Sitting of 16 April 1914

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Barnsley Corporation (by Order),
Rhymney Railway Bill (by Order),
Third Reading deferred till To-morrow.
Llanfaelog Water Bill [Lords] (by Order),
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
Mr. JOHN WOOD: If the Chairman can assure me that the model Clause for housing in accordance with the Standing Orders is inserted by the promoters in this Bill, my opposition will disappear?
The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS (Mr. Maclean): I can inform the hon. Member that I am authorised by those in charge of the Bill to say that that Clause will be inserted.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill read a second time, and committed.
Pier and Harbour Provisional Order (No. 1) Bill,
"To confirm a Provisional Order made by the Board of Trade under the General Pier and Harbour Act, 1861, relating to Cowes." Presented by Mr. ROBERTSON; read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed.
London Electric Supply Bill,
Order [30th March] for Second Reading upon Monday, 20th April, read, and discharged; Bill withdrawn.—[The Deputy-Chairman.]

TREATY SERIES (No. 5, 1914).
Copy presented of Agreement between the United Kingdom and France respecting the Delimitation of the Frontier between the British and French Possessions from the Gulf of Guinea to the
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Okpara River, London, 18th February, 1914 (with maps) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

POST OFFICE (CHANGES IN WAGES, ETC.).
Copy presented of Return showing the Changes in the Wages and conditions of service of Post Office Servants (excluding the clerical classes) in connection with the Reports of the Select Committees on Post Office Servants, 1907 and 1913 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES.
Copy presented of Annual Report of Proceedings under the Sale of Food and' Drugs Acts, 1875 to 1907, the Merchandise Marks Acts, 1887 to 1894, and other Acts, for the year 1913 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
Papers laid upon the Table by the Clerk of the House:—

1. Supreme Court (Rules),—Copy of Rules of the Supreme Court (Poor Persons), 1914, dated 6th April, 1914 [by Act];

2. Public Records (Public Record Office),—Copy of Schedule containing a list and particulars of classes of Documents existing or accruing in the Administrative Departments of the Public Record Office which are not considered of sufficient public value to justify their preservation therein [by Act]

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  New Hebrides.
  Dr. CHAPPLEasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any agreement has been come to with France in the direction of a Conference on the New Hebrides question; and, if so, will representatives of Australia and New Zealand be invited to take part?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): It is hoped that a Conference will meet shortly. The Governments of Australia and New Zealand have not been invited to send representatives, but, as stated in the

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  reply given by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the hon. Member on 4th March, an assurance has been given to those Governments that they shall be informed before any new arrangements are entered into.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Will there be any opportunity for discussion in this House, and will the right hon. Gentleman lay Papers?
  Sir E. GREY: I could not give a promise at this stage as to laying Papers.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman give a day for discussion?
  Sir E. GREY: I cannot give a promise at this stage. I do not want in my reply to indicate there will not be discussion, but I cannot give an undertaking.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. PATRICK MEEHANasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if the Estates Commissioners have considered the question of issuing a final offer, pursuant to Section 43 of the Irish Land Act, 1909, for the lands of Rathillig, on the estate of John Kilkelly, Queen's County?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The Estates Commissioners had a preliminary inspection made some years ago, and informed the owner of their estimated price, but he was not willing to sell at such price. They have now under consideration the question whether they will reopen negotiations with him.
  Mr. DUFFYasked the Chief Secretary whether he received a copy of a resolution passed by the Loughrea Rural District Council requesting the Estates Commissioners to purchase 250 acres of land on Mr. F. S. Taylor's estate, at Castle Lambert, near Athenry; is he aware that Mr. Taylor has expressed a willingness to come to terms with the Estates Commissioners for the sale of those lands; is he aware of the state of congestion that exists in the district; and will he represent to the Estates Commissioners the advisability of acting on the suggestion of the Loughrea District Council?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I have received a copy of the resolution referred to. I have nothing to add to the replies given to the
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  hon. Member's previous questions on this subject.
  Mr. DUFFY: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider, if he has not already considered, the circumstances in connection with the request of the Loughrea District Council in connection with this matter?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I will bring the matter again before the Congested Districts Board.
  Mr. DUFFYasked the Chief Secretary whether he is aware that the estate of Sir William Mahon, situated at Dernamana, New Inn, county Galway, has been sold to the Estates Commissioners for a number of years back; is he aware of the number of small farmers who live in the vicinity of this estate; and, in view of the urgency of enlarging the holdings of these small tenants in order to enable them to live in some decency, will he direct the attention of the Estates Commissioners to the matter, and state when it is proposed to deal with this estate?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners acquired the property referred to last year, and hope to be in a position during the present year to allot the untenanted land and turbary acquired for distribution. In alloting these lands the circumstances of small occupiers in the neighbourhood will be considered.
  Mr. REDDYasked the Chief Secretary if he will state what steps the Estates Commissioners are now taking, or propose to take, for the enlargement of the holdings of seventeen tenants in the townlands of Kilnagant and Barnaboy, King's County, which holdings are all under 8 statute acres in area and several are under 4 acres; and whether the Commissioners will take any steps to acquire about 150 acres of untenanted land on the adjoining estate of Stobbs for the enlargement of these small holdings, which have been reclaimed from bog and heather by the industry of the tenants occupying them?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The lands referred to are not the subject of proceedings before the Estates Commissioners under the Land Purchase Acts, but they have received a communication from persons in the neighbourhood asking them to acquire them. The Commissioners are not at present in a position to state what action, if any, they may take with a view to the acquisition of the lands in question.
  Mr. REDDY: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether they will take any action?
  Mr. BIRRELL: They have not made up their minds yet. They are considering it.
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSYasked the Chief Secretary what is the cause of delay in completing the sale of the Mahony estate, at Mount Collins, Abbeyfeale, county Limerick; and when the Estates Commissioners will finally deal with it?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The holdings on this estate are intermixed, and the Estate Commissioners propose to carry out a scheme of rearrangement, and to facilitate this they have arranged to acquire some additional land in the neighbourhood. The statutory requirements as to the title to this additional land are being complied with, and the Commissioners hope to be in a position at a comparatively early date to acquire such additional land, and to carry out a scheme of rearrangement.

  Evicted Tenants (Ireland).
  Mr. BOLANDasked the Chief Secretary whether any and, if so, what steps have been taken by the Estates Commissioners to secure the reinstatement of James Griffin, Knockaneglas, Glenbeigh, in the holding on the Mahony estate at Dooks, from which he was evicted?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners have not received any application from James Griffin for reinstatement in a holding on the Mahony estate, county Kerry. An application was received from a Daniel Griffin for reinstatement in a holding of 45 acres in the townland of Dooks on this estate, formerly occupied by him and now in the possession of another tenant, and the Commissioners, after inquiry and consideration, decided not to take any action in the matter.

  Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Ireland).
  Mr. PATRICK MEEHANasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) if he is aware that the adoption of the Departmental line from Drogheda to Oranmore has cut away half the local Irish market for the store cattle and other stock of Queen's County and King's County farmers; and if he can say whether there is any likelihood of obviating this disadvantage?
  Mr. FIELDasked the Vice-President whether he can state what arrangements are being made respecting, if any, the movement of live stock and the export of live stock to Great Britain?
  Mr. T. W. RUSSELL (Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture, Ireland): I have conferred with the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries to-day, and am able to announce new arrangements in regard to the transit of Irish cattle:—

  1. An Order will be issued to come into force on Wednesday next, 22nd instant, under which store cattle may be shipped from districts north of the existing boundary line to Greenock, Ayr, Stranraer, Barrow, Heysham, Fleetwood, and Holy-head. All ports north of the line will be opened for this trade, namely, Belfast, Dundalk, Greenore, Drogheda, Newry, Derry, Coleraine, Portrush, and Larne.

  2. The stores will be subject to two hours' detention in Ireland and to four days' detention and isolation from the date of landing. At the expiration of the four days the animals will be permitted to be moved by licence to specified premises in Great Britain; there to be detained under the observation of the local authority for a further period of fourteen days.

  3. Next week the Department propose to submit for the approval of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries a revised boundary line, which will place the counties of Clare and Gal-way on the northern side. The new line will also run from Mullingar viâ Navan to Drogheda. The Department are also about to make proposals to the Board in regard to the opening of the port and market of Dublin. This can only be done when the position of the disease at Bally-sax and Stepaside renders it safe. But at Ballysax the disease has not been active for three weeks, and at Stepaside there is no appearance of fresh cases. And I hope the Department may be able towards the

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  latter end of next week to open both the port and the market of Dublin. This will also open the natural market for King's and Queen's Counties, or at least such portions as are at a safe distance from affected areas in Tipperary.

  Mr. FIELD: I beg to give notice that in order that we may quite understand this question I will raise it on the Adjournment.
  Mr. DUFFY: Pending the reconstruction of the line alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman may I ask him, has any modification been made in the boundary line in respect of the fair to be held to-morrow at Loughrea?
  Mr. RUSSELL: In answer to the request made by the hon. Gentleman, the boundary line is drawn so as to bring Athenry, Loughrea, and Ballinasloe on the north side.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITE: Will fat cattle be allowed into England at once after two days' quarantine?
  Mr. RUSSELL: Yes.
  Mr. MOONEY: Are there to be eighteen days' detention on this side and two days on the other side, making twenty days in all?
  Mr. RUSSELL: That period of quarantine has existed for a couple of weeks. Upon the occasion of the last outbreak these arrangements were made—four days' detention at the ports and fourteen days by the local authorities.
  Mr. JOYCE: Is it not a fact that for forty years no disease of this kind has been known in Limerick or the county of Limerick; will the right hon. Gentleman say why that important port has not been opened before now; and whether in opening county Clare and county Galway Limerick will also be opened?
  Mr. RUSSELL: The hon. Member has stated what is quite correct. There has been no actual disease in the county of Limerick for a very long time, I should say forty years, but the hon. Member must remember that Limerick is in close proximity to Tipperary, and part of Limerick has to be drawn into the scheduled area.
  Mr. FALCONER: Is there any prospect of the opening of the other Scottish ports?
  Mr. RUSSELL: If things continue as they are in Ireland in regard to the disease itself there will be no difficulty arising with regard to the opening of the whole of the ports. I am happy to say that the disease is showing every sign of abatement.
  Mr. NOLAN: On what date will Drogheda be free for the export of fat and store cattle?
  Mr. RUSSELL: It will be open for store cattle after Wednesday. I will make an announcement as to fat cattle later on.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked whether a deputation, introduced by the mayor of Drogheda, waited upon the officers of his Department last week with regard to the opening of their port; whether they were able to state, upon the authority of the local head of the constabulary, that calves alleged to have come from Cork did not come from that county but from the county of Kerry; and whether he will now state definitely if Drogheda, the natural port of exportation for the counties of Meath and Louth, will be opened this week?
  Mr. RUSSELL: I am informed that the calves referred to by the deputation were certain calves from Kerry stopped by the Drogheda police. The animals which were the object of suspicion were not, however, these calves, but others moved from Thurles into the Drogheda neighbourhood. The resumption of shipments of live stock from Drogheda Port is a matter for arrangement with the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and I have no hope that shipments from the port will be allowed this week.
  Mr. NOLAN: I should like to know if the port of Drogheda is to be opened for the export of store cattle, why at the same time it cannot be opened for the export of fat stock?
  Mr. RUSSELL: The port of Drogheda will be opened when the boundary line is changed, and stores will be free to leave on Wednesday.
  Mr. FFRENCHasked whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that forty-

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  eight days have elapsed since that last consignment of calves supposed to be infected with foot-and-mouth disease arrived in the county of Wexford; and whether, seeing that there is no appearance of this disease in any part of the county, nor in any of the surrounding counties, he can say when it is proposed to open the port of Wexford?
  Mr. RUSSELL: It is gratifying that Wexford continues free from foot-and-mouth disease. The restrictions that were imposed on a part of the county in relation to the movements of calves referred to were withdrawn some time since, but in view of the general position as regards the disease in Southern Ireland the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries have not yet seen their way to reopen British ports to stock from any port of Ireland below the Drogheda-Oranmore line. While it is hoped that some modification of this embargo may soon be possible, there would, in any case, be doubt whether the port of Wexford could benefit in the matter, as no line of steamers suitable for live stock traffic has been sailing from the port for eighteen months.
  Mr. FFRENCH: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is contemplated at present to get a steamer, and is it not a very simple matter to isolate Wexford from the South of Ireland? You have only two bridges, and it is very easily done. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of opening the port of Wexford?
  Mr. RUSSELL: I put that case to the Board to-day, and they are not in favour of it. That would require a perfectly new line to be drawn.
  Mr. FIELDasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he can state what arrangements are being made respecting the importation of Irish live stock into Great Britain?
  Mr. FFRENCHasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware that a crisis in the cattle trade like the present inflicts losses on Irish farmers, and that recurring restrictions must render them unable to pay their annuities; and will he consider the advisability of coming to some arrangement with the Vice-President of the Irish Department, with a view to allow freedom of trade in live stock between Great Britain and Ireland from unrestricted areas?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Herbert Lewis, for Mr. Runciman): I cannot usefully add anything to the statement already made by my right hon. Friend the Vice-President of the Irish Department.
  Mr. FIELD: I beg to give notice that I shall raise the question on the Adjournment in order to get further information.
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask a question, of which I have given private notice: Can the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) say whether he has seen the statement in the Press that there has been a fresh outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the county Kilkenny, and whether he is in a position to confirm or contradict it?
  Mr. RUSSELL: All I can say is this: I read the announcement in the "Times." I have had a telegram from the chief veterinary inspector since that—just before the House opened—and he says there is no fresh outbreak.

  Unlicensed Emigration Agents.
  Mr. HUNTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the evidence of Mr. Park before the Dominions Commission to the effect that there were 5,000 unlicensed emigration agents, who monopolised the sale of emigrants' passage tickets and gave highly coloured descriptions of the Dominions, especially as to there being employment for unskilled labour; and whether he could take any steps to prevent fraudulent representations being made by unlicensed agents in the future?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): I have seen the evidence in question. The Dominions Royal Commission, in their second Interim Report, postponed their recommendations pending further study of the subject and the introduction of any further safeguards must await their final Report. I may, however, point out that fraudulent representations by emigration agents are punishable under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts, under which, in a recent case, a prosecution was successfully instituted by the Board of Trade.
  Mr. HUNT: Is that the only case that has been successfully instituted?
  Mr. HARCOURT: It is the only recent case.

  British East African Protectorate (Population).
  Mr. EDMUND HARVEYasked whether the right hon. Gentleman can state the approximate present population of the British East African Protectorate, specifying the numbers of official and non-official white settlers, respectively, as well as the number of Indian settlers and of the native population?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The latest information I have dates from 1911. There were 3,175 European inhabitants, of whom 428 were described as settlers, planters, farmers, and gardeners. The number of officials on the 31st of December of that year was 619. The total number of Asiatics was 11,886, of whom 6,282 were adult males. The total population is estimated at about 2,765,000.

  British Guiana (Loan).
  Mr. POINTERasked whether steps are being taken in British Guiana to secure a loan from the British Government for the building of a railway to develop the hinterland; whether, in connection therewith, the Governor or any of the elected representatives have been, or are, suggesting that in order to increase the security of the British Government the Colony ought to surrender its elective system; and, if so, what is the attitude of the Colonial Office?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I have received certain proposals from the Governor of British Guiana for the construction of a railway into the interior. These proposals are at present under consideration, and I am not in a position to make any statement on the subject.
  Mr. POINTER: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure me that there has been no suggestion in regard to giving up the elective system?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I would sooner not give any assurance as to what has been suggested until I am able to deal with the whole matter.
  Mr. POINTER: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure us that he will not give way to any suggestion of that kind?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The whole matter is under consideration, and I could not give any assurances now.
  Major ARCHER-SHEE: Is it not a fact that the consideration of this question has been going on for over two years?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Quite recently new suggestions have been made.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.

    INSURANCE AGENTS' REMUNERATION.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East, as representing the Insurance Commissioners (1) what remuneration is paid to the insurance agents employed to do the work of the following approved societies: the Prudential, the National Amalgamated, the Liverpool Victoria Legal, the Royal Liver, and the Scottish Legal; and (2) whether he has received any representations from insurance agents employed to do the work in relation to individual members to the effect that their remuneration is inadequate; whether he has made any investigation into the conditions of their employment; and whether he has made any and, if so, what reply to the representations of the agents?
    Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN (Lord of the Treasury): As I have already stated in answer to similar questions, the Commissioners have no power to interfere in this matter, which is to be settled between approved societies and their employés, and a reply to this effect has been sent to any representations received on the subject.
    Mr. JOHN WARD: Does the hon. Member admit that he has received representations from numerous agents in different parts of the country as to the inadequate remuneration they get for so much work?
    Mr. BENN: Yes, Sir; representations have been received.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Are these agents not paid out of public funds voted by this House, and under these circumstances is it not a proper subject of inquiry what remuneration is paid to these agents?
    Mr. BENN: Yes, part of the salaries of the agents does come out of the State-contribution.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: What is the amount of the portion of the remuneration paid to the agents in connection with their services under the Act?
    Mr. BENN: I could not say without notice. The hon. Member is aware that two-ninths of all the charges of the benefits is borne by the State.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: If I put down a question, will the hon. Member make further inquiries?
    Mr. BENN: Certainly.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: For what reason bas the hon. Member not replied to the first question asked by the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. MacCallum Scott)?
    Mr. BENN: We have no information as to the wages paid to the servants of approved societies.
    Mr. BOOTH: Is my hon. Friend aware that all the workers of all the approved societies generally complain about inadequate remuneration?
    Mr. BENN: I do not know that complaints are so general as that.

    LOCAL INSURANCE COMMITTEES.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether the Insurance Commissioners have recommended to the local insurance committees that they should insert a Fair-Wages Clause in any contracts made by them; and whether they will make a similar recommendation to approved societies in regard to labour employed by them direct or in regard to contracts made by them for the supply of labour?
    Mr. BENN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative, and to the second part in the negative. I have already explained that the Commissioners cannot interfere with the arrangements of individual approved societies in this matter.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Is the position of approved societies not exactly the same as insurance committees, and is it not the case that the reason given by the Commissioners to the insurance committees for their recommendation was that they were spending public money, and that therefore some precaution ought to be taken to secure that an adequate wage was paid where the expenditure of public money was concerned?
    Mr. BENN: Yes, Sir; but there is no exact similarity between the contracts made by the insurance committees and the wages paid by approved societies.

    UNEMPLOYED BENEFIT.
    Mr. FREDERICK WHYTEasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can now make a statement with regard to the dispute between the Perth Station joint committee and certain classes of their employés on the subject of arrears under Part II. of the National Insurance Act?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. J. M. Robertson): The Board are in communication with the Caledonian Railway Company, but I am not yet in a position to make a statement with regard to this matter.

  Non-Provided Schools (Birkenhead).
  Mr. KINGasked the President of the Board of Education how many of the seven non-provided schools in Birkenhead, which were warned in 1910, have had plans approved for alterations; how many have carried out improvements to the satisfaction of the Board; and how many, if any, have ceased to be recognised as efficient Grant-receiving schools?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. J. A. Pease): In two of the five schools referred to the alterations have been completed; in two more I am informed that the alterations will be proceeded with as soon as possible, and I expect that they will be carried out during the present year; at a fifth the Board have required amended plans, which are about to be submitted. The two remaining schools will be discontinued as soon as two new council schools, for which plans have been conditionally approved, have been erected.
  Mr. KING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it has taken over five years to carry out the orders of his Department, and is he satisfied with that sort of thing?
  Mr. PEASE: I do not think that you can say it has taken five years. These schools are being watched from time to time, and certain recommendations may have been made extending over five years, but I could not say that without verifying the facts.

  Motor Cars (Illumination of Number).
  Mr. CROOKSasked the President of the Local Government Board whether, having regard to the recent running down by a motor of a cyclist who was killed at Lee, he will now make an order that all motors should show the car number by transparent light, and thus make certain that no such vehicle could escape without identification in the future?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Herbert Samuel): I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my predecessor in reply to a similar suggestion on the 25th October, 1912.

  West Ham Union (Outdoor and Indoor Relief).
  Mr. W. THORNEasked the President of the Local Government Board if he received a petition from the Private Secretary to His Majesty the King that was sent to His Majesty by Mr. C. J. A. Robinson, of 27, Argyle Road, Custom House, in the borough of West Ham, dated 24th March, in connection with the West Ham Guardians' outdoor and indoor relief under the provisions of the Acts 43 Elizabeth, c. 2, and 59 George III., c. 12; and if he intends taking any action in the matter?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As stated by my predecessor in July, 1910, the enactments referred to have for many years been regarded as obsolete, and I am not prepared to call upon boards of guardians to put them into force now.

  Shipping Casualties.
  Mr. PETOasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state the nature of a case where at a Board of Trade inquiry into a shipping casualty the Board of Trade would feel warranted in not opposing applications for costs or for a fixed sum towards costs by captains or officers made parties to such cases but exonerated from blame; whether the case of the master of the "Scotsdyke" has been brought to his notice where, though the questions put by the Board of Trade to the Court might have involved the suspension of his certificate and though the Court exonerated him from blame, the solicitor to the Board of Trade, at Glasgow, opposed
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  the application made for the costs of the master, and this was upheld by the Court; and whether the Board of Trade have issued instructions to their legal representatives in the different seaports that they shall oppose similar applications for costs in all cases?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: As the hon. Member was informed on 23rd March, I am afraid that it is not possible to give an undertaking that could be universally applicable in these cases. The case of the "Scots-dyke," however, appears to have been one in which the Board of Trade might properly have refrained from opposing an application for payment of a sum for costs. I regret that, by an oversight, the solicitor who represented the Board in this case was not instructed in this sense, and in the circumstances, while I cannot say what attitude the Court would have taken up if the matter had been left, without comment, to its discretion, the Board are prepared to consider an application from the master for payment of a sum towards his legal costs.

  Board of Trade Returns (Asbestos-Cement Tiles).
  Mr. HUNTasked what is the heading under which, in the Board of Trade Returns, asbestos-cement tiles come; and what was the value of asbestos-cement tiles imported last year?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Asbestos-cement tiles are included in the Official Trade Returns under the heading "Goods not enumerated or described in the Import List, manufactured wholly or in part." The value of asbestos-cement tiles imported in 1913 cannot be stated, but the value of the imports of asbestos manufactures of all kinds was £251,533.
  Mr. HUNT: Is there no way of finding out what quantity of asbestos-cement tiles are imported?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I am afraid not, under the Customs regulations; but it appears to be quite a small amount.

  United States and United Kingdom (Trade Statistics).
  Major ARCHER-SHEEasked what was the value of the exports Of the United States to the United Kingdom, exclusive of re-exported articles, in 1912 and 1913, respectively?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The value of the total exports from the United States to the United Kingdom in the calendar year 1912 amounted to about 126½ millions sterling, and, in 1913, to about 123 millions sterling. The value of the re-exports included in these figures cannot yet be separately stated, but, in the fiscal year 1911–1912, it was a little over £1,000,000.
  Major ARCHER-SHEEasked if there has been any increase in value of the exports of the United Kingdom to the United States in the year 1913 owing to the new American tariff; and, if so, what is the amount of that increase?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The new United States tariff came into force on the 4th October, 1913. During the last quarter of last year the declared value of the exports of the United Kingdom produce from this country to the United States showed an increase of £254,000 as compared with the corresponding quarter of 1912. It is not possible to say how much of this increase is to be ascribed to the operation of the new tariff.
  Major ARCHER-SHEE: May I ask the hon. Gentleman to answer the question on the Paper, and to say what was the value of the exports for the years 1912–13?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The question is No. 33, and it asks if there has been any increase in the value of the exports of the United Kingdom to the United States in 1913 owing to the new American tariff. I stated that in the last quarter there was an increase of £254,000. I do not understand what is omitted.
  Major ARCHER-SHEE: Will the hon. Gentleman say whether there has not been a decrease in the actual amount exported to America during 1913?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The question I have answered is 33. Is the hon. Member referring to that?

  Seamen (Unclaimed Money Orders, Wages and Effects).
  Mr. WINGasked what fund the balance of £6,251 19s. 1d., unpaid money orders issued to seamen, as shown on White Paper No. 106, will be allocated to; what further claims have been made on that fund since 31st March; and what is the amount of the present balance?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Of the sum of £6,251 19s. 1d., being the balance as at 31st March, 1913, of unpaid money orders issued to seamen, the sum of £6,126 2s. 10d. has been paid since, leaving a sum of £125 16s. 3d. still to be claimed.
  Mr. WINGasked what fund will benefit by the balance of £16,346 15s. 8d., unclaimed wages and effects of deceased seamen, as shown on White Paper No. 82; and what claims have been made since 31st March, and the amount at which the balance at present stands?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: In accordance with the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 and 1898, moneys arising from the unclaimed property of seamen are paid into the Exchequer for the purposes of the mercantile marine services. Of the balance of £16,346 15s. 8d. remaining unclaimed on 31st March, 1913, £3,469 15s. 8d. was paid to claimants down to 31st March, 1914, and £2,050 1s. 2d., the sum still unclaimed in respect of the year 1907–8, has been paid into the Exchequer (Class II., Vote 9). The present balance is £10,826 18s. 10d.

  Garristown and Delvin Drainage Board.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Secretary to the Treasury what proportion of the charge of sinking the Delvin River was fixed on the Alexander estate in the original award made by the Commissioners of Public Works (Ireland)?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Montagu): The cost of sinking the river was part of the total cost of the formation of the district, and the proportion of this total charge fixed on the Alexander estate is 528913.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked upon what date the existing Garristown and Delvin Drainage Board was elected; what notice of the election was given to owners of land who are qualified electors; whether the notice required by Statute was inserted in a local newspaper; and, if so, what was the name of the newspaper and the date of its publication?
  Mr. MONTAGU: I understand that the last election took place on the 11th September, 1913, and that notice of the election was sent to members of the previous board, though not advertised in any newspaper.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITE: Were the obligations of the Statute complied with?
  Mr. MONTAGU: I understand that no notice was put in the local newspapers, but the actions of the board are by the Statute quite valid.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked whether the authority of a certificate made by the Commissioners of Public Works under the provisions of the Drainage and Improvement of Land (Ireland) Act, 1892, in the case of the Garristown and Delvin Drainage District Board is merely a document indicating that the assessment for maintenance made by the Drainage Board is fairly apportioned between the different owners of the affected lands; whether the Commissioners have any power to say that the gross amount levied is fair or equitable or whether they have any power to release the drainage board from the complete responsibility for the raising and expenditure of the maintenance rate vested in them by Statute; and whether, having regard to the statement made by the Commissioners that the amount was collectable by virtue of the authority of their certificate and its misleading effect in the public mind, they will modify the statement in that respect?
  Mr. MONTAGU: Where, owing to sales or other causes, land originally forming one lot in a drainage award is divided amongst two or more owners, a certificate of apportionment by the Commissioners of Public Works is required in order to apportion the maintenance rate between the several divisions of the land, and the certificate is the authority for the Drainage Board to collect the maintenance rate in these proportions. The Commissioners of Public Works have no power to say that the gross amount levied is fair or equitable, nor any power to release the Drainage Board from the complete responsibility vested in them by Statute for the raising and expenditure of the maintenance rate. The statement made by the Commissioners that the apportioned amounts were collectable by virtue of the authority of their certificate does not appear to require modification.

  Public Trustee.
  Mr. FREDERICK WHYTEasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether questions relating to the Public Trustee should be addressed to him?
  Mr. MONTAGU: No, Sir.

  Customs and Excise.
  Mr. HUNTasked for what reason the pensionable overtime allowances, as recommended in the Report of the Committee on the Amalgamation of the Customs and Excise Departments, paragraph 236, have been withheld from officers of Excise origin who by virtue of the Excise Transfer Order, 1909, were appointed to the Customs and Excise service on the 1st of April, 1909, and were not excluded from the recommendations of the Committee which provided that these allowances will not be necessary in the case of officers appointed to the service after the 1st of April, 1909?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The allowances in question were recommended by the Committee specifically for certain Customs classes in view of the diminution of their average overtime earnings resulting from the change from the old to the new system of overtime pay. There was no system of overtime pay in force in the old Excise service.

  Ministerial Offices (Partisan Speeches).
  Major WHITEasked the Prime Minister whether, with a view to ensuring the absence of a political atmosphere in the Navy and Army, he will advocate that Ministers holding the positions of First Lord of the Admiralty and of Secretary of State for War should abstain from making partisan speeches during their tenure of office?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): I hardly think this is a practicable suggestion.
  Major WHITE: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the proposal if he is exempted during his tenure of office?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I do not mind being exempted at all.
  Mr. JAMES HOPE: Are we to take it that it is only impracticable in view of the personal constitution of the present holders of these offices?
  The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir, on more general considerations.

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.

    NAVAL AND MILITARY QUESTIONS.
    Mr. CLOUGHasked the Prime Minister whether Brigadier-General

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    Gough himself wrote out the phrase—but they have no intention whatever of taking advantage of this right to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the Home Rule Bill—and whether Earl Roberts orally threatened to resign his office of field-marshal unless General Gough's demands were conceded?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The answer to both parts of the question is in the negative.
    Mr. JAMES HOPEasked the Prime Minister whether any Howitzer Battery or batteries were moved or were under orders to be ready to move in Ireland, and were they confined to barracks for any days between the 14th and 23rd March of this year?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The reply to both parts of the question is in the negative.
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: There are three parts to the question.
    The PRIME MINISTER: To all parts.
    Mr. AMERYasked the Prime Minister whether he proposes to arrange for a judicial inquiry into the circumstances connected with the recently contemplated military operations in Ulster, and with the resignation and reinstatement of General Gough and other officers?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I see no sufficient grounds for such an inquiry.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: Has the right hon. Gentleman in making that reply borne in mind the very large number of reports and statements that are being made on this subject?
    Mr. OUTHWAITE: Are the Government taking any steps to allay the panic amongst the 100,000 Ulster volunteers in Ulster caused by the movement of 200 or 300 soldiers?
    Mr. AMERYasked the Prime Minister whether General Gough has yet received any official notification of the Government's repudiation of the written
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    assurance given him in the Army Council's Memorandum of 23rd March; and, if so, whether he will publish the document containing the notification?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir.
    Mr. AMERY: Is the House to understand that General Gough is still in the position in which he was left by the assurance given by the Army Council?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That question has already been answered. It was answered last week by my right hon. Friend.
    Mr. AMERY: I understand the Prime Minister to say that no official notification was given to General Gough; in that case, how is General Gough to know that the assurance has been repudiated?
    The PRIME MINISTER: In the circumstances, and having regard to all that has happened and to the announcement which has been made in the House, it does not seem necessary to add anything.
    Mr. AMERY: Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the answer, I propose to raise the question on the Motion for the adjournment of the House.
    Mr. AMERYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty (1) on what date orders were given to the fourth destroyer flotilla to proceed to Lamlash, and if he will give these orders; at what precise time the destroyers left Southampton; what precise time on 21st March the countermanding orders were sent; and (2) at what date orders were given to the "Attentive" and "Pathfinder" to proceed to Kingstown to convey troops to Carrickfergus; and if he will give these orders?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): I must refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer given by the First Lord to the Noble Lord the Member for Portsmouth on the 25th March, adding this further information, that the destroyers sailed from Southampton Water at 7.30 a.m. on the

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    21st. The countermanding orders were issued at 7.15 p.m. on the same evening, and the destroyers arrived back in Southampton Water at S.50 a.m. the following morning. With regard to No. 55, I must refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the First Lord to the hon. Member for Thanet on the 30th March. The orders in question were given on the 19th March.
    Mr. CLOUGHasked the Postmaster-General the number of cypher and other Telegrams which were dispatched from the Curragh to the right hon. Member for Bootle, to the right hon. and learned Member for Dublin University, and to the Unionist headquarters in London, respectively, from 18th March to 31st March, 1914?
    The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Hobhouse): It would be improper for me to divulge to my hon. Friend any particulars of the telegrams in question, if any such telegrams there be, without the consent either of the senders or of the addressees.
    Mr. BONAR LAW: As this question makes a personal reflection both on myself and on the Central Office of our party, I desire to say that no communication of any kind, either by telegram or letter; passed from myself or from any member of our association.

  Plural Voting Bill.
  Mr. LEACHasked the Prime Minister if it is still the intention of the Government to pass the Plural Voting Bill during the lifetime of this Parliament?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The Government hope to do so.

  Post Office Servants (Holt Committee's Report).
  Mr. WINGasked the Prime Minister if he will state the date of the promised day for the discussion of the Holt Report and questions affecting the postal service?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I will endeavour to arrange that an occasion on which the Report can be discussed shall occur at an early date.

  Whitsuntide Recess.
  Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the Prime Minister if he will state, for the convenience of the House, when the Whitsuntide Recess will begin and how long it will last?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I fear it is early yet for me to be able to make a statement.

  Imperial Defence (Pacific).
  Dr. CHAPPLEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he can see his way to arrange for a Conference of Empire representatives at Vancouver to discuss the policy of Imperial naval defence in the Pacific?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies will shortly be laying Papers on the subject of an Imperial Defence Conference. I am further informed that in present circumstances it will not be possible to hold such a Conference in Vancouver.

