who had a Motion on the Paper that the House at its rising adjourn until tomorrow (Saturday), said he had hesitated about proposing the Motion in expectancy that the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone would rise. He wished to ask the noble Lord whether he had any light to throw on the position in which the House had been placed. Of course the Government had no desire to have a Saturday sitting unless it was necessary, though if the noble Lord persisted with his impediment in the way of the coming debate next week, he thought they had no alternative but to clear that impediment out of the way. In order to put the matter in order he begged to move "That this House at its rising to-day do adjourn until to-morrow, at ten of the clock."

said he felt in a great difficulty about the matter. He had no desire at all that the Government should insist on the Saturday sitting, which, it appeared to him, would operate with the least disadvantage to hon. Members on that side, with more disadvantage to Ministerialists, and still more to the officials of the House. It was, therefore, a very bad and clumsy expedient for dealing with the difficulty. He was only anxious to be quite sure that the Government were really going to deal with the question of blocking Motions without delay and in a businesslike and proper spirit. It had occurred to him that a possible way out of the difficulty would be for the Government to appoint a small Committee, representing all sections of the House who were interested in the subject, for the purpose of arriving at a common agreement as to how the question should be dealt with. They were told by the Government that they were anxious to deal with it by common assent, and he thought that could not very well be done by a discussion in the House. It was clumsy and difficult to deal with the matter by a long series of negotiations carried on by persons who perhaps were not very anxious for the success of the negotiations, and, therefore, the better plan, he thought, would be to have a meeting of a small number of Members representing the separate sections of the House, not according to their numerical strength, the question not to be decided by a majority, or anything of that kind, for the purpose of discussion and arriving at a common agreement. If the Government assented to some such proposal as he had suggested, he would be very pleased to move that the Order for the Second Reading of his Bill should be discharged.

said the noble Lord had put forward a plan which seemed to him (Lord R. Cecil) to be the best. He doubted if it was the best. He thought that private negotiations and consultations would be quite as likely, perhaps more likely, to attain the result they all desired than a sort of informal Committee. He did not know what the nature of such a Committee would be, but, however that might be, it would be a matter they would have to take time to consider, and in the meantime the debate was to take place on Monday, and the noble Lord's Bill was an impediment in the way of the debate's taking place. He could not understand why the noble Lord, as he had said yesterday, should deliberately commit the offence which he denounced, in order, at the expense of everybody else, to punish the Government for having been dilatory in bringing forward a remedy for this undoubted evil. A Motion such as that passed before Easter usually pointed to a consideration of the question, and ordinarily, according to his recollection, it was usual for all these questions of emendation of the rules of procedure to be dealt with at the beginning and not in the later part of the session, and it was not easy to see why they should proceed in hot haste to amend this rule. If the noble Lord would be good enough to remove this impediment, he was willing to consider the course he had suggested, or any other course, but it required to be considered. As the Leader of the Opposition had said, it was a matter which required considerable thought and investigation before the House laid down a new code of rules on the subject. He would not say that the difficulties were insuperable. But how to attain unanimity was the question. He did not think they could do more than they had done and were in process of doing. They were actively pursuing the matter before they ever heard of the noble Lord's Bill; they intended to go on with it, and he trusted that they might come to a conclusion which would be satisfactory even to the noble Lord. At any rate, he did not think they ought to be forced in any way out of the course they were following by action of this sort hastily taken, and so self-contradictory and so utterly inconsistent as committing in the face of the House the very offence which they were invited to proceed to make impossible. It was not in that way that they would be induced to exercise greater activity, but they were willing to do all in their power. He honestly said so, and the noble Lord ought to take it for granted that they would do what he said they would. They would even consider the noble Lord's suggestion and arrive at a conclusion upon that subsidiary question in the course of a few days. In the meantime he trusted that the noble Lord would have the grace and good nature to withdraw the Bill and depart from the commanding portion which he occupied.

said he was sure that his noble friend would be the last person to doubt the pledges which the. Prime Minister had given as to this question. But his noble friend, considering what had occurred in the past, was justified in concluding exactly the very opposite of what the Prime Minister meant, namely, that the Government were anxiously devoting their whole powers to rapidly solving this question. Might he remind the right hon. Gentleman how the situation had arisen? It should be borne in mind that his hon. friend the Member for Norwood had put down a Question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who requested him to defer it. His hon. friend, following the course always adopted where such a request was made by the Government, postponed his Question. In the interval which elapsed between the putting of the Question and the date on which it was to be answered, a Motion was put down, before Easter, on the subject, and it was discussed and carried unanimously, with the support of the Government, who announced their desire to take up the question energetically. Nearly three months had passed since that time, and the energetic proceedings had only gone so far as to see whether any arrangement could be come to between the Front Benches as to the sort of proposals that would require to be laid before the House. He believed the Prime Minister himself would admit that his noble friend was amply justified in taking any course which the rules of the House allowed to bring the matter prominently before the attention of the Government, and he did not believe that the course his noble friend had pursued was seriously condemned in any part of the House. Everybody felt that more rapid procedure was desirable; and if the "hot haste" of the future was not to be hotter than the haste in the past it would be some time before the question was dealt with. His noble friend had suggested an informal Committee, a sort of round table conference, upon the subject. The Prime Minister objected to that; at all events, he saw difficulty in that course. It did not commend itself to him; and, at the first glance, he himself did not say that there were not objections to it, because clearly it was not a course in accordance with ordinary precedent. But he did not quite follow the Prime Minister's objection to dealing with the subject, if not by an informal Committee, at all events by some Committee. The Prime Minister said it was not usual to deal with the Standing Orders in the latter part of the session. He was not aware that there was any rule or precedent on the matters; but certainly it had been in accordance with the practice of the House to have a Committee to discuss procedure towards the end of the session. He rather thought that the Committee which the right hon. Gentleman himself proposed last session, which had for its business to deal with certain very large changes which the Government proposed in the Standing Orders, sat as late as June or rather later. Whether the right hon. Gentleman thought an informal Committee was or was not desirable, or in accordance with precedent, no human being doubted that the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee was strictly in accordance with precedent, and he could not help thinking that if the Government had any real wish to press on this matter a small Parliamentary Committee should be appointed. He had always held that if the Government had a clear idea of what ought to be done in regard to the amendment of the Standing Orders they were justified in taking the responsibility upon themselves, and submitting their plan to the House for acceptance, rejection, or amendment. But in this case the Government had indicated that they had not got a plan, that they only intended to have a plan after they had gone through a certain amount of preliminary discussion, not confined to their own friends, but ex- tended to all quarters of the House. The accepted, orthodox, and familiar method of arriving at such a plan was to have a Committee representative of all sections of the House before which the matter could be discussed. He ventured to say that the Government should follow the principle which they themselves laid down in the last Parliament with great insistence, and which seemed to be the only one, in view of the uncertainty prevailing in their own minds as to the course which they ought to pursue. If they desired to show, as he was sure they did, their earnest wish to deal at once, and effectively, with this difficult position, they had only to get up and say that they would appoint such a Committee. Of course it could not be appointed that day. Notice would have to be given, and the Government must have time to consider the reference. If the right hon. Gentleman would say that he was prepared to refer the question to a small Committee representative of the Whole House, he believed that would solve the difficulty in which they found themselves, and would bring a rather strained position to an amicable conclusion, while they would all be saved the labour of a Saturday sitting. He believed it was the universal and unanimous wish of the House that the debate on the House of Lords should begin without difficulty on Monday next, and the course he suggested would, he thought, afford full satisfaction. He was sure it was a suggestion well worthy consideration, and was in full accordance with Parliamentary tradition.

said they now had two proposals before them. He confessed that the right hon. Gentleman's proposal seemed to be more defensible than that of the noble Lord. But the right hon. Gentleman's proposal had been sprung upon them after the noble Lord had sprung his. The point of the whole thing was that the noble Lord was not willing to withdraw his Bill unless the Government said immediately what they were going to do. If they had made up their minds that would be a small point to yield, but at the present time they were engaged in the process of gathering consent, and he thought that was a regular way of proceeding. Up to the present they had not succeeded in finding any particular remedy, and now the right hon. Gentleman had asked for a Committee. The Government would consider, not unfavourably, the proposal that they should appoint a Select Committee, but it was too much to ask that they should decide the question at once without looking into precedents to some extent and taking into account the general effect of that course. They must have a little time for consideration. The Government would consider the right hon. Gentleman's suggestions, and he did not think he could say any more than he had said. The noble Lord seemed to think that the Government were desirous of running away from the position they had taken up, but they had no such idea, and they were just as anxious to see the thing settled as the noble Lord himself. But the noble Lord's action had to be taken at once. He left him the responsibility for it.

said he understood that the right hon. Gentleman would favourably consider the plan he had suggested. The course which his noble friend had taken had not been fruitless; he had made a clear step towards a rapid solution of the question. His only desire was that the least inconvenience should be inflicted upon the Members of the House, and above all upon the officials, and after what had occurred he ventured to suggest that his noble friend should withdraw his Bill.

said that under the circumstances he would accept the course suggested by his right hon. friend. He would have accepted his suggestion, even if he did not agree with it, but in this case he did agree with it. Without saying anything more which might imperil the good understanding which now existed he would be very glad to move that the order for the Bill standing in his name be discharged.

