Sitting of 25 November 1920

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Greenock Port and Harbours Order Confirmation Bill [Lords,]
Considered; to be read the Third time To-morrow.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

    5TH KENT REGIMENT (PRIVATE A. C. W. AUSTIN).
    Captain LOSEBYasked the Minister of Pensions if his attention has been called to the case of Private A. C. W. Austin, late of the 5th Kent Regiment and the Labour Corps, who was charged at Aylesbury Assizes with attempted suicide, brought about by his condition of destitution, and who was released on representations being made to the presiding Judge that the matter would be referred to the Pensions Ministry; if he is aware that representations have been made and that nothing has yet been done; if he is aware that this man, almost totally incapacitated by War service, was in receipt of 5s. 6d. a week pension; that his pension has now been taken from him and that the man and his wife are destitute; what steps, if any, has he already taken; and what further steps does he propose to take?
    The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Mr. Macpherson): As soon as my hon. and gallant Friend wrote to me regarding this case, I had inquiries made into the circumstances. The man was examined by a medical board, who assessed disability at less than 20 per cent., and this finding was upheld on appeal being made to the
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    Medical Appeal Board. An award was made in accordance with this assessment. In view, however, of the special representations which have been made, I arranged a further examination by a medical board, the result of which I hope to be able to communicate to my hon. and gallant Friend in a day or two.
    Captain LOSEBY: Is there no possibility that cases of this kind should be avoided?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: My hon. and gallant Friend knows that I have to abide by the decision of the medical board. I have done everything possible in the matter.

    TREATMENT AND TRAINING.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Minister of Pensions how many men in receipt of high disability pensions are still in need of further treatment and training; how many are now undergoing treatment and training in Government institutions; and whether it is proposed to add to the accommodation at present available?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: Some 2,000 men have been recommended by medical referees for admission to convalescent centres for concurrent treatment and training. I regret that it is not possible, without considerable inquiry, to state how many of these men are in receipt of high disability pensions, but I am informed that a majority of the men found suitable for concurrent treatment and training do not belong to the category suggested. Arrangements are in progress for providing substantial additions to the existing accommodation, and a first instalment of 300 places will be available early next month.

    16TH YORK AND LANCASTER REGIMENT (EX-PRIVATE WILFRED STEVENSON)
    Mr. C. WHITEasked the Minister of Pensions whether he will reconsider the case of ex-Private Wilfred Stevenson, No. 36621, late 16th York and Lancaster Regiment, who was severely injured on the 22nd February, 1919, while serving in the Army, but doing work under military orders and officers at the Tyne Docks, North Eastern Railway, South

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    Shields; whether he is aware that this man was refused a pension on 15th October, 1919, by the Ministry of Pensions, on the ground that he was in civil employment at the time the accident occurred, though he was in uniform and returned to camp and drill, and lived in billets or barracks during the time he was engaged in this so-called civil employment; that after the accident occurred, he was sent as a soldier to the War Hospital, Sunderland, where he underwent seven operations, and was detained there till 4th July, 1919, when he was discharged physically unfit; that this man has had to be operated on monthly since his discharge, which necessitates a long railway journey and a good deal of expense; and whether under the circumstances, he will make further inquiry into this case, with a view to a pension or grant being made?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: This man belonged to a Transport Workers' Battalion specially raised for duty at ports in the United Kingdom. Such men when engaged by civil employers were under contract entitling them to local civilian rates of pay in lieu of Army pay and allowances, including pension rights. At the time of his unfortunate accident, the man was drawing civil pay. He is not, therefore, eligible for pension or gratuity under the Royal Warrant, and can only be dealt with under the Workmen's Compensation Acts.
    Lieut.-Colonel J. WARD: Is the case being dealt with under the Compensation Acts?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I do not know. That is not within my purview. I will make inquiries, and communicate the result to my hon. and gallant Friend.
    Mr. WHITE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the man cannot claim benefit under the Compensation Act because now, owing to the higher wages, he is getting more than he was prior to enlistment, though he is still suffering?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I shall be very happy to look into this case. This man is unfortunately one of those who elected to be paid by civilian rates of pay instead of Army pay.
    Mr. WHITE: But he was not only trained in this work, but he was trained as a soldier and drilled in all the other departments?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: Yes, but I must point out that this man accepted the civilian rates of pay, instead of the Army rates, and lost his pension rights. Therefore under the Royal Warrant he is precluded from getting a pension from the Ministry of Pensions. I shall be very happy to look further into the case.

    DUKE OF CORNWALL'S LIGHT INFANTRY (JOHN LAWMAN).
    Mr. C. WHITEasked the Minister of Pensions whether he will consider and recommend an increase of pension to John Lawman, of Keswick Cottage, Hensley, near Matlock, who first enlisted in November, 1902, in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, in which he served 10 years, 240 days, and who lost an eye in 1911 at Bloemfontein by the accidental explosion of a shell, being discharged from the Army in July, 1913, with a pension of 8d. a day; whether he is aware that this man was called up again for military service in November, 1916, and served in India and at home until 29th December, 1919, when he was demobilised; whether this man can claim an increase of pension as a pre-War pensioner; and whether, failing that, he can, under the exceptional circumstances, increase this man's pension to the amount he would receive had he lost his eye owing to military service since the outbreak of the present War?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: This case is being investigated in connection with the recent concession to pre-War pensioners, and a form of declaration was sent to the man on the 23rd November.

    ADMINISTRATION (COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY).
    Mr. J. DAVISONasked the Minister of Pensions whether the proceedings of the Departmental Committee of inquiry into the method and system of administration of the Pensions Ministry are to be open to the Press and public; and whether public notification of sittings will be made to enable organisations of ex-service men and other persons engaged in work on behalf of the disabled to be represented, and to allow any ex-service man, or widow, or dependant to attends

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    to give evidence of the hardship they have suffered in consequence of the delays of pensions administration?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: The proceedings of the Departmental Committee will, following the usual practice in such cases, be private. I am glad, however, to be able to inform my hon. Friend that the ex-service men's organisations have already been invited to agree as to the witnesses through whom they would desire to submit views as to the administration of pensions and other matters affecting the several branches of the inquiry which the Departmental Committee will have to undertake. The nature of the evidence to be taken will be a matter to be determined by the Committee itself, but I fear that the suggestion made by my hon. Friend in the last part of his question would not be conducive to the rapid progress of the Committee's work.
    Mr. ALLEN PARKINSON: Will any opportunity be provided for evidence to be given by the trade union women employed by the Ministry of Pensions?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I will consult the Chairman of the Committee, and communicate with my hon. Friend.
    Mr. SITCHasked the Minister of Pensions whether it is proposed to add representatives of the ex-service men's associations to inquire into the system and method of administration of the Ministry of Pensions?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: Five members of the Departmental Committee referred to, belonged to the fighting forces engaged in the late War. One of these, my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Sowerby, is, I believe, a member of the Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers; another, Captain H. C. Baird, a disabled officer, is editor of one of the best-known publications dealing with questions affecting ex-service men, and is intimately in touch with their complaints. In these circumstances, I do not think it advisable to add snore members from these associations. Every facility will, of course, be given to them to state their views.
    Mr. J. GUEST: Will representation on the Committee be sanctioned for organ-
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    isations representing women pensioners and employés?
    Major NALL: Is it not a fact that a Committee of this sort must be chosen with regard to its ability to consider the case and not with reference to the delegation of particular interests?
    Mr. WATERSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman take cognisance of the fact that ex-service men prefer to send their own nominees?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: It is a Departmental Committee, and must of necessity be chosen by the Department concerned. I hope I have been very fair in my selection of members. I think the selection will command the respect of the House.
    Mr. GUEST: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my question?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I do not know what my hon. Friend means by "representation." The Committee has already been selected, and I am convinced that any desire on the part of any special branch of pensioners will be considered by the Parliamentary Secretary, and that the views of any particular branch will be carefully considered.
    Captain LOSEBY: Is it not a fact that the hon. and gallant Member for Sowerby (Major Barker) is the direct representative of the ex-service men and that invitations have been sent to all hon. Members of this House who have consistently fought the ex-service men's case in this House?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I am grateful for the opportunity of answering these questions. It is true that I have invited many hon. Members who have taken a deep interest in the subject and have often attacked the Ministry, to take part in this Committee.
    Mr. WATERSON: Is it not a fact that on the National Pensions Tribunal there is a representative of the non-commissioned officers and men, and will the right hon. Gentleman not see his way to put a non-commissioned officer on this Committee?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I do not think so. I have selected the Members most carefully, and I am going to give the ex-service men's associations every facility for stating their case. It is for them to bring a charge, and not to be the judges.

    TREATMENT ALLOWANCE.
    Mr. CAIRNSasked the Minister of Pensions whether he would allow treatment allowances to men for one week or more after their treatment ceases in order that they may be helped until they find employment?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I fear that the concession proposed would be contrary to the terms of the Royal Warrant under which these allowances are paid, since they are paid during the period of treatment only. Moreover, the object sought to be gained by my hon. Friend's proposal would not be within the scope of my Department, but within that of the Ministry of Labour.
    Mr. CAIRNS: Does that mean that the people have to starve?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I hope not. I think the Ministry has been very generous. It is always willing to provide treatment allowance and treatment to any man so long as it considers him treatable. After that it naturally becomes a question for another Department.

    SPECIAL DIET (EXAMINATION FEES).
    Mr. CAIRNSasked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that diabetic cases have to pay 3s. 6d. each time they are examined; if so, will he with draw this fee; and is he aware that this hardship comes every four weeks?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I presume that my hon. Friend refers to the arrangements made for the provision of special diet where this is required as an adjunct to a course of home treatment under his panel doctor for the man's pensionable disability. In such cases, special diet may be allowed where the panel doctor certifies that certain additional articles of diet are necessary. He has no authority from the Ministry of Pensions to charge this fee, and I am, therefore, not in a position to withdraw it. The matter is entirely one between patient and doctor, and I should have supposed that a recommendation of this simple character would ordinarily have been given by a private practitioner without extra charge. The requirement that continuance of the allowance for special diet should be certified as still necessary once every four weeks, is a general rule applicable to all cases except those of tuberculosis.

  EX-SERVICE MEN.

    PENSIONS ISSUE OFFICE.
    Captain LOSEBYasked the Minister of Pensions the total number of women and ex-service men, respectively, employed in the Pensions Issue Office.; and what steps have yet been taken to put into operation in this Department the substitution committee recommended in the Lytton Report?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: There are 5,580 women (of whom 118 are typists and 214 messengers or cleaners) and 59 ex-service men (including 30 messengers) employed at Pension Issue Office. A substitution committee was duly appointed, and the ex-service men's representative claimed that all the posts filled by women should be regarded as suitable for men, but the other representatives claimed that the office had always been regarded as a woman's branch. The question whether substitution shall be carried out in this section of the Ministry has consequently been referred to the Lytton Committee, of which my hon. and gallant Friend is a member. In the meantime steps are being taken to carry out the recommendations of the committee in regard to the married women and pin-money workers employed in this branch.
    Captain LOSEBY: Is it a fact that there are 5,000 women employed in the Pensions Issue Office and only 200 men, ex-service men and otherwise. Has the right hon. Gentleman or his predecessor given anything in the nature of an assurance that this should be mainly a woman's Department? What is meant by a woman's Department? Does it mean more than half women?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: My predecessor gave such a pledge and I followed it somewhat haltingly. It is true that the main employés are women. My hon. and gallant Friend knows better than anybody else that at the time we instituted this special branch of the Ministry no men were available. At present the vast majority are women who are specially trained for the special work. I am awaiting the Report of the Committee, of which my hon. and gallant Friend is a member, to bring forward a new suggestion.
    Mr. HOGGE: Is not this the least efficient branch of the Ministry?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I do not agree with my hon. Friend. I think that they are now performing extraordinarily efficient work. The House never hears of the thousands of cases which are dealt with efficiently, but hears only occasionally of a case that is inefficiently dealt with.
    Captain LOSEBY: If 60 per cent., say, of the employés were women, would that make it mainly a woman's Department?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I think it would. The Government have appointed a Committee to revise the whole situation. I do not consider that I am at present bound by any pledge which I gave in altered circumstances. Meanwhile, I am awaiting the Report of this Committee, which I will consider most sympathetically and carefully.

    POOR-LAW RELIEF.
    Captain TERRELLasked the Minister of Pensions whether his attention has been called to the number of cases of ex-service men forced to frequent the casual wards of the country, where they complain of delay or difficulty in obtaining the pensions which they think are due to them; and whether he is investigating all such cases and will issue instructions to the workhouse masters to report them.
    Mr. MACPHERSON: A circular was issued to all Boards of Guardians last year requesting them to refer all such cases to the Local War Pensions Committee, in order that immediate investigation might be made. I have no reason to doubt that Boards of Guardians are complying with this request.
    Captain TERRELL: Why have so many ex-service men to frequent workhouses in this country?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: That is a very difficult question. I am always anxious to hear of individual cases of this kind.
    Captain TERRELL: Is it not a fact that ex-service men are forced to frequent workhouses because certain trade unions will not allow them to work? [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."]
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I am not aware of any case of the kind. If my hon. and gallant Friend will produce any case of the kind, I shall be glad to investigate it.
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    These instructions are issued to boards of guardians not by me, but by the Ministry of Health. I can assure the House that I am only too anxious to find out any case of the kind, and I shall be happy to investigate it.
    Mr. WATERSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the boot industry the trade unionists allowed 6,000 ex-service men to be trained, and that now the industry is overstocked and men are unemployed?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I must say that the trade unions as a whole have done very well indeed. My one difficulty is with the particular trade union which my hon. Friend has mentioned.
    Mr. PENNEFATHER: Would not the right hon. Gentleman send out a reminder to the workhouse masters reminding them of the circumstances?
    Colonel C. LOWTHER: Would it not be possible to have special treatment meted out to those men?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: The regulations are quite clear. The Ministry of Health has charge of these matters. I have made it perfectly clear to the committees that wherever there is a legitimate case, it should be investigated at once, and if a man is entitled to a pension or gratuity he should get it at once.
    Sir F. FLANNERY: In cases where ex-service men apply for relief to workhouses, could not the master be instructed to deal with him specially, and not put him along with paupers who have not served their country?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I will certainly communicate the idea to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health. I have no control over workhouses, but I should be sorry to think that anything of this kind occurs.
    Colonel LOWTHER: Could not the workhouse master be instructed to bring these cases immediately before the right hon. Gentleman?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: Even the Minister of Health cannot instruct a Board of Guardians; he can only request that certain things be done. I will communicate with the Minister of Health, and see what joint action can be taken.

  IRELAND.

    ATHLONE PRINTING WORKS.
    Mr. MOSLEYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he has yet discovered who burnt the Athlone printing works on the 3rd November last; and whether he will state why the police were unable to give effect to the assurance of future protection given by General Tudor to the brother of the proprietor of the Athlone printing works after the previous attempt to burn them down on 18th October last?
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood): I am informed that inquiries into this matter are still proceeding, but that no clue has yet been obtained as to the perpetrators of the outrage. In regard to the latter part of the hon. Member's question, the police and military are doing their best to protect all innocent persons and their properties.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Who is making these inquiries?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: The officials who are responsible to me in this House.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Are those the gentlemen who burned the premises down?
    Mr. MOSLEY: Is it not the case that a specific assurance of protection was given to the owner of these works in October last, and will the right hon. Gentleman state why effect was not given to that assurance?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: The obvious answer is that it is extremely difficult to protect all persons and all property in Ireland at one and the same time.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Would it not be better to get these military forces which are perambulating the country, and indiscriminately shooting, to protect the property of law-abiding citizens?
    Mr. MOLES: Move another Vote of Censure.

    CREAMERIES (DESTRUCTION).
    Mr. WATERSONasked the Chief Secretary the number of Irish creameries that have been partially and totally destroyed and how many have suffered more than one attack; and the estimated
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    damage done, the total amount claimed through the Courts, and the total amount of compensation assessed?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: The following is the most recent information regarding the destruction of creameries:—

    Total number alleged to be damaged or destroyed

    41

    Number alleged to be totally destroyed

    10

    Number damaged and unable to work without repairs or renewals of machinery (a good deal of which has been already effected)

    16

    Number slightly damaged

    8

    Number damaged, but which were able to resume work almost at once

    7

    The evidence regarding the degree of destruction or damage done is in many cases very contradictory. The above details should therefore be regarded as provisional only.
    Mr. WATERSON: How many have suffered more than one attack?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I cannot say.
    Mr. WATERSON: Can you get the information?
    Colonel LOWTHER: Is it not a fact that my right hon. Friend completely disposed yesterday of the question of burning creameries, in his spirited defence of the Government's policy in Ireland, in which he trounced the leader of the Irish party?
    Mr. KELLY: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us by what means he is going to arrive at the decision in which of these cases the Government will admit liability as to compensaton?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have already said that I am having all the details collected with regard to each creamery, and when all these details are collected the Government will come to the decision as to how far they are responsible for the destruction of any of them.
    Mr. KELLY: Will the right hon. Gentleman hear the applicants and the evidence which the applicants may wish to submit to him?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I will consider that.
    Mr. MacVEAGH: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether anybody has yet been arrested in connection with any of these outrages?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I must have notice of that.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman appoint a Committee on Reparations judicially and fair-mindedly to go into all these questions, and not leave it to the malefactors to determine all these things?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am the Committee on Reparations.
    Mr. MacVEAGH: You are also the malefactor.
    Mr. HOGGEasked the Chief Secretary whether an official report of the burning of the creameries at Tubbercurry and Achonry was issued from Dublin Castle to certain press representatives on or before 6th October; whether this report was drawn up by a senior police officer at the request of the Chief Secretary's Department; whether it was admitted in the report that these creameries were destroyed by constabulary; and whether this report was presented to him before 20th October, when he stated that he had never seen a tittle of evidence to prove that the servants of the Crown had destroyed creameries?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have now received the full reports of the destruction of these two creameries, to which my attention had not been drawn on the 20th October when I made the observation to which the hon. Member refers, and I now find that it is admitted in each case that the burning was committed by members of the police force on the 1st October in an outburst of passion evoked by the brutal murder of District Inspector Brady and the wounding of another of their comrades on the evening of the previous day.
    Mr. HOGGE: If my right hon. Friend finds that he himself is not in possession of the evidence which enables him to give a correct answer in this House, will he or the Prime Minister give us the Committee of Inquiry that we want in order to investigate the real facts?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: No.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is admitted that the police committed this crime, and have any of them been arrested for that?
    Colonel C. LOWTHER: Is the right hon. Gentleman going to institute an investigation every time a British officer or soldier or policeman is slandered?
    Mr. MacVEAGH: He admits it.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman please answer my question, whether, if he knows, as he states he knows, that the police did this, the criminals are to be brought to justice?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I protest against the suggestion that they are criminals. I have admitted the destruction by the police. As to how far they were justified in the destruction I am not yet in a position to say.
    Mr. HOGGE: Does my right hon. Friend seriously ask the House to believe that on the 25th November, more than a month after the 20th October, when this report was presented, he, as Chief Secretary—and he tells us he is everything in Ireland—does not know that these constables have been arrested?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: No, I did not say that, and I do not know that these constables have been arrested.
    Mr. HOGGE: Then you ought to know. [HON. MEMBEES: "Manners!"]
    Mr. WATERSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman take cognisance of the fact that the manager's house was riddled with bullets, and has he made any further inquiries since the deputation met him?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: Yes, I have met the manager of this creamery and have had a report by the police. He was considered by them to be one of the extreme Sinn Feiners of the neighbourhood.
    Mr. MacVEAGH: May I ask whether arson is a crime, and, if so, whether those who commit arson are not criminals?
    Mr. DONALD: Is the right hon. Gentle man aware that hon. Members would give far greater service to Ireland if they would assist to put a stop to this state of affairs—
    Mr. DEVLIN: What about Belfast?
    Mr. DONALD:—instead of helping the Sinn Fein propaganda, because that is what they are doing?
    Mr. DEVLIN: Go and protect the houses that were burned out in Lisburn.

    TEACHERS' PENSIONS.
    Mr. DONALDasked the Chief Secretary whether Irish pensioned school teachers have yet received their increase of pensions; whether these increases are calculated on the 1914 Act according to salary and length of service; and whether Irish pensioned teachers are entitled to a minimum pension of £52 similar to Scotch pensioned teachers?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: Increases have been granted to the greater number of Irish pensioned national school teachers to whom the Pensions (Increase) Act, 1920, applies, and drafts for the amounts due are in course of being issued. The remaining cases are being investigated. The increases have been calculated in the manner prescribed in the schedule to the Act, according to the rate of pre-War pension and not according to salary and length of service. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.

    SHOOTING FATALITY, GALWAY.
    Mr. MOSLEYasked whether Mrs. Eileen Quinn, of Kiltartan, County Galway, was killed by a shot fired from a passing police lorry on 1st November, 1920, while sitting on a wall in broad daylight with a child in her arms; whether he will state the distance between this wall and the road from which the shot was fired; whether the position of Mrs. Quinn at the time she was shot was in full view of the road; whether the police occupying the lorry in question were called as witnesses at the court of inquiry; how many rounds of ammunition were fired by the occupants of this lorry in the course of their journey; and how far away was the nearest point at which murders of soldiers or policemen had occurred to the scene of Mrs. Quinn's death?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: A military court of inquiry was held into this deplorable affair and found that the cause of death was misadventure. I am not prepared to reopen the inquiry by entering into a discussion of points of evidence all
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    of which were fully considered by the court.
    Mr. MOSLEY: Is it a fact that a doctor who examined Mrs. Quinn after her death gave it as his opinion that she was shot at close range, and was his evidence produced before the court of inquiry?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I cannot speak offhand, but certainly the doctor who attended Mrs. Quinn must have been called.
    Major MACKENZIE WOOD: Was there there any legal member of this court?
    Mr. KELLY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether this was one of the cases in which the legal representatives of the next-of-kin were refused leave to attend the inquiry?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I must have notice of that.
    Mr. KELLY: It is the general rule in Ireland.

    CO-OPERATIVE PROPERTY (ATTACKS).
    Mr. WATERS ONasked the Chief Secretary whether he can now give the results of his inquiry into the attacks on co-operative property in Ballintrillick, Ballymote, Nenagh and Littleton?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am informed that the police have been unable up to the present to obtain information as to the persons who committed the attacks in any of these cases, but that the inquiries are still proceeding.
    Mr. WATERSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the fact that these negotiations have been going on for almost a month and that nothing has been done yet, and is it his intention to continue to go on in this way?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: It is the intention to continue to go on as we have gone on up to the present.

    IRISH PEACE CONFERENCE.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Prime Minister whether he has yet decided to receive the deputation appointed to convey to him the resolutions passed by the Irish peace conference?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Lloyd George): I can add nothing to the answer which I gave on Thursday last to a question by my Noble Friend.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a growing desire in this country to explore every avenue of peace, and that there is a growing uneasiness in this country at the continuance of the policy of lawless violence?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I think there is great resentment against lawless violence, and we are doing our very best to repress it. The desire in this country to explore every avenue of peace is shared by His Majesty's Government. I can assure the Noble Lord we are exploring every avenue.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Is it not more probable that crime will be repressed in Ireland by a policy of conciliation and co-operation with the Irish people rather than by a policy of terrorism?
    The PRIME MINISTER: This is a question which was thrashed out at very great length last night, and I do not want to pursue it, but of this I have always been convinced, that no policy of conciliation is possible in Ireland until the reign of terror has been broken, for the very obvious reason that men in Ireland who are prepared, I think, to enter into negotiations at the present moment, are in terror of their lives and cannot do so freely.
    Mr. RONALD McNEILL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the so-called "Irish peace conference" represents no body of opinion in Ireland at all?

    REPRISALS.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to a resolution, passed on the 11th instant by the Central Wales Federation of Evangelical Free Churches, to the effect that the federation, while strongly deploring the murder of policemen and soldiers in Ireland, records its energetic protest against the policy of reprisals in Ireland adopted by the Government and desires to press upon the Government the policy of reconciliation; and whether he will take an early opportunity of addressing the Free Churches of Wales?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have not seen the resolution referred to in the first part of my Noble Friend's question. I quite recently addressed a meeting in Wales on the subject, and I have every reason to believe my fellow-countrymen approve of the steps taken by the Government to stamp out murder in Ireland.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Are not the Free Churches in Wales a very important section of the community?
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: As the Evangelical Free Churches in Wales appear to be in state of heathen darkness as to the Christian character of the policy of reprisals, will not the right hon. Gentleman take an early opportunity of enlightening them?

    SETTLEMENT PROPOSALS.
    Mr. DEVLINasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that at a special all-Ireland trades union congress held on Tuesday, 16th November, in the Mansion House, Dublin, resolutions were unanimously adopted as the basis of an Irish settlement on the following lines: the withdrawal of the British armed forces from Ireland; the calling of a constituent assembly elected on the basis of proportional representation by a free, equal, and secret vote; that such assembly should draw up a constitution for Ireland on the understanding that such constitution shall be made operative subject only to two conditions, namely, that it affords protection to minorities and that the constitution shall prevent Ireland from becoming a military or naval menace; and whether, in view of the fact that the all-Ireland trade union congress pledges the workers of Ireland to the acceptance of the above policy, he is prepared to take steps to carry it into realisation without delay?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have carefully considered the resolutions in question—and I heard what my hon. Friend said yesterday—and welcome them as expressing a desire on the part of Irish labour organisations for a constitutional settlement. I am unable to agree, however, that that object can best be attained in the manner proposed.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think, in the absence of any organised method of exposing the National will, that he ought to accept the declara-

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    tion of the trades union congress as the declaration of men who are capable of speaking for the nation?
    The PRIME MINISTER: Well, no; I do not think that Ireland itself quite accepts that view. Undoubtedly this body represents a very powerful section of Irish opinion, and to that extent it is a valuable contribution; but I do not believe Ireland accepts an expression of opinion from a labour conference, especially as Ireland is not an industrial country, as an expression of the opinion of the whole nation.
    Mr. DEVLIN: If we can give the right hon. Gentleman an assurance that this is not only the expressed will of industrial Ireland—[HON. MEMBERS: "It is not!"] —but also of agricultural Ireland—[HON. MEMBERS: "It is not!"]—will he concede the demand made by the labour conference?
    Mr. DONALD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the terms of this question are entirely misleading, and that the gathering was a political, and not a trade union one at all—it was Sinn Fein, and does not represent the views of 80 per cent, of the trade unionists of Ireland?
    Mr. DEVLIN: If this was a Sinn Fein Conference, and the right hon. Gentleman now understands what Sinn Fein is prepared to accept, will he concede the demand?
    The PRIME MINISTER: Even if this were a body of Sinn Feiners it does not mean that these people claim to represent the whole of the Sinn Feiners.
    Mr. DEVLIN: You do not want everybody; you only want the best.
    The PRIME MINISTER: What we have always asked for is an expression of opinion by those authorised to speak on behalf of the whole of Nationalist Ireland. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman would say that this body was entitled to speak on behalf of three-quarters of Ireland.
    Mr. DEVLIN: Yes, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I do say it now.
    Mr. A. HENDERSON: Has the right hon. Gentleman not repeatedly told the House that his difficulty was to find any
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    one who could speak for a substantial volume of opinion in Ireland: does not a trades congress of over 1,000 delegates answer to the demand that he has made; and would he not be prepared to open negotiations with those who do represent organised opinion?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The way in which I explained it was by a common phrase: "Those who can deliver the goods." It is obvious that in a country like Ireland, which is not an industrial country, that a body of this kind does not represent the whole of the Irish nation. There is a body which undoubtedly represents the Irish nation chosen by the electors—
    Mr. MacVEAGH: You have them all in goal!
    The PRIME MINISTER: There are bodies that can speak on behalf of Ireland, but this body cannot.
    Mr. SEXTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at this Congress 50 per cent, of the agricultural labourers were represented?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No, but take that figure, that is only 50 per cent, of the agricultural labourers; the farmers were not there.
    Mr. DEVLIN: If a National Conference is held representing not only the industrial, but the agricultural labourers' organisation, would the right hon. Gentleman concede the demand?
    Mr. MOLES: Before the right hon. Gentleman replies, may I ask whether he is not aware that six successive Sinn Fein Conferences, by elected delegates, speaking of the whole of Nationalist Ireland, have six times affirmed that nothing but an independent republic will satisfy them?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That is so. The only bodies that can claim for the moment to represent Irish opinion have spoken in that sense. I have repeatedly stated in this House and outside that that is one of the difficulties.
    Mr. DEVLIN: How will you get over that?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I could indicate it; but it must be a body that has got control of Irish opinion to that extent, first of all of guaranteeing that no further

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    murders will be committed—that is essential! This body could not even stop the murders in Ireland. I am Very pleased to think that they had nothing whatever to do with that organisation. It is essential that the body concerned should represent those loyal to the authority of the Crown.
    Mr. MacVEAGH: May I ask—
    Mr. SPEAKER: This Debate now stands adjourned.

    MARTIAL LAW.
    Mr. HIGHAMasked the Prime Minister if he will consider the advisability of setting up martial law in Ireland, particularly in view of the murder of British officers last Saturday; and, if not, will he introduce legislation making it a penal offence for any person to be in unlawful possession of arms in Ireland?
    The PRIME MINISTER: With regard to the first part of the question, I can add nothing to previous statements on this subject. With regard to the second part, it is already an offence under the Defence of the Realm Regulations to carry fire arms without a permit, and it is also an offence under the Fire Arms Act passed this year.
    Mr. HIGHAM: Has the question of setting up martial law in Ireland been carefully considered by the Cabinet, and will he state what are the chief objections to it?
    The PRIME MINISTER: My hon. and gallant Friend must not imagine that we have not very carefully considered this question, and we have deliberately come to the conclusion that it is not desirable, at any rate, at the present time. The moment we think it is desirable we shall certainly apply it.
    Mr. HIGHAM: May I have a reply to my question?

    CROKB PARK (INQUIRY).
    Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR(by Private Notice) asked the Chief Secretary whether, as at the first meeting of the inquiry into the killing of 13 people and the wounding of many more at Croke Park on Sunday, the inquiry is to continue to be a purely military
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    one; and whether, as on the first day of the inquiry, the proceedings will not be open; and will the representatives of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of Dublin continue to be excluded; whether the rumors is true that two men called Frank Flynn and Edmond Carmody were shot by uniformed forces near Castlereagh on Monday night; and whether a boy named Thomas Lynes was shot dead at Knapagh by forces of the Crown passing in a motor lorry?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I received notice of this question only at 12.20 today, and I at once telegraphed to Dublin. I regret to say that I have not yet received any reply. With reference to the first part of the question the court of inquiry will be opened or closed according to the judgment of the court itself.
    Mr. DEVLIN: The criminals!
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: When the hon. Member calls officers of the British Army "criminals" I do not think he will carry many hon. Members with him in this House. It is because of the publicity and knowledge of the personnel of some of these courts that several courts-martial officers were murdered on Sunday last.

    ARREST IN DUBLIN.
    Mr. DEVLIN(by Private Notice) asked the Chief Secretary whether his attention has been called to the action of the Crown Forces in raiding the residence of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin; and what explanations he has to make for this most outrageous conduct?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am informed that no raid has been made upon the Archbishop's residence, but that one of his servants who occupied the lodge belonging to the house was recently arrested. No outrageous conduct of any kind took place.

    MURDERED OFFICERS, DUBLIN (FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS).
    Sir J. BUTCHER(by Private Notice) asked the Leader of the House whether he can say what arrangement has been made to enable Members of Parliament to attend to-morrow's ceremony in connection with the funerals of the officers who lost their lives in Dublin last Sunday?
    Mr. BONAR LAW (Leader of the House): I have here a report of what

    629
    the proceedings will be, and perhaps the House will be interested to hear it read:
    The following is a general outline of the arrangements for the procession and services at the Abbey and the Cathedral to-morrow:
    The bodies, nine in all, will be brought to Euston Station early to-morrow morning.
    They will be conducted on gun carriages in funeral procession to the Abbey or the Cathedral, where services will be held.
    The coffins will subsequently be conveyed, separately and without troops, on hearses, to the several places of burial.
    The route will be Euston Road, Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road, St. Martin's Place, Whitehall, Parliament Square, the Abbey.
    Thence, Victoria Street, Ashley Place, Westminster Cathedral.
    The procession will be composed of massed bands, four battalions of Guards, two squadrons of Household Mounted Troops.
    The King will be represented at the Abbey and the Cathedral.
    Seats in both the Abbey and the Cathedral are being reserved for Members of both Houses of Parliament, who will enter the Abbey by the West Cloister Door, and the Cathedral by the Main Entrance.
    I might take the liberty of suggesting to hon. Members who desire to go to Westminster Cathedral as well that the time is 10.45 at the Abbey and 11 o'clock at the Cathedral. Tickets for the Abbey are in the hands of Mr. Speaker's Secretary, and will be given to hon. Member's applying for them. In the case of the Cathedral, that is not necessary, as hon. Members will be admitted as they arrive on presentation of their cards. Perhaps it will be convenient if I say that I propose to move that the House shall meet at 12.30 to-morrow.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Will the right hon. Gentleman say if the Government have considered the advisability, after the Adjournment to-day, of moving that we should adjourn until Monday?
    Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not think that is necessary.

  RUSSIA.

    TRADE RELATIONS.
    Commander Viscount CURZONasked the Prime Minister (1) whether it is still intended to insist that the Soviet Government desist from all form of propaganda against this country before sanctioning a resumption of trade with that country; whether the Government propose that trade should be resumed before the Soviet Government admits the future liability of the Russian debts to this and other countries;
    (2) whether, if the Government authorise any resumption of trade with Soviet Russia, they will insist upon an adequate sum of gold being deposited in London as a guarantee for any transaction; and whether, should the sale of gold for such a purpose become necessary, the Government will stipulate that the price of sale must be that offered in London?
    Mr. ADAMSONasked the Prime Minister whether he is now in a position to make any statement regarding the ratification of the trade agreement with Russia?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I can add nothing to what I have said in reply to questions on this subject.
    Viscount CURZON: Is it not a fact all the questions so far have been concerned with the question of prisoners, and may I ask whether it is still a condition that propaganda must cease before we resume trade?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I think the answer I have given covers the whole of these cases. Before an agreement is signed, an opportunity will be given to the House of Commons to review the whole situation.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Did my right hon. Friend see the report in the paper the other day that the Americans had got contracts from Soviet Russia to the extent of six hundred millions? An hon. Member laughs, but, as a matter of fact, I think it is true, on account of the quantity of engines and rolling-stock the Soviet Government want, and that the American Government declare to some extent it is true?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I did see that, but it left on my mind the impression of an exaggeration.
    Mr. THORNE: That may be, but it is nevertheless true.

    LAND CONCESSION.
    Colonel NEWMANasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to a report that the Communist Government of Russia is negotiating a concession of 400,000 square miles of its territory to the representatives of a large American trust; and will he take steps to ensure that under this concession the existing rights of British subjects are respected?
    Mr. SWAN: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers that question, may I ask the hon. Gentleman if he is aware that these chances have been lost by the blind refusal of the Government?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame): My hon. Friend had better hear the answer. I have been asked to reply. As the President of the Board of Trade stated on Monday last, inquiries arc being made on this subject. I should be glad to consider any information in the possession of my hon. and gallant Friend which leads him to think that this concession may infringe existing rights of British subjects.
    Lieut.-Colonel J. WARD: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Japanese troops occupied this territory more than a year ago, and that Japan is not likely to let go these territories for American trusts or anyone else?
    Sir P. LLOYD-GREAME: I do not think I should be entitled to answer a supplementary question of that kind, and I am afraid I could not debate the proposition of my right hon. and gallant Friend.

  PROFITS (TAXATION).
  Mr. GREENWOODasked the Prime Minister if, in view of the increase in unemployment and the probable further increase this winter, he will give an assurance to encourage industry that in future the taxation of profits will be based on current trading, and not on that of pre-War years?
  The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain): As the House is aware, I am engaged in a careful review of our present taxation, and an examination of possible alternatives, but I am unable to make any fresh statement of policy at the present moment.
  Mr. GREENWOOD: Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is quite as necessary that the policy of the Government should be to encourage employment in every possible way, as well as to look after the interests of the unemployed as they have decided to do?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Yes. I am happy to find myself in complete agreement with my hon. Friend as to that.
  Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Excess Profits Duty is more responsible for unemployment in this country than any other thing, and is it not a fact that more is being paid out in unemployment doles than he can ever possibly hope to recover from the Excess Profits Duty?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I cannot accept the hon. Member's premises, which lead him to an inaccurate conclusion.
  Mr. W. THORNE: Is that the fault of the bricklayers?
  Mr. G. TERRELL: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to accept the recommendation of the Royal Commission, and adopt the three years' average in the next Budget?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Would my hon. Friend read the question? I cannot attach his question in any way to the question on the Paper.

  PEACE TREATIES.

    ASIA MINOR.
    Viscount CURZONasked the Prime Minister what is the present military position in Asia Minor; whether the Greek troops have evacuated Is mid and other strategic positions; whether there is reason to think that they may do so; and, if so, whether the Allied and Associated Powers are in a position to maintain these positions and to guarantee the defence of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No change has been manifested in the military situation in Asia Minor consequent on the Greek Elections. Greek troops have not evacuated Ismid and other strategic positions. There are no indications at present that they may do so, but their future actions will no doubt be in accordance with the attitude of the new Greek Government. The necessary measures for ensuring the security of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, in the event of a Greek withdrawal, are being considered by His Majesty's Government.
    Mr. T. SHAW: Is there any truth in the statement that Kemalist Turks have allied with the Bolsheviks, and consequently made a profound modification in the condition of things in Asia Minor?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I must have notice of that question. It is not very clear what is happening in that quarter, and, although I have gone into it myself, I am not quite convinced by the evidence on either side.
    Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Is it true that the new Greek Government have dismissed the Greek Commander-in-Chief at Smyrna, and put in his place someone who is very unfriendly to this country?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of the question.

    GERMAN INDEMNITY.
    Colonel LOWTHERasked the Prime Minister whether he informed the London correspondent of the "Petit Parisien" that he had in no way deviated from his election pledge to make Germany pay for the War to the utmost of her capacity; and whether he would give the House an assurance that in fixing the amount of the indemnity Germany's capacity to pay will be measured not only by her present assets but by her past and potential wealth?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have nothing to add to the statements I have repeatedly made to this House on this subject, that the criterion of German reparation payments must be her obligations under the Treaty and her capacity to pay.
    Colonel LOWTHER: Is it not a fact that the French Government's advisers are far more sanguine than the right hon.
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    Gentleman's advisers as to the money being recoverable from Germany?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That is a question which will be examined by their experts at the next Conference, and I have not yet heard what their advice is.
    Colonel LOWTHER: Further, is it not a fact—and I say this without any offence —that the right hon. Gentleman's advisers can be classed under the category of international financiers—some of them; I do not say all?
    The PRIME MINISTER: It is not in the least true. I do not even know to whom the hon. and gallant Gentleman refers.
    Colonel LOWTHER: I do not want to be offensive, but I could mention names.
    The PRIME MINISTER: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will let me know. If there is any adviser of the Government to whom objection is taken, I should like to know his name.
    Colonel LOWTHER: Is it not also a fact that hordes of money have been taken into Holland and placed with Dutch banks to the account of the ex-Kaiser and millionaire friends of his? Could not this money be recoverable?
    The PRIME MINISTER: All I have heard about that is what I have seen in the papers, and we have made enquiries and have no such information.
    Colonel LOWTHER: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The hon. and gallant Gentleman pays far more attention to his questions than to the answers given to them. I said we have inquired and have not yet received any answer.
    Mr. BILLING: If the right hon. Gentleman is successful in his inquiries and traces this money, will it be confiscated, as it is badly wanted in this country?
    The PRIME MINISTER: First of all I must get the information. If there is money in Holland the hon. Member must know that there are great difficulties in confiscating property in an independent State.
    Mr. BILLING: Is it not the policy of the Government to allow the German ex-Emperor to get away with large sums of money to which he is not entitled and of which this country is in urgent need?
    Colonel LOWTHER: May I ask if—
    Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order. The hon. and gallant Gentleman must not continue standing when I rise.
    Colonel LOWTHER: I wish to apologies.

    WAR CRIMINALS (TRIAL).
    Sir J. BUTCHERasked the Prime Minister when the first and second interim reports from the committee of inquiry into the breaches of the laws of war will be published, dealing, amongst other things, with the crimes committed by the Germans during the late War on land, on sea, and in the air in violation of the laws of war and of humanity?
    The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Gordon Hewart): I am asked to reply to this question. No decision as to the publication of the reports referred to has been taken, nor will be taken, until the trials at Leipzig have been concluded.
    Sir J. BUTCHER: Before a decision is taken, will my right hon. and learned Friend remember the vast amount of care and attention which was devoted by the committee to investigate the evidence, and to get the names of these German criminals?
    Sir G. HEWART: Yes, Sir, I am well aware of that.
    Sir J. BUTCHERasked the Prime Minister when the trials of German war criminals at Leipzig will commence, and what has been the cause of the delay; whether the first cases to be tried are cases of alleged glaring and outstanding violations of the laws of war and humanity; and how many of these alleged criminals are in the custody of the British Government and the German Government respectively?
    Sir G. HEWART: I am asked to reply to this question. It is not yet possible to state when the trials will commence. The documents containing the charges and the evidence are in the hands of the Attorney-General of the High Court at Leipzig; and I understand that the materials are being investigated in accord-
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    ance with the procedure of that Court. Some time was necessarily taken in securing the proofs of witnesses scattered over a wide area. I have no reason, at present, to impute delay. The first cases are of the type suggested in the question. None of the accused is in the custody of the British Government.
    Colonel LOWTHER: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give the House an assurance that these trials will not be dropped like the trial of the arch-criminal the ex-Kaiser?
    Sir J. BUTCHER: Can the Prime Minister give an assurance that these German trials will be proceeded with, and if they are not gone on with at Leipzig, will he take steps so that these men shall be brought to trial in this country?
    Mr. BILLING: Has the right hon. Gentleman had a recent opportunity of reading a verbatim report of his election address, and, if not, may I send him a copy, which I have in my possession?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have something else to do. In reply to my hon. and learned Friend, I took special steps in the matter at Spa, and I am convinced from the attitude of the German Government itself, and its replies there, that they mean to proceed with these trials. Until I am convinced that they are not going to carry out the undertaking which they gave— and we were all impressed with the determination of a particular Minister —I would not like to say what steps we will take.
    Mr. MacVEAGH: Will the Prime Minister arrange to have all these officers, including the ex-Kaiser, tried by court-martial in Dublin?

  CENTRAL CONTROL BOARD (LIQUOR TRAFFIC).
  Mr. W. THORNEasked the Prime Minister when he received the Report from the Committee that was appointed to consider the question of hours of opening of public houses and clubs on Sundays; and whether the Report has been considered by the Cabinet and sent on to the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic)?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The Report was received on the 16th November. It has now been considered by the Cabinet,

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  which has decided to adopt its recommendations.
  Lieut.-Colonel GRANT MORDENasked the Prime Minister whether he will take immediate steps to ensure that the working and middle classes may have the same facilities to purchase small quantities of spirits for consumption off licensed premises as the more well-to-do portion of the community, being able to obtain spirits by the bottle, at present enjoy?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt):I have been asked to reply. The matter is one which will come under review in the event of the Liquor Control Bill which is now before the House passing into law.
  Viscountess ASTOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman say when this question of the liquor traffic control is coming before the House, and may I remind him—
  Mr. SHORTT: That question should be addressed to the Prime Minister.
  Viscountess ASTOR: Then I will ask the Prime Minister when does he intend to deal with the drink question, which he himself once said was as great an enemy to the country as Germany?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I hoped it would have been possible to introduce a Bill this year, but as my hon. Friend knows very well it is quite impossible to carry legislation on this subject in the short time which is at the disposal of the House this Session.
  Viscountess ASTOR: Can we not have the Liquor Control Bill introduced?
  Mr. THORNE: Can the right hon. Gentleman state when the Second Reading of the particular Bill mentioned by the Home Secretary is going to be brought before the House, and can he say if there is any truth in the report which has appeared in the papers that the Government intend to drop the Bill altogether?
  Mr. HOGGE: Is it not a fact that the Government have now got through the substantial part of their programme, and until the Lords provide us with some more work could we not proceed with the Liquor Control Bill?
  Mr. THORNE: Is the Government united?
  Viscountess ASTOR: Are you united?

  ALCOHOLISM (INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS).
  Lieut.-Colonel ALLENasked the Prime Minister whether Sir Auckland Geddes acted on the instructions of His Majesty's Government in attending the fifteenth International Congress against Alcoholism recently held at Washington; if so, whether he was instructed to make Reports thereon and send them to the Home Office, Board of Trade, and Minis try of Health; and, if so, will he have these Reports printed and circulated?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): Sir Auckland Geddes attended the first meeting of the Congress, and His Majesty's Government was represented at the remaining meetings by a member of the staff of the British Embassy at Washington. I expect to receive shortly a Report of the proceedings of the Congress, and will then consider whether it could usefully be printed and circulated.

