I beg to move, "That the Clause be now read a second time."

This new Clause was proposed last night, and the Home Secretary intimated at once that he was disposed to consider the insertion of the Clause in the Bill, and requested that I should put it down for to-day, and that he would give us his opinion to-day. I trust it may be possible to pass the Second Reading of this new Clause and add it to the Bill without further discussion. It simply gives to this House the right to control certain matters undertaken by the Government under the powers of this Bill when proceeding under Order in Council. If an Order in Council is issued under this Bill within twenty days of Parliament sitting it would be open to Parliament to pass a Resolution setting that Order in Council aside. The Order in Council would become operative, and anything done under it would not be rendered illegal, even if the House decided to take such a course. It simply, therefore, ensures that the Government of the day, acting under an Order in Council, will have the approval and sanction of the House of Commons in its procedure. This is so reasonable and constitutional in practice, and so consonant with what, I believe, must be the feeling in every part of the House, that I ask the Government to accept it.

I beg to second the Motion.

This Clause, if accepted, will apply to two Clauses in the Bill. The question, of Orders in Council arise in Clause 2, which proposes to apply Conscription to Ireland. Clause 1 is accepted in this new Clause, as provisions have already been made by a special stipulation. This would cover the application of the Clause to Ireland. In regard to Ireland, nobody knows how, or under what circumstances, it is proposed to extend the Act to Ire land. If we pay any attention to the declarations of Ministers, it may be a very considerable time, or it may not, before the Act is extended to Ireland, when circumstances may be very different from what they are at present. In addition to that, the Order in Council has got to pro vide certain modifications and adaptations. They are not going to have the Act applied to Ireland simplicita, as at present, but with modifications and adaptations. We understand that this Act is to be applied to Ireland by de grees—that is, the unmarried men will be called first, then the married men below a certain age; then, finally, all classes above that age. We understand that this Act will apply to Ireland in very much the same way as Conscription was brought in for England. If that is so, this House ought to be consulted as to the successive stages by which the Act is to be brought into operation in regard to Ireland. But the Order in Council does more than this; it does something about which, I think, every lover of law must feel a little amount of anxiety. It can make special provision in respect of the constitution of the civil Court, and when we are told that it is proposed to make special provisions in respect of the constitution of the civil Court, one pricks up one's ears, and thinks that it is about time that the House of Commons had some thing to say about that constitution before the Order in Council is put into force. There arc, therefore, reasons why those Orders in Council should be submitted to this House as other Orders in Council are before they are made irrevocable. The Home Secretary has taken the power not only to make these Orders in Council, but to revoke them or vary them at any time or in any way. It is just as necessary to see what these new Orders in Council are as to see what the original Orders in Council are.

Then we come to Clause 4. The House will remember that there was a very considerable discussion in Committee yester day, and the Home Secretary gave an undertaking to seriously consider whether this Clause should not be incorporated in the Bill in respect of these Regulations. First of all there is a Regulation affecting the constitution of the tribunals. That is a matter which excites the warmest possible interest in this country, and I do submit that we ought to have an opportunity of considering Regulations which affect the constitution of tribunals before they become an irrevocable part of the law. There are Regulations establishing special tribunals, for regulating the making of applications and the grant or renewal of certificates and other things. All these are matters in which the public are greatly concerned. They are matters which affect the happiness, the lives, the liberty and security of a very large number of people, and they are matters which the House of Commons ought to consider, and which should not be left to the absolute unfettered dis- cretion of the Government. The right way of dealing with these matters is by securing that both Orders in Council and Regulations shall be submitted to this House as is done in other cases.

The main object of this proposal is no doubt to secure that an Order in Council applying the Military Service Act to Ire land shall be laid upon the Table of the House, and that there shall be power within a limited period to move in either House an Address for the annulment of such Order in Council. That proposal is, of course, of great importance, and one on which I obtained the leave of the Committee yesterday to consult my colleagues, and I am quite prepared now to announce our view. The object is to obtain opportunity for debate upon such an Order in Council. We are not anxious to avoid discussion of any step which we as a Government take. No Government worth its salt would endeavour to prevent criticism of its actions in the House of Commons, and, even if we did desire to obtain that end, I think that I know the House of Commons well enough by now to be quite sure that the attempt would fail. If we had not the support of the House of Commons in our action, we could not attempt to carry things through. Wheat happens is that if any substantial body of Members differ from the Government, especially on an important matter like this, their views can be made known. Either a vote of want of confidence or a Motion for the Adjournment may be moved, and the Government may afford an opportunity for debate, or the matter may be raised in some other manner. If a substantial body of Members desire it, they must needs be put in a position to debate the action of the Government For those reasons, and mainly for the first, that we do not desire to avoid discussion of our action, we are prepared in principle to accept this Clause so far as Orders in Council are concerned. The important Clause to which this new Clause would apply is Clause 2, the Irish Clause, though it might possibly come in with regard to the details of other Clauses. But, as regards the time suggested, we think that twenty-one days is too long. If the House is prepared to take fourteen days, that would give a sufficient opportunity for a Motion for an Address.

Fourteen days after the Orders are made?

Fourteen days after the House has first sat after the Order in Council is made. I do not think that we could apply this to Regulations. They deal with matters of procedure, some of them of importance and some of them of very small importance indeed. They must be put into operation at once. Under the old Military Service Acts Regulations are made without this permission, I am pre pared to accept the Clause, provided that a change is made in the number of days and provided that it is confined to Orders in Council.

Many of us welcome very cordially the announcement of the Home Secretary. So far as this proposed new Clause relates to the application of the Bill to Ireland, it is agreed that there should be a Parliamentary opportunity, if opportunity is desired, of discussing the provisions to be made. No difficulty will be found with regard to restricting the number of days to fourteen, which is, if my recollection serves me aright, the more usual form of the Clause than the longer period of twenty-one days. With regard to the other reservation of the Home Secretary, I must confess that I have a considerable feeling of doubt. Under Clause 4 very wide powers are conferred on the Executive to reconstitute all tribunals throughout the country, and greatly to modify their powers and procedure. I think it was felt in most quarters of the House that there ought to be some sort of opportunity, if opportunity was desired, to consider the course which the Government propose. So far as the distinction drawn between Regulations and Orders in Council is concerned, I think that I am right in saying that it was proposed when the Bill was introduced, as Clause 4 was originally drawn, that this should be done by Order in Council, and in order to meet the views of one or two hon. Members that was altered in Committee to Regulations. I was not quite sure why it was desired to alter from Order in Council to Regulations, but if the consequence of that, which was apparently quite a trivial Committee verbal alteration, is that the House is to be deprived of its formal opportunity of discussing and considering any proposals that are made by the Government in the exercise of powers under Clause 4, I think that that would be a most unfortunate circumstance.

If that change had not been made, we could not have agreed to apply this new Clause to Clause 4.

The Home Secretary a few minutes ago said that Regulations were not, as a rule, submitted to Parliament. I think that there is a certain number of precedents—the Old Age Pensions Act; and I think there are some dealing with education. I am fairly sure that that is so. I believe that one Regulation made, if I remember rightly, under the Old Age Pensions Act, was rejected on an Address to the Crown. How ever that may be, the fact remains that the Government, in introducing the Bill, originally considered that the matter of Clause 4 was a matter for Order in Council. That has since been altered by Amendment in Committee. I think that we should be well advised to go back on that, and that it would be well, if the right hon. Gentleman thinks that Regulations should not be laid on the Table of the House, and calls the document issued by the Government under the Clause an Order in Council and not a Regulation. The right hon. Gentleman said that in a matter of such importance as the extension of the Bill to Ireland an occasion can be found either by a formal Motion of Adjournment of the House, or in some other manner to raise debate, if debate is desired. That is true, but with respect to comparatively minor matters, such as those dealt with in Clause 4, that does not apply, and those are precisely the kind of subjects with respect to which it is proper to insert words such as those now before the House. I therefore hope that the Government will reconsider their intention with regard to matters dealt with in Clause 4, and with regard to affording the House opportunity for discussion if it is desired.

I think that the Order in Council ought to be discussed within fourteen days of the day on which it is submitted. With regard to Regulations, whatever we want now we do want some speeding up in connection with appeals, and that sort of thing at the present moment. The Regulations under which we are working were prepared originally in connection with the Derby scheme. These Regulations were issued by the Local Government Board and changed from time to time as circumstances required, and were never submitted to the House of Commons. The effect has been that endless opportunities were given for asking for reviews of decisions by tribunals. It is not at all unusual for a case to have gone from the local tribunal to the Appeal Tribunal and from that to the Central Tribunal, and for the members of the local tribunal to find that after a certain lapse of time the case comes back to them again on some other point of view and with some new fact, and people have run through all these tribunals very often two and three times, which was a perfect absurdity. The opportunities for appeal were too extensive and were much too easily availed of, and clever solicitors in very many cases have, been able to keep men out of the Army for very long periods after they should have been there. I hope that, so far as Regulations are concerned, they will not be subject to debate in this House.

There is no delay. The Regulations come into force immediately. They are not held up for consideration by the House. If the House desires subsequently to debate them and secure modification it can secure such modification, but without prejudice to anything that has been done meanwhile. That is the course that has been adopted with respect to the Schedule of Occupations under the Order in Council which has been issued by the Minister of National Service which comes into operation at once.

But during that whole period of fourteen days, or what ever it is, everybody remains in a condition of uncertainty. Nobody knows what may happen. That is not right. There has been no objection in the past to those Regulations. We have less reason now to change them than ever there was. Above all things we ought to see that those Regulations do provide some reasonable and fair appeal, but not the unfair appeals that are so common now.

Under this Clause some of the work to be done is described as being done by Regulation made by the Local Government Board. But later on the Clause says that any Order in Council made under this Sub-section may be revoked or varied by any subsequent Order in Council. It will be within the recollection of the Home Secretary and those who listened to the Debate yesterday that there was a general understanding that important Regulations or Orders made under this Clause were to be laid on the Table of the House. This is under stood by this new Clause. I listened to what the Home Secretary said, and that was the impression left on my mind. I can quite see his objection to have Regulations delayed, as was referred to by the hon. Baronet the Member for Ayrshire, by being subject to this provision. But I think that there might very well be Regulations regarding these tribunals, in which there is great public interest, which affect very seriously the interests of many individuals in this country and many important classes which really should come under the provisions which the Government have now agreed to of laying them on the Table of this House, and I would suggest to the Home Secretary that when considering it he should give us some understanding as to what class of Regulations should be made by the Local Government Board, and what class should be made by Orders in Council which would be subject, if he accepts the Amendment, to the provisions of being laid on the Table of the House. I think that it would get over the objections to which my right hon. Friend has referred and which he pressed him upon, if he would say that important Regulations, such as Regulations affecting the attitude or constitution of the tribunals, or matters of that kind, would be made by Orders in Council, and that it is only matters of administrative detail such as technical questions connected with appeal and things of that kind which would be left to the Local Government Board. I make the suggestion, because I think that it will meet the matter.

I desire to sup port what has fallen from my hon. and gallant Friend. There are two quite distinct kinds of Regulations. There are Regulations for speeding up the proceedings, and I agree with my hon. Friend (Sir G. Younger) that there is no special need for those to be laid upon the Table of the House. The method adopted with regard to those has, on the whole, worked well and no case has been made out for a change, but under Clause 4 the Government are taking power to deal with much more important and more organic matters than they did in previous Acts. There is the power to constitute nominated tribunals everywhere, instead of those appointed by the local authorities, and there is the power to appoint special tribunals. I would appeal to my right hon. Friend as to whether it could not be made clear whether they are Regulations or Orders in Council which are to be made by the Local Government Board—I want them to be made by that Department— affecting the constitution of tribunals, or the appointment of special tribunals, that they should be laid upon the Table of the House. I quite agree that those which have to do with speeding up procedure on all the matters referred to by my hon. Friend (Sir G. Younger) need not be laid upon the Table of the House. They are strictly matters of detail and of procedure. The others deal with matters of far greater weight and interest and are matters of which Parliament ought to have an opportunity of taking cognisance.

I think that the hon. Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir G. Younger) was slightly inaccurate when he referred to this particular proposal as unequalled by our previous procedure. If he will cast his mind back on previous Bills dealing with this question, he will remember that the main provision of those Bills received statutory sanction. This is a wholly new Clause, in which the real sub stance of the Bill is put in the form of Regulations. Anyone who will glance at the power given to the Minister in the execution of this Bill to proceed by way of Regulation will realise at once that he has power to do everything that is really substantial under the Bill in the form of a Regulation. That is a power which, in such serious matters, should not be dele gated by this House to any Minister or Department. The Home Secretary said that we were making a demand that was really unprecedented. May I remind him that to-day we stand at some advantage by reason of our experience? It is simply because experience has shown us that Ministers and Departments may transform the whole spirit and intention of an Act by the form of their Regulations that it becomes necessary for this House to be on its guard against delegating its powers to any Minister or Department. I hope that the Home Secretary will seriously consider the question of modifying the proposal by adopting the suggestion of my hon. Friend. Certainly, on the weightier matters dealt with in these Regulations, we ought to have greater security than that which the Home Secretary at present proposes to give us.

This concession by the Government may be either substantial or illusory. The previous Acts in no form applied to Ireland, and therefore the Order in Council, if genuinely issued, should take the form of an Act of Parliament. If it takes the form of an Act of Parliament, it will have to embrace not merely the application of the Act to Ire land, but every Regulation which the right hon. Gentleman says is to be dealt with by means of this procedure in regard to England, because the Regulation Section as now framed does not apply to Ireland. It is the English Local Government Board that will have to administer it. You are therefore in the extra ordinary position, if you mean honestly as regards Ireland, that you must give us in that country something that you refuse to give to England, namely, the power to challenge these Regulations. That is a most repugnant and inconsistent position. You state to the English Members. "We will not lay upon the Table of the House the Regulations, because they are not within the Order in Council," but you cannot apply any Regulation to Ireland without an Order in Council, and there fore, as I construe the Statute, if you mean genuinely by Ireland, you are giving us something which you are refusing to England and Scotland. That is an absurd position.

indicated dissent.

I say "if you mean genuinely by Ireland." I start with that proposition. But as you do not mean to submit the English Regulations to the House, you do not mean genuinely by Ireland. Section 4 contains the provision as to applications for certificates of exemption and as to calling up. How is Section 4 to be applied to Ireland? Am I to be told that the Government are going to enact by Order in Council that the Irish Local Government Board may make Regulations upon matters wider than you have allowed the English Local Government Board to make in regard to England and Scot land? We will not have that. You must say upon what subjects the Irish Local Government Board is to make Regulations. We cannot entrust to the Irish Local Government Board power to make Regulations of a wider kind than are given in the case of England and Scotland, nor can we entrust the Irish Local Government Board with power to make the Regulations which you are allowing the English Local Government Board to make. I will tell the House why. This is a matter of vital substance to us. After a fight which lasted twenty years, a solemn compact was made between both sides of the House that prisoners in Ireland should not be compelled to give evidence, or to submit themselves to cross-examination. If ever there was a bargain made solemnly by a Minister it was that made by the present Foreign Secretary that never would any attempt be made in Ireland to subject prisoners to the horrors of cross-examination by Crown prosecutors. This Bill for Ireland is essentially a criminal Bill, and, as regards Ireland, you are taking power to create special Courts. In England the ordinary magistrates will act under the Reserve Forces Act and the other military Acts, but in Ireland you have taken power by this Section to take away from the ordinary magistrate the ordinary power to inflict penalties and punishments for offences under this Act. Sub-section (3) of Section 4 reads:

"If any question arises at any legal proceedings under the Reserve Forces Acts, 1882 to 1907, or any Orders or Regulations made there under, whether any certificate of exemption has been withdrawn, or has otherwise ceased to be in force, the Court may require the holder of the certificate to give evidence on the Section, and if satisfactory evidence is not given to the contrary the certificate shall be deemed to have been withdrawn or to have otherwise ceased to be in force."

In other words, if any man in Ireland says, "I have an exemption paper," you throw the burden of proof upon him, and you compel him to go into the box and give evidence in his own defence. And before what Court? Before the drum head courts-martial which you are setting up under Section 2, which says:

"An Order in Council under this Section may, as respects the civil Court before which proceedings in respect of any offence punish able on summary conviction under the Reserve Forces Acts, 1882, the Army Act, the Military Service Acts, 1916 to 1918, or this Act; or any Orders or Regulations made there under are to be brought in Ireland—

(a) make special provision with respect to the constitution of the Court; or

(b) assign any such proceedings to such civil Court or Courts as may be specified in the Order."

You are going in Ireland—a country which is already practically in arms against this Bill—to set aside the ordinary justices and the whole of the ordinary tribunals of law. You are going to take away trial by jury and all matters of that kind. If you like, you can take away trial by judges. You have taken power to do away with the King's Bench under this Sub-section. You are going to subject a prisoner in Ireland, unless these Regulations be modified, to a state of things to which no English prisoner would be subjected. It is not merely that you are working against the sentiment of the country, but, while you are pretending to parity and equality, you are giving us practically ascendancy, tyranny, and slavery. There is no Act passed for England and Ireland together which receives the same treatment in both countries. On the sham cry of equality of sacrifice, you are going to give us drumhead courts-martial. Accordingly, when the right hon. Gentleman objects to the Regulations being laid before the House, I ask, Is it intended that the Irish Order in Council should be plenary in its character? In other words, will the Order in Council as laid before this House be a complete code of law, as is the Act which applies to England? We know already from the right hon. Gentleman. He says that is impossible, because yester day he made the statement, which certainly rather capsized me, that there was to be no Registration Act for Ireland. There is a Registration Act for Ireland. The English Registration Act, so-called, applies to Ireland. Yet, at that box yesterday, the right hon. Gentleman made the astonishing statement that there was no necessity for registration to be applied to Ireland.

