prepared to abide by the result of that appeal, I believe most people know that we mean what we say. I venture to appropriate the expression used by the right rev. Prelate who presides over the See of St. Asaph when he said that he was prepared to accept the verdict and make the best of it. And let me further point this out, that so far as Parliament is concerned, if the verdict were to be unfavourable to us, we should stand exactly where we stand now; we should still be under the thraldom of the Parliament Act, and we should have no opportunity of influencing the result except by those conversations, consultations, and suggestions into which you are continually inviting us to enter.
But at any rate the result of a referendum or a General Election would be an infinitely more trustworthy guide as to the proof of public opinion than any guidance that can be derived at this moment from House of Commons majorities. I always desire to speak respectfully of the other House of Parliament, and I am going to use with regard to it, not my own language, but the words of two members of this House who have recently spoken to us upon this subject. On the Second Reading of this Bill in the last session Lord Peel, speaking with considerable expel knee of the House of Commons, used these words—
"I have seen nearly too much of the way in which these majorities are cemented and compacted together to have any respect for them."
The other quotation which I will make is from a speech addressed to us the other evening by Lord Loreburn, who said—
"Our own legislative machinery in this country had really broken down for effective purposes.… When there are many important issues together before the House of Commons, the temptation to Members of Parliament to sacrifice their own opinions as to what is really best for the country is very difficult to withstand.… Some support one Bill because they are looking forward to another Bill"—
that is what I ventured to describe the other evening as a thinly-veiled transaction—
"All this tends to sap the independence and judgment of the Members of the House of Com

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mons and to turn Members of Parliament largely into ciphers, dependent upon the will of Ministers themselves."
And then he concluded—
"All this will gradually lead us to a state of things when divisions in the House of Commons will not represent the real opinion of the House of Commons itself, but merely an anxiety to keep Ministers in power."
The remedy proposed by Lord Loreburn was some form of devolution. It will be a long time, with all the goodwill in the world, before we shall see any system of devolution in working order in this country. In the meantime, now that Government has destroyed the only safeguards which the Constitution provided and is driving the chariot of State as furiously as it does, I suggest to your Lordships that the only corrective for the condition of things which Lord Loreburn so eloquently described is that there should be an appeal to the electorate of this country whenever great changes such as those involved in this Bill and in the Irish Bill are proposed without sufficient evidence to show that they are desired by the people of the country.
Now, my Lords, I shall say only a few words with regard to the Bill itself. It was impossible to listen to this discussion without being impressed by the extraordinary weakness of the case made for the Bill. The arguments in favour of it may really be condensed into one single proposition. We are told that this Bill is desired by a majority of the people of Wales, and that therefore they ought to have it. My Lords, even if the premise be a true premise, even if the Bill is desired by a majority of the people of Wales— of which I am not at all convinced—I cannot admit that it is one which should be treated in one way or the other upon the assumption that the question involved is merely a local question. The Establishment of the Church in Wales is not a local question; it is a misnomer to talk of the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church. What you are doing is to drive four dioceses of the Church of England out of the Establishment, and that I maintain is not a local but a national question.
What is the backing behind this proposal? The population of Wales numbers altogether two millions, out of the total of thirty-six millions composing the population of England and Wales together. To
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the best of my belief, of those two millions, only one, or little more than one, can be claimed as really in favour of this Bill. Consider what that means. It means that 3 per cent., or very little over 3 per cent., of the total population of England and Wales is asking for this Bill. Now consider the difference between your treatment of this Welsh minority and your treatment of another minority in Ireland. I take the Ulster minority—the minority embraced in the four counties. They include 23 per cent. of the population of Ireland. That minority claims the right to be heard, and what it asks is simply to be left alone. Your reply is, "Your minority is so insignificant that we cannot leave you alone, and we propose to drive you out of the Union." Now take the Welsh minority. The Welsh minority is 3 per cent. of the population of England and Wales. That minority claims a right, not to be left alone, but to drive the Church of England out of the Principality; and your reply is, "Your minority is so important that we cannot turn a deaf ear to your request, and we propose to give effect to your desire." And upon that you set to work upon your task of piecemeal Disestablishment of the Church of England.
The noble Marquess who spoke just now went back to the alleged analogy of the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland; so did Lord Eversley, who spoke yesterday. Neither of them had apparently paid much attention to the conclusive argument used by my noble friend Lord St. Aldwyn in regard to this particular point. The noble Marquess suggested a dilemma. He said, "How could it be right to Disestablish the Irish Church in 1869, and how can it be wrong to Disestablish the Welsh Church in 1913?" Is the noble Marquess not aware that the circumstances of the two cases are wholly dissimilar? He shakes his head. May I then suggest to him, in the first place, that the Church in Ireland already had an organisation of its own. It was a self-contained Church; and, moreover, it had joined our Church at a comparatively recent time. The Welsh Church is an integral part of the Church of England, and not only that, it is probably the oldest part of the Church of England. Another trifling difference. Disestablishment was asked for in 1860 by the unanimous voice of the Roman Catholics of Ireland representing about

