said, there was a Notice standing on the Paper in his name, for the postponement of the second reading until that day six months. That Notice was given in order to protect the agricultural interest from any increase of tolls on artificial manures; but after taking into consideration the new Standing Order passed yesterday, he wished to withdraw his opposition to the Bill.

begged to move, as an Amendment, that the Bill be read a second time upon that day six months. He was under the impression that his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Derbyshire (Admiral Egerton) intended to move the rejection of the second reading; but as he did not see the hon. and gallant Member in his place, and as he certainly thought the Bill ought not to be allowed to go any further, he would take the liberty of making that Motion himself. The main fact upon which, he relied in making the proposition was that a Committee last year rejected the most material and important part of the present Bill after a full consideration of the whole matter on its merits. Indeed, he might say the Committee rejected it unanimously, in view of all the circumstances of the case, and nothing had occurred since last year which ought in any respect to alter the position of affairs. He did not think that it was necessary that he should go at length into details, because they were amply discussed before the Committee last year; and if his contention was right, that no Bill, which had been rejected on its merits by a Committee, in one year, should be introduced into the House in the following year without any new circumstances to justify its re-introduction, it certainly was not necessary that he should go into the details of this Bill. The Holborn Board of Works were the road authorities having control over the roads in the St. Andrew's district through which these lines were projected, and they themselves opposed in the Session of 1879 a proposal to introduce tramways into their district, alleging—

"That the construction of tramways in the district would of necessity prove a great obstruction, and be fraught with danger to the large vehicular traffic which would use the thoroughfares, and would depreciate the value of the property along the entire route. That there existed no public necessity for the construction and making of the tramways within their district, sufficient to justify the damage, danger, and inconvenience which would result therefrom to the public interested in or using the thoroughfares."

Now, nothing had happened since that time to alter the fact, or to induce anybody in the district to change his mind. The only alteration, if there were any was in the large increase of vehicular traffic which had taken place over these roads in the interim, and that could only result in the proposed tramways becoming much more dangerous to the public than they would have been in 1879. The Tramways Company had been endeavouring, year by year, to get possession of this district; but no such tramways had yet been sanctioned by Parliament He had before him a Petition very largely signed by the frontagers throughout the district, in which they alleged the inconvenience and danger which would accrue to them if the Bill were allowed to pass. And they also said that the Western terminus of the proposed tramway was in a most objectionable position. It was close to the entrance of a new fire brigade station, and was badly placed for affording access to the main thoroughfares; and as it had already been decided by Parliament that tramways could not be continued further West, in that direc- tion the proposed tramway could not be prolonged westward, as the Company hoped to carry it in the direction of Oxford Street, to any central point in London, or to form a junction with any other line? In point of fact the promoters were stopped, by a Private Act, from going beyond their Western terminus; and, therefore, they could not afford the facilities which they might reasonably be hoped to afford. He submitted that after the decision of the House of Commons last year, rejecting a Bill almost entirely identical with this—namely, the Tramway Lines No. 1 and la, it was quite ridiculous that the opponents of the Bill should be put a second time to all the trouble, expense, and inconvenience of opposing a Bill before a Committee upstairs, an important part of which was thrown out unanimously upon its merits by a Committee last year. This was an attempt, such as they often had to resist in these days, on the part of the Companies to endeavour to starve out individuals who were opposed to their schemes. The House would be aware that recently the public had suffered very much by an omission to protect public interests, which ought to have been dealt with at the time the Bill of the Metropolitan District Railway Company was passing through that House. Instead of doing so, the Bill of the Metropolitan Company was sent upstairs, and there objectionable provisions found their way into it. He (Mr. J. E. Yorke) thought it would have been far better if the Bill had been dealt with on public grounds in the House, and never sent upstairs at all. He was sorry that his hon. and gallant Friend the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works (Sir James M'GarelHogg) was not present, because he should have liked to ask him what the opinion of the surveyors of the Board was upon the matter. In regard to the present Bill, he would suggest to the House that the only alternative to the throwing of the Bill out altogether was that the promoters should consent to abandon all that part of the scheme which was submitted last year to a Committee upstairs, and unanimously rejected by them. If they chose to abandon that portion of the Bill he would not have a word to say against the remainder of the measure. But unless he had an express declaration from the promoters that they proposed to take that course, he trusted the House would agree with him that the Bill ought not to be allowed to go further. It was alleged, in a statement circulated in support of the second reading of the Bill, that the local authorities having jurisdiction over the proposed roads, with the exception of St. Luke's, had given their assent to the Bill. That was the case, and it was in view of having that fact in mind that the Committee unanimously determined last year to reject the Bill. The promoters said that this year the lines had been altered and laid out with a view to meet the objections raised by the opponents last Session. It was quite true that the present Bill contained one slight divergence; but the proposed deviation was more apparent than real. The same offer was made to the Committee last year; but the Committee having that alternative clearly in view, nevertheless declined to accept it, and threw out the Bill. Therefore he submitted, on the ground of public convenience, and on the ground that it was wrong for two years running to put people to the great expenditure and inconvenience of fighting Bills of this kind, that these were matters which ought to be dealt with by the House instead of being sent to a Committee upstairs. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time on that day six months.

said, he was not prepared to contest many of the observations which had been made by the hon. Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. E. Yorke), because he had no special knowledge in regard to them; but he should like to say a word as to the facts of the case. He believed it was true that the Metropolitan Board of Works and the frontagers on the road were in favour of the Bill, and that they had sent in a joint Petition in its behalf. The Holborn Board of Works, by a majority of 20 or 30, passed a resolution in favour of the Bill on the 8th January, and there had also been two Petitions in its favour, signed by the frontagers. He therefore thought that the Bill, which proposed to construct tramways for the advantage and convenience of the public, ought to be enquired into by a competent representative authority, and that it should, therefore, be submitted to a Committee upstairs.

said, he thought that this was a case, judging from what he had heard from his hon. Friend the Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. E. Yorke), which would justify the House in departing from the usual course that was generally adopted in dealing with the question of Private Bill Legislation. The proposal to reject a Private Bill on the second reading was generally deprecated both in that House, and by the public out-of-doors; but in this case it appeared that the matter had already been inquired into by a Committee, and the House ought to respect, as far as it could, the decision of its-own Committees. If in any such case they adopted a contrary course, the practice was not unlikely to grow up of the House becoming slack in maintaining the authority of its own Committees, and of allowing abuses of the Forms of the House to the injury of private individuals, owing to the great expense that attended investigations of this kind. They had heard from his hon. Friend the Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. E. Yorke) that last year the Committee to whom the Bill was referred unanimously threw it out. The alternative scheme for a deviation, which was the only difference in the Bill submitted on this occasion and the Bill of last year, was at that time submitted to the Committee; and the Committee, having that deviation before them, nevertheless took the extreme course of throwing the Bill out. The House was now invited again, in the course of the present Session, to send upstairs to another Committee a Bill, to all intents and purposes, exactly identical with the Bill they had rejected last year. He asked the House to consider whether that was a course that was likely to maintain the credit of their Committees or of the House itself? It would certainly fail to show that there was anything like harmony between the House and its Committees. In regard to the question of expense, it was notorious that the proceedings upon Private Bills in that House were very costly, and it was quite possible that private individuals, having once maintained their opposition, might eventually find themselves crushed by a great Company coming down to the House, year by year, and endeavouring gradually to extinguish an opposition which any private persons might be in a position to offer. He hoped, therefore, although he should be sorry that the House should make it a practice generally to refuse the second reading of a Private Bill, that they would consider that his hon. Friend the Member for East Gloucestershire bad made out a case, and had given sufficient reasons, on the present occasion, why they should take a step which might be regarded as a precedent by parties outside the House interested in the promotion of Private Bills. Such persons ought to be made to understand that the Forms of the House would not be allowed to be used to the injury of private interests; and the rejection of the Bill upon the second reading would thus teach a salutary lesson. Reluctant as he was to consent to the rejection of a Bill upon the second reading, yet, after what he had heard, if his hon. Friend chose to go to a division, he would certainly support him.

confessed that he had listened with some surprise to the observations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Raikes). Hitherto the advice the right hon. Gentleman had given to the House had always been in opposition to the course proposed to be taken by the hon. Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. E. Yorke), and very wisely so. Bills of this nature ought to undergo the investigation of a Committee upstairs; and, for his own part, he (Mr. W. M. Torrens) had very seldom consented to vote for the rejection of a Bill on the second reading. He gathered, from what the right hon. Gentleman said, that the House was invited not only to treat this as an exceptional case, but to convert it into a precedent. He certainly thought that was a proposal to change the well-known and especial practice of the House upon rather illogical grounds. He would remind the House of the difficulties which the Member for a Metropolitan constituency was under in a case like this. He had been asked 10 days ago, on behalf of certain frontagers in Holborn, to present a Petition from many very respectable people in their parish against the second reading of the Bill. But it became necessary to inquire somewhat further into the merits of the case, and to ascertain what the conflicting claims were. A numerous deputation represented to him that the interests both of the frontagers and of the employers and employed throughout the district of Clerkenwell would be best served by supporting the Bill; and he held in his hand a Petition from that district exactly in the contrary sense to the one which worthy people in Holborn had asked him to present. He would, therefore, suggest, whether, seeing in the localities chiefly affected that there was such a difference of opinion upon the subject, the House would now consent to alter its practice and set a new precedent, or whether it would not send the Bill to a Committee upstairs, to form a judgment upon it after hearing the evidence, and after having had the assistance of counsel, and so to decide what ought to be done with the Bill? His own opinion, speaking perfectly impartially, because he had no interest in the matter, except to see that justice was done, was that the objectors to the Bill were considerably outnumbered by those who thought that it ought to be read a second time. He, therefore, advised the House not to change its practice and set up an exceptional case. They did not know yet what the arguments were which brought about the unanimity of the Committee in rejecting the Bill last Session. For his own part, he had no objection to urge against the case which had been made out against the Bill by the hon. Member for East Gloucestershire; but he certainly did dissent very widely from the proposal to alter their Constitutional practice and to establish a new precedent.

said, he happened to be a resident in the neighbourhood through which it was proposed these tramways should pass; and, in fact, he would have to cross one of the lines of the proposed tramways daily in his way from his house to his office. He, therefore, knew the inconvenience to which the public would be put by the construction of them. It was proposed to carry them down a street which had been recently formed and thrown open to the public. If the Bill passed, tramway lines would occupy a considerable portion of the street which was originally contemplated to provide a great main artery between the East and West of London; and he ventured to think that the persons who had to traverse that street would be subjected to considerable danger. A large number of the inhabitants of the district objected to the Bill, and one of the grounds of their objection was that they had already been put to considerable expense in opposing a similar measure. As it was desirable that they should not be put to more expense a second time, he trusted that the House would reject the Bill.