The effect of that, as I understand it, is that the police in every district, without any legal fetter, are to be allowed to say, "All you Catholic fellows are the lusty fellows we want. Your superstition is intense, but you would make splendid brigadiers or privates. Superstition will stop a bullet just as well as the Thirty-nine Articles." Accordingly, as there will be no registration, as I understand it, the local police will select recruits just as the sheriffs long ago selected juries. If you are to have no Registration Act in Ireland, is the Order in Council, which the right hon. Gentleman says he is prepared to lay upon the Table as regards Ireland, to be a complete code or not? They have just inserted a provision to this effect: "Any Order in Council or Proclamation made under this Act may be revoked or varied by any subsequent Order in Council or Proclamation made in the like manner, and subject to the like conditions." If you bring forward an Order in Council simply saying this, "Clauses B, C and D shall apply to Ireland," there would be nothing to attract the attention of Englishmen to the frame of that particular Order. The Government may be even luxuriant in their response to our demands for time. They might say ''We will give you three days, if you like, for the discussion of this matter," and then, when this House has had its fill of this discussion about Ireland, and settled the matter by an enormous majority, on the somewhat harmless-looking provisions of the Government, and when you are all thoroughly sick of Ireland, which you generally are, from the 1st of January to the 31st of December, then an amended Order may be made. I admit that would also have to be laid on the Table, but it would come before a wearied, tired and stale House, and Members would say, "Hav'nt we had all this before? We gave them three days last month, and here they are again. Was there ever such an unreasonable lot of superstitious Papists as these Irish?"

My question to the Government is, "Is this a real concession or a sham concession? Will this Order in Council contain the plenary application of all these Acts to Ireland, so that the House may be apprised, and know the length, breadth, height, depth and scope of your intentions as regards our country?" That is a plain question. I find myself met, as regards England, with the statement that the Regulations are not to be submitted. Why, I could, in a morning, I venture to say, completely baffle all the Irish Members if I were the draftsman under this Act. I will tell you what I would do. There is nothing more simple. It is as easy as lying. I would have an Order in Council applying the Bill to Ireland. There you are. I would then have in that Order power given to the Local Government Board to make Regulations. Nothing more than that the Local Government Board make Regulations. Remember that these things have the effect of Statutes. You cannot certiorari them; you cannot go to the King's Bench and apply that these Regulations shall be annulled, or done away with, on any ground, and if you did it would be no use. The judges would be against you. I am not complaining of the judges; they are doing their duty, or what they think is their duty, in construing these Acts of Parliament in what the old patents call "the most benignant manner to the Crown." I am not criticising the way in which these Orders and Regulations are construed in the Courts; I am only pointing out the powerlessness of the Irish people against such a procedure, which I say would be so facile and so easy. Therefore, I end as I began, by saying if this be a genuine concession, as I acknowledge it to be in form, is it the intention of the Government to decant into the Order in Council, for the benefit of the Irish people and the enlightenment of their representatives, the whole of the law—the law relating to magistrates, the law relating to age, the law relating to exemptions, the whole of the laws? Conditions are different in Ire land from what they are here. If you turn the handle of a board in Dublin there is an enemy behind the counter. Accordingly, it is not too much to ask the Government, is the Order in Council intended to be what I call plenary and sufficient, or is it intended to be illusory and unsatisfactory?

There is one class of Regulation which I should like to ask the Home Secretary to allow to be submitted to Parliament. Under Clause 4 there is a type of Regulation with which the law can hardly be very familiar—the Regulations which have the power of overriding Acts of Parliament, and in so far as there is inconsistency between a Regulation and an Act of Parliament, the Act of Parliament goes under. When you make a Regulation of that kind is it clearly a slight concession to the House to place it on the Table so that it may be subsequently revoked, even though it has full validity for the time being. This, I submit, might be included in the Amendment we are now discussing.

Am I going to get any reply?

I beg to move to leave out the words "Regulation and."

I have listened to the arguments which have been used in favour of keeping Regulations in this Clause, but I do not see my way to accept the suggestion. You cannot distinguish one Regulation from others. I think you must apply the same test to the whole of Clause 4. The present Regulations are not subject to this condition. There is no provision at all in the first Military Service Act for the laying of Regulations. There are numbers of them. The House knows perfectly well they have to be altered from time to time. They are made by the Local Government Board, as these Regulations will be. They deal with procedure, with form, with machinery at all events, and I venture to submit they are different entirely from Orders in Council. I have tried to meet what I believe to be the general wish of the House, and I do sincerely hope that the concessions will be accepted as meeting the justice of the case, and that this Amendment will be accepted.

Then I am right.

May I ask you to put the word "Regulation" only, so as to admit an alternative Amendment, of which I have given notice?

I hope the House will oppose the Amendment of the Home Secretary. I think he ought to under stand that the country does not trust the Local Government Board or any other Department of the Government in the making of these Regulations. Members of the community have had sufficient experience of Acts passed in this House and of the interpretation of those Acts by the Departments concerned. Men who have been called up for the purpose of serving in the Army have been subjected from time to time to a series of Regulations which could not and have never been made knowledgable to them. Over and over again men have been taken into the Army simply because they did not know the Regulations, and those responsible for drawing these Regulations in many cases have not even taken the trouble to point out to the men concerned what powers they had under the Regulations. There are so many cases that I am quite clear in my own mind that certainly I will not support, the Government in this Amendment. I would not give to any Govern- ment Department power to draw Regulations affecting the lives and property of so many other people in the country; and I hope the House will resent this attempt, after putting this Act on the Statute Book, to place further autocratic powers in the hands of men who have abused them consistently ever since they got them.

I am sure we are all grateful to the Home Secretary for having met us as far as he has, but I do not think we can accept it as complete satisfaction. I do hope it may still be possible to come to what I call an accommodation with the Home Secretary by distinguishing between Regulations which are to be laid before the House and those which are not. There is in particular one Regulation to be made in pursuance of Section 4, Sub section (1), paragraph (a), dealing with the constitution of tribunals, which is a Regulation to which I think everybody attaches the very greatest importance. Nothing can be more important than the constitution of the tribunals before which you are going to take the cases. If the Home Secretary can see his way to allow that particular Regulation, at any rate, to be one which has to be laid on the Table of the House, and approved by the House, I think we may regard the matter, if not as satisfactory settled, as a compromise. Therefore, if this Amendment of the Home Secretary's is not carried, I should be ready to move after the word "Regulation" to insert the words "made in pursuance of Section 4, Sub-section (1), paragraph (a)."

If the right hon. Gentleman can see his way to agree to this suggestion, then I shall be willing to accept the rest of his proposal; but if he does not see his way to allow the reconstitution of the tribunals to be a matter to be reviewed by this House, then I am afraid I must press my opposition to a Division.

I wish to support my hon. Friend in the appeal he has made to the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman has advanced certain arguments why this proposal should not be accepted. He says, in the first place, it is impossible to distinguish between the various matters to be dealt with by the Regulations, and that some are comparatively trivial, and not such as the House is accustomed to have laid before it. But my hon. Friend has made a proposal which will enable us to distinguish between the various matters. Clause 4, Sub-section (1, a), deals with a topic which is of very great importance, namely, the reconstitution of the tribunals through out the country which are to deal with military service questions. I think the House will agree that if the Home Secretary will go so far as to accept the application of this Amendment to that one paragraph, and to restrict it to that particular paragraph, we can agree to the rest of his proposals. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman states that the Regulations may have to be altered from time to time. That may be so, but the Amendment need not interpose any difficulty or delay in the alterations which can be effected just as the original Regulations was made, and no delay therefore need be involved, although it will afford an opportunity for the House subsequently, if it so desires, to propose an Address with regard to the alteration. Further, the Home Secretary told us that these were Regulations which, in their nature, were not suited to be of a statutory character. I submit to him, however, that the particular Regulations reconstituting the tribunals are Regulations dealing with matters previously dealt with by the Statute itself, and not merely by Regulations or Orders in Council. To show that that is necessary we have this very remarkable provision in the Bill, which has been already referred to:

"Any Regulations made under this Sub-section shall have full effect notwithstanding any thing in the provisions of the Military Service Acts, 1916 to 1918, and those provisions, so far as they are inconsistent with any Regulations so made, shall be repealed."

This Regulation absolutely overrides the existing statutory provision. May I quote an authority on this point to whom we are accustomed to defer? I find that Erskine May, with regard to Orders and Regulations which have to be laid before Parliament, in order to allow an opportunity for an Address to be moved with a view to their amendment or cancellation, refers specially to the Orders and Regulations made for factories and workshops under the Rules of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Surely if it is customary for this House to require Orders and Regulations determining the conditions of work in factories—important as they are—to be laid before it, it ought also to have before it the Regulations under which it is proposed to constitute the whole machinery for requiring military service from hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. This is a matter of primary importance, and I would respect fully urge upon my right hon. Friend that he should give the small concession which is desired by my hon. Friend who proposes to move a subsequent Amendment.

I should like to support the appeal which has been made to the Home Secretary. It is well known that a great deal of unrest has been caused in the country during the last two and a half years by the Regulations which. have been issued, and not only by the Regulations themselves, but also by the way in which they have been interpreted by the bodies set up to administer them. Anything that this House can do to pre vent unrest and discontent ought to be done. I therefore join with the right hon. Gentleman who last spoke in appealing to the Home Secretary to make the Amendment suggested, as I am assured that he will be the gainer and not the loser as a result of the concession.

My right hon. Friend has shown this afternoon the disposition which he has always shown to meet the wishes of the Committee if he can possibly do so. But on this matter I do want to submit how extraordinarily difficult it is to-distinguish between one group of Regulations and another group. It has been suggested by one of the speakers that some of these Regulations are organic. I suppose others are, consequently, inorganic. We have been asked to make an exception in a particular case, but my right hon. Friend feels he must adhere to the view that these Regulations should not be laid on the-Table of the House—even those for re constituting the tribunals and for creating new areas. I would point out that it is extraordinarily difficult to separate these particular Regulations from the others. I contemplate that we shall, at all events, start by nominating, to a very large extent, the old tribunals.

Who will have the nominations?

The Government will have the nominations.

What?

The Appeal Courts are now nominated by the Government.

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us who will have the power under this Act to nominate the tribunals in England, and who will have the power to nominate them in Ireland? Will it be in the power of the Local Government Board, if it chooses, to make a Regulation saying that the tribunals may be appointed by the military authorities?

The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the Appeal Courts are nominated now by the Local Government Board in consultation with local opinion. There is consultation with chairmen of county councils and with other local government bodies, and every effort is made to obtain a local view as to the personnel of these Appeal Courts. The Appeal Tribunals will be nominated, therefore, by the Local Government Board, a body which has, per haps, far greater knowledge than is possessed by any other Department of the material to be found in each locality which is suitable and valuable for service on these tribunals. It is the Local Government Board which, to a large extent, will be responsible for these tribunals. While I contemplate that a very large user will be made of the old material, which has acted so well and done such good service, it will undoubtedly be necessary to change the personnel of some of these tribunals and also to change the areas over which those tribunals will operate. On these matters Regulations will have to be made, and they will have to be framed sometimes very quickly. They ought not to be subject to any period of uncertainty, such as would result if they had to be laid on the Table of the House, and to be made liable to reversal by the House by Resolution. I do not think the House will altogether lose its control over the Regulations, even if they do not have to be laid on the Table.

There are many ways in which questions can be raised with regard to this machinery. The Regulations will be circulated as quickly as possible to every Member of this House, so that they, at any rate, may be informed of their nature, and then it will be possible by means of question and answer here, or by Debates in the Chamber, to discuss their merits or demerits. I have no doubt it will be found that the House will have a good deal to say about the Regulations, and no doubt it will help us, as it has hitherto done, in generally governing the action of these tribunals. In view of that, I think my right hon. Friend is right when he says he is not prepared to lay the Regulations on the Table of the House. The result of doing so would be to create great uncertainty for a period as to whether or not the House was going to move an Address with regard to them. I am confident it is the desire of the Government, and it certainly is the desire of my Department, to make these Regulations as widely known as possible. I believe a very great deal of the unpopularity which might have attended Conscription in this country has been avoided, thanks to the work publicly done by the local tribunals. It would have been very difficult in this country to have imposed Conscription on our fellow countrymen unless we had at the same time given them opportunities for publicly stating their case before the tribunals, which, I repeat, have done their work uncommonly well.

The attitude taken up by the Home Secretary on this question is exceedingly disappointing. I do not, of course, read any sinister motive into the views he has expressed or into those of the President of the Local Government Board, but I must say that their reluctance to invite an expression of opinion by the House of Commons as to various sections of their work is very strange. With great respect, it is, I suggest, a gross exaggeration to suggest that to leave it within the power of the House to present an Address upon any of these Regulations will involve any undue delay or any element of uncertainty with regard to the Regulations for establishing the tribunals to be set up. Nothing of the kind would result. If the Regulations are such as to satisfy the House that they adequately protect the interests of the citizens of this country, no difficulty will be raised in regard to them and no uncertainty need be felt. I support this particular suggestion of the hon. Member for the Hexham Division (Mr. Holt) because I want to give stability and confidence to these tribunals, and not because I want to produce unrest or uncertainty. The most important thing that will have to be impressed on the minds of the people of this country is that these tribunals have been properly constituted, and that Parliament has control over them. There is a peculiarly sensitive disposition just now on the part of the people against government by officials. I do not know how far it is justified, but nothing would do more to undermine public confidence in these tribunals than the suggestion that they are the creation of officials and that the House of Commons is prevented from exercising proper control over them. If we desire the tribunals to work efficiently, we must remove all cause of distrust regarding them amongst the people, and I would press upon the Home Secretary and upon the President of the Local Government Board to reconsider their decision and not be so prejudiced against the suggestion which has been put forward. We are pressing this urgently, because we believe it will be of supreme importance, and that if they will only concede this one point, that the constitution of the tribunals and the definition of the areas shall be subject to be laid upon the Table of the House, so that the House may give its opinion where necessary, it will give confidence and do much to make the working of the tribunals smooth and efficient.

I agree with so much of what my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board has said that I regret the more I cannot accept fully the rest. I desire to point out to him and to the Home Secretary that this distinction was drawn in the Bill of 1916, and that yon then put on the Statute Book the composition of the tribunals and the area in which they were to act. The Committee, some with more willingness than others, but the Committee as a whole, accepted the substitution of nomination for the method put in that Act. Surely it is fair that those particular Regulations constituting the tribunals and defining their areas should be distinct from other Regulations as similar ones were in the Act of 1916. In other words, that you should have the opportunity by laying upon the Table of this House or in the other place of raising the question of composition and areas, and that these should be subject to revision, and that the other things in the amended Clause 4, in the rest of Section A, in the whole of Sub section (b), and what may be properly interpreted Sub-section (c) and (e), because (b) goes out, should be left to Regulations which are not subject to be laid upon the Table of the House. I do hope my right hon. Friends will allow the same distinction to be drawn in this Bill as was drawn in the Act of 1916, because the composition and the determining of areas are permanent things, while the others, being matters of procedure, are on an entirely different plane. I therefore join my earnest appeal with those which have already been made, and I know that my right hon. Friends are aware that I do so not to hinder but to help them in their work.

I should like to join in the appeal which has been so generally made that this Amendment may be acceded to. I think, as has been said again and again, that it will help the Government rather than hamper or hinder them. The President of the Local Government Board seemed to see difficulties in the way, but his difficulties have relation to more general Regulations, and I cannot see that the difficulties which he makes apply to the special character of these Regulations. It will meet the desire of the House, and I am sure it will be accepted in the country, and I sincerely hope that even now the Government will accept the Amendment.

I have listened to the case which has been put up both by the Home Secretary and the President of the Local Government Board in regard to the Amendment, and most Members who have been endeavouring to ascertain the intention of the Government will agree that they have not been very fortunate in the arguments they have put forward. The House has been told by the President of the Local Government Board that it will be difficult to disentangle the words of the Regulations which it will be necessary to lay upon the Table of the House from the other Regulations in respect of which this is not required. If anybody takes the trouble to look over former Regulations made by the Local Government Board he will see perfectly clearly that all these are divided, as it were, into special compartments dealing with the special subjects which naturally arise. There is no crossing between the different Regulations even as they are at present issued, and if the President of the Local Government Board were asked at present to divide the existing Regulations into the parts which it would be necessary to lay upon the Table of the House and those which it would not be, he could do so very easily.

Indeed, the fact that such a puerile argument is put forward seems to be evidence of the poor case which the Government have.

The other point was the question of time. In respect of the matter of the constitution of the tribunals this can hardly apply at all. The existing tribunals would go on working until the new tribunals are ready to take their place, so that there cannot be any possibility of delay. Surely, therefore, the contention that was so forcibly and yet so moderately put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton must be accepted by the House As the law stands at the present time these tribunals are constituted under the Second Schedule of the first Military Service Act. There is ample provision and ample protection there in respect alike of the areas and of the persons who are to be selected as members of those tribunals. Why, then, in moving this statutory provision, do they refuse to allow Parliament the right to veto, as it were, in respect of the new arrangements which they are setting up? I think if at any time it was necessary to have this statutory protection it is now, when for the first time you are going to call up men in respect of whom special difficulties will arise. There were difficulties in regard to those who came within the former military age, but those difficulties are small compared with the difficulties which arise in respect of the men between forty-one and fifty-one—in regard to their business interests, and so on. It is precisely at the time when you are going to create these difficulties that you are going to set up tribunals in which there will be less public confidence. At least, you are creating a suspicion that there will be less public confidence in them because you refuse to Parliament the right to say who these tribunals are and in respect of what areas they are to act. I think that though it is comparatively a small concession for the Government to make, if they now hesitate to make it it will be the duty of the House to mark their resentment of the course they are taking by dividing on this Amendment.

The Government surely must have expected that some Amendment would be made to this Clause. They have deliberately provided in this Clause that there shall be done by Regulation what would in ordinary cases be subject to express legislation by this House. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board sought to suggest that there is some analogy between the class of Regulations provided for in the first Subsection of Clause 4 with the class of Regulation which the Local Government Board has power to make already. Nothing could be more false. At present the constitution of the tribunal is determined by express legislation put on the Statute Book. Now for the first time the Government take power by this Act to constitute the tribunals by Regulation. They have not given us the smallest information as to how this is to be done. I challenged the right hon. Gentleman by interruption to tell us who was to constitute the tribunals. I thought he was somewhat gingerly in his answers, and I do not know that he expressly pledged himself to the proposition that the Regulations would provide that the tribunals would be constituted by the Local Government Board.

