Sitting of 1 April 1914

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Private Bill Petitions (Standing Orders not 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 Petition for the following Bill, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, namely:—
Galway (Barna) Railways and Harbour.
Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.
South Staffordshire Mines Drainage Bill,
As Amended, considered; to be read the third time.
London County Council (Tramways and Improvements) Bill, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corporation Bill,
Read a second time, and committed.
Port of London Authority Bill (by Order),
Third Reading deferred till Tomorrow.
Birmingham Corporation Bill,
Ordered, That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Birmingham Corporation Bill to hear evidence from the National Federation of Meat Traders Associations (Incorporated) against Clause 29 of the Bill.—[Mr. Field.]

NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.
Copy presented of Provisional Regulations, dated 30th March, 1914, made by the Welsh Insurance Commissioners, entitled the National Health Insurance (Appeals and Disputes) Regulations (Wales), 1914 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 174.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  ROYAL NAVY.

    RIVER GUNBOATS.
    Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether in the Navy Estimates for 1911–12 the sum of £19,272 was taken as a first instalment towards the construction of two river gunboats; that the further sum of £61,936 was taken in the following year for the continuation of this work, and that the order for the vessels, then named "Kingfisher" and "Rail," was reported to have been placed with Messrs. Yarrow and Company; that in 1913–14 the sum of £2,438 was taken as the first instalment towards the construction of two river gunboats, referred to as No. 1 and No. 2; and that in the current Navy List there is no mention of any vessel named "Kingfisher" or "Rail," while the Estimates for the coming financial year contain no specified provision for work on river gunboats; how many vessels of this type have been ordered since 1st April, 1911; how much has been spent on them; and when it is expected that they will be completed?
    The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Churchill): It was decided not to proceed for the present with the construction of these river gunboats, and therefore no money has been spent on them.
    Mr. MIDDLEMORE: Why has £80,000 appeared on the Estimates during three successive years without any of it having been spent?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It was in consequence of the delay in the commencement of these vessels. They will undoubtedly have to be commenced. The actual date depends upon the requirements of the rivers on the China station. It has been found possible to delay the construction of these boats.
    Mr. LOUGH: Why was a second allocation of money made in two successive years?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I think the expenditure is always divided over the years.
    Mr. GERSHOM STEWART: Has piracy been so effectively dealt with in the Canton Delta that the construction of these gunboats can be delayed?

    MEDITERRANEAN FLEET.
    Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in the event of there being at the end of 1915 an insufficient number of completed "Dreadnoughts" to provide for the maintenance of a 50 per cent. superiority over Germany in Home waters and also a force of four or six of these vessels in the Mediterranean, he will state whether the Admiralty would deplete our necessary strength in the Mediterranean to ensure the presence of an adequate number of ships in Home waters or vice versâ?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: This is one of those hypothetical questions which it is best not to answer.
    Mr. MIDDLEMORE: Is not this beyond hypothesis, that after the end of 1915 we shall only have two "Dreadnoughts" to spare for the Mediterranean, after providing for the 50 per cent.?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I am much obliged to the hon. Member for the information.

    NEW CONSTRUCTION.
    Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the fact that the "Royal Sovereign" and "Royal Oak," laid down on 15th January, 1914, are not expected to be completed until after the end of March, 1916, that a greater average sum will have been spent on these ships by the end of the coming financial year than on the "Revenge," "Resolution," and "Ramillies," and that hitherto dockyard-built ships have been completed more quickly than those built by contract, it is anticipated that the three vessels named will be completed by the end of 1915?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It is anticipated that "Revenge," "Ramillies," and "Resolution" will be completed before the end of 1915.

    GUN TRAFFIC (PERSIAN GULF).
    Sir GEORGE SCOTT ROBERTSONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether any reduction of our naval strength in the Persian Gulf is contemplated in view of the agreement which has lately been come to with France concerning the gun traffic of Muscat?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No reduction is at present proposed, but the situation is being closely watched with a view to such
    1164
    modifications of the arrangements now in force as the altered conditions may require or justify.
    Sir G. SCOTT ROBERTSON: Has the right hon. Gentleman had any reports of attacks upon British ships by pirates?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir; I have not received any. The India Office is much concerned in this subject, and, perhaps the question ought to be addressed to them.
    Sir J. D. REES: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that two British ships were raided in the Persian Gulf by pirates not long since?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I am not personally aware of it.
    Colonel YATE: Is anything being done to arm vessels of the Indian Marine in the Persian Gulf?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I could not answer that without notice.

    H.M.S. "MARLBOROUGH."
    Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary to the Admiralty if his attention has been called to the inadequacy of the messing and sleeping accommodation for the engine-room artificer staff on the "Marlborough" for the eleven days of her recent trials; if he will consider the possibility of devising better provision for the future and of granting shore leave during some of the time of trials lasting so long; if he will have inquiry made into the case of the "Marlborough"; and if he will cause inquiry to be made into the messing provision for the submarine establishment at Harwich when one of the two ships which are usually there for the purpose is away on annual refit and cause better provision to be made?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): The conditions under which steam trials are run necessitate a certain amount of inconvenience to all on board, officers as well as men. This is due to several reasons. The arrangements for messing and accommodation can only be temporary. The ship is short of many facilities that exist when she is fully prepared for commissioning, and there are present a large number of officials and men forming the contractor's staff, record party, etc., not part of the regular complement. Subject to these facts, I am not aware that the circumstances in the case of the trials of,

    1165
    the "Marlborough" were exceptional. But if my hon. Friend still desires it, I will call for a report. I should add that all ranks and ratings concerned receive a special allowance during trials. As regards the last part of the question, there are twelve submarines and two submarine depot ships at Harwich. Each of the latter is fitted to mother nine submarines. Some inconvenience is unavoidable when one of these ships is absent refitting, but the refits of the submarines at Sheerness are arranged, as far as possible, to ensure that there are not more than nine at Harwich during the absence of one of the depot ships.
    Mr. BARNES: Will the right hon. Gentleman have some inquiry made into this complaint?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: I will certainly make inquiry and ask for a report.

    Turkey (Speech of Consul-General Eyres).
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been called to the speech in London of Mr. H. C. A. Eyres, Consul-General at Constantinople, in which that gentleman said he believed that Turkey was a decadent nation and the Turk was without a spark of progress, while, as far as Eastern peoples were concerned, there was nothing to be hoped from Turkish regeneration; whether such speeches commenting publicly on the affairs of the country in which he serves are permissible on the part of a Consul-General; whether any representations have been made by the Grand Vizier on the subject to the British Ambassador at Constantinople; and whether the Foreign Office has taken any and, if so, what official action in the matter?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Acland): My attention has been called to a speech made by Mr. Eyres at a private club in London. Representations with regard to it have been made by the Grand Vizier to His Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople, and I am in communication with His Majesty's Ambassador on the subject.
    Sir J. D. REES: Is any disciplinary action contemplated against this gentleman for his very irregular conduct?
    Mr. ACLAND: A rather serious view is taken of the matter, but as it is, so to speak, still sub judice, I would rather not say anything more about it.

    Portuguese West Africa (Arrest of Rev. J. S. Bowskill).
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has received any information regarding the composition of the Court which is to try Mr. Bowskill; whether arrangements have been made for the provision of legal advice for him at his trial; whether it has been decided that such trial shall he held at Loanda or, if not there, at Noki?
    Mr. ACLAND: In a telegram dated 29th March His Majesty's Minister at Lisbon reported that he had received a note from the Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs stating that a telegram had been sent to the Governor-General of Angola requesting information as to the composition of the tribunal which is to try Mr. Bowskill, and as to the place where the trial will be held, and urging that the trial should not begin until Mr. Bowskill had had time to obtain legal assistance. His Excellency promised to inform Mr. Carnegie of the Governor-General's reply when it had been received.

    France (Customs Declarations).
    Mr. NEEDHAMasked the Secretary of. State for Foreign Affairs whether the recent proposals of the French Government for diminishing the allowance to corner margin for errors in Customs declarations have been modified; and whether he can give any further information on this question?
    Mr. ACLAND: The original proposal of the French Government was to reduce the margin of error from 5 per cent to 1 per cent., but this was subsequently modified, and the margin is fixed at 3 per cent. by the Budget Bill adopted by the French Chamber of Deputies on 23rd March last.

    Sierra Leone (Nursing House).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if, before sanctioning the proposed rule prohibiting patients in the Sierra Leone nursing home from being treated by their private practitioners, he will consider the peril to recovery which might arise through denying to patients suffering from a disease the continued medical skill of their regular medical practitioners who alone would possess the history of the case?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): My hon. Friend may rest assured that full consideration will be given to this and all other aspects of the question.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a white man was recently removed to the Sierra Leone nursing home suffering from black-water fever; that he had previously been treated by a native doctor with high qualifications in whose skill in the treatment of tropical diseases confidence is reposed not only by the native population, but by many of the white population; that the patient applied to the authorities of the nursing home to allow him to be treated by his regular medical attendant, but that in view of the proposed new rule this was at first forbidden, but afterwards permitted; and whether he has received any representations of public opinion from Sierra Leone on the subject of the proposed treatment?
    Mr. HARCOURT: The circumstances of the case to which my hon. Friend refers are not within my knowledge. I am not sure that I understand the last part of the question; but I have received no representations of public opinion from Sierra Leone on the subject of the proposed new rule to which my hon. Friend refers.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Has the right hon. Gentleman received any representations from the West African section of the local chamber of commerce?
    Mr. HARCOURT: I cannot carry all the representations in my head. I will inquire.

    Federated Malay States Railways.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the humble memorial from the subordinate officers of the Federated Malay States Railways, petitioning for a revision of their salaries' scheme and conditions of service, was sent to him through the proper channel before a copy of it was sent to him direct; and whether he has yet received the memorial?
    Mr. HARCOURT: I have received both copies of the memorial, and I am satisfied that the steps which are being taken will remove any legitimate cause of complaint, and the High Commissioner has accord-
    1168
    ingly been requested to inform the memorialists that I am not prepared to intervene on their behalf.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Do I understand that any steps are being taken in the Federated States?
    Mr. HARCOURT: Yes, Sir, the whole matter is under consideration.

  BRITISH ARMY.

    OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS (OFFICERS).
    Mr. CROFTasked whether any officer in the Army has, during the last fortnight, been given an unconditional order and failed to obey?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): No, Sir.

    1ST WORCESTERSHIRE REGIMENT (COURT-MARTIAL).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether Private Harold Spiers, of the 1st Worcestershire Regiment, was tried by court-martial on the 22nd of September, 1911, and sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment; what was the charge made against him; and what was the defence offered by him?
    Mr. McKENNA: The sentence was fourteen days' detention. The charge was absence without leave. He pleaded guilty, and it was stated in extenuation by his counsel that, owing to the hardships he had gone through, he did not realise the serious position in which he was placing himself.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Is it the fact that this man was ordered to serve on duty in suppressing riots in connection with a strike, and that the sight of men being shot down in the roads so unnerved him that he deserted?
    Mr. McKENNA: I cannot answer as to what was in the soldier's mind, but he certainly endured other hardships besides those mentioned.
    Mr. JOHN WARD: Are not all these statements of my hon. Friend the statements of his counsel as justification for his act?
    Mr. McKENNA: That is a representation by counsel as to what was in the soldier's mind. I can only answer as to the other hardships he has suffered.

    OFFENCES.
    Mr. W. THORNEasked the Under-Secretary for War the number of soldiers dealt with for desertion, discharges for misconduct, and imprisonment by court martial for the years 1909 to 1913, inclusive?
    Mr. H. BAKER: My hon. Friend will find this information on pages 36–37, and pages 74–75 of the General Annual Report on the British Army.

    Land Valuation.
    Mr. FITZROYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give figures showing the cost of the Land Valuation Department for the year ending 31st March, 1914, including the amount borne by other Votes and the amount borne by the Valuation Office, Ireland?
    Mr. WEIGALLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state the estimated cost of the Land Valuation Department for the year ending 31st March, 1915, including the estimated amount borne by other Votes and the amount borne by the Valuation Office, Ireland?
    Mr. ROYDSasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the cost of land valuation to 31st March, 1913, £1,393,000, as given by him, includes the costs borne by the Land Valuation Office, Ireland; and, if not, what the latter costs amounted to up to 31st March, 1913?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Montagu): The figure £1,393,000 which my right hon. Friend explained in reply to a question on the 5th May last, does not include the costs borne by the Valuation Office, Ireland, which up to 31st March, 1913, amounted to £39,497, making a total of £1,432,497. The total figures estimated on the same basis for the years ending 31st March, 1914 and 1915, are £745,900 and £843,614 respectively, including the items mentioned by the hon. Members.

    Customs and Excise Departments.
    Mr. HAMILTONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has yet been able to give, as promised, his personal consideration to the statement submitted to him by the surveyors and officers of the Customs and Excise Departments; and when he hopes to make a state-
    1170
    ment of the Government's intentions in the matter?
    Mr. ASTORasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he has received representations from the Excise officers in connection with the amalgamation of their Department with the Customs Department, and also representations concerning the duties imposed on them by the National Health Insurance Act, 1911, the Old Age Pensions Act, 1908, and the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910; and if he will appoint an independent Committee, with representatives of the House of Commons on it, to investigate the grievances of the Excise officers?
    Mr. MONTAGU: I have given my personal consideration to all the representations which have been submitted from Customs and Excise officials, and have caused, or am causing, detailed replies to be sent to them. I will consider any replies that may be received, and then decide what further action, if any, is desirable.

    Revenue Bill.
    Mr. NEWMANasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of his undertaking that he would introduce a Revenue Bill at the commencement of the present Session, it is his intention to move the First Reading of the same at an early date after the Easter Recess?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The answer is in the affirmative.

    Local Taxation Reports.
    Mr. NEWMANasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has been afforded an opportunity of reading the final Report of the Departmental Committee on Local Taxation; and, if so, whether, in view of the inability of a majority of the Committee to recommend the imposition of a rate upon land values, it is the intention of the Government to proceed with the policy known as the taxation of land values, with a view to raising the revenue required for the whole or part of the local services of the country?
    Mr. MONTAGU: The Report is now under consideration. As regards the latter part of the question, my right hon. Friend is not yet in a position to add anything to his previous statements on the matter.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.

    SANATORIUM BENEFIT.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the statement of the medical officer of the Welsh Insurance Commission that the number of insured cases receiving domiciliary treatment is small and does not warrant the sum spent for them, namely 6d. per insured person, paid to the panel doctors; whether several insurance committees have found themselves short of funds for sanatorium benefit in consequence of the above 6d. being diverted from them; and whether he proposes to make a temporary Grant to needy insurance committees so that consumptive insured persons may receive the sanatorium benefit which they need and to which they are entitled?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN (Lord of the Treasury): My right hon. Friend understands that the report contained in the hon. Member's question does not accurately represent the observations of the officer in question. These were addressed solely to the circumstances of a particular area in which domiciliary treatment had in many cases been given without formal recommendation for sanatorium benefit. With regard to the latter part of the question,
    I would remind the hon. Member that expenditure upon domiciliary treatment is part of the committee's expenditure upon sanatorium benefit as a whole, and that extensive Grants are already provided towards the cost of comprehensive schemes comprising arrangements for the treatment of insured persons.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: Has a surcharge been made in cases where domiciliary treatment has been given without advice?
    Mr. BENN: No, it will depend on the circumstances of the case.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: In the circumstances of the case to which the lion. Member has referred, will it be so?
    Mr. BENN: I cannot say.

    BOROUGH COMMITTEES (LONDON).
    Sir WILLIAM BULLasked whether the borough committees in the county of London have only met once and in a few cases twice since January, 1913; whether the failure to do so is giving grave offence to the representatives of the friendly societies; when the next meetings are
    1172
    likely to take place; why the powers contemplated in the Act, in Section 60, are not given to the borough committees; and why the borough committees are not made a first, summary, and inexpensive Court of Appeal for all persons who have small grievances under the Act?
    Mr. BENN: The question of the functions and position of district insurance committees in the scheme of administrative arrangements under the National Insurance Acts is one which presents considerable difficulties, and the matter is engaging my right hon. Friend's close attention.

    Quillimane-Shiré Railway.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can give the House any information regarding the construction of the Quillimane-Shire Railway, and the capacity of the harbour of Quillimane for dealing with such shipping as may be expected to frequent that place when it has become the terminus of a railway?
    Mr. ACLAND: The track has been opened up in the neighbourhood of Quillimane for 34 kilometres. On the main line the track comprising the region between the flats of Nicuadalla and the Licuare, to the extent of 20 kilometres, is being opened up, as well as 28 kilometres on the Inhamacurra branch between the Nicuadalla country and the head of the Inhamacurra Railway. The question of the improvements necessary at the port of Quillimane is, I understand, now engaging the attention of the Portuguese authorities.

    Factory Inspection (India).
    Mr. GILLasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the chief inspector of factories in India issues a Report of the work of the inspectors; and, if so, whether it can be made available to Members of this House?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY for INDIA (Mr. C. Roberts): There is no chief inspector of factories for India as a whole. The provincial inspectors of factories render reports annually, and if the hon. Member wishes to see these I shall be happy to place in the Library a copy of the Reports for the year 1912.
    Mr. GILLasked how many factory inspectors are engaged in the administration of the Indian Factory Act; how many are natives and how many Europeans; and whether, previous to appointment, they

    1173
    had practical knowledge of factory life, or, if not, what were their previous occupations?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: There are fourteen factory inspectors in India. All are Europeans. Four of them were appointed in this country, of whom two had experience of factories, and the other two had qualified for the Home Office Factory Inspection staff. The other ten were appointed in India, and had had experience in factories or in business.

    Muscat.
    Sir GEORGE SCOTT ROBERTSONasked how many British-Indian troops were sent to Muscat last year to protect the capital, and at what cost to Indian finances; and are any troops stationed there now?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: The number of British-Indian troops of all ranks sent to Muscat last year was 1,024, and the number stationed there now is 408. These figures exclude non-combatant details. Figures as to the cost are not available at present, but a further communication on this point is expected from India.
    Sir G. SCOTT ROBERTSON: Has there been any fighting?
    Sir J. D. REES: Will the cost be recovered from the Sultan, or will they debit it to the Indian Revenue?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: The cost will not be borne by the finances of India alone. Presumably the Treasury will bear its due part.

    Education (India).
    Sir GEORGE SCOTT ROBERTSONasked when the Quinquennial Report on the Progress of Education in India (1907–12) will be laid upon the Table?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: I understand that the copies of the Review are now on their way from India. They will be laid on the Table as soon as possible after they are received at the India Office.

    Finance (India).
    Mr. RUPERT GWYNNEasked if the £2,150,000 remitted from India in respect of profit on coinage of rupees has been invested on behalf of the gold standard reserve; and, if so, in what securities, or has it been added to the reserve in gold, or how otherwise has it been dealt with?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: The sum of £2,150,000 has been added in sovereigns to the gold standard reserve.
    Mr. GWYNNEasked if he will say why the Council drafts were sold in 1913–14 for a sum of £1,456,100 in excess of all Home requirements; why a closer estimate of these requirements was not made; how the money was employed pending its requirement for the following year; and if the sales for the requirements of 1914–15 will be correspondingly reduced?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: The reasons for selling Council drafts in excess of the Secretary of State's immediate requirements are given in the Report of the Royal Commission on Indian Finance and Currency. I would refer the hon. Member especially to paragraphs 176 and 179. The estimate of requirements in 1913–14 was as close as was possible when it was made. Money held in England in excess of the standing balance at the Bank of England was lent in the usual way to approved borrowers. The sales in 1914–15 will be conducted in accordance with the policy recommended by the Royal Commission, which makes it impossible to say now what the total amount will be.
    Mr. GWYNNE: Are we to understand that the India Office accepted in its entirety the Report of the Royal Commission?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: No; I said nothing of the kind.
    Mr. GWYNNE: Why does the hon. Gentleman quote the Royal Commission's Report as a reason for having exceeded the requirements of the country when the Royal Commission's Report was not issued until after the requirements had been exceeded by this sum of over £2,000,0007
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: I think the general reasons were stated in the paragraph to which I referred the hon. Member.
    Mr. GWYNNEasked how much of the £1,415,700 additional Home expenditure on capital account during the year 1913–14 represents discharge of debt; what was the nature of the debt; and what was the nature of the other expenditure on capital account?
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: £280,000 represents the discharge of guaranteed debenture

    1175
    bonds of the Bengal Nagpur Railway Company, for which the Secretary of State was liable. The other additional expenditure on capital account was made up as follows:—

    £

    Additional expenditure on Railways

    1,098,700

    Additional expenditure on Delhi

    50,500

    Deduct shortage of expenditure on Irrigation

    13,500

    Total

    £1,135,700

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.

    AMENDMENTS.
    Mr. NEWMANasked whether the suggestions with reference to an Amendment of the terms of the Government of Ireland Bill, as outlined in a Government White Paper, will, in the event of the Bill obtaining a Second Reading, be forthwith tabled as actual Amendments to the measure, and be debated on Committee stage in due course; and whether the Government adhere to their statement that the suggestions as outlined represent a limit of concession beyond which they are not allowed to proceed?
    Mr. McKENNA: As regards the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the Prime Minister's statement on this subject on 16th March; and, as regards the latter part, to the speeches made by my right hon. Friends on the Second Reading of the Bill, to which I have nothing to add.
    Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked the Home Secretary whether, in view of the impossibility of approaching the settlement of the Irish problem with any prospect of success in the present excited state of public opinion while this House is sitting and party feelings exacerbated by continuous Parliamentary discussion, he will consider the desirability of extending the Easter Recess from four days to three weeks, so as to admit of the possibility of some settlement being arrived at during that period?
    Mr. McKENNA: My right hon. Friend regrets that he does not see his way to accede to the hon. Member's suggestion. He trusts that the view expressed in the first part of the question may prove erroneous.
    Mr. C. BATHURST: Will the right hon. Gentleman and the Cabinet consider the advisability of a prolonged Adjournment at Whitsuntide with this object in view?
    Mr. McKENNA: It will be considered when the time comes.

    MILITARY FORCES.
    Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONasked whether His Majesty's Government have any intention of taking advantage of the right to use the forces of the Crown to uphold law and order and to support the civil power in order to crush opposition to the principle and policy of the Government of Ireland Bill?
    Mr. JAMES HOPEasked whether His Majesty's Government have any intention of using the forces of the Crown in Ireland or elsewhere to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the Government of Ireland Bill?
    Mr. McKENNA: I will answer this question and No. 45 together. The policy of the Government with regard to this matter was clearly stated last night by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and I have nothing to add to his statement.
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: Was the Lord Chancellor wrong when he answered this question on behalf of the Government in the negative?
    Mr. McKENNA: Is that question in order, Mr. Speaker?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That is a matter on which we can only form our own judgment.
    Lord ROBERT CECILasked the Home Secretary what were the questions which the general officer commanding in Ireland put to officers under his command, and which are referred to in the third paragraph of the Memorandum of the Army Council dated 23rd March, 1914?
    Mr. McKENNA: The Prime Minister has seen the general officer commanding in Ireland, who informed him that, when he summoned the general officers commanding divisions and brigades under his command, the only question put or intended to be put by him to them. was whether they were ready to put their duty before all other considerations? It was not his intention that this or any such question should be put by the general officers to their subordinate officers. He informed the general officers of the permission given by the Secretary of State to all officers whose homes were in Ulster to withdraw temporarily from their regiments in the event of operations becoming necessary in Ulster, and he requested the general officers to find out at once the number of officers who would withdraw on this ground. He was asked whether any officers who could not claim this exemption would be allowed to resign, and he replied that the result of any refusal to do their duty could only be dismissal.
    Mr. HARRY LAWSON: May I ask whether it would not be convenient that the actual words, or a summary of what was said by the general officer, were laid on the Table of the House?
    Mr. McKENNA: I have given, so far as possible, the actual words of Sir Arthur Paget.
    Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, as a matter of fact, this question was put to subordinate officers by any divisional officer?
    Mr. McKENNA: I should require to have notice of that.
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: May I ask whether the general officer stated to his subordinates that non-commissioned officers and men domiciled in Ulster would have the same chance of not taking part in the operations as the officers?
    Mr. McKENNA: I will put that question to Sir Arthur Paget, but I cannot answer now.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any
    1178
    note or memorandum in the possession of Sir Arthur Paget of these questions?
    Mr. McKENNA: I understand that there is no note. The issue was so exceedingly simple that Sir Arthur Paget did not think it was necessary to have a note.
    Mr. HARRY LAWSON: Did not his military secretary take a note?
    Mr. McKENNA: No, I believe not.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he will ascertain whether the commanding officers who repeated these questions to the company officers made any note?
    Mr. McKENNA: I will consider the question.
    Colonel YATE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether we are to understand from this communication from Sir Arthur Paget that the Divisional and Brigade Commanders under him did not communicate his exact words to the officers serving under them?
    Mr. McKENNA: As I have said, I have not any information as to the questions put by the brigadiers to their subordinate officers, and consequently I am quite unable to say whether they added to, or subtracted from, the statement made by Sir Arthur Paget.

    MR. ROWLAND HUNT'S CIRCULAR.
    Captain WARINGasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the circular letter issued by the hon. Member for South Shropshire to a non-commissioned officer of the Grenadier Guards and others; if so, whether it differs in principle from the handbill distributed by one Crowsley among soldiers at Aldershot; and, if not, will lie consult the Public Prosecutor with a view to his deciding whether similar proceedings should be instituted against the hon. Member as were instituted against Crowsley?
    Mr. McKENNA: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The remainder of the question should be addressed to the Attorney-General.

    Commissioners of Woods (Cottages).
    Mr. LANE-FOXasked the President of the Board of Agriculture what cottages, if any, have been built by the Board or the Commissioners of Woods for agricultural labourers employed on the land under their control in the north of England during the past five years; what has been the average cost of them; whether they are let on economic rent; and, if not, what the economic rent would be?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Runciman): Twenty-four cottages have been built by the Commissioners of Woods for agricultural labourers employed on the land under their control in the north of England (the counties being Cheshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire) since 1st January, 1907. The average cost of them has been £218, including drainage, water supply, fencing, carting and levelling, and, in some cases, bridge approaches, but excluding architect's fees. Each cottage includes three bedrooms, parlour, living room, scullery, larder, store and detached fuel house and earth closet. They are all let to farmers, parish councils or small holdings associations, who rent farms of the Crown. Twenty-one out of the twenty-four are let at economic rents equal to interest at from 4½ to 5 per cent. per annum, on the cost; two were erected without extra rent to replace worn-out cottages on the same farms, and one is let at a rent which is not economic.
    Mr. LANE-FOX: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to state what is the economic rent which is being paid?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: It is a rent equal to interest at from 4½ to 5 per cent. on the cost.
    Colonel YATE: May I ask whether the 4½ or 5 per cent. covers not only the interest on the cost, but also the amount expended on repairs?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: It covers the whole cost.
    Mr. LANE-FOX: May I ask whether a cottage of this sort cannot be built under a cost of £200?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: We have experience extending over a period of years, and the cost some years ago cannot be taken as the price at which cottages can be built to-day.

    Inspection of Horses.
    Captain MURRAYasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he can give figures showing, for the year 1912, or if possible for 1913, the total fees received by the Board for the horses examined at various ports under the Diseases of Animals Act, 1910, and the expenditure incurred by the Board in respect of salaries of veterinary inspectors and other incidental expenses?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: The information asked for was given in answer to two questions addressed to me by the hon. and gallant Member for the Widnes Division on the 5th March. I am sending my hon. Friend copies of the answers.

    Foreign Markets (Produce Consigned on Commission).
    Mr. DOUGLAS HALLasked the President of the Board of Agriculture if he has any official information showing what steps are taken by the Governments of other countries to protect the grower who consigns produce to markets on commission, or whether he will take steps to secure reports from His Majesty's representatives abroad on the subject?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. I will refer the hon. Member's suggestion to the International Institute of Agriculture for consideration.

    Kensington Palace.
    Captain MURRAYasked what use it is proposed to put the out-building in Kensington Palace, in which formerly was housed the old Roman boat and other articles of interest belonging to the London Museum collection?
    Mr. BENN: The building has been set apart for use as a much needed store.
    Captain MURRAYasked whether there is any reason why the fountains in the Dutch Garden of Kensington Palace should not play more frequently that is at present the case?
    Mr. BENN: It has been the practice that the fountains should play from Easter until the end of September daily from ten till five. The First Commissioner will gladly consider this suggestion.
    Captain MURRAY: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this has not been carried out?
    Mr. BENN: I am not aware.

    Hampton Court.
    Captain MURRAYasked whether, in order to enable the public to see into Hampton Court Park, and to make more attractive the stretch of road from Kingston to Hampton Court Palace, the First Commissioner of Works will consider the advisability of demolishing the wall alongside the road on the north side of the park and of substituting therefor an iron paling?
    Mr. BENN: This improvement is very desirable, but there is no money available for it at present.
    Captain MURRAY: Will the hon. Gentleman have an estimate made of the cost?
    Mr. BENN: Yes, I will consider how much it will take to carry out the work.

    South Kensington Museum.
    Captain MURRAYasked whether any progress is being made with the proposed new spirit museum in the South Kensington Museum grounds between the buildings and Cromwell Road?
    Mr. BENN: A new scheme is now being prepared for erecting this building as part of the western extension of the museum. The original proposal has been abandoned.
    Captain MURRAY: Are we to understand that the ground is taken off?
    Mr. BENN: Yes, Sir.

    Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906.
    Mr. GILLasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has yet decided to appoint a committee to inquire into the working of the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, with a view to legislation to do away with the present anomalies, as shown by cases decided in Court?
    Mr. McKENNA: I am fully alive to the importance of this matter, but, as I have explained on a previous occasion, some of the questions involved, and particularly the question of State insurance, which the Government has promised shall be investigated, will have to be considered in connection with the system of national insurance established by the Act of 1911, and it is desirable that there should be a somewhat longer experience of the working of that system before the inquiry is instituted.

    Factory and Workshop Act, 1901.
    Mr. GILLasked the Home Secretary whether it is his intention to introduce a Bill to amend the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, and to consolidate all Acts relating to factories and workshops?
    Mr. McKENNA: I am afraid it will not be possible to introduce a Factory Bill this Session.

    Cotton Industry Workers.
    Mr. GILLasked the Home Secretary the number of persons employed in the cotton industry, distinguishing between males and females, and also giving the number under twenty-one years of age in each sex; and, if he has not these particulars, will he ask for a return from all employers of the number of workpeople as specified above?
    Mr. McKENNA: The latest figures available are those of the Census of 1911, when the numbers returned as engaged in cotton manufacture were as follows: Males, 233,380, including 77,472 under twenty-one; females, 371,797, including 148,165 under twenty-one. These figures include 2,565 employers. The latest Factory Act return of persons employed in the industry is for 1907, but a return for 1912 has been collected, and is now being tabulated as rapidly as possible.

    Secret Orders (Disclosure).
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALDasked the Home Secretary whether any inquiry is being made by the Government, or the Departments concerned, into the way in which secret orders and private and confidential information is being divulged to Members of this House and others, in order to discover who is responsible?
    Mr. McKENNA: The Government have no information which would justify them in making such inquiries.

    Truck Act.
    Mr. GILLasked the Home Secretary when he will introduce the Bill for the amendment of the Truck Act?
    Mr. McKENNA: As I stated last Thursday in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for the Ince Division of South-West Lancashire, I hope to introduce the Bill soon after Easter.

    Great Yarmouth Assault Case (Sarah Yaxley).
    Mr. W. THORNEasked the Home Secretary if his attention has been called to a charge of an alleged assault brought against a young girl by the name of Sarah Yaxley, aged seventeen, that was heard at the. Great Yarmouth Court on Monday, 23rd March, who was charged with assaulting three young women whose ages were between twenty-one and twenty-six, and fined 10s., including costs, in each case or seven days' imprisonment with hard labour; if he is aware that Police-constable Bokenham, who gave evidence against the girl, was some time ago admonished by the justices for giving false evidence; if he will order the fines to be returned; and if he will call for a copy of the police-constable's evidence?
    Mr. McKENNA: I have received a report from the justices with regard to this case, from which it is clear that my hon. Friend has been misinformed as to the police-constable referred to. He has never been admonished by the justices for giving false evidence, and his conduct has
    been exemplary in all respects. After considering a full report of the evidence, I am sorry I can find no sufficient ground for interference with the sentence.

    Members of Parliament (Free Postage).
    Mr. HELDasked the Postmaster-General whether he will state how many European Legislatures refuse free postage to their Members whilst in attendance on Parliamentary duties; whether he is aware that a number of Members of this House favour free postage per the House post office during the Session; and whether he will consider the advisability of adopting the usage general in other countries?
    The ASSISTANT POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Captain Norton): I am afraid I can add nothing to the reply given to the hon. Member's previous question on the 26th March. I think no useful purpose would be served by addressing an inquiry on the subject to The postal administrations of all European countries.

    Telephone Service.
    Sir J. D. REESasked whether it is necessary that a mass of printed matter should be perused and accepted and signed as an agreement by any person desirous of being connected with the Government telephones; why subscribers living within 10 miles of London who subscribe for the
    1184
    purpose of being connected with London can only have trunk calls with London; and whether this renders useless or greatly impairs the value of the telephone service around London, and when trunk calls will be charged at the cheaper rates available on the Continent?
    Captain NORTON: As there are obligations on both sides it is necessary that a formal agreement should be entered into by any person desirous of obtaining telephone service, and it is convenient that all the important conditions of the service should be printed with the agreement form. The terms of contract have been modified from time to time, and my right hon. Friend is always willing to consider suggestions for their amendment or simplification. The question of the charges to be made in future for trunk telephone calls is now receiving consideration. The hon. Member is, however, under a misapprehension in supposing that calls made by subscribers to exchanges within 10 miles of the centre of London are trunk calls.
    Sir J. D. REES: Is the information supplied by the district head in St. Albans erroneous when he treats calls to the centre of London as trunk calls?
    Captain NORTON: I shall have to have notice of that question.
    An HON. MEMBER: Are we to understand that the trunk system will be replaced by the zone system? Has the zone system been under consideration for two years, and how soon are we likely to have the result?
    Captain NORTON: That matter has not yet been decided.

    Cunningsburgh (Money Order Office).
    Mr. CATHCART WASONasked why the people of Cunningsburgh have been refused a money order office, in view of the fact that the Department would be guaranteed against any loss?
    Captain NORTON: I am making inquiry, and will communicate the result to the hon. Member as soon as possible.

    Post Office Employés (Holt Committee's Report).
    Lord NINIAN CRICHTON-STUARTasked whether the Government propose to change in any way, or use as stated in the Report, that part of the Holt Committee's Report which deals with the rise in the cost of living?
    Captain NORTON: The Committee stated that certain considerations which they enumerated, including the rise in the cost of living, "are relevant in fixing the remuneration which should be given to Post Office servants, and attention has been given to them in the recommendations which your Committee have made." The Government have accepted the scales of pay which the Committee recommended on those considerations.

    Government Employés (Forest of Dean).
    Sir WILLIAM BULLasked what are the lowest, the highest, and the average rates of wages paid to employés of the Government in the Forest of Dean district, distinguishing between wages paid to workers under and over eighteen years of age?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am making inquiries, and if the hon. Gentleman will be good enough to postpone the question until next week I hope then to be able to give a complete answer.

    Agricultural Land (Greater Birmingham).
    Mr. OUTHWAITEasked the President of the Local Government Board the acreage of greater Birmingham, the acreage assessed for rates as agricultural land, and the total amount raised in rates from the total area, and from that part assessed as agricultural land?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Herbert Lewis): The total extent of the city of Birmingham is about 43,500 acres. I am informed by the Town Clerk that the city is now being surveyed for assessment purposes, and the evidence at present available suggests that there are just over 20,000 acres of agricultural land. The total amount of public rates collected during the year 1912–13 in respect of properties in the city was £1,618,000. It is not known how much of this was collected in respect of agricultural land, but the amount may be estimated at about £7,000.