Under the circumstances, Sir, I think that we should have it authoritatively from the Chair that it will be possible to-day to withdraw the Bill.

said when the order for the Bill was reached at five o'clock it would be open to the noble Lord to move to withdraw it.

then asked leave to withdraw his Motion for the Saturday sitting.

said that in what he was about to say it must not be taken that he was expressing the opinions of those who sat on that Bench, for he was giving his own views entirely. After listening to the speech of the Under-Secretary for the Colonies in introducing the Bill there were one or two features he would like to comment upon and on which he desired to ask for further information. The Undersecretary had told them that since the Act of 1867, there had been two or more conferences between the provinces which constituted the Dominion, and that at those conferences the matters which had been settled in the Act of 1867 were discussed. Those conferences found the arrangements made in 1867 were not entirely agreeable or suitable to the provinces, and some changes were made. His first question was, if it was within the power either of the provinces or of the Dominion Government to alter the Act of 1867 without a subsequent Act of this Parliament, why was it necessary they should have this Bill which merely altered the contribution made by the Dominion Government to the provincial Governments? With reference to the exceptional treatment that British Columbia received under the Bill he would like to say a word or two. The speech of the Undersecretary for the Colonies conveyed the impression that to a certain extent British Columbia feared she would suffer injury under the arrangement agreed to by the other provinces. The Government of British Columbia were unable to accept the arrangement arrived at by the other provinces, and, in fact, there had been a considerable divergence of opinion. When one considered the enormous area of British Columbia, the difficulties of transportation, and how expensive it must of necessity be to carry on the work of Government in a country of such great size, he was not surprised that the Government of British Columbia found themselves in a difficult position with regard to the contributions from the Dominion Parliament. The area of British Columbia was about equal to the area of France and Germany combined. That gigantic territory was peopled by something under a quarter of a million. That alone showed how difficult it must be to discharge all the obligations of Government, unless adequate provision were made by which the Government could be carried on. If it were not for the fact that the population of British Columbia was loyal to the law of the land, if it were not for the fact that they were law abiding to an almost exceptional extent, he believed it would be absolutely impossibly for the Government of the country to be carried on on such a small pittance. He would like to refer to a personal experience of his own. A few years ago he was in British Columbia. It was at the time of a strike, which lasted for many months, a strike which affected a large number of working men, and of which strike there appeared to be small prospect of the conclusion. He was told that the strikers, who were inexperienced in the matter of organisation, had sought the assistance of some professional strike organisers from the United States—some of the very men, if he remembered rightly, who had been engaged in those terrible transactions which were being revealed to an astonished public in the American law courts at the present time. The strike had lasted for several months. The time arrived when it was suggested that methods of force should be employed, but to the everlasting honour of the working men of Canada, the moment there was any suggestion of force, the American organisers were boldly told that the working men of Canada did not approve of American methods of settling disputes of that kind. He was happy to say that the strike was settled by peaceful compromise. There were none of those disgraceful scenes which had been unhappily associated with strikes in the United States. Unless the population of British Columbia were essentially loyal to the law it would be impossible to carry on the administration of that country on this basis. They were not only loyal to the law, but he was happy to say they were loyal to the Empire as a whole, and because they were loyal to the Empire, and were likely to become one of the most valuable portions of the Empire, he thought they should meet with sympathetic treatment on the part of the Home Government. But in the part of British Columbia which he knew best they had not been always loyal. He remembered, fifteen years ago, he found in the remoter districts of British Columbia a very strong feeling in favour of annexation to the United States. They looked at it merely from the business point of view at the time. They found that owing to the natural configuration of the ground it was easier to trade with the United States north and south than to trade east and west with the rest of Canada. Everyone who had been in the country knew that it was cut off from the rest of the Dominion by chains of mountains, and, except for a few passes, there were no means of travel east and west. But the feeling in favour of annexation disappeared the moment there was a threatening of trouble between the United States and ourselves with reference to a question about Venezuela, The moment there was that threatening there arose then, and there existed now, and he was confident, unless we did something to forfeit it, there would continue to exist, a feeling of loyalty towards the Mother Country which merited the sympathetic treatment which the right hon. Gentleman had been able to give in this matter. He understood that the earlier drafts of the Bill contained a provision that the arrangements laid down in it were to be final and unalterable. No wonder British Columbia protested against words of that kind. How could it be laid down that an Act of that House with reference to the Dominion of Canada should be final? Who could say what the developments of the next ten years would result in? He was glad to think that the Government were able to delete the words as to the provision being final and unalterable. It might very well happen that in ten years time, when the special grant of 100,000 dollars a year which the Bill gave to British Columbia came to an end, other arrangements would have to be made—arrangements which would be arrived at by a, conference between the constituent parts of the Dominion of Canada. He only hoped that then not only the provincial point of view, but the point of view of the Dominion as a whole, would receive from the Government of that day the same kindly and sympathetic consideration which British Columbia had received at the present time.

said he was aware of the urgent necessity of this Bill, and he believed it would meet the desires expressed by the Prime Ministers of the Dominion. He could not without demur allow the hon. Member for Seven-oaks to express what he understood him to express when he said that there was a feeling in favour of annexation in the western or Pacific portion of Canada. It had been his fortune to travel much in that province and to meet many of the leading men there. He could state that there was no sign or tendency in favour of annexation, and he thought the suggestion made by the hon. Member was a little unworthy. There was no sign or tendency except that of allegiance to the Crown on the part of the people of that great province.

I specifically said that at the present time the feeling in regard to annexation had disappeared entirely. I specifically said that it existed fifteen years ago.

said he was only too happy to accept the explanation, and he apologised for having misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. There was no sign of any annexationist feeling in that province. Of all the provinces in the Dominion, no one had bettor withstood all forms of annexation pressure than the province of British Columbia. Formerly the province was cut off, as the hon. Gentleman had truly said, but no one talked of it to day as cut off from the rest of the Dominion. There was now a trans-continental line running through Canada, and two others were in course of rapid construction. The Bill, he thought, was the outcome of a conference of the nine provincial Premiers, and of communications with Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Prime Minister of the Dominion. With the exception of the Prime Minister of British Columbia, the Conference was unanimous in passing the resolutions embodied in the Bill now before the House. The Prime Minister of the province came to England to lay his case before the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He desired to draw the attention of the House to the fact that in these days of uneasy Imperialism these most difficult negotiations had been conducted with credit on both sides without any noise in the Press, and without allegations being made that there was on the part of His Majesty's Government any want of sympathy with British Columbia, These most difficult and complicated negotiations were conducted with sympathy and hearty goodwill, with the result that the Under-Secretary for the Colonies had been enabled to bring the Bill before the House supported by all the Prime Ministers of the Dominion, the Bill containing one provision which left a way open for future terms to be made more satisfactory to the Prime Minister of British Columbia and the people whom he had the honour to serve. In this respect the Dominion of Canada and the Prime Minister of that greatest Colony of the Crown had shown a good example in the way they had dealt with the matter among themselves and with the Home Government.

said the House was under a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for having enlightened it a little in regard to the provisions of the Bill. He could not thank the Government for having done so. They were apparently under the impression that all that it was necessary to do was to introduce a Bill, and that there was no need to explain it or to give any information about it.

Really, the hon. Member does me an injustice. I spoke for nearly a quarter of an hour in introducing the Bill under the ten-minutes rule.

said he withdrew what he had said, but would ask whether, if a Bill was introduced under the ten minutes rule, and if the right hon. Gentleman spoke for fifteen minutes, that was to be sufficient for all the stages of the Bill. He had read the Bill, and although it was apparently very simple he was at a loss to understand why British Columbia should have been singled out and given apparently an advantage which was not given to the other Provinces. He understood from what had been said by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks that British Columbia was an extremely loyal place, that the population was small, that the industries were not largely developed at present, and that that was the reason why exceptional treatment had been granted. He gathered from what was said by the hon. Member for York that the Prime Minister of British Columbia objected to the Bill as originally drawn and came over to England to have an interview with the Secretary of State. He gathered that the interview was satisfactory, and that now the Prime Minister of British Columbia was satisfied. Was that correct?

:Since the Bill was introduced a great many objections have been considered. We have had the loyal assistance of the Prime Minister of British Columbia.

said that information had to be brought out little by little. He understood that the Prime Minister of British Columbia was not altogether satisfied with the proceedings in connection with the Bill. In regard to the ten years limit he would like to know whether objection was taken on behalf of the Prime Minister of British Columbia.

I did not intend to allow the Bill to pass without making any observations on it; but I thought that it would be more convenient to postpone my remarks until I could deal with any points raised during the debate. The hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London asked why the Bill came here at all. The British North America Act is the fundamental Act governing the Constitution of the Dominion of Canada, and the different Prime Ministers of Canada voluntarily entered into that union. Adherence to the union was something in the nature of a treaty, and when an alteration in the basis of the treaty is made, as it is by the revised schedule of subventions proposed, it was felt desirable by all the Prime Ministers in conference that such a matter should be ratified by the Imperial Parliament in the most formal way. It is only recently that an agreement has been come to by all the Provincial Prime Ministers and the Dominion Government, with the exception of British Columbia, whose needs, I admit frankly, are different from those of the other States, and require special treatment. That special treatment was accorded to her by the agreement of the other Prime Ministers, but not in such a degree as British Columbia would have wished. The objection of British Columbia was a very simple and a common one; it was that the special payment made was satisfactory as far as it went, but that it did not go far enough. The Prime Minister of British Columbia and others thought that the words "final and unalterable" should not be inserted in the Bill. It is true those words were in the Address of the Dominion Parliament but they were not inserted in the Bill by the Parliamentary draftsman on the ground that they were unusual and unsuitable in an Act of Parliament. I hope the House will realise that there is an element of urgency in the matter, as on the strength of the anticipation that this legislation will go through smoothly the Federal Government has undertaken to pay to the different Prime Ministers the revised schedule of subventions. Consequently, if the Act is not passed by 1st July, inconvenience will be caused in the framing of the Budgets in the Dominion, and I ask hon. Members for some special indulgence in passing as rapidly as possible a Bill which has nothing to do with party politics.

said that as one with many interests in Canada he hoped the House would give a Second Reading to this Bill, which would remove possible friction between the Dominion Government and the Provincial Governments. The fact that the Prime Minister of Canada and nine of the Prime Ministers of Provinces had settled the terms of the Bill showed their high statesmanlike capacity; and it was also notable that the Prime Minister of British Columbia had soon his way to accept a compromise. The British Columbian Government objected strongly to the use of the words in the agreement "final and unalterable." They maintained, and rightly, that there was nothing in their Province absolutely final and unalterable, so vast was the area, so vigorous the growth. Two new railways were being built, opening up the far North to the Pacific shores, developments were going on in the island of Vancouver, new steamship lines were being established between Vancouver, San Francisco, and Japan, and there was a growing demand for both labour and capital from this and other countries, so immense was the natural wealth of the vast forests and the mines and ores. The Province was to be congratulated on its great prosperity, and the Bill would make for easy working between British Columbia and the other Provinces and the Central Dominion Government.

said he supported the Bill as one who had great interest in Canada. British Columbia had had its loyalty tested by material inducements being held out to it to join the United States. He hoped his friends on that (the Opposition) side of the House would not obstruct the measure, but give it their hearty support, as it tended in the right direction. If the Prime Minister of British Columbia did not get by the Bill all that he had asked for, at any rate it should be shown that he had obtained the sympathies of the British House of Commons.

said he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill one or two Questions which came within the provisions of the Resolution, and they arose in this way. When land was taken on lease for the purpose of this Bill, as he understood it, the agreement for the lease would be regarded as a preliminary expense, and would be paid for out of money provided by Parliament. He wished to elicit from the right hon. Gentleman what were to be the terms and conditions of the lease, and who would be responsible for giving compensation, in the first place, to the farmer, who was to be deprived of part of his land for the purposes of small holdings, and, secondly, to the landlord when the land taken by the county council was surrendered at the end of the first lease. He also wished to know what would be the nature of the compensation. He would take the case of the farmer first. In the first schedule to the Bill there was this proposal—

"The council may at any time after they have served the notice to treat on the owner, serve on the tenant, if any, of the land to be compulsorily acquired, notice to quit, and such notice shall have the like effect as if it had been given by the owner."