  BRITISH ARMY.

    ROYAL FLYING CORPS.
    Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can make any definite statement as to the conditions of service of engine-room artificers in the Royal Flying Corps on the following points: is service in the corps to be considered as continuous or is the period of service to be a fixed one, if the latter, what is the term of service; and will the promotions of engine-room artificers, serving in the Royal Flying Corps, be made by means of a special roster, or will they be included in the general roster for all engine-room artificers?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The matters referred to by my hon. Friend are at present under consideration.

    TERRITORIAL FORCE.
    Mr. CHIOZZA MONEYasked the Secretary of State for War how many non-commissioned officers and men in the Territorial Force were discharged during the year 1913; how many of these joined the Territorial Force Reserve; and how many joined the National Reserve?
    The UNDER SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Tennant): During the year ended 1st October, 1913, the number of non-commissioned officers and men discharged from the Territorial Force was 77,859. There is no information as to how many of these subsequently joined either the Territorial Force Reserve or the National Reserve. From page 124 of the General Annual Report it will be seen that 359 non-commissioned officers and men were transferred direct to the Territorial Force Reserve. These are not included in the numbers shown as discharged.

    SCHOLES HOOK RANGE, PEMBROKESHIRE.
    Major WHITEasked the Secretary of State for War if it is intended to reopen the Scholes Hook range, Pembrokeshire, for rifle shooting; and, if so, whether he is aware that danger has been caused to the men working on the Fenton home farm by bullets striking close to them when at their work?
    Mr. TENNANT: If suitable arrangements can be made for clearing the danger area of labourers and others when firing is to be carried out, this range will be reopened. The fact that bullets have fallen near men at work behind the targets has recently been reported, and the range has just been inspected with a view to steps being taken to improve its safety.

    ULSTER CINEMATOGRAPH FILM.
    Mr. FIENNESasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the officers and men of the Wiltshire Yeomanry were ordered to attend a cinematograph performance in Chippenham on the 9th of April last, at which films were exhibited presumably for the purpose of encouraging recruiting; that the first of such films represented the drilling of Sir Edward Carson's Ulster Volunteers and the second represented the senior Member for Dublin University addressing an Ulster crowd; whether the exhibition of these films was authorised or approved by the military authorities; and whether, in the interests of the good discipline of the military forces, he will arrange that they shall not be compelled by order to attend such exhibitions?
    Mr. TENNANT: I have no information on this matter, but I am calling for a report

  ROYAL NAVY.

    ADMIRALTY CONTRACT (FAIR WAGES CLAUSE).
    Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary to the Admiralty if inquiries have yet been made into the specific charges of non-fulfilment of the terms of the Fair Wage conditions of Government contracts of Messrs. Gwynnes, of Hammersmith; if so, with what result; and, if in consequence of repeated allegations against this firm, he will institute an independent and non-Departmental inquiry or, alternatively, strike the firm off the list of Government contractors?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: Inquiries are being made. When they are completed I will communicate the result to my hon. Friend. In the meantime I should prefer not to-answer the second part of the question.
    Mr. BARNES: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when we are likely to have a satisfactory reply, or any reply at all?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: My hon. Friend raised the question on the 16th February and that has called for close and careful investigation. He will get a reply without any delay.

    CHATHAM DOCKYARD (OVERTIME).
    Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary to the Admiralty if much overtime is being wrought in Chatham Dockyard while men are being discharged; if not, how much in terms of men or money per week; and if the men on notice could be transferred to shops where overtime is being worked?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The recent discharges at Chatham were found to be absolutely necessary after most careful investigation of the work to be done. The amount of temporary overtime being worked is not great, and is restricted to pressing work of such a character as would not admit of the economical employment of an increased number of workmen. The cost of this overtime is about £120 per week.

  Pacific and Atlantic Cables.
  Major ARCHER-SHEEasked the Postmaster-General what proportion of the deficit on the working of the Pacific cable for the year ending 31st March, 1913, was paid by the United Kingdom; what was the actual amount of the deficit; and whether he can give the same information for the year ending 31st March, 1914?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The answer to the first part of the question is five-eighteenths; and to the second, £32,269 17s. 5d. The information for the year ending 31st March, 1914, is not yet available.
  Major ARCHER-SHEEasked the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to a statement by Senator Pearce, of Australia, that there is an omission in the official records of the last Imperial Conference with reference to the resolution in connection with the laying of a State-owned Atlantic cable, and that the words "near future" mentioned in the resolution on that subject were in reality limited by a declaration of the British Postmaster-General that that was to be construed as a period of twelve months; and, secondly, that it was the intention of the conference that the subsidiary conference mentioned in the resolution should consider the methods to be adopted in laying the cable, and not the question of the advisability of laying it; that it was only upon these two distinct understandings that Senator Pearce withdrew his original resolution; and, if these are the facts, will he say why no subsidiary conference has been called in view of the repeated requests for such action by the Australian and New Zealand Governments?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I observe from the Press that Senator Pearce is said to have made a statement such as that referred to by the hon. Member. I am informed that there was no omission of the kind suggested from the official records of the last Imperial Conference referring to the resolution respecting the laying of a State-owned cable. The interpretation of the words "near future" used in the resolution will be found on page 357 of the Minutes of Proceedings of the conference. The question of calling a subsidiary conference on the subject is at present being discussed with the Commonwealth Government.
  Mr. CROFT: Does the right hon. Gentleman hold any different views from his predecessor as to the importance of laying down a British-owned Atlantic cable?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I do not think that quite arises out of the question on the Paper. I will consider it.

  Scottish Cattle (Testing Station).
  Captain MURRAYasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware that, England being an infected and barred country, Scottish breeders who send their cattle into England to be tested cannot get them exported; and whether, in view of the fact that, so far as Scotland is concerned, the new testing station at Pirbright is in these circumstances useless, he will reconsider the proposal to establish a testing station for Scotland?
  Mr. HERBERT LEWIS: My right hon. Friend is aware that at present the testing station at Pirbright is of no advantage to Scottish breeders who wish to export stock to those countries, particularly Argentina, which are prohibiting the importation of animals from England in consequence of the recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease. But he hopes that the embargo will have been removed, in a much shorter time than would be required for the provision of a testing station in Scotland. Meanwhile the Pirbright station is on trial, and, moreover, in view of the difference of opinion which exists among Scottish breeders on this subject, he does not see his way, at present, to apply for a Grant from the Development Fund for a station in Scotland.
  Captain MURRAY: Will the right hon. Gentleman ascertain whether that difference of opinion still exists among Scottish breeders, and whether the objection which has been previously manifested towards this proposal still exists?
  Mr. HERBERT LEWIS: My right hon. Friend will be glad to make inquiries and to receive information on the subject.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. BONAR LAW: May I ask the Prime Minister what business will be taken next week?
The PRIME MINISTER: On Monday, as I stated yesterday, we shall take the Second Heading of the Established Church (Wales) Bill, which will be continued on Tuesday, when we hope to take the Division. Thereafter we shall take the Second Heading of the Army (Annual) Bill.
On Wednesday, the first Order will be the Committee stage of the Army (Annual) Bill; then we will take the Motion which

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I have undertaken to put down for a new Standing Order as to anticipatory Motions, and, if time permit, we shall take some of the smaller Orders on the Paper.
On Thursday, we shall put down Supply. I understand that the Stationery Office Vote and the Office of Works Vote will be taken.
Lord ROBERT CECIL: I do not know what is likely to take place on the Army (Annual) Bill in Committee, but does the right hon. Gentleman think that after that is taken will be a fair opportunity for the discussion of the new Standing Order? If he does insist on it, will he consider the desirability of suspending the Eleven o'clock Rule in respect of that discussion?
The PRIME MINISTER: The Army (Annual) Bill is not subject to that Rule. I have no reason to think it will occupy much time. I also hope that the discussion on Anticipatory Motions will not take much time, but, of course, I will undertake to see that the Motion gets adequate discussion.
Lord ROBERT CECIL: Will not the right hon. Gentleman consider the desirability of putting it down before the Army (Annual) Bill, which is not subject to the Eleven o'clock Rule?

CHILDREN (EMPLOYMENT AND SCHOOL ATTENDANCE) BILL.
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee A.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 190.]
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 190.]
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration upon Friday, 19th June, and to be printed. [Bill 190.]

GREY SEALS (PROTECTION) BILL.
Reported, without Amendment, from Standing Committee C.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 191.]
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 191.]
Bill, not amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration Tomorrow (Friday.)

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).
Sir DANIEL GODDARD reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee A: Mr. Harold Smith; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Sandys.
Report to lie upon the Table.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  SUPPLY.— [FIFTH ALLOTTED DAY.]

    CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1914–15.
    Considered in Committee.
    [Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

    LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, IRELAND.—Class II.)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £64,728, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1915, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Local Government Board, Ireland,
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    including sundry Grants-in-Aid."—[Note.—£45,000 has been voted on account.]
    Mr. CLANCY: On this Vote I propose to raise a question, which, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many others, including all my colleagues, is one of the most serious, vital, and urgent that can be brought before Parliament in relation to Ireland. The way in which this question arises on this Vote is well known to the Chief Secretary, and probably to other Members of the Committee. It arises out of the recent inquiry into the housing conditions in Ireland, and especially in Dublin, directed by the Chief Secretary, and the Report which that body has made. Before I go further, I must say that the contrast between the action of this Departmental Committee and that of a Royal Commission is rather striking, and is to the credit of the Departmental Committee. It is scarcely much more than three months ago since they began their inquiry, and they have already completed their work, whereas if the work had been given into the hands of a Royal Commission the work would scarcely have been commenced by this time. The work done is important. A good deal of valuable information has been gathered, and a good many suggestions have been made in the Report which will be very useful to us in the later stages of the discussion of this question.
    It is true that there is nothing that is very new in the Report of the Departmental Committee or in the evidence which they have taken. When the party to which I belong were tackling this question in 1908, we had to prepare a case for Parliament, as we were asking for State assistance towards housing in Ireland. In the course of our inquiries we discovered a most amazing and, indeed, a most appalling state of affairs. If I may be pardoned for quoting from a speech of my own, I might mention that I said in 1908, on the Second Reading of our Housing Bill of that year, that no fewer than 21,747 families out of nearly 60,000 families, or 36 per cent., were living in Dublin alone in one-room tenements. On further investigation we found that the one-room tenements in Dublin having five or more occupants were 8.69 per cent. of all the tenements, whereas the percentages for the leading towns in Great Britain were as follows: Manchester, 04; Liverpool, 22; London, 57; Edinburgh, 1.80; and Glasgow, 4.28. It will be seen from those figures that at that time the one-room

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    tenements in Dublin in which families of five or more persons lived were actually twice as numerous as in Glasgow, the next highest in the United Kingdom. We are not, therefore, surprised that the present state of things, as revealed by the Report of the Departmental Committee, should be found to exist, notwithstanding the fact that no small amount of work towards removing this scandal and blot on our civilisation has been done since the passing of the Act of 1908.
    There are still 20,108 families living in one-room tenements in Dublin—that is to say, of all the tenements in Dublin, 78 per cent. are lettings of one-room tenements. The mere statement of that fact and of those figures is enough to prove that something serious has to be remedied, and that Parliament ought not to delay applying a remedy. If anyone reads the Report of the Departmental Committee, and especially the evidence tendered before it, he will come to the conclusion—he cannot help coming to the conclusion—that the state of those tenements is an infinitely aggravating circumstance and that human beings ought not to be allowed to live there if they can possibly be accommodated elsewhere. Amongst other things I might mention, tuberculosis is bred in these places to an extent which is quite remarkable, and a very curious circumstance which is mentioned by the Departmental Committee proves that fact. Whenever the domestic servants in Dublin—who, of course, are all drawn from the poorer classes, and a great many of whose parents and families live in those tenement houses, whether in town or country, get into better dwellings as servants to the wealthier people, there is no more consumption amongst them than there is amongst their employers, and in fact the statement in the Report is that their health is better. It seems to me, and I think it must seem to every reasonable man, that all the efforts made to put an end to the ravages of this white scourge, as it has been called, are scarcely any use at all if you have at the same time in the same city in which tuberculosis is raging, these tenement homes and other dwellings which absolutely breed consumption.
    In the greater part of my remarks I shall refer chiefly to Dublin, but a great deal of what I have to say as regards Dublin is true also as regards other cities and towns of Ireland, and that is so stated in the Report of the Departmental Committee. But Dublin stands out in a particularly bad
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    light in regard to this matter. It has by far the largest number of one-room tenements in the whole of the United Kingdom, the next highest being Finsbury, and the third Glasgow. The allegation is that the Corporation of Dublin is in some way to blame for this state of things, and I listened with some amazement to two speeches made here about a fortnight ago in which not only charges were made against the Corporation of Dublin but against individuals of corruption;: whereas any impartial reader of this Report or of the evidence, reading it honestly and drawing an honest conclusion from it, cannot but be aware that there is not a particle of foundation for the charges against the corporation—charges suggested rather than expressed. Amongst the charges is one that the sanitary laws of Dublin are not strictly enforced. ["Hear, hear."] I hear cheers at that suggestion from a Gentleman who to my knowledge has never assisted Dublin or any part of Ireland to obtain better housing conditions. It is almost suggested that all the tenement houses, which are so much complained of, are practically owned by members of the Dublin Corporation. I think the figures disprove that allegation. The tenement houses of Dublin number over 5,500 altogether, of which only 73 are owned by 11 or 12 members of the corporation, and not all of these are bad. The Report suggests that the corporation is to blame. I desire to say, as the result of my own personal experience in the working out of the Act of 1908, under which several housing schemes have been promoted, as far as I can personally speak, the officials of the Local Government Board who have taken part in these inquiries have acted both with intelligence and with sympathy, and therefore it is with some regret that I find myself obliged to criticise this Report in some respects. Here is a suggestion on page 6:—
    "It is sufficient for us at this stage to say that, in our opinion, the third class tenement houses and the third class small houses, which have been stated by the sanitary staff to be unfit for human habitation, should, as a first step, be absolutely cleared away."
    Allegations on page 12:—
    "The fact that evidence was given at the inquiry showing that there are 1,518 tenement houses inhabited by 22,781 persons, and 1,289 small houses inhabited by 4,851 persons, and 20 lodging houses over which the corporation have licensing powers, and which are licensed to accommodate 434 persons, giving a total of only 28,000 persons living in houses stated by the corporation officers to be not fit for human habitation, would not, we think, require a very stringent application of the closing powers of the corporation."
    [Hear, hear.] Another cheer from the hon. Member for Dudley (Sir A Griffith-

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    Boscawen)—a place where I believe there are no slums. The first answer to be made to that suggestion, which is to the effect that the corporation should close all these houses, is this: The question may be asked in return, what have the medical inspectors of the Local Government Board been doing if it was the duty of the corporation to have cleared away these tenement houses? The truth is, that the inspectors of the Local Government Board whose duty it is to see to the performance of this duty by the corporation, have not neglected their duty, have always been in close touch with the corporation, and have refrained from asking the corporation to enforce their powers simply because they knew that the result of doing it would be to throw tens of thousands of people out on the streets. Some of them are men of common sense and recognise both the limits of possibility and the demands of humanity. One would imagine from this suggestion that the corporation have closed no tenement houses. The reverse is the fact. The dissentient Memorandum by Mr. MacCabe is to be found at page 30 of the Report. He says:—
    "I do not accept any statement which expresses or implies that the sanitary administration of the Dublin Corporation is, or has been defective, or that it is in any way responsible for the present housing conditions in Dublin. What the Corporation (during the short time it has had powers to act) has done is to reduce by thousands the number of tenement houses, compel the introduction of the water-carriage system of sewage, and reduce enormously the zymotic death-rate. What the corporation' has left undone is in my opinion; beyond its power to effect in practice. The tenement system is, as ray colleagues say, bad in itself, and, in my opinion, no sanitary regulation could do more than prevent the evil becoming absolutely intolerable."
    The Departmental Committee themselves, in fact, give this explanation, for they say in a paragraph at page 7 of the Report:—
    "We recognise, however, that at present it is necessary to proceed with caution, in order that no undue hardship may be inflicted on the inhabitants of these dwellings by eviction before other dwellings have been provided."
    I want to know whether even the hon. Member for Dudley would advocate the wholesale demolition of the 20,000 tenement houses in Dublin now?
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: No.
    Mr. CLANCY: Yet he blames the corporation for not doing it. They also make another suggestion which really I cannot understand at all. It is notorious that the whole population of Dublin has increased largely within the last ten or twenty years, and that it has been recruited from the labouring classes in the country. The
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    suggestion in this Report is one with which I entirely disagree, namely, that if the sanitary laws' had been more strictly en-forced those rural labourers would have' been prevented from coming into the city. I really do not see how they could have been prevented. If work was to be had within the city by an agricultural labourer, how could any sanitary regulation be made to prevent him from entering the city? What sanitary regulation will prevent him remaining in the city while work is to be had and his family has to be supported? I do not understand how it is to be done. It is said that the corporation ought to have compelled those owners to put their property into repair, or, in the alternative, ought to have put the property into repair themselves and recovered the cost from the owners. If anyone reads the evidence—the uncontradicted evidence—of the officers of the corporation who gave their testimony on this subject he will find that they are of a contrary opinion, and that the remedy would be absolutely useless, for the simple reason that most of those tenement houses are owned by poor people whose livelihood depends upon the rents they derive from the tenements. They believe that it would be absolutely impossible for the corporation to recover from those people the cost of demolition or the cost of repairing these houses.
    4.0 P.M.
    It is charged against the corporation of Dublin that somehow or other they ought to have tackled successfully this tenement-house problem, because in 1891 the population was only 245,000 and the inhabited houses only 25,764, whereas in 1911 the population was 265,649 and the inhabited houses 28,406—that is to say, in 1911 the population was greater by over 20,600 than in 1891 and the inhabited houses were only 2,600 more. Certainly it is difficult to see how the fact that twenty years ago the population was lower makes the solution of the problem more easy now when the difficulty is increased by the increased population, while there is no appreciable increase in the number of inhabited houses. I cannot make it out. Among the other ridiculous charges brought against the corporation is the high price paid for land. Those who make that charge do not seem to know the facts. Anybody who knows about that subject knows that the price of land for houses under the Housing of the Working Classes Act is not determined by any corporation, but that there is a tribunal for the purpose—an arbitrator—who acts upon the evidence before

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    him. I may mention a particular case to illustrate the extortionate price exacted, and in doing so it is not to find fault with the arbitrator, whom I myself believe to be a very fair and painstaking officer. What is the case? The Corporation of Dublin wanted a certain site for houses; they got an agent to go round and try what he could do to buy it as if he was buying it for him-self. It was owned by a company whose name I do not like to mention. The representative of the company said, "If you give us £100 we will let you have it." I may add that there was an agreement made which was found not to be binding, and the case accordingly came before the arbitrator. He heard the case. He heard the evidence of experts, and on the evidence given in that investigation the award for the property, which the owners were willing to sell by agreement for £100, was £2,000. No wonder that there should be complaints of high prices being paid for land in Dublin and elsewhere. But what I do beg the Committee to see is that the corporation are not responsible for these high prices. There are various other charges brought against the corporation, but I will not enter into them all. They are charged with not having acted on this and that enactment; with not having done this and that; and recommendations are actually made that certain provisions should be enacted by Parliament which were contained in certain Bills brought forward by them in this House and rejected either by this House or by the House of Lords.
    I pass by these charges against the corporation by saying this, that there is not a single charge brought against the corporation itself as a corporation which is substantiated by the slightest particle of evidence, and it is disgraceful that any Member of this House should take advantage of his position as a Member, and of his being immune from actions at law, to make charges of this kind in this House, and to make charges of corruption against individuals. If these charges are to be made against individuals, at least they ought to be made in the places in which these people live, so that they might have an opportunity of bringing the speaker to book. The most serious charge in the whole series brought against the corporation is that certain rebates of rates were made to four or five corporators. The law enables the corporation to make a rebate up to 33 per cent. on certain property
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    valued under £8 on the certificate of the medical officer of health that it is kept in fair condition, and that certain other conditions of the law are complied with. In this particular case there were five persons, members of the corporation, who got between them under £50 out of nearly £4,000 given in rebates. In regard to only three of these five persons does the Report venture to make any charge whatever. And finally, in regard to this question of rebate, the medical officer of health (Sir Charles Cameron)—it sounds like a Scotch name, but I believe that he claims to be an Irishman as well as a Scotsman; he is a Protestant, and he is a Unionist; he is a man of great experience, and a man of some courage, and I think an honest man—has deliberately told the Committee that he takes the whole responsibility of the question of these rebates on his own shoulders. In face of this, it is not right for anyone to get up in this House and charge the corporation with corruption in this matter, and do that also before the evidence was given upon which I now make my statement.
    I pass from these charges and come to what the corporation has done to house the people—for in this respect, also, one would think that nothing had been done. I wish to make this statement, and I challenge contradiction upon it. I have often heard in this country that necessity exists for a law compelling the local authorities to put in force these Housing Acts and other such Acts for the benefit of the people. There is no necessity to enact such a law for Ireland. There is not, at any rate outside a certain portion of Ulster, and there never was, any necessity to invoke the power of the Local Government Board to compel the local authorities to put the Labourers (Ireland) Acts into force. The difficulty was to restrain them. And many a scheme in the past, promoted by local authorities, has been nipped in the bud by the Local Government Board on one ground or another. And, might I mention also, that, so eager were some of the local authorities to house the labourers, that the limit of a shilling in the pound on the rates, to which they might have gone under the law previous to the Act of 1906, was, at their own request and at the request of the Irish Nationalist Members, raised to 1s. 3d., and even that figure has now been reached in the case of several of the counties. I think that the same thing is true, broadly speaking, of the urban local authorities

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    now. I think that they have all shown a willingness to avail themselves of all the powers at their disposal. There is no doubt whatever about that, because that is admitted in the Report of this Departmental Committee. At page 14, paragraph 34, they say:—
    "The finance of their operations is dealt with later"—
    that is the corporation, this much-abused body—
    "and it is with pleasure that we state that they appear from the very beginning to have taken advantage of the powers given to them in this regard, and it must not be forgotten that the Acts before 1890 placed a rating limitation on their borrowing and rating powers for this purpose."
    They give particulars as to the work they have actually done in this matter—
    "The corporation have provided 1,385 dwellings and lodging-house accommodation for in all about 7,600 people, or in other words they have housed 2.5 per cent. of the population, and it was claimed on their behalf that they have done more for the housing of the working classes than any other city in the United Kingdom. Other schemes, namely, Lisburn and Lurgan Streets, Trinity Ward; Beresford and Church Streets and Ormond Market, under which it is proposed to provide accommodation for 2,025 persons are passed and intended to be shortly put into operation. The corporation have also under consideration schemes for providing further accommodation for 6,480 persons. Up to last year, the business of the corporation under the Housing Acts was carried out by a committee of the corporation called the improvements committee, but early last year a special housing committee was formed and we think that the evidence clearly indicates that this step on the part of the corporation was a correct one, as much greater activity has since prevailed."
    I repeat, in the words of this Report, that the Corporation of Dublin has from the very beginning displayed the utmost willingness to take advantage of all the powers under the Housing of Working Classes Acts, and I say that the same thing is true of all the urban authorities in Ireland. They have, after all, both in Dublin and elsewhere, touched but the fringe of this great problem. What is the reason? I think it must be admitted that the reason is to be found in the poverty of the towns, in the high rates of the towns, and in the unwillingness of Parliament to give any assistance in the matter to these towns; and anybody who takes all these circumstances into account, must admit that the towns in Ireland, and especially in the city of Dublin, have gone as far as they possibly could with any regard whatever to the rate-paying powers of the community. This is clearly proved, I think, by the figures relating to the working of the Housing Acts before 1908, and to what has been done under the Act of 1908 up to the end of the last financial year. I find that in the forty years before 1908, since 1866,
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    when the first of these Housing Acts was passed, only 4,650 families and a thousand persons besides, had been provided for, and that at a cost of £830,000. What has taken place since the Act of 1908 gave them cheaper money and aided them with a little grant? The Bill of 1908 was cut down. It was deprived of its principal financial provisions by this House, Nevertheless the Act has produced the following results. I give the latest figures which have been kindly supplied to me by the Local Government Board, for they have not been yet published. From 1890 to 1908, in eighteen years, there were loans to the extent of £853,354 sanctioned for housing purposes in Ireland. In the six years that have elapsed since the passing of the Act of 1908, loans to the extent of £763,273 have been sanctioned. I think it will be admitted that those figures show that the Act of 1908, although insufficient for the purpose—no one knows that better than myself—has at least had a most stimulating effect upon all the municipalities in Ireland where housing accommodation for the working classes is required.
    There was a novelty introduced into the Act of 1908 in the shape of the Irish Housing Fund. I am not aware that any similar fund has been established for England or Scotland, and I should like to mention to the Committee the result of the working of that fund. The fund was altogether only about £160,000. We had every penny from the Suitors' Fund. Not a single penny was subscribed by this country to that fund; it was all obtained from the Suitors' funds in Dublin. I am bound to acknowledge on the present occasion that we owe that fund practically to one man, in addition to the Chief Secretary who helped in the matter—the late Lord Chancellor Walker, who liberated the Suitors' Fund in Chancery to that extent. At present that produces an annual income of £6,500 a year. For the first three years it paid 100 per cent. of the housing charge, and in that three years the local authorities had all the rents in addition as profit. In the fourth year it paid 86 per cent. of the annual housing charge; and in the fifth year ending the 31st March last, it paid 36 per cent. of the housing charge. It is a small transaction, but I think it is a very creditable one. The burden of it all is that this is a big question, a question not for a municipality but for the State. Were it not that I do not like to take up the time of the House, I might quote a passage, a very strong passage from the Report of the Depart-

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    mental Committee, in which they take up a very decided stand, and discuss the question whether or not, from an economic, strictly economic point of view, private enterprise ought to be left to do this work, or whether the State should come to the rescue. They have come to the conclusion, and expressed it, that up to a short time since private enterprise might have been expected to do it, but that it can now no longer be expected to do so.
    I remember very well that in 1008, when we were endeavouring to get some provisions inserted in the Bill of that year, in order to encourage private enterprise, the things we proposed were summarily dismissed by the House of Lords as an effort at national knavery or something of that kind; yet those things which we proposed in 1908 are some of the very things now recommended by this Government Department. The Committee wound up with the conclusion that there is nothing for it but State aid, especially as the State has recently admitted it in the case of England itself. Let me say that in addition to the rest of Ireland, something is due from this Parliament, to Dublin especially. Dublin was a flourishing city at the time of the Union. The very houses that are now tenement houses, and which are a disgrace to and a blot upon the escutcheon of the city, a source of disease, and to some extent of crime, were the houses of the aristocracy and the gentry of Ireland. You passed the Act of Union, and the gentry and the aristocracy, like the unpatriotic people they have been, followed in the wake of the Parliament to London. You deprived Dublin, at one stroke, of the source of its prosperity; and your fiscal policy, in various stages of it and in various forms, has helped to bring ruin to that city. I ask the Chief Secretary, or rather I do not appeal to him because he is sympathetic, but I ask British Members on both sides, to say whether or not under these circumstances Dublin is not entitled to special consideration in this matter? All I can say is that, in my opinion, there is nothing for it except State assistance on a generous scale, and I hope the coming Housing Bill of the Government will afford them an opportunity—if there are no other opportunities—to redeem the promise made by the Chief Secretary to deputations in Dublin last November, that such State assistance would be forthcoming.
    I do not like using this opportunity, which should be regarded as a non-party occasion, for party purposes, but I cannot
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    help alluding to one circumstance, and I hope the Committee will not think I have violated the canon which I laid down for myself when I do so: Two British Members, Unionist Members, who spoke here about a fortnight or three weeks ago, brought politics into this question, dragged them in by the neck and heels. They did it before the evidence was forthcoming. They contrasted, forsooth, the state of things in Dublin with the state of things in Belfast. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] There you have it again. But what is the case? I do not like bringing in this matter, but it would be unjust to Dublin if I did not do so. Belfast is a modern city in comparison with Dublin—a completely modern city. It was a village almost about sixty or seventy years ago, and in about twenty or thirty years—the history of the matter is this—Belfast was over-built, and over jerry-built. Every working man had his house as the result of private enterprise, and Belfast was not burdened with the disadvantages of Dublin. It had not an Orange Corporation that had plundered the city for 150 years. They plundered the city of Dublin so much that, on the passing of the Reform Act of 1840, Mr. O'Connell, the first Liberal or Nationalist Lord Mayor, had to redeem the very insignia of the mayoralty from the pawn office, where they had been deposited by the loyal Orange Corporation that immediately preceded the reformed corporation.
    Belfast had not to carry out what the loyal Orange Corporation of Dublin had left undone. It had not to carry out a great water scheme, the best now, I believe, in the whole three Kingdoms. It had not to carry out a main drainage scheme, already one of the most perfect in the three Kingdoms. It had not to carry out a reconstruction of the streets, which cost an exceedingly large sum of money. It had not to do all these things, and because it had not, forsooth, it was able to do, it is supposed, that which Dublin wickedly, and neglectful of the interests of the workingman, had left undone. But is it all well even with Belfast? I do not suppose the hon. Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) knew about it; but until 1910, despite protests from many inhabitants in Belfast, they never took a step to enforce the Housing of the Working Classes Act until 1910. But then public opinion began to be aroused, and, notwithstanding the beautiful condition of Belfast and the splendid state of the housing of the work-

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    ing classes there, they had to ask last year for a sum of £160,000 to wipe out the slums of Belfast. And last year they benefited, I may add to the extent of £1,200 from the Housing Fund, which I should have thought it was above their dignity and self respect to touch. We are not afraid of any comparison that may be made between Dublin and Belfast. I did not rise to make a political speech, but I thought it right to defend Dublin, and I felt I could not defend Dublin without disputing this contrast between Dublin and Belfast, which has been brought to the notice of this House, and brought too before the evidence was produced on which it was supposed to be founded. I hope it is not necessary to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to make a definite pronouncement to-day, that something will be done at an early date to remove this blot upon Dublin and upon Ireland.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £100.
    The hon. Member who has just sat down appears to be very annoyed because a few weeks ago my Noble Friend and myself called attention to this question on the Adjournment Motion. He has made sundry remarks about me and my lack of interest in the Irish housing question. I would only remark, in reply, that I, personally, have voted for every one of the Irish Labourers Acts brought forward in this House. I want to reply to him personally, because I think that he has always taken a great interest in the housing question, and I simply ask him to believe that some of us on this side have done the same. But when the hon. Member attempts to defend the Corporation of Dublin at the present moment in regard to housing, I think he is taking on a rather bigger job than he can carry through. All the circumstances are fully revealed in the Report and in the evidence which was given. The hon. Member admitted that there is nothing in the Report that he did not know before, and, if they did know before, what a sweeping condemnation it is of the corporation which permitted this state of affairs and of the Local Government Board in not having taken steps to compel the corporation to do their duty before! The hon. Member referred to the Report, which is, I suppose, based on the evidence, and I will quote one or two passages from that evidence. Mr. Richard Pilkington, who was a member of the Dublin Citizens' Association for many years, and who knew a great deal
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    about the management of house property in Dublin, said the tenement property in Dublin was the worst that could be found in any civilised country. Miss Harrison, in her evidence, stated that according to the last Census there were 118,000 people badly housed in Dublin, against 104,000 under the previous Census.
    That does not speak much for the work which the hon. Member says the Dublin Corporation have been doing, because in the meantime there are 14,000 more people badly housed than there were ten years earlier. Miss Harrison produced a report which showed that there were 12,000 people living four in one room; 11,000, five in one room; 8,000, six in one room; 5,000, seven in one room; 3,000, eight in one room; 1,000 living nine in one room; 450 living ten in one room; 176 living eleven in one room; and 60 living twelve in one room. That is not a very creditable state of affairs for the Dublin Corporation or the Irish Local Government Board. I will take-another witness, as the hon. Member likes evidence. Alderman Sir Joseph Downes said that he knew a tenement house not far from the General Post Office in which 88 people lived, and that there was also a house in Henrietta Street where 87 people lived. The Rev. P. J. Monohan, a priest working in the district, stated that No. 10. Francis Street was a house which demanded attention. He pointed out that there were really two houses, No. 10 front and No. 10 back, and in that combination of two houses there were 107 human beings. He proceeded to show that the sanitary arrangements were totally inadequate. That is the state of affairs revealed by the evidence, and by the Report, and the hon. Member gets up and says that the Dublin Corporation have-done their duty! Does he really say that, having regard to the statements made in the Report? On page 12 of the Report there is the following:—
    "The plea of the corporation in regard to the in-sufficiency of their powers would have considerably more force were it supported by evidence of a rigid administration of existing powers."
    Mr. BRADY: Would the hon. and gallant Member read the next paragraph?
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: The next paragraph is as follows:—
    "The facts, however, would go to show that Sir Charles Cameron (the principal medical officer) has taken upon himself a dispensing power in regard to the closet accommodation."
    The Report goes on to state:—
    "The condition of the tenement houses at our inspection would, we think, apart from the evidence of many