    Central Welsh Board.
    Mr. HAYDN JONESasked whether District Auditor Propert stated in evidence on the 25th ultimo at the Cardiff Police Court that, though some of the charges included in the accounts of the Central Welsh Board submitted to him last year for audit were illegal, he did not disallow them, but certified the accounts as correct; if so, whether such
    1186
    action was regular and in accordance with the usual approved practice of the Local Government Board in such cases; and what is the value of an audit which fails to detect irregularities or to disallow illegal payments?
    Mr. HERBERT LEWIS: My right hon. Friend has no information on this matter at present, but he is making inquiries.

    Population (United Kingdom).
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked what, according to the Census of 1911, was the female population of the United Kingdom, and to what extent it exceeded the male population, and how these figures compare with those of the Census of 1901?
    Mr. HERBERT LEWIS: The female population of the United Kingdom at the Census of 1911 was 23,275,120, and exceeded the male population by 1,328,625; at the Census of 1901, the female population was 21,356,313, and exceeded the male population by 1,253,905.

    Coal Imports from Germany.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has information to the effect that gas companies in London are importing coal from Germany; and, if so, whether this new departure is due to the increased cost of production in this country?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Robertson): I am informed that considerable quantities of German gas coal have been purchased for the manufacture of gas in London. This is, no doubt, due to considerations of price, but I am unable to discriminate between the causes which may at the moment have rendered the German more favourable than the English market as a source of supply for London gas works.

    Foot-and-Mouth Disease.
    Sir THOMAS ESMONDEasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) if he has received a resolution from the Enniscorthy District Council asking him to remove the restrictions placed on the sale of cattle and pigs in county Wexford, in view of the facts that it is impossible for the farmers to obtain sufficient feeding stuffs, and that foot-and-mouth disease has never existed in county Wexford; and if he will state what reply has been given to the Enniscorthy District Council?
    Mr. RUSSELL (Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture, Ireland): The whole of the county Wexford has now been removed from the area of restrictions. The Enniscorthy District Council and other local bodies have been so informed.
    Mr. DELANYasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) whether he has received a copy of a resolution passed by the town commissioners of Mountmellick, requesting the Government to restore facilities for the shipping of Irish stock from unaffected areas to ports in this country, and pointing out the stringency of the restrictions in Ireland; can he say why Dublin was not included in the recent Order opening the northern ports and Sligo; and why King's and Queen's counties, which have been free from foot-and-mouth disease for a period of over thirty years, are not included within the area of the recent Order issued permitting shipment to certain ports in this country and Scotland of stock for immediate slaughter?
    Mr. RUSSELL: The resolution referred to was duly received and replied to. Since Monday night the landing of animals from the ports of Belfast, Derry, Dundalk, and Sligo for immediate slaughter at Glasgow, Birkenhead, and Manchester has been authorised by an Order of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. The Board, in making this Order, made it a condition that the animals so shipped should come from the northern side of the boundary line agreed to by the two Departments.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the present position of Ireland in the matter of foot-and-mouth disease; whether there have been any further outbreaks of the disease during the past week; and whether any of the previously existing restrictions have been relaxed?
    Mr. RUSSELL: Since my reply to a similar question by the hon. Member last Thursday, two further outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease have occurred in county Cork and two in county Dublin, making fifty-four outbreaks in Ireland altogether. Restrictions have been removed from those districts in Munster temporarily scheduled pending the result of investigations on the movement of certain calves from Cork; these animals have now been traced, but restrictions remain on all districts within fifteen miles of any outbreak of the disease. The customary area has been scheduled on account of the outbreaks in county Dublin.
    Mr. BATHURST: Is there any indication as to the source of the outbreak in the county Dublin?
    Mr. RUSSELL: The outbreak at Stepaside, county Dublin, occurred only two days ago, and I do not think that the officers of the Department have had time to do anything more than make the elaborate arrangements that are necessary for seeing to the food supply of Dublin and the immediate neighbourhood, but I will undertake to endeavour to make the matter as clear as possible.
    Mr. FIELD: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Dublin market will be open to-morrow?
    Mr. RUSSELL: The whole of the city and the vicinity of Dublin are within the fifteen-mile radius of the place where the outbreak occurred.
    Mr. GINNELL: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture whether Mullingar Fair, which is due to be held on the 6th April, and is one of the most important fairs of the year, will be allowed to be held?
    Mr. RUSSELL: Yes. Representations were made by the Department at Mullin-gar yesterday, and a satisfactory arrangement was arrived at.
    Mr. KILBRIDE: May I ask whether under the new regulation drawing a line from east to west, and providing that no cattle north of that line are allowed to be exported, applies to any store cattle imported from Mullingar and taken up North?
    Mr. RUSSELL: Yes; the boundary line must be kept.
    Mr. KILBRIDE: For store cattle?
    Mr. RUSSELL: Yes.

    Moneylenders.
    Mr. MARSHALL HALLasked the Attorney-General if, with a view to mitigate the nuisance arising from touting circulars and advertisements by registered moneylenders, be will introduce a Bill enacting that, in all cases where loans with such moneylenders are contracted upon the invitation of the moneylender, the maximum rate of interest legally chargeable and recoverable shall not exceed five per centum per annum?
    The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir John Simon): I am not able to promise to introduce legislation, but the hon. and learned Member will have observed that a Bill for amending the Moneylenders Act has come down from the House of Lords, and will offer opportunities for modifying the existing law when it comes before this House.
    Mr. GWYNNE: Are we to understand that the Government will give facilities?
    Sir J. SIMON: I cannot undertake that.

STANDING ORDERS.
Resolutions reported from the Select Committee;
1. "That, in the case of the Middlesbrough Corporation Bill, Petition for additional Provision, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to insert their additional Provision if the Committee on the Bill think fit."
2. "That, in the case of the Hightown Gas and Electricity Bill [Lords] Petition for additional Provision, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to insert their additional Provision if the Committee on the Bill think fit."
3. "That, in the case of the South Suburban Gas Bill, Petition for additional Provision, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to insert their additional Provision if the Committee on the Bill think fit."
Resolutions agreed to.

STANDING COMMITTEES (CHAIRMEN'S PANEL).
Mr. Eugene Wason reported from the Chairmen's Panel; That they had appointed Mr. John William Wilson to act as Chairman of Standing Committee C (in respect of the Grey Seals (Protection) Bill and the Parliamentary Elections (Polling Day) Bill).
Report to lie upon the Table.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).
Sir Daniel Goddard reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Members from Standing Committee C (in respect of the Parliamentary Elections (Polling Day) Bill): Mr. Harcourt and Mr. Trevelyan; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the said Bill): Sir William Ryland Adkins and Mr. Lewis.
Sir Daniel Goddard further reported from the Committee; That they had added to Standing Committee C the following Fifteen Members (in respect of the Grey Seals (Protection) Bill): Major Anstruther-Gray, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Currie, Viscount
1196
Dalrymple, Sir John Dewar, Colonel Greig, Mr. Harry Hope, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. Lyell, Mr. Macpherson, Mr. O'Donnell, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, Marquess of Tullibardine, Mr. Cathcart Wason, and Mr. Watson; and (in respect of the Parliamentary Elections (Polling Day) Bill): Sir Frederick Banbury, Mr. Goldman, Mr. Harris, Captain Jessel, Mr. Leach, Major Morrison-Bell, Mr. Muldoon, Mr. O'Shee, Mr. Parker, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Walter Roch, Mr. Rowlands, Sir Harry Samuel, Sir Harry Verney, and Mr. Aneurin Williams.
Reports to lie upon the Table.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the extension of the area for the benefit of which charities in a town may be applied, and the variation of the purposes for which dole charities may be applied in certain cases." [Town Charities (Extension) Bill [Lords.]

BLOCKING NOTICES.
Mr. FRANCE: I desire to ask a question in reference to the procedure of this House: Whether, in view of the three Bills which appear on the Order Paper for the first time to-day to be presented by the three Noble Lords the Members for Oxford University, the Thirsk Division of Yorkshire, and the Newton Division of Lancashire, the Motion on divorce of which I gave notice a fortnight ago, in consequence of my having been first in the ballot for private Members' Motions, can or cannot be taken to-night?
Mr. ROBERT HARCOURT: Before you reply to that question may I ask whether you are aware of the fact that a Procedure Committee was recently appointed specially to consider this question of Blocking Motions in consequence of the Amendment to the Address by the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin, and whether you would be able to exercise your influence meanwhile with the Noble Lords to prevent them violating this desire?
Mr. SPEAKER: If the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University presents the Bill of which he has given notice, it will, of course, block the Motion of the hon. Member. I see the Noble Lord in his,

1197
place, and I was going to make an appeal to him not to present this Bill to-day. I would point out to him, that the object, as I understand, with which he put this notice down, was to call special attention to this particular rule—this Blocking Rule. I think he will have gained his object by what has been already done. Of course, if he persists in presenting his Bill, I am afraid, as this procedure is capable of being used both ways, that the Noble Lord will find himself and his Friends equally blocked by some Bill introduced by some hon. Member. I would respectfully suggest to the Noble Lord that it is hardly fair to deprive the hon. Member of the fruits of his good fortune, and that the labour which he has given to this particular question should be wasted.
Lord HUGH CECIL: In reply to the appeal that has been made to me from the Chair, I have to point out that this is a matter that has been under the consideration of the House of Commons for six or seven years. The Government have been repeatedly asked whether they would be willing to modify the Rules of the House. They have given a specific answer, but they have never done anything else. I should not merely on that ground put down this Motion, but this is a matter in which I see no advantage in the particular Motion the hon. Member brings forward. It is a Motion which does not seem to me to be at all important in the public interest, and it appears to me, therefore, that my Motion is a very proper one, if hon. Members are to be able to use the Blocking Motion at all. I am told that Members have actually put clown Motions evidently designed to block Motions for Adjournment during the present Session. If that is to be the rule as used on one side, we are entitled, of course, to use it on the other side. If the Rule is to be abolished, then, as soon as the Government have made up their minds to do so, I should heartily support the Motion. But I am afraid, in the circumstances, I must persist in my intention to present the Bill.
Mr. ROBERT HARCOURT: Why should we be censored in this manner by persons outside of this House? Is it not an abuse of the whole procedure of the House of Commons?
Mr. T. M. HEALY: If the Motion were defeated, what would be the result?
Mr. SPEAKER: I do not put any Question. It is one of the inconveniences which have arisen from the new Rule for the presentation of Bills. Under the old system, where a Member had to ask for leave to bring in a Bill, I have very little doubt that the House would have refused leave in a case of this sort, because it would see that the Bill was a, bogus Bill, and was only presented for the purpose of preventing the Motion coming on. In this case there is no Motion to put.
Mr. T. M. HEALY: Is it possible for the Chair to direct that to-day's Motion shall stand over until to-morrow?
Mr. SPEAKER: I am afraid I cannot do that. I am bound under the Standing Order to allow the presentation of Bills. Certain days of the week are offered to hon. Members to present Bills, and I am bound to obey
Mr. FRANCE: May I respectfully call attention to the Resolution of the House of Commons of 27th March, 1907:—
"That to put a Motion on the Order Paper of this House, or to introduce a Bill so as to prevent the discussion in this House of Motions for which precedence has been obtained in the ballot, or of definite matters of urgent public importance, is hurtful to the usefulness of this House and an infringement of the rights of its Members."
Mr. SPEAKER: I do not quarrel with that at all. That does not set aside the Standing Order which enables hon. Members to present Bills.
Mr. PRINGLE: Are we now to understand that the consideration of hon. Members opposite for the public interest is a hypocritical sham?
Mr. W. THORNE: May I ask whether it would be in order to move the suspension of this particular Bill which the Noble Lord is to present, in order to engine the Motion to come on?
Mr. SPEAKER: That could not be done without notice.
Sir FREDERICK LOW: May I ask whether the Bill of which the hon. Member for Newton has given notice is in order?
Mr. SPEAKER: That Bill would not be in order. I could not put that, because, on the face of it, that is not a Bill which could be introduced. I confine myself entirely to the first Bill.
Lord HUGH CECIL: I can assure the hon. Member opposite that I have no personal ill-will against him, and I sympathise with him. But my action is taken on

1199
purely public grounds. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I am surprised to see that the Chairman of the Labour party is afraid of his own Motion. Personally, I think the other is much more worthy of consideration. I am afraid that I must persist in my Motion to present the Bill.
Mr. T. M. HEALY: May I ask you, Sir, if you have taken steps to secure that the Bill in question is not a Bill that will have to be founded on a Committee of this House?
Mr. SPEAKER: I have no power to examine Bills before they are presented. I do not know in the least what is in it.
Sir HARRY VERNEY: Would it be in order for the Leader of the House to move the suspension of the Noble Lord from this day's sitting?
Mr. SPEAKER: That may become necessary some time.
Mr. RONALD M`NEILL: Having regard to the fact that shortly before the present Government came into power the Prime Minister, in a public speech, made a violent denunciation of the Blocking Rule, and announced that one of his first duties would be to remove it, would it-not be possible for the Government to give an undertaking that they will fulfil that pledge at an early date, in which case my Noble Friend might be induced to withdraw his Bill?
Sir RYLAND ADKINS: Would I be in order in asking the Noble Lord whether this Bill is being introduced at the instance of high ecclesiastical authorities, as that might influence the acquiescence of the House?
Mr. SPEAKER: Perhaps the Noble Lord will give an answer. He has said quite plainly that the object of the Bill is to defeat the Motion.
Mr. JAMES HOPE: Have there not been Motions obviously with an exactly similar purpose which have appeared on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) in this Session?
Mr. BECK: Is it not the fact that four years ago the Government did introduce a Standing Order on this subject which was blocked by hon. Members opposite?
Mr. SPEAKER: That is not the question.
Mr. ROBERT HARCOURT: Would I be in order in asking the Government to discharge the Order for the Procedure Committee in view of the extraordinary action of members of that Committee on the floor of this House?
Mr. SPEAKER: I cannot help it.
Bill presented by Lord HUGH CECIL; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 157.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Lord EDMUND TALBOT: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what business it is proposed to take upon Monday and Tuesday of next week?
Mr. McKENNA: We hope to conclude the Debate on the Second Reading of the Government of Ireland Bill upon Monday.
Upon Tuesday we propose to take the East African Protectorate (Loans) Bill, Second Reading; Merchant Shipping Bill, Second Reading; Inebriates Bill, Second Reading; Mall Approach Improvement Bill, Second Reading; and, if time permits, some of the other smaller Bills on the Paper.
Perhaps the Noble Lord will ask me tomorrow as to the business when the House reassembles after the Easter Recess?
Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say anything about the Established Church (Wales) Bill—when it will be taken?
Mr. McKENNA: As soon as possible.

NOTICES OF MOTION.
  MILK.
  To call attention upon Wednesday, 22nd April, to the supply of milk and legislation and administration in connection therewith, and to move a Resolution.—[Mr. Astor.]
  WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION ACT.
  To call attention upon Wednesday, 22nd April, to the Workmen's Compensation Act and the administration thereof, and to move a Resolution.—[Mr. Adamson.]
  RIGHT OF PRIVATE CAPTURE AT SEA.
  To call attention upon Wednesday, 22nd April, to the right of private capture at sea, and to move a Resolution.—[Mr. S. Walsh.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY,

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.
  Order read for resuming adjourned Debate on Amendment [31st March] to Question proposed [9th March], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  Which Amendment was to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."
  Question again proposed. Debate resumed.
  Mr. CAWLEY: At the Adjournment of the Debate yesterday I was referring to the proposal for a Referendum. I am not personally opposed to the idea of a Referendum, but I feel it is not suitable to the facts of this particular case, and, whatever else it would do, it would not effect agreement. If the verdict were in favour of Home Rule we should still be faced with the opposition of Ulster, because the right hon. and learned Genutleman the Member for Trinity College (Sir E. Carson) directly refused to be bound by the decision of a Referendum. If, on the other hand, the verdict went the other way, it would probably preclude the Opposition when they came in from dealing with the question. It is no use asking people whether they will have two alternatives, neither of which they want. I have no doubt the bulk of the people in this country desire an immediate settlement of the Irish question. I do not think that is seriously doubted in any quarter, and it is no good asking them whether they would agree to one alternative which means no settlement, or to another alternative which means no settlement. It is no good asking the people of the country will you have A or B when what they really want is C. Therefore I think the Referendum cannot possibly effect a settlement, and, however applicable it may be in other cases, it is no use in the present case. Yesterday the right hon. Gentleman who moved the rejection (Mr. Walter Long) once more raised the question of the proposal of a General Election. I believe the same objection would apply to that. There is another objection, and that is that we on this side, at any rate, I can speak for myself, were returned by constituents many
  1202
  of whom returned us on the faith of our pledge to try and pass Home Rule in this Parliament. We should not be doing our duty by those constituents if we went back and said "We are afraid of the threats of Ulster, and we are not prepared to do what we said we would do." It has always been the theory in this country that even if you have not got as the main issue at an election any particular Bill, if the intention of bringing in that Bill was clearly announced to the country, as it was in this case, that then you had the right to bring it in, and you had a duty to bring it in as regards those who voted for you on the strength of it. That has been the old theory. Now, apparently, right hon. and hon. Members opposite are pressing the doctrine of the mandate a great deal further.
  I understand their theory to be that you have no right to make any such change in this country, that it is almost a crime to make any such change in the Government of this country, and particularly a constitutional change, unless the change has been the main issue at a General Election. I believe that is the theory which they are putting forward. I am not sure they are willing to follow it. They propose in consequence of that to hold a General Election on the question of the Home Rule Bill and the Home Rule Bill only, and then if returned to power they propose to do what—to restore the Veto of the House of Lords and to abolish Free Trade, two of the biggest changes which could possibly be made. I think they cannot be surprised if we do not altogether accept their support of this doctrine of the mandate which they have not observed in the past, and which they have themselves announced their intention of throwing over the moment they are in power. Whatever may be one's views as to the doctrine of mandate, there is no doubt a General Election would not settle the question now. Therefore I do not myself look forward with much hope to the suggestions with regard to a General Election made by the Foreign Secretary yesterday. A General Election, like a Referendum, cannot settle the matter. We are therefore driven back to the advisability of settlement during this Parliament.
  For my part, I disagree with the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) in his view that a settlement ought to be obtained, if possible, by proposals put forward by the Government and discussed on

  1203
  the floor of the House. I believe that a settlement, if it is to be obtained, is far more likely to be obtained by what is known as the method of conversations. Our objection to the action of the Opposition so far, has been that they have shown no readiness to consider any of the numerous propositions for settlement that have been put forward. I am not going to discuss to-day whether they have been relying on the Army or not. I feel as strongly as anybody in the House on that question, but I do think we should gain nothing by discussing any aspect of the Army question now. It will be helpful neither to the spirit of compromise existing at present nor to the preservation and maintenance of discipline in the Army. I think it is quite allowable to say that this difficulty about the Army is a reason why both sides should do what they can to settle this question amicably. I believe we are all equally concerned in maintaining the high standard of discipline in the Army and its exclusion from all questions of politics. Both parties desiring that must feel an additional incentive to effect a settlement if possible. I, personally, am not very sanguine about a settlement being obtained, but I am sure that during the last few days there have been certain signs that a settlement is possible if good will is shown by both parties. We have had a succession of speeches by Back Bench Members on both sides which have shown that those Members are willing to subordinate their own ideas as to what is the absolute best in order to arrive, if possible, at a common understanding. We on this side appreciate several of the speeches that were made yesterday by hon. Members opposite. We have the general opinion, which is growing stronger in the country, that politicians are not good for much if they cannot settle this question amongst themselves without fighting. I am certain, too, that even amongst the most extreme partisans, even amongst the Nationalists, there is a feeling growing that a settlement with good will is the best for Ireland; and I think that signs are not wanting that many people who have supported the volunteers in Ulster are yet not anxious that a blank negative should be offered to all the proposals for settlement emanating from this side.
  I am sure that that feeling of compromise is not dictated by any fear of the consequences if no compromise is arrived
  1204
  at. I myself have never shrunk from what I believed from a very early stage to be the possibility, or even the probability, of bloodshed in Ulster. I am quite prepared to face it now, if no settlement can be arrived at. I am quite certain also that all those Members on the other side of the House who have been doing what they can to effect a settlement are by no means the most chicken-hearted Members there. We on this side have looked forward to this Home Rule Bill as a basis upon which we could found the very highest hopes. We have looked forward to a contented instead of an agitated Ireland, which should look forward to achievements in the future, instead of back to the wrongs of the past. We have looked forward to securing the good will of Nationalists in Ireland in order that in future every Irishman who went abroad might become a bond of union between this country and the land to which he went, instead of a point of hostility, as he very often is at the present time. We have looked forward to the co-operation of Ireland as an accession of strength, both moral and material, to the British Empire. We have thought those ideas worth fighting for, and we think so still. For them we have been willing to risk the horrors of the suppression of a rebel outbreak in Ulster. For them we have been willing to consent to what many of us dislike very much, the idea of a temporary exclusion of Ulster. For them we are willing now to make any sacrifices that we can and to do what lies in our power to effect a general settlement of the question.
  4.0 P.M.
  Mr. DILLON: Keeping in mind the history of this controversy, I have no hesitation in saying that the Debate to which we listened yesterday was the most remarkable that has ever taken place. For thirty years the controversy over Irish Home Rule has endured in this House. I have been present throughout all those Debates, and yesterday, for the first time, I heard this question debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation, and with an evident desire on both sides to reach a settlement. Whatever differences may still divide us, I cannot shut out from my own mind the strong hope that this marvellous prospect, for it was almost a miracle, may be the harbinger of better days, and that we may really arrive at some settlement that will spare Ireland from any further trouble, of which she has had enough in the past, and open the

  1205
  gates to a brighter future for all sections of the Irish people. But when I heard the hon. Member who has just sat down (Mr. Cawley), in the admirable speech which he has delivered, say that he thought that there was growing, even in the minds of Irish Nationalist Members, a desire for a peaceful settlement, it showed me how marvellously even our warmest and most enthusiastic Friends in this House, and in England, can misunderstand. A desire for a peaceful settlement? Why, there is no section of this House that has so longed for a peaceful settlement as we have. Any man, I do not care on what bench he sits, who applies his mind impartially to the study of this problem, must see that from the very nature of the case we must desire more than anybody else a peaceful settlement of this question, because the whole future of our country and our chances of making this great experiment a success depend almost entirely on a peaceful settlement. I have said that the temper of the House yesterday was a very good and remarkable augury. The continuance of that temper is of the most vital importance to the prospects of peace, and not only to the future of our country, but to the future of Great Britain just as much; because you are now beginning to realise, more than you have ever realised before, what this Irish question is, and what a poison it has infused into your own system, and will continue to infuse until in some measure you withdraw the poison and reconcile the people of Ireland to your rule. The whole chances of a peaceful settlement depend upon the maintenance during the remaining stages of these Debates of that same temper which characterised and dominated the Debate yesterday. The Foreign Secretary closed his most remarkable and powerful speech yesterday with a great appeal. He closed his speech by an appeal for a fair start in regard to the Army, and then he said:—
  "If by any fresh controversy on this subject the issues which we have endeavoured to close are reopened, if we are thus forced, depend upon it the neat election must be on something much more grave than the question of Ulster or of Ireland—upon something so grave that. whatever its result may be, it cannot leave things in the Constitution of this country as it found them."
  That was a very solemn appeal, backed up by the hon. and learned Member for Exeter (Mr. Duke), whose eloquent speech has induced me to take part in this Debate so early, because he made a pointed appeal to the Nationalist Members to break their silence and make some contribution to the Debate. He backed up the
  1206
  appeal of the Foreign Secretary by saying that England was now, and had been for the last week, in a predicament most grateful to all her enemies. And it was true. If anything is needed—and nothing is needed—to support the weight of those appeals, just look at the cablegram in this morning's "Times" describing the effect of our proceedings on the public in America. It says:—
  "Just as the Panama Tolls controversy is having a lamentable effect on the atmosphere of Anglo-American relationships, so the whole Ulster business is having a lamentable effect on British prestige, for not even his most ardent American admirers imagine that Mr. Asquith has solved his difficulties with regard to either Home Rule or anything else."
  They go on to say that—
  "It is depressing to find how general is the judgment that the resigning officers were tempted into a grave lapse of duty by the passionate intrigues of Unionist politicians."
  4.0 P.M.
  [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Hon. Members will pardon me for a moment. I am not quoting what I do for the purpose of continuing that phase of the question. I will tell them what I want to be at if they will allow me. What I want to point out is this—and then I will pass from the subject: The reason I allude to the quotation really is that I am anxious to preserve the tone of yesterday's Debate. The reply to that appeal coming from the Foreign Secretary, and supported by the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Duke), must he on both sides. If there is to be this same temperature maintained, if there is to be an absence of recrimination, then, Sir, I think both sides must give up this question of the Army. When I see the proposal to hold a meeting in Hyde Park on Saturday to denounce the Government for using the Army to coerce Ulster, I ask hon. Members above the Gangway in all good faith, "How can you ask hon. Members opposite, or us, to abstain from this controversy in the face of such proceedings?" I pass from that matter; I did not really intend to pursue it, but I quoted the statement to point out that forbearance, if there is to be forbearance, and a fresh start on the subject in response to the appeal of the Foreign Secretary—that forbearance must be practised by both sides. The hon. Member for Exeter wound up his speech by making a strong appeal to us to break our silence. Here are the words he used:—
  "I trust that at some early hour we may hear from a representative of the Nationalist party in this Debate, in which there has been frank speaking and dispassionate and respectful speaking—"

  1207
  Quite true!—
  "whether they are ready to come into this scheme of conciliation and to offer to Ulster the slender but generous concession upon which, as it seems to me, the peace of this country and, it may be, its future existence will depend."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st March, 1914, col. 1110.]
  That was a very strong appeal. I must say that the whole tone of the speech of the hon. Member for Exeter was most friendly and sympathetic to Nationalist Members. I will proceed to examine what was the nature of what he asked us to do. I shall deal further with his speech later, but in point of fact he appealed to us to consent to the withdrawal of the six years' time limit. That was the substance of his appeal—which he described as a slender concession to Ulster which would save this country. The hon. Member for St. Augustine's Division (Mr. R. M`Neill) made a similar appeal. He asked what difference did it make, even from the Nationalist point of view, if this six years' limit were withdrawn. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Croft) seemed to be also under the impression, which was shared by the other two hon. Members I have just referred to, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College (Sir E. Carson) had accepted the Government's offer subject to the withdrawal of the six years' limit. I shall deal later with our attitude and our position in reference to the six years' time limit. But first of all I want to point out that all these three hon. Members, and many other hon. Members in previous Debates upon this side of the House, had spoken under a total delusion—I am sure a perfectly bonâ-fide delusion—as to the attitude taken up by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Trinity College on the occasion referred to. Here is what the hon. Member for Christchurch said:—
  "…. last time the question of concessions were discussed. Let its examine this. I think it must he agreed that the Unionist party leaders went a very long way on that occasion and tried even at the eleventh hour … to see if we could not conic together. What was the proposition? First of all we have the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dublin University, in which he deliberately asked the Government. Why do they not extend their exclusion of Ulster until Parliament should otherwise order? I think that was, from his point of view, a very great extension."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st March, 1914, cols. 1078–9.]
  It is evident, therefore, that the hon. Member for Christchurch is under the impression that if the Government had said across the Table "Done!" the whole question was settled. I want, first of all, to remove that total misunderstanding. Here is an extract from what I may describe as
  1208
  the official journal of the Ulster Unionist party, that is the "Belfast Newsletter," on the day following that Debate:—
  "Sir Edward Carson had strong reasons for concentrating Ids attack upon the time limit in the Government's proposals. The excluded area, he argued, should be acknowledged as the master of its own fate for all time before any other point was argued. The advantage of that line of attack was that it compelled Ministers to say what they meant by exclusion, and it offered an inducement to them to make it a reality. When that Parliamentary point has been conceded, the question of which area should come in would properly arise. That is a matter vital to the working of any scheme of exclusion. To have opened the fight on the question whether the vote for exclusion should be by county or by province, however, would; it is feared, have confused the mind of the British public."
  It is perfectly plain, therefore, that the intention was to obtain first of all the removal of the six years' limit, and then go back to Belfast with some other proposals affecting the question of the area to be excluded. The "Newsletter" continues:—
  "We are by no means surprised at the news we publish to-day from London, which states that among our Parliamentary representatives the opinion has now been arrived at against acceptance in any form of compromise based upon the Government's present proposals. The question, we are told, is not simply one of the time limit for excluded counties, as to which accommodation might be possible"—
  They then go on
  "we are Row told in this message that 'the Covenanters stand together, and nothing less than the total exclusion of Ulster will be accepted.' … This is what we insisted upon on the revelation of the Government's proposals: we said that the only voting area that could be accepted was the whole province voting in globe."
  There was no question, therefore, at any time of the acceptance by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College of the Government's proposals based on the withdrawal of the six years' limit. My object in making that point clear is to show that the statement made in perfect good faith by the hon. Member for Exeter in his speech, and also by the hon. Member for Christchurch, was based on a total misapprehension of the facts. As a matter of fact, the Government proposal has not been met in any fair or reasonable way by hon. Members on the Front Opposition Bench. Here is another example of the spirit in which that proposal was met. On the following day the same journal said:—
  "The Government roust come to the Ulster Unionists' terms to avoid civil war in which case "—
  Mark this—
  "it would lose the Nationalist vote, or go to the country for a way out, for it cannot now pass the Bill as Mr. John Redmond requires it as the condition of his assent to the Prime Minister's proposals for peace. Sir Edward Carson saw far when he said some advance had been made by the acknowledgment of the principle of exclusion, for he saw that the Government could not return to the prior position of passing the Bill as it stands."

  1209
  Therefore, according to the organs of the Ulster party, all that has been said from that Front Bench in the previous Debates has been simply a piece of political tactics, apparently having for its object to try to draw from the Government further concessions, and the splitting of the Nationalist party who support the Government. That may be very astute tactics. We are rather too old politicians to be taken in by it, although some hon. Members have been taken in by it. It is not straightforward dealing. It does not fit in with the kind of temper which was displayed in this House yesterday by hon. Members on the back benches on this side of the House. Let me come to the appeal which was made yesterday by the hon. Member for the St. Augustine's Division. He, too, adopted a very much more peaceful and conciliatory tone than I have ever noticed before—very much so. Really, sometimes I think that the time will come, if this kind of temperature lasts, when it might be possible for us to deal with hon. Members like the hon. Member for St. Augustine's and so arrive at a settlement. Some of the things he said in his speech appealed to me very much. I will allude to them again. He made a strong appeal on these lines: He said that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had alluded to a number of schemes which had been proposed from various quarters, and known as the Horace Plunkett scheme, Home Rule within Home Rule, the Referendum, and various other schemes, all of which, he said, had been repudiated. They have. They have all been repudiated by the men who speak for Ulster. They have been, at all events, for the present, swept aside.
  Why, said the hon. Member for St.. Augustine's, was the one scheme put forward on behalf of Ulster not alluded to at all by the Foreign Secretary? What he described as the one scheme put forward on behalf of Ulster was the exclusion of Ulster. He went on in a most remarkable way to qualify that, because he used these extraordinary words—I was listening to every word that fell from him with really the keenest interest. I remembered that the Member for Exeter had made it a reproach, an unusual reproach, to the Nationalist Members that we were very silent. I thought how little he ought to make it a matter of reproach, though he explained his meaning afterwards. The reason why we were very silent—I speak
  1210
  for myself—is that we were deeply impressed, more deeply far than hon. Members perhaps appreciate and under stand, with the fateful issues that depend upon this Debate. What remains to us of our lives may be darkened or brightened by what arises from this Debate. I confess I was hanging on every word that came from the hon. Member, whose ability I had the privilege of recognising on the first occasion that he spoke in this House, and who is, undoubtedly, a man of very exceptional intellect and ability. He went on to say later in his speech that a proposal had been put forward to some extent in the name of Ulster. He saw and realised that he had rather crossed the line, and committed himself too far in what he had put forward in the name of Ulster—I mean with regard to his statement. We all remember what occurred on the occasion when it was put forward or supported by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Trinity College. He went down to some club the following day and explained for the benefit of his friends in Ireland that he had supported it because he knew it would make Home Rule impossible, and would wreck the Bill, and I claim all this has been put forward by the men of Ulster only in the sense of a test of exposing the impossibility of Home Rule and the unworkable character of the proposal. I do not call that an honest proposal, and I say, in reply to the appeal of the hon. Member for St. Augustine's Division, that, in my opinion for what it is worth, there is no section of the Irish people in favour of the exclusion of Ulster as a settlement. I include in that the men of Ulster themselves.
  I entirely agree and recognise, and I deplore being obliged to recognise it, that the overwhelming majority of the Protestants of Ulster are bitterly hostile to Home Rule. There is no dispute about that. I recognise it, and I am very sorry for it, and they grasp at this proposal of exclusion because they think they could use it as a political weapon to kill Home Rule, either on the one hand by splitting the alliance between the Government and the Nationalist party, which was the first line of attack, or by raising such a condition of things in Ireland as would render our position impossible and throw all Ireland into confusion and bring about the failure of Home Rule. That is the reason why they have tolerated it, and the hon. Member for St. Augustine's was very careful to so partially put forward the demand of.