  MONTENEGRO.
  Mr. RONALD McNEILLasked the Prime Minister whether the declaration made by the right hon. Member for Paisley on the 20th January, 1916, that England would continue the War with energy until Montenegro and Serbia had been re-established as independent kingdoms has ever been repudiated and is recognised as binding in Honour on the nation on whose behalf it was made by the then Prime Minister; whether it is still the policy of the Government as regards Montenegro that she shall be reestablished as an independent kingdom; and, if not, will he say on what date and for what reason that policy was changed?
  The PRIME MINISTER: As regards the first part of the question, the declaration of the late Prime Minister is accurately summarised by my hon. Friend, but he realises the difficulties that have arisen from a division of opinion in Montenegro itself as to the future government of that country.
  Mr. McNEILL: Does the policy of this country still remain unaltered; and does the right hon. Gentleman still adhere

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  to the policy put forward as one of our main war aims, which was endorsed by the American and the French Governments—does that remain the policy of the Government?
  Sir J. D. REES: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he thinks the British taxpayer can spare one single "Bradbury" for Montenegro; and ought not the British nation's affection for these small nations to be of a purely platonic character?
  Mr. McNEILL: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman, in replying to my question, to disregard the flippancy of my hon. Friend. The question is a serious one?
  Sir J. D. REES: It is not a matter of flippancy at all!
  The PRIME MINISTER: It is not a question of change of attitude; it is a question of fact as to what the Montenegrins themselves wish. If they are really desirous of entering into a great Slavonic Confederation, there is no reason why we should force independence upon them.
  Mr. McNEILL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that no real steps are being taken to ensure that they shall give free expression as to what is their view?
  Sir J. D. REES: May I ask the Prime Minister—in spite of the ponderous rebuke of my hon. Friend—whether it is not a fact that British taxpayers cannot afford a "Bradbury" for Montenegro?
  Mr. DEVLIN: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he can assure the hon. Gentleman who asked this question that, whether or not Montenegro was mentioned, there was a general declaration that this was a fight for the freedom of small nationalities, and would the right hon. Gentleman suggest to the hon. Gentleman who put the question that he should join with me in getting freedom for Ireland?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I believe the hon. Member has done so!

  IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.
  Commander OLIVER LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Prime Minister
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  whether it is proposed to set aside a building for the deliberations of the representatives from the Dominions who will attend the Imperial Cabinet in June; and whether this building will remain available in the intervals of imperial gatherings for the transaction of business arising out of them?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The detailed arrangements for the meetings next June have not been made, but presumably the arrangements made in the case of the Imperial War Cabinet meetings of 1917 and 1918, which proved satisfactory, will be followed.

  COST OF LIVING.
  Colonel NEWMANasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that, in spite of the pronounced fall during the past two months in the price of raw and manufactured materials, with the exception of wheat which is controlled by Government, the official statisticians of the Labour Ministry are able to record an advance in the average level of food, clothing, fuel and light; and will he appoint a Select Committee to investigate the methods by which these official figures are arrived at?
  The MINISTER of LABOUR (Dr. Macnamara): I have been asked to reply. I am aware that the wholesale prices of some commodities, such as textile raw materials and cotton cloth, have shown a decline during the past two or three months, and this decline has already been partly reflected in the Ministry of Labour figures as to clothing prices, which showed a slight fall on average during October. The rise in the index number is due mainly, however, to the recent increase in the price of bread, and partly to increases in the cost of certain items of working-class expenditure, such as milk, eggs, rents and workmen's fares, which are included in the Ministry of Labour index numbers but are not included in some of the well-known wholesale prices index numbers. I am advised I can add nothing to the answer already given as to a Committee.
  Commander BELLAIRS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the very serious effects arising from a reliance on these index numbers, and that a committee reported that they were exaggerated?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: My hon. and gallant Friend no doubt is referring to the Summer Report; but I cannot recall that they made that observation.
  Colonel NEWMAN: Would the right hon. Gentleman remember what the Committee says about the inaccuracy of these figures?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. ACLAND: May I ask the Leader of the House how far it is proposed to go with the Order Paper to-day, if the Agricultural Bill be disposed of in a reasonable time; secondly, what will be the business to-morrow; and, finally, what business the Government are going to take next week?
Mr. MacVEAGH: May I ask whether, having regard to the fact that by long practice in this House Irish questions have been taken first on Thursdays, and that to-day, as a result of the grouping of questions, only a few of the Irish questions on the Paper were reached, the right hon. Gentleman will confer with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Edmund Talbot) as to the possibility of making arrangements by which Irish questions will obtain precedence on at least one day a week?
Mr. BONAR LAW: We have made arrangements for the Irish questions to have a fair amount of time, but I think the hon. Member will appreciate that they were precluded from being reached by the number of supplementary questions put by hon. Members. In answer to my right hon. Friend (Mr. Acland) I have to say that to-night we shall take only Orders 2 and 3—Isle of Man (Customs) Bill and the Public Works Loans Bill— if there be time for them.
To-morrow the Business will be—

Women, Young Persons, and Children (Employment) Bill, Report;

Criminal Injuries (Ireland Bill) Report;

Gold and Silver (Export, Control, etc.) Bill, Second Reading;

Isle of Man (Customs) Bill, Second Reading; and the

Public Works Loans, Financial Resolution, Committee.

On Monday the Business will be—

Official Secrets Bill, Second Reading;

Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, Second Reading;

and further stages of Bills taken tomorrow.
On Tuesday we will take the Teinds Bill, and further stages of Bills not completed on Monday.
On Wednesday the Business will be Supplementary Estimates, and on Thursday, subject to the conclusion of the Business commenced on Monday, we propose to take the Debate on the question of Expenditure, in which I understand a large section of hon. Members are anxious to take part.
Mr. ACLAND: What Supplementary Estimates are likely to be taken?
Mr. BONAR LAW: The House Building, the Mines Department, the Mercantile Marine, Public Education (Ireland), Colonial Services, and National Health Insurance Commission (Ireland). I do not think we shall get beyond that.
Mr. BILLING: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, having regard to the grave matter of unemployment of ex-soldiers and officers, he will give this House an early opportunity of debating the action of the Trades Unions on the question of Dilution?
Mr. W. THORNE: Put it down for tomorrow.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS.
Commander BELLAIRS: I desire to raise some points of Order in regard to questions on the Paper, and I apologise for not having given notice. The first is whether there is not an honourable understanding that Members who put down questions involving serious charges against the military forces and the police should verify those questions, as far as they are able, before they put them on the Paper. The second is in regard to the number of questions. You, Mr. Speaker, cut down the number of questions from eight to four and subsequently to three per Member. May I ask your attention to Question 68 on the Paper, which is followed by Questions 69 and 70, all put by the same hon. Member.

643
Question 68 deals with, I believe, 22 separate events in Ireland, and I submit that that is an abuse of the privilege conferred on Members of asking questions.
Mr. MacVEAGH: As the hon. Gentleman has pointed to a question in my name, I may say, in the first place, that he has not had the courtesy to give me notice that he intended to raise the question. May I say that all the points embodied in Question 68 have reference to one particular subject, namely, outrages committed on women and children in Ireland by the forces of the Crown. I submit it is much more to the convenience of the House that all these questions should be put in one and an answer given at the finish, rather than that each question should be put separately, because otherwise they would occupy more space and take up more of the time of the House.
Mr. SPEAKER: I do not think that the hon. Member seriously intended that all the points embodied in Question 68 should be answered seriatim. I take it that his object was to call attention to the grievances which he raises, and probably the answer would have been that the particulars would be tabulated in some report and laid on the Table of the House. I do not think I can control the length of questions which hon. Members desire to put down.
Commander BELLAIRS: May I raise this point? Very serious charges are involved in these questions. Is it not an honourable obligation on every Member of the House to verify questions which contain serious charges before putting them on the Paper?
Mr. SPEAKER: It is a well understood rule that no Member should put a question down unless he is satisfied that, primâ facie, the matter which it raises is true. It is impossible for every Member to satisfy himself as to all the facts of the case. If he could do that it would not be necessary to ask the question. All that he can reasonably be expected to do is to take steps to satisfy himself that, primâ facie, there is good reason for asking the question.
Mr. MacVEAGH: All the statements embodied in this particular question were taken from the public newspapers, and
644
none of them have been contradicted. I have received confirmation from private citizens of them and I am therefore perfectly satisfied of their bonâ fides.
Mr. SPEAKER: The latter point may be good evidence, but I do not think the first is.

ADJOURNMENT.
RESOLVED, That this House do meet to-morrow at half-past Twelve o'clock.— [Mr. Bonar Law.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to,
Paisley Corporation (Inchinnan Opening Bridge) Order Confirmation Bill, without Amendment.

NEW MEMBER SWORN.
Sir WILLIAM RYLAND DENT ADKINS, K.C., for the County of Lancaster (Middle-ton and Prestwich Division).

UNEMPLOYMENT (RELIEF WORKS) BILL,
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee E.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 220.]
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No.? 20.]
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 244.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  AGRICULTURE BILL
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
  Lieut.-Colonel COURTHOPE: I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words, "upon this day three months."
  4.0 P.M.
  In moving the rejection of this Bill, I am not actuated by any hostility to or of the Government in introducing the Bill, but I have serious quarrel with the form of the attempt which they have made to translate their laudable motive into Statute Law. We all agree that the desire to increase production and to reestablish, -if possible, a rural population, is a laudable one. In my humble opinion, however, this Bill will be an obstacle rather than an assistance to the furtherance of those laudable aims. I think that, were it not for the skill and tact displayed by my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary during the Committee and Report stages, un the Government would find a much greater opposition to the Bill than is likely to reveal itself during the Debate on the Third Reading. I think they owe it to him that the Bill is not likely to meet with the weight of opposition which, in my humble opinion, it deserves. I should like, if I may, to compliment my right hon. Friend upon the unfailing courtesy and good temper which he has displayed to us who are usually his colleagues, during the Debates which have taken place, and must have been somewhat trying to him.
  I am sure that what is really required for agriculture, in order to remove unrest and doubt and to maintain food production at the highest level that can be expected, is confidence. You want confidence if the owner is to invest the capital that is required for the equipment of his land: you want confidence if the occupier, whether he be owner or tenant, is to throw the whole of his energy and resources into the cultivation of his farm;
  694
  and you want confidence if the correct friendly relationship is to be maintained either between master and man. This Bill, I believe, will tend to produce doubt and uncertainty rather than the contrary. It proposes to maintain in peace time the war policy of interference. It proposes to introduce, under certain circumstances, a third party between the contracting parties—between the owner and the tenant in matters of tenancy, and in certain other circumstances between master and man in the carrying out of their agreement. Further, it introduces fresh powers, and increases existing powers, for the expending of capital upon a man's estate against his will. It is true that these forms of interference may not be exercised very frequently. That point has quite properly been made over and over again by my right hon. Friend, and I admit it. But I would point out that, so far as I am aware, the sword of Damocles never fell, and yet it was quite sufficient to destroy the appetite of the unfortunate man who sat beneath it. That, I think, is the case with agriculture. If this Bill is passed in anything like its present form it will be a sword of Damocles—a fear of interference coming Heaven knows when or where—hanging over the whole agricultural community. It will tend to poison the relationship between a landowner and his tenants, and possibly to some extent also between employer and employed, although the latter is a small point compared with the former. I believe, therefore, that the Bill in this respect will do more harm than good.
  It has been claimed on behalf of the Bill, and I have no doubt it will be claimed again to-day, that it has the general support of the farmers of the country. We were told a day or two ago that unanimous resolutions had been passed, first by the Committee of the National Farmers' Union, and secondly, on the following day, by the Council of the Union, in favour of the Bill. I want to point out, however, that the resolution in support of the Bill contains a most important proviso, and my information is that, unless that proviso is made effective, the opinion of those who passed the resolution will be very materially altered. The proviso is this:
  "Provided the suggested new Clauses relating to tied cottages and repairs to service

  695
  cottages are modified, in the first place so that good husbandry is not prejudiced, and in the second place so that the liabilities of owners under tenancy agreements shall not be transferred to the tenants (namely, the employers)."
  The second point, I admit, has been to some extent met—perhaps entirely—but the first point is not, in my opinion, met at all. On the question of the support which the farmers of this country are giving to this Bill, I should like to read a resolution which, probably, many hon. Members have received this morning. So far as I know, and I have made some inquiry, it is the only resolution which has been passed in the short space of time which has elapsed since the Report stage of the Bill was completed. It was passed unanimously by the Halstead branch of the Essex County Farmers' Union, and it is to this effect:
  "That in the opinion of the farmers of the Halstead district the Agriculture Bill now before Parliament, if made law, will be detrimental to agriculture, and will not tend to the greater production of food, but will add to further taxation. What is required is decontrol and a free market."
  I do not pretend for a moment that this body is a very important section of the farmers of the country; I have no information on that subject; but I do know that at many of the agricultural gatherings which I myself have met during the last few months I have found a marked hostility to this Bill among those farmers who have studied it. It is true—I want to admit the other side of the case—that there is a very general feeling in favour of the Bill among those farmers who have not studied it; but I do not attach much importance to that. In moving the rejection of this Bill I do not pretend to voice the views of any body of opinion. I am speaking for myself, and I do not like opposing a big measure introduced by the Government which I support. I have, however, had some small experience in agricultural matters, as owner, as estate manager and as farmer. I do not wish to suggest that I am an expert; I am not; but my experience, for what it is worth, leads me to the firm conclusion that this Bill will have a bad effect. That being my feeling, I consider it to be my duty to state my objections to the Bill and to move its rejection on the Third Reading. Let me briefly mention two or three of the grounds on which I have formed this conclusion.
  696
  First of all, let me take Part I of the Bill, which continues the Corn Production Act of 1917. I may briefly summarise the purpose of Part I by stating that it provides for the continuance of guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and oats, and for the continuance of control of cultivation. Let us look at the guarantees and see what they are worth. In my opinion they are largely illusory, and I will try and justify that statement. In the first place, the purpose of these guarantees, and of the control of cultivation which, it is said, automatically accompanies them, is to maintain an increased acreage under wheat and oats, and particularly, at the present time, I take it, under wheat. Everyone who has done any farming knows that, in order to increase, or even to maintain, the present acreage under wheat, you have to keep under wheat cultivation a great deal of land which is not first-class wheat land. First-class wheat land will produce wheat under almost any circumstances; it is the second-class land which the Government wish, and quite naturally, to maintain to some extent under wheat, in order to keep up the food production of the country. My experience is that, although the minimum prices provided in this Bill are ample to provide a handsome profit to the wheat grower on the good wheat land, they are not enough to induce the occupier of second-rate wheat land—which may be, and probably is, first-rate land for some other form of cultivation—to abandon the cultivation which he has considered in the past to be economically sound, and to devote that land to wheat. I do not believe that they are adequate for that purpose. The Government must remember that, in considering these matters, they have to take into account not only the well-equipped large farm, which is large enough to justify every sort of up-to-date machinery. They have to consider the small man too—the man whose farm will not by itself carry a tractor, but who has to plough and cultivate his land by horse traction. Only last week-end I had the pleasure and privilege of walking with my right hon. Friend over some high Weald land—land which, if ploughed by horses at all, always require three, and sometimes four, heavy horses for an old-fashioned foot plough, which is the type of plough best suited to that heavy land. Anyone with any experience of farming costs knows'—and I am only

  697
  taking as an example land of which I have personal knowledge; the same thing applies to many other parts of the country—that cultivation of wheat on such soils is very costly. I maintain that, although the large farmer, with his tractors, and so on, may manage to do it profitably under these guaranteed prices, the small man cannot, and to that extent the guarantees will inevitably fail in their object.
  Another objection to the guarantees is that no one quite knows how they are to be calculated. If they are to be effective, they will be effective through the confidence which they inspire in a farmer's mind as to the future. If he cannot calculate from the standard to any particular year, then to that extent confidence is impossible, and there is bound to be a feeling of uncertainty and doubt. To come to larger matters respecting guarantees, they have not been operative in the past, and, personally, I have grave doubts whether they will be operative in the near future. Let us assume for a moment that prices fall and the guarantees come off. If the amount paid in guarantees is small, it has, of course, a value, but it is a small one. If, on the other hand, it is large, I do not believe that it will be paid at all, whatever may be the intention of the Government. Let us consider what justification I have for saying that. During 1918 the acreage of the United Kingdom under wheat was over 2,750,000 acres, and under oats over 5,500,000 acres. In 1919 it had fallen somewhat, but still the wheat acreage was 2,372,000, and that of oats 5,143,000—that is to say, a total approaching 8,000,000 acres under the two crops which these guaranteed minimum prices concern. Let us suppose that there is a bad slump. Some people are talking about a return of the corn prices to which we were accustomed in the bad days. Some people think that they may return, although I myself do not. Suppose, however, that there is a slump to that extent. Then the guarantee might easily amount to £6 or even £10 an acre over the whole of that acreage, that is to say, it might require from £50,000,000 to £80,000,000 a year. Does anyone suppose, in a country in which at least seven-eighths of the population are urban rather than rural, that the taxpayers will tolerate taxation
  698
  to that extent in order to pay these guarantees? I do not believe it for a moment. I am certain that, if there were a bad slump in prices, these guarantees would not help the farmer at all, because the Government, whatever Government it might be, and however anxious it might be to act up to its obligations, would be forced to repeal this part of the Act. That is my principal reason for thinking that the guarantees are largely illusory.
  Even supposing, however, that they have a value for the purpose of promoting confidence among farmers, what is the price that the farmer has to pay for that benefit? He has to submit to the continuation of what is called control of cultivation, which, from his point of view, means continuous and unknown liability to interference. As I have said, such interference may not take place very frequently, but he does not know that; he is always under the liability and the fear. I maintain that the statutory interference which was accepted during the emergency of War is absolutely intolerable as a permanent institution during peace. I do not believe that the farmers of the country who are asking for guaranteed prices, security of tenure, and so on, appreciate in the least what they have to submit to on the other hand in return for these doubtful benefits. Let me give a very common instance to show the kind of doubt that will exist in a farmer's mind. During the War, under the Cultivation Orders, a considerable acreage of fine old pasture of fatting value—everyone knows what I mean by that—was ploughed up and maintained for some two or three years as arable. Every farmer knows that, economically, the sound thing is to put that back under permanent pasture, and a great many are doing it. But let me ask, if a farmer realises that at any time he may be liable to be called upon to put that land back under the plough, is he going to the great expense and trouble of laying that land down properly? It is a very expensive and tedious matter to lay down land to permanent grass properly. It has to be cleaned; you must have the very finest seeds for the purpose or you will not get your result; and the outlay is only justified if you are going to get a return from that permanent pasture over a considerable period of years. The continu-

  699
  ance of the control of cultivation will make it exceedingly difficult for any farmer to lay down land to permanent pasture in the best way with any confidence that he will be able to keep it as grass. A great many of them, consequently, will skimp their expenditure, and the result will be grass which will not fat stock instead of grass that will.
  There is another matter to which I should like to call my right hon. Friend's attention. In his very well meant effort to meet my friends and myself to some extent during the Report stage, he inserted a proviso to the effect that, although a farmer may be required to put land under arable cultivation, he will not have to submit to dictation as to what crop is grown. From the point of view of the right hon. Gentleman's own purpose, I must ask him to consider whether he might not just as well do away with the control of cultivation altogether. What it amounts to is that he will say to me, "You may not have your land under permanent pasture, but you may keep it under rotation grasses." I am to be put under no obligation to grow wheat or oats, but simply to keep the land under the plough. On many soils it will be much more profitable to the farmer at present prices to maintain a succession of rotation grasses and catch crops than to grow wheat or oats. Unless that is altered, the Clause might just as well come out altogether. It all really comes down to this, that you cannot permanently get away from economic considerations. Wheat will only be grown if it pays to grow wheat as well as it pays to grow other crops, or to have the land under grass and carry a larger head of stock.
  There are many things which the Government are doing, or can do, which will encourage wheat production far more than any of the provisions of this Bill. For instance, there is the promotion of agricultural education and research, and facilitating the supply at reasonable prices of such artificial fertilisers as basic slag, kainit and muriate of potash. I should like to see large quantities of muriate of potash coming over from Germany under the Peace Treaty—perhaps we shall. Another matter in which the Government are already giving encouragement and which I think will do far more for wheat production than the
  700
  whole of this Bill put together, is the introduction of the sugar beet industry. Although the sugar beet industry appears, on the face of it, to be mainly a sugar consideration, yet the sugar is quite secondary in importance. It will be found, as it has been found in other countries, that you introduce a profitable cleaning crop into your rotation, and its principal effect, from the national point of view, is that it cheapens the price at which corn crops can be produced, because, as everyone knows, the farmer, in calculating the cost of his corn crop, cannot take the corn crop by itself, but has to allow for the loss which he usually sustains in cleaning his land in the rotation. In these three or four matters the Government are moving in the right direction, and can move still further; and I would humbly suggest to them that they should stick to those methods, rather than attempt to push wheat production along by such methods as those proposed in this Bill.
  Let me now turn to Part II. of the Bill, which is the part amending and dealing generally with the Agricultural Holdings Act. The first Clause of Part II., namely, Clause 8—better known as Clause 7, as it was in the Bill until the Report stag? was completed—provides for compensation for disturbance. I am not going to say a word against the proposal to impose a tremendous fine on the landlord in the case of capricious disturbance, although four years gross rent is a tremendous penalty. Perhaps the House does not realise what an enormous difference there is between gross rent and net rent in the case of agricultural land. On the average, a year's gross rent is equivalent to something like four years' net rent. It is very seldom less than three years, and on some estates net rent is almost non-existent. I only mention that to show what a heavy penalty four years' gross rent is. I do not, however, object to that, but I do object most strongly to the proposal to give compensation to the extent of one year's gross rent in the case of disturbance which is not capricious, but is justifiable for good reasons. We all know and deplore the hardship which has fallen on many tenant farmers owing to the sale or break-up of estates. But the fact that a number of farmers have suffered hardship is no justification for imposing a hardship upon every owner of rural land, who has done nothing

  701
  to deserve it. Not only has he done nothing to deserve it, but he belongs to a class which above all others has been hard hit by the economic conditions which have arisen owing to the War. It may be said that this Bill will not affect most landlords, that most landlords do not want to disturb their tenants; but I am informed that eminent tenant right valuers estimate that the right of the tenant to this one year's gross rent as compensation in the case of disturbance transfers, or will transfer if it comes into force, 7 per cent, of the capital value of the farm from the landlord to the tenant. It means the transfer of capital value from the one to the other whether it is exercised or not. That is the view of the tenant right valuers, who are the best qualified to judge in these cases.
  It is obviously bad for the landlord, and I ask whether it is good for the tenant. If this provision makes so much addition to the tenant right interests in the farm, is it not going to be a great hardship to the incoming tenant? I admit that you are conferring an advantage upon those who are tenants at the moment, but is that all you desire to do? Do you not want to help the farmer of the future as well as the farmer of the present? I submit that it will make it very hard for the incoming" tenant. I think it may do a greater injury than that to the tenants of the future, because I am afraid that if this Bill reaches the Statute Book it will create such a feeling of doubt and uncertainty in the minds of rural landowners that they will hesitate very much before they create new tenancies; that they will wait till each farm comes back into their own hands, and then, if they possibly can, they will either take it into their own occupation and farm it themselves, or they will sell it with vacant possession rather than run the risks to which a new tenancy will expose them. I am afraid that this may become very general, and that far from being assisted in his agricultural operations, and his position, by this Bill, the tenant farmer may find that he is being gradually brought to an end by the very measure which is designed to help him.
  There is another point which makes for doubt and insecurity, not so much on the part of the landlord as on the part of the tenant, and that is that, quite naturally, the tenant is told that if he gets security of tenure in his farm he must give security of tenure to his labourers in their cottages.
  702
  I do not think it is practicable, hedge it round with provisos and safeguards as you will, to carry on a farm under the condition that you have to go to the District Wages Board to get permission to turn out an unsatisfactory servant. That is what it means. You may be compelled on a big sheep farm, for instance, to retain a shepherd who is causing you great loss, provided it is short of actual misconduct, through lack of efficiency or some other cause, and yet you cannot, without the permission of the District Wages Board, get rid of him. Farming under these conditions is going to be intolerable, and I hope the House will realise how serious this matter is, and will give me some support in opposing the Bill. The Bill extends the right to carry out capital improvements against the landlord's wish. It is true, again that an attempt has been made to provide safeguards, but I do not think the safeguards will suffice to remove the element of doubt which Clause 13 must introduce into the mind of every owner of land. Roughly speaking the provision is this: If a tenant thinks that the addition of buildings or works will be an improvement to his farm and his landlord does not think so, or has not money to carry them out, the tenant may, by getting the assent of the Agricultural Committee, carry the works out himself and on leaving he will have a right to claim against his landlord the value of those buildings or works to the incoming tenant.
  That sounds all right, but let me examine it a little more closely in the light of what is actually happening to-day. At the present time hops are paying very well in some districts, and I know of several cases of occupiers of dairy farms and other farms of that nature who are not doing particularly well with their dairying who have applied to have hop kilns put up in order to turn their holdings into hop-producing holdings. The land may or may not be suitable for hops. In most cases it is not; but it is very difficult for anyone, however skilled, coming from outside to tell whether the land is suitable for hop cultivation. It has only been found out by experience of generations. One field will grow good hops, another field will not, and yet there is nothing apparent in their aspect, their soil or anything else to account for it. Yet one knows it by long experience. In these circumstances, and the present position of the hop trade, it is quite conceiv-

  703
  able that an agricultural committee might think that the growing of hops would be an improvement on the farm. They may say that hops are grown successfully on farms next door, north, south, east and west, perhaps, and great expense may take place in the building of cast houses, etc. It is a particularly costly equipment. The probability is that our forbears have been right in thinking that that particular farm was not best suited for hops, and the tenant, when he has put up the buildings, and probably crippled himself in doing so, will find that the farm is not suited for hop cultivation. When he leaves, although the buildings will be of no real value to the tenant of the future, do you imagine that any valuer would write them off as nothing at all? Of course not. They might not put the full cost value upon them, but they would put something substantial, and the landlord might easily find himself called upon to make a payment to his outgoing tenant of thousands of pounds which he could not recover either in the shape of capital or in the shape of interest from the future tenant. Every landlord will realise this, and will feel that it is a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and it will create great lack of confidence and great hesitation in creating a new tenancy if by chance he gets a farm back into his own hands.
  There are, of course, bad landlords and bad tenants, but I am confident that the bad landlord and the bad tenant is the exception rather than the rule, and it would be a deplorable mistake, as this Bill proposes to do, to provoke unrest among all alike, in order to coerce or control the few who are bad. It would be infinitely better to put up with the few bad landlords and the few bad tenants rather than to unsettle the whole industry. What the industry wants far more than a measure of this kind is freedom from control, freedom of contract and a free market. If you tore up this Bill, and washed out the rest of war control so far as it affects the agricultural industry, I believe you would be doing a far greater service to the farmer than you will by any measure of this kind. It is because I feel these things deeply, and am convinced that this Bill will do far more harm than good, that I move that
  704
  it be read a Third time upon this day three months.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I beg to second the Amendment, and in doing so I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend upon the extremely businesslike and practical speech which he has delivered. It is a speech notable for the moderation of its tone, for the calmness of its language, and for the common sense which pervaded it from the moment he rose until the moment he sat down. I regret very much that there were not more Members in the House to hear it. I should also like to confirm what my hon. Friend said as to the way in which the right hon. Gentleman (Sir A. Boscawen) has conducted the proceedings during the Report stage. I was not on the Committee, but I have been present throughout the whole of the Report stage, and I can testify to the courtesy, the good sense, and the ability which my right hon. Friend has shown. It is all the more marked because, although it is not a difficult thing to conduct a good Bill through the House, to conduct a bad Bill through the House requires great tact, great moderation, and a very considerable knowledge of the House, and ability. I object to this Bill on several grounds. First, I object to it on the ground that it breaks existing contracts. During the Report stage I observed that, if we are to remain a successful business nation, it is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, that the sanctity of contracts should be maintained, and a right hon. Friend of mine sitting near me observed that I thought I was living in the Victorian age. If he meant the precepts which were observed in the Victorian age, and which led to the great prosperity of this country—except perhaps during the Elizabethan age this country never experienced such prosperity or such freedom as during the Victorian age—I believe that now, under the circumstances of great difficulty with which this country is confronted, we ought to observe those tenets and those principles which conduced to the prosperity of the Victorian age. Having been for many years engaged in business in the City of London, I think I may claim to have some knowledge of what does and what does not make a prosperous business, and I venture to say, and I do not believe that it will be contradicted by any single individual who

  705
  has ever been engaged in trade or commerce, that unless you have security of contracts you cannot carry on successfully, and that must apply as much to farming as to any other business, if not more so. Farming is a very difficult and an exceptional business—it depends to a great extent on the weather—and unless people are certain when they enter into arrangements that these will be sacred, there will be no likelihood of the future of farming being as successful, even, as it was in the bad times beginning somewhere about the 'eighties. That is one reason why I object to this Bill. If there are any hon. Members who will vote for this Bill with a light heart—there are so few Members present that one might almost imagine the bulk of Members are not in favour of the Bill and do not intend to put in an appearance—I would remind them that if you are going to interfere between two sound Englishmen, or Scotsmen, or Welshmen, who have entered into a bargain, and to alter that bargain to the benefit of one and the detriment of the other, you will not stop there. That interference will be carried into many other walks of life.
  I object to the Bill, also, on the ground that it imposes a burden on the State. I have been a Protectionist ever since I began to study politics, or knew anything about political economy. I was the first London Member to go down to his constituents and tell them that he intended to support the policy of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. I have not changed my views in the least, and I have always held that of all forms of Protection the worst is a subsidy. I do not think I need enlarge upon this, except to say that, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, Protection means the imposition of a duty upon a certain article to encourage employment in this country and provide a certain revenue for the State. A. subsidy acts quite to the contrary. Instead of bringing money to the State, it takes money out of the pockets of a large majority of the people of the country and puts it into the pockets of a small minority, who benefit at the expense of the majority. I do not think there can be any sound arguments in favour of this. It is very easy to talk about providing subsidies, but when the time arrives for payment, the question will then arise as to where the money is coming from. My hon. Friend has made
  706
  a calculation, and I am content to accept his figures. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I think he said that, in his opinion—and he is a man who is able to give an opinion upon these matters—the subsidy might easily lead to an annual charge of something like £50,000,000. That is a very large amount.
  When I first came into this House the annual expenditure of the country was something like £92,000,000 or £93,000,000, and I perfectly well remember Mr. Gladstone, speaking at the Box, saying that if the annual expenditure ever amounted to anything like £100,000,000 it would be extremely disastrous for the country. Now, in addition to the enormous burdens which are being imposed upon the taxpayer at the present time, we have the prospect of another £50,000,000 or so to be paid. Where can it come from? I see opposite my right hon. Friend (Mr. G. Lambert), who has taken up the question of the national finances, and I would like to ask him, if he speaks, if he can show where you can get the money without increasing a burden which is already too great. I read in the papers this morning that the Prime Minister proposes to spend £100,000,000 upon the unemployed. It would not be in order for me to discuss that here, but we remember the hopes that the Government would reduce expenditure by £200,000,000 or £300,000,000, and now we find there is a prospect of expenditure being increased by something like £150,000,000. I voted against the Second Reading of the Corn Production Act on two grounds; one was the expense of the subsidy, and the other was that I did not like the interference of the State with the business of the farmer, or, indeed, with any business at all. My third objection to this Bill is that the State will interfere with a very highly technical business, and a very highly speculative business. I do not wish to cast any aspersions upon officials or State Departments generally, but I do say that it is quite impossible for any official, I do not care who he is, not even if he were my right hon. Friend himself or myself, sitting in Whitehall to manage a business in a distant part of the country. For one thing, we should not have the ordinary incentive which makes men successful in business and which makes men work. The majority of people in every rank of life would far rather not work than work. There are a

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  few people naturally inclined to be actively disposed, and, personally, I think they have a happier life than the person, who sits quietly at home; but that is a matter of opinion. It is quite certain, however, that without the incentive of gain you cannot make a business successful, and there is no incentive to a Government Department to make an enterprise which they undertake successful, that is to say, they do not lose by it.
  I also think the result of interference by the State will not increase the production of food. There are not a very large number of Members of the Government on the Front Bench at the present moment, but I would ask my hon. and gallant Friend (Commander Eyres-Monsell) whom I see there if he can name a single instance in which a Government Department has taken over the control of any industry and has brought it out as a commercial success? I do not believe he can. That being the case, it is perfectly self-evident that the result of this State control will in no wise do what we all desire. Next, I would like to draw attention to one or two small things in the Bill. Like all Bills of the present Government, this Bill begins by creating officials or providing work for officials. Clause 3 states:
  "For the purpose of this part of this Act there shall be three Commissioners, one of whom shall be appointed by the Minister, the Board of Agriculture for Scotland and the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland."
  5.0 P.M.
  These Commissioners are to find out what is the proper price to be fixed for the subsidy on corn, if it is necessary to provide sums to meet the guarantee. Then the Clause goes on to say that there shall be paid to the Commissioners such remuneration as the Treasury may determine, and it is to be defrayed out of monies provided by Parliament. Then it says further, that the Commissioners may by order require the production of any books or papers, and may order people to attend before them. The people whom they order to attend before them are the farmers of this country. The man with a farm of 250 acres does not want to kick his heels about an office while the Commissioners, paid out of money provided by Parliament, ask him all sorts of questions. We begin this Bill by setting up Commissioners, and we go on to provide work
  708
  for Agricultural Committees. These Committees will have paid officers. I think I am right in saying that already there are a large number of paid officers. I forget exactly the sum, but I think the salaries vary from £800 to £1,000, and all are provided with motor cars, and all have a large number of officials and clerks. In addition to all this, it is provided, in Clause 4, that the Minister, after consultation with the Agricultural Committee (if any) for the area in which the land is situated, may order the occupier of the land to execute certain repairs, and if he does not do them—and in this case, it must be remembered, the repairs have got to be paid for at once—the Minister may do the repairs and order the tenant to pay for them at once, or the owner, if he is the occupying owner. In Subsection (15) of Clause 4 there is a provision giving power to require the maintenance and clearing of drains, embankments and ditches, and the maintenance and proper repair of farm roads, fences, stone walls, gates and hedges. I am not quite sure what the ordinary farmer will say to that. In my part of the country hedges and ditches are in a very bad state, and I am told that is the case everywhere. On two occasions I got the hedges cut at very considerable expense, with the understanding that they should be cut every year; but it has never been done. There was always some excuse, and during the last six years the reasonable excuse was that labour could not be got. Not being a Minister, I looked the other way, but under this Bill the Minister can order the cutting of the hedges, and if it is not done, he can send down unemployed who will demand the trade union rate of wages. I agree with the remark that farmers who have not read the Bill are perhaps in favour of it. While the very few of them who have read it are strongly against it. Very few people understand the Bill with its extraordinary amount of references to past legislation. I am not, I think, exceptionally stupid in understanding Acts of Parliament and I have not been always able to understand the various references in this Bill without reading them several times. There is then the ploughing up provision, which I regard as the most serious part of the Bill. It is all very well for people who have had no experience of the land to talk about ploughing

  709
  up. I believe that during the War a large number of people in urban districts thought that if you ploughed a field immediately something grew and that the operations were finished. The ploughing up is a very small part of the operations necessary to produce a crop of wheat or anything else. Under this Bill the Government will have power, after consultation with the local committees, to order a farmer to plough up land. An hon. Member said that does not amount to much because the Government will not have the power to say what crops are to be grown. I do not know how long it will be before we have an amending Bill giving power of that kind.
  By ploughing you may lose fattening pasture which is very difficult to obtain and very valuable when obtained and which can only be restored at great expense. The farmer may thus lose under this Bill some very valuable old pasture which was his sheet anchor in the days gone by. The ploughing-up orders made the great mistake of compelling each farmer to plough a certain percentage whether suitable or not. There is a very large quantity of land far more valuable for grass than arable, and a certain amount more valuable as arable than grass. Are they going to recognise that? They may send a practical farmer down, but I venture to say there are few practical men who, by merely looking at a grass field, can say what is the actual value of that field. You have got to put stock on it and see how they do in order to find out. I know a field which an ordinary person would not think very much of, and yet it is a very good field and would keep stock fat when, apparently, it was quite bare. Nobody could learn that unless by months of experience. That shows the absurdity of leaving the matter to people from a distance who have not got the time to go into all these things. Who is going to bear the loss which may result? There is a provision that an arbitrator may be appointed to consider whether or not there has been any loss. Surely in these days when one gets up and does not know what is going to happen, and when every day is as black as it can be, why inflict more legal expenses and more arbitrators upon an unfortunate long-suffering race of people. We come to the provision in Sub-section (9) of Clause 4 by which the
  710
  Minister can enter on another man's property and put a receiver in to manage it. Has anybody in their sound senses ever heard of such a Clause? Why should you do so? We will next have the Government taking over the trade unions and putting in a receiver to manage them.
  Mr. J. JONES: I wish they would; we will be the Government one of these days.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I think they do their business better than the Government. Words almost fail me to think that I should be standing in the English House of Commons objecting to a Bill brought in by a Government in which there are a good many Conservative Members and which says that a man's property is to be taken over from him and managed by the Government, and he apparently has nothing to say to it. Why, I would really sooner have the Labour party there.
  Mr. J. JONES: We will convert you yet.
  Sir F. BANBURY: They could not do worse, and at any rate we should be able to oppose.
  Lieut.-Colonel A. MURRAY: Why not do that now?
  Sir F. BANBURY: I come to the Clause which gives compensation for disturbance. There, again, that is a provision which simply takes out of the pocket of one man something, and proposes to put it into the pocket of another. We have been told that this is rather an illusory Clause. I am going to endeavour to show that it is not only illusory, but also an extremely bad Clause. I think it is going to benefit the tenant farmer who has made up his mind to retire from business. He may be getting old, or for some other reason he may not wish to continue farming, and he retires, and is to get some vague unknown sum representing the difference between what he would have received if he had sold his stock at a certain time and what he did receive when he sold them at another time. Who is going to arrive at that figure I do not know.
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE (Sir A. Boscawen): Not if he retired of his own freewill, but only if he receives notice to quit.
  Sir F. BANBURY: If he has made up his mind to go he will not go of his own accord, but will make some excuse by which he can apply to the Agricultural Committee and make out that the greedy grasping landlord has done something wrong and then he will get compensation. But suppose that that is not so. Suppose he receives notice to quit and, as he is becoming an old man, does not care to take another farm, he will get the un known amount of money in addition to the benefit ho would have received under the Agricultural Holdings Act and the one, or possibly up to four, years' rent. But if he wants another farm he will simply have to pay that back to the out going tenant of another farm. The result will be that the only persons who will benefit are the persons going out of business. Then there is the Clause about rent. Every year a tenant can demand an alteration—
  Sir A BOSCAWEN: No.
  Sir F. BANBURY: He can frequently give notice to the landlord requiring the rent to be settled by arbitration. I do not know where you are going to get all these arbitrators unless this is a Bill passed in the hope of obtaining popularity and that nothing will result from it. Personally I think that a great deal of unpleasantness will result from it. This is exactly the way in which the land legislation in Ireland started. It began in 1870 with Gladstone's Bill for compensation for disturbance. It extended to fixity of tenure, and that had to be abandoned and the state had to find large sums of money to buy out the landlord and re-sell to the tenant. Unless we are very careful the same result will happen here. I cannot understand how, after the experience of the Irish legislation, any Government can introduce a Bill of this sort which creates dual ownership and may eventually lead to nationalisation. Personally, I would sooner have nationalisation though I do not believe in it as it would not be good for the country. But if the majority of the people think that the nationalisation of any industry is right, and if they compensate the owners properly, there is nothing to be said against it except that it will end in disaster. At any rate, it is fair. But this Bill is not. During the Report stage—I have not had time to look up the OFFICIAL REPORT,
  712
  but I think I am correct in saying it—in the majority of Divisions the Government never have had a larger support than from 150 to 160 Members. If the Government, on an important Bill of this sort, out of a membership of something like 640—I am leaving out the Sinn Feiners—can only get 150 to support them, it means that the great majority of the House do not approve of the Bill.
  Mr. MacVEAGH: They would not take the trouble to support it anyway.
  Sir F. BANBURY: That is a very serious state of things. Nobody can deny the importance of the Measure. It makes a very great change in the biggest industry of this country. Therefore, if it is to be passed, it ought to be supported by, at any rate, the majority of the Members of this House. I have been told—I have not had time to verify it, but my source of information is a good one—that in the old days, and up to within a comparatively recent period, nothing could be done in this House unless half the Members of the House plus one were present in a Division. If that Rule had been applied now, this Bill would not be passed. It is a very good Rule and ought to apply generally, and certainly to important measures of this kind. I have endeavoured to follow the example of my hon. Friend, and give calmly and dispassionately the reasons which actuate mo in voting against the Third Reading of this Bill. I hope that hon. Members will follow our example and show that in their belief this is an ill-digested, ill-considered measure which is not wanted by the majority of the people, and which if passed will lead not only to disastrous consequences in the industry which it is supposed to benefit, but in all the industries of the country.
  Mr. T. DAVIES (Cirencester): I am particularly anxious on this occasion to say a word in praise at any rate of one of the Clauses of this Bill, if not of more. For the first time what is known as the Evesham custom is being legalised by the Statute Law of the country. I think that in years to come the consequences of that will be such that everybody will bless this occasion. I may give an actual case. I could give many more. I am not an owner of any land. I do not farm any land. Therefore I can speak absolutely

  713
  independently. But I do know the case of a schoolboy, the son of a poor widow whose husband died when the boy was nine years old. That boy went to school until he was thirteen. He then went to work on the land for a farmer. When he was about eighteen he said, "I should like to have half-a-day a week off for some time to come." The farmer said, "Why?" The boy said, "Because I have got a small allotment, and I want to plant it with grass "—as they call it in our part of the country: asparagus. The farmer said, "Yes. You can go, Fred." Fred went. Next year he said, "I would like to have a day a week off for a bit." This went on. A little later on he got two days off, and then three days, and at last he went right off. That allotment started with twenty perches, and to-day that man has got about twenty acres of the best market-garden land in the Evesham district, and he drives a pony and trap about, and is doing remarkably well.
  You want the landlord to let a man have market garden ground without any question of being afraid of any rent or any question of compensation, because under the Evesham custom what happens is this. A man goes to a landowner and says, "Will you let me have that field "— it may be five acres—" I want to use it for market gardening to grow strawberries or rhubarb, or put up a bit of glass?" The landlord says, "Very well, you know the conditions. You may do what you like with the land as long as you pay the agreed rent, but I shall not be responsible for any compensation for what you do to the land." Suppose this young fellow emigrates or gives up the land. Ho simply gets another man to take it off his hands, paying him full compensation for all his time and the trouble and expense he has gone to. He goes to the landlord, who concerns himself only with finding out whether the new man is a solvent tenant or not, and if satisfied accepts him. That has led in my own division to many men becoming market gardeners. Under this Bill that custom is legalised for the first time, and if there were nothing else in the Bill I would support it for that reason. We have got a belt of land from Tewkesbury to Stratford-on-Avon, 30 miles long, which is being developed year by year in this way, and is bringing a
  714
  much larger population on the land, and this population is paid much better than ordinary men. That is a part of the country where you are setting ex-service men on the land to their great benefit. I should be extremely sorry to see that dropped out of the Bill.
  On the more general aspect of the Bill the hon. Members have indulged in a great deal of destructive criticism, but have contributed no constructive criticism. We have in this country an increasing population for a circumscribed area. As the population grows we have to get food from somewhere. During the late War we found that it would not do to trust altogether to imports. Towards the end of 1917 we were nearly cut off.
  That being so, the Prime Minister in his Caxton Hall speech on 22nd October, pointed out that this kind of thing could not be allowed. Then the question came, how was he to encourage the agriculturists of this country to grow more wheat? You cannot by any Act of Parliament alter the natural advantages or disadvantages of different parts of the country. I should be very averse from putting the decision whether land should be ploughed or not into the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture in London. I do not believe that any one man sitting in London can direct the agriculture of a whole county or the whole country. Under the Bill that is not done. The Bill provides that in every county there shall be an agricultural committee, consisting partly of members nominated by the Minister and partly of members elected by the county council. They are local men, most of them engaged in agriculture and living amongst those whose land they will have to survey. While it is true that you must go in for a great deal of corn growing, and that may be possible in the East of England, there are many parts in the West that are not at all suited for corn because of climate and soil. The Bill makes provision for that kind of difference and states that the local committee shall carry out the directions that the people on the spot think are best to bring the land into proper cultivation. I have not heard from any critic of the Bill any other way of doing this than the plan in the Bill.
  None of us like these ploughing-up Orders. Farmers do not like them and landowners do not like them, but if you are to carry out the pledge of the Prime Minister that more corn is to be grown,