Anything is open under the Act as it stands. The Regulation may provide that the appeal should be to a tribunal suggested by the competent military authority. That would be perfectly within the four corners of this Act; for what does the Act say?—that the Local Government Board may make Regulations providing for applications for certificates of exemption being made to such tribunals constituted in such manner as may be authorised in the Regulation. Everything is left at large. We are not told whether Regulations will name A, B, C. and D, and say that these shall be the gentlemen who will form the tribunal for such an area, or whether the form of the Regulations will be such that the county council in any area, subject to the veto of the Local Government Board, may select so many persons to constitute it. I put the extreme case, though I hope it is not a possible one, that it is within the four corners of the Act that the Local Government Board might in their Regulations say that the tribunal shall be selected by the competent military authority in any area. I want to know why, if the Government did not intend to leave this at large, they have not put some limiting words in their Sub-section (a)? They could very well have put in tribunals constituted by the Local Government Board" or in some way have indicated the manner in which the tribunals are to be constituted.

My interest in this matter is an Irish interest. I know perfectly well that the Government have not the smallest inten- tion of doing in England anything which would shock English public opinion, but we have no such protection in Ireland, and I am bound to say that the view expressed by the Home Secretary last night as to the form in which the Order in Council extending this Act to Ireland would take is not one which, distinguished lawyer as he is, I would have any confidence in an Irish Court accepting. It is suggested that under Clause 2 of this Act extending the Act to Ireland no other modifications can be made except modifications, as we used to say mutatis mutandis, to adapt the Act to Irish conditions. That is not the Act at all. It says," with such modifications and adaptations as may be made by the Order for the purpose of making it applicable to Ireland." Consequently it is perfectly possible that even though the Local Government Board in England may have the appointment of the tribunals and may draw them from the classes which the right hon. Gentleman indicated, in Ireland the Local Government Board may well say, "In Ireland we have not the material for creating tribunals such as you have in England, where the Military Service Act has been in operation for several years."

Tribunals have been working in Eng land, and, as the right hon. Gentleman told us, as many as eighteen hundred have been sitting there already, so that the work of selecting the tribunals has been done. In Ireland the Local Government Board may very well say that they have no such materials in Ireland and that they cannot work this Act in Ireland as it has been worked in England and Scotland. Consequently the tribunals in Ireland may be constituted on entirely different lines. Surely when the Government deliberately

I shall only call the attention of the Government to one fact. We have been discussing this question for over half an hour, and the Government have not had one voice speaking in its favour except the two Members who have spoken from the Treasury Bench. Members from every part of the House without exception have spoken against the Government's proposal. In view of that fact, and believing that, after all, the Government wish to have the general support of the Committee, I hope they will, even at the last moment, withdraw their Amendment.

I beg to move, in the proposed Clause, to leave out the words "the next subsequent twenty-one days on which that House has sat next," and to insert instead thereof the words "four teen days."

The Address must, therefore, be presented within fourteen days after the Order has been laid before Parliament.

I should like to ask the Home Secretary what would happen if the House did not sit during the fourteendays? Ought not the words "on which that House has sat" be left in?

The Amendment would mean that the Order would remain for fourteen days when the House was sitting.

We must look at the possibility that the Order might be laid on the Table of the House on the eve of the Adjournment of the House, when there might be no effective opportunity of the discussion of this Regulation. That is an eventuality for which we must allow. Sup posing the Government were, I do not say by desire, driven by circumstances to introduce and to lay on the Table of the House Regulations on the eve of Adjournment, it might so happen that this House would never have one moment's opportunity for debate.

The words of the next Amendment, I think, cover that.

The next pro posed new Clause, standing in the name of the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) [Orders in Council], has been covered by the provision already made. I think the same also refers to the next Amendments on the Paper. I call upon the Home Secretary.

I beg to move to leave out Sub-section (2). I move this Amendment as I promised last night.

May I respectfully ask you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if you are passing over Amendments standing in the name of the hon. Member for Mid-Lanark (Mr. Whitehouse) and myself in regard to age?

That was Mr. Speaker's intention, and I am following the selection he indicated.

This will not apply to what the old English law used to call" a religious man." It will apply to religious men who are Nonconformists, though I do not know whether that will include Presbyterians. [An Hon. Member: "It will…"] I should like humbly and respectfully to say that the Government ought to have regard to the religious men in "the Catholic Church other than ordained clergymen. As far as my experience goes—and I wish to give the Government this recognition — in my opinion the old Act has been fairly ad ministered as regards religious men. I have never, except as regards one student who was very near his ordination, received a complaint as to the administration of the Act in England. I think you have acted fairly in England. I trust that that will be the verdict in future when this Act is in force, though one cannot say. But I might be allowed to say as regards monks, some of whom have been engaged for twenty years in teaching, that it is the height of absurdity if you expect to make any military use of any of these men, no matter what their age. Really, I am rather tired of talking on matters in connection with this Bill, or against the production of such a Bill as this, howled for by the English newspapers, which have said that it is the business of the Government to shoot, and not to argue with those opposed to them. Shoot us; do not argue with us… This Bill, having such consequences, is to be discussed at the point of the bayonet… That such should be the case is, to my mind, the setting back the hands of the clock something like 100 years. By this Bill you may, in your action against religious men, excite prejudice against yourself. And the Government are doing all this at the suggestion of narrow and prejudiced people in London, some of whom are themselves of military age, who think that the monks ought to be brigaded in France and Flanders, but who themselves prefer to be brigaded in Fleet Street.

I beg to thank the Home Secretary for accepting this Amendment, which I moved in the Committee stage. His object, however, is directly opposed to the object with which I moved the Amendment in Committee. We are at least agreed that compromise is not satisfactory. The only question that now remains is whether the clergy should be wholly exempted, or whether they should be wholly included. I will not delay the House by repeating the arguments I used in the Committee stage, but I do want to-express my regret at the decision of the Government. At a time when they are imposing, and I think rightly, this very difficult Bill upon the country, they are refusing to except a class. This alteration means some hundreds of Grade 1 men lost to the Colours. The Government should realise the extreme hardship, in practice, that must necessarily be imposed by this Bill. There will be no good feeling produced towards the Churches by the absolute exemption of the clergy from the obligation of military service. The Churches themselves, I believe—certainly the Church of England—has not asked for this. Whatever, of course, may be at the back, I am sure the great mass of the Churches want to play their part in this War as ordinary citizens.

They can do it voluntarily…

There is every difference in the world between doing it voluntarily and coming within a compulsory Clause. Especially those who have fought in France will bear in mind that—whether with their will or not does not matter— ministers of religion have not borne the full and equal burden imposed upon other classes of the community. That will be remembered against them after the War, and will stir up ill-feeling which, I, personally, would have been most glad to avoid.

I rise to express my cordial agreement with what I conceive to be the ultimate object of the Home Secretary in moving this Amendment. I understand that this Amendment is the first necessary to remove persons in Holy Orders and regular ministers of other religious bodies from the Bill, and that this Amendment is to be followed by another exempting them in the Schedule of the Act. I have always opposed the conscription of the clergy and ministers—as indeed I have opposed the conscription of anybody and everybody—and I should be sorry for the Home Secretary's Amendment to be inserted in the Bill, without the House being asked to consider what are the grounds for exempting the clergy and ministers.

The history of this question in this House on this Bill is a remarkable one. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle two or three nights ago, on the Committee stage, moved the same Motion as the Home Secretary has now moved. He moved it in order to conscript the clergy and ministers for combatant service in precisely the same terms as everyone else under the Bill. The hon. Member's Motion was defeated by a majority of about 300 Members of this House desiring to retain the Bill in the form in which it was introduced by the Home Secretary. On that occasion mine was the only voice raised in this House to protest against the conscription of the clergy. I cannot believe, as I said before, that the Home Secretary has conic to his present attitude in consequence of the remarks that I made on that occasion.

Of course he has…

It is extremely gratifying to me to be able to record that that is the only logical explanation of the attitude of the Home Secretary, and I am very glad to be interrupted to be told so. But I think I know the Home Secretary too well—perhaps I should say I know the Government rather too well—to believe that they have proceeded as they have for any such reason. What has happened is this: There has been a great revolt behind the scenes. I have read the letters which have been appearing in the "Times" from the Bishop of Chelmsford and others. I remember some time ago the Bishop of Chelmsford was actively sup porting service for other people, and, indeed, in the course of his address he stated that he himself was going to take, in private, lessons in physical training. In yesterday's "Times" the Bishop of Chelmsford protests altogether against the conscription of the clergy. He states in this letter what I reminded the Committee on a previous occasion, that the clergy would be very useful at home because of the increasing lawlessness of the children of soldiers—a most amazing statement to make, a most extraordinary statement to make, and I think a most improper one … He said further that they will be useful at home" in assisting the piling up of spiritual munitions." I am quoting the words of the bishop. I was sorry when the Home Secretary came down and, with out any relevancy to the discussion, announced that he was going to exempt the clergy, that he gave as one of his reasons that the Bishop of Chelmsford had mentioned the great help they would render. These are not the grounds which those of us who appeal for the exemption of the clergy from this Bill desire to urge. The right of clergymen and ministers to accept exemption under this Bill is precisely the same right which is claimed by applicants of exemption upon the grounds of a conscientious objection to military service. The same right exists in each case. I have always appealed for the rights given by Statute to conscientious objectors, and I know how extremely unpopular that subject has always been in this House. We know now that the clergy and ministers have put forward the same objection. We know that at the great meeting called yesterday various considerations were urged, but I want it to be made quite clear that the only ground we put forward for exemption in this case is precisely that which we put forward for other citizens of this country, namely, that the clergy have a conscientious objection to military service. I regret such reasons as those which were put forward by the Bishop of Chelmsford and by the Home Secretary yesterday. Whilst I very heartily support the exclusion of clergy and ministers, I do soon precisely the same grounds that I have supported the exclusions of other citizens of this country.

I do not wish to enter into the general considerations which the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Whitehouse) has just put before the House. I have always regarded exemption of any ministers of religion as quite illogical, and I has risen to ask for an explanation. I think it is well for the House to understand why the Government is doing this. It is not on account of the eloquent speeches of the hon. Member for Mid-Lanark or the Member for North-East Cork, neither is it on account of the conscientious objection of the clergy, but it is because there has been an agitation on this subject in Wales. It is very significant that the concession was made after a speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon, and why was that speech made on the Committee stage? Because there had been a revolt amongst the Nonconformist ministers in Wales. They went to hear the Prime Minister at the Free Church Council meetings, and there the Prime Minister asked them to pray—

The Prime Minister is past praying for.

I think when the history of this question is elucidated it will be found that I have given the correct explanation. Everybody who knows the grounds upon which this Government usually proceeds will agree that I put for ward an explanation which is certainly very probable. We had the speech of the hon. Member for Carnarvon, and immediately after that we had the reply of the Home Secretary. The hon. Member for East Cork got no reply, but he only represents a small party in Ireland.

That is not so now …

That may not be so now, and in that case we may see more attention paid to the arguments of the hon. and learned Member.

Not a bit…

The other point I wish to raise arises in regard to the Amendment which the Government has put down on the Paper to the First Schedule, to insert the words "men in holy orders or regular ministers of any religious denomination." The proposal has caused a great deal of trouble, and in some cases it has been necessary to take the matter into the Court. Some men have claimed exemption on the ground that they have been regular ministers of a religious denomination. I think it is only fair that the Government should state precisely what these words mean. It is true that under the Sub-section in the Bill as it stands it is left to the Central Tribunal to interpret, but I think it would be an advantage to have guidance from the Government itself, and we should know what instructions the Minister of National Service is going to give to his local representatives through out the country. There are a number of very obscure denominations in the country of which most of us have not heard, and while not having a ministry in the sense of the Baptists or the Congregational Church, many of these men who act as ministers still exercise their secular occupations, and that fact does not, so far as those denominations are concerned, deprive them of the character of regular ministers of religion. I would suggest that where the members of the denomination itself regard the applicant as a regular minister of their denomination, and it is easy to ascertain that from the official body of the denomination, then the exemption shall be granted. We want equality of treatment between all denominations, no matter how weak or obscure they may be, and the Government might make such, a concession.

May I ask the Home Secretary whether the deletion of this Sub section really does absolve the clergy and ministers of all denominations, or whether it does not really place the ministers of the country exactly on the same footing as any other citizen. So far as I have come into contact with those who represent religious thought, I do not think they desire any specific treatment, and they take their stand together with the ordinary citizens. I agree that by this action you are creating a very serious revulsion against those who represent religion, who will become a specially favoured class, because they happen to be ministers of religion. Therefore, in the interests of religion it would be better if they should take their stand with other citizens, and be placed on the same grounds, with the same exceptions, and stand their corner the same as every other man.

Not in Wales.

I believe the ordinary ministers do not require any special privilege.

I should like to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman can say approximately how many men we shall lose under fifty years of age through this Clause? I understand that there are a number, or, in fact, a greater proportion, of ministers in Wales than in any other part of the United Kingdom according to the population, and under these circum stances the Home Secretary might tell us how many men the Prime Minister is losing by introducing this Clause. One can only appeal, before taking so serious a step, that the Government should ascertain to what extent their proposal will affect the man-power of the country. So far as clergymen serving are concerned. I am quite sure that if they are given the opportunity it is feasible that those who wish can volunteer, and I am sure they would not like, as a class, exemption made in their case. I ask, in the event of this Clause not being carried and no exception being made in the case of clergymen, whether the right hon. Gentleman would place clergymen on the same footing as ordinary individuals, and enable them to be returned as Members of this House? At the present time a clergyman of the Church of England cannot be returned to this House without giving up Holy Orders. It is unfair to ask a clergyman to do what you are asking him unless he has all the privileges enjoyed by Members of this House.

I hope the House will support the Government with regard to the exemption of clergy. I have listened to my hon. Friend opposite, and I submit that there are a good many of us who look upon it as repugnant to con script, ministers of religion. I myself am not a Quaker. I believe this is a just War and that we must exercise force for carrying on that operation, but I do believe in a general sense we recognise ministers of religion as serving the Master who stands for peace and for the advocacy of peace principles. I believe that if ministers of religion were more successful, both on the Continent of Europe and in this country, perhaps this great, tragedy might have been avoided. I hope that the general sense of the House will recognise that we have to play our part and that we desire that the clergy should uphold a higher ideal.

In answer to the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Wing), of course he is right in thinking that if we simply omit the Sub-section and leave this Bill as it stands the effect would be to subject ministers to the same obligations as other citizens. I have an Amendment later to leave them exactly where they are to-day.

As this is a matter on which the Government hold strong views, will the Government leave this Amendment to the free vote of the House?

I am afraid we cannot do that. In answer to the hon. Member for Cork, I would remind the House that there are many men of the class to whom he refers who are to-day of military age, and those cases have been dealt with in a reasonable spirit, and they have not been called up. I am quite sure that future cases will be dealt with in the same spirit. As to the meaning of the words in the existing Act, I think it is one that has already been thoroughly dealt with by the Courts. Everybody knows who comes within the words, and I do not think any further explanation is needed.

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but there is some difference between the English and the Scottish Courts in dealing with this matter.

I know that different decisions are given in the two countries. I quite agree with the remark that has been made that there are many ministers who would prefer not to be excepted from the Act, but in regard to this Sub-section which was put in the Bill we have, had a number of representations, some from ministers, some from the Salvation Army, and other bodies, pointing out that if we include ministers we shall gravely interfere not only with the religious ministrations through out the country, but with the services rendered by ministers in other ways. We have acted on those considerations—not at all on the considerations which the hon. and learned Member for Lanark suggested — by dropping this provision of the Bill. I may state I had in mind the dropping of this provision even before the hon. Member (Mr. Ellis Davies) spoke, and I only waited to see someone supporting that view. We dropped the provision for the reason, also, that when you have included those whose ministrations are required in civil life and those who have conscientious objections or for reasons of health may not be able to serve, there were so few left that I do not suppose they would have formed a battalion of men, if all taken together. So few being left, we really thought it not worth while to run counter to the strong feeling of the country for so small an advantage as that. That was the reason of our decision.

There is just one point I would like to urge on the Home Secretary. It is true that conflicting opinions have been given as to who are ministers, but I hope that in the Regulations that are made in regard to this class, this difficulty will be got over. It is not correct to say that men are not ministers merely because they are not paid, and I sincerely hope that care will be taken with regard to that point, and that it will be recognised that some of the most useful religious ministration in this country is done by men who do not receive payment for it. I believe that there is now an opportunity of making such Regulations as will overcome difficulties that have been caused in the past.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give an assurance on this paint. There are at least two religious bodies who depend, in so far as human ministration is concerned, entirely on unpaid preachers, and I think that we should have a clear statement on the point.

While we may not be able to go to the full extent the hon. Gentlemen desire, I will take care to represent the point they raise.

I beg to move, in Sub section (3), to leave out the words "and Section eight."

The effect of this Sub-section as it stands includes returned prisoners of war who are liable to military service under this Bill, but the House will observe that there is a proviso in the Sub-section under which those prisoners of war who have been exchanged are exempted from military service, but those prisoners who have escaped, and have been able to return here, are now made, for the first time, liable to military ser vice under the Military Service Acts. There are two reasons why I suggest to the Government that the existing exemption should be continued. The first is that the withdrawal of the exemption will bring in a very small number of men. There are only a few of these men, and some of them have suffered a good deal during their imprisonment in Germany. As a general rule, they are not likely to be men who would be of much service from a military point of view. But there is a second point, which is based on more general grounds. We have had issued recently a Report regarding the treatment of prisoners of war on the part of the German Government, and a very interesting document has been published recently on behalf of the Committee which has been investigating the treatment of prisoners. That Report has been used for propaganda purposes. Is it not obvious to the Government that it is going to diminish very much its own propaganda, if, at the very moment of the issue of this Report, it also introduces a Sub section into an Act of Parliament which makes those men, who have suffered all those cruelties, liable to Conscription? Does that not suggest to the House that the Germans will at once make a very obvious reply to the Report, "How can anybody believe those stories of the alleged sufferings and hardships of these men, who have been reduced to this terrible state of health, when they are to be conscripted by the British Government?" That is a general consideration which ought to enter into the minds of the Government in seeking to impose this provision. For these two reasons, that it affects only a small number of men, while the provision in the Bill would do something to entirely nullify the effect of the propaganda in regard to the cruel treatment of prisoners of war in Germany, I move the Amendment.