  1211
  Ulster. That is the reason why they support this proposal for the exclusion of Ulster, simply as a political weapon—
  Mr. MOORE: We did it to get rid of your tyranny.
  Mr. DILLON: That is really rather a recurrence of the old spirit, but I do not take any notice of it. This proposal for the exclusion of Ulster is simply in the hands of the Unionists a political weapon and not really a proposal for peace and settlement. The hon. Member for the St. Augustine's Division went on to argue with great ability and great logical force as to the unfairness of the proposal of the six years' limit. Here is what he said, and I think I can give a perfectly clear summary of his argument. He said, "It was most unfair. We ask for an election now before Home Rule is passed into law, and all you say is, there will be two elections in the future on this question of Ulster." He said, "An election now would turn on this question of the coercion of Ulster, but if you have two further elections six years hence, how can we induce the British electors to consider the question of Ulster?" I think that is a most unfair statement of the case that I have ever listened to. Let us examine it. Supposing you go to an election now, does any person imagine—and we may have an election before many months, in view of the offer made by the Foreign Secretary yesterday—that election would turn solely on Ulster? Do you not know that 100 other questions, as recent by-elections have shown will come in, and in many constituencies will completely overshadow the question of Ulster? Take the case of two elections, and consider the greater chances you have—I am now speaking against myself, I spoke in this sense some time ago on a platform outside, and I was very severely taken to task by my own friends—look at what you get in the Government proposals. You get two further elections, and you have an almost overwhelming chance that the Tories will come into power in one of them. It is hardly conceivable that the Radicals are going to win the two next elections.
  Mr. J. WARD: Why not?
  Mr. DILLON: I do not know what may be the feelings of hon. Members above the Gangway, but that would be a thing almost unparalleled in British history. You have all that chance, and no matter
  1212
  what the issue of the election may be, if the Unionist party come into power, they can do what they like; but mark this further thing, that not only will you at these elections have issues outside Ulster on which you may hope to win the confidence of the British people—surely you are not brought to that position that you have no other issues—but you will have the issue of Ulster added and superadded to all the other issues if you have an election six years hence or five years hence. You can go to the country, and there will arise the question, if Ulster is still recalcitrant, of the possibility of the coercion of Ulster, which you will have in addition to all other issues. Therefore, it is clear there is advantage to you from your point of view, but that is by no means all. How would this House stand after we had made up our minds to make to you what was to us a very dangerous and a very bitter sacrifice indeed? Some hon. Members who know Ireland were very confident we would conic to grief over it.
  Mr. T. M. HEALY: So you will.
  Mr. DILLON: Here is testimony from a wholly unexpected source of the difficulties we have to face, and when we were facing these difficulties and making up our minds to be parties, as we are parties, to this offer for peace and conciliation, we had to take into consideration the fact that in this Bill, with the proposed Amendments, we would be driving out of the House of Commons more than half our vote, and not only would you have the advantage in an election five years hence on the question of the possible coercion of Ulster, but you have, in addition, forty Nationalist votes cut way from the Nationalist party, while all the votes from North-East Ulster would remain in full strength. How can the hon. Member for St. Augustine's say that the offer of the Government is a worse offer than the offer which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition made across the floor some time ago? He offered, in spite of all that has been said about conscience and the duty of the men of Ulster to defend their rights, and about the Army, lie offered across the floor to put all to the test of the unknown machinery of a Referendum, which I am convinced would not bring to the polls 50 per cent. of the electors of this country, and under that Referendum, supposing 30 per cent. of the electors of this country voted in favour of the coercion of Ulster, which might possibly and probably be the

  1213
  result, he offered on behalf of the Unionist party to agree to the coercion of Ulster. I am against the Referendum altogether. I decline, so far as I am concerned, to put the fortunes of my country to such a test. I would almost as soon toss up a halfpenny to know whether Ireland shall have freedon or not, but the Leader of the Opposition did not hesitate, and he said he would agree that the Government were justified in coercing Ulster to submit to Home Rule if the Referendum voted for it, and he made no qualification as to the numbers voting, and though it might be only 30 per cent. of the electorate of this country the Leader of the Opposition would agree. But under the proposals made by the Government Ulster cannot be coerced until after two General Elections, when the whole thing is fully discussed in a Parliament in which the Nationalists would be under-represented, while the Unionists of Ulster would be fully represented. I put it to any reasonable man, Could a more reasonable proposal be made? Mark what the position is!
  The hon. Member for St. Augustine's Division made an appeal to us to make a sacrifice. Have we made no sacrifice? Why, the hon. Member for Cork was willing to testify to the extent of our sacrifice, and he, with many others in Ireland, said that Ireland would hunt us from the country for daring to consent to these proposals. We have not been hunted from the country, but we faced that risk for the sake of peace. And mark you this: We did not say when these proposals were brought forward we would go back and submit them to a national convention. That is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College said. We took the risk. So anxious were we for peace, that we felt to go back and wrangle over these proposals, however unwelcome, as they were, to large bodies of our people, was not the road to peace, and we felt in a great crisis like this, where the whole future of generations of our country were at stake, where peace and war and civil commotion were stated to be at stake—we felt, as politicians, we should take our lives in our hands and risk everything for the sake of peace. We have been told it was a hypocritical sham. We do not think so. We made our offer honestly and faced the risks. We made a great offer more generous to Ulster than was asked for by the Leader of the Opposition. And really
  1214
  I do think that the representatives of Ulster ought to have met our proposals in a far larger spirit than that in which they have met them. The hon. Member for St. Augustine's made another appeal which struck me very much. He appealed to Nationalist Members below the Gangway and said that they did not probably understand or make allowance for the spirit of Ulster. He said that the spirit of Ulster was the spirit of a people who had an ideal, and that we were only looking for material advantage; and he said you can not break the spirit of the people who have an ideal. I agree with the hon. Member. The nation and people with an ideal are very troublesome and difficult to overcome. But have we no ideal? I ask the hon. Member for the St. Augustine's Division to try and put himself in our place. Have the Nationalists of Ireland no ideal? And which is the nobler ideal, his or ours? Which, I ask with confidence, is the ideal that has endured most and survived most? What have the men of Ulster ever suffered by coercion? They have never known what suffering means nor coercion. Talk about the coercion of Ulster now! As I said the other day, little they know of coercion. But our people have passed through four hundred years of coercion of the cruellest kind that was ever inflicted upon any nation, and yet our ideal survives and cannot be put down. A fresh hope arose in my breast when I heard the hon. Member for St. Augustine's talking about ideals, because, if he turns to the study of the history of his own country in that spirit, he cannot fail to sympathise with the Nationalist ideal. A habit has grown up on these benches of describing the Nationalists of Ireland as the implacable and eternal enemies of the Protestants of Ulster. That is a cruel injustice. We have never wronged these men in all history. I do not care to rake up bitter memories, or I might point out how often they have wronged us. I say, therefore, that it is a cruel and a false thing—false to the facts of history—to speak of the Nationalists of Ireland, of the Catholics of Ulster and the Nationalists of the rest of Ireland, as the sworn, eternal, and implacable foes and enemies of the Unionists and the Protestants of the country, as is frequently done. Here is what the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Duke) said:—
  "One cannot disguise from one's mind, and it would be idle and foolish to disguise the fact, that a population so divided by race, by religion, by tradition, by

  1215
  ambition, by the hopes of its daily life, from what one may call the population sprung from the native stock of Ireland, can ever be united."
  That is a most extraordinary statement as to the native stock of Ireland. Ireland is a mixed community. I remember sitting by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) when I did not belong to the same party, in 1893, in the Gallery of the House of Lords listening to the Debate there when the House of Lords rejected the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The Duke of Argy11,.then an old man, but full of fire, was delivering a very eloquent speech. He was a very eloquent man, and here is what I heard him say:—
  "Who are Dillon and Redmond? They come forward now and posture before the public of this country as representatives of the ancient race of Ireland. Who are they but the descendants of Norman robbers who came to Ireland centuries after my ancestors were Celtic chieftains on the coast of Scotland."
  Take the more recent history. Who was John Mitchell? The prophet to this day of the most extreme wing of the Irish Nationalists. He was the son of a Scottish Presbyterian clergyman only settled two or three generations in Ulster, and one of the most respected leaders of the Presbyterian Church in all Ireland. His great friend, John Martin, was a Presbyterian from Ulster. There was also James Davies, a Welsh Presbyterian, who was also a Protestant. Now let us come down almost to the present day. Who was Isaac Butt? Who was Charles Stewart Parnell? A man who came of an English stock, and whose family, as he often told me, settled in Ireland in the days of Queen Anne. And now to the very day we are now living in. Who was Douglas Hyde? The head of the most extreme society for Deanglicising the Celtic race, the president of the Gaelic League. They are all of English stock and came to Ireland about two centuries ago, and have become more Irish than the Irish themselves. Who is Professor Kettle, who was quoted as a man who was an extreme Nationalist? His name shows who he is. He is a Norseman of Norse blood, and, therefore, to talk of this hopeless division of race as an element in this problem is absurd and a gross misrepresentation of the whole case.
  Let me briefly refer to the proposals which were dealt with in the Debate yesterday. First of all we had the Referendum. That has been repudiated on all sides, and on this side quite as emphatically as by the Foreign Secretary. [An HON. MEMBER: "No!"] The hon. Member
  1216
  for Exeter and other hon. Members said they did not regard the Referendurm as desirable at all. Then you had Home Rule within Home Rule. That also has been repudiated by the representatives of Ulster. Then there was the question of federalism. I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Stirling Burghs (Mr. Ponsonby) with great interest. I have no objection to make to any of the proposals contained in that speech, but I make one reservation, and I stand on the statement of the Prime Minister, that you cannot standardise Home Rule for each country, and that Ireland must have priority in this matter. That was the statement of the Prime Minister himself, and on that we stand, except that there is nothing in the speech, which I read again carefully this morning, of the hon. Member for Stirling Burghs, to which I take exception. Let me examine this question of federalism, because there has been a great deal of talk about it, and if I may say so, without being offensive, a great deal of loose talk. What is federalism? Here is what the hon. Member for Exeter said:—
  "Is it a Bill which confers powers inherent in the prerogative of the Crown to a legislature composed of King, Senate and people, in a separate island, and you cannot take part of the prerogative of the Crown and bestow it somewhere without bestowing sovereignty."
  If this is done the road to federalism is blocked, because if you endow one of the constituent races of the United Kingdom with the attribute of sovereignty you cannot take it away. The hon. Member says that this Bill in its present form is not consistent with the federal idea. I never heard a more astounding argument. Take the greatest federal State we have, that is, the United States. Where does the sovereignty come in? It is to be found in each individual State. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] Yes, it is, and it has been described by a great American statesman as the free combination, or federation, of sovereign States. The sovereignty lies in each individual State. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] I can assure hon. Members that that is a fact, and the central government has only got such powers as the sovereign States of America have granted to it. That is the greatest federal Constitution in the-world. As a matter of fact the usual and normal foundation on which a federal constitution is based is sovereign States
  coming together forming a single community. Therefore, there is absolutely no, foundation whatever for the argument used by the hon. Member for Exeter. The hon. Member says that this Bill proposes-to transfer certain sovereign prerogatives.

  1217
  to Ireland. What is a sovereign prerogative? Surely in the system at work in Ireland at the present time there are sovereign prerogatives? Did the hon. Member ever hear of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who exercises a whole quantity of the prerogatives of the Sovereign, and he is part of the Irish Government. That is a remnant and a symbol of the old Irish Sovereign Parliament which has long passed away. Therefore, there is no force in that argument
  in the slightest degree. May I point out that there is nothing in this Bill which bars the road to federalism, and there is no foundation for the theory which is continually put forward and accepted in many quarters, that it is impossible to have a federal system unless there is absolute uniformity of all the constituent States. Therefore, there is no foundation for that argument at all.
  I want to say, and I am speaking entirely for myself on this point, that personally I am against federalism, as I understand it, for this country. Nevertheless, it is evidently a question for investigation and inquiry, and that is the reason why I support the proposal of the hon. Member for Stirling Burghs. The working of federalism in the United State—which I have had some opportunity of studying—is not an unmixed success by any means. Of course, it was a necessity for that great country, and they never could have come together, and they never could have held together except under a federal system. All that springs from their history. No men understand better than the hon. Members who sit below the Gangway opposite what are the drawbacks of federalism. and I think the English people will be well advised if they think not once or twice, but thrice before they commit this country to a system of federalism. Federalism involves some form of written Constitution, and I believe myself that the system under which this Bill stands of a supreme Parliament marks the end of true federalism. A system with a supreme Parliament, with an elastic Constitution, is, in my opinion, far better suited for the delevolpments of these Islands than a federal system.
  I do not profess to dogmatise on that question, nor am I saying that this Irish Bill bars the road to federalism. I believe this Bill will fit in as it stands perfectly well with a federal system. Let us by all means inquire into the question, but when we are told, as we were told in the
  1218
  "Spectator," that we must consent to the withdrawal of this Bill, and wait until a statutory Commission devises a system of federalism for Scotland and Wales and the whole of this country, then I agree with the "Spectator" that we should have to wait till the Greek kalends. Of course, that is the object of the proposal, but that was not the proposition of the hon. Member for Stirling Burghs. He proposed that Ireland should have the Bill, and then during the six years this inquiry should be made. I want to say a few words upon the contribution made to the Debate by the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil). He gave us at the beginning of his speech a lecture on temperature. Having advised us all to abstain from any charge or recrimination, the Noble Lord immediately proceeded to charge the Government with one of the foulest crimes of which any body of men could possibly be guilty. What was his proposal? He proposed, by way of a contribution to peace, that the Government should throw down on the Table of this House, in the form of suggestions, all their proposals for discussion in this House. He said, "For pity's sake put down your proposals for Home Rule within Home Rule, and let us discuss them at full length." He also said, "Throw down your proposals, in the form of suggestions, for the exclusion of Ulster, and let us discuss them, although I think they are thoroughly bad." I dare say the Noble Lord would like that course. He would like us to spend two or three months in discussing these proposals in the shape of suggestions, but certainly his ideas would form no road to peace. I am perfectly certain that before long he would succeed. raising the temperature to boiling or over boiling point.
  That brings me to the question of procedure, to which I attach great importance if there is to be any chance of agreement. There are two ways, and to my mind only two ways, in which this Bill can be amended if there is a settlement, and, if there is no agreement or no peace, assume that the Bill will not be amended at all. If there is peace, and I must say that I have a strong hope of peace, there are two ways in which this Bill can be amended. There is no way of amending it by following the guidance and advice of the Noble Lord. One was, is for the House of Lords to read the Bill a second time and insert amendments in it, which can be done quite easily; but, if as I know

  1219
  is held by many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, responsible Leaders, that is an intolerable proposition, and if the House of Lords cannot assent to the principle of the Bill, then let the Bill be put on the Statute Book and an agreed amending Bill be immediately introduced. That can only be done if there is agreement and peace. It is a perfectly easy way to solve the question, even if the House of Lords will not agree. I assure hon. Members that we mean peace. We have run great risks for peace, we have exposed ourselves to ferocious denunciations in the cause of peace, and we will do all that we can to secure peace and to conciliate Ulster. I do not say that by way of boasting or bragging, or pretending that we are very great saints to turn one side of our face when the other has been smitten, but because it is our clear, unmistakable interest. Remember this: If you do really want peace, do not seek to force us to do what we cannot do, and what our people will riot allow us to do. If you adopt that course, then we will be reluctantly driven to the conclusion that it is not peace you are seeking, but some effective weapon to destroy the Bill.
  Sir R. FINLAY: I am sure that the House must have noticed with pleasure the conciliatory tone with which the hon. Gentleman began his speech, but I am afraid that the manner in which he ended his speech may not advance the prospects of an agreement. He criticised very unfavourably the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dublin University (Sir E. Carson), and the general tone of his criticism upon the attitude of the Unionist party was certainly not particularly friendly. One part of his speech struck me very much. It was near the end, when he said that he was not in favour of devolution, though he was ready to consider it, and when he said that this Bill was not to be regarded as a measure of federalism. On what ground did the Prime Minister justify this Bill when he introduced it? He said it was a step towards federalism. I rather agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mayo (Mr. Dillon) than with the Prime Minister. So far from being a step towards federalism, this Bill is the very negation of federalism. The speech of the Foreign Secretary, if he will allow me to say so, offered a most agreeable contrast to some of the speeches that we have lately had from, at any rate, some of his colleagues.
  1220
  The speech of the Foreign Secretary was conciliatory in tone, and in some parts it was very grave in substance indeed. I shall endeavour to deal with the attitude of the Government as we have it in the latest and most authoritative pronouncement from him in the same spirit in which he approached the question. One thing he said was this, "Failing agreement the Bill must pass as it is." Why is it that the Government are captives to their own Parliament Act? Is it that they are working in fetters and not with the liberty of amendment which this House has always had? Is it that failing agreement, failing the acceptance of the principle of the Bill and agreement upon modification, the Bill must pass in a certain form, however objectionable and however certain to lead to disastrous consequences? Surely that is a deplorable attitude to be taken up by anyone.
  The Bill, we are told, must be placed on the Statute Book, and then a General Election. I welcome the statement I understood the Foreign Secretary to make: that until a General Election has taken place the forces of the Crown would never be used to compel the submission of Ulster to the Home Rule Bill. I understood the Foreign Secretary to say that, and I welcome the statement. But surely the people of this country ought, to be consulted before the Bill becomes law, and not afterwards. What fatal influence is it that prevents the Government from being willing to take the opinion of the people of this country as to whether this Bill should or should not be put upon the Statute Book? We have lately had some talk about a Referendum, and an offer was made to the Government to take the opinion of the people of this country on the Referendum. One most able and Ministerial journal pointed out the many merits of the proposal, but said that there was one fatal barrier, and that was the obligation of the Liberal party to their Irish Nationalist allies. Surely it is a most extraordinary thing that the issue at the next General Election is not to be, "Will you or will you not have this Bill passed into law?" but "Will you or will you not repeal a Bill which has already been placed on the Statute Book?" Surely that is a very odd way of proceeding. Would not the straightforward course be to ask the people, "Do you desire this to go on the Statute Book?" I will not attribute to the Government any tactical reasons for putting the question in that form, but surely they

  1221
  must see that, if the matter is to be looked at fairly and squarely, apart from the question of party manœuvres, the proper course is to ask the people before the Bill is put on the Statute Book.
  In considering the question whether this Bill should be read a second time, I desire to put to the Government this question: Would the Government now with all the knowledge that they have, as distinguished from that which they had at the time this Bill was introduced, if they were beginning again with their knowledge of the state of feeling in Ulster, and with their knowledge of the consequences that are likely to ensue, would they introduce the same Bill again? I venture to say that to that question there can be only one answer. They would not. Is it not as clear as daylight that when the Government introduced this Bill they totally misunderstood the situation in Ireland. They did not in the slightest degree appreciate the strength of the feeling in Ulster. They did not realise that in Ireland you have, if I may use the expression without offence to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mayo, two nations to deal with, and not one. I am not going into the old racial considerations into which the hon. Member entered, and which seemed to result in establishing to his own satisfaction that there is no such thing as an Irish nation. We now know that there is a great division, a great distinction in national characteristics, in history, in traditions, and in ideals between the Scottish and English centres in the North-East, and the population of the South and West of Ireland. There is a difference in religion, there is a difference in history, and there is a difference in the national objects which both sections of the Irish population have in view. In dealing with a country so divided, would it be a wise plan to say: We are going to settle the Irish question by putting one of these bodies under the rule of the other?
  5.0 P.M.
  The Government have talked a good deal about the Colonies. Have they ever considered what took place in Canada with regard to the two provinces of Quebec and Ontario. There you had two provinces, the one French by descent, and Roman Catholic by religion, and the other English by descent, and mainly Protestant by religion. For a long time they formed but one province, and it worked so badly that the first thing that had to be done when federation was taken in hand was to separate the province of Ontario
  1222
  from that of Quebec. What was done in South Africa when you were approaching the question of the Union? In the predominantly British province of Natal you did not approach the question of Union until you had taken a plebiscite of the population, and had ascertained that they were willing to come in. The Government now know what is the feeling in Ulster, and what the consequences are likely to be. I say that to introduce this Bill was a blunder, but to carry it through and put it on the Statute Book now when the facts are known to the Government would be a crime. The Foreign Secretary said that agreement may obviate the necessity of settlement by force. A great deal has been said about the proposal for modifications in the Bill. May I venture to make to the Government one practical proposal. It is that they should take up what they think the best idea for arriving at a settlement and put it into practical shape. We shall never make any progress at all until some proposal, which it is for the Government to adopt as the most hopeful, is put into the form of Amendments to the Parliament Act, or into the form of a separate Bill. It is no good discussing these things in the abstract. We have had fleeting phantoms—one idea after another, which no one has ever been able to put into definite shape. We have Home Rule within Home Rule. How is that going to be worked out? We have had the exclusion of Ulster by counties. How is that to be embodied in a working measure? I put it to the Government that the very first step to be taken is to reduce one or more of these proposals into the form of a Bill or a definite Suggestion under the Parliament Act. Time is running on. We have been talking about a settlement without making very much progress. We have been pursuing these phantom ideas—we have been embracing the clouds. The only test of practical ability is to have something put into definite form. Then you begin to know where you are. But the alternative presented by the Foreign Secretary to agreement is of the utmost gravity. He asked, failing agreement, there to be a settlement by force? True, he added, the Home Rule. Bill is not to be enforced by the forces of the Crown until after a General Election. But in his speech he went on to make it perfectly clear that there would be some interval between the passage of the Home, Rule Bill into law and the General Election. If a General Election were going to

  1223
  immediately follow the pa3sage of the Bill contemplated by the Foreign Secretary, the point which I am making would not have so much importance. But it is perfectly plain that the Foreign Secretary contemplates that it is possible that there may be a considerable interval between those two events. He referred to the possibility of outbreaks in Ulster, outbreaks which might render necessary the interference of the Army to put them down. I think no one can have followed attentively the history of Ireland of late without seeing that there is some ground for the apprehension of the Foreign Secretary, that the state of tension in Ireland is such that you might have, in such an interval as that, outbreaks of considerable gravity, and that indeed you might have conflagrations which could only be quenched in blood. Are we to face this as a probable consequence of the policy upon which the Government have embarked if they force this Bill on to the Statute Book under the Parliament Act? I agree with the Foreign Secretary that there is indeed a possibility of such melancholy events.
  In what state did the Government find Ireland when they took office? According to the testimony of everyone, Nationalists and Ulstermen alike, and according to the testimony of the Chief Secretary himself, they found Ireland making great strides in material prosperity. They found old animosities dying away, and a state of things arising in which the feuds of the past were beginning to be forgotten. What a change—what a disastrous change has this calamitous policy of Home Rule wrought in a comparatively short time! The Foreign Secretary has actually to contemplate, as a probable event, outbreaks in Ulster of such a nature as to require the use of the forces of the Crown to restore order; he contemplates the putting down of those outbreaks by the extreme use of force. Is not that a most disastrous consequence of the policy in which the Foreign Secretary has declared it is the intention of the Government to persevere? You are going to put this Bill upon the Statute Book whatever the consequences may be. You say you have a mandate from the people of this country. Did the people of this country ever give a mandate for a measure of this kind which entails civil war, or something like it? Will any hon. Member opposite say that they did? Will any hon. Gentleman say that even the Government, when they introduced this
  1224
  Bill, realised that the state of feeling in Ulster was such that a disaster of that kind will be the probable consequence of that measure? [An Hon. MEMBER: "We thought the Tory party would be loyal."' They did not know it. The Chief Secretary for Ireland might have known it, but, at all events, he did not warn us, and the measure has now been carried to a point at which surely you ought to ask the electors: "Do you, or do you not, desire this measure to be persevered with?"
  All sorts of reasons are given by the Government for not consulting the electors. They say it would be of no use asking whether the electors want this Bill to go on. I say it would be a very great deal of use. If the by-elections are any guide at all, most probably the result would be that the people would say that they did not want this Bill to be put on the Statute Book. At all events, that is a possible consequence of consulting them, and I shrewdly suspect that, with some of the supporters of the Government, the possibility or probability—the high probability—of that result is the most potent reason against a General Election. It would solve the difficulty, because this disastrous policy would be reversed, and Ireland would return to the paths of sober progress on which she was engaged, according to the testimony of the Irish Secretary himself, before the policy of Home Rule was brought to this point. It is said you might have parties equally divided—a sort of stalemate. If that were the result of a General Election, and if parties were so evenly divided that you could not say either really preponderated, it would be perfectly clear that no Government would be justified in pressing on a revolutionary measure of this kind under such circumstances. The third possibility is that the Government might secure a substantial majority. If they did they would go forward, and they would go forward with the knowledge that they had the people at their back, and that the responsibility for what might follow would rest on those who had voted for them—the electors of the country. But none of these reasons generally alleged against a General Election by the supporters of the Government is the true reason. The true reason is that there is some compact, the particulars of which we do not know. I am not going to discuss the merits of the Referendum—
  Mr. PRINGLE: The most revolutionary proposal before the country.
  Sir R. FINLAY: I will not say a word either in support of or against the Referendum, I have very definite opinions upon it, but I am not going to encumber my present speech by discussing it. I do, however, want to point out that a newspaper, one of the leading journals which supports the Government, expressed an opinion that there were great merits in the proposal, but added, that, to adopt it, would be inconsistent with their obligations to their Irish allies. I suppose, therefore, there was some arrangement, or sonic understanding, that there was to be Home Rule, and not only Home Rule, but Home Rule under the Parliament Act and without consulting the electors of the country. Why cannot the Government take heart of grace, and say to the hon. and learned Member for Waterford, "It is perfectly true, we entered into this arrangement, compact, understanding (or whatever you choose to call it), but you did not know, and we did not know what terrible consequences the passage of the Home Rule Bill might have. Now that we do know it, we tell you honestly we feel it would be wrong to carry it out." It is a bargain which I think every unprejudiced person will admit ought never to have been entered into. There was one passage in the speech of the Foreign Secretary, to which I listened, I confess, with very great pain, and I think it must have overtaken many hon. Members with great surprise. The Foreign Secretary said that we were approaching a tremendous issue, and that was, "Is the Army to govern, or is Parliament to govern—the Army against Parliament." The Foreign Secretary did not adopt the formula put forward by some hon. Members sitting on the same side of the House—the People against the Army—the Army against the People. He put it—the Army against Parliament. The truth is that what you suspect as being wrong with the Army is that it is too much in touch with the feeling of the people of England on this subject. I do not think that the majority in this House of Commons is very much in touch with the great majority of the people of England, and that is the cause, I think, of your fear that the Army is too much in touch with the feeling of the people to be altogether relied upon for carrying out your behests. A more idle and mischievous cry than that raised against the Army was never heard of in this country.
  Mr. J. WARD: Hear, hear. You did it.
  Sir R. FINLAY: I am not going to discuss whether or not the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent is entitled to the whole merit of the idea. I say that the cry against the Army, the cry of Parliament against the Army, is an idle and mischievous cry, for which there is no justification whatever. Inquiries made by the Government resulted in their ascertaining that there would be, in certain parts of the Army, a great reluctance to undertake operations against Ulster, on the part both of officers and of men. These men answered the questions that were put to them. Is that an attempt to domineer? You put a question, and when you do not get the answer you like you say, "What a domineering tyrant you are!" We are told that we are to have a democratic Army. Does a democratic Army mean an Army which is in touch with the people, or out of touch with the people? It may occur to some hon. Members of the House how a great Scottish poet, de ribing the English, Scottish and Irish oops who took part in the great struggle for the liberties of Europe under Wellington, described the characteristics of those troops. Depicting the English, he spoke of—
  "Free-born thought, that leads the soldier with the laws."
  I trust we shall never see in this country an Army which will be the blind instrument of despotism, whether it be a despotism of a dictator or the despotism of a scratch majority in the House of Commons. You cannot uproot the feelings that permeate the Army as Englishmen without tearing up a great deal that has rendered the British Army most valuable in the history of this country. To carry out the idea which some hon. Gentlemen seem to have of a democratic Army you would have to have an Army of foreign mercenaries, such as those that were employed in the rather regrettable episode in our history of the war against the American Colonies by the British Government of the day. We do not want an Army of that kind, and I pray that England may never see an Army which is so thoroughly out of touch with the people as to lend itself to any task, however odious, to which it might be set by the Government of the day. Wherever you have an Army which is composed of citizen soldiers, you reach a point where ordinary rules of action are strained to the breaking point if you embark on strife of a civil nature. No maxims, no rules,

  1227
  bear to be pushed to the bitter extremity, and hardly any rules can be made of universal application. You come to a state of things where there is a conflict between duties. You come to a state of things where conscientious scruples must be respected, and it would, indeed, be disastrous if you succeeded in reforming the Army to such an extent that such scruples were impossible. It is perfectly plain from some things said during Debate that some Members of the party opposite are looking forward to the cry of "The Army against the People," or "The Army against Parliament," as a profitable election cry.
  Mr. PIRIE: It was scarcely spoken of at all yesterday.
  Sir R. FINLAY: Something has been said which implied that.
  Mr. LONG: And at the National Liberal Club.
  Sir R. FINLAY: I believe hon. Gentlemen are utterly mistaken. I do not believe it would advantage them, and it rather fills one with despair that the Foreign Secretary, whom we all so highly respect, should have appeared to lend countenance to such a cry. I hope that this House will not read this measure a second time. When the Parliament Act was introduced we were told a great deal about the tremendous amount of discussion and brain power that would be put into every measure which passed through the three Sessions There was quite a moving passage in a speech which the First Lord of the Admiralty made some two years ago, when he said:—
  "Think of all this expenditure of effort, all these colossal exertions in the three successive Sessions!"
  and that passage was quoted with approval by the Prime Minister. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Gentlemen opposite cheer that. What is the reality? The reality is that in the second Session you have no Committee stage at all, and I suppose there will be no Committee stage in the third Session. Is that what was intended? Was not what was contemplated this: That any measure which was to be passed in this extraordinary way over the heads of the Second Chamber was a measure which would have run the Parliamentary gauntlet and received the approval of the House of Commons three times after being thoroughly considered and thoroughly sifted? We
  1228
  now know what the reality is. You have no Committee stage in the second and third Sessions, on the plea that if you have a Committee stage and any Amendment were introduced, you would lose the benefit of the Parliament Act. That condemns your Parliament Act. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] But it is no excuse for your carrying through these measures without that consideration which was promised.
  I desire to add only a very few words as to the strong objections which I feel to this Bill upon its merits. Apart altogether from the question of Ulster. I regard this measure as being a mischievous one, and in three capital respects. We have been told that the control of the Imperial Parliament is to be absolute, unquestioned, effective. The control of the Imperial Parliament under this measure would be a paper control; it would be no more an effective control than the control which you have over your great Dependencies to whom the boon of self-government has been given. The Imperial Parliament would never venture to interfere in the internal affairs of those great Dependencies, and no more would it venture to interfere in the internal affairs of Ireland if an Irish Parliament were set up under this Bill. The second is the retention of forty-three Irish Members in this House. I remember rely well hearing Mr. Gladstone, in 1886, demonstrate that if you had a Parliament in Ireland you could not have the Irish Members in the Parliament at Westminster. That speech has never been answered and never can be answered. In 1893 Mr. Gladstone. although he could not answer his speech of 1886, altered his plan and proposed that the, Irish Members should be admitted to the Parliament at Westminster. The present Government have found out a plan which combines the defects of both those proposals. We are to have forty-three Irish Members here. That is far too few for the adequate representation of Ireland in Imperial matters, and it is far too many to take part in discussing British matters when the Imperial Parliament has no effective voice with regard to Irish matters. The third dejection which I have to this measure, apart from Ulster, is on financial grounds. I am not going into details upon that matter, but I think the situation was very pithily described by the hon. Member for Cork when he pointed out that the hon. and learned Member for Waterford was responsible for this measure, and that

  1229
  it was a measure of such a nature that in six months it would put. three provinces into bankruptcy and the fourth into insurrection.
  Above and beyond all these objections, there is the great Imperial objection, that you would be setting up, within sight of our own shores, a semi-independent State, and that you have no security, and can have no security, that the attitude of that State towards this country would be uniformly friendly. I shall say very little about the case of Ulster. We have heard a great deal about it lately, and it is simply irresistible. Whatever doubt there is about the feeling in the South and West of Ireland—and I believe that the Parliamentary representation of those parts of Ireland does not on this point give a fair idea of the people towards Home Rule, and with regard to a very great many people there their attitude is described in the words of an honest farmer who, when asked, "Are you in favour of Home Rule?" replied, "Well collectively I am for it, but individually I am against it"—whatever doubt there is about the attitude of the South and West, there is no doubt about the resolute antagonism of Ulster to this measure. These men claim no ascendancy, and they claim no privilege.
  The situation is most paradoxical. They are the most loyal men in the United Kingdom, yet a state of things is produced which threatens to drive those loyal men into resistance to an Act of Parliament passed under the Parliament Act. You generally find that revolt occurs on the part of the disaffected who want to go under another rule, but here we are to employ the forces of the Crown to drive these men out and put them under a rule to which they declare they will never submit. One word as to the effect that such a policy, if carried out to the bitter end, mist have upon the Empire. Suppose that Ulster is coerced, that all resistance is put down, and that Ulster is held in subjection to a Government in Dublin which it detests. Is this Empire in the same position in the councils of Europe as she was before? Is not this country permanently weakened, and is it not clear as can be that the effect of this Home Rule policy, adopted in deference to the Irish Nationalist Members, would be to deal the deadliest blow at the greatness of this country that can be conceived by creating a Poland in the North-East of Ireland? Hon. Gentlemen opposite have been awakened rather rudely from the soft
  1230
  dream of three years. They have been dreaming of a Parliamentary arrangement, of log-rolling, of the manipulation of votes, and of a coalition. They had come to forget that there were realities in this world which far transcend the manœuvres of Parliamentary life. They are rudely awakened. They have come into conflict with the determination of one of the best parts of the population of the United Kingdom. What is their answer going to be? I trust, I pray, that it will not be "Shoot them down!"
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir S. Buckmaster): I do not propose to follow the right hon. Gentleman in the discussion that he introduced with regard to the Army. It does not appear to me that that question is relevant to the great matter that we have to discuss to-day, and in my judgment the duty of every man at the present moment, is to do what he can to allay the feelings of irritation and suspicion which have been occasioned by the events of the past few weeks.
  Sir R. FINLAY: I referred to what the Foreign Secretary had said on the subject.
  Sir S. BUCKMASTER: The right hon. Gentleman proceeded to discuss the question of the Army and the people, and it is that question upon which I hold opinions as strong and as definite as these, but not of the same character, which, for the reasons that I have already stated, it appears to be unwise at the moment to express. This is the third time that this Bill has come before the House for Second Reading, and in one more stage it will have passed from our control. That is a fact which cannot shake or change strong and deep-rooted prejudices which are entertained against the measure, and still less can it give new and added argument in its support, but I think it lends a further gravity to the discussion, and I think that has been felt and expressed in every speech which has been delivered during this Debate. To my mind one of the most striking and significant features of this discussion has been that very little criticism has been directed against the details of the measure. Only occasionally have arguments been brought against the principle of the Bill, and the greater part of the discussion has taken place in relation to proposals on the one side and on the other by which the matter may be reasonably and peaceably arranged. That I cannot help thinking is the sincere desire of every Member in every quarter

  1231
  of the House. It certainly must seem to all reasonable men possible that, however strong opinions may be on both sides, there ought to be a common ground upon which men can meet, and without the breach of any pledge, and without the abandonment of any principle, be able to come to some reasonable terms by which the principle of this measure can be carried into effect without unreasonable apprehension on the part of any man. I should myself have thought that the speeches were hopeful in connection with such an arrangement if it were not that without exception the proposal that has been put forward by the Government has been received with derision and contempt, and yet how far-reaching, how generous those proposals are I do not think even at this moment hon. Members opposite really recognise. I myself think you could obtain no better assurance of the good will of the Nationalist party and of their sincere and earnest desire to have this measure carried through with good will among all people than the fact that they have assented to the proposal which the Government has made.
  Let me just restate what I understand the position to be. Hon. Members opposite assert that we arc making an unauthorised use of a Parliamentary majority for the purpose of carrying a Bill of which the country does not approve. We are quite satisfied that this Bill does no more than carry into effect a principle which for thirty years has been the marked, the essential, and the distinctive characteristic of Liberal opinion. Be that as it may, the Leader of the Opposition has time and again demanded that another election shall be taken at this moment in order to determine what the people of the country may think, and he has said that if their verdict is in our favour his support of Ulster's opposition to the Bill will be withdrawn. Considering that the proposal of the Opposition, what is it that the Government has proposed? The Government has made a proposal whose meaning is perfectly plain. The counties of Ulster are to have the option to select if they will avail themselves of the privilege of being excluded from the operation of the Bill for the period of six years. If during those six years, when two elections must take place, the Parliamentary majority in this House, gathered from whatever source, thinks that the operation of the
  1232
  Home Rule Bill is acting or will act partially and unjustly to the excluded counties, they will have full power to, extend the exclusion. But that is not all. From and after the passing of this Bill the majority of the Nationalist Members in this House will be reduced, the Members for the excluded counties will be retained, and in point of fact the proposal that is being made by the Government means that we are prepared to face the result of an election with the number of our followers depleted, while your. followers will remain the same. We offer-you that, that this must take place within eighteen months, and you say that that is a proposal which is a hypocritical sham. I cannot help thinking from the language which was used in the Debate yesterday, and from some observations which have fallen from the speakers to-day, that it has not been rightly apprehended that it is the first, as well as the last election which will give the opportunity to a majority in this House to change, if they think right, this measure that we are now reading a second time. From time to, time hon. Members spoke as though this question was going to be relegated into obscurity for six years, and that it was only at the end of six years that it could ever again come before the consideration of the House. This is what the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Duke) said:—
  "Ulster is to he brought in automatically at the oat of six years, unless a miracle happens"
  I do not suppose that any Members on our side of the House take a very sanguine view of the electoral prospects of hon. Members opposite, but we have never said that it would be perfectly impossible for them to be returned at all within the next six years excepting by the intervention of supernatural power.
  Now let me see what is the proposal which was suggested by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Carson), the proposal which has been supported by many hon. Members opposite, and which they suggest is the exact equivalent of their own, giving Ulster a more favoured position. That proposal is that Ulster shall be excluded from the Bill, and shall not be brought within the ambit unless this Parliament so determines, and they say that there is really no material difference between the two, and that if we are sincere about our proposal, we might readily accept that. Let me point out what the differences are. In the first place, that proposal is based upon the