  715
  there must be some kind of control. Owing to the Amendments that have been accepted by the Government, the sting has very largely been taken out of the compulsory Orders for the ploughing of land. The question of guaranteed prices seems to me a most debatable proposition. I have my doubts as to whether, when the country has to pay millions to keep food prices up to such a pitch as will enable farmers to grow corn, the ordinary population of the country will stand it. I have doubt also as to the solidarity of labour. The agricultural labourer's wages, as we know, are the poorest and lowest in the Kingdom. The labourer has had reason for years past to be dissatisfied. I am secretary of a big benefit society with something like 16,000 members, nearly all of whom are engaged in agriculture. We have branches in 71 villages in East Gloucestershire and the surrounding counties, hence my knowledge of the conditions in agriculture.
  Let me give a concrete case. It is that of a labourer with three sons. I could give the name, if necessary. The boys were all over 21 years of age, and they all lived at home. One day one of the boys said, "I have had pretty well enough of this. I shall go to Gloucester and get into the police force, if I can." He was engaged as a police recruit, and started at £3 10s. a week. He had been earning £2 2s. a week on the land. Ho has the prospect of a good pension after 28 years' approved service, and he is supplied with uniform. He went home and said to his brothers, "I have been to the chief constable, and have been taken on at £3 10s. a week. You are working for £2 2s. Father has been a labourer all his life. How long will he have to go on if he is to get a pension? In 28 years' time, at the age of 52, I shall have a pension on which I can live. My father will go on to 70, and ho will get 10s. a week." The next boy tried to follow the lead of his brother, but he found that the Chief Constable of Gloucester had enough men. He then went on to the railway and got £3 3s. a week straight away. The third boy also went into the town and was engaged as a mason's labourer at £4 6s. a week. When I hear people say that the agricultural labourer is dissatisfied, I am inclined to reply that, taking him all the way round, he is a jolly good sort
  716
  of fellow. Is it any wonder that when men have left the land with these results, other young fellows get dissatisfied and want to go to the towns to obtain the same kind of work?
  There will be a certain population left upon the land. Their wages now are fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board, under two conditions. The first condition relates to the general cost of living; the second condition is as to whether the agricultural industry can afford certain wages. It is not a bit of good fixing wages if people cannot pay them, and if the wages are to be kept up it can be done only out of the profits of the industry. Is the worker in the unions outside the agricultural labourer's union prepared to pay a bit more for his meat and bread so that the agricultural labourer shall have a decent wage? That is a question I would put to hon. Members of the Labour party. Is the solidarity of labour such that, if the pinch comes, they are prepared to pay 10d. for the loaf that might be sold for 8d. under unlimited competition? If so, the problem is very largely solved. If they are not so prepared, the guarantee and the whole system fall to the ground. The agricultural labourer may be amongst the poorest of workers, but he is also amongst the most loyal and honest and the most grateful when properly treated. I myself have worked upon the land from the time when I was a boy of 8. I have been able to milk, thatch, plough, and shear sheep. Anyone who knows what a Welsh farmer's boy is knows well that he has not a primrose path to tread. That being so, my sympathies are with these men, and always will be, and also with the small farmer, for I know what he has to bear. That is the problem which the Prime Minister put to the country—more food must be produced and agricultural wages must be made more equitable. The population of the country is growing, and must have food, and if you do not produce it in this country you must get it from abroad; and if you get it from abroad, you must send the money for it, because you have not the manufactures to send. The less the importation of food from abroad, the better for the country generally at the present time. The supporters of the Amendment have not told us of any alternatives to the Bill.
  Sir F. BANBURY: Leave us alone.
  Mr. T. DAVIES: I remember when some of the best wheat in this country was sold in the Cirencester market at eight bushels for a sovereign, and wages were 12s. to 14s. a week. I hope those days are gone, and gone for ever. But it is not a bit of good talking unless we do something. If we will not do the things that the Bill provides for, I do not know how we are going to get over the various difficulties I have mentioned. You can never satisfy extremists on either side. The great body of middle opinion think the Government have done the best that could be done in the circumstances. Take the question of compensation payable for the giving up of farms. Does anyone in his sober senses think that when a man has to leave a farm he is compensated adequately by receiving one year's rent, when possibly that man will not find another farm for two years and has to live on his capital in the meantime? The criticisms of the opponents of the Bill are mutually destructive. They say that the Bill is not wanted because of the good landlords and good tenants, and that the tenants will never leave. If that be so, where is compensation going to hurt the landlord? In my part of the country we have big landowners and big farmers on the higher land, and small men in the vale. I have been told by some of the biggest landowners in the county that the custom on their estates has been to have generation after generation of the same family occupying their farms over periods of 150 or 200 years. How is this Bill going to hurt those people? It is said, "You may have to pay two, three, or four years' compensation." Hon. Members do not say that two, three, or four years' compensation is given only because of capricious eviction.
  If a bad landlord decides to turn out a good tenant for something of which he does not approve—possibly he does not vote blue or yellow, or does not go to the same church or chapel—why should he not pay compensation? I myself have been in a village when acting as a Conservative agent, and the man in the street to whom I have talked has said to me, "For Heaven's sake, do not talk to me in the street, or life will be a burden to me for the next six months." Do not run away with the idea that all these hard things come from the landlord or the tenant. The Labour party is often
  718
  just as bad. The good landlord and the good tenant have nothing to fear from this Bill, and they say so. Nobody has attempted to prove that that is not true. Both the landlord and the tenant have the power to go to an arbitrator if they think things are not right. That is one great thing that many landlords have welcomed. They said in the past they had not disturbed their tenants because of the nice feeling that had existed between landlord and tenant, but they said the tenants could afford to pay more rent, and they could have, although none of them ever offered to pay any more. In the future, instead of giving a man notice to quit because you want his rent raised, the landlord and the tenant get together, and if they can mutually agree as to what the rent shall be, that settles it. What is there wrong about that? [An HON. MEMBER: "It happens now."] Yes, it happens now, and it will happen under this Bill, so there is no harm done there. We will say they do not agree. The landlord may say, "You are not offering enough," and the tenant may say, "You are asking too much." What happens then? You simply go to an arbitrator. You agree upon an arbitrator and that his decision shall be final. The landlord may say, "The man will not pay the rent when the arbitrator has fixed it." If that is the case, he will have to leave without compensation. Suppose the landlord says, "The rent fixed is not enough for me," he has either to accept the rent or pay the man out, and what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
  I have been brought up on the land, and have always lived with agriculturists all my life. I have never lived in a town, except the small town of less than 8,000 inhabitants where I am at the present time, and all my constituents, without exception, are engaged in agriculture. We have not a manufacture in the whole of the Cirencester and Tewkesbury Division, unless, perhaps, they manufactured some very bad beer during the War, and, that being so, my whole interests are bound up with agriculture. I should like to say a word in regard to the question of agricultural labourers' cottages, which has given rise to a good deal of misconception. Customs vary in different parts of the country, and you cannot generalise from one particular place, but to show that this Section will

  719
  not hurt us in Gloucestershire, let me point out that we have two classes of workmen on our farms. There is the ordinary day man, who is engaged purely and simply by the week, although many of them have been on the same farm for forty or fifty years, or all their life. He rents a house in the village or the hamlet independently of the farmer, and if he leaves the farmer's work, he is not bound to leave his cottage. He can work and live where he likes. This Act does not touch the day man at all.
  The next man is what we call the hired man. In our part of the country, being, as the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City might say—a very Conservative and old-fashioned lot—although I doubt whether he would think what I am saying now is very Conservative—while you have altered the date of Michaelmas to the 29th September, we still stick to the old date of the 11th October, and our hired men are hired from the 11th October of one year to the 11th October of the next year, and the hired man is the carter, or the shepherd, or the cowman. He has as part of his perquisites a cottage, and as a rule a 20-perch plot of potato land: that is to say, wherever the field has been cultivated the farmer ploughs and manures it, and all the hired man has to do is to plant his potatoes and so on and look after it. That hired man has his wages, he has a little plot of potato land, and he has a cottage found him. When the 11th October expires, if he has been there a year, he is free to go, and the landlord is free to resume possession of the cottage, and the Act does not apply at all. Supposing, however, you have got a man there and you find that he is a most incompetent workman. If you find that out during the first six weeks of his engagement, you can turn him out without compensation, and I do not think much of the farmer who takes on a man as a carter, a shepherd, or a cowman who is incompetent; why does he not use ordinary prudence and find out from somebody else whether he is competent or not before he employs him? There, again, with regard to these cottages, therefore, there is an enormous amount of misconception. If between the six weeks and the end of the year that man is guilty of misconduct, he still has to go without compensation, while if he has to have compensation it is just one year's rent, and I have already been told
  720
  by farmers that they see nothing to fear in that.
  I freely admit that there are certain things in the Bill which we do not like, but, taking the Bill as a whole, I say it is a fair attempt on the part of the Government to meet the peculiar circumstances of the case. We have got peculiar difficulties in agriculture, and I venture to say, whether you take the landlord's, or the farmer's, or the labourer's, or the market gardener's point of view, here is an honest attempt to improve the condition of all four of those classes without, as far as possible, injuring any of the rest, and, that being so, I cannot give a silent vote. I cannot support my hon. Friends who are going to vote against the Bill, but I must give a vote for the Bill. Before I sit down may I make one appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary? There are references in this Bill to the Corn Production Act, 1917, and to the Act of 1908. It would be of the greatest benefit to us in an agricultural district to have one Consolidation Act putting them all into one measure. If that were done, I believe it would be a wonderfully good thing and would help us very materially indeed in carrying out the provisions of these measures. May I say, in conclusion, that in common, I believe, with every hon. Member in this House, I feel that we have had in the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture a most sympathetic man in this particular matter, a man with a perfectly open mind, and perfectly willing to listen to any suggestions to strengthen his Bill and make it better; I venture to say that the right hon. Gentleman has added a big feather to his hat by the way in which he has carried this Bill through, and we hope one of these days he will rise still higher and be the Minister instead of the Parliamentary Secretary.
  Mr. LAMBERT: My hon. Friend who has just sat down has made a most excellent speech, and I do not wonder that in the Cirencester Division they have elected him as their Member, because it is very delightful to listen to him. The principal reason for bringing in this Bill was that it would increase the arable area of the country, but I have not heard in all the Debates that have taken place that the proposals of this Bill will in fact increase that arable area and bring a larger amount of corn land into cultivation.

  721
  One of the ostensible reasons for the Bill is that we are to grow more food in this country to prepare for the next war. [An HON. MEMBER: "We do not want any more wars."] I quite agree with my hon. Friend, but surely it has been stated over and over again that this is a measure of security against a future enemy in the case of a submarine campaign. All I have to say is that the Government have the poorest possible opinion of the gentlemen who made the Treaty of Versailles if they have to prepare for a future war at so early a date. In agriculture we are in a transitional stage. It is no use talking of what the future will be in five years' time any more than people could say five years ago what the present was going to be. We have had a wave of speculation and an orgy of expenditure, but those things are coming to an end, and I say to-day that it is absolutely impossible to forecast the future of agriculture, and that is why I do not hail with delight the Government bringing in a permanent policy to deal with agriculture for the future. They have, however, made their decision, and this Bill is animated with the very best of intentions to everybody. It is going to give a bit to everybody, so far as I can understand it, but unfortunately there is one person whom the Bill has left out of account altogether, and that is the British taxpayer.
  We have got into the war habit, the habit which was engendered by the War, that wherever there was a difficulty you must meet it by a grant of public money. You have had subsidies in the coal industry and the railway industry, and they have all had to be stopped. The experience of these subsidies really has shown us that they are based upon fallacies and false economy. The taxpayer and the ratepayer are being bled white, and cannot go on tolerating these great burdens. To my hon. Friends of the Labour party, I say that their class will feel it more than any other; they are coming up against a great industrial crisis in this country, which is brought about by profligate and improvident finance. I ask to-day, where is the Chancellor of the Exchequer when such a Bill as this is being discussed? We have never heard one single word from the Chancellor of the Exchequer about this Bill, yet, for all that, this Bill may throw a great liability on the British
  722
  taxpayer. There are three Commissioners to fix the price of wheat and of oats, and I want the House really to grip this fact, that, assuming on the Ministry of Agriculture's own figures that wheat and oats are sold for Is. per quarter less than the minimum price fixed by these three Commissioners, that will involve the taxpayer in something like £1,750,000 a year. It may easily go to 10s. a quarter below.
  Lieut.-Colonel ROYDS: Twenty shillings.
  6 0 P.M.
  Mr. LAMBERT: I am always moderate. If it goes to 10s. below, that will be £17,500,000, and if it went to 20s. below, that would be £35,000,000, and it can easily do that. Here is the reckless way in which the Government deal with finance. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has never said one word upon a measure which may involve the taxpayers in the payment of something like £35,000,000 in one year to the growers of wheat and oats in the country, and to me, trained in the old traditions of Mr. Gladstone and old financiers of that type—if you like Mr. Goschen or Sir Michael Hicks-Beach—I say men like that would never place such liabilities as these upon the taxpayers. When I notice in these Debates the representatives of the large towns coming here and voting for this Bill, well, I am a pretty old Parliamentary hand now, and I know what will happen if they have to meet any such liability as I have mentioned to be paid to growers of wheat and oats. Why, there will be such an outcry in this country that I do not know how that subsidy will be paid. I honestly do not. I do not think you can dishonour the debt, but you will have the most tremendous outcry against the agriculturists of the country, there is not a shadow of doubt. And when you are voting here so eagerly and readily for these subsidies, remember there is a day coming when they may come about. It is easy enough to give out I.O.U's. Suppose the Chancellor of the Exchequer has even to find £10,000,000 in his Budget. Will not that derange the Budget? We seem to have got out of the habit of thrifty finance; in fact, I do not know where we have got? We have no regard for millions. In the old days £100,000 was thought a good deal, but to-day you spend millions

  723
  with the same ease that in the old days thousands were spent. This subsidy may have to be paid to growers of two products alone in the agricultural industry— the growers of wheat and the growers of oats. Therefore the whole industry cannot share at all in these doles or subsidies, or whatever they may be called.
  There is to be paid a Is. a quarter for every quarter of oats that is grown at less than the minimum price fixed by the Commissioners. The Government cannot, of course, say how many bushels per acre are going to be grown, but if they reckon that forty bushels, or five quarters, to the acre are going to be grown as an average crop, that means that for every Is. per quarter, 5s. per acre will have to be paid if the price goes below the minimum price fixed by the three Commissioners. Take the figures issued by the Board of Agriculture. In Ireland last year, 1,442,000 acres of oats were grown. Now Is. a quarter below the minimum price will entitle the Irish farmers to be paid £375,000 a year. Ten shillings would entitle them to be paid £3,750,000 a year. We have been told that the control of cultivation is a corollary of these guarantees. Can you control the cultivation of the Irish farmer? You cannot keep law and order in Ireland, and what is the good of talking about controlling the cultivation of the Irish farmer? You are going to pay the Irish farmer this enormous subsidy if the minimum price of oats goes below the price fixed by these Commissioners. You may in England control the cultivation of the land, but you know full well you cannot control the cultivation of the land in Ireland. Has this Bill been thought out with regard to the Government of Ireland Act which is now being discussed in another place? I ask these questions because I am really apprehensive of the future of the financial condition of this country. I honestly want to support the Government if they will let me, and if they will be economical I will support them, but I cannot in this reckless finance. My right hon. Friend—and I join in the eulogies which have been passed upon the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary, who has conducted this Bill with extraordinary skill—my right hon. Friend has been asked how many officials will it take to carry out the provisions of
  724
  this Bill, and what will be the cost. Here is a typical case of Government slackness.
  "No final decision has yet been arrived at as to the expenditure which will be necessary to check the accuracy of the claims made by farmers if ever the guaranteed prices become operative"
  is the official reply.
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Last year we did have an elaborate check, and then we were very roundly abused by Members of this House for having done so.
  Mr. LAMBERT: That is perfectly true. Last year they had an elaborate check, and they had to come down to the House at once to present their Estimate for £10,000, I believe, and there was an awful row, a tremendous outcry. What will the outcry be when they come to present their next Estimate?
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Wait and see.
  Mr. LAMBERT: I seem to have heard that phrase before. Let me ask this question seriously of my right hon. Friend. How many officials will it take to check the claims for compensation or subsidy in the case of the Irish farmer? Can anybody say? You surely are not going to pay money out of the Treasury without checking the claims? Nobody knows how many officials you must have, and it drives me to despair that this is the kind of financial guidance that we get from the Government on these matters. I really feel I want to go out of politics altogether when the finances of the country are being treated so lightly. It makes one feel very sad, and, of course, the Nemesis will come. It is coming already. Go to the constituencies and see what they have to say about rates and taxes. The Prime Minister came in and made one of his delightful speeches on this Bill the other day. He said that it is no use having this Bill unless you increase the area of cultivation in this country. Is there a single practical farmer who has alleged that this Bill will increase the area of cultivation in this country? If there is I would like to hear him say so.
  Mr. J. GARDINER: As a practical farmer, I say so.
  Mr. LAMBERT: I am very glad to hear that my hon. Friend is so sanguine. I say, and I do not believe it can be denied,

  725
  that the great bulk of the agricultural opinion of the country believed that this Bill will not increase arable cultivation. What is the Bill founded upon? The Selborne Report, on which the Bill is based, was signed in January, 1917, and it was full of assumptions which have been proved to be absolutely fallacious. The Selborne Report actually suggested that there should be a guaranteed price for wheat of 42s. a quarter. What have the Government brought in now? 81s. a quarter only three years after. For oats, the Selborne Report said that the guaranteed price should be 23s. a quarter. To-day the Bill says 53s. 4d. a quarter. That shows how little the eminent men who signed that Report could forecast the future. We have had a great deal of legislation. We have had the Corn Production Act passed. During the War, and since the Armistice, we have been scurrying Acts of Parliament through this House, the effect of which we have little understood. During the War we were passing Education Acts and other Acts about which we had very little notion, and really did not understand. Our minds were not fixed upon them. Our minds were fixed upon the War, which was a far greater matter. I will take the Selborne Report. But the Prime Minister and the Government have forgotten there has been another set of Commissioners appointed since the Selborne Report. I have here the Interim Report of the Agriculture Commission. The main Report was signed on 10th December, 1919. The Commission consisted of 23 members. It was very sharply divided upon the question of guaranteed prices. Of the 23 members, twelve were for these guaranteed prices, but of that twelve the hon. Member for East Grin-stead (Mr. Cautley) signed the Report recommending these guaranteed prices, subject to the proviso that he differs so fundamentally from the other eleven Commissioners that he sets out his objections in a separate Report. That is eleven, plus one. But there are eleven more, and they are absolutely against this system altogether. They say in the very first paragraph of their Report:
  "For the reasons given below, we, the undersigned Commissioners, find ourselves unable to agree with our colleagues in recommending a continuance of the policy of guaranteed prices for cereals."
  726
  So you have your Commissioners divided, and, as an hon. Friend reminds me, that was signed by the Labour Members.
  Mr. G. EDWARDS: We do not trouble about that.
  Mr. LAMBERT: You do not trouble about your own people. My hon. Friend, I know, has been a great friend of the agricultural labourers, and I have a great respect for him, but I do say when Members of a party sign a Report it is assumed that they represent the policy of the party. If the contingency should arise that the Labour party is in power, their policy is in this Report, but they are going to vote with the Government to-night. I feel a little mixed about these things. Let us take this Majority Report. The basis of the minimum price, they state, upon which this Bill is based is the "average bare cost of production." Does anybody believe that you are going to get men to plough up land if they are only guaranteed the average bare cost of production? The 11 Members say in the first place not only that they are against this guaranteed price, but they add:
  "We regret our colleagues have not set forth in detail their calculation and the basis on which it was made."
  That is the whole foundation of the Bill! Guaranteed prices, and nobody has been able to say yet upon what basis you fixed your figures. The Royal Commission does not give any basis. This is a very serious matter. It is coming on to the taxpayer. We shall have some trouble later. In face of this Commission, in face of the taxpayer rebelling, is anybody going to take steps to plough a large amount of land? What is the first essential? You must have labour, and labour requires cottages. Is there any private person who can build cottages to-day to compete with the Government? But so far are we apart, so far are we not having Government cooperation, that when the Government are building cottages they do not take into account the necessities of this Bill. We have an example in my village. There they are putting up six cottages. They are close to the village; they are not convenient for the land. I have always said in this matter—and I do not want to go into it now, for I think it would not be in order—if the condition of the agri-

  727
  cultural labourer is to be improved, he wants a cottage where he can get a bit of land with it. A few acres of land is a benefit to the agricultural labourer. He can cultivate it, and his wife can help him. Besides, I am not one of those who believe that a man, once an agricultural labourer, should always remain an agricultural labourer. Let industrious men have a chance of climbing the ladder of prosperity. You have not only to provide buildings, but you have to get proper implements in order to plough up more land.
  There is another point which has been really overlooked of late, and that is the enormous increase in the rates. Can anybody tell me what the effect of the great increase of the rates is going to be on agricultural land? I do not know, but land may go out of cultivation because of it. The Government recognise, the Prime Minister recognises, that no person is going to plough up land for the guarantees offered under this Bill. So the right hon. Gentleman says, "I am going to compel them to do it." Here are his words:
  "If you are going to carry out this Report you can only do so by means of Parliament saying that powers must be given under proper safeguards, under fair conditions, to compel the necessary cultivation such as you had in the course of the War."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1920, col. 1616, Vol. 134.]
  I candidly confess I do not like those words "compel" and "compulsion." But here is the recommendation of the minority 11 members of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, the Committee appointed to consider this very question:
  "If the State is to possess power to ensure that the object for which the guarantees are given will be attained, the only way it can be done, under the guarantees imposed by our colleagues, is by giving the Board of Agriculture or the county committees power to enforce serious cultivation."
  That is what they say.
  Mr. G. EDWARDS: I do not.
  Mr. LAMBERT: The Report adds:
  "We do not believe such powers can be practically applied. We are of opinion it would be against the best interests of the industry to attempt to deal with farming in such a manner."
  That is the Minority Report of 11, There was only 12 on the other side, or
  728
  perhaps I should say 11 and a bit. Does anybody realise what the cost of all this machinery is going to be? Does anybody realise what the cost of these Agricultural Committees is going to be? There are the various expenses of the arbitrators, and travelling, and so on. It has been rightly said by hon. Gentlemen opposite that they wish to see justice done and that the arbitrator will prevent gross cases of injustice. That may be; but let us just consider where we are. The Minister has power to come down himself to me and tell me that I have got to plough up certain land, the Minister himself, by his fiat. I can appeal to the arbitrator, but what is going to be the expense? The cost would not fall on the Minister. I could probably fight the case, but what about the farmer? The whole machinery seems to me to be a hotchpotch of puzzle-headed officialism. I do not believe in it a bit. Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman opposite that I have one supporter in the Government, and I am glad to say that he is a very able one, one of the ablest. He is against all this reckless State action. He has said this:
  "There is nothing more blighting to the prosperity of the country than Government control. There is nothing that was so weakening to initiative and enterprise as dependence upon the State."
  Splendid! These were the words of the President of the Board of Trade. I agree absolutely. But we are going to have Government control. We have to rely upon this Government control of which the President of the Board of Trade said there was nothing more blighting to the prosperity of the country! One does not understand it. One of the most illuminating remarks made in this Debate was made by the hon. Gentleman, the Member for Ludlow, who said:
  "We have been examining into the number of officials in the Board of Agriculture, and we find during the period 1914–20 they had increased by no less than 2,000 new individuals."
  New individuals, new officials! Two thousand more in the Board of Agriculture! Would it not be far better if these officials were put into small holdings themselves and cultivating a bit of land? Would we not get more food? But these 2,000 gentlemen must have something to do. Here is the Bill. They are going to have something to do under it, and will go on meddling until the country, in the

  729
  words of my old friend the late Lord Fisher, "Sacks the lot."
  I am sorry to have been so critical in this matter. I really do it from the point of view of the taxpayer. I listened to the speeches about compensation to the farmer. 25 years ago I introduced a Bill to give compensation to the farmer. I was then opposed. I would like to have had such a speech delivered in my support as that delivered a little while ago from the opposite benches; in fact, I am not quite sure whether my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary did not in those days oppose me. He has been converted. I am very glad that the tenant farmer, especially the good tenant farmer, is going to get compensation. I would advocate all along the line that the good tenant farmer should have absolute security for all the capital he invests in the land. I am all in favour of that, but I do not know how this Bill is going to work. I do say here, speaking as one having knowledge of agriculture, that one of the greatest necessities to-day is to attract capital to the industry. Buildings have to be put up. That prospect has not been improved. Will this Bill tend to increase the number of buildings that are going to be built? We have been talking about the agricultural labourer. I am one of those who have been supported by the agricultural labourer. I know a great many of them, and I have always been an advocate that the agricultural labourer should be enabled to earn high wages, that he should be paid good, just, generous wages. Of course his wages must be; they would not be paid unless they were. I say to-day that the farmers have been very shortsighted. When they were making money very fast in the early part of the War they did not put up their labourers' wages. I am sorry for it. But as the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has said, by the fixing of these prices and wages it has come about that the agricultural labourer gets 46s. a week while the miner gets £4 10s. There is no reason for that.
  The agricultural labourer is quite as good a man. He has to work eight hours. I am one who wants to benefit the agricultural labourer not only in wages, but in giving him the opportunity of climbing the ladder of life. When I
  730
  criticise this Bill I am not criticising those provisions dealing with the labourer's wages. But I can have no part or lot in a measure which casts a quite unknown burden upon the taxpayer, and that will not yield a commensurate result in increasing the arable cultivation of the land. I cannot recognise, or be responsible for, a measure which will simply harass the industry through a horde of officials, and certainly will hamper, rather than encourage the production of food. I say that, in my judgment, when this subsidy comes to be paid, as it will very probably have to be paid, it will prejudice the agricultural industry and all those engaged in it in the eyes of the country at large, and therefore this measure will sow the seeds of future grave trouble for those engaged in the cultivation of the land.
  Mr. GARDINER: Like other Members who have taken part in this discussion, I wish to compliment the right hon. Gentleman in charge of this Bill on the fair and kindly spirit in which he bus conducted this measure through Committee and through the Report stage. It is quite true some of us did not get more than we desired in Committee, but we honour the right hon. Gentleman all the same, and we recognise the fact that he endeavoured to be absolutely impartial I do not propose to deal with the subject matter of the speech which has just been delivered by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Lambert). He is well known wherever British agriculture is understood, and he has done much in the past to help agriculturists. I am exceedingly sorry he is so pessimistic about the Bill, and the position of agriculture to-day. May I ask why the Bill was introduced and for what purpose? Is it likely to accomplish the purpose for which it has been introduced?
  We go back to October, 1919, and look back upon the past history of agriculture, and everyone of us is agreed that agriculture had been neglected for generations, and that nothing had been done by the Government of this country to give the encouragement that agriculturists ought to have received. It was quite an epoch when the Prime Minister made his Caxton Hall speech which has resulted in this Bill. I am not going to say that I love this Bill whole-heartedly,

  731
  and every detail in it. There are certain portions of it that some of us would rather have been left out. I want to look at the thing broadly and in a manner that will not be offensive to any section of the House. Although Part I of the Bill was not desired by Scottish agriculturists, they recognise that the Government in this Bill have endeavoured to the best of their ability to give effect to the promises that were made at Caxton Hall. He would have preferred a simple Bill without all these references, and I suppose Scottish Members would have preferred a Scottish Bill rather than one relating to the two countries.
  I want to look at the Bill as we have it. In the first place it was to ensure an increased production. In reference to the guaranteed prices, although I do not accept everything which has been said from the Front Opposition Bench on this subject, I do not think they will induce the amount of extra cultivation which the Government expect. On the other hand, I want to point out that in my opinion, and I have carefully studied the position, I do not think there is much likelihood that the guaranteed prices will ever come into operation. I know that at present there is a tendency to lower prices in agricultural produce, and the price of cereals is lower than it was some time ago. There is a fall especially in oats. When we think of world conditions and the cost of production everywhere, including the cost of freights and other things that enter into the question of the price of foreign produce, and if as this Bill produces, as I think it will, intensive cultivation, I do not think the agriculturists of this country will ever require the subsidy, and they will be perfectly independent of it
  So far as guaranteed prices are concerned, if ever the day comes when those prices come into operation and the industrial population refuses to support them, I would remind them of what happened during the War. They must remember the national necessity during the War. In the second place, let us remember that it is not the cost of production plus a fair and reasonable profit, but simply the cost of production that is guaranteed in the Bill. What I am more particular about is the question of the power to enforce proper cultivation.
  732
  During the War, there is no doubt at all that many things were done with regard to cultivation, by Orders and otherwise, that ought never to have been brought into being. We admit that frankly, and if these conditions are going to continue, I do not think there is an agriculturist in the country who would submit to them. In some quarters I know farmers have been told at meetings that they had not read the Bill or mastered its contents. In my view, very few ordinary farmers will be able to understand this Bill at all. When we find hon. and learned Members of this House confessing their ignorance of the provisions of this measure and acknowledging that they do not understand it, I think agriculturists may be excused for being ignorant on this subject. To go into a gathering of agriculturists and to state that this Bill to enforce cultivation is to be run by what they call whipper-snappers in breeches from Whitehall, is going beyond a reasonable statement.
  I believe that some of my hon. Friends have had experience of somebody coming from Whitehall and overriding the decisions of the agricultural committee, and causing very foolish things to be done. No one can imagine that the agriculturists of this country, combined as they are now, would ever submit to such a course of procedure. With the local knowledge of the kind and standard of farming which is required in the district of any agricultural county, I cannot imagine for one moment that the things which were done during the War will ever be renewed. Some of my hon. Friends who opposed the cultivation part of this Bill very strenuously admit frankly that there is a considerable percentage of bad farming and that there are many bad farmers. I have heard it put by one hon. Member that 40 per cent, of the farming is not up to the requisite standard. If that is so, there must be a remedy. We can surely in this country never submit to 40 per cent., or even a lesser percentage, of the agricultural land of this country being under cultivation. The matter is of great national importance, and must be dealt with.
  Under the old system of the old-fashioned landlord with the good relationship that existed between landlord and tenant things were different. A farmer was chosen simply because he was

  733
  honest and paid his rent regularly, and he was allowed to continue in occupancy of his farm year after year, and possibly his successors after him. The old system has been exceedingly detrimental, but with the new system the fact that a bad tenant is going to be turned out by the Agricultural Committee without compensation will cause every farmer to consider his position, and if he has been a slacker, then he will apply his mind and his muscle to a kind of cultivation that will be of some use to the country. The bad farmer must be cleared out, and we must have a higher standard of farming than ever we have had experience of in the past. I for one will never rest content if it can be said about the agriculture of this country that it is second to any other country in the world. I do not know of any reason for us occupying a position like that, but I think our agriculturists under this Bill will be placed in a position where the kind of farming which I have described will disappear, and something very much better will come into being. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether anybody approved of the ploughing up orders.
  Mr. LAMBERT: I asked would they increase the amount of arable cultivation of the land.
  Mr. GARDINER: My war time experience was evidently different to that of my right hon. Friend. Not only was the area cultivated increased in my district, but the intensity of the cultivation was materially increased to the profit of the cultivator and the nation. This is borne out not only by myself as an individual agriculturist, but we have also a body like the National Farmers' Union agreeing absolutely and unanimously to the suggestions contained in the orders. These men quite recognise the fact that, if there is going to be a guarantee, there must be some control, and they favour it accordingly. Three or four days ago I had the privilege of visiting one of the great estates in England on which there was the most magnificent park that it has ever been my privilege to walk into. During the War the agricultural committee interfered with this park, and ordered it to be cultivated. The noble owner of that park did not like the process, but he told me on Saturday that, from the economical point of view, it had been the best thing that could have hap-
  734
  pened, and the quantity of produce raised from that park has been an encouragement to him, and now that he is left alone instead of putting that park back to grass, his intention is to cultivate a great portion of it intensely in the future. So much for the system I am assuming that these orders will be given in a reasonable way be men who really know their business, and that the ploughing up of unsuitable land would thereby disappear.
  What is more important in my judgment in the Bill is Part 2. It is true some of us would have preferred simple security of tenure, but in this, as in other matters, I am going to admit again that the Government have, as far as lies in their power, endeavoured to give us security, if not of tenure, at least of capital, and it is quite possible that experience will produce some modifications in the direction I have suggested. Is security really needed? So far as I know, we are all agreed it is, because hon. Gentlemen opposite, who speak for agriculture in this House, have stated that it is essential, if the industry is to bring about the results we all expect from it. I have never said, and never will say either, that there are no good landlords, or that the great majority of landlords are not good. Neither will I ever say that all the farmers are good, because I know that some are very bad. Occasionally you have a really good landlord with a very bad agent, and many of the evictions that have taken place in our country have not been because of the bad landlords, but because of the bad factor, as the agent is called in Scotland.
  The argument that the desire for security is of recent growth so far as my country is concerned is not well founded. We have had evictions very largely for political reasons. We have had evictions because the agent or landlord was opposed at a School Board election and did not win. I am stating what is absolutely true. I know what I am talking about. We have had many evictions as the hon. Member opposite stated, because the tenants prefer to go to a nonconformist chapel rather than to the parish church. More than that we have had evictions from mistaken views as to the welfare of the tenants. I do not suggest for a moment that the evictors desired anything but what was best for the persons evicted, but they were mistaken. We have had evictions for the sake of sport. I wish this

  735
  Bill could have gone further and dealt with the question not merely of cultivating the land but of the kind of stock permitted on the land. I dare to say in this House in regard to agriculture that it will never be secured in its proper position unless it is made impossible for any man to turn sheep stock off good sheep land and to substitute deer. We have in Scotland ruins in countless number, ruins of homesteads and cottages which were inhabited by men, women, boys and girls of great promise. Where are they? What became of them? They were turned adrift. I say it was a mistake. I do not suggest that noble owners of land who evicted tenants did not desire their welfare, and did not think that they would be better off in the Colonies, but if some hon. Members of this House here to-night had been present, as I have been when some of these families were being evicted, they would have realised that although it is quite true the home was simple, and the buildings not all that they ought to have been, and that the land was often poor and through lack of finance not well cultivated, yet their hearts and bawbees had been put into it, and to see men and women, especially big strong men. some of whom had fought for their country, and have been the mainstay of it, weeping bitter tears as they left the old home—scenes the like of which induced men like Burns to write "The Emigrant's Farewell" and other laments, I am quite sure it would make them agree that the desire for security is not of modern growth, but has been in the hearts of our people for generations.
  I come next to the question of compensation. After all, is this talk about compensation really well-founded? I quite agree that under the Bill there is to be compensation for one year or for four years, as the case may be, but I suggest that in practice it will be very very seldom that this will come into effect. It will be very seldom that notice will be given. I quite agree that occasionally a landlord may be placed in the position where it would only be fair that he should be allowed to put his son or a friend into possession of a farm. These are hardships, but you can have no Act of Parliament that will not bring hardship to somebody. I submit that the average person is in favour of compensation as provided in the Bill. I want
  736
  once more to repeat what I said in the House on a former occasion, that if this Bill comes into operation in its present form, then instead of more changes of tenancy there will be far fewer, and the relationship between landlord and tenant will be quite as good and as well maintained as now. Instead of the Bill being detrimental to good landlords, or good tenants, it will, I believe, prove a blessing to both. In my opinion, too, increased production will come not so much from Part I of the Bill as from Part II. The security given in this Bill is not all that I would like it to be, but I suggest that agriculturists placed in possession will not be afraid to spend their money wisely on fertilisers and in other ways to improve their holdings. I wonder if hon. Members in this House have ever attempted to estimate what an increased production of one or two quarters per acre would mean, or what an addition of one or two tons of potatoes per acre would represent. Probably no one has. Are the averages of British agriculture satisfactory? They are not. If you can have a man growing 10 or 12 quarters of oats, why be content with the present average? If you can have a man growing from 12 to 16 tons of potatoes per acre, arc we going to be satisfied with the present average? I suggest that the security given by Part II of this Bill will induce increased intensive cultivation, and at least a considerable proportion of the £500,000,000 now spent yearly on imported food, will be saved.
  There is one thing I approve of heartily, and that is the value given to continuous high farming. That is now admitted, and it will help to increase production more than some other parts of the Bill. Furthermore, the landlord is to be compensated for deterioration of a holding. I agree absolutely with that proposition. If there is to be benefit for the man who farms the land, there should also be compensation to the landlord in case a farmer farms badly. Now I come to the position of farm workers. What about the minimum wage? We know what it is. It is 50s. per week for labourers, but that is not the salary in my part of the country. We do not pay such low rates of wages, and I am glad to say that, notwithstanding the complaints made in some localities by some farmers, we have no

  737
  difficulty in paying a higher rate of wages than 50s. out of the extra profits of the industry. Naturally, anyone who has been born on the soil, as I have, anyone who, like the hon. Member who spoke just now, who has worked on the land from boyhood, anyone who has had to do with manual labour on the farm, sympathises with men who work thereon, and our desire is surely that it should be made possible for every man and woman who toils on the soil, not only to live by it and to live well, but to make progress and eventually to take bigger holdings. Then there is the housing problem. So far as housing is concerned, I may say that if ever there was a class in the community that required consideration in this direction, it is the agricultural labourer. They are just about the poorest housed of all classes, and, as has again and again been said in this House, they are one of the finest classes of the community; they are the backbone of the country. If there is anything in this Bill that is going to provide better housing conditions for them, I say I support it with all my heart, and I am quite sure that any right-thinking tenant farmer would say the same. My only regret is that the housing accommodation has been so poor in the past, but I am afraid there is nothing in the Rill that will give us the class of houses absolutely necessary to make the men and women engaged in the industry comfortable and contented.
  Now for a few words as to the defects of the Bill. We fought hard on this side to secure for the widow and the children of the tenant farmer the compensation that would have gone to the tenant farmer had he lived. There is nothing that has taken place in connection with this Bill that has grieved me more than the refusal of those in charge of it to grant this concession. I quite admit that an able-bodied farmer who leaves his farm and may do so without compensation can secure in some shape or form employment at remunerative rates either in his own industry or otherwise. But if this Bill is going to secure the capital of the farmer and if in his lifetime he would have been entitled to receive it, surely the much more helpless widow and fatherless children ought to have it. I am glad that the care of these is in higher keeping than any Government or any Minister of the Government, and to that higher
  738
  power I respectfully commend the fatherless and the widow.
  7.0 P.M.
  We are told that agriculturists do not desire the Bill and do not approve of it. Let me glance at the situation for a moment as it is in Scotland. There we have two principal bodies representing agriculture. There are three in fact, but only two of them take any interest in the details of legislative work, the one being the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, and the other the Scottish Farmers' National Union. One is composed entirely of farmers, and the other of landlords, agents, and farmers, and both have agreed that this Bill is a right Bill and have approved of it. That is as far as Scotland is concerned, and if I understand the position correctly, the Farm Servants' Union also approves, and the spokesmen in this House have spoken with approbation of the Bill. In England you have the National Farmers' Union agreeing to the Bill. When some people suggest that the National Farmers' Union is not agreed on this subject, I am rather surprised, because the figures of the Bristol meeting, which was held the other day, bear out the fact that the members of that Union are practically unanimous in their approval of the Bill. The figures show that 407 voted for approval, 40 approved with qualifications, and 17 opposed. In my country those who oppose the Bill do so because it does not go far enough. They desire something more drastic than anything which this Bill contains. Now about the farmers outside these bodies. The suggestion is sometimes made that the National Farmers' Union does not really represent the farmers of the country. Well, from my mode of life in the past, I came constantly into touch with farmers every day of my life in large numbers. I claim to know the life of the farmers of Scotland in a unique manner, and, except on tone occasion, I have never met a farmer who did not approve of this Bill. The one who did not approve said, "I have 19 years' lease; I want nothing more. I will go on farming well for 14 years, but I will take good care that everything that is in the farm shall be taken out in the concluding-years of the tenancy." It may be that he wanted to recompense himself, but he was doing so at the cost of the national

  739
  interest, and I am quite sure that no member of this House would agree with such a manner of looking at the question.
  Supposing this Bill is rejected here, or supposing something happens in another place that will reduce its value to agriculturists. What will happen? I suggest to this House that no such moderate Bill as this will satisfy the agriculturists of Great Britain. The whole tendency— and it is a strange tendency, because agriculturists, above all men, were considered to be Conservative, and in the counties it was acknowledged that farmers would either vote Conservative or Unionist—has now changed. We have men who formerly were Conservatives and Unionists, men who think about the future as well as the present, saying that, if this Bill is not passed practically in its present form, they will not be satisfied, and will have to ask for something more drastic. I agree that there are things in the Bill which I do not like, but I do say that it is a fair and reasonable manner in which to fulfil the promises of the Prime Minister and of the Government, and I heartily support the Motion for the Third Reading.
  Mr. GLANVILLE: I do not profess to pose as an authority on agriculture, but I want to say a word or two on behalf of the British taxpayer and of the British food consumer. During the last two years the latter, especially, seems to me to have been entirely forgotten. I have listened in this House time after time to agricultural Debates. The agricultural Members have said constantly, "What is the Government going to do for agriculture? They must do something for agriculture," which meant that the agriculturists wanted something for the time when the prices of agricultural produce would fall. Many of the provisions of this Bill are excellent, but it is the financial provisions and the circumstances connected with food prices to which I wish to refer. I should very much like to know what view the Chancellor of the Exchequer takes in regard to this subsidy, which I believe has now been altered to 81s. per quarter. That means that if the price of wheat falls below 81s. per quarter, the British taxpayer has got to step in. Here is the whole nation praying for a reduction of
  740
  prices, but if those prices commence to fall, and fall below 81s.—which they may do—the British taxpayer has got to hand the difference over to the agricultural interest, and the food consumer has to be made to pay. Even if he pay a little less on his food, he has got to pay the extra in taxes.
  I wonder if hon. Members realise what has been going on in connection with the agricultural interest. This subsidy, as has already been pointed out during the Debate to-day, may cost the nation £40,000,000, or even £80,000,000 a year. I do not know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks that is a way to solve the deficit, but it does not seem to me the practical way of doing it. What have agriculturists done to get this special treatment? They pay no Super-tax; plenty of them in the early days of the War made enormous sums of money. They pay no Excess Profits Duty, neither are they, even compelled to furnish accounts. I heard the then Chancellor of the Exchequer say about two years ago that if the farmers did furnish accounts, they had no staff available to investigate those accounts. They could not get men, but they can get plenty of men now. There are plenty of competent and educated ex-officers looking for employment, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer could easily find occupation for them if he compelled the farmer to toe the line like other people and to furnish accounts.
  I want to say a word or two with regard to prices, which I think will astonish agriculturists. I have got the figures from the Board of Agriculture. The price of wheat before the War was 34s. 9d.; the price a few weeks ago was 90s. 7d. The difference in the quantity produced this year, as estimated by the Board of Agriculture for wheat alone, in price amounts to £19,750,000. Now I come to barley. The price of barley before the War was 25s. 2d.; four weeks ago it was 86s. The difference in this year's production in price was £23,000,000. Take oats, which have been the subject of so much discussion throughout this Bill. Before the War oats were 19s.; when I got this information, they stood at 56s. The difference in the total price for oats was £29,500,000. I am referring of course to British produce, not to Irish; I have left Ireland entirely out of my figures. Then I come to the next item. I have taken only 14 items produced on the land and the figures, as I say, will