said, that as he was Chairman of the Committee which threw out the Bill last year, he hoped he might be allowed to say a few words on the subject. The case was this. The opposition to those lines of tramways came, to a great extent, from those who were living on the road. They were intended to take a particular route, and they were opposed by the owners of a brewery, which the line proposed to pass; and the fact that the line now diverged, to a certain extent, from the front of that brewery was the sole excuse for bringing the Bill before the House again. He might say this, as far as the brewery was concerned—that that was not the fatal objection upon which the Committee decided to reject the Bill. If it had been, it was probable there might have been a difference of opinion among the Committee. But the question the House had to consider now was this—was this line of tramways precisely the same as that which was inquired into by the Committee last year? He thought that no case, although he had only seen the statement on one side, was made for bringing the matter again before the House. Of course, if there was any essential difference between the Bill now before the House and the Bill of last year, the Petition for the Bill ought to be referred to a Committee; but if the two Bills were practically identical, then he could only state what the opinion of the Committee was last year, and leave the House to decide the matter.

said, there was one fact connected with the Bill to which he wished to draw the attention of the House, and which seemed to have escaped the notice of those who opposed the Bill. He did not think it necessary to say anything to strengthen the ground? which the hon. Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. E. Yorke) had taken up in moving the rejection of the Bill, which was that a similar measure had not met with the approval of the Committee to which it was referred last year; but, as far as he had been able to gather during the noise which had prevailed almost throughout the discussion, he had not heard one word as to the state of the roads or the streets through which it was proposed to carry these tramways. He believed it was intended to bring these tramways through two roads which had been made at great expense during the last two years, and through a very populous neighbourhood, formerly occupied by very narrow streets. This new road had been constructed for the purpose of facilitating the traffic between the East and West of London, and the improvements had been carried on up to the present time, a Fire Brigade depot having been established in one part of them. It was proposed to carry the improvements further West by way of Bloomsbury Square and Portland Street, and he believed that in the course of a few years they would have a thoroughfare through Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus. He would only ask the House if it was right that this new road, which was being made for the purpose of relieving the congested traffic of our thoroughfares, should be monopolized by a private Company for private gain? He considered that there was a great principle involved, and he hoped the House would not allow these new streets to be handed over to a private Company, merely because, on their first formation, the traffic was not so great as there was reason to expect it would ultimately become.

in rising to call attention to the want of Harbour accommodation on the East Coast of Great Britain, and more particularly to the lamentable need of low-water Harbours suitable for fishing and coasting vessels; and to move—

"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Harbour accommodation on the Coasts of the United Kingdom, having regard to the laws and arrangements under which the construction and improvements of Harbours may now be effected,"

said: I am confident that the House will not need any apology from me for bringing the subject of our Harbour accommodation before it—a subject which must excite the keenest and most general interest of a nation, whose success in the past, whose glory and material welfare in the present, are so inextricably bound up in the maritime enterprize and prowess of her sons. Some apology is, however, due by me to those hardy seamen and fishermen, whose interests I desire to further, and whose perils my earnest hope it is to be, in over so small a measure, the means of decreasing, for having ventured to bring this Motion before the House, instead of leaving it to the care of some more able and older Member. I do not think the necessity for some action of the kind being taken can be more clearly shown than by a short statement of the casualties which occur along our Coasts from year to year. According to the Report of a Select Committee of this House, which sat in 1857, the annual average of all wrecks and casualties, from whatever cause, which occurred on the Coasts of this country in the five years 1852ࣽ6, both inclusive, appears to have been 1,025 per annum. Dividing the 20 years 1861 to 1880 into quinquennial periods, we find the average annual casualties to have been in the period from 1861 to 1865, 1,538; in the 5 years from 1866 to 1870, 1,862; in the 5 years 1871 to 1875, 2,536; and in the 5 years 1876 to 1880, 3,380. Are not these figures appalling, not only in their aggregate number, but still more so in their fearfully rapid and never-failing progressive increase? Surely it is time for Government to interpose, with firmness and determination, and to take steps to put a stop to so disgraceful a state of things; and surely one, at any rate, of the means by which these evils may be mitigated is by a judicious, but resolute, policy of encouraging by every possible means, at intervals and in carefully selected localities around these Islands, the construction of low-water Harbours, which shall offer a ready place of refuge to vessels in distress, at all times of the tide. It is but a poor answer, and one quite unworthy of the Government of a great country like ours, to say, when hundreds of lives have been lost by sudden storms, and they are petitioned by poor fishermen for assistance in constructing necessary Harbour accommodation, that the great commercial seaports have been able to provide for themselves stupendous harbour works, that all such works must only be undertaken on the most strictly commercial principles, and that they must imitate their great corporate neighbours, and help themselves to what they want without Government intervention. Now, Sir, it is just six years since a debate on Harbours was raised in this House. On that occasion, it was on the Motion of the noble Lord who now represents Liverpool, and then King's Lynn (Lord Claud Hamilton). The object of his Motion was to press the claims of one particular locality, and to ask the grant of large sums of the public money. My Motion is on totally different lines. It is not to press the claim of any particular locality, nor to demand the free grant of Government money. I only ask for a thorough, an impartial, a searching inquiry. I contend the time is opportune. We have had two exceptionally stormy seasons in succession. It is now 26 years since the last inquiry upon the subject was ordered by Parliament. A Committee was appointed in 1857, and the result of their labours is to be found in the passing of the Harbour and Passing Tolls Act, which has been of immense benefit; but, as I shall presently endeavour to show, has not of late years been administered in the spirit in which it was framed, or for the purposes for which it was passed. Then the great harbour works on the South Coast at Portland, and elsewhere, have been completed, or are on the point of completion; and the convict labour thus to be set free is available for and about to be applied in new localities. And, again, the Scotch Fishery Board, which has an annual sum, though a very small one, for disposal on harbours, has just been re-constituted; and some inquiry on the past disposal of those funds, and into the present needs of the country, whose interests are its care, must be beneficial, and help the new Board to a thoroughly sound decision as to their action in the future. I intend to rest my demand more especially upon the facts relating to the East Coast of this country, the most dangerous of our shores, and on which—more particularly on that part between the North Foreland and the Firth of Forth—an altogether undue proportion of wrecks annually occur. That will be evident at a glance to any hon. Member who will refer to the Wreck Charts annually compiled and published from the Board of Trade Wreck Register. Upon this point the Report of the Committee of 1857 is very clear. In that Report it will be found that Captain Washington states that he had computed that one-half of the whole wrecks of the United Kingdom occur on the East Coast of Great Britain, and fully one-half of that number between the Firth of Forth and the Humber. This estimate of Captain Washington is fully borne out by the statistics of the last year we have now published—from June, 1880, to June, 1881—in which, out of a total of 2,865 wrecks, excluding casualties by collisions, 1,171 occurred on the East Coast, between the North Foreland and Cape Wrath, and 956 of these last, or one-third of the whole number, between the North Foreland and the Ferne Islands; while out of a total loss of life, excluding collisions, of 888, 496 were lost between the North Foreland and Cape Wrath, of which 420 were between the North Foreland and the Ferne Islands. In the year 1881–2, of which the statistics are not yet before Parliament, the loss of life on the East Coast was, I fear, even more appallingly great than that which I have already presented to the House. On two occasions alone 249 lives of fishermen were lost on the Coasts of Scotland—namely, 58 in the Shetlands in July, and 191 on the Berwickshire Coast; in October. Now, Sir, what are the harbours we have on this fearfully dangerous East Coast? Many indeed in number, but few indeed in value for refuge purposes. It should be remembered that the value of a harbour for refuge purposes must be gauged by its capability for taking in the class of vessels for which it is intended at all states of the tide; and I believe that 10 feet at low tide should certainly be the least that should be allowed, even for the class of fishing boats now in general use on the North-East Coast. For it is necessary to boar in mind that, in addition to the amount of water a vessel actually draws, an allowance must be made for the "send of the sea," or, in other words, the depth to which the keel of the vessel descends in the trough of the sea, equal to at least one-half the height of the waves. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) recently made an important speech on the subject at Swansea, in which he showed himself fully alive to the importance of the subject, and expressed his desire to gather all the information he possibly could on the subject. This inquiry now asked for will, if granted, be the means of furnishing him with much that will be useful to the formation of a sound opinion. The following is a statement of the existing harbours on the East Coast. Between the Thames and the Humber there are 17, of which five only—the Thames, Harwich, Lowestoft, Yarmouth, and Lynn—are harbours having more than 8 feet at low water; between the Humber and the Forth 27, of which only five also—the Humber, Tees, Hartlepool, Sunderland, and the Tyne—are harbours having more than 8 feet at low water. And of these five, four are on the Coast of Durham, within 30 miles of each other, so that their utility as harbours of refuge to the country generally is greatly diminished. Between the Forth and Cape Wrath there are 48, of which two only—the Forth and the Tay—have more than 8 feet at low water; but the latter is very dangerous to enter during storms; and five with between 6 and 8 feet at low water—namely, Montrose, very difficult to enter in certain states of wind and tide; Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Buckie, and Aberdeen— this last also dangerous to enter in storms. This short summary of the harbours on this dangerous and rocky Coast, combined with the wrecks that annually occur on it, surely speak for themselves for the crying necessity that exists for the multiplication of harbours that should be available in all weathers and at all states of the tide. I must now again, for purposes of comparison, refer to the Report of the Committee of 1857. The following passage will there be found:—

"It appears in the evidence taken by your Committee that between St. Abb's Head and Flamborough Head, a distance of about 150 miles, every harbour along the Coast, without any exception, has a bar at its entrance more or less dangerous, and that none of them can be entered at low water. This Coast includes the important ports of the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees, besides those of Berwick-on-Tweed, Blyth, Hartlepool, Seaham, Whitby, and Scarborough."