  1233
  assumption that the Home Rule Bill will not embrace Ulster. It is based on the assumption that there is to be exclusion, and that principle is fundamentally opposed to what we believe to be the true principle. But it does not rest there. If the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman be accepted, this is what will follow: lf an election takes place and we are returned again, and once more seek, in obedience to the directions of the constituencies, to include Ulster in the Home Rule scheme, what will follow? We shall be restored to the exact position that we occupy to-day. We shall have the drilling of Ulster volunteers; we shall have the long, slow, laborious, existing process of driving the measure again three times through the House of Commons in two years; we shall have the same obstinate resistance to all our measures, both from within and from without the House; and we shall have a repetition of all the speeches that we have listened to upon this measure when that proposal comes to the front. I do not think that even now hon. Members opposite realise how bitterly we resent the injustice of our present Parliamentary position. They think that the Parliament Act has smoothed all obstacles and put us on a footing of legislative equality with themselves. It has done nothing of the kind. It has modified but it has not removed an intolerable injustice, and if our scheme were adopted, and hon. Members opposite attained a majority in the country, and they brought forward their Bill for the purpose of further excluding Ulster from the operation of the Statute, that Bill from the time it left this House would have a triumphal procession to the foot of the Throne. Our Bill would meet with every form of organised resistance. There is a difference between the two schemes, and not a mere difference of language. It is a difference of substance, and the substance is so important that I do not wonder that hon. Members below the Gangway say that they have gone to the last limit of concession in respect of the proposals which have been put forward.
  Great and important as we all think this Ulster question to be, I think there is a danger lest the consideration of Ulster should dominate and overshadow the whole issue of Home Rule. In considering and attempting to give full and considerate attention to the objections of Ulster, there is a tendency lest people should shut their eyes to the strength and the passion of the movement which is represented by hon. Members who sit below
  1234
  the Gangway. [Laughter.] That appears to excite the merriment of hon. Members who sit opposite, and who must be strangely unfamiliar with the facts. For what is the truth? Ulster has never been made bitter with oppression, Ulster has never been kindled with the national ideal, but if you glance back only a few years in the history of Ireland, you can see what are the conditions under which hon. Members who sit below the Gangway have come to represent the national faith. If you will consider events merely within the memory of living men, Ireland has been scourged with famine, she has been torn, with faction, she has been the subject of oppression, she has been honeycombed with conspiracies, gunboats have-occupied her rivers, battleships have threatened her ports, troops have invested her soil, not directed against drilled, armed, and organised resistance to law lawfully passed according to the Constitution of this country, but they have been used without one single word of protest from hon. Members opposite against a defenceless and disenfranchised peasantry; and through the whole of her history, through the whole long time of her trouble, in all the sorrows by which she has been afflicted and struck down, two things have remained to her—the consolation of her religion and the inextinguishable flame of her national faith.
  It is easy for hon. Members opposite to laugh when we talk about the passion represented by hon. Members who sit below the Gangway, but if they have forgotten history, surely they should know of the conspiracies, the intrigues, and the lawlessness which afflicted Ireland. Yes, these are the dark and devious pathways' from which they have been rescued by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. J. Redmond). It is under his guidance that they no longer tread these mazes, and that their cause has been put on the broad highway of a constitutional demand. I know that there are dark scenes in Irish history—scenes that the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Sir E. Carson) would recall with clear, and, I believe, with painful recollection. A crowded Court, a packed: jury, a spy on the witness stand, and some desperate, fanatical peasant in the dock waiting to hear his doom from the lips of a man who, be he never so wise or just, fails to command confidence and to inspire trust in the people for and against whom he executes justice. Is it surprising that, under circumstances such as those, Ireland

  1235
  should have felt that her cries for help were addressed to ears so far away, and so dulled with the sound of many voices that either they passed by unheeded or were only listened to when it was too late to grant full and adequate relief. This, fortunately, has changed. The Irish movement is no longer a conspiracy that can be crushed. It is a constitutional demand which people who believe in constitutional Government can no longer deny. I do not for one moment doubt that there are difficulties even yet before us. The past of Ireland lies in dark shadows, and shadows even now gather about her path. It is our belief that, given good will and self-government, those shadows will lift and drift away; but hon. Members opposite believe that they will deepen and grow more dark. That is the great and grave issue between us, and unless this matter is settled by conciliation and agreement, that is the issue that must go forward to the proof.
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: The Solicitor General at the beginning of his speech said it was his duty to damp down the irritation which had been caused by what I venture to call the poisonous cry of The People against the Army." Who is responsible for raising that cry? What is the position of the Attorney-General, who has so opportunely left the House? Why, only on 28th March he was sent down to Blackburn, and he used these words:—
  "The issue that has been raised is this: Is the policy of this country to Is influenced by the polities of officers in the Army."
  Mr. PIRIE: On a point of Order. May I humbly submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is scarcely germane to the Debate on the Second Reading of the Government of Ireland Bill to discuss as a principal point this question of the People versus the Army?
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: On the point of Order. I beg to submit that I was not going to discuss it as a principal point. It was raised by the Solicitor-General.
  Mr. SPEAKER: I regret very much that it should have been raised, but it was not raised by the hon. Member. It was raised by previous speakers. This is the first occasion on which my attention has been directed to it.
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: Not only that. May I point out that the Foreign Secretary devoted a good deal of his speech
  1236
  to this part of the question yesterday. I would only point out that it ill becomes the Solicitor-General, when his colleague is as much responsible as anyone for raising this cry in the country, to say that he is put here to damp it down. The Solicitor-General said t the end of his speech that he was making an appeal for conciliation. Well, a great part of it did not sound very conciliatory. When he tried to revive ancient memories of ancient wrongs he was doing his best once more to inflame the temper of the House, and he has partially succeeded. Nobody knows better than he that it was Liberal Governments, of which his is the successor, that were more responsible for the wrongs that were committed than any Governments which were drawn from the predecessors of those hon. Members who sit on this side of the House. Besides, what is the good, when we are talking of conciliation, and when an appeal is made to us to try to lay the way for peace, of taking a tone of this kind? It is said that the Irish Nationalists have all the ideals on their side. Nobody denies—I less than anybody—that the Irish Nationalist party are actuated by a very high and real ideal, hurt I say that the ideal of the people of Ulster is a far finer and larger one. They wish, as a component part of the strength of our Empire, to join with the rest in doing what they can for that power which makes, by common admission, for the peace and prosperity of the world. I say that the Imperial ideal is of far finer texture than any raised or professed by hon. Gentlemen who sit below the Gangway. The Solicitor-General said that this was a constitutional question which ought to be solved in a constitutional manner. We ask that and nothing else. It is as a constitutional question we wish it to be settled by an appeal to the whole of the citizens of this country, with no possible advantage of plural voting, because the Leader of the Opposition has offered that it should be submitted to a Referendum in which one vote would have one value. Is not that a settlement in a constitutional manner? [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] The Solicitor-General could not have heard the speech of the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), in which he said that. a real constitutional settlement would be by the two elections promised by the Prime Minister. The hon. Member pointed out that this was an issue which could not be judged alone. He said it would be obscured by every other sort of

  1237
  extraneous matter. That is partially true, but how will it be after six years? How will it be when the land campaign has been elaborated for another six years? Will a straight vote be obtained then? If a straight vote is to be obtained, it will be much more likely to come with a submission of the question to the electors now, when there will be nothing to obscure the issue and when there will be nothing to darken understanding.
  6.0 P.M.
  As one of those who hopes, in spite of hope, that the spirit of reason will revisit the House, I confess that I listened to the hon. Member for East Mayo with dismay, almost with despair. He began with a profession of good will, but his words, and, so far as I could judge, his intentions, were those of the new spirit of Hibernian ascendancy. He did not advance one yard along that path of conciliation of which he spoke when he started. He actually dragged in the opinion of an American newspaper to show how far he was wishing to bring in conciliation. He said that the Army had lapsed from its duty. He said that in spite of the fact, as he knows, that the Prime Minister and Lord Morley liav3 denied that the Army had disobeyed its orders, or done anything amounting to a lapse from duty. He said that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University had been guilty of bad faith, bad faith to this House, and bad faith to the country, and he finished up with the usual threats of force. What is the good of telling us that we ought to approach once more the consideration of this question in a spirit of good will if these threats of force are used every night, with greater bitterness than ever?
  Mr. DILLON: I made no threats of force.
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: At the end of his speech the hon. Member distinctly said that this Bill would be thrust through without amendment unless the compromise to which the Nationalist party have agreed were freely accepted as a final solution here above the Gangway. He knew that that was impossible, and he said that the law would then be enforced.
  Mr. DILLON: No, I did not.
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: The hon. Gentleman undoubtedly said that the Bill was to be thrust through without amendment, and he once more threatened the Unionist party.
  Mr. DILLON: I think that this is a little bit unjust to me. I was talking of Parliamentary procedure. I pointed out that there were only two ways in which the Bill could be amended under the Parliament Act. I said that if either of those ways were adopted, of course the Bill would be put through.
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: Yes, he said that, knowing that his Leader sitting behind him has said that all the forces of the Crown would be used to enforce the law when passed without amendment through Parliament. It is trifling with the House. If the Bill is passed without amendment it is the intention, we know from the Foreign Secretary, to enforce it by use of arms if necessary. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] The Foreign Secretary, within the knowledge of the House, said last night that the forces of the Crown would be used to see that the law is carried out. I do not think that is capable of dispute, but I do not wish to weary the House with quotations. Therefore, we are once more in the atmosphere of threats, and in that atmosphere we are told we are to approach in a new spirit the consideration of this problem. I, for one, was glad to recognise that there was one thing that stood out in this Debate—that is that the House did not want the crambe repetita of the old speeches for and against Home Rule. They were very good speeches—better speeches, I fancy, after the lapse of years, than we hear in these days. They were very good speeches, but they have served their turn. I should like personally—and I believe that there are many others who want to do the same—to approach this problem in a new spirit. The First Lord of the Admiralty, the House will recollect, said that he wanted to approach it with the modern eye. But his eye has become a very bloodshot eye or a very bloodthirsty eye. I want to see him approach this with a clear eye and conciliatory eye, but it must be a real eye not an artificial eye. [HON. MEMBERS: "The glad eye!"] I think personally that there has been perhaps too much talk of arms and too little of ways and means. We have heard a great deal of physical force and very little of moral authority as concerning the future government of Ireland. I want to make an appeal to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway.
  After all it is quite true that government rests upon physical force, but it is only moral authority that enables that

  1239
  force to be properly organised and to work well. The great deficiency—perhaps it is the great misfortune—of hon. Members is that, much as they know of politics, they know very little of administration. And suppose that there were no possibility of armed force being used in Ulster—suppose that there were no Ulster Volunteer force, I think that the difficulties of the government of Ireland, in face of the bitter hostility of a million of its citizens, would be far too great for them to compass and to overcome. I do not know how they propose to deal with the details of administration that they will have to face, and to bring into the hearth and home of every citizen, if they have not the good will and the consent of those with whose affairs they seek to deal. It has never been found possible in any part of the world. Certainly it was even carried so far years ago that, when it was proposed in the Philadelphian Convention, which determined the constitution of the United States, to readjust the boundaries of the States, it was said, "You would not get the people to render the same obedience to a new State Government that they did to the old," and the proposal was rejected. In fact every time and everywhere it has been found to be impossible to transfer, in such a way as is now proposed, the civil allegiance of a community like the Protestants of Ulster. My Noble Friend the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) spoke of having searched in vain for precedents. I venture to point out that there is one precedent that is very much against what the hon. Member for Mayo thinks can be done now. Take the case of Holland and Belgium. They were linked together in 1815. There was much that was akin between the Flemish and the Dutch. Yet in 1830, in order to secure good government it was found necessary to dissolve the Union, and to establish the two States as they are now. I hold it to be a crime to attempt to do it now; and I quite admit that in recent years we had another example which I do not think can be repeated. Nobody respects the memory of the late Lord Salisbury more than I do, but I hold now, as I held then, that the Government committed a great mistake in transferring, against the will of the people, the allegiance of the people of Heligoland to Germany. I did not think that it was justifiable then, and I do no think that it can be repeated now. It was on a small scale, but I think that it is a
  1240
  warning which stands in our way when we are considering the case of Ulster to-day, and all these difficulties which are certain to come, and which ought to make hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway make every concession they can in order to obtain the consent of those whom they seek to govern.
  Mr. DILLON: So we are.
  Mr. HARRY LAWSON: We heard talk this afternoon once more of the possibility of a federal solution. The hon. Member for Mayo dealt with it. I submit to the House that the essential condition, of federalism is that there should be a free will offering of those who go into the Union. They must come of their own accord. That is of far more importance than exact equality of terms. Unless the people of Ulster come in there can be no real federation able to effect what has been found to be possible in other parts of the world. But I am in doubt, and I dare say that somebody on the Front Bench will clear it up as to what they mean when they talk of a federal system. Do they mean a system under which Ulster would be considered a separate entity? [HON.- MEMBERS: "NO."] If they are to take the existing units it would be impossible for Ulster to be prepared to enter into a federal system on those terms. It must be a real unity of unities. That can only be if the consent of Ulster is obtained, and Ulster is ready to come in just as the States of all the federal systems in the world have come in, and that is of their own free will and accord. It is a very favourite doctrine of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and I have listened to it with amused indifference, that the newspaper. Press is guilty of engendering a great deal of the heat that has made the calm consideration of this problem impossible. In another place Lord Crewe said he wished that there had been a Press Act which would have enabled the Government to, have muzzled the Press for the last few months, and prevented the publication of all the articles which they have had on the Irish question. Surely this is very belated nonsense. It comes very strangely from those who were supposed to be attached to the idea of the liberty of the Press. I rather understand it, because the Press can be neither closured nor guillotined; but if we have advanced any further in the consideration of this question it is very largely due to the fact that the Press has incessantly called attention to the fact

  1241
  that this country is standing nearer a ghastly catastrophe than it has stood for nearly 300 years.
  You cannot trade profitably in these days on public ignorance. That seems to be one very strong argument against the proposals of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that private conversation should be resumed on the Irish question. Surely, what we want is a little more frankness and honesty. We do not want secret conclaves of political cardinals. What is brought forward should be laid on the Table of this House. If it is open to public criticism, and if it stands the right of criticism and reason, then it will serve; if not, none of these secret agreements will be of much value. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs is always listened to with great respect in this House, and we were very anxious to know last night what he had to say. But I venture to say that, in one regard, he put forward an argument which is not at the root of this matter and will not stand examination. He said that one of the great purposes that would be served by the passage of this Bill would be the relief of the congestion of business that was killing this House. I do not believe that devolution will have any such effect. I believe that devolution has an equivalent force both ways. It extends the scope of the discussion of business one way as it contracts it in the other. Suppose this House were relieved of Irish business, what would it mean? Two or three days of Committee of supply—nothing more. Suppose that we gave yet a further instalment of time, anybody who sits through the consideration of Estimates knows that 99 out. of 100 of these Estimates are not ever discussed or considered. It merely means that there will be a little more discussion of matters which now escape consideration. It will not relieve in any other way the congestion of business. The real truth is that the one thing on which the House ought to concentrate its attention is how far the passage of this Bill will tend to secure the prosperity of Ireland. I say that it is only by proceding along the paths of peace that that is possible, and that is what makes one so disappointed at the two speeches that I have heard here this evening. They have not advanced us a step.
  There are rumours outside—I do not know whether they will be confirmed in this Debate—that there has been some idea of giving Ulster a second opportunity
  1242
  and a second term of six years' exclusion. If that were so, I think that it would materially alter the offer to which the Prime Minister at present stands committed. But nobody knows whether anything of that kind is to be done, and we have the same empty threats of force and violence, that mean nothing, which have been used on both sides, and may serve hon. Gentlemen now, but which those who sat before them on that bench many years ago were the first to counter, because when Ireland was in the throes of another crisis more than a hundred years ago it was Fox who said:—
  "Legal or illegal, I approve of t he manly determination which in the last resort flies to arms for deliverance."
  Of course that has been the talk of Radicals throughout the ages, and it only serves them now to exalt the doctrines of law and order which I heard them in the old days—and nobody more effectively than the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary—ridicule when they were applied to the administration of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London. Is anything to be done in this Debate to clear the issue? Are we to be content to leave things as they are now? Ireland has been to this Empire like the Nessus shirt of Hercules—burning and lacerating everything which it has touched in the past. If we are to get rid of it we shall have to be wiser than Hercules was in the old fable, and we shall have to pray to the gods of good sense and good feeling to come to our aid. Yes; and have we heard much of good sense and good feeling here to-night? I should have been glad to respond to any offer, but has the hon. Member for East Mayo said one thing which is in advance of the terms, the impossible terms, already rejected by the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues? All that has been done now has been to unsettle everything and to settle nothing, and, if we are to have any settlement, I think it had better be admitted that it must be on the ancient ways of peace, by frankness, by honesty, and by good will.
  Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN: The grave speech of the Foreign Secretary last night made two things perfectly plain, and which strangely escaped the notice of the hon. Member for East Mayo, but will not escape the notice of the people of Ireland. The first thing is that in this year, which is known in Ireland as the "Home Rule year," we will not have Home Rule for Ireland—we will not have Home Rule for even three-fourths of Ireland. The next point

  1243
  which was made absolutely clear is that we will never have an Irish Parliament, or even three-fourths of an Irish Parliament at all, unless and until the people of England give their leave at a General Election, which we were assured in Ireland a thousand times over was never to conic off again on this issue. The only comfort the Foreign Minister had to give us is that the Government mean to go through the farce of nominally placing upon the Statute Book this dummy Bill—a Bill which they themselves have offered to transform in its most vital particulars, and which they admit that they have not the least notion in the world of putting into force without the authority of the people of England, and without that appeal to the people of England, which, I must candidly say, it was one of the principal recommendations of the Parliament Act to avoid. If, under those circumstances, that ghastly farce is gone through, I have to say that in my judgment it is an imposture at the expense of the Irish people, in order to save the faces of the parties sitting here.
  I cannot congratulate either the Government or their Irish followers in regard to recent events. They may have postponed the trouble in Ulster, but they have demoralised their Army, they have swelled the head of the Covenanters, and they have destroyed their Irish settlement without pleasing anybody. That, at least, is my profound conviction. I do not know which to admire least, the levity with which they took up this plan for the dismemberment of Ireland, or the alacrity with which they have changed front. The Prime Minister said that they still stood by the principle of the Bill, but what he calls the principle of the Bill we call an absolute negation of the first principle of Irish nationality, and the only principle which makes this Bill worth fighting for. I cannot add very much more than that in respect to the fourth fact, for which I suspect the First Lord of the Admiralty is to a large extent responsible, namely, the marching of the Army up the hill in Ulster and then marching it down again, so far as they could get it to march at all. All those matters I dismiss entirely from my consideration—all these military alarms in Ulster, Curragh, Downing Street and elsewhere, which were undoubtedly of most painful and vital interest to the people of Great Britain, and I sincerely sympathise with them; but Irish Nationalists are all thinking of one question that now overshadows.
  1244
  every other, the fact that for the first time in our history the majority of the representatives of Ireland have consented to partition Ireland.
  The only consolation that is administered to us in Ireland was the whisper that went round that this offer was deliberately framed with the idea that it would be flung back in the teeth of the Government. But that is not what has happened. On the contrary, they have gone very much further than I should in the direction of accepting the six years' offer, and the Foreign Minister last night again acknowledged that the Government are pinned to the principle, arid not only to the principle but to certain details which are not specified, and about which we will know nothing until, perhaps, we hear of some further surrender by the party behind. At the present moment, in spite of the increase of temperature that has taken place in Ulster, I believe the danger is that both British parties will agree only too well to divide the oyster, and to present the Irish people with the empty shells. At the present time—and there is no disguising the fact—we are no longer discussing a Bill for the reconciliation of Ireland, for both British parties are discussing projects for saving England from civil war. That is a very good object, but it is not the object for which this Bill has been fought.
  At first it seemed to me as if the Prime-Minister and the party behind me were a little daunted by the consternation that proposal caused in Ireland, but it seems that they have made up their minds that Irish public opinion does not object, or that Ireland should really stand it. I quite admit that there may be some ground for the confidence of hon. Members that the silence of Ireland means the approval of Ireland, but I say that public opinion in Ireland at this moment is rigorously repressed under the heel of a powerful secret society and place-hunting Press as it was under the English Coercion Act, which I can remember. The Bishop of Kildare, who is a supporter of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond), has told us that he himself heard of this offer with the feelings of a man who is informed that his leg would have to be amputated above the knee, but he added that no doubt the mass of the poor people would submit in sullen acquiescence—not a very cheerful frame of mind for the people who were assured that they were on the eve of recovering

  1245
  national independence. But let nobody be too sure that this policy of amputation above the knee may not raise Irish feeling to a state of violence very considerably livelier than even sullen acquiescence. The Foreign Secretary stated last night that they would not go beyond the six years. That appeared to leave the door open for some arrangement. As I understand it, the length of the time limit might be settled by the introduction of some temporary scheme. I will not be an opponent of any well-considered effort towards settlement. I am not sure that eventually it may not be the only form in which a practical settlement may be arrived at. All I do say, and say at once, is that we will not have any federal plan which will be based upon the exclusion of Ulster. I am so far apart from other hon. Members that to my mind the difference between the six years' limit and indefinite exclusion of Ulster is, from the Irish Nationalist point of view, simply a fraud and a sham. In my belief, if Ireland is once divided by the consent of her representatives, it will remain divided. The hon. Member for Waterford regards this matter of exclusion as so comparatively unimportant a detail that in his Patrick's-day banquet speech he actually put it on the same level as the reservation of the Royal Irish Constabulary. In the very act of speaking to the toast of "Ireland a Nation," he actually talked as if the dispensing with the control of a British military force which never belonged to us was on the same level as amputating the body of Ireland of four or five or six Irish counties. He actually spoke as though in six years it would be as simple a matter to get the victorious "Orange Free State" into the Dublin Parliament as to induce the Royal Irish Constabulary to exchange one paymaster for another. The hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) went still further. He actually discovered material for a Te Deum in this offer for the exclusion of Ulster. The hon. Member, to my deep regret, and to the sorrow of all Ireland, has been undoubtedly the most deadly enemy of conciliation in the country for the past ten years. It is a deep regret to me to-night that when for the first time he figures as a conciliationist it should be on the basis of a concession which practically wipes the name of Ireland off the map. Speaking the other day in England he said:—
  "I have no hesitation in saying that, so far as I am concerned, this offer is an honest offer, and I pray to God they might accept it."
  1246
  Unfortunately he speaks with two voices he referred here to-night to what he said upon a former occasion a few days ago:—
  "As regards the question of the time limit the Irish party recognised that they were running great risks because in the not unlikely contingency of the Tory party returning to power in the next six years it would. be possible for them, by a one-clause Bill to make the-exclusion perpetual."
  A day or two previous, addressing an Irish audience in the north of England, he used these words:—
  "If at a future election the Tory party were to comeback into power, and were to decree that the exclusion of Ulster would be perpetual, what would be the result? The Irish Government and the Irish Members would immediately take up the gauge of battle and we would fight again with a united Ireland."
  There is a forecast of the millennium in. one sentence, and he tells that Tory party that nothing would be simpler than a one-clause Bill for perpetual exclusion, and he tells us in the next breath that he and his Dublin Government would resist. it to the death. The hon. Member must forgive me if I attach more importance to the danger of the one-clause Bill than I do to his successful resistance. The only successful resistance the hon. Gentleman has ever offered in his life was resistance to the national policy which the whole Irish party and the whole Irish nation were solemnly pledged to, and which only for him would long ago have brought us the happiest solution of this question, without a shot being fired or an angry word being spoken in Ulster. The hon. Member for Waterford evidently does not address his prayers for the success of the offer, because I remember with what a majestic wave of the hand he told us if it were not accepted nothing would be simpler than to go on with the Bill and put down force with force. I think in-that, he is about as wise and far-seeing as he was when he assured the country there was no longer an Ulster movement. It is not quite so simple a matter as that. The First Lord of the Admiralty, whom I am glad to see present, and whose unlucky visit to Belfast was the beginning of all this trouble—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] You know very little of Belfast who doubt it. The right hon. Gentleman has since boxed the compass on-this question from his raid upon the Ulster Hall to his recantation at Dundee, and then to his speech at Bradford recanting the recantation invoking the God of battles and promising to put these grave matters to the proof. He has put these grave matters to the proof, with the result of the honest misunderstanding at

  1247
  the Curragh and in Belfast and in Downing Street with which we are only too painfully familiar. In that speech at Bradford the right hon. Gentleman used these words:—
  "Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable, but there are worse things than bloodshed even on an extreme scale."
  I cannot think that the right hon. Gentleman knew what a shudder those words sent to the hearts of Irish Nationalists, who had given up their lives trying to create a genuine feeling of peace. Bloodshed upon an extreme scale may seem a comparatively light matter to a War Lord or to a. Sea Lord. How can the right hon. Gentleman possibly have failed to realise that if any blood were once shed, the blood of Irishmen, upon an extensive scale by Irishmen or by Englishmen, it would defile and it would poison the entire life of Ireland for generations. It would certainly lead to the ruin of all our labours for the unification of Ireland as a nation. I condemn and abhor with all my heart the preparations of the Ulster Volunteers for even the possibility of slaughter between Irishmen and Irishmen. They are, to my mind, outrageous, and they are ridiculously disproportionate to any disastrous consequences that would follow to Ulster from this somewhat paltry Dublin Parliament. But if anybody is indicted I am afraid the so-called Government of Ireland and their Hibernian advisers will have to be joined in the indictment. The Foreign Minister last night complained of the difficulties that had been thrown in the Government's way as to the concessions that it offered. The Foreign Minister is honourably distinguished by a long course of efforts to try and bring about a settlement of this question, but, with that one exception, what concessions have the Government offered to Ulster during all the last two years until within the last few weeks, and then the concession they have offered is one that they know to be hateful to almost every man in Ireland. I have said that I condemn the Irish Government for three-fourths of this trouble.
  They had two years to think over the concessions which they are now offering with a lavish hand in the utterly wrong direction. They conceded nothing, and they did nothing except to gibe and jest. Two years ago there was not a mouse stirring in Ulster, and when the Unionist party were not yet committed in any way,
  1248
  and if two years ago, if even six months ago, you had taken the advice of Lord Loreburn and called in the best and wisest men of all parties, of whom undoubtedly the right hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment and the Foreign Minister are among the very highest types, and even if you failed to find agreement—if you had then honestly made an appeal to the people of England, as you will have to do by and by, and very soon with less grace and with less merit, nothing would have been easier, I venture to say, if the victorious commander of the Ulster Army will allow me to say so, under those circumstances, than to have suppressed this Military organisation within one month, and to have punished, if need be. Your opportunity was lost, and you have done too much and you have done too little: you cannot now do that without bloodshed on an extreme scale, which perhaps the First Lord may regard with Napoleonic serenity. You have tried at the last moment to redeem your inconceivable want of foresight as to one-fourth of Ireland by rushing to the opposite extreme, and offering the one concession which has scandalised almost every man in Ireland, Protestant or Catholic, and which is as execrated, I venture to say, in Belfast as it is in Cork. That is the consequence of the new system of government of Ireland by secret conspiracy. You have allowed one secret conspiracy to lead you by the nose and you allow the other to intimidate you. Look where I will I can see no hope for Ireland, or for the Unionist party, or for the Government, unless—[Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen might really remember that we are discussing a question of cutting up our country and not theirs. I should like to know what their feelings would be if Germany, for instance, proposed to leave them all the rest of the country and to reserve the county of Middlesex as a German "Ulster." Hon. Members will find that they had better not laugh too readily. The one way of saving the situation is that the Government should retrace their steps that they should abandon entirely this hateful plan for the breaking up of Ireland; that they should call into counsel the best representative men of all parties, and try if they cannot even now hit upon some better solution. The Government have hit upon the one solution which has united all Ireland against them. Is there no other form of conciliation? The Prime Minister, in developing to the House his own hopelessly bad plan, confessed that in

  1249
  his judgment there was another and a better solution; and, if I understood him rightly, the Foreign Secretary last night expressed the same opinion. The Prime Minister, after referring to the local minor reforms, which are known as "Home Rule within Home Rule," said:—
  "Then, as regards legislation, my proposal was this—and I am still rather wedded to it, though I am afraid I met with very little support in any quarter—that Ulster should return, like all the rest of Ireland, representatives to both the Upper and the Lower Houses of the Irish Legislature, but that when any law was passed by those two Houses to which in respect of its application to Ulster the majority of the representatives of Ulster were opposed, it should not come into force quo-ad Ulster, if they protested, until it received the sanction of the Imperial Parliament. That, I think, was going a very long way—a very much longer way than many people expected or desired. I gather it receives very little support in any part of this House, but it had this advantage, that, in the first place, it completely met the question of possible administrative oppression; in the next place, it started Ireland with a fully representative Irish Parliament; and, in the third place, it preserved the veto of the Imperial Parliament in regard to legislation which might injuriously affect the Ulster minority—preserved it, not only as it is in the Bill, when it can only be exercised on the initiative of the Imperial Parliament itself, but preserved, or rather extended it, in such a form that it could at any time be brought into operation upon the initiative of a majority of Ulster Members. I am not going to press that suggestion upon the House. I part from it myself with regret and with reluctance, but it has one drawback, and a very serious drawback. It does not commend itself to any of the parties concerned. That was the first road which we pursued—or, at any rate, which I pursued—in the direction of peace."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March, 1914, col. 910–11, Vol. LIX.]
  It is a misfortune that the Prime Minister is absent at this critical stage in the fortunes of his Bill. I should have liked to have asked him what was the influence which compelled him to abandon that scheme "with reluctance." When he says:—
  "I gather it receives very little support in any part of this House,"
  I want to know what steps were taken to test the feelings of the House outside half-a-dozen politicians. This is a question not of half-a-dozen politicians, but of the fate of millions of men. What steps were taken to test the feelings of the Protestant minority in Ireland upon this question? If the House will give me their attention I will show that the real opposition came from the party who sit behind me. It was because the substance of that proposal came originally from my colleagues and myself, that these Gentlemen overruled the Prime Minister's own conviction as to the best road to peace, and forced upon him this hateful alternative of disruption, which is not only incomparably more humiliating for Ireland, but will be absolutely destructive of this Bill as a measure for the reconciliation of the two countries. When I determined to take the
  1250
  opinion of the people of Cork as between us, I did so in a public letter under the heading "What the Cork election will mean." It began:—
  "I desire to set forth in precise terms the programme of conciliation, on which I intend to stand or fall in the election which Mr. Redmond's official representatives have forced upon the city of Cork."
  [Laughter.] I really do not know what that loud laugh means unless it is what a great poet once said it meant. I will not trouble the House with all the concessions that I suggested, such as the representation of the minority in the Irish Parliament and the filling of official positions by merit and not according to the signs and passwords of a secret society. I will quote only the first paragraph, and I think the House will find that it is almost identical with the proposal which the Prime Minister recommended:—
  "First, as to the Ulster terror of parting with the active authority of the Imperial Parliament. We propose, for an experimental term of five years, to give the Ulster party which would remain in the Imperial Parliament (say ten, with the possible addition of two members, one for Trinity College and one for Rathmines, to represent the southern minority) a direct suspensory veto upon any Bill of the Irish Parliament unless and until it shall either be approved or rejected by a resolution of the Imperial Parliament to be passed within a month after the exercise of the veto. Further, to give the Ulster party the right, upon a signed requisition to the Speaker, of discussing, on a motion for the adjournment of the House of Commons, any administrative act of the Irish Executive dealing with education, justice, or police. For the experimental period these powers would give the Protestant minority the direct and active protection of the Imperial Parliament in a much more effectual way than they possess it at present. Such a suspensory veto may seem an unheard of concession to a minority, and so it is. It would, in my judgment, be gladly submitted to by the best thinking men of our race, in the belief that it would serve as a wholesome restraint upon an infant Parliament in its first inexperienced years, and in the firm conviction that nothing will be attempted which would either tempt the Ulster party to exercise the veto or the Imperial Parliament to enforce it"
  That proposal is in substance the proposal which recommended itself to the Prime Minister, with the exception that the Prime Minister confined himself to, Ulster, while we proposed to extend the protection to the minority in the other parts of the country, whose anxieties, I confess, appeal more immediately to my sympathies. The Prime Minister proposed to leave the veto of an indeterminate length, while we proposed that the whole thing should be settled one way or the other within one month by a simple resolution. How was that proposal received by the party behind me—not in this country, where they are a little more cautious, but by their paid organisers and subsidised newspapers in Ireland. In the first place, they suppressed my letter almost entirely. That they had a perfect right to do if

  1251
  they did not misrepresent it. But while they suppressed every other line of that letter, they picked out one sentence from the paragraph I have just read in order to propagate a most gross libel with regard to its author. They dreaded to let their own supporters know what we really proposed. They dreaded to face the people in the secrecy of the ballot. When, on their own insolent challenge, I gave them the opportunity of doing so, they hypocritically pretended that it would have been a national scandal to have taken the opinion of the people in the only constitutional way in two great Nationalist constituencies in Ireland.
  7.0 P.M.
  But they do not think it in the least a national scandal to do what they are doing at the present moment—to proclaim a war of extermination, not only against us Members of Parliament, but against every county and district councillor who adheres to the policy of conciliation which the hon. Member for East Mayo approved so unctuously in this House. Many hundreds of representative men are, in the favourite phrase of these Gentlemen, "to be wiped off the face of the earth," simply because they approve of the recommendation which the Prime Minister himself acknowledged to offer the best hope of permanent peace between the two countries. As the "Freeman's Journal" phrases it, they have commenced their holy war for extermination of these men in order to wipe out the blot of factionism." [Laughter.] There goes the chorus. "Factionism" means every Irishman who dares to raise his voice against the ring of secret society bosses and Dublin Castle place-hunters, who are butchering the cause of Ireland. And the "Freeman's Journal" is the patriotic newspaper which has quartered no less than sixteen members of its old staff in Dublin Castle offices, from the Lord Chancellor downwards, since this Government came into power. What is the pretext for this war of vengeance against hundreds of humble but good representative Irishmen? The only pretext is that this one sentence has been singled out from the paragraph which I read to the House, and on the strength of it an appeal has been made to the basest and most bigoted passions, with the cry that I am proposing to hand over Ireland to the veto of ten Orangemen. I ask any fairminded man who has listened to the paragraph which I have read out, to say whether that is not shameful! In the first
  1252
  place, I do not know that there are more than ten Gentlemen connected with Ulster who are concerned. What I do know is that in the course of these Debates I have heard at least four of them intimate that upon our lines the consent of Ulster might and could be won. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Trinity College said something very much the same at Belfast two or three days ago. What I proposed was to give a suspensory veto for one month and no more, not to ten Orangemen, but to the elected representatives of a million of the Irish people. I proposed doing it under modifications which would have made it almost certain that the veto would never have been exercised owing to the completeness of the protection it would afford, and owing to the immediate action the House of Commons could take to punish any arbitrary exercise of it. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), who is always obliging in his candour—to his opponents—in a speech only a week or so ago in England, stated that there were as many vetoes in this Bill as there were links in a chain. That is a very fitting commentary on this great measure of national freedom.
  The hon. Member has never raised any objection to the veto of the Lord Lieutenant, the veto of this Parliament, the veto of the Privy Council, the veto of the Joint Exchequer Board, and several others. All of these vetoes would have had to be exercised by strangers and aliens. The moment, however, it comes to the question of allaying the apprehensions of one quarter of our own countrymen and co-religionists, the Hibernian Liberals are horrified at the notion of the veto, even for a month. They denounced the representatives of one million of the Irish people, although I heard the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Waterford not long ago in this House repeat the saying of O'Connell, which I must say goes a great deal further than I should be prepared to go, "That he would be prepared to have Ireland governed by the worst Orangemen than by the best Englishman." That is the secret why the judgment of the Prime Minister himself was overridden in this matter, and overridden by gentlemen who, while they refused that small concession to their Protestant fellow-countrymen, simply because it had the misfortune to come from us, would, without scruple, have consented to tear asunder Ireland—the Ireland that we