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four-fifths of the whole population. The Welsh demand, as I showed just now, comes from a fraction representing probably not more than half of the population, and consisting, not of representatives of a single Church, but of representatives of a coalition Of a number of Churches, not one of which, taken by itself, is as numerous and as strong as the Church of England. But, my Lords, in spite of that, we are ready to take the Irish precedent if you will really apply it mutatis mulandis to the present condition of things—if you will take the Bill on the Table as the equivalent of Mr. Gladstone's three Resolutions in 1868 and give us a General Election on that Bill, just as we had an election on the three Resolutions in 1868, that is all we desire, and we are ready to abide by the result just as we were ready to abide by the result in 1869. So much for the precedent of the Irish Church.
But in the meantime we must respectfully decline to deal with this question of the Disestablishment of the Church as if it were one which concerns the people of Wales and the people of Wales alone. As long as Wales remains politically and administratively a part of this country we must refuse to listen to these proposals for local treatment. For surely it is absurd to suggest to us that you should have an Established Church with an organisation co-extensive with the political machinery of the whole country, and that then you should allow any section of the country to shake itself free of its allegiance without further ado. Really, noble Lords opposite argue as if we were talking, let us say, about a question like the liquor traffic, or something of that kind. We were perfectly ready the other evening to read a second time a Bill giving a wide measure of local option to Scotland with regard to the traffic in intoxicant liquors, but I protest altogether against the idea that we could deal with that part of the law which unites the civil and the religious government of this country upon the same lines as if we were dealing with licensing or any other question of purely local convenience.
I suggest to your Lordships that His Majesty's Government are really beginning at the wrong end. Is it not their first business to make up their minds whether they intend that Wales should be a nation or not, and what amount of autonomy
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they are going to give to it? When they have made up their minds on that point then will come the question of the amount of control over Church matters which we can safely give to this new area. But we ought not to forget that even in the case of Ireland, where His Majesty's Government desire to grant a very wide measure of autonomy, they have insisted specially that that autonomy should not include a right to deal with the question of Church Establishment. These arguments are not devoid of importance, because it is perfectly clear to us that although noble Lords opposite are talking of Disestablishment in Wales what is really in their minds is the much larger question of the Disestablishment of the Church in England. The noble Earl who will follow me at any rate cannot recede from that position, and I believe I am right in saying that three at least of his colleagues have used similar language and have admitted that in their view this Bill really is a first step towards the Disestablishment of the Church of England.
That was the main argument used by noble Lords opposite, and the rest of their case seemed to me to be virtually negligible. I thought this was particularly the case with that part of it which was directed to showing that there had been a failure on the part of the Church in Wales to realise what was expected of her. The record of the Welsh Church seems to me to be one of which no Church need be ashamed. The Church has grown with the growth of population, its efficiency has constantly increased, its ministers minister where no other ministrations are available. I do not know what Lord Eversley meant yesterday evening when he told its that the Welsh Church was the Church of the rich. That I must say is an entirely new light in which the matter is put. But all these attempts to belittle the services of the Welsh Church, to throw discredit upon its record, seem to me to fail completely. Mr. McKenna announced the other day that the history of the Welsh Church with the exception of the last two generations, was one of neglect and misrule—with the exception of the last two generations! My Lords, what an exception ! Would any one deprive a publican of his licence because his grandfather or great-grandfather had managed the premises badly? That is a specimen of the kind of basis upon which these indict