I beg to second the Amendment.

No soldier or sailor who is discharged from the Navy or the Army, when no longer fit for service, ought to be included in a Bill of this kind, and a provision of this sort would destroy the Act of Parliament which gives them exemption. Be sides, the provision in the Bill would add to the inefficiency rather than the efficiency of the Army, while at the same time it would produce an exceedingly bad impression amongst those who have been discharged from the Army or the Navy, and who, having been so discharged, feel that they have again entered into ordinary life, and that they would be no more called upon. I hope that this Amendment will be accepted by the Minister of National Service.

I support the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Lanark, who pointed out that very few men would be sacrificed. I am told that a considerable number of men who have escaped and were eligible for the Army—I am referring to non-military men who escaped from Germany—have already enlisted, but I would point out that if men who have escaped should again be made prisoners, they would have a worse time on the second occasion than they experienced on the first. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will accept the Amendment on the grounds already advanced.

I think there is some misunderstanding on the point of what is exactly the effect of the provision. There are several classes of persons who have been in the hands of the enemy, and who are now in this country. First, there is the class of persons who fell into the hands of the enemy as civilians, and who were released from one or other of the enemy countries through some arrangement entered into by His Majesty's Government. Such persons are at present excepted from the Act, and would under the proposals in this Clause continue to be excepted, so that there is no change in their case. Another class of persons who fell into the hands of the enemy consist of those who escaped as the result of their own action. That class at present is exempted, but would not have statutory exemption under the proposed arrangement. There is a third class of British subjects who have been in the hands of the enemy—soldiers and sailors, who have been taken prisoners, and who have escaped They were not under that exemption. They came back and rejoined the Service to which they belonged. Many men now serving with the Army have been for a short time in the hands of the enemy, and then have got back to their old life. It has never been suggested that such men should cease to serve in the Army. From that there is an unbroken series of cases leading up to the man who has been merely in the hands of the enemy for a few months, or a man who has been in their hands for some months and has escaped. If he belongs to the armed forces, he continues to serve. That is the position at present, and that will be the position in future. There is one rule about these men that has been carefully observed, that is, for example, if a man were taken prisoner on the Western Front and imprisoned in Germany and there after escaped, he does not go back to the Western Front; he is sent to a garrison battalion in India or Egypt possibly, or wherever it may be, but he is not exposed to the liability to capture in the same theatre. That, I think, is fair. That is an administrative act which has been going on for months—I do not know when it began—and there is no proposal to modify that in any way whatsoever. Then we have the fourth class of persons who have been in the bands of the enemy, men who were soldiers who were captured after they had been wounded, who were imprisoned for a time in Germany, and who have been released through one of the neutral countries. They at present are excluded under Section 8 of the second Military Service Act. It this Bill in the form in which it now stands should go through the House and become law, they will be excluded under heading 3 in the Schedule.

Which Schedule?

The First Schedule. So there is just the one class left that is affected. It is a class with which we have had great difficulty in dealing. There is a class of civilians who have been, for a short time, in the hands of the enemy, and who are now in this country. A large number of them, in faut, suffered no material hardship. A large number of them are already serving. But there is a. certain number of these men who have really done nothing special to help the country in the War except to meet with the accident of being taken prisoner, if that can be regarded as a help, and who are at the present time exceptions under the Act, without, as it appears to the Government, there being any real reason for their being excepted. That is the one small, limited class of persons who will be affected by the provision of this Sub section of the Clause. I call it a, small class. So it is in relation to the total number of men who are to be taken; but it is a class who, perhaps, have led to a good deal of trouble in administration, because there is no possibility of being absolutely certain that the claims of the individual are in fact correct. There is a number of men wandering about the country at the present time who claim that they were on board a ship which, let us say, was stopped by the "Karlsruhe" at the outbreak of war, who claim therefore that they were for the time being under the control of the enemy, and who regard themselves as exempt from military service.

How many of them?

I should say some hundreds. They are perfectly fit men who have done nothing for the country. The classes to which, we are indebted and under an obligation are adequately safe guarded even under the new provisions. It is only this small class which is affected, and it is a class which I do not think should receive special treatment.

Do I understand that the right hon. Gentleman cannot accept this Amendment? Because, if so, I hope that is not his final word. I do not think he gave a quite fair description of the sufferings of the men who have undergone imprisonment and who have escaped. It is true that they took no active part in the War, but that was not their fault. They were caught at the out break of war. Some of them have been in prison for more than three years, and they have been subjected to special hard ships of diet, sanitary conditions, close confinement, and deprivation.

I am sure my right hon. Friend will pardon me interrupting him, because we are obviously at cross purposes. The men of whom he speaks who come under the agreement are excluded by the provisions. These are the remaining men who would not be touched by the special provisions.

What about the men who escaped from Ruhleben, and who, therefore, do not come under any convention or arrangement made with the German Government? I know some of those men, who have taken rather an active part in propaganda work, and who are specially, shall I say, objectionable to the German Government. Yet they are of military age, and if they were caught again as prisoners their fate would not be an enviable one. I am sure my right hon. Friend would not desire to subject men of that sort to the unfortunate fate which we all of us know is reserved for any prisoner who is objectionable to the German Government. I quite see the difficulty of my right hon. Friend's position, but I would seriously ask him to reconsider this matter and see whether something cannot be done in another place or even now to meet the hard case of men whose only obstacle in the way of serving their country was that they were in Germany when the War broke out, and who had been subjected to the most cruel treatment, so that they have been rendered, as in one or two cases of which I know, absolute physical wrecks for the time being. If they are pressed into service again, and caught in Germany, I can assure my right hon. Friend that the fate to which they are doomed—he knows it much better than I do—is not one to which he would willingly subject anyone. I hope he will consider this question again.

If the right hon. Gentle man reads the Section in question, he will observe that there is nothing in the Amendment which he cannot accept. Section 8 says:

"Nothing in this or the principal Act shall operate so as to render liable to military ser vice any person who has at any time since the beginning of the War been a prisoner of war, captured or interned by the enemy, and has been released or exchanged."

The right hon. Gentleman observed that there are several hundred nomadic prisoners of war who were stopped by the "Karlsruhe." They would not come under this Section. That is not the type of man the House is troubled about at the moment. The man they are troubled about is the man who has been interned for some time or captured by the enemy, and has subsequently been either released or exchanged. As the right hon. Gentle man says, if he has been a soldier, he is sent to another theatre, and if he were captured he would be captured by a different enemy. That man, to a certain extent, is all right. But if the man has himself escaped and is of military age, and is conscripted after that hardship, whether he deserved it or not—I am assuming the fact that he is—if he be caught by the enemy, he is put up against the wall and shot. Surely, if a man has been an actual case of capture and internment and has subsequently escaped, we ought to do something to protect him. I have sufficient admiration for the abilities of my right hon. Friend the Minister of National Service to know that he can devise a means of seeing that the really genuine man is not put in that predicament. If he reads the Section which I have quoted, he will see it does not cover the man of the nomadic type to whom he referred. The right hon. Gentleman does not lose any thing by accepting the Amendment. He retains to himself and to the House a power which the House would like the Govern- ment still to have. I do not think the House would like any of these men, after they were conscripted and caught, should suffer that further fate. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to allow these words to be deleted, so that the Section I have read to the House will still stand.

Surely the right hon. Gentleman sees that the only people he is likely to capture under this provision are those who have actually succeeded in escaping. He does not get those who have been exchanged; he only gets the men who have shown exceptional courage—and I readily understand that it requires exceptional courage, because several of my acquaintances have escaped—in breaking through and getting out of Germany. When one remembers the conditions and treatment of those who endeavour to escape, I do not see why the right hon. Gentleman should treat them as he is doing. Those who sit tight and wait till they are ex changed are all right, while those who take their courage in both hands and dash back to this country and give it all the service they can—they are doing an immense amount of good in this country by quiet propaganda work among their friends and explaining to them what German kultur really is—are treated in this way. To call these men up and make this distinction in regard to them is a thing almost too unfair for even this Government to do.

I think we are talking at cross purposes at the present moment. The men who have escaped have never been excluded from the provisions of the Act. The men who have been captured and interned by the enemy and who have been released or exchanged are excluded. Therefore the man who has escaped is already liable. We are not changing the conditions; we are dealing with a man who, for example, was on board a ship in August or December, 1914, which was stopped by the "Karlsruhe" and for the time being was in the hands of the enemy, but was released on the ship being allowed to proceed on her way. I shall certainly consult the draftsman, because I do not want to touch those people, with whom we all sympathise. If I am wrong, we will certainly take action of the kind to which reference has been made. I am advised that the only people this power we pro pose to take will affect are men of the class to whom I am not now referring. They are not men who have escaped, but men who were released and have got away and have not really been prisoners at all. In fact, they were never off their own ship, and never suffered any hardships, and were only in the hands of the enemy for a short time.

Although I am not satisfied, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, to leave out Clause 2.

In the first Debate yesterday the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College (Sir E. Carson) made a very remarkable speech, and I desire at the commencement to read a very short extract from that speech to the House, in order to refresh their memories. The right hon. Gentleman said:

"But the Government must really tell us what is the machinery that is going to be applied, north, south, east and west. What ever it is, do not be ashamed of it… … Do not say, 'We cannot trust Ireland; we cannot trust them to tell them what the machinery will do.' I can assure you that is the very worst way you can deal with Ireland. Far better that you should let us know—for better or worse. Really, I find great difficulty in understanding where we are in this Bill in relation to Ireland."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th April, 1918, col. 91.]

Is there a single Member who has closely followed these Debates who does under stand at this moment where we are in relation to this Bill in its application to Ire land? The Prime Minister, when introducing the Bill, went out of his way to say he wished the House and the country distinctly to understand that there was no connection whatever between the introduction of a Home Rule Bill and the applica- tion of Conscription to Ireland, and he emphasised that statement in a very remarkable way. But when we come to the speech of the Chief Secretary there can not be the slightest doubt that the whole House and the country outside, as we know very well from the daily Press, put a wholly different interpretation upon the intentions and the plans of the Government. Here is what the Chief Secretary said:

"On the other hand, it would be the worst disservice to the State to call into the ranks men who were suffering under a historic sense of grievance. His Majesty's Government wants to remove it. It seeks the help of this House to remove it. It seeks the help of the country to remove it."

If it be true that it would be the worst disservice to the State to call to the Colours men in Ireland who are suffering from a historic grievance, what is the meaning of telling us that there is no relation in the mind of the Government between the introduction of self-government for Ireland and the application of Conscription to that country? Is any Member in this House, I do not care in what quarter he sits, prepared to say that the Irish people are not to-day suffering from a historic grievance and from as great an intensification and exacerbation of that grievance by the events of the last three years? I want to know how we are to reconcile, how the Government expects us to reconcile, these two declarations coming on successive days from members of the Government. Is the one thing dependent upon the other or is it not? And what is the meaning of this sentence from the Chief Secretary's speech:

"So far as I am concerned, I want to tell the House that if this Clause had been a Clause for applying military service to Ireland without the means for the course which I am explaining to the House, I could not have been a party to it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th April, 1918, col. 1922, Vol. 104.]

The Chief Secretary said shortly before that he was speaking not only on his own behalf, but on behalf of his colleagues in the Government. Does it mean that in his mind it is not possible morally, from his point of view, to put this Clause applying Conscription in Ireland into force without first removing the historic grievance under which he says the Irish people suffer, and, if not, what did he mean by making that statement? When subsequent speeches were made which appeared to contradict and disavow these declarations we in vain called upon the Chief Secretary to speak again, and we have not heard from him since as to the interpreta- tion he places or the explanation he is prepared to give for these strange contra dictions, but it appears to me that we find some explanation in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Carson). He says in the course of that same speech from which I have quoted:

"I think you have made a fatal mistake in the manner in which you have brought this Bill before the House."

What is the meaning of that sentence? The right hon. Gentleman generally has some sinister meaning when his words are as significant as that. I have no doubt he was referring to the speech of the Chief Secretary, and that a very hard struggle was going on behind the scenes when that speech was delivered. I understand that at this very moment when I am speaking he and his followers in the Unionist party arc assembled in meeting upstairs considering what form of ultimatum they will deliver to the Government. On this point I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Let the Government be frank and tell us in Ireland honestly, as they have not done up to this hour, what it is that they mean to do in connection with this Bill. I challenge the Government, before this Debate, carried on under the most extra ordinary circumstances of difficulty, concludes, to answer that question put to them, not only from these benches by the Irish Nationalist Members, but by a man who in a moment of forgetfulness used the imperative and said "the Government must tell us," and on more than one occasion he has proved his power to make the Government do what he wishes.

Then I come to the question of the tone in which Ministers have brought forward this proposal and the claims they have made. The tone, I am sorry to say, particularly of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been a return—which pained all of us, for he has been for three or four years a, most courteous and conciliatory Leader of the House—to his old tone when he led the Opposition, and his tone throughout all the speeches he delivered was one of menace and hostility to the Irish people. He quoted one passage which will go round Ireland. I do not know what purpose he had in quoting it except as a threat, and I think a very improper threat. He quoted the passage from President Lincoln in which he spoke of the necessity of shooting the wily agitator. He said:

"Am I to allow a poor soldier boy who deserts to be shot and the wily agitator who has induced him to desert to go scot-free?"

I assume that is intended for us and the meaning is that if we dare to advise our people to oppose or resist this measure he will deal with us first. I have been for thirty-seven years in the House and have heard that language very often. It will have no effect upon us and it will have less effect on the leaders of the revolutionary party in Ireland, whom he and the Government are now doing their best to strengthen. Then the right hon. Gentle man went on to say:

"We are doing what we have a moral right to do —"

and he was speaking without any conditions. He specifically said that before hand—

"We are doing what we have a moral right to do, and also a technical legal right."

As regards the moral right I deny it, and in making that denial I am speaking not only for the united Nationalists of Ireland of all sections, but for three-fourths of the Unionists of Ireland too. No power on earth has a moral right to conscript a single Irishman resident in Ireland and compel him to fight except a body representing the Irish nation, and I believe you will find it impossible to do it. That is my answer to the statement of the moral right.

But I go further, and I call upon the Chief Secretary in support of my view. He said:

"On the other hand, it would be the worst disservice to the State to call into the ranks men who were suffering under an historic sense of grievance, and, so far as I am concerned, if this had been a Clause for applying military service to Ireland without the means for the course which I have indicated above, I would be no party to it."

Therefore, in my opinion, as far as I can put an interpretation on the speech of the Chief Secretary, reading it as a whole, he does not believe there is a moral right to compel the Irish people to fight in this War unless you remove, first of all, the historic grievance under which they are suffering. The Leader of the House says, "We have a moral right, but further we have a technical legal right." You have a technical legal right. So you had 150 years ago when you taxed America and you had stronger arguments in that great controversy. There is not a single thing that has been said to-day against the Irish people in this controversy which was not said against the American Colonists when they resisted your power of taxa- tion. There is no doubt you had a technical legal right. You had this argument that you had about the Colonies, that you had come to their assistance, and every word, every reproach almost that has been hurled against the Irish in this matter was directed against the American colonies in those days as to their ingratitude and their want of sense, of duty not to come to the assistance of this country, not by a blood tax—there was no question of compelling them to spill their blood in your service—but by contributing a small monetary aid. I noticed the other day, in the "Times," one of the most remarkable contributions to this whole controversy by a very learned and distinguished man, Professor Pollard, of the University of London—

"Sir, the case for the Conscription of Ireland can, I think, be put in a nutshell. Logically it is as complete as Lord Grenville and Lord North's case for imposing taxation upon the American Colonies and for a share in the common taxation necessitated by a war waged? largely in their defence."

These are the very arguments we are using. The case, was logically complete and you told the Colonies they were un gracious, and Lord North and Lord Grenville and the Government, which in their ability and statesmanship bore a striking resemblance to the Government we are living under to-day, called upon the loyalty of this country and called every man a traitor who sympathised with the American Colonies, and I glory in the fact that Ireland then, as in the days of the Boer Republic and the better days of the present Prime Minister, did not hesitate to express their sympathy because they were right and England was wrong. George Washington himself ex pressed, in words which are graven on the hearts of all Irishmen, his gratitude to the Parliament of Ireland and the people of Ireland for the upright course they took in that war. But you stuck to your technical legal right and you enforced taxation on America. Who would have believed in those days, when that war commenced, the mighty consequences which would follow from it? When you look back and study the history of that period, and contrast the ridiculous and absurd contribution which you endeavoured to get from the American Colonies, with the result you find that, you dug a gulf between this country and your sister country, and your sister people in America, that it has taken 130 years to bridge. Take care that you do not dig that gulf again when the War has to some extent brought you together. Voices were raised in these countries—patriotic voices, I think protesting against this treatment of America, but they were denounced as traitors, and in language similar to that which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has addressed to us.

I say that you are embarking on a course now which may have consequences as long-reaching and as serious as your attack upon the American Colonies, because in these small beginnings passion rises on every side, and, once the flood of passion rises, things are said and done that can never be recalled. No man can foretell how wide may be the consequences of your present action. Remember this, that when you proposed to tax America the number of her people was small and insignificant. She was a much smaller country then than Ireland is to-day, and a much smaller country than Ireland then was, and much less wealthy and important; but they were your own children, who had only lately left your own shores, who had no national history behind them except that of Colonies and Dependencies of this country, and had no real national self-consciousness as one nation until you Welded them into one nation by this endeavour to tax them against their will. You created by that attack the liberty of America, you built up a mighty nation, with the most intense national self-consciousness, out of scattered people who were your own children and of your own blood, who had only left your shores one or two generations before.