  1253
  have known and laboured for!—and to divide her by Statute into two different countries, two different races, two different creeds, upon the cheerful calculation that they in six years were going to charm the covenanters back into the Dublin Parliament with the genial arts by which they are at the present moment working for the extermination of many hundreds of fellow-Nationalists, simply for the crime that they have dared to make the word "conciliation" a reality and not a hideous sham!
  There is still, I dare say, a month or two between us and the last word in this tremendous controversy. The Foreign Minister said last night that that time might well be used in investigating whether there is not yet a chance that some measures of agreement may be reached. It ought to have been reached in the way of suggestion. If the Prime Minister were here I would respectfully appeal to him to do justice to his own higher repute as a Statesman, and to return to the policy which he, and which the Foreign Minister himself admits, they only abandoned with reluctance. Let them not be afraid of the people, especially the Irish people. When it came to a question of facing the people in the secrecy of the ballot in all the great Nationalist constituencies we know what became of the men who are taunting me now for desiring the best for Ireland. I am absolutely convinced it would be the same with the masses, both of the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland, if they were really tested in the only reliable way. At all events, I say let us, even now, have the merits of the two conflicting programmes, the programme of "contracting in" and the programme of "contracting out," the programme of uniting Ireland, and the programme of deliberately and by Statute dividing her; let us have the merits of these two programmes threshed out for the first time by some such representative body as Lord Loreburn suggested. If there be no agreement, let the Government at once go to the country and ask the people for the power which they lack at present, and which alone will enable them to suppress the movement of opinion in Ulster. No matter what the prospect and how the people may take a settlement upon the lines on which you are at present travelling, these lines will never bring you anything except division and disaster. Instead of appeasing the national sentiment, which it was the first
  1254
  duty and the first object of the Bill to achieve, you have inflicted a deeper wound upon the dearest associations of the Irish people. Though we may be a small minority of Irishmen in resisting this proposal, we shall do so by every Parliamentary means. It may be, as the hon. Member for East Mayo anticipates, that the country is for the moment dragooned into a state of sullen submissiveness: the time will come when that sullen submissiveness will cease, and you will rue the day that you ever touched this fatal and criminal conspiracy against the unification of Ireland as a nation.
  Mr. PRATT: We must keep steadily before us in this controversy the ideal of the unity of Ireland. If the speech of the hon. Gentleman has done nothing else but emphasised that, it has at this time rendered a service. I could not help being impressed by an incident that occurred during the eloquent speech which was delivered earlier by the Solicitor-General. He made reference to the strength and passion with which the hon. and learned Member for Waterford and his followers have clung to the ideal of freedom for Ireland. I noticed that when he referred to that strength and passion there was a smile—I had almost ventured to say a contemptuous smile—on every face upon the benches opposite. It seems to me that we cannot get ahead in this matter until we recognise and realise that if we are to take seriously the people of Ulster, the people who follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University and we have been charged to do that—we must also take seriously, too, the people who represent the majority of the people of Ireland. I cannot understand the spirit upon which this division of Ireland is based in this House. We heard a speech from the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition at the beginning of the Session. He said that the Government by this measure proposed to hand over the people of Ulster in chains to the domination of a Dublin Parliament. We heard the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester in a speech the other evening representing the Nationalist party in Ireland as waiting in that Dublin Parliament for six years, ready at the end of that time to pounce upon their prey. One naturally asks what is the meaning of language like that? Upon what is it based? It surely means this, that the great majority of the people of Ireland have very little true love

  1255
  for freedom; nay, are so infinitely removed from real freedom that the first thing they will do when you give them a measure of political freedom, for which they have asked for generations, will be to enslave their fellow countrymen within their own lands.
  Before we accept that we are, I think, entitled to make two observations. If we are to believe that the great majority of the people of Ireland have so little real love for freedom that they would do as represented, it seems to me that that is the most bitter commentary upon the government of England in Ireland during all these centuries. Because what is the test of good government? What is the true elemental test of good government—at any rate to one who has been brought up in British traditions? It may be said that the test is the prosperity of a people, the tranquillity of a nation, the culture of a race. I think these are great tests—but I think the ultimate test as to whether a government has been successful, has been good government, and effective government is this: Has it made men free and lovers of freedom? And if the result of centuries of British oppression, or, as I prefer to say, of English government in Ireland, has been that which we are asked to believe, that the mass of the people are strangers to-day to the very elements of freedom, then I say it may or may not prove that the principles embodied in this Bill are bad, but it does prove beyond question that the government of Ireland in days gone by has been bad.
  There is another observation I would make in this connection, and it is this: The Noble Lord the Member for the University of Oxford appealed to history in the speech which he made yesterday. I would like to appeal to the Noble Lord, and to Members opposite: Can they give any instance in history of a nation that has struggled for generations and for centuries, as Ireland has struggled, for freedom that has ever used that freedom for the enslavement of others? I believe there is not the remotest truth in the charge alleged of the incapacity of the Irish people to act as freemen, and, if there is the slightest proof of that charge, it seems to me it must be traced to the historical fact that they have never had the training that free government would give them, and if there is the remotest truth—I do not believe it, and it has never been attempted to be proved—if there is
  1256
  anything in that charge, I venture to say that the one way to deliverance is along the road which this Bill goes. Then we are asked to take it for granted that there is not one Ireland but two. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh University this afternoon, in one part of his speech, repeated that assertion. I suppose in some respects there are two Irelands; but deeper than all divisions is the fact that there is one Ireland. The people of the North have boasted many of them of their Scottish descent and ancestral inheritance—the very greatest and noblest thing which men can boast. But if they were asked if they were Scotch-men, what would their answer be? Their answer would be that as much as the men of the South they are Irishmen.
  Deeper than all divisions in Ireland is the unity of Ireland, and, Sir, if the knife is put into Ireland, North, South, East or West, you cut and mutilate and maim Catholic as well as Protestant, North as well as South. And if that real and elementary unity which is deeper than all divisions is to become a living thing, a thing of common texture in Ireland's existence, if it is to work itself out in the ordinary concerns of administration of local government, and of all the duties that pertain to civil and national life, if that freedom which already exists elementarily is to become a living land a human thing, I can conceive of no other way in which it can become that real thing except by the granting of free political institutions. A stable community does not rest so much upon unity of opinion as it rests upon adjustment of interests. It is the sound foundation of a stable community that you have those institutions working to-day and adjusting various interests of a living and throbbing community, and it is through that that you have the hope of true and full freedom. It is not real and full freedom for men who think alike, to come together. True liberty and real freedom is found with men who think differently, and have really very little in common, work together and see the larger ideas as well as the smaller, and I do not know, as man who knows a little of British history, any other way in which that real freedom and unity can be secured, except by the principle which is in the Government measure we are discussing to-day. I am profoundly convinced that Irish freedom can never be fully attained except in and by Irish unity, and that likewise Irish unity cannot be fully

  1257
  realised unless you grant Irish freedom. I speak not only as a supporter of this large measure of political freedom which we call Home Rule, but I speak as one who has believed for years that such a measure should be granted not only to Ireland but to Scotland as well.
  We in Scotland have played our part in the affairs of the Empire. Our sons and our representatives have played a noble part in every portion of the British Empire, but there is a feeling in Scotland at the present time that the glamour of our far-flung Empire is beginning to pall before the realities of our industrial and agricultural life. We cannot bear in mind the great facts of the depopulation of the rural areas in Scotland; we cannot look to our great cities and industrial and mining centres and see the wretched housing and wretched conditions in which thousands of Scotch men and women are living to-day, without feeling that there is a problem of Empire as real and as serious as any that has taken our sons beyond the sea, and we feel in Scotland that if we had the management of our own affairs, if we had the same principle applied to us, that we would not only save ourselves by our exertions, but help to save the rest of the United Kingdom by our good example. We are, therefore, brought up against this larger question of what is termed on the one hand the federal system, and on the other a system of devolution. I think the times are propitious for such a discussion. The second reason I would be inclined to give for the Government's compromise remaining just where it is, at the six years' limit, would be this—my first reason I have already given. It was that, by leaving the contract there, it lays down the unity of Ireland. If you take out that limit, you take away the unity of Ireland. By leaving that limit there, you look ahead to the end of the vista where you see Ireland united. My second reason is this: that the Government would be well advised to stick to that limit, because I think it will hasten, nay it will make imperative the facing of the problem raised in a system of federalism, or a system of general devolution. I think it would be bad at this time, if that larger question was left too open and wide and indefinite as to time. I think it ought to be laid upon all of us on either side of the House to address ourselves at once, not merely to this question, but to the question of general devolution which has been discussed.
  1258
  An hon. Member on the other side told us a little while ago that the difference in time gained in taking Ireland out of our discussions here would be that we would have a day or two longer for discussing our financial affairs. Is there anything more important than that this great Imperial Parliament should have more time to discuss this question of finance, and all the other important Imperial questions, such as the question of the relations of our Dominions, the great and grave question of India, which are hurried through this House in a few days from time to time. We must have that additional time; but, on the other hand, there must be closer attention to the domestic and social problems which are ripe, and rotten ripe, for solution. Therefore, one would hope that after all the experience we have gone through lately would lead us to be of one heart and one mind, in this, that we should carry this measure forward to its ultimate conclusion, and that immediately upon that we should be free to address ourselves to these larger questions before six years. So far as we in Scotland are concerned, I do not think we intend to wait for six years. We want to have the Scottish question faced within that time and before the effluxion of that time. Is it not better far to realise, to use the phrase of Mr. Gladstone, that there are great social forces marching onward in their majesty and might? Will we not be bound during the next few years to put ourselves into communication one with another to see if we can find a way out of these far-reaching questions, and to bring them to a happy conclusion?
  We have heard from many speakers that the circumstances in which we find ourselves just now constitute a crisis greater and more menacing than this realm has ever known for centuries. I am not competent to give judgment upon that. The historian alone can do so, but he is blind indeed who looks forward on the affairs of this nation, and cannot discern grave dangers upon the horizon, and he is deaf, indeed, who cannot, with listening ear, hear the tramp of a greater Army than the Army now encamped in the divided North of that unhappy Ireland of which we have been hearing to-day. There is a mightier Army than that. Millions of the toiling people of this proud, rich, realm are marching forward to a larger liberty and a fuller life, and that cannot be denied them, and that they will claim, and rightly claim. The crisis which,

  1259
  to my mind, is greater even than the Irish crisis is just the crisis that is contained in the choice the toiling people of this country will make, and make before long, whether their deliverance is to be obtained by the cruel and eternally unjust arbitrament of force, or whether they will seek their deliverance through the working of representative institutions. It seems to me that we should leave unspoken every word and refrain from expressing every thought that would hint, or suggest, to any section of the community an appeal to force. That should be a duty cast upon every one of us here. On the other hand we should address ourselves to the task of making our representative institutions representative indeed. In that lies, in very truth, the mirror of the nation, and the reflection of the ideals and the hopes
  of all sections of the community. It is because I believe that the measure of the Government is carrying us along that path, and towards that goal, that I for one shall heartily support the Second Reading of this Bill.
  Sir MARK SYKES: The Debate has taken rather a different turn to what one might have anticipated from the whole of the speeches that were made yesterday. Speaking personally one felt more hopeful yesterday of the country being delivered from the dreadful situation in which it now stands. Yesterday, and at certain moments during the present Debate, we had been more hopeful, although, of course, it is quite impossible, until the Debate has run its course on Monday next, to judge exactly of the situation. I was rather disappointed at the way in which the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) kept down the temperature of the House, because I feel that he rather did it by pouring cold water on all the statements made. I could not say that the Solicitor-General's speech was provocative, but it seemed rather like the kind of speech one had heard on occasions which were less contentious. Personally, it is impossible for me to disguise the fact that I have never felt in public affairs so great a feeling of personal distress as during the last eight or ten days. Particularly I felt it myself, because I was introduced into politics by a very dear friend of mine, Mr. George Wyndham, who had two things nearest to his heart, namely, Ireland and the British Army. In view of the terrible position in which Ireland and the British Army have been in the eyes of the public
  1260
  for the last few days, that was a very deplorable thought to me. It is impossible to say who is to blame. If one sitting on the Back Benches may dare to say so, I feel that the blame must lie upon all. We have drifted on passions, and both sides have gone from one wild cry to another, until we have divided class from class, creed from creed, in order to further our policies, until at the very end of it all one cannot deny that the military forces, and even the very Throne itself, has been involved in our quarrels.
  In this particular Debate we have occasion to pause. Personally, I feel that for this country the future yawns in the most terrible way, and unless this question is settled now I see no way that can save this Empire from ultimate disintegration. If you have an election now, or next year, or whenever it is, whichever party wins, wins to its own ruin. If the supporters of the Government win, they will win with a mandate to coerce Ulster by force. If the Unionist party wins, as things now actually stand, they will have a mandate to thwart for many years hopes which are now just on the verge of fruition. I feel that ruin is inseparable whichever way is adopted, and if a settlement is not arrived at I see no way out of the difficulty but bloodshed sooner or later in Ireland. If an election is won on one of those two issues, whichever party is returned, I cannot see our Army otherwise than compromised in politics. You may call it the Army which has held certain views, or the Army which is to be democratised, but it will never be the same non-political disciplined Army of which rich and poor were so proud, but it will be an Army, like so many armies that have verged upon politics, in which there will be suspicion, spying, and intriguing. Following that comes the situation in the Navy, and in the wake of that this House may have even more bitter factions in it than it has at the present moment. Once blood has been shed, and once we have come to a moment of actual acts of violence, of course the factions grow more bitter.
  Behind the whole of that dreadful situation one sees rising up the prospect of labour troubles, which, I am sure, are the cause of honest apprehension to the Members of the Labour party, as they are to other hon. Members. One still sees India in the most critical mental condition, and, looking back to the state the country may he in in another twenty months or less, when the loyalist will be shaken in his

  1261
  faith, the anarchist will be hardened, and the fanatic will see in our difficulties the hand of God Himself. That is a position in the world which one does not like to contemplate. Speaking personally and entirely from a Conservative point of view, I say that the England of 1895 was good enough for me. I am not saying that as a partisan remark, but I prefer the general structure of that year. But it is impossible now to go back to that. We cannot go back to the latter part of the Victorian era, because new forces have come into play. Labour now has a different meaning to what it had at the end of the nineteenth century. The Empire itself has an entirely different meaning, and the Irish question, owing to Mr. George Wyndham's Land Act, has been fundamentally altered—financially at least—and the social condition of the people in the South of Ireland has also been fundamentally altered since that time. Listening to the speech of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs yesterday, I noticed that he said one thing which seems to me more important than the whole of the rest of his speech. It may have been a suggestion, and I do not ask for an answer now, but I think it is one which really may solve this problem. The right hon. Gentleman said:—
  "Unless we do get a federal solution in time, Parliament, and I believe this country, will go under from the failure of Parliament to transact its business I think that is absolutely essential, and if that be the case, to make sure of the federal solution within the six years, that at any rate is a matter which can be discussed."
  I cannot help feeling that that was the most important observation which the right hon. Gentleman made. It may be a real basis, not only of settling the Irish question, but of settling a great many of other questions as well, and I feel that it should not he regarded merely as a pious hope. This may find us a way out of the difficulty. I believe that if both political parties could only give us good undertakings, as they could, that this country would have a sound federal Constitution of such a kind that Imperial business could be conducted without being trammelled by local factional feeling, and that local business could be got through locally, without being constantly hampered by the interference of highly centralised party machinery—if such a solution as that could be arrived at, we should have done far more even than settle the Irish question.
  I will make a suggestion, although I hardly dare do so after the last speech but one to which we listened. It is that if Ulster could be excluded until a federa-
  1262
  tion scheme had been adequately discussed, and if the Home Rule Bill could be passed in a way in which it would not be incompatible with a federation scheme, I believe that somewhere between those two the solution of this difficulty lies. If it does, then the future is much brighter, because immediately the question of politics in the Army and all those other contentious points drop out of sight, and not only is the Irish question settled, but the country will have a Constitution which will enable it to employ every useful individual in every class of the community, from the squire to the labour leader. I am certain this Empire wants them all, and we want every useful man there is. I think what I have suggested will do much to lift politics out of the quagmire of personalities, ill-feeling, hate, and pettiness, with which it is affected at the present moment, and then the smallest as well as the greatest matters of Imperial concern can be treated on their merits. But to achieve that it is not so much necessary, I feel, as to appeal to English Members of this House, or even to Scottish Members, as to appeal to Irish Members of all political views.
  I venture to suggest that such a settlement as that would give the Irish Unionist Member an opportunity of saving the Union in the highest sense of the word—the Union that we love. I believe that it would also give the Irish Unionist not only time to think, but eventually an opportunity of participating in the development of his own nation, while avoiding the fears and dangers which at present haunt him. I believe that such a settlement as that would be an honourable tribute and concession to the real determination and sincerity which everybody in this House admits inspires the people of Ulster even in their resistance, no matter how much they may dislike it. May I venture at such a juncture as this to lay before Gentlemen of the Irish Nationalist party a suggestion? I say I believe, party polemics apart and off the platform, that the honour of the British Army and the future of our Empire is as dear to them as it is to us, not only because of the Irish regiments with their splendid record, but more than that—because of the thousands of men of their own political belief, race and creed who serve in British regiments as well. If they feel bitter at the demonstrations in Ulster, if they feel bitter at the choice which the officers at the Curragh

  1263
  exercised—well, it was a choice, and there was no dishonour in making the choice; and, even without a choice, you may press men too far in some directions.
  In France, I believe, when the Suppression Law came in, several officers were perfectly legally requested to do certain things by the French Government—that is, to enter certain sacred buildings and perform certain acts. They were ordered to do that perfectly rightly by the French, but rather than do it they resigned their commissions. I think that I personally, and many hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, would have done the same thing under the same circumstances; but I put in this proviso. In saying that, I make no suggestion that a man should not be punished if he fails to do what he is ordered. If a man is ground between the nether and upper millstones of conscience and duty, it is only his own peace of mind and the verdict of posterity that can be his reward. He must in the interests of the order of things be sacrificed on the altar of the God of things as they are. I ask for no clemency for anybody who disobeys an order, but I do ask hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway to remember that they also have bitter memories. They have thirty years behind them, dark years when dreadful things happened to some of them, and when several of them broke the law and went to prison for acts they thought right. I ask them to remember that other people have strong opinions. I entreat them, if there is a possibility of settlement, not to make use of a commanding political position in order to press good men too far.
  Mr. SILVESTER HORNE: I am sure there is but one opinion in all parts of the House in regard to the speech to which we have just listened, a speech which was not only scrupulously fair, but which was in my judgment an exceedingly magnanimous speech. Whatever may be the outcome of the Debate in which we are taking part to-day, I am certain that the hon. Member will have the satisfaction of knowing that every word that he spoke was a definite contribution to the peaceful settlement of this question. I do not think that I am personally qualified to understand the state of mind of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien), who spoke earlier in the Debate, but I confess that it did seem rather extraordinary to me that the leader of a party which is specially dedicated to the cause of conciliation should have said that he was positively afraid that the
  1264
  two leading parties in this House were now coming together on common ground and were within measurable distance of an agreement.
  Mr. T. M. HEALY: At our expense.
  Mr. SILVESTER HORNE: Of course, the hon. Member is entitled to say that, but in point of fact there are many Members in all parts of this House whose one desire it is to see these Debates trend to a position in which it shall be possible for all Members, without sacrifice of essential principles, to come together and to secure that settlement which is dear to all our hearts. It seems to be the fate of this Bill while it is passing through the House of Commons to raise every problem that can be raised in regard to the government of a free people. We have had the question raised of the rights of minorities. We have had the question raised of the best method of ascertaining the judgment of the constituencies. We have had the question raised—the very critical question in any country—of the limits of civil obedience. We have had the question raised of the limits of military obedience. And now it does seem, in its final stage through the passage of the House of Commons, that we are called upon to consider—and I think rightly called upon to consider—the reality and the effect of a federal system of government in this country, and whether it may not be possible to secure greater efficiency in regard to the administration of Imperial affairs, while at the same time giving the fullest possible rein to those local feelings which are so strong in various parts of our country, and which this measure in one particular is intended specially to conciliate.
  It does seem to me, sometimes, as if there is a danger that in the discussion of this great and important point we may be distracted from the merits or demerits of the special Bill, the Second Reading of which we are now discussing, and that we may not face, as I think we ought to face, the real feelings that are animating the men who, greatly to the distress of us all, have armed themselves in Ulster, have drilled in Ulster, and have taken up an attitude certainly of potential rebellion in Ulster. Nothing astonishes me more than the contrast between the arguments that are advanced against Home Rule in this House and by hon. Gentlemen opposite and the arguments that are advanced against Home Rule in Ulster and that are incorporated in the manifestoes that are sent across the

  1265
  Channel from the Ulster people, and some of which, at any rate, I hold in my hand to-day. I venture to say that there is not a single right hon. or hon. Member on the benches opposite, although he is championing the cause of these people, who would in this House take upon his lips the sort of thing that is being used by the Ulster people and adopt the arguments they have adopted against Home Rule.
  8.0 P.M.
  I want, if I may, to point out to hon. Members how strange the situation appears to some of us. They are actually making themselves the champions of those in Ulster with whose opinions they do not agree, and whose public pledges and manifestoes many of them—the hon. Member who spoke last included—would be the very last people in this country to sign. I do not want to say any words here that will, as the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) said, raise the temperature of this Debate, but I do want hon. Members opposite to face the facts as they are. We have had, for instance, proposed to us from that side the possibility of taking a Referendum in regard to this matter. I am going to quote from two of the manifestoes that have reached me, and that are made the special appeal, if I may say so, to the Free Churchmen of this country, and then ask hon. Members whether they imagine that the mere fact of a bare majority on a Referendum would make the slightest difference in the world to people who believe what these people believe. Let me take, first of all, a manifesto that is being issued by the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland. I understand—I want to be perfectly frank in this matter—that this is not a very large body, but these men are part of the Covenanting Army. These are the men who have been drilled, and who have enrolled themselves under the leadership of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Sir E. Carson). In their manifesto, as sent to me, these words occur:—
  "It will be for ever impossible to fight Home Rule successfully so long as it is contended or admitted that the Romanists and other open enemies of the true religion ought to have any political power. We regard the so-called Catholic Emancipation Act as the first great step towards Home Rule. From the time of the passing of the Act which gave the Romanists the franchise dates the beginning of their power to threaten the liberties of the Protestants."
  I repeat that these men and those whom they represent are members of the Covenanting Army. These are the watchwords
  1266
  that are going through the North of Ireland. These are the men whose cause hon. Members opposite are championing. All I can say is, if any of them ever said upon the platform that all the Covenanters of the North of Ireland are standing for is perfect equality, and that they are not asking for ascendancy, then they have to face the manifestoes of people who ask that their Catholic neighbours should be disfranchised in order that they may have absolute political power themselves. I quite admit that I do not lay any great stress upon that particular manifesto, but I hold in my hand a manifesto which is much more serious. It is a manifesto sent by the Rev. Dr. Macauley, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. I am bound myself to take note of a document of this kind. This is an appeal to the Free Churchmen of England to support them, and I hope that the House will understand that I have read it with every desire whatever to see things as far as I can from their point of view. Let me ask the House what is the position that is adopted by these Gentlemen, and let me ask hon. Gentlemen opposite once again whether they suppose that any Referendum that can be taken in this country would make the slightest difference to people who believe the kind of things that are put into this document. I will only quote four short sentences from this appeal:—
  "You may be assured that nothing will be left undone by the Vatican to form Ireland into a submissive and efficient instrument. of its will."
  That is the first point they take up—that this is a sort of ecclesiastical conspiracy against the well-being of Ireland, that the Vatican is behind it all, and that the Vatican's one determination is to form Ireland into a submissive instrument of its will. If I believed that, I would go out with the Covenanters. The fact of the matter is that this agitation in the North of Ireland has nothing whatever in common with the arguments that are used. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh University (Sir R. Finlay) to-day came in the last part of his speech to certain practical difficulties and pointed out as he believed defects of machinery and so forth, there was weight no doubt in his criticism, as there has been much weight in the criticism passed from those benches, but for the criticisms passed from those benches not a hundred men in Ireland would drill or arm themselves. They are not out there as Covenanters, because they believe there is a

  1267
  difficulty in adjusting local and Imperial finance; they are out there because they believe a pure hallucination, which is that there is a sinister Roman Catholic conspiracy to bring them into a submissive instrument to the will of the Vatican. Take the second:—
  "You are under no illusion as to the persistence and resourcefulness of the ecclesiastical crisis, as you know that, under an Irish Government the worst form of sacerdotal lordship will have an open field."
  Take the third:—
  "We entreat you not to take part in thrusting us and our children under this insidious and intolerable rule."
  And, finally:—
  "Would it not be an amazing spectacle to see the Free Churches of Great Britain in alliance with Irish Roman Catholics to put their Protestant brethren under the heels of a Papal absolutism."
  That is the document which represents the real opinion of the Covenanters, and it is a document I defy any hon. or right hon. Gentleman opposite to rise and say is the reason why he himself is supporting the Covenanters or opposing Home Rule. In point of fact, we have come to this position: that nothing that this House can do, no concessions that this House can make, can possibly alter the judgment of men who believe that they are going to be put under the heel of a Papal absolutism. I have fought as hard as most people against what is called a sacerdotal lordship, but throughout it has never occurred to me to go to the Chief Whip of the Unionist party and ask him to organise the whole forces of Unionism in this country to prevent me from being put under the heel of Papal absolutism. The whole point of the Irish situation is simple. You have a large body of people, who, on the score of their industry, of their integrity, and their commercial genius are deserving of all respect, but on the other side of their nature, on the side of their theological and ecclesiastical opinion, they are the victims of a pure hallucination. That is just the difficulty with which we are confronted at the present time. It may be possible we shall have it urged upon us that, after all, our sympathies ought to be enlisted with men whose creeds in some respects we share, and with whose general witness and testimony we are associated. But I absolutely deny on the floor of this House that that is Protestantism. After all, the Protestantism as we understand it, the Protestantism of which I am a most sincere and earnest supporter has, as part of its
  1268
  genius, the genius of toleration, and when we are told that in supporting the Home Rule Bill we are doing an injury to the Protestant faith, I ask the Government to believe that the Home Rule Bill is, in our judgment, by strengthening the power of the people, the most important weapon that can be used in support of that faith in Ireland. And we believe, as was pointed out by a previous speaker, that to bring all types of people together, to bring all forms of creeds into one assembly, not to discuss the merits of Transubstantiation, but to discuss the well-being of the Irish people and the promotion of the welfare of Ireland, is the best way to deliver Ireland from this nightmare on the part of the Protestant community.
  I did not rise to make a long speech, but there is one thing I want to impress upon the House. If any words of mine could reach my Protestant co-religionists in the North of Ireland, many of whom I know personally, I would say this: They have said that the guarantees for safeguards put into the Bill are inadequate. I would put to them this point: The guarantees on which they have got to rely are not paper guarantees; they are not the Act of Parliament. The guarantees upon which they have to reply for their freedom are certainly not the muskets and bullets of which they talk so much. The guarantees on which they have to rely, the guarantees on which a great free people does rely, are the century in which we live, the new atmosphere of toleration in which we live, and the national spirit that now regards all creeds as of equal value in the life of a community, and that does not distinguish between one man's religious opinions and another's. We have to rely upon these things, and they, too, will have to rely
  upon these things. I venture to say to them that, in the judgment of those with whom perhaps they are most in sympathy in this House, there is no element in the life of Ireland that an Irish Parliament more needs than that the Ulster Covenanters, men perhaps of harsh and narrow theological views, but men of proved worth, integrity, and industry, should bring their business capacity into the new Parliament. I believe they would be welcomed. I do not believe for a single moment that there is any desire on the part of any section of the Irish Nationalist party to give them anything else than a most hearty welcome.

  1269
  We have had put before us the federal principle as a possible development of the problem. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, as has been pointed out, hinted that this is the line on which we might possibly seek a peaceful solution. I should like to say a few words about those bitter years around 1886, when a multitude of Free Churchmen and their friends deserted the Liberal ranks. We know quite well how the wedge of division was driven into the Nonconformist ranks in that year. The two leaders of Nonconformity—the two greatest leaders at that time—were both associated with the life of Birmingham. One was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, who, we all wish, was able to be present here today, and the other was Dr. Dale. The life of Dr. Dale has since been written. In it there was a remarkable letter in regard to the position of Mr. Chamberlain, and I mention it here to-day because it shows that he was wishful, even at that time, to see such a settlement as pointed to an eventual federal settlement. Dr. Dale wrote these words, and they have never been denied. The book has been published for many years:—
  "Mr. Chamberlain's own settled convictions have been long familiar to me. We discussed them at a time when they were considered perilously rash by members of the present Cabinet. I always told him that his proposals were inadequate, and that a body in Dublin with powers which would justify the name of a Parliament was a necessary element in any final solution of the difficulty. When Mr. Gladstone s Bill was brought forward he recognised the gravity of the new conditions of the case and was willing to accept a Dublin Legislature on condition that the Irish Members were retained at Westminster, and that the Bill received the modifications which were necessarily involved in their retention."
  Immediately afterwards, Dr. Dale wrote to the "Contemporary Review" a remarkable article on Home Rule, which drew from Archbishop Walsh the testimony "that it contained in it practically all the elements of a thoroughly satisfactory, because complete and final, settlement of the whole question." The Nonconformists at that time—the dissentient Nonconformists at that time who have so largely come back to the Liberal party over the question of Education—were represented by Dr. Dale and Mr. Chamberlain, and they took the action they did because they thought Mr. Gladstone's original scheme lacked a certain vital element which was going to point to the federal solution of "Home Rule all round." If I could speak to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) I would ask him
  1270
  to make himself the trustee of that noble tradition of Liberal-Unionism. We have come to the point now when quite clearly this has to be taken into consideration, and it would be, in a way, if they followed it, to their own prestige and a justification of their own prescience if they were able to say, "We stood out then for this very solution of the Irish question, that it was a compulsion on Parliament to make this scheme a federal scheme all round. Show us there is a disposition on the part of the Government to complete that scheme within a reasonable time, and we will support it now." I believe we might, firstly, find therein a Parliamentary solution of the difficulty, and secondly, what I regard as infinitely more important, a solution which would enable Catholics and Protestants in Ireland to come together under free institutions and to act in co-operation for the welfare of their common country.
  Mr. SANDERS: I beg to move, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
  Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.
  Debate to be resumed to-morrow (Thursday).
  The remaining Government Orders were read and postponed.

  BRITISH CITIZENS' RIGHTS.
  Mr. GOLDSTONE: I beg to move, "That, in the opinion of this House, the rights of British Citizens set forth in Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Habeas Corpus Act, and declared and recognised by the Common Law of England, should be common to the whole Empire, and their inviolability should be assured in every self-governing dominion."
  It is my duty, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, to move the Resolution which appears in my name. I doubt whether there is any Member of the House who will not deplore the facts which render it necessary for a Resolution like this to be moved in the Imperial House of Commons. That the House may be in possession of the facts which call forth this Resolution, I propose very briefly to recite them. To be in possession of the whole case, one must go back to the events of July, 1913, when the miners on the Rand determined to come out on strike in support, as they thought, of the claim for further con-

  1271
  sideration from the mine-owners and the Government of the difficulties under which they worked. There 25 per cent. of the miners die annually from miners' phthisis, and the miners, desiring an amendment of the conditions which caused this tremendous loss of life, moved, or attempted to move, the Government to take action to insist that the mine-owners should improve the sanitary conditions associated with houses at the mines. Instead of them getting that relief, the South African Government appear to have given way to the mine-owners, who threatened that if any considerable addition were made to the cost of production to give effect to what the miners desired, the South African Government would be held up by those mining magnates as the enemies of the British, and that they would bankrupt the Transvaal. That, no doubt, is a serious matter for the South African Government, who depend for a considerable portion of their revenue on what they receive from the mine-owners round Johannesburg, and it would appear that the mine-owners secured what we cannot but term a victory over the Government, who were afraid to be represented in this country as being inimical to British rule. Then we had the strike and the awful events of 4th July in Johannesburg, when the military were called in to suppress the right of public meeting and the right of free speech, and twenty-one persons were killed and hundreds injured. Then we had the threat, which, in my view, has brought matters to a head and raised the issue on which I now move this Resolution—the threat of General Botha that, in the event of a subsequent strike, he would take such action as would render strikes impossible for a generation.
  We now come to the events of the present year. The railwaymen were threatened with what was called retrenchment. The retrenchment took the form of a suggestion, amounting to an indication, on the part of the Union Government that they would get rid of something like 494 railwaymen. It was not that there was any absence of work in the repairing shops of the State railways. We have it on good authority—for the facts are now in this country, having come to hand by correspondence and newspapers, so that we are in a position to speak with greater certainty than when we moved our Amendment to the Address—that the shops had
  1272
  plenty of work. The fact is that there were engine-drivers who were almost afraid to go upon the footplates of their engines because of their unsatisfactory condition. It was suggested at the time there was all this work, which would have occupied—I have it on good authority—months of the men's time, that this retrenchment should take place. A curious and significant fact in connection with that retrenchment was that the men whose services were to be dispensed with were, for the most part, active trade unionists. That, in my view, is the most important factor leading up to the events about which we complain. The railwaymen's representatives, accompanied by Dr. Poutsma, one of the deportees, saw Mr. Burton and General Smuts. I understand that they actually went down on their knees and begged that the men on the State railways might work short time in order that their colleagues might not be dismissed. There is only one other industry to which they could go the mining industry, and there is now such an understanding between the mine-owners and those responsible for the control of the Government railways, that a man dismissed from one cannot get employment on the other, and, if he has not the wherewithal to remove himself and his family from the country, then he bids fair to be on the way to starvation. Hence this begging appeal on the part of the railwaymen's representatives on their knees that the workmen might go on short time in order to allow those men who were threatened with dismissal to continue their work.
  Dr. Poutsma had attended this deputation. He is secretary of the Railwaymen and Harbourmen's Union. He had addressed his men, and was on his way home by motor car. This was when it appeared that the railway men, finding it impossible to get reasonable terms by negotiations, had determined on a strike. Dr. Poutsma was in the position of having to explain to a great meeting of his men that this was the decision of his executive council. He was then on his way home. Without warrant he was arrested. When he asked what crime he had committed, the answer was that there was no crime. Without the knowledge being conveyed to his wife or family, he was put in prison and kept there for something like twenty-one days, in a foul place in which it was a crime to imprison any man. I have these words from Dr Poutsma's own lips:—
  "And served with a type of soup that was enough to make one ill to see."

  1273
  This under British rule! Naturally the workers in the Johannesburg area were incensed, and the answer to the illegal imprisonment of Dr. Poutsma and one or two others was the calling of a general strike. Let it be noted that when this general strike was called, those who were responsible for calling it made no suggestion that there should be any sabotage, or anything in the nature of the destruction of property, or that there should be anything at all like an attempt to take life. All are agreed that the men who were in charge of this national stoppage recommended their men to adopt peaceful means. There is no doubt that the suggestion was that they should fold arms and nothing more. They knew that to do anything more would be to play into the hands of those who were looking for an excuse for drastic measures, and they carefully avoided doing it. They did not drill 100,000 men, and there was no attempt to coerce the Government of the day by illegal assemblage and the importation of arms. Nothing of the kind was ever suggested. But martial law was the reply of the Government to this general stoppage of work. We have generally regarded it as one of the rights of working men to withhold their labour if they so determine.
  There we have, as we think, one of the great departures from well understood British practice. Martial law, we have understood, according to our great charters, was never to be declared in time of peace. It was this kind of thing that led to the great civil war in this country which resulted in Charles I. losing his throne and his head, but in this case, without the raising of a single troop, without the use of weapons to kill a single individual, martial law is proclaimed, and the Executive really takes into its hands the trial, the imprisonment, and the deportation of men on its own authority, which is nothing short of a Bill of Attainder, so to speak. Against that I think we are compelled to protest, and we are asking the House to say that these well understood principles of no imprisonment without trial and no putting into operation of marital law in time of peace shall be the law the Empire round It may be that the Colonial Secretary will tell us that to attempt this may involve some interference with our Dominions. It may be so. If it means that, we think the interference should take place. We have understood that when we granted powers of self-government to our Dominions at the same
  1274
  time they would accept the fundamental statutory and common law rights for all British citizens within their Dominions—the kind of thing which has been won by long and bitter contests in the history of our country. But that apparently is not the case so far as this one Dominion is concerned. We have reason to believe that so far as the workers in Canada and in Australia are concerned, they would be no parties to making any objection if the Government make the suggestion, which I think they ought to make, to the Government of South Africa to give them the statutory and common law rights which have been so long understood by us to exist. We have from our friends in Australia and in Canada clear indications that in their view what may be termed an Empire labour protest should go to the South African Government on this matter, on which we feel so keenly.
  May I now call attention to the feeling which has been generated in South Africa itself as a reason why the Colonial Secretary, on behalf of the Government at home, should take action. The Government may have felt that they could do nothing because there was a unanimous feeling in South Africa that what had been done had been done in the interests of the Colony and at the wish of the great majority of the British citizens located there. The recent events which have happened there seem to show that the Home Government could take action, and that it would have the support of the majority of citizens in South Africa if they were to intervene. Take the recent provincial council elections for the Transvaal. I know the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Harcourt) has indicated that he thinks that is more a kind of municipal election, but I would draw his attention to this fact, that t he election was fought in constituencies and on registers which are the Parliamentary constituencies and the Parliamentary registers for the Union Government. Therefore we have reason to believe that the majority of the, people in the Transvaal, not the most British of all the Colonies, hold the same views as we voice here, and that if action were taken by the Governor-General on the instigation of the Home Government there would be no objection from the various provinces which constitute the Union of South Africa. What were the results of those elections? Previous to the provincial elections in the Transvaal there were two Labour men on that council.