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meats are framed. The noble and learned Viscount was much more dexterous. He framed his indictment not so much upon the sins of the Welsh Church as upon the admirable results achieved by the Nonconformist Churches. He described the social movement which was proceeding in Wales, and mentioned the distinguished men who were at the head of that movement. He told us that the Nonconformist clergy were above the level of the Church of England clergy; he told us that amongst the Nonconformist ministers were to be found the highest authorities upon theological questions; but, my Lords, as I listened to the noble and learned Viscount I drew from his words a conclusion quite different from that which he drew himself. The conclusion which I was inclined to draw was that if all this progress was taking place in Wales, if all these things were happening, then it could not also be true to say that the presence of the Established Church was paralysing the life of the country and dwarfing the genius of the people.
Then there is the constantly repeated saying that the Welsh Church is forced upon the people of Wales. Who is injured by the presence of the Welsh Church? By whom is the injury inflicted? Who suffers it? Do people suffer? in purse or in person or in self-respect? All these questions are asked, but they are never answered. I venture to suggest that this really is a platform grievance, and that it has no solid foundation in fact. I cannot help holding that the truer view of the case is that the Nonconformist clergy and the Church of England clergy are not enemies, nor even rivals, but that they are, or ought to be, considered as allies, serving side by side in a great army which has to contend with a common enemy. And, my Lords, that view is, I believe, the view which is going to prevail in the Principality. The old antipathies are dying out, but nothing, I venture to think, will go so far to revive them as that this Bill should be forced on the country under the machinery of the Parliament Act. If that is done, you will leave behind you rankling animosities which will survive not only in the breasts of those who have suffered the wrong but of those who have inflicted it on others.
With regard to the Disendowment clauses of the Bill, I will add very little.
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I believe the Disendowment proposals of His Majesty's Government are regarded throughout this country with the utmost dislike and suspicion. I believe there is scarcely a village, even in districts where Nonconformity is prevalent, where you could not get up a successful meeting of protest against the injustice and the meanness of these proposals. Their operation will unquestionably be cruelly severe, for they will deprive men who are very badly remunerated already of even what might be called a subsistence wage. When you come to consider how the money which is thus to be taken away from the Church is to be disposed of, the folly and injustice of the proceeding seems to me to be more than ever obvious. What will this sum, expressed in terms of recreation grounds, or libraries, or baths and wash-houses, amount to? I noted particularly what was said by the noble Lord on the Back Bench, Lord Ashton of Hyde, on this subject. He was strongly opposed, and I think rightly opposed, to allowing this money to pass under the control of the county councils and to be by them disposed of as they might think fit. May I recall to your Lordships an incident which is not without bearing upon this part of the case? A Bill was proposed—I forget the year—dealing with the question of the compensation of evicted tenants in Ireland, and we found that it contained a clause under which £250,000 was to be taken from the Irish Temporalities Fund—that is, the Irish Church Funds—in order to compensate these people whose record was certainly not one of the very highest respectability. I do not wonder that the noble Lord on the Back Bench shares our feeling, that some precaution, at any rate, should be taken to prevent these funds from being misapplied as His Majesty's Government would have misapplied the Irish Church Temporalities Fund.
Then there is the question of the title of the Church to this money. If the title of the Church is not good, what title is good? Twenty-five years is a sufficient prescriptive title in the case of Nonconformist property. The other evening your Lordships passed a Bill under which persons who for forty years have been making use of a path or passage across anybody's private grounds may claim a right of way over that path in spite of settlements and legal objections. In the case of the Church it is not twenty

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five years; it is not forty years; in some cases it is four centuries or more which you are going quietly to leave out of account.
I will add but one word. The right rev. Prelate who presides over the diocese of Hereford made a personal appeal to me last night, and asked me whether I would not do what lay in my power to facilitate a compromise over this Bill. I have to reply that so far as the principle of this Bill is concerned there is no room for compromise; there is no via media between Establishment and Disestablishment. But I know it is suggested, perhaps not by the right rev. Prelate but by many other people, that we ought to endeavour to come to terms in regard to the question of Endowment. We are told that we ought to try to save something from the wreck while there is yet time. To that my answer is two-fold. In the first place, I desire to express my conviction that, even if this Bill becomes law, even if this great injustice is done, the time will come when we shall have to put that injustice right and to indemnify, in one way or another those whom you are endeavouring to spoliate. My other answer is a very simple one. If I am told that we ought to save something out of the wreck, I reply that the ship is not wrecked yet, and that in our view the people of this country will not allow it to be wrecked.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (EARL BEAUCHAMP): My Lords, the discussion which has taken place yesterday and to-day has not unnaturally ranged round other topics than those of this Bill. We have discussed not only the merits or the demerits of the Bill for the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, but we have also been discussing upon the Amendment moved by the noble Marquess opposite the question of submitting this Bill to a General Election and the operation of the Parliament Act. Yesterday we had some interesting suggestions made to us by the noble Marquess who moved the Amendment, suggestions which have been added to in the course of the speech which has been made by the noble Marquess who has just sat down. It is interesting to remember that there was one clause in the Parliament Act which received very general assent on both sides of the House. It is, I think, the last clause in the Parliament Act, and it provides that
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Parliament should last for a space of five years. But now the suggestion which is put before us is not that Parliament should last for five years, or even that we should have triennial Parliaments, but that we should have a General Election at least once a year; and if some of the suggestions which were made the other evening by the noble Earl, Lord Curzon, were carried out, it might be necessary for His Majesty's Government to have them more often still.
The noble Marquess who moved the Amendment offered us our choice. He said, "Throw over your Home Rule Bill and submit this one to the people of the country; or else throw over this Bill and submit the other one to the people of the country." So far as we understood last night, each Bill was to go through the same process and was to be submitted in turn to the people at a General Election. Now I understand from the noble Marquess who has just sat down that that would not be the programme which he suggests, but that a single General Election should be held to cover both measures, and he offers us the further alternative of a referendum. Well, that is an interesting suggestion—that the one General Election should cover the two Bills. We should be still more interested if we knew whether, supposing His Majesty's Government were defeated, the Government which succeeded His Majesty's present Ministers would feel justified in introducing a measure of Tariff Reform, or whether they would look upon the General Election that then took place as merely settling the fate of these two Bills. We may hope on some future occasion to be told a little more clearly what exactly we are to deduce from these General Elections. Lord Curzon, in the debate on the Home Rule Bill, foreshadowed a scheme by which the Bill, if submitted to a General Election and approved by the people of the country, would then be taken in Committee of your Lordships' House, and by means of Amendments it would be made "palatable" to your Lordships' House. It is not explained what is to happen if the Amendment which your Lordships' House introduces is not considered to he in harmony with the principles of the Bill as conceived by its authors—that is to say, by His Majesty's Government; and that is why I said a few moments ago that it might be necessary for us to have even a second