Now, how far does the present state of things differ from that set out in the Report? Between the Humber and the Forth, since 1858, many harbours have been altered or enlarged—e.g., Bridlington, Scarborough, the Tees, Hartlepool, Sunderland, the Tyne, Blyth, Warkworth, Burnmouth, and Dunbar; but, with two exceptions, it cannot be said that any of these harbours offer better refuge for vessels during storms; several—e.g., Scarborough, Sunderland, and Blyth—offer more accommodation, but are not available more than formerly by ordinary vessels except about high water. The two exceptions are the Tees and the Tyne. The former is already available at all times of the tide by small vessels, and is steadily improving; while the Tyne may now fairly be described as a real harbour of refuge for all purposes. Twenty years ago the Tyne had a very dangerous bar at its entrance, over which the depth of water was, on the average, about 6 feet at low water, and 20½ feet at high water. Of springs, now, the bar has been entirely removed, so that there is 23 feet at low water between the pier heads. The total cost of these works has reached something like £3,500,000 sterling, of which the Tyne Commissioners have laid out in the last 20 years £1,000,000. A grant of £250,000 was recommended for them by the 1859 Commission; but the only aid they have received has been loans to the amount of £345,727 from the Public Works Loan Commissioners. The distance from the Humber to the Tees is 110 miles, and there is no refuge harbour along that great stretch of Coast. From the Tees to the Tyne is only 30 miles; but this portion of the Coast is specially fortunate in regard to harbour accommodation; while from the Tyne to Inchkeith, in the Forth, the next available shelter, is 130 miles. Let me give, as instances of the great need of low-water harbours of easy access, two disasters that recently happened on the coast of my own county, both of which, humanly speaking, would certainly have been greatly mitigated, if not wholly averted, by the existence of such a harbour. The first was on the 19th of November, 1875. Some 40 Fife boats had left Yarmouth for home the day but one previously. They were on the morning in question overtaken by a severe gale. A number of the boats made the attempt to take Berwick Harbour; but the Berwick fishermen signalled them against such a course, and they were forced to make for the Holy Island. Two of the boats followed in the wake of some Burnmouth boats, and found safe shelter in that harbour; but a third, which made the attempt later on, was warned off by the coastguardsmen, and had to stand out to sea and was lost. Five boats in all were lost—three belonging to St. Monance and two to Cellardyke, with 37 men, who left 18 widows and 71 children. Then came the terrible disaster of the 14th October, 1881. On that occasion, between 1 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a terrible storm burst on the fishing fleet fishing off the Berwickshire Coast, and in a couple of hours 35 boats and 191 lives were lost, leaving 107 widows and 351 children. Many of the boats on that occasion were smashed up within sight and hearing, and almost within touch, of the shrieking women on the shore, or at the pier heads at Eyemouth and Burnmouth. The skipper of one of the Eyemouth boats described to me the fearful horrors of that day. He ran for his own harbour; but, as he neared it, he realized the absolute impossibility of entering. To use the man's own words, he came to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to "put his trust in God, and make the sea his friend for the night." He accordingly went out to sea, and, after 28 hours of the greatest hardships and danger, got into Shields. Eyemouth alone, on this occasion, lost 129 men, Cove, Coldingham, Burnmouth, Newhaven, and Fisherrow, losing the remaining 62. Seven Eyemouth and one Burnmouth boat weathered the storm at sea, and took shelter at last on the 15th and 16th in the Tyne. Instances such as these may be multiplied without end. It is only a week ago to-day since a fearful storm raged on the North-East Coast, which, I am informed, placed the boats on the Aberdeenshire Coast in the gravest danger, and would, had it come upon the men at low tide, infallibly have led to a great disaster. The same storm terribly jeopardized the safety of the whole fleet of Yorkshire fishing boats. Eight fishermen wove drowned at Filey, leaving seven widows and 20 children. These men, I hear this morning, were lost entirely from the absence of proper harbour accommodation. I may here mention that I have the authority of the Secretary at Lloyd's for saying that one great reason for fishing vessels not being accepted on the books of that great institution is the want of suitable harbours for their accommodation on our Coasts. Ramsgate, Hull, Preston-pans, the Shetland Islands, have all been among recent sufferers. I do, Sir, implore the Government to take into their most serious consideration the clamant necessity of coming to the assistance of these unfortunate men, and to make some endeavour to devise apian by which we may deal effectually with a state of things which year by year becomes a more and more crying disgrace to the country. It is my contention that great national harbours of refuge, and perhaps defence, which have so often been the subject of debate in this House, can only be constructed at the most enormous expenditure, and by means of public money. I, therefore, pass them by. It is, however, I believe, the fact that the Government have already determined to employ the convict labour set free by the completion of the works on the South Coast, on three works of this character at Dover, Filey, and Peterhead. But we have a right to ask for a clear and definite statement of their policy in this matter, the reasons that have weighed with them in coming to this decision; and why, especially, the works at Dover are to take precedence of the works at Filey, for, as far as I can judge from all the evidence, the latter place has far greater claims as a harbour of refuge than the former, and is situated in a position where such works are far more needed than at Dover, with the Roads and the Thames so near at hand, and would, besides, be of the greatest service in the development of the North Sea fisheries. I hope the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade will not fail to make a very full and definite statement on this point for the satisfaction of the House and the country, though, of course, he may plead the value of defence works at Dover to be sufficient to outweigh all other considerations. It is often said that fishery harbours will not pay. I do not believe that at all. I believe that if the place is judiciously chosen and the works efficiently constructed there need be little fear of their paying. Look at the marvellous development of Grimsby. In 1856, 1,540 tons of fish were sent inland from that place by rail; while, in 1881, 49,583 tons, or about one-fifth of the whole quantity so conveyed in the whole of England, were despatched from that place. Again, Fraserburgh may be cited as another example of rapid development. In 1815, the total catch of herrings there was 5,560 barrels; from 1840 to 1850, about 24,000 barrels per annum; while from the extension of the harbour, which commenced in 1873, the catch has yearly increased, and in the years 1877 to 1881 the average number of barrels caught yearly reached the enormous figure of 180,000, worth about £250,000. In 1870 the number of boats was 480, and in 1880, 789. In 1847 the revenue from harbour dues was under £1,200; in 1877–81 it was considerably over £10,000 per annum. It seems to me that the policy to be adopted is something of this sort. A certain number of places should be carefully selected along the Coast, with the view of being made into first-rate fishery harbours, which should be available by small craft at all times. The selection of these places should depend on their suitability for improvement from an engineering and commercial point of view, and from their situation on the Coast in regard to one another. It will be at once apparent that there is a vast difference between the construction of great national harbours of refuge, or even of harbours suitable to the vessels of our great commercial ports, and of harbours that will servo for refuge for fishing and other small trading vessels. Such harbours, into which small craft of all description could run with safety at all times, are undertakings comparatively small, both in difficulty and expense. The first thing absolutely necessary is the extension of the principle of lending money at a low rate of interest, recognized by the Act of 1881, to the establishment of fishery harbours. Hitherto, as far as the East Coast, at any rate, is concerned, it has been chiefly the large ports which have benefited by that Act; and the smaller harbours, including nearly all those devoted to fishing, have obtained but little assistance. Between the Humber and Capo Wrath, £1,377,000 has been lent to 11 harbours, with an income exceeding £2,000 per annum, and only £19,205 to five places whoso income is below this amount. There are, in this district, between 40 and 50 harbours which rely mainly or entirely upon the fishing industry; only about four of them have an income exceeding £2,000, and only eight have received loans. The Committee of 1857 recommended free grants to the amount of £2,000,000; the Commission appointed to complete the Committee's work recommended grants amounting to £2,365,000. Both the recommendations as to grants were set aside, and never acted upon; but as an alternative policy, the Harbours and Passing Tolls Act, 1861, was introduced and passed, to make provision for the construction and improvement of harbours, by authorizing loans from the public funds to harbour authorities. Now, Sir, many and various applications were at once made under the Act, and during the first four years the Public Works Loan Commissioners advanced some £1,250,000, or about half of the whole amount lent by them for harbour purposes in the 20 years ending 1880; but soon a dispute arose between the Board of Trade and the Loan Commissioners, first proceeding from the Board of questioning certain decisions of the Commissioners. The Board seem always to have taken the more liberal interpretation of the Act; the Commissioners always the more restricted one. The result has been that year by year the loans became less and less, till at last the policy seems to be to give as little as possible, and that only under the most severe conditions. In the four years ending March, 1866, the average annual amount granted was £331,925, and £115,750 refused; in the four years ending March, 1870, £101,711 granted, and £174,132 refused; in the four years ending March, 1874, £111,950 granted, while the returns of refusal are incomplete; in the four years ending March, 1878, £49,050 granted, and the average of refusals in three years—1875–8—£336,266; and in the four years ending March, 1881, £68,000 granted, and £250,743 refused. Again, Sir, it is impossible to get at the reasons of refusals from the Loan Commissioners. In 1875, before a Committee of this House, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Hubbard), Chairman of the Board, stated that the Commissioners wished all their acts to be clear as the light of day, and that they had no objection to state their reasons for refusing loans to harbours; but though it has again and again been asked that the reasons of refusal should be included in Parliamentary Returns, it has been impossible to obtain an acquiescence to the demand. To return, however, to the places to be selected for the purposes of these harbours, if possible, they should not be distant from one another more than 40 or 50 miles, so that vessels using them might not have far to run in a storm. When once these places have been decided on, loans should be refused to intermediate places till the completion of the works at the selected places. The execution of such a policy as I have attempted to sketch would give, for instance, on the East Coast of Scotland first-rate fishing-boat harbours at Eyemouth and Anstruther, improved harbours at Stonehaven, Banff, Helmsdale, and Scrabster; and first-rate fishing-boat harbours at Wick, Melvich Bay, and in the Kyle of Tongue. These, together with a harbour of refuge at Peterhead, would, I am certain, lead to such a development in the Scottish fisheries of the North Sea, whether of herrings, or of cod, ling, and haddocks, as would seem to be almost incredible. I do not suggest, for one moment, of course, that these works should be carried out by free grants of Government money, though, of course, cases might occur where such grants might be deemed necessary, as in the case of Ark-low last year; but I do say that this is a policy to be effected by means of loans at low rates of interest. The figures I have put forward to the House, however, are remarkable, not only for the actual decrease in loans granted, but as much or more so for the proportionate decrease between loans granted and loans refused, and prove, without another word, how far short the results of the Harbour and Passing Tolls Act has fallen of the intentions of its promoters. Fishermen have always shown themselves willing to pay heavy harbour dues. At this moment the Grimsby dues are, I believe, some £17 per annum on each boat, which is a heavy yearly tax on boats originally costing from £400 to £500. But a further difficulty has been placed in the way of applicants for harbour loans, for which we have to thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote). As the Act was passed in 1861, the rate of interest for harbour loans was 3¼ per cent up to £100,000, and in excess of that sum such higher rate as the Commissioners might determine, not exceeding 5 per cent; but in 1879 the right hon. Gentleman changed the rates to 3½ per cent for loans not exceeding 20 years, 3¾ per cent for loans exceeding 20, but under 30 years, 4 per cent exceeding 30, but under 40 years, and 4¼ per cent exceeding 40, but under 50 years; and, moreover, limited the sum to be lent to any one place in one year to £100,000. The effect of these changes cannot be better stated than in the words of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade—

"The Bill now presented for our consideration, if I may judge of its purpose by the statement which was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has for its object the abolition of this system of loans altogether. Everything which he said would apply to the whole system of loans. If that be his opinion, why does he not bring in a Bill to that effect? Instead of that, he seeks to secure the same result by a side-wind, by making the conditions of the loan so onerous that nobody can take advantage of them."—(3 Hansard, [249] 616.)