  1275
  For the recent election there were twenty-five labour candidates, twenty-three of whom were elected, out of forty-five seats, giving the Labour party a majority on an issue, as we think, identical with the issue which we are raising to-night.
  If the right hon. Gentleman urges that this election in the Transvaal is a municipal or county council type of election, may I call his attention to what has happened in the by-elections for the Union Parliament. Take what happened in a district of Cape Town. The parallel that I draw between that district and an English district is that it is equivalent to our St. George's, Hanover Square, or Kensington, and the result was the election by an overwhelming majority of a Labour candidate. It is as though my hon. Friend (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) were returned for St. George's, Hanover Square, or my hon. Friend (Mr. Snowden) were successful against the Noble Lord (Lord Claud Hamilton). And in a district like that, for people to take the view they have taken, to depart from their traditional political associations, and vote on an issue like this for a Labour candidate is, in my view, to show that opinion in the Cape Town district, even in its best residential quarters, is opposed to the action of the South African Government in what it has recently done. I cannot help but believe that the action of General Smuts was prompted by political consideration as well as those of preserving the peace of his Colony.
  It is a curious thing to note that the candidate against him in West Pretoria is one of the deportees, and that as the result of the action taken, largely on the initiative of General Smuts, now I am informed on good authority he finds it difficult to get a hearing in Pretoria West, and those who have communicated with us tell us that if the issue be fought in Pretoria West on the point we are now raising in this House there will be but one result, and that will be the ignominious defeat of General Smuts on his own action. In fact, the suggestion has been made that he should no longer be a candidate for the seat for which he now sits. All these things serve to show that the feeling, whether in Cape Colony, at its centre in Cape Town, or in the Transvaal, or if you could take a vote in a town or in any of the provinces which constitute this Dominion, would, if not unanimous, at
  1276
  least show an overwhelming majority in favour of regarding these rights of British citizenship which we ask the House to assert to-night as the rights of citizens in every part of the Empire. I appeal to the Government not to divide the House on an issue which is so important. They may consider that the final words of the Motion are unduly provocative to the self-governing Dominion. I rather gather that that is their opinion. If so, provided that we get what I may term the main body of the Resolution asserted in this House with practical unanimity, for my part, I would consent to the withdrawal of these final words. If that be the only complaint the right hon. Gentleman has to make against the Resolution, for my part—and I think I speak for my colleagues—I will gladly meet him in regard to that, but so far as regards the main portion of the Resolution which states that in every part of the Empire these rights of British citizenship shall be asserted to be the common rights of all coming under the flag, we cannot go back, and I venture to appeal with some confidence to the House to assert the principle I have ventured to place before them.
  Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSON: In seconding the Motion I do not propose to follow my hon. Friend into the interesting details of the situation out of which the Motion has really sprung. I think we in this country, who take an interest in political affairs, are becoming fairly familiar with recent events in South Africa. At any rate, I myself have had a good deal to do with the deportees, and have been brought into the very closest association with them. I have read columns of news in the South African papers dealing with the position from its initial stages, and the conclusion to which I have come is that if the deportees were guilty and deserving of the punishment which unfortunately has been meted out to them, not in a Court of Law, but by Parliament, then it seems to me there are Members on all sides of this House, and I think especially on these benches who, if they had been dealt with in the same harsh and unjustifiable manner, would probably have been doing penal servitude, if not sent to Botany Bay. If there was nothing more involved in the position than the punishment of the nine men who have been deported—and I am not for a moment going to minimise the suffering which they and their dependants have experienced,

  1277
  and I am not going to hide the opinion I hold that they have suffered very great injustice—the case would not have been nearly so serious as it really is. I want to point out how fundamental the position is, and to say that it is so very serious that no lover of liberty, no admirer of the high standard of freedom upon which we pride ourselves in this country, can afford to ignore the situation which has been created by recent events in one of our self-governing Dominions. It seems to me that if we were indifferent to this situation, especially we on the Labour benches, we would be false to the trust that has been reposed in us, not only by our constituents, but by crowds of organised workers, whom, to some extent, we represent in this House.
  We are satisfied that the events to which my hon. Friend has referred, happening as they have within the British Empire, are a full and complete justification for the Motion which has just been submitted. In that Motion we ask the House to make a very definite declaration. That declaration is that that standard of freedom, those elementary rights, and those axioms of British law should, not only be recognised, practised, and enforced, both here and in our Colonies, but should be common to the whole of the great Empire of which we form a part. I think it will be frankly admitted by all sections in this House that it has always been understood that under the British flag there are rights and liberties which are absolutely free from violability. We have always understood that every British subject was entitled, first of all, to have a charge preferred against him if wrong had been committed—apprehension first, charge, trial, and evidence, and that only when the whole of these processes had been carried through should punishment follow, and that the punishment should have regard to the evidence submitted, and to the nature of the violation of the law that had taken place. I do not know that there has been any doubt that that has been the recognised position. Dealing with the arrival of the deportees, the "Morning Post" expressed the position in very clear and emphatic language. It said:—
  "For our part we do not welcome these deported men in this country. We should like to have seen them tried for the offence"—
  I want the House to note these words—
  "tried for the offence of which they were suspected. We are so old fashioned as to believe that every British subject, whatever his views and to whatever class he belongs, has a right to trial before punishment, and has a right to appeal to the Crown against punishment
  1278
  without trial. This seems to us a much bigger question than syndicalism, or than any other of the questions which are now obscuring the issue."
  I think that puts the case of my hon. Friend and myself, and the party with which we are identified, as forcibly as it could be stated. One of the most offensive parts in connection with this business is that the punishment has been inflicted not in a Court of Law, but by a Parliament. It is not difficult for us in this House to imagine what would be the position if this house attempted so to destroy the traditions that have ever been associated with British justice and took away from the Law Courts of this country the power of trial, and usurped the functions of those Courts and attempted to inflict anything in the nature of a sentence so extreme and, shall I say, so wicked as the ones to which our comrades have been subjected in connection with South Africa. The opinions which I have expressed are not confined to the Mother Country. It has been my privilege to have communications from our Colonies, and not only from the communications which I have received in connection with my work as an officer of the British labour movement, but from the cables that I have seen in the Press, our Oversea Dominions are pretty well unanimous against the punishment that has been inflicted on these eight or nine trade unionists. And though they might have some temerity that we at home would not possess, with regard to the question of the Mother Country interfering with the policy adopted by the South African Government I think that there are no two opinions with regard to the condemnation that has been expressed on the broad general point of the punishment that has been inflicted. But we need not go outside of South Africa itself. This is a point which I want to emphasise very strongly. I have been reading the Debates in the South African Parliament. I do not know that anybody has condemned the policy of the Government in stronger language than Mr. Merriman himself. I have here one or two expressions which I would like to bring to the notice of this House. He said:—
  "There is a great principle involved in this. Hitherto we have gone through the Act of Indemnity and we have reached the stage that we have condoned what the Government have done. Although we did not approve of all the Government did, still we have felt that they thought they were justified by what had been going on and have acted in good faith "—
  I want the House to notice this—
  "that although panic-stricken, they may have taken steps of which we did not approve, still they did it in the best interests of public safety. But now we come

  1279
  to the dividing line. Now we are asked not to condone the acts that the Government did, but we are asked to become participators and to join with them in doing an illegal act"—
  I think that that is as strong language as has ever been used in this House. I do not know that stronger language was used by the Labour party in South Africa—
  "and doing something which is utterly destructive of the very first principles upon which the liberties of this country are founded. Anxious as I am to strengthen the hands of the Government, I cannot be so false to all those principles I have professed during my life; I cannot vote for a Clause like this to condemn men illegally seized-kidnapped, as someone expressed it—and put on board ship in secrecy."
  He also said:—
  "To raise prejudice, and then to judge them on the lowest form of prejudice where the men have not any chance of answering for themselves—they are not tried; they are not heard in the open; no charge has been made against them, except a sort of vague prejudice which exists—that is the atmosphere in which we are asked to deal with this matter."
  I am quite prepared to leave that in the very severe language of condemnation used by Mr. Merriman. I need not remind the House that he has no associations, and never had any associations, either with the Labour party in South Africa or with the classes with whom the Labour party themselves usually act. If I remember correctly, he was formerly the leader of the Opposition in the Cape Parliament. But I would like to take this point with regard to the position of the parties in South Africa a stage further. We have been reminded by my hon. Friend who moved the Resolution of the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies (Mr. Harcourt) when we raised this question the other night on the Motion for Adjournment. Naturally, we on these benches were a little elated at the unexpected and complete victory that had been secured in the provincial elections. To begin, I think, as they, did, as we have been reminded, with two members, and to have the two, I think, turned into some twenty-three representatives of the Labour party on those provincial councils, giving them a majority, was something to make any political party, having association with those obtaining the victory as we have, highly elated. The Member for Leicester felt that this was an opportunity for making an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Harcourt), but he did not welcome the result, as I have no shadow of doubt he would have been prepared to do if he had been in the National Liberal Club and the results of a victory so complete at the London County Council had
  1280
  been recorded upon the tape. I have no shadow of doubt that in such circumstances he would have gone a little outside of his usual decorum, and probably for once have thrown up his hat. However, as my hon. Friend the Mover has reminded us, if the provincial elections were nothing, the right hon. Gentleman cannot afford to ignore entirely the result of one or two of the Parliamentary by-elections that have been decided since the trade union leaders were so ruthlessly deported from the country of their adoption.
  9.0 P.M.
  I think that the Parliamentary election, having regard to the character of the constituency to which the hon. Member for Sunderland called our attention, was most striking, and it seems to me that we would in this country take a by-election as being very indicative of what the feeling of the country really is. I am quite sure that if the Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil) heard some night that the Fife election had resulted in the return of the candidate associated with his party, or I might go a little further and say, that if it resulted in the return of my friend Jim Larkin—I do not know that it would make very much difference—the Noble Lord would be quite prepared to become elated. We have seen him elated at the results of by-elections recently, and he would be telling us then that what Fife had said to-day the whole country would say to-morrow. We apply the same thing in connection with the elections in South Africa, and we, at any rate, will maintain, until we find evidence to the contrary, that the South African people are as strong in their condemnation of their Government, for their departure from the ordinary fundamental principle of constitutional law, as we in this country can possibly be. But we have had other indications, where public meetings have been possible, that all sections of the community, and I think I can safely say the members of all parties in South Africa, have joined together in public gatherings and in great protest demonstrations to condemn the policy of the Government which lead to the deporting, without trial, of these trade union leaders. I have here a copy of the resolution which was passed at a great many of those meetings and demonstrations:—
  "That this meeting, while recognising that strong action was necessary in dealing with the situation created by the recent strike,"—
  I am quoting that because I want you to see that they are not labour people who carried those resolutions, that they are not people who are fully in sympathy with

  1281
  the workers who have been engaged in the strike—and the resolution goes on:—
  "regrets the steps the Government have taken in deporting any South African citizens without trial, as such a course is unconstitutional, unjust, and positively dangerous."
  That resolutions have been carried in places like Durban, Port Elizabeth, Maritzburg, and other places that could be named, is clear proof that we have in the Colonies and in some of our Overseas Dominions, as well as in South Africa, as indicated by the elections there, and as indicated by the resolutions which have been carried at the protest meetings, a strong feeling against the deportation of these men Lastly, there can be doubt as to the feeling in this country, none whatever. It may be said that the meetings that, have been held have been organised by one party. I want to point out that those meetings of citizens there were people who had never had direct or indirect association with the Labour party, yet they turned up and joined enthusiastically in the resolution of protest against the action of the South African Government, not because they were in whole-hearted sympathy with the policy persuaded by the trade union leaders who have been deported, but because, as we represent in our Resolution now before the House, they had become alarmed, and thought that if this dangerous precedent was allowed to go on without any protest at home we might find some day an attempt made even in this country, and certainly in South Africa again, and probably in some of our Oversea Dominions, to quote this dangerous precedent as one to be acted upon. We know how free people are in these days to take a course, not because they are satisfied that it is right, but because they can establish some form of excuse for its adoption merely because some persons have been bold enough to initiate it when placed in circumstances that required them to act in such a manner. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies will give this Resolution, for the reasons I have endeavoured to state, his sympathetic consideration. I do not want in any sense to make this a party question; I think the fundamental principle at stake is too far reaching. I believe that every lover of liberty on whichever side of the House he may sit, with whichever party he may be associated, ought to join with us in entering upon the journals of this House the
  1282
  declaration that we, at any rate, believe in the sound principle referred to in the Resolution, and we believe that they express the view that ought to be common to every part of this great Empire with which most of us feel proud to be associated.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): The hon. Member the Mover of the Resolution towards the end of his speech said it might be convenient to the House to make a suggestion as to the course to take on the Motion. The hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Goldstone), in moving the Resolution, made a very wide generalisation under the shelter of the Motion which he has moved, and he directed himself to a specific attack upon the Government of the Union in South Africa, both as regards the mining strike and the interference of the military last July, and the railway strike and deportations in December last. I spoke very fully on the question of the mining strike and the use of the military in this House in July or August last year, and I dealt as fully as I could with the subject of the railway strike and the deportations in the very interesting Debate on the Address at the opening of the Session. I do not myself feel that I could to-night usefully add anything to what I said, with much care and much thought, as to the proper relations between the Government—whatever Government it might happen to be—of this country and the great self-governing Over-sea Dominions which are our care. If I may refer to this Resolution in its broader aspect, I would remind the House that the Indemnity Bill in South Africa has now passed into law, with an amendment in it accepted by the Government removing from the title the words "as prohibited emigrants," and from the preamble the last sentence of it which stated, "that, all the said persons should be deemed permanently to be undesirable inhabitants of the Union." The Bill was materially altered during its passage through the South African Parliament.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what is the full legislative effect of those alterations?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I really do not think I ought to commit myself, but it must be pretty clear to the House that the only passage in that Bill which used the word "permanent" has been deleted from it.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: I understand there is an operative Clause.
  Mr. HARCOURT: There is, but there are no words in it to indicate permanency. I refer to Clause 4. The nine deportees who have suffered under that action of the South African Government have been, I understand, advised that they have certain legal remedies in this country against the owners of the steamship on which they travelled from South Africa, and that matter being sub judice now, I should not, of course, attempt to refer to it at present. It will be clearly understood by the House, of course, that all these acts were done after and under the declaration of martial law. It may well be thought, I know—
  Mr. GOLDSTONE: The imprisonment of Dr. Poutsma was not under martial law, but before it was declared.
  Mr. HARCOURT: I believe the Indemnity Act covers acts committed a few days before martial law, but so far as that imprisonment is not covered by the Indemnity Act, of course, he would have his legal remedy in South Africa; but so long as the declaration of martial law has been covered by an Act of Indemnity by the South African Parliament, I think that we must depend on the general sense of the South African community to administer justice in the present, or to right a wrong, if there is any, in the future. The Mover of this Resolution attached, and I think perhaps rightly attached, special importance to the general declaration which it contains. He probably did not mean that there should be a strict application of all the instruments which are included in the Motion. Parts of them, as the House is well aware, are long obsolete. Many of them to-day would be impossible. The hon. Member perhaps is aware that amongst the declarations of right in Magna Charta is one which says that all assizes and suits should be held in fixed places in England. That would obviously not be suitable for our Dominions and Colonies. It is also provided that earls and barons shall only be fined by their peers. It is asserted that intestate estates shall be dealt with and distributed under the supervision of the Church. That would probably appeal to some hon. Members opposite more than to my hon. Friends below the Gangway on this side.
  One of the articles provides that the lands of convicted felons shall be handed over to the lords of the manor, and another provides that all weirs shall be removed from all English rivers. I will also, in passing, remind my hon. Friend who seconded—and I am sure the recol-
  1284
  lection of it will shock him—that in Magna Charta there is a provision that no man shall be arrested on the appeal of a woman except for causing the death of her husband. What I am sure my hon. Friends had in their minds, speaking in all seriousness, is one of the great provisions of Magna Charta—I believe it is the 39th Article of the Charter—which provides against outlawry or banishment except by the law of the land. Undoubtedly the action of the South African Government was admittedly entirely illegal, and hence the necessity for the Indemnity Bill. If there had been no self-government, and if there had been no Parliament in South Africa, and if such action had been taken by a Governor merely on authority from the Crown or from this House, then we should have had an Indemnity Bill introduced here; but we have deliberately made South Africa the representative and elective judges of their own affairs. You may if you choose—if you think it right or possible—repeal your Charter of Freedom, but you cannot expect to control it in its daily and detailed application. Lord Chatham once said:—
  "Magna Charts, the Petition and Bill of Rights, are the Bible of the British constitution."
  But, like its prototype, they have had revised, and I think often improved, versions throughout the British Empire. In the Petition and Bill of Rights of 1625, it is asserted that no taxes were to be imposed and no imprisonment was to be inflicted and no maintenance of soldiers without or against the assent of the legislative authority. That is indeed the origin of our Army (Annual) Bill of to-day, which shows that the Army is the creation of and the servant of Parliament and of the people. This Petition and Bill of Rights has been and is the basis of every grant of self-government to every one of our Dominions throughout the world, and is the essential basis of our administration of Crown Colonies and Protectorates under the British Parliament. The hon. Member drew attention to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, known for many years as Lord Shaftesbury's Act. The so-called Habeas Corpus Act does not create any right of personal freedom, but improves the legal machinery by which those rights may be enforced. Habeas Corpus has been suspended several times in the United Kingdom. It has been suspended many times in the Colonies and often in Ireland. It is indeed automatically suspended, or, at least, becomes automatically ineffective under martial law. The House will remember

  1285
  that there was an application made in South Africa to Mr. Justice Wessels in Cape Colony at the very moment of the deportation of these nine men. Mr. Justice Wessels said that he would have issued a writ in the matter, but that the men were at that moment out of his jurisdiction, and he added that if the Government chose to violate the law, it was not within the power of a judge to control their action. In South Africa, under Roman-Dutch law, the writ would have been the same, though in form different, and known as de libero homine exhibendo. It is practically the same process, and has the same result.
  The British Habeas Corpus Act is not applicable and not available to many of our Colonies, indeed to most of them, because, if it did actually and literally apply, application would have to be made to the Courts in this country to issue the writ, which would obviously entail so great delay as to make it impossible. The Colonies and Dominions have Acts with provisions to precisely the same effect, and their local forms are applicable to the same purposes. By an Act passed in this House as late as the year 1862 the British writ of Habeas Corpus is actually forbidden to run in British Colonies which have an established Court of Law. In the Motion which has been moved mention is made of the common law of England. The introduction of those words is, I think, slightly confusing in this connection. We here all know what we mean, but I am not sure that others outside the House, and especially outside the United Kingdom, would know exactly what was imported by those words. The common law of England does not run throughout the British Empire. I will mention two or three exceptions. In Quebec the law, of course, is old French law. In Mauritius and Seychelles, they administer the French law of the Code Napoleon. In British Guiana, Ceylon, and South Africa, they administer the Roman-Dutch law. The words "the common law of England" would, therefore, be inappropriate, though the conditions which they import would apply throughout the whole of the Empire. But I think that we all mean the same thing, and we all want the same thing. I can see no reason why the House should not agree to this Motion if the Mover and Seconder would accept an Amendment which I shall be prepared to move, and which, I think, is the true meaning of my hon. Friends, and probably
  1286
  represents the general sentiment of the House. I propose to leave out all the words after "Habeas Corpus Act" and to add others, so that the Motion will then read—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the rights of British citizens set forth in Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Habeas Corpus Act, as representing the freedom of the subject, are those which this House desires to see applied to British subjects throughout the Empire."
  This, I believe, represents the concept of all of us of what our free institutions ought to be and what we believe them to he throughout the Empire. Any deviation from this must be judged by the circumstances necessitating or producing it; such deviation must be justified to the free Parliament of the Dominion and the constituent authority from which it springs; and any such deviation must be legalised by an indemnity having the force of law with the assent and authority of that Parliament. In conclusion, I cannot do better than to read a short passage from Professor Dicey's "Law of the Constitution."
  Mr. LYNCH: On a point of Order. A very important Amendment has been put before us viva voce; could we not get the exact words? I think we are entitled to know what is the Amendment.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: If the right hon. Gentleman moves the Amendment, it will, of course, be read out from the Chair, and, if any hon. Member desires me to do so, I will read it a second time.
  Mr. HARCOURT: If it will be any convenience to the hon. Member, I will read the words again. [The right hon. Gentleman repeated the words of his proposed Amendment.] The passage which I propose to quote from Professor Dicey is the following:—
  "An Act of Indemnity again, though it is the legalisation of illegality, is also, it should be noted, itself a law. It is something in its essential character therefore very different from the proclamation of martial law, the establishment of a state of siege, or any other proceeding by which the executive Government of its own will suspends the law of the land. It is no doubt an exercise of arbitrary sovereign power, but where the legal sovereign is a Parliamentary assembly even acts of State assume the form of regular legislation, and this fact of itself maintains in no small degree the real no less than the apparent supremacy of law."
  I beg to move.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the words "and declared and recognised by

  1287
  the common law of England, should be common to the whole Empire, and their inviolability should be assured in every self-governing Dominion," in order to insert instead thereof, the words "as representing the freedom of the subject, are those which this House desires to see applied to British subjects throughout the Empire."—[Mr. Harcourt.]
  Lord HUGH CECIL: Shall I be in order in speaking on the general Question, or must I wait until the Amendment is being disposed of?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: If the House desire that the Amendment should be made; otherwise the Debate will be restricted for the time being. Perhaps the Mover and Seconder will intimate whether they are prepared to accept the Amendment.
  Mr. GOLDSTONE: I think that the point we desire to make as to the liberty of the subject is substantially met by the Amendment suggested from the Treasury Bench. With the consent of my Seconder, therefore, I shall be prepared, with the leave of the House, to accept the Amendment.
  Amendment put, and agreed to.
  Original question, as amended, proposed,
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the rights of British citizens set forth in Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Habeas Corpus Act, as representing the freedom of the subject, are those which this House desires to see applied to British subjects throughout the Empire."
  Lord HUGH CECIL: We have listened to a very interesting speech, in which the right hon. Gentleman dealt with the historical aspects of this question, though not always quite accurately, for he confused the Petition of Right with the Declaration of Rights. Strictly speaking, the Petition of Right has no connection with the Army (Annual) Bill. It hardly affects the Army at all. It deals only with two points: the establishment of martial law, and the billeting of soldiers. The Bill of Rights does deal with the establishment and maintenance of the Army. The Colonial Secretary, in dealing with these historical matters, practically omitted to say a single word about what the Colonial Office
  1288
  has done in connection with recent events in South Africa. It is quite true, as he said, that, having granted self-government to a great Dominion, the power of the Imperial Government is very closely restricted indeed. It is restricted far more closely in fact than in theory. In theory there was nothing to prevent the Crown from refusing the Royal Assent to the Indemnity Bill. I am not quite sure how far it applies in South Africa, but I believe it is the case that now the Crown has the power of disallowing the Act within six months of its passage. The right hon. Gentleman says in effect that this great power cannot be used. Once you concede self-government you must allow the Dominion to manage its own affairs precisely as it pleases. That is quite true in a general way, and shows what a great responsibility is undertaken when you do give autonomous institutions to a Dominion or any part of the Empire. It follows that autonomy must be very nearly absolute when once you have conceded it. Supposing the right hon. Gentleman had advised the Crown to refuse assent; supposing General Botha had been supported, as he had reason to think he was supported, by South Africa, it would have been impossible to form a new South African Government! He would, therefore, have had the Imperial Government at his mercy by the simple process of resigning his office. No other Government could have been formed, and South Africa would have been reduced to administrative anarchy. That is so in South Africa, and it is so wherever you establish autonomous institutions.
  People constantly talk of the concession of autonomy as if the most important thing were the establishment of self-government and the giving of a Parliament. As a matter of fact the most important thing, and the most responsible thing, is the establishment of an executive responsible to the Parliament. When you have done that you place the executive power in the hands of Parliament, and you practically have no means of controlling that Parliament at all. You have to submit to whatever it does. That is a lesson which I wish I could persuade hon. Members to learn in matters nearer home. Once you have conceded a separate executive you have, in fact, conceded something which in effect closely approaches independence. The point is, when you have conceded these things you may find that your independent or quasi-independent Government

  1289
  does things of which you very strongly disapprove. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Salford is quite right in thinking that self-government implies, not only the power to do what we think is right, but also the power to do what we think is wrong. That is quite true. That is what it really means. It means that you may have an exceedingly oppressive system set up in the British Empire. It means, and I believe hon. Members are quite right in thinking so, that proceedings actually tyrannical may be done under the British flag. Supposing proceedings as tyrannical as had taken place in South Africa had taken place there before the British flag floated over Pretoria and Johannesburg. I really believe, if General Botha had been at the head of a South African Republic, instead of being a Minister under the British Crown, and had done the same thing as he has done in South Africa, there would within a fortnight have been war between this country and South Africa. So that it actually follows that we have less power to interfere in a part of the British Empire that, as it were, takes to tyranny than we should have in a neighbouring country which was nominally independent. That is an exceedingly significant and important fact.
  The truth is that it would be more difficult to appeal to force within the British Empire than it is to appeal to force outside it; so that you have actually sometimes less- control over an autonomous part of the British Empire than you would have over nominally a foreign country. I do not know whether hon. Members have ever reflected upon what that means in connection with the Irish question. I wonder whether they ever foresee what very awkward things might happen on the other side of St. George's Channel. I thoroughly agree with hon. Members opposite that our pride, our patriotism, is really identified with personal liberty. I should take comparatively little interest in my country if-it were not conspicuously a free country. It is the liberty of the subject, the individual liberty of the subject, that gives the real value to British institutions.
  Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: What about freedom in religion?
  Lord HUGH CECIL: The hon. Member need never be apprehensive that I shall wish to burn him at the stake. The principle of universal liberty is, as I said, the thing that makes the British Empire a source of pride and satisfaction to us all. Let us see for a moment, as it appears to
  1290
  me, how far the case of the South African Government suggests that they should invade the essential principles of personal liberty. The hon. Member who moved this Resolution first spoke of the arrest of Dr. Poutsma. That was the first charge before the establishment of martial law. He is quite right in saying that the arrest of Dr. Poutsma on a criminal charge, without proceeding to trial, is a grave invasion of the liberty of the subject, but it is an invasion of the law that can be made in times of great anxiety in all countries. The actual arrest of an offender or a supposed offender in an irregular manner with the intention afterwards of making the situation regular by an Act of Indemnity is a proceeding for which there are abundant records in this country, and in many civilised countries. The proclamation of martial law is much more unprecedented. It is very difficult, at such a distance from the spot and in view of the defective information, at present to express a final judgment, but it is very difficult to understand how, with a Parliamentary majority supporting his Government, and the power of passing any emergency legislation that might be necessary, he should have been ready to proclaim martial law. Martial law is merely the supersection of the ordinary law of the land by mere arbitrary government—that is to say, martial law is no law. The course that would have been followed in this country in a similar case would have been, perhaps in a few hours, to pass through Parliament such special legislation as the national emergency required—to supersede all law altogether by a mere administrative Act. But to do that, not for one or two days, but for weeks together, is certainly on the face of it a very grave invasion of the principle of public liberty to which we are accustomed in this country.
  The South African Government, having got martial law, proceeded to arrest a great number of people under it. Having arrested them, and therefore having them absolutely at their mercy, and being entirely free from any rational anxiety of any further mischief that they should proceed to deport nine of them from the country quite gratuitously seems to me without any justification and in violation of any spirit of law and justice. They brought in an Act of Indemnity to condone what they had done. There is, I think, no greater or more dangerous violation of public and personal liberty than the infliction of a penalty by Act of

  1291
  Parliament. In former times it used to be done in this country, but it is the worst of possible abuses of legislative power. To begin with, the body, not in the least judicial, inflicts judicial sentence. We can imagine what an outrage it would be if this House undertook judicial functions. Not only was the judicial power used by a body essentially non-judicial, it also inflicted a penalty on persons who had no warning that they had committed an offence for which such penalty could be incurred. It is therefore a plain contravention, not only of the tradition of British liberty, but of the most elementary principle of national justice. All that has been done and done to our common shame under the British flag. I cannot help thinking, though I quite recognise that the Colonial Office could not advise the vetoing of the Bill, they might have remonstrated with the South African Government on what was being done. It is not the function of the Imperial Government certainly to control, but it is the function of the Imperial Government to offer advice to the Dominions, and especially in the course adopted here which gave us an interest in the matter, when these men were deported to these islands. We have at any rate a right to be heard—I do not say considered—before nine men are sent to the British Isles by an administrative act contrary to law. I confess I think the Colonial Office would have been well within their right if they had made a civil but courteous remonstrance with the South African Government and pointed out to them that they were transgressing the principles of liberty and justice, and although I dare say it would not have weighed with General Botha in the matter of the compulsory expulsion, it would have weighed with the people. If such an expression in a moderately written document could have been quoted all over South Africa, it would have great weight, and all the more so, if it was accompanied by assurances that there was no intention of interfering with the self-governing rights of the people of South Africa.
  It is a remarkable and unfortunate thing that we are here discussing this matter with very empty benches. It is a remarkable illustration of what is happening to the representative system in this country, that what interests the country at large no longer interests the House of Commons, and that which interests the
  1292
  House of Commons very often does not interest the community at large. The theory is that we are a mirror of the opinion of England, so that what largely interests the people interests us. But it is becoming increasingly plain that we are a machine which is to-day quite disconnected with the motor power which is supposed to work it, and that while the people are profoundly interested in the South African Government, as I believe they are, we can hardly scrape together an audience in this House.
  Mr. J. SAMUELwas understood to say that Members were not present because of the Motion on the Paper with regard to divorce.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: It is your people that have stayed away. These benches are full.
  Sir ARTHUR MARKHAM: There are only seven Labour Members present.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: I am not making a party point. Let me say that when we on these benches are charged with adopting reckless partisanship in our efforts to injure the Government, that we might very easily have turned the Government out if we had taken up the attitude of asking that the Royal Veto should have been applied in this case. If the Unionist party took up that cry we should have swept the electorate. It appeals to trade unionists and the advocates of the rights of labour. I was very much impressed when I attended the demonstration at Hyde Park to find that it appeals to them also from the Imperial point of view. British arms and treasures have been spent in acquiring this country for the Empire, and people resent that our best traditions should be set aside. Therefore, if the Unionist party had taken up the cry and agitated in favour of the Governor-General vetoing this Bill, the Government would have had to capitulate or be turned out of office. We did not do so because the proposal of vetoing a Bill is contrary to the principle upon which the Empire is built up. Nevertheless, I am glad that this matter has been brought forward to-day, because it gives us the opportunity of expressiog an opinion and to dispose of an apprehension not shared by the hon. Member who moved this Motion, that something of the kind might happen in this country. That would be probably impossible, because the great majority of the electorate

  1293
  would profoundly disapprove of anything of kind. The circumstances that alone made it possible in South Africa was that there was a great portion of the rural electorate there out of sympathy with labour. We shall see what the balance of power between the rural electorate and the urban electorate is in South Africa, but undoubtedly the rural electorate are more national than any other power of opinion in that country. There is a similar discrepancy between the power of the rural electorate and the urban electorate in Ireland. The principles of General Botha are never likely to be acceptable in Ireland. I am not sure they would be acceptable among the farmers of Ireland, largely under the influence of the Roman Catholic religion, hostile to Socialism, and, as peasant proprietors, hostile to capitalism.
  Mr. STEPHEN WALSH: There would be the most conservative element in the world.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: But not a Government most really concerned for the liberty of the subject. There is good Conservatism and bad Conservatism. There is the Conservatism that prevails in the country in favour of wise reform, and there is the Conservatism that prevails in the Transvaal. I leave it to hon. Members to consider which is likely to prevail in a national Parliament in Dublin, judging from their experience of the Dublin strike. There is no danger of the thing happening in England, for not only are the working classes devoted to personal liberty, but all classes are. It is a tradition which has been handed down. We value it on this side of the House as much as they do, and if we sometimes criticise trade unions it is rather because they appear to us to invade the liberties of trade unionism, and they
  will find abundant support on all sides of the House and in all parties if anyone in an insane moment proposes to overthrow the rights of personal liberty to which they are appealing to-day. Unhappily the South African Government are affected by different views, and I cannot help drawing the attention of hon. Members opposite to the wonderful passage of rhetoric in which Burke led the foundations of Colonial self-government, which read almost ironically in view of what we see in South Africa. He appreciated self-government because he was devoted to liberty. He says:—
  "As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you.
  1294
  The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obediency. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the Colonies, and through them secures to you the commerce of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the Empire Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest member."
  That great passage was uttered in this House nearly 150 years ago, and I think it ought to be still part of the gospel of the British Empire, and it ought still to be what we all hope and look for the British Empire to give to the world. Let us then, I hope, with unanimous voice recall our sense of profound regret that the South African Government has departed from that standard, and let us invite them to return to the sound paths in which we walk, and on which alone we believe national greatness depends.
  Mr. HAMAR GREENWOOD: I feel bound to protest against some of the Noble Lord's opening remarks, in which he urged this side of the House to beware of the danger of granting a limited self-government to Ireland, because of the dangerous results which have followed the granting of self-government to South Africa. Has any great cvil resulted from the granting of Home Rule to our Oversea Dominions?
  Lord HUGH CECIL: But they are not represented here.
  Mr. H. GREENWOOD: The Noble Lord called attention to the danger of granting Home Rule to Ireland because of this incident in the history of South Africa, and he argued that it was a dangerous thing for this House to part with its sovereignty over a self-governing Dominion. In the past when this House has granted self-government to its Dominions, it has done it, in the first place, for the advantage which it gives to that Dominion; and, secondly, for the advantage of the Empire of which that Dominion forms a part. I