In his opinion, compensation should be made under whichever of the three forms of tenure the farm was held. Under all ordinary circumstances it was when the landlord gave notice to quit that he was responsible for the compensation to the tenant. The first question he wished, therefore, to put was, who was to be responsible in this case for the notice? Was it to be the county council or was it to be the landlord? That was a point which ought to be made quite clear, because he did not think it was so in the paragraph he had read in the Schedule. The second question was what was the nature of the compensation to be paid under the terms of the lease? An existing tenant would be paid compensation either under the Agricultural Holdings Act, or under the custom of the country, or under agreement made with the landlord. In his judgment the compensation to be paid by the county council should be the same as it would be under whichever of these three forms of tenure the farm was held; provided that neither the custom nor the agreement gave less than he would be entitled to under the Agricultural Holdings Act. Under that Act the compensation would be the value to the incoming tenant which would be quite sufficient. But the value to an ordinary incoming tenant and to the county council when the land was required for a different purpose might not be the same. And yet there was no reason why in such a case the tenant should be deprived by a hair's-breadth of the full compensation he was entitled to now. He came to the case of the landlord. If at the end of the lease the county council did not want the land any longer for their particular purpose and it was returned to the landlord, that of course pre-supposed some kind of deterioration in the land. If it had not deteriorated, people would be anxious to take it and the county council to keep it. He had asked a very important question in regard to the breaking up of grass lands, but he had never been able to find any provision of compensation in such a case. He thought before the Bill went upstairs they ought to have some clear understanding on these points, because, although he had searched the Bill, he found no clause or clauses enacting compensation of this nature. It was only in the schedules that they found anything material on the point, and even there there was a very curious provision which he did not remember to have seen before, that where there was a dispute between the council and the landlord as to what the compensation was to be, it was to be settled by one valuer who was to be appointed by one of the parties to the dispute, viz., the Board of Agriculture, representing the Commissioners. Section 30 of the Bill dealt with the question of the county councils receiving compensation, and therefore the omission was all the more curious. He hoped his right hon. friend would be able to give them some explanation upon these points to which he omitted to make any reference on the Second Reading of the Bill. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he made these observations with no view of putting any impediment in the way of the progress of the Bill, but if the right hon. Gentleman would answer his questions it would conduce to the progress of the measure.

said he could remember no sins of omission on his part which made it necessary for the right hon. Gentleman to return to the House and recur to this subject. He thought, however, that he had dealt with the main questions, and if he had omitted to deal with some of the smaller criticisms it was certainly not with any desire to conceal from the right hon. Gentleman or the House the intention and the footing upon which the Bill had been drawn. The right hon. Gentleman had asked how compensation was provided for in the case of a departing tenant. That was specially provided for under Part II. of Schedule 1. Of course the county council would be the incoming tenant, and they would come under the usual custom of an incoming tenant, although the legal remedy of the outgoing tenant was against the landlord. He had no doubt that in such cases the county council would pay directly to the outgoing tenant, but if the landlord paid he would recover it from the county council. The sitting tenant, therefore, would be in no worse position than he was now, either under the Lands Clauses Acts or under the custom of the county in which he was. No difference was made in the position which the tenant was entitled to occupy. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman thought that giving power to serve a notice to treat with the landlord was equivalent to a notice to quit to the tenant, because the intention of that provision was merely to enable the county council to perform the duty which might have been omitted by the landlord. Moreover, the power only applied to yearly tenancies, and did not apply to leases. As to compensation to the landlord for depreciation or possible depreciation of the land at the expiration of the term, all he could say was that given an ordinary tenancy the landlord would be entitled under the ordinary law to compensation for deterioration in the ordinary way, and under the ordinary rule. That was expressed in Part II. of the Schedule. There would be the usual provisions for good culture, and if grass land was broken up that was one of the things which the county council would have to deal with, and they could proceed for waste against the tenant. As to the arbitrator being appointed by the Board he did not think that any exception could be taken, and a similar course was pursued in regard to arbitrations under the Local Government Board.

inquired who was to pay the amount which might become due for depreciation. Would it be necessary for the county council to pay out of the rates the claims for depreciation? He would like to know whether it would not be possible under circumstances when the Commissioners had stepped in and forced the county councils to take the land and create Small Holdings, for the Small Holdings Commissioners to pay out of Imperial Funds the claims for depreciation. He had not been able to obtain a copy of the Resolution, but so far as he could understand, no definite sum was mentioned in it, and very little information was given as to who the Commissioners would be and what salary they would receive. Could the right hon. Gentleman say what sum would be placed at the disposal of the Small-Holdings Commissioners, what salaries they would receive, and what class of men they would be? Would they be Members of Parliament appointed by the Government, would they be responsible to the House for the working of the Act, or would the Board of Agriculture be responsible to the House and the country, and would it be possible for gentlemen to hold these places who had financial obligations with regard to the creation of small holdings in the country.

said the salaries of the Commissioners would be fixed by the Treasury and the Board of Agriculture at whatever sum was necessary to secure people who would perform the duties adequately and properly. No Member of Parliament would be able to act as a Commissioner. The landlord and not the tenant farmer would have had notice to quit in respect of the land used for small holdings, and would have quitted it. The question of damage by severance of the farm could be easily settled.

asked on a point of order whether it was in order to discuss on this Resolution the financial clauses of the Bill which were printed in italics.

The hon. Member can only discuss the clauses in Committee. All he can discuss now is whether the House shall grant this money.

moved to amend the Resolution by inserting after the word "payment" the words "a sum not exceeding £20,000 per annum." He said that he put the Amendment on the Paper because he thought the Committee ought to know what amount of money they were going to vote. This precedent had always been followed by hon. and right hon. Gentleman opposite when in Opposition. They were most strict in insisting on their right to know, before they voted, how much they were going to vote. It was the more important in this case because when the Bill went to Committee the closure might be applied and it would be impossible for a proper discussion to take place. It was in order to ensure a discussion that he moved this Amendment. He had put in what he conceived to be a large sum, and the only question that seemed to arise was whether that sum was sufficient for the purpose to which the money was to be devoted. He understood that that purpose was the payment of salaries and expenses to which the Commissioners might be put. The expenses to which they were put could not be of any great amount, because the real expenses under the Bill would fall on the local authorities.

If any.

If any. Then he was right in thinking that the expenses under the Resolution would be limited to the salaries of the Commissioners and their clerks and officers and to the cost of any experiments they might make in the institution of small holdings which the Bill authorised. If those were the only objects for which the House was asked to vote the money it seemed to him that £20,000 a year was an ample sum for the purpose. He might be met with the argument that the duties of the Commissioners were all in the future, that such duties had never existed in the past, and that therefore it was impossible to foretell what amount of money would be required. But such an argument was an extremely feeble one, because they might be quite sure that the Government had taken the trouble to ascertain the amount of expenditure to which they were going to commit the nation. The only other objection would be that the amount was not sufficient; that of course could only be a matter of opinion; the right hon. Gentleman would be able to tell the Committee the grounds on which he founded his opinion, and if he could show that a larger amount was necessary he believed that those who sat in Opposition, and who considered they ought to know how much they were voting, would not be averse to extending the amount to £25,000 or something of that sort. All he said was that these experiments should be temporary and tentative, and that Parliament should not rush on before they knew what the cost was going to be. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would accept the Amendment in the spirit in which it was moved, or if he could not accept it he would state clearly to the Committee how much he proposed to spend under the Resolution. He begged to move.

said that, besides the two objects to which his hon. friend had referred, the payment of salaries and the experimental expenditure under Clause 14, there were the "preliminary expenses" under Clause 15. That was one point on which he wished for information. The words "preliminary expenses" were very wide, and the words of the Bill were quite wide enough to cover the payments out of pocket. Let them take the question of compensation. Was it intended to allow expenses of that kind, which might be a very large amount, to be paid by the Board out of this small holdings account? If it was not, the proposed amount would be sufficient for the purpose, because the legal expenses would not be a very large item. But apart from that it was important that there should be a limit to begin with. There was not in the Bill any limit as to the number of Commissioners, and it would be an advantage to know what number the right hon. Gentleman intended to appoint. The only provision was that they might appoint two or more. Did that mean three or four or a larger number? Then as to staff, was it intended that the Commissioners were to have an office and a large staff of their own, or was the idea that they should be a part of the Board of Agriculture and have a few clerks? It was on all these points that the amount of grant that the Board would require depended, and therefore it was relevant that the right hon. Gentleman should, if he could, tell the Committee what was his view.

said that the fixing of a limit on the expenditure would hamper the discretion not only of the Board of Agriculture but of Parliament itself, for these salaries would appear year by year in the Estimates. The Small Holdings Fund at the Bank of England was not the fund out of which these salaries would be paid. The Treasury had agreed to allocate to the Small Holdings Fund in the first year £100,000, to be used in providing the experimental holdings set up by the Board of Agriculture, or in paying the preliminary expenses of the acquisition of land by the county councils. Clause 15 was carefully drafted to exclude the payment of charges which were really part of the purchase money, and not of the preliminary expenses. It was necessary to cheapen the processes of land transfer, and a discretion was left to the Board of Agriculture in the payment of expenses so that no payment should be made for excessive costs too lightly incurred.

said that everybody must have been impressed with the inconvenience of this part of the procedure of the House. The right hon. Gentleman had been compelled to answer questions which he said were due to misconception and that was due no doubt to the Committee having in their hands a Resolution which they had never before seen. It was almost inevitable that under the circumstances they should discuss the financial clauses of the Bill and not the financial Resolution. They were much indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for the trouble he had taken in giving the explanation that he had and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman's excellent example would be followed by his colleagues in the future. He understood the right hon. Gentleman to make it perfectly clear that in these preliminary expenses there was to be nothing except that which was part of the expense of acquiring the land. He should be very sorry to assent to any Amendment that first of all would interfere with the right of Parliament to fix and vary the expenditure from time to time, and, in the second place, might have the effect of throwing upon the rates some portion of the expenditure which otherwise would fall on public funds. He therefore asked his hon. friend not to press his Amendment.

