explained that when the Bill was read a second time, it provided that no parent should be liable to prosecution if "he" made a statutory declaration that he believed that vaccination would be injurious to the health of his child. Then a provision was introduced to the effect that the declaration might be made by " either parent " or any other person having the custody of the child. In another place the Amendment which they were discussing was carried, confining the right to make such a statutory declaration to the father of the child. The Government did not, in regard to the law as it now stood, seek to do anything except to substitute a statutory declaration for the present procedure, and they proposed with some regret, to accept this Amendment, which was put forward on the ground that no person had the right to claim exemption, except the person who was liable in respect of the penalty for neglect. He frankly admitted that it was the father who was in charge of the child and although he believed some magistrates actingultra vires had allowed the mother to attend, and claim a certificate of exemption still they ought not to have done so. The objection to the father coming And making a declaration was that he lost a day's work, but the answer to that was that the statutory declaration would not occupy the time which one under the Act of 1898 would take. The man would not be subject to examination, and the declaration might now be made either before a single Justice of the Peace or a solicitor who was a Commissioner for Oaths' " There were many Justices of the Peace and many solicitors in that position, and therefore there need be no waste of time. If they insisted upon this Amendment, under the authority of Sir Erskine May the Bill would be lost unless the Lords waived the Amendment they proposed to make. They were, therefore, on the horns of a dilemma, but on the whole he recommended the House to accept the Lord's Amendment. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

called attention to the fact that there were several differences between the Scottish and the English Bill. In the Scottish Bill there was a retrospective clause enabling parents to obtain exemption for all children under fourteen years of age. That was a distinct improvement on the English Bill.

said the hon. Member was not entitled to discuss the Bill but only the Amendment before the House

said he was dealing with the question of why, if the Scottish Bill was passed in that form, he English Bill should not also be framed on the same lines. This Bill would be particularly hard on people n country districts who lived a long way from Justices of the Peace or solicitors who were Commissioners for Oaths. There were no Commissioners except in county towns, and a man would have to give up a day's work in order to make a declaration before a solicitor and get him to witness it. If a man had only fifteen shillings a week it was very hard to ask him to give up day's work in order to go before a magistrate or a Commissioner for Oaths, and in addition pay 1s. 6d. as the cost of making a declaration. The Committee of this House inserted words to remove this injustice, but the House of Lords had deleted them and with this deletion they were asked to agree. He thanked the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he had dealt with the Bill, but he might say that if it were lost there were a great many people in the country who would not regret it. These peddling attempts to mitigate a great injustice were of doubtful benefit. The more the stream was dammed the greater would be the breach, and the greater the rush of water when that breach took place. He would not move to disagree with the Lords Amendment, but he wished to enter a grave and formal protest against its action, which would increase the number of persons who would not obtain exemption. In the country districts if the mother was not allowed to go and get an exemption there were many working men who would dread to go before the squire, in whose service they were, to get one, as they would feel that they were endangering their employment by making a declaration. Then again these poor people had a difficulty in giving the time to get these exemptions, and this seemed to him to be a special hardship which the House of Lords need not have inflicted upon poor suffering people. Some of them had tried to save the people from that great hardship. In the case of the poor person, the mother of a sick vaccinated child had to sit up all night with it, but that did not apply in the case of the rich, because after the vaccinator had made his marks, if the child was ill there were nurses to attend to it.

said the hon. Genleman was wandering from the point, which was whether the House should agree with the Lords Amendment.

said he would at once obey the ruling of the Chair, but what he wished to do was to protest against a mother being debarred from attending and asking for this relief, a right which this House intended to give her.

said he wished to express his regret that the Government could not 'see their way to resist the Lords Amendment and that the point had been surrendered. This Amendment was only passed in another place by a majority of five, and he was afraid that the other House, in regard to this particular Amendment, and also in reference to other questions concerning compulsory vaccination, had shown a disregard not only of the recommendations of Committees and Commissions, the requirements of sanitary science, and of public convenience. It was by a single vote in a House of fifteen Peers that repeated penalties for non-vaccination had been continued twenty-five years. He therefore thought the House should scrutinise with care the rejection of its Amendments by the other House. The Royal Commission, of which he was a member, after a brief consideration, dismissed as utterly ridiculous the attempt to enforce repeated penalties. Though he would have been glad to see the Bill go further he accepted it as an advance in the direction of the abolition of compulsion in a matter in which compulsion could not much longer be maintained.

quite appreciated the position of the Government, but wished to enter his protest against the manner in which another place had acted. It was not until after great consideration upstairs that they admitted the provision that the mother was a person who could make the application for the exemption of her child. After all, the mother was the person who was responsible for the health of the child, and she, he thought, should certainly be allowed to make the declaration.