Now you are bringing yourselves into conflict with an ancient and a proud nationality a nationality which, it is true, has suffered through centuries un paralleled tortures and persecutions, perfectly unparalleled in the history of Any nationality; but it has been proved over and over again in history that that country has only been intensified as regards its national feeling and the passion of the life of its people for their own country by all these persecutions. Long before America was discovered, centuries before America was known to exist to the people of Europe, our nation was a mighty nation and a civilised nation, and you little know how bitterly you insult us when from time to time you come to that box and talk to us about, being indifferent to the civilisation of Europe and the danger which now threatens us. Why, we laid and sowed the seed of European civilisation when the Germans were barbarians, and when you came over to our land to seek for light… Do you know that King Alfred himself came as a fugitive to the county of Mayo and got the first rudiments of learning in the county that I have the honour to represent? You have to deal with a people who have imbued into their blood and their marrow and their bones a passionate patriotism which cannot be equalled by the feeling or patriotism of any nation in the world. Yet you propose lightly to embark upon what may be an implacable war with this people. Make no mistake about it, you are not going to get the smallest reinforcements for your war fronts from this Bill. All Ireland as one man will rise against you. I am not in a position to say how the opposition will be worked. I cannot answer for all Ireland, but what I can answer for is that, on one point they are all united, and that is that the resistance must be made by universal national resistance, led by our clergy, for every chapel in the land will be a rallying point to resist what we consider to be not only an intolerable oppression, but a shameless insult against our country. Here is a letter I received to-day from a lady who lives in Ulster. I am not at liberty to give her name, but I can answer from my own knowledge that she is a lady whose name will carry weight. She says:

"it is not only Sinn Fein or Home Rule Catholics that are indignant at this, but the Protestant Unionists of the parish I live in, and all round here, are furious. They sent their sons, who went willingly, and very many are dead, but that is a very different thing from scruff-necking those who are left. One farmer's wife, a Protestant Unionist, to whom I have just been speaking, said she would shoot with her own hands any soldier that came to take her son."

That is the spirit of a Protestant Unionist in Ulster. I see that all the Ulster Members are upstairs, framing an ultimatum to the Government on the Home Rule side of this question, which they will no doubt deliver shortly. I make a challenge to the Ulster Members. Let them go to Antrim or Down and hold a meeting in favour of Conscription, and that will open the eyes of the Government. I do not think that the Government or any Member of the House, from what I have heard since these Debates commenced, have the smallest idea of what is the real feeling in Ireland. I have been forty years, I regret to say, in the public life of Ireland. During those forty years I have passed through some of the stormiest periods, as the Prime Minister knows, that have ever taken place in Irish history, and I tell you solemnly that there has never been anything to approach the state of feeling which exists in. Ireland to-day. I have received a steady stream of telegrams from all classes, public bodies, public meetings, priests, bishops, and all classes of the population, assuring me that the chaos and confusion that will occur is something appalling to think of. Some people are fleeing from the city of Dublin expecting wild disturbances. Already attacks have commenced on the railroads. I do not think that the resistance will take that form, but I cannot say what shape it will take. The state of public excitement is so great that in many parts of the country business is paralysed, and people will not attend to it. They think and speak of nothing but this great national crisis.

I tell the right hon. Gentleman that if he means to go on with this matter he will turn Ireland into another Belgium, and the proceedings will ring throughout the civilised world. Here is an extract which may somewhat affect the minds of the Government. It is taken from yesterday's "Irish Times," which is the chief Unionist newspaper in Ireland, and a very great newspaper. It says:

"The Imperial Parliament has decided to enforce Conscription in Ireland, and we hear on all sides of preparations for opposition, either active or passive —"

Remember that this newspaper has always been in favour of Conscription.

"Either the Government will carry out its declared purpose or will shrink before the menace of widespread resistance. Whether it shrinks, or whether it fulfils its declared purpose at the cost of turmoil and disorder in this country, the result will be fatal to Ireland."

That is a nice state of things. That is the opinion of the "Irish Times." It has always been in favour of Conscription, but after the result of the proceedings of the last three or four days their opinion is that whether you go backwards or forwards, the result will be fatal to Ireland. They wind up this argument by one of the most preposterous appeals that I ever remember in the course of my life. This newspaper has spent the last three or four years abusing me as the chief evil genius of Ireland, but they now make an urgent appeal to me to come to the rescue, and to save Ireland from the impossible position into which the Government has brought the country, and to persuade the Irish people to agree to Conscription. They will have to write a good many articles before I do that.

7.0 P.M.

The Prime Minister the other day in his speech quoted a passage from a speech delivered by my hon. Friend the late Member for Waterford. I think it was an ungenerous quotation, because it was divorced from its context, the occasion on. which it was delivered was not explained, and it was calculated to give a false impression. If my right hon. Friend had been aware—I do not know whether he was or not—that this statement, divorced from its context and used in the same un fair manner as he uses it, is one of the chief Sinn Fein revolutionary leaflets in Ireland, I think he would have been slower in using it. What is the truth? On that occasion the hon. Member for Waterford was speaking, as I spoke, on a Bill which did not apply to Ireland at all. There was no question of applying it to Ireland. He was speaking on that occasion on the general question of Conscription. Certain hon. Members of this House got up and said that they objected to it on moral grounds, and that under no conceivable circumstances would they be persuaded to endorse Conscription. Whereupon the hon. Member for Water ford, and myself afterwards, said in the course of our speeches that we did not share that view, and that if we were looking at it entirely from the English point of view—we were speaking from the point of view of the English Bill—and if we were persuaded that it was necessary to save and defend the liberties of this country and necessary for the War, that we would not hesitate to favour Conscription. I adopt exactly the same principle in regard to Ireland. If the liberties of Ireland were at stake, and we had a free Parliament, and thought it was necessary to save the liberty of Ireland, I would vote for Conscription. I say that it was a most unfair interpretation to put upon the speech of the late hon. Member for Water ford. Let me read a speech made by him a year afterwards in Ireland—the last speech he made to his constituents. Surely if ever there was a man who, looking to the past history of these unhappy controversies, deserved to have his voice or the echo of his voice listened to by hon. Members in this House, it was the late Member for Waterford. Here is what he said on Conscription:

"Conscription in Ireland, so far from helping the Army and the War, would be the most fatal thing that could possibly happen. It would be resisted in every village in Ireland. Its attempted enforcement would be a scandal which would ring round the world."

I recommend the attention of hon. Members to these words as coming from the late Member for Waterford, and as having infinitely greater strength than any words coming from me, because hon. Members must know that he strained almost to breaking-point his influence with his countrymen in his endeavours in favour of this War.

"This demand for Conscription in Ireland is not a genuine military demand. It is a base political device put forward by men who want to injure; and discredit Ireland's political future, and to revive by any and every means the bad blood between the two countries."

That is the deliberate opinion of the late Member few Waterford in the last great public speech he ever delivered, on a question of Conscription in Ireland, and I recommend it to the careful judgment of this House in every quarter. Ireland had hoped that that expression of opinion coming from the late hon. Member for Waterford would have an effect of checking the Government on its wild career. We believe, and Ireland believes, and the Irish in America will believe, that this whole Conscription campaign has been started by the Member for Trinity College and the Orange faction in Ireland, who are now fighting with their backs to the wall, as they think, because it will produce a feeling between the two countries which will make a Home Rule settlement impossible. I have spoken of the threats uttered against Ireland by Ministers when advocating this measure. But there are other threats not made by Ministers, but there are rumours, and, I am sorry to think, well founded rumours.

I take, first of all, an extract from the "Spectator," a newspaper which has been one of the chief champions in this crusade for Conscription in Ireland. In this week's issue it says:

"The crux of applying Conscription in Ire bind rests with the instrument to be used, and, above all, with the instrument at the top. If Mr. Lloyd George is in deadly earnest and clearly nothing less will serve such a cause—"

of course, the idea of being in deadly earnest is to shoot—

"what he should do instead of talking would be to announce that Lord Wimborne and Mr. Duke will be recalled immediately from Ireland and a soldier put in their place."

Then it goes on to suggest that since a difference of opinion with the Premier in regard to strategical considerations did not allow Sir William Robertson to be used at the front he could be sent to Ireland to carry out this work. What a glorious position for Sir William Robertson… Some people think that he would be better on the Western Front than engaged in this great task of dragooning Ireland. I want to know what is the real programme of the Government? Do they intend to send a soldier to control Ireland? Are we to have Sir William Robertson or Lord French or General Gough, who now, I understand, is disemployed for the moment, or the head of the General Staff, Sir Harry Wilson, who, according to my information, is one of the men who has been bombarding the Government for the last six months with demands for Conscription in Ireland, and a man who has been himself a con federate of the Orange party in Ireland and one of the chief military advisers during the threatened revolution in Ire land. From that point of view he would be a very suitable man for the task. Let the Government tell us the truth and let us know the whole of their plan to carry out the whole of this extraordinary enterprise.

The great tragedy of this whole situation is the change that has come about in the temper of Ireland, altogether owing to the malignancy and the blundering on the part of the War Office. I am quoting from the Prime Minister himself. In the month of March, 1915, more than six months after this War began, I stood beside the late Mr. Redmond at the top of O'Connell Street in Dublin, and we together reviewed 25,000 of the National Volunteers who marched past us, as fine a body of soldiers as I have over seen, most of them very well drilled. The Sinn Fein party in Dublin at that time were very anxious to interfere with that demonstration, but they were unable to produce more than 300 men or so, and so they did not give the slightest trouble. I may quote from a remarkable article in the "Daily Telegraph" on St. Patrick's Day when there was a great collection here for the Irish soldiers.

"The enemy conceived that he might be assisted by such occurrences in the neighbouring Ireland as darkened the pages of history during the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. He was disappointed. It was one of his many misconceptions. There is one key to the soul of Ireland, and that key is freedom. It was at once realised there that this War was not a dynastic war on the part of the Allies, that it was not the struggle for material wealth, but a life and death conflict for liberty. Once the issue was exposed to Irish men with all the white heat which injustice in spires in their hearts, they threw themselves into the battle. The enemy has since felt Irish steel and has fallen under Irish bullets, Whatever the future may produce, the English people will never forget the generous blood of the sister nation which has been shed on so many hard fought battlefields since this War began."

But a great many people in Eng land have already forgotten it and are now talking about cowardly Irishmen shrinking from a fight.

Irishmen never shrink from a fight. But they have ceased to believe in the reality of the Government's devotion to freedom. It is the loss of faith in this Government and its motives that has produced the impasse in Ireland, and Ireland has ceased to have any enthusiasm in this War because it has ceased to believe in the policy of the Government. That is the root of the trouble. The great body of national volunteers which we reviewed in Dublin was the body which Mr. Redmond, with the assent of one who was afterwards among the revolutionary leaders, offered to Lord Kitchener to garrison Ireland, a body that would have carried out this task and would have acted as a breeding ground for recruits, but that offer was rejected and was thrown back in his face with contempt. Why? Because you could not make up your minds to trust Ireland. You distrusted her at the outset when her heart was full of generous enthusiasm, and you distrust her still, and every detail of the organisation of the Irish division proves your distrust. That is at the root of all the trouble in Ireland. There is universal distrust of this Government and of British statesmen in general. No one in Ireland places any reliance on Government pledges. No one believes that the Government intend to introduce a Home Rule measure which will satisfy Irish national feeling or to put the Home Rule Act into operation, and nobody in Ireland will believe it after all the disappointments which we have had until an Irish Parliament is sitting in Dublin. Talk about passing your Bill—and I must say that the talk has been very halting and very hesitating—you have passed one Bill already and it is on the Statute Book, and you may pass another Bill and put it on the Statute Book where it will repose, and you may have a third Bill, but until an Irish Parliament assembles in College Green you will get nobody in Ireland to believe that you mean to carry out your promise.

If the Government were but bold in their immediate action to remove that distrust and suspicion, the effect in Ireland might be very good indeed. But the hideous tragedy of the present situation is that by your introduction of this measure you are creating an atmosphere in this House and an atmosphere in Ireland, which will, I fear, be fatal to any attempt at a general settlement of the Irish question at the present time. That is my fear. Look at the attitude of the Member for Trinity College. What is he doing at this moment? This is one of the things that have created all the trouble. Make no mistake about it. This is what has brought into being the great revolutionary organisation which exists in Ire land to-day, and which has weakened our power. The Prime Minister knows perfectly well that I warned him two years a goat one of those private conferences that in my opinion he was bringing to an end the Irish party. Of course, as I said at the time, I did not know whether that would be a cause of any great regret. But you are beginning to find that there is something more troublesome than the Irish party. The great difference is this, that the trouble which we give and the fight which we make have for their ultimate object—and you are beginning to understand it now—to bring about a settlement between the two nations. But the trouble which you are up against in Ireland now which you have created and called into being was an insignificant matter at the date of the executions in Dublin.

Not one-twentieth part of the people of Ireland were with the revolutionary party at that date. The body which you have called into being, which is a formidable and most dangerous body, is a body whose object is not to bring the two nations together and to create an understanding and a settlement, but to prevent a settlement and to keep the two countries apart for ever, pitted against each, other as enemies, and, in addition, there are up against you in America millions of our race whom you have turned into bitter and implacable foes. That is the situation which you have created in Ireland. I got a letter to-day from a man who knows the present military and political position of Europe as well as any man living. He is in France, and he says, "As usual, we possess the men, the money, the opportunities—everything except the intelligence to make the most of them." Now in that sentence you have, in my opinion, the key not only to the Irish situation, but the key to the whole situation at the front. These are terrible times. We feel them as much as you do. Perhaps we feel them more, because we have been driven out of the position which we held at the beginning of the War. Our people have been split into two great sections, and all our efforts in the early days— and they were genuine efforts— have been rendered nugatory and defeated. This Government was formed eighteen months ago and was hailed with a blast of newspaper trumpets unparalleled in the history of this country as a Win-the-War Government especially created to put new life into the conduct of the War and to put an end to the "Wait-and-See Policy" and the old gang. Above all, it was to take the people into its confidence and tell them the whole truth. But since the Government was formed all criticism and all newspaper denunciations have been met with the formula, "Oh, let us get on with the War…" We have got on with the War, no doubt, but nobody can truthfully say that the progress that has been made with the War has been satisfactory. I ask, Is it not time to inquire how we have got on with the War, and what has been the cause which has led to the present diplomatic and military situation? The Government has had a long trial and has proved itself to be a Government which, in my opinion, can neither carry on the War successfully nor make peace, and a Government which can neither govern Ireland nor allow Ireland to govern herself.

I beg to second the Amendment

My observations will be very few, because I observe some indication on the part of the Prime Minister to take part in this Debate, and in my judgment the sooner we hear him the better. We have been considering this Bill now for nearly a week, and our arguments, which have been strong, have never been answered. One of the most curious features of this Debate—and in this respect it is almost unique—is that it has been one-sided from beginning to end. I do not recollect a single speech from anybody outside the Government ranks in support of the action of the Government in including Ireland in the Conscription parts of the Bill. Every speech that has been made, except the speeches made from the Government Benches, has been made against the inclusion of Ireland. [An HON. MEMBER: "We want to help the passage of the Bill…"] I dare say, and I am thankful for that intimation, because some of us have begun to think that we were wrong and that there was some growing sympathy with Ireland in the matter of these pro visions. Apparently, the old failing of anti-Irish hate exists in some quarters to-day as strong as it ever did in the history of the relations between Ireland and Great Britain. [HON. MEMBERS: "No…"] If it did not, one would have imagined that this at least was an occasion upon which even for five minutes some person who did not share those views would have got up and said so. There was silence, forsooth, because they wanted to help to carry this Bill … I am glad that avowal has been made. We have asked for information as to what the procedure is to be in Ireland, and it has been most consistantly refused. We do not know how the tribunals will be constituted. We do not know the grounds upon which people may make application for exemption. We do not know the rights of appeal that are to be given to the people of Ireland under this Bill We are asked to give a blank cheque to the Government to do whatever they like in respect of these three matters. I do not comment upon it, because it is only of at piece with their whole conduct in regard to Ireland in this matter.

We are continually hearing from the opponents of the Irish Nationalist demand statements to the effect that it is a dishonour to Ireland not to be brought under this Conscription law. "Ireland is dishonouring herself by not accepting this law. Why should men between forty and fifty be conscripted in England and young men he left free in Ireland to enlist or not?" [Cheers.] Yes, there it is again—absolute ignorance of the difference between the two races, and an absolute incapacity to understand that the Government of a nation may conscript its own citizens, but has no moral right to conscript the citizens of another nation. We were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night that this Parliament had a moral right to conscript the Irish nation. I want to know where it has got that moral right. You have a right to conscript the people of Great Britain, because the people of Great Britain have assented to your rule, and you are their representatives. You have, therefore, been commissioned by them, more or less, to enact a Law like this. What consent have you got in the whole of your connection with Ireland from that country to rule Ireland? I defy any person sitting on either side of the House to point to any single, proof that Ireland has ever consented to your government. I will tell the Prime Minister here to his face that his Government is regarded in Ireland as a usurpation. He has no moral right to speak to the people of Ireland at all on any subject. I was almost going to say that neither this nor any other British Government has the moral right to arrest even a rat in Ireland. Have you got a moral right to impose this Conscription upon Ireland from any other source? Will you, say that you have got it from your conduct of Irish affairs? Will you say that your relations with Ireland have been relations of such benevolent treatment of that country as to justify you in calling upon its citizens for this sacrifice? I do not like to use hard language, but plain language is necessary on this occasion, and in my opinion the record of your treatment of Ireland is a record of infamy and deceit.

During the last three or four years at least, and especially during the last eighteen months, during which the present Prime Minister has been the chief ruler in this country, deceit has been more in evidence than on any previous occasion. If you have not got the moral right to inflict this law upon Ireland either from the consent of the people or from your treatment of them in the past, I want to know from where you have got it. I say that you have not got it at all from any source. Consequently, this law, like the Act of Union itself, may be enforced while there is power to enforce it, but in conscience it will never bind a single man of the Irish race. You might as well talk of the moral right of the footpad to rob the man whom he meets on a lonely road without arms. We are told that we ought to consider ourselves dishonoured in not joining with Great Britain in accepting this Act of Conscription. It is a favourite feature of Irish trials, say, for sedition, to tell the accused in the dock, ''You are an ungrateful son for raising trouble and for creating tumult and disorder and disloyalty in Ireland." I would like to read two or three sentences spoken by a man who was a distinguished politician in Ireland before he became a distinguished Member of this House, namely, the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan. He was tried in Dublin for sedition. What did he say in his speech in his defence? He said:

"Sedition in a rightly ordered community is indeed a crime, but who is it that challenges me? Who is it that demands my loyalty? Who is it that calls to me, ' Oh, ingrate son, where is the filial affection, the respect, the obedience, the support that is my due? ' I look in the face of my accuser who thus holds me to the duty of a son. I turn to see if I can recognise there the features of that mother, whom indeed I love, my mother Ireland. I look into that accusing fact;, and there I see a scowl, not a smile, and then I answer to my accuser, 'You have no claim on me. You have no claim on my allegiance. You are not my mother.'"