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    witnesses at the inquiry, justify us in coming to the conclusion that the owners were not stringently compelled"—
    that is, by the corporation—
    "to keep them in a clean and sanitary condition."
    They go on to point out that in other ways the corporation have not done their duty. They point out that the corporation did not make use of their closing powers and did not keep a register of tenement houses, although they were compelled to do so by their own private Act. They dispensed with the sanitary accommodation said to be necessary by their by-law, and they did not compel owners to keep their tenements in a clean and proper condition. On the next page the Report goes on to state that the conditions were due to some extent to the failure of the corporation to enforce the sanitary laws, and that want of inspection, which is the fault of the corporation, has caused excessive rents for houses not fit for human habitation. They continue:
    "Further, it would seem to us that the want of a firm administration has created a number of owners with but little sense of their responsibilities as landlords, and that it has helped much in the demoralisation of a number of the working classes."
    They proceed to remark, and this, I think, is the most important thing of all, when the hon. Member has complained that private enterprise has been killed, which is perfectly true:—
    "The provision of decent houses by private enterprise has been handicapped by the unfair competition of insanitary dwellings."
    How on earth can the hon. Member contend, after all those paragraphs on pages 12 and 13 of the Report, that the corporation have done their duty? Turning from their duties as regards the inspecting and closing of houses, and making owners carry out proper regulations, the hon. Member tells us what they have done in the way of building houses. I quite admit that they have done something in the way of building, but if he will look at the Report he will find that what they have done does not get commendation of the gentlemen who held this inquiry. On the very next page of the Report there is the following:
    "So far as we have been able to form an opinion on the work accomplished or in contemplation, we think that the schemes are incomplete and too scattered."
    They say, further, that the maintenance charge is abnormally high. Here is a very curious thing, and how does the hon. Member account for it? The average charge for maintenance per tenant in Dublin in the houses erected by the Dublin Corporation is £2 14s. 3d., while it is only £1 15s. 4d. in Liverpool. That is a thing worth looking into. Let me turn again to
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    the evidence, of which the hon. Member is so fond. Mr. O'Brien, vice-president of the Dublin Trades Council, said that the corporation possessed powers to build on the outskirts of the city. Of course that is much the best way to do it, but, he said, they preferred to buy out slum property at £1,000 per acre, in order to enrich slum owners. I do not think, even if we look at the amount of building they have done, and putting aside the utter inadequacy of their inspection, and of their closing orders, that we can come to the conclusion that they have done it well. On the contrary, they appear to have made every mistake that a corporation could make. I pass to more serious things. We have evidence that the reason why these things, and this appalling state of affairs has prevailed, has been the political character of the corporation. We have got that set out very clearly in the evidence of Mr. Pilkington, from whom I have already quoted. He said the state of affairs in Dublin was due to the absolutely uneconomic way in which Dublin was managed. He did not mean to attack the corporation, and he added:—
    "I think they are the very best corporation we could get, taking into consideration the political way in which the corporation are elected."
    Mr. FARRELL: That is your point.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: That is the evidence. Let me give a little more evidence. The Rev. Wm. Farrell, a Roman Catholic curate, said:—
    "The slum vote keeps the city in the slavery and servitude of slumdom. It is an old fact that contests in the city for municipal honours are decided chiefly by slum votes, and this on account of the abstention of the more respectable and educated voters.… For, by means of these votes, they can ride into the Corporation on the crest of whatever ism, be it Hibernianism, Sinn, Feinnism, Larkinism, etc. that appeals to the passions of the unthinking at the moment."
    I say, due to the fact that the corporation has been elected by slum voters has played up to slum owners, and because many members of the corporation are owners of slum property, this state of affairs has been allowed to go on.
    Mr. BRADY: Is there any finding in the Report to justify that?
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: Yes, I think there is. If the hon. Member will look at page 13, he will find that altogether fourteen members of the corporation own slum property. The names of three of them I will mention, because they are mentioned in the Report. The hon. Member was very angry with me because he said I

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    mentioned names on a previous occasion. What I did was to quote from the Report, and I do so again. On page 13 it is stated that three gentlemen, Alderman O'Reilly, Alderman Corrigan, and Councillor Crozier, are the owners of dwellings unfit for human habitation. That is not all. They received rebates in the rates of the city in respect of this property. It is all very well to say that Sir Charles Cameron did, as I believe he did most gallantly, take the blame upon himself, but he is the officer of the corporation, and they cannot escape responsibility by making him the scapegoat. The fact is that three members of the corporation, in respect of property not fit for human habitation, accepted a rebate on the rates in contradiction to the very conditions that were laid down for the rebate. The case of one of them, I think Alderman Corrigan mentioned on page 13 of the Report, is exceptionally bad. The Report states:—
    "In two instances, affecting twelve dwellings, belonging to Alderman Corrigan, the property was certified by the sanitary sub-officer as not fit for a rebate, but was subsequently passed as fit on the authority of Sir Charles Cameron."
    The Report goes on to state that the reason they were not fit for a rebate was because the drains were not trapped. Alderman Corrigan did nothing to the drains, but he accepted the rebate. I believe that is a state of affairs positively scandalous, and I do not see how the hon. Member or any other hon. Member can get up and defend it. The hon. Member also was very angry with me because he said I instituted for political purposes a contrast with Belfast. The contrast with Belfast is made in the Report, and it is a very remarkable one. There is a complete difference of recent history in the two cities. After all, the present conditions of housing are chiefly due to recent history, and in Belfast you have had for a great many years a corporation of Unionists, and in Dublin you have had an almost exclusively Nationalist body. Let me take the comparison, and it is a very remarkable one, because it shows that whereas housing in Dublin is the worst of all the big cities in the United Kingdom, housing in Belfast is about the best. I will refer to two tables given in the Report, and first of all to the number of tenements of one room per thousand total tenements in the principal cities of the United Kingdom. In Dublin there are 339 single tenements per thousand, which is a very high figure, and
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    in Glasgow 200, London 134, Edinburgh 94, Liverpool 54, Manchester 18, Birmingham 10, and in Belfast only 6. Everybody who knows anything about housing knows that the single-room tenement is the greatest abomination and source of crime—
    Mr. J. SAMUEL: Read the next paragraph.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: I am going to do so, but the hon. Member is in such a hurry. In the case of Belfast the figure is lowest, while the other cities are in different order. We will take the next paragraph, and the number of persons per thousand of population living in tenements of one room in the different cities. In Dublin you have 229 persons per thousand people living in single-room tenements; in Glasgow, 132; in London, fifty-nine; in Edinburgh, fifty-six; in Liverpool, twenty-three; in Manchester, seven; in Birmingham, four; and in Belfast, three. No man looking at those figures can come to any other conclusion than that the housing affairs of Belfast have been very well managed, while those of Dublin have been indescribably badly managed. I will supplement these figures by others taken from the last Census Return. According to that Return, the population of Dublin was 304,000 and that of Belfast 386,000. Take the number of people living three or more in one room—that is a pretty good test of the housing condition. If you get three people living in one room it is obviously a case of over-crowding, and if there are more than three it is bad overcrowding. In Belfast only 530 out of the whole population live three or more in one room. In Dublin the number under similar conditions is 55,654. It is all very well to explain that Belfast is a comparatively new city and Dublin is an old city, but you cannot explain that extraordinary contrast merely by that statement. You can only explain it by saying, in the words of the Report, that the corporation have not been properly using the powers they possess, but have allowed this state of affairs to go on getting worse and worse until the scandal was so bad that the Chief Secretary was compelled to appoint a Commission to inquire into it and expose it to the whole world.
    We may well ask what is to be done. I quite agree that you cannot close all these houses right away without making provision for rehousing the people. The

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    Report recommends, if I remember aright, that 14,000 families should be displaced, and 14,000 new self-contained cottages erected to receive them. But if you did that right away without State aid, you would impose an enormous burden upon the rates. The economic rent would be roughly 5s. 5½d., allowing for the repayment of capital, the payment of interest on the money borrowed, and so forth. The most that these poor people could be expected to pay would be 3s. 7d., and the result would be a loss of 1s. 10½d. a week to the ratepayer. I quite agree that that cannot be done. The Report, therefore, confirming practically the view that housing reformers on this side of the House have taken, in contradistinction to the view taken by hon. Members opposite—
    Mr. PRINGLE: Why can they pay only 3s. 7d.?
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: That is the figure taken from the Report. The Report says that having regard to the wages they receive they could not be expected to pay more than 3s. 7d. a week. What is the proposition? That these people are to be immediately turned out and new dwellings erected for them. Unless you are going by a wonderful stroke of the pen to raise their wages at once by at least 2s. a week, they could not pay the economic rent of the new houses to be erected for them.
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: Mr. Larkin raised wages by 6s.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: If the hon. Member, who I know is very powerful, could manage by a single speech or by a stroke of the pen to raise wages by 5s. or 6s. a week all over Dublin, I have no doubt that he would solve the housing question there, and he might be able to solve it in other places also. Still, we have to take facts as we find them. I am dealing with the Report, which says that these people could not pay on the average more than 3s. 7d. a week, and the economic rent would be 5s. 5½d. What does the Report recommend? Just as we on this side have asked for State aid in this country for the purpose of rehousing people when turned out of the slums at a rent that they can afford to pay, so the Report asks for a similar condition of things to prevail in Ireland. I can only hope that when Unionist housing Bills are brought forward in this House they will
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    have the general support of the Irish Nationalists. Undoubtedly the Government will have to proceed step by step in the matter, but I think we have a right to ask what the Local Government Board are going to do. Are they going to give a Grant-in-Aid? Are they going to compel the corporation to use its powers? Are they going to impose any penalties on those members of the corporation who have been accepting a rebate? Are they going to make them repay the rebate, which they ought never to have had? We certainly want to know what is the position of the Government in the matter. In the meantime I think we are amply justified in drawing attention to this condition of affairs, which I think is one of the most disgraceful ever brought forward in the House of Commons or revealed to the country. I do not think we can accept the explanation given by the hon. Member in his attempt to whitewash the Corporation of Dublin. In order to call attention to this matter, I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £100.
    Mr. BRADY: As far as the closing remarks of the hon. Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) are concerned, I think I am in complete agreement with them. It is a pity, as he is so very anxious to befriend Ireland in the matter of housing, that in the Bill with which he was associated last year and in the Bill this year, which was practically his Bill, Ireland was not included.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: I was quite willing to include Ireland if the Irish Members wished it.
    Mr. BRADY: As far as I am aware, the hon. Member did not take any steps to ascertain whether the Irish Members were willing to be included or not. Speaking as the Member for one of the Divisions of Dublin, I do not regret that this Vote has given us an opportunity of discussing the Dublin Housing Report. I am profoundly gratified that the opportunity has arisen, because, like my colleague, the hon. Member for North Dublin (Mr. Clancy), I do not want to run away from anything in that Report. There is no reason why we should be ashamed of any finding in the Report so far as it affects the Corporation of Dublin. I listened very attentively to the speech of the hon. Member, and there is a great deal of common ground between us on this question. Nobody can claim that the housing conditions, as they obtain to-day in Dublin, are as they should be.

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    Anyone who has read the Report must be absolutely driven to the conclusion that they leave a great deal to be desired. Nobody is better qualified to deal with the question of Dublin housing than my hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Clancy), who has made this question, particularly in regard to the city of Dublin, almost the study of his political life, and his name, in Ireland at any rate, will be imperishably associated with the beneficent Act popularly known as the Clancy Act, which has done so much to better the housing conditions of the working classes in the city of Dublin and throughout Ireland. It would, however, be folly to deny that the housing conditions under which a large proportion of the workers of Dublin live are wretched beyond expression. I make a present of that admission to the hon. and gallant Member. I have no intention of wearying the Committee with the figures contained in the Report. I simply make one quotation from them for the purpose of showing that this common ground in regard to the housing evil exists amongst all sections of the House. The Report finds that there are 25,822 families, consisting of 87,305 persons, living in wretched tenements in the city of Dublin. Of that number 20,108 families occupy one-room tenements. Taking the population of Dublin at 304,802, we find one-fourth of the dwellers occupying tenement houses in which, according to the Report, the conditions of life are both physically and morally bad. There is urgent necessity for reform, which, the Report goes on to state, must have as its object the complete breaking up of the tenement system as it exists.
    5.0 P.M.
    This evil is not a matter of to-day or yesterday. To hear the hon. and gallant Gentleman, or the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord R. Cecil), who spoke on this subject a few days ago, one would think that the housing question in Dublin was the special creation of the Nationalist corporation. I say that it is nothing of the kind, and I hope to prove that before I sit down. The Noble Lord—I hope he will forgive me for saying it—when this question was raised a short time ago, used very bitter words against the Nationalist corporation. He did not hesitate to attribute to them a deplorable state of things, and proceeded to found upon it the inevitable argument against Home Rule. Because there are slums in Dublin you are not to have Home
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    Rule! That is what it came to. I hope I am not using extravagant language when I say that this is nothing less than an audacious attempt to import political prejudice into the consideration of an evil in the settlement of which politics should not enter at all. If ever there was a subject to engage the attention of this Committee into which politics should not enter, it is the subject now under consideration. I have suggested that the housing question in Dublin is not a matter of to-day or yesterday. Commission after Commission has reported and urged a settlement of this problem. I gladly admit that more than one of those Commissions were set up by Conservative Governments, but as usual—and perhaps this is not peculiar to Conservative Governments—the Reports of those Commissions were promptly pigeon-holed and nothing whatever was done. In 1879, 1880, and 1900 Commissions were held from which representations were made to deal with this slum problem in Dublin. In season and out of season the Corporation of Dublin has pressed this question to the front, and has done everything in its power to grapple with the problem. That is a pretty bold statement to make, but I will give figures to prove it. In the last thirty years—and I may tell the Committee that I am now quoting official figures supplied to me by the City Treasurer of Dublin—the Corporations of Dublin have spent £361,700 in building artisans" dwellings to a total number of about 1,800. That is work actually accomplished. At the present time they have schemes in varying degrees of progress—again I am quoting official figures—involving an expenditure of £469,250 to provide, when the schemes are completed, 2,000 dwellings for the working classes in Dublin. As my hon. Friend has pointed out the Corporation of Dublin would have done far more than they have done if their financial resources had permitted. As the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) pointed out—and here is another point of common agreement between us—if the Corporation of Dublin were to carry out such a scheme of housing to-day as would adequately house all those who are inadequately housed the ratepayers of Dublin would be swamped.
    As I listened, Mr. Whitley, to the attack on the Corporation this afternoon, an attack which I do not hesitate to call both unfair and unjust, I could not help thinking of the treatment they received at the

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    hands of the party whose spokesman has attacked them here this afternoon. At the time—I think this is precisely revelant to the point we are discussing, namely, the efforts of the corporation to deal with the housing question—the Corporation of Dublin came to this House and sought powers to enable them to deal with this problem as alone it could be dealt with, what happened? The corporation promoted a Bill for the purpose of increasing their rating capacity. That Bill passed all its stages in this House by large majorities. The Bill went to "another place"—as it is euphoniously called—and again it passed its Second Beading without a Division. I refer to the 1899 Bill. After a long and expensive hearing before the Committee in "another place," the Bill—I will not say was entirely thrown out—was eviscerated by the casting vote of the Chairman of the Committee, the Duke of Northumberland. Then we are told that the Nationalist corporation has not done everything it ought, or could, to remedy the evil! When the Bill, to which I am alluding, came down to this House, with the Lords Amendments, the hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for the University of Dublin—I am sorry for the reason that keeps the hon. and learned Gentleman away to-day—and his then Leader, the late Colonel Saunderson, in the Debates used these words:—
    "We do not like the Corporation of the City of Dubliu because it is Nationalist. We do not like the idea of our affairs being dealt with by this Nationalist body."
    What was this Nationalist body doing? They came over here for the purpose of getting powers to enable them to deal with the slum problem in Dublin, and that was the way they were treated by the Conservative party! I would like to dwell upon that experience for the moment, if I may, and quote from a speech made by my hon. and learned Friend in that very Debate, which took place on the consideration of the Lords Amendment. Referring to the opponents of the Bill, the hon. and learned Gentleman said:—
    "These people know well that a great part if not most of the misery, and drunkenness, and demoralisation that exist in the City of Dublin, as in all great cities, more or less, is produced by the terrible condition of the houses in which the majority of the poor people live."
    Here, as I have said, was a courageous attempt on the part of the corporation to deal with this evil. I say without fear of contradiction, not even the contradiction of my hon. and gallant Friend—if I may call him so—the Member for Dudley, it
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    was deliberately frustrated for political motives by the Conservative party. Let me say a word or two about the statements in the Report criticising the corporation for not enforcing sanitary laws. Let me assure the Committee that I have no desire to gloss over the things that are in the Report. Some of them, to use a well-known phrase, are dead against us. I say that a little examination, not only of the Report, but of the evidence upon which the Report is founded, will go far to substantiate the case which I am trying to make before the Committee—that in all the circumstances it really is not the fault of the corporation. An impartial study of the evidence will satisfy any reasonable person that the corporation are not to blame. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has laid great emphasis on the question of the rebates of those members of the corporation who happen to own tenement property.
    I have the authority of the Lord Mayor of Dublin for stating that none of the details of these cases ever came before any committee of the corporation. The recommendations come once a year before the finance committee—that is the financial recommendations involved in these rebates—and are certified by Sir Charles Cameron, the principal medical officer, and they are, as a matter of course, adopted by the committee. It was sworn in evidence during the inquiry that in any case where the corporation did not fully utilise its own by-laws it was the outcome of the deliberate advice tendered by Sir Charles Cameron. He swears this himself in his evidence, which is to be found in the volume of evidence on which the Report is founded. He takes in the frankest and fullest manner the responsibility. As a matter of fact I am informed that in some cases the subordinate sanitary officers reported that in these particular cases the rebates were not earned; that these tenement owners were not entitled to the rebate, whether members of the corporation or otherwise. Sir Charles Cameron made a personal examination of the houses, and in his evidence he swears that he was satisfied as to the giving of the rebate. I do not gather that the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggests that there was any back-door influence, or any influence of any kind, to induce the corporation's principal medical officer to report as he did—much more the corporation! In any case, there would be no foundation for any such idea. I would remind hon. Gentlemen

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    above the Gangway that when they are trying to make a great Nationalist scandal of this matter—because really the impression made on my mind as I listened to the hon. and gallant Gentleman was that he thought that he had discovered a great Nationalist scandal—that they are not in any way damnifying the corporation as a corporation: they are really aspersing the character of one of the most efficient medical officers in the Kingdom.
    Those of us who have the privilege of the personal acquaintance of Sir Charles Cameron know that he is one of the most capable medical officers in the Kingdom. Hon. Gentlemen opposite will be gratified to know that he hails from beyond the Tweed. In politics he is and always has been a Unionist. His religion is different from the majority of Irishmen. I emphasise these differences of opinion for the moment, and I do not think I should be misunderstood when I say that here is an officer who for upwards of fifty years has enjoyed the unquestioned confidence of the Nationalist Corporation of Dublin that a few years ago conferred upon him the highest honour in their power, the freedom of the city for which he has done so much. Sir Charles Cameron, as has been pointed out, takes upon himself, as the Report states, the fullest responsibility for any departure from the strict letter of the by-laws. I recognise that the hon. and gallant Gentleman takes a very deep and genuine interest in the question of housing, not alone in this House, but elsewhere, and on the London County Council before he came here. I am sure he will agree with me that however anxious a man may be to carry out sanitary reforms that it is almost impossible in every case strictly to carry out the requirements of the law. If, for instance, there was an absolutely strict enforcement of the law in Dublin it would produce a worse evil than that which already exists. If all the houses in Dublin unfit for habitation were closed to-morrow more than one-fourth of the population would be in the streets. That is a very humiliating admission to have to make, but it is none the less true! Is the corporation to be accused of maladministration because it does not close every house which is at this moment capable of being closed for human habitation?
    Here again let me quote: 12,000 houses have been closed by legal proceedings on the part of the corporation because they
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    were not fit for human habitation. Last year over 7,000 sanitary notices were served in Dublin and over 13,000 summonses obtained in Court against defaulting landlords. The point I am endeavouring to make, Mr. Maclean, is that, however anxious a local authority may be to exercise to the full their sanitary powers under the various Public Health Acts, it is not practical politics until other provision is made in the matter of dwellings for these people who are to be disturbed. Let me give the Committee an illustration of that point, drawn from experience on this side of the Channel. I was looking quite recently into the circumstances of a certain town in England. I will quote from the report of the medical officer of health for the district. He says:—
    "The housing question is attended with peculiar difficulties. A very large proportion of the town consists of small cottages originally bad in construction and design. Many of them grouped in narrow streets and courts without any sort of orderly method or arrangement. Much of the brickwork is very old and saturated with damp and filth. The dwellings are frequently defective in lighting and ventilation. The adjoining yard surface is often unpaved and ill-drained. Roofs are often defective in these old properties."
    The Report goes on:—
    "There is a class numerically large who earn very low wages and who are quite unable to pay a rent of 5s. weekly. Their limit is 2s. to 3s. (id. Many people of this class are living in houses which are neithersanitary nor pleasant."
    Finally, the Report concludes:—
    "It is certainly a standing reproach of this town that within a few yards of our main streets there is so much badly-constructed old property and insanitary buildings which are objectionable in appearance, unhealthy as dwelling-places, and depressing because of the way in which they perpetuate the evils of slum existence."
    If any hon. Member of the Committee would like to know the name of that town it is the town of Dudley. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] But I do not want to emphasise that point unduly. I am using it as an argument.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: Hear, hear.
    Mr. BRADY: The hon. and gallant Gentleman may laugh, but here is a report of the medical officer. He finds that slums even in Dudley are rampant. I recognise that Dudley, like Dublin, is confronted with the practical impossibility of dealing with this matter in twenty-four hours.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: What is the date of that Report?
    Mr. BRADY: The date is the 31st December, 1911. It is the latest Report I was able to obtain. Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will tell us if anything

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    has been done since. I am giving my personal experience. I do not know whether the hon. and gallant Member has ever paid a visit to Dublin. I was lucky enough to find myself in Dudley on one occasion, in connection with political matters, and I did not certainly find it the most salubrious town in England.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: What is the death-rate?
    Mr. BRADY: I cannot tell off-hand. The conditions in Dudley and in Dublin are of course very different. I know that two constructions may be put upon that; but the Committee understands the sense in which I use it. I only use the comparison to show that what is true in Dublin is true also in Dudley and in many other towns. We are all anxious to deal with this problem of housing, but it cannot be dealt with in a year or two or ten years, at any rate by the local authorities. Before I sit down I want to indicate very briefly what, in my judgment, is the root and cause of the terrible conditions existing in Dublin to-day, and which I have no desire to minimise. I place in the foreground the gradual influx into Dublin of labourers and people generally from the country, who take up their abodes in the large tenement houses which my hon. and learned Friend has described, and which were built originally for wealthy citizens. The Report itself recognises this, and the Commissioners say:—
    "We are aware of the tendency of the rural imputation to come into the citizens area."
    Here again we are on common ground. Hon. Members in this House are only too familiar with that, but unfortunately the difficulty in Dublin is that there are not industries to enable those migrants to live when they come up from the country. The Commissioners deplore the fact that firmer administration was not exercised by the corporation which would result in rural labourers not coming into the city. I was much struck with that, and it is beyond my comprehension to understand what powers the Dublin Corporation have to prevent rural migration into the city. As a matter of fact, the Irish Local Government Board are largely to blame for a considerable portion of this migration, because I find, and here I am speaking on the authority of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, that the Irish Local Government Board for years refused to allow the corporation to employ only local labour upon its contract jobs, and thereby opened the door for increased migration. Dublin
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    naturally experiences what every other city in this country has suffered from—namely, excessive migration from the country to the town—but, unfortunately,. Dublin has fallen, as my hon. and learned Friend has said, from the high place in the industrial world which it occupied before the Union, when her prosperity was such as to warrant the late Mr. Lecky in describing her as the second city of the Empire. Would hon. Members be surprised to hear that even in 1810, ten years after the Union, there were still 2,500 looms at work in the city for the-manufacture of silk and poplin, and fifty-five cotton factories, engaging 14,500 persons, at an average weekly wage of 40s.? Hon. Members above the Gangway may say that a native Parliament had nothing to do with this commercial prosperity. I do not want to introduce a political atmosphere, I do not think I could introduce it, because, if I may perpetrate a "bull," it has been introduced already. Would hon. Members be surprised to hear that two years before the Act of Union the bankers of the city of Dublin placed it upon record that
    "Since the renunciation of the power of Great Britain, in the year 1782, to legislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this kingdom have eminently increased"—
    and they resolved—
    "that we attribute these blessings under Providence to-the wisdom of the Irish Parliament."
    Bankers, as a rule, are not sentimentalists. If I quoted a resolution of the Corporation of Dublin, the retort would be that is a Nationalist body, but here you have the bankers of Dublin giving it as their solemn belief that the prosperity of Dublin was brought about by a native Parliament. The Guild of Merchants of Dublin in 1799 resolved:—
    "That the commerce of Ireland has increased and her manufacture improved beyond example since the independence of this Kingdom was restored by the exertions of her countrymen in 1782."
    The absence of industry is the second cause of the conditions of things existing in Dublin to-day. We believe, and we have the experience of the past to fully justify our belief, that with the return of a native Parliament this cause will certainly disappear, and industries will once more spring up in Dublin and other parts of Ireland. Meantime this problem, polities or no politics, of housing is an urgent one and brooks no delay. In my view, and I am fortified in that view by the Report which we have been considering, the problem can only be dealt with adequately

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    on Imperial lines. Surely what has been done, and so successfully, for the Irish labourers ought to be done with equal success for the dwellers in our cities! It would be impossible to place the entire burden on the shoulders of the ratepaying community in Dublin, and it would be a good investment for the State, because it is only in the health and material well-being of the citizens, from the lowest to the highest, that true national prosperity can be secured.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: There are one or two observations that I would like to make in reference to the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. He made an attack or criticism, let me say, upon the borough of Dudley. It may be well-founded, but the point is, that no one would, of course, say that any town of considerable magnitude is devoid of slums altogether. There are slums in every town—in towns much smaller than Dudley and in towns much bigger. I have never heard it said that Dudley is not a well administered town, and that the local authority has not done its best, but the point about Dublin is that it is infinitely the worst of all the great cities in the United Kingdom. It is not that it has got a few slums, but it seems to have got very little else. That is the conclusion one is forced to from reading this Report. Let me remind the Committee of the chief housing evils under which Dublin suffers. First, there is a large system of tenement houses, which I understand to mean houses of a good class that were turned into working-class houses. Everyone knows that is an extremely bad thing wherever it takes place. There are districts in London where it took place, and the houses generally are unsatisfactory when converted, but that is not the only thing in Dublin. The sanitation is a scandal, according to this Report. There is a record in the Appendex, page 350, which I think shows a most scandalous state of things. The Report is taken from the tables furnished by Mr. Travers, and shows the number of houses in which the sanitary accommodation is one water-closet to twenty or more persons. There are 1,161 houses of that kind, and in some cases the accommodation is only one water-closet to forty persons. That is a very scandalous state of things. There is scattered through the Report reference to general decay and to the age of the houses and their unsatisfactory
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    structural conditions. There is—I will not venture to quote the references—indescribable filth in the yards and the closets and even in the passages of many of the houses.
    It is really incredible, I should have thought at this period of our history, that such a state of things should exist. And observe this: We are constantly told in the Report that the only water supply is one single water-tap in the yard. Such a state of things would not be found to exist in the small villages and country towns—indeed, I do not know any country towns in this country where such a state of things does exist—and that the capital of Ireland should be in such a condition as that does seem to me to be a very scandalous state of affairs. We are told by the Commissioners that this state of things has produced very serious results, as may be easily expected. It is pointed out that the character of the inhabitants have suffered, that there is a great deal of immorality, and that this condition of affairs is not confined to the tenement houses, but that the smaller houses of the "third class," as they are called in this Report, are almost as bad, and some of them even worse. The Commissioners say:—
    "Some of these structures scarcely deserve the name of house, and could be more aptly described as shelters. A number of them are erected in narrow areas, almost surrounded by high buildings or walls, with alleys or passages, which in some cases are scarcely more than nine or ten feet wide, as a means of approach."
    These are not old houses, but new houses. The tenement houses are no doubt a relic of the changed conditions of the population in Dublin, but these have been created under the sanitary administration of the local authorities. There is one other broad head of the housing evil, and that is overcrowding. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dudley dealt with that, and I am not going to go through it again; but surely this broad fact is extremely illuminating, namely, that one-fourth of the population of Dublin lives in one-room tenements! The hon. Member who spoke last admitted that, and if you take only the working class, because the working class is about two-thirds of the population, there would be much more than one-fourth of the working class living in one-roomed tenements. You find 12,000 families, according to the Report, comprising 73,000 persons, living under conditions of six to a room. I think that is a most astonishing state of things to find existing in any city in the United Kingdom at the present time. Now it is said that for all this the corporation is not responsible, and hon.

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    Members, with a local patriotism worthy of a better cause, have tried to convince the Committee that the corporation of Dublin is absolutely impeccable, and that they have carried out their duties in a thoroughly good way. What are the facts? The Corporation of Dublin have got considerable sanitary powers, like other corporations. Their principal powers are under the Public Health Act of 1878, and they possess powers with reference to the very question of closets. They have powers to make by-laws as to how many people should be allowed to live in a house with one closet, and they have made a by-law and said the number should be twelve, but they do not enforce it, and in 1,161 cases they have not enforced it. We are asked by hon. Members here to say that this is all due to the discretion, wrongly or rightly, exercised by Sir Charles Cameron, and that the corporation is not responsible. But Sir Charles Cameron can only carry out the orders of the corporation, and he has to do what he can. [An HON. MEMBER: "He is responsible!"] He may be personally responsible, but he can only carry out his duty according to the amount of money and support he receives from the corporation.
    Mr. CLANCY: He is an independent officer and irremovable, and he has prescribed duties to perform.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I know he is irremovable, but that is not the point. I am not saying that he does not discharge his duty as well as he can, but ultimately the responsibility must rest upon the corporation because they furnish the funds, and it is their business to find the necessary money to enable him to carry out his duties. If he were to come to the corporation and tell them that in 1,161 cases they were infringing the by-laws, then he would have to carry out the directions of the corporation. At any rate, it is the duty of the corporation to see that its by-laws are enforced.
    Mr. CLANCY: Upon the question of finance, may I point out that the law, before the Act of 1902 was passed, enabled the corporation to raise money for this very purpose, but the Unionist Government, which I suppose the Noble Lord supported then, actually stereotyped the Grant for these purposes in the Act of 1902 and thereby prevented the corporation from raising the money.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I am dealing with the failure of the corporation to
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    carry out these by-laws. Of course the corporation can raise the money to do this because they have the whole of the rates behind them. I am quite sure that if this Committee once sanctions the view that when a corporation fails to do its duty it can shelter itself behind its medical officer, that is an end to all good administration. In point of fact the corporation have not enforced the by-laws. With respect to closets and overcrowding, they have done much worse. I am not going into the full details, but I say that they have deliberately encouraged the maintenance of houses which are unfit for human habitation by granting to the owners of those houses who happen to be members of the corporation, and I dare say many others, rebates on the rates on the ground that they are providing houses suitable for the occupation of the working classes. That is about the worst thing that has ever been brought to the notice of this House with reference to corporations. It is not necessary to say that they are corrupt. [An HON MEMBER: "Do you say they are corrupt?"] On the facts, as disclosed in this Report, I am ready to say that any impartial person would say that there was something in the nature of corruption. All that it is necessary to say for the purpose of discussion is there has been a gross dereliction of duty on the part of the corporation, and that fact cannot be got over. Observe what that dereliction of duty is. It is not only that this rebate was made, but it was claimed. Here we have members of the corporation charged with the sanitary administration of the city, knowing the condition of their houses, claiming this rebate and sending in a formal claim which, after some hesitation, is granted. I say that is a very serious charge to make, but it does not rest there. It is not only the three members of the corporation who have been alluded to, but there are as many as nineteen other members of the corporation interested in this slum property. If anyone will look on page 344 of the evidence they will see there set out returns showing the names of the members of the Corporation of Dublin who own or are interested in tenement houses or second-class houses in the City of Dublin. Second-class houses are those which are just fit for human habitation and no more. They are described in the Report as—
    "houses which are so decayed or so badly constructed as to be of an order fast approaching the border-line of being unfit for human habitation."