I hope, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman will bear these opinions he then expressed in his mind, and give us all the help he can to a return to the original provisions of the Act. After all, but little loss has accrued from advances hitherto made for harbours by the Loan Commissioners. Between 1861 and 1880 they advanced £2,781,822; during that period their losses, including principal and interest, amounted to only £16,434. I wish, in conclusion, to urge in the strongest terms upon the House, that, though all round our shores we have innumerable small tidal harbours, which are, no doubt, exceedingly useful in calm or even moderate weather, yet in a storm, unless at high-water, or, at the best, at half-tide, are worse than useless, for those seeking refuge must perforce remain outside till the harbours fill with water, or, at any rate, a sufficient depth of water is on the bar at the entrance of the harbour to enable them safely to cross it. In fact, in the case of vessels that do try to make them, they are little better than mantraps. The true policy to be kept in view by all interested in this subject is, I am confident, not the construction of one great harbour of refuge in one district, which would be of no use whatever to nine-tenths of the vessels which might be in distress, but the formation of a number of smaller harbours dotted here and there at judiciously selected intervals all round our shores, with a sufficient quantity of water at low-tide, to which vessels might run at whatever part of the Coast they might be overtaken by a storm. I beg to move the Resolution of which I have given Notice.

said, he had much pleasure in seconding the Resolution so ably proposed by his hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks). He should have apologized to the House for taking so prominent a place in the debate, not being a commercial or naval man, had he not brought forward the same question himself in a Resolution in 1876, when the Conservative Ministry held Office. The then President of the Board of Trade (Sir Charles Adderley) made at that time two objections to the proposal, which he (Sir Eardley Wilmot) confessed somewhat surprised him. One was that if no more harbours were constructed shipowners would construct their vessels of better material, and be more able to resist stormy weather; the other, that harbours did not pay in a financial point of view. As regarded the first objection, he was afraid that no amount of skill or science could always resist the power of the elements; and, as regarded the second, although Portsmouth, Portland, or Plymouth harbours did not pay financially for their construction, they paid abundantly in the security they afforded to our commerce, in the safety of our shipping, and in the preservation of many valuable lives. As regarded the necessity of more harbour accommodation than existed at present, he had only to refer hon. Members to the two Blue Books he held in his hand. One was the Wreck Register of last year, the other was the Report of the Commission on Convict Labour, lately published. Both these documents afforded undoubted testimony to the truth of the statements made by the hon. Mover of the Resolution, containing, as they did each, a Wreck Chart, upon which the spots more thickly clustered together on the North-East Coast, in the region of Filey and Whitby, than in any other part of the shores of Great Britain, were a plain proof of the great loss of life and property in that district. The hon. Member had dwelt forcibly on that point; and he (Sir Eardley Wilmot) could confirm his testimony by the tables and statistics to be found in the Wreck Register in his hand. The same tables were valuable in another direction, as they proved that, although the prevalent wind throughout the year on our Coasts was from the South-West, yet the wrecks which occurred were in a much larger proportion from the North, North-East, and East. The table also showed that the fact of there being much fewer wrecks on the Southern and Western Coasts was to be accounted for by there being more harbours for vessels to take refuge in in time of tempests in those districts—as, for example, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Falmouth, and many smaller harbours. Then, as regarded the sufferers from shipwreck, the tables in the Wreck Register also showed that the casualties almost invariably occurred in vessels of small tonnage, generally under 300 tons. The losses to vessels upwards of 500 tons were few. The poorer classes—namely, the fishermen, whose whole property often consisted of their vessels and nets, were the chief sufferers; and, in determining the harbour question, this class of seamen was very greatly entitled to consideration. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had told them that the Government had decided in favour of two sites at which harbour works were to be commenced—namely, Filey and Dover, in conformity with the recommendation of the Commission on Convict Labour; but that they had determined to begin first with Dover. He (Sir Eardley Wilmot) must say he regretted this decision, for he thought that preference should be given to the far greater requirements of the North-East Coast—at Filey. There was ample and excellent material close at hand for the works; and the Brigg, a natural breakwater, extending half-a-mile into the sea, and affording shelter from the winds prevalent on that Coast, would save, at least, £250,000 in the expense of construction. Filey was close to a railway, by which coal could be brought down to the bay; and suitable and safe accommodation might be readily found on the adjacent cliff for the convicts employed in the work. At Dover, on the contrary, concrete had to be used, as no stone was to be found within reach; and if the harbour were completed there, as proposed by the Government, it must be considered rather as a work of defence than as one of protection and safety for shipping. At all events, if they made another pier and breakwater at Dover, he hoped they would not make it in a straight line, like the present Admiralty Pier, which was built broadside to the prevailing winds, but in an arched or convex form; the disadvantage of the present construction being that in one night damage was done to the masonry to the extent of £20,000. The wall, too, of the present pier had another defect—namely, that its side was perpendicular instead of slanting, and thus sustained the full force of the waves, instead of enabling them to slide off them. There was the danger of silting, too, at Dover which did not exist at Filey. He must apologize for having troubled the House at such length, and thanked it for the indulgence with which it had received his remarks. There was only one other subject to which he would briefly refer, and that was the strategic aspect of the question as regarded the North-East Coast. At present there was not a single harbour between the Tyne and the Thames in which an iron-clad could anchor should it at any time come to grief in those seas, or where it could take in coal or water. On the opposite coast, the Germans had constructed the magnificent harbour of Wilhelmshaven, at the mouth of the River Weser, and up to the year 1876 had expended on it£1,500,000. Even before that time, so secure was the accommodation for ships of war there, and so powerful the defence, that in 1870, during the Franco-German War, the French Fleet lay outside Wilhelmshaven for some time, and was quite unable to get at the enemy's Fleet inside. Was it desirable that other nations should be so far ahead of us in providing the means of safety for our fleets, even putting aside the security afforded by such a harbour to numberless trading vessels which might be labouring under stress of weather in those dangerous seas? In conclusion, he confidently appealed to the Government to grant the Committee asked for by his hon. Friend, when this great and very important question of harbours might be fully considered, and something effectually done to guard against the lamentable loss of life, and the great injury to property, which he contended was materially owing to the insufficiency of adequate harbour accommodation in many parts of the United Kingdom, and especially on the North-East Coast.

I am very loth to interpose at this early stage of the debate; but I wish to do so, because I think there is a general feeling that, if possible, it would be well if the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) should have an opportunity of bringing on the very important Motion on the Transvaal of which he has given Notice. As I hope I may be able to make a statement on the subject before the House which will be satisfactory to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks) and other hon. Members interested in the question, I think it better, very briefly, to state at once the opinion the Government have formed on the matter. Let me say, in doing so, that I think we are all very much indebted to my hon. Friend for the extremely able and very interesting statement which he has made on the subject. It is quite impossible to ex- aggerate the interest in the matter, because I believe there is no question which appeals more strongly to our sympathies than anything which concerns the life and security of our sailors. There is, therefore, no doubt that it is not difficult to make out a very strong case for some immediate reform and amendment of the law. I did not quite follow my hon. Friend at the commencement of his speech; but I imagine the terrible loss of life to which he referred was included in the general loss of life during the years quoted. In 1882, there was a total of 526 British vessels lost on the Coasts of the United Kingdom. The total loss at sea was, of course, however, very much greater than that. I am speaking only of the loss of life on the Coast, or immediately within sight of it. There was a loss of 692 lives; but if I take the average for six years, I find that the loss in 1882 was considerably in excess of the previous year. Of course, the House will understand that only a very small proportion of this loss is due to the want of harbours of refuge. At the same time, I believe no one can be more deeply impressed than I am with the fact that the loss of a large proportion of those lives is due to preventable causes—that it is due to mismanagement, and misconduct on the part of the shipowners, or in some cases to carelessness in the furnishing of ships, and above all, to the most shameful practice of overloading. These are evils for which I hope, at no distant time, I may be able to propose what I think will be sufficient remedies; but they are not touched at all by the Motion which has been put on the Paper by my hon. Friend. That Motion deals solely with the question, how far life and property at sea might be saved by the creation of harbours of refuge, or ordinary trading harbours round our Coast, and also, perhaps in a minor degree, how far a stimulus might be given by the construction of such harbours to one of the greatest and most important of our industries, and how far the Government and Parliament can aid in such work. I was very glad to hear from my hon. Friend that he did not ask the House for anything in the shape of I a grant of public money, but that all he I asked was that there should be a searching inquiry to see where these harbours could be best provided; and also, as I understand him—and, if so, I accept that construction—to ask for inquiry into the working of existing legislation, to see how the facilities which are at present afforded by the Harbours and Passing Tolls Act may be modified and extended. I say I am glad that he excluded the question of a grant of public money. That arises, no doubt, in the case of convict harbours; but then it must be understood that convict harbours stand on a different footing. I do not understand that my hon. Friend purposes this Committee should inquire into the construction of convict harbours, which are not constructed under the Harbours and Passing Tolls Act, 1861. In the case of convict harbours, what you have first to regard is the convenient employment of the convicts, and you have to see that certain provisions are fulfilled; that the works will not interfere with local interests; that there is a probability of satisfactory accommodation for the convicts; and that the works will be of a kind to justify the construction of the necessary accommodation for them on the spot, and that the works will be in themselves of a sort which can be properly undertaken by the convicts. The Government, after carefully inquiring into the matter, have come to the conclusion that the two localities which best fulfil these conditions are Dover and Filey. My hon. Friend asks me why we have selected Dover as the place first on our list. My answer is, because we have had in view the several purposes for which such a harbour is to be used, and they are three-fold. There is, in the first place, the possibility of using it as a harbour of refuge; in the second place, there is the possibility of using it as a commercial harbour; and, in the third place, there is the possibility of using it as a great national harbour for the Naval Forces of this country. As regards all three purposes, I think Dover undoubtedly has the higher claim With regard to the third, it is already the site of a considerable fortification; whereas at Filey the fortifications will have to be constructed, and will involve a great addition to the total cost. But we do not exclude Filey from our early consideration, and although we begin with Dover, yet we hope and believe that the time may not be far distant when we will commence similar works at Filey; and, most certainly, it is not the intention to wait until Dover is completed before the works at Filey are commenced. I may here state the reasons why I do not think it would be desirable to contemplate any great scheme of public grants for harbours generally. In the first place, we should be involving the country in an expenditure, the vastness of which might be calculated to appal the House. Let us see what our experience has been in reference to this matter. The Committee of 1857 recommended an expenditure of from £1,500,000 to £2,000,000, three-fourths of which was to be provided by passing tolls, and one-fourth only was to be provided by Government grant. The Commission which was subsequently appointed increased this Estimate to the sum of £4,000,000, of which it was proposed £2,500,000 should be provided out of the public funds. There is nothing so uncertain and so unreliable as the estimates of harbour construction. There is nothing so uncertain as the success of the works undertaken. In the case of Dover, the original estimate of the works was £245,000; and we have spent already £693,000. At Alderney, where the original estimate was £620,000, we have spent £1,274,000, which might as well, for all practical purposes, have been thrown into the sea. At Holyhead, where the original estimate was £638,000, the sum actually expended was £1,479,000; and at Portsmouth, where the original estimate was £558,000, the expenditure already amounted to £1,034,000. Altogether, upon these four harbours, while the original estimates of qualified engineers was £2,059,000, the actual expenditure has been £4,500,000. In any calculation that may be made on this subject, we may assume that the original estimates will probably be more than doubled; and, in fact, there is no limit to the probable expenditure which may be contemplated in the case of these harbours. There is also no limit to the claims that will be made when it is understood that the public purse strings are to be loosened for this purpose; because, although the Committee recommended altogether some 12 localities as suitable sites, since that time there have been applications, supported by strong memorials, from at least a score of places, which can put forward claims almost as strong as those to which the Committee gave preference. Among these places I may mention Bridlington, which by many people is preferred to Filey; Warkworth, in Northumberland; Dun-geness, Lundy Island, in the British Channel; Newhaven, Torbay, and other places; and altogether at the Board of Trade we have applications for 19 places which would have to be considered, and on behalf of which the local pressure would be extremely strong if it were once understood that the Government money was to be forthcoming. The only justification for undertaking such an expenditure of public money would be the certainty that there would be a saving of life and property in proportion; but from a very careful Parliamentary examination that had been made into this subject, in 1862, it appeared that the loss of life on our Coasts—the loss which, in any event, could have been saved by harbours of refuge—was very small indeed. After eliminating from all these losses all that is due to founderings or misconduct of owners or officers of ships, the number that is due to causes which might have been prevented by the existence of harbours of refuge is exceedingly small. On the East Coast it was found, after a careful examination, that only 15 lives could by any possibility have been saved by means of harbours of refuge. No doubt there are some cases, like those which were quoted by my hon. Friend, and especially as touching fishing interests, in which the loss of life could be prevented by such harbours; and, therefore, I say the Government will gladly welcome the multiplication of these harbours, which may not only be the means of saving life, but will undoubtedly give a great stimulus to commerce and trade. Therefore, as the contention of my hon. Friend is only that a Committee of Inquiry should be formed for the purpose, the Government will undoubtedly and with great willingness assent to this proposal. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for South Durham (Sir Joseph Pease) proposes to move, as an Amendment, that the Committee shall be instructed to inquire into the working of the Public Works Loans Act; but that, I understand, is entirely covered by the original wording of the Resolution, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire that there is room for such an inquiry. There is no doubt that works carried out under that Act have very materially fallen off in late years, and it will be interesting to understand on what grounds this has taken place. The Board of Trade are of opinion that trading harbours, even where they are not specially harbours of refuge, ought to be assisted by Government loans, and they were included in the original conception of the legislation in question. It would be well worthy of inquiry, whether a modification of the Public Works Loan Act, which was made at the institution of the right hon. Baronet the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1879, may not also come under consideration, considering it is a fact that out of grants of something like £2,500,000 of public money which have been advanced altogether under this Act to 45 harbours, there has only been a loss of money amounting to £34,000. I think it is a fair subject for inquiry whether facilities which have proved so valuable and useful may not be extended. There are a great number of cases of fishing harbours to which large assistance has been given. £100,000 has been given to Fraser burgh, and £30,000 to Peter-head. In conclusion, I cannot help saying that whatever may be the defects of this system, and the faults of the administration, the general results have, on the whole, been extremely satisfactory, and the way in which private enterprize has been stimulated by these grants is something very remarkable. Any course of action that would check that flow of private and local enterprize would, therefore, be unfortunate, and should be carefully avoided, and I hope sincerely that one result of the appointment of the Committee may be greatly to stimulate it.