I say to the Prime Minister, who used to be. so I understood, a champion of liberty; and who took up arms in speech against the Boer War—

And we often saved his life on the floor of this House.

I say to him, if he addresses us as representatives of Ireland, and if he says ''It is your duty to accept the same obligations of military service as the people of Great Britain," that he has no right to make that demand of us. He is not representing our country. He is representing a Government and a country which, for centuries, have persecuted us, and who have left behind them a legacy of hate which has taken probably half a century to mitigate in some degree. I am sorry to say that his present action, and the action of his colleagues now, is calculated to undo all the good accomplished in the last half-century.

It is with a considerable degree of diffidence, and only under a strong sense of responsibility, that I rise to take part in this Debate. I would express the hope that if I fail, as I probably shall, to reach the high level of eloquence of some of the previous speakers, the House will believe me when I say that my plain and simple words are the outcome of convictions borne in upon me during the last two or three weeks. I stood in this matter three weeks ago, as my colleagues well know, at exactly the point occupied by the Irish Leader last week. That is to say, I thought Conscription for Ireland was outside the arena of practical politics until Home Rule had been made an accomplished fact. I believe now that Home Rule might be put upon the Statute Book before this Clause is operative. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is there already'."] I believe that upon this Bill hangs the fate of another Bill which may bring reconciliation and healing, and, instead of discord, may mean the binding up of wounds. We have heard a deal to-night, and we heard a lot last Friday about what may happen in Ireland. We have been threatened—I will not use the word threatened—but a prophecy has been made about men shooting from their doorsteps. We have been told of terrible things which will happen in Ireland. Might I ask Irishmen not to cry before they are hurt. Might I suggest to them that they should not start shooting until they are shot at. After all, a great deal of water will have to flow through the bridges before this particular Clause can be put into operation. A great deal may happen in that time. I hope and trust—and I speak as one who is a Home Ruler and has been one all his life—that Irishmen will regard the next few weeks as the most fateful weeks even in the history of their country. Upon what takes place during the next few-weeks I believe will hang the fate of Home Rule for our day and generation.

Might I remind the House of one important new fact in this situation, which has come into the arena since we began three weeks ago. That new fact is the finding of a body of Irishmen. Up to then, and even up till now, British statesmanship had attempted to deal with difficulties of Ireland. They may have had the best of intentions I suppose they have had, but they had not breathed the atmosphere of Ireland. They had not known the psychology of the Irish people. They have not known, firsthand, the play of education, of religion, and all the other factors in Ireland. Therefore they have failed. About a year ago the Convention was set up with, I believe, the concurrence of all parties in this House, and certainly with that of the right hon. Member for Trinity College. The Convention was charged with this mandate: "We have failed hitherto to settle the Irish problem. See if you cannot, as Irishmen, bring in a programme whereby it can be settled in your own way." The Convention was set up nearly a year ago. It has been devoting its time to the matter for a great many sittings—I do not know how many. It is true, now that we have the Report, that it has not given us that substantial agreement that we had hoped and yearned for. But, after all, it has given us recommenda- tions, and one recommendation upon which there is substantial agreement. That recommendation has reference to the main factor, and that is the setting up of a Parliament for the whole of Ireland. Can we build upon that recommendation? I hope we can. I hope there is sufficient statesmanship in this country, even in this grim period of war, to snatch a victory on the Irish front, if we cannot from any other.

I hope you will have a better chance on the other fronts.

We are going to snatch a victory on the other fronts. I have no more doubt as to the outcome of this War, in spite of all our difficulties and set backs, than I had three years ago. I believe we have right on our side, and that ultimately we shall have might on our side; and that this fight is a fight for Ireland as well. The hon. Member for East Mayo has put one or two plain, straightforward questions. He wants to know what it is we mean to do. A little later on, he said, and I took his words down, "What is their real programme?" That question has been put in different words during the last few days. It was put by the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Adamson) the other day. It was put by the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Scanlan). It was put by the late Prime Minister, who, with his usual clearness and directness, went to the kernel of the whole business. Hon. Members will remember that he pointed out that this particular Clause was the empowering Clause, and he wanted to know what we were going to do. He put the plain, clear, straightforward question, "What are you going to do in the interval before this Clause can operate?" I have to give the plain, clear, straightforward answer. We are going to bring in a Home Rule Bill, and pass it through this House, if it is possible to do it. [An HON. MEMBER: "Have you asked Carson?"] Can I say more than that We are going to bring in a Bill for Home Rule, and pass it.

Impossible…

I assume, of course, co-operation and good will on the part of those who are immediately concerned. Given that, and that is the only qualification, we are going to pass this Bill. If we cannot get that, then it is a matter for every man to reconsider his position in the light of the fact that will then have emerged. But the Government is going to bring in this Bill, and is going to pass it. That is my reply.

Through the House of Lords?

If the House of Lords will not pass it, after this House has passed it, then the blood of the House of Lords be on the House of Lords head.

Might I ask my right turn. Friend a question, because we ought to have no doubt about these matters. Does he mean, by the statement he has just made, that before any men are called to the Colours under this Man-Power Bill, he is going to pass a Home Rule Bill?

I have already said that we are going to bring in a Bill, and pass it.

Answer that question…

I am no prophet. We are going to bring in a Bill, just in the ordinary way.

To humbug the Irish people…

I think the question put by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University is a perfectly legitimate one, and I want to join him in pressing for an answer to it. Do you propose not to put into operation this Clause, if it passes, until a Home Rule Act for Ireland is in operation?

I do not think I can go further than I have already gone.

"Oh, oh…" and "Sit down…"

I want to be perfectly frank with hon. Members. We are going to bring in a Bill and pass it, if it is within our power to pass it. I cannot say whether the House of Lords will pass it or not. If it does not, the ordinary con sequences follow.

Will you resign?

I have tried to state the position.

Will the right hon. Gentleman, or the Prime Minister, go the length of saying that if the House of Lords fails to pass a Bill approved by the House of Commons, the Ministry will resign?

There is no difficulty in answering a question of that sort. I would say certainly the Government would resign. [An HON. MEMBER: "Let the Prime Minister answer… "]

I see the Prime Minister is nodding his approval of that statement. Does he approve it?

"Hear, hear." I said "Certainly"

The right hon. Gentle man who was addressing the House was making a considered statement, and he ought to be allowed to continue.

On a point of Order. It is quite true the right hon. Gentleman is making a considered statement, and I am very sorry to interrupt him, but I think we are entitled to have that statement made sufficiently clear so that those who are to reply subsequently may know what he really meant.

The hon. Member is entitled to get the statement made clear, but not during the course of it. If he will reserve himself until the right hon. Gentleman has finished, and then desires to ask any further question in Debate, I understand the Prime Minister will follow later, and he will be able to supplement any matter on which doubt may be felt.

I thought I had answered the question put by the late Prime Minister. The form of that question was, if in the interval between now and this Clause becoming operative, we intended to bring in a Bill and to pass it? My answer to that is in the affirmative. I want now to apply myself to one or two practical considerations, and I want to make a special appeal to my Irish friends. I want them to try and realise, if they can, the difficult position in which we shall be placed without this particular Clause in the Bill. Please remember what has been done on this side of the Irish Channel. Please remember that we have skinned our industries down to the bone. We have brought ruin to many a small household at a time when the head of that household was just building up a small business. We have taken the widow's son. We have taken one, two, and sometimes three, and even four, sons from the same family on this side of the water. The other day a case was put by my hon. Friend the Member for East Manchester (Mr. Sutton), referring to one of his constituents, who was still under fifty years of age, who had had two sons recently killed in the War, and whose wife, in consequence, was prostrate with grief. That man, under the operation of this Clause, will have to go into the Army. I want to ask my hon. Friends to try and put themselves into our position. Can I go down to Manchester and ask that man to join the Army, to be conscripted for the Army, while he knows perfectly well that young men are still standing idly by in Ireland? I can only say, for my part, I cannot do it. and I am not going to do it. That is the practical difficulty in the way, so far as contingent Conscription in Ireland is a feature of this Bill. We are told that a Home Rule Bill should be passed, and then Ireland should be left to furnish the men of her own accord. I am free to say I have been much moved by these appeals. I wish I could be guided by them. But let us look the facts in the face. I do not know how long it will take to pass the Home Rule Bill.—[An HON. MEMBER: "A week end…"]—It must take several weeks. A Bill of many Clauses must, under the Rules and Regulations which govern our procedure, take some weeks to get through. At any rate, it will occupy a few weeks. But after it has been passed it will be necessary to set up the Parliament in Ireland, and that will probably take three months, and all that time will have to pass before we can get men from an Irish Parliament. Indeed, it will occupy nearly the whole of the remainder of this year. But we want men now, and not at the end of the year.

And you will not get them.

The result will be we shall have to go on absorbing men on this side of the Channel and we shall have to wait until Home Rule is put on the Statute Book before we can begin to get a man from Ireland. Now, the Irish are a chivalrous and high-minded race. Let me appeal to them. Irishmen have gone from this country, and from Ireland as well, and they have fought side by side with men from England and Wales and Scotland. They have acquitted them selves magnificently on many a stricken field, and many have made the last great sacrifice. The War is still going on. It is still making this great demand on the man-power of England, Wales and Scot land, and I want to know from my fellow Irish Members, do they think it is fair and right that the men on this side of the Irish, Channel should be sacrificing their lives while Irishmen on the other side of the Channel are standing idly by? Let me put it from the point of view of the women folk. I have letters now and again from them. Many of them I regard as my friends, although I have never seen them. In the early days of this War I took part in the effort to get better allowances for soldiers' wives and better pensions for their widows. I got in touch with a great many women, who occasionally write to me about their troubles. I try to get those troubles rectified as far as I can. I had a letter, dated the 10th of this month, from a woman with whom I had been in correspondence before—I had been trying to get leave for her husband. She writes:

"I have had a letter from my husband. He says there is no possible chance of getting leave, and so I must just wait for the War to come to an end. He says he is doing his best in his corps. He is happier now he is receiving letters and parcels more frequently, and he says he will stick it out.… This last offensive in France makes me feel we must be as brave as we can and sit tight."

The writer of this letter is the wife of a soldier. She has not seen her husband now for close on three years. That is the type of our noble women from one end of the country to the other. They are bearing their burdens cheerfully and courageously at the present time, and I appeal to my Irish fellow Members, seeing that that is what is going on on this side of the Channel, and they content that the people on the other side of the Channel should stand aside and not bear their fair share of the burden? I remember in the early days of the War I was cheered and stirred by the magnificent speeches of the late Irish Leader, and I believed we were nearing the end of our Irish troubles. I visualised the Irish people marching for ward with us and managing their own affairs. But that picture has lately been fading away. It may be that the causes are partly to be found in incidents such as those recited to us the other day by the Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin). I was grieved to hear him describe how the enthusiasm of young recruits in Belfast had been chilled by the treatment they and their religion had received from men in khaki. I was sorry to learn from him of the difficulty which had been put in the way of the hon. Member for Waterford getting a commission. But there was one thing which struck me at the time, and it was this, that that sort of thing is not at all peculiar to Ireland. I know some young men on this side of the Channel who joined up immediately the War broke out. They were men who came from good homes, who were accustomed to all the amenities and comforts of our social life. But they went out immediately after the War had begun, and they spent the first horrible winter up to their knees in liquid mud. They came back lousy and dirt-begrimed, and with pretty well the same tales as were told us the other night by the hon. Member for West Belfast. I know young men who went from this side of the Channel who never thought of asking for a commission, but they went into the Army as privates and did their best for their country. These things happened three years ago. They may have happened since.

They are going on now…

I think they have to a large extent been rectified.

No…

I know they have. I have made close inquiry. In those days our young men were brought in contact with men in khaki who had no knowledge of or interest in anything but the tented field. But I believe that now, as a result of the common danger and of facing death daily, a new religion has grown up, and there has come a closer comradeship between officers and men. [An HON. MEMBER: "No…"] I believe it is so.

I deny it…

I know of cases where it is so, and therefore I do ask my hon. Friend the Member for West Belfast not to think of these happenings as relating to Belfast only—not to treat them as sectional differences. I ask him, and I ask all my hon. Friends from Ireland, to think once more of the great issues involved in this War, and now we come to them, it may be in a chastened mood, to give us again their help and co-operation. We have no option consistent with going on with the War—and to drop the War is to my mind unthinkable—but to pass this Clause. Let me remind hon. Gentlemen what this War is. It is a war for the very life of democracy. It is a war upon which there are ranged on our side pretty well all the democratic countries of the world, including the great democracy of the West —a democracy which includes in its army many thousands of Irishmen.

Hundreds of thousands.

And let me remind you that this is a War of such magnitude that it has dwarfed all minor and internal issues in the belligerent countries; and I would say this, not by way of threat or anything of that sort, that if this War were to be lost because of Ireland, then Irish Home Rule would be a matter not for our day and generation. In fact, any internal questions left unsettled at the end of this War stand a very poor chance of getting settled except with due regard to the considerations arising from this War. One might have hoped that such a condition of things would be brought about that Ireland could have yielded the men when a Home Rule Bill was passed. One might have wished that Ireland would have been in a position to yield her quota of men now without Conscription. But we must look at the facts as we find them. It is all very well to say Ireland might give the men if she had Home Rule. This Parliament is the only Imperial Parliament. This Parliament is the only Parliament charged with the duty of looking after the safety of the people of these Islands. This Parliament cannot divest itself of its duty of calling upon all men to do their share in providing for the common safety. I should say—I hope I will not give offence to my Irish Friends when I say it—that there is a special obligation resting upon Ireland because of its very separation by a strip of water on the west side of this island. There are German submarine commanders always prowling about. They have no respect for persons, and they would just as soon sink a shipload of Irishmen —

We do not even get protection in the way the Belfast boats do…

I do not think there is any discrimination on this side or on the side of the Germans. There is not, at all events, on the part of the gallant men of our Navy, who, in their silent watches on the sea, are protecting Irishmen just the same as Scotsmen or Welshmen; and I should say the commanders of the German submarines would just as soon sink a shipload of Irishmen as a shipload of Scotsmen, Welshmen, or Englishmen. Therefore, there is an obligation on the part of Irishmen to put in their weight and fulfil their part of a common obligation. I base myself on that, apart altogether from discussions of Home Rule or any other questions. I base myself upon this: there is a common obligation to support the Navy and the Army because all share in the protection of the Army and the Navy. It is true that Canada has given her share in her own way, and that Australia has refused to conscript herself for service; but there is this to be said in regard to Canada and Australia, that they are a long way off, and they are not represented in this House as Ireland is. It is also true that the Convention which has just concluded its labours has, by a sub-committee, decided that Conscription should be a matter only for an Irish Parliament. Well, very large issues are raised thereby. I think I am right in saying that no federal system of Home Rule is possible if such a principle is to be applied. It is inconceivable that if the principle of Federal Home Rule were put into operation, Ireland, and of course Wales and Scotland, would have a veto over the raising of forces for the protection of these Islands. Still, for my part, I would not even boggle at that. If it were possible to settle this age-long grievance of the Irish people, and if only that stood in the way, I should grant even that; and I will tell you why. Because at the moment it is really an academic question. If we win this War, as we shall, then there will be no Conscription either in Ireland or anywhere else. Therefore, for my part, I would not even have that obstacle, in the way of settling the Irish question.

I hope I have answered the questions put by the hon. Member for East Mayo. [HON. MEMBERS: "No…"] Well, I have honestly tried to do so. I am sincerely anxious and eager to see some good coming out of these Debates. I appeal to Irishmen to do good for evil that good may come. I believe that with good will and co-operation there is one of the greatest chances for Ireland that has presented itself in my time, and I say that as a Home Ruler all my political life. To sum up, I should say the new fact in the position is the new chance that we have of settling this whole problem. The Government mean to catch hold of that chance with resolution and determination, and to pass a Bill based upon those findings, with such modifications as may be found necessary, as speedily as possible. We cannot apply this measure of Conscription here without applying the meed of Conscription to Ireland which we have in this Bill. We need the men, and we have the right to ask for them, because there is a common danger and therefore a common obligation. I have tried to avoid anything in the nature of recrimination or threats, because it is no time for that. I have refrained from saying anything about the criticism of the generals which was offered by the hon. Member for East Mayo, because, after all, that does not bear upon the present situation. I appeal to this House, as I specially appeal to the Members from Ireland, to give us this Clause of the Bill, to trust us once more, to trust organised Labour in this country to see that justice is done in this Bill, and that the just aspirations of Ireland are met. I ask hon. Members opposite, and I ask the House, to yield to the soldiers that support which is their due. These men are fighting for us; they are suffering that we may live in safety. Let us give them that support to which they are so manifestly entitled, and then let us at the same time apply that principle of self-government for which they are fighting.