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General Election before it was possible for us to pass the Bill as we thought it ought to be passed through both Houses of Parliament.
But what it really would come to would be that noble Lords opposite, by a continual process of General Elections, would no doubt in time wear away the majority of the Liberal Government. And the noble Marquess who suggests, as an alternative to this scheme of General Elections, that we should have a referendum on each Bill to which the majority in your Lordships' House objects forgets that we are brought back to the old ground of the different treatment which your Lordships' House offers to Liberal measures as compared with Conservative measures. The referendum has been a subject of discussion in this House before, and at this late hour I am not going to begin it again. But this, at any rate, I would say on the subject, that to apply the referendum simply to measures of which the majority of your Lordships' House disapprove and not to measures introduced by a Conservative Ministry, is clearly unfair to legislation introduced by a Liberal Government.
Let me turn to the point of how far this Bill may be considered as being in accordance with the wishes of the people of this country. I have no hesitation in saying that, so far as the last General Election was concerned, the people of this country were seized with the fact that the Welsh Church Bill was in the programme of His Majesty's Government. And I think more than one noble Lord who has taken part in this discussion has forgotten that there was a Welsh Disestablishment Bill introduced into the House of Commons during the session of 1909. That was not the same Bill as the Bill which is before your Lordships now. This Bill is very much more generous to the Welsh Church than was the Bill to which I have just referred. And, my Lords, I think we are entitled to point to the fact that so far as we can see there has not been a great movement against the Welsh Church Bill on the part of the people of this country—["Oh!"]—if, indeed, there had been any such movement then I am quite sure the first people to feel the effect of that movement would have been the Liberal Members in the House of Commons. I venture to think that noble Lords are apt
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to under-rate the pressure which can be brought to bear by constituents upon their Members of Parliament. If there is a real feeling in the country against any particular measure constituents can, and do, make their displeasure felt. But there certainly has not been, beyond the demonstrations to which I shall refer in a moment, any such evidence of a change of opinion.
Demonstrations have been held up and down the country, and there have been large numbers of people present at those demonstrations. For my own part I should have attached some importance, perhaps, to some of those demonstrations if there had not been so much talk about "guarding the Faith" or about the "spoliation and the robbery of God." We all realise that it is easy to get up at any time a meeting in any village against the policy which you may be anxious to demonstrate is unpopular in the country. There are very few villages in the country in which you could not get up a meeting; and I venture to say that these demonstrations have been very largely attended by what I would call the constant Tory population of this country. There are, of course, and there always must be, exceptions; there are some Liberal Nonconformists who dislike this Bill, but those are exceptions. Generally speaking, I fail to find any evidence that there has been a great accession of strength to the opposition of this Bill beyond that which has always been found amongst the ranks of the normal Tory population of this country. However that may be, let me express my regret that your Lordships should once more abdicate your functions and your powers of dealing with the Bill and of amending it in such a way as you think right, and having that detailed discussion in Committee which can only be of great advantage to any Bill. In the same way, we on this side of the House are free to regret the fact that no use has been made of the Suggestion Stage in another place. I think further, that we are entitled to say that in the future your Lordships cannot altogether escape the responsibility of having allowed these Bills to go through in their present shape, if they go through under the normal way of the Parliament Act.
I turn to the discussion of the Bill itself. I am sure that the noble Marquess who has