said the speech of the right hon. Gentleman had among its many other merits that it was in support of reducing the expenditure to the lowest possible limit, because so much use was made of the unpaid work obtained from the county councils. But apart from that consideration, he thought it would be very unwise in the first place to limit expenditure to enable the county councils to carry out the policy of the Bill; and, if they were not sufficiently active in carrying it out, of course that would involve additional expense. Above all, there was the question of experimental work, which he thought was one of the most important recommendations in connection with small holdings. That experimental work many of the county councils would not always find themselves in a position to undertake, and some considerable expenditure would be highly desirable in the interests of the policy of the Bill for the creation of small holdings. The experimental work should be of a sufficiently comprehensive character to carry out small holdings on the basis of further agricultural organisation. On that ground, therefore, he thought it would be unwise to limit the sum which the Board of Agriculture would be able to spend at discretion. As regarded the valuers, he thought the whole success of the scheme depended on having a single valuer and a low scale of expenditure. There was no difficulty, certainly in the northern part of England and in Scotland, in finding valuers who were not by any means paid officials of any. public department, but who were recognised in the different localities as the most capable men that could be selected, and no Government department should go outside those valuers. He thought the scheme, so far, was admirable, but he was very much against limiting the preliminary expenditure which he had indicated.

said the hon. Baronet behind him had given good reason for thinking that in certain circumstances the sum to be taken was too large; but the right hon. Gentleman perhaps would give them a further estimate which would enable them to form something like an idea of what the Bill would cost, or such information as to the details of the work as would enable them to form an estimate for themselves. The right hon. Gentleman had referred only to the Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners, but in the event of the Bill being put widely into operation in most of the counties of England, they would like to know how many Commissioners and assistant commissioners would be required; and, under the Bill, it would seem that there were also to be local agents. Did all that come out of the money they were now asked to vote? Then there were all the expenses of the inspectors, of inquiries, and of witnesses. These were matter contained in Clauses 16, 22, and a number of others. Were these to come out of the money they were about to vote? If that were so, he thought £20,000 would not be anything like the sum that the operation of the Bill would require; and he would like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman had in his mind the number of assistant commissioners, who were to go all over the counties, and the number of local agents and inspectors to be appointed, so that they might be enabled to form an estimate for themselves. Under Clause 23 it was provided that if the land taken was not wanted it was to be thrown back into the farmer's possession. Was the compensation, then, to be paid to come out of the money they were now authorising? At any rate, if they could get from the right hon. Gentleman some idea of the extent of the staff of sub-commissioners, inspectors, and local agents, they might be able to form some estimate of the expenditure likely to be involved in this Bill.

said, in reference to the Amendment, he thought it could be disposed of if he was right in what seemed to him to be the interpretation of the Bill. Clause 15 was not very clear, but it enabled the Board to—

"repay, or undertake to repay, the county council out of the Small Holdings Account, the whole or any part of the expenses incurred by the council in proceedings in relation to the acquisition of land for small holdings, etc."

If they turned to Clause 7, it provided that land acquired by the county council for the purposes of small holdings might be adapted to letting and be let for small holdings under and in accordance with the provisions of the Small Holdings Act, 1892. Then, again, if they went back to the Act of 1892—this was part of the inconvenience of drafting by reference —he thought it was quite clear it included in "adaptation" the erection and provision of buildings and the equipment of the farms. It was upon that point that he wanted to have the reply of the right hon. Gentleman, because under Clause 3 of the Small Holdings Act of 1892 power was given for the adaptation of small holdings; and then by Subsection 3 of the clause it was provided—

"That the county council may also, if they think lit, as part of the agreement for sale or letting of a small holding, adapt the land to small holdings by erecting such buildings or making such adaptations of existing buildings as in their opinion are required for the due occupation of the holding, etc., etc."

If that were true, what it appeared to mean was that, out of the funds provided by Parliament, the county council would have power, as part of the preliminary expenses of small holdings, to adapt and erect buildings, and, generally speaking, to equip small holdings. If that were so, any limitation to such a stun as £20,000 would be a deadly blow to the operation of the Bill, and fatal also, he thought, to the local funds, because, in the absence of national funds, either the Bill would not be carried out, or, if it was, it would be at the cost of the local rates. That seemed to him to be an interpretation which might fairly be placed on Clause 15, taken in connection with the two other sections to which he had referred, and if the right hon. Gentle- man concurred, then he would have no hesitation in earnestly recommending his hon. friend not to persevere with his Amendment, and he thought that would meet the general view of those on his side of the Committee.

said the right hon. Gentleman had not given any reply to his first question as to what the cost of the Bill would be. In reference to the Amendment the right hon. Gentleman said it would limit their power, and that there would be opportunity on the Estimates to discuss the question. But when the Estimates came on, it would be extremely difficult to discuss these matters, as they would not be able to effect any alteration in reference to money already spent on salaries and expenses, and, of course, the majority would support the suggestion of their leaders in resisting any alteration. His right hon. friend the Member for South Dublin had said he could not approve of the Amendment if it was going to east the expenditure on the rates. But he could not see that his proposal would have that effect. The only possible effect it could have in that direction would be that under Clause 15 —which the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill had already assured them only referred to legal expenses—if there was not sufficient money at the disposal of the Commissioners, they would not be able to recoup the county councils in respect of the preliminary expenses.

Turn to Clause 7.

said that Clause 7 referred back to the Act to which his right hon. friend had alluded, and the point in regard to which he presumed the right hon. Gentleman would answer that Clause 15 was so very distinct that he believed he was correct in saying that they would not be allowed to do anything more than contribute the whole or part of the legal expenses incurred in the acquisition of the land. If he was right he really did not see what harm there was in his Amendment. If he was wrong, then it showed the advantage of discussion, because it opened up a tremendous vista. These Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners would be allowed to go about the country to acquire and equip land for small holdings, and the expenditure might run into millions of pounds, under this Resolution. He did not say that it was at all likely to do so, but he submitted that they must be prepared against eventualities. He did not see why he should withdraw his Amendment unless it were satisfactorily answered by the right hon. Gentleman. He wanted the right hon. Gentleman to tell him how much he was going to spend in a year. He did not expect a precise figure, but a rough estimate. He wanted to know what the Commissioners were going to spend, and he relied on the courtesy of the right hon. Gentleman for more information.

said the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bordesley had said the sum proposed was an exorbitant one, but he hoped that the Department of Commissioners and other officers would not be an expensive one. It was quite obvious that the number of Assistant Commissioners and other assistants would vary according to the needs of the year and the development and success of the policy. He would be glad if the Bill turned out a success, as he believed it would, for they would then require considerably more assistants in the Commissioners Department for carrying it out. The amount that would be spent would be exactly the amount necessary to provide the Commissioners, who had to carry out the provisions of the Act, with an adequate amount of assistance for the working of their Department, and Votes would be annually submitted to Parliament for consideration. The right hon. Gentleman had no right to ask him to give an estimate; he had told him that Parliament would be informed year by year of the necessities of the case, and those, of course, would become actually known when they appeared in the Estimates. In reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon, he did not propose to go into the question of legal interpretation, but perhaps the light hon. Gentleman would take the advice offered to him by the hon. Member for the City of London, from whom he could get an opinion for nothing. Under Clause 15 the only expenses that could be paid to the county council by the Board and by the Treasury were expenses in connection with the acquisition of land. But the right hon. Gentle-man had referred to the equipment of the holdings under the Act of 1892, and had said that that equipment was among the preliminary expenses of the sale of the holding; but the right hon. Gentleman would realise that the adaptation would not commence until after the acquisition of the land had been effected. The clause only applied to the preliminaries to acquisition, and not to action that might be taken after acquisition.

Clause 7 refers to land acquired.

Yes; but those terms which were to be made were only processes that took place before the land was acquired, because they were preliminary to the acquisition. He thought the right hon. Gentleman might take it from him that the words did carry out the intention of the clause, which was to pay all the necessary cost of putting the county council on the one side, and the landlord on the other, in the position of a willing purchaser and a willing seller, and, under compulsion, all the intermediate expenses, such as the cost of the inquiry notices, advertisements, arbitration, and so on. The clause was not meant to do more than pay the preliminary expenses loading up to the purchase of the land.

said he had not stated that £20,000 was a sum which could be considered liberal, but what he had said was that in the eyes of those who thought the money was unnecessary it was too large a sum to throw away altogether. But he had added that if the Bill was to be put in force throughout the counties of England, and especially if the county councils showed themselves restive, and they had to do all the work by compulsion, then the army of commissioners, local agents, and inspectors, and the inquiries and so forth, would increase the expenses to such an extent that £20,000 would not at all represent what would be required.

asked why it was necessary to incur the expense of commissioners at all? Why could not the work of these small holdings, an object about which they were all agreed, be carried out by the Board of Agriculture acting through inspectors? He thought if the Board of Agriculture undertook these duties it would mean much more than a saving of expense, because the work would be better carried on than it would be by commissioners. They were all asking who those commissioners were going to be, and therefore he hoped some information would be given upon that point.

said that some Amendment of this kind was very necessary. Those who had had experience of the working of the Labourers Acts in Ireland knew how the money under that Act was swallowed up by the salaries of the officials. They were all aware that those who were intended to be benefited by such Acts as these came in last. The cost of the machinery was so great that the amount of benefit to those who ought to receive it would be very slight. He would like to know if this £20,000 limit included the salaries of the commissioners, staff, and so forth, as well as preliminary experiments. He understood that the experimental side was necessary in order to decide whether or not more money should be spent in certain localites. Under Clause 14 would those experiment be based on the lines of the new settler or upon those who were now carrying on similar work? If the experimental work was to take a certain sized farm, put a tenant on it, and then try to find out whether he was able to produce crops of a certain standard, the experiment would be a failure. In drawing comparisons, would the adjoining tenants and the profits they were making out of their farms be taken into account? If that was the system they were going to adopt, they would find all existing small holders would be applying for subsidies, because if they subsidised one class they must treat another class in the same way. A very good parallel was the case of the fishing industry.