I shall not express any opinion upon whether either my opponents opposite, or those whom I have the honour to be associated with from Ireland in this House, ought to trust this Government. That is a matter which I shall deal with upon a subsequent occasion. An important announcement has been made which I think I ought to deal with at once. When this Bill was introduced I said that I would support, and those who acted with me from Ireland would support, with all our hearts, this measure for applying the Man-Power Bill to Ireland. I take exactly the same view now as I did then. I shall support it, and shall support it to the end. At the same time, let me say that the only basis upon which I am bound to support it, or that those in Ireland who are associated with me are bound to support it, is that they should have equal and similar rights with all the other cititzens of the United Kingdom. If you take away those equal and similar rights and put them in a subordinate position, then an entirely different question arises. But for my own part, if you put me, as an Irishman, in that subordinate position with which we are now threatened, if you put me under a Government of hon. Members opposite and those who are associated with them, I would still support it; and I will tell you why in a moment. Further, if you put me under Sinn Feiners, who I believe are a very large and revolutionary party in Ireland, I would still support it; and I will tell you why. Because no more detestable domination could be put over the world than the Germans are now trying to impose. Yes, I would support it, not because I was grateful to His Majesty's Government, and even though I detested and loathed the breaches of faith which I think I will be able to prove against them. That has nothing to do with it. I support it because I would prefer anything than that the whole principle of civilisation and progress should be impeded by the victory of our enemies who are trying to make a world-domination by the sword. I have another reason, as an Irishman, why, even under these conditions, I would support it. Hon. Members opposite, and those who act with them in Ireland, sent out a brave division —in which, may I say, I have many friends —to the front. Ulster, too, sent out a brave division to the front. Fighting there for this country, and for their own country let me say, they have become mere skeletons of the past. I am ashamed of Ireland that they are skeletons. They ought to be filled with the manhood of Ireland, who ought to go out and replace those who have been slaughtered by the enemies of their country and the enemies of this country and of France.

Having made my position upon that perfectly clear, let me now deal for one moment with the announcement which has just been made by my right hon. Friend It is now perfectly clear, and let it be understood—and I think it is well it should be understood on both sides—that no recruits in Ireland are to be conscripted until a Home Rule Bill is passed by this Government. That is the announcement. That is, the handing over of Ulster is the price to be paid for Conscription. Let us face the facts. Why do I say the Bill is to be passed? For this reason. The Government have pledged themselves to bring in and pass the Bill if possible; but if they cannot pass it they say they will resign. Therefore, in their tenure, of office there can be no Conscription unless the Home Rule Bill is passed. That makes the situation perfectly clear and perfectly definite. I want to ask for a moment, what do they think they are going to gain by passing the Bill under those conditions? When the Ball is passed, will hon. Members opposite withdraw their objection to Conscription? They have not said so. My own belief is that Conscription will be then more difficult, because you will have, I suppose, a Government set up in Ireland… which will be opposed to Conscription, and therefore you will have not merely the people to deal with, butt the Government to deal with in relation to Conscription.

And what will be the case, on the passing of the Bill, in Ulster? You will ask me, I have no doubt, to go over to Ulster and make things smooth. Well, I do not own Ulster, nor does anybody else. All I can say is it is not an easy job to go over and say to these people, "You were promised, if you went into the Army, by a Prime Minister, by a Leader of the Opposition, by a whole House of Commons, and by an Act they have passed that Home Rule would be suspended during the War, and you sent your men out on that condition to fight and to die for their country." As I passed through Belfast a short time ago a woman in the streets roared out, "I have lost three children, Sir Edward, in the War. Are we going to get Home Rule?" I knew perfectly well what she was thinking about. Am I to go over and tell them, because they have acted in the spirit which this country has, and have relied on the promise given by a Prime Minister, a Leader of; the Opposition and an Act of Parliament, that all that is to be pushed aside, and because of their loyalty, and because they happen to be perfectly quiet at the present time, they are to be the people to be sacrificed? And they are, in addition to that, to be asked be allow themselves to be conscripted, and many of them to allow their businesses to be ruined. I hope, notwithstanding that, they will still support this Conscription Bill, and help to carry it out in Ireland. But it is a bitter matter, make no mistake about it. Nothing Ireland—north, south, east, and west—has suffered so much in its history as the broken pledges of British statesmen.

We are agreed at last On one thing.

Let me look forward a little, because Governments are rather inclined, I think, to get over momentary difficulties by idle statements, and sometimes by resolutions, and sometimes by Acts of Parliament; but you are setting up in the middle of the War a Home Rule Parliament—setting it up, as I understand, whether Ulster likes it or not—setting it up without ever having consulted the Sinn Fein element, which is, at all events, not a negligible element in Ireland. I suppose you will have, even if the War continues, to set up this Government by elections in Ireland, and constitute a Government selected by the people. How will you carry it on, and who will carry on that Government? If it is opposed by the Sinn Feiners, and if it is opposed by Ulster, I do not envy any of the hon. Gentlemen opposite who happens to be the Prime Minister of this first Irish Parliament. No; I believe you have blundered from beginning to end on the whole of this question. You ought to have made up your mind: was Conscription possible in Ireland under present conditions or was it not? If you made up your minds it was, and that it was right, then you ought to have passed it. If you made up your minds it was wrong, you ought not to have tried to pass it by a bribe, and by throwing over those who have been faithful to you in the past. You have tried, I suppose, to please everybody, and I believe in the long run you will please nobody. But for all that, I say to my friends in Ulster, "With all seriousness and sadness at the vista which is set before you in having inflicted upon you something you never, at all events, dreamed of during the horrors and miseries of this War—not withstanding all that, I beseech of you to go on as you have been going on in the past to help in the prosecution of the War."

I have taken little part in the melancholy proceedings connected with this Bill. I abstained, because I regard these Debates as marking the final bankruptcy of Parliamentary methods as a means of enforcing the demands of Ireland. I noticed a heading in the Northcliffe Press a night or two ago, "An Irish Flutter in the House," to describe the solemn protest of every Irish Nationalist representative in this House, and, as I am more or less a looker-on, I may be permitted to add that that protest was conducted by the Irish Members with singular eloquence and ability. If the Prime Minister wanted to give Parliamen- tarians another chance in Ireland, he would have frankly accepted the demand of the hon. Member for Mayo and dropped this Clause on the first night, and he would have saved himself and ourselves from the hurricane of passion and anarchy that he has all but already set loose in Ireland. If he had done so, he would have deprived the Sinn Feiners of their principal argument with the Irish people—that is perhaps Parliamentary methods in Westminster—because, let there be no mistake about it, the insurrection would never have gained such a hold upon the sympathies of the people of Ireland, in fact, that insurrection could never have taken place at all only that it was provoked by a long series of Parliamentary mutterings and rottenness which has made the name of Parliamentarians a hissing and a scorn amongst the young men of Ireland. The Prime Minister did nothing of the kind. He concluded from recent elections in Ireland that Sinn Fein was no longer a power to be dreaded, that the country was disarmed and helpless, that now was the time to strike. Accordingly he and his Government refused to yield one inch and united every Nationalist Member for Ireland, backed up by the united Irish hierarchy, backed up by the Leader of the Opposition, and backed in his heart— nobody can doubt—by his own Chief Secretary.

Not only that, but the Prime Minister apparently managed to persuade himself that he was striking some smashing blow at Irish disaffection, when he was all the time furnishing the Sinn Feiners with the most splendid and the most triumphant justification they could desire by demonstrating the impotence of Parliamentary methods in this House, and by exposing to the world the Prime Minister's cruel and ungrateful return to the Irish Members for long years of devoted service. What follows? The right hon. Gentleman who spoke a while ago—what did he say for himself? The Irish people have just been most rudely awakened from one delusion, and that excellent Gentleman appeals to them now to chloroform themselves into a new delusion as to this Home Rule Bill. The right hon. Gentleman, amidst pretty general laughter, appealed to the Irish people to trust him once more. Why, one of the most fatal weaknesses of our national character is our over-readiness to be captivated by fair words from strangers. For the last seven or eight years the Irish people have trusted you to an almost criminal extent. It has taken betrayal after betrayal to open their eyes and to reawaken their self-respect. Now, forsooth, we are asked to begin the dreary task of showing once more a childlike and almost servile fidelity to the men who represent a Government that has again and again been guilty of what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College has just taunted them with broken pledges to Ireland. I do not impugn the good faith of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow, but I have no hesitation in saying that in spite of what has happened to-night that this talk about presenting us with a new Home Rule Bill by way of compensation for plunging our country into civil war in the meantime is arrant nonsense, and if the right hon. Gentleman did not know it he ought to have known it. In spite of what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Trinity College said to-night—and I regard his speech as one of very considerable importance and I listened to it with great respect—I cannot forget that you constructed your so-called Irish Convention in such a way that the only possible answer you could receive from Ulster was the answer that you did receive, namely, a cry of "No surrender, or the partition of the country."

You know very well that it is not merely the present hybrid Government, but that the Home Rule Government pledged themselves solemnly, by all their gods, to what might have been regarded by them as fair play for the nation, without even compelling the irreconcilables of Ulster to obey the law like other people. I shall say no more upon the statement that came from the Treasury Bench to-night intimating more or less, that although the Chief Secretary was repudiated and ignored the other night by the Leader of the Opposition he had the satisfaction of finding one of his colleagues coming down to-night and, more or less, renewing and emphasising the intimation that an Irish Parliament must be sitting before any recruits are called to the Colours. I hope that that is so. We are willing to wait and see. But we cannot afford to believe you, and we do not believe you… We will wait for deeds and not for words before we will relax in any particular the tremendous outburst of feeling in Ireland which alone has brought the Prime Minister even the very short pilgrimage that he has apparently accomplished to-night.

Go your course, and we will go ours. It is not in this House; it is in Ireland that this battle will have to be fought out, as it is owing to the people of Ireland that the first approach to victory has been won. In every great emergency within my recollection for fifty years it was not in this House, but it was at home, in Ireland, that the national cause was Saved. So it will be this time. I am not in the counsels of those who undoubtedly are in the confidence of the young men of Ireland. But of this I am very sure: Be their plans what they may, there will be found sufficient determination and sufficient self-sacrifice among the people of Ireland to convince you, before you have completed this battle for the military enslavement of Ireland, that you have not entered upon very profitable military operations. You will find that you will make millions of enemies while you will never capture one efficient recruit for every ten soldiers it will take you to capture him. You will have the whole Irish race against you, including 500,000 of the best soldiers in the Allied Armies. You will have to encounter in every town and on every hillside in Ireland a universal resistance, in which you will have the priests of Ireland and the people solidly united as a formidable and unconquerable force. You will find before you have an end of the job that you have undertaken in Ireland that you can no more succeed in beating these forces down than Queen Elizabeth could succeed in forcing her religion, or that Cromwell could succeed in driving the Irish people from the land of which they are now the owners after the confiscators have gone. You undertook many years ago again and again to give Ireland her liberties. You have broken your word even in the matter of the wretched Act which you have placed upon the Statute Book, and you have in this matter of Conscription broken your word again. You may now try to sneak out of it.

The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House the other night was scandalised because we suspected that this is rather a measure for torpedoing Home Rule rather than the enrolment of recruits. What else were we to believe when you consider the infinitesimal addition that this Bill can ever make to the strength of your arm compared with what you will be letting loose? What intelligent explanation is there for undertaking this campaign at all except as a means of taking advantage of the present outburst of a not inexcusable panic and prejudice here in England to get rid of your Home Rule obligations altogether and your difficulties with the Ulster irreconcilables, and then throw all the blame upon the people of Ireland and place them in a false and unfair light before the people of America and before the rest of the world? I have no hesitation in saying you may perhaps, to some extent, witness a change of front to-night, but if we do we owe it to the magnificent courage of the Irish people, and nothing else. I make all allowance for the difficulties of the Leader of the Opposition during these Debates, but I confess that I could not help thinking that if we had still a Gladstone in our midst he would not content himself with words of sympathy, however eloquent in debate, but he would have carried his convictions and his followers into the Division Lobby, and he would and could have defeated this horrid breach of faith with Ireland and possibly have saved the Empire as well.

We said at the beginning of the War, and we say it to-night, that you had a just and noble cause when you entered the War, but I solemnly believe that the day on which you issue this Order in Council—I would call it an Order in Blood—it will be the death warrant of peace between the two countries, and from that day history will hold you as responsible for the guilt of that act, as an act of brutality and treachery as bad as ever the Germans perpetrated in their beastly onslaught on Belgium. I hope the Prime Minister when he speaks to-night may even yet avert the fate which awaits the movement of reconciliation between the two countries. If he cannot, then we are here to-night as mourners at the funeral of that great movement amongst Irish Nationalists. My advice has been spurned so often by the wise men of this House that the one suggestion I can even imagine at this last desperate stage is that you should at least suspend this Order in Council, I do not say merely until you have passed a Home Rule Act, which may be as wretched an abortion as the Act upon the Statute Book, but I say until you have first speeded up a General Election that will give the Irish people an opportunity of pronouncing and of electing a body of representatives who will genuinely represent Ireland.

We are all in this extraordinary position: At the present moment there is no man and no set of men who are entitled to claim to be the authorised representatives of the people of Ireland. I say first elect those men and give the Irish people an opportunity of electing genuine and authorised representatives, whoever they may be, and then enter into genuine negotiations with those men. Whoever they are, come to business with them at once. Do not go on talking for another twelve months as in the case of that cruel practical joke of the so-called Irish Convention. If there is any point they differ upon you could refer it to the arbitration of President Wilson and of General Botha, with power to appoint another. That may still save you and save us from scenes of anguish and bloodshed, and from irreconcilable hatred, which I do not like. But you will have to take the initiative yourselves, and, in the words of your friend Lord Northcliffc, "you will have to do it now." Unless you do so, I, for one, can see no way in which you can escape from the humiliation, the danger of having an angry and desperate Ireland knocking at the doors of your Peace Conference, and possibly knocking at the doors and gaining a hearing on the same footing as those small nationalities of the Austrian Umpire which you have undertaken to champion as one of the inevitable conditions of peace.

As one who has for a long time always been sympathetic to the Irish people on the question of Home Rule, perhaps I may be excused for intervening in this Debate. It was my fortune to sympathise with Ireland and Home Rule almost before the time of Parnell, and I was in this House when the hon. Member for East Mayo made his speech nearly forty years ago. He delivered a speech very shortly after he entered the House.

You are an old man.

I am over sixty years of age, and I remember that after the speech which Mr. Dillon delivered he was followed by Mr. Gladstone, who described that speech as a distressful one. Who was right in those days? Mr. Gladstone had not then adopted Homo Rule. We now have had the speech of the hon. Member for East Mayo on this Bill, which I am certain is going to create hell in Ireland.

It is the most unfortunate Bill which has been presented to Parliament since the War began. You did have unity in Ireland when the War began, but what is the condition produced in Ireland by this Bill? I am quite aware that by introducing this measure at the present time, and raising the age to fifty-one, you make it extremely difficult for many Members in this House, and for the people of this country, to excuse Ireland. All the greater is the pity. In view of the Report presented to Parliament by the Irish Convention, the Government should have introduced a Bill for Home Rule before bringing in this measure, the introduction of which has created a bad atmosphere in Ireland, because they look upon you with the greatest suspicion. I notice that a good many Members always shrink when they hear Irishmen say that they distrust British statesmen. They have always done so. I will read a passage written by Mr. Lecky, in referring to Grattan. He said:

"Grattan shares, like most Irishmen, a strong dread lest what was given should immediately be drawn back."

That was written of Grattan, and I say that Irishmen are quite justified by their history to look upon us with great suspicion. You could have removed that suspicion if you had delayed this Bill for a fortnight or three weeks, and presented at once a Home Rule Bill for Ireland. It is not only hell that you are going to create in Ireland, but what is to be the effect of this Bill upon Irish troops fighting for us at the front? Do you think it will encourage them to fight for us in France, when they see what is the condition of things in their own country? [An HON. MEMBER: "They want drafts…"] You would have got them if you had brought in a Home Rule Bill first. What will be the effect of this Bill on the friends of Ireland in America? Anybody who knows the United States of America as I know them recognises that there is no section of the community in America which exercises greater influence in that country, and this measure must have a disastrous effect upon them. I very much regret that this Bill should have been introduced at this particular juncture. You should first of all have proceeded with a measure of conciliation for Ireland. There was a time when Ireland was in exactly the same position as she is in now. Let me quote from a Report sent by the Lord Lieu- tenant (the Duke of Portland) to the Government in 1782. This is what he said:

"If you delay or refuse to be liberal, the Government cannot exist here in its present form, and the sooner you recall your Lord Lieutenant and renounce all claim to this country the better; but, on the contrary, if you bring your minds to concede handsomely, I am persuaded that you can make any use of this people, and of everything that they are worth, that you can wish."

What was the result? Fox declared:

"They were determined to repeal the declamatory Act of George I. to abandon the appelate jurisdiction of the English House of Lords, to consent to such modification of Poyning's law as would annihilate the exceptional powers of the two Privy Councils, and to limit the Mutiny Act."

The Duke of Portland reported these concessions to the Irish Parliament on 27th May, 1782. The proceedings in that Irish Parliament were made memorable, in the first place, by expressing its gratitude to Almighty God by a day of thanksgiving

"for the many blessings of late bestowed on this Kingdom of (Ireland), and particularly for that union, harmony, and cordial affection happily subsisting between the two Kingdoms, and also its gratitude to England by voting £100,000 towards furnishing 20,000 additional sailors for the British Navy."

That was the result of making concessions. If you had treated Ireland in the same generous manner, and if there had been statesmanship displayed, you would have had, perhaps, in Ireland precisely the same result to-day. Anyone who has employed Irish people knows that there is no body of people who more readily respond to generous treatment. I believe that if you proceed with this measure and impose coercion on Ireland, it will be one of the most disastrous things that ever occurred in the history of this country.

I am very glad to have the opportunity of replying at once to the last speaker. I understand he sits for a Scottish constituency. We have heard from the Leader of the Irish Nationalist party that there is no need for men. [HON. MEMBERS: "Not at all… He never suggested anything of the kind…"] Well, the hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. Price) suggested there was no urgent need for men, because he suggested postponing the matter until a Home Rule Bill was passed. I suggest to the hon. Member that he should read the report in the papers of the 51st Division, a Scottish Division, which has had to fight hard in the South day after day, and which has not been taken out of the line for a rest, but has had to fight again in the North against a second attack, where the men have borne themselves most gallantly. When a Scottish division has to take its place twice over at the front, how can anybody say that there is no need for the Irish to take their share of the burden and to avoid throwing such an undue strain on the other portions of the country? Some of the Nationalist Members have accepted the principle that the Parliament in America is quite entitled to conscript the Irish in America. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear…"] I am glad to hear that they accept that position. Yet they deny the right of this Parliament, although they sit in it, to conscript Irishmen by a Bill passed at Westminster. They are supported in that by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), who lately has made speeches and taken up a strong position as a Federalist. Those who take up the position of Federalists should stand by federal principles. If there is one thing which is sustained throughout by federal principles, it is that peace and war, armies and navies, are matters for the central government. I am not prepared to define the whole federal position, but to put the case in a sentence, it is not inaccurate to say that it amounts to this: that matters which are common to all, shall be settled in a common Parliament. It is inconceivable that any federal solution of our difficulties in this country could be arrived at which would be satisfactory to England, Scotland, and Wales, which did not include the questions of the Army, Navy, and Conscription. When the Nationalist Members take up an attitude incompatible with the federal solution of their grave national difficulties, they are taking up a position which makes it very difficult to have a general peaceable solution of the Irish difficulty on federal lines. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] I will repeat it to the hon. Member, if he does not understand. It is because, under all conceivable federal governments, the questions of Conscription and of the Army are necessarily matters settled in a Central Parliament. Let me give the House an example. In South Africa there are two races which greatly differ, the British and the Dutch. They have Conscription there, and they have compulsory training, but they did not settle those questions in a local parliament. It was settled in one unified Parliament.