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just sat clown will agree with me that few new points have been introduced into the debate since we last discussed this Bill in the spring of the present year. I was ranch flattered by the apparent desire of the noble Marquess that I should have spoken at an earlier stage on this Bill, and I confess that had. I realised how short a time would have been left to me I might have been tempted to make my speech in moving the Second Reading. I was also flattered by the frequency with which my statement in favour of the Disestablishment of the Church of England was quoted by noble Lords opposite. I am in favour of a free Church in a free State, and I am not ashamed of that opinion. I am bound to admit at the same time that I think it is far more likely that the movement for the Disestablishment of the Church of England will come from within rather than from without, when some of those with whom I am glad sometimes to act in concert within the Church are less fond of the Erastian bonds which for the moment they hug to themselves. The noble Viscount Opposite, whom we all respect however deeply we may differ from him—Lord Halifax—challenged us last night upon the point that we had not introduced a Bill of this kind for Scotland; and there, I think, he touched upon one of the main roots of the controversy with regard to this Bill.
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: I never suggested that His Majesty's Government should introduce a Bill of this kind for Scotland. What I did say was that they would not dare to put into any dealings with Scotland such a division as they had attempted to force on the Church of England.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I am sorry I misunderstood the noble Viscount. At any rate I now understand him to say that the terms we should introduce would be more generous and different. I am afraid I must leave that point until I have had some time to consider the question. I know well enough that the people of Scotland are a hard people to deal with, and I could not venture to enter into a controversy with the noble Viscount on that point. Let me turn to the position as it appears to some of those within the Church itself. I have here an extract from a little monthly newspaper called The Commonwealth, in which was published
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at the beginning of this month, above the signature, I think, of Canon Scott Holland, the following remarks—
"For after all, this appeal really amounts to this, that we are required by our position as Churchmen to refuse to recognise the claim of a people, expressed with singular consistency and reiteration, that their religious life should not be officially expressed by the ministrations of the Anglican Church. This is a claim which, it seems to us, a nation has a perfect right to make, and which a Church is ill-advised to ignore. We should giant, willingly, that in those cases where there is practical unanimity in the national expression of religious belief there is much to be said for an Established Church, but we cannot believe that there is anything to be gained by clinging to a position of dignity anti of service where the dignity is a source of constant friction and the services which we seek to render are repudiated and undesired."
I was interested, in listening to the noble Marquess just now, to note a phrase in which he spoke of the old antipathies as dying out. I wondered what those old antipathies really were. But as those old antipathies did exist, are we quite sure that they are dying out as quickly as the noble Marquess fancies? Is it not possible that those old antipathies may not be the antipathies of which we always speak when we are talking of the feeling which exists between the Nonconformists in Wales and the members of the Church of England in Wales, and are not those old antipathies very much at the root of the dislike which so many people in Wales have to the administrations of the Church of England in Wales?
Consider for one moment what is the converse of the position which we offer in this Bill. It is that the present position should be maintained, and that you should continue to fasten by law the privileged position of the Church upon a nation and upon a people when many of the people have left that Church, some of whom dislike it, and a vast majority wish to displace it from its privileged and favoured position. That does not to me seem to be a position which it is wise for any friend of the Church to wish to see it occupy at the present time; and if these antipathies exist, my Lords, we who support this Bill cannot admit that the whole of the responsibility for those antipathies is due to those who are in favour of this Bill. Here is a passage from a speech which was made by the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of St. Asaph at Llandudno on April 11 this year, in which, speaking of the gap which would