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    Those are the houses in which seventeen members of the corporation, or nearly one-fourth of the total members, are interested. Under those circumstances what hope have you of efficient sanitary administration when the council is situated in that way? We are told by the hon. Member who has just sat down that a Bill in 1899 failed to pass the Committee of the House of Lords dealing with this problem. I am not familiar with that Bill, and I do not know why the Committee refused to pass it, but I am familiar with the practice before Committees upstairs, because I have passed a considerable part of my life in practising before them, and I am certain that the suggestion that they could have thrown out that Bill for political purposes is absolutely untrue, and it only shows the total inability of hon. Members to grasp the fundamental principles of our Constitution in thinking that such a thing is remotely possible in the case of any Committee that has ever been constituted for dealing with private Bills. I am quite sure it is utterly untrue that any action of that Committee was taken for political purposes. I think it is extremely likely that the Bill was indefensible on its merits, and that it was rejected on that ground.
    The hon. Member asks, "What do you suggest we should do—you cannot re-house all these people now?" I quite agree. The point is that it is the failure of the corporation—and it is so found by this Committee—to carry out its duty in the past that has produced a result of such a character that you cannot now cover it except by some very heroic measures. The hon. Member says the corporation knew nothing about all this, and the details were never brought to their notice. Surely my hon. Friend knows that the condition of housing in Dublin has been a matter of common talk for many years! There have been two or three Commissions, and constant references have been made to the question in the Dublin Press as to the responsibility of members of the corporation for the state of things existing there. For the hon. Member to say that the whole thing has taken the Corporation of Dublin by surprise is a poor form of defence. If the hon. Member will look at the Report he will see that in paragraph 14 they find that in 1880 the condition of affairs in Dublin, although very bad, was not so bad as it now is, and, worse than this, there were only twelve persons to a tenement
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    house in that year—according to one computation it was sixteen—but now, according to another computation, it is twenty-two. So that the situation has grown worse. This is not a question as to whether the corporation has succeeded to a very difficult inheritance. There is no doubt that they have failed to meet the difficulty, and, not only this, they have actually allowed the condition of things, which was originally very bad, to get worse during the last thirty years. We are told that they have done a great deal with reference to house building, and that I quite concede. The Committee-find that there has been a considerable amount of house building, but not a very large amount, considering the population and the amount of money which the scheme has cost. The Committee give figures which seem to point to the legitimate conclusion that the house building has been carried on in a very extravagant way. [An HON. MEMBER: "Arbitration."] It depends on what kind of land you select. If you choose to buy for your rehousing scheme land of an extremely expensive character, which may be convenient for other purposes, you cannot complain if you have to pay a high price for such land. I find that the cost of building cottages is higher in the hands of the corporation than in the hands of those who have also been engaged in house building for the working classes in the city of Dublin. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is so everywhere."] It may be so everywhere. I know it is very much higher, and the cost of maintenance in Dublin is very nearly twice what it is in Liverpool. I can see no reason why maintenance should be higher in Dublin than in Liverpool.
    Mr. CLANCY: Do you suggest corruption?
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I will tell the hon. Member exactly what I do suggest. I have not the honour of the acquaintance of members of the Corporation of Dublin, and I have no means of forming an opinion as to whether there is corruption or not, but I say there is something very unsatisfactory about the administration of a local sanitary body which is found to be very lavish when it comes to rehousing—the structural alterations of houses and the purchase of land—and is yet very slack in the enforcement of sanitary regulations which will bring no grist to anybody's mill.
    Mr. CLANCY: The Noble Lord stated that the cost of building was higher in Dublin than in England. I ask him to have the courage to say whether that is corruption or not.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I did not say that. I said, of course, it might have been a great deal higher. I said the cost of building by the corporation is higher than the cost of building by private individuals.
    Mr. CLANCY: Is that corruption?
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I did not say so.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Can you quote any instance where it is not so?
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I cannot; and that is why I am not in favour of State enterprise in this matter and the expenditure of money by municipalities in the way advocated by hon. Members. What I do say is this: I do not know whether it is corruption or inefficiency, but it is maladministration if you find great lavishness, as you do, in rehousing, in the purchase of land, in the cost of maintenance, and, coincident with that great lavishness and inefficiency, great slackness and inefficiency in enforcing the ordinary sanitary regulations which should be carried out without being of any advantage to any of those on whose political favour all elected bodies depend. That is a very serious matter to consider, and, when we are asked to give the corporation credit for their activity in rehousing, I think we may say with great emphasis, as I certainly do say, that it would have been far better if years ago they had begun to enforce, efficiently and rigidly, their sanitary powers so as to have prevented the present state of things having grown up, than to spend very large sums of money now in rehousing schemes which may have other advantages besides sanitary advantages. This is a Motion to reduce the Vote of the Local Government Board. The right hon. Gentleman may perhaps say that the Local Government Board is not responsible for all this, and that it is only responsible in the sense that it ought to have prevented the local authority having committed these mistakes. I think we may say that it is unfortunate that there should have been no inquiry into this matter until the riots took place in Dublin. It is a very serious state of things that it seems impossible to induce this Government to take anything seriously until some serious disturbance of
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    the peace is threatened or is likely to take place. The only other point that arises on this Report is a curious reference to the Land Taxes, which, I see, are credited with having interfered with the building operations of one of the largest artisan dwelling companies in Dublin. Does the hon. Member doubt it?
    Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: No.
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): It does not prove it.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: No, it does not need proving. We know it is the fact all over the country. It has been proved very elaborately and completely on more than one occasion in this House, and I do not think the hon. Member will deny that the Land Taxes have interfered with building operations in this country. I am reminded also that the Secret Land Inquiry set up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer reports that is the case with regard to urban houses. But it is not necessary to quote any authority. Everybody knows it is so. I have been very much attacked, not at all unjustly or unfairly, by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway because in some observations I made a few weeks ago in this House I drew a comparison between the conditions of Dublin administration and the condition of Belfast administration. That, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, was not our invention. It was done by the Report of this Committee, and we were merely calling attention to that fact.
    Mr. CLANCY: You picked it out.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: Certainly we picked it out. I have said it on many platforms, and I wish to say it in this House, and to be contradicted if I am wrong. If there is anything to be said, nothing has yet been said to displace that comparison by hon. Members from Ireland, except that the condition of affairs in Dublin is very different from the condition of affairs in Belfast. There is the history and so on. But that has nothing to do with overcrowding. It may, indeed, have produced tenement houses, but those tenement houses are a difficulty with which the Dublin Corporation has to deal, and there is no reason why the tenement houses in Dublin should be any more crowded than the cottages in Belfast. The truth is that there is no doubt—nobody doubts it; I have never heard anybody doubt it—that the administration of

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    Belfast is far better than the administration of Dublin. I do not believe anyone seriously, quite apart from party politics, would doubt it, and this particular Report does furnish a very strong and brilliant object lesson of the disadvantage of Nationalist rule as compared with Unionist rule in Ireland.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Maclean): The discussion on this Vote is a somewhat unusual one, as the Noble Lord will recognise. Of course, it is in order as we have this Departmental Report to deal with, but I would ask the Noble Lord not to go outside the confines of that Report.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I was about to return to this actual Report in confirmation of what I have to say. I was about to read a paragraph of the Report to show the result of the administration in Dublin upon the health and prosperity of the citizens in Dublin. The Committee said:—
    "Before concluding this aspect of the question we must state that in our opinion the low social conditions among the poor classes in Dublin are in some measure due to the failure to enforce stringently the sanitary laws, though we do not suggest that this feature is peculiar to Dublin. While we say this, we are aware that there are other contributory causes arising from the past history of the country and the tendency of the rural population to come into the cities and urban areas. A firm administration would, however, in our opinion have deterred the rural labourer from coming into the city, und the absence of such administration must, therefore, be held to have produced a converse result, and to have had the indirect effect of keeping wages at a low level.
    We suggest also that the non-enforcement of the sanitary laws has permitted dwellings which are not fit for habitation to be inhabited by the poorer classes at rents, which, though in some cases low in themselves, are altogether excessive for the class of accommodation provided.
    Further, it would seem to us that the want of a firm administration has created a number of owners with but little sense of their responsibilities as landlords, and that it has helped much in the demoralisation of a number of the working classes, and increased the number of inefficient workers in the city.
    We suggest also that the provision of sanitary dwellings by private enterprise has been to some extent handicapped by unfair competition with insanitary dwellings, which could be let at rents that would not pay for the provision of decent houses."
    I venture to say that those findings of the Committee are absolutely independent of the question whether there are tenement houses in Dublin or not, and I say that they point to inefficient, if not to corrupt, administration by the Corporation of Dublin, and that those who are reluctant to come under Nationalist rule may find in them a very strong argument in support of their opposition to the Home Rule Bill.
    Mr. J. SAMUEL: The speech of the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin has given us an indication of the purpose of the Motion which has been made to reduce the Vote of the Department, because the termination of his speech was strictly political and had not much bearing on the question under review. I quite agree with him on some of the matters which he did raise appertaining to the housing problem. I quite agree with him in his statement with regard to the medical officer of health. The medical officer of health, although he is an independent man—that is to say, he is not subject to be discharged by the council for various reasons—still is not in a position to carry out his own recommendations unless the council see that they are carried out and spend the money. Therefore it is the duty of the council, without regard to the composition of the council, to see that any regulations suggested by the medical officer of health are carried into effect. The hon. and gallant Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) makes the same error with regard to Dublin as he does with regard to housing in our English cities. He does not touch the root of the evil in Dublin in the same way that he does not touch the root of the evil of the housing problem in our English towns. What is the condition in Dublin? I have read this Report and I have visited the slums in Dublin on more than one occasion. When I visited them, I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong in the city, because they are in a very deplorable state and should not be allowed to continue. I came to the conclusion that, in the first place, there are too many public-houses in the poor parts of the city of Dublin.
    6.0 P.M.
    The next point, which neither the Noble Lord nor the hon. Member for Dudley mentioned, but which is a factor in this great question of housing, is the condition of the poor people in Dublin. You will find on page 8 of the Report that there are 5,000 heads of families earning only 15s. per week, and that there are 9,000 who earn over 15s. and below 20s. per week. That is really one of the difficulties in the city of Dublin as it is in our English towns. Where you have these low wages paid, and perhaps a false utilisation of the money that is earned, you have these conditions existing that you find in the city of Dublin. I contend that you find them, though not perhaps to the same extent, in some of our English towns. I stated in a recent discussion on the Housing Bill introduced by

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    the hon. Member for Dudley, and I say it again now, that so long as magistrates permit the over supply of public-houses in the poorer parts of the town, you will never touch this housing problem as it ought to be touched by this House. We are, therefore, in my opinion, discussing matters beside the question. Let me come to the real position, so far as I can see it in Dublin, and I am not going to stand here to blame the Dublin Corporation. I believe they have been lax in the carrying out of the existing law with regard to sanitation, but with regard to housing, there is a good deal to be said in their favour. On the question of rebates, I was surprised to hear the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil) and the hon. and gallant Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) raise that point, because in every English town property owners are allowed to compound upon their property.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: By Statute.
    Mr. SAMUEL: Yes, by Statute, for houses under £8, but it has nothing to do with the sanitation of the house. It is for the purpose of conveniently collecting the rates. We know that in the English towns it is done both with the poor rate and the district rate, and the overseers of the poor never ask whether the property is or is not in a sanitary condition. What they do ask for is the rates. It is a matter for the urban sanitary authority to see that the property is in a sanitary condition.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: If the hon. Member will look at the Report, page 13, paragraph 29, he will see that the corporation have laid down certain conditions which must be observed before rebate can be given, and the Report points out that one of these conditions was that the houses should be suitable for habitation by the working classes. These conditions were not observed, and it was not suggested they had been, and yet the rebate was given.
    Mr. SAMUEL: I do not know what the local conditions are in Dublin, but I know that in the English towns rebates are given to owners of property whether they are members of the corporation or not. The real crux of the question in Dublin, and you have the same difficulty in many cases in England is that the present members of the corporation have come into the possession of an old town. When the
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    houses were built there were no proper by-laws and there was no regard to sanitation. There was no outlook in that respect. It may surprise the Committee to learn that in a Committee upstairs, so far as English towns are concerned, last week, we for the first time, even in this country, sanctioned two towns making by-laws, with the consent of the Local Government Board, which should provide for a minimum size of bedroom. Any builder or corporation can at present make any size room, so long as the height is nine feet. That indicates, so far as our country is concerned, that our ideas of building houses have been very defective. Dublin is in this position, that it has spent £354,000 on rehousing. There is a loss in regard to that each year of no less than £10,000. I do not think the Noble Lord, nor the hon. and gallant Member for Dudley, dealt fairly with the corporation. I want to ask them this: That £10,000 is equal to a 2½d. rate. Now, with the knowledge that the rates are 11s. in the £, how can you expect the Dublin Corporation to undertake great and gigantic schemes of rehousing under the existing law? That is the real crux of the whole business. The Dublin Corporation, like every other corporation when it promotes great and expensive schemes, does so subject to the sanction of the ratepayers, and when they come to spend large sums of money on very old property which has been in existence hundreds of years the ratepayers are not very keen to give their sanction.
    I represent a town which is very old, with a corporate existence going back to the thirteenth century. We have a large number of slum areas and slum property with very narrow passages. I sat for two years on a committee with the full intention, with other members of the corporation, of removing that slum area after the passing of the Act of 1910, but we came to the conclusion that, if we carried out the existing law and paid full compensation for the property, it would practically ruin the town, because it would ruin the ratepayers. The result is that nothing has been done to remove this class of property, where you have yards only three feet in width. What I want to appeal to the Government to do is this—and I appeal not only to the Irish Department but to the English Department—to realise that if they want to deal with this question, not in the sense of the Member for Dudley but in the sense of dealing with it fully,

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    you must bring in a radical Bill dealing with the whole question of the Act of 1890, and providing for the payment of compensation according to the actual value of the property, and that alone, without any other or extra compensation. Let me refer the Committee to two cases which are cited in the Dublin Report. On page 15, paragraph 36, you will find these two cases where the corporation has been compelled to pay, under the arbitration principle, no less than £10,000 per acre for land to build houses upon. The average works out at over £4,000 per acre. How can a corporation, with rates at 11s. in the £, pay for land in that way? Let me remind the Noble Lord that in 1898, when I believe he was a Member of the House, the Dublin Corporation came before this House with a Municipal Bill, and there was a political fight.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: What I said was that I was quite sure that a private Bill was not a political question.
    Mr. SAMUEL: The Dublin Corporation applied for leave to extend their boundaries which would be granted to any other corporation, and there was a political fight.
    Mr. J. H. CAMPBELL: It was not refused.
    Mr. SAMUEL: I will not go into that, but the fact remains that the corporation have to pay this high price for property whilst their rates are very high. Docs any hon. Member think that the corporation would pay £10,000 an acre for land if they could get it any cheaper? They paid this money under the arbitration. I say it is impossible for any corporation to build houses and promote a scheme of this nature with the price of land like that. There is another case for the Noble Lord. I am afraid he has not read the Report. If he has, he ought to be fair to the Dublin Corporation. This is a case in paragraph 36, where the corporation required a certain piece of property and the owner agreed to sell it for £100, and he entered into an agreement with a private person for that sum, but when he found out that the corporation required this property he then said that the agreement was not binding upon him, with the result that it went to arbitration, and what he offered To sell for £100 to the private individual, he got £2,000 for from the corporation. The
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    Noble Lord and the hon. and gallant Member for Dudley ought to quote those things.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: It had already been quoted.
    Mr. SAMUEL: If it was quoted, you ought to commiserate with the Dublin Corporation.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I am very sorry for them.
    Mr. SAMUEL: Yet he said the Dublin Corporation was to blame. In the English towns you have the same conditions.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: May I point out that the Report goes on to say that Mr. Rice, the official of the Dublin Corporation, said that, on the evidence before him, the arbitrator was correct.
    Mr. SAMUEL: That is so, but the fact remains that he offered to sell it for £100 to a private individual, and he got £2,000 awarded to him from the corporation.
    Mr. J. H. THOMAS: Because it was a corporation.
    Mr. SAMUEL: Under the existing law, corporations in England and Ireland are subject to the same Act of 1890. Take Liverpool. In 1864 it had 22,000 insanitary houses. They spent on rehousing £1,135,000. Their deputy-surveyor stated at a meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne last year that at the present time they had 30,000 insanitary houses, a population of 100,000 living in slums, and 30,000 in cellars. These housing schemes are costing Liverpool not less than £37,000 per year. I ask the Noble Lord how can he expect any corporation to undertake rehousing and to abolish this slum property when they have to pay this big compensation. I disagree with the hon. Member for the St. Stephen's Green Division (Mr. Brady), and the Noble Lord, and the hon. Member for Dudley on the matter which is really the difference between the two sides of the House. I have taken very great interest in the housing problem, both upstairs and in this House. They ask that Parliament should provide Grants-in-Aid and give large sums of money, in other words, that we should have State aid. I am opposed to that. It would be a crime—I say it advisedly—for this Parliament, or any Parliament, to vote large sums of money to pay high compensation for this class of property. That will never cure the evil.

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    Up to the present time, taking Ireland and the United Kingdom under the existing law, it has cost the corporations of this country £77 15s. per head to remove people from our slums. It is computed that we have 5,000,000 people living in slum property to-day. If the law is not changed, and if we go on in future under the Act of 1890 paying high compensation, and if it is worked out at the same rate, it will cost the municipalities throughout the United Kingdom no less than £389,000,000 to remove people from the existing slum property. The municipalities cannot stand it. I should like to see the whole of our slum property removed. I believe in sanitation for every town, without regard to who are the members of the council or otherwise, but it would be a criminal blunder on the part of this House to agree to vote large sums of money to Dublin or any other town under the existing law and to perpetuate the system of giving large sums for this class of property. I am voicing the opinion of every member of our English municipalities which have discussed this question when I say the only thing that we can do is to bring in a new Bill, dealing with this matter right from its foundation, by which fair compensation will be given for this class of property. By that means the municipalities will be able to deal with this question for themselves.
    Mr. PATRICK MEEHAN: I do not intend to deal with the question of Dublin housing. I merely rise to call the attention of the Committee and the Chief Secretary to the necessity of providing additional money for the purposes of the Labourers (Ireland) Act. A great deal has been done to provide proper housing accommodation for the agricultural labourers in Ireland, but a great deal yet remains to be done. The district councils in Ireland are preparing schemes and have formulated schemes and lodged them with the Local Government Board, but these schemes are being held up owing to the fact that no money is available. The £1,000,000 that was provided in 1911 is practically absorbed, and the housing of labourers in Ireland is at present at a standstill owing to the lack of money. At present fifty schemes have been lodged with the Local Government Board in respect of which no local inquiries have been held. When the Board is pressed to hold these inquiries the reply is that there is no money available, that it is no use holding the inquiries, and that they would only
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    hold inquiries in very urgent cases, I do not know what they mean by "very urgent cases," but I assume that they mean the case of a scheme for a district in which the housing conditions are particularly bad. In my own Constituency, in the case of the district of Slievmargy, a scheme has been lodged comprising fifty-five houses. Under that scheme twenty-six applicants reside in houses which were condemned as insanitary and unfit for human habitation, some of them so far back as two years ago. When the Local Government Board were pressed to hold an inquiry into this particular scheme, they said that Slievmargy was low down on the list and that there were other schemes which were of far greater urgency. The Committee can judge what the condition of the applicants must be in the case of the other schemes when I say that under the scheme of Slievmargy you have 50 per cent. of the applicants living in wretched hovels which have been condemned as insanitary and unfit for human habitation. I have seen some of them myself, and must say that the people in them are living under conditions that are a reproach to our civilisation and a striking condemnation of the system of government under which such a condition of affairs is possible.
    In the Report of the Local Government Board for the year ending 31st March, 1913, the Local Government Board themselves admit that there is an insufficiency of funds. It appears from the Report of 31st March, 1913 that there were then 13,800 cottages in Ireland that still remained to be financed, and that there was available at that date £644,767. That sum would be sufficient to finance about 3,800 houses, and would leave about 10,000 cottages, for which there is not one penny available. The amount of money which would be required to finance these 10,000 houses would be £1,700,000. In the Land Bill which has just been introduced Clause 10 says that the limit of the amount of advances that may be made by the Land Commission under Section 16 of the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, shall be £6,250,000, instead of £5,250,000, and that that Section as amended by Section 4 of the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1911, shall have effect accordingly. That means that £1,000,000 additional is to be provided by that Bill for the purposes of the Labourers (Ireland) Act. That Bill has been introduced, and it is a matter of opinion whether or not it will pass this Session

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    unless some agreement is arrived at with the Opposition. Unless there is an agreement we may assume that the Bill cannot pass. The case of the agricultural labourers in Ireland ought to be met apart from that Bill. If I may throw out a suggestion, it is that a single Clause Bill should be introduced providing £1,000,000, or whatever sum would be necessary, to complete the housing of the agricultural labourers in Ireland, and I would suggest that that should be done this Session.
    Another point that I wish to bring forward is that there are 5,375 cottages included in schemes in respect of which no local inquiry has been held. These schemes have been lodged with the Local Government Board and are lying in the office. For the life of me I cannot see why they should not proceed with the inquiries, because the result would be to put the Local Government Board in the position of knowing the exact number of cottages that will be passed, and give both them and us a fair indication of what money would be required. If those inquiries were held, these schemes would be whittled down, some of the applications would be thrown out, and, if they had been held last year or were proceeded with now, we should know, before any Bill is introduced, the exact amount of money that would be required for the purposes of the Act. I therefore press upon the right hon. Gentleman that the Local Government Board should hold these inquiries, because, after they have been held and after the arbitrators' inquiries have been held, when the money is available they can proceed with the schemes and have the houses advertised and built without any further delay. This is a very pressing question at the present time in Ireland, especially in the towns. The cottages that have been built have been mainly built in the country districts, but in the smaller towns, as we on these benches know, there are lanes and alleys in which the people live under very bad conditions. I am glad to say that the district councils in Ireland are taking up the question of the housing of the people in these places, and are formulating schemes by which they do not give the inhabitants of the cottages large pieces of land, but under which they adopt the principle of building houses rather than of giving big plots of land near towns. I hope it will be found possible this Session to introduce such a single Clause Bill as I have indicated.
    Mr. BIRRELL: The hon. Member who has just sat down, and who has made a very admirable speech, has referred to a different subject, which I have no doubt later on in the evening other Members from Ireland will reiterate, and with which I shall have an opportunity of dealing, therefore I shall confine the observations I am now about to make to the question which, until he rose, occupied the attention of the Committee. I hope I shall not be accused of cowardice or of adopting anything but the correct official attitude if I say that I am really not here, and ought not to be expected to be here as a defender of the Dublin Corporation. I am not a member of the Dublin Corporation, and am in no way whatever responsible for its acts. I am speaking now as President of the Local Government Board for Ireland, and representing that Board here, my responsibility for a great corporation such as that of Dublin is very small. The authority which I possess is of a kind which is called affirmative. I cannot initiate anything; I really cannot act with any degree of authority at all except on a complaint, and the complaints which have been made from time to time as regards the Dublin Corporation have not been great or numerous, and the powers I have therefore been able to exercise are very small. I am very glad this Departmental Report of the Local Government Board has excited the attention and has been read by so many persons in all parts of the country. I am rather interested to find that almost every word in it is treated by hon. Members opposite as if it were inspired. That is a great compliment to my inspectors, whom I have already complimented upon the skill which they have displayed.
    After all, it must be remembered that even an inspector of the Local Government Board under a Radical administration may occasionally say more than the evidence justifies, and his report must not be treated as if it was the last word said on every subject. Apart from that, I think it is a most admirable Report, and I am very glad it should have received the attention it has had. It is a very painful Report indeed, and to any of us who have any acquaintance with Dublin at all—and I have not inconsiderable acquaintance with it, having wandered over every part of it, like a disembodied spirit, and having visited many of the tenement houses, and the second and third class houses, and seen them—it is a

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    grave and serious document, in no way exaggerated, and it has collected the facts in a very short space of time, a much shorter time than the Royal Commission could have collected them. It has put the state of life of the poorer portion of the inhabitants of that great city in a manner which I do not think anyone can read without feeling grieved, and to some extent, ashamed. Therefore, I am very glad the Report has made its appearance.
    But with regard to the Corporation of Dublin, I am very glad indeed my hon. Friend (Mr. Jonathan Samuel) spoke in the way he did, because I think the corporation has been very harshly treated by hon. Members opposite, not, I dare say, from any political motives—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Well, I am entitled to express a Christian hope. I should rather attribute it to ignorance of the conditions which prevailed in Dublin. The Dublin Corporation was not a body which attracted me to start with, but the knowledge which I have gained of the successful work that it has done, and the great business achievements which it has accomplished, I confess somewhat to my surprise, but which nevertheless it has accomplished, shows that it is not a body which deserves to be spoken of as if it were unable to control the destinies of a great city. It started during the last decade with an enormous amount of work. It had to make and carry out main drainage—an essential task—before you began to do anything at all, and the same with its electric light, and also in the way in which it paved its streets, to say nothing of its own schemes for housing the poor, in which it is acknowledged to have done more than any other municipality in any other city in the United Kingdom. A body which can carry out work of that sort when put to it, and can do it well, and can do it at all events free from any obvious extravagance, is not a body to be spoken of in the way in which the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil) seemed only too disposed to do. The municipality has be-hind it great achievements, and has done much for the benefit of the community, but Dublin is an extraordinarily poor place.
    I do not think anyone can become personally acquainted, in the way I have done—on foot, wandering about from one place to another—without being struck with its poverty. Wages are lamentably low. They have been recorded in this Report, and my hon. Friend (Mr. Jonathan Samuel) has referred to the thousands of persons receiving from 15s. to 20s. per week, and the
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    large number of persons receiving between 20s. and 25s. They come to Dublin attracted to it by its metropolitan character and by other charms which it may possess. They come in search of work which is not there. What you want in Dublin is more work for the workmen who are already there. It is a very poor place indeed. It has not been able, like Birmingham, Glasgow, and Liverpool and other gigantic cities, to absorb within its assessable area outstanding districts. It has not been able to get in Rathmines and Pembroke, although Rathmines and Pembroke both contribute sums to the corporation expenses. Still, they lie outside the general city, and therefore you have a poor city, an ancient city, a famous city, full of these tenement houses, once occupied by Members of Parliament and otherwise, and now let out in this miserable fashion to a poverty-stricken population. In addition to this you have the very poor class of accommodation referred to in this Report as second and third-class buildings. You have the rates already close upon 11s. in the £, collected from poor people—not the easiest class of persons from whom to collect rates—and you have this corporation of eighty persons, composed of people living in the city and engaged in some of its industries. You have cast upon their shoulders one of the most difficult tasks which could be cast upon the shoulders of anyone. It has been constantly inquired into—there was an inquiry into the equalisation of rates, and Pembroke and Rathmines and Dublin were all three contrasted, and it was a very searching inquiry indeed, and, very much to my surprise, not knowing very much about these things, except after they have been inquired into, Dublin came out best of the three and was proved, in regard to the many questions which were put to it, to be more economically managed than even Pembroke or Rathmines.
    I am not responsible for the Corporation of Dublin in any shape or way, but accusations were brought against it, as if it were really unfit to be responsible for any portion of the work of a great municipality, and it is really only fair to remember these things. Remember what they have done, and the extraordinary difficulties and the things they have to do. However, that does not alter the fact that this Report as people who knew Dublin before knew very well would be the case, proved a lamentable state of things, and it has also shown that the Dublin Corporation have

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    not exercised to the full, or to the extent to which they ought to have exercised them, the legislative powers they already possess. The Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil) was rather angry with me about a month ago, at eleven o'clock at night, when I said there were other corporations besides Dublin that did not exercise their powers. I am quite certain that is so. One of the great complaints that we may make against municipal authorities is that they are constantly pressing for new powers when they do not exercise the powers they have already got, but I am perfectly satisfied—my hon. Friend (Mr. Jonathan Samuel) gave us an example himself—that they very often do not exercise the powers which they have got simply because they cannot afford to, and for other reasons. Here is the Report, and those who read it may draw their own conclusions from it. The Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil) referred to seventeen persons in the corporation who were the owners of property. There were really only five who owned more than one house, and of the balance of twelve each was the owner only of one single tenement. I do not say that that is right or wrong, but to describe them as being seventeen owners of tenement property-would rather lead one to infer that they owned a considerable portion at all events of the tenement houses in Dublin. They owned a most insignificant fraction of these houses, and there were not more than two or three who owned more than one or two at the most.
    I will not go into the question of the rebates. There it stands. To my mind, it is a monstrous thing that people should get rebates for property if it really was unfit for human habitation. The fact that a medical officer could go to these places, and after having examined them himself sanction the rebates, leaves upon my mind some little doubt as to whether they really can have been quite so bad as is represented. I quite agree that the corporation are responsible for their officers, but at the same time you must have an expert. Really going into shabby tenements of this sort and looking about them does not entitle you to express a competent opinion about it unless you have some expert knowledge, and I do not know that the corporation is to be blamed because its medical officer certifies in a particular manner. But I confess the whole rebate story has not a pleasant sound or a
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    pleasant look to my mind, and I am very-glad that it has been investigated and that these facts should have been brought out. I hope they will sink into peoples minds and sink into the minds of the inhabitants of Dublin themselves, and that they may see what they can do, and what everyone can do. If you do not like the corporation turn them out and put other people in. That is what is understood by democratic government. I think the Committee would make a great mistake, on this perfectly frank and candid Report, which I am only too glad to think should have proceeded from officers of the Department over which I preside, to draw the conclusion from the Report that the Corporation of Dublin are to any appreciable degree composed of persons so lost in the greed of their possession of this miserable property they hold as to be unfit to carry out the great work reposed in them. We must take men and we must take corporations as we find them. I spent my life in criticism of the Corporation of Liverpool. I believe, on the whole, the Corporation of Liverpool, though it made colossal blunders in its own housing schemes, on the whole did its duty and spent other people's money on the same footing as we are all willing to do. I really hope that we shall not allow our feelings about this corporation to interfere with our duty.
    Then the hon. Member (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen), at the couclusion of his speech, agreed with the conclusion of the speech of the hon. Member (Mr. Clancy). I knew it would come. What are you going to-do? You must do something. Here is your own Report. The corporation cannot do it. The rates are 11s. in the £. You must at once get up in your place and announce for Dublin, and, of course, for all other places, though I agree Dublin is the worst, for reasons which are very easily explained, and the most pressing case, a large Grant of public money and begin at once clearing away your slums, choosing your new sites, and erecting houses at uneconomic rents. All that is a thing which requires a great deal of consideration. Socialism may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing, but there is nothing worse than to try to combine Manchester principles with little patches of philanthropic Socialism. A large class of people living in an uneconomic way on 15s. or 16s. a week! And you will thereupon say that the public must supply the money to build nice, clean, charming residences,

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    where they and their wives and their children can lead useful lives, and the rent may be provided for out of the pockets of other people. That is a rotten state of things. It is one we cannot possibly accept as the merest substitute for the conditions which should exist.
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: You provide cottages in Ireland for agricultural labourers.
    Mr. BIRRELL: With regard to labourers' cottages, that is perfectly true. We have done it with regard to labourers' cottages because it was a necessary appendage of the great scheme of land purchase in Ireland. It followed that if you supplied the small farmer with financial accommodation to enable him to buy out the landlord at a pretty full price, you could not leave the agricultural labourer without some overflow from so bountiful a policy, and I am very glad to think that the work has been done, is being done, and will still, I hope, continue to be done in Ireland in that way. But if you ask me to apply these principles to great cities, and say that you propose for all time to build up houses to put people in at rents which involve a leavy loss from the very beginning, and that you will meet the cost out of the taxes—all this money that you take comes out of the pockets of people who are very poor; the people who are rich may be dismissed from consideration, for they are so few in number—and if you ask me to establish a system of houses where people are to get accommodation at rents which will keep down wages, because one of the necessities of life is supplied by the taxpayers, then I say that is a state of things which, at all events, requires more consideration than I could be expected to give it at this moment when speaking on a Vote in Supply. But that something has got to be done, I most certainly agree. A great deal could be done in the way of providing accommodation by extending the period of the loan and lowering the rate of interest, and a good deal could be done also, I think—though this, of course, requires consideration too—during the early years of undertakings of this sort by exempting houses from rates, which fall with prodigious and accumulated force in consequence of the outlay which has to be undertaken in building the houses themselves. A great deal of local enterprise is stopped by the heavy rates which fall upon undertakings of this sort before they begin to make any return at all.
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    I agree that everything should be done that can be done, and if more can be done than is done at present to assist Dublin in consequence of its exceptional conditions and the sorrow of its inhabitants, certainly the Chief Secretary for Ireland will not be indifferent to any proposal of that sort which is likely to be made. But I am sure that no Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whatever side of politics he belongs, will be satisfied, or will be willing to make a grant to Ireland and refuse it to other places. Therefore, what was stated with so much force by my hon. Friend behind me in the way of high price, and in the way of compensation, is not the only point that has to be considered, but it is also the fact that it is a very dangerous proposition to start with, that you are going to keep down wages by keeping down rents by means of payments which have to come out of the pockets of other people. Therefore, I cannot do more than say that this Report does not contemplate an instantaneous remedy of that great wrong.
    It may be that this corporation has acted selfishly, but, at all events, they did not create the situation. If they had acted strictly and rigorously up to their duties, it is a question whether they would have succeeded in being returned a second time. I do not know how that would have been, but they might have done more than they have done. But that blame attaches also to other corporations as well as that of Dublin. When all that is said and done, the task of finding proper accommodation for all these people is a very difficult one. You may say, "Build homes outside," but you will find it a very difficult thing to persuade people to go. I remember on one occasion meeting a good and dear old lady who was living in a rather filthy tenement, and when I visited the place she seemed to suspect from my manner that I was engaged in some sort of philanthropic enterprise. She was almost shaking her fist at me, and said, "No suburb for me." That is what I call the metropolitan spirit. She objected very much to being removed from the activity and society of an overcrowded tenement and being planted out in some dismal road at considerable distance from the life and gaiety of a great city. That is a deep-rooted feeling, and it adds very much to the difficulty which all municipal bodies have to deal with when they are considering where they are to build their homes.