Do you think we have a local parliament?

My point is that if there were a local parliament—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah, if…"]—I am much obliged to hon. Members opposite for interrupting me, because it shows, they are doing what I value very much, that is listening to what I am saying. I was saying that in South Africa there are two races, both proud of their race. The Dutch are as proud of their race as the Irish rightly are of their own. They thought out, under General Botha, to whom the Irish party has just appealed, the best form of government and decided to have a unified form of government, and they settled all questions of the army and conscription.

Under Botha…

Certainly… There is also the case of Canada, which has already been alluded to. There you have the French section of the people differing in religion, language, and many great sentiments from the rest of the people of Canada. But their army questions are not settled in the Quebec Parliament, as hon. Members from Ireland know. They are settled in the Central Parliament of Canada.

No…

My point is that if you are going to achieve a workable constitutional scheme for Ireland, it must be on federal lines and be acceptable to England, Scotland, and Wales, and any such scheme must necessarily place the Army, the Navy, and the question of Conscription under the central Parliament at Westminster. [An HON. MEMBER: "When is that scheme to come?"] I am glad that hon. Members do not so greatly disagree with me. If I may for a moment chaff them, there was a point in the speech of their leader, the hon. Member for East Mayo, when he seemed to be somewhat of a Unionist, because he described how he was passing across the Irish Channel, and when he was half-way across he began talking about "Our Navy." He recognised in that speech that in matters of defence the two nations must necessarily stand together in order to help each other. He began to speak of "we." How he spent the rest of his voyage I do not know, but I noticed that he denounced the English for not providing more ships. Perhaps he spent his time calculating how often he had voted for a reduction of the British Navy during his forty years in this House.

There is one matter which is very urgent. I want to put it so as to create as little feeling as I can between us and Nationalist Members opposite. It is a very difficult thing to put. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife (Mr. Asquith) said that this was simply a matter of expediency, and not one of principle. I differ absolutely from that statement. I believe that the whole foundation upon which alone these heavy burdens can be borne is the foundation of equal justice. I believe that Conscription in this country was partly necessitated not only by the need for better organisation, but by the bad feeling that would be created if one man should go out and another should stay at home and take his job. I say very sincerely, and with all friendship to Ireland, that England, Scotland, and Wales are under this Bill going to shoulder a very heavy burden. Men up to fifty years of age are to be called up. Year after year during this War, first under the voluntary system, then under the organisation of Conscription, the burden of the business and the whole work of our country has been gradually piled up on the older men. It is upon these older men, who are now bearing a heavy burden, that this Bill is going to make a heavy call. There are people with one-man businesses, there are men engaged in the distributing trade, there are men engaged in all walks of life throughout the country, who will have to respond to that call. It could not be done without a feeling of great injustice if these men were to be called up with the full knowledge that there are—nobody disputes it— thousands upon thousands of young men —and there are no better soldiers—staying at home in Ireland. No one knows how well those men would fight better than many hon. Members in this House who have seen them, but the fact remains that they are not fighting, and it creates ill-will between the two countries. It is not in the interests of Ireland that there should be this ill-feeling between the two countries, and I, for one, hope that under this Bill Irishmen may come more willingly than some of their speakers suggest. I do not want to see trouble between us and Ireland. I am not like some hon. Members who, when one of their number spoke of Ireland being Under a dark cloud, cheered. I am not one who would cheer that sort of thing. I lament the difference between Ireland and my own country, and should like to see them removed, and, so far as this question of Conscription is concerned, it will undoubtedly make for better feeling between England, Scotland, and Wales, and the Irish, if in this desperate struggle we feed that the Irish have borne their full share throughout the latter stages of the campaign.

In the last two or three speeches hon. Members have spoken as though there was no heed for haste. There is need for haste—urgent need. We have in the past had Governments who required men for the Army nine, ten, and eleven months ahead, and while we have been waiting for unanimity the time has gone by. We have had cases where, perhaps, nine months have been allowed waiting for unanimity and for some of the Labour party, and then, perhaps, only nine or ten weeks to train the men before they went to France. I believe it is essential that the men should be got at once, and that adequate time should be allowed to train them properly before they go out, and I hope this may lead not to confusion and tumult, but to a better feeling between the two countries. I realise, as representing an English constituency and as a Unionist, that there are on those benches, through all the clamour we have heard against the Bill, many men who are as anxious as we are about the news from France. We know that many who speak so violently here, the moment they get outside the House, go to look at the tape as anxiously as we do and see what the news is. We know there are many other men who have borne a gallant part in the War, others who have sustained personal losses, and others who are bearing the shadow of grave personal anxiety, and therefore I speak rather for the urgent needs of our people in France and in a spirit of protest against anything which may stir up strife between the two countries.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech has been a very interesting contribution to the discussion. It would not be possible for me to enter into the various points he has raised. For instance, the federal question is beside the question now. We are all agreed as to the hardships inflicted by this Bill. It is a horribly hard Bill. It is a far harsher and more cruel Conscription Bill than it was ever conceived this House could possibly agree to. What was the meaning of bringing it forward? What was the meaning of inserting the curious provision raising the age to fifty and fifty-six and compelling men fifty years of age to take their share in the War? All these curious details, I suppose, must be laid to the account of the higher statesmanship. There was some object in making these extraordinary arrangements for Conscription in England, and we cannot help thinking that it has something to do with the question of Conscription in Ireland. I do not wish to go into that or to raise any controversial points, because things are very much too serious. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Barnes) made a most sympathetic and affecting speech. I have known him for a number of years. He has always been a strong and consistent friend of my country. He has fought many battles with us in the old days, and the appeal he made to us Irishmen in connection with this Bill certainly made a very great impression upon me for personal reasons, but he asks us to do an absolutely impossible thing. He asks us Irish Nationalists to agree to the imposition by this House of Conscription upon our country. Whatever can be said with regard to Conscription by an Irish Parliament, there is no use pretending to think that Irishmen will ever submit to Conscription from this House. We have said that already, and we can only repeat it now, and I think it is a most unfortunate thing for the future relationship between these two countries that this question of Conscription should have been so mixed up with the question of an Irish Parliament that it makes it almost impossible for us to accept an Irish Parliament under existing conditions.

We really do not know where we are as far as the intention of the Government are concerned. We have heard that the Government propose to pass a Home Rule Bill. But we could not understand, although it was thrown out in some sort of indefinite way, whether the Home Rule Bill was to come into operation before Conscription should be applied to Ireland. We are left in doubt upon that point. Some hon. Members think the statement of the Government was that Conscription would not be applied to Ireland until the Irish Parliament was established. I do not know how that is. We may see something about it in the papers to-morrow morning. But the unfortunate thing is making an offer to us Irish Nationalists of a Home Rule Bill for Ireland coupling with it the acceptance by our people of Conscription imposed by this House. The situation is difficult, and I am afraid it is almost insoluble. No one realises better than we do, who have spent all our political lives in trying to make peace between this country and our own, the hideous position in which we stand. It is not for us to talk of sacrifices. Even our most inveterate opponents must admit that taking us all round we Nationalist representatives of Ireland have done the best for the Empire and the War according to our opportunities. We have made suggestions to the Government over and over again, but our suggestions have been invariably turned down. We have advised our people to have patience; we have urged them to believe in Government promises, but in every single case we have been turned down. While we have done these things for many years with the object of reconciling our people with the English people and reconciling the English people with our people we find now at this appalling crisis that by the amazing action of the Government all our acts, all our labours, all our endeavours for the whole of our lives, are practically thrown to the winds. It is a hideous situation. What the Government expect to do by introducing Conscription at this time I cannot imagine. It cannot be for the purpose of an immediate increase to the Armies at the front. Everybody knows that if Conscription is imposed in Ireland to-morrow the men that would be raised would not be fit for military service for twelve months or six months. [An HON. MEMBER: "Three months."]

It would be a shame to send men after three months.

What the Government ought to have done was to set up an Irish Parliament and to leave this question of Ireland's contribution to the War in man-power to the decision of the Irish Parliament. I am convinced that if you had only trusted Ireland you would not have been disappointed. What is going to-happen now goodness only knows. You have got into an impasse. I am absolutely convinced that the only chance you have now of enlisting the full strength of Ireland and the full power of the young manhood of Ireland on the side of the Allies is by allowing Ireland through her own Parliament to decide what shall be her part in the War.

I speak as an Irish Nationalist who, at the beginning of this War felt bound as a lover of liberty to ask my fellow countrymen to join with the Allies in defeating the Huns. For two years I spent every Sunday going through my county, and practically through the whole of Munster, appealing to my fellow countrymen to join whole-heartedly and enthusiastically in order to repel what I consider the modern invaders and destroyers of humanity and liberty. I felt then as I feel now, that if Germany were to win in this War not alone Ireland, England, and Scotland, but the whole of the civilised world would have suffered a calamity from which it would take a century or more to relieve them. Through all the years that have gone while this terrible War has been in progress I have felt as an Irishman when things occurred to mar our work, and to raise doubts in the minds of our fellow countrymen as to the great object of this War, and as to your desire to be fair to my countrymen, very sad and sorrowful. It is painful to Irishmen, the children of a small nationality, sons of a race and of a country which is old and proud, belonging to a people older than you, older than the Germans, to hear taunts thrown at us that we refuse to take our part in this War, implying thereby that we, the children of a fighting race, always standing for idealism, self-sacrifice, and liberty, are skulking behind, that we are too cowardly to fight as men, and that we allow the old and the decrepit to go to defend our shores while we remain at home. I repudiate that as an insult to my race and country. We are no cowards who skulk behind others and wait to be defended by them. No man who knows us, no man who has studied the history of our race, whether in this War or in any other, can say truly that Irishmen are not prepared to fight and to sacrifice if you only show them they have a cause to fight for.

There I come to what I consider is the gist of all this discussion. Have you honestly asked yourselves what was the meaning of that noble spirit of our late and much lamented chairman, whose character I am afraid has not been understood or appreciated in his own country or in this, and whose patriotism and far-seeing statesmanship has been forgotten long before he was dead? Have you realised the splendid spirit of enthusiasm which prompted him to come forward in the early days of the War, when he cheered you and cheered the world by saying, "Ireland is with you in defence of liberty"? What is the trouble to-day? We have been denied the rights which would encourage and enthuse us to fight for that liberty. You have placed a Home Rule Bill on the Statute Book, but you refuse to put it into operation because a handful of men in the North-East corner of Ulster said you dare not put it into operation. Because of their threats you cast us aside and allowed the minority to rule the majority. The gist and the cause of all this trouble is that you refuse to recognise the nationality and the right of Irishmen to decide their own fate in their own country. You tell me, and you think you have answered the question when you say it, that Irishmen in America are conscripted. So they are, and proud to be conscripted. They will not even wait for Conscription. America is a free country in which Irishmen as well as the nationals of every other country are entitled to share the full rights of citizenship. Irishmen are free in America; every position is open to them. Anybody who knows my race in America will realise that they govern in America. They govern in every country but their own. The only country in which Irishmen will not govern, cannot govern, are not allowed to govern, is Ireland. They govern in South Africa, in your Colonies, and in America, but the only country where they will not be allowed to govern is their own. If Irishmen wished to appeal to the sentiments of self-sacrifice and love of liberty which is in the heart of every Irishmen, there is only one way to do it, there is one key to the help of the Irish race, and that is to give them their freedom. If you give the men in my country their freedom, if you trust them, if you give them the rights for which for ages they have fought, struggled and sacrificed, and which you have denied them, with oppression and cruelty and wrong, then if they refuse to help you it will be for you to say that Irishmen are cowards and will not take part in this terrible struggle for human liberty for future generations.

Let us view the question merely of the abstract right. What is the right that this House has to impose Conscription upon Ireland? Let Englishmen ask that question of themselves. Every voice from Ireland speaks against it. Every man on these benches speaks against Conscription for Ireland. My Friends from Cork, who represent another and a smaller party, speak against it. Has there been a single Unionist Member who has spoken in favour of it? Yes; one. But how has he spoken? What is his support? It is qualified by one or two other things. But if ever a nation spoke with an unanimous voice with regard to a question affecting the very lives and future of the country, that country is Ireland. What, then, is your right to say that you can impose this upon Ireland? If you believe in representative Governments, if you say that we in this House speak for Ireland, and if you believe in freedom, then are you going to impose upon Ireland that which the Irish people, through their representatives, say they will not have? Would you do it in the case of Australia or Canada, or any part of your Empire except Ireland? Certainly not… You dare not and you would not do it. You would only do it in Ireland because you think you have the power to do it.

It is with infinite sorrow that I as an Irishman speak to you and see the course which your folly, I will not say your deliberate intention, but your folly and ignorance of the condition of things prevailing in my country, are leading you into. Whether you like it or do not, if you impose Conscription in Ireland you will take the first and most serious step in landing not only Ireland, but possibly your Empire, in ruin and destruction. You will take a course that will gladden the heart of the Germans, which will inevitably also weaken the support in the eyes of the Irish-Americans who are thronging in thousands to assist you in this War, Many of our brethren in the Colonies who are now at the front will look at the condition of things in Ireland. I beg hon. Members in this House to leave aside suspicion and prejudice, to banish all hatred and suspicion of my fellow countrymen, and to look at this question honourably as men who are fighting for the freedom of small nations. Give to my country, which is as important as any other which you are fighting for, its freedom. Give to Irishmen the right to legislate at home. Give them the right, when they are free men, to send out their sons in defence of freedom. Then, and not until then, will you get a single Irishman.

I feel unwilling to share the responsibility for this Clause, and I intend to vote against it to-night, as I did on the Committee stage, on the ground that it is against all the principles of good statesmanship to take a course at the crisis of your fate which is perfectly certain to lead to very serious trouble— either to civil war or rebellion or to disorders and perils of all sorts and kinds, and the serious trouble which, in view of the attitude of the representatives of three-fourths of Ireland, must ensue, will not bring, so far as I can see, any compensating military advantage whatever. I cannot bring myself to believe that men conscripted against their will and against the will of their representatives in Parliament and the general sense of the community in which they live can be of any real military value to the British Isles. I have no doubt that they will be supplied with the best of officers whose duty it will be to bring them to the point of moral and of determination necessary to fight the Germans. But how would those officers succeed in that task when all the home influence behind those men, and the letters they receive from home, the articles which they read in their home Press, and the general influence and opinion of their home circles, are inciting them not to the unquestioning performance of their military duty, but to dissatisfaction and even to disaffection? I am driven to the conclusion that, though we have the absolute right—I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton in this—to take this step it is one of absolutely no value unless you first get the consent of the Irish people.

In these circumstances may I make a very respectful suggestion to the Government as to a possible arrangement by which large numbers of men in Ireland might be obtained for the Army without the troubles which the course the Government suggest would bring upon the country? The Government have already made a considerable concession to-day in promising that no Irishmen shall be subject to Conscription until the Home Rule Bill is on the Statute Book. But that concession does not really go far enough to remove the distrust which is felt by the Irish representatives for the professions of the Government, which we have got to take into account. There is no chance of defeating this Clause. It is certain to pass into law. What I want to suggest is that the Government might keep the Clause in abeyance—in other words, make no Order in Council until an Irish Parliament has actually met. I believe that that would go a long way to remove the difficulties. I would also suggest to the hon. Member for East Mayo that he might, in circumstances like these, use his great influence as Leader of the Nationalist party to help to get large numbers of men voluntarily for our common Army. The hon. Member for Mayo will, I am sure, not object to my saying that he has not yet established claims upon the gratitude of the Allies comparable to those which were so abundantly established by his illustrious predecessor, Mr. John Redmond. But I feel sure that he realises—indeed, he has told us that he realises—that this is Ireland's quarrel no less than our own, and if this difficulty can only be got over I agree heartily with the Government that men of military age in Ireland who are not now serving with the Army should, if possible, be got into the Army to help to save our common heritage from overwhelming disaster. There is in the "Westminster Gazette "to-day a suggestion that facilities might be offered to Irishmen to be recruited for the American Army if they should prefer that to the British Army, and I am sure that, if there were any whose susceptibilities would prefer enlistment under the Stars and Stripes, no red-tape of the British War Office ought to stand in the way of their being given an opportunity which is equally valuable for the purpose of fighting Germany.

Lastly, I wish to suggest with regard to the Home Rule Bill which is now under the consideration of the Government, that the Bill should be one not purely for Irish Home Rule but for Home Rule all round, and should include proposals here and now for subordinate Parliaments not merely for Ireland, but also for England, Scotland, and Wales, and I feel that the most urgent motive for that suggestion is that if it produces a Bill for purely Irish Home Rule, even if it is on a plan to fit into a federal system later on, you will be up against the question of the coercion of Ulster. Ulster with the long delays of British Governments, with such things as the Preamble of the Parliament Act undealt with for seven years, will not be inclined to put much faith in the promise that later on federal institutions will be applied all round. But if they have before them a proposal which applies absolutely equal treatment to Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales, it will be very difficult for them to complain that they are not being treated as fairly as any other part of the country. On those grounds, I earnestly suggest that there may be further communications between the Government and the dif- ferent parties before the act is finally taken which must be of very grave consequences to every part of this Kingdom.