  741
  be astonishing. Let us take beef, mutton, pork and bacon. Here I have estimated the increase in price, and I have not taken the figures of the Board of Agriculture, because taking the four different items makes the matter very complicated. The quantity produced in the British Isles was 1,050,000 tons. The Irish figures are not separate, but I have struck off about one-third for Ireland, and I think that hon. Members will agree that that is a fair estimate. That leaves about 700,000 tons of these four different kinds of meat, and the increase in the price was 11d. per lb. I think that no hon. Member can say that this is too high an estimate of the increased price in British-produced beef. This shows an increased price to the consumer in Great Britain of £70,000,000. I asked the President of the Board of Agriculture the other day what price we were paying for imported meat, and he said that nearly all the contracts had run out, that the final ones were running out this month, and that the other contracts from the Antipodes were in existence up to the end of last March. There has been no alteration here in the price fixed by the Food Controller for foreign meat for the consumer. The price which the Government was paying last March under contract was 5d. per lb., and that was free on board; 1½d. per lb. was about the freight—£14 a ton, which raised the price to 6½d. Why did not the Government insist that this meat should not be sold above 1s. a lb.? Would not that have left a sufficient margin of profit? The effect would have been, if they had done that, that the British farmer could not have got more than 1s. 2d. or 1s. 3d. per lb. for his British meat, instead of getting £70,000,000 a year out of the British consumer. In my opinion it is a shocking state of affairs.
  Now let us take butter. The increased profit on butter during this year is £5,850,000. Now I come to cheese, a much smaller amount. The increased price on second quality cheese is £2,400,000. Potatoes—I have taken second quality potatoes because I did not wish to be charged with exaggeration, and the increased price on second quality potatoes is not so high as the increased price on first quality. The increased price here is £22,500,000. The potato grower pays no Excess Profits Duty and no Super-tax. Take eggs. The latest egg figures avail-
  742
  able at the Board of Agriculture—and I must say that they do not seem to be very up to date at the Board of Agriculture—are for the year 1908. Of course, every hon. Member is well aware that in the last three or four years the production of eggs in this country has gone up by leaps and bounds, but the quantity given me at the Board of Agriculture was 1,187,000,000 eggs, without turkeys' eggs or ducks' eggs. Rather than be charged with exaggeration. I will leave out the 87,000,000, and only take the 1,100,000,000. The increase in the price of eggs is another £12,500,000, and that the British consumer has to pay. I have heard a lot about the working man and what he is willing to do, and from what I know of his representatives in this House, they are very earnest and very sincere men, but when this system comes along they are very docile indeed, or they would never have stood this condition of affairs. But they have stood it, and they seem likely to stand it for some time to come. Now I come to milk. Hon. Members talk about the farmer giving up his grass land and ploughing it up. Is he likely to do that when he can make some £48,500,000 extra for his milk this year as compared with what he could have got for that milk in 1914—from 7⅓d. to 1s. 6½d.? Now I come to another item —hay. Hay does not require much labour or much manure The increased profit on hay is over £48,000,000. Now I come to another trivial item. The increased profit on straw was £22,500,000.
  Lieut.-Colonel ROYDS: Is not the hon. Member confusing profit with prices?
  Mr. GLANVILLE: I am not talking about thousands. I am talking about millions. I can well understand hon. Members not liking to hear these figures read out. I have listened to these Debates for the last two years, and I have tried to ascertain from the various speeches what really was going on financially with regard to the food that was being produced. I noticed that every agriculturist who spoke was skilful enough to avoid dealing with any figures, and that is what made me take the trouble to ascertain the true position. That completes the list of the 14 items which I have collected produced by the agricultural interest. Of course, hops would

  743
  come in for a good deal and some other crops, but that completes that list, which shows a total of £304,500,000 extra—something like three times what it was before the War.
  Now there is another item. "But look at the expense the farmer has. Look at the enormous expense he has to pay for his fertilisers. Look how the wages have gone up." Now we will deal with his wages. 600,000 labourers—and they are not all kept on permanently—at an increased pay of about 30s. a week equal £48,000,000. £48,000,000 from £304,000,000 leaves nearly £260,000,000 out of which the farmer has to pay for his fertiliser and any other extra expense as compared with pre-War. The farmer has been doing handsomely out of the nation. I do not know how long it is to go on. When the doles were being scattered about, when the working people had any amount of paper, I suppose it went on very quietly. We have got to an end of that, and now we have got to a condition of affairs when the nation has to settle down in sober earnest. I know the agricultural interest will come here next year and will say, "What about our barley? Are we to have anything for growing barley? Are we to have nothing for growing other produce?" and so pressure will be brought on the Government again and again, and the Government has got to give way. They cannot help themselves. They cannot stand without the agricultural interest. If they were to put up a fight against the agricultural interest, which in my opinion they are willing to do, they know very well it would be a very dangerous thing, and they are afraid the Government might topple. I had rather the Government toppled than that the nation toppled. What is an agricultural labourer getting now? 46s., 48s., 50s. a week. My hon. Friend is afraid that if a check is put on the present food prices the agricultural labourer will suffer for it. I do not know whether he will. I know he should not. I know that when this £250,000,000 a year is handed over to the agricultural interest there is plenty of money for the agricultural labourer who puts in a good day's work, or there ought to be.
  I do not know, of course, what the agricultural interest thinks about it. Do they think the whole of the country exists for the purpose of making the fortune of
  744
  farmers and landowners? I do not think ultimately the farmer will get much of it. I do not think he will be allowed to. Pressure will be brought on him to purchase his farm. The operation has been going on, and many a farmer has bought, or agreed to buy, his farm, probably in excess, of the value of the whole amount he has been making and hopes to make in excess profits. I felt it my duty, in the interest of the British food consumer and of the nation, to give the House these figures. I should think no fair-minded men in the House—I give them all credit for being fair-minded—would resent my giving the figures as I have obtained them from one of our own Government Departments. I took the precaution of getting them to write them down for me on Government paper, so that in case I was questioned I should be able to produce the original information. But I think when we have had all these agricultural Debates for the last two years, and when we get them for the next year or two—and, I have no doubt, we are doomed to get them—it would have been much better and it would have been a little more candid if we had been favoured with accurate information as to the amount of money which the agricultural interest were putting in their pocket at the expense of the nation. I wish my voice would reach all over the country. I am sorry it will not. I do not suppose I shall even be reported, but I hope the information I have managed to get in tonight will bear good fruit, and perhaps produce a little more modesty in the demands of the agriculturists next year and the year after.
  Major BARNSTON: I think the House will be grateful that the hon. Member has introduced a little unconscious humour into our discussions, which were somewhat dull. He told us he was not a practical agriculturist. As he went on to tell us that hay did not require much labour and manure we shall all endorse his statement. We have had some seven weeks in Committee, and we had a very prolonged Report stage. The Bill is practically the same Bill which my right hon. Friend introduced some weeks ago, and which passed the Second Reading without a Division. There have been a few alterations, to which I will call attention. I was very glad that Clause 16 of the old Bill, which dealt with the doing away with the penal Clauses and

  745
  the ploughing up of old pasture, was struck out in Committee. I think it might have led to great injustice to a landlord by a tenant, and, after all, these old pastures are in many cases a national asset. The question is not only one between the farmer and the landlord. Then the Government have put back the Clause dealing with control of cultivation, though I think now this is in a more limited and practical shape, and I cannot understand why some of my hon. Friends seem so absolutely to distrust these county Committees. One hon. Member, I think it was my right hon. Friend (Sir F. Banbury)—at any rate, it sounds like his touch—spoke about agricultural committees doing things to spite their neighbours. Surely in our counties we have enough patriotic and public men who will work together not to spite their neighbours, but for the good of their counties and for the good of their country. In Cheshire our Agricultural Committee— and I believe it is the same nearly all over the country—is composed of the best landlords, the best farmers and the best land agents in the county, and I believe the only fear will be that they will not do too much, but will be apt to do too little. A new Clause has been added dealing with compensation for allotment holders on disturbance. I am very glad to know that the principle of compensation for disturbance of labourers occupying tied cottages has been recognised because in a matter of this sort we must see to it that we have security of rent. It is right for the farmer to have security, and it is right for the labourer to have security, and after all when a labourer lives in a cottage and a garden—and every man who lives in the country ought to have a bit of garden—that cottage and garden is probably as much to him as a farm of 200 or 300 acres is to a large farmer. Then if you add to that the Agricultural Wages Board, which so delighted hon. Members opposite, I think these are the main alterations in the Bill. Therefore, it is practically precisely the same Bill, with these few additions, that was passed by the House without a Division some few months ago.
  Most people would admit that the Bill embodies in a legislative enactment the speech which the Prime Minister made at Caxton Hall some few months ago. I was rather surprised that my hon. Friend
  746
  (Lieut.-Colonel Courthope) moved its rejection. Like many other hon. Members representing agricultural constituencies, he has asked over and over again for an agricultural policy and a policy based on the Corn Production Act. I am not surprised that my right hon. Friend (Sir F. Banbury) also opposes the Bill because I have been in the House for 11 years and I have never known a private or a Government Bill, a small or a large Bill, which he did not tell us was practically the end of all things, and to-day he told us—a curious position for my right hon. Friend—that words had absolutely failed him.
  Mr. SEDDON: Except the Dogs Bill.
  Major BARNSTON: Except the Dogs Bill. I am glad my right hon. Friend who undoubtedly is one of the most popular Members in the House in spite of the iniquities of this terrible Government, never seems to get a day older and bears up in health extraordinarily well. My hon. and gallant Friend (Lieut.-Colonel Courthope) rather endeavoured to prove that the farmers were opposed to the Bill and he quoted one branch of the National Farmers' Union in Essex which had apparently passed a resolution in opposition to it. I believe the Farmers' Union is composed of something like 600 branches and has approximately 100,000 members. This was not even a county branch and my hon. and gallant Friend brings that one small sub-branch as evidence that the farmers do not like the Bill. Really, we ought to have some better evidence and a stronger statement than that.
  I support the Bill for certain main reasons which I will give to the House. In the first place, it does what my hon. Friends and I have asked for so long. It gives us an agricultural policy and it reconstructs and enlarges the Corn Production Act. That has been the main purport of nearly every speech we have heard from agricultural Members for the last two or three years. It gives security of capital to the tenant farmer. It gives compensation to labourers who occupy tied cottages. In the past the lot of these men has not always been a happy one. It gives, and I look upon this as one of the best Clauses in the Bill, an easy way of raising or decreasing rents, and a way that will cause the least friction. For myself, speaking as a land-

  747
  owner, I look upon that as one of the best provisions in the Bill. This Bill will kill the bad landlord and at the same time it will kill the rotten farmer. We must all admit that Acts of Parliament, however good, cannot do as much for the tenant as he can do for himself. He can do more for himself than any legislative enactment can do for him, and he can do it by his industry, his capacity and by putting his capital to the best advantage. Because I believe that in the main this Bill will be to the advantage not only of the tenant farmer but of the whole agricultural industry, I am delighted that We have got to the Third Reading, and I am sure we shall pass the Bill to-night.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: We have had from the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken a very interesting speech, and, as we expected from the faithful and enthusiastic Boswell, a cordial support of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir A. Boscawen). I should like to join in the tributes that have been paid regarding the consummate skill and unfailing courtesy which my right hon. Friend has displayed in the passage of this very highly technical and complex Bill through its various stages in the House, and also through twelve anxious and long days in Committee upstairs. Although I congratulate him on those qualities, I am afraid I cannot use equally complimentary language with regard to what I call the right hon. Gentleman's sporting proclivity. Upstairs we spent twelve days.
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Thirteen.
  Captain TUDOR-REESM: Upstairs we spent 13 days, a very unlucky and unfortunate number, in discussing this Bill. The Committee was probably the best and the most representative that this House ever appointed. The burden of the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down was that the Bill as we have it to-day is substantially, except for a few small details, the same Bill that was introduced into this House.
  Mr. LANE-FOX: Then we have wasted our time.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: Yes, we have wasted our time. The right hon. Gentleman has not taken his beating in the sportsmanlike way that we expected of him.
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Why?
  Captain TUDOR-REES: In regard to the question of control, which is a very important matter; in fact, the most important matter in the Bill. I have been struck by one thing more than another in to-day's Debate, and it is this, that from all sides of the House, whether from opponents or supporters of the Bill, there has been complaint about the retention of the obnoxious Clause relating to the ploughing-up orders. Hon. Members hate, and I hate, State control. That matter was very carefully and seriously considered in Committee, and my complaint against the right hon. Gentleman is that he has reduced Committee work to a farce. We came deliberately to the conclusion that State control in regard to ploughing-up orders should be exercised from the Bill, but the right hon. Gentleman, I do not say offensively, has taken advantage of a tame and unquestioning majority in this House to override and defeat the Resolution come to by the Committee upstairs, after very careful, laborious, and detailed consideration.
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I stated in Committee when that particular decision had been taken that the Government could not allow the Bill to remain in the state it then was.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: I agree that my right hon. Friend did say that, but that makes no difference to my contention. I remember that on the Report stage of the Bill an hon. Gentleman suggested an Amendment, and the objection taken to it by my right hon. Friend was that the Government could not possibly accept the Amendment because it was considered in Committee upstairs and the Government felt bound by the decision of the Committee.
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: Because we agreed to it and we could not go back upon our word.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: I am suggesting that the Government have gone back on an important decision taken upstairs. In regard to the question of control, the Committee came to one decision, and my right hon. Friend asked the House to reverse that decision, but in regard to other Amendments introduced and defeated upstairs, he said the Govern-

  749
  ment could not accept those Amendments because the Committee had considered them and they felt bound by the decision of the Committee. The decision come to by the Committee involved the question of State control. The right hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert), who enjoys the distinction of representing a constituency contiguous to my own, referred to objections to State control. We have had State control in shipping, telephones, collieries, railways and in every direction where we have had State control there has been failure, chaos, and disaster, and I am rather afraid that now that we have State control over the greatest, the oldest, and, in many respects, the most important industry in this country, that of agriculture, that industry instead of thriving, will, like all other industries under State control, deteriorate, and that will have a very bad effect upon industry generally.
  The right hon. Member for South Molton referred to the question of the expense that is going to be involved in this Bill. I do not know where he got his figures, but I put a question a few days ago to the Parliamentary Secretary with regard to the staff employed by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the cost, and the answer was that the full-time staff of the Ministry, including Kew Gardens, numbered 1,781, and the annual cost for salaries, as on 1st November, including war bonus, £573,480. The corresponding figures on the 1st August, 1914, were 659, and £132,921. That means that the State control of agriculture since 1914 has resulted in an increase in staff of 1,122 and an increase in cost of £440,559. If that has been the increase since 1914, one can readily imagine what an infinitely greater increase there will be in provisions under this Bill. Therefore, not only will State control in this respect seriously interfere with the industry and adversely affect agriculture generally, but it is going to be, apart from the question of guarantees, a very expensive luxury for the taxpayers.
  We have heard a good deal about the Farmers' Union, and my hon. Friend who spoke last rather discountered the opinion of a branch of the Farmers' Union. I have noticed during these Debates that if it supports the Bill the Farmers' Union and its branches are regarded with particular favour, but if
  750
  their opinion is adverse to the Bill that opinion is very often discounted. The farmers of this country, while they want an agricultural policy, and whilst they support generally most of the provisions of this Bill, are certainly dead against the control of the industry so far as ploughing up is concerned. To-day I have received two very important resolutions from branches of the Farmers' Union, and being in Devon they are very important branches. My division is purely agricultural, and I think I can claim that I represent the best farms and the best farmers in the country. One resolution was passed by the Bideford Branch of the Farmers' Union, and in moving it, Alderman Metherell, the chairman, used very significant words. He called attention to the alteration— and this is what upsets the farmers generally—which has been made in the Agriculture Bill at the instigation of the Government, and so that compulsory powers had been given to the Government to make the farmers cultivate land as they might direct, as in war-time. He said that this was a most drastic change, and that, notwithstanding the efforts of their representatives, it was carried. They were quite agreeable to the Clause asking for good husbandry, but this they would never accept. They would be better off without the Bill than as at present proposed. Another tenant farmer said that the Bill was monstrously unfair to farmers and landlords. They would be absolutely under the heel of the county agricultural committees if the Bill was passed, and he protested against it. The following resolution was passed unanimously:
  "That this meeting strongly protests against the action of the Government in again inserting the compulsory Clauses in the Agriculture Bill, and calls on the National Farmers' Union to get the Bill rejected unless these Clauses are removed."
  The next resolution comes from the South Devon Flock Book Association, held at Plymouth, and was passed yesterday:
  "The meeting further protests against legislation that permanently endorses any system of control by non-practical officials, such that might be desirable in war time, but is utterly wrong in peace time."
  I will pass on these resolutions for what they are worth to my right hon. Friend. I will leave the sins of commission and deal with the sin of omission. The sin of omission amounts to a failure on the part

  751
  of the Government to redeem the definite pledge made by the Prime Minister at the Caxton Hall. A good deal has been said about that speech. I know how punctiliously careful the Government are to honour all their pledges, and how sensitive they are to suggestions that they are not redeeming their promises down to the smallest particular. Knowing their sensitiveness I endeavoured in Committee to give them every chance to honour their bond in regard to what was said by the Prime Minister at the Caxton Hall and I quoted the Prime Minister's speech. An extraordinary situation arose from that quotation. Having quoted the Prime Minister's words in regard to security of tenure, I was astonished to find my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Ripon (Mr. E. Wood), who made most excellent contributions to our Debates, saying, "Do not take the Prime Minister's words too seriously." That speech originated in a Celtic imagination which found expression in exuberant language. My hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Daventry (Captain FitzRoy) when he answered an hon. Friend of mine from these Benches in regard to that speech said, "The Prime Minister at the time was very busy, he was very confused in his mind and he was badly coached." That is the purport of what he said. I am going to indicate what the Prime Minister meant in regard to this particular question. Another thing that amazed me in regard to this particular Bill was that an hon. Member introduced an Amendment and quoted in justification the Prime Minister's own words, and said that the Amendment contained the very words used by the Prime Minister which simply showed that the Prime Minister's speeches in one respect are very much like the Bible. They can be quoted either for or against any particular proposition with equal cogency and effect.
  Sir C. HANSON: No, it is not true of the Bible.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: I accept my hon. Friend's assurance. The Parliamentary Secretary said this, "I claim that the Bill carries out in the spirit and almost to the letter every word addressed by the Prime Minister to the farmers at Caxton Hall last October." On Report stage he said: "We are giving security to the farmer." An hon. Member interjected, "No!" and the hon. Gentleman
  752
  said, "We will see that when we come to it." Unfortunately we never came to it, because my Amendment in regard to security of tenure was not ruled out of order, but was passed over by Mr. Speaker. Does this Bill carry out the promise contained in the Prime Minister's speech with regard to the security of tenure? I am going to answer by suggesting it certainly does not in. the most important particular as far as tenant farmers are concerned. A moment ago I was going to inform my hon. Friend as to how the Prime Minister was coached in regard to security of tenure and to prove to him that when he used the words he meant security of tenure and not compensation for disturbance as we have it in this Bill. At Caxton Hall he said three of several cases he dealt with were those in which when a tenant leaves he receives compensation under existing Acts of Parliament, and if those Acts are inadequate the Government was prepared to consider any matters where they are not satisfactory. In those three cases notice might be given to evict the tenant, but in two cases notice ought not to be given where the farm was sold over the tenant's head to another landowner who might want it himself or might want to sell it and make money out of it, where the farmer could not raise the somewhat extravagant price often asked at a resale, and where notice was given to raise the rent. In those cases the farmer needed protection, and he should get it, and it was important he should be secured in his tenure unless the land was sold either for public purposes or a case was made that he was a bad cultivator.
  I referred to this in Committee upstairs that the right hon. Gentleman said "dual ownership." As the right hon. Gentleman had so much information as to the opinion of the Farmer's Union, I am going to quote from the headquarters of the Farmers' Union. They said that:
  "The dual ownership bogey is only designed to frighten the unthinking, and any measure of security of tenure would obviously be a measure of dual ownership. Unless the landowners desired to perpetuate security of tenure dual ownership ought not to be quoted against the fulfilment of the Government's pledges."
  I am going to suggest to the Government that with regard to security of tenure they had not carried out the Government's policy. They had only given compensa-

  753
  tion for disturbance, and that is an entirely different matter. It has been said that the Prime Minister did not mean security of tenure in the way that those of us who have been advocating security of tenure for a good many years believe. In 1912 the Prime Minister himself appointed the Land Inquiry Committee, and the Minister of Pensions was a Member of that Committee, and an hon. Friend of mine who sits below me was a Member of that Committee, and this is the Report they made:
  "It is suggested, however, that these reforms would be of comparatively little value if provision was not made for granting complete security of tenure to the tenant farmer subject to good farming. Without such security of tenure no proper remedy will be of any avail. We have, therefore, come to the conclusion that if complete justice and freedom are to be enjoyed by the tenant farmer, and if the land is to produce its full yield, the tenant farmer should have complete security of tenure, subject to necessary safeguards."
  They refer to the Agricultural Holdings Act, and say:
  "It fails in that it does not give security of tenure, but merely compensation for disturbance."
  I respectfully suggest that when the Prime Minister made his speech in the Caxton Hall, promising the tenant farmers security of tenure, notwithstanding the interpretations based upon it by my hon. Friend opposite, he knew what he was saying when he promised security of tenure. Some years ago this Report was accepted by the Prime Minister and defended in this House. When he promised the country security of tenure they expected to get security of tenure and not merely compensation for disturbance, such as they are getting under this Bill. In conclusion, my own opinion, knowing farmers well, is that you will not get increased production unless you remove from the tenant farmers the menace of eviction. Under this Bill the very best farmer, the very best cultivator of any land, can be removed, subject to the payment of a certain sum of money in compensation. I am anxious to see the tenant farmer absolutely secured, and, although I have made these criticisms in regard to certain points of the Bill, I am certainly going to support it, for compensation for disturbance is certainly better than nothing at all.
  Mr. GEORGE EDWARDS: In regard to this Bill, I hold no brief for the
  754
  farmer, but I am interested in what is fair and what is just, and because I believe the main provisions of this Bill will for the first time deal fairly and justly with agriculture, I want it to become law. Those who are opposing it would be well advised if they withdrew their opposition and do all that they can to bring it into law at the earliest possible moment. I support it because, after reading it through, listening to the Debate, and considering it specially in its now amended form, I am certain it will do two things. In spite of all the arguments that have been made during the Debate that it will not increase food production or lead at all to the better cultivation of the land, I am perfectly satisfied, when it becomes law and gets into work, it will do both these things. Although it is stated it does not give any security to the farmer, as my hon. Friend says, no one knows better than he does, that if you are going to give the farmer security of capital, then it is to all intents and purposes security of tenure.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: No.
  Mr. EDWARDS: You may say No, but it does not alter the fact. If a landlord for any reason knows that if he turns a tenant out of his farm he is liable to pay compensation, then he will think twice before he takes such a course as that.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: If he thinks twice he will turn him out. That is the trouble.
  8.0 P.M.
  Mr. EDWARDS: I did not catch the remark, so I cannot reply to it. Anyone who knows anything about agriculture at all knows that it was for want of security of capital that our land to-day is in the state of cultivation it is. It was because those who had the capital or those that took the land had not got sufficient capital and were not enabled to get it because there was no security given for the capital or security of tenure, whatever you like to call it. Now, for the first time in the history of this country, here is an honest attempt to deal with the great and important industry and to put it on a footing that will enable it to occupy its just position in the industries of this country. As far as the agricultural labourer is concerned, I am surprised at the interest manifested towards that particular class. I would like to know, especially from the

  755
  right hon. Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), when this new interest in the agricultural labourer had its commencement. I want to tell the House that the agricultural labourer is never going back again to his pre-War days, and this Bill will do something to increase his comfort and to lift him up higher in his social scale. Can anyone say that there is anything in that Clause that is not just, not fair? The man living in his tied cottage has been liable to be turned out at a week's notice, if there was a difference of opinion between him and his employer, with no compensation. Agricultural labourers are the most skilled class of workmen that we have. The Mover of the Rejection of this Bill said that the farmers did not want it. I am afraid he did not read the Report of the Farmers' Union, because if he had he would have known that the Farmers' Union is strongly in favour of it, and very anxious that it should be added to the Statute Book. The Mover also expressed the curious view that those in favour of the Bill were not experts. Surely the hon. Gentleman will not say that the leaders of the Farmers' Union are not experts. It has been my fortune as a member of the Wages Board for the last two years to meet a great many of those leaders, and, in my opinion, you could not find more able, more honest, or more expert men in any industry than you have in the leaders of the Farmers' Union. They come along and say they are anxious for this Bill, because it will for the first time give them security of capital so that they may carry on their work. Much has been said about control, and that seems to be the bugbear.
  Captain TUDOR-REES: Hear, hear!
  Mr. EDWARDS: I am glad to hear that ironical "Hear, hear." I have come to the conclusion that what we want is not less but more control for this important industry, and if we are going, as I think we must, to give the farmer security for his capital, then we must have control. If the labourer is to have a living wage and the remuneration which is just, then you must put the farmer into a position which will enable him to pay it. We have had some figures given to us about the increase in cost, but we have not been told about the increased prices. If the
  756
  labourer is put where he ought to be as the first man on the soil, and if he is to be kept in comfort decently, and provided with a proper home, then you must put the industry in a way to do those things. As a direct representative of the agricultural labourer I support this Bill wholeheartedly, and I tell the House that the agricultural labourers demand it. If you want to abolish unrest, and keep this important class contented, then you must pass this Bill into law so that these men will get a proper place in the country. They demand that, and they ask that the Bill shall become law at the earliest possible moment.
  Lieut.-Colonel JACKSON: As one who has the honour to represent a constituency where the agricultural industry largely predominates, I wish to intervene, but not to repeat to any extent the arguments already advanced. I have not taken an active part in the previous stages of this Bill, but it has been my good fortune to watch the efforts of my hon. Friends on these Benches, men who are thoroughly experienced and have real technical knowledge of agriculture in their persistent attempts to do what they could by amendment to improve the Bill, and to try and produce for the Government, and I would almost say in spite of the Government, a measure fair and just, and, above all things, workable and one which perhaps would be acceptable in the interests of agriculture and of the community generally. I am afraid however that their efforts have not met with all the success that they might have wished for. At the same time, I should like to join with those who have already spoken in expressing my admiration of the considerate way, and generous manner sometimes, in which the Parliamentary Secretary has conducted the Bill through the House. I have always had an admiration for him, and my admiration has grown more than ever by a kind of feeling that somehow or other he has an extraordinary power of self-conviction in the merits of this Bill, to have been able to have aroused enthusiasm in the way he has done against the onslaughts, and what appeared to be irresistible onslaughts from these Benches. When I first studied this Bill I felt somehow that there was a fundamental objection to it which I could never get over. I felt that underlying it was a principle which was altogether unsound and extremely dangerous.

  757
  I have never been able to have any confidence, and I do not think I ever shall be able to have any confidence, in a business which depends for its prosperity upon subsidies and which is therefore liable to the interference of Government control. I wonder how many Members of this House would really be prepared to invest in any sort of business which was founded and had to stand on such a foundation as subsidies and interference by Government control.
  I admit, and I think we all must admit, that control by the Government must go with the guaranteed prices. If the agricultural community demand guarantees they must realise that they have got to have control, and very drastic control. So far as guaranteed prices are concerned, I personally have never been able to believe that they would give very much advantage to those to whom they are supposed to be a great encouragement. They have not been, so far as I know, of any advantage at all. If within the next two or three years, as is more than probable, a world shortage operates in this country, then there is not likely to be any advantage gained from the guaranteed prices during that period. Like many hon. Members who have spoken to-day, I have most serious misgivings as to what will happen in this country when the Government have to find the subsidy. It is not outside the range of possibility, if in a very few years the distraught countries, such as Russia, get going again, and grow corn very quickly, as they can, that in a very short time we shall have corn at 40s. knocking at our doors. That would necessarily mean that a good many millions would have to be paid in the way of subsidy. I can picture the concern of those responsible for the Government of the day, and they may not be the same individuals as now, and the anxiety of hon. Members from urban districts and our cities and towns struggling with their consciences as to whether they had to honour the bond being entered into now or whether they had reluctantly to come to the conclusion that the finances of the country would not stand it. Government control is, of course, the natural sequel to the subsidy. I think it is the nastiest pill of all we have to swallow in this Bill. I cannot imagine anyone of the agricultural community I know wishing to take one voluntarily. The provision in the Bill whereby it is
  758
  possible for an individual by order to come down and directly interfere with the legitimate business which a man is carrying on in his own way, and order him to do it according to his ideas, and in a way which, from past experience, the man knows to be wrong, is, I think, bound to prove in the shortest possible time quite intolerable, and will not be submitted to. I am not surprised that the Government insisted upon inserting that particular Clause about ploughing up in the Bill. The control is their quid against the very doubtful quo of the guarantees. No Government could feel justified in giving the one without imposing the other.
  I do feel that in a very short time after the Bill has got working, the agricultural community will realise that the advantages which they are going to get by this Bill will be to a large extent smothered by the disadvantages which will accrue. I do not think it is possible for anyone, however experienced an agriculturist he may be, to be really able to judge as to what the effect of this Bill will be on agriculture until it really gets working and into practice. So much depends on how the powers under the Bill are exercised. There is great difference of opinion as to how the Bill will operate. I have heard those whose opinion on agriculture I respect very much. "Just see what may possibly happen under the powers which are given in such and such a Clause to the Minister or to the Committee to do this or that. If they are put into operation in such and such a way it is obvious that the position of the people directly interested will be impossible." On the other hand, I have heard men for whose opinion I have an equal respect say: "The provisions of this Bill are not likely to be imposed. If they are imposed, they are so hedged round that you can get out of the difficulty and the terrible effects which you anticipate will not take place." With this difference of opinion there is only one way of finding out the effect of the Bill and that is by putting it into operation.
  There is one matter about which I am justified in having a certain amount of anxiety. I have asked many of my Friends, "What do you consider is likely to be the position of the landowners under this Bill?" I take the good landowner. I do not take the bad landowner, because if he is a bad landowner, and

  759
  the Bill operates to make him a good landowner, or to make him quit, so much the better. The answer I got in most instances was this: "The prudent landowner will take the first possible opportunity he can to get out. He cannot possibly afford to carry the risk of an unknown liability which he may incur under this Bill. He will be a wise man if he gets the opportunity of getting out to take that opportunity, and invest in something else where his money will be safe." That is a serious thing for agriculture, for agriculture at this moment requires, as much as any other business, as much capital as it can possibly get. If you get these landowners to go, you will cause capital to fly from the land and go elsewhere.
  Many years, like the large majority of hon. Members of this House, I spent in business in the cities of this country. I knew very little of agriculture, and cared very little about it. I got the greatest fun in the world in one way out of agriculture. I rode and shot over the farmers' land, and thoroughly enjoyed it. That was all I knew about it. I often heard of the importance of agriculture, but never appreciated it thoroughly until I was fortunate enough to go to another portion of the county to which I belong, the East Riding, and to be elected to this House. I immediately got into touch, as I had not been before, with the agricultural community. I tried to take an intelligent interest in their concerns, and I am delighted to think that, having seen, I got my eyes opened and realised—I do not think anyone can realise more quickly than one whose eyes are opened like that—what the prosperity of agriculture means to the prosperity of this country. I do not think that I am overstating it when I say that the prosperity of the whole of this country depends to a great extent on the prosperity of agriculture. Upon it depends the health and vigour of our race and the security of our island home.
  We are all agreed that any measure which will really help towards prosperity in agriculture should be welcomed, but we do not know what the result of this Bill will be. It is not easy to produce a measure that will meet with everybody's approval, and this Bill has proved emphatically that it is not easy to produce
  760
  one that meets with the universal approval of those of this House who represent agricultural constituencies or who know a great deal about agriculture. Is there not some hope, possibly, even from this Bill? I think that there is. One great hope we have is that this is a sign that the Government and Parliament and, I hope, the country, have wakened up to the fact that agriculture is of real importance and are determined to do all they possibly can, where they have neglected it in the past, to make up for lost time and promote its interests. What we want to do is to try to find out the right measure that will help it along. This is no doubt an honest effort on the part of the Government to do that, but whether after two or three years' working it will prove to be satisfactory has yet got to be seen. I am one of those who believe that we shall not know what it really means until it has been working for two or three years. It may possibly be, as many anticipate, that parts of it will be good, parts of it indifferent and parts very bad, and if the Government will be prepared carefully to watch this Bill and act upon-experience, keep the good parts, improve the indifferent and eradicate what prove to be bad, then I do think, in spite of all the dangers which I believe it contains, that eventually it may prove to be a satisfactory measure.
  Captain BROWN: The hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken has very similar ideas to mine in some respects as regards this Bill. Like him, I am prepared to vote for the Bill in the hope that with experience we shall find what is good and what is bad, and what we can then reject. I can speak perhaps with more conviction as regards Part I of the Bill. The part of the North of England which I represent gets no benefit from the guarantee, and receives the handicap of the control which is tied up with that guarantee. In a district which raises cattle and sheep and which cannot produce much corn there can be no benefit from the guaranteed prices. What corn we produce we consume. Though we have every reason to object to Part I on that account, I do not think we would like to go so far as to oppose the Bill, for we recognise that we are a minority in the agricultural world, and we recognise the difficulties with which farmers in other parts of the country have to contend. Moreover, Part I of the Bill is temporary

  761
  and is only an experiment. I must reserve to myself complete freedom for the future, but for the moment, when farmers are asking that some greater security be given to them, I think it is reasonable that the Government should come forward and guarantee them against loss.
  Part II of the Bill is far more important. It is permanent, and will have permanent effects. It is designed, I hope, to improve the relations of the agricultural industry for many years. The mortgages that exist on estates, I am told, are considerable. As the Defense of the Realm Act comes to an end these mortgages, which may have been at a low rate of interest, will become renewable at a higher rate. If that be so, land in many cases will be sold. There is every reason to give farmers some kind of security. We know that the amount of capital necessary in farming, or in engineering, or in any other business, has doubled or trebled in recent years. Surely the farmer has a right to demand greater security for the increased capital he must put into his farm. From inquiries I have made I find that most good landlords—the good landlord is one who resides on his estate, looks after things personally, knows his own farmers and probably has no agent—do not fear this Bill. For one thing they do not often change their tenants. Generation after generation of the same family occupies their farms. Where landlords have failed in the past it has been in the case of an old tenant whom they did not like to reprimand when he failed to trim his hedges or clean his ditches. To such a tenant they have been too kind. This Bill gives a good landlord of that type an easy way out of his difficulty. He can go to the county committee, and if he proves his case the committee will give him a certificate, and he can get rid of the bad farmer without a lot of trouble.
  In one respect, perhaps, I take a peculiar view. That view is that this Bill is going to result in increased rent. It is only natural, as certain burdens and restrictions are placed on capital, that capital should demand in due course an increased reward. It will be found that capital will be a little more difficult to obtain, and where it is obtained it will demand a higher rate of interest. It means that the landlord will demand a little more rent. Look at it from
  762
  another point of view. If the position of the tenant farmer is made more attractive there will be more eagerness to join the ranks of the tenant farmers. If more people seek farms the landlord, very rightly, can put up his rent. There is a third way in which I believe rent will tend to rise. What happens when you go to arbitration? The arbitrator has in his mind's eye a good farm, highly cultivated, where good profits are being made, and he sets against this the farm on which he is called to arbitrate. He has to set a high standard in his mind before he can adjudicate, and the whole tendency must be a high standard of rent. As a practical result of these three factors operating, I think there will be a slightly higher rate of rent obtainable from agricultural holdings throughout the country. Again, there is the good old-fashioned labourer's argument, which is not too bad and has some truth in it, that the higher the farmer's rent the better he has got to do his land, the more he has got to plough, the more fertilisers he has got to put on his grass, and he says that that means the more labourers he will have to employ. High farming is very likely encouraged by a good rent, and it leads to plenty of employment in the countryside.
  I seldom trouble the House with a speech, and I apologise for taking up so long a time, but I do want to say one word in conclusion, I hope without any offence to any hon. Member. I am a landlord. I am the younger son of one who was landlord of a big estate, and since then I have got a small estate of my own, and I speak from the landlord's point of view. I have heard the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. G. Edwards) saying, for the labourers, "We demand our rights," and I have heard another hon. Member saying on behalf of the farmers that they wanted their rights, and I have heard my hon. Friends opposite talking of their rights as landlords. It makes me rather afraid when I hear demands of that description. In these days I do not believe rights exist; in their place there are only duties, and if we look after our duties our rights will take care of themselves. What is the demand by tenant farmers, who are not an unreasonable and greedy class of men on the whole, but an encroachment on the rights of landlords? Undoubtedly, this Bill does encroach on the rights of land-

  763
  lords, but I think we must admit that perhaps all the duties have not been performed as they should have been. I do not suggest what they are, but at the present moment, here in my place in the House of Commons, I thought perhaps, when we know there are many coming landlords, men with new-found wealth, seeking to secure all those rights and privileges which landlords think they should possess, it might be right perhaps to warn them that those rights and privileges depend purely and simply on the duties which they perform. If this Bill is going to be of any use in guiding us I would say, let us not put really any faith in the Bill, let us not put any faith in an amended Bill, be the compensation or fines double or treble what they are in this Bill, but let us tell those who own land in the country that their rights and their privileges depend, not on us here, but on themselves, and if in the country they will only perform the simple duties which appertain to English country gentlemen all those rights and privileges which they now demand will be freely and willingly accorded to them by everyone.
  Mr. SEDDON: I am sure, every hon. Member who has listened to the last speech appreciates not only the tone but the modesty with which it was delivered, and I feel that if all landlords, whether young, middle-aged, or old, took up the same attitude and the same lofty sense of personal duty, then neither this Bill nor any other Bill could bring disaster to them. We have listened to a very interesting Debate. When the Bill was before the House on its Second Reading, I took exception to certain provisions of it. I felt that the agricultural question was the most important that we could discuss in this House. Knowing a little about Scotland, knowing also something about Wales, I felt that to tackle the question it would have been wise to have dealt with it in three Bills, because customs and conditions vary in the three countries. I might describe Wales as the country of small holdings. Farming as it is known in the Lowlands of Scotland and the greater part of England is practically unknown in Wales, and the difficulties of one set of farmers under varying conditions are totally different from those of another set of farmers.
  764
  But the Bill has gone through its Committee stage. I am glad my Welsh friends are more or less satisfied.
  Sir R. THOMAS: No.
  Mr. SEDDON: Well, they are hoping that the establishment at no distant date—
  Sir R. THOMAS: We do not want the Bill.
  Mr. SEDDON: That is no reason why we should not give careful consideration to this question of agriculture. I was brought closely into association with this subject as a member of Lord Milner's Commission in 1915. I frankly admit that up till then I had not given very much attention to the agricultural question, but there we were in a difficulty. Something had to be done, and that Commission made its recommendations, one of which was a guaranteed price to the farmer for the produce that he gave to the country. Arising out of that inquiry, I was forced to this conclusion, not only that agriculture had been neglected in the past, but that unless something was done arising out of the panic to save it in the future, then at some distant date—and I hope it will be distant—when we might be faced with the same circumstances, we would be in exactly the same position or even worse, as we were in 1915. So I tried to devote what little intelligence I have as to the best way of dealing with this question. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) was in a very dolorous mood. He reminded me of the Children of Israel with their harps on the willows, and he seemed to have nothing to say for this particular Bill. Probably when he sees it in operation his courage may arise and his hopes be inspired that after all there is something even in this Bill, although it cuts across his pre-War ideas. But I was more forcibly struck with the community of interests expressed by the hon. and gallant Member for Eddisbury (Major Barnston), the remarks of my hon. and esteemed Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. G. Edwards), who represents the agricultural labourers, and also the remarks of my hon. Friend who spoke last (Captain Brown). All who know the hon. and gallant Member for Eddisbury know he stands high among the landlords of Cheshire and that his reputation is second to none, and he has accepted this

  765
  Bill as a landlord. He knows very well that something must be done for agriculture, and he has accepted it almost without reservation, and the same applies to my hon. Friend representing the agricultural labourers.
  My hon. and learned Friend has convinced me there is something in what is said outside that you want in this House practical men, and not lawyers. His was a debating speech, and he based his remarks on some hole-and-corner meeting held in Devon, and with an assurance and assumption he informed the world and this House that the only good farmers and the best farmers came from that particular constituency which he happens at the moment to represent. I want to say that that hole-and-corner meeting, whether it was representative of all Devonshire or only a little part of it, sinks into insignificance when compared with the great mass of farmers who belong to the Farmers' Union. After all, these men have been joined together for a definite purpose. I am speaking, of course, of the English Farmers' Union. Theré is a membership of some 100,000, and they are the best farmers, because everybody knows that it is always the trouble with labour that it is the least efficient who are the last to come inside an organisation, and it is the same with the farmers. When you get the Farmers' Union representing all the best throughout the country in common agreement with the agricultural labourer and the enlightened landlord, then there is something more to be said for this Bill than mere Government expediency, or any other term which has been applied to this particular Bill.
  My point goes a little further, and I want to emphasise what was said by my hon. Friend towards the end of his speech. The representative of the agricultural labourer said, "Make peace now if you want to prevent unrest among the agricultural labourers." You have got to give them some indication that there is going to be a standard of comfort approximating to what they have to-day, which has been gained through the strength of their organisation during the War. Exactly the same has been said by my hon. Friend who represents the farmers in Scotland. There you have a robust body of men whose ability at farming nobody can doubt. The Scottish Farmers' Union are
  766
  making exactly the same statement as the agricultural labourers—"Unless you pass this Bill, then our demands will become stronger, because we will know that the House of Commons is not prepared to give us even this act of justice which we were prepared to accept at this particular time." If you get the agricultural labourer and the farmer in that maelstrom of unrest and incipient revolt, where is your landlord to come in? It was said that the Bourbons were responsible for the downfall of the old French Monarchy, and I am convinced, with all due respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury)—we all know his honesty—that he has, like that ancient Royal Family, forgotten nothing and learnt nothing.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I have learnt this, that it is not wise to give way to threats.
  Mr. SEDDON: No, and it is not wise to stand up against the storm when you know the storm is going to engulf you. After all, the right hon. Baronet is such a charming Member of this House that no one can quarrel with him. I would like to call attention to a little incident in his past which robbed this House of his beaming presence and his undoubted ability and usefulness as a Member of this House. He opposed the popular will—
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir EdwinCornwall): On the Third Reading you can only discuss what is in the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's past is not in the Bill.
  Mr. SEDDON: I beg pardon, but, looking at the right hon. Gentleman's smile, I thought I would remind him as an object lesson—
  Sir F. BANBURY: I should do it again.
  Mr. SEDDON: He is of the old guard who has fought against this Bill, and I would advise him and his friends who have conscientiously opposed this Bill to consider whether they are doing wise to the cause they represent, because I am convinced that if this Bill happens to be destroyed here or elsewhere, then the future of that class for whom they are supposed to speak, will be materially worsened. I support the Bill because I believe it is an honest attempt to solve, or at least put this great industry upon a more permanent footing than in the

  767
  past. Certainly it has got flaws in it. The time is far distant when the draughtsmen of this country will be able to draft a Bill to suit every Member of this House. That time will be the millennium, and will not come to pass so long as party divisions exist. The Bill, taken all in all, is not only an honest attempt, but I believe will be a successful attempt. At least, it is being blessed by those who will be more hurt or benefited by it, and that is the great farming community. They are giving it support. In my final word I want to join in the general chorus of appreciation of the right hon. Gentleman who is in charge of the Bill. Upstairs, his courtesy, his urbanity, and, I would say, his knowledge of agriculture, were a great asset. Since the Bill came down, he has shown all those delightful characteristics. I only hope he will be rewarded, not only by the success of this Bill, but that he will get that to which he is entitled—I hope in the dim and distant future—that call from above, Good and Faithful Servant, thou hast done well.
  Sir R. THOMAS: I am very much obliged to the hon. Member for Hanley (Mr. Seddon) for the kind references to the country which I represent. My hon. Friend knows a good deal about Wales, but on this occasion, I am afraid, he has misrepresented the views of a large section of the Welsh farmers when he says that they are satisfied with the Bill as it is at present. It is perfectly true that a concession was made to us in the form of a separate Wages Board, and for that I have already expressed my gratitude to my right hon. Friend, because, if we must have a Bill, we would prefer it with a separate Wages Board. But if there ever have been arguments in favour of devolution, the arguments on this Bill have been the strongest I have ever heard. I do not know of any arguments that have brought out the fundamental differences which exist between the four nations in the British Isles more clearly than the arguments which have been adduced for or against this Bill. We hear that the English National Farmers' Union are strongly in favour of fixed prices and of control. I agree at once that if you say you must have fixed prices, or if you accept the
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  principle of fixed prices, you must also accept the principle of control. One is a corollary of the other. I represent the Welsh National Farmers' Union in this matter; I am their accredited agent in this House, and I am entitled to speak for them. The Welsh Farmers' Union have considered this Bill carefully. We have a barrister as Secretary of that Union, and he has seen that the farmers have been properly instructed as to its Clauses, and as to the effect of those Clauses, Therefore the Welsh farmers do understand what this Bill means. What are the resolutions which they have passed and which they have asked me to defend in this House? The most important one of all is this: that they do not want to obtain their profits from the taxpayer of this country. There is a principle of free trade there. It is a principle which goes to the very root of the life of this country. Here you have a section of the community who would benefit—some hon. Gentleman said to-night that probably the farming community might have to draw on the Exchequer of this country for no less a sum than £50,000,000 a year. Here you have farmers deliberately meeting and passing a resolution that they object in principle to obtain their profits out of the taxpayers of the country. There you have the difference between England and Wales. England says: "Yes, we will have fixed prices and accept control." Wales, on the other hand, says: "We will not have fixed prices, and we will not have control." Therefore, the hon. Member for Hanley, when he stated that we should have had three separate Bills, stated the thing which is perfectly true, because we should not have had a Bill at all for Wales dealing with fixed prices and with control. We do not want either one or the other.
  We want reforms, it is perfectly true, in agriculture. The Prime Minister, before he accepted office, in the year 1896, introduced a Land Court Bill for Wales. He was one of the strongest advocates of the Land Court. I brought in an Amendment to that effect in Committee on this Bill, and also in the House, and that Amendment was turned down. The farmers of Wales are amazed; they cannot understand why my right hon. Friend should in 1896 advocate a Land Court for Wales, and in the year of grace 1920 turn it down. We in Wales