  1295
  cannot speak with personal knowledge of South Africa, but of the other Dominions I have personal knowledge, and I can say that there is much more freedom there. The reflection made by the Noble Lord is, in the first place, upon Parliament for granting self-government; and, secondly, upon the self-governing Colonies which, it is said, is so little in keeping with the spirit of Burke, from whose speech the Noble Lord has quoted.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: I was reflecting only on South Africa, and not on the Colonies generally.
  Mr. H. GREENWOOD: What the Noble Lord said is a reflection on any other Dominion that enjoys autonomy, and the reflection was also upon this House for granting such autonomy. The Noble Lord told us to beware of the danger of extending local autonomy to Ireland, and he went so far as to say that we had less power in our own Dominions than we had in some foreign countries. Have we less power in South Africa or Canada than in Mexico? Has there not been the unfortunate assassination of an Englishman in Mexico, against which this Empire has lifted up its voice in protest? Could that incident have occurred in a self-governing Colony? I resent the suggestion that the people of our self-governing Dominions, who are in the main British people, are so lacking in their regard for the feelings of this country, and their love for its laws, that they should be considered worse than Mexicans because they enjoy local autonomy. With regard to urging the Colonial Office to veto this Indemnity Bill, I believe you would have a republic for every veto. The Noble Lord said that was a question on which he could have swept this country in three weeks. What a miserable country it must be. What an insult to the people of this old Mother country if in three weeks you could sweep the country because of the vetoing of this Indemnity Bill. If that is the Noble Lord's conception of running the British Empire—
  Lord HUGH CECIL: No; I expressly said it was not.
  Mr. H. GREENWOOD: The Noble Lord said the great majority of the people would have considered the application of the veto a proper thing. Whatever the intelligence of the Noble Lord may be, all I can say is that he holds the intelligence of
  1296
  his fellow countrymen very low if he thinks they would follow him in such a campaign. Personally, I profoundly regret that General Botha could find no alternative to the deportation of those nine men, but as he found no alternative, I submit to the House that this House ought not to judge his Government, and the Colonial Office is rightly advised not for one moment to interfere with the administration of a self-governing Dominion. The struggle to build up our connection with our Overseas Dominions in this country has been a long and bitter one, and many distinguished Statesmen on both sides of this House have, at times, felt that the struggle was not worth maintaining, and that it would be better to allow the Dominions to look after themselves. But that view is not held by anybody now. The reason no one holds that view now is that the system of perfect local autonomy, with non-interference by the Colonial Office, except in the way of friendly advice, has built up an Empire cemented not by machinery, but by loyalty, affection, and a sense of self-preservation which, I think, we all agree, is one of the miracles of today. I think a Resolution of this kind is in the nature of a tonic, and the House of Commons is well occupied this evening in passing a Resolution of this kind which will be cabled around the Empire, and which will be read, and I think appreciated, wherever the sons of this old country are to be found. In reference to the specific case of South Africa, I would like to remind the hon. Gentleman who seconded the original Resolution of certain words of the great Lord Selborne. They are these:—
  "The will of the Legislature is omnipotent according to British theory and knows no superior."
  That applies as much to a Colonial Legislature as it does to our own, and, when we are condemning General Botha, let us remember that it is not for us to judge of his Executive or of himself. His judges are the electors, and, if they think he has done wrong, he will pay the penalty that every Executive does in a free and enlightened country. I think, therefore, that any criticism which we may feel should be withheld, and that we should support the general principle of perfect local autonomy, and leave General Botha to be acquitted or condemned by the voters of South Africa.
  Mr. LYNCH: We are passing an agreeable academic night, listening to a few polished speeches which will have no out-

  1297
  come whatever. Of those speeches I admired most perhaps that of the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University, that is to say from the academic standpoint, for in his subtle dialectical exercises he seemed to advocate, as the solution of the Irish question, complete independence. I also enjoyed the speeches of the hon. Member who proposed and the hon. Member who seconded the Resolution, but I thought that they would be better in keeping if delivered in the South African Parliament. The sturdy South Africans would be at some difficulty in following the dialetical skill of the Noble Lord. Then we had the diplomatic speech of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, with his diplomatic solution of the whole difficulty, for by a master stroke he removed all grounds of objection, but only by leading to a completely anodyne Resolution. When I listened to the opening speeches I felt like St. Augustine, who said "There are two men in me," because on the one hand I felt indignation at the recital of these high-handed and arbitrary proceedings, and on the other hand I felt how futile was the whole discussion and how wrong it would be to give vent to that just indignation. There is one particular feature of this matter which overshadows everything else, and that is the question of the authority of the South African Government. I am inclined to say that the original Motion is anti-democratic, and that many of the speeches which have been delivered in support of it on this occasion, as well as speeches on previous occasions, have, perhaps, had a slight anti-democratic ring, or, at any rate, have not been in accordance with the true development of democratic principles. There have been condemnations of syndicalism. There are two aspects of syndicalism, and syndicalism should be carefully separated from sabotage. Most of these condemnations are directed really not against syndicalism but against sabotage, and all the arguments adduced by the Leaders of the Labour party against syndicalism are parallel to those formerly adduced against trade unionism itself. Quite apart from the question of whether these gentlemen had been guilty of illegal acts is the great question of the status of the Government of South Africa, and here I am inclined to say that almost every speaker in this House has been at fault, including, perhaps by a lapsus linguœ, the Secretary of State for the Colonies himself, as, for instance, when on one occasion he spoke of "Dependencies." There is in this
  1298
  House, on all occasions and on all sides, a tendency to patronise the Dominions.
  10.0 P.M.
  Mr. HARCOURT: No. I used the word "Dependencies" deliberately, in order to include every Possession of the British Crown beyond the seas. If I had used the word "Dominions," it would not have done so.
  Mr. LYNCH: I accept that explanation. One reason why I made the reference was in order to make the point perfectly clear. Even the hon. Gentleman whose speech I listened to with very great attention, and who is himself a representative of the Dominions, used continually the word "Colonies." I am rather surprised that it should be accepted in Canada, but I can assure him that it is not acceptable in any other of the Dominions.
  Mr. H. GREENWOOD: When I use the word "Colonies" I use it as it is understood by the Colonial Office, and when I use the word "Dominions" I use it as it is understood.
  Mr. LYNCH: I am again glad to have brought out the point, but I think it best altogether to avoid words which have a depreciatory association, which are entirely out of date, and which have been resented, especially by the younger representatives of the second or third generation, particularly in Australia and South Africa. There has also been a tendency right throughout the whole of these speeches to lecture the South African Government, sometimes in a friendly or paternal way, and sometimes in the way of admonition. I have known the representatives of South Africa personally, and I have had some experience of this House. While having every intention of preserving my high respect for the great qualities of statesmanship and intellect and ability of the Members of this House, I find that my own recollection of the men I met in South Africa is that they are in no way inferior to them, even in regard to those qualities; and certainly, when they have their own affairs to deal with, they are vastly superior to those who can only deal with them at the distance of half a hemisphere. I venture to say that if such a suggestion as that of the Noble Lord who sits for Oxford University had been carried into effect, and that this country had given voice to a protest in any great impressive and official form, the result would have been as the

  1299
  hon. Member who has just sat down has declared, but these Dominions would not have waited for one or two repetitions of that act they would probably have run up the Republican flag forthwith. I venture to say that the very word "Empire" is a misnomer. It is a word which I always avoid myself, and it is a word which, as the Secretary for the Colonies has carefully explained, has no real meaning and application to those great condominions usually denominated the British Empire. If the original Resolution had been carried into effect, then for the first time, we would have had real Empire builders, and the pioneer of them all would have been the hon. Member who proposed the Resolution, because it would have been declared by the deliberate act of this Parliament to be within the power of this Parliament to deal with and control the acts of the Parliaments of the great Dominions over the seas. That Empire, however, would not have lasted very long, and I think that the best counsel that can be given to this House and to the Colonial Secretary is to remind them that these great statesmen are perfectly capable of managing their own business, that the people of these great Dominions are marching steadily on in the way of progress, and that it behoves this country to march to the same step. These peoples at this hour of the day are not going to recede back to the Middle Ages and to shackle themselves with the remnants of a feudalism from which we are emerging in this country. They are not going to pour the new wine of their manly energies into the old bottles of a decaying and worn out system.
  Sir RYLAND ADKINS: We have arrived at a very interesting position by somewhat remarkable steps. This Resolution, put on the Paper by the hon. Member for Sunderland, is one which has given many of us an opportunity of expressing our opinion or, at any rate, of supporting the proper and, I venture to think, wide expression of feeling in this country on a matter of very great importance. We have only arrived at this opportunity by devious and circuitous routes, but one can almost forgive the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University for the rather characteristic chicane by which he deprived the House of the opportunity of dealing with the first matter on the Paper, because he has allowed the House to have
  1300
  the chance of dealing with this question. One has always recognised in human life that devious paths are generally overruled for the public good. How much credit is due to the Noble Lord, is a matter I am not competent or willing to decide, but having seen him in his less attractive aspect earlier in the afternoon, and in another phase of that variegated mind when speaking for a few moments in accents we believed to be sincere, on the elementary principles of constitutional government, I am not going to be tempted into considering the irrelevant analogies with which the Noble Lord's mind played so readily. There are plenty of differences between the condition of the Colonies, if that word is still permissible after the protest made by the last speaker, and the condition of Ireland under any conceivable alteration of the existing law. But this, at any rate, is clear, that under any conceivable alteration of the existing law Ireland will still be represented in this House, and the difference which is important, and as some of us think fundamental, is scarcely consistent with the party polemics of the Noble Lord, and the other comparisons he drew from those misleading analogies.
  I am not concerned so much with the way at which we have arrived at this discussion as with the subject matter of the discussion. I agree with the Noble Lord in regretting that there should be the slightest excuse for any one of us to say that this matter does not create great interest in the House of Commons. Now, on an occasion which rarely happens, after a very long interval of time, the House of Commons is asked, not to pass judgment, but to express an opinion upon the actions of a Government in another part of His Majesty's Dominions, which is full of constitutional and political significance. I desire to express my thanks to the hon. Member for Sunderland for accepting the Amendment which has been suggested by the Colonial Secretary, and which I hope, as the Noble Lord hopes, may lead to an unanimous vote of this House. There are few positions more difficult, or more dangerous, than that of a representative Chamber of the Empire, as this is, in commenting on actions done in other parts of His Majesty's Dominions which have the fullest grant of self-government. There is a danger in whatever happens; there is a danger in ignoring it; there is a danger in taking notice of it. If you ignore what has happened in South Africa, and thereby imply assent, it may have as great, as

  1301
  serious, and as injurious consequences as expressed dissent may have. It is perfectly true that this House has no direct authority, but I differ from the Noble Lord, as the hon. Member for Galway differed from him, in being glad, and not sorry, that the Colonial Office issued no mere comment when they have not the sanction of authority behind them to do it. But there is all the difference in the world between formal votes of censure and formal quasi-authoritative expressions of regret and the unfettered, free, and individual expression of opinion which has been made in this House to-night from all parts of the Chamber. We seek to exercise no authority, but our sympathy with our fellow subjects in South Africa is not the cheap and easy sympathy which one may extend to a mere acquaintance with whom he is merely concerned to be on friendly casual terms. It is the sympathy which we may feel for relatives and for friends, which makes us profoundly interested alike in the success or in the failure of those with whom we are concerned, and which makes us anxious, if possible, to express courteous and temperate judgment when we find that those for whom we care, and in whom we are interested, are taking steps which appear to us to be fraught with danger and pregnant with disaster and with future trouble.
  Those of us who think about the proceedings in South Africa will be grateful to my hon. Friend for the opportunity he has given to us to express sentiments which may be entirely without offence, but, one may hope, not entirely without persuasion. In this country we have a system of law which is not the same in many important particulars as other systems of law in other parts of His Majesty's Dominions, and, in view of the reference in this Resolution to those great landmarks of our legal system which mark out alike in our history and in our own sense of freedom the great stages by which we have endeavoured to reconcile individual liberty with public order, we may well wish that a similar system of law had prevailed all along in South Africa. Our judgment of what has been done there should surely be tempered and modified by the fact that their system of law—the Roman-Dutch law—is different from our own. That should qualify our expressions of disagreement, and that should moderate the vigour and take away entirely the edge of our criticism. But that is no reason whatever why we should refrain
  1302
  from passing a Resolution like the amended Resolution now before the House, which expresses our desire that the legal traditions of this country and the constitutional doctrine which they embody or imply should be shared by our fellow subjects in that country. I am sure that most people in this country heard of these deportations, of the Act of Indemnity, and of the whole proceedings in this great matter with feelings of sorrow, regret, and surprise. I believe that just as we listen with attention to and consider with care all the deliberate actions of the Government responsible to the King in that part of his Dominions, so our opinions and our feelings and the judgment which we form, in all sympathy and with all respect to them, are opinions, feelings, and judgments which are not without their weight in South Africa.
  It would, indeed, have been a great pity—it might even have become an Imperial misfortune—if this House had passed any strong and stringent Resolution which seemed for a moment to impair the fullness of their self-government or the absolute character of their responsibility. But when they know that this House of Commons is in full sympathy with that previous House of Commons which was responsible for the grant of self-government to them, when they know that the vast majority of this House—indeed, I trust the whole of this House—are in agreement with that great and pregnant utterance of the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, that
  "it is better to have self-government even than good government."
  [HON. MEMBERS: "We do not agree with it!"] Like all important truths, it requires and ought to have some dissentients in order to make its fulness and power more clear to the general public. Those of us who do agree with it may, at any rate, hope that our fellow-subjects in South Africa realise that this House of Commons, in the main, is in accord with that great utterance and the principle it enshrined, and that they may be more willing to feel and realise that our sorrow and our regret, our surprise and our alarm at what has happened in South Africa, are not feelings awakened by hostility or by want of sympathy, but are feelings awakened by our own knowledge—knowledge shared in all parts of the House by men of every party—of how sacred liberty is, and of how much more, in the long run, is it desirable that you should take great

  1303
  risks with political opponents or with social movements than to try by oppression to unduly violate the law. But the real inwardness and significance of this amended Motion and of its unanimous passing is not that our attitude is one of carping criticism or even of censure, but of grave and friendly warning that we who inherit traditions which have come down to us from ages in which these problems were thought under many conditions by every type of man, are only anxious that our fellow subjects for whom we wish every prosperity should avoid the mistakes of our ancestors, and should find a shorter and an easier way than has been found in this country to that harmony of freedom and order which is the ideal of us all. Therefore, is it that in that spirit, and in that spirit alone, I, for one, welcome this Motion, and I shall unhesitatingly vote for it, and in doing so I believe, so far as the mere utterance of a minor Member of Parliament can be helpful, I am not hindering but helping the welding together of the Empire, which all men who love it desire always.
  Mr. WALSH: It almost seems a pity, in face of the almost unanimous feeling of the House, to continue the Debate much longer. At the same time one desires to put a point or two in perfect sincerity that do not seem to me to have been yet touched upon. When this British Parliament grants self-governing powers to those communities beyond the seas, I have been under the impression that there were certain fundamental principles of British law upon which all these self-governing institutions were to be based. We have been told by the Colonial Secretary that South Africa was governed under Roman-Dutch law. I for one confess to absolute ignorance of that fact. I thought, when we took part in those memorable Debates which led up to the granting of self-government to South Africa, that whatever might be the variations in the general form of government, at least there were certain fundamental conditions the protection of which would be granted to every British subject. In my limited knowledge, I thought that the great Charter granted 700 years ago was at least to be observed, and really I did not think myself that the right hon. Gentleman treated the matter quite as he ought by pointing out to our Friends on these benches that there were many things in
  1304
  Magna Charta which were completely out of date—at least, the essentials of Magna Charta, we hope, are still in existence. It is nothing to us to tell us that the lord of the manor can take forfeited lands and other things which are complete anachronisms. Not a bit of it. What we want to know is, wherever the King's writ runs, throughout the whole of the British Dominions, are the fundamental rights of his subjects equal one to another? That is the great point we desire to know. I do it with some hesitation and some regret, because we find such a vast body of opinion in this House almost in entire agreement, but let us see what was the fundamental condition of that particular charter. It has been carried along right up to date, but one Clause reads this way:—
  "No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or otherwise destroyed. Nor will we not pass upon him nor condemn him but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either justice or right."
  In the ignorance under which we labour upon these benches we really thought that that fundamental condition would exist just as much in the South African Dominions as in our own country, that there should be no person outlawed or exiled, that justice should not be sold and should not be deferred, that no man should be deprived of his fundamental liberties, except through trial by his peers. Are we to be told that the connection between these great Dominions and ourselves is so slight and slender that we must even speak of the connection with bated breath and whispering humbleness? Are we to be told that the cord is so slight and slender that the very slightest touch will break it and will imperil the whole fabric of the British Empire? The Noble Lord read with very great effect—and, indeed, we all felt grateful to him—a noble passage of Burke. I remember that in a similar passage Burke spoke of the ties connecting these territories with the Empire. He spoke of the ties which, light as air yet strong as iron, bind the Colonies to the Mother Country. I think these ties are strong. The Mother Country is sending out tens of thousands of her sons every year. These sons when they leave the Mother Country have a right to know whether they are going to these outlying Dominions on the same fundamental

  1305
  rights as they possess here. They have a right to ask that question, and to have it answered when they take their wives and mothers and children from this country to build up, perhaps, a brighter and happier empire in other lands. They have a right to have the fundamental question answered, once and for all, whether these rights which have been fought for, and which have occasionally caused calamity, suffering, and heartbreaking for hundreds of years, have been secured to them, not merely in England and the British Isles, but wherever the King's writ runs and the British Commonwealth extends. It seems to us that we have a right to have that question answered No one impugns the sincerity of the right hon. Gentleman, but he really ought to carry the matter a little further, and let it be seen, so far as it is possible by honest negotiation, by friendly entreaty, and by every art open to honest diplomacy, that throughout the whole of the British Empire these fundamental rights and liberties shall be properly maintained. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the Petition of Right. I would rather speak of the Bill of Rights to which the Noble Lord referred. The very first passage in the Bill of Rights is to this effect:—
  "That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal."
  That is the second great law upon which British rights are established. We wish to know, also, whether that is to be established wherever the King's writ runs. We have a right to say that inasmuch as they derive their authority from this Imperial Parliament at least the fundamental rights of the King's subjects in South Africa shall be equally honoured and equally safeguarded. Let us take the tenth clause of that same Bill of Rights. It says:—
  "Excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel nor unusual punishments inflicted."
  Can you conceive a more cruel or unusual punishment of presumably free men than to be sent out of the heart of the Empire without trial in any way whatever, indeed, without any allegation of any sort, with no indictment framed and no charge of any sort alleged against them, imprisoned without a trial, and told positively when they reached the prison that there was no indictment framed against them, and that, indeed, they knew not what to charge
  1306
  them with? Can you imagine a more cruel punishment than that men should be deported thousands of miles, leaving their wives and children in the country from which they were sent? Is it really true that in this great Britannic Commonwealth we really do possess equal rights throughout the whole Dominions, or is it a farce, a fallacy and a phantom that we are pursuing? I have a consuming desire to have preserved the fundamental liberties that have made the British name famous throughout the world. I say with the utmost sincerity that while there may be other countries better blessed in many ways, the fundamental rights to which British citizens have been accustomed are, after all, the greatest blessings that citizens can enjoy. But we shall have to modify our opinions and revise our views unless we arc told that, at least, wherever the British subject goes, wherever he takes his wife and children, where he is willing to expend himself and his fortune, the fundamental rights to which I have referred shall be secured to him just as much as they were in the Motherland at home.
  That is the reason that we have raised this point. Justice has been delayed; cruel and unusual punishments have been inflicted. These men have not been tried by their peers. I thought once that they had the right as British citizens to appear at the bar of this House to plead their own case when other remedies were not available. That may be an unheroic course, but I think that, just as in the old Roman days, the proudest boast of a Roman was to be able to say, "I am a Roman citizen," and to be free from degrading punishments when he made that proud boast, in the same way to-day we ought to be able to hold up our heads proudly and to say that there shall be no cruel and unusual punishments, that there shall be no delaying of justice, and that there shall be no imprisonment without the prospect of a fair trial, that all these great prizes shall be secured to us, and that no man shall be able to say, "I am a British subject; I have to bear the pains and penalties; I have to bear taxation and the thousand and one obligations that British citizenship imposes upon me, but I am denied the full rights of every citizen." I think it a great pity that such a state of things can be honestly stated, and I am sure that we all sincerely hope that in this House, above and below the Gangway on both sides, British citizen-

  1307
  ship shall be a real thing, and that it shall not become the mere figment of political imagination.
  Mr. FREDERICK WHYTE: The hon. Member has raised a point of very great importance: that every citizen of the Empire ought not only to hope but know that whether he remains at home or goes to the furthest part of it, he shall enjoy the full rights which have been won for him in the Old Island at home. But the recognition of those rights at home rest, for us, upon the long experience of this country of days when those rights either did not exist or had still to be fought for. And in granting self-government to any Dominion under the British Crown the Home country is taking the responsibility itself, and is giving the responsibility to the newly-organised Dominion, saying, "You shall establish those rights on your own foundation and upon your own public opinion, and it cannot in future happen that, once having given full rights of responsible government, that the Home Government can interfere and shall say 'this Act may pass and this Act may not pass.'" But I take it that the point which my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. Walsh) raised in the earlier part of his speech, namely, the right of this House, as the senior democratic assembly in the Empire, to express its opinion, even in strong terms, on what has happened within the range of another democracy in the Empire, is a right which is unchallenged, and I am quite certain that the expression of opinion which has taken place already outside this House throughout the length and breadth of this country, has already had its due effect in the South African Dominions of the Crown, and that nothing but good can follow from the declaration which this House is about to make, that the events which were witnessed during the troubled period of recent South African history are events which we earnestly hope as Imperialists, without distinction of party, can never happen again. I think there cannot be anyone in this House—although I heard a whispered dissent from an hon. and gallant Member—who will express any opinion but one of reprobation of the measures that were taken by the Union Government. It is no doubt a great irony that General Botha should be the darling of the London Stock Exchange, and some of the cartoons of Mr. Will
  1308
  Dyson have very aptly expressed in recent months the feelings of very many persons in this country regarding the association of General Botha with the interest of the Stock Exchange. But, if I may, I should like to be allowed to say that I would rather see every Dominion of the British Crown stumble through injustice and tyranny to a sure knowledge of its own rights under its own government, than that there should be any form of interference from the Government at home.
  The Noble Lord has drawn the lesson often drawn before, that the British Government in many cases has more power over a foreign nation than she has over her Dominions, and that for the very simple reason that she has deliberately delegated that portion of her sovereignity which covers the Dominions to the people of the Dominions. There can be progress towards a firm foundation of the common rights of citizenship in any Dominion unless the citizens of each Dominion are left free to fight for and establish those rights of citizenship for themselves. So much has been said already regarding the whole position that I had not intended to add anything to the Debate, but the words which fell from the hon. Member for Ince, expressing surprise that any person in the South African Union should find himself deprived of any right which he enjoyed at home, suggested to me the argument which I have been trying to develop. In certain minor aspects I have heard the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord R. Cecil) say that at the present moment there is an Executive in power supported by a Parliamentary majority which is prepared to violate certain rights of Magna Charta. The matter then rests upon this, that whatever rights have been won in the past rest upon the foundation of public opinion now, and it is because public opinion in this country is so well grounded in the history and in the long story of stirring events which have won those rights, and it is because modern public opinion in Great Britain is so firmly grounded on that basis, that in the main no one ever dreams that those rights will ever be challenged in this country. So the education of public opinion in other parts of the British Dominions must proceed very much in the same way. I do not believe that those rights of British citizenship under the British Crown can rest upon any other foundation but that of

  1309
  a consenting and supporting public opinion, and that public opinion, I have no doubt whatever about it, is better educated by passing through trial than by receiving any form of education or of remonstrance from home. While I yield to no one in deploring the events which passed, I, at the same time, am very glad indeed that His Majesty's Government took no action whatever to frustrate the working out of democracy in the great South African Union.
  Mr. POINTER: I think this Debate has shown very clearly that the issues that have been raised in the Resolution, whether in the original or amended form, are very much wider and affect very many other issues than the particular one which was the cause of the appearance of the Resolution on the Paper. The point that seems to be raised very clearly indeed in this: If the Resolution raises one point of importance more than another it is the conflict between what might be called the rights of the self-governing power and those traditions of British citizenship of which we have heard. As I have listened to the arguments, it has appeared plain to me that the issue we have got to decide is whether or not the rights of the self-governing Dominions would be based upon those British traditions, or whether the liberties of the people living in those areas would be based upon what the self-governing Power may arrogate to itself as its right and as its duty. That, I think, is a very important point, and I can quite understand if the subject is not handled very carefully it may bring reprisals. It may bring from persons in the self-governing Dominions the retort, "We are not going to be under the thumb of the Home Government. You have given us self-government, and you have got to let us work out our own salvation in our own way." But it seems to me that we ought to see to it that in future the relationship between these traditions and the powers of self-governing bodies are clearly defined. At present they seem to be somewhat loose ends. For instance, the hon. Member near me (Mr. Whyte) has told us, by implication, that the British flag connotes nothing, that our past struggles for liberty mean nothing and count for nothing, that in future, as fast as a Colony is converted into a self-governing Dominion, it must forge out of the rock for itself, without any respect to the past, its own conditions of liberty, constitutional usage, and the rest of it.
  Mr. WHYTE: I agree that that may be an interpretation to be placed on my speech, because I did not develop to its full extent the argument that I was trying to put forward with regard to the particular combination of elements which go to make up the South African population and the South African laws. If I had carried my argument a little further I think my hon. Friend would have seen that I meant no such conclusion as that which he has drawn.
  Mr. POINTER: I quite understand that my hon. Friend meant nothing of the kind, but, if there is any logic in his argument, that is exactly what it all meant. He said something like this—I do not profess to quote his exact words: "I would rather our self-governing Dominions stumbled and fought their way through injustice and tyranny to better conditions in the future." My point, if I can make it clear, is that there ought to be at least some conditions laid down, assimilation to which should connote membership of the British Empire. In short, does the British Empire mean anything, or does it not? Is there anything which connotes the British Empire? Are there any distinguishing features which mark it off from the rest of the world? Is there nothing in past British struggles for liberty? Are there no traditions upon which we may base ourselves, and, basing ourselves upon them, say, "These things are British; these are anti-British?" I certainly think there ought to be something of the kind. I am not going to push the argument too far; I am not going to say that if there are no such conditions laid down we must come down with a heavy hand upon any Dominion which happens to depart from what we think ought to be. But I make this plea: that if there are no such conditions laid down they ought to be laid down, and that very shortly.
  I cannot understand the wringing of the hand of the Colonial Secretary, and in a lesser degree by the Noble Lord (Lord H. Cecil), who made a most interesting speech which I enjoyed to the full, in spite of the fact that one would almost have thought from one part of his argument that Dublin was the capital of the Transvaal, and Pretoria the capital of Ireland. Notwithstanding that ingenious and clever argument, I agreed in the main with what he said, until he came to what appeared to be an exhibition of helplessness. "We have given self-government

  1311
  to South Africa," he said, "and now we are powerless to help ourselves." I am afraid that it is only too true. But I am not disposed to let the matter rest there. I think that the Government, with representatives of the Opposition, and of the party to which I belong, together with representatives of the self-governing Dominions, ought to meet together and hammer out some conditions which would connote British citizenship. I do not suggest that everything upon which there might happen to be a difference of opinion between this country and the Colonies ought necessarily to be held to be of such a vital nature that it ruled those who committed themselves to those things outside the pale of the British Empire. On the other hand, there are some things which, I think, ought to do so. Let me put a case in point. Suppose, for instance, an Australian brother should feel, rightly or wrongly—they should know best—a fear of the Asiatic, believing him to be a menace; and not wishing to submit to Asiatic domination, should decide that no Asiatic should be allowed to land on their shores. Suppose we allowed that. We, so far as we are concerned, say that it is an intolerable thing, and it is in the nature of things we would like to suggest, or compel, the Australians to adopt our point of view. But there is another point where, I think, we should be justified in coming down with a heavy hand, and saying we will not admit this within the ambit of our British Empire, namely, that instead of prohibiting the immigration of Asiatics, the Australians should allow them to come in and then proceed to reduce them to a condition of slavery. That marks off the two kinds of things I have in my mind—one, upon it full liberty and autonomy might be allowed; while the other is a fundamental going hack upon our own struggles for liberty of judgment and liberty of person. No community should be prepared to accept that as a basis of citizenship, or to allow the British flag to fly over such a condition of things.
  For my part I have no wish to be associated with any disruptive influencies within the Empire, but I do say in all seriousness that if the kind of thing which we have just witnessed in South Africa recently is going to be repeated, very often some of us at least shall have to ask ourselves this question: Is an Empire under such conditions worth having? I
  1312
  think a very plain answer will be given to that question, for observe this: if there is to be an Empire, and if there is to be in some corner of it people who are living with ideals of the British Empire, rather less enlightened in relation to freedom, then the time is not far distant when a lower standard of liberty and citizenship may come filtering through to the rest of us, and the principles of the whole Empire will be in danger. I hope my suggestion will not be lost sight of by the Colonial Secretary, and that there should be some attempt to keep before all these fundamentals upon which British citizenship and the British Empire should be built up, and with which I believe the British Empire is unsafe.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: I am sorry that I have been unable to be here before, for as the House knows I like to be present when questions of this sort are debated. I would like to say that I agree with very much that has been said in the speeches that I have heard. There is only one regret I have, and that is in regard to the speech of one hon. Member on the other side, in which there was what I believe to be a charge of injustice against the present Prime Minister of South Africa. I do not think in a Debate like this it is a fair or proper thing to charge the Prime Minister of South Africa with being associated in a sordid sense with commercial elements on the
  Stock Exchange. I am sorry the hon. Member is not here at the moment. I think that was a very unfortunate importation into this Debate, and I am quite sure the Leader of the Labour party will agree with me that it should not be done.
  Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: He did not mean that.
  Sir G. PARKER: The Leader of the Labour party apologises for him. I am sure the Labour party would wish to dissociate itself from any attack upon General Botha. I want to say a word concerning the speech of the hon. Member (Mr. Pointer). I quite agree with him that there is a danger to this or any other Government in the centre of the Empire being too squeamish concerning discussion and frankness with any Government of the Oversea Dominions in regard to what the hon. Member called this fundamental principle. All the difficulties we have in the Empire in the past have been about questions which concerned interference

  1313
  with administration very largely I do not think, except in the case of the rebellion of 1827, when there were deportations to Jamaica, that there has been a single case in the Empire in which so grave a question has been raised. I venture to say it would not have been possible in Australia or Canada, where, on the whole, British ideals have been established before responsible government was given. I naturally speak with very great care, and I hope with some discretion, in this Debate, because I believed, with a good many others on this side, that some such difficulty as this would occur if responsible government were given before a period of representation was operative for a certain length of time in South Africa. I believe that the difficulty occurred because responsible government was given too soon. The ideals of British government and British citizenship and fundamental rights are understood in every portion of the King's Dominions wherever British people have laid the foundations of these individual civilisations. I venture to say that the Colonial Secretary, in the speech he made the other day, and again to-night, has in his anxiety and care, lest anything should be done to injure the relations between the Home Government and the Governments of our Oversea Dominions, has hesitated to express what I believe every member of the Oversea Dominions of British blood—at any rate—would subscribe to, and that is, if a difficulty of this sort occurs, frankness on the part of this Government, and open and conciliatory frankness, is the most useful element in the situation.
  Question put, and agreed to.

  POST OFFICE EMPLOYES (HOLT COMMITTEE'S REPORT).
  Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN: I beg to move, "That this House do now adjourn."
  11.0 P.m.
  Lord NINIAN CRICHTON-STUART: I wish to raise a question of extreme importance to a very large number of persons in this country, and that is the working of the recommendations of the Holt Committee. There were five questions dealt with, but I only wish to deal with two of them this evening—(1) that of the increasing demand made on the
  1314
  abilities of Post Office servants, and (2) the question of the cost of living. The Prime Minister answered a question in this House on the 7th of December, 1911. It was a question as to whether the Committee could be appointed early, and asked to sit as soon as possible, as the question was becoming one which needed carefully looking into, and the Prime Minister said:—
  "It is only the recent increase in the cost of living which could justify further inquiry being held."
  I submit that that shows that the Prime Minister himself saw the necessity and the reason for the granting of a Committee of Inquiry into the matter, because he realised that the cost of living had gone up very greatly in this country. Later, when the Prime Minister postponed a deputation which was coming to hint on the subject, he did so for the reason that he wished to know what the Board of Trade Returns were on the question of the cost of living. Those Returns showed between 1907 and 1913 that the cost of living had gone up 11.3 per cent. I submit that the recommendations of the Holt Committee have not shown any benefit granted to the servants of the Post Office in any way commensurate with 11.3 per cent. increase in the cost of living in the country. The Postmaster-General answered a question of mine to-day in which I asked hint whether it was proposed to issue the Report as it stood on this question of the rise in the cost of living, and he answered by quoting the Report itself, in which four lines are given, on page 3, paragraph 16, on the question. I submit that in practically the whole of the rest of the Report it would be very difficult to find any place in which any further consideration is given to the rise in the cost of living in the country. In order to illustrate that point, perhaps I may quote from a letter which I have been sent from one of the indoor postmen in my Constituency, and in which he says their case for higher wages is based upon the increase in the cost of living which has been found to have been 11.3 per cent. during the previous five years. The Committee met this by granting an increase of Is., but only on the maximum weekly pay. This meant that only those men who had been at the maximum for three years would receive this increase. In other words, a man to receive this Is. immediately must have had twenty-nine years' service. What this meant to the general

  1315
  body of postmen might be readily understood when it was pointed out that out of 309 postmen at Cardiff only nine had the maximum pay, and of these only six had been on this pay for three years, and were therefore qualified to receive the increase. I venture to submit that the Holt Committee does not carry out certainly in that case—and I am only quoting one of many—the purpose for which the inquiry into the matter was granted. When the late Postmaster-General met the deputation on the question of the new recommendations of the Committee, he pointed out that you had to take in place of the recommendations which it had been hoped the Report would make, the conditions of the service, medical attendance, pensions, and permanency of employment. He also pointed out that a million or so had been granted as extra remuneration. I submit that the extract I have just read shows that there are very few, if any, certainly in the lower ranks of the Post Office, who are going to benefit in any way from this increase of money which has been given. It. is stated, and has been stated in several deputations which I myself have received, that the officials in the higher positions in the Post Office do receive a certain amount of increase in their salaries, but that the rank and file in the Post Office receive practically nothing. I asked the right hon. Gentleman a question on the 25th of last month as to how the sum of £85,120, the estimated cost of the immediate changes in the pay of sorting clerks and telegraphists, was arrived at, having regard to the fact that the principal recommendations only affected the male sorting clerks and telegraphists, of whom not more than 30 per cent. are in receipt of the maximum pay. The right hon. Gentleman answered that the proposals were still under the consideration of the Treasury. I submit, I hope as politely as possible,
  1316
  that was not an answer to my question. The object of my question was really to find out how this £85,000 odd was to be divided among the sorting clerks and telegraphists, and how many of them, or if all of them were to benefit. It may also be pointed out that the answer rather shows that the Post Office had no scheme whereby these sorting clerks and telegraphists were to be helped, and it rather showed, too, that the whole of the question was under the thumb of the Treasury. It further goes to show that the Holt Committee's Report did not give that full consideration to the question of the cost of living which the servants of the Post Office had a right to expect.
  I wish to make a point, if possible, on the subject of the increased amount of work which is being given for practically no remuneration. The sub-postmasters suffer most greatly of all servants of the Post Office in this matter. I think I am right in. saying that sixteen new items of work have been added without any increase of pay, or with a very small increase during the past few years. There is the question of the issue of insurance stamps. Some sub-postmasters have received a small extra rate of remuneration, but whereas eight units are allowed for the sale of ordinary postage stamps only two units are given for selling insurance stamps. Further, it should be remembered that there is an enormous amount of work entailed beyond the mere selling of the stamps over the counter, therefore more remuneration ought to be granted for it. This, however, is but one illustration of many cases that might be cited.
  Notice taken that forty Members were not present, House counted, and forty Members not being present,
  The House was adjourned at Fifteen minutes, after Eleven of the clock till to-morrow, (Thursday).

  Valuation Department.
  Valuation Department.
  Estate and Succession Duties (Ireland).
  Estate and Succession Duties (Ireland).
  Income Tax (Ireland).
  Income Tax (Ireland).
GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.
  FLEET OPERATIONS.
  FLEET OPERATIONS.
ROYAL NAVY.
  THIRD BATTLE SQUADRON.
  THIRD BATTLE SQUADRON.
  ADMIRALTY CONTRACTS (FAIR-WAGES CLAUSE).
  ADMIRALTY CONTRACTS (FAIR-WAGES CLAUSE).
  NEW CONSTRUCTION.
  NEW CONSTRUCTION.
  Naturalisation.
  Naturalisation.
  Taxi-Cabdriver's Licence.
  Taxi-Cabdriver's Licence.
  Island of Lewis (Uig Cottars).
  Island of Lewis (Uig Cottars).
  Foreign-Made Watch Cases.
  Foreign-Made Watch Cases.
  Horses Exported for Slaughter.
  Horses Exported for Slaughter.
  Railways (Demurrage).
  Railways (Demurrage).
  Small-pox (Germany and Prussia).
  Small-pox (Germany and Prussia).