I do not think the question of subsidies comes in at all under this Amendment.

said his argument arose out of what had already been said in Committee. If the Committee decided to authorise this unlimited amount of money they ought to be supplied with some rough estimate as to how far the money would go in the first five years. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that £100,000 was the amount first asked for. He understood that that amount was not for salaries. If he said the amount was to pay for the salaries of the officials entirely, then he felt somewhat in a difficulty, because he would not be able to criticise the matter. If £100,000 was wanted for the payment of the commissioners and the clerks and the rents of their offices, telephones, &c, it seemed to him to be an extraordinary amount which required more explanation.

said he desired to explain clearly that all his Amendment proposed to do was to insert the words "a sum not exceeding £20,000 per annum." He did not touch either the experimental clauses in the Bill or the £100,000 to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded. All he laid down was that the salaries, expenses, and remuneration of the Small Holdings Commission should be fixed at not more than £20,000.

thought the hon. Baronet had several times over endeavoured to make clear his Amendment. He was afraid there were some hon. Gentlemen opposite who did not quite understand what the proposition of the Bill was. Although it was out of order, perhaps he might be permitted to say that there were no subsidies provided for smallholders in the Bill. Some hon. Members opposite seemed to think that this £100,000 was intended to provide part of the salaries and expenses of these officers. He had stated more than once that that sum had nothing whatever to do with salaries, because it went into the Small Holdings Account for the acquisition of experimental holdings. He had also stated that all the salaries of these officers would be voted annually by Parliament, and it remained in the discretion of Parliament to fix the amount to be provided for that purpose. He believed that was the proper method for retaining Parliamentary control over these officers. He had been asked why should the Board set up a Commission which was somewhat in the nature of a Land Court. He was afraid that the word "commissioner," which he probably had incautiously chosen, had misled some hon. Members opposite. They were not independent commissioners, but simply persons who made the inquiries, and it would not matter much whether they were called commissioners or inspectors, because they were salaried officers of the Board. The Board must have an agent, and it must employ somebody to move about the country. The word "commissioner" seemed to have misled some hon. Gentlemen opposite. If any of these appointments as commissioner were given to any Member of Parliament he would have to vacate his seat, and he would not be able to enter Parliament as long as he was a commissioner under the Bill. Although he might have unfortunately selected the word "commissioner," there was nothing in the nature of a commission about it; the commissioners were simply inquiring agents under the direct control of the Board, and their salaries would be voted under the usual Vote for the Board of Agriculture.

asked whether these commissioners would have any power of initiating inquiries on their own account. The obligation was laid upon them by the Bill of reporting upon the need for small holdings, and that rather led them to believe that the commissioners would have a free hand to hold inquiries pretty much when and where they liked, subject to the condition that they reported to the Department. There was all the difference in the world between an inspector who wont down to some place by direction of the Board, and had no power except to report direct to the President of the Department the result of his inquiry, and that kind of officer who could at his own discretion go down and hold inquiries where he liked and report the result of his inquiry. It seemed to him that the commissioners had power to hold their own inquiries, and that was a sufficient justification for their assuming that they were not analogous to the ordinary inspectors. If that were so he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would accept an Amendment in Committee to call these officials inspectors and not commissioners. It was well known that inspectors had no power to act and hold inquiries on their own initiative. Therefore he thought the right. hon. Gentleman ought to call them what they really were, that was inspectors, whose business it would be to do what the Department told them, instead of allowing them to go marauding about the country, possibly doing a good deal of mischief. If the commissioners were only to act under a Minister responsible to Parliament who could be called to account in Parliament for what they were doing, it was quite clear that the assumption that some form of a Land Court was being set up had no foundation.

said he was extremely sorry that the right hon. Gentleman had thought it necessary to draw such a picture as that in which he described these commissioners as being men inclined to maraud about the country, doing a great deal of mischief. He might remind the right hon. Gentleman that that was not at all consistent with what he said at a former stage of this Bill, for he then told them that he had no desire to wreck this measure.

said he had no desire to wreck the measure, but he thought the words he had used, of which the right hon. Gentleman complained, were perfectly justified. If the Commissioners were allowed to hold inquiries just at their own sweet will, his language was not at all improper. The suggestion he had made to the right hon. Gentleman he was sure would be likely to conduce to the successful working of the Bill.

:pointed out that Clause 2, which set out the duties of the Commissioners, stated that they were—

"Acting under the direction of the Board.'

That was the earliest possible place he could put those words into the Bill. He thought that was the only point to which the right hon. Gentleman's speech was directed.

said the right hon. Gentleman had only himself to blame for the discussion which had taken place in regard to the word" commissioners." At a previous stage the First Commissioner of Works stated plainly that no Amendment whatever limiting the scope of the Bill would be accepted in Committee. Therefore he could not be surprised if they elected to bring before the Committee matters of this kind. But apart from the salaries of the Commissioners he objected to their appointment altogether. It was quite true that the second clause provided that the Commissioners should be under the direction of the Board, but those who had been Members of Parliament for any length of time knew the meaning of that phrase.

Order, order. We cannot discuss upon this Amendment the constitution of the Commission. We are simply dealing with the salaries and expenses of the Commissioners and officials, and the matter of the appointment of the Commissioners and their duties is more proper for discussion when the Bill is in Committee.

thought he would have been at liberty upon the salary of the Commissioners to discuss the question whether they should receive any salary at all.

That is a matter which will come up for discussion upon the Bill itself. The only question which can be dealt with now is the general question of salaries and expenses of the Commissioners and officials. The Resolution is simply an enabling Resolution, without which the Committee on the Bill could not deal with the salaries and expenses.

said that this was an Amendment to limit the amount of the expenditure, and if instead of being Commissioners these officials were simply inspectors the figure would bear a very different aspect. It was quite true that so far as the first subsection of Clause 2 went the Commissioners must act under the direction of the Board. That meant that the Board must start them on their inquiry, but when started they would see that under Sub-clause 3 they would be able to act as independent officers.

It is quite obvious that the hon. Member is discussing the Bill, and you cannot discuss that under this Resolution. The Resolution deals with the expenses in general terms, and the proper time to discuss the matter to which the hon. Member is referring is in Committee.

said the statement made by the First Com- missioner of Works that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin could hardly be expected to understand the Bill was one which he would hardly wish to repeat on reflection. If his right hon. friend the Member for South Dublin, with his long experience of agricultural matters, could not be expected to grasp the details of the Bill, that must be the fault of the Bill and not of the right hon. Gentleman. What the country wanted to know was the amount which the right hon. Gentleman estimated would have to be voted for salaries and expenses. They ought to know whether the scheme was to be more costly than appeared on the face of the Bill.

said the question put by his hon. friend had not received adequate consideration from the First Commissioner of Works. The Amendment proposed to limit the salaries and expenses of the Commissioners to £20,000, and in refusing to accept that the First Commissioner of Works said that the matter ought to be left to the discretion of Parliament. Parliament was now sitting, and they were now in Committee of the Whole House. Would not the right hon. Gentleman give them a little information to enable them to exercise their discretion now? No doubt the right hon. Gentleman had furnished an approximate estimate to the Treasury, according to the usual practice, and he thought the House of Commons, as well as the Treasury, had the right to be taken into the right hon. Gentleman's confidence. He could not conceive that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Financial Secretary of the Treasury had allowed the First Commissioner of Works to draw a blank cheque on the future in this respect. Why did the right hon. Gentleman refuse to accept the Amendment? Did he or the Treasury contemplate that the official salaries and expenses might amount to more than £20,000 a year? If not, there could be no objection to accepting the Amendment.

said he did not think that anyone would object to fair salaries being paid to the Commissioners. The question raised now was in regard to what the Commissioners were going to do. The Minister in charge of the Bill the other day stated that one of the principal duties of the Commissioners would be to stimulate a desire for allotments throughout the country.

The Amendment before the Committee deals solely with the first part of the Resolution, and relates only to the salaries and expenses of the small holdings Commissioners and other officers. The duties of the Commissioners cannot be discussed on this Amendment.

said he had tried to get a copy of the Resolution, and could not. It was not printed in the Papers this morning.

No, and that is according to the rule. When the late Government was in power the same thing happened.

said that if the Commissioners were to stimulate a desire for allotments and small holdings throughout the country, and the Committee were passing a Vote for that purpose, they might be letting themselves in for something extremely heavy.

That is outside the scope of the first part of the Resolution. That has nothing to do with the salaries and expenses to which the Amendment refers.

Would not this work come under the salaries?

The latter part of the Resolution which is not touched by this Amendment, refers to the costs and expenses incurred in respect of small holdings and allotments by the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

said he did not know what the expenses would be if they were not the expenses of the Commissioners going about the country.

The expenses of carrying out the Act other than the salaries, remuneration and expenses of the Commissioners and officials concern the latter part of the Resolution, and do not fall under the Amendment.

said he understood that travelling expenses would include expenses for holding meetings, delivering lectures, and giving magic lantern entertainments, if the Commissioners were to stimulate a desire for allotments and small holdings. He had not the slightest desire. that the Commissioners should not be adequately paid. Unless they were well paid good men would not be got.

said a most important question had been raised as to whether the Commissioners would occupy a position corresponding to that of inspectors under the Board of Agriculture, or whether they would occupy a quasi-independent position. He recognised that this was a point for discussion in Committee upstairs rather than now, but owing to engagements elsewhere he would have no opportunity of taking part in the work of the Committee. In view of the provisions contained in Clauses 34 and 35 of the Bill he had come to the conclusion that the Commissioners would occupy a very prominent position, and that they would carry out their duties independently. He had, therefore, reluctantly come to the conclusion not to support his hon. friend's Amendment. It would be unwise, looking to the importance of the position to be occupied by the Commissioners, to limit their salaries and expenses to anything like £20,000. If the salaries and expenses were to be fixed in this way the useful work which it was hoped the Commissioners would be able to do might be limited.

said the right hon. Gentleman had been clearly asked whether he could not give the Committee more information as to the Estimate which had been put before the Treasury. He would have thought that a Liberal Government whose members when in Opposition were so fond of preaching economy, would not give up the practice of putting before the Treasury an Estimate in a matter of this kind. If an approximate Estimate of salaries and expenses had been put before the Treasury, surely the right hon. Gentleman might give the Committee a little more information about it. He and his friends did not ask for every little detail down to a halfpenny, but some idea of the amount might be given. He could not understand why the Government did not give the information.

said the Government had refused to give any information as to how the money was to be expended. Could the front Government Bench suggest a percentage of the amount that was really to be devoted to administration so that they might all feel they were not voting as much money for the working of the scheme as for the good work which it was proposed to do under the Bill. If £100,000

said that he objected to sign a blank cheque for a sum which could not be estimated by the House, and as to the amount of which the Government refused to give any information. In his opinion the Board of Agriculture was better fitted to do the work than these new Commissioners, and yet they were asked to vote for the payment of a great army of officials in every county in England, including agents and sub-commissioners, without any idea being given of the amount of expense to be incurred, whether it would amount to £10,000, or £200,000. He made a further appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, in fairness to the House of Commons and the taxpayers of the country, to give some idea of the expense which he thought would be incurred in the employment of this great army of official.

asked whether they were to understand that the discretion on the part of the Government was to be absolutely unlimited.

said that of course there was a sum of £100,000 for the preliminary expenses in connection with the experiment of forming small holdings. The other part which had been discussed was the number and cost of the Commissioners who had to carry out the Bill. Those must necessarily depend on the shape in which the Bill came out of Committee, and on the duties which were imposed upon them by the House. The discretion would be exercised by the Board of Agriculture and the Treasury in the first place, and the House would always have an opportunity, every year, of criticising the amount provided for the salaries and expenses of the Commissioners.