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exist if the Church of England was blotted out, he said—
"Then with what would the gap be instantly filled? Were their standards of faith, unaltered through the centuries—"
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl; but that passage has been quoted very often. Mr. Herbert Lewis, a member of the Government, had said that if the Church were blotted out "the gap would be instantly filled by the Nonconformist bodies," and I was referring to that "gap" alluded to in Mr. Lewis's speech.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I quite agree. The right rev. Prelate said—
"Then with what would the gap be instantly filled? Were their standards of faith, unaltered through the centuries, to be replaced by the shifting theories of the Calvinistic Methodists, who within the short span of their existence had already turned their backs upon their own trust deed. Were the reverence and sanctity of their altars to give place to those of the chapel, where the altar first became a pulpit and then a platform? In morals, was their standard of truth and honour to be filled by that of the Calvinistic Methodists as all Wales knew it in mart and market? Was their standard of purity to be taken from those districts where Calvinism was predominant? And in their social life, were their ideals of Christian fellowship, or broadminded charity, of fair dealing in the distribution of local privileges and honour, to be taken from the Calvinistic Methodists as they knew them in the public life of Wales?"
I hope the right rev. Prelate will forgive me if I say I prefer the methods of controversy adopted by the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of Winchester last night.
There was one passage in the speech made by the noble Marquess who moved this Amendment to which I hope he will allow me to refer. He said that people in England did not realise that there were many parts in Wales where there were no religious ministrations at all except those of the Church in Wales, and that if the Church were obliterated there would be no religious ministrations for the unfortunate people. Now, that is an argument that has been used very frequently, with a slight difference, by the right rev. Prelates who represent Wales in this House; and the reference which they generally make is not so much to the many parts of Wales as to the parishes in Wales in which there is no religious ministration except that of the Church of England. The suggestion in the amended form—that there are
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ecclesiastical parishes in which there is no Nonconformist religious ministration—is, as one would naturally expect, correct. But you would not expect that as new organisations spring up they would adopt the old organisation of the Church of England; they would naturally adopt a different one without any regard to ancient ecclesiastical divisions, and would naturally place their ministers where they wished them to be. And I venture to say, in opposition to the noble Marquess, that it is difficult to find many of these districts in which the Church in Wales is the only organisation which offers religious ministrations.
I have had the advantage of going with some little care into the question of the county of Cardiganshire, where there are thirty-four parishes which have no resident Nonconformist minister. Now, the statement that there are thirty-four parishes without any resident Nonconformist minister is a statement for which I am responsible. As it stands it does not do entire justice to the situation. Ten of them have no Nonconformist place of worship, and there are various circumstances in regard to each of those parishes which lead one to the conclusion that, although it is perfectly accurate that there are no resident Nonconformist ministers in those thirty-four parishes, yet such arrangements are made as fully provide for Nonconformist religious ministrations being given to the people who live in those parishes. There are cases where there are two portions of mountain land and the nearest minister lives in the same village as the nearest incumbent; or five chapels within a very short distance of three sides, with four ministers; or another parish with five chapels and five pastors quite near; or it may be that the parish is part of the same town, or the town is divided into two parishes, all the Nonconformist chapels and Nonconformist ministers being on the other side of the river. The point which I am anxious to make is that although it may be technically accurate that there are ecclesiastical parishes in which there is no Nonconformist religious ministration, yet in a broad way there are very few, if any, districts in Wales which are left unprovided for in this way.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: There are none unprovided for by the Church; not a single one.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: Now, my Lords, that naturally leads one to the question of Disendowment; and here may I draw a broad analogy, not necessarily exact in all its particulars, between what has already been done by the State in some of our colleges and universities. There in many cases money was left for the sake of learning. As time went on and these Nonconformist organisations arose, it came about over the whole country that every member of the population did not belong to the Church of England, and so it was felt to be a hardship upon the Nonconformists that they should be excluded from their share of endowments which, though they may have been left technically for the benefit of the members of a single Church, were yet left for the benefit of the whole of the country, because at the time when the money, was left there were no other religious organisations existing. Therefore Parliament in its wisdom abolished tests. I venture to say that there is a true broad analogy between that instance and what His Majesty's Government propose to do in the present Bill.
The noble Viscount, Lord St. Aldwyn, to whom we always listen with particular respect, said last night in the course of the debate, recognising, I think, that that was the line of argument which many of us adopt, that the natural alternative was a system of concurrent endowment. I largely agree with the noble Viscount, and if logic ruled us in this imperfect world very likely concurrent endowment would have been the method suggested by His Majesty's Government. But it is no use suggesting concurrent endowment when all these other bodies concerned refuse to accept concurrent endowment if you offer it to them. I venture to suggest that we go some way in the direction of concurrent endowment when we devote the money which would otherwise be given to a particular religious organisation to a purpose of which they approve, and which they wish to see benefited in this way. There is not, I think, a very grave or broad distinction between actually giving the money to the organisation itself and giving it to some other organisation of which they approve and which they say they would like to see benefited in this manner.
Then I turn for one moment to the case of the curates. It is the only matter of detail which I shall discuss, because I think
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many of these matters, and perhaps, indeed, even this one, could have been better discussed in Committee if your Lordships had gone to that stage, and I am not sure that a Second Reading debate is a good opportunity to take up these comparatively small points. But the case of the curates was specially put to me by the most rev. Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury last night. I think the position with regard to the curates is perfectly obvious. They are not given any compensation because they have no endowment. There is no endowment; therefore there is no disendowment for them under the Bill. Noble Lords opposite who take an interest in these matters know that for a long time there has been considerable agitation amongst the unbeneficed clergy, who have been anxious that their condition should be improved. I venture to say that the position would have been entirely different if the Church itself had improved their position to the extent of giving them a more assured position within the Church of England itself; but in so far as the Church has refused to give them any legal position or any legal right, it is for that reason that it is difficult, to say the least, of it, to bring them within the provisions of the Bill without making a very large alteration in the principles with which it was introduced.
I turn to the last subject with which I shall trouble your Lordships, and that is the question which is generally associated with the term Disendowment of the Church of England. The noble Marquess opposite told us last night that he did not think we felt the full force of that argument. I admit at once that I do not feel that there is any great force in it. As it seems to me, the position is this. The unit of administration in the Church is certainly not the parish, it is the diocese. You move parishes with comparative ease by an Order in Council from one diocese to another, but for the Church of England your unit must be the diocese. It would be, perhaps, better if it were the Bishop in Council, but the most rev. Primate has lately appointed a Commission to consider the question of an increase in the Episcopate. I do not think it would be very surprising if that Committee not only recommended an increase in the Episcopate, but also an increase in the Archiepiscopate. Those ideas have been floating in the minds of Churchmen for a great many years, and I