said, he considered the subject under discussion one of the most important connected with their domestic legislation that could engage the attention of the House. He did not agree with the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) that the number of lives lost on the Coasts owing to the want of harbours of refuge was very small. The loss was, he (Mr. Bourke) believed, larger than the right hon. Gentleman supposed; and if he were the Representative of ever so small a constituency on the Coast, instead of a large place inland, he would have a somewhat different opinion on the matter, and might think that considerable saving of life would result from the construction of harbours of refuge. To the fishermen class there was no question of greater or closer interest than this; and he earnestly trusted something would be done on their behalf, and that something good would come of the inquiry. He was sorry that Dover had been chosen as the first harbour on which to begin operations; but still they must be satisfied. Half a loaf, however, was better than no bread; and, while accepting it, with the belief that the President of the Board of Trade had shown a wise discretion in assenting to the appointment of a Committee, he would express the hope that in a short time further progress would be made in regard to this very important subject.

who had an Amendment on the Paper, proposing to include in the inquiry the administration of the Harbours and Passing Tolls Act (1861), said, his object was to bring under the notice of the Committee the manner in which the Public Works Loans Commission had carried out the powers committed to them. He still hoped it might be embodied in the Motion. He was exceedingly disappointed at the line his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade had taken on that important matter. "What disappointed him (Sir Joseph Pease) most in that statement was that, without any further inquiry, convict labour was to be employed in order to make harbours at Dover and Filey. Dover was not a place for such a refuge harbour at all, nor was Riley, at that moment, a place where the best harbour of refuge could be constructed on the North-East Coast. He would point out that the Tyne was already a harbour of refuge, and the Tees was fast becoming one. Since 1858 the whole character of the shipping trade of the country had altered, and on the Coast between Berwick and the Tees they had now one-fifth of the number of ships going out and in, and one-eighth of the tonnage of the United Kingdom. The larger number of wrecks on that Coast occurred either South of the Humber, or in the neighbourhood of Tees Bay. On that Coast the use of the refuse slag from the ironworks at Middlesborough was capable of forming a harbour at a very low cost indeed, for its deposit in a suitable location would cost them nothing; while there was no longer any doubt that this material could be used practically for this purpose, for it had been tested, and found a most excellent substance to stand the exposure to the water and waves. The quantity of slag at present being poured into the North. Sea was about 12,000 tons a-week, it soon would be about 24,000 tons a-week, while two years hence it would probably be about 30,000 tons a-week. They were told there were great natural advantages at Filey. Why, on the Tees they could have a breakwater that could enclose 1,000 acres of sea, with ample depth of water, and the cost to the nation would not run above £100 a running yard. He complained of the slender character of the inquiry instituted by the Commission, on whose recommendation Dover and Filey had been selected. They had examined only two engineers, both previously committed; and that, he was sure, would give no satisfaction to the country generally. The Downs would certainly have been a far better site than Dover, and beyond that the Tees had never been looked at for a single moment by this Departmental Commission, yet they could make a harbour there at a very much smaller cost than either at Filey or at Dover. There was in the neighbourhood of the Tees sufficient accommodation for the convicts who might be employed there. On the question of harbours for the fishermen, small harbours could not provide sufficient employment for convicts, and could not afford to pay interest to the Exchequer, and the result would be that the national purse would have to pay for the works. To that he should not very much object; but he thought the action of the Public Works Loans Commissioners should be considered, and the rules that were to decide their course of proceeding in relation to the securities required for these loans. One thing he hoped most sincerely, in common with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke last (Mr. Bourke), that the fishermen would ultimately reap some benefit from the inquiry.

said, that, while he begged to thank the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade for the very serious consideration he had given to the subject, he could not help wishing the Govern- ment had made further inquiry before deciding to employ their convicts at Dover and Filey. He regarded Dover as a most unfortunate selection; it was not, and really never would be, a harbour of refuge; and, as far as the national defences were concerned, it would be no use at all. It was a question whether, when the harbour was completed, it would not rapidly silt up. He thought that the construction of the harbour was a mistake, seeing that within five or six miles of Dover there was the magnificent anchorage of the Downs, which, whatever kind of harbour Dover might be made into, would still be in case of war, as in times of peace, the great rendezvous for the Channel Fleet and other squadrons. However, as the Government seemed to have decided upon Dover, they must make the best of it. He hoped that it would be within the scope of the Committee to inquire whether a new harbour of refuge could not be constructed at some other place far more preferable for the purpose than the port of Filey.

pointed out that the Public Works Loan Commissioners were bound by the Act of Parliament, in the most stringent manner, to look to the security which they accepted; and he could assure his hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks) that there were many applications which had been refused which they would have been glad to have entertained if they had thought that in so doing they were performing their duties as guardians of the public purse. How, then, would they stand, if they put their hands in the pockets of the public and were as liberal as it was desired they should be in granting loans for harbours of refuge or other harbours? The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) had told the House about the enormous sums of money that had been expended on harbours of that character, and he had shown that at least double the estimated expenditure had been incurred in those harbours. Further, the right hon. Gentleman had also informed the House that the claims on the Board of Trade for harbours of this nature were of a very large character. He (Sir Hussey Vivian) did not object to any inquiry the House might desire into the Public Works Loan Commis- sion. There wore as humane men as any on that Commission; and if they only saw their way clear, in the discharge of their public duty, to make these grants, he was sure every application made to them under these circumstances would be accepted. But then it was impossible for them to shield the public from excessive loss if they allowed their humane feelings to guide them in the consideration of questions of that kind. He supposed the hon. Baronet the Member for South Durham (Sir Joseph Pease) complained that they did not make a grant to a harbour which undoubtedly had a largo income, and was a solvent concern. He (Sir Hussey Vivian) might, however, complain in the same manner, for about the same time that his hon. Friend made his application, he (Sir Hussey Vivian) made a similar one on behalf of Swansea Harbour, and was likewise refused. The question, indeed, was simply a commercial one. A good ample security could always obtain any amount of money that might be required. His hon. Friend, he might mention as a proof, found no difficulty in carrying out those great works on the Tyne. Nor had they at Swansea any difficulty either. They went to the public, and very readily obtained a large sum of money necessary for the works—he believed something like £300,000. These, indeed, were not cases in which the country's purse ought to be drawn upon. If it was the desire of the country that harbours of refuge for fishermen and for shipping should be carried out, distinct sums of money should be voted for that purpose. But he did not think the House should be permitted to deceive itself into the belief that grants could be made for harbours of this kind without, at the same time, some risk being run. Indeed, on the contrary, they were liable to make very serious bad debts in granting such loans. He did not come to the House prepared to enter into the discussion, or otherwise he could assure hon. Members he could have given them many instances in which large sums of money had been lost through grants of this nature having been made. He believed, for instance, that the whole of the money granted for the harbour at Wick might be regarded as a bad debt, inasmuch as the works had been washed away and no longer existed. Thus it was apparent that the country must face I these risks if grants were to be advanced for the making of harbours. He was far from saying that such harbours were not desirable; but, at the same time, the pecuniary risk they ran was great, and it would be unfair to cast on the Public Works Loans Comission the decision as to whether or not the public money should be granted in such cases. If they did advance the money, and there were no incomes to meet the loans, then they would be blamed for so doing by the House; and, therefore, while on the one hand he would court the fullest inquiry as to the course taken by the Public Works Loan Commission, on the other hand he felt that unless they were acting under the conditions of an Act of a very different character to that under which they now acted—which compelled them to look with the greatest care to the security of the public money lent—they would not be able to grant public money any more than they had heretofore done. While hon. Members had been urging the necessity of a harbour of refuge on the East Coast, the claims of the West should not be overlooked. The whole of the North Coast of Cornwall, for instance, was entirely void of any place to which vessels could run in distressed weather; and, again, along the Coast from Milford to Penarth there was no safe place in which vessels could seek shelter when the weather was stormy. Lundy would be a good site for the protection of the Bristol Channel. No better site for the purpose could be found; and, in addition, it possessed the advantage of being a place from which convicts could not possibly escape, unless they were amphibious. Thus, while hon. Members were laying before the House the requirements of the East in the way of harbours of refuge, the House should not also forget the requirements of the South and West in the same respect. He was extremely glad that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had assented to this Committee; but, so far as the Public Works Loans Commissioners were concerned, if the House expected them to grant larger loans than heretofore, then the Act of Parliament under which they derived their powers would first of all have to be changed.