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    It happens that within the existing area of Dublin there is a large amount of open space—an unusual amount—which is suitable for cottages and homes for poor people if they could be induced to go away from the charms of a metropolitan life. I therefore think that Dublin in that respect is rather better off than some of the other towns to which my attention has been called. But to make a town plan for Dublin successfully and wisely is a task which must of necessity take some little time. On one thing I am perfectly clear, and that is that this Report cannot be allowed to rest, as so many other Reports have done, in the pigeon-holes of offices. Therefore, notwithstanding the ascerbity of some of the observations made to-day, I am very glad indeed that this Debate should have been held, and that this horrible state of things, in no sense of the word exaggerated, should have been discussed. In fact, there is a moderation of tone in the Report which only adds to its value, and there can be no mistake that the state of things which now exists is horrible and intolerable. Therefore I hope and trust it will sink into all our hearts, and that the criticism to which the Corporation of Dublin may be properly and fairly exposed will not do them anything but good, and that we may look forward in the near future to such a rebuilding and reconstitution of these old tenement houses as must greatly advantage the health, happiness, and morals of the people of Dublin. The tenement houses themselves are, I think, quite capable of economic improvement if there was a good deal of expenditure upon them. They are fine houses. They might be fitted up very excellently—no doubt at considerable expenditure—to fit them for well-to-do artisans and clerks. There is no need to regard them as anything but still valuable property, but they must be emptied out of their present inhabitants. The other houses referred to in the Report—some of them new and recently built houses—have become just as unfit, and perhaps in some respects even more repulsive, as the tenement houses themselves. All these things will, I hope, sink into the hearts of the people and lead to a remedy.
    Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: I am sure that hon. Members from Ireland have felt a good deal gratified and flattered by the attention which the Noble Lord the Member for the Hitchin Division (Lord Robert
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    Cecil) and the hon. and gallant Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) have given to the capital of our country. I must, however, make two observations on that point. I do not see any of the Conservative Members from the North of Ireland at the moment. I presume they are more usefully employed, and it was left to English Members to carry on the Conservative campaign on this question. The second observation I must make is this. The Noble Lord and the hon. and gallant Gentleman approached this question with the air of new Christopher Columbuses. You would imagine that the slum property in Dublin had remained undiscovered and unknown until the auspicious hour when the House was about to adjourn and when these two gallant, fearless and philanthropic explorers appeared on the horizon, and for the first time brought to the attention of the House of Commons, and the world, the state of slumdom in Dublin. This House had not the advantage of the presence of the Noble Lord in the last century. I believe if the Noble Lord had been present here he would have known that the question which appeared novel to him, and for the discovery of which he apparently claims the merits of an original discoverer, had been brought to the attention of this House over and over again by hon. Gentlemen on these benches, and had been brought to the attention of the House with definite plans for meeting the evil. For instance, not once, but several times before the Parliamentary birth of the Noble Lord, we on these benches brought forward proposals to deal with the question of the slums in' Ireland in a definite and practical way, namely, to bring within the bounds of Dublin, with all its poverty, those outlying suburbs which are mainly inhabited by the richer taxpayers and ratepayers of the city.
    7.0 P.M.
    We have been endeavouring to do that year after year, and Session after Session and until we have accomplished that we will never be able to approach adequately the problem of the slums of Dublin. The suburban inhabitants are Dublin citizens in everything except name and in respect of the immunity they now enjoy. How are we treated? Our Bills passed the House of Commons, they were strangled in another place, and they were strangled by the party of which the Noble Lord is an eminent member. And this is the Gentleman who now comes at the eleventh and three-quarter hour and claims that the Dublin Corporation and the Nationalist party have neglected the slums of Dublin,

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    though his own party rejected Session after Session the measures which would have given us a chance of dealing with the question! Why has Dublin been selected now? The Noble Lord was perfectly frank about it. It is all a political attack—a political attack founded upon statements which, if not entirely unfounded, are a mixture of truth and falsehood, which is always the hardest thing to fight. How have we treated similar demands by great cities of this country? Why the extension of the boundaries of Bradford and Birmingham—[HON. MEMBERS: "And Glasgow!"]—were voted for by every single Member of the Irish party; and if the middle of Birmingham and the slums of Birmingham to-day have the advantage of bringing in the rich ratepayer in the outlying districts, it is due to the votes of these Irish Members, who were able to extend the limits of an English city but were unable to extend the limits of the capital of Ireland. My hon. and learned Friend behind me calls attention to the case of Belfast. I understand that Belfast had a very wise town clerk, who at a very early period of its existence did manage to extend the boundaries of Belfast to such an extent as to bring into the ratepaying factors of Belfast men who live a considerable distance from the centre of the city. Belfast could get an extension of its boundaries, but this capital, which is now held up to the whole world as the worst case of slumdom, still remains, and remains so by the action of the Tory party, unable to extend its boundaries and to bring in these rich suburban residents to pay their share toward the amelioration of that evil, which is due largely to the Tory party, and which is now used as a weapon against the Nationalist party.
    A great many extraordinary statements have been made. It is true that there are a great many slums in Dublin. Who denies it? We were the first to call attention to it, long before the indictment of the new Christopher Columbuses came before this House. We have always insisted that the case of the slums in Dublin was a bad case and an urgent case, and does anybody suppose that, if there was a Parliament sitting within the walls of the old House on College Green in Dubin, that problem would have remained a century without solution? I do not suppose that the Noble Lord is very intimately acquainted with
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    Irish history. If he were, he would know that this condition of Dublin to-day is the child of a very remote historical ancestry. I spent three years of my life in Dublin, and I have been there many times since. The Noble Lord's sympathetic heart, which has had such a rude shock within the last few weeks about the wrongs of Dublin, does not beat with half the shame and horror of an Irishman's heart when he sees the conditions in that city. Every Irishman who has ever been in Dublin has gone away from it with pity and almost with despair owing to the conditions in that city which he sees there. Under this blessed dispensation of the Union the houses which were the mansions of the peerage and of the commoners in Ireland in the eighteenth century are now turned into the most wretched slums. We see streets which were the homes of the professional and wealthy classes of Dublin in the eighteenth century now snuffing away like an unhealthy limb, becoming depraved and corrupted year after year into these miserable tenements. What is the cause? The cause is that Ireland lost her native gentry and her native and independent life.
    I do not wish to take up much of the time of the House, because there are other subjects to come on, but I could quote a passage to which my attention was called by Mr. Lecky himself, in reply to a letter of mine, describing the state of Dublin in the eighteenth century, at the time of the Irish Parliament, and you would understand by reading the description of Dublin, even at that period, when wealth was certainly not common in Ireland, and by contrasting it with its present condition, what the blessed fruition is of that form of government in Ireland of which the Noble Lord is one of the most ardent exponents. Then there is a second reason of the condition of Dublin, and it is this: It has been pointed out already in this Debate that the people of Dublin did not get control of their city until 1840. Up to that time we had the benefit of that system of government in Dublin which still, to a certain extent, exists in Belfast, where the whole control of the city is in the hands of the Orange party. Do not talk about your miserable one or two cases of slum owners in Dublin to-day. Think of the corporation which for generations in past centuries lived upon the plunder of the citizens of Dublin. Why, when the people of Dublin, in the year 1840, came for the first time into the government of

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    their city they found the city bankrupt. As my hon. and learned Friend pointed out, the bankruptcy had even got to the point that the Regalia, or whatever they are called, of the Lord Mayor of the city were in a pawnshop, under the beneficent rule of that Orange party of which the Noble Lord is such a champion. That is the heritage which we got in 1840. What has been done since then? I am not going to speak in language of extravagant eulogy of what the corporation has done. I am not going, either, to defend the corporation in everything which it has done. I cannot defend it against some of the statements made in this Report. But I do say that the Corporation of Dublin has done, since 1840, an enormous amount of good work for the people of Dublin.
    It has provided the best water supply of any city in the Kingdom; it has established one of the best systems of main drainage; and since 1908 it has spent £350,000 on housing accommodation. Does the Noble Lord or the hon. and gallant Gentleman think that you can abolish slumdom in Dublin or any other city in a few hours, a few days, or a few years? I was much struck by the observation made in reference to Liverpool by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Jonathan Samuel), who can speak on this subject with great authority from his large experience of municipal life. There is not in the United Kingdom a city that has done more for the improvement of the housing of the poor than the city of Liverpool has done under the authority and influence and skill of an hon. colleague of mine, the Member for the Kirkdale Division (Colonel Kyffin-Taylor), and a leader of the Irish Nationalists in Liverpool (Mr. Austin Harford). They have had to do a great deal of work in the constituency which I represent, which was the first asylum of my people when they were flying from the horrors of the famine of 1847. Anybody who goes through the Scotland Division and other parts of Liverpool and sees the transformation that these members of this building committee of Liverpool have effected will be dumfounded with admiration at the generosity of the city and the public spirit of the citizens in doing this work. Yet, as my hon. Friend reminded the House, according to themselves there are 100,000 people still living in slums in Liverpool in spite of all that work, and if Liverpool, after all this vast expenditure
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    of money and this great public spirit, and all these improvements has still to confess that it has 100,000 people whom it has not yet been able to relieve, with what decency or what honesty, can any hon. Member come to Dublin and reproach it because it has not in the course of thirty or forty years abolished what a great city like Liverpool has so far been unable to abolish within its own area?
    Now with regard to the Corporation of Dublin. I really thought, not having looked at the facts, when the case was brought up before the House by these new friends of Dublin and of Ireland, that the Dublin Corporation would be proved to be a gang by the side of whose crimes Tammany would pale its ineffectual fires even if the worst charges against Tammany were proved. What are the facts? These Gentlemen say that there were seventeen slum owners in the corporation. Well, I will at once make this admission, that one slum owner in a corporation is one too many for me. But let us take the case against Dublin, and even when political purposes are in view let us take the case fairly and truly. Of these seventeen slum owners, only five are owners of more than one tenement. Five are too many, but if there are only five, you ought to say five. You ought not to say seventeen, giving the idea that all slumdom was in the hands of the seventeen members of the corporation, and that the corporation consisted only of slum owners. A great deal has been said about these five slum owners, who got rebates. I quite agree with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary that it does not sound very nice. Again, let us be honest and truthful, and not partisan, in the discussion even of this fact. Why did these gentlemen get the rebates? In the first place, there were only three as to which there was any question. In the next place, I believe that the rebates, altogether, only amounted to the magnificent sum of £49. They got the rebates because Sir Charles Cameron, one of the most respected and effective medical officers in the whole world, a Protestant and a Unionist, almost as pure and undefiled in his political faith as the Noble Lord himself, on his own responsibility and his own authority, urged the corporation to give these rebates. What is his account of the transaction?—
    "Before the granting of rebates, all these places were in a very insanitary condition. They were immensely improved then after the rebates, in consequence of granting these rebates. I took a liberal view, and I always will take a liberal view even though it may not be strictly in accordance with the by-laws. I want to

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    give the reason. I have two objects in view. The first is the improvement of the places. They never could have been improved so much except for the rebates of rates. The second is that these places would be let at low rates to these people, who rind it very difficult to pay this 2s. or 2s, 6d. per week. I may be wrong, but that was the view I took, and I would like to say this: On no single occasion, with regard to the rebate of rates, has any member of the corporation ever called on me personally or sent any message to me, with one solitary exception."
    What, then, becomes of this monstrous charge of corruption which the Noble Lord and the hon. and gallant Gentleman have made with that impartiality and love for Dublin which they have displayed in this Debate? In no case except one had one of these peccant members and slum owners made any appeal to the medical officer of health. This is a matter entirely within the control of Sir Charles Cameron. If you want to criticise the rebate, then criticise Sir Charles Cameron, if he can be fairly criticised. But it is a monstrous exaggeration of even the party passion of the Noble Lord to make charges of gross corruption against the Dublin Corporation when founded on a small matter like this.
    The Noble Lord could not avoid referring to Belfast by way of pointing a moral and adorning a tale. He wound up his speech by a candid avowal of the real purpose of this attack on the Corporation of Dublin. It is extraordinary the rapidity, the promptitude, the eagerness, with which the Noble Lord takes up a case when he thinks it will injure his political opponents. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. John Ward) had been raising the question of Rosyth for years, and at the eleventh hour and three-quarters in jumps the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord Robert Cecil) to tear the laurels of Rosyth from the brow of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stoke, and all for love of the poor. I am surprised and rather delighted at one of the complaints of the Noble Lord, and that was the high price paid for land. Here is a Saul come amongst us in favour of dealing with the claims of the landlords. We welcome his alliance and the kindly and paternal interest he takes in the case of Dublin. As the Chief Secretary pointed out, the problem of Dublin is the problem of poverty and not the problem of the corporation or of one or two men who have been guilty of certainly wrong acts. It is the poverty of Dublin. And the poverty of Dublin lasts to this day, and in some respects is aggravated to this day, 113 years after its Parliament was destroyed, and you asked us to rely on the generosity and mercy and impartial judgment of hon. Members like the Noble Lord!
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    The Noble Lord could not help speaking about Belfast by way of comment. I am going to make allusion to Belfast for quite a different reason from that of the Noble Lord. I read a speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Belfast, and I found there a statement that the Bishop of Down and Connor, the Right Reverend Dr. D'Arcy, was making an appeal for £100,000 to build schools for 15,000 Protestant children who were without schools in Belfast, and, at the same time, the Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, a great protagonist in the fight against Home Rule, said that if they heard of a city with a population of 80,000 or 90,000, being without any schools at all, they would be shocked, but if they took a part of Belfast without school accommodation, it amounted to something like that. In this great and powerful and prosperous city, two of its Protestant leaders called attention to the fact that thousands of its children were without schools in which to obtain even elementary knowledge. I was in this House some years ago, and I heard Mr. Kettle, who I regret is no longer a Member of this House, describe the life of the children in a school of Belfast, and he shocked me, and I think he shocked the whole House by reading the Report of the Inspector of Schools, which stated that the air accommodation of that school was less than it was in the Black Hole of Cawnpore. I do not say that because I want to make any charge against Belfast. I say that Belfast, in many respects, is ahead of Dublin in her housing accommodation. I can give historical reasons for the contrast; but I say that there is only one guarantee for good administration in any land, and that is that the men who administer the country shall be responsible, and shall be appointed or dismissed by the representatives. When Dublin and Belfast are in that position then, and then only, will you be able to deal with the slums of Dublin and the unschooled children of Belfast and make the country a better and a happier country.
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I propose to ask the Committee to consider for a few minutes another subject altogether, although it comes under the scope of this Vote, and the only reference I have to make to the Corporation of Dublin is a friendly one. I will ask the Committee to consider the administration of the distress fund under the Unemployed Workmen's Act, and, in doing so, I think I shall

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    convince the Committee that a mistake, a very grave mistake, has been made in its administration. The reference I have to make to the Corporation of Dublin in connection with the matter is that the corporation on three occasions passed a resolution asking that an inquiry should be held into the administration of this fund by the Local Government Board, before the Local Government Board took the trouble to move in the matter at all. That very simple fact does not quite bear out the accusations that have been made by hon. Members opposite regarding the honesty and probity of the Dublin Corporation. The complaint I am going to make is one that must be primarily founded against the Local Government Board itself. The Local Government Board has never in a friendly way accepted the Unemployed Workmen's Act, and report after report shows that it has been hesitating in its action under the Act; it has not made proper requests for money to enable the Act to be put into operation, and from time to time it has deliberately blocked the operations of the distress committees. There was a meeting held in the early days of the administration of the Act at the Mansion House of Dublin, with the Lord Mayor in the chair. It was held for the purpose of protesting against the action of the Local Government Board. One of the speakers, Mr. James Brady, a solicitor, referring to the action of the Local Government Board at that meeting, said:—
    "For its action, the Local Government Board deserves the greatest censure on the part of the citizens of Dublin as a whole, and grave censure also from the Distress Committees throughout the country. So far as his experience of the Board was concerned in Ireland, he felt hound to say that the members of it were incompetent and incapable of doing anything except in their own interests."
    That was Mr. Brady's judgment of the Local Government Board. Having that judgment in mind, I am bound to confess, as I listened to the preceding Debate, that I felt that the Local Government Board, even in respect of the housing of Dublin, appeared to be just as culpable as the Dublin Corporation itself. Let me give a specific case in point in connection with the question I am raising. In 1905, when the first Grants were made to Dublin from the Unemployment Fund, the sum of £5,800 was given to the Local Government Board of Ireland. That was done in December of that year, and according to information which I have had given to me, the Local Government Board
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    apparently kept that secret until just shortly before Easter, 1906, when, according to the statement made by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, it was pointed out to him the money was in the possession of the Local Government Board. Then the Local Government Board disgorged the money on a special appeal to them in 1906. but the money was not handed over until September of that year, in spite of the tremendous amount of distress which existed in Dublin all the time. But that is not all. It got £5,800 for the relief of exceptional distress in Ireland. It spent £5,300 in relieving agricultural rating in the West of Ireland, and £500 went to relieve exceptional distress in the city of Dublin. That is one point in respect of which I complain of the action of the Local Government Board in the administration of the Unemployed Workmen's Act. Let me take the Distress Committees. When the Central (Unemployed) Body-was started in London first of all, the English Local Government Board put me upon it as one of its representatives. I remember very well the very great difficulty we had in those early days of devising a scheme upon which to put the unemployed.
    But there was one principle which we laid down right from the beginning—a principle obvious to everybody who sits down and considers the problem—that from this distress fund, from these moneys, private properties ought not to be improved unless the owners of those private properties were prepared to give a substantial sum of money in return for the improvement. I do not believe that anyone will question the justice of that proposition. If the private property which is going to be improved is held by people whose names are not disclosed, and if those who suggest to the Distress Committee that certain private properties should be improved, although they do not say who had made the suggestion to them, then I think it is clearer than ever that those properties ought not to be touched by the body administering the fund. Let me tell the Committee what has happened in Dublin. In the first season, from December, 1906, to May, 1907—only a part of the year—the Distress Committee in round figures paid out £1,500 in wages for unemployed workmen. Every penny spent in that season was spent on the improvement of private property, and that included not merely free labour, but free material, which is very much worse

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    than supplying free labour. I remember how difficult it was to refuse some of those proposals. It might be that the committee, finding itself in a corner, would say to the private owner, "If you give us the raw material, if you supply us with the stones and other material to make the road in front of your property, or if you pay a portion of its cost and we get those materials, we will make you a present of the labour and construct your road." I can conceive a committee doing that. I think it would be wrong if they did, but certainly, in the initiation of a big scheme of putting unemployed men to work, more especially under very great pressure on account of the necessity of putting them immediately to work, I would be inclined to look on that with a blind eye, and I would regard it as an excuse. But in the case to which I am referring that was not being done. The material was, given free, the labour was given free, and the work in that first season was altogether on private property.
    Mr. BIRRELL: What was that for?
    Mr. MACDONALD: It was mostly on roads and for cleaning, but if my right hon. Friend will look at the Reports he will discover on analysis that the word cleaning in Dublin does not mean cleaning simply, but means making roads, as well as cleaning them. In the second season 1907–8 the amount spent in wages was £2,478, and of that £497 was spent on work that might be called public work. [An HON. MEMBER: "Where?"] It was by the corporation on work concerning the corporation in Dublin. A sum of £2,000 was spent on private property. [An HON. MEMBER: "Where?"] In various parts. If hon. Members want to know they will find it in the evidence given before the sworn inquiry which was held in September, 1912. I am going to give illustrations from subsequent seasons. I am not going through the whole of the accounts since 1906, but I am going to give some illustrations in pretty good and accurate detail from subsequent seasons. In 1907–8 this point of cleaning comes up. Cleansing is a head under which money has been spent. In 1907–8 the Distress Committee put unemployed men to work upon property that had not been taken over by the corporation, because the owners of the property had not made the roads, and had not done what was necessary in order that the corporation might take over the property. If they had done what was necessary, it
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    would have cost them a very substantial sum of money in order to have done their duty as owners of the property. In 1907–8, and it is true to say for the subsequent five seasons, and, indeed, it lasted during six seasons, those unmade roads for which the owners were responsible before they could be taken over, were made by the Distress Committee, and in the majority of cases the recoupment paid by the owners was absolutely insignificant. I am going to give some of the cases.
    In 1908–9 a sum of £5,826 was spent by the Distress Committee on wages, and £154 of that only was spent on corporation work, and £349 on work belonging to the-Board of Works, or £500 in round figures, while the remaining sum of £5,300 was spent on private property, without any recoupment having been asked for from the owners. On looking through the accounts for 1908–9 I find that the auditor has put frequent notes on the margin that he is not responsible for the accuracy of the accounts. Let me now give some examples. There was an improvement made in Mount Pleasant Avenue, Clontarf, for which £129 8s, 10d. was spent on labour by the Distress Committee, and £2 on materials by the Distress Committee, and not by the owners. Next season on the same improvement £322 was spent on labour, and £2 18s. on materials, and there was no recoupment asked for by the Distress Committee from the owner of this property. Not only that, but when this case came before the sworn inquiry in September, 1912, the Distress Committee could not tell who the owner of the place was, and when those who were defending the Distress Committee were pressed for the name, the pressing was not upheld, and now so far as the public is concerned they do not know, and we do not know, whose property was improved in this way. The second case for that season was that of the Grand Canal Company, and the sum of £1,833 was spent on this property, and no recoupment was asked for whatever. The Grand Canal Company did not finish with the Distress Committee that season, but went on, as the Committee will see. In the season 1909–10 a sum of £5,315 was spent in wages, and of that there was £72 for corporation work, and £161 in connection with the Zoological Society's Gardens, which is a semi-public thing, and £81 in connection with some scheme of the Vacant Land Cultivation Society, which I also put down as a public object. With those exceptions, the rest of the money in that season, or

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    practically £5,000, was spent upon private property.
    A curious thing in connection with this season of 1909–10 was that on a careful analysis of the wages it is found that nearly one-fourth of the sum which is shown in the accounts of the Distress Committee to have been paid for wages was paid for cartage of material in connection with this large expenditure on the canal. That is a payment which really does not come within the scope of the Unemployed Workmen's Act at all. Not only that, but a still more careful analysis shows that included in the wages must be the price of the material, as otherwise the whole scheme of work is a palpable absurdity. So that in that sum of £5,315, which, if spent on wages, was properly spent, but there are undoubted payments which were not spent for wages for people registered as unemployed, but spent on the cartage of material, for which no recoupment has been asked.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Who compose the Distress Committee in Dublin?
    Mr. MACDONALD: The Distress Committee is a joint body composed of representatives of the corporation and one or two other public bodies.
    Mr. G. HAMILTON: Are they chiefly Nationalists?
    Mr. MACDONALD: I should think they are pretty well mixed by the work they have been doing, and, besides, I am not raising this either as a Nationalist or Unionist question. I have a good deal of experience of distress committees on this side, and I am bound to say that the cases I have come across of these have been performed by Unionist members of those committees, and slum-owners at that. At any rate, they do not belong to the Labour party. In 1910–11 £3,720 was spent in wages; of that £7 10s. was spent upon corporation work and the rest on private property. The Grand Canal Company was a beneficiary to the extent of £766 9s. 6d.
    Mr. STEPHEN GWYNN: What was the work on the Grand Canal Company?
    Mr. MACDONALD: Roadmaking along the edges of the canal and various other subsidiary matters.
    Mr. BIRRELL(was understood to say): They did not want them made.
    Mr. S. GWYNN: Was there a public right of way?
    Mr. MACDONALD: Possibly there was, but I am perfectly certain the hon. Member will not say that this was not improving the property of the Grand Canal Company. Even if it was a public right of way, then it is transferred to the corporation, but the Grand Canal Company holds the control for all ordinary and practical purposes of the work that was done. The quay improvement is a canal improvement. I am not going through all the accounts, and I do not want to discuss the whole thing right through, but if my hon. Friend wishes me to assume that this was a public affair, then I vary my language, but I do not believe he is going to defend this action—
    Mr. S. GWYNN: I would like to know whether the hon. Member suggests that the expenditure was for purposes which did not benefit the public. There may be expenditure on private property which is for the benefit of the public. Everybody who knows the facts about the Canal, knows that these roads are used as public roads in Dublin just as much as any ordinary road.
    Mr. MACDONALD: I quite agree they may, but the case I gave of Mount Pleasant Avenue also benefits the public, and it benefits the public that unmade roads should be made as quickly as possible and handed over to the corporation, but the owner has got to do that. It is part of the obligation of the owner, and in the ordinary way this canal company ought to have made these roads, and I am informed the making of them is part of its obligation. Supposing it is not, then the corporation ought to have been asked for recoupment. If this was a public improvement, the same rule should have been adopted in Dublin as was adopted by us in London, and which has been adopted by every distress committee in the country, so that you cannot get out of it in that way. This is an improvement of the canal company's property undoubtedly, and the canal company—with the corporation if you like, for I do not want to take any unfair advantage of them—ought to have been asked for recoupment on account of the improvement of the facilities that the canal company is going to use and make a profit out of. In 1911–12 the same sort of thing happened. A sum of £3,237 was spent in wages, and all that was

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    spent on private property, with the exception of another bit of work done for the Zoological Society and the Women's National Health Society. The Grand Canal Company's property was improved to the extent of £521, or at least that sum was spent in wages. If you take the first seasons through which this Grand Company's work appears in the accounts of the Distress Committee, there is a total of £5,547 spent in wages and £117 spent on materials. That is a form of payment which no one, and I venture to put it quite absolute, who has had the least experience of the administration of the Unemployed Workmen Act will say is legal, and made without recoupment, and without any bargaining as regards recoupment—nobody who has ever sat on a distress committee, as I have done on the Central (Unemployed) Body, which is the largest, for a single moment could defend such action as this running over a long series of years.
    Now let me give some more details. Take the question of the supply of material. I will confine myself to this one year. It is typical of the rest; the same thing runs through the other years. The Distress Committee spent £234 in the purchase of material. That is not an accurate figure. The amount was much larger than that, as anyone who knows anything about Distress Committee work will see if they work out the figure in relation to the wages. Never mind; I will take that figure. Of that £234, only £123 was recovered, so that in material alone the Distress Committee made a present of £111. Hon. Members must remember that this money is given for the unemployed. Every Distress Committee knows perfectly well that if the Treasury gives it a £5,000 Grant, its duty is to spend not £5,000, but perhaps £10,000, by getting recoupment after recoupment, and spending the money again and again in order to swell to the maximum the amount of work which the original £5,000 enables it to put at the disposal of the unemployed. That is always our problem. When we got our Grant from the Local Government Board we never assumed that that was going to be our income. We spent that and got something back; we spent that and got another percentage back; we spent that and got another percentage back; until, by the efflux of these losses, we had spent the whole of our money. The annual expenditure was not the Grant given us by the Local Government Board, but that
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    Grant plus a very substantial percentage. Let me give examples from 1911–12, and I will read in relation to them an extract from the sworn evidence which this Committee ought very seriously to consider. One of the improvements was the Rutledge Terrace improvement. It began in 1910–11. The owners subscribed £20 for material. The Distress Committee spent £33 on material and £86 on wages. That is one very significant improvement. [An HON. MEMBER: "What was the improvement?"] Roads and paving, I understand.
    Mr. J. H. CAMPBELL: Not taken over?
    Mr. MACDONALD: Not taken over.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: Have you the names of the owners?
    Mr. MACDONALD: I have not the names in the Rutledge Terrace case. I cannot say whether they are known. But I have the names in two other cases as the right hon. Gentleman will see in a moment. The second case is that of Susan Terrace. The owners subscribed £17 4s. 5d. for material; the Distress Committee spent £27 16s. 7d. on material, and £230 in wages. These figures are a little mixed, because, on account of the way in which the Distress Committee has produced some of its accounts, two or three schemes are mixed up together, so that it is impossible to get at what the exact expenditure has been on each case. In that respect Susan Terrace is mixed up with the third case, which is that of Donore Road, where there was £30 subscribed for material and the Distress Committee spent £60 in buying material, and £212 in wages. The corporation engineer's valuation of the improvements to Donore Road is £319 10s.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: All subject to the approval of the Local Government Board.
    Mr. MACDONALD: Yes. I said at the beginning that my accusation was against the Local Government Board. It is not the corporation that is responsible for this. The Local Government Board and its inspectors are mainly responsible. I think the Distress Committee ought to have done its work very much better. The Distress Committee ought to be severely censured for the way in which it has done its work; but the Local Government Board was in charge, and through its auditors and inspectors ought to have stopped this

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    practice at any rate in the third season. It might have allowed the Distress Committee to potter about for two seasons, and then said, "You know where you are now; you have got your footing; you must stop this reprehensible practice, and get to work on a proper footing, as every Distress Committee in other parts of the country has to do." As a result of this procedure there was a great deal of talk in Dublin. I had letter after letter from friends there—secretaries of trade unions and unemployed people—complaining about it, and finally from certain friends who were not trade unionists but members of the Dublin Corporation and of the Distress Committee. The matter became the subject of universal conversation in Dublin amongst everybody interested in social reform. The Dublin Corporation immediately took the matter up. Three times it passed a resolution asking the Local Government Board to inquire into the matter, and at the third time of asking the Local Government Board instituted an inquiry. In September, 1912, the inquiry opened, and it was conducted by an inspector of the Local Government Board. A curious thing about the inquiry is that the inspector who conducted it was the gentleman who, if the Local Government Board was responsible at all, was responsible for the first four years' expenditure of this money. He had not been responsible for the other two years, but for the first four years he was responsible, and the lady who has done so much to bring out the whole matter, Miss Harrison, commenting upon his position at the inquiry, said:—
    "I understand better than most how difficult is the position of the inspector"—
    That is the gentleman conducting the inquiry.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: What is the inspector's name?
    Mr. MACDONALD: Mr. MacCabe. I believe there are several of them. Miss Harrison said:—
    "I understand better than most how difficult is the position of the inspector, and I venture to say it was a cruel position to put you in, Sir, to hold the balance between the Distress Committee, of which you have been inspector from the first. In that capacity yon had to report, and the committee could not have had their Grants unless you had reported that they were doing satisfactory work. And now the Local Government Board make you the judge of my charges against the committee."
    This gentleman has been reporting in favour of the committee's work for four
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    years, and at the end of six years he is asked to be the judge of the charges made against the work of the committee!
    Mr. BRACE: The sole judge?
    Mr. MACDONALD: Yes, the sole judge, without anybody to keep him in countenance and to sign his Report. That is the sort of inquiry that was held. The evidence is not published. I put a question a week or two ago to the Chief Secretary, asking him to publish it. It is the most interesting evidence that I have read for a long time. I have verbatim excerpts from a large part of it here, from which I will read one or two extracts. The evidence is absolutely conclusive on this matter. There is not the least doubt about it. The charges were substantiated, except when they were a little bit coloured, and even the colouring in every case was shown to have a substantial foundation of truth. In the main the case was made out in such a way that it is most amusing and amazing to read the Report of the inspector and the comments of the Local Government Board upon it. Let us see what was done. It was proved that this Distress Committee paid for putting property into the condition in which it was necessary to be put by the owners before the corporation took it over; no recoupment. It was proved that it improved property like that of the Canal Company: no recoupment. It was proved that, as my right hon. Friend said very innocently, it was cleaning property. Let us see what that means. This is an extract from the evidence given at what is commonly known in Ireland as the sworn inquiry. Miss Harrison is speaking:—
    "I come to Donore Road. The two owners are. I believe, Mr. Good—Mr. Peter Good—and the chairman of the City of Dublin Distress Committee, Councillor Crozier. Mr. Good apparently paid £16 0s. 9d. as his share of the materials, and—I hope I will be corrected if I am wrong—I think Councillor Crozier paid £14, altogether £30 for Donore Road; the work there is valued at £319 10s."
    And much of that comes under the head of cleaning. Miss Harrison goes on:—
    "I don't want to say more than that. There are twenty-two houses belonging to Councillor Crozier, I believe. Councillor Crozier, do you want to say how many houses are yours?
    Councillor Crozier: None of them are mine.
    Mr. McGrath: Have you sold them since then?
    Councillor Crozier: No, they were not mine then.
    Then Mr. McGrath read a letter asking that certain things should be done.
    Mr. McGrath: Was that the start of this entire matter, and was it this letter which led to the transactions at Donore Road?
    Mr. Crozier: Yes.