said that it was hardly fair to represent this as a case of the House of Lords overruling the will of the House of Commons. As the Bill was originally introduced, it only provided that "he"—that was the responsible parent, namely the father, if there was a father living—should alone have power to apply for the exemption, but when the Bill was before the Standing Committee hon. Members moved to leave out the word "he" and insert "either parent or such other person as the case may be," which would enable a mother to make the application for exemption, even where there was a father living. The President of the Local Government Board resisted the Amendment on its merits, and not on any ground of expediency, and when the Committee went to a division it was only carried by the small majority of two, the numbers being sixteen to fourteen, and the President voting in the minority. When the Bill came before that House he himself put down an Amendment to restore it to its original shape, but, unfortunately, he was not there at the moment when he was called upon to move, so that this House as a whole had never had an opportunity of expressing an opinion upon the question. In these circumstances this could not, he repeated, be represented as a case in which the House of Lords had sought to overrule the wishes of this House and of the Government. All t hey had done was to restore the Bill to the shape in which it was brought in, and in favour of which the Government had argued and voted. There was another circumstance which was very significant. After the Amendment in question had been carried in the Standing Committee of this House, the Scottish Vaccination Bill was brought in in the Lords in the form in which the father only could object, and 'that Bill was introduced into the Lords by the Government. He was opposed to the Bill as a whole, but he did not oppose the Scottish Bill, in this House as the English Bill had been passed and he thought there should be parity of treatment. But the argument now advanced would make a difference between the Scottish and the English Bills. He thought he had shown that the House of Lords, so far from overruling the decision of this House, had only registered the opinions of the Government. The only argument against the Lords Amendment was that the father might lose a day's work. But, really, that question did not arise, as the making of a declaration would only take a few minutes. When the man went before the Commissioner for Oaths or magistrate under this Bill, the matter would be treated as a formal one, and the process might be gone through in the evening or at any other time of the day. Moreover, it was only fair to point out that the father was the person responsible, and against whom an order would be made in the event of vaccination not being carried out. He was the person who would be summoned, and who would have to pay the fine if convicted, and, therefore, it was he who ought to say whether he desired exemption or not. It would be a deplorable thing to have a conflict between father and mother on this question, and to have the mother making an application for exemption when the father desired that vaccination should take place. For himself, he thought it was the person who was responsible for the fine who should be the person to apply for the exemption, and he thought the Bill, as originally brought in, and as it passed the House of Lords, was in the right form.

said that there was very little to be said in addition to the very able statement of his hon. friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, and he only intervened for a few minutes to deal with some criticisms which had been made upon the action of the Government, but which he thought were made under a misapprehension of the case. His hon. friend the Member for Sleaford had rather overestimated and exaggerated the difficulty of making a statutory declaration. Under the old procedure the certificate of exemption could only be obtained from a magistrate in Court, whereas this Bill provided for a statutory declaration and superseded that process. In the former case the father could only go to a criminal Court and was treated more or less as one of the persons before that Court and was associated with the persons who were before it. The object of the Government was now secured in the last Amendment. The authorities would be more accessible to a larger number of people who desired to make the statutory declaration. Besides 10,000 Commissioners for Oaths there were 18,000 Justices of the Peace available, before whom the statutory declaration could be made, and the applicant would still have the opportunity of going before a magistrate. Beyond the number of new people before whom statutory declarations might be made, a man need not now leave his work in order to procure exemption, because from 12 o'clock on Saturday to 9 or 10 o'clock in the evening he could make his application; and the Justices of the Peace were only too pleased to carry out the work, which they discharged with great tact and ability. The workmen could approach them and they were offered every facility. There was no comparison between the conditions which the Bill offered and the old conditions which they superseded. The other point was as to the hardship on the father. He believed that with the new opportunity which the father had for making the statutory declaration, the complaint which they had under the old conditions as to losing time would disappear. With all respect to anti-vaccinators, was it not time that they recognised the fact that the tendency of modern life was unfortunately to place on the woman any responsibility there was in the bringing up of children. Personally, he did not regard that as a condition of things which they should encourage in any way whatever. It seemed to him that the mother, on whom was placed the pain and suffering of childbirth and the nursing of the children in sickness, ought to be free from these responsibilities relating to vaccination, and that the statutory obligation ought to be placed on the father, whose tendency would be, he was sure, to relieve the mother of this responsibility; he was sure that the best of them would do that. He could only say that they had removed existing hardships, and now offered facilities for making statutory declarations which brought home to the father, on whom it rested, the responsibility of doing his duty to society. He had a responsibility legally showable under this Act and many other Acts, and, therefore, they were not dealing with him harshly. In conclusion, he had to thank those hon. Members who had taken a very active and praiseworthy part in passing this Bill, and but for their efforts, and the kindly spirit in which they had adapted themselves to the requirements of the Government, who were compelled to make large demands upon their time and attention, they would probably not have had a Vaccination Bill at all. Question put, and agreed to.