said, he concurred entirely in the necessity for this inquiry. He wished to put in a word for the Bristol Channel and the South Coast, which, at the present moment, were entirely un-provided with adequate harbour accommodation. It struck him that an inquiry dealing with a limited portion of the country, which might probably lead to an expenditure of money, was scarcely fair to the rest of the community. He could not but look upon the question, to some extent, from a local point of view, and he was bound to place before the House the case of the fishermen on the North Coast of Cornwall. But from a national point of view, also, the construction of harbours of refuge was a matter of great importance. The condition of the North Cornwall fishermen was absolutely deplorable. If the Government would lend money for the construction of harbour works on that Coast the rate of interest to be necessarily at a very low rate, the money would be safe and the interest regularly paid; and great advantage would accrue not only to the poor fishermen of that district, but also to the community in an ample supply of wholesome food at a cheap rate. To his own knowledge, the fishermen of the West Cornwall frequently dared not venture out to sea in doubtful weather, because of the utter absence of any harbour of refuge. The Committee of 1859 reported that a harbour of refuge was more wanted at St. Ives than almost any other spot in the United Kingdom. On the East Coast there were many competitors, and no absolute preference of one port over another had ever been made. Thus the case of St. Ives was the most pressing of all. If that recommendation was warranted in 1859 it was still more so now, as the harbour was much worse now than it was then, and our commerce and carrying trade had been enormously developed. Besides that, St. Ives was on the highway of the most important part of our trade from Liverpool and the chief ports of the country, and had thus especial claims upon the attention of the Government.

said, he regretted that the Motion had not continued to be confined to the East Coast, and that a Committee of the House was now proposed instead of a Royal Commission. The East Coast was large enough to be the subject of,; a special inquiry; and a Royal Commission, visiting the localities, would have collected much valuable evidence as to the harbour accommodation now, compared with what it was 25 years ago, when the former Commission reported. Except on the Tyne, none of the plans then proposed had been carried out. He (Mr. Stevenson) had to thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks) for his appreciation of the labour of the Tyne Commission, over which he (Mr. Stevenson) had the honour to preside; but he would not claim that the Tyne was yet a complete harbour of refuge, though they hoped to make it so. They had spent£3,000,000 on the piers and in river works, principally dredging; and they had got only £350,000 on loan from the Public Works Loan Commissioners. Already the Tyne was largely used as a refuge for ships sailing to or from other ports. The people on the Tyne had no interest beyond other taxpayers in the question of the employment of convicts on harbour works. But he thought the opinion of the House should be taken, and much fuller inquiry made before either Filey or Dover was selected. There was some case for Filey 25 years ago; but it was entirely altered now. Then fleets of laden colliers which had left the coal ports, caught by a sudden gale before weathering Flam borough Head, had no port to run back to short of the Firth of Forth, and many were wrecked or foundered. The steamers had changed all this; fleets did not accumulate, and the Tyne was open for refuge. Besides, the intended area of Filey could not contain all the men-of-war and fishing and other vessels that were said to be likely to use it, all at one time. He had the greatest misgivings also as to the success of the harbour at Dover, on account of the danger of silting up, if they enclosed the area and interfered with the currents that now maintained its depth. "What was now wanted at the Tyne was a pilotage service adapted to the change of circumstances, so that vessels seeking refuge should have pilots to conduct them into the harbour, when the present pilot cobles could not get to sea. Most of the wrecks that still occasionally took place would thus be prevented. He thought this was a subject that deserved the fullest inquiry. The coasting tonnage from the Tyne in 1859 was in the proportion of 5£ sail to I steam; in 1881 the proportion was 1 sail to 3 steam.

said, he was of opinion that his hon. Friend the Mover of the Resolution was only to be congratulated upon one thing—namely, the ability with which he had put forward his views. His hon. Friend and his supporters had failed to obtain a single crumb of comfort from the Government. He (Earl Percy) regretted exceedingly that the President of the Board of Trade had thought it right to restrict this inquiry to its present very narrow scope, while, at the same time, pronouncing so decided an opinion upon the larger question included in the Resolution as it originally stood. In the event of the great question of harbours of refuge all along the Coast being re-opened, they would all have their pet schemes; and he, for his part, would certainly advocate the claims of a harbour further North than Filey. He was convinced that inquiry would show that the President of the Board of Trade under-estimated very much the real good that could be effected by harbours of refuge, and overestimated the dangers arising from the misconduct of shipowners and the overloading of ships. He had very little hope that much advantage would result from the proposed inquiry; but he trusted that they might look upon it as the forerunner of better things.

said, that representing, as he did, large shipping interests, he looked with dismay on the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman to build with public money a harbour at Filey. He did not know of what use it was going to be to the fishermen of the Humber. If any money was to be spent, it should be spent on harbours at places where they were really required on the North East Coast, and not on a harbour built for the purpose of propping up the decayed trade of a particular town. He protested against the Government taking up the cause of Filey, and trusted the Government would allow the whole question to be thoroughly considered, and, if they found they had made a mistake, relinquish their absurd purpose of laying out money for the benefit of a decaying port.

said, that, in his opinion, the speech of the President of the Board of Trade was most unsatisfactory in some important respects. For his own part, he was disappointed at the limited nature of the proposed inquiry, and he would suggest that it should be so enlarged as to apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, and that there should be an adequate Irish representation on the Committee. On the Coast of Ireland there were as dangerous spots as any to be found in Great Britain, and both the Committee which had previously sat and the Royal Commission which followed unanimously reported in favour of the construction of two harbours of refuge on the Coast of Ireland. The Committee unanimously recommended that Waterford, with which he was identified, should be improved and made a harbour of refuge, as between Dublin and Cork there was no possible place in which large vessels could take shelter. He therefore hoped that now, when the matter was being revived, Irish interests would not be neglected. He hoped that the Committee would also take into consideration the question of fishery harbours. He thought it was the bounden duty of the Government to render available for the benefit of the people every industrial resource. Regarding the fisheries as a nursery for both the Royal Naval and Mercantile Marine, he thought there was nothing which would better repay the outlay, to say nothing of the benefit to the localities concerned, and to the community in general, from the more abundant supply of wholesome food. He earnestly hoped, therefore, that on the Committee there would be a sufficient representation of Irish interests, so that when the Report came up for consideration they would be able to come to an impartial conclusion on the different views which would be submitted as to the best sites for harbours.

said, he trusted that the advantage of having some great harbour of refuge would not be lost sight of amid the number of local claims. Why Dover should be selected he did not see. The relative claims of Dover and Filey had been discussed before the Committee, whose Reports he held in his hand, and in the result the Committee said that they did not feel in a position to express an opinion on the subject. He thought that the reason why it was deemed necessary to have a very large harbour at Dover was because the project of a Channel Tunnel had conjured up in the minds of the military authorities the idea of invasion, and as a large harbour was being constructed at Boulogne it was thought that we should have a large harbour at Dover. But it would be better if the Government paid more attention to the preservation of life, and the safety of the fishing population. He hoped they would hear from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or some other Member of the Government, before the close of the debate, that though the works at Dover had been commenced, some opportunity would be given to the House to express an opinion whether concurrently with those works a harbour on the North-East Coast should not also be made.

said, that considering his very close and intimate connection with the part of the Coast which his hon. Friend (Mr. Marjoribanks) represented, it was right that he should express thanks to the hon. Member for the manner in which he had brought this subject forward. He congratulated the hon. Member on having got from the Government even a quarter of a loaf. He would much rather have had a Royal Commission than a Select Committee; but it would have been useless to divide the House on the question of a Royal Commission, and therefore the hon. Member was justified in moving for a Select Committee. They had this question before the country for almost a century. There had been Committees, and Commissions, and Reports to no end; but nothing had been done. He sincerely hoped that the Select Committee now promised might bring about some result. He did not intend to enter into the very large question of refuge harbours, for the reason that it had generally been the custom to advocate the claims of one locality against another, and they had had petty local jealousies brought into what was a national question. The result had been that nothing had been done, and the fishermen on our Coasts were still in peril. The sum subscribed for the relief of the sufferers by the Eyemouth disaster was £55,000; and if it had been expended on the previous improvement of the harbour, it was highly probable that the disaster would have been prevented. It was well, on every ground, that the Government should stimulate local effort to improve these harbours. Not only would disasters be prevented, but the supply of fish food would also be increased. Grants might pauperize the dwellers on the Coast, but those who helped themselves should be assisted by loans on favourable terms. The Public Works Loan Commissioners, through their Representative here (Sir Hussey Vivian), had stated that they required to go to Parliament for more powers if they wore to give assistance on better terms. If so, he was sure that Parliament would readily grant those powers. He could not discover on what conditions loans were given, and it would be a convenience if the conditions were strictly laid down. Appeals were made now and again on behalf of occupiers of land; but Government assistance in the manner he was advocating would be a far greater benefit than assistance given to the landed interest. He cordially supported the Motion.

said, when the question came before the Select Committee he hoped the interests of the town of Galway would not be overlooked. The question of utilizing convict labour was now occupying the attention of the Government; and, in his opinion, convict labour could be nowhere more usefully employed than in Galway Harbour. The late Government were promoting a scheme for building a breakwater at Galway, and he did not think the present Government could do better than resume that project. There was a great want of proper harbour accommodation on the "West Coast of Ireland. Nature had done a great deal for it, but the Government had done nothing. He hoped that on the Select Committee Irish interests would be fairly represented, and that the important question of improving harbour accommodation on the West Coast of Ireland would not be further neglected.