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    Mr. McGrath: Was it in consequence of that letter that the Distress Committee undertook the work?
    Mr. Crozier: Certainly it was.
    Mr. McGrath: And did the owners pay for all material?
    Mr. Crozier: Yes, for sure.
    Miss Harrison: Is it a tact that you own none of this property?
    Mr. Crozier: Well no, I never owned a brick.
    Miss Harrison: Why then did yon pay this subscription if you did not own any of the houses?
    Mr. Crozier: I am the agent of those who do own it."
    I will leave out a little aside. They have got into a bit of trouble. When they emerged from the scrimmage, the evidence goes on:—
    "Miss Harrison: I want to know how it is that you paid a subscription for Donore Road and not for other places?
    Mr. Crozier: What do you mean by other places?
    Miss Harrison: Not for Rutledge Terrace.
    Mr. Crozier: Why should I pay other people's subscriptions?
    Miss Harrison: Why do you pay subscription for property that was not your own?
    Mr. Crozier: Because I was agent for the property.
    Miss Harrison: Then it was not your own money?
    Mr. Crozier: It was the money directed to be paid to get this work done.
    Miss Harrison: That is the same thing.
    Mr. Crozier: Certainly.
    Miss Harrison: How much did you pay?
    Mr. Crozier: Whatever the bill was that I was furnished with.
    Miss Harrison: You paid about £14. You promised to pay that money to get the work done.
    Mr. Crozier: There was work done at Rutledge Terrace for the owners of Rutledge Terrace, and then Donore Road was left undone, and when they were making that road I suggested that it would be well to give employment by converting the footpaths in Donore Road.
    Miss Harrison: Why did you ask them to do the footpaths in Donore Road, when it was not your property?
    Mr. Crozier: Because I am the agent of those who are the owners.
    Miss Harrison: If you are the agent, yon must know who the owners are?
    Mr. Crozier: One side belongs to one son belonging to me, and the other side belongs to the other son, and I am the agent for both."
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Is he a Unionist or a Catholic?
    8.0 P.M.
    Mr. MACDONALD: I do not know. I am not raising this question from the party standpoint. I am raising this question because I sincerely believe it is disgraceful to whoever is concerned in it. I do not care whether they are Unionists or Nationalists. I am perfectly certain that these facts being brought out will stop this sort of thing in Dublin, and anyone, whatever his political creed, whether he be Nationalist or Unionist, or Protestant, or Catholic, ought to be grateful to me, or whoever endeavours to bring the facts to light. Councillor Crozier, later on, made an explanation. I will not trouble the Committee with that explanation, but I will just mention this much: he said, with reference to who initiated this improvement at Donore Road, that he did
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    not sign it. Miss Harrison remarked on that:—
    "What I have got to point out is that the report of the works sub-committee, recommending that the work should be done on his own property, was signed by Councillor Crozier, the chairman of that committee; and work was also recommended to be done by the members of the works sub-committee on property belonging to Councillor Crozier's sons. I will not press the matter for it is an exceedingly painful matter to me and one to be regretted"—
    and so on. That is my case. There are various other instances, but I will leave the matter there. That is the clearest case that was brought out, but there will not be the least doubt in the mind of whoever reads the evidence, as I have done pretty carefully, that a deliberate attempt was made to keep the owners of the property that had been improved in the background. Again and again the inspector in charge of this inquiry pressed the authorities to produce the names. As to what Councillor Crozier is; Unionist or Protestant, or Nationalist or Catholic, I do not know. I did not ask, and I do not intend to ask. Councillor Crozier was discovered and was stopped. I am very glad to have been able to put the Committee in full possession of the facts in regard to this matter. It has been proved—and I have gone carefully over the Report—that the women's workroom accounts were kept in such a way as to make it impossible to get the details. Miss Harrison used the words "a scandal and a disgrace." I think that is perhaps a wee bit exaggerated. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the accounts of the women's workroom, as cross-examination showed of those who were responsible for them, are very disgraceful indeed. The second thing that was proved was that there was no index of registered applicants, although a Statutory Order was issued to compel the Committee to keep such an index. The third thing proved was that there was no proper visitation of applicants. Again, it was proved that work done ought not to have been done by this Committee at all. Then it was proved that corporation stores were provided free of charge. It was proved that the Works Sub-Committee acted without the knowledge of the Distress Committee in putting work in hand. It was proved that the minutes were improperly kept, and that full records were not in existence. It was proved that a recoupment was offered by the Women's Health Association, and was not claimed by the Distress Committee when it had been offered. It was proved that Members of the Distress Committee had not attended for six months, and nobody took

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    the least trouble to inquire why or to get an explanation. It was proved that words like "cleansing" were practically falsified names. It was proved that the funds were used for the ward purposes.
    Mr. S. GWYNN: What does that mean?
    Mr. MACDONALD: That means that it was proved that in certain wards more work was done than in other wards, and that the influence of certain members are in favour of their own wards being specially attended to from the distress fund. In the evidence that was clearly brought out in one cross-examination—I am afraid I cannot remember the councillor's name. Finally, it was proved that work that might have been done quite easily was not done at all. After all this, in the annual report of the Local Government Board, which was circulated to hon. Members a month or so ago, we find that "after careful consideration" of the evidence in that inquiry, the Board—
    "were satisfied that the grave charges made against a member and against some of the employés of the committee, were wholly unsustainable. In regard to details of administration, defects were shown to exist"—
    I suppose the Donore Road difficulty is one—
    "but these were of minor importance, and could have been remedied without resort to the costly expedient of public inquiry."
    That is the position of the Local Government Board. Certainly the Local Government Board could have written that before they held the public inquiry. It is a perfect farce to ask the Local Government Board of Ireland to adjudicate upon a matter like this. It is very characteristic of them to send down an inspector who was deeply dyed in the accusations that were made, because he was the official who agreed to the work of the Distress Committee during the last four years. To appoint him to hold this judicial inquiry is a stroke of business very characteristic of the Irish Local Government Board. There is one point I wanted to make quite clear, that although this sworn inquiry was made in 1912 the position has not yet changed. Although the Local Government Board asked the Distress Committee of Dublin to do something in order to get recoupment, and although the Distress Committee professed to be beginning to do something in order to get recoupment, the experience was so much in keeping with what I have been reading from the sworn inquiry that really I will put the Committee
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    in possession of it. In December, 1912, two schemes were put before the committee—one had reference to Kelly's Row: draining, metalling, road-making, and so on—and the other had reference to St. Anne's Place, and was somewhat of the same character. The Kelly's Row scheme was to come out of the recoupment scheme, and two members of the Distress Committee made themselves responsible for getting the recoupment. The St. Anne's Place was a private property scheme. The name of the owner was withheld from the Distress Committee when the scheme came before the committee. All that was said about the private property scheme was that the material would be guaranteed. The work was immediately put in hand—that is in December, 1912. The Kelly's Row scheme had to be investigated in January of 1913 again. It was revisited by deputation. Estimates were asked for from the responsible engineer, so that the two members of the committee might go to the owners and get their proposals. It took over three months to produce the estimates for the improvement, which were not handed over to the Distress Committee until April, 1913. Meantime the St. Anne's Place scheme had been finished. The road had been made, the steam engine had rolled it down, and for this the miserable sum of £7 10s. was paid by the owners that were undiscoverable; and it was taken over by the corporation as a fully made road, and put to the charge of the ratepayers of Dublin.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Are the owners still undiscoverable?
    Mr. MACDONALD: According to my information, yes.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Could not the names of the owners have been ascertained at the public inquiry?
    Mr. MACDONALD: I could not say. The names are undiscovered, but this is since the public inquiry, and that is why I am publicly dealing with this case. My latest information, which came only a day or two ago, was that the names of the owners of this place were not discoverable. In respect of Kelly's Row, the estimate turned out to be £168. The Distress Committee on 15th April earmarked £100 for wages, so as to enable this improvement to be carried on. Ten days later, after the work was begun, the Distress Committee was informed that there was no

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    money to enable it to go on. Mr. O'Neill advanced £85 from his own private pocket to allow it to go on. When that sum was exhausted the engineer estimated that another £40 was required to finish it. The £40 was found, and when that was exhausted the engineer estimated that there would be another ten days' work required over and above which had been done. That ten days' work remained unfinished for the next six months. Only the other day was this scheme completed. I venture to say that with these facts before us that the Irish Local Government Board should receive a most severe and unqualified censure from this House for allowing such things to go on. The Dublin Distress Committee should also be censured. The superior authority is not the corporation. Let us be clear about that! Even the Distress Committee is a subordinate authority in this respect. The Irish Local Government Board, with its inspectors, with its auditors, ought certainly to have put an end to this thing long ago, and have seen that the money that was voted by this House for the purpose of alleviating temporary distress in Dublin was spent for the alleviation of that temporary distress, and not for the improvement of the property of private owners, who are so ashamed of the transaction that they will not allow their names to be mentioned in an open place.
    Mr. HAMILTON: I think the speech to which we have just listened is a most serious indictment of the Irish Local Government Board, though I do not think we shall find the hon. Member for Leicester voting for this reduction of £100. I do not, however, propose to follow the hon. Member in his arguments, but to revert once more to the question of housing in Dublin. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool made a very great point of the lack of schools in Belfast, and stated that thousands of children in Belfast are apparently going without education. The facts that I have before me are that in Belfast 3.6 per cent. of the population are illiterates, while in Dublin the percentage is 5.3 per cent., so that I am afraid that point, made with such force and so loudly cheered by my hon. Friends below the Gangway, falls rather flat. Another point which the hon. Member made was in connection with the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin with respect to the housing at Rosyth. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division seemed to think that the Noble Lord had taken the
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    opportunity of bounding in at the last moment and seizing the laurels from the brow of the hon. Member for Stoke. It will be in the recollection of the Committee that the Noble Lord raised this question and very promptly got a discussion on it. I need only point out that the Resolution was seconded by the bon. Member for Stoke, who disappeared and did not even vote in the Lobby in support of his own Motion.
    It being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means, under Standing Order No. 8, further proceeding was postponed without Question put.

  PRIVATE BUSINESS.

    WESLEYAN AND GENERAL ASSURANCE SOCIETY BILL [Lords], (By Order.)
    Order for Second Reading, read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
    Mr. POINTER: I beg to move to leave out the word '"now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."
    In moving this Amendment I want to make it quite clear that so far as this Bill is concerned those who are objecting to it, being persons interested in the main as members of the society or company, are not doing so because of any objection they have to the company requiring any better status under which to carry on their work. They realise quite well if, in the opinion and experience of the company, they believe that the acts under which they are now working are in any way preventing their due progress or preventing the legitimate expansion of their business, that is a very good reason, of course, why they should come to this House and ask for an alteration of the conditions under which they carry on that work. But they are objecting because they believe that the powers which are asked or sought to be perpetuated in this Bill will be detrimental to a very large section, and in fact to the bulk of the people, paying in the shape of policy holders into this particular company. I want to make it quite clear that we do not not set up the contention that this Bill creates injustice, so much

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    as the contention that the Bill seeks to perpetuate and to give further legal sanction to injustices which already exist and which cropped up in the past.
    As I understand the position of this company, it is that a number of years ago they started in dealing in ordinary insurance policies, plus a scheme, which had for its object provision in time of sickness. As time went on, believing, I suppose, and judging from the experience of other companies, that the ordinary industrial policy was a paying business—and, of course, neither I nor anybody else will seek to blame them for that—they added an industrial policy to the inducements they held out to the people of this country. I want it to be clearly understood that this company, like most others, is in this position, that the bulk of the people who contribute to its finances in the shape of payments, either weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, belong to the working class, and by far and away, as I shall hope to show by figures later on, the greater number of their members belong to the industrial class, who pay for their insurance in the main by weekly instalments, and in consideration of which they take out policies mainly for very small amounts indeed. These are the class of persons—I use the word "persons" as I am rather hampered in my expressions, because this company has refused in the past to give them the status of members, and they are now trying to perpetuate that anomaly by putting it into this Bill which will give it further legal sanction. There is one argument which I think it is quite possible may be used, namely, that if these people took up their industrial insurance in the full knowledge that they would not become members, then this Bill, in seeking to perpetuate that, is not doing these people an injustice. I want to say a word in regard to that, because, having experience myself as an agent of insurance, I know something of what goes on inside, and I say most emphatically that the ordinary holder of an industrial insurance policy does not know the terms under which insurance is granted. He does not know, except in a broad and general way, the conditions that attach to it, and I may point out that, so far as the policy is concerned, the form they sign tells them nothing as to whether they are members or not members.
    There is one feature which I feel sure the bulk of the Members of this House know
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    very little, if anything about, and that is the various arguments that are used, and the various inducements held out to those people, and I would add parenthetically that at least a great proportion of these industrial policy holders are women with no experience, who know nothing of business, or finance, or the ordinary rules governing a society and the rest of it, and, therefore, they are all the more easily taken in, if I may use the expression, by the wiles of the insurance collectors. Lest I should be thought to be unduly blaming the insurance agent, let me say one or two things which I think are of interest. In the first place, agents and collectors are very often driven by facts over which they have no control, to use unfair methods for getting business. One of them is this. There is in existence a gentleman called—I speak of him as a type, of course—a special canvasser. That special canvasser is a man who in very many cases has been drummed out of the society or company either for which he seeks to work afterwards, or some other company, for fraud or embezzlement, or for doing something which he ought not to do.
    An HON. MEMBER: Oh, no.
    Mr. POINTER: It is absolutely true. It may not be true of the hon. Member's company, I do not happen to know in what company the hon. Member is interested, or connected with, either as a policy holder or otherwise, but I do know these men are very often driven out of active insurance work because of faults very often of a grave nature, and they trade on the very qualities which secure their dismissal from the positions they hitherto held, and use as assets in their new position. They go round with the ordinary agent. They secure business by all sorts of unfair methods and untrue statements, and they leave the agent afterwards to face the indignation, and very often the agent gets into trouble in consequence. That is one of the methods whereby people are inveigled into insuring in many of these companies. It is the practice in many companies to hold an agent responsible any any lapses which may occur. It is sufficient for my purpose to say that when an agent is held by his company—or if not by the headquarters of his company by his immediate superior—responsible for replacing any relapses, or if he suffers some fine, or is made to suffer in any way, then I think that you can quite see that there is an unfair pressure upon that agent

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    which leads him to adopt methods which he is very heartily ashamed of, and which he only adopts under the direst pressure. There is another system the agents are subjected to, which makes them bring unfair pressure upon people and induces them to make misleading statements to would-be policy holders. In this particular circumstance I am speaking not only of the companies generally but of the very company whose Bill we are discussing tonight. I happen to know one person to whom this has happened three times, and this particular man is only a type of many others. I mention his case because he happens to be a friend of mine. He has on three occasions been subjected to this experience. He has built up by patient devotion to business a book valued at £20—that is, the premiums in it amount to £20. On three occasions that book has been taken, and £8 have been taken on. He has been left with £12, and he has had to build up by laborious efforts another book, only to see that £20 divided again and part of his business given to some other persons.
    Hon. Members will see that under circumstances like this, you cannot expect agents to be over scrupulous as to the way in which they get business. When I am told in this House that these people who are now holders of industrial policies in this particular company have gone in with their eyes open, and have nothing to complain of, I say most emphatically that, taking all the facts into consideration, that is not so, and you cannot argue as if these people had had all the facts placed before them, and in a calm and judicial manner had been able to make up their minds as to the policy they were asked to take up. I want to put a further consideration. I think every hon. Member will realise that the type of man or woman—and especially the woman—who takes out the ordinary £10, £20, or £30 policy is not usually a class who has had much experience of finance or the conduct of societies. Therefore, I think they have a special claim upon the consideration of this House. If we were considering a class who, like the bulk of hon. Members, have had experience such as I suggest these people lack—I know some hon. Members are experts in finance, and all of us have had some experience of the conduct of societies, and the rest of it—I would not be in the position of coming here and asking this House to interfere, and I should say that the intelligence and
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    the experience of persons such as ourselves ought to be sufficient to allow them to look after their own affairs without any help from us. I ask whether or not these people, who wish to make some provision for their future or for the future of their wives and children, and being more or less obsessed with the importance of making that provision, and not having the wherewithal to make a calm judgment as to what is the best provision to make, have a claim upon the consideration of this House.
    There is a matter to which the attention of hon. Members and others who are objecting to this Bill has been drawn, and it is—What is a member? Ordinarily, of course, without any regard to legal status or anything of the sort, one would suppose that anyone paying a premium of any kind would be regarded as a member, but it appears that the practice of this society or company has been in the past to regard only those persons who have taken out ordinary policies, or who have been members of the sick scheme, as members, and that all the vast number of persons who have been paying on industrial policies, have been ruthlessly ruled out. If you could say in any real sense that these people deliberately adopted that choice I would say that they had nothing to complain of, but this Bill seeks to perpetuate that grievance, and I, for one, think that that grievance is a very real one. I know nothing about the law, except that I subscribe to the assertion that "the law is a hass!" As far as the technicalities of the law are concerned I know very little. I notice in the statements set forth by those who have petitioned against this Bill, that they point out that a recent decision was received as late as January of this year in regard to the Glasgow Friendly Society, which lays down that, all persons who have paid into the funds of a society ought to be members. The Chief Registrar-General at one time subscribed and backed up that opinion, but I have learned to-day that he has now gone back upon that view, and has admitted his mistake.
    I know nothing about the legal position at all, but the statement of the Registrar-General did seem to me so very definite that I should be very interested to learn from those who are favouring this Bill and supporting it, upon what point the Registrar-General has now come to the conclusion that the considerations which weighed and decided this matter in

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    January in this year are no longer applicable to this case. It seems important that men who are contributing should have some voice in the conduct of the affairs of the company if there is to be anything like representative opinion to be gathered from any source whatever. I think that very important point shows the relative position of the industrial policy holder and the ordinary policy holder. I was somewhat interested to find that at the end of 1912 the number of industrial policy holders in this particular company was somewhere about 1,300,000, and that the premiums paid in respect of them in that year amounted to £761,808, whilst the premiums received in respect of ordinary policies was only £185,205, or an excess of industrial premiums over ordinary premiums of £576,503. At the present time I believe there are industrial policies in force to the amount of 15,000,000, whilst the ordinary policy holders number about 3,500,000. What appears to me as very striking is that the people who are contributing the greater part of the money, and who are responsible for the bulk of the income of this company, are to be ruthlessly thrown on one side, whereas the conduct of the society and the responsibility for it, whether that results in good management or bad, is to be vested in a number of people who represent a very considerable minority. That may or may not be what Members of this House think is fair and right, but, as far as I can see, it is a piece of injustice that this House ought in no way to encourage at all. There is one other point of importance.
    Amongst other powers which this Bill will give if it passes from the stage of a Bill to that of an Act, is to authorise the company to extend their business in all sorts of ways. It authorises them to indulge in fresh business, and to enter into any arrangement or agreement with other companies or societies in order to prosecute that business. It is quite evident, of course, that in doing so they will be taking on fresh business of which they have had no experience. The result of that experiment may mean a loss, in which case the industrial policy holders will be contributing to profits, which may be dissipated by unwise management or unwise speculation of one kind or another, or, what I suppose after all is more likely, industrial insurance being a more or less profitable business, it may mean a profit, in which case the
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    industrial policy holders will be contributing to profits and reserves which may be used for further business or investments creating more profits upon which they will have no claim. I would like the House to know that the chairman of this company admits—perhaps it is not an admission, because I do not suppose he made the statement voluntarily—that the profits of this company are derived to the extent of two-thirds from industrial policy holders.
    We shall, therefore, if this Bill passes, have this anomaly. The class of policy holders who contribute two-thirds of the profits will be in the position of having no possibility or anticipation of sharing in any profits which may be made. I ought perhaps to qualify that a little. Rule 68 says that the directors may allocate certain profits to industrial policy holders. That is optional, so I suppose it is also true that they may not allocate them. There is in this Clause, therefore, no real safeguard for industrial policy holders. It is quite true that during the last two years—I am speaking entirely from memory, but I think from 1908 to 1912—a total sum of about £49,000 was allocated by way of bonus to this class of policy holders. In that time, of course, the amount of bonus given to the ordinary policy holders was very much greater. They now apparently seek to put in a permissive clause to give them power if they wish to give industrial policy holders some little crumb of justice. I do not know whether that will be held in this House to be a virtue, or whether it will be held, as I hold it, to be a tardy repentance of past misdeeds. I am of the opinion that these people have put in this proviso more as a sop realising the absolute injustice that has been dealt out in the past to industrial policy holders. In order to make their present Bill a little more palatable they come forward and say, "If you will give us the increased powers for which we are asking then in all probability we may distribute a little of the profits to these people, to whom in the years 1908–12 we gave small sums. It is interesting, however, to notice that during last year this practice, which was evidently of a temporary and experimental nature, was discontinued, and so far as I am informed no bonuses were granted during 1913 in any way or shape whatsoever.
    I wish also to call attention to one or two other features of this Bill which I regard as being very important. The policy holders, as I have tried to explain,

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    holding industrial policies amount to 1,300,000 in number. They not only rule out ruthlessly all these people, but they are taking means and measures to perpetually cut down and cramp the operations of all the smaller ordinary policy holders. The way in which they are doing that is manifested by two or three provisions in the Bill. One is that twenty-five or more members holding aggregate policies of £100,000 may call a special meeting. The company in the main consists of people who are contributing small sums. Leaving out the industrial policy holders, the great proportion of the ordinary policy holders hold policies of from £50 to £200. Some of them are endowment policies, by which, of course, is meant that they pay, with the expectation of receiving a certain sum of money after a lapse of a certain number of years, ordinarily from fifteen to twenty-five years. The bulk of the ordinary policy holders are not people who hold big policies; they hold comparatively small policies, ranging from £50 to £200. Here is a provision whereby any twenty-five members, if they happen to hold on an average policies of £4,000 each, may call a special meeting. I quite understand that there ought to be some rules and provisions with regard to calling a special meeting, but if twenty-five members are sufficient when they happen to hold aggregate policies of £100,000, then twenty-five ought to be a sufficient number, whatever those policies may amount to; or, in the alternative, they ought to be put upon the same level, so as not to give the power to the rich men in the society. That is a common feature of the industrial companies to-day, namely, the way in which the big policy holder is little by little getting the whole conduct of the society or company, as the case may be, in his grip, and is strangling the small policy holder and using him as a convenience whereby he may become himself more rich more rapidly. Then as to the qualifications for the directors. Here is a provision which does not allow a person to become a director except on certain conditions. There is a reference to past services, but, generally speaking, no ordinary policy holder can become a director unless his policy is one for over £1,000. Here, again, I submit that if the House should give its sanction to such a provision as that in the case of a society consisting mostly of poor men, it would give its sanction to a provision which I think
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    should not commend itself to us. We find the same sort of thing in the provision as to voting power. It is to be by a show of hands unless challenged, and is then to be by the character of the holding. A holding of £25 gives one vote. If a man has £100 he gets four votes. If he has £1,000, forty votes. I should have thought that a man with £100 policy was in most cases a man who had his all at stake. Very few people of that kind would have £100 in this society and £100 in another society. But take the big policy holder, supposing £4,000 is his all, even then he has no more at stake relatively in this society than the man of smaller means might have.
    It has been said that only twenty-five persons have signed the petition which has been circulated. That is quite true, but I would point out the reason for that. It is very largely the great difficulty in getting together people who are so scattered as in this case, and then the notice of the presentation of a Bill like this—I say this without any offence to the company; I am not saying it was done deliberately, it is in the nature of the case—the notice was not very prominent, and even now many members and contributors and policy holders, I am quite prepared to believe, do not know that such a Bill is in progresss before this House. When you are dealing with an unorganised mass of working men and working women, to get a consensus of opinion is a very difficult matter indeed. When you are asking for an expression of opinion from a friendly society or a trade union, there you have an organised body of men. You have a vehicle or machinery through which and by which their expression of opinion may come. But in a case such as this you have a great mass of unorganised people who are not in touch with each other, who happen quite fortuitously to be members of the same company, who do not know each other, and the difficulty is to get an expression of opinion from them promptly. Instead of putting that as an argument to which we should listen, I think it should be put the other way—that is to say, that in spite of the difficulty of getting those people together they have subscribed their money and have made their protests against what they believe to be a gross injustice.
    To sum up my points: First, we object to the permanent exclusion of the industrial policy holder, seeing that he contributes by far the greater amount to the income of the society, because from his policy two-thirds of the profits are derived.

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    Secondly, we think it is an injustice if this House gives its sanction to any such agreement, and consequently, if there is to be a division of profits at all, we want that the permissive word "may" should be removed and the word "shall" inserted in its place. We want a provision in the Bill so that the amount of distribution of the bonus of profits to the industrial policy holder shall be in strict proportion and relation to the amount they contribute to the profits. In the third place, we object to the Clause under which the £1,000 qualification for directors is allowed to remain, and on the same lines we object to the great powers given to the larger policy holders to control the business of the society as represented by the provisions for calling meetings. These are more than Committee points. They raise grave principles, and we hope that this House in its wisdom will not grant to a company such as this—a company which admittedly is out for the making of profits—permission to perpetuate an injustice and to continue, if not for all time, for a considerable number of years to put people who enter into insurance upon an inferior footing to those who do not contribute so much as they do towards the success of the undertaking.
    9.0 P.M.
    Mr. JOHN WARD: I wish to second the Amendment. I do so not necessarily in order to criticise the details of this Bill, though there are some of them that ought to be considered by the House before giving this great corporation the franchise they are asking for. In Clause 13 enormous powers are given to the directors, the power to wholly control the society is placed in their hands, either to dismiss or deal with the servants of the company without any appeal whatever. Then there is the question that the directorship of the company would not be drawn from the ordinary members of the society, but from a sort of class ring of those who happen to be policy holders to the extent of £1,000. I think the House will see at once that that may mean the handing over to them of interests quite as valuable, though not on the same scale, in a way that we should not contemplate in a measure of this description. There is another peculiar rule in this society which I do not find in any other society. That is on the inspection of books, Clause 31. I have not seen such a rule in a Bill of this description. It says that books of the society shall be open at all convenient times for the inspection
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    of any of the directors, but it goes on to say that no member can ever inspect any of the books without he gets authority from the directors. It looks almost as though you were making it nearly impossible that a man who has some personal interest in some account connected with the society has not leave unless he also-gets a written authority from the directors to examine his own accounts and the affairs relating to his own accounts. There is no such thing as that in any other class of society. So far as the trade unions of the country are concerned, any member who gives seven days' notice to any officer or trustee, or in the case of any ordinary friendly society if any member who has ever paid a penny into the society gives seven days' notice to the officers that he wants to examine his account, the books, by law, must be open to that member. If the Bill passes in its present form, apparently no member belonging to this society can ever inquire into his account unless he first obtains the permission of the directors. I know that with regard to companies of this description some peculiar legislation is already on the Statute Book, but I do not imagine that it has gone as far as that yet, and I imagine that the House would not be in favour of extending the principle in the way suggested in that Clause. As to the alterations of rules in the future, we are clearly, by this Bill, handing the society over to the directors, holus-bolus, without any appeal to anybody. Clause 34 says that the rules in the Schedule shall be the rules of the society. You would imagine that that is definite, but it goes on "for the time being." If they wish to do so, the directors can alter the rules of the society, and those alterations have then to be submitted to a meeting which must be held at Birmingham. It is a moral certainty that the number of members who would get to Birmingham to agree to the rules or otherwise would be but a very small proportion of those interested in the finances of the society. Therefore, we may say that the control of a general meeting reduces the whole business to a farce. I am not going into the details of the Bill, because I dare say that those who reply will say that they are Committee points. I may inform those who defend this Bill, that, unless these points are altered in some way or other by the Committee, this is not the last they will hear of the opposition to the Bill. We shall have to

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    make a desperate effort on the Third Reading, unless there is provided more democratic control than appears to be the case as the Bill stands now. They may be Committee points, but if those who are promoting the Bill imagine that they are going to get out of the difficulty, and that they will never need to refer to this Clause again, and that there is no necessity to put their house in order, I can assure them that the opposition to the Bill will go much further than it will probably go to-night. There is another class of men who have not been considered. A petition has been sent round to Members of this House signed by members of this society, but I have also received a petition—I do not know whether other Members have received it—from the agents of this society asking this honourable House to oppose the Bill. The petition, says it is inimical to their interests. They are the people who really get the members for the society, collect the premiums, and who do by far the most important part of the work in a society of this description. They think their interests are being very seriously prejudiced by this Bill. I am not going into the details of the petition they have sent to me. I dare say they are well known to the defenders of the company and to those who are going to suggest to the House that this Bill should be adopted. If they are, it would be well for those who are promoting the Bill to take the matter into account before it is too late. I suggest that those promoting the Bill should consult the agents themselves, and see whether something cannot be done to allay their suspicions. I suggest that all the more because the agents of a company like this are in a very peculiar position. They are financially and otherwise personally interested in the affairs of this company in their own way quite as much as any director can possibly be, yet the peculiar position in which they stand in relation to the management of a society of this description makes it impossible for them to appear before the Committee or state their case. Anyone with any experience knows that it would be all up with an agent who engineered opposition to this Bill in a Committee upstairs, or who came forward to give evidence against the Bill and stated reasons why he thought it would injure himself and his comrades. I suppose that the moment after the Bill got through his position could be described by a
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    cypher, and that they would be in a position to dispose of and dispense with him, or, in other words, to reward his services during the passing of the Bill. That is all the more reason why the House should be careful if it thinks that these agents, who are deserving men and who have built up the company's business, believe that their interests are being jeopardised by Clauses in the Bill. They do think so, and they have pointed it out in a written statement to myself and other Members.
    The peculiar circumstances in which they are placed, the impossibility of their appearing personally to state their case for fear of the consequences that might come to themselves and their future in the society, should give the House pause on the Third Reading if not now, and cause it to consider their interests before the Bill goes too far. This House ought to be particularly concerned in looking after a special interest which cannot protect itself. The ordinary members of the society may be able to do so. They have already issued a petition against the Bill, but any hon. Member can see that it would not be possible for the agents to sign a petition of that description, for not one of them would be alive as an agent of the company even now, and, if he were kept on now, it would only be while the Bill was being got through. He would have punishment inflicted upon him the moment after. Therefore there is a form of opinion against this Bill which cannot be heard in this House or before the Committee. We want some definite statement, especially with regard to the latter part of the business. I am not so much concerned about those who have invested their money in the concern, because I suppose they have done so with the idea of getting a quid pro quo out of it. They have taken the risk themselves, perhaps it may be sometimes on wrong information, as my hon. Friend suggested, but presumably with their eyes open. On the other hand, the agents are deserving servants of the company who have built up its business, and if their interests are likely to be prejudiced by the passing of this Bill, then most certainly it is the duty of the promoters, knowing that the men themselves cannot be heard, to make some statement on the subject which will allay the fears of these men.
    Sir EDWIN CORNWALL: The Mover and Seconder of the Amendment have made very interesting speeches in regard to industrial insurance generally, and

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    there is a good deal which could be said with regard to that subject, not only tonight, but any other time the House cared to debate the subject as a whole. But neither of them would desire to pick out this particular society, and hold it up as carrying on its business in any different way from that in which industrial insurance is carried on throughout the country. I hope some day that matter may be dealt with generally. Hon. Members realise themselves that the main points that they have raised are Committee points, rather than Second Reading points, except with regard to the agents, and there I notice that in the House of Lords—I do not quite square this with what the hon. Member (Mr. Ward) said—one petition was presented by the National Union of Life Insurance Agents, and the Committee of the House of Lords amended the Bill so as to remove the objections expressed in their petition. So the fact that the agents were permitted to petition, and that the House of Lords Committee conceded their point, should count for something.
    Mr. J. WARD: I have never been informed by the agents, who supplied me with the first petition, that their point had been conceded.
    Sir E. CORNWALL: I think the hon. Member will find that the Committee sat only recently in the House of Lords, and the agents won their point. With regard to the general points which have been raised, I see a difficulty. No one is more anxious than I am that all Bills of this nature should be thoroughly thrashed out in Committee. I should like all the arguments which the hon. Members have used to be thoroughly dealt with in Committee. When I say thoroughly, I mean both sides, because we must all admit that statements here are ex parte, but when you get before a Committee and get counsel employed on both sides, you can sift out the real truth, and where there is a case made there is no better tribunal in the country than a Committee upstairs to deal with points such as those mentioned by the hon. Member (Mr. Pointer). But I see a difficulty. This petition does not pray to be heard. The hon. Member says that one difficulty is that the cost of counsel upstairs is too much for these people. I dare say that the Committee would let some of these appear without counsel, but I am very anxious that the case should be heard, and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. G.
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    Thorne) has upon the Paper the following notice:—
    "That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Wesleyan and General Insurance Society Bill, that the holders of industrial insurance policies in the society who have presented a petition against the Bill, may be heard by their counsel, agents, and witnesses upon the allegations contained in their petition."
    So that I think if we all agree to that Instruction being passed, it gives an opportunity for the case to be heard. But I do not think that the hon. Member (Mr. J. Ward) should threaten the promoters of the Bill that if the ease is not heard upstairs, there will be some very fierce opposition on the Third Reading, because any question of the case not being heard upstairs would in no sense be the fault of the promoters, who are quite anxious and desirous that every point should be raised in Committee.
    I should like to tell the House what this Bill is. This society was founded in 1843, first of all to undertake sickness business. Soon after that it carried on ordinary insurance business with ordinary management. They were members of the society. But forty years ago they went into the business of industrial insurance, and they have now 1,400,000 industrial policy holders, and so far as I know no one has said anything at any time against the society, and no one says anything against it to-night. The ordinary department numbers 70,000 and the industrial department 1,400,000. The income from the ordinary department is £211,000, and the premiums from the industrial department £763,000. The total accumulated funds of the society at the end of 1913 amounted to £2,108,000. Every other society of this nature which started many years ago under the old Friendly Society Acts, and these friendly societies differ according to the Acts they came under, and the year they came into existence, has been obliged from time to time to come to Parliament and get itself put upon a basis to enable it properly to carry out a very large business, when it becomes a large business, and several other societies have had to come to Parliament, and Parliament has never hesitated to give every organisation of this nature exactly what this society is asking Parliament to give it now. The first object of the Bill is incorporation. The incorporation of the society would enable it to manage its own estate as a corporate body instead of