It will be for the convenience of the House if I make a few observations in moving the Second Reading of this Bill. I should like to say that the Bill has nothing whatever to do with the telegraph service. It refers solely to the telephone service. It has further no connection with the proposed purchase of the National Telephone Company's system in 1911. Its object is merely to enable the post office to carry on and extend telephone service up to that date. I agree with my hon. friend the Member for Preston, who has placed on the paper an Amendment to the Bill, that, from the financial point of view, the telegraph and telephone services should be, kept as distinct as possible, in order that we may know how far the telegraph service is carried on at a loss, and how far the telephone service is carried on, on a fair commercial basis, at a profit, and on its own merit;. This Bill is merely a continuation of previous Telegraph Acts for the purpose of raising capital for the telephone service. The first of these Acts was passed in 1892, when £1,000,000 was granted by this House for the purchase of the trunk lines from the National Telephone Company. There were further Acts in 1896–98–99 under which £3,300,000 were raised for the same purpose; and finally, in 1904 a further sum of £3,000,000 was raised for the purpose of extending the telephone system. The total amount so far raised for telephone purposes is £7,300,000. Out of that £3,400,000 had been spent on trunk lines, £2,600,000 on the London exchange system, and about £500,000 | on the provincial exchanges, the balance being in regard to stores and the purchase of municipal systems. Since the first line was purchased from the Telephone Company the mileage of trunk lines has increased from 29,000 to 145,000 miles, and the total mileage, London and provincial, is now 328,000, showing a very large increase in the telephone system. The further £6,000,000 which I now ask the House to vote will, it is hoped, carry on the extension of the telephone system up till the end of 1911, when the system of the National Telephone Company will be purchased by the State. Whether it is an advantage to have allowed the two systems to be continued so long is a matter of controversy. Though by agreement we might possibly purchase the National Company's system before 1911, I do not think that that would be satisfactory. The chief items of this £6;000,000 which I now ask for are £2,800,000, to be spent on the trunk system, £1,800,000 for the London Exchange system, and £1,000,050 for provincial exchanges. I would point out that this money is to be raised on loan for a very short period. Some of the earlier annuities on which the capital was raised were for twenty years. That was thought to be too long a period for loans of this nature, and we shall now raise the money on terminable annuities for fifteen years. Further, so far as the expenditure of the Post Office is concerned, hon. Members will see that the Treasury has full control over it. Every particular of proposed expenditure has to come before the Treasury before that expenditure can be undertaken. The protection under this loan is, I think, very complete, because the period is very short. I put the Bill before the House as a business proposition. While the telegraph system of this country is unfortunately carried on at a very considerable loss, the telephone system is being carried on at a satisfactory and substantial profit. After providing for 3 per cent. interest on the capital expended, and allowing sufficient for depreciation of the plant, the profit left during the last financial year was £37,200, representing a certain interest per cent. on capital, in addition to the 3 per cent. for which provision had already been made, The London exchanges show a considerable profit, and so do the trunk lines, but the provincial lines show some loss. I can only say that, as far as I am concerned, I think that the telephone service should be carried on on a business basis and that rates charged should provide a substantial profit to the State. It is a great mistake to carry on the telegraph or telephone system in any other way. But everyone who has looked into the figures agrees that in regard to the telegraphs the original capital was inflated, and that at the present moment we are carrying it on at a loss quite irrespective of the interest on the original capital. From that awful example we should endeavour to profit in working the telephone system, which should be conducted on business lines. I beg to move."

said that he rose to move, "That it is undesirable to authorise further capital expenditure upon telegraphs or telephones until a full statement has been presented to Parliament showing the financial results of the past working of the Post Office telegraphs and telephones judged from the standpoint of an ordinary commercial undertaking." The hon. Member said the Postmaster-General had told them that this Bill only authorised expenditure upon telephones, but he would remind him that there was not a single word in the Bill about telephones, and that there was nothing to prevent him from spending the whole six millions on telegraphs. The Bill which authorised the right hon. Gentleman to spend six millions of money went back to days before telephones were invented, inasmuch as it referred to the Act of 1863, when telephones did not exist. A much more serious matter was that they had no statement before them as to how the money was to be spent. The right hon. Gentleman had no doubt made a very eloquent and lucid speech in twelve or fifteen minutes, and as he wanted £6,000,000 that was at the rate of something like half a million for every minute he spoke. In his judgment, however, the House should have a little more explanation of what this money was required for, Surely in the case of a Government pledged to economy the House of Commons ought to have a little more explanation. In such a case as this a private company would issue a prospectus, false or otherwise, showing how they proposed to apply the money which they asked the public to subscribe, but in this case they had no details. A demand for £6,000,000 was chucked at the House of Commons on a Friday afternoon without any explanation. The Bill was, moreover, a particularly bad illustration of the vicious practice of legislation by reference; it was a deliberate attempt to to evade examination by the House. This was a Loan Bill, but nowhere was the word "loan" mentioned. It was only when they hunted up the Telegraph Act of 1892 that they found that the Postmaster-General was entitled to borrow this money. It was a very serious thing for them to go into the market and borrow £6,000,000. That represented more than the whole sum hitherto spent on telephones, namely, £5,750,000. The Postmaster-General had said that the amount so far raised for telephone purposes was £7,300,000, and he supposed the difference between the figure he had quoted and that figure represented the unspent balance.

said the figures given by the hon. Member were up to March, 1906. The figures he gave were up to March, 1907.

said he begged the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. He did not catch the figures 1907. That explained the difference. The Post Office claimed that telephones were worked at a profit and telegraphs at a loss. It was very difficult to believe that. The accounts were hopelessly mixed up. The telephones were conducted in the same offices as the telegraphs and other Post Office business, and the same girl was sometimes occupied in selling stamps, sometimes receiving telegrams, sometimes issuing Post Office orders and postal orders, and sometimes conducting telephone business. Therefore it was exceedingly doubtful whether an accurate account had been furnished or could be furnished of the cost of working the system as between telegraphs and telephones. The Post Office officials, moreover, had a distinct motive for showing that there was a profit on telephones, because they were working in competition with a private company which paid a good dividend. If the Post Office officials did not show good figures in regard to the telephones the public would very naturally ask why it was that a private company charging the same prices made a profit while the Post Office made a loss. Therefore the Post Office had an interest in overcharging the telegraph accounts and undercharging the telephone service. There were, moreover, extraordinary discrepancies in the accounts. He would first take the figures from the appendix of the Postmaster-General's Report. There were three separate accounts, relating respectively to trunk lines, London exchanges, and provincial exchanges. The capital for trunk lines was stated at £2,897,503 at page 86, but a footnote at page 89 gave it as £3,197,000. At page 85 the capital given for the London exchanges was £2,232,588. From a footnote on page 87, however, it appeared to be £2,305,000. The capital for the provincial exchanges was at page 86 given as £403,195 while the footnote at page 88 gave it as £388,000. Then in regard to depreciation he found at page 87 the life of plant at the London exchanges taken at thirty-three years. Was not that an extravagant estimate considering that the industry was rapidly developing and the instruments used were constantly being superseded? In his judgment that was a very enormous period at which to fix the life of the plant. When he came to the trunk lines, however, which were dealt with on page 89, he found the life of the plant was valued at twenty-nine years. Depreciation ought, therefore, to be calculated at slightly over 3·4 per cent. The Post Office took the figures and worked them out at £88,901, whereas he made it £108,698. This probably explained why the Postmaster General had recently refused to answer a Question of his which involved some calculations in compound interest. Naturally the Postmaster-General would be shy of attempting compound interest when the officials at the Post Office were unable to do simple interest sums.

denied that he had said that the officials at the Post Office could not do sums of simple interest. His Answer had been that the figures which the hon. Gentleman wanted could be found from the returns and tables which had been supplied to the House.

said that what he had gathered was that the refusal to supply the information was due to the reluctance of the officials to tackle sums. He would take the figures, however, as they were. The whole balance which the Post Office officials claimed on the whole account was £43,000, which was about 1 per cent. profit on the capital invested.