said, the terms on which loans were granted were distinctly laid down; but the conditions required to be made a little more elastic. He protested against the conclusion that appeared to have been arrived at by the Government to adopt Filey as one of the harbours of refuge, without giving the House an opportunity of discussing the question. He assured the House that public opinion on the North-East Coast was that Filey was a bad, if not the very worst site that could be selected for the purpose. He would, therefore, express an earnest hope that the Government would proceed no further with the project until the House had an opportunity of expressing an opinion upon it. It was unfortunate that those most interested had not been listened to, and that action had been taken on the advice of the gentleman who had been professional engineer to Filey.

said he should much like to see the harbours of Ireland attended to, as a means of increasing the industrial resources of the country. As Chairman of the Commission on Irish Prisons, county and local, he was glad to have heard that the recommendation as to the closing of Spike Island Prison was to be acted upon as soon as possible. A number of plans for the employment of convict labour had been considered; but the question of Galway Harbour had not been brought before the Commissioners. Independently of that, he would impress upon the Government to give the preference to Ireland by way of encouraging the people to look for a living to something besides their holdings.

said, he hoped that after he had answered a few questions the debate would be permitted to conclude, inasmuch as the Government had accepted the Motion. The Government distinctly understood that the Motion was to include the Irish harbours, and of these none deserved more consideration than that of Galway. The question had been raised whether this Motion included an exhaustive inquiry into the conduct of business by the Public Works Loans Commissioners. That was the distinct object of the Motion, and that was the sense in which the Government accepted it. Of course, the law, as it was worked now, was not exclusively the law of 1861. That law had been largely altered on the proposal of the right hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford North cote), when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer some years ago. It would only be proper, therefore, that the Committee should expressly inquire into the whole working of the law of 1861, an well as of the law since. Most unquestionably, it was right that the law and its amendments should be thoroughly looked into by the Committee; but he was bound to say that no complaints had reached him as to the present working of the law, or the proceedings of the Public Works Loan Commissioners under it, whose assistance was most valuable. It had never been the intention of the Government to refer to the Committee the question of harbours constructed by convict labour. Indeed, any proposal of that sort was not within the scope of his hon. Friend's Motion, which had reference solely to harbours constructed out of money advanced by the Public Works Loans Commissioners or by the Fishery Board in Scotland. It had been objected that if this Resolution passed in its present form there would be no future opportunity of discussing the question of harbours built by convict labour. His answer was that the Government would give them the fullest opportunity of discussing the relative merits of Filey and Dover. Estimates for them would have to be proposed, and on those Estimates the fullest discussion would take place. Complaint had been made that the Papers did not disclose the reasons why the Government were going to expend money on the larger harbour at Dover and upon a new harbour at Filey. As they were to be military harbours as well as harbours of refuge, some details in connection with their construction ought not to be thrown open to all the world. But when the Vote for the extension of the harbour at Dover was before the House, the Government would, on their responsibility, explain the grounds on which they proposed to carry out that extension, and it would then be competent for the House to disapprove the course which the Government wished to adopt. In like manner, when, not this year, but later on, the Vote for the new harbour at Filey was brought forward, that subject could be fully discussed. After those assurances, he trusted the Motion would be carried without further delay.

said, he was glad the Government had determined to construct a harbour of refuge at Dover, in accordance with the plan recommended by the Royal Commission many years ago. The Admiralty Pier, which was part of the plan, was compeleted some 10 years back; but it was soon found that the erection of a pier jutting out into the sea did not fulfil the conditions of a harbour of refuge, and that the entire design ought to be completed. Accordingly, a Vote was granted in 1873 for the completion of the second arm of the harbour; but the then Government wont out of Office, and left to the Dover Harbour Board the execution of the work. The Board brought in their Bill, and proceeded with it up to a certain stage, when the Government of Lord Beaconsfield asked them to abandon their measure in favour of their own. The Government next brought in a Bill of their own; but were, unfortunately, prevented by financial considerations from carrying it out. The matter remained in abeyance till last year, when the Harbour Board again introduced a Bill, which was carried. In conclusion, he hoped the present Government would show a little more earnestness and consistency than the Government of Lord Beaconsfield, which took up the subject being convinced that it was a right one, and then dropped it on financial grounds.

said, he would remind the House that last year they had been informed by the Home Secretary that the construction of two harbours of refuge was projected—one in England, by means of English convict labour, and the other in Scotland, by Scottish convict labour. The President of the Board of Trade had now announced that the Government intended to employ convicts at Dover and Filey; but nothing had been said of Scotland. He feared that the project of employing Scotch convicts in Scotland had been abandoned. If that were so, it would cause very great discontent and dissatisfaction in Scotland. He feared that the Committee would end in very great disappointment. They were to inquire into the fishing harbours all round the Coast. There were thousands of such harbours, and it appeared to him that it would be three or four years before any Committee could do justice to the question. He would have much preferred a Royal Commission to a Select Committee. He hoped the Committee would inquire into the advantages of money being spent on harbours by the Scotch Fishery Board.

said, he thought that after the discussion which had taken place the matter now under debate would be brought prominently under public notice. He did not, however, consider that sufficient attention had been directed to the importance of the fishing interest and the large number of vessels employed in the fishing between; the Forth and the Thames. There wore no less than about 4,600 vessels engaged in fishing in that district; and if Her Majesty's Government would only realize the number of lives that were constantly in such perilous danger for want of harbour accommodation they would not only be conferring a lasting benefit upon these poor men, but they would be doing still more—it would be the means of increasing the supply of food to the country, and satisfy the clamour for a cheaper supply of fish. He should have been very glad had the President of the Board of Trade informed the House of the number of lives that were saved by the Board of Trade rocket apparatus on the North-East Coast of England. He had the honour to be connected with the National Lifeboat Institution, which, during the last two years, had saved no less than 676 lives between the Thames and the Forth. Here, if it was required, was ample proof of the necessity of the harbours of refuge. He must say he was perfectly shocked that so large an amount of money was to be spent on Dover Harbour; and as regarded Filey, from a national point of view, it was the best situation; but he should have preferred it had a Royal Commission been granted and an inquiry held into the whole question. This would have been much more satisfactory than a Committee such as was now proposed. There were dangerous places on the Norfolk and Suffolk Coast, and the outlying banks of the Thames were matters of serious importance. They had no harbours of refuge for ships on this particular Coast, and he did hope the Government would see their way to give some consideration to this most dangerous portion of the Coast of the United Kingdom.

said, he rose to say a few words, especially with reference to what had fallen from the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Fresh-field). The hon. Member had made some remarks on the conduct of the late Government in declining to proceed with so important a matter as Dover Harbour; and he added, rather contemptuously, that he regretted very much that the scheme was abandoned on financial grounds. The hon. Member received a sympathetic cheer from Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite, who disliked extravagance much, but disliked Lord Beacons field's Government more, and with whom, if Lord Beaconsfield did anything in the way of economy, expenditure seemed to find favour. He (Sir Stafford North cote) could only say, however, that the subject of Dover Harbour lay quite apart from this particular Motion. The Motion of the hon. Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks) had led to the Government mentioning their intention to proceed with Dover Harbour. When that proposal was made, it would be for the House to consider and approve it; but it had nothing to do with the question then before them. As to the Motion of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, it might be said that nobody had a right to object to a Committee which the Government were prepared to grant. If the Government considered that there was sufficient ground for an inquiry into the harbour accommodation on the Coasts of this country, and that a Committee could throw further light upon it, by all means let such a Committee be appointed. He could only say that he hoped the Committee would not be one which would call up false hopes, as some Commissions had done in former times, and particularly one dealing with this question, by making recommendations which were easy enough to make on paper, but which the Government found it impossible to take up. He was glad to hear the proposal as to the loans to be made by the Commissioners; but he wished to put in one word of caution. The Loan Commissioners were gentlemen who rendered considerable service to the country, and he hoped that it was not intended to set them aside either by the action of a Committee or of the House itself. Of course, whatever rules the House liked to lay down should be laid down; but it would, be a bad example if they interfered with the complete responsibility of those gentlemen of administering the law when it was law. He knew quite well—and so did all those who had been connected with the Treasury—how hard was the pressure brought to bear on those gentlemen, and how conscientiously they discharged their duty. With regard to the question of Dover Harbour, that was a matter which rested upon different grounds, and he would not now discuss it; but he only rose to say that the present proposal was one which they might accept.

in rising to call attention to the position in the Transvaal of British subjects and persons of the Native race; and to move—

"That, in view of the complicity of the Transvaal Government in the cruel and treacherous attacks made upon the Chiefs Montsioa and Mankoroane, this House is of opinion that energetic steps should be immediately taken to secure the strict observance by the Transvaal Government of the Convention of 1881, so that these chiefs may be preserved from the destruction with which they are threatened,"