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    being, as it is now, partly a friendly society and partly a collecting society. It would enable it to have an up-to-date constitution, and would give it wider powers of investment. Their auditors have told them that their present method of investment is not as satisfactory as it ought to be for such a large business, and it is necessary to have some such Bill as this to enable it to adopt modern and wider powers of investment. It also gives them power to legalise the bonuses paid to industrial policy holders.
    The hon. Member (Mr. Pointer) made a good deal of the fact that the profits belong actually to the ordinary members and not to the industrial policy holders. That is true, and hitherto the society has given bonuses to the industrial policy holders, but the question has been raised in law as to whether they are legally entitled to give these bonuses. This Bill proposes to make it legal to give the bonuses to those very people the hon. Member for Sheffield has been referring to. To suggest that this society, which is going to legalise these bonuses, is going to penalise the people, and take away or withhold the bonuses, is not a true representation of the position; because a society of this size and importance knows very well that if it wants to hold its position in competition with its rivals, it must give the same bonuses as other similar societies give. This Bill puts them in the position which they ought to hold in that respect. It only asks that Parliament should enable it to have the same legal position and status that Parliament has given to similar societies already. If the Bill passes it will enable the society to maintain and extend its business. With regard to the agents, I am sure that my hon. Friend will realise that nothing could be more important than that the society should be in a position to maintain and extend its business, and I venture to say that if the Bill is wrecked no greater disservice could befall the agents of the society at this moment. I cannot imagine anything more detrimental to the agents of the society than that we should prevent them having this opportunity of extending the business. On the main point of this Bill passing or not passing into law, on behalf of the agents, I say that it would be a thousand pities if it was not carried this Session. When the Bill was first brought forward the Registrar of Friendly Societies made this report:—
    "I have the honour to report that this Bill is for the very desirable purpose of removing the society from
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    the anomalous class of friendly societies, which are exempt from all the Friendly Societies Acts passed after the Friendly Societies Discharge Act, 1854 (17 and 18 Vict., c. 56), and therefore are still subject to the provisions of the earlier Acts. The difficulties of such a situation are obvious, and similar Bills have been promoted in several other cases, this being the last of the societies, I think, except the Clergy Mutual, which is promoting a similar Bill this year, which now exists under the old conditions. A possible further exception is the Friends Provident Society of Bradford, which has had a special Act, but has not, I fancy, been incorporated."
    I think that all goes to show that this society is doing what a society in its position ought to do. It would be negligent in its work, if it did not go forward with the Bill. Look at the question of membership. The case for those objecting to the Bill is that these 1,400,000 policy holders ought to be made members. Let me say, first of all, that when a society of this description is a small society and working in a given area, the idea of membership is of the very essence of its existence, but when its work is extended throughout every county in England until the policy holders number 1,400,000, how can you really make out a case that all these policy holders should by law be made members and should take part in the management of the society? The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. J. Ward), in referring to the twenty-five who signed the petition, used the very argument which I am going to use against that proposal. In explaining why only twenty-five signed the petition the hon. Member referred to the difficulty of getting a large mass of people together. If it is difficult to get them together to sign a petition against the Bill, bow are you going to get them together to manage the affairs of the society? I submit to the House that the proposal is unworkable.
    These people for forty years have been coming into the business under contracts. The hon. Member says they do not know what the contracts are. Nevertheless they are contracts, and they have come into the business as customers of the society. Every business has customers. For forty years they have been customers of the society under contracts without profits and membership. Why should it be asked to-day that these 1,400,000 policy holders should have their contracts cancelled, and that they should be put into a different position? For forty years they have never asked that. I would like to point out that the inclusion of these 1,400,000 as members, taking part in the management and working of the society, would go to weaken the management. In these days of serious competition the management of

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    a large business has to be continuous. Those engaged in the management have to look years ahead, and if you are going to have an uncertain management, not knowing who are going to be directors at one time and directors at another time, you are only going to weaken the organisation and injure the society. One might refer to the statements in the petition, but they all seem to me to be matters either for Committee or matters dealing with the general management of a business of this description. Of course, it is always easy to criticise the management of a business, but it is not so easy to carry on that business. I could go into my office and find fault with those who are carrying on my business, but it would be futile to do so. You have to have confidence in people, and be careful how you do carry on business in these days when there is so much pressure. Therefore, I say to hon. Members that they should not be too ready to tear up the organisation which, I believe, is going to maintain the success of this society, although they might conceive that there are better ways, if they had the responsibility. I say, "Do not be in too great a hurry in tearing up the organisation of the business which these people are carrying on." I think the House will agree with me that this Bill ought to have a Second Reading, and ought to pass into law in the interest of policy holders, agents, and all those who are responsible for the management.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: I wish to support the hon. Member (Sir E. Cornwall) in asking the House to give the Bill a Second Reading. I really cannot understand the object of the hon. Member for Sheffield in opposing the Second Reading. I listened to most of his speech, and it seemed to me to be full of Committee points. The point made as to the industrial policy holders is that they ought to have a share of the profits. They came in on a non-profit basis, and since then I understand the company has given them a share in bonuses. It is doubtful whether the action of the company in giving bonuses to the policy holder is legal, and one of the objects of the Bill is to make that legal, and to secure to them a share of the bonuses. Another point was he thought that industrial policy holders ought to be treated as full members, and he quoted a decision given in the case of the Glasgow Friendly Society, and seemed to think that that decision bound this case.
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    I understand that the difference is this: The Glasgow Friendly Society was a friendly society properly so-called, and this is not, and though the word "members" is a term which is usually applied both to ordinary policy holders and industrial policy holders, yet, if you are going to deal with it in a legal sense, it only includes the ordinary policy holders.
    Mr. POINTER: Will the hon. Member explain how, as the collecting societies advertise this as binding in some particulars, it is not binding in this particular?
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: I will only do it in a general way, without a long legal argument. The general statement is this: The Registrar-General, in a subsequent second report, has emphasised the distinction. This is not a friendly society governed by the Friendly Society Acts, except by one Act, which does not make it a friendly society for any purpose except the purpose in that particular Act. If this Bill goes to a Committee upstairs there is power to insert in the Bill, if the Committee thinks fit, Clauses which would make the industrial policy holders members for all purpose. I am not going to prejudge that. What I suggest to the House is that we ought to give the Bill a Second Reading, and let the Committee take into account all the arguments which the hon. Member has put forward; and if the hon. Member, or those who represent the policy holders, can convince the Committee that the policy holders ought to be treated as full members, then let the Committee treat them as full members, and insert Clauses in the Bill accordingly. The hon. Member also said that the industrial policy holders might be damaged by the Clause which allows the society to extend its business. There is something in the argument which he put forward, that if this society is allowed to extend its business on speculative lines the assets of the society to which the industrial policy holders look for their security might possibly be diminished at a risk to the policy holders without any prospect of corresponding benefit, if benefit came, from those transactions. But that is the sort of question which the Committee will look into most closely before granting those powers at all, and obviously it will limit those powers in such a way that they cannot harm the policy holders of the society whether they be profit-sharing members or members not entitled to profit. Then the hon. Member said that although these industrial policy

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    holders might not be members in the full sense yet they were induced to join the society on such conditions that they never understood the nature of the contract into which they entered, and he developed an argument which seemed to me ought not to be allowed to pass without some protest. He said that the policy holders were an easy prey to the insurance agents, who induced them to become policy holders by unfair methods. That is a sweeping statement, and I do not believe that it represents the truth either in this or in any other case. Insurance agents as a whole are honest men, who are earning their living in an honest way, and ought not to be stigmatised by the hon. Member for Sheffield in the general terms which he employs in connection with them. He even went further and said that to assist their unholy efforts special canvassers who had already been discharged from the society on the ground that they had committed fraud were employed to induce people to become policy holders. He had no right to make that charge.
    Mr. POINTER: That is not right. I tried to make clear that these people were sent to assist the agents in spite of the agents, and not at their request.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: The hon. Member said that special canvassers were employed to assist the agents, and that those canvassers have been frequently drummed out for fraud.
    Mr. POINTER: You say that I said to assist in unholy operations.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: When there was disagreement with that statement the hon. Member said that it was agents not only of this society, but of other societies. I do not think that any hon. Member has any right in the absence of those canvassers to attack their action, and their action has been in my judgment just as honourable as the hon. Member's action has been in bringing this matter forward. We have just as much right to impute motives to the hon. Member in bringing this matter before the House now as he has to say that the agents are guilty of some sort of conspiracy to bring people in without any knowledge of what they are doing. The points which have been taken by the hon. Member for Sheffield, and those who have supported him, are possibly points which ought to be considered by the Committee. They are no answers to the general case, that this is a society carrying on a large business for the
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    benefit of policy holders and employing large numbers of agents, whose operations are hampered by being under a constitution which no longer fits the need of their work, and who come to this House as many other similar societies have done before, and ask this House to grant them wider powers which they will use for the good of the policy holders, and for the increase of their business. That is the general case. Nothing has been said which disposes of the general case, although there may be special points which ought to be dealt with in Committee.
    Mr. GOLDSTONE: The hon. Member for Colchester has made a very indignant protest against the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe (Mr. Pointer), which in my view is entirely unwarranted. The hon. Member for Attercliffe, as I understand him, pointed out that it was only canvassers who were brought in against the wishes of the agents and not on the suggestion of the agents, who were using whatever arguments came first to their hand to induce people to join, and, if things did not come up to expectations they left the agents to face the difficulty; and it was rather that practice which my hon. Friend condemned, and there was not the imputation of any motive to the canvassers who are, as I understand, very much the same in all types of societies.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: He said that they have been drummed out for fraud. Does the hon. Member suggest that that is so?
    Mr. GOLDSTONE: I am not suggesting that. I am only pointing out what was the argument.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON EVANS: That is the point to which I am replying.
    Mr. GOLDSTONE: The practice which my hon. Friend condemns is a practice—which I should condemn also—of canvassers against the interests of the agent being brought in to get policy holders, and then being transferred, or possibly drummed out. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend has instances which he can quote, or he would not have made the statement which he did; and it is a practice which should be condemned, in the interests of the legitimate agents as well as in the interest of the legitimate work of these various insurance companies. The hon. Gentleman was on safer ground when he suggested that, when this Bill went to a

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    Committee, the Committee would be entitled to consider whether the policy holders should not retain their old rights of membership. That, m our view, is a very important point. Under the old constitution of this society the industrial policy holders are members. I am assured that it is so, because the old Friendly Society Acts under which the society was constituted, accorded to the old policy holders of the industrial type the full rights of membership, and the importance of this Bill now is this: that in giving powers of incorporation it may deprive the policy holders of their rights under old Acts, and these rights ought to be safeguarded. If the Committee upstairs will reconsider the matter and insert a Clause or words which will secure to the old policy holders the rights which they now enjoy, then I think it is very important, and goes a considerable way to meet my hon. Friends and myself in our-opposition to this Bill. We desire to retain the old democratic control of the industrial policy holders. Those who suggest that this cannot be done I think entirely ignore the existing practice. Let me take any old friendly society. Of course it never attempts to get all its members together in any centre. What it does do is to appoint delegates—which is the plan of the Royal Liver Society—and those delegates receive their instructions from the members of the society, who exercise control through them.
    It seems to me that in giving away the democratic power you leave it within the power of the directors to vote themselves considerable salaries and the like, entirely without reference to the policy holders, whose case we are now making, and they may possibly make a diversion of profits into directors' fees. That is a reasonable fear, and it is one which they entertain. It seems to me, therefore, that this fear should be voiced in the House. We may take it that the agents of the society are not going to take action which would be prejudicial to its interests. They would not appeal to us as they have done to voice their protest against the Second Reading if they were not satisfied that the Bill proposes to give powers under the incorporation which the directors ought not to have and should not obtain. It is obviously against the interest of the agent to do anything prejudicial to the society, on whose success he depends. His livelihood is at stake, and he will not suggest any
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    change which would be inimical to his own life interest. The agents have more at stake in the interests of the society than any other section of the members, whether directors or policy holders. It is in the interests of the agents who have a life interest at stake, and in the interest of the policy holders, that we say the Second Reading of this Bill should be resisted. But if we are to have the Instruction which has been spoken of, and if the Committee upstairs will consider the rights of the industrial policy holders in regard to control, our case has been considerably met. If we receive the assurance that the Instruction will be accepted, and also the point which the hon. Member for Colchester made with regard to the course of the Committee upstairs, I think my hon. Friend and the Seconder of the Amendment, and those who are opposed to the Second Reading, might be prepared to withdraw their opposition and allow the Bill to go through. I think if we have that assurance the opposition to the Second Reading will be withdrawn.
    Mr. GEORGE THORNE: I have an Instruction standing in my name on the Paper in regard to this Bill. The measure has three main objects, which have already been fully explained by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green. Those objects are to make the status of the society perfectly clear and to deal with the industrial policy holders and other matters. Not the slightest objection has been raised to any of the proposals of the Bill by those who oppose the Second Reading. Its principle seems to be accepted. That is the whole thing with which we are concerned in this House, and all the others are matters of detail which, in my view, certainly ought to be referred to the Committee upstairs for careful scrutiny and consideration. This being a matter in which I take the greatest personal interest, I have carefully looked into it, and it is because of that I have placed an Instruction on the Paper to the effect that the holders of industrial insurance policies in the society who had presented a petition against the Bill may be heard by their counsel, agents and witnesses. It will be seen that the Instruction provides for counsel, but what a man can do by counsel he can do by himself; and I am told that many of those who are applying are poor, and do not feel able to spend money on counsel; but they can appear personally, if they so desire, and of this I am sure, that, constituted as the

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    Committee will be, it will give more consideration to representations made by an individual on his own behalf than if they were made through counsel. If the Instruction is accepted, all those whose interests are affected by this Bill will be heard. I understand that the promoters do not think that those interests are prejudiced, and that they do not desire to affect them. But we want to make sure that is the case, and we cannot decide that in this House; it is only the Committee which can decide it; hence the Instruction I have put down, and I was glad to hear the hon. Member who has just spoken, as representing the Labour party, state that if the Instruction were accepted they did not propose to press their opposition to the measure. I should like a distinct understanding from the Member for Bethnal Green that the Instruction will be accepted if the Second Reading is passed.
    Sir E. CORNWALL: I have already said that we shall be very happy to support the Instruction if the hon. Member for Wolverhampton will move it.
    Mr. BOOTH: I think the hon. Member for Sunderland has put the point very reasonably and is entitled to take it as a genuine and bonâ fide rule that those who are critics of a Bill may wait to see whether their points are dealt with in Committee, and reserve their rights until then. I think that is a perfectly fair attitude. In regard to the remarks of the Member for Attercliffe, I regret his reference of a general character relating to insurance canvassers. The hon. Member for Colchester, with a certain amount of warmth and energy, of which I do not complain, repelled a charge which he thought to be unfair. A suggestion was made that against the will of a local agent a special canvasser was brought in to canvass against the interests of the local agent. But surely no special canvasser can be brought in in that way except to increase the book of the local agent, to extend the number of policies, and to increase the amount of the premiums. The man who principally benefits by this special canvasser is the ordinary canvasser, who frequently finds it very difficult to obtain policy holders. The special canvasser comes in as a sort of expert, and he can train the ordinary canvasser how to get business and how to induce persons to take out policies on new tables. That is usually the work of the special canvasser, and he is a man rather higher
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    in rank than the ordinary agent. He cannot be any good at all to the society unless he helps along the agent or canvasser; otherwise the money would be thrown away. That, I submit, is the ordinary description of the duty of a special canvasser. The hon. Member suggests that this special expert is a man who in reputation can be challenged, and whose career has been an ignominious failure. Can you conceive any body of business men promoting an ordinary agent to do special work at special remuneration who is below the ordinary agent in rank and character? The hon. Member suggests that these special canvassers are people who have been found guilty of fraud and defalcation, and are men who have been drummed out of ordinary agencies.
    Mr. POINTER: I said that very often that is so.
    Mr. BOOTH: Yielding to no one in the knowledge of what goes on in the industrial insurance world, I say that that statement is entirely foreign to the truth. I challenge the hon. Member to name any society in which that occurs, not even to mention this one, the reputation of which stands in the very front rank. This Wesleyan and General Assurance Society has a special reason for looking to men of character and men of position. The House may have noticed that one of its regulations prescribes that the meetings of the directors are opened with prayer. Hon. Members below the Gangway here are perhaps inclined to make light of that. This House opens with prayers every day, and the origin of those prayers is in the remote past, I mention the fact to show that this particular society did not come into existence as a profit hunting or business concern, but that it had another origin, and I do not think that on that account it is entitled to less confidence. Not any of the societies for a single moment would tolerate even as an ordinary agent, or as the humblest worker in the service of the company, men guilty of defalcation and of fraud. These industrial companies work together in a certain measure in friendly harmony. They are most particular in taking an agent who has served in one society and who wishes to transfer his services to another. If there is the slightest hint that the man in his previous service has been guilty of any fraud, there is no industrial company or society would look at him, I do not care what ability he had, or how plausible his

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    tongue was, or how presentable his appearance might be. I do not think since I entered the House have I heard a more unfounded charge brought against any person than that which is brought in this instance. Being to a certain extent in touch with these people, the House will excuse me when I say that I am amazed that a statement like it should have been made. It has never been made outside.
    Mr. POINTER: Many a time. It was made at the Trade Union Congress.
    Mr. BOOTH: No, no. I read the reports, and I challenge the hon. Member to say that it was made, either at the Trade Union Congress or in his own Constituency, that a large majority of these companies employ as special canvassers men guilty of fraud and defalcation. There is not a vestige of truth in such a charge. I challenge the hon. Member to give the name of one man or mention the name of a village or a town where an agent of that kind has been appointed on behalf of an industrial insurance society. The Members of this House will recollect that, apart from the law, there is such a thing as public opinion, and there is as well the keenest competition in the industrial insurance world. At the present time, as the House knows, my interests are connected with another company, but that is no reason why I should allow a suggestion of this kind to be made against this company because I am interested in a competitive institution. There is, as I say, the keenest competition amongst these companies. Hon. Members who are in touch with the democracy are aware that there is not a working-class house or tenement in the whole of the United Kingdom but is canvassed in the course of the year by agents. If this company did not manage its business properly, and if it had the reputation of having criminals in its service, then the business would leave it. The public would not transact their business and would not trust a company which acted in that way to provide funeral money and to provide money for their old age. If any society were misguided enough to employ even a small group of men of the type suggested, of these criminals guilty of breaking the law, and of defrauding the public, they would lose in reputation and undoubtedly would go straight to liquidation. No society or company would be mad enough to do such a thing.
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    I was very sorry to hear the statement made, and I took this opportunity of having a contradiction put on record. There is not a word of truth in, or foundation for the charge.
    Mr. POINTER: I view of the general agreement for a Second Reading, if the Instruction of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton is accepted, I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time," put, and agreed to.
    Bill accordingly read a second time, and committed.
    Ordered, "That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Wesleyan and General Assurance Society Bill [Lords] that the Holders of Industrial Insurance Policies in the Society who have presented a petition against the Bill may be heard by their counsel, agents, and witnesses upon the allegations contained in their petition."—[Mr. G. Thorne.]

  SUPPLY.— [FIFTH ALLOTTED DAY.]

    CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1914–15.
    Considered in Committee.
    [Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]
    Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question proposed in consideration of Question, "That a sum, not exceeding £64,728, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1915, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Local Government Board, Ireland, including sundry Grants-in-Aid."—[Note.—£45,000 has been voted on account.]
    Question again proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £64,628 be granted for the said Service." Debate resumed.
    Mr. G. HAMILTON: I was referring to the question of housing in Dublin when I was interrupted, and to the remarks of the hon. Member for the Scotland Division (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), with regard to education and the number of schools in Belfast, and with regard to the question of housing in Rosyth. The hon. Member pointed out that in Liverpool housing had

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    been very much improved, and his argument appeared to me to mean that in Dublin it had been improved also. The actual facts are that, in spite of certain action by the Dublin Corporation, housing conditions in Dublin have been made very much worse. In the evidence Miss Harrison used these words:—
    "According to the last census there were 118,000 people odd badly housed in Dublin, as against 104,000 at the time of the previous census."
    Thus in ten years they have gone worse instead of better in the City of Dublin.
    Mr. HANCOCK: What was the increase in population?
    Mr. HAMILTON: There was a slight decrease during the ten years. Miss Harrison continued and produced a report which showed that 12,000 people live four in one room, and 11,335 live five in one room, and 8,000 live six in one room.
    Mr. J. SAMUEL: I think you are wrong with regard to population, and that the population increased.
    Mr. HAMILTON: I think you will find that there is a decrease in the last Census. The Report states:—
    "In the evidence given before the Royal Commission in the year 1880 it was stated there were 9,760 tenement houses in Dublin occupied by an estimated population of 117,000 persons, and that of this number 2,300 houses, occupied by an estimated population of about 30,000 people, were declared to be then unfit for human habitation. It follows that the average number of persons occupying each tenement house in that year was about twelve, while the number of tenement houses had been reduced to 5,322"—
    That is from 9,700. That, of course, the hon. Member for the Scotland Division would argue, was a great asset and a great improvement caused by the Dublin Corporation—
    "While the number of tenement houses has been reduced to 5,320, they are now occupied by a population of 87,305 persons, being the number ascertained by the sanitary staff, giving an average of 16.5 per house"—
    as compared with 12 per house at the previous estimate. I think, therefore, it is quite clear that the housing conditions in Dublin, in spite of the efforts which have undoubtedly been made by the corporation, are worse to-day than they were ten years ago. All statistics go to prove that. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division argued that the corporation had done great work in other directions. We are told that they have one of the best water supplies that any city enjoys at the present day. It is a great thing that Dublin has a good water supply, but that good water supply is not of much use to the poor people in Dublin if they only get one
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    tap in a yard for two or three tenement houses and no water in the house at all. In addition to providing a good water supply, the corporation might have seen that that water was conveyed where these poor people could drink it and use it for washing and other sanitary purposes. The hon. Member also went back some seventy-four years. I have noticed that when our Friends below the Gangway start to talk on these questions, and bring in a little bit of politics, they are very fond of going back a long time. We on this side like to consider present day or recent history in Ireland. We, with our Friends below the Gangway, are ashamed of the history of Ireland seventy-four years ago. The hon. Member goes back to the year 1840, when he says the present corporation took over the government of Dublin. Since then the corporation has been more or less a Nationalist corporation. Seventy-four years is longer than I or probably any other Member of this House can remember, and if in seventy-four years the corporation of Dublin under Nationalist government have not been able to improve the housing conditions more than they have improved them, I think we are justified in drawing the Chief Secretary's attention to this matter by supporting the Motion for the reduction of this Vote.
    10.0 P.M.
    The hon. Member also argued that if only there were Home Rule in Ireland, the whole of this housing trouble in Dublin would at once disappear. The Chief Secretary argued that the difficulty before the city corporation in Dublin was that if they started to make drastic alterations and improvements in the housing conditions, and to spend money for that purpose, the members of the corporation would lose their seats at the next election. I submit that even under a Home Rule Government the same condition with regard to election to the corporation would hold good, and would possibly be even more emphasised than at present. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division seems to think, first of all, that Home Rule is necessary to improve the housing conditions, and, secondly, that it is neccessary to bring in the suburbs of Dublin in order that their financial strength may improve the finances of the city of Dublin. There may be something in that argument; but the Parliament of this country has always held that an extension of borough boundaries should not be permitted unless the place sought to be included in the borough was willing to come in.

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    That is one of our arguments against Home Rule. It is an argument against the inclusion of the portions outside Dublin within the government of the city of Dublin. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division was using a rather dangerous argument, because his own city of Liverpool not long ago wished to include that eminent suburb, Bootle, within its boundaries. Bootle would not come in, and Parliament decided that Bootle was right, and refused the Liverpool Bill, in just the same way as it refused the Bill which Dublin brought in with the object of including its suburbs. [An HON. MEMBER: "It was refused by the Committee."] It was refused by Parliament. That is the principle of Parliament. The Parliament of the United Kingdom does not include any area in any government if that area does not wish to come into that government.
    The hon. Member for the Scotland Division asked why this inquiry was instituted in the city of Dublin—why was Dublin selected? It is a little difficult to know exactly what reason to give for the selection of Dublin, but I might submit one or two reasons to the Committee. Dublin is the worst town in the United Kingdom, not only for its housing conditions, but for the results of housing conditions, which to my mind are more serious. If we take the death-rate, out of forty international towns of about the same size, Dublin stands the sixth worst. The Committee will be interested to hear the names of the towns that are worse than Dublin. They are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rio de Janeiro, Trieste, and Venice. I think that gives some ground to the Chief Secretary for instituting this inquiry. In regard to the infantile mortality, of thirty-two international towns, Dublin stands the tenth worst. The towns worse than Dublin are: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Cologne, Breslau, Venice, Budapesth, Trieste, Berlin, and Rio de Janeiro. Is not that some reason why the question of housing in Dublin should be inquired into? Then take crime. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division, and, indeed, the Chief Secretary himself, resented very much the comparison between Dublin and Belfast. But, after all, we who sit on these benches cannot help but compare the two towns. We are considering the government of towns in Ireland; Belfast and Dublin are the two biggest towns in Ireland; therefore,
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    in order to get a fair comparison one must compare those two towns. They both live, as far as this Parliament is concerned, under the same laws as any other town in the United Kingdom, with one or two small exceptions, such as in the case of Dublin, the special Act about which we have heard to-day, the Clancy Act. When one compares Dublin and Belfast, Dublin always comes out badly. If the boot was on the other foot, if Belfast always came out badly, should we not hear still stronger arguments from the benches below the Gangway as to Home Rule being absolutely essential in order to put Belfast straight because it was so badly governed? If we take the details of crime for the year 1911 in Dublin, with a population of 304,000, there were 3,429 indictable offences, while in Belfast there were only 1,826, although the population is 86,000 more than that of Dublin. If we take pauperism, the pauperism rate for Belfast is 95 per 10,000, and for Dublin 283. Dublin is not singular. The other Nationalist towns in Ireland are much the same. In Cork, Limerick, Waterford, the average is 327 paupers per 10,000. If we take the lunacy rate—and all these things, I submit, arise from bad housing, as much as from anything else—the lunacy rate of Belfast is 33.9 per 10,000, while Dublin is nearly double, or 65 per 10,000. These are the reasons why Dublin was selected for this inquiry. Speaking entirely for myself I must say that when this question was raised by my hon. and learned Friend (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) a few weeks ago on the Adjournment, I was, if I may say so with all respect, very much disappointed with the reply of the gentleman the Chief Secretary of Ireland. He used practically these words—
    Mr. BIRRELL: When was this?
    Mr. HAMILTON: On the adjournment, some weeks ago. I know it was after eleven, and possibly the right hon. Gentleman had not had time to read the Report, although it had been out for several days. We on this side of the House and I, for one, have taken an interest in this question of housing in Dublin, not since this Report came out, or even since the inquiry was instituted, but for several years. As an Irishman interested in Dublin and interested in my native country, I have taken a keen interest in this question of housing in Dublin. When this Report came out I read as much of it as I could, and as quickly as I could. In his reply

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    that evening the Chief Secretary boasted that he had appointed a Departmental Committee, and he said:—
    "It is a most valuable Report which this Committee has produced."
    Mr. BIRRELL: Hear, hear!
    Mr. HAMILTON: He continued:—
    "It has been prepared in a comparatively short time. I think that it shows the advantage of a Departmental Report over a more pompous and cumbrous method of inquiry."
    I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but what is the object of all this? What is the object of having the inquiry which was going to report so soon? Why, that this House and that the right hon. Gentleman himself might take action at once. The matter was so serious that the right hon. Gentleman appointed a Committee which was to report without any waste of time, and I think that Members on this side of the. House were justified in thinking that after his great skill and foresight in getting the Committee to report so quickly the Government would take some action at any rate to get something done after the Committee had reported. The Chief Secretary continued his speech that night in these words:—
    "The hon. Member is very anxious to know what I am going to do with this Report. We shall wait until this Report is completed and until we have the Appendix"—
    That has arrived now.
    "which will enable us to compare the condition of things not only in Dublin but in other towns, and also enable us to form some opinion as to the size of the problem, etc."
    I was very much disappointed with that. I was still more disappointed with the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to-day. He does not seem to have made up his mind yet what he is going to do. We have the whole of the Report and the Appendix. We did hope—at least I did—that the right hon. Gentleman would tell us that he had been in personal communication with the Corporation of Dublin, and that he was consulting with them as to what action they were going to take; that he was going to bring all the pressure he could to bear upon them to take some action at once. There was one matter I hoped he might refer to, and that was the recommendation of the Report of the Committee that certain property should for the purpose of improving housing conditions, be exempted from Increment Duty. That was a definite recommendation in the Report. It is not a big matter to the Government. Home Rule is pending, and I should have thought the Government might have
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    risked that small amount, and so have given that encouragement to the corporation. Instead of that, the right hon. Gentleman referred again to the fact of the wicked landlord. That land had to be bought and paid for "at a pretty full price" were the right hon. Gentleman's exact words. I do not know but that I have deep sympathy with the landlords. They only own land instead of owning something else. Anything we own and want to sell we all want to get "a pretty full price for." Whether I am a Nationalist, or the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench, if I have something to sell, I expect to get a fair price for it, and I imagine that is the same as "a pretty full price." The right hon. Gentleman also said that these defects of housing in Dublin could not be tackled—and I would like to know exactly what he meant by this phrase—"by Manchester principles combined with patches of Socialism."
    Does he mean that you cannot get the housing problem in Dublin and in Ireland right under Free Trade—is that the Manchester principle that he refers to? The right hon. Gentleman does not answer me. I therefore gather from his remarks that he means that under Free Trade Dublin has been put into such a condition that it cannot pay decent wages to its workmen, and therefore its workmen cannot afford to house themselves decently. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I agree with the hon. Gentleman who spoke on the other side side of the House that at the bottom of this is the difficulty of bad wages. What I feel we in this part of the House are justified in saying is, that in Dublin wages are bad. We know it. In Belfast, the other large city of Ireland, wages are good, and housing is good. Why is there this distinction. In Belfast there are large manufacturing concerns carried on. [An HON. MEMBER: "Sweating."] In Dublin, apparently, they cannot be carried on. I think that possibly the right hon. Gentleman has hit upon the correct solution, "that under the Manchester principles of Free Trade Dublin will not thrive." Wages cannot rise. Housing will remain bad. The right hon. Gentleman also said in connection with what I may call the misbehaviour or wrong receiving of rebates by certain members of the city corporation, that he found it "not at all nice to his mind." We on this side of the House, do not expect