  769
  ask for security of tenure, not for security of capital. The object of this Bill is not, as my hon. Friend below says, to have increased rents. The object of this Bill is to have increased production. The way to obtain increased production is to allow a nation to cultivate and carry on its interests in its own particular way. We in Wales are not a nation of grain-growers. The climate is against us. We cannot profitably grow wheat. We have never laid ourselves out so to do. The result is we have no granaries in Wales. What happened during the War? Small farmers were compelled to grow grain. They had no storage accommodation for it, and when the threshing, which they had to do to get the straw, took place, they were forced to put that grain on to the market, whether that market was a good or a bad one. Therefore, I say, to talk about enforcing cultivation and to enforce ploughing in Wales is perfectly ridiculous.
  9.0 P.M.
  This Bill, so far as Wales is concerned, has no meaning. It will not be carried out. I tell my right hon. Friend now—he may not have known it—that the Welsh National Farmers' Union have passed a resolution that they will not carry out the Bill—because they cannot! It is impossible for the Welsh farmer to grow grain and make any sort of a living on his farm. The small farms in Wales are dairy farms, cattle-rearing farms, and if you are going to have a guaranteed price at all, why limit it to grain? Why not have prices for cattle, pigs and everything else? Why not have a guarantee all round? The fact is this—and I am pretty confident of it— this Agricultural Bill is the thin end of the wedge of a system of protection in this country. It has all the principles of protection. I for one am a convinced free trader, and will have nothing to do with it. Wales will have nothing to do with it. Wales will not have protection either in agriculture or anything else. Therefore I say, and emphatically say, that I shall vote with my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London against this Bill, not because we are not grateful for what the Parliamentary Secretary has done in giving us a separate Wages Board for Wales, for, as I said before, if we must have the Bill we would rather have this provision, but we do not want the Bill.
  Mr. KIDD: It is common ground, I think, in the House that if this Bill works out so as to stimulate agriculture in the country, and to lead to increased prosperity, while at the same time adding to the remuneration and comfort of the men working on the land, it is a Bill that is entitled to our support. But we are not to be condemned if we, as some of us do, entertain that view not so confidently entertained by some, and believe that the Bill may result differently. I am bound to confess that I have very considerable sympathy with the attitude taken up on this occasion by the right hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury). Listening to the discussion of the earlier stages of the Bill, one could not resist the feeling that the Bill was very often discussed a little too much from two standpoints only, the standpoint of the landowner, and the standpoint of the tenant farmer. There are those of us who neither rejoice in being a present landowner, or a pedigree landowner, while, on the other hand, we are not tenant farmers. Having, however, admiration for both these classes, we have intense sympathy with them, and on that account are very anxious to see that nothing in the Bill is likely to do damage to the agriculture of the country.
  However, there are other interests besides that of landlord and tenant farmer to be taken into account. In the first place, there is the interest of the worker, that is the ploughman. In the second place, there is the interest of the ex-service man, who at the present time is undergoing training for agricultural pursuits; and thirdly, there is the national interest. If one looks at this Bill from the standpoint of the ploughman, one is rather surprised that the Bill should have received the support in any measure of the Labour party. I shall be glad to hear if any Member of that party is accredited or qualified to represent the ploughman, and can discover in this Bill anything that is likely to help the ploughman so far as his aspirations go to becoming a tenant farmer. Make no mistake about it. In imposing compensation upon the landowner as a condition of getting rid of a tenant, you are imposing payment for that compensation upon a class which is not a luxurious class. The only way that compensation can be paid is through the incoming tenant. I am speaking as one

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  who happens to have some acquaintance with tenant farmers. At the present time I am winding up the estate of one of the largest farmers in my own county. He began life as a ploughman, and afterwards acquired a small holding of 40 acres. He gradually increased that holding until he became one of the largest farmers in that particular district of Scotland. It has always been argued that we should provide the ploughman with a ladder of progress. Any man to-day with the will and ability in any industry, who is prepared to make some sacrifices, can find a ladder of progress which brings him to almost any point of his ambition. The difficulty in regard to the ploughman has always been that there is no such ladder of progress for him. In the past there has been a scarcity of small holdings and small farms. A ploughman has not the means to take a big farm, and however skilful and industrious he may be as a worker, or however prudent and willing to make sacrifices, or however ambitious, the ploughman, as compared with other workers, has not had the same opportunity of making good. Are you helping him? If access to the land has been difficult in the past it will be ten times more difficult after you have passed this Bill.
  With regard to the ex-service man, what is the good of you and me pretending to have such an admiration for these men if after those protestations we proceed with legislation that is calculated to defeat their hopes and ambitions. Many ex-service men have discovered a taste for agriculture who had no such taste before. The Government is undertaking the training of these men. We all know that they are not men of means. They have served 4 or 5 years in the War and they have had 2 years' training in agriculture. Just as you are making access to the land impossible for the ploughman you are increasing the difficulties of the ex-service men. There is also the national interest. The intention of this Bill is by imposing a system of compensation to obtain security of tenure for the present generation of tenant farmers. Is it in the interests of agriculture to standardise the present mode of farming? I know that this compensation in its severest form is only payable in the event of some capricious dismissal of the tenant, but I wish to point out that by means
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  of this compensation Clause you are entrenching mediocrity. What is the stimulus for people in the world of industry except competition? Why is agriculture to be deprived of this stimulus? By these proposals you are directly putting a premium, if not on total incompetence, at least on mediocrity, and there fore the system of compensation is bad.
  I wish to examine the contention of those who maintain that this Bill will give additional security to the tenant farmer. Many of us have seen the different conditions which have been maintained in the world of agriculture on the one hand and industry on the other. In the domain of industry we have tried to do everything by Act of Parliament, and have we prospered by that policy? In the domain of agriculture we have left everything to the personal relation, and what has been the result? The laws which have regulated succession from father to son in ownership have been largely reflected in tenancy. I can give a case in my own county where the present tenant farmer by himself and his forebears has occupied the land for 268 years. We have been told that in Scotland security of tenure is very bad for agriculture: but this Bill is intended to give security to the tenant farmer. In Scotland we are told that they have too much security. Do you think that the laird in Scotland who has given the tenant the security which he enjoys to-day has been moved by considerations of pounds, shillings and pence? Your profit and loss test is the test of commerce. The success of your land system in Scotland has been due to the fact that the relations between the laird and his tenants has been of a personal nature, and has not been based on pounds, shillings and pence. By this Bill you are going to interfere with those relations. Do you expect that the same relationship will exist when you have thrust in the crude hand of an Act of Parliament.
  You cannot have it both ways. You must either have the land free and regulated with the warm, full co-partnership of proprietor and tenant or you must have it regulated by Act of Parliament. Let hon. Members opposite assume for a moment that the land is nationalised. Would they as owners agree to the compensation to the tenant farmers which is

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  provided by this Bill. Again I would say this to the tenant farmer. Would you with the land nationalised ever rejoice again in the privileges which you enjoy to-day under private ownership? Take it from any point of view you like, I say that the Labour party, if they be true to their own doctrines, are bound to condemn this Bill on all grounds. Under no system of nationalisation would the tenant farmer enjoy the privileges he has to-day, and so far as the land of this country is concerned, so far from improving the situation of the tenant farmer the Bill is going to destroy it. It has been suggested that every farmer in Scotland is in favour of the Bill. I have received letters, and I have spoken with scores of farmers, and I find there is a very widespread objection to this Bill.
  One hon. Member moved the rejection of Clause 7, Sub-section (5). Had he succeeded in carrying that Amendment there would have been something to be said for security to the tenant farmer, as the object was to make the compensation payable to heirs also on the death of the present tenant. In other words, the hon. Member who moved the Amendment evidently had in view the creation of something in the nature of a fresh class of land-holder in this country, a class which was to have security not only for themselves but also for their successors. I grant, if the hon. Member had been able to obtain that, it would have given security to the farmer, but without it he has less security than he has hitherto enjoyed. As lease after lease falls in on death of tenant is it to be imagined that the leases will be renewed to heirs—son or widow? Just realise what will be the result if the present land system is turned down—a system under which the country has been so prosperous. What would happen as lease after lease falls in? No landowner will take upon himself the responsibility of continuing against his successor the menace of payment imposed by this Bill. He will not relet the land. He will do one of two things. There will for some years to come be an intensified demand for land, and as farm after farm becomes vacant the landowner will either take advantage of that intensified demand and sell the- land at a very high price or he will resume possession of it. Speaking as one with a very deep regard for agriculture, I hope the second method will be the one adopted, and when these farms fall in I
  774
  trust the lairds of the country will not dispose of them by sale.
  I quite recognise the desire on the part of the men who during the War have made wealth far beyond the dreams of avarice to become proprietors of land. They may not have that social sense which the old laird had. Therefore, I hope that the land falling in will not be submitted for sale, but that the landowner will resume possession and, in co-operation with his ploughman, acting, perhaps, on co-operative lines, and sharing the profits, will remain on the land and, at the same time, put a premium on the excellent services of the ploughmen; in fact, the latter may then get back his own. This is our consolation, the consolation of those who take an interest in our land system. In a few years' time the tenant farmer of to-day, or his successor, will have lost the farm. The land will have passed into the hands of the landowner who will act in co-operation with the ploughman. The ploughman may not enjoy that independence which the present tenant farmer has, but his position will be largely improved. But what of those farmers who have strained themselves to have splendid farms which they may hand on to their sons and their grandsons? What is offered to those men in return for the withdrawal of that right of successorship which they have had for generations? Speaking as one who represents tenant farmers, I say that, although you are pretending that you are bringing to the tenant farmers greater security, you are, in fact, going to destroy the security he has, you will disappoint the hopes he has cherished, and you will destroy his main ambition.
  Colonel Sir A. HOLBROOK: Representing an English agricultural constituency, I rise to speak in favour of this Bill. Some of the arguments used by the last speaker may be sound as regards Scotland, but I do not think they would have very much weight in any English constituency. When this Bill was brought up for Second Reading I discussed the matter with landowners, farmers and labourers in my constituency, and I found that the general opinion was—and I believe it is still to-day—that the Bill offers justice all round. At the time I ventured to assert it was a sound and honest attempt to meet the agricultural difficulty which was experienced when

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  the War broke out, and I still take that view. Of course there are many points in the Bill which everyone of us interested in agricultural matters think might be improved, but taken as a whole the measure will meet the difficulties under which the agricultural community has been suffering for many years past. An hon. Member who spoke earlier in the Debate (Mr. Glanville) quoted a lot of figures showing the great advance in recent years in the prices realised by agricultural produce. He was very careful to give the aggregate receipts, but he did not disclose any figures showing the reason for the increase. We all know that during the last three or four years prices have gone up in every direction and the farmer has been put to very much greater expense in connection with production, and he has been compelled, consequently, to demand higher prices in order to secure some small modicum of profit. His wages bill alone has trebled probably during the last three or four years, and it is therefore clear that the farmer cannot sell his produce or his stock at the same prices as hitherto. It has been suggested that the compensation of guaranteed prices in this Bill will be objected to because it will impose a very largo burden on the taxpayer. I suggest that the figure of £50,000,000, which has been mentioned, is ridiculously high and quite out of proportion to the real state of the case. I have gone into the the matter with some of my friends who are greater experts than myself, and I have come to the conclusion that the demand likely to be made in respect of these guaranteed prices is not going to be a very serious burden upon the taxpayers.
  Supposing this guarantee were not given. Let me call the attention of hon. Members to the number of lean years which the farming community in this country suffered under prior to the War. It must be remembered that, for many years, the farmers were expected to produce wheat at prices which never gave them any profit. I come, personally, from a large industrial centre, but I do think that those who live in industrial centres have no right to expect to obtain cheap food at the expense of the agricultural community. We all want cheap food, particularly those of us blessed with large families, but, at the same time, we
  776
  cannot expect to obtain that cheap food at the expense of one class of the community. If the farmer is not to be assured that the wheat he grows is going to bring in some return, it is quite conceivable that ho is not going to interest himself very much in producing wheat. The one object of this Bill, I understand, is to increase the production of food, and to place this country in a position so that it will not be as it was when war broke out, growing only a very small proportion of the food required for its population. I know that in the compulsory ploughing which took place during the War many mistakes were made, but there were also many cases where ploughing proved to be beneficial. I was personally engaged on work on Salisbury Plain during the War, and in that district we ploughed up over 1,000 acres for the purpose of growing oats for Army horses, and we did so with enormous success. No one would have thought, before the War, that that land could be productive and, had it not been for the War, it would never have been discovered that that land could be productive. It is quite conceivable that, under this Bill, much of the land that will be brought under cultivation will materially increase the food of this country. The objection has been made that this ploughing up of land led to the destruction of good pasture land. I considered that question very closely during the Debate on that particular Clause, and I came to the conclusion that the safeguards given by the local agricultural committees would protect the farmers from any mistakes of that character. The members of the local agricultural committees are men of high experience, men of good local knowledge, and it is not at all likely that they would be led into the error of destroying land that is not suitable for arable cultivation, and I think that the safeguards afforded by this Bill in that direction wipe away most of the difficulties.
  I deeply regret that this Amendment for the rejection of the Bill on the Third Reading has been brought before the House because it is quite conceivable that the discussion to-night may give a false lead when the Bill arrives at another place. I submit to hon. Members that if by any mischance this Bill does not pass the other House, and is thrown out, there

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  will be great disappointment in agricultural districts, and I think that we should be doing an enormous disadvantage to the proposal to increase production in this country if the Bill were rejected. The hon. Members who have opposed the Bill have put forward many arguments in favour of their contentions, and I think the arguments put forward from an hon. Member from Wales will not obtain much support. He distinctly says that they do not intend in Wales to convert any pasture land into arable land. I do not think that is an attitude which any district should take up. We have to look at this thing from the wider point of view. It is necessary that we should maintain home production and that we should increase the amount of corn which is now grown in this country. If some of the opponents of the Bill had been with me on Salisbury Plain I think we should not have heard the arguments put forward to-night that hay could be produced without much cost. The hon. Member who made that remark could have had no conception of the cost of cutting, trussing and transport of hay during the early years of the War. If he had he would have realised, as we know now, that hay went up three or four times above its price when war broke out, simply because of the labour necessary for the cutting, trussing and transport. Therefore I think arguments of that sort cannot be accepted as having any weight as opposition to the Bill. Taking it all round, I consider that this Bill is meeting a great difficulty in the agricultural districts, and it is generally approved by all classes—landlords, farmers and agricultural labourers—all of whom are getting some consideration under the various Clauses. Representing as I do a large agricultural district I feel that I ought not to give a silent vote on this occasion. I regret that the agricultural Members in this House have not seen their way to be unanimous in support of this Bill, which I think will do a great deal to improve the agricultural conditions of our land.
  Mr. ROYCE: I do not want to detain the House many minutes, but I should like to say that I have been very much impressed by the remarks of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Kidd). His very interesting speech shows that he is closely and intimately connected with agriculture and, in my opinion, he
  778
  touched what is perhaps the weakest spot of the Bill when he alluded to the ladder of progress and the difficulty that will be experienced under this Bill by the agricultural labourer in improving his condition and in acquiring land. I have frequently spoken on that subject and the only hope I have in that connection is that the concession that the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill has made in connection with the larger farms, although not anything like the amount of concession we ought to have had, is something, and I do hope that it will to some extent enable the agricultural labourer to progress by that ladder which has been so eloquently described by the hon. Member. Having said that, I should like to thank the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill for his great consideration. He has received showers of compliments to-night, but in the case of the Labour party, which I have the honour to represent, I can assure him of our gratitude in connection with the concession he has made with regard to the tied cottage system. That concession, for the first time gives something, not very much, but at all events something, in the nature of security to the roof-tree of the worker on the land. We are grateful for that, and our gratitude, which has generally been described as an anticipation of something more, in this instance is no exception. We want something more. It is not very much more that we want, but something was omitted in that connection. Clause 11 provides that a tenant having a lease must receive notice before the expiration of his lease—not more than two years and not less than one year. May I beg that in the instance of the agricultural labourer, whether he be engaged for six months of for twelve, it shall be incumbent on the part of the tenant who employs him that he should give him notice some short period before the expiration of his term of service as to whether he intends to continue it or not. That is a reasonable request if it can be put into the Bill, and I am sure it would be a very great advantage. It would not hurt the farmer and it would be of inestimable benefit to the labourer. May I also express gratitude to the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Captain Fitzroy), who at the last moment last night moved an Amendment which the right hon. Gentleman accepted in connection with the

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  agricultural labourer's garden. It was a very important matter which had been overlooked, and it is of very great service that it has been included in the Bill. It is not much that the agricultural labourer gets.
  I have heard a great deal to-day with regard to the question of the guarantees. We do not like guarantees and we do not like subsidies, but in this instance we accept the guarantee because we get something at the same time that is of very great advantage to the worker on the land. We get the continuance of the Wages Board. Some right hon. Gentlemen have not perhaps attached much importance to the Wages Board. I attach the utmost importance to its continuance. I hope the time is not far distant when something in the nature of Whitley Councils can be established in agriculture, but at present the agricultural labourer is not sufficiently advanced in his organisation to enable him to stand alone, and the Wages Board has been of immense benefit to him in improving his conditions. I am sure no one desires the agricultural labourer to go back to the conditions that existed in pre-War days, but that would be the effect if this subsidy was removed and there were that slump in prices which have been anticipated by so many speakers who are opposed to the Bill. I wonder, when these dreadful pictures are painted by opponents of the Bill of the possibility of having to provide large sums in payment of subsidies to the farmer, whether they remember that during the last three years he has been subsidising the food of the nation by receiving a very much smaller price for his produce than the world price. That has amounted to a very large sum, quite as high as the highest estimate that has been suggested this country might ever have to pay. He has subsidised the cereals of the nation to the extent of something like £40,000,000 a year in comparison with the world price, having received so much less. I hope that will not be forgotten. Reference has been made to the effect of the payment of a subsidy in future years. I hope the industrial element in this House and the country will realise that the agricultural labourer is largely dependent on such subsidies in the event—the remote event, I think—of any great slump in prices, and those who have his interests
  780
  at heart, I am sure, will never wish that he should go back to the conditions that existed in pre-War days.
  The hon. and gallant Gentleman (Lieut.-Colonel Courthope) told us that the sword of Damocles hangs over the agricultural industry. He was careful to tell us that the sword did not fall, and I do not think it will fall in this instance. I think agriculture will survive even under the present conditions of this Bill. I think it will improve. The whole essence of the Bill seems to me to lie in the selection of the agricultural county committees, and if you have good county committees and good administration I do not believe there is any need on the part of the tenant farmer to fear that they will unduly interfere with methods of cultivation. And so far as the landlords are concerned, I think they in their turn will overcome all the difficulties that are presented by this Bill. It seems to me from the remarks which were made by the hon. Member (Mr. Kidd), who has evidently given the subject very considerable study, that he does not, even with the fears he entertains for the present, believe the Bill will work ultimate harm. I believe it will work a great deal of good. I believe it will improve the cultivation of the country. Someone has remarked of the various qualities of land that there were two qualities of land, and that it would not do to plough up the best pasture land. It will be very profitable to plough up good pasture land. It has always been said that the farmer grows rich who ploughs up grass land, and the farmer is ruined who lays down grass land. I do not believe that rule will be broken in connection with the present Bill. At any rate, we shall vote for the Bill in the full belief that it will not only benefit the agricultural labourer but also the tenant farmer. We believe it will confer great benefits, and so far as the fears that the country will be called upon to pay heavily in the shape of subsidies, I do not believe, if the country is called upon, the House will refuse to believe that the interests of the country are wrapped up in the sound condition of the agricultural industry. The fact that the countryside is contented and happy will have very great weight in the deliberations of the House, and if it is brought to the notice of the country in a fair manner they will realise that agriculture, during the period of our greatest

  781
  trial, has stood by the country, and I do not believe they will desert the industry if at any time the world production should render it a danger in this country. So I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on getting his Bill to its Third Reading. I notice that the amount of opposition, to judge from the Benches, is likely to be very small, and I hope he will have the same success in another place that he has achieved in this.
  Mr. ACLAND: The last two or three speakers have raised the point of the supposed difficulty that this Bill is going to introduce with regard to settling ex-service men on the land. I listened to the speech of the hon. Member (Mr. Kidd), but I could not agree with him. Those who know anything about schemes for settling ex-service men will not agree with him either. It is not the price of the land that makes those schemes difficult, but the price of the equipment.
  If you take an ordinary 20-acre holding at £40 an acre, the land will cost £800, and the equipment will cost at least £1,200—the house, and so on—and the stock a minimum of £500 or £600. Forty pounds out of that one year's extra purchase on the land is going to be neither here nor there. You cannot say that is going to make the settlement of ex-soldiers impossible, whereas before it was possible. It is the cost of the equipment which is the great obstacle at present, and, unfortunately, looks like continuing to be so. With regard to the Bill, there can be no suggestion that any of us have been speaking from the party point of view, or for party purposes, as was the case last night, or that we have been saying anything but what we all genuinely believe. On this subject we are not, in the words of the song, "Bound to leave our brains outside and do just as our leaders tell us to." The diversity of opinions amongst Conservative speakers is only exceeded by the diversity shown amongst Liberal speakers, and if more had spoken representing the Labour party no doubt there would have been the same diversity of opinion. The real difficulty is that hardly anyone, except the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) and possibly the right hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert)—upon whom the right hon. Baronet's mantle in this House is falling, although I hope the day may be long delayed—would say that
  782
  the Bill is wholly bad, and I do not think that any of us would say that the Bill is wholly good. Those whose lives bring them into close acquaintance with the industry of agriculture must find it most difficult to decide upon which side of the fence to come down in regard to this Bill. The Bill is an ingenious but rather complicated machine of checks and balances and compensations and conditions. The different parts of it are bound together, and it is very difficult to look at one without having the others closely in one's mind.
  Let me look at the different inter-connections in the Bill. There is an interconnection that used to be urged a great deal in this House, but which we hear less of to-day, that because farmers are compelled, many of them perfectly willingly, under the machinery of the Wages Board to pay reasonable wages, they therefore have a right to guaranteed minimum prices. That argument is not used much now. I do not think it is sound; I do not think one can really recognise it. It ought to be required of every industry that they should pay reasonable wages, and no industry has on that account a claim for subsidies from the State. There is the further connection, that if you are going to have guaranteed minimum prices and greater security, you must couple with that some measure of control in the interests of increased agricultural production. That is a perfectly true connection between the different parts of the Bill. I believe the Bill is not only an attempt at a concordat and a new basis of harmony for persons inside the industry, but it is much more an attempt at something like a permanent arrangement between the industry and the general public outside. I believe it is quite vital that if guarantees are given, which may undoubtedly come to a considerable sum, the public ought to see steadily working some machinery under which our most important industry of agriculture will consistently, year after year, give a better return to the general public, of which it forms a part. In regard to the amount of the guarantee, no one can prophesy. I think the figures we have had given to us this evening, varying from £40,000,000 up to £80,000,000, are wild over-estimates of anything which is probable. You only tempt providence if you prophesy. I think it is possible, on oats, that we may

  783
  have to pay £6,000,000 or £8,000,000 within the next five years, but I would not put it higher than that, although it is an extremely difficult subject to prophesy about.
  In this connection the giving of some sort of control in return for guaranteed prices, and in return for extra security of tenure, is nothing like so much against the grain of a very large proportion of farmers in this country as some hon. and right hon. Members would lead us to suppose. I believe the farmer has been painted by his friends very much blacker than he is. I believe the younger generation of farmers are far more advanced in this matter than those who speak for them, and that they have a great deal of public spirit in this matter, and are trying to give the public a better return than perhaps they gave before the War. I know that many of them welcomed the Ploughing Up Orders, and did their best under them, and incidentally made a good thing out of them. They made a very genuine attempt to do what they conceived—they got a new conception during the War—to be their national duty, and I believe they will go on doing so. During the year or so that I had the honour of being the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, I had to address farmers' meetings, and I got into the habit of beginning what I had to say—even then, before the great food scarcity, when we were trying to get the farmers to do better and produce more, in spite of their terrible difficulties—by remarking, "You have to remember that you are not the only pebbles on the beach." That sentiment was always as well received as anything I had to say.
  Farmers have learned a great deal from the War. They have learned that unless we all hang together we shall very likely all hang separately, and they have learned that this country is no longer in the position, being as it is now a debtor nation, that she can cheerfully continue to import the main bulk of her food supplies year by year. In the great industry in which they are engaged, and in which, as the census of production before the War showed, there was a greater amount of production per person employed than in any other of our staple industries, the farmers realise that they must make a consistent and continuous effort for
  784
  greater production, and in that connection it is not unreasonable to make, as this Bill does make, provisions which will very often, perhaps, be kept in the background, but which will be there in cases of necessity for "driving the lazy ones on with a stick," so that they may assist in raising the general standard. Therefore, it is essential from the point of view of the community that there should be this measure of control, and it is not unwelcome to a very large number of the most thoughtful of the younger generation among the farmers.
  There is this further link between the different parts of the Bill, and it is an important one, that if the State is going to take an active hand in stimulating production, the cultivator must have some greater security that he will enjoy the results of his industry. Therefore, the two parts of the Bill connect up We would all like to give that extra security in some way that would not bring hardship upon no one, but to-day there is no way of doing that except in some cases at the expense of the landowner. It is rather absurd that one cannot resume a home farm and one cannot cut off a piece of land for a smallholder without losing a year's gross rent, which is equal to about four years' net rent from the land which is affected. There is no other way, therefore the landlord has to put up with it, and to make the best of it, as he has done with so many other things, and to go on with that tremendously public spirited work which he does in the country.
  Major Sir KEITH FRASER: How about education rates?
  Mr. ACLAND: Reducing them?
  Sir K. FRASER: Yes.
  Mr. ACLAND: I do not quite see the connection between reducing the educational rates and asking the landowner to give this extra compensation in the shape of rent. If I could see the connection I would deal with the point. Landowners as a whole realise that this Bill will accelerate the process rapidly going on, namely, their disappearance. Yet they are willing to do their best, because there is really no other way of giving that extra security to the farmer which is the essential part of any agricultural scheme. I have said enough to show there is this close connection between the

  785
  different parts of the Bill, and the important consequence is that you cannot very materially alter any parts of the Bill without spoiling its balance. Some of the speeches delivered this evening have been rather in the nature of signals as to what was desired should be done in another place. I hope that these signals will be disregarded, because it is certain that if material alterations are made in the main principles of the Bill, the Bill must be dropped and, on the whole, that would be disastrous. I would like to take the general view, and one's state of mind depends very much upon whether I am looking at the Bill as a Bill, or trying to take a general view, and looking on the general state of agriculture as it is likely to be in the next 20 years with the Bill or with no Bill at all, which is the only practical alternative. If I had to look only at the Bill I should vote against it, but if I had to take the longer view of the general effect on the whole agricultural position in the next 20 or 30 years, it is to the good.
  May I refer first of all to a few provisions which all agree to be good and about which there is really very little controversy? Sub-section (4) of Clause 4 says that the owner must provide necessary works of maintenance on the farm. Surely that is good. Sub-section (7) of the same Clause says that an owner who neglects his estate may have that estate taken over. I think that is all to the good. Clause 9 is about allotments which as far as it goes is certainly an improvement. Clause 10 gives extra security to the worker in his cottage. Clause 13 gives power to prevent the owner unreasonably refusing his consent to improvements. Clauses 14 and 17 work in together and give compensation for continuous high farming or continuous low farming, and Clause 18 is a simplification of arbitration proceedings which it is very desirable to introduce. All those things are to the good, and we ask hon. Members to remember on this side that if this sort of Clause had to be introduced into a Liberal measure, they would have had little chance of surviving the ordeal they have to go through when they leave this House.
  I come to the main provisions, the guarantees and the control and the compensation. Here there is a good deal to criticise. With regard to guarantees, I
  786
  do not think any industry, because it paid a very low rate of wages in many cases before the War, has a right to claim subsidies when the wages have been put on something like a reasonable basis. There is also this inherent in any system of subsidies—although the Government has done its best to make the system a stable one—that an industry, once it looks to this House for its prosperity, has been pushed on a very slippery slope. It is, in principle, the wrong thing to do. There will be a tendency for the leaders of the agricultural industry to say, if anything goes wrong with agriculture, that it will be quite all right if you only increase the subvention. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) said, there will undoubtedly in the years to come be a very great difficulty with regard to public expenditure. It is public expenditure that in the next 20 years is going to rule all our words, thoughts, and works. Of many things, however desirable they may be in themselves, we will say that we simply cannot afford to have them. That is the ruling spirit in which we will have to regard subjects of public expenditure. That being so, we have to look forward, and it is a very doubtful arid dangerous thing to have done. We will have, when this Bill passes, a certain liability whch may be a very heavy burden on the taxpayer.
  10.0 P.M.
  That outcry and demand for guaranteed minimum prices was mainly expressed by a generation of farmers which is tending to pass away. The farmer who is coming along now has not had practical experience of the great drop in prices of the nineties. It is hearsay with him. He did not have to put up with them, but his father before him did. How quickly public opinion forgets with regard to a great event or a great man. In my short political career I can remember when a speaker first mentioned the name of Gladstone how the hall at once cheered. That was among Liberals. It was the same with Disraeli among the Conservatives. Now the name of Gladstone in a political speech is taken in the same way as the name of Peel or Pitt or Chatham. A few years makes all the difference between those who have personal recollection and those who only have hearsay. We are passing to a generation of farmers who only have the

  787
  hearsay recollection of the bad times of 30 years ago.
  The second great principle is that of control. With regard to that, not certainly in the intentions of His Majesty's Government, nor in the fears of hon. Gentlemen opposite, but in fact, that control is going to be rather idle. We are exaggerating enormously when we talk about what will actually be done under control. It is purely chimerical to talk about armies of inspectors from Whitehall ordering farmers to plough up and to do this and that. No Ministry of Agriculture in a time of peace can work against the predominant feeling of the great agricultural community with which they live. I believe there will be a very small crop of definite orders to cultivate. I think it will be good in the background. When the general public asks what have they actually got in return for their guarantees, there will be very little overt proof of a definite quid pro quo for the guarantees. I believe the best definite effect on account of the compulsion you take will be to improve the general standard of public opinion and therefore of development and progress in these matters.
  The compensation Clauses, of course, so called, are simply a half-way house and as such not a very secure dwelling-house. The compensation Clauses do not give, as we all know, real security to the farmer. Sales of land, I am afraid, are bound to continue. The burdens upon owners of agricultural land are bound to continue to be heavy. If we had what, in my opinion, would be the good sense to impose a capital levy in order to free ourselves of some of these charges, then obviously enormous pieces of estates must be sold at once. If we adopt what is, I think, the only possible alternative, the continuance and, I am afraid, the increase of the present scale of taxation, then clearly sales of land must go on sporadically, and of course large sales must take place whenever Death Duties have to be paid. The owner as a result of this Bill will get less for his land, but still the interest on the money that he gets from the land will be Very much greater than the net return which he gets from his farm at the present time. I found that in two estates I have to administer at the present time the net returns, without allowing anything for
  788
  Death Duties, were, on one estate, 5s. 2d., and on the other, 5s. 6d., after paying Income Tax, repairs and management, insurance and all those other things. On that sort of basis at present I could only expect a return of 5s., but I could sell for 20 years' purchase of the gross rent. Suppose that this Bill brings down the number of years' purchase to 17 years and that I can re-invest that at six per cent., that will give me a net return of 14s. in the pound, minus the 6s. Income Tax, against a return of only 5s. or 5s. 6d. So clearly if one is to make money it will still pay, and the only way will be to sell out agricultural land and invest the proceeds out of it. An hon. Member asks what about mortgages. I am only speaking of what I know and thank goodness I have no mortgages, though I daresay that affects the question very much. If an estate is clear you can make more by investing the money than by continuing to run it in the ordinary way. That must mean that sales will continue to take place. If that is so there cannot be anything like real security or fixity of tenure with the best will in the world, and men will find that their farms are sold, and though they get compensation under this Bill they will not get what they really want, which is a certainty of not having to go.
  Having incidentally, I am afraid, condemned, or considerably criticised, the principal proposals of this Bill, why do I think that it should on the whole be supported? There is a saying that has always been in my mind, and which illustrates the general state of mind of many of us who are agriculturists and of the agricultural community. It was that of a farmer who on his way back from market after selling some stock was asked how the sales had gone. He said, "I did not get what I expected, I did not think I should." To put it in another way, a Scottish Member whom I asked this morning what he thought about the Bill in general said, "We do not like it, but we should be very disappointed if we did not get something of the sort." That is difficult to understand, but it is, I think, a very true observation. I think, taken altogether, the Bill provides something like a fairly stable basis for the future progress of the agricultural industry. Certainly if you look within the industry there will be, in my humble opinion, much more peace there than if

  789
  the Corn Production Act had just been allowed to expire. In that case you would have had no Wages Board, and the farmer would be at the mercy of the return of the prices of the nineties, and he would have had no extra compensation for disturbance, and you would have had no provision to induce landlords to keep their estates up to the highest mark of which they are capable, and you would have had no increased security for the tenant of the tied cottage. I believe, as I say, therefore that makes the Bill a better concordat between the different elements engaged in the industry, and I believe also it is the basis of a concordat between the agricultural community and the public outside. How often have we all heard about the neglect of agriculture by the State. The Prime Minister told us of it the other day and we heard it often before. Every president of a Chamber of Agriculture at the agricultural dinner has said it ad nauseam. Every landlord at the rent audit dinner has made it a commonplace. It is quite true that the agricultural industry may not have known what they wanted when they talked about the neglect of the community, and they may not quite like what they have got, but at any rate never again can they complain of being neglected. The general grievance in that matter is remedied even if minor ones have taken place in the shape of certain provisions in this Bill.
  I feel, in summarising, that the Bill does give a greater feeling of all-round security. Say what you may like about some of its detailed provisions, there is a feeling secured by the Bill on which you may build wonderful things. I believe that very great developments are coming rapidly in our agriculture, and by rapidly I mean in the next 30, 40 or 50 years, which is rapid for an industry which hardly moves from century to century. I believe that one of the truest things ever said about agriculture was the saying of Sir Thomas Middleton, that far too large a proportion of the farms in this country are too big for a man to work with his hands and too small for a man to work with his head. I believe that gradually there will be a development away from that middle size of farm in the direction either of increased small holdings or an increased number of larger farms run on scientific industrial methods. I believe we shall also see con-
  790
  siderable development of the use of power for agricultural machinery and for transport, and, especially, that there will be a development of co-operation in conducting the business side of agriculture. That will have gradually the effect of providing for the consumer a better article at a more reasonable price, while still leaving the producer a reasonable profit. All this sort of internal development the industry must work out for itself, but I believe, if it can gain as a basis peace within itself, and peace, if possible, with its neighbours outside, it is much more likely to be able to tackle that task than if there was still the old chaos and the old feeling of neglect and lack of interest by the community in agriculture.
  There are two small points which I wish to mention. I think that we shall have to go further on allotments. Members interested in allotments will, I feel sure, next Session have to press the Government to appoint something like a committee or commission to go around the county boroughs and the larger boroughs and inquire what land should be permanently dedicated to allotments and what measures are necessary to secure it. At present allotments are always being pushed further and further out. You want something like a permanent dedication, because of the great value which the allotments can be to the community. Increased compensation, as long as he is pushed further out every few years, will never give the allotment holder what he has a right to ask for. Then sooner or later, and I wish it had been done some years ago, the Government, after careful consideration, should lay down a standard of food production for the country at which it is reasonable to aim. It ought to be in a position to say what proportions in each county and each district it is reasonable to have kept under arable rotation and what standards of corn, milk, and meat production ought to be aimed at.
  One thing that upsets agriculture more than anything else is the liability to be changed and upset when one Government succeeds another. If you were to lay down some standard to be aimed at, even if it were to take 10 or 20 years to attain, which would be accepted by successive Governments, would produce that element of stability which is the life

  791
  blood of real success in the agricultural industry. As a part of that process of laying down a standard of what the nation expects from the agricultural industry, you ought to have periodically every ten years or so, a survey, county by county, estate by estate, parish by parish, and apply it to what is really going on, as to whether in each parish or district there is a real chance for the small man, not only whether he is pulling his full weight with regard to food production, but what the conditions are with regard to home life, what are the restrictions on the labourer with regard to keeping poultry and pigs, what chance has a small man of getting up, and what chances there are of a full life in the highest sense of the term. I have said that frequently before, and I hope that some day the seed will not fall on barren ground.
  I want to end on something on which we can all agree. I believe that in the first place if this Bill reaches the Statute Book the agricultural community will owe a great deal to Lord Selborne. It so happened that he became Chairman of the Agricultural Committee and I became Chairman of the Forestry Reconstruction Sub-committee—they were two sister reconstructions committees—on the same day. He did me the honour to ask me to take on the forestry work because I happened to be his Parliamentary Secretary. I steered the forestry ship into port last Session. I hope that he will now have the pleasure of seeing his ship reach a safe haven, because he has shown wonderful public spirit, vision and firmness of conviction in the work which he has done on behalf of the true interest of the agricultural community. Then we owe very much to the admirable good temper, and the great tenacity of purpose on material points which have characterised the handling of the Bill by my hon. Friend (Sir A. Boscawen) opposite. I believe that it will be in no small measure due to his work and his great gifts of character if the Bill becomes a success, as I for one most earnestly hope it will.
  Colonel Sir A. SPROT: The objects of this Bill are certainly commendable. The question for us is whether the methods adopted will attain those objects. The objects aimed at are the production of food in this country to a greater extent
  792
  than formerly, and the employment of a larger number of people on the land. I was in France about a month ago, and while there I read an announcement in the newspapers to the effect that the French harvest for this year was sufficient to feed the whole of the French people without purchases from abroad. That is a very great achievement on the part of our Ally. I believe it is the case that up to the last year of war, or thereabouts, the price of bread never went up in France. That also was a great triumph for the French people and administration. Shall we ever be able to do anything of that sort in this country? Our conditions are entirely different. In France they have had protection for many years, they have a much greater diffusion of the ownership of the land, their country is larger than ours, and there is a great deal more agricultural land in proportion to the population. We live in a small group of islands, and we have an immense population, mostly employed in industrial pursuits. It is impossible for us to feed the whole of our people from the products of our own land. That is no reason why we should not attempt to feed as many of them as possible. I think the real solution of the food question for us is to get food from our colonies and to keep up our Navy. If we continue to do that, both in peace and in war, we shall continue to have our people fed. The great bulk of our population will be earning money by means of industrial pursuits to enable us to purchase the food we require. I shall be told, "We must consider the submarine boats." We had to meet that novel form of warfare during the War and we succeeded in doing so. If there are inventions which make submarines more formidable in future, other inventions will come which will enable us to meet the new peril. But we shall never be able to produce the whole of our food here; we shall always be obliged to get a great portion from abroad, and we shall have to meet that danger in the best way we can.
  The method which is being adopted by this Bill is the fixing of guaranteed prices combined with Government control. I have never been able to get many people to agree that these methods will produce the effect desired. In my own constituency, at any rate, I find that the people

  793
  who ought to know are not of that opinion, and I represent the largest wheat-growing county in Scotland, a county in which agriculture is carried on on the very best and most scientific and up-to-date principles. I have made diligent inquiry, and I find that the farmers there are not at all enthusiastic about this Bill. They do not think that it will attain the objects which are aimed at, and they object very strongly to the idea of Government control. They think it is time that all control and Government interference were abolished. They were quite willing to submit to it during the War and for the purposes of the War, but now they consider that the time has arrived when it ought to be taken off, and they have called upon me to vote against the Third Reading of this Bill.
  The arguments which I was going to use have been taken up very largely by other hon. Members, but I would first turn for one moment to a point with regard to the Third Reading, of the Bill. We have had a very long discussion on the Report stage. We did not have an opportunity, most of us, of discussing it in Committee, and very little was said about it on the Second Reading, because hon. Members had not then been able to take in the various details of the measure. What I have to say about the Bill as it now stands is that we brought forward certain exceptions with regard to the compensations which are proposed to be given in Part II, exceptions which we desired to see introduced into the Bill, all of which were, I think, reasonable and would, if accepted, have improved the Bill, such as the case of a man wishing to resume a farm in order to cultivate it himself, the case of resuming a home farm, the case of the multiple farmer called upon to give up one or more of the multiple farms which he was cultivating, the case of giving up land for small holdings, Government buildings, and for housing schemes. In all these cases we considered that there were reasonable exceptions which ought to have been introduced into the Clause which deals with compensation. We were not able to get any of those exceptions adopted by the Parliamentary Secretary, and I consider we might have given our support to the Bill, although disapproving of its main features, had we been able to introduce some of these things which I have mentioned. As it stands,
  794
  the Bill, to me and to those who support me, is not in such a form as to command our support, and therefore I am afraid I shall be obliged to go into the Lobby against it.
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: We have reached the last stage of these lengthy proceedings in this House. I think this, including the days spent in Committee, is the twenty-sixth day on which the House has been, in one way or another, engaged on this Bill. I desire to say just a few words before the House goes to a Division on the Third Reading, but they will be few, partly because I have not much time, and partly because I have spoken frequently, and at such length, on so many occasions, that I really do not wish to inflict more than a few words on the House this evening. I feel I ought to begin by thanking many Members of the House for the exceedingly kind references they have made to the difficult work I have had to undertake in connection with this Bill. Really, my thanks are much more due to those Members, with some of whom, unhappily, I have frequently been in controversy, who throughout have carried on the controversy with the greatest kindness and good feeling. I feel I owe a great deal to many of my hon. Friends behind me on the Agriculture Committee. It has been a real regret to me that we have been at difference, but we have succeeded throughout in carrying on our difference in the best spirit. Then I owe a great deal to my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne (Mr. Acland), who has spoken in these Debates with a knowledge and an administrative experience which I myself cannot pretend to have. I think, too, we owe a great deal in these Debates to members of the Labour party. I feel sure that we owe very much to the contributions to our Debates of the hon. Member for the Holland-with-Boston Division (Mr. Royce), and the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. G. Edwards), who has been honourably engaged in agriculture all his life, and who told us the other day that his college was the turnip-field.
  I have sometimes been taunted by some of my friends that I have been trying to ram this Bill down their throats with the aid of Labour party votes, but really, if there ever were a Bill upon which the Labour party had the right to express their opinion, I think it is this Bill. After

  795
  all, the Labour party, like other Members, represent the interest of consumers, and they are also very direct representatives of the organisations of agricultural labourers. We must remember that when we talk about our rural population, which is all too small in my opinion, and I should like to see it very much larger, the agricultural labourers are the majority of that rural population, and an Agriculture Bill which did not deal with the problem of the agricultural labourer, which did not try to better his conditions so far as it could, would not be, in my opinion, an Agriculture Bill worth having. Perhaps we have not gone so far as some hon. Members would desire, but we have tried in this Bill to assist and improve the position of the agricultural labourer. We have made the Wages Board permanent. The Wages Board is riot a popular body with farmers, but, in my opinion, it has done most excellent work. It has undoubtedly improved the wages of agricultural labourers, and it has kept peace on the farm in a manner in which peace has not been preserved in any other industry. There have been few exceptions, and those only small and slight. Then we have tried to deal with the very difficult question of the tied cottage, and I think we have been able to bring forward a Clause which, with suitable safeguards against its abuse, with suitable safeguards which make it possible to do something for the labourer without doing anything against good cultivation, will really confer great benefits in the future.
  When I am speaking of the efforts made to improve the condition of the agricultural labourer, I think it is sadly significant that this week, when we hope our plans are coming to fruition, there should have died one whom we all respected in this House, and who spent his life in trying to benefit the agricultural labourer—I mean the late Mr. Jesse Collings. I have said that the agricultural labourer forms a large majority of our rural population, which is too small. If it is to keep up its end, if it is to have its proper place in the councils of the nation and in this House, it is absolutely essential that everybody engaged in agriture should stand together. There has often been in the past far too much difference of opinion between landlord and tenant—on some if not every estate—
  796
  and there has often been far too much pulling in the opposite direction of the farmer and his men. I look forward to the time, and I hope this Bill may help to accomplish it, when everybody engaged in agriculture will recognise that they are engaged in one of the greatest of industries, that their interests are identical, and that, after all, and making all allowances, agriculture is one of the greatest, if not the most important one, of our national industries.
  I thank my hon. Friends behind me for their kindness and consideration. At the same time I am not going to disguise the fact that I have some little complaint against them on their attitude to this Bill. It would be imagined from the speeches of hon. Friends behind me that an autocratic Government had forced this Bill upon them contrary to their wishes. The very opposite is the truth. They, have demanded this Bill.
  Lieut.-Colonel ROYDS: Not this Bill, no!
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: They have demanded an agricultural Bill.
  Lieut.-Colonel ROYDS: Ah, a different matter!
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: They have absolutely shouted for an agricultural Bill. Time after time they have demanded a Bill, and as I shall show, they have demanded a Bill based upon the principles of this Bill. Let us look at some of the facts. When first I became Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, before I had been in office a fortnight, an Amendment was moved to the Address by my hon. and learned Friend, the Member for East Grinstead (Mr. Cautley). That Amendment regretted that in the King's Speech no announcement was made, no real provision, to meet' the needs of agricultural industry and population. My hon. Friend said:
  "What I suggest to the Government is, and I do very strongly trust that the Parliamentary Secretary will see to it, that immediate steps should be taken to revise the Corn Production Act, and to revise the prices, otherwise the whole of the farmers of England and the whole of British agriculture are heading to catastrophe and disaster. Under the stimulus that has been applied land has been brought into cultivation which can never grow wheat economically. This applies to only a small portion, but a great deal that has been brought into cultivation could be kept in cultivation. We must grow wheat. We must grow for our