Three per cent.

said that what he meant was 1 per cent. profit after paying 3 per cent. interest. His point was that it was not good business to borrow money on State credit, at 3 per cent. interest, and then only make 1 per cent. profit out of it. It was very bad business indeed, because the National Telephone Company borrowed money by way of debentures at 4 per cent. and paid a dividend of 6 per cent. on their share capital Although they charged the same rates for telephonic communication as the Post Office. In addition the National Telephone Company paid a royalty equivalent to more than 2½per cent. on all its capital to the Government. Moreover the Telephone Company paid local rates which the Postmaster-General escaped paying. The right hon. Gentleman complained that he had to provide plant, a good deal of which remained idle, but that was one of the peculiarities of all telephone business. The Post Office profit of 1 per cent., moreover, was only arrived at by the palpable fraud of taking the life of the plant at thirty-three years. He contended that the figures as a whole were such that no commercial company would tolerate for a moment. He turned to another source of information. That was the Return which the right hon. Gentleman produced at his request, and in connection with it he would like to acknowledge the courtesy with which the right hon. Gentleman and his officials had met his various suggestions and the great trouble they had taken to give the figures which he wanted. It was, however, quite hopeless to get a complete account out of the materials provided, but what he had obtained was sufficient to show that this undertaking was not and had never been worked as a business undertaking. There was no proper capital account and items of capital were mixed up with revenue. He ought to explain that the telegraph and telephone accounts were merged together and did not discriminate between the two services. He also wished to refer to the royalties paid by the National Telephone Company. They amounted to £271,000 odd last year. It might be perfectly justifiable for the Government to make the Telephone Company pay a royalty, but the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster-General ought not to take credit for that as earned money. The sums received were sheer blackmail; justifiable blackmail it might be, but the sums ought not to go to the credit of the Postmaster-General as earnings; they ought to be treated as part of the miscellaneous revenue of the Exchequer. The last year's payment of royalties represented the equivalent of more than 2½ per cent. interest on the capital of the company, yet in spite of this annual drain the company succeeded in paying a dividend of 6 per cent. on its share capital and 4 per cent. on its debentures, while the Post Office, according to their own statement, only made a profit of 1 per cent. over and above the 3 per cent. on their borrowed capital. The blackmail levied upon the National Telephone Company was the result of the Post Office monopoly in the means of electrical communication. At the time of the original proposal for the purchase of the telegraphs in 1868 the idea of a monopoly was scouted and everybody said it would be intolerable to grant one. The provisions establishing a monopoly were subsequently slipped into legislation at the request of the Post Office. The monopoly was afterwards applied to telephones in order to get a sum of money from the Telephone Company for an invention which did not exist when the Act was passed. The aggregate total of the blackmail in the way of royalties which had been levied was over £2,000,000 which ought all to be credited to miscellaneous revenue. Nowhere was there a full statement of the capital expended on telephones and telegraphs, though there was a small footnote at the bottom in which it was said to be £22,299,000; that, however, did not take into account the loss of interest in previous years. But ignoring for a moment loss of interest, and merely adding to the figure given in the footnote the sum of £2,043,783, the royalties paid by the National Company, and the sum of £6,470,000 shown on another page of the Return as the aggregate of the past annual deficiencies, they obtained a figure of £30,824,000. But was it right to ignore the loss of interest? It was difficult to get a precise analogy to the transactions of a business firm because there was no share capital. Let the House, however, imagine the analogy of a private firm working on borrowed capital and backed by a wealthy banker. In this case the British taxpayer was the banker and the Postmaster-General the private firm. If he had to draw upon the banker he ought to pay interest upon all the moneys advanced to him. In other words, there ought to be compound interest allowed on all previous advances and deficiencies met by the taxpayer. If compound interest were charged it would bring up the total he had mentioned to £34,000,000. Of this sum £16,000,000 had been borrowed, and the remaining £18,000,000 had been advanced by the taxpayer. Taking the interest on that sum at so low a rate as 3 per cent., it ought to yield £540,000 a year. Instead of this return in the way of interest we had a loss of £353,000, which with the royalties, £227,000, made a total of £580,000. Thus instead of earning £540,000 we were; losing £580,000, which made the taxpayer out of pocket by the transaction to the extent of £1,120,000 a year on a capital expenditure of £34,000,000. He thought that a very serious state of things indeed. It was said that what the State lost by its telegraphs it gained on its postal service, and could afford to do so, but that was not a conclusive argument because the two services might be booked by separate departments as in India. Moreover, he would like to know why poor people who wrote letters and never sent a telegram should be taxed and be compelled to pay for the luxury of rich people who sent telegrams in order to save themselves the trouble of writing letters. Among the largest patrons of the telegraph system were bettors on horse racing. Why should the House of Commons be invited one day to pass a Bill to put down betting, and the next day to subsidise betting telegrams? Press telegrams were sent for Is. per 100 words and 2d. for every repeat of a message. He did not see why the State should subsidise newspaper proprietors. Being a journalist himself, he happened to know that a great deal of this "stuff" was absolutely useless to anybody. On reaching the newspaper offices it was thrown away and the nation had to pay for telegraphing it. If a loss was justifiable, why should they stop at £1,000,000; why not go on until the whole of the Post Office surplus was absorbed? The Postmaster-General did not venture to argue that a loss was justifiable. On the contrary he professed that though the telegraphs were now past praying for ho was going to make the telephones pay. But exactly the same profession was made in regard to the telegraphs. The author of the purchase of telegraphs in 1870 was Mr. Scudamore, and he, when cross-examined by a Select Committee in 1868, assured that Committee again and again that the telegraphs in the hands of the Post Office would be self-supporting from the start, and would ultimately be a considerable source of revenue. That view was sustained by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Ward Hunt, in the debate on the Second Reading of the Bill for buying up the four telegraph companies. That Gentleman said that the net revenue would suffice to pay interest on purchase money, and would repay the debt in twenty-nine years. The Bill was rushed through Parliament, and the companies got excellent terms, but not excessive in view of the large profits they were then earning. Incidentally he would like to point out to the House that the very threat to purchase the companies had added to their profits, because it had compelled them to abstain from extending their capital outlay, and had also frightened away possible competitors So that during two or three years before purchase the companies were doing an increasing business without increasing their capital, and thus were able to secure high dividends. Before the threat to purchase, the competition of the different companies had reduced the rates by half in the short space of ten years. The opposition of the companies to the purchase was bought out by the high terms offered by the Post Office, so that no hostile evidence was put before the Committee. There was also the curious fact to be noticed that it was not until the terms had been settled that the Post Office and the Treasury officials realised that the companies had only a leasehold interest in a large part of the property. The railway companies had a reversionary interest in the poles and wires erected beside railways, and after the Government had paid to the telegraph companies the terms agreed upon, it had to pay the railway companies for their reversionary interest. But that bad bargain did not explain the present loss. It explained it only to the extent of £50,000 or £60,000 out of a total loss of a million a year. The present loss had been due to the necessary incapacity of a Government Department to manage a business concern on business principles. To prove that there was no desire to run the system at a loss, it was sufficient to mention that the Post Office before carrying the telegraph to villages insisted on guarantees from private persons or local authorities. These guarantees had to provide for the whole of the working expenses, for a sufficient sum to repay capital in seven years, and for a margin for contingencies. It was interesting to compare the period of seven years which the Post Office used to insist upon when supplying telegraphs to villages, with the period of thirty-three years now officially put forward as representing the life of telephone plant. These terms, exacted for many years by the Post Office to protect itself against unprofitable business, were harsher than any private company would have dreamt of exacting, and yet the Post Office could not make a profit. Moreover, the Post Office, by virtue of its monopoly had been able to obtain the benefit of all the inventions made by outside enterprise. Duplex telegraphy had almost doubled the value of the Post Office capital invested in poles and wires; quadruplex telegraphy had further added to the value of the plant. The invention of automatic instruments had rendered possible an immense reduction in the working costs. In 1891 the Postmaster-General reported that the Wheatstone Automatic Receiver enabled 400 words to be sent safely per minute as against sixty or seventy under the old system, and yet the working cost was constantly increasing. The Post Office, armed with a monopoly, able to buy upon its own terms the inventions of all the world, had gone on losing more and more money every year. Before flinging good money after the bad the House should know exactly where they stood. Let them have the accounts put in a business shape, so that the losses could be detected, and the leakages stopped. Socialists were equally interested in this matter. They believed that State management was better than private management. They could not afford to have their theories discredited by this scandalous example of waste and inefficiency. He did not accept those Socialistic theories, but he was much more concerned for the efficiency of the public service and the economy of the national revenue than about any theories. He was willing to work with any man, whatever his theories might be, who would join with him in insisting that this gigantic Department, which controlled the most marvellous inventions of the human mind, should conduct its business on business principles for the benefit and for the credit of the nation. He moved.

said he rose to second the Amendment, mainly on the grounds that it was most important in the public interest before this £6,000,000 was voted that the House should have a business-like statement from the right hon. Gentleman of how the business of his Department was conducted. The hon. Member for Preston had given a long history of what had taken place with regard to the telephones, but he (Mr. Ridsdale) would venture to point out that the Postmaster-General was not responsible for the arrangement made by one of his predecessors for the taking over of the telephones, and it would be wrong to blame him for that. But when the right hon. Gentleman came to the House for the purpose of borrowing money to expend on the development of that system he must in justice advance some business-like proposition as to the profit likely to be gained by the State by the operation. So far as he could see from the figures, it appeared to him that the telephone system, at present, was run not at a profit, but at a loss. The number of messages sent upon the combined telephone systems had increased by 10,000,000 during the last ten years, and that being so, one would have supposed that on the very much increased turnover a well-conducted business would have been able to effect a saving on the cost, and that the cost of 1,000 messages sent now would be less than the cost of a corresponding number of messages sent in the past. But if hon. Members looked at the figures they would find that whereas the expense per 1,000 messages, telegraph and telephone, was £34 in the past, it had now risen to £42, or an increase of nearly 20 per cent. in ten years. He did not see how that increase in the cost could have been due to the telegraph messages, and thought it must have been due to the telephones. As the right hon. Gentleman had fairly and frankly admitted that it was necessary to run this Department on business lines, he thought the House was entitled to some more business-like statement from him. Another thing to be considered was that the credit of the country was not so good now as it was five years ago, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman might find some difficulty in obtaining his £6,000,000 on the top of the £5,000,000 already guaranteed by the Government for the Transvaal.

said the loan was to be spread over four years.

said he was very glad to hear that, but knowledge that the Government required money was still in the money market, and he was not sure that the knowledge was not quite as detrimental as the obtaining of the actual money

said it was a most unexpected occurrence for a Member holding the views he did to find himself somewhat in agreement with the hon. Member for Preston, but he thought the case which the hon. Gentleman made out with regard to the management of the Postmaster-General's Department was mainly sound. As one who honestly believed that public management was more economical and more advantageous than private management he desired to say that the extravagant and foolish transactions made years ago by the Postmaster-General's Department, and to which the hon. Member had referred, could not be properly attributed to the principle of public management or to the methods necessarily attached to public concerns. They should be attributed rather to the fact that we were endeavouring to run a huge Department on lines that were absolutely impossible of success from a business point of view. Theoretically this huge business, with its £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 a year of salaries and wages, with all the ramifications of so vast a concern, was controlled by a Postmaster-General who probably had had no previous experience of the details of the business itself. But as a matter of fact it was the permanent official who ran the business. Hence it was no matter of surprise to know that time after time the interests of the State had been given away as a kind of present to interested parties, while the officials had taken undertakings from private individuals at a price that ought never to have been paid. Certainly the public and Parliament had never agreed to them, for the custom had invariably been for the bargain to be made first, and the House called upon to sanction it afterwards. He contended that it was necessary to bring these arrangements before Parliament first, and not to leave them to the permanent officials and the theoretical control of the Post-master-General. Public control should be real and effective in its character, If the right hon. Gentleman wanted to secure a proper Government administration of this business for the benefit of the public let him ask for a Committee of Members of this House to associate themselves with him. In no other way could the public secure effective control over the Department. He supported the Amendment.