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    the Chief Secretary to talk about things "not being nice to his mind" when he stands up in this House. I speak with all respect, but is not the Committee justified in expecting something more from the Chief Secretary—in getting some idea what he intends to do with regard to these men that have received these rebates wrongly?
    What are the Government going to do? Are they going to bring any pressure to bear on the corporation? Are we not justified in asking the right hon. Gentleman from the authority which he has, either through the Local Government Board or as Chief Secretary, by some method, which I am sure he can find if only he looks, to bring pressure to bear upon the corporation to see that this money is refunded? I understand that one of the members of the corporation who has received this money, and who was mentioned by the hon. Member for Leicester in another connection, is a Unionist—the more shame to him. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Therefore it is not a political matter. I am glad to find that one of them is a Unionist, and that therefore I can attack him more freely without being thought to have a party bias in the matter. Surely if a councillor has been receiving this rebate wrongly the Chief Secretary can do something and bring pressure to bear on the corporation to take some action! I have spoken much longer than I intended to do, having been carried away by enthusiasm. I hope the Committee will forgive me, but I do feel that at the bottom of this whole question is a great principle. The principle is, What are we trying to do? Are we in this House trying to cure the evils which have occurred or are we trying to prevent these evils? They are at the bottom of all the crime and immorality, and high death-rate, and high infantile mortality. Housing is one of the chief roots of the evils, and if we could improve the housing conditions of the working classes we would be doing a great work. I am convinced, as one who has done some slumming in the worst portions of this country, and also in Dublin, for I had the pleasure of going round these houses—I do not think it should be called a pleasure, but rather a terrible experience—that it is far more important to cure the condition of the housing of the working classes in Dublin than to supply them with sanatoria when they are ill. If we get at the root of
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    the evil, and prevent illness and immorality and attacks upon our civilisation, I feel that we should be doing some good, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary will do something to help in that direction.
    Mr. BIRRELL: The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down will excuse me if I do not follow him into all the details of his somewhat provocative speech. I have already spoken upon that subject, and I hope he will pardon me if I do not reply to his speech at the present moment. I can assure him his interests in the case of housing in Dublin recommends itself very much to me, and I am glad to think that in my efforts I shall be reinforced by Members sitting for English constituencies. I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald), in which he spoke of the doings of the Distress Committee. He gave us a great; deal of miscellaneous information which I felt it rather difficult to follow, as I am not acquainted with all the details to enable me to deal with it in a manner that. I should like. At the same time, I want one or two things to be made perfectly plain, first, with reference to the responsibility of the Local Government Board in this matter; and, secondly, with reference to the duties and the responsibilities of the Distress Committee itself. I was, I confess, a little taken back to find that the chairman of the Distress Committee was a gentleman who figures in regard to rebates by the corporation, but, after all, that is not a matter for which the Local Government Board has any responsibility whatever.
    The Distress Committee is a body which was constituted under the Act of 1905 passed by my predecessor in office, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. Long), and that Act required Distress Committees to be set up both in England and in Ireland, not in any way for the purpose of distributing public funds, but as responsible bodies which might invite local and involuntary subscription, and also which might be given or granted some share of public revenue. There were voluntary bodies appointed in the manner stated by the Act of Parliament, and they had to deal with private funds. The Distress Committee in Dublin, as established by an Order of the Local Government Board, comprised thirty-five members. Sixteen were appointed by the corporation from its own body, six were appointed by the corporation on being selected by the guardians

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    of the North Dublin Union, and six were appointed on being selected by the guardians of the South Dublin Union, and seven were appointed by the corporation from outside their own body, but being persons experienced in the relief of distress. That was not a body over which the Local Government Board had any authority either as to appointment or in any way except to see that any fund they had procured from any source, whether obtained originally by voluntary subscription or as subsequently provided by grants from their Employment Fund, was properly distributed. There has been a good deal of difference of opinion as to whether it has been a good thing or a bad thing, but be it good or bad the powers and responsibilities of the Local Government Board were simply to see that any moneys which they handed over should find their way into the pockets of the unemployed in the place over which the Distress Committee had authority to act. A Distress Committee has these authorities. The hon. Member for Leicester spoke as having been a member of a distress committee. I wish he had been a member of the Dublin Distress Committee, for I am quite sure he would have discharged those important duties with all the abilities with which he has been endowed. But he would have found it difficult in Dublin to secure under the provisions and regulations of the Act that all this money did find its way into the pockets of the unemployed persons. It is the most difficult job in Dublin to find work for this class of person, because the work they do is not necessarily very well done, and they are not the strongest and ablest or best qualified workers. To find a job which would employ not two or three but a band of thirty, forty, or fifty of these people, and to secure that this Unemployment Fund does find its way into their pockets and bellies is a very difficult task.
    The way in which it is done is that the Distress Committee may provide work, or it may contribute to work that is being done by some other public body or authority. I will take first the providing of work for these people in Dublin. There were 200 or 300 people all clamouring for work. Of course, you have to have a labour test, and you have to find work for them. It is a somewhat demoralising task to pursue suddenly to have to pop down in a city like Dublin, which presents the difficulties to be found in other cities in a most marked form, and to find some sort
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    of occupation and some labour test these men can perform in order to get their share of the money. The sole business and power of the Local Government Board is to see that any Grant it gives, or the great bulk of it, finds its way into the pockets of these people. Some of it may go in cartage and some of it in material, but we try to get work for these people. The Grand Canal has been mentioned as an instance. That company has a road which is frequented a good deal by the public, and it was thought to be a good scheme to have a number of men turned into it in order to put the road into a better condition. The Canal Company were approached and asked, "How much will you give towards this work?" and the reply was, "We will not give you a farthing; the road is good enough for us, and we are not going to recoup one blessed penny." On the other hand, you have these men clamouring for work, and all the company say is, "If you like to put these men on the job we will not sue them for tresspass." That is the whole history of this transaction. The Distress Committee has no power whatsoever to recover from them anything, or to insist upon their subscribing one farthing in exchange for that advantage. The question simply was: Should these people have this work on the job, or should they not have it? That was the difficulty with reference to the Grand Canal. The road they made, I am told, was undoubtedly an improvement. It was steam-rolled, and, although I cannot honestly say that I have been upon it myself, I am told that it is not in itself a bad specimen of the work done by distress committees. The Grand Canal Company are a poor body, and they would not pay for it. There were these poor people clamouring for work, and the Distress Committee, finding it extraordinarily difficult to get any work for them at all, put them on it. There was a case in which recoupment might fairly have been demanded, but it could not be recovered. The difficulty in Dublin, I will not say in Ireland, is to get people to pay unless they are obliged.
    Then other examples were given by the hon. Member. The bulk of the work that the Distress Committee did was in the nature of road making and cleansing the back lanes of Dublin, which are not liable to be swept or kept clean by the corporation, and which are not only inhabited, but also owned by poor people and by persons

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    upon whom any demand that they should pay for cleaning the dirt out of the streets would have been treated, I will not say with ridicule, but with a stoney refusal to do anything. This was the difficulty which presented itself. How were we to find the work. I ask this Committee on behalf of the Distress Committee, notwithstanding the pertinent criticisms of my hon. Friend to bear in mind the plight in which they were situated. There were a number of very poor people seeking work, which it was most important to get for them as soon as possible. The Distress Committee went about seeking work for them. It is not in itself a very pleasant thing for an employer of labour to go about begging to do a job for the owners of these terraces, and the occupiers and owners of the property abutting upon these lanes in which the cleansing took place. They did sometimes extort or obtain from the owners of these premises a very small contribution in respect of the material. They themselves expended other sums in the purchase of material for this road, making or cleansing, or whatever description is given to it, with the result that the work was done.
    The hon. Member says, and obviously it must be true, that some pecuniary advantage must have accrued to this property in consequence of this expenditure of money, labour, and wages. He said that in one case the improvement was estimated at £314, or something of that sort. It may be so. It is obvious that some improvement must accrue, but whether this property has been put up for sale and has ever been subjected to that test so that you could say it had increased in price since its former acquisition by virtue of this improvement I do not know; but there has been nothing to show that its assessable value has been increased by the work done by these poor people, and I should very much doubt whether any appreciable increase in its value has taken place. Of course, I agree that if you can get recoupment it is the right economic policy and you draw the right picture. As my hon. Friend has said, you get money from the fund, say £250, and you so use that money that you double the fund at your disposal. I admit that he has experience of this country, and I have no experience of England in this matter. But the Dublin committee were in a different position from the committees in England, who can spend money on profitable jobs and get something back. They could get some return
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    irrespective of the value of the work done, representing the increased value of the property. But we cannot do that. We have tried in Dublin to do it and we have necessarily failed, owing to the conditions of the case. I am not responsible for that. I have endeavoured to defend the Dublin Corporation from attacks which seemed to me to go beyond the proved facts of the case, and it is the same here, although I am sorry that the chairman of the Distress Committee should have apparently employed his position to get work done, and, as the owner of property, should have prevaricated as to the ownership of that property. Still, I very much doubt whether any other person would have agreed to recoup. We cannot get recoupment in most cases in Dublin. If they wanted it done in that way they would do it in the ordinary course of business, and get the work done by the people they usually employed. They would not go to a charitable enterprise of this sort.
    I quite agree that the Distress Committee should obtain recoupment where they could do so. That was their duty, but I do not see any evidence that they failed in that duty. They had to deal with people who said, "Do it if you choose." That really deals with the greatr part of this case. My hon. Friend suggests that the Local Government Board has a bias against this kind of work on which there is recoupment. They have not. They have no duty nor authority beyond seeing that the money has been spent in such a way as to put the maximum of the advance into the hands of these poor people. Complaint has been made that they did not take up some work from the Board of Works. This job would have involved an expenditure of £600, but the amount of money that would have been put into the pockets of these poor people would have been so small that, notwithstanding the character of the work, the committee could not undertake it. The gravamen of the case is that we did not obtain recoupment. My answer is that we could not. I am sorry that my hon. Friend should have sneered at Mr. MacCabe. As a matter of fact, he was, not specially connected with the Distress Committee, more than any other inspector who could have been appointed. He was chosen to take up that inquiry because he had knowledge of the subject and was a very competent person. I regret that any imputation should be made against him. He was on perfectly friendly terms with the lady who asked for the

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    inquiry and to suggest that he was in particeps criminis with all sorts of people is absurd. He was no more connected with the matter than other inspectors who must have been chosen. I cannot go through the various cases. My hon. Friend talked about private property. Of course, private property has a disagreeable sound. He said the money is employed for the benefit of private property. That is really not the way to look at it. The Distress Committee do not go about seeking to benefit the owners of private property at all. They have to discharge the most difficult duty of finding jobs for these unfortunate people, in order that this public dole, which has been placed in the hands of the Distress Committee, should be spent with as little harm as possible.
    I cannot say whether this Distress Committee has discharged all its duties with great precision or with great accuracy. Certainly a number of its members, I know, are most devoted and quite free from any imputation whatsoever of utilising their position for the benefit of themselves. Miss Harrison was referred to by my hon. Friend. I am not going to say a single word against her. She was herself a member of the Distress Committee, who, perhaps, did not get her own way. It may be that her way was better, and that they might have been wise if they had conceded to her many of the points she made. Upon that I express no opinion. She, at least, obtained a sworn inquiry, and the hon. Member read us portions of' the evidence and the report of it. All I can say is that that inquiry was held in public, that it was fully reported in the newspapers, and that the respectable citizens of Dublin had a full opportunity of forming their own opinion as to the rights and wrongs of the case. As I have said, my obligation in the matter was that of the Local Government Board and nothing more. I cannot do anything more than exercise such wise control as a Local Government Board can do. Local Government Boards, when they interfere with bodies like the corporation, or bodies like the Distress Committee, are not treated with very great consideration, and they have to go very cautiously and be satisfied that they do not hit unless they have authority to do so.
    I have carefully considered the authority of the Local Government Board in this matter over the Distress Committee, which is a statutory body created for particular purposes by Act of Parliament, and
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    beyond seeing that any money is expended in the manner in which it is authorised, I have no authority over them at all. If there has been any blundering, if there have been any mistakes, I am sure I am very sorry. If the Distress Committee continue these grants—I express no opinion whether they should have or not—I dare say that in future they will do their very best to obtain recoupment from the citizens and other persons in Dublin. I hope they will have greater success in the future than they have had in the past. They have tried most honestly to obtain this assistance in the form of recoupment, and I assert that if they have failed they have failed because they could not get it. Their obligation and our obligation was not to withhold Grants. My hon. Friend would never say, "Unless you get recoupment, we will not give you Grants at all, because the money is being squandered or is going into the pockets of private owners." That is not the course which would recommend itself to him or to the people of Dublin. The Distress Committee did the best they could. Although I cannot defend every action of theirs, I am perfectly satisfied they have done nothing of which, as a body, they need be ashamed. The conditions of Dublin are such that if my hon. Friend were to go over there and should become the chairman of the Distress Committee, I venture to believe that, before many months passed he would be doing the same thing.
    Mr. O'SHEE: May I remind the right hon. Gentleman of the additional £1,000,000?
    Mr. BIRRELL: The way that matter stands is this: The Land Bill, which was read a first time the other day, contains a Clause whereby another £1,000,000 is provided, on land purchase terms, for increased cottages in Ireland. That is part and parcel of the Bill. I am not without hope that the Bill itself may become law before the end of the Session, because I have reason to believe that negotiations have been carried on. Of course, obviously we cannot take a contested Irish Land Bill this Session, but I am not without hope that we may be able to come to some arrangement whereby that Bill may-become law. If so, the extra £1,000,000 is secured. If we can get the Land Bill through by agreement, well and good. If we cannot, I agree that it would be an unfair thing and a hard thing that the labourers'

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    cottages should lose the £1,000,000 which was incidentally introduced into that Bill. Therefore, though in the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer I cannot give any very definite promise, I can assure the hon. Member that it is my intention to keep my eye upon the Irish Land Bill, and if it is not likely to pass I shall endeavour to introduce a one Clause Bill securing this £1,000,000 in order to complete a good many schemes which are now outstanding for the increase of cottages in different parts of Ireland. I know, economically, there are objections to the proposal, but I am satisfied in my own mind that the advantages outweigh all the disadvantages, and I should only think I was fulfilling my obligation if I secured that that Clause should survive.
    Mr. J. H. CAMPBELL: I am afraid I cannot quite endorse what the right hon. Gentleman has just said with regard to this Land Bill, because, having had an opportunity of glancing through it, rather cursorily, it seemed to me that he has gone the wrong way about it if he thought it was possible that this Bill of his should pass by agreement, because, as I understand his Bill, from beginning to end it reeks with coercion and compulsion. If that is so, so far as I am authorised to speak on behalf of my Friends behind me, there is very little chance of a Bill of that sort getting through by agreement. But that is a side issue. I was very greatly interested indeed in listening to the speech of the hon. Member (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald). The statement that he made as to the operations of this Distress Committee were quite new to me. I thought he made a very grave case indeed against the operation of this Committee, and one that required a much more complete and full answer than has been given by the Chief Secretary. The gravamen of the charge made by the hon. Member was that owners of private property have been utilising the assistance of the Distress Committee by applying money at their disposal for the purpose of improving private property at the expense of this fund. He gave one very striking case—the case of the Grand Canal Company—at whose instance nearly £6,000 had been applied apparently for one purpose, namely, the improvement of their towing path. The right hon. Gentleman says he is not acquainted with the towing path.
    Mr. BIRRELL: It is a road.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: The right hon. Gentleman said it was of great advantage to fishermen, I can only tell the right hon. Gentleman that his informants are leading him entirely astray. The fishermen who fish in the canal are as scarce as the flowers that bloom in the spring. [Laughter.] I mean in the winter. Although fishermen are very scarce, I am able to inform him that the fish are scarcer, and I do not think there is a case on record of a man who ever produced a fish from that canal. To say that the money was used to improve the path for fishermen is ridiculous. The charge made by the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) required a more serious and substantial answer. The Grand Canal Company is a private company, working for profit and paying dividends to their shareholders. The directors are a very responsible and highly-respectable body of gentlemen. The chairman is a Privy Councillor, nominated to that high office by the right hon. Gentleman himself. He was a Member of this House and sat below the Gangway with hon. Members from Ireland. Another director of that company was also a Member of this House and sat in the vicinity of hon. Members below the Gangway. I think something more was due to them than the explanation of their conduct which was accorded by the right hon. Gentleman. Knowing what I do of these gentlemen, I cannot believe that there is not some better explanation of their action. It is stated that they apparently used the Distress Fund to the extent of £6,000 to improve their property without recouping the city to the extent of a penny.
    Mr. BIRRELL: They did not want the work done.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: I can hardly conceive that any public or private company would refuse to have £6,000, which did not come out of their pocket, spent on the improvement of their property. I must conclude, in the absence of better information, that the Grand Canal Company directors have a better answer than that given by the Chief Secretary. With regard to the other question, I have this advantage over the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), that I have been for years, and am to-day, a substantial contributor to the rates of Dublin, and therefore I take an interest in the corporation of that city. I am not here to-

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    day to indulge in any general attack on that corporation. They are a poor thing, but they are our own, and if the ratepayers are not satisfied with them, they have their remedy, and that is to remove them. I must admit that they have inherited the condition of things which prevails to-day to a very large extent. Dublin is in a peculiar position with regard to labour conditions. There are very few industries and very few skilled artisans. The bulk of the labouring classes are men who are compelled to earn their living discharging cargo at the docks, carting coal, and in occupations of that kind. That very arduous and difficult labour is always underpaid. I regret to say that they receive very small wages indeed.
    That is not the fault of the employers, because I do not think that the Dublin employers are making greater profits in their trades than the average employer over the rest of the United Kingdom, but it is owing to the unfortunate conditions which prevail in Dublin owing to the absence of these industries which take from the ranks of unskilled labour a large number of men and absorb them into the ranks of skilled labour. There is hardly anything of that kind in Dublin, and the result is that these unfortunate men are condemned to remain throughout their lives in the ranks of unskilled labour. That has largely complicated the position, because their wages do not increase, and they are not in a position to pay an economic rent for self-contained labourers' houses or cottages. Consequently they are herded together in these tenement houses which are the heritage of the past, and, of course, are not the creation of the Dublin Corporation. At the same time it is right to say this: The hon. Member for the Scotland Division (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) tells us that all this distress, decay, and poverty in Dublin are due to the Union, and at the same time the hon. and learned Member for County Dublin (Mr. Clancy) tells us that a few years ago Belfast was a village; while we all know that to-day it is one of the greatest ports and hives of industry in the United Kingdom. It is a curious fact that that has happened under the Union, that in the case of Belfast there have been continuous unbroken prosperity and progress, while in the case of Dublin there has been exactly the opposite. I was a little bit surprised to hear the hon. Member for the Scotland Division suggest as a sort of reflection upon Belfast that during the last few weeks there has been an
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    appeal made by a bishop of the Church of Ireland, the Bishop of Down, and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, for funds to equip more schools. When you realise that the population of Belfast to-day is something like 380,000, and that the population has gone up from a few thousand in about a half-century, you can well understand that the population has rather outstripped the supply of schools and churches, and so far from that being a reflection on the City of Belfast—
    Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: I never said that it was a reflection.
    Mr. CAMPBELL: Then I do not understand the object of the remarks of the hon. Member. He was criticising the action of the Belfast Corporation. He was answering an argument based on a contrast of the conduct and administration of the city of Belfast and those of the city of Dublin, and it was in that connection that he took care to remind the House that these appeals were made, and unless this was intended to be some reflection upon the corporation of Belfast, I fail to see how the argument was relevant. We were also told, I think by the same hon. Member, that the reason why the slum question in Dublin has not been dealt with is because Ireland has not had Home Rule. That is a very extraordinary statement, because, as regards the conduct of its municipal affairs, Dublin has had Home Rule for over seventy years, and it has utilised it in this way—for the last twenty - five years no Unionist has ever had a chance of occupying the position of mayor of the chief city of Ireland. But while I am not here to disaparge the administration of affairs in Dublin by the corporation, and while I am not a bigoted admirer of that body, yet one has to admit, as I freely admit, that in the case of some important sanitary improvements they have accomplished reforms that are a credit to the city, yet the fault which I find in regard to this matter of housing accommodation is not that they have failed to remove these tenement houses, which I admit would be impossible for them to do having regard to their rating facilities, but where they are to blame is in not having administered the law and the powers at present in their hands.
    One has only got to read this Report to see that they have been at least very slack in their administration of the law.

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    I was very glad to hear the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees vindicate their medical inspector from the suggestion that he was responsible for all this. It is a very mean and very shabby way to try and relieve the corporation at the expense of the medical inspector, who is bound to obey orders. If he refuses the Local Government Board can dismiss him. To say that because they acted upon his report that therefore they are excused from all personal responsibilities is, of course, ludicrous. But the Report I am afraid makes it perfectly plain that it is largely due to the presence in the corporation of a substantial leaven of those slum owners, that they have failed to exercise that vigilance and care that one would expect from a great public body in regard to a matter of this kind. One other matter. I do not think it was a very fair argument, though it was pressed very much by hon. Members below the Gangway, that when they came to this Parliament for the extension of their boundaries they were refused, and to that extent they had been deprived of those extra rating facilities. Hon. Members opposite may take it from me that there are two sides to that question, and on that occasion the other side was represented by the inhabitants of those prosperous townships which have been made self-contained in every respect as regards local government, and which are prosperous and financially strong, and they do not wish to throw in their lot with the city of Dublin, managed in the way in which it has been for some years. It is a curious commentary upon the position of affairs in Ireland that just as to-day we are told that Home Rule cannot be financed without the benefit of the province of Ulster, so it is impossible to finance the affairs of the city of Dublin without getting in these prosperous outlying townships. That is a comparison well worth considering. I only rose for the purpose of saying what I thought I ought to say in justice to the Corporation of the City of Dublin, that while they have been very slack and remiss in enforcing obligations under the Housing Acts, they have, I think, done good and useful work in many other departments of public life.
    Mr. O'SHEE Mr. O'SHEE rose—[HON. MEMBERS: "Divide!"]
    Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That
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    the Question be now put," but the Chairman withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question. Debate resumed.
    Mr. O'SHEE: The whole of this discussion has been occupied with the case of Dublin, but I wish to refer to the case of the small towns and the urban areas where the same bad housing conditions exist as in—
    Lord ROBERT CECILrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put," but the Chairman withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question. Debate resumed.
    Mr. O'SHEE: The position in the small towns is in this respect a very serious one, and there is particularly a town in my Constituency—
    It being Eleven of the clock the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.
    Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

  GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.

    CURRAGH OFFICERS.
    Mr. GULLAND: I beg to move, "That this House do now adjourn."
    Mr. AMERY: I wish to draw the attention of the House to the amazing answer given to me this afternoon by the Prime Minister in regard to the repudiation of the assurances given to General Gough. I regret that owing to a misunderstanding which prevented his being informed until a late hour to-night the Prime Minister is not able to be present, but I think the facts are quite sufficient to warrant my raising the subject immediately. The House was informed this afternoon that the repudiation of the pledge—a repudiation so serious as to involve the resignation of one Cabinet Minister and of the two military heads of the Army Council—has never been communicated to those whom it directly affects. We were told that
    "in the circumstances, and having regard to all that has happened and the answers which have been made in this House, it did not seem necessary."
    Surely it is an astonishing new doctrine that public servants should ascertain their duty and their liabilities from and shape their conduct upon, not the written instructions which they have received and

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    which have never been countermanded, but what they may pick up in the newspapers about speeches and interjections of Ministers. How can any Government service be carried on in that way? Supposing the Secretary of State for War were to promise an increase in the soldiers' pay forthwith, would the Army Pay Department be entitled to pay that out on the following morning on seeing it in the newspapers? Of course not. But supposing a special exception is to be made in the case of General Gough, how is General Gough to learn from all the speeches which have been made and from all the obiter dicta which have fallen from Ministers what his position is? To what is he to go for guidance? Is it the newspapers? Is it the speeches as Ministers made them, or is it the faked versions of those speeches which appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT? He has a great variety of statements from which to make his choice. On the 25th March those assurances were declared inoperative. The Foreign Secretary emphatically preached the gospel of coercion. The Postmaster-General, at Swadlincote on 14th April, said that if Ulster persisted coercion would become not merely legitimate but necessary. At Longford, one of the hon. Gentlemen behind me, who knows the policy of the Government better than the Government themselves, announced that the Government were
    "ready to take the risk of putting down rebellion in Ulster by fire and sword rather than consent to any scheme of permanent exclusion."
    I admit that if General Gough in his studies should light upon those passages he would have good ground for thinking that the assurances given him had been repudiated. But these are not the only speeches that have been made. The Irish Secretary, since that repudiation, has definitely stated in this House that Ulster must be won, and that could not be done by force; that Ulster could not be driven into a constitution to which she was averse. That would comfort General Gough, although I admit it is vague. There are more definite statements with regard to the two paragraphs containing the assurance. Lord Morley, on 31st March, said:—
    "I do not repent of stating them as my own view of the Government policy."
    He went on to say that—
    "Two eminent colleagues—referring to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary—used language in the House of Commons to the effect that, like myself, they did not find anything in the two paragraphs which differed materially from the rest of the Memorandum."
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    The difference was apparently in the order in which that Memorandum appeared in the White Paper, after a certain letter from General Gough. The late Secretary of State for War glories in the paragraphs, and describes them as the true Liberal view. More than that, no Minister has repudiated General French's interpretation of the meaning of these two paragraphs, namely, that they did not mean enforcing the Home Rule Bill, if it became law, upon Ulster. The late Secretary for War explicitly said that General French's gloss was nothing more than a re-assertion of these two paragraphs. I say that upon those statements alone General Gough is fully entitled to assume that the only repudiation that has in fact taken place is the repudiation of the sequence of certain documents in the White Paper, a matter which does not concern him at all, and that the assurance given to him on paper is still valid to-day. Of course it is valid to-day! It is valid to him, and it is valid to the whole Army.
    I would remind the House that when the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Sir J. Jardine) raised this question the other day as to whether General Gough's position was different to that of any other officer in the Army he was told that it was not. The Government knows that the assurance is valid to-day. I know there was a repudiation. It was a parliamentary repudiation. It was an expedient to meet the whirlwind raised by the hon. Member for Stoke on 24th March. The hon. Member has no great reason to feel satisfied: he has not gained his point. In fact, the situation to-day is still the same as it was on 24th March. The assurance stands—is bound to stand as long as the Government exists, because it was the assurance of the whole Cabinet! No "cock and bull story" about an independent Secretary of State perverting the whole object of the Government by inserting these paragraphs will stand for a moment. We all know there was a very serious crisis in connection with the Army at that time. The Secretary of State himself said, "A situation of grave peril in the Army undoubtedly had arisen," and added, that he reported at frequent intervals to His Majesty. If so, he reported at even more frequent intervals to the Prime Minister. He, the Prime Minister and the First Lord of the Admiralty were discussing this matter practically the whole of the Saturday and the Sunday before. On the morning of 23rd March, it was perfectly

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    clear, and we all know it, that the Government had decided that they had made a grave blunder, that they could not face the exposure of the facts, that they had to be smoothed over, and General Gough had to be induced to accept reinstatement on any terms.
    Mr. PRINGLE: On a point of Order. The hon. Member opposite rose to raise the point of the repudiation of the pledge given to General Gough, he is, however, raising the general questions which are covered by the Blocking Motion (No. 21) on the Paper. The hon. Member is entitled to deal with the one, but I submit he is not entitled to go into the details covered by the Blocking Motion?
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member up to the last moment or so was perfectly in order. In the last few sentences he has covered the ground which is covered by the Blocking Motion.
    Mr. AMERY: I certainly do not wish to raise the point as to the action of the officers which is covered by the Blocking Motion. I only want to deal with the assurances given by Ministers and only referred for a moment to the conditions under which they were given. I want to remind the House that these assurances were first of all given verbally at the War Office. Can any Member of the House believe for a moment that they were given without the full knowledge and sanction of the Prime Minister? They were given verbally in the presence of witnesses, among whom I believe was the First Lord of the Admiralty. Does any Member of the House suggest that because they were given verbally and not in writing they are not to be binding? The ex-Secretary of State for War then went to the Cabinet where he was for three-quarters of an hour, where he repeated in detail the assurances given to General Gough verbally, and I notice that at Ilkeston the other night he laid great stress upon his extraordinarily retentive verbal memory.
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): Is the hon. Member stating to the House what the Secretary of State for War said at the Cabinet?
    Mr. AMERY: No, but what the Secretary of State for War said on 25th March, when he informed this House that he had stated to the Cabinet what he had been just telling the House—and he prides him-
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    self on his memory. He was three-quarters of an hour with the Cabinet, and the Cabinet did not dissent from the view he took. If they had dissented, the right hon. Gentleman could never have added these two paragraphs. He came back from his interview with His Majesty. Let me quote his own words at Ilkeston:—
    "When I came back my colleagues had dispersed and I found only the Prime Minister and Lord Morley."
    And I notice the Press reporters drew attention to the fact that the First Lord of the Admiralty also stayed behind, though I notice that with a modesty and self-effacement not very usual with that right hon. Gentleman he has never drawn attention to that. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say:—
    "It seemed they had been considering the substance of what should be given to the officers."
    One of the Ministers stayed behind, and the right hon. Gentleman and he concocted these additional paragraphs. Could that have been done if there had been really a difference of policy? and on a matter on which the right hon. Gentleman had been to see the King at frequent intervals, as he stated in this House, would he not have gone and informed the Prime Minister, who was in the same house, if not in the same room? It seems absolutely clear from these facts that there was no difference and could be no difference in policy, and that the assurance given by the right hon. Gentleman was the assurance of the whole Cabinet—and the story of the change of policy will not wash. The facts are that the Government made a mess and they had to get out of it as best they could. They were all agreed on policy. They may jettison the ex-Secretary of State for War, but they cannot get over the facts. It is not the Army that caused the trouble, but the Government's own action, and any attempt they make now to make their Parliamentary repudiation a reality would at once bring about a complete disclosure of the whole situation, which it would be impossible for the Government to survive. They can come down to this House and tell this House that they meant to dishonour their cheques and so win the approval of high-minded, high-principled supporters opposite. They cannot, in fact, dishonour their cheques because they could not stand the exposure that would follow.
    Mr. JOHN WARD: There is one observation which I think all who are present will agree with in the statement of the hon. Member (Mr. Amery), and that

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    is that there is a great difference in the circumstances under which we are discussing this subject to-night from what was the case on the 24th. Circumstances have changed in one remarkable aspect, and that is that whereas the hon. Member opposite and his Friends imagined that they had a splendid argument and a splendid position, namely, to use all these officers for their own party purpose—
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now contravening the blocking notice on the Paper.
    Mr. WARD: I have said all I wished to say upon that point.
    Lord HUGH CECIL: You are saying what is untrue.
    Mr. WARD: I am sure that on some future occasion, probably next week, I shall have an opportunity of quoting some of the speeches of hon. Members opposite in justification of my statement. The suggestion now is that the new Secretary of State for War should make the very blunder that caused the resignation of the previous Secretary of State for War. I understand that the suggestion is that the Prime Minister as Secretary for War should make some communication to General Gough withdrawing the paper that he has lodged, I understand, in some bank in London. I should imagine that was committing again the very offence which the recent Army Orders were intended to mitigate or prevent in the future. Such a communication would be in opposition, as it was in opposition, to the Army Regulations and to all law relating to military affairs connected with the work and the duty of officers in the position of the General indicated. We shall know now that it is not proper, and it is recognised on both sides of the House that it is improper, to seek in any way to secure the ideas of a commanding officer before the event as to what he proposes to do in a hypothetical case should he be ordered to do so. That having been laid down and decided and accepted by the hon. Member who has introduced this subject, accepted by everybody opposite, and now the request is that we should break through the rule again, that some communication should be made to this officer relating to the possibility of an order later on, and that we should really reconsider circumstances which have not arisen. I suggest that there is no necessity to make any communication to those
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    officers, for the simple reason that we may take it for granted by the way in which this subject has been dropped like a red hot coal by the Opposition—[An HON. MEMBER: "Wait and see!"]—we may take it for granted that these officers know their business, and they have no intention in the future, whatever the speeches of the leaders on either side may be, to interfere in political questions nor become the tools of any party. We may take it for granted that whatever orders are given by those in authority will be carried out. They will maintain civil authority, if it is necessary to do so, not only in England, in the case of labour disputes, but they will be used also in Ireland in the case of political disputes. We may take it that that is the position in the future. Whatever may have been the position of affairs in the past, in the future these officers will do their duty like men. They will carry out the oath they have given to serve His Majesty in accordance with the law. That applies both to the officers and men who serve in both the Sister Services of His Majesty. We may take it for granted there will be not the slightest prospect of these men refusing in the future to perform their duty, no matter what Government is in power. There was a fear and there was a hope on the part, of some that might have occurred, and there was even the possibility of such an occurrence a short time ago, but I venture to say that the recent discussion has obviated the possibility of any such occurrence in the future, and we may take it for granted, after the way in which the Opposition have recently, during the last few days, both in the Press and in their speeches—[An HON. MEMBER: "They ran away at East Fife!"] Of course, they ran away there. [An HON. MEMBER: "And Tariff Reform last night!"] I am not concerned about Tariff Reform, but, of course, yesterday there was another illustration of bravery of a sort. I venture, therefore, to suggest that when one looks at the Order Paper and the Questions, and sees the way in which this subject is being dropped at the present time by hon. Members opposite who thought they had a splendid weapon with which to beat the Government, we need never imagine that there is any likelihood of any such danger occurring in the future. It is a moral certainty that the Government will be able to proceed with their proposals

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    relating to Home Rule. [HON. MEMBERS: "McKenna!"] They may be certain, whatever this House does, whatever laws it may pass, either this year, next year, or in the future, that after recent occurrences and after the discussion that has taken place in the public Press, there is not the slightest possibility of officers refusing to perform their duty whenever called upon to do so. [Interruption.]
    Mr. McKENNA: As the hon. Gentleman gave his notice publicly to the Prime Minister this afternoon, I think it is better to explain to the House why my right hon. Friend is not here now. Later in the afternoon—the hon. Gentleman described it as a misunderstanding—the hon. Gentleman wrote to the Prime Minister to say that he did not propose to raise the question at the end of the sitting. It is
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    quite true that still later in the evening the hon. Gentleman sent a further communication saying that he had changed his mind—[Interruption]—because he had been under the belief that another hon. Member was going to raise another matter.
    Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Why did not you say so at first?
    Mr. McKENNA: You did not give me time. But then the Prime Minister had made other arrangements, and could not come down. As regards the substance of the hon. Gentleman's statement—
    It being Half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
    Adjourned at Half after Eleven o'clock

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