  797
  own protection. We must get men on the land."
  The hon. and learned Gentleman urged an extension of the Corn Production Act.
  This Bill is nothing else but an extension of the Corn Production Act.
  Lieut.-Colonel ROYDS: Part II.?
  Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I am speaking now of Part I. I will come to Part II. What is the difference? If there is a difference between this Bill and the Corn Production Act the difference is this: The guaranteed prices are higher in this Bill and the control is less. That is the difference. Yet my hon. Friends now turn round and say that this is not the Bill required, and that Amendment was supported by various of the agricultural Members. On 4th March we had another Motion on the Consolidated Fund Bill. The hon. and learned Member (Mr. Cautley) then said:
  "After the passage of the Corn Production Act agriculture became a subsidised industry, and the subsidy has got to be kept up if corn lands are to be cropped."
  I heard one of these hon. Members say the other day that he would never ask for guaranteed prices. But what did the hon. Member for Ludlow, or was it the hon. Member for Ripon, say? He said he hoped I would use all my influence to get agricultural prices fixed on the unimpeachable cost of production. That is exactly what we have done in this Bill, while the hon. Member for Faversham (Lieut.-Colonel Wheler) pressed for an immediate declaration of policy. On 20th March another Motion was moved by the hon. Member for Daventry, who said the agricultural labourer ought to have his wages increased until they were on a par with the rates paid in other industries in order to attract men back to the land and to safeguard agriculture. The Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Lane-Fox) pressed for a statement and complained that the Government were going back to the bad old days when the men struggled along as best they could, and yet to-night my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Rye (Lieut.-Colonel Courthope), asks the House to throw out this Bill in order that we may have de-control and a free market. Those are exactly the bad old days. What is the good of asking for a policy when all the policy you want is de-control and a free market? On that occasion the hon. and gallant Member for Stirling (Sir H. Hope) said:
  "No bad farmer should be allowed to farm land, and farmers must have security."
  798
  There is security in this Bill. The Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the method whereby guaranteed prices should be arrived at. A Motion was made in this House and on it the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Pretyman) congratulated me upon the decision to hold an inquiry. Then we had a deputation to the Prime Minister introduced by the hon. Member for Daventry, and afterwards came the Caxton Hall speech. The hon. Member for Daventry moved a vote of thanks to the Prime Minister and he said:
  "As the representative of the Agricultural Committee of the House of Commons composed of all shades of political opinion he could, to a certain extent, speak for agriculturists generally in this country, and on their behalf. He could say that the Prime Minister's speech would give a lively satisfaction to the agricultural community throughout the length and breadth of the land. They knew now definitely that the Prime Minister was the true friend of agriculture."
  Our Bill is based in its main principles upon the Caxton Hall speech of the Prime Minister. Following this there were repeated demands for the introduction of the Bill, and there were complaints that it had been delayed. Questions were put to me, and I was asked, "When is the Bill going to be introduced?" The Members for Daventry, Rye, Ripon (Mr. Wood), Barkston Ash (Mr. Lane-Fox), Newbury (Mr. Mount), and Tavistock (Lieut.-Commander Williams), and a great many others pressed me on this point. I said that it would be brought in "shortly." I was then asked to explain what "shortly" meant, and I said, "an early date." I was then asked what I meant by an early date, and I replied, "within a reasonable period." Finally, they gave me up, and turned their attention to the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister. At last we brought in the Bill, and its terms became known. And then there occurred a positive transformation scene. The very people who had been loudly demanding and clamouring for the Bill immediately turned round and became its most damaging critics. I do not complain of that. They had a perfect right to criticise. They may say, "This is not the Bill we want." But curiously enough it is based on the principles they asked for. I have just this to say. They had no right to criticise a Bill brought in at their request

  799
  and demand unless they were prepared to bring forward some alternative policy. I have never heard, in the course of these long Debates, any suggestion of an alternative policy, and I say therefore we brought in this Bill at their request; it carries out their wishes, it holds the field, and we intend to pass it.
  After all, what could the alternative policy be? We are agreed that we want increased production. We are agreed that increased production can only be obtained by means of the maintenance of more land under the plough. How is it to be done? It must be done by making the conditions of the farmer such that he will risk his capital on arable land without running grave danger of losing it. The conditions must be such as to pay the farmer. There are two ways of doing that. You can do it by guaranteed prices or by a protective tariff. Is a protective tariff the policy of my hon. Friends? I do not believe it is. I do not believe they think the country will ever agree to a protective tariff on foodstuffs, and therefore I am certain it is not their policy. If they believe in their principles, consequently, they are driven back to this, that they must agree to the principle of guaranteed prices, and that is the principle which underlies this Bill. If you guarantee prices, what follows? What follows is this. You must have a certain amount of control. The State has undertaken a big burden. We have been told that the amount of money that may be paid for guaranteed prices may mean a very big sum. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) made a great point of that. If the State is willing to undertake a big financial burden it has a right to see that the land is properly cultivated, and to see that there are no bad and indifferent farmers. There is no room for a bad farmer in this country. The land of this country is too small in extent and too valuable to allow it to be badly farmed. There is no place either for the bad landlord. We all agree that a bad landlord has no place in our country to-day any more than an indifferent farmer. Yet when we brought in a Clause based on the Selborne Report to say that where a landlord managed his estate so that the tenants could not properly farm their farms a manager or receiver should be put in, it was de-
  800
  nounced by many Members of this House as the most outrageous proposal ever put before the House of Commons. It may be said, "Oh, yes, we agree to enforcing good cultivation; we agree to suppressing the bad landlord, but that is enough, and you propose to go too far by insisting upon control of the actual nature of the cultivation." I do not think it is enough. Let me put one figure before the House. From 1873 to the year of the War, we lost no less than 3,000,000 acres of arable land in England and Wales. It is quite true that we have recovered a certain part of that during the War. Is that all to be lost again? Is it all to be allowed to be laid down, and to tumble down, to grass? If we give these guarantees, have we not the right to see that a sufficient amount of this land which is suitable for the plough is maintained under the plough? Does anyone tell me that the whole of those 3,000,000 acres that used to be under the plough cannot profitably be under the plough to-day? Surely that is a position which cannot be taken up, especially when we remember that there are adequate safeguards that there is to be no ploughing-up order, and no maintenance order under arable cultivation, if thereby the interests of the owner or occupier will be injuriously affected—in other words, if it is an uneconomic proposition. I say that that absolutely follows from the guaranteed prices, and that that is a part of the Bill upon which we are bound to insist.
  As a matter of fact, I do not believe that the opposition to this Bill really proceeds half as much on the question of control as it does on the question of compensation for disturbance. In my opinion, we should have heard a great deal less about all this tenderness to the tenant farmer in the matter of control if we had not had Part II of the Bill. I am the last person to wish to hurt the landlord, and I have acknowledged over and over again that, under the old landlords on the old estates, there was, notwithstanding the fact that we had yearly tenancies in England and Wales, practical security of tenure. But that is all gone. These extensive sales have introduced the speculator and the new landlord, and have set up a condition of affairs quite different from anything that has gone before. There is now the greatest want of security; and security is necessary, as the Prime Minister said, if the tenant

  801
  farmer is to do his best with the land. Security is the best fertiliser of the soil. As that security which used to exist in practice has gone, we are bound in this Bill to deal with the matter, and to deal with it in an adequate manner. Therefore I say that these proposals are necessary, and I hold that they are moderate proposals. What is going to happen if they are not carried out? Does anyone suppose that we are going on as we were? Does anyone think that the tenant farmers are going to settle down, with the insecurity that prevails to-day, and ask for nothing more? I venture to say that, if this compensation for disturbance is not enacted in this Bill, or in some other Bill in the immediate future, we shall have an agitation either for complete fixity of tenure, with a Land Court, or else for nationalisation, to which the Government is opposed;. but which it will be very difficult to resist.
  It has been said that the Bill is unjust, because, while it does something for the tenant farmer, something for the labourer, and a great deal for the State, it does nothing for the landowner. That, again, I do not think is just criticism. The landowner gains two points of great advantage by this Bill. He gains a ready and easy method of getting rid of a bad tenant. We all know that on the old estates tenants were often allowed to remain long after they were really cultivating properly. The landowner was most unwilling to get rid of a tenant, especially one whose family had been for years on the estate. That is bad for cultivation; it is bad for food production. Now you have a ready method, by means of the agricultural committee, of doing the unpopular thing in the national interest, which the landowner is often unwilling to do on his own initiative. Then there is the question of rent. I have always said, and I hold today, that one of our difficulties is that a great part of England and Wales is largely under-rented. Rents were brought down in the bad times, and they have never been put up since. The result is that it is impossible, with present taxation and the present cost of repairs, for the landlords in England and Wales properly to keep up the equipment of their estates.
  Rents must be raised. There again the landlord could only raise rents unless agreement could be come to by the very difficult and unpleasant process of giving notice to quit. Now, by means of the arbitration Clause, all that need happen is that the landlord says, "I think my estate should be re-valued. I wish to have a fair increase of rent—fair having regard to the present value of money and the economic conditions. He goes to an arbitrator, the matter is settled without friction, and if the tenant refuses to pay he will have to go without getting a compensation for disturbance. Therefore, I maintain that the Bill deals fairly with all classes who are interested in the soil. I will quote a short statement made in a certain newspaper the other day not usually devoted to agriculture. It said:
  "The Government's Agriculture Bill now getting through the House of Commons is one of the great measures of the Coalition of which much will be heard. A prominent critic thus sums it up: 'It gives to the farmers a guarantee for prices which they can accept, links with this a guarantee of labourers' wages, a security for the tenant farmers, and gives a prospect of increased output, and a more fertile soil, with indirect benefits, in consequence, to the commercial classes. Thus it enables Liberals to do something for agriculture, as well as Conservatives.'"
  That is the Bill I ask the House of Commons, in the name of the Government, to give a Third Reading to, and I claim that it is the only measure which can be carried at the present moment to deal with our agricultural situation. The alternative is de-control and a free market; it is laissez faire; it is leaving the farmer to shift for himself. It is that disastrous policy which was adopted by the Manchester school, which deliberately sacrificed our agriculture to the needs and interests of the industrial towns and practically depleted our land, which drove thousands of our population off the broad acres of England and Wales into the great cities and jeopardised our food supply in time of war. That is the only alternative. That is an alternative that the Government are not prepared to accept.
  Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  The House divided: Ayes, 161; Noes, 12

  Division No. 374.]

  AYES.

  [10.59 p.m.

  Acland, Rt. Hon. F. D.

  Allen, Lieut.-Colonel William James

  Barlow, Sir Montague

  Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. C.

  Amery, Lieut.-Col. Leopold C. M. S.

  Barnett, Major R. W.

  Agg-Gardner, Sir James Tynte

  Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley

  Barnston. Major Harry

  Barrie, Charles Coupar

  Herbert, Dennis (Hertford, Watford)

  Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton

  Bell, James (Lancaster, Ormskirk)

  Hilder, Lieut.-Colonel Frank

  Pratt, John William

  Bell, Lieut.-Col. W. C. H. (Devizes)

  Hirst, G. H.

  Raeburn, Sir William H.

  Bellairs, Commander Carlyon W.

  Holbrook, Sir Arthur Richard

  Ramsden, G. T.

  Blake, Sir Francis Douglas

  Hunter-Weston, Lieut.-Gen. Sir A. G.

  Rankin, Captain James S.

  Boscawen. Rt. Hon. Sir A. Griffith.

  Hurd, Percy A.

  Raw, Lieutenant-Colonel N.

  Bowyer, Captain G. E. W.

  Hurst, Lieut.-Colonel Gerald B.

  Rees, Sir J. D. (Nottingham, East)

  Breese, Major Charles E.

  Irving, Dan

  Remer, J. R.

  Bridgeman, William Clive

  James, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. Cuthbert

  Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)

  Bromfield, William

  Jephcott, A. R.

  Roberts, Rt. Hon. G. H. (Norwich)

  Brown, Captain D. C.

  Jodrell, Neville Paul

  Robinson, S. (Brecon and Radnor)

  Cairns, John

  Jones, Sir Edgar R. (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Robinson, Sir T. (Lanes., Stretford)

  Carter, W. (Nottingham, Mansfield)

  Jones, J. T. (Carmarthen, Llanelly)

  Rose, Frank H.

  Clay, Lieut.-Colonel H. H. Spender

  Kenyon, Barnet

  Royce, William Stapleton

  Coats, Sir Stuart

  Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement

  Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)

  Colfox, Major Wm. Phillips

  Law, Alfred J. (Rochdale)

  Sassoon, Sir Philip Albert Gustave D.

  Colvin, Brig.-General Richard Beale

  Law, Rt. Hon. A. B. (Glasgow, C.)

  Seddon, J. A.

  Davidson, J. C.C.(Hemel Hempstead)

  Lawson, John J.

  Seely, Major-General Rt. Hon. John

  Davies, Evan (Ebbw Vale)

  Lloyd-Greame, Major Sir P.

  Sexton, James

  Davies, Thomas (Cirencester)

  Locker-Lampson, Com. O. (H'tingd'n)

  Shaw, Thomas (Preston)

  Davison, J. E. (Smethwick)

  Lorden, John William

  Shaw, William T. (Forfar)

  Davison, Sir W. H. (Kensington, S.)

  Loseby, Captain C. E.

  Short, Alfred (Wednesbury)

  Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)

  Lunn, William

  Shortt, Rt. Hon. E. (N' castle-on-T.)

  Edwards, G. (Norfolk, South)

  Mackinder, Sir H. J. (Camlachie)

  Sitch, Charles H.

  Eyres-Monsell, Commander B. M.

  McLaren, Hon. H. D. (Leicester)

  Spencer, George A.

  Falcon, Captain Michael

  McLaren, Robert (Lanark, Northern)

  Stanley, Major Hon. G. (Preston)

  Finney, Samuel

  Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)

  Strauss, Edward Anthony

  Flannery, Sir James Fortescue

  McMicking, Major Gilbert

  Swan, J. E.

  Ford, Patrick Johnston

  McNeill, Ronald (Kent, Canterbury)

  Taylor, J.

  Foreman, Henry

  Malone, Major P. B. (Tottenham, S.)

  Terrell, Captain R. (Oxford, Henley)

  Forestier-Walker, L.

  Mason, Robert

  Thomas, Brig.-Gen. Sir O. (Anglesey)

  Foxcroft, Captain Charles Talbot

  Mildmay, Colonel Rt. Hon. F. B.

  Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South)

  Fraser, Major Sir Keith

  Molson, Major John Elsdale

  Thorpe, Captain John Henry

  Ganzoni, Captain Francis John C.

  Montagu, Rt. Hon. E. S.

  Townley, Maximilian G.

  George, Rt. Hon. David Lloyd

  Moore-Brabazon, Lieut.-Col. J. T. C.

  Tryon, Major George Clement

  Gibbs, Colonel George Abraham

  Moreing, Captain Algernon H.

  Vickers, Douglas

  Gilmour, Lieut.-Colonel John

  Morgan, Major D. Watts

  Ward, William Dudley (Southampton)

  Glanville, Harold James

  Mosley, Oswald

  White, Charles F. (Derby, Western)

  Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)

  Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert

  Whitla, Sir William

  Graham, R. (Nelson and Colne)

  Murchison, C. K.

  Wignall, James

  Greenwood, William (Stockport)

  Murray, Major William (Dumfries)

  Wild, Sir Ernest Edward

  Gregory, Holman

  Myers, Thomas

  Williams, Lieut.-Com. C. (Tavistock)

  Greig, Colonel James William

  Neal, Arthur

  Wilson, Daniel M. (Down, West)

  Gritten, W. G. Howard

  Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)

  Wilson, W. Tyson (Westhoughton)

  Grundy, T. W.

  Nicholson, Reginald (Doncaster)

  Wise, Frederick

  Guest, J. (York, W. R., Hemsworth)

  O'Neill, Major Hon. Robert W. H.

  Wood, Sir H. K. (Woolwich, West)

  Hacking, Captain Douglas H.

  Ormsby-Gore, Captain Hon. W.

  Worthington-Evans, Rt. Hon. Sir L.

  Hanson, Sir Charles Augustin

  Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)

  Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)

  Harmsworth, C. B. (Bedford, Luton)

  Parry, Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Henry

  Hayday, Arthur

  Peel, Col. Hon. S. (Uxbridge, Mddx.)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Henderson, Major V. L. (Tradeston)

  Pennefather, De Fonblanque

  Lord E. Talbot and Captain Guest.

  Hennessy, Major J. R. G

  Pollock, Sir Ernest M.

  NOES.

  Balfour, George (Hampstead)

  Kiley, James D.

  Williams, Col. P. (Middlesbrough, E.)

  Bowerman. Rt. Hon. Charles W.

  Marriott, John Arthur Ransome

  Wintringham, T.

  Entwistle, Major C. F.

  Sprot, Colonel Sir Alexander

  Hogge, James Myles

  Thomas, Sir Robert J. (Wrexham)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)

  Thomas-Stanford, Charles

  Lieut.-Colonel Courthope and Sir F.

  Banbury

  Question put, and agreed to.

  SUPPLY.
  Resolved:
  "That this House will, to-morrow, resolve itself into a Committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to His Majesty. "—[Lord Edmund Talbot."]
  Ordered, That the Civil Services and Revenue Departments Supplementary Estimate, 1920–21, presented to this House this day be referred to the Committee of Supply.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Resolved:
  "That this House will, to-morrow, resolve itself into a Committee to consider of the Ways and Means for raising the Supply to be granted to His Majesty."—[Lord Edmund Talbot.]
  The remaining Government Orders were read, and postponed.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of 19th October,

  805
  proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
  Mr. HOGGE: Can the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury tell us what are Orders 2, 3, 4 and 5 for tomorrow?
  Lord EDMUND TALBOT (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury): First of all there will be the Committee standing in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend.
  Mr. HOGGE: The Select Committee on Salaries?
  Lord E. TALBOT: Yes; that will be the first Order to-morrow. The second Order will be the Unemployment (Relief Works) Bill, Report stage. The third Order will be the Women, Young Persons, and Children (Employment) Bill; the fourth Order the Criminal Injuries (Ireland) Bill, Report; then the Gold and Silver (Export, Control, etc.) Bill, the Isle of Man (Customs) Bill, and the Public Works Loans Bill.
  Adjourned accordingly at Ten minutes after Eleven o'clock.

IRELAND.
  PEISON WARDERS (OVERTIME).
  PEISON WARDERS (OVERTIME).
  ANTI-SINN FEIN SOCIETY.
  ANTI-SINN FEIN SOCIETY.
  CREAMERIES.
  CREAMERIES.
  REPRISALS.
  REPRISALS.
  INQUESTS.
  INQUESTS.
  MURDERS, LIMERICK.
  MURDERS, LIMERICK.
  MARTIAL LAW.
  MARTIAL LAW.
  UNTRIED PRISONERS.
  UNTRIED PRISONERS.
  BRUSHMAKERS' STRIKE.
  BRUSHMAKERS' STRIKE.
  SIGNBOARDS (IRISH LANGUAGE).
  SIGNBOARDS (IRISH LANGUAGE).
  CROKE PARK, CASUALTIES.
  CROKE PARK, CASUALTIES.
  ATTACK ON OFFICERS, DUBLIN.
  ATTACK ON OFFICERS, DUBLIN.
  MOTOR CARS.
  MOTOR CARS.
  POLICE BARRACKS, CHAPELIZOD.
  POLICE BARRACKS, CHAPELIZOD.
  LIVERPOOL MEETING POSTPONED.
  LIVERPOOL MEETING POSTPONED.
  PETROL.
  PETROL.
  WAGES, GERMANY.
  WAGES, GERMANY.
  PRESS ARTICLES (SIGNATURE).
  PRESS ARTICLES (SIGNATURE).
  GREECE.
  GREECE.
  WAR ROLL OF HONOUR.
  WAR ROLL OF HONOUR.
  BOROUGH COUNCILS (CLERGYMEN).
  BOROUGH COUNCILS (CLERGYMEN).
LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
  BRITISH REPRESENTATION (PERSONNEL).
  BRITISH REPRESENTATION (PERSONNEL).
RUSSIA.
  BRITISH POLICY.
  BRITISH POLICY.
  TRADE RELATIONS.
  TRADE RELATIONS.
PEACE TREATIES.
  WASHINGTON CONFERENCE (DECISIONS).
  WASHINGTON CONFERENCE (DECISIONS).
  TURKEY.
  TURKEY.
  PASSPORTS AND VISAS.
  PASSPORTS AND VISAS.
  FINLAND.
  FINLAND.
  MONTENEGRO.
  MONTENEGRO.
BRITISH ARMY.
  LEAVE WARRANTS, IRELAND.
  LEAVE WARRANTS, IRELAND.
  WAR SERVICE (PLAQUES).
  WAR SERVICE (PLAQUES).
  VICTORY MEDAL.
  VICTORY MEDAL.
  RECORD OFFICES (CLERKS).
  RECORD OFFICES (CLERKS).
  RIFLE BRIGADE (RIFLEMAN M. H. STOKER).
  RIFLE BRIGADE (RIFLEMAN M. H. STOKER).
  WAR (TERMINAL CHARGES).
  WAR (TERMINAL CHARGES).
  PALESTINE (BRITISH GARRISON).
  PALESTINE (BRITISH GARRISON).
  DYESTUFFS, GERMANY.
  DYESTUFFS, GERMANY.
NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.
  WIDOW'S PENSION (MRS. J. T. HILTON).
  WIDOW'S PENSION (MRS. J. T. HILTON).
  HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION.
  HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION.
  PRE-WAR NAVAL PENSIONERS.
  PRE-WAR NAVAL PENSIONERS.
  WAR ORPHANS.
  WAR ORPHANS.
  PENSION STOPPAGE, YORKSHIRE.
  PENSION STOPPAGE, YORKSHIRE.
  CHELSEA HOSPITAL.
  CHELSEA HOSPITAL.
EX-SERVICE MEN.
  DISABILITY AFTER TRAINING.
  DISABILITY AFTER TRAINING.
  LAND SETTLEMENT, SCOTLAND.
  LAND SETTLEMENT, SCOTLAND.
  ROYAL BERKSHIRE REGIMENT (PRIVATE A. C. MAJOR).
  ROYAL BERKSHIRE REGIMENT (PRIVATE A. C. MAJOR).
  TRAINING (DELAY).
  TRAINING (DELAY).
  BUILDING TRADE.
  BUILDING TRADE.
FOOD SUPPLIES.
  UNCULTIVATED LAND, HAMPSHIRE.
  UNCULTIVATED LAND, HAMPSHIRE.
  SUGAR.
  SUGAR.
  FLOUR.
  FLOUR.
  FISH.
  FISH.
  LAMB.
  LAMB.
INDIA.
  ARMY PAY ACCOUNTS.
  ARMY PAY ACCOUNTS.
  OFFICEBS' PASSAGES.
  OFFICEBS' PASSAGES.
  POLICE PAY.
  POLICE PAY.
  LEAVE AND UNEMPLOYED PAY (OFFICERS).
  LEAVE AND UNEMPLOYED PAY (OFFICERS).
EDUCATION.
  HYGIENE.
  HYGIENE.
  BURNHAM COMMITTEE, REPORT.
  BURNHAM COMMITTEE, REPORT.
  UNEMPLOYED JUVENILES.
  UNEMPLOYED JUVENILES.
  CHIEF INSPECTOR, WALES.
  CHIEF INSPECTOR, WALES.
POST OFFICE.
  SUB-OFFICE ASSISTANTS, ABERDEEN.
  SUB-OFFICE ASSISTANTS, ABERDEEN.
  OVERTIME.
  OVERTIME.
HOUSING.
  RYE.
  RYE.
TRANSPORT.
  RAILWAY RATES, TIMBER (SCOTLAND).
  RAILWAY RATES, TIMBER (SCOTLAND).
  BASINGSTOKE AND ALTON LIGHT RAILWAY.
  BASINGSTOKE AND ALTON LIGHT RAILWAY.
  STEAM YACHT "DEVON."
  STEAM YACHT "DEVON."
MUNITIONS.
  UNPAID WAR COMMITMENTS.
  UNPAID WAR COMMITMENTS.
KENYA COLONY.
  RACIAL SEGREGATION.
  RACIAL SEGREGATION.
  TRANSPORT FACILITIES.
  TRANSPORT FACILITIES.
  EX-SERVICE SETTLERS.
  EX-SERVICE SETTLERS.
  HONG KONG.
  HONG KONG.
  OPIUM, MORPHIA AND COCAINE (EXPORT).
  OPIUM, MORPHIA AND COCAINE (EXPORT).
  GOVERNMENT TIMBER.
  GOVERNMENT TIMBER.
  POLICE PENSIONS.
  POLICE PENSIONS.
  FIREARMS ACT.
  FIREARMS ACT.
  CENTRAL CONTROL BOARD (LIQUOR TRAFFIC).
  CENTRAL CONTROL BOARD (LIQUOR TRAFFIC).
  POLICE COURTS (PROBATION OFFICERS).
  POLICE COURTS (PROBATION OFFICERS).
  JUVENILE COURTS (METROPOLIS) BILL.
  JUVENILE COURTS (METROPOLIS) BILL.
  DANGEROUS DRUGS ACT.
  DANGEROUS DRUGS ACT.
  TAXATION OF COMMODITIES.
  TAXATION OF COMMODITIES.
  COCOA DUTY, ISLE OF MAN.
  COCOA DUTY, ISLE OF MAN.
  INCOME TAX ASSESSMENT.
  INCOME TAX ASSESSMENT.
  COST OF LIVING.
  COST OF LIVING.
  UNEMPLOYMENT, CAEDIFF.
  UNEMPLOYMENT, CAEDIFF.
  WOMEN AND YOUNG PERSONS (EMPLOYMENT) BILL.
  WOMEN AND YOUNG PERSONS (EMPLOYMENT) BILL.
  EX-KAISER.
  EX-KAISER.
  HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (STAFF).
  HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (STAFF).
Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BILL.
Debate on the Amendment moved by the EARL OF DUNRAVEN to the Motion that the Bill be now read 2a—namely, to leave out all the words after "that" and insert "this House declines to proceed with a Bill which meets with no support from the great majority of the Irish people, and affords no prospect of any permanent settlement"—again resumed (according to Order).
LORD FARNHAM: My Lords, in presuming to address your Lordships at this stage in such an important debate and one which is to be followed by a Division as critical and as important as any in which your Lordships have to record your opinions, I venture to do so only because I happen to be placed in a position to represent a large loyal population in Ireland that is vitally affected by whatever decision your Lordships may come to to-day. It is on their behalf that I rise to support the Amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Dun-raven. In doing so I adopt a somewhat similar standpoint to that taken by the noble Earl, Lord Donoughmore, in the Opening remarks of his very damaging speech against the Bill. The noble Earl declared that he was an unrepentant Unionist. I, my Lords, am an unrepentant Unionist, and I think I must be rather more unrepentant than the noble Earl himself, for although his tone was unrepentant at the commencement of his speech it was somewhat apologetic at the close, for he told us that he was prepared to vote for some measure of Home Rule if he thought it was good enough.
THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: I said that I would vote for it if it would improve the present condition of Ireland.
LORD FARNHAM: I apologise to the noble Earl if I misrepresent him. I am not and those I represent are not prepared to support any Bill which interferes with the broad principle of the maintenance of the Union. I claim to speak for a
630
large body of loyal public opinion scattered throughout twenty-six counties in Ireland and represented by the Irish Unionist Alliance, of which I have the honour at the moment to be chairman. Our policy differs somewhat from that of the noble Earl, Lord Midleton. He claims with great force to be an anti-partitionist. So do we. We are just as strong in our hatred of partition as the noble Earl. But while he is willing to avoid partition by accepting some measure of Home Rule for Ireland, we on the other hand maintain that you can only avoid partition by maintaining the Union. Accepting the fact, which we do, that Ulster cannot be coerced, Home Rule must mean partition. That is the very reason why we are debating this Bill to-day.
It is because we are unrepentant Unionists that it is impossible for us to consent to any Motion for the adjournment of this debate, if, as I understand, such a Motion is likely to be made. We are against the principle of the Bill, and when dealing with principle you can only do so by giving a straight direct vote. An adjournment must be for some purpose, for some form of compromise, and when you are dealing with principle you cannot compromise without losing your principle. I sincerely hope that the noble Earl will not move the adjournment of the debate, but will let us have a straight vote to-night one way or the other. If the adjournment is moved I shall be compelled for these reasons to vote against it.
I speak for those loyal men and women who through several generations have been the outposts of British civilisation in Ireland, who have upheld the honour of their King and country and fought for the welfare of the British Empire. Through times of great danger and difficulty they have always remained loyal. They sent their sons ungrudgingly to die on the battlefields throughout the Great War, while those who were unable through age or infirmity to go remained at home to live amongst a hostile population that openly allied itself to the Empire's enemy. They saw the positions which their sons had vacated filled by the very men who had openly and successfully flouted the efforts of the Government to enforce conscription and who publicly declared their sympathies with the King's enemies.
It is now proposed to hand over these loyal people to the allies of the great

631
enemy against whom their sons and brothers fought and died. I cannot believe that either the Government or the British people can realise the enormity or baseness of this great betrayal, or can fully realise the conditions under which the loyalists would be forced to live. Even now many of them in parts of Ireland are allowed to exist only at the will and pleasure of the Republican Army. They are forced to obtain permits from Sinn Fein even to buy flour. They are forced to attend Sinn Fein arbitration courts, and submit to their decrees. They are forced to pay subscriptions for the upkeep of the Irish Republican Army. They are forced to part with their lands and sometimes even with their dwellings by the activity of the Bolshevist element in the community. In many cases they are forced to give up their lands by the use of the utmost cruelty. Cases have been known where those who have refused have been placed in coffins and the lid fastened down before they would consent to give up their lands.
One poor man who twenty years ago was a prosperous farmer lost his money through no fault of his own. During the next seventeen years he worked hard as a common labourer. He saved his money, was eventually able to invest in a small herd of dairy cows and was ultimately in a position to buy an interest in the farm in which he was working and to mortgage the rest of it for a sum of money in order that he might hold it. When he had got that farm and worked himself up to this position he was brutally turned out of his home. I will tell you in his words exactly what happened to him. In his description he said—
"I was doing very well and we were very happy with our prospects until the night of Tuesday, June 28, at 10.30, when a body of over sixty armed men, disguised, suddenly appeared and shouted to me to get out' or if not I would be shot in five minutes.' My wife went out and called on the men if they had a leader? She got no response. They then rushed at her and covered her with revolvers. The family were round her. They told her to get out on the public road. She asked for time to get her young children out of bed. They would not let her move and marched her out on the public road. My eldest daughter then rescued the three small children who were in bed and brought them to me. She had to get permission to do this, and two went with her. The three children were brought out in their night-clothes and placed on the roadside. My wife asked for permission to go into the house again—she was let in. She asked the men if they had a leader. Some answered, We are all leaders to-night.' She made towards one man who was fully masked
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and asked under what authority they presumed to turn us out. He made no answer but Get out.' When all were out on the roadside, with only the clothes we had on, they proceeded to burn everything. The house, offices, furniture, and farming machinery were all destroyed and burned. Nothing remains of our house but the ruined walls. They threatened that if I attempted to rebuild the house I would be shot, and also that they would shoot me if I applied for malicious injury compensation. To obtain compensation, notice must be served and information given within three days, and they watched the roads to see that I did not do this. I and my family have since been living in the open air, with only a few sheets of corrugated iron against a wall to shelter us. It is terrible, and we never know when we may be murdered."
That is only one instance. I could give you many, but it would take up too much of your Lordships' time. In parts of Ireland people live in daily terror of the outrages committed in the name of the Irish Republic.
And that loyal body of Irishmen, those devoted servants of the Crown, the Royal Irish Constabulary, about whom we have heard no word mentioned in this debate, how are they to fare under this Bill? How can you expect men to arrest murderers if at the same time you produce and pass a Bill which will have the effect, anyhow in three years, of handing those men over to the very murderers whom now you ask them to arrest? That is a terrible position in which to place such a fine body of loyal men. For our loyalty throughout all trials and dangers we are now told that we are to be handed over by this Bill to be governed by those very enemies of the Crown against whom we have been striving for so long. If this Bill passes it will only serve to prove to the Empire one thing—that loyalty no longer pays; that loyalty can no longer claim or expect any reward; and that the forces of sedition, treason, and murder will ultimately be allowed to achieve their object. That is a proof which, I venture to submit, will shake the whole Empire to its very foundations.
What a moment at which to pass this Bill! What a moment at which to try to effect a settlement, while the whole country is stirred to its very depths with enmity, hatred, and mistrust, when the whole country at the present moment is recoiling in horror from one of the most barbaric outrages that has ever taken place in the history of our civilised Empire. Does the Government really believe that this Bill is ever going to be an accepted

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settlement? Up to the present not a single Irishman has voted in favour of it, and twenty-six counties at all events are united, probably for the only time in Irish history, in denouncing it. Is this Bill to be forced on the country in face of such a position? Is the Government really prepared to gamble on an ultimate settlement by such means? The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack even admitted that this Bill might lead to the reconquest of Ireland. I believe he is perfectly right. But what is going to happen to us in the meantime? I say that no Government has the right to gamble with the lives of its loyal citizens and with the safety and welfare of the British Empire.
If this Bill is ever accepted by Southern Ireland it will only be seized upon as a weapon to lead to the ultimate aspirations of the disloyal elements in Ireland to establish an Irish republic. "No man has the right to limit the boundaries of a nation and say, ' Thus far shalt thou go and no further.'" That is inscribed in golden letters on the statue of Mr. Parnell in Dublin. After the Irish Convention, which was supposed to have so nearly accomplished the settlement of this question, a Majority note was issued in the Convention Report. In that note you have this statement—
"In coming to this decision we are largely moved by the belief that the Government we are helping to establish will be an effective instrument in obtaining for Ireland by general consent whatever further powers their material interests require."
Does that sound as if they meant to establish a permanent settlement?
It has been brought out very strongly in the course of this debate that there are no safeguards whatever for Southern Ireland. Of course, there are no safeguards. When an army is running away and leaves its outposts in the hands of the enemy, that army is hardly in a position to make paper decrees telling the enemy how he is to treat those outposts when they are in his power; and so no paper safeguards that can be inserted in this Bill during the Committee stage would be of the least use, in my humble opinion, once you establish an Executive which can administer the laws of the country according to the wishes of a hostile majority. It seems to me that, instead of being able to reduce the military establishment which you have to keep in Ireland, the greater power you
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give to the Irish people the greater will be the necessity for maintaining a large military force in that country. I believe that there is only one real Amendment which can be of the least use to insert into this Bill, and that would be an Amendment which would ensure that this Bill should not come into operation until Ireland is in a fit state to receive it and until it is acceptable to the majority of the people of the country.
At this very moment when you are attempting to extend self-government you have a very good example indeed of what self-government means in Ireland. We have already a very large measure of self-government in Ireland under the Local Government Act. How, I ask, is that helping to make Ireland prosperous and happy at the present moment? We have in Ireland now a typical and unparalleled example of hopeless disorder and chaos. County councils and corporations are refusing to work in the interests of the community; roads are not surveyed and repairs are not carried out; employees are unpaid, hospitals and asylums have had to be closed—in other words, an absolute state of chaos prevails. Yet this is the moment that is thought a fit and proper one to give them a greater management of their own affairs.
The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack said that this was an Irish question. This is not so much an Irish question as an English question, and the difficulty is not so much an Irish difficulty as an English difficulty. The difficulty lies in making the England people understand the real nature of the Irish demand. I am not one of those who believe that the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, is the only Unionist in England. I believe that the rank and file of the Unionist Party in England are sound, and that they only want to be told the true state of affairs about Ireland. I believe that a settlement will ultimately be found, not in better Government of Ireland Bills, but in the ultimate realisation by Great Britain of the utter futility of any Home Rule proposals. One would have thought that this was sufficiently obvious, and that any one who believed that Home Rule would turn disloyalty into loyalty would have had those doubts already removed. Every Home Rule Bill that we have had, we were told, was going to settle the Irish question. When the 1914 Bill was placed on the

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Statute book, what was the outcome? It was followed by the rebellion of 1916. It was followed by a Sinn Fein alliance with Germany. It was followed by the formation of the Irish Republican Army, by an alliance with Soviet Russia, and by the alliance of the Irish Workers' Transport Union with the Third International, a body which has for one of its avowed objects the setting up of an Irish Republic with the sole purpose of being a stepping stone towards the smashing of the British Empire.
This Bill was passed through the House of Commons to the accompaniment of a regular orgy of assassination. And on the very eve of its introduction into your Lordships' House we had those barbaric atrocities in Dublin to which I have already referred. Surely one would have thought that this was sufficient evidence to lay before the country to prove the hopelessness of the Home Rule cause and the vital necessity for maintaining the union in order to preserve the British Empire, and also to show that the Government, instead of persevering with another Government Bill for Ireland, should have gone to the country and told them the truth and demanded a mandate for the suppression of the Irish republican demand, a mandate not for the weakening but for the strengthening of the bonds of the Union.
But we are told that because the 1914 Bill is on the Statute-book this cannot be done, and that some compromise must be effected. The word "compromise" is one of the greatest stumbling blocks in the Irish question. To an Englishman the word is intelligible. England is the home of compromise. Englishmen invented compromise. Ireland, on the other hand, has no idea what compromise means. If you start compromising with an Irishman he at once takes it for granted that you are beaten and want to give in, and though he may swallow it at the moment, if he thinks fit, it will only be to wring greater concessions later on. Until the English people understand this fact they will always be at a disadvantage in dealing with the Irish question.
When we are told that the 1914 Bill is on the Satute Book and that that is the reason why this Bill must pass, I say that is an argument which carries no weight whatever with the majority of people in Ireland. It is an argument which has proved a very useful one in the hands of
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those who wish to force this Bill through, but it is very much like holding an empty revolver at a man's head; it is only effective so long as it deceives the man into thinking it is effectively loaded. This weapon was loaded six years ago, and the explosive charge in it has become rotten and will never go off. We have nothing whatever to fear from it. I doubt if there is any one in Ireland who is seriously afraid of this ill-begotten and antiquated Statute, or who thinks that it can ever be forced on Ireland, hated and detested as it is by every section of the community. Does any one seriously believe that that Act can be forced upon Ulster? I do not believe it for a moment. If it could, all I can say is that the spirit which used to dominate Ulster must have changed very considerably in recent years. We have no reason to fear the 1911 Act; in fact, I think we can prefer it to be on the Statute-book to the present Bill ever getting there, because we know that it never could be put into force, while this Bill would probably set up a Parliament in the one part of Ireland that has always sworn it would never allow itself to be driven from the Union, thereby smashing not only the union with Great Britain but also the possibility of Ireland itself ever becoming united. One noble Lord said that this was only expression of opinion. Perhaps so, my Lords, but it is the expression of a very large body of opinion of people who live in a place where they are likely to know best as to whether it will bring about the unity of Ireland or not.
We are told also by those who have always been the real and earnest supporters of the Union that, much as they hate this Bill, they must allow it to go through in order to keep their pledge to Ulster. I hope that the Bill will not be passed by the aid of my fellow Ulster Peers. I use that expression deliberately, for in all probability this is the last time that I shall ever be able to do so, because if this Bill passes I and my fellow loyalists in the three counties of Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal, will no longer have the right which was won for us and handed down to us by our ancestors of belonging to the great Imperial Province of Ulster. Your Lordships may think that a small matter, but I assure you there is nothing that we in the three counties feel more than that we may no longer be entitled to our proud title of Ulstermen. In fact, already we are no longer regarded as Ulstermen.