said he rose to support the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Preston, whom he congratulated on the very clear and able speech in which he had put his case before the House. If he might say so, the many clear, able, and interesting speeches which he had heard from him on all but one subject made him regret that he illustrated in his person the truth of the medical dictum that the ablest and most level-headed people were capable of forming a sane judgment on all subjects but one. He did not know whether the House would agree that they had hardly had a sufficient statement from the Postmaster-General as to how the money was to be spent. In any case this was not a Bill which should pass its Second Reading late on a Friday afternoon. He agreed as to the difficulty of comparing the working of the Post Office telephone system with the working of an ordinary private company, but at the same time it was plain that the result of the working had not been successful, seeing that for the year 1904–5 the difference between the receipts and working expenses was over,£100,000. However difficult it might, be to compare the working of Post Office telephones with the working of an ordinary public company it was easy to see that the working has not always been attended with success. One of the excuses commonly given by Socialists and others for loss on municipal enterprise was that that loss was small as compared with the benefit conferred upon the poorest people. Such an excuse would not certainly be put forward for loss on the working of the telephones, because no one by the greatest stretch of imagination would contend that telephones necessarily conferred a boon on the poorest people, and personally he thought it was of the utmost importance that the precedent of the working of telephones should be looked into most carefully. Nor could it be contended that the working of the telephones as yet had been in any way democratic. It had been exceedingly difficult in some villages and other places to obtain a telephone system, very hard conditions being very often imposed. He thought they had heard very little justification for the Bill, and be hoped the right hon. Gentleman below him would be able to find more excuse for the action of the Post Office and for bringing the Bill forward than the Postmaster-General himself had been able to do. One remark of the hon. Member for Bradford he did not quite understand. The hon. Gentleman seemed to complain that the Post Office was run by permanent officials. The moment before he complained that in his opinion Postmasters General frequently had had no previous experience of working the Department. The hon. Member could not have his cake and eat it. Somebody must be in charge of the Department who had had some experience of working it.

I said that theoretically the Postmaster-General controls it. In reality owing to the limitation of the best of Postmasters-General the permanent officials work it.

said he agreed to a very large extent, but he understood the hon. Member to complain that that was the case. No one could complain, first of all, of the Postmaster-General having no previous experience, and then that the Department was worked by those who had experience. What Committee of the House would be capable of controlling the Post Office? He would be sorry to see it working under a Committee. He did not think the hon. Member was quite fair in that respect to the proposal, and he was sorry to hear him blaming the permanent officials. He hoped the House would support the Amendment if only on the ground that this was a big question, that they had not had a full statement of how the money was to be spent, and that it was not a Bill which should be passed late on a Friday afternoon.

said the House must have been struck by the ardent views of the hon. Member below the gangway, and it illustrated the vicissitudes of political life when they found the hon. Member for Preston, the great disciple of Cobdenism, rubbing shoulders with the leading exponent of Socialism. The Postmaster-General in a brief summary had informed the House of the reason why he required this £6,000,000. He had based his demand on telephones, but there was not a word in the Bill about telephones, and before the House acceded to the demand of the right hon. Gentleman it was right to ask whether his Department carried on its telegraphs and telephones on sound business principles. He made no reflection on the administration of the right hon. Gentleman. He believed that according to his lights the right hon. Gentleman did more to advance the public interest and convenience than any other Minister, but at the same time he had been following the procedure and adhering to the traditions of the past, asking for as much as he wanted and giving as few details as possible. He was apparently on this occasion asking for more than he wanted at the moment, because the Bill asked for not only the £6,000,000 but the produce thereof. He heartily concurred in the observations of the hon. Member for Preston who was the high priest of individualism, but as to the suggestion that all those concerns that private competition was more able to carry out should be withdrawn from the State, that was far from being his opinion. All he said was that it was the province of the House vigilantly to scrutinise the expenditure of large sums of money, and where it was not fully satisfied that the sums were properly laid out for the public service to ask for further information.

said he had listened with much attention to the speech of the Postmaster-General, and in his opinion the right hon. Gentleman had nothing to withdraw. There was however one part of the speech to which he took exception and that was where he agreed with the hon. Member for Preston. The right hon. Gentleman said a Government Department ought to be run as a business concern. That in his opinion was a fatal error. A Government Department which rested on a monopoly could not be run in the same way as a company or a private concession. The object of a man of business was to make a profit, but that of a Government Department was to accommodate the public and to carry on the business of the public. The post, the telegraph, and the telephone were required in every village. They wanted all the people of the country to have every convenience that could possibly be given to them. If the Government had never interfered and left these businesses to those who started them it would have been another matter, but what the Government had to consider now was not the making of a profit but the conferring of the greatest benefit on the public. He thought these things would have been much better conducted if they had remained in the hands of private enterprise, that the nation would have been much better served and the Government would not have lost so much money. But the question now was, was the business carried on well or ill? The loss of £500,000 a year was a comparatively small matter when it was considered that the business of the nation depended on the proper execution of the Department. The business represented a value of £2,000,000,000 a year or more. Our power to carry on this great national concern to the best advantage and in competition with foreign countries depended on our facilities, and the Government must consider not the mere profit of this Department and that Department, which was simply a matter of book-keeping, but the business of the nation as a whole. A business department often showed a loss, when the result of its working really was a profit. For instance, a railway might be made to develop some country, and by its construction the value of the land might be multiplied fivefold, and a large, prosperous, and happy population might be settled on it, whilst at the same time the railway company itself might be a loser, and the shareholders got no dividends. But still, the railway would be profitable to the country. In the same way, as long as the Government claimed and possessed a monopoly of the post, telegraph, and telephone, those Departments must be conducted so as to facilitate the trade of the country and accommodate the social life of the people, so that not only the rich but the poorest of the poor should have the benefit.

said that in his opinion there could be no more unfortunate way of conducting a business of this kind than that suggested by the hon. Member for West Bradford. No one had a greater respect than he for hon. Members of the House and their talents, but to suppose that twelve or fifteen hon. Members would be able to conduct with efficiency a complicated business like that of the Post Office was absurd. The right hon. Gentleman in his introductory remarks had attempted to deal with the present position, which he admitted was not satisfactory, and said that an inflated sum was originally paid for the telegraphs. No doubt a good deal more was paid than would be paid by a business man, but that it was an inflated sum he denied, because the result showed that out of the first year's working the whole of the interest was met out of profits, and £120,000 set aside for the reduction of the debt, whilst £4,000 was spent on buildings, etc. Therefore any loss that arose from the working of the telegraphs did not arise from the initial sum spent in acquiring them. The hon. Member for Preston had shown that it was very difficult to ascertain whether it was the fact, as the right hon. Gentleman had stated, that there had been a profit made on telephones or not. The accounts had been so mixed up that it was extremely difficult to separate the items. He would like to know, if it was the fact that the number of messages sent had been increased every year and was larger now than ever before, how it was that there was this loss. If the business had increased, and if they had more economical appliances for carrying it on, he failed to see why there should be any loss at all, unless there was bad management on the part of the Post Office. He was not at all sure, however, that it was fair to say that the management of the Post Office was bad. The conclusion he had drawn was that which the hon. Member for Preston had arrived at, viz., that for some reason or other the Post Office officials were more desirous to favour the Post Office than the telephone system. It appeared extraordinary that there should be a loss on telegraphs and not on telephones, and he thought there must be something in the idea that the Post Office officials were desirous of showing that the telephones were not altogether working at a loss. In the Bill there was nothing about telephones, and there was nothing to prevent the right hon. Gentleman from spending the whole of this money on the telegraph service, except his statement that he would not do so. He contended that no Minister should be allowed to say he was bringing in a Bill to appropriate £6,000,000 in that manner. Supposing an election took place and the present Government did not come back to power; what was to bind the new Postmaster-General? He could not be bound by assurances given across the floor of the House by his predecessor. It was a very little Bill, and of little Bills he had his suspicions. He also saw there was in it legislation by reference, and of that too he was always suspicious. Let them consider what it was they were going to do with the £6,000,000 when they got it. It must be remembered that in four years time they were committed to the purchase of the National Telephone Company's system. That arrangement was entered into by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor in 1905, Lord Stanley. The price was to be fixed by arbitration. When Lord Stanley was asked about what price the arbitration would fix he declined to reply, on the ground that his answer might prejudice the arbitration. He however had gone to the library, and had found out that the capital of the National Telephone Company was £10,200,000, and he might safely presume that that would be the amount given by the arbitration to the company. It followed, therefore, that in the next four years we were going to spend £16,000,000 on the telephone service. If the service up to 1902 was unprofitable, the best thing the right hon. Gentleman could do would be to withdraw this Bill and substitute for it one more moderate in character. He did not say it was not necessary to allow the right hon. Gentleman to raise a certain amount for absolutely necessary improvements and additions, but £6,000,000 was a much larger amount than should be sanctioned for that purpose. And, in view of the fact that in four years the whole of the National Telephone Company's system must came into the hands of the right hon. Gentleman, it would seem to be wiser to wait until he had control of the whole of the telephone systems, before he committed the country to so vast an expenditure. The telephone system was going on all right now, and so far as he knew there was no object in assenting to the Bill now.

reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee A (in respect of the Married Women's Property Bill): Mr. Solicitor-General; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Married Women's Property Bill): Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland.

further reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Members from Standing Committee C (in respect of the Small Holdings and Allotments Bill): Mr. Charles Duncan and Mr. Atherley-Jones; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the Small Holdings and Allotments Bill): Mr. W. Tyson Wilson and Mr. Silcock.

reported from the Committee on Group G of Private Bills; That Mr. C. J. O'Donnell, one of the Members of the said Committee, was not present during the sitting of the Committee this day.