BARONY OF ST. JOHN.
Committee for Privileges met: The Attorney-General further heard on behalf of the Crown: Counsel heard in reply on behalf of the Claimant: Committee adjourned sine die.
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 Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have not been complied with:

Galway (Barna) Railways and Harbour.

The same was ordered to lie on the Table.

WALSALL CORPORATION.
(Petition for additional Provision.)
MIDDLESBOROUGH CORPORATION
(Petition for additional Provision.)
SOUTH SUBURBAN GAS.
(Petition for additional Provision.)
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS).
  NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE CORPORATION.
    BIRKENHEAD CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
    (Petition for additional Provision.)

    SHROPSHIRE, WORCESTERSHIRE AND STAFFORDSHIRE ELECTRIC POWER.
    (Petition for Bill.)
    Examiners' Certificates of non-compliance with the Standing Orders referred to the Standing Orders Committee on Monday the 27 th instant.

LEIGHTON BUZZARD GAS BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
ASHINGTON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL.
Read 2a, and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
WHITWELL AND DISTRICT GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  SKEGNESS GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
KIDSGROVE GAS BILL.
  LONDON ELECTRIC RAILWAY BILL.
  Brought from the Commons, read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
NATIONAL INSURANCE ACTS.
Provisional Regulations as to Appeals and Disputes (Wales): Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) and to be printed. (No. 48.)
COAL MINES (NORTHUMBERLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
A Bill to restrict work in Coal Mines to certain hours of the day—Was presented by the Lord Willoughby de Broke; read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 49.)

THE COERCION OF ULSTER.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: My Lords, I should like to ask the Lord Chancellor a question of which I have given him private notice with regard to the report which appears in Hansard of remarks which he made to your Lordships on Monday week, March 23. Much importance and interest attaches to certain words which fell from the noble and learned Viscount as regards the intentions of the Government with respect to Ulster. The words used by the Lord Chancellor, as reported in The Times, are as follows—
"No orders were issued, no orders are likely to be issued, and no orders will be issued for the coercion of Ulster."
The words as now officially published in Hansard run—
"No orders were issued, no orders are likely to be issued, and no orders will be issued for the immediate coercion of Ulster."
The Hansard report is "starred," which I believe is the proper method of showing that the speaker has himself revised the words which are there inserted. But this seems to me so extraordinary and exceptional a change of the whole meaning of the phrase, which attracted great attention at the time, and which, so far as all those members of the House whom I have been able to consult remember, was delivered precisely as The Times reports it, that I venture to ask the noble and learned Viscount whether the words were not uttered as reported in The Times, and whether the change in Hansard was made by his authority.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT HALDANE): Yes, my Lords. The speech was revised by me and corrected by the insertion of the word "immediate." The reason for that was that it was necessary to insert the word so that the sentence should read with the context. If the noble Viscount had quoted the context in which the sentence occurs as well as the words themselves, it would have been perfectly plain that it referred to immediate coercion of Ulster. What has happened, as happens sometimes in the newspapers and elsewhere, is that a sentence has been taken and wrenched from its context, which in this case would have made it abundantly plain that it was in reference to the immediate situation I was speaking; and the sentence has been given a wholly different meaning. I deliberately inserted the word "immediate," not for the purpose of giving a different sense, but for giving the sense in which I had used the sentence. I will read to the House the context, but I will first of all read the words as I spoke them—
"No orders were issued, no orders are likely to be issued, and no orders will be issued for the coercion of Ulster."
But I also said—
"There is not a word of truth in the suggestion that last week or at any time the Government issued orders for the coercion of Ulster. What has happened is pretty plain. There have been going on in Ulster things—I do not wish to allude further to them—which in themselves constitute a menace to law and order. If the business of government cannot be carried on in Ulster, then it becomes the duty of those who are responsible for law and order to see that it can be carried on, and for that purpose they are not only at liberty, but they are bound, to take such precautions as are proper…. So far as public opinion is concerned, it will be left there to make itself manifest; but if there is anything which amounts to a menace against the cause of law and order, that must be dealt with…. No steps have been taken for an active campaign in Ulster against anybody. Everything that has been done has been in the nature of preventive measures."
I think it is clear from the context that the sentence which I used was with reference to the immediate situation, and I inserted the word "immediate" on purpose to prevent the sentence being used, as it has been used mercilessly in the last few days, wrenched from its context and given quite a different sense, which cannot now be given as the word "immediate" is in.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I venture to suggest to the noble and learned Viscount that the fact of this passage in his speech having been, as he said a moment ago, constantly quoted during the course of this debate might have led him to the conclusion that if it required correction or qualification it should be qualified or corrected by a statement made by himself in his place in this House. It is by a mere accident that we became aware that this very important change in the text had been made in the corrected version which appears in Hansard. As to the explanation which the noble and learned Viscount has offered—namely, that the addition of the word "immediate" was necessary in order to make this particular passage agree with the context of his speech—I am not quite sure that that is how an ordinary reader would regard the matter. It is no doubt the case that in the earlier portion of his statement the noble and learned Viscount said emphatically that there was not a word of truth in the suggestion that last week or at any time the Government had issued orders for the coercion of Ulster, and that he then went on to say that it might become the duty of the Government to take precautions in the event of its becoming impossible to carry on the business of government in that province. But so far as the coercion of Ulster is concerned, we certainly took the noble and learned Viscount's meaning to be that as a matter of fact no such orders had been issued in the past, that no such orders were being issued at the moment, and most important of all—that no such orders, that is, orders for the coercion of Ulster for political purposes, were in contemplation for the future. We took that as being an unqualified and unreserved declaration made by the noble and learned Viscount on behalf of himself and his colleagues, and I must say it comes to us as rather a rude shock to find that the whole gist of his meaning should have been altered by the amendment which he has inserted in the authorised version.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Will the noble Marquess permit me to repeat the sentence immediately before the words that have been quoted. I said—
"There is not a word of truth in the suggestion that last week or at any time the Government issued orders for the coercion of Ulster. What has happened is pretty plain. There have been going on in Ulster things—I do not wish to allude further to them—which in themselves constitute a menace to law and order. If the business of government cannot be carried on in Ulster, then

877
it becomes the duty of those who are responsible for law and order to see that it can be carried on, and for that purpose they are not only at liberty, but they are bound, to take such precautions as are proper."
If that had been quoted with the sentence as it stood originally there would have been no ambiguity about its meaning. It is because the sentence has been ruthlessly taken from that context that I put in the word as necessary to show what the meaning is.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: My Lords, I am very glad to have elicited the admission from the Lord Chancellor that the wording has been altered. I am afraid that the public will not hold, as the noble and learned Viscount does, that the word was necessary to make good the sense of the rest of the phrase. I must say it is really unfortunate, and this incident would seem to show that in speech, as it has also been in writing, His Majesty's Government seem neither individually nor collectively able to express exactly what they mean with regard to this matter.

BRITISH NATIONALITY AND STATUS OF ALIENS BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

MIDWIVES (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I rise, in pursuance of notice, to present a Bill to secure the better training of midwives in Scotland and to regulate their practice. In doing so, I propose to make a short explanation of the circumstances which have led to my introducing this Bill and of the contents of the Bill, which I shall ask your Lordships to read a first time. Your Lordships are all aware that some years ago an Act for a similar purpose was passed for England. As a matter of fact, I was in charge of that Bill in this House, and I became aware that opinion was not sufficiently ripe in Scotland to make it expedient at that time to extend similar proposals to the country north of the Tweed. I need not go into the reasons for it. There are certain differences of practice, and opinion was not in favour of the change at that time. As a result of further discussion, partly, I think, owing to the experience of the working of the Act south of the Tweed, opinion has largely changed, and I believe I am not going too far when I say that in Scotland opinion is now practically unanimous that it is necessary
878
to have a measure of this kind and also to a large extent unanimous as to the lines upon which it should be drawn.
There have been more than one attempt to legislate in this direction during the last year or two for Scotland, and I have to a large extent taken as the foundation of the Bill which I am presenting to-night to your Lordships a measure which was introduced into the House of Commons both in the year 1912 and last year. But I have made some changes. I have been in consultation with the Privy Council Office and with the Office of the Secretary for Scotland, taking that Bill as a foundation, and almost all the changes which have been made from the Bill to which I have referred have been made to meet the views expressed either by the Scottish Office or the Privy Council. I am far from saying that I am entitled to speak for either of those Offices, but in a matter of this kind, which naturally ought to be presented to Parliament in as little controversial a form as possible, I am sure your Lordships will think it expedient that one should ask for advice from Government Offices of that kind before introducing a Bill.
The main objects of this Bill are to provide that after the year 1916 no woman not certified as competent shall take or use the title of midwife, and that after a further limit of years—namely, after 1921—further limitations are put upon the attendance at child-birth of those who are not so certificated. But all this is subject to reasonable provision to protect the interests of those who are now practising in that way. The Bill further provides for the constitution of a Central Board for Scotland to carry out the Act under the Privy Council, and it sets forth at some length the powers and duties of the Board. All these, as I have said, are largely modelled on the English Act, but with alterations which are necessary to make them suitable to the circumstances as they exist in Scotland. There are provisions in the Bill for discipline, for expenses, and for dealing with offences, all of them much in the same phraseology as in the English Act, but modified to some extent by the experience which we have gained in the operation of the English Act during the last five or six years. The local authority for carrying into effect the provisions of this Bill and for the local supervision of those who are certified will be the local authority of every district—

879
that is, the county and town councils, with their district committees when the counties are divided into districts—and it is distinctly provided that the term "local authority" shall have the same meanings as in the Public Health Act 1897, the reason for that being that we are anxious in this matter to avoid the prejudice which is created, both in the minds of the medical profession and in those of the midwives, if they are to be to any extent put under the Poor Law.
In addition to the Government Offices which I have mentioned, I have been in communication with the Committee of the British Medical Association for Scotland, and have accepted one or two suggestions which that body has put forward. I am able to say that the Local Government Board for Scotland are in favour of legislation on the lines of this Bill. The Medical Service Committee for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland have passed a resolution strongly advocating a Bill of this kind. The medical officers of health of all the large towns that I know of who have taken it up at all, certainly those of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leith, and other places, have passed resolutions in its favour. The Scottish Maternity Hospital for the four great centres of medical education—Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee—are also in favour of it. And at an important nursing conference held at Glasgow last month the following resolution was unanimously passed—
"That this meeting of nurses and others interested in nursing and the welfare of mothers and infants unanimously and earnestly urge upon the Secretary for Scotland the great need for an Act for the protection of women in child-birth and for the training and supervision of women practising as midwives in Scotland."
One of the matters which have ripened opinion in Scotland in favour of this Bill has been certain provisions in the National Insurance Act. I believe the National Insurance Commissioners are also in favour of legislation, and that legislation of the kind is absolutely necessary in the interests of the poorest women in the community, who are most helpless and most in need of assistance at this time. I have thought it right to make these remarks. I now present the Bill and ask your Lordships to read it a first time, and I shall as a matter of course allow a long interval to take place, far on into next month at any rate if your Lordships give it a First Reading, before I ask the House to proceed with its further stages.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (EARL BEAUCHAMP): My Lords, it is only necessary for me to say, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, that they welcome the action which has been taken by the noble Lord opposite. Although we have not yet been able to scan its details with care, we understand that the Bill is designed upon the lines of a similar measure for this country which has proved of inestimable value to some of the poorest women in our population. I cannot doubt that there is need for legislation of this kind in Scotland. That being the case, reserving our liberty of action with regard to details, we naturally welcome this Bill; and if the noble Lord is successful in carrying it into law, I am sure I may say there are many poor women in Scotland who, though they may never know the name of their benefactor, will have reason to thank the noble Lord for his public-spirited action.
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 50.)

THE IRISH LAND ACTS.
THE EARL OF MAYOrose to ask His Majesty's Government—

1. What area of land the Congested Districts Board (Ireland) have in their own hands, undivided, at present, and how is the same being used.

2. Up to what date have the Report and Accounts of the Congested Districts Board been published.

3. Why, when holdings subject to purchase annuities are sold by public auction, it appears that they are not purchased, or bid for by the Estates Commissioners for the enlargement of holdings, &c. in the neighbourhood.

4. Why is this the case if additional land is required for such purpose.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, as to my first Question, there is no doubt that the Congested Districts Board have acquired a certain amount of land and have done some good in the way of

881
relieving congestion. But what I complain of is this, that instead of the land which they have acquired for the purposes of enlarging holdings and therefore relieving congestion being given to the people to relieve congestion, in a great many cases it is let, after its acquisition by the Congested Districts Board, for grazing purposes, notwithstanding that much capital is made of the fact that the Board want all the grazing land they can acquire. When they let this land for grazing they perpetuate the very system to which they are supposed to put a stop. I am told that there are in the neighbourhood of Loughrea and Athenry very large tracts of land so let for grazing and for meadowing. Surely that is not the right way for the Congested Districts Board to carry on their business. Once they have got sufficient land they should not compulsorily acquire more and then let it in this way. There is no doubt that large quantities of land are used in that way.
As to my second Question, I am told that the Congested Districts Board are likely to publish their Report and Accounts for 1912 very shortly, but then they will be eighteen months in arrear. I cannot make out what the object of this Department is in not publishing their Report and Accounts in time. Is it to cover up this system of letting land for grazing and meadowing? I cannot see any other object in it. It must be remembered that the Congested Districts Board have a very large sum of money per annum voted to them by Parliament to deal with this question of congestion, and surely the people who pay the taxes have a right to see the accounts of this Department at as early a date as those of other Departments are presented to the public.
The other two Questions standing in my name I was asked to put down on behalf of a noble friend of mine. But it appears that hidden away in the Act of 1903 there is a direct law against the Estates Commissioners purchasing holdings which are paying what is called a State rent. That section is, as I have said, hidden away in the Act, and many of us were not aware of it. Certainly the noble Lord who asked me to put down this Question was not aware of it. I therefore ask the Question so that it may be stated publicly once and for all that this law exists.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE): My Lords, in reply to the noble Earl's first Question, I am informed by the Irish authorities that the Congested Districts Board had in their hands on November 30 last year 97,000 acres of untenanted grazing land, and about 155,000 acres of rough land, turbary, mountain land, some cut-away bog, and also, I believe, a certain amount of plantation land. The Board are in possession of this land, but a considerable portion of it had not been vested in them at the date named. Then as to the use to the land, the Board say that they use their untenanted land as far as they can in providing grazing at so much a head for the live stock of small farmers in the neighbourhood. Where they cannot get enough stock for that purpose they issue advertisements inviting tenders for agistment—that is to say, that people should take land and let it out in the same way at so much a head, a practice which in some parts of England is termed joistment and in the North of England is spoken of as stinting. The Board issue tenders for letting land in that way in division of fields. If the Board cannot do this, in the last resort they buy some stock themselves in order that the land may not remain unused and earn no profit at all. But this last practice they only adopt if they find it impossible to dispose of it in any other way. I understand that the noble Earl's complaint is that this land should be used for grazing at all and not immediately divided up into agricultural holdings. But surely it must take a considerable time and also a large expenditure of capital to perform that operation, which is no doubt in the long run what the Board have in view. In the meanwhile, having made these purchases, it seems only practical and sensible that for the time being they should endeavour to put this land to some profitable use.
Then I come to the noble Earl's second Question. The Board have published their Report and Accounts up to March 31, 1912, and those are at the disposition of the noble Earl or of anybody else. The Report and Accounts up to March 31, 1913, have now been presented to Parliament and will be very shortly issued to the public. Therefore at that time the delay will not be eighteen months, as the

883
noble Earl stated. The Report of the Board up to exactly a year ago will shortly be in the hands of the public, and I think if the noble Earl considers he will see that that is not a longer delay than usually takes place in the publication of complicated public Reports of this kind. Now I pass to the other Questions. The noble Earl has stated quite accurately that there is a section in the Act of 1891 which prohibits—
THE EARL OF MAYO: I thought it was the 1903 Act.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: There is a section in the 1903 Act, but the Act of 1891 is also concerned. Section 9, subsection (4), of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, runs thus—
"An advance shall not be made under the Land Purchase Acts, as amended by this Act, for the purchase of any holding for the purchase of which advances have been made under the Land Purchase Acts, whether before or after the passing of this Act, and whether under this Act or otherwise, until the entire annuity for the repayment of such advances has been paid or redeemed."
That, by the hypothesis, has not been the case in the instance of this land which is put up for sale owing to default, and therefore by that section alone it is not possible for the Land Commission to advance money for the purchase of any of this land. But it is also true that Section 6 of the Act of 1903, which was what the noble Earl had in his mind, lays down certain rules and conditions under which alone the purchase can be made, and those provisions obviously cannot be complied with in the case of an auction. Therefore again it becomes impossible for the Commissioners to buy land in that way.
THE EARL OF MAYO: Except when the whole annuity is paid off.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: Even then the Act of 1903 lays down certain rules and conditions—for instance, that the landlord has to come forward and make an agreement with his tenants. Those conditions are not complied with in the case of a sale by auction, and therefore even if the annuity had been paid off, which ex hypothesi is not the case, it would not be possible for the Land Commission to come in and buy
884
the land. There is another difficulty on the merits of the case apart from the legal disabilities. These holdings which come up by default of the payment of the annuity are very few in number, a fact at which we shall all rejoice, and they are also as a rule exceedingly small and would not as a matter of fact be suitable for purchase by the Estates Commissioners for the purpose of enlarging other holdings, For instance, during the last financial year—the one which ended in March, 1913–31 holdings subject to purchase annuities were put up by the Land Commission, and the average purchase annuity in the case of these was only £13. As a matter of fact, there are practically no cases of default in the case of substantial holdings of the kind which would be useful for the purpose of cutting up and adding to existing holdings. Therefore even if the legal disabilities were removed by further provision by Act of Parliament, it is questionable whether cases would arise in which it would be to the public interest for the Land Commission to buy these holdings for the purpose of adding them to others. I think that answers the noble Earl's Questions so far as I am able to do so.
THE EARL OF MAYO: I understand that in the 1903 Act there is a provision—I am speaking now of holdings put up to public auction not through default but because the man wants to give up farming or to go away—that when the whole of the annuities have been paid off to the State, then the Land Commission can buy.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I doubt whether that is the case. I should be sorry to express a definite opinion in the absence of expert advice on this point, but my impression is that it would not be within their legal rights.
LORD MACDONNELL OF SWINFORD: Whether or not it is the case that the Land Commission have this power, I would point out that where holdings in respect of which the annuities have been paid off are put up for sale they fetch a price wholly out of proportion to the money advanced upon them. They sell for something between thirty and fifty years purchase, and it would be wholly impossible for the State to buy them.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, my noble friend has elicited some exceedingly valuable information. We all of us realise that the Congested Districts Board cannot be expected to divide up all at once these large areas of which they have obtained possession, and naturally they must in the meantime do the best they can to turn them to profitable use. But we now learn that the Board at this moment are holding something over a quarter of a million acres altogether of one sort of land or another. This they apparently let to adjoining farmers, and as to that portion which they are unable so to dispose of they do the best they can in the way of temporary letting for grazing purposes. All I have to say about that is that most of us, I think, will look with a certain amount of suspicion upon these very large farming operations carried on by a Public Department, and that I think justifies my noble friend's curiosity as to the production of these accounts. I confess that it will interest me extremely to see whether the Board have been able to administer this great area in a way thoroughly satisfactory from a public point of view.
THE MARQUESS OF CEBWE: I think I ought to explain, when the noble Marquess refers to a quarter of a million of acres, that the land which he meant to mention is the 97,000 acres of untenanted land. The 155,000 acres of rough land, turbary, and so on, hardly conies within the scope of the argument which the noble Marquess used.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Mountain grazing, as the noble Marquess knows, is a very valuable asset in the eyes of Irish farmers.

PAUPER CHILDREN (IRELAND) BILL. [H.L.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  THE EARL OF MAYO: My Lords, the Bill to which I ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading is entitled "an Act to extend the operation of the Pauper Children (Ireland) Act, 1898." Its object really is to enlarge the powers of boards of guardians with regard to the boarding out of children. The Bill is intended to remedy a defect so
  886
  far as Ireland is concerned in the statutory enactments which enable boards of guardians to board out certain children over whom they have assumed parental control. At present boards of guardians in Ireland can adopt some children but they can only board out certain classes of those adopted children. This Bill enables them to board out any child whom they have power to adopt, if they think fit to do so. The boarding out of children in Ireland has had a most excellent effect. The country people who take the children into their cottages act as foster parents, and the children are removed from the taint of the workhouse. There is nothing so bad for a child as to be brought up in a workhouse. It there leads a sort of mangy existence, with no amusements and no knowledge of family life. It does not even know how to go out to buy things at a shop, and as a rule children brought up in workhouses become tramps and often worse than tramps, and come back to the workhouse. We have found in Ireland that where boards of guardians have been able to board out children the results have been most beneficial. Committees of ladies in the various counties look after the children and visit them occasionally to see that they are kept clean and are properly fed. The adoption of children is optional for boards of guardians, and boarding out is also optional. This little Bill, which consists of only two clauses, fills up a gap in Section 1 of the Pauper Children (Ireland) Act, 1902. I have been to the Irish Office, and I believe that the Irish Government are quite willing to allow the Bill to go through. It is not very much to ask, but we want more powers for boards of guardians so as to give them every chance of boarding out these children. I hope your Lordships will grant the Bill a Second Reading. I beg to move.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Mayo.)
  LORD MONTEAGLE OF BRANDON: My Lords, before the noble Marquess the Leader of the House speaks on behalf of His Majesty's Government I should like to say a word in support of this Bill. Having been out of town I have not had my attention called to the Bill until this morning, and my information on the subject, I am afraid, is not as thoroughly up to date as the noble Earl's. I have not had the opportunity of consulting friends in Ireland

  887
  who are familiar with the subject. But I think there can be little question about the use that this Bill would serve. As I understand the matter, it is really in hte nature of a dropped stitch. The first Act, the Act of 1889, was fundamentally amended and largely extended in the year 1898, and it was subsequent to that that what I may call the Boarding-out Act was passed, in the year 1899. The Boarding-out Act did not extend the class to which it applied as far as the amending Act of the previous year. It went on the original Act of 1889, and I think it must have been in the nature of an oversight that this class of children, who I think all Poor Law authorities in Ireland agree are eligible for boarding out—namely, the children of vicious parents and other parents who are really not fit guardians of their children—were omitted. Guardians have power to adopt them, but have no power to board them out; they can only keep them in the workhouse. I hope your Lordships will agree that that is an undesirable state of things, and will give the Bill a Second Reading.
  THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I certainly join in the hope which has been expressed by the noble Earl opposite and by my noble friend on the Cross Benches that your Lordships will read this Bill a second time. As has been explained, it fills a gap which ought to be filled in the provisions for what are known as State children in Ireland. Boards of guardians have power to adopt children in many different circumstances. They can adopt orphans and deserted children, and they can also adopt children of vicious or inebriate or mentally deficient parents; but it is only in the case of orphan and deserted children that they can board out. I entirely concur in what fell from the noble Earl as to the advantage of the boarding-out system. It is one of the three or four methods which those who have given the closest attention to the care, not merely of Poor Law children, but of poor children generally, have agreed can be adopted with benefit to the child. It also has, as the noble Earl pointed out, often a most admirable and humanising effect on those who adopt the children. Relations are instituted between the child and the foster parent which sometimes last agreeably all through life, and therefore the system is one which ought to be encouraged as far as possible. It is encouraged by
  888
  many boards of guardians in this country, and it was also one of the methods which were favoured by Dr. Barnardo and is carried on in the great institutions which bear the name of that eminent man. The scope of the measure, as the noble Earl has admitted, is not in itself a very wide one. The number of children who would be brought under the provisions of the Bill when it becomes an Act is probably numerically not very large, but so far as it goes it is a substantial and useful reform and His Majesty's Government are glad to do what they can to encourage it.
  On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

THE GOVERNMENT AND ULSTER.
THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTHrose to call attention to the following language used by the Attorney-General in the House of Commons on Monday, namely—
"They thought it right and necessary to let the Ulster Volunteers know that it was the fixed intention of Ministers to use the Forces of the Crown, if necessary, to prevent the usurpation of law by force";
and to ask His Majesty's Government whether they are prepared, in the event of the Home Rule Bill becoming law through the operation of the Parliament Act and without an appeal to the country, to use the Forces of the Crown to crush any resistance to its operation in Ulster.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, since I put this Question on the Paper last night I must confess that certain facts have appeared to-day which have somewhat modified my position. When I put this Question down last night I had in mind what I considered to be the very definite and reassuring language used by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack in regard to Ulster, and I was anxious to call the attention of the House to the variety of voices, if I may so put it, in which different Ministers of the Crown have alluded to this question of Ulster. I noticed to-day what my noble friend Lord Midleton made the subject of a question earlier in the proceedings this afternoon. I noticed that the Lord Chancellor had re-edited a most important statement in his speech in the Official Report. We all admire and envy the mellifluous eloquence of the noble and learned Viscount, but conciseness and directness of statement are

889
not, perhaps, the distinguishing features of his oratory. But on this particular occasion and with regard to this particular sentence the words seemed to be perfectly clear, definite, and unqualified. What did the noble and learned Viscount say in my hearing and apparently in the hearing of the Press? Speaking in this House during a debate when our feelings were very much roused and when both in Parliament and in the country recent events had caused the deepest anxiety, the Lord Chancellor said—
"No orders were issued, no orders are likely to be issued, and no orders will be issued for the coercion of Ulster."
As my noble friend Lord Milner, speaking from the Cross-Benches, said, we were all in a state of great anxiety and tension. We were not desirous, as he said, of making Party capital or introducing violent Party elements into the discussion, but we did want to have our mind relieved on what we feared we were drifting towards—the nightmare of Civil War. At such a time it was doubly important that we should have had from the Woolsack a statement such as I have read. But those words used by the Lord Chancellor have been re-edited by him, and we read them in Hansard now in this way—
"No orders were issued, no orders are likely to be issued, and no orders will be issued for the immediate coercion of Ulster."
it seems to me that the insertion of the word "immediate," which no noble Lord heard uttered in the House, must really give to us and to the public the impression that in speaking of no immediate coercion of Ulster you mean that there will follow some subsequent coercion of Ulster. That seems to me to be the inevitable effect upon the public mind.
It may be said that Governments cannot answer hypothetical questions, but we are confronted by stern facts and realities. What is governing the situation is that we are confronted in Ulster by a grim, determined, resolute opposition, not only a political opposition, but an opposition supported, maintained, and affirmed by, we are told, a by no means despicable army of 100,000 men. It is all very well to describe that army as a rebel army, but surely a serious and heavy responsibility must fall upon the shoulders of the Government if they choose to treat it as such while not having had the moral courage to prevent such an army being
890
created. But apart from all that, we have to face the situation, and I had hoped, in conjunction I venture to say with many other people, that the evils of the crisis had for the time passed away, and that at least some basis might be formed upon which suggestions might take place which, if they did not lead to an ultimate settlement, might lead at any rate to some amelioration of the tension of feeling and anxiety. But after what has passed to-day we are confronted by exactly the same position, if I may put it so, that the officers must have felt when those two paragraphs were struck out of the document in the White Paper. Those definite words of the Lord Chancellor did have a very reassuring and soothing effect in the course of debate, and I regret very much that the noble and learned Viscount, as those words were constantly referred to, did not get up in this House and make the revision then. But the words were allowed to stand until after the debate had taken place, and now, after the debate, we find ourselves placed in exactly the same position of anxiety and difficulty as the officers must have felt and as I am sure the country will feel to-morrow when it knows exactly what has taken place.
I did not rise to embarrass the Government or to make any acrimonious remarks, but I would venture to submit to His Majesty's Government that these sort of proceedings go a very long way to destroy any feeling of confidence or any idea of settlement, as suggested by my noble and learned friend Lord Loreburn. On the other hand, it seems to me that if there is a repetition of this sort of re-editing of language used it will be impossible for any party to know exactly how they stand. It seems to me as though we are being trifled with, and I can assure your Lordships that I only rose, as I had hoped, to obtain from the Government some assurance that the language used by the Attorney-General was not language which implied the coercion of Ulster, as we had been so definitely given to understand in this House by the Lord Chancellor that no orders would be issued for the coercion of Ulster. As it is, I put my Question; but I do so fearing that I shall get not only an unsatisfactory answer, but such an answer as will cause the profoundest anxiety and distrust in the country.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, the noble Earl opposite devoted the bulk of his observations to the speech delivered by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack which has already formed a topic of conversation this afternoon, and my noble and learned friend, as he was well able to do, has stated clearly the reasons which actuated him in making the correction which has appeared in Hansard. I confess that I have never yet seen any precise explanation of what is meant by "the coercion of Ulster." It is a phrase to which, I conceive, a number of different meanings can be attached. The noble Earl, however, whatever he understands by the coercion of Ulster, takes my noble and learned friend, by his statement that no immediate coercion of Ulster is proposed, to imply thereby that subsequent! coercion of Ulster is proposed. The noble Earl is a distinguished ornament of Oxford University, at which logic is, as we all know, one of the principal studies. But he would find it difficult to construct a syllogism on the basis which I have just stated—namely, that because my noble and learned friend says that there is no immediate intention of coercing Ulster, thereby he is threatening subsequent action in that direction. My noble and learned friend—I did not myself hear his speech—was undoubtedly thinking of the scare of which I spoke yesterday, of a great and immediate strategical movement, involving both the Army and the Navy, for the complete military occupation of Ulster, and I have no doubt that he intended to convey, as we have endeavoured to convey all along, that any supposition of the kind was purely baseless.
I made a general statement on this subject last night. Through no fault of my own I am afraid it was made at an hour when most of your Lordships were dining. I have no desire to repeat any part of that speech this afternoon. My right hon. friend the Foreign Secretary also made a statement germane to this subject in another place yesterday. It is, of course, the fact that a speech made in one House cannot be taken as addressed to the other, but on the other hand I have no doubt that many of your Lordships have read that speech and have appreciated the position of His Majesty's Government in respect of this matter which was described with absolute accuracy by my right hon. friend.
892
We hope that this Irish Bill will be passed in a form in which, if not agreed, it may, at any rate, meet with general acceptance. Assuming, if you will, for the purposes of the argument, that, from the point of view of the Opposition, the worst happens, and the Bill is forced through under the Parliament Act in the form in which it now stands. When that operation has taken place, if it should take place, Ulster, like the rest of Ireland, will still be governed directly by the Imperial Parliament, although the Government of Ireland Bill is passed. In the course of the observations that I made yesterday I did not ask any questions because I could not expect noble Lords opposite to reply to them, but I alluded to the statements that had been made about setting up what is termed a Provisional Government in Ulster. Assuming that such a Provisional Government is set up, and set up, as we have been led to believe, for the whole Province of Ulster, various results may follow. The decrees of such a Government, in the first place, might not be accepted by the Roman Catholic and Nationalist population of Ulster, comprising, I think I am right in saying, not far from 44 per cent. of the population of the Province. The decrees of that Government might be defied, and serious rioting might ensue, possibly of a very violent character, which might be held to demand the intervention of the Imperial Government, who would still be responsible for law and order in Ireland.
The noble Earl's memory no doubt goes back to 1886, when the Government of Ireland Bill of that year failed to become law. The Bill was defeated, the prospects of the Nationalist Party in Ireland were as gloomy as possible, and the situation therefore was altogether a different one from that which would exist if this Bill was passed. There was no provocation of the Protestants or Unionists of Ulster, but in spite of that fact, from the month of May to the month of October continual rioting went on in Belfast and also in some other parts of the country. A great many lives were lost, 25 or 30 lives were known to have been lost, and it is believed that a certain number of deaths were concealed. Many hundreds of people were severely injured, and it is therefore impossible to deny the possibility, assuming, as I am, that this Provisional Government has been set up in Ulster and its decrees

893
are defied by the Nationalist minority, that serious violence might ensue, calling for the intervention of the Imperial Government.
Quite apart from that, to develop what I stated yesterday, assuming this Provisional Government to undertake the entire administration and government of the country against His Majesty's Government, it would presumably seize by force the various Government buildings, the Police barracks, and perhaps the military barracks, and other public institutions. That action would be bound to be resisted, and those in charge of these institutions would defend them at the risk of, and possibly with the loss of, their lives. It is therefore impossible, speaking now, and the whole situation being hypothetical, to estimate what degree of restraint, or, if you prefer the word, coercion, it might be necessary to apply in such circumstances as those. And, as I reminded the House yesterday, all this, by the hypothesis, would take place without anything having happened in Ulster in the sense of change of government or administration there. There would be no Irish Parliament, and no Irish attempt to enforce Irish decrees. It would be the Imperial Parliament just as it is now, whose decrees are defied and which would take the responsibility for enforcing them. Therefore I ask the noble Earl whether he expects me now to make a statement that in such circumstances as those the Government would remain entirely passive; that it would adopt an attitude of complete non-resistance to an uprising of that kind; and, in fact, that it would retire altogether from the country and leave it in the hands of those who had forcibly taken it. If resistance to such action as I have described, and described as I hope in a manner which can provoke nobody, is called coercion then it cannot be denied that coercion may become necessary, and that it may be applied; and I cannot believe that, in the particular circumstances that I have described, the people of this country would resent in any degree such application of force, or consider that any unfair use was being made of the Forces of the Crown.
But, as my right hon. friend pointed out yesterday in another place, the possibilities which I have been describing are
894
of a purely hypothetical character, because, before anything which can be Irish coercion of Ulster is to take place—that is to say, any coercion applied to Ireland in respect of the Government of Ireland Act, as it would then be—a General Election must have taken place before Ulster can come under an Irish Government. No irreversible steps can have been taken by that time, and it would be open, supposing the people of the country desired to make an alteration affecting Ulster, or, indeed, affecting any portion of the Government of Ireland Act, it would be open for any Government which is returned to power so to make it. Therefore the question which the noble Earl has put does not, in fact, suggest the dilemma which he appears to assume that it suggests.
The answer to the noble Earl's Question is that nothing will have happened in Ulster; the Act will not be in operation, and therefore if the Forces of the Crown had in any hypothesis to be used they would be used, not in respect of the operation of the Act, but in respect of an uprising of a certain proportion of the inhabitants of Ulster because of what they feared might happen after a General Election had taken place. The noble Earl also mentioned, and I am glad that he did, the possibility, or the prospect as I should prefer to say, of a settlement being reached which would place all these contingencies still further away in the region of hypothesis. I do not think there will be any gain in my attempting now to enter into those particular questions. The facts are familiar to the House. But I desire to express once more the hope which I expressed last night that it will not be found impossible to come to terms on the lines suggested in the speech of the Prime Minister; and therefore all these alarming possibilities of which the noble Earl has spoken may prove to be ill-founded, and will never come into being. But I must respectfully protest against the implication which the noble Earl made that the simple correction which my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack made in the terms of his speech introduces any alteration whatever in the situation or in the intentions of His Majesty's Government, and I hope what I have just said makes that altogether clear.

THE EASTER ADJODRNMENT.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I see that there is no business on the Paper after to-morrow until, I think, April 20, but I have been informed—I have no doubt the noble Marquess will correct me if I am wrong—that the business which has been placed on the Paper by him and by Lord. Selborne for the 20th could conveniently be transferred to the 21st.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Oh, no. There is an important Question standing in my name for April 21, which I should be very sorry to have displaced.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: Then perhaps the business down for the 20th could be taken on the 22nd. I am, of course, entirely in the hands of noble Lords opposite on this particular point. It is absolutely indifferent to me whether we reassemble on the 20th or the 21st.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: May I suggest that the two Notices which now stand for the 20th should be put
896
down for the 22nd, and then the Motion of my noble friend Lord Salisbury which stands for the 21st will keep its place.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I am quite agreeable to that. I understand that the noble Marquess's Motion for the 21st, calling attention to agricultural wages, is to stand for that day?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Thank you.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: It is proposed that the Motion in the name of Lord Selborne and another Motion in the name of the noble Marquess (Lord Salisbury), for April 20, should be transferred to Wednesday, April 22. Therefore when I move the adjournment at the conclusion of business to-morrow I shall move to adjourn until April 21, if that is agreeable to your Lordships.
House adjourned at, ten minutes before Six o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.