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think there are many who would like to see, for instance, an Archbishopric of London. Well, if there was an Archbishopric of London we should certainly find considerable difficulty, at any rate, in allowing the Archbishop of London to remain in the Convocation of Canterbury. But when we speak of the Church of England none of us, I am sure, would forget the personality of the most rev. Primate from York nor the existence of the Church of England people in the northern counties, but, they have no connection with this Bill or with the Church of England in Wales—no direct connection—and instead of speaking about taking the four dioceses of Wales away from the Church of England, we should be talking less loosely and more accurately if we said we were taking them out of the Convocation of Canterbury; and the Church of England, as a whole, including those vast populations of Church-people in the North of England, apart altogether from Church of England people in Ireland and Scotland, will be in no way affected by this severance from the Convocation of Canterbury which is all that this Bill purports to effect. I venture to say that when this Bill has become law it will be perfectly possible for the representatives of Canterbury and York and of Wales to meet together for mutual consultation and for advice, if they wish to do so. But the Church in Wales, naturally, would have from that time power to regulate herself.
This kind of severance is no unusual and no bad thing. Reference may be made, not only, as on the last occasion, to the self-governing Dominions, but also to the fact that there has been a severance of the same kind amongst the Roman Catholics in England. Quite within the last few years,
if I remember rightly—no doubt some noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong—some of the Roman Catholic dioceses in England were separated from the Archbishopric of Westminster, and two new Archbishoprics were instituted, I think, in Liverpool and Birmingham. That was done of their own accord and to their own benefit because their organisation would thereby improve. I believe that in the same way this will lead to a better organisation of the dioceses in Wales.
In conclusion, let me try to give an answer to the question with which the most rev. Primate concluded his remarks last night. He asked, Who is to gain? I admit fully that there is very little for any one to gain materially in connection with this Bill. The sums of money are too small. But, on the other hand, what we do look forward to as the gain under this Bill is that the national demand of Wales will have been satisfied, bitterness will be assuaged, an old sore will be healed, the religious bodies will be able to return to their religious work, and a sense of rankling injustice will be removed.
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: I respectfully ask your Lordships' permission that Lord Cottesloe may have the privilege, on account of infirmity, of being polled in his seat.
Leave given to Lord Cottesloe accordingly to vote in the House.
On Question, whether the words proposed to be left out shall stand part of the Motion?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 48; Not-contents, 213.

CONTENTS.

Haldane, V. (L. Chancellor.)

Sandhurst, L. (L. Chamberlain.)

Lyveden, L.

Morley of Blackburn, V. (L. President.)

Aberconway, L.

Marchamley, L.

Ashton of Hyde, L.

Moulton, L.

Crewe, M. (L. Privy Seal.)

Blyth, L.

Pirrie, L.

Colebrooke, L. [Teller.]

Pontypridd, L.

Lincolnshire, M.

Courtney of Penwith,

Reay, L.

L. Cowdray, L.

Rotherham, L.

Devon port, L.

Rowallan, L.

Chesterfield, E. (L Steward.)

Eversley, L.

St. Davids, L.

Beauchamp, E.

Farrer, L.

Saye and Sele, L.

Craven, E. [Teller.]

Glantawe, L.

Shaw, L.

Kimberley, E.

Glenconner, L.

Southwark, L.

Spencer, E.

Granard, L. (E. Granard.)

Stanmore, L.

Haversham, L.

Strachie, L.

Knollys, V.

Hempbill, L.

Tenterden, L.

Hollenden, L.

Weardale, L.

Hereford, L. Bp.

Inchcape, L.

Welby, L.

Oxford, L. Bp.

Lucas, L.

Whitburgh, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Canterbury, L. Abp.

Orford, E.

Brancepeth, L. (V. Boyne.)

York, L Abp.

Pembroke and Montgomery, E.

Brodrick, L. (V. Midleton.)

Norfolk, D. (E. Marshal.)

Plymouth, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Beaufort, D.

Powis, E.

Calthorpe, L.

Bedford. D.

Roberts, E.

Camoys, L.

Devonshire, D. [Teller.]

Rosslyn, E.

Carew, L.

Leeds, D.

Scarborough, E.

Chaworth, L. (E. Meath.)

Marlborough, D.

Selborne, E.

Churston, L.

Newcastle, D.

Shaftesbury, E.

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Portland, D.

Shrewsbury, E.

Clements, L. (E. Leitrim.)

Richmond and Gordon, D.

Stanhope, E.

Clinton, L.

Rutland, D.

Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

Clonbrock, L.

Somerset, D.

Waldegrave, E.

Colchester, L.

Wellington, D.

Westmeath, E.

Cottesloe, L.

Westminster, D.

Wicklow, E.

Crawshaw, L.

Abercorn, M. (D. Abercorn.)

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Dawnay, L. (V. Downe.)

Abergavenny, M.

Yarborough, E.

De L'Isle and Dudley, L.

Ailsa, M.