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Over and over again in the course of this debate Ulster has been spoken of. My fellow Ulster Peers have spoken of Ulster, but they meant, not Ulster, but a new geographical province composed of the six counties. My fellow Ulster Peers at all events know me too well to attribute to me any vindictiveness or bitterness of spirit in what I may say on this question. I profoundly regret my severance from them, and it is a real personal grief to me to be associated with them no longer, nor to be able to be one of the most devoted helpers of our great leader, Sir Edward Carson. But the question between us is one of conscience, and when consciences differ so utterly as to what is right there is no further room for argument.
I say at once that this Bill does not keep the pledge to Ulster. It has succeeded only in dividing their ranks, in breaking their Covenant, and in showing three counties of Ulster that they no longer have the right to remain in the Imperial Province. The whole essence of British justice now appears to be taken from Mr. Birrell's statement that minorities must, suffer. The minority in Ulster must suffer because you are setting up an ascendency of one Party in that province. Ulstermen have never claimed any ascendency. They have always said they never wanted any ascendency, but to remain on equal terms under the United Kingdom. The small minority of Covenanters in the three counties must suffer because the very smallness of the minority was an inconvenience to the remainder of their fellow countrymen. The minorities in the South and West must suffer because you are placing them under the domination of a hostile majority, practically without any representation whatever.
I maintain that there is only one way for the Government to keep its pledge with Ulster and only one way in which Ulster can keep her Covenant or her honour, and that is by maintaining the whole Imperial Province within the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, my Lords, I know site was skilfully manœuvred into such a position that she found it difficult if not impossible to oppose having a Parliament which she did not want forced upon her, and so she acquiesced, though up to now no single Member of Parliament has voted in favour of the Bill in another place. It is true we hear now that there has been a great change of opinion suddenly, and that the. Ulster Peers in this House will
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vote for the Bill. We also heard a letter front Sir Edward Carson read in this House, to which of course your Lordships must give great consideration; but I humbly submit that in reality if the Ulster Peers vote for this Bill they can only register their own opinions and not the opinions of those they represent.
How have they become aware of this great change of opinion which has suddenly come about in Ulster? I know of no monster demonstration such as we are accustomed to in Ulster whenever there is any intense feeling amongst the people on a particular subject. In the houses of Ulstermen there are placards bearing words which were invented by the lamented father of the Duke of Abercorn, that great Ulster leader, "We will not have Home Rule." I have not heard of those placards being torn down and other placards placed upon the walls, saying," We will have Home Rule. We will have finality."
NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
LORD FARNHAM: I submit that public opinion, at all events in the country, cordially disapproves of it, and that there is really no necessity from that point of view for the Ulster Peers to vote in favour of this Bill. I earnestly hope that no representatives from Ireland will vote in favour of this Bill. If they do, they will be voting to place their loyal fellow-countrymen under the domination of a rebel Parliament, and to place their fellow-Covenanters in the three counties under such a Parliament—I use the very words of the Covenant—as they swore, with them, "never to acknowledge." My Lords, if those of them who protested against the breaking of the Covenant on March 10 vote in favour of this Bill they will be doing the very thing they protested against so strongly on that occasion. That, to my mind, betrays an elasticity of conscience which is past all understanding. It will be the irony of fate indeed if this Bill is passed by the very votes of those who have always sworn that they would never have Home Rule.
In conclusion, with a full sense of responsibility and with all the earnestness and sincerity I can command I appeal to your Lordships' House, which has always stood between the loyal population of Ireland and Home Rule, to save us once again from this great betrayal. There is no mandate for this Bill from any section of

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the community; there is no demand for it in any part of the country. If you take the bold course and stand by your friends and refuse to betray your own loyal kith and kin we are confident that you will have behind you, as you always had on previous occasions, the great majority of the British people. But should this Bill be allowed to pass we believe that it will be the first step towards the downfall of the British Empire.
LORD SHANDON: My Lords, the position which I would earnestly press on you is this. I, unlike the noble Lord who has just spoken, who professed himself an unrepentant Unionist, am an unreprentant Home Ruler. There is one thing upon which I would distinctly congratulate the Government—namely, that they have realised that the condition of things in Ireland is such that a literal, strict, and uncompromising adhesion to the Act which we call the Act of Union has become impossible, and also that they have recognised that there is no use in waiting until we have an ideal condition of things in which to proceed with those ameliorative measures which ought to be passed.
When this Bill was introduced into the House of Commons I, for one, recognised that it did not contain large concessions, large provisions and potentialities. But I also, in common with a very large section of moderate Nationalists in Ireland—and it is them whom I represent—am convinced that the Government, in framing the Bill, have defeated the very objects which I feel perfectly satisfied they honestly intended to carry out. And anything which I wish to say to-night is intended merely, so far as those whose opinions I believe I represent are concerned, as a last effort to place their views before you, and earnestly to beseech the Government, even at this eleventh hour, to give some concession to them. I have not only expressed an individual opinion, but after the introduction of the Bill I endeavoured as far as I possibly could to ascertain the views of those in Ireland who are absolutely moderate in their views and who wish only for finality, and finality which will be peace, and not hostility.
One point which emerged as the result of the discussions in the House below and of the action of the Government is that there is an enormous majority of absolutely moderate opinion in Ireland which
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sees in particular parts of this Bill, not the beginning of that peace which we all would wish, but the starting point of further differences, further bickerings and further misunderstandings. Do not think that, in saying this, I am in any way hostile to the general principles of this Bill. If those principles had not been, as I conceive, defeated by the very frame of the Bill itself, I for one would have been most delighted to give it complete and most enthusiastic support. One of the points in which unquestionably, in the opinion of those who think with me, it fails is that, by an elaborate and useless series of clauses, it prevents the operation of the very principle which the Bill is supposed to carry out and embody—namely, the principle of ultimate unity between North and South.
Let there be no mistake with regard to what that unity means in the minds of those who think like myself. It does not mean the setting up of that form of Government which has unfortunately been described as Colonial Home Rule. We have to borrow from the Colonial Statutes and from the Colonial systems certain forms, certain principles, but none of us pretends that you are to apply all those forms and all those principles in the solution of this difficulty in Ireland. We all recognise that the proximity of Ireland to Great Britain and all the other matters which have been mentioned here from time to time, and truthfully and accurately brought forward, differentiate to some extent the position of the Colonies from the position of Ireland. There is no desire for control of the Army and Navy on the part of any moderate opinion in Ireland, whom I honestly believe are actually or potentially existent—and it is the potential existence to which I look forward, because at the present time, to use a popular expression, they are snowed under by hostile forces on all sides. Control of the Army and Navy is not only impracticable from a military and naval point of view but is perfect nonsense from a financial point of view, because one year's naval and military enterprise would leave Ireland hopelessly and completely bankrupt. That is a view which, being practicable, appeals to those who take practical views of things. Neither from the sentimental nor the practical point of view is there any such desire. I certainly think they would repudiate the idea which has been expressed in terms by so high an authority

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as the Prime Minister, that Colonial Home Rule is asked for because it includes the control of the Army and Navy, which cannot be granted. Of course, if you assume your premises the conclusion follows, but the premises are false.
What we do seek and have sought by suggestions in the Press and in the form of Amendments in the House below is improvement in two particular matters. One was in the direction that ultimate unity should not be, to use the words of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, a possibility as the result of this Bill, but a probability, because unless there is this probability of ultimate union we are simply laying up stores of mischief for ourselves in the future. Ulster has been placed in the position under this Bill that so long as she pleases she can prevent union. I have always conceded the view that Ulster must not be coerced. No one must be coerced, least of all should Ulster, because Ulster has its own strong opinion which seems to be divergent from the rest of Ireland. But that does not give to Ulster the right to coerce the rest of Ireland; it does not give the right to Ulster to say, as some members in the House of Commons said, "We will never have this union," and they were sincere and honest and straightforward in that. You place in their hands the power to prevent that union, and. therein lies the first grave difficulty, unless it should be amended in this House, in the probable success of the Bill. There is no real difficulty that I can see. I am not now going to trouble you with the manner in which some of us have endeavoured to place this thing on paper. Personally I am entirely against talking in the abstract. In the concrete there is no difficulty at all in phrasing clauses which will have the effect of enabling the North of Ireland to have the utmost freedom within its own counties, be they six or four, or be they the whole of Ulster, while at the same time avoiding placing those six counties in such a watertight compartment that it would be more difficult by an Act of Parliament to extricate the situation in the future than to extricate the situation as it exists at the present time.
It is proposed to set up, at defiance of all economic laws, a costly dual system without any provisions in the Statute except this shadowy Council which would enable the two parties by constant contact to be induced, not even to the construction
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of one single Parliament for the whole of Ireland, but to the construction at the start of the services to be utilised. Do not think I forget for one second that the Council is composed in some advisory capacity to suggest this, that, and the other thing about community of services. The Council with its equal division of twenty men on one side and twenty men on the other may or may not make proper suggestions, but they are bound to remain in the temper in which the whole business will start. There is no difficulty, as I have said, that I can conceive in framing clauses which will produce that gradual process of conciliation and amalgamation which certainly the duality created by this Bill is bound in its very essence to prevent.
But this can be cured unquestionably by this House in Committee, and I should have been very hopeful indeed but for the fact that the same promises were held forth with regard to Amendments in the House below as are held out here. The Government, for reasons which seemed to them, I presume, sufficient beyond all doubt, adhered to the very letter of the provisions with regard to the condition of feebleness in which the Council must find itself, and have up to the present time refused as a matter of principle to accept any alteration of that Council so as to make it a real active power capable of controlling in the interest of every one in Ireland the acts of both Houses, North and South. That is still a matter which this House could cure.
But there is another matter which this House cannot cure—at least it has been so said—and that is the fiscal provisions which are contained in this Bill. I have taken the trouble—believe me I am not stating what is not only as far as I can see well-founded but founded in reason—of consulting men of business in Southern Ireland. I have not had the same means of access to men of business in Northern Ireland, but it certainly seems to me that there has been a singular change of view with regard to some business men at least in the North of Ireland. But so far as the South is concerned all classes, whether they be landowners, farmers, owners of creameries, or owners of such manufactures as we have, are convinced that the financial provisions of this Bill are absolutely unworkable. There is one view of looking at it which has been so well put by Lord Donoughmore that I am not

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going to repeat it. That view points out that you are by one section providing in grandiloquent terms that Ireland shall collect its own taxes, except—and when you come to the exception the exception is enormous, and you leave only £3,000,000 out of £42,000,000 to be collected, not by Ireland, but to be again subdivided and to be subject to cost of collection apparently by two separate bodies.
That view of it having been put so clearly by Lord Donoughmore, I wish to put this only as supplemental. If it is wrong it is better that I should state it, and that it should be corrected. The finance of the Home Rule Act, from which finance of this Bill in principle has been largely copied, was, even when that Act was going through the House of Commons, made the subject of complaint and prophecies of disaster on the ground that it was impossible to work. The basis of the finance of that Act was this. At the time it was believed to be the fact that Irish services cost more than what was expended on them. I think the exact amount of excess was something like £1,500,000. The bill accordingly was based on the assumption that, after certain processes of balancing, Ireland should have to begin with something like £500,000 going down to £200,000 a year as a grant. I think those were roughly the terms. In addition to that there were some temporary concessions which correspond to the temporary, and in many respects generous, concessions in the Bill. No sooner had that Bill been passed through the Commons than a tremendous attack was made upon it in Ireland by the commercial classes, and I think the leader of those was a very distinguished man of business, Mr. William Martin Murphy. Long before Sinn Fein was thought of and long before the universal condemnation of the Home Rule Act the finance clauses of that Act had made it absolutely repugnant to a majority of people in Ireland. Whether they were right or whether they were wrong is a matter, of course, of opinion. Personally I had always thought they were wrong, but recently I went to the trouble of going into the matter, and I have come to the conclusion they were right.
Taking the round figures of the Lord Chancellor you are taking first out of a possible surplus of £22,000,000, on the basis of those figures, £18,000,000 as the contribution towards the charges. You leave about
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£4,000,000 for Ireland under the finances of this costly Bill. You add to that some other items; amongst others, what certainly must be regarded as a very substantial matter, the uncollected annuities under the Irish Land Acts, and in the words of the Lord Chancellor, subject to correction, you bring it all up to £7,000,000. He said—
"it will be seen—the excess of revenue over expenditure being estimated at £2.2,250,000—that when the Imperial contribution is fixed in the way I have described at £18,000,000, there is a margin of £4,250,000 to which the Irish Parliaments will be entitled. But that is not the only margin which will be available for them. As I explained in dealing with the amount of expenditure, there is a sum of £1,750,000 for services which have not yet matured. The margin is increased, therefore, to £6,000,000. Nor is this all upon the financial side. It is intended to make a free grant to Ireland of the Irish Land Annuities, amounting at this time to about £3,250,000 and rising to something over £3,500,000 as the existing land sales are completed."
On the face of it that looks, if you take only the figures, very generous treatment. The view taken of it in Ireland is this. In the first place the finances of the United Kingdom are not at all the same as they were in 1914. The value of money is not the same, and the first thing you have to discount in these figures is that your expenditure has increased much more in proportion. These increases are not only the natural results of any Bill framed in this way, but are artificially inflated by the provisions of this Bill. If there was only one Civil Service and one system and not this dual system in Ireland there might be some chance of this covering things even at the present value of money, but you duplicate everything and adopt the most enormously expensive way of doing it, and expect there is to be equilibrium brought about by both Irish Parliaments. In addition, in Ireland it is recognised that in the South the only manufacture which we have is the manufacture of beef and mutton and farm produce. The value of these must fall. Great Britain will not tolerate the present prices, and with the fall of prices will fall the taxable capacity of Southern Ireland.
Undoubtedly the surplus which is on paper at the present time will disappear. Then what shall we have? We shall have in lieu of the present system, by which Irish services have to be paid for in the first instance out of the revenues of the United Kingdom, a primary tax of £18,000,000, and you have to balance the

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rest as best you can. I can quite understand that in the House below there was so much insistence upon Clause 24, because it seems perfectly clear that owing to the changed monetary conditions and the present position of affairs in Ireland, Ireland will be commencing her career as a self-supporting country with this primary charge of £18,000,000, and if we come to put Clause 24 in force, if the surtax becomes, as I conceive it must, an absolute necessity, the financial ruin which is foreseen in the South will unquestionably come to pass. I certainly sympathise deeply with those who have much interest in the South of Ireland, and who are endeavouring to carry on such manufactures as we have, and endeavouring also to carry on with success farming operations. I think there must be the greatest sympathy with them when we look forward and see the future which is before them, with vanishing revenues, higher charges, and the necessity of a surtax. We are told this cannot be cured in this House.
We are told that this is not real. The majority in Ireland are convinced that it is real. They are convinced, and I believe myself they are absolutely right, that the finance of this Bill must fail. I would again beg the Government even at this eleventh hour, whether it takes the form of an adjournment or not, to reconsider this question, and to see whether there is any good in launching a Bill with such inherent defects, however meritorious it may be, and it is meritorious, in other ways. Why should we not be united, whether we hold the views of Lord Farnham, or of myself, or the views of those who are advising the Government financially? This must be a matter of compromise. The whole Empire is concerned in starting this Bill in a way which will ensure that it Flail float properly, and I greatly fear that it cannot float properly. Therefore I have ventured to address your Lordships, to-night, not in a spirit of hostile criticism but with an honest desire, if I can, to help the Government.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: My Lords, after the illuminating debate which we have had now for nearly three evenings, I cannot help feeling that the time has come when we are nearing the necessity of making a decision, and when we must face the actual realities of the situation in which we find ourselves. I confess,
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much as I admired the speech with which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack introduced the Bill, that it struck me that there was an air of unreality about the tone which he adopted. It is difficult to understand how, in the face of the universal condemnation which has fallen on this Bill, rightly or wrongly, from all parts of the South of Ireland, he should have been able in his concluding sentences to tell us that this proposal of the Government had a greater promise of settlement than any previous Bill which has been introduced. Again, he spoke in one sentence of finality, and a few sentences afterwards he was talking of the possibility of having to substitute Crown Colony government for the ordinary government throughout the whole of the South of Ireland. Once more—in a matter which is of vital importance to Southern Unionists—he told us that it would pass the wit of man to discover the proper means of making a Second Chamber for these two Governments in Ireland; but in the next sentence, that which an impartial Government with all its ability was unable to do he hoped would be found easy of achievement by the partisan Council, consisting of twenty Ulstermen and twenty extreme men from the South, who differed from each other from every point of view. I felt throughout his speech that I was listening to a fairy tale, and admirable as was the edifice, I would ask you to consider whether he has not built his house upon the sand.
Why for the last thirty-five years have these Bills been introduced? It is not from any unrest or difficulty or want of prosperity in Ulster, but because the South and West of Ireland presented a problem and made demands which have taxed all the wisdom of statesmen. Let it not be supposed, if I criticise the Bill from this standpoint, that I desire to throw myself in any degree against proper safeguards for Ulster. We have all at different times had to take part in these discussions with the utmost admiration for the manner in which Ulster has fought for her freedom, and my only criticism would be on the point where anything which is done for Ulster is done in such a way as to block the path of settlement for the rest of Ireland.
The noble Marquess, Lord Londonderry, who always speaks with such moderation as well as ability, spoke of the adoption of

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partition and gave as one of his rea ons for supporting it that he loved Ireland. I do not question that statement. The noble Marquess has a hereditary right to claim that he has done his very best for his country. But I doubt, when you have regard to the fact that you cannot find a man, woman, or child in the South who does not resent the idea of permanent partition in Ireland, whether the noble Marquess quite had in his mind the famous judgment of Solomon, who, when asked to decide between the two claimants, did not give the verdict to the unselfish affection of the parent who proposed to divide the child but to the parent who proposed to make a sacrifice in order to preserve the life and wellbeing of the child.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: The noble Earl has rather misunderstood me. I did not speak of permanent partition. I expressed a hope that partition would not be permanent.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: That hope is a very academic one. I might ask the noble Marquess to consider the statements of his own friends in another place who have based themselves on this particular form of partition as being the one thing which would cause Ulster to be divided off for ever, and are prepared to support it on that ground. I should like to ask your Lordships to consider—I will do so in as few words as I can, as we have had a prolonged debate—what the effect of looking at this Bill solely from the point of view of Ulster will have upon the rest of Ireland. First of all, you have marked out six-counties, the exact number demanded by the North and the number which has been most criticised by the South. My noble friend Lord Killanin, in a remarkable speech delivered at an hour which unfortunately prevented many of your Lordships hearing it last night, reminded the House that it was on this question of the six counties that Mr. Redmond by his compliance in 1914 lost the whole support, or a large proportion, of his most cherished followers, and ultimately from the sadness of the surroundings lost his life.
Take the question of finance. I am not going to labour any of these questions, because your Lordships have had a surfeit. The financial powers given by this Bill are precisely those for which Ulster contended in the Convention, and they do
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not give any one of the powers for which 76 members out of 95 in the Convention went into the lobby together to demand as the right of the country and as the only grounds on which it was possible to make an arrangement. Take again the question of a second Parliament. It has been pointed out that up to a few months ago, I might almost say weeks ago, the demand of Ulster was that she should remain part of Great Britain—"Let us be as we are." We are all prepared to assent to that demand, much as we would have preferred her to take a predominant place in Irish politics and assist to rule the rest of the country as by her wealth and education she is so well fitted to do. That has been given up, and we are now told that it is impossible to devise in the two Parliaments any security for the minority in Ulster on the one side or the minority in the South on the other; a decision the Convention found no difficulty in arriving at by a unanimous vote, but from which Ulster at the last moment dissented. It was one of the most encouraging features that all classes in the country and in the Assembly recognised the necessity and feasibility of securing proper safeguards for minorities.
It is not for me to suggest to the Lord Chancellor how he should conduct his case, but I wonder whether it occurred to him, when he took the very unusual course of suggesting to your Lordships how you should treat this Bill through the medium of a letter from an eminent member of the House of Commons, that the higher the praise which is felt due to Sir Edward Carson for the stand he has made for the liberty of those with whom he is associated the greater is naturally the feeling amongst those whose aspirations he has foiled that he and his opinions on behalf of the one part of Ireland which has obtained all she wants are used to commend a Bill to your Lordships in regard to the whole South and West of Ireland who have had to sacrifice that which they most desired in order to obtain for the North what the North wants. If I had had such a letter as that, instead of flaunting it before your Lordships in a peroration, I should have kept it dark, and I say so simply because I desire if we possibly can to get some result out of these discussions.
I think the Government should also consider how their reputation for good faith stands by the Bill. They are pledged

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not to the minority in the North alone; They are pledged to the minority in the youth. The eyes of the Government, which were so acute when focussed on the 800,000 Protestants who are massed together in the North, became uncommonly dim when diffused among the 350,000 Protestants scattered in the South and West. Your promises and pledges were as good for one as for the other; and your pledges are of more than recent date. They have been given in the highest quarter by the Prime Minister. They have been reiterated by every Minister who has dealt with this question, and I agree with Lord Farnham that there is no vestige of vindication of those pledges in this Bill.
Look at it as a matter of business. Every day in this House we see measures coining up which have to be dealt with, some drastically, but all in some detail with the full consent of the member of the Government who happens to be in charge of them. Yet you assume that what has been found necessary for an Assembly which has been a pattern Assembly for all civilised countries for 800 years is not necessary in a new Assembly with a hostile atmosphere in a country which has been riven by faction, torn by different groups, divided in every way in which a country can be divided; and you assume that they are to meet and between Monday and Saturday in any week may pass any piece of legislation they like. There is nothing between you and those who are to be subject to them except the veto of the Lord Lieutenant. I only wish the noble and gallant Field-Marshal, whom I see in his place to-night, could have heard the unanswerable speech made by Lord Salisbury last night. The unfortunate Lord Lieutenant, who is to be the servant of and advised by the Southern Ministry in regard to their affairs, and by the Northern Ministry in regard to theirs, and is either to be advised by, or accept the guidance of, British Ministers with regard to all affairs, in each case has no remedy whatever if the Government whose advice he disregards should declare itself willing to resign. The whole proposal is one which would not stand for a month if it were once started.
In what position do you leave those for whom I and Lord Farnham have the right to speak? Have they no claims on your Lordships? The men whom you are going to put in this position are the men who have built up the whole prosperity
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of the South of Ireland. The men who are behind us in the protest I am making are the men who hold all the greatest businesses in Dublin and throughout the South, all the largest owners of land, those to whom the country owes most and to whom, as a reward for services in the war, coming as they did from a population which to some extent held aloof from the war, you say: "What we give you is this, that you shall from this time forward be so placed that you will have no part whatever in the government of the country whose wealth you have made and for whose fortunes you have fought." It is riot usual in this House to speak of personal feelings, but I will venture to depart from custom and to ask your Lordships whether you can imagine what are the feelings of my noble friends and myself who, on many platforms in the last few years, have assured our supporters in Ireland that whatever happened, if this step forward is to be made and they take a generous view and support the Government, they may rest satisfied that these pledges for safeguards which are given in every other civilised country would not be forgotten.
We have passed through a great deal, and I can say that the bitterness of the cup which you have forced the Southern loyalists to quaff by your advocacy of this Bill, by deliberately ignoring the pledge given by Mr. Walter Long in another place last May, entitles us to feel the words, which I venture to repeat here, used by Lord Cairns in 1881 over another body of loyalists who were deserted by the then Government—"In all the ills we ever bore, we grieved, we sighed, we wept; we never blushed before." ft is not really a question now of how we are to reconcile those difficulties, but I ask the House of Lords to extricate the Government and Ireland from this impasse.
I would like to clear away what seem to me shams in the reasons which have been given for carrying the Bill in its present form. I will put them as shortly as I can. In the first place, I entirely agree with what has fallen from Lord Farnham as to the bogey of the 1914 Act. I am not able to bandy legal argument with the noble and learned Lord, but I am informed on high legal authority that if this Bill fail and the last Treaty is signed to-morrow it is impossible for you to put the Act of 1914 in force. The finance has all been altered and the constituencies

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have been altered, but your pledges remain. To state that this Bill must be passed in this form or the 1911 Act will operate, is, I believe, a complete mistake. The second reason to which I specially desire to draw attention is the suggestion that if this Bill does not pass there is nothing between it and the acceptance of a Republic; that no proposals which stop short of that would have any ground for acceptance. On this Bill there has not been raised one single voice at a public meeting in the South of Ireland, and so far as I know there is not a newspaper there in support of the Bill. Not one member of the House of Commons connected with the South of Ireland voted for the Bill and not one member of the House of Lords connected with the South of Ireland in this debate, in which some thirty speeches have been made, has said one good word for the Bill.
But if you would extend your net a little more generously, if you would consider opinion which is ready but which has found difficulty in utterance, if you would retain for Great Britain all those truly Imperial matters, the Army, the Navy, Treaties, Foreign Affairs, defence of the ports, then I think you might afford to give Ireland that which is local. I could not go so far as the noble Viscount, Lord Grey, went in his admirable speech last night. Those with whom I am connected would not be prepared to see Ireland march out without making the contribution which is due from her for the vast expenditure by which she has come to her present prosperity. We object to being the Cinderella among the nations of the earth in any circumstances. Subject to that, I would give full fiscal control of all that is not imperial into Irish hands. Under the present Bill, so long as you retain the full powers which you have over Irish finance, Ireland has no security on which she can borrow a farthing. She is absolutely in leading strings. The municipalities in Ireland will be able to borrow more readily than the Central Government.
On this subject of finance, with which your Lordships are not able to deal, the bankers of Dublin, the traders of Dublin, and the commercial men throughout the South of Ireland are as absolutely opposed to the restrictions in the Bill as are the peasants of Donegal. If such a programme were put forward I know I should be asked, Who can come forward to support it?
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In the last few days we have had some evidence. It is not a month since certain Members of the Lower House—chiefly the younger Members—put forward a strong financial programme in the direction that I have indicated. There is hardly a newspaper in Ireland which did not chorus approval. Efforts were made that suggest extraordinary commendation of it. That was at least a salutary example of what we might hope, and that is but one indication of feeling. The Lords Lieutenant of counties in Ireland called meetings during the autumn to consider this very programme, and I believe I am right in saying that in almost every case it was endorsed unanimously. My noble friend the Lord Lieutenant of Cork who is here to-night, the Lord Lieutenant of Carlow, and one other noble Lord who I see present now were at the Queen's County meeting. I could give your Lordships a list of eight or ten counties in the South which held meetings called by the Lieutenants, and which came to the same conclusion. The Chambers of Commerce of Dublin and of Cork, and I believe of other cities, have passed resolutions to the same effect. Even in Ireland there is some consistency. After two years the great majority of the Convention were at one, and the whole question could have been settled as far as the South was concerned by the grant of these larger powers.
Within the last few days we have had the most remarkable manifestation that we have yet had. Everybody knows what is the power of the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. Every one also knows how unusual it is on a subject which is so largely political, if not wholly political—since it deals so much with the pacification of the country—for individual Prelates to make speeches of the description of those which have been made by the Bishop of Cork and the Bishop of Ross within the last fortnight. Each of those Prelates differs from the other, as all of us who are connected with Ireland know, in appreciation of the situation, and yet they have come forward to make a proposition on these lines and to indicate that such a proposal would be accepted. Is it not a hard thing for a Government, when there is no organised body to meet them, to turn a deaf ear to these manifestations, coining as they do from men wholly differing in opinion and not the result of any organisation, yet all pointing in the same direction? Give us something under the Crown, within the Empire, something which gives us not

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control of Imperial affairs (for which no wise man in Ireland has ever asked) but control of our own local affairs. I am asking your Lordships to-night not to shut the door upon this attitude. I ask that you will give us the opportunity of seeing whether something cannot be done which we are unable to do in Committee of this House.
I have studied this question to see whether we could submit these points to the House in Committee. I have come to the conclusion that it is perfectly futile to do so. The main question of finance may at any stage involve a charge on the British. Exchequer which is not involved in the Bill now before us, and that would be ruled out by another place on the ground of privilege. The question again of a Second Chamber is not a Committee question. It is of the essence of the Bill. The change is one which requires to be discussed quietly, and to come to an agreement upon. Discussion is also needful to see whether any change can be made which, while wholly securing Ulster, would not place her in a position which would be regarded as antagonistic by the great mass whose consent it is necessary to obtain in the South. That obviously also is a subject that we cannot deal with in Committee.
What I would ask is that we might be permitted to follow a precedent of which there exists I believe more than one. But there is one precedent that I should especially press upon the attention of the House to-night. In 1884 the Franchise Bill came up to this House, after prolonged and careful debate, as the first measure of the session. It was not like this Bill, which has had a meandering course for nearly a year and has been taken up and put aside for other urgent business and has undergone very little change in its passage. When the Franchise Bill to which I have referred came here the efforts of your Lordships were directed to asking for a great enlargement of its scope without throwing out the Bill. The Government resisted that by every means in their power. They declared, as I have no doubt the Government will declare after I sit down to-night, that if an adjournment were made and the Bill hung up they would consider it equivalent to rejection of the Bill. In the case to which I have referred the Government held their ground through three debates, but in the
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end they agreed to negotiate. Mr. Gladstone and Sir Charles Dilke met Lord Salisbury and Sit Stafford Northcote, and that which seemed insoluble was by the vote of your Lordships' House solved in such a manner that for thirty years the settlement remained undisturbed. That also is the basis on which the Franchise Bill passed last year.
Our situation is not dissimilar. In those days those who were opposed to the Bill were taking the popular view, and we are urging the popular view upon you to-night, because it is only through the popular view that you can achieve the settlement which you desire to make. They also were asking for an advance upon what the Government proposed. So are we. They did it solely in order to promote a settlement. So do we. If you shut the door upon us we can only say that if the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, like the traditional Mrs. Partington, attempts to encounter the onrush of the. Atlantic he may have a less formidable enemy to meet but he will not be more certain of complete defeat. He is certain to meet with defeat if he endeavours to force this Bill in its present state on the South and West of Ireland.
I should ask to be allowed to move the adjournment of this debate for a fortnight—a definite period, not the indefinite one which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack deprecated. That would enable negotiations to take place, and I venture to suggest that in the meantime nobody would be prejudiced. If my noble friend's Amendment were to be destroyed by it, I know that there are many members of this House who would hesitate to vote with me. But my noble friend's position will be precisely take same after we have voted on the Amendment to adjourn for fourteen days as it is now. If we succeed—and I hope we may—we shall have those opportunities for negotiation which we have never enjoyed heretofore. We shall have at our backs the immense force of the fact that your Lordships will have shown by a vote that you are dissatisfied with a Bill that satisfies only one Party and the others not at all, and are determined to step into the breach to facilitate, if you possibly can, a settlement of the question. If on the other hand we are defeated, my noble friend's position will be as good as it is now. I ask your Lordships to choose between certain failure and

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a reasonable chance of success in this settlement. The noble Viscount, Lord Grey, said last night that mistakes have been made continuously throughout these long years of struggle. He did not spare the Government with which he has been officially connected. I urge your Lordships not to add to those mistakes by hastily deciding to go into Committee on this Bill to-night after the warnings you have had from every part of the country.
This question will not be decided by the Irish speakers who have occupied a good deal of this debate. It will be decided by the mass of those who have come to hear the arguments and who will vote as they think fit. If they should go into the Lobby into which I invite them to go—and I shall certainly ask your Lordships to divide—they will find in that Lobby nearly every man in this House who has a large stake in Ireland; they will find in it the consent of all the classes in Ireland who are not represented in this House, and those who are in favour of keeping open every avenue of settlement. I know that in taking this course I am departing in some degree from that which has been the past history of those who have spoken for the Union from this side of the House. I think there are no two ways about it: either you must have government by this country, which government we all feel has recently failed, or you must give to Ireland sufficient latitude to govern herself, which you do not do by the present Bill.
NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: I can conceive of nothing in the long history of this House which will be more fertile in popular support and statesmanlike reward than the fact that the people of Ireland find that, without derogating from the Imperial ditties which come first to us, they have not had to look further for the support of the rights or privileges which are to be afforded to them than this, the oldest Assembly in the world. I beg to move.
Moved, That the debate be adjourned until this day fortnight.—(The Earl of Midleton.)
THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN: My Lords, this Motion for the adjournment of the debate to a definite date has my most cordial approval, and for two reasons. The debate has been very illuminating and very instructing. A great many noble
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Lords most eminently qualified to form and express a sound opinion have given their views as to the effect that this Bill, if it becomes an Act in its present shape and is put into operation, will have all over the South and West of Ireland. I think their views deserve very careful consideration.
I have one special reason for approving of this Motion. Your Lordships will recollect that in moving my Amendment I addressed myself almost entirely to the fiscal question. The noble and learned Lord upon the Woolsack, in opening the debate, expressed the view that I was inconsistent in the attitude I have taken up towards this Bill, and he quoted this passage from a letter I wrote to The Times towards the end of August last—
"If these assumptions are correct, the path to a possible settlement is open and simple to follow. The only danger lies in its simplicity. Why clamour to scrap the Government Bill?"
If the noble and learned Lord had quoted another two lines the House would have understood why I said, "Do not scrap the Government Bill." This is what I said—
"Why clamour to scrap the Government Bill Y It can by amendment be brought up to the grant of full autonomy, fiscal and financial. His Majesty's Government know, just as well as every man, woman, and child in Ireland knows, that full autonomy is the only alternative to moral, social, and economic ruin. If they prefer the former, it is their business to put their proposals into concrete shape in an amended Bill."
They have not put their proposals into concrete shape in an amended Bill. We cannot amend the Bill in this House in that direction, and, though I suppose it is a forlorn hope, there is hope. I most sincerely and from my heart implore His Majesty's Government to take an opportunity of giving consideration to that and to other points that have been made during the debate.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords. I am anxious not to detain your Lordships at any length, because we all desire to hear the view of His Majesty's Government upon the new situation which has arisen from the Motion for the adjournment proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Midleton. But I am bound to say a few words from this Bench, and, I hope, on behalf of those with whom I usually act. I trust it will be clearly understood by everybody that my noble friend's Motion, as I think he clearly showed, is not moved with a dilatory purpose nor in order to kill the Bill without the onus

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of voting against the Second Reading, but that it is moved for the distinct purpose of bringing about conversations and possibly agreement which could not be arrived at in the ordinary cut and thrust across the Table in Committee of your Lordships' House. I hope that will be generally believed, because I am certain that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will not imagine that we could think that he is the sort of man who would walk with his eyes open into a simple booby-trap of that kind, or be induced to lead his colleagues there. No, this is, I am certain, a serious Motion of the noble Earl's, and I hope that when the noble Earl opposite comes to reply he will so treat it.
The fact that I am speaking to this Motion of course limits the area of discussion of the Bill. One is not entitled to discuss it as a whole after a Motion for the adjournment of this debate, but one is entitled, I conceive, to point out those special features of the Bill which make the adjournment, in my opinion, reasonable at this moment. I have no hesitation in saying—and those who happened to hear what I said at the beginning of this session will not be surprised—that I am not entirely enamoured of this measure as it stands. At that time I ventured to lay down three conditions which seemed to me necessary if a measure of self-government for Ireland was to be accepted there—hi the first place, that there should be a single Parliament, with all possible safeguards for Ulster; in the second place, that Ireland should have, generally speaking, control over her own finance; and, in the third place, that there should be no Irish representatives sitting at Westminster.
On the third point I need say very little, because it is not one upon which, I conceive, the adjournment of the debate would be likely to bring me much comfort. I feel strongly on it myself, because I am convinced that in present circumstances the presence of Irish Members at Westminster can only be purely mischievous—and for these reasons, that if there are Irish Members in the House of Commons, it must remain from time to time the cockpit for Irish contending factions, as it has been in the past. In the second place there is the risk, to which Mr. Gladstone alluded long ago and which has been mentioned in the course of these debates, that in the political sense—not, of course, in the
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material sense—the Irish vote in the House of Commons is up to auction, and parties are likely to be tempted to try and secure it. In the third place, there is what I think it is not pedantic to mention, that so long as you continue to tax Ireland from this country you will find that you are taxing a country which is under-represented according to its population—only forty-seven Members instead of sixty-five at least which it ought to have—and therefore you are breaking tile canon that taxation and representation should go together.
But I pass to the two more important matters—those of the partition of Ireland and the creation of the two Parliaments. It is not too much to say that in listening, as we have, to all the speeches made by Unionist Peers outside Ulster, we have found their grievances have all hinged upon this partition. I say it in no spirit of hostility, but I am bound to agree with what has fallen from the noble Earl, that this Bill has been simply framed from the point of view and in the interests of the six counties of Ulster. In fact, I should deliberately assert that if it had happened that at the General Election of two years ago the Coalition Government had been headed by Sir Edward Carson instead of by Mr. Lloyd George, this Bill would have now appeared in practically the same form in which we see it to-day. Of course, it may be said that Sir Edward Carson would not have brought u a Home Rule Bill at all, but there I cart call in the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, who has made it clear that, things being as they are, some measure of Home Rule must have been brought in by any Government which was entrusted with the affairs of the country.
I am bound to note what the noble Earl behind me said of the somewhat unusual course which was taken by the noble and learned Lord in quoting front the Woolsack a letter from Sir Edward Carson, designed apparently to influence the course which those who follow him should take in dealing with this matter. I venture to think that, if the converse course had been taken by some noble Lord here—if some noble Lord, like Lord Farnham for instance, who represents a large body of opinion, had written a letter which he desired read out in another place—some adverse comment would have been made, probably by the authorities of the House. And I am bound also to point out to the noble and learned Lord that he infringed a canon

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which we are here accustomed to observe in reading out a long extract from a speech made in another place. That, for obvious reasons, is never done here, and I trust it may not become a custom in your Lordships' House.
The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack pointed out what was perfectly true, and he naturally twitted various sections of the House with it, that the opposition to this Bill is composed of a number of people holding quite incompatible views and prepared to oppose it from altogether different standpoints. That is not altogether a new phenomenon. I think I can recall cases where something of the same kind has happened before. And it has also to be borne in mind that if the opposition to the Bill is heterogeneous, so also is its support. Because on this very question of the partition of Ireland into two Parliaments the Government are going to receive the support of noble Lords who look at it from a totally different point of view.
My noble and learned friend Lord Haldane, in a most sanguine spirit, looked forward to the creation of those two Parliaments as leading in due time, presumably in a somewhat short time, to a united Parliament for Ireland. I am altogether unable to share the smiling confidence of my noble and learned friend.
The noble and learned Marquess opposite, Lord Londonderry, also held out a hope that in time it might be a united Parliament for Ireland, but he qualified it by using the words "some of us may not live to see it." One hopes for a long life for the noble Marquess; he has, I trust, a great number of years before him; but if any union is to be postponed for thirty or forty years at least, if not more, I greatly doubt its taking place at all. On the other hand, there are seine noble Lords from Ulster who have made it quite clear that they do not expect that the two Parliaments will unite in any time which it is possible to foresee. They are not quite so open in their statements as an hon. Member in another place was whose speech has been alluded to, who congratulated himself and congratulated Ulster that this partition was to be for all tine. The noble Duke, the Duke of Abercorn, alluded to the phrase that has become famous which was used by his father when he said "We will not have Home Rule." I really do not think that the filial piety of the noble Duke need
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be in any way offended by what is happening. They are not having Home Rule. This is not Home Rule in the sense in which it was understood in the time of the late Duke of Abercorn and in the sense in which we have all of us understood it. It is something altogether different, and the invention of this new Parliamentary Ulster is not in my judgment an infringement of the anti-Home Rule pledge of that time. It was also true that during the passage of the measure through another place the only concessions that were made at the different stages of the Bill, so far as I am aware, were made to the Ulster view on representations from the Ulster Members. I do not think that any Amendment was accepted from those who are entitled to speak from the same point of view as the noble Earl who has moved the adjournment of the debate. It was agreed in another place as a concession to Ulster union that the Council should not be either nominated or elected on proportional representation, proportional representation being a method which appears to be peculiarly odious to Ulster, but that it should be appointed on purely partisan lines. Then again it was enacted in another place that there should be no chance of the two Parliaments uniting unless, not a majority of those voting, but an absolute majority of both the Parliaments on the Third Reading of a measure for the purpose voted in its favour. You may say that this is not an unreasonable proposition, but all those things tend to make union more difficult, and tend in the opinion of some of us to postpone it indefinitely.
I do not want at this hour to dwell upon the different elements of financial freedom on which a great deal has been said, and well said, in the course of the debate, and upon which the noble Earl, Lord Dun-raven, especially fixed as justifying his Motion for the rejection of the Bill. I think that the design and composition of the Exchequer Board is a fatal blot on the Bill, and it is one of the matters which I am sure the Government ought to be asked to reconsider. I do not want to trouble the House with my own views, but I certainly should give Ireland control over all her finances; yet at the same time it would seem to me reasonable, and I believe it would be regarded as reasonable in Ireland, that. a lump sum or the equivalent of a lump sum should be paid in reduction of the National Debt as a final clearing

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up of the financial position between us and Ireland. It is not always remembered, I think, that even if you were to do that Ireland would have to tax herself pretty heavily. It is a mistake to suppose that you will find a heavily-taxed England and a lightly-taxed Ireland. The noble Lord opposite, Lord Armaghdale, drew attention to one necessary source of heavy expenditure—namely, education in the North of Ireland. What he said about the North is equally true about the South, and I. ant convinced that unless the new Ireland is to become a mere peasant State with none of the annual expenditure which the more civilised order of States are in the habit of incurring it will be necessary, even if you give full financial freedom, for the scale of taxation to be almost, if not quite, as high in Ireland as it is in Great Britain.
The real point, as was mentioned by the noble Earl behind me, is, Why is it more desirable to adjourn the debate at this stage than to read the Bill a second time, give an interval for Committee, and endeavour to secure Amendments. It has already been often pointed out, as far as financial Amendments are concerned, that it is not, and indeed it practically never would have been, even before the Parliament Act, feasible for us to recast in any way the financial provisions of the Bill. One noble Lord—I think Lord Stuart of Wortley—pointed out that the Parliament Act admitted of a process of suggestion. I am afraid that no suggestion, however hypnotic, would have the effect of altering tie finance of the Bill in the House of Commons unless His Majesty's Government took it in hand themselves and were prepared to re-cast it.
I desire to be quite candid. I think it is extremely possible that if we were to go into Committee now His Majesty's Government would be able to carry the Bill through Committee in practically its present form, without any Amendments whatever, unless of course they changed their minds on certain points and desired to amend the Bill themselves. His Majesty's Government are to be congratulated upon that point—on the fact that, as sonic noble Lord said yesterday, they can "divide and rule"; that that incompatibility of criticism which the noble and learned Lord mentioned is the strength of the noble Lord opposite and of His Majesty's Government when you 'come to discuss particular clauses in Committee.
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If any Amendment were moved with the design of what we should call on this Bench strengthening the Bill the Government would, of course, secure the enthusiastic support of Lord Willoughby de Broke and of those who agree with him, and I dare say of most of the Ulster Peers. On the other hand, if there was a desire to weaken the Bill from the strictly Unionist standpoint, and the Government were to resist that process, they would no doubt receive the support of many of us who sit on this side of the House.
I feel therefore that the only thing to do is to make an appeal, as the noble Earl did, to the Government to take a more excellent. Way—not rely on the chances of Committee but to engage in a different kind of discussion with those who, with full knowledge and also with the knowledge that they will be the people who will suffer if mistakes are made, object so strongly to much that is in the Bill. I ask all your Lordships, Is not Clause 70 and the probability that Clause 70 may have to be put into practice—that is the clause which provides for the non-existence of one of the Parliaments (of course, the Southern Parliament)—is not that a deplorable thing in itself? What an end to a measure of this kind if, as regards three-fourths of the country, you cannot put it into operation at all.
We have been told that, failing this Bill, Southern Ireland will be subjected to Crown Colony government. As an old Colonial Secretary I protest most strongly against any statement of the kind. The government—a government without any representation or consent—which is going to be imposed upon Ireland bears no sort of resemblance to Crown Colony government. If it were tried on Ceylon or Jamaica I should like to know where yon would be. Crown colony government in all important cases is representative government. What Crown Colony government does closely resemble is the position of Irish Members at Westminster since the Union. Ireland has not had responsible government but representative government, just as in Crown Colony government there is a body of representative members always liable to be outvoted by the official majority, but able to state their views. It was because Irish Members were in that position at Westminster that they deserted the ordinary course of discussion and argument and took to obstruction and

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even to violence, because they knew very well that however forcibly expressed their views might be in argument they were not likely to obtain any general acceptance, even on an Irish matter. What really, therefore, is proposed is the sort of government which might be imposed upon some pagan Protectorate—upon people who are in themselves assumed to be completely unfit for any form of representative government. That is the alternative to the present measure.
I wonder whether it is not the fact that a so-called settlement like this, imposed by Parliament, is one which can never be accepted by Ireland as a whole; whether, indeed, we ought not to have persevered where we did make a start at one time—namely the effort of trying to get some form of agreement in Ireland itself before bringing the matter to Parliament at all. I look back to the time of the Convention with a personal reminiscence which will always be of deep interest to myself. It will always be a matter of satisfaction to me that by the pure accident of a casual meeting at an entertainment held in this House I was able to ascertain that Mr. John Redmond would support and attend such a Convention as was afterwards held in Ireland if the offer were made to him; and being no longer a member of the Government at that time—it was some months after I had resigned office—I was able to put his views before His Majesty's Government in a way which enabled them to make the offer they did. I have noticed in a memoir of Mr. John Redmond that during the course of the Convention when things were going well he said, "How lucky it was I went to that dinner." That is a recollection of my own, and I trust that your Lordships will pardon my mentioning it; but I do feel that such is, in fact, the only real possibility of anything like an agreed settlement on the lines which the noble Earl has mentioned—of the statements of view made by distinguished Prelates of the Roman Catholic Church.
My Lords, is it not possible for the Prime Minister, who has taken so conspicuous and so honourable a part in these different attempts which have been made and who himself so nearly succeeded in the autumn of 1916 in bringing about an agreement, to make sonic further advance? I am most unwilling to believe that he has given it up as a hopeless task, and has simply fallen back on what this Bill does—namely,
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give satisfaction to Ulster but almost letting the rest of Ireland go hang.
There is a real difference between such action as can be taken during an interval such as the noble Earl asks the Government to accord between different members of the House, invoking also, as it may be possible to invoke, some responsible opinion outside, and the mere discussion and weighing of Amendments around the Table front which one feels that very little will come. I do not disguise from myself that this proposal, particularly if it is to meet with success, involves a possible further adjournment. I do not disguise from myself that it might involve, what after all your Lordships have often done, an adjournment even over Christmas and meeting for a short time in January, with, of course, a postponement of the Prorogation and the beginning of the next session. That might be inconvenient and uncomfortable, but I cannot think that your Lordships, if you believed that this Bill was going to be improved thereby, would shrink from any small inconvenience which such a course might cause.
I feel so deeply that the fate of Ireland as a whole, through what has been proposed about Southern Ireland, is hanging in the balance and that the situation is so delicate, that I beg His Majesty's Government to consider deeply before they throw away the chance and dismiss the possibility of turning this measure, so much criticised as it is now from many quarters, into one which will be acceptable at any rate to a large number of responsible persons in Ireland.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON):My Lords, although technically I am speaking on the Motion of the noble Earl that the debate be adjourned, I hope your Lordships will allow me a certain latitude, as claimed and indeed most liberally exercised by the noble Marquess who has just spoken, in covering a rather wider field. For the best part of three days I have had the pleasure of sitting on this Bench listening to a series of speeches as serious and as important as any that I have ever heard in a first-class debate in your Lordships' House. I am the only member of the Cabinet who will have had an opportunity of commenting upon those speeches since the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack resumed his