said, he was afraid that he had, to some extent, earned for himself a bad character in the House, for bringing forward Motions which were calculated to embarrass Her Majesty's present Government; but he hoped the House would believe, and he was quite sure that the Prime Minister would believe, that upon this particular occasion the Motion he had brought forward was an exception to the general rule. He had no intention whatever of expressing any censure, or any implication of censure, upon the past conduct of Her Majesty's Government; and his desire was a sincere one, to lay before the House, and especially before the Prime Minister himself, the condition of affairs in Bechuanaland, to which he had on previous occasions repeatedly called attention. In doing so, he found he had placed himself in the way of a Motion which was about to be launched from the Front Opposition Bench, and, had he been able, he would gladly have avoided such a position; but he did not think anything he said would prejudice the Motion of the right hon. Member for East Gloucestershire (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach). He wished, first, to remind the House that the Bechuana Natives were not to be confounded either with the Kaffirs or with the Zulus. They were not a warlike people governed by despotic Chiefs, but a peaceful, pastoral race, governed by headmen and popular assemblies, and had, during the 50 or 60 years in which they had been in contact with the White race, made considerable progress in civilization and knowledge. Except during the years 1854 to 1857 they had been at peace, and de facto subjects of Her Majesty, although they had never been so de jure. A cession of their territory was made to the Government in 1878, and for two years the country was actually administered by English officers, under a provisional Administrator. In 1880, without any intimation to the Chiefs, or any explanation or reason assigned, the provisional Administrator was withdrawn, and Bechuanaland again became de facto as well as de jure an entirely independent country. In the cession of the Transvaal to the Boers, the Natives of Bechuanaland were not consulted. He had already called the attention of the House to the fact that the Chief Montsioa was to be punished by the Transvaal Boers for the assistance he had rendered to the English refugees during the Transvaal War, and he had been told the hostilities would be stopped through the intervention of the Government, and that the Natives would, if necessary, receive protection. The Prime Minister, on the 25th of July, 1881, insisted on the necessity of protecting the Natives outside as well as inside the Transvaal, and declared that that object would be secured by the retention of the Suzerainty. Shortly after the Convention was signed, attacks were made upon the Chiefs Mankoroane and Montsioa, avowedly because of their loyalty towards the British Government in sheltering the refugees from the Transvaal. The House must also bear in mind that after the Award of Governor Keat, the Boers never ceased to lay claim to a large portion of that which acquired the name of the Keat Award country, founding their claim upon certain Treaties made between themselves and Massouw and Moshette. It would be unnecessary, however, to go into details on the subject. Sir Hercules Robinson said that, during the hostilities between the Boers and the Native Chiefs, Montsioa and Mankoroane had scrupulously respected the Transvaal line. Not so their opponents, who, aided by Boer freebooters, had had the Transvaal territory as a place for organizing expeditions. So much for the war which had gone on. When Questions had been asked in that House about the war, they were told throughout the year 1882 that it was a war merely carried on by freebooters, and that the Transvaal Government had no complicity whatever in the matter. That was, in effect, the answer he had received to a Question put by him in that House to the hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on the 13th of April, 1882, which had been repeated in the following month, and confirmed on the 5th of June—that was, that no action had been taken by the Transvaal Government, and that everything had been done entirely by freebooters without their knowledge. Did the Government not now know that the Boers had never made the slightest pretence of keeping to the Convention? In March, 1882, Joubert himself had written most extraordinary letters to two Chiefs living beyond Moshette; and in those letters he spoke of the British officer, Colonel Moysey, as a poison-strewer, and that he made it his business to set one Chief against another, and the result was that all those fights had been set down to him. He had said, too, that it was the old policy of the English adventurers to cause discord and dissension all over the world. That was the spirit in which the Convention had been observed by the Boers. On the 3rd of Juno, 1882, the Volks-raad had intervened in the matter, and adopted a Resolution that the existing boundary of the land established by the Convention was the cause of the disturbance, and appointed a Commission to put an end to the controversy, which Commission was to regard the boundary in accordance with the still existing Treaties between the Republic and Montsioa and Moshette—that was, Treaties made in dereliction of Governor Keat's Award. So far from their observing the Convention, they had announced at an early stage that the boundary line which it had fixed was the whole cause of the controversy going on. That, of course, was not the view of the High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson, and he had made a most able and practical proposal, and he (Mr. Gorst) earnestly entreated the attention of the House to it. He had proposed that the war territory should be secured by mounted police, that the police should arrest all deserters and violators of the Neutrality Proclamations, and remove them for trial within their respective jurisdictions. As the cost of these police, about 200 of whom would be sufficient, would be but trifling, he proposed that the cost should be shared between the British Government, the Cape Government, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal Government. The Cape Government had agreed at once, and the Orange Free State refused only on the ground that their Constitution forbade such a use of their forces. But when the proposal reached the Government of the Transvaal, the answer returned was that two of the Triumvirate were absent; but the one present took upon himself to express his surprise at the proposal of the British Government, and stated that the remedy was worse than the disease. Krüger said—

"The cause of the evil is the boundary line fixed by the Convention, and no measure will avail so long as that is not remedied."

The High Commissioner at once pronounced an opinion which he (Mr. Gorst) thought would be the opinion of the House; he said—

"It is manifest that if the Transvaal Government is to take advantage of the lawless proceedings of freebooters, it is not probable that the disorders will be long confined to the West Border; and, apart from the serious objection on this and other grounds, that Government has quite enough to do to despatch adequately its existing responsibilities, without adding to the wide extent of country under its jurisdiction."

About the same date, too, they heard from the British Resident, Mr. Hudson, who had visited the disturbed territory, that the condition of that part was a scandal to the Government, for bands of marauders plundered with impunity, while the Government were unable or unwilling to interfere. Now, about that date, the end of July last year, there was a peace made between Moshette and Montsioa. The terms included the repudiation of the English Government, and an agreement that in all future disputes they should call in the help of the "South African Republic." The evidence of complicity on the part of the Transvaal Government was very strong. On the 16th of October that Government themselves deliberately addressed letters to Mankoroane and Montsioa apart from the knowledge of the British Resident, and therefore contrary to agreement, and addressed them in those terms—that they had received the agreement relating to cession of their territory, and that they accepted it, and that they would send an official Commissioner to Christiana, out- side the Transvaal boundary, to settle the matter of boundary. When these letters came to the knowledge of the British Resident, he immediately addressed a despatch to the Transvaal Government, asking them what they meant, and pointing out that they had violated three Articles of the Convention—the Article which made the British Resident the sole medium of communication between the Transvaal State and the Natives outside the boundaries; that the cession of territory was a violation of the Convention; and, finally, that they had violated it by undertaking to send a Commissioner to Christiana, which was beyond their boundaries and jurisdiction. On the 6th of December the Transvaal Government answered the despatch, and what did the House think the answer was? Why they said simply that they had violated the Convention—that what they had done was a violation. A more bare-faced answer was never written by one Government to another. So much for the Chief Mankoroane; and now he would say one or two words about Montsioa. That Chief did not fail to appeal to the Government from time to time to point out that these infringements of the Convention were going on. On the 22nd of June last he stated that—

"After the messages he had received he expected to see the Boers go away from his country, but, instead of that, more Boers than ever came from both the Transvaal and the Free State; that they had come to join his enemies; that he hoped the English Government would not always allow their word to fall to the ground; and that they would take some steps to preserve him and his people from the Boers, whose intention was to steal their land and join it to their own country."

On the 28th of July, Montsioa instructed his European adviser to address a very remarkable letter to the Government, pointing out that—

"He had four times driven his enemies into the Transvaal State, and he said that each time those freebooters crossed the line he could have followed them and destroyed them, but that he had trusted to the promises of Her Majesty's Government in the Convention."

Then he added a very significant sentence—namely, "I have now lost confidence in the promises of the Pretoria Convention." Montsioa not only pointed out the evil, but he suggested a remedy. He proposed to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister three courses to pursue, each of which he thought the House would admit was sensible and deserved consideration. The first course he proposed was the annexation to the British Dominions of all the country to the south of the local river in the Bechuana country. He proposed to return to the status quo of 1880, and suggested that the country should be governed by British officers, and that the expenses of these officers and of the police should be defrayed by the Natives themselves. He (Mr. Gorst) did not say this was a course which the Government ought to have adopted, but it was a reasonable and practical suggestion which was deserving of consideration. Montsioa also proposed the expulsion of the freebooters from the territory, and this might have been done by the 200 mounted police proposed by Sir Hercules Robinson. The third course Montsioa proposed was that, if they would not do either of those two things, they should at least allow him to buy powder and shot to defend himself. And this last proposal was as fair as it was simple, because Montsioa was in this unfair and unfortunate position—that while his enemies could get any amount of powder and any number of arms from the Transvaal State, which was free and open to them, so strictly and rigidly was neutrality enforced in the Orange Free State and in Griqualand West, that he could not buy any powder or arms at all. An effort had been made to get powder for this Chief, but the Cape Government had stated that they could not depart from the Griqualand neutrality. At last, when abandoned by the British Government, unable to obtain arms or ammunition, and overwhelmed by the freebooters, Montsioa had been compelled almost by his Tribe and his sons to make peace, and he sent an officer of the Transvaal Government to make that peace. So it came to this—that an officer of the Transvaal Government undertook on behalf of Montsioa to mediate and to settle the terms between those Boer freebooters and the unhappy Chief. Lord Kimberley might well say that he awaited explanations as to the action of the Transvaal Commission; but he did not know that the noble Lord had received that explanation up to the present day. If the allegations in Montsioa's letters were well-founded, it was obvious that the neutrality agreed upon had been broken. The Transvaal Government had refused, on a very frivolous pretext, to join a Commission appointed to inquire into the state of things complained of, and Mr. Rutherford had been obliged to go alone. In 1880 this unhappy country was in a condition of peace and contentment; now it was in a very deplorable state; and if any hon. Member desired to see to what the country had been reduced by two years of Boer aggression—contrary to the distinct terms of the Convention—he had only to read the Papers produced. Dreadful atrocities had been committed in the country from time to time; and though he did not, of course, blame the Government for refusing to accept as accurate the statements of cruelty made to them without first investigating the charges themselves, he earnestly hoped the Government would lose no time in making full inquiries. There was one other point. He asked once whether two cannon had not been brought from the Bechuana country, and whether these had not been supplied by a well-known Boer burgher? Mr. Rutherford actually saw those two cannon pointed at Montsioa's stronghold by the Commandant of the South African Republic. There was an almost affecting account given of the attempts which were made to induce Montsioa to renounce Her Majesty's Government, and how he had refused to sign the document of renunciation which was placed before him, in spite of the threats of the Boers that there would be no peace if he did not sign. At the end of his visit to the country, Mr. Rutherford was asked by the Chief Mankoroane a question which he would like to hear answered by Her Majesty's Government—

"Why," said this old savage, "do you Engglish take so much trouble and come down so far from time to time to make inquiries, and see with the eyes and hear with the ears, if nothing is to come of it?"

He felt quite certain that the Prime Minister did not like the contrast between the case of the Natives outside the Transvaal boundary, which he imagined and pictured to himself when he delivered that speech in the House of Commons, in July, 1881, and the picture of the condition of the same Natives which was drawn so graphically by Mr. Rutherford. But where was this to end? That question had been clearly and prominently brought before Her Majesty's Government by the High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson. Mr. Hudson had made a suggestion, that if the terms insisted upon by the Transvaal Government were acceded to, and if the boundaries of the Transvaal were extended, arrangements might be proposed that would more effectively regulate its extension proclivities, and at the same time strengthen the power and authority of that Government over its own subjects. Sir Hercules Robinson said—

"I confess I am unable to conceive what more effective treaty arrangements against extension proclivities can be devised than those which already exist. The Transvaal Government have already also quite sufficient power over their own subjects. What appears to be wanted is the willingness to exercise it.…The Convention line through the Keate territory was the best and fairest compromise between the two sides that could be devised. Mr. Keate had assigned the whole of the territory in dispute to the Natives. The South African Republic subsequently tried to get behind that award by cessions, the validity of which Her Majesty's Government refused to acknowledge.…If the Transvaal Government had been willing to control their marauding subjects, who almost immediately after retrocession began to cross the Convention line with the view of despoiling the Natives beyond it and the lands which had been assigned to them, that boundary would have answered perfectly; and so long as the Government are not willing to undertake such an obvious duty there will he the same trouble with any other line which can be laid down. If Montsioa and Mankoroane were now absorbed, Bonoquani, Mokobi, and Bareki would soon share the same fate. Gassisibi and Sechele would come next. So long as there were native cattle to be stolen, and native land worth appropriating, the absorbing process would be repeated. Tribe after tribe would be pushed back and back upon other tribes, or would perish in the process until an uninhabitable desert or the sea were reached, as the ultimate boundary of the State."

That was the picture of the Government's own