Bridport, V.

De Mauley, L.

Bath, M.

Chilston, V.

Desborough, L.

Bristol, M.

Churchill, V. [Teller.].

Digby, L.

Camden, M.

Cobham, V.

Dunmore, L. (E. Dunmore.)

Exetor, M.

Colville of Culross, V.

Dynever, L.

Lansdowne, M.

Falkland, V.

Ellenborougli, L.

Salibury, M.

Falmouth, V.

Faber, L.

Winchester, M.

Goschen, V.

Farquhar, L.

Zetland, M.

Gough, V.

Fingall, L.(E. Fingall.)

Abingdon, K.

Halifax, V.

Forester, L.

Albemarle, E.

Hampden, V.

Glanusk, L.

Ancaster, E.

Harding, V.

Gwydir, L.

Bandon, E.

Hill, V.

Hare, L. (E. Listowel.)

Bathurst, E.

Hood, V.

Harlech, L.

Camperdown, E.

Hutchinson, V. (E. Donoughmore.)

Harris, L.

Cathcart, E.

Knutsford, V.

Hastings, L.

Clarendon, E.

Peel, V.

Hatherton, L.

Cottenham, E.

Portman, V.

Hay, L. (E. Kinnoul.)

Coventry, E.

St. Aldwyn, V.

Hindlip, L.

Cromer, E.

Templetown, V.

Hothfield, L.

Curzon of Kedleston, E.

Bangor, L. Bp.

Hylton, L.

Dartmouth, E.

Bath and Wells, L. Bp.

Kenry, L. (E. Dunraren and Mount-Earl.)

Darnloy, E.

Bristol, L. Bp.

Kenyon, L.

Dartrey, E.

Ely, L. Bp.

Kilmaine, L.

Devon, E.

Exeter, L. Bp.

Kilmarnock, L. (E. Erroll.)

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

Gloucester, L. Bp.

Kinnaird, L.

Dundonald, E.

Liverpool, L. Bp.

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Eldon, E.

Llandaff, L. Bp.

Knaresborough, L.

Essex, E.

London, L. Bp.

Lamington, L.

Ferrers, E.

Peterborough, L. Bp.

Latymer, L.

Fortescue, E.

Rochester, L. Bp.

Lawrence, L.

Grey, E.

St. Albans, L. Bp.

Leconfield, L.

Haddington, E.

St. Asaph, L. Bp.

Leigh, L.

Halsbury, E.

St. David's, L. Bp.

Lilford, L.

Harewood, E.

Wakefield, L. Bp.

Llangattock, L.

Harrington, E.

Winchester, L. Bp.

Lovat, L.

Harrowby, E.

Aberdare, L.

Lovell and Holland, L. (E. Egmont.)

Howe, E.

Addington, L.

Manners, L.

Ilchester, E.

Aldenham, L.

Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

Innes, E. (D. Roxburghe.)

Alington, L.

Mendip, L. (F. Clifden.)

Leicester, E.

Allerton, L.

Merthyr, L.

Lichfield, E.

Ampthill, L.

Methuen, L.

Lindsey, E.

Ashcombo, L.

Monckton, L. (V. Galway.)

Londesborough, E.

Atkinson, L.

Montagu of Boaulieu, L.

Lovelace, E.

Bagot, L.

Mostyn, L.

Lytton. E.

Ballour, L.

Muncaster, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Barrymore, L.

Newlands, L.

Manvers, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Newton, L.

Mar and Kellie, E.

Belper, L.

O'Hagan, L.

Mayo, E.

Blythswood, L.

Oriel, L. (F. Massereene.)

Morley, E.

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

Oranmore and Browne, L.

Morton, E.

Ormathwaite, L.

Northosk, E.

Boyle, L. (E. Cork and Orrery.)

Penrhyn, L.

1278

1279

Playfair, L.

St. Levan, L.

Templemore, L.

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Sanderson, L.

Tennyson, L.

Sandys, L.

Teynham, L.

Rathdonnell, L.

Sempill, L.

Torphichen, L.

Rathmore, L.

Silchester, L (E. Longford.)

Tredegar, L.

Redesdale, L.

Sinclair, L.

Trevor, L.

Revelstoke, L.

Somerhill, L. (M. Clanricarde.)

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Southampton, L.

Vivian, L.

Rosmead, L.

Stuart of Castle Stuart, L. (E. Moray.)

Waleran, L.

Rothschild, L.

Worlingham, L. (E. Gosford.)

St. Audries, L.

Sudeley, L.

Wynford, L.

St. John of Bletso, L.

Sudley, L. (E. Arran.)

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Resolved in the negative accordingly, and the said Resolution agreed to.

PUBLIC RIGHTS OF WAY BILL. [H.L.]
Third Reading (which stands appointed for this day) put off till To-morrow.
House adjourned at twenty minutes past Eight o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.