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seat two days ago. Upon some of them I shall ask your leave, and indeed I think you will expect me, to comment. I do not want to make two speeches this evening, particularly at the present late hour, and if I were to speak only, upon the Motion that the debate be adjourned, and if that Motion were carried, as I earnestly hope it will not be—I shall give my reasons a little later on for venturing to offer you Lordships that advice—I should have no opportunity of replying, as I believe some of your Lordships at any rate will expect me to do, upon the general debate. I trust, therefore, that you will exonerate me if I follow the example so generously set by the noble Marquess in dealing with some of the larger issues raised by the Bill that is now before your Lordships' House.
For instance, if I speak only on the Motion for the adjournment of the debate it would be quite out of my power to deal with the very serious and moving statement made by the noble Earl (Lord Midleton) himself, speaking as he did for those Irishmen in the West and South and centre of Ireland with whom he is associated. He will expect me, your Lordships will expect me, after the direct challenge that was issued to this Bench, to say something in reply to the charges which were delivered with so much vehemence by him.
I said just now that it had been my privilege to listen to a series of remarkable speeches in this debate. Two of them were, I think, so exceptional as to deserve more than a passing notice. I allude, in the first place, to the speech of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, who on the first day of the debate gave us a masterly exposition of the contents and details of the Bill, went on to deliver a very searching analysis, indeed almost an exposure, of the criticisms contained in the Amendments and elsewhere of the opponents of the Bill, and ended up with an appeal by the moving eloquence of which we were all greatly stirred. The second speech to which I desire to refer in a sentence was that of Lord Grey of Fallodon. We were all of us delighted that a silence of four years, due to causes which have excited our warmest sympathy but which we hope are now in less active operation than they were, was brought to an end, and none of us who heard him yesterday in your Lordships' House could fail to entertain the wish that on many future occasions we shall be able to profit by his calm and
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dispassionate utterance and by the counsel which his great authority and almost unequalled experience entitles him to give to your Lordships. The other speeches in this debate have not fallen below the standard of the two to which I refer, and it cannot be denied that the views of both sections in Ireland—because, unfortunately, there are two sections represented in this House, Ulster on the one hand, and what is somewhat inaccurately called Southern Ireland on the other—have been expounded with very great fulness in the course of this debate.
In recommending to your Lordships the favourable treatment of a Home Rule Bill cannot, of course, help remembering for a moment the very different fate that befel Home Rule Bills which are in the recollection of many of your Lordships. It is twenty-seven years ago since the first Home Rule Bill, reaching us here in September, 1893, was thrown out by a majority of 419 to 41. Then ensued an interval of twenty years, and the second Home Rule Bill, reaching us in January, 1913, was thrown out by a majority of 326 to 69. In September of the same year, a new session having opened in the interval, the same Bill was thrown out on Second Reading by a majority of 302 to 64; and in September, 1911, just after the opening of the war, that Home Rule Bill was placed on the Statute-book under the Parliament Act without a Division in your Lordships' House.
Now we have arrived at the position when another Home Rule Bill, introduced by one Unionist sitting on that Woolsack and commended by another Unionist now addressing you, is presented to your Lordships, accompanied by an earnest appeal, which I shall presently make on behalf of the Government, that you will give it your respectful and sympathetic consideration. To what has this change been due? It has been due, I think, in the main to three considerations. I was rather surprised to hear the noble Earl, Lord Midleton, speak with so much contempt of the situation in which we are placed by the operation of the Parliament Act and the presence on the Statute-hook of the Act of 1914. My Lords, we are held in the clutch of those circumstances. We are tightbound in the vice of the Parliament Act, and it is all very well for the noble Earl to say that, supposing the war comes to an end and the Treaty with

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Turkey is ratified, it does not matter a bit, because the Act of 1914 is so absurd or so obsolete that no one can put it in operation. That is not the case. It will come automatically into operation on the day when the Peace Treaty with Turkey is ratified. And if it be said that great changes have taken place in the interval, that the constituencies in Ireland have been altered and that the financial provisions of the Bill are in many respect obsolete—granted. But what will the duty be that will then fall on the Government of the day, whether it be this Government or any other Government? We should have to introduce an Amending Bill; but we cannot wipe off from the slate that which is inscribed thereon. Therefore I think the noble Earl held out illusory hopes when he told us that we need not bother about that aspect of the case.
The second consideration is this, that the march of events has brought a great number of us—I believe they are the majority of your Lordships' House, in spite of some of the sentiments which I have heard to-night—to the conviction that some form of Home Rule must be conceded to Ireland. I admit that every one is not converted. Nothing will convert my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke. He still remains a magnificent relic of the old guard, but the backwoods in which my noble friend ranged at the head of a formidable band some years ago are now relatively deserted, and his picturesque figure is seen stalking, consoled only by Lord Farnham, amid the scenes that were once those of his adventures and triumphs. The third change is that, whereas on all previous occasions Ulster had been firmly and definitely opposed to Home Rule, she now desres and welcomes it. Lord Grey did not, in the whole course of his speech, make a truer remark than when he said that one of the great mistakes that have been made—I think he was speaking for the Party to which he belongs—in previous discussions of this question has been the manner in which they have been disposed to ignore and disparage the claims of Ulster. I remember speaking on this subject on previous occasions myself. I remember once answering the noble Marquess opposite, who had endeavoured to convince your Lordships that the case of Ulster was inspired by sectarian feeling and rested largely on religious prejudice. Although an Englishman I made a protest on this, as I thought, gross act of injustice
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to Ulster, and from the moment Mr. Asquith made the statement that Ulster could not he coerced it followed that no Home Rule Bill could be carried without the consent of Ulster. That consent has been given, and the only thing I would seriously traverse in some of the speeches to which I have listened with reference to Ulster has been the tendency on the part of some noble Lords even now to disparage the reality and the sincerity of the acceptance of this measure by Ulster.
Not so do I read the speeches to which I have listened. In the course of the last two days speeches by Ulster Peers have been made by the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Armaghdale, the Marquess of Dufferin, Lord Massareene, and the Marquess of Londonderry. I have also read on many occasions the speeches delivered by Sir Edward Carson in another place, and we had the letter—the irregularity of which I am prepared to condone—from that eminent-man which was read out by the Lord Chancellor two days ago. I do not deduce from those expressions of opinion the view that Ulster is giving a grudging or un-gracious acceptance to this Bill. I do not look upon her acquiescence in Home Rule as a tepid, reluctant acquiescence. On the contrary, I believe that Ulstermen and those who speak for Ulster are prepared to give this Bill a fair chance, to set up their Parliament, and to work it in good faith in the interests not merely of Ulster but of Ireland and of the Empire as a whole. Therefore I think this does mark a great step forward. When we are told that nobody wants this Bill, after all the men in this House, speaking for one and a quarter millions of the population of Northern Ireland, have told us that they do want it; and when we are told by our critics in foreign countries that we ought to defer to the principle of self-determination, at least that is the principle on which we have acted in so far as Ulster is concerned.
There is only one other preliminary observation which I would ask leave to make, and that in a sentence only, with regard to this debate. It is true that we have been discussing this Bill in an atmosphere that is blackened with the shadow of horrible and revolting crime—crime which is a disgrace to our country and a blot upon our fair name. And yet, I think, in the whole of this debate I have heard only one speaker—

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and to him I will not refer—who in the presence of that sombre background has argued that we ought, in consequence of these events, to stay our hands and to desist from the attempt at pacification upon which we have embarked. Why have none of us been deterred by those events of which I am speaking? Because it is not the practice of our people to be diverted from a path which they believe to be both right and expedient by crime, however scandalous and however revolting; and still more because we believe that those crimes are neither practised nor condoned by a great majority of the people of Ireland, but are regarded with as much abhorrence by them as they can be by any man who is sitting in this capital of London. And again, it is universally recognized—and we are grateful for the recognition—that whatever be our views about the political solutions we have to put forward it is the duty of this Government, as of any Government, to combine in repressing this condition of affairs which is a menace not only to peace and good will in Ireland but to the essential fabric of society itself.
Just now the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, was kind enough to admit that I might find in the speeches that have been delivered from different quarters of the House plenty of material for knocking heads together and pointing out how various and how discrepant are the views that have been entertained. It is true. And listening to him I was brought back in memory to the days, now thirty or more years ago, when from the gallery in the House of Commons—not being then a Member—I heard Mr. Gladstone deliver his speech on the Second Reading of the first Home Rule Bill. I remember very well how, at the end of the debate, reviewing the various criticisms that had been directed against him, he said, "My Bill holds the field." I think I might use the same words with regard to the outcome of this debate.
You may take, for instance, the two main bodies of criticism that have been directed against the Bill. The first was that which was contained in the speech of Lord Dunraven, and it is important, because his speech was the first instalment of that volume of criticism upon the financial aspect of the case of which we have heard so much since. The Motion of my noble friend Lord Dunraven on the Paper is to the effect that this House
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declines to proceed with a Bill "which meets with no support from the great majority of the Irish people and affords no prospect of any permanent settlement." Those are the ostensible reasons for which he asks your Lordships to vote against the Bill; but as a matter of fact it was when we listened to his speech—if I may say so, a most able one—that we found that his main, indeed I think I might say almost his sole, objection was that the Bill does not give the fiscal autonomy to Ireland which lie desires.
I ask the noble Earl this question. Supposing our Bill had had in it the fiscal autonomy which he desiderates, supposing by some device, unrealisable as I believe it to be, we could put fiscal autonomy into it now, can the noble Earl assure me that the Bill so altered will meet with support from the great majority of the Irish people? Who are "the great majority of the Irish people"? Are they Ulster? No. Not a single Ulster Peer in this debate has asked for fiscal autonomy to be introduced into this Bill. Are they my noble friend Lord Midleton and his friends? No. The whole object of Lord Midleton's speech was to contend that he represents a small and defenceless minority in Ireland. Who, then, are the great majority of the Irish people? My Lords, we all know who they are. We all know they are the Party whose seventy Members, although they may not be willing to take their seats over the way, are yet the constitutionally elected representatives of Ireland at this moment, and we know perfectly well that if we remodelled our Bill to satisfy Lord Dunraven not one of those seventy Members would accept it—not one. I judge by their utterances. We know very well that what they want is not a Bill with fiscal autonomy in it. What they want is a Bill for political independence. They are not out for any particular advantages, financial or otherwise, which my noble friend desires. They are out for an independent Irish Republic. They treat fiscal autonomy of the character that he desires with contempt. And, my Lords, I say this. Give them Customs, give them Excise, give them Income Tax, let them off their contribution to the National Debt, let them off the payment for their share in the war—do you think you will get peace? No. Do you think you will get acquiescence from them? No. They would meet your offer in exactly the same way that de Valera met it in America when the suggestion was

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made to him. They would meet it with a resolute and an implacable No. Therefore, even supposing that we were to take the advice of my noble friend Lord Dun-raven, we should not, I respectfully submit to you, succeed in getting support from the great majority of the Irish people.
The next adviser to whom we listened with natural respect was Lord Grey of Fallodon. Do we find salvation in his advice? I am sorry not to be able to say what I am now going to say in Lord Grey's presence, but he told us himself of the circumstances that rendered it impossible for him to be here to-day, and I am sure lie will acquit me of any discourtesy in mentioning in his absence, as I am bound to do, the points which I should have preferred to make in his presence. A few weeks ago Lord Grey of Fallodon wrote a letter to the newspapers in which he proposed that the Irish should be left to frame a Bill for themselves, and after two years the forces and representatives of the Crown were to be withdrawn from Ireland. He yesterday, in your Lordships' House told us that after a few weeks' reflection he had abandoned that scheme. These were his words, "Unless the Government could assume direct and real and effective control of what is being done in Ireland"—which is. I take it, what we are trying to do at this moment—"he would withdraw at once." There is a saying of the Roman historian, Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. My Lords, does any one seriously propose that salvation for Ireland or safety for ourselves would be secured by following the second thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Grey of Fallodon, and at tins moment, when we are engaged in this terrific struggle, beating a wholesale retreat from Ireland?
"But," it may be said, "you are ignoring, you are slurring over the concrete proposal of the noble Viscount"; and as I gathered from what Lord Crewe said just now that that proposal meets with some favour from him, may I be allowed to say a word upon it. What Lord Grey proposed as regards legislation was this. He wanted, not a Bill, but certain broad lines of policy laid down. He did not tell us in what form, whether in a manifesto or a speech or a pronouncement by the Government, or to whom. And, of course, it is very difficult to say to whom this statement ought to be addressed. But his proposal in substance was this. You should say to Ireland that Great Britain must reserve Army, Navy and Foreign Affairs. Every-
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thing else he would leave to a Constituent Assembly or Convention. Yet within five minutes of having made that suggestion to your Lordships the noble Viscount went on to say that he was doubtful if a Constituent Assembly or a Convention would be practicable at the present time. It does seem to me that in the course of this debate a good deal has been said about the possibility of an Irish Convention which is based on a very imperfect memory of the past. Lord Bryce, for instance, in his very eloquent contribution to this discussion, revived that proposal; and more than one noble Lord has said, Why not try the Convention again: surely the last time we had it, in 1917, we very nearly came to an agreement? Is not that a good omen for the future?" That is not my recollection at all.
Nobody was more keen or enthusiastic about the Irish Convention than myself. It fell to be my duty to stand at this Table and propose it to your Lordships' House, and we remember the general sense of expectancy and almost of enthusiasm with which we Englishmen, who have blundered in Ireland for centuries, felt that at last we were handing over this inexplicable tangle to Irishmen to solve, and we were only too content to stay our hand and sit down and see how they would solve it. Did they solve it? I have been refreshing my memory by looking at the results of the Convention. So far from their having arrived either at an agreement or at anything approaching an agreement, it is well known to all of us that Sinn Fein would have nothing to do with the Convention from the start; that the only scheme that was presented by Ulster to the Convention was confined to the exclusion of their own Province from any scheme of self-government; that the Southern Unionists agreed with the Ulster Unionists; that the Nationalists were divided into two parties and signed separate reports, twenty-eight signing one and twenty the other; and that the nearest approach to union that could be arrived at was a series of resolutions drawn up by the Majority.
Thereby hangs a tale. When the Convention reported, so anxious were we to extract advantage from their labours that I was a member of a Committee set up by the Cabinet to try to draft a Home Rule Bill on the Majority Resolutions and the Majority Report. We got no distance with our labours before we found it was

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absolutely impossible, and that on those lines we could only draw up a scheme which nobody would have. Consequently I fear that the second scheme of Lord Grey, followed by Lord Bryce, of referring the matter to another Convention or another Constitutent Assembly now would be hardly likely to be any more fruitful than the first. Therefore as regards the schemes we have had submitted to us I am rather disposed to agree with the noble and Learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, who on the first night of the debate—and he might equally have said the same thing to-night— said that no alternative to the Bill had been produced in the debate, that no one had framed or could frame a Bill which would satisfy everybody in Ireland, that it passed the wit of man to produce such a Bill, and that in those circumstances he thought the Bill which we had introduced held the field.
But you may say, my Lords, that the whole atmosphere of this debate has been changed by what has passed to-night, and that I have to look at the case from the standpoint of the speech that was made by the noble Earl, Lord Midleton. I will attempt to do so. I hope that if I disagree with my noble friend he will acquit me of any desire in the smallest degree to disparage either the great authority with which he spoke or the profound and intense conviction, amounting almost to passion, that inspired his utterance. I know the record of my noble friend in connection with Ireland. I know the services he has rendered. I know the part he played in the Convention, and I know the anxious time he has gone through since, severing long ties as the result of the course he felt compelled to take. And when he stood up to-night to address your Lordships in moving tones I know that he was speaking from his heart that which represents his inmost conviction. But what is the case that he made? I understand his view to be that it is wrong to give a separate Parliament to Ulster at all. I do not think he definitely said so in his speech to-night, but it might be inferred from what he said and from the remarks he has made on many other occasions. He said it because he holds profoundly to the view that partition will be the greatest mistake. I rather agree with him.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: I would like to correct just one word—the greatest barrier to a settlement.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I quite accept my noble friend's correction. He regards partition as the greatest barrier to a settlement, and that view of the case has found expression in some other speeches to which we have listened in the course of this debate—speeches to which, if I may say so, I listened with no small dismay. For instance, I remember hearing or reading the speeches delivered on the first night by the noble Marquess, Lord Sligo, and by Lord Kilmaine. Those noble Lords argued that if once you set up two Parliaments in Ireland or, supposing that you failed to 3et up a Parliament in the South of Ireland, if once you set up a Parliament in the North of Ireland the separation becomes permanent, no amalgamation is possible between the two, and you stereotype the particular type of Legislature that you are about to create.
NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: That remark is endorsed by many noble Lords speaking with great experience. That is not my reading of Irish history, that is not my diagnosis of Irish character, and that is not the object with which the Government have framed and introduced this Bill.
NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: Speaking for the latter, I can truthfully say that on the many occasions when we have discussed this matter, if ever with reference to any provision as regards the six counties—finance, education, or anything else, a question has been rather evenly balanced—the moment it has been said, "Oh, well, if you treat it in such and such a way you will render the ultimate fusion and unity of Ireland more certain and will give it a better chance," then inevitably and at once the balance has inclined in that direction. Speaking for myself—I dare say it is impertinent in an Englishman to say or feel anything about it at all—deep in my heart is the conviction that sooner or later (it may, perhaps, be later in view of what is happening now) that passion of nationalism which is deep-seated in the Irish bosom, that spark of fire which every Irishman has, that love for his country which we all know so well, will bring them together. And through these dark and stormy avenues that we are treading, I never

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lose sight of the goal that I believe to be at the end of our endeavours. Therefore my picture, if it is fair to draw a picture, is quite a different one from that of the noble Lords to whom I have referred. I believe that when this Bill is passed the Ulstermen will take it and will set up their Parliament in the North of Ireland, in Belfast, and I believe that without vindictiveness, without partiality, and without provocation they will show how Irishmen can govern themselves and can govern other Irishmen who do not agree with them. I say that I trust Sir Edward Carson in this matter. I am profoundly convinced of the sincerity of that right hon. gentleman. I believe everything that he has said in the House of Commons, and that when more than once he said across the floor of that House that he would be willing to shake hands with those he has so long opposed—
LORD BUCKMASTER: I agree.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON:—he spoke not only that which is in his own mind but in the minds of the people whom he leads. I prefer to be sanguine, I prefer to be hopeful; and instead of thinking that we are building up a wall with big bricks that is to sever these two sections of the Irish people from each other, I believe we are building a flimsy wall that will be kicked over by the common-sense and moderation of that people before many years have gone by.
Now I come to the question of finance. I really think, if I may say so, that there is some confusion of ideas about this. A great many people have talked about fiscal autonomy. It is an easy generality, but if requires a little examination. Fiscal autonomy is a conceivably possible and practicable proposition for a single Ireland and a single Parliament. Even so, there is a good deal to be said against it; and the other day, in replying to a Motion made by my noble friend Lord Loreburn, I ventured to trouble your Lordships with some of the arguments (which I will not repeat to-day) that I thought militated against the acceptance of any such proposal. No such proposal was put forward by Mr. Gladstone; no such proposal was in the Bill of Mr. Asquith. Even the Convention, if I remember rightly, when they dealt with fiscal autonomy proposed to postpone it for seven years after the conclusion of peace. I think I am right
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in saying that. But, whatever be the case for or against fiscal autonomy in relation to a United Ireland and a single Parliament, how can you possibly give fiscal autonomy to two Irelands and two Parliaments Are you going to have two fiscal autonomies, one in the North and one in the South, a Customs barrier between the two, two Income Taxes, two methods of collection, two manners of incidence, and so on? The proposition is altogether unthinkable. I venture to say that none of the critics who talked so easily and so loosely about fiscal autonomy has considered it in relation to the present scheme.
The finance of the present Bill has formed the subject, as nobody knows better than the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, of the most profound and anxious investigation by him and his colleagues for the best part of six or eight months. You do not imagine that the finance of the Bill has been lightly tossed on the floor of this House, to be taken by your Lordships as if it was a casual thought of His Majesty's Government. Not at all. And the further you investigate the matter—I am only sorry that the conditions of work in your Lordships' House render it so difficult for us to touch finance—the more you will find that the kind of autonomy which some noble Lords advocate is inconsistent with the structure of this Bill.
But you may say to me, "Well, that is rather disheartening. Do you really mean to shut the door when there is so strong a wave of opinion in favour of making liberal concessions financially to Ireland? Are you going to say that, because Lord Birkenhead and a number of able men have decided that it cannot be done in the present Bill, therefore it cannot be done for all time?" No, I do not say so for one moment. I say this—I think the Lord Chancellor said much the same the other day—that if any real proposal for fiscal autonomy for a United Ireland and a. single Parliament were put forward by a body competent to speak for the majority in Ireland and offering prospects of settlement, we will go a long way to meet it. How foolish should we be if we did not. If Ireland came with one accord and with one voice and said "Give us our Customs, give us our Excise, give us our Income-Tax," do you think there is any British Government that would steel itself to immediate refusal? No. Under such conditions an Irish body, or an Irish Parlia-

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ment, speaking with the authority that I described, would have the game in its own hands and would almost be able to exact such reasonable terms from any British Government as it might desire.
And when the noble Lords who have advocated fiscal autonomy speak about endeavouring to secure it at the present stage and about delegating the matter to a Convention or a Constituent Assembly, do they not forget that the machinery is provided in the Bill itself by which this request of which I have been speaking can be made? I am surprised at the small attention that has been devoted by speakers to the proposal of the National Council. As I understand, the National Council in Ireland, drawn in equal proportions from the two Parliaments, can make to the Government any proposal that it pleases, and once the two Parliaments exist and the National Council is called into being there is nothing whatever to prevent it from corning to the Government and saying, "Give us this tax," or "Give us that tax," and from receiving a favourable reply.
But the noble Viscount, Lord Grey, would invert the order. He says, "Do not wait for your National Council to come into being and to make the request. Do it straight away. Do it of your own accord." He said, with an emotional appeal that touched all of us, an appeal to our bygone history. "When has Britain ever lost by giving too much?" Yes, my Lords, I think it is true that we have often gained by giving liberally and amply. But when we gave the Constitution to Canada, as recommended by Lord Durham, and when we gave the Union to South Africa, with the great and blessed results to which Lord Grey of Fallodon alluded, how did we do it, and in what circumstances did we do it? We did it because there were people to deal with, because we knew with whom we were negotiating, because they came into the council chamber with us. I was at Cape Town and saw the conferences between all parties and all States that preceded the South African Union; there we knew, in making this contract, in entering into these terms, that the goods would be delivered. Whom are we to make the bargain with now? Who is going to deliver the goods? If you adopt Lord Grey of Fallodon's advice and hand over your fiscal autonomy—gone for ever—what return are you going to get? It will be thrown into your teeth
678
by the Sinn Fein Party, who neither ask for nor want anything of the kind. I really think that Lord Crewe was not fair—I have no doubt quite unintentionally—to the Prime Minister in one remark he made. He said. "Could not the Prime Minister indicate by some gesture or some word that he is willing to receive any representations of an authoritative character on this or other questions?" He has issued the invitation. I have read it in the papers. I forget whether it was in Parliament or elsewhere, but he certainly deliberately said that he was open to receive any responsible suggestion coming from representative planers in Ireland, either on the finance of the Bill or on anything else.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My impression is—the noble Earl will correct me if I am wrong—that the Prime Minister was unable to receive a very representative deputation which desired to see him.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: That is not my recollection, because when I have spoken about the matter to the Prime Minister—I think within the last few days—he has expressed his perfect willingness at any time to receive such representations. But while that is his attitude here, and while, as my information goes, no reply is made to him, from across the Atlantic there is thundered the implacable "No" of de Valera. Those are the circumstances in which we stand. It is always that sinister figure in the background that is confounding our best efforts.
Before I deal with the proposal of my noble friend Lord Midleton for the adjournment of the debate I ought, I suppose, to say a word to him upon his charges against the Government, which were very serious. He accused us of shameless violation of our pledges. I may be—I probably am—less familiar with the subject than is he, but I do not know to what pledges he refers, and I am not aware of the manner in which they have been violated. The noble Earl, indeed, went so far as to say that there was not a vestige of vindication of our pledges in the Bill—
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: With regard to the South.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I am talking about the South. I am dealing

679
with the noble Earl and those for whom he speaks. And further he says that they, by which he means the Parliament of the South, may pass any legislation they please. That is not in the least the case. I have a copy of the Bill here, and I looked at it while the noble Earl made that remark. What do I find? If it is legislation based on religious prejudice that he fears, that is provided for by Clause 6 of the Bill. I will not trouble your Lordships to read it, but you will take it from me that that reference is correct. If it is administrative injustice that he fears, that is deliberately provided against in Clause 9, subjection (6), of the Bill. If it is legislation against the propertied classes that he fears—I rather gather that he did from some observation he made—that will apply to others besides those he represents. The wealth and the property even of Southern Ireland are not entirely confined to those for whom my noble friend speaks. If it is a question of posts and appointments to offices, I am afraid the clients of my noble friend do not get very many now. If it is a question of the administration of public grants to schools, the present Education Board has, I believe, shown no sectarian animosity whatsoever, and the schools of all denominations have been treated with fairness and equality. What are the other safeguards that my noble friend desires? I implore him to believe that anything in the nature of safeguards that he and his friends can demonstrate to be necessary we are only too glad to listen to. He will have his opportunity in Committee. We do not take up an obdurate attitude on this point.
I waited when I heard the noble Earl denounce us for not carrying out our pledges to hear what are the particular safeguards he desires. He only mentioned one, and that was a Second Chamber. May I say a word on that point? The Irish Convention of 1917 recommended a Senate of sixty-four members for the whole of Ireland, partly nominated and partly representative of various classes and interests, although they shrank from indicating how they were to be chosen. That was, as my noble friend quite correctly remarks, the original idea of the Government when they prepared the scheme, and if that is what he was alluding to when he talked about the broken pledge of Mr. Walter Long I really think he was most unfair. Both my right hon. friend
680
and the Government were anxious to the full degree to carry out their pledge. But what happened? When it was drawn up into form it had this fatal flaw. The noble Earl will surely not suggest that you could have two Second Chambers organised on a different basis for the North and South of Ireland; yet the kind of Second Chamber that you would require to give protection to his friends in the South would be exactly the kind of Second Chamber that would not be wanted because it would swell the majority in the North. That was the real difficulty; and further there was the difficulty of imposing a nominated Second Chamber of this sort, or, if it was an elected Second Chamber, a Chamber necessarily chosen on a high property qualification upon the representative institutions provided for in this Bill. So much for our intentions. But then the noble Earl went on to say, "The Committee stage will give me no chance; it is really impossible for me and my friends to safeguard ourselves in respect to the Second Chamber." As I understand the Bill, that is not at all the case. I have been looking forward to the Committee stage in the hope that we should have from my noble friend a concrete suggestion as to the way in which we might meet his views.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: We have a right to the safeguard of a Second Chamber on the lines provided by the Convention. We had the pledge from the Government that they would insert a provision for some such Second Chamber. They find a difficulty because they cannot make two, and consequently they make none and leave us without any at all.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: That is not my point. My point is that the noble Earl has the opportunity presented to him by the Committee stage of this Bill; and when at an earlier period this afternoon either he or some other spokesman of his party said the opportunity would not arise, he was quite mistaken. We shall hear, I think, when we come to Committee exactly what is the kind of Second Chamber that the noble Earl desires. Commanding, as he does, very wide support from many quarters of this House no doubt he will be able to make an exceedingly effective case to us.
I now come to the Motion with which the noble Earl concluded. It was a Motion

681
that your Lordships should agree to the adjournment of this debate for a fortnight. I own that when I first heard last night of this suggested intention I thought it had a tactical character, and I dare say there are some of your Lordships who still entertain that unjustifiable suspicion. It was rather warmly expressed by Lord Ribblesdale in a speech that he made yesterday evening, and it looked as if it was an attempt to collect together in one fold all those scattered parties whose discrepant views I have ventured to comment upon in my remarks this evening. But as the noble Earl and Lord Crewe tell me that that is not the object but that it is seriously put forward, I dismiss it from my mind and will treat the proposal as a serious one.
The noble Earl—and he is supported by Lord Crewe—proposed that we should adjourn this debate for a fortnight. Why? What is to happen in the interim? I understand that the noble Earl is anxious that certain views which he and others entertain about fiscal matters, and possibly about other matters, should be taken into serious consideration during the interval. With whom are we to negotiate? For whom does the noble Earl speak? He spoke to-night for the Protestants, for the loyalists of the centre and South of Ireland. Are we to consult with them alone? Are we to consult with the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition? Are we to consult with all the various sections in this House? There is no analogy whatever between this situation and the events of 1885. On that occasion—my recollection goes back as far as that—the Franchise Bill was held up (the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong) in order to provide for a fair redistribution of seats. That was a matter that equally affected all parties. The arrangement was made, if I remember rightly, by Sir Charles Dilke, or at any rate he co-operated in making it, and the request for a fair redistribution came from all quarters and was officially put forward by all sections of the Opposition and was deferred to by the Government.
Let us suppose that we adjourn to-night. What are we to do I Are we to wait for a visit from the noble Earl, Lord Midleton? Are we to wait for Lord Crewe to come round? Or are we to wait for this party or that party in Ireland? Even supposing we get into touch with these noble Lords speaking with great authority, what guarantee have we—if I
682
may use the metaphor I used a short timeago—that they will "deliver the goods?" What guarantee have we, if we postponed the Bill and put something into it which is not there now, that it is going, to use Lord Dunraven's words, to be "accepted by a great majority of the Irish people"? Then how is it to be done? This Bill has come to us from another place; it is about, if your Lordships pass the Second Reading, to enter Committee here. Now the very points upon which the noble Earl and his friends want the Bill turned upside down are financial points. They are points we cannot deal with. What are we to do? To come back here in a fortnight's time, after discussing the thing with the noble Lord and his friends, and find that even if we arrive at some basis of agreement with him the House of Lords is powerless to deal with the matter, would be an absolute waste of time.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: Surely the noble Earl is putting up difficulties which do not exist. The noble Earl would be in a position to give assurances that the Government are prepared in the House of Commons to make the necessary Amendments, if he was satisfied that there was that opinion behind our proposal which we shall endeavour to show him, and which we shall have no difficulty in showing him is universal in the South of Ireland.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I do not think that that is the course which events would pursue. Even supposing that were possible, let me say this quite definitely—that the finance of this Bill has been, as I think I indicated a little time ago, the subject of most patient and anxious investigation on the part of the Government, and it is not likely that in a fortnight from now it would be possible for us to introduce any such changes as, quite apart from other considerations, would satisfy the desire of my noble friend. On the contrary, if we delayed the Bill for a fortnight the only result would be that a fortnight hence we should reappear in this House, and the spokesman of the Government would have to say that they adhered to the finance in the Bill as it at present stands. And when the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, as he did, contemplated an even longer delay—a delay, I think, extending over Christmas and into next year—I for my part am quite willing to sacrifice any holiday, and I am sure we all are, in

683
order to bring about peace in this matter; but after all it is not only the peace of Ireland but the peace of the world that is concerned. I think that the noble Marquess, when he suggested this extensive delay, rather forgot the ratification of the Peace Treaty with Turkey. If the whole matter is to be suspended until some time in the early part of next year it means that we cannot conclude peace with Turkey, we cannot terminate the war, because the moment we do so, as your Lordships know, the Act of 1914 comes into operation.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: But surely it is possible in two days in another place, And two days here, further to postpone the operation of the 1914 Act?
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: That presupposes general assent to the propositions which are likely to be put forward by the noble Marquess. He may be right, but I think myself he is wrong. I am sorry to have to return this reply to Lord Midleton, but I do not think that it is along those lines that salvation is to be sought. I hope, my Lords, that you will not accept the Motion for adjournment this evening, but that you will proceed to a vote upon the Bill.
About the Bill itself I desire to make only two observations in conclusion. The first is this. Lord Midleton in his remarks said that what the people of Ireland, or rather the people for whom he was speaking more particularly, wanted was control of their local affairs. Those were his words. What are local affairs?" I suppose nothing can be more local than agriculture, education, land, old-age pensions, local government, poor-law, railways, liquor, health insurance, and unemployment. All these local affairs, round which the local life of any community revolves, are given to Ireland by this Bill, and the noble Earl is not merely forcing an open door but actually declining what is offered to him in this respect. That is what we are prepared to give, and I have no doubt that in Committee we shall be willing to go some way to meet the views and criticisms that may be put before us by our critics. I ask you, my Lords, not to cast this Bill away. I am not certain that we have been altogether justified in our attitude to previous Home Rule Bills; but whether that be so or not, do not cast this Bill away. Take
684
it, use it as a basis, use it as a platform from which to move out and do something better. If you refuse it, once again you plunge Ireland into the old unending and cruel strife. My Lords, the second reflection is this. I ask your Lordships to look upon our policy as a whole. Do not urge us forward on one side of our policy and then stop us short on the other. Over and over again your Lordships, only in the last few months, have risen here and appealed to the spokesmen of the Government to be resolute and unflinching in defence of law and order in Ireland. We have not failed to respond to that appeal. The strain and the burden are not borne by us. Although the responsibility is ours the strain and burden fall upon those heroes who, in daily risk of their lives, are fighting our battles and yours. That is one side of our policy. We have had to meet the sword with the sword. It is a hateful necessity, but it is one which, as every one knows, any Government worthy of the name was bound to accept. Then we come to you with the other side of our policy, and we ask to be judged by the two together. We come to you with that which we regard as the indispensable concomitant of the suppression of crime and disorder, which we have been bound to undertake.
I am not blind enough to suppose that this Bill will be a solution of the Irish question. No, my Lords; it is only our contribution to the solution. It takes you sonic distance. You may call it a half-way house or a quarter-way house, or what you like, but it is an attempt on the part of Great Britain, speaking through her Government, to discharge her age-long debt. And, my Lords, if you let us discharge it, do bear this in mind—that just as I said three years ago that we all welcomed the idea of throwing the thing into the hands of the Convention and saying to Irishmen "Make your own fate," so if you pass this Bill the responsibility from the moment of its passage into law will rest upon Irishmen. One more the destiny of Ireland will be in the hands of Irishmen, and I am myself sufficiently hopeful to believe that, in view of all that they have accomplished in the past, Irishmen are still capable of saving their own country.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER rose to continue the debate, but in response to cries of "Divide" gave way and resumed his seat.
On Question, whether the debate should be adjourned for a fortnight?—
Their Lordships divided—Contents, 91; Not-Contents, 177.

CONTENTS

Argyll, D.

Harcourt, V.

Holm Patrick, L.

Somerset, D.

Hutchinson, V (E. Donoughmore.)

Inchiquin, L.

Aberdeen and Temair, M.

Kenmare, L. (E. Kenmare.)

Camden, M.

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

Crewe, M.

Anslow, L.

Lincolnshire, M. (L. Great Chamberlain.)

Ashton of Hyde, L.

Killanin, L.

Askwith, L.

Kilmaine, L.

Barrymore, L.

MacDonnell, L.

Abingdon,

Braye, L.

Monteagle, L. (M. Sligo.)

Beauchamp, E.

Buckmaster, L.

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Buxton, E.

Carmichael, L.

Morris, L.

Carnock, L.

O'Hagan, L.

Darnley, E.

Chalmers, L.

Oranmore and Browne, L.

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

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Ormonde, L. (M. Ormonde.)

Crofton, L.

Parmoor, L.

Drogheda, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Pentland, L.

Fitzwilliam, E.

De Freyne, L.

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Iveagh, E.

de Mauley, L.

Raglan, L.

Kimberley, E.

Decies, L.

Rathdonnell, L.

Kingston, E.

Denman, L. [Teller.]

Ravensworth, L.

Lanesborough, E.

Desart, L. (E. Desart.)

Rovelstoke, L.

Mayo, E. [Teller.]

Dynevor, L.

Saltersford, L. (E. Courtown.)

Midleton, E.

Dunmore, L. (E. Dunmore.)

Saye and Sele, L.

Nelson, E.

Ebury, L.

Shandon, L.

Portsmouth, E.

Elgin, L. (E. Elgin and Kincardine.)

Stanley of Alderloy, L. (L. Sheffield.)

Stanford, E.

Stanhope, E.

Emmott, L.

Swaythling, L.

Wicklow, E.

Farrer, L.

Sydentham, L.

Allendale, V.

Fingall, L. (E. Fingall.)

Tennyson, L.

Bryce, V.

Cainford, L.

Tenterden, L.

Cowdray, V.

Greville, L.

Vernon, L.

Do Vesci, V.

Hare, L. (E. Listowel.)

Wavertree, L.

Gladstone, V.

Hemphill, L.

Wrenbury, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Canterbury, L. Abp.

Mount Edgcumbe, E.

Knutsford, V.

Birkenhead, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Onslow, E.

Milner, V.

Pembroke and Montgomery, E.

Peel, V.

Wellington, D.

Plymouth, E.

St. Davids, V.

Abercorn, M. (D. Abercorn.)

Reading, E.

Termpletown, V.

Bath, M.

Roden, E.

Dufferin and Ava, M.

Rosslyn, E.

London, L. Bp.

Linlithgow, M.

Rothes, E.

Sandwich, E.

Aberconway, L.

Albemarle, E.

Scarbrough, E.

Aberdare, L.

Ancaster, E.

Strafford, E.

Addington, L.

Bathurst, E.

Vane, E.(M. Londonderry.)

Alington, L.

Bradford, E.

Westmeath, E.

Ampthill, L.

Cavan, E.

Annesley, L. (V. Valentia.)

Chesterfield, E.

Farquhar, V. (L. Steward.)

Armaghdale, L.

Chichester, E.

Sandhurst, V. (L. Chamberlain.)

Atkinson, L.

Craven, E.

Bangor, V.

Avebury, L.

Curzon of Kedleston, E.

Bertie of Thame, V.

Balfour, L.

Dartmouth, E.

Cave, V.

Beaverbrook, L.

Dundonald, E.

Charlemont, V.

Bellow, L.

Durham, E.

Chilston, V.

Bledisloe, L.

Eldon, E.

Churchill, V.

Cawley, L.

Ferrers, E.

Devonport, V.

Cheylesmore, L.

Fortescue, E.

Esher, V.

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Harewood, E.

Falkland, V.

Clements, L. (E. Leitrim.)

Howe, E.

Falmouth, V.

Clinton, L.

Kilmorey, E.

French of Ypres, V.

Clwyd, L.

Lindsey, E.

Goschen, V.

Colebrooke, L.

Lovelace, E.

Hampden, V.

Colwyn, L.

Lucan, E.

Hardinge, V.

Cottesloe, L.

Lytton, E.

Hood, V.

Cozens-Hardy, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Knollys, V.

Crawshaw, L.

Dawnay, L. (V. Downe.)

Methuen, L.

Ruthven of Gowrie, L.

Deramore, L.

Monckton, L. (V. Galway.)

Sackville, L.

Desborough, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

St. Audries, L.

Douglas, L. (E. Home.)

Monson, L.

St. Levan, L.

Dunedin, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Saltoun, L.

Ernle, L.

Moulton, L.

Sanderson, L.

Erskine, L.

Mowbray, L.

Sandys, L.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Muir Mackenzie, L.

Savile, L.

Fairlie, L. (E. Glasgow.)

Newton, L.

Shaw, L.

Faringdon, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Somerleyton, L. [Teller.]

Farnham, L.

Oriel, L. (V. Massereene.)

Somerton, L. (E. Normanton.)

Glenarthur, L.

Ormathwaite, L.

Southwark, L.

Glentanar, L.

Oxenfoord, L. (E. Stair.)

Stanmore, L. [Teller.]

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Sterndale, L.

Harris, L.

Phillimore, L.

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

Hindlip, L.

Playfair, L.

Horne, L.

Pontypridd, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Hothfield, L.

Queenborough, L.

Stuart of Wortley, L.

Hylton, L.

Ranfurly, L. (E. Ranfurly.)

Sudeley, L.

Incheape, L.

Ranksborough, L.

Sudley, L. (E. Arran.)

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Rathereedan, L.

Sumner, L.

Lawrence, L.

Rayleigh, L.

Teynham, L.

Leconfield, L.

Redesdale, L.

Treowen, L.

Lee of Farnham, L.

Ribblesdale, L.

Weir, L.

Lovat, L.

Riddell, L.

Wemyss, L. (E. Wemyss.)

Marchamley, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Wigan, L. (E. Crawford.)

Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

Rochdale, L.

Willoughby de Broke, L.

Mendip, L. (V. Clifden.)

Rotherham, L.

Wolverton, L.

Meston, L.

Roundway, L.

Wyfold, L.

Resolved in the negative and adjournment of the debate disagreed to accordingly.
The House then divided upon the Amendment to the Motion "That the Bill be now read 2a"—viz., to leave out all the words after "That" and insert "this House declines to proceed with a Bill which meets with no support from the
great majority of the Irish people, and affords no prospect of any permanent settlement."
On Question, whether the words proposed to be left out shall stand part of the Motion?—
Their Lordships divided:—Contents, 164; Not-Contents, 75.

CONTENTS.

Canterbury, L. Abp.

Lytton, E.

Hood, V.

Birkenhead, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Malmesbury, E.

Knollys, V.

Mount Edgcumbe, E.

Milner, V.

Wellington, D.

Onslow, E.

Peel, V.

Pembroke and Montgomery, E

St. Davids, V.

Abercorn, M. (D. Abercorn.)

Plymouth, E.

Templetown, V.

Bath, M.

Portsmouth, E.

Camden, M.

Reading, E.

London, L. Bp.

Dufferin and Ava, M.

Roden, E.

Sandwich, E.

Aberconway, L.

Abingdon, E.

Scarbrough, E.

Aberdare, L.

Albemarle, E.

Stamford, E.

Abinger, L.

Ancaster, E.

Strafford, E.

Addington, L.

Bradford, E.

Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

Alington, L.

Cavan, E.

Annesley, L. (V. Valentia.)

Chesterfield, E.

Farquhar, V. (L. Steward.)

Armaghdale, L.

Chichester, E.

Sandhurst, V. (L. Chamberlain.)

Atkinson, L.

Craven, E.

Allendale, V.

Avebury, L.

Curzon of Kedleston, E.

Cave, V.

Balfour, L.

Dartmouth, E.

Charlemont, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Dundonald, E.

Chilston, V.

Bledisloe, L.

Eldon, E.

Churchill, V.

Cawley, L.

Ferrers, E.

Esher, V.

Cheylesmore, L.

Fortescue, E.

Falkland, V.

Clinton, L.

Harewood, E.

Falmouth, V.

Clwyd, L.

Howe, E.

French of Ypres, V.

Colebrooke, L.

Kilmorey, E.

Goschen, V.

Colwyn, L.

Lindsey, E.

Hampden, V.

Cottesloe, L.

Lucan, E.

Hardinge, V.

Cozens-Hardy, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Methuen, L.

Sackville, L.

Dawnay, L. (V. Downe.)

Monckton, L. (V. Galway.)

St. Andries, L.

Deramore, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

St. Levan, L.

Desborough, L.

Monson, L.

Saltoun, L.

Douglas, L. (E. Howe.)

Moulton, L.

Sanderson, L.

Dunedin, L.

Muir Mackenzie, L.

Sandys, L.

Dunmore, L. (E. Dunmore.)

Newton, L.

Savile, L.

Etnmott, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Shaw, L.

Ernle, L.

O'Hagan, L.

Somerleyton, L. [Teller.]

Erskine, L.

Oriel, L. (V. Massereene.)

Somerton, L. (E. Normanton.)

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Ormathwaite, L.

Southwark, L.

Fairlie, L. (E. Glasgow.)

Penrhyn, L.

Stanmore, L. [Teller.]

Faringdon, L.

Phillimore, L.

Sterndale, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Playfair, L.

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

Glentanar, L.

Pontypridd, L.

Greville, L.

Queenborough, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Harris, L.

Ranfurly, L. (E. Ranfurly.)

Stuart of Wortley, L.

Hindlip, L.

Ranksborough, L.

Sudeley, L.

Horne, L.

Rathereedan, L.

Sumner, L.

Hothfield, L.

Rayleigh, L.

Teynham, L.

Hylton, L.

Redesdale, L.

Treowen, L.

Inchcape, L.

Ribblesdale, L.

Wavertree, L.

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Riddell, L.

Weir, L.

Lee of Fareham, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Wemyss, L. (E. Wemyes.)

Lovat, L.

Rochdale, L.

Wigan, L. (E. Crawford.)

Marchamley, L.

Rotherham, L.

Wolverton, L.

Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

Roundway, L.

Wrenbury, L.

Meston, L.

Ruthven of Gowrie, L.

Wyfold, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Argyll, D.

Hutchinson, V (E. Donoughmore.)

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

Somerset, D.

Killanin, L.

Crewe, M.

Ampthill, L.

Kilmaine, L.

Lincolnshire, M. (L. Great Chamberlain.)

Ashton of Hyde, L.

Lawrence, L.

Barrymore, L.

Leconfield, L.

Linlithgow, M.

Bellew, L.

MacDonnell, L.

Braye, L.

Monteagle, L. (M. Sligo.)

Bathurst, E.

Buckmaster, L.

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Beauchamp, E.

Chalmers, L.

Morris, L.

Drogheda, E.

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Mowbray, L.

Fitzwilliam, E.

Clements, L. (E. Leitrim.)

Oranmore and Browne, L.

Iveagh, E.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Ormonde, L. (M. Ormonde.)

Kimberley, E.

Crofton, L.

Oxonfoord, L. (E. Stair.)

Kingston, E.

Decies, L.

Parmoor, L.

Lanesborough, E.

Denman, L. [Teller.]

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Lovelace, E.

Desart, L. (E. Desart.)

Raglan, L.

Mayo, E. [Teller.]

Ebury, L.

Rathtdonnell, L.

Midleton, E.

Elgin, L. (E. Elgin and Kincardine.)

Ravetisworth, L.

Stanhope, E.

Saltersford, L. (E. Courtown.)

Westmeath, E.

Farnham, L.

Saye and Sele, L.

Wicklow, E.

Farrer, L.

Shandon, L.

Fingall, L. (E. Fingall.)

Stanley of Alderley, L. (L. Sheffield.)

Bangor, V.

Hare, L. (E. Listowel.)

Bertie of Thame, V.

Hemphill, L.

Sudley, L. (E. Arran.)

Bryce, V.

Holm Patrick, L.

Sydenham, L.

De Vesci, V.

Inchiquin, L.

Tenterden, L.

Harcourt, V.

Kenmare, L. (E. Kenmore.)

Willoughby de Broke, L.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past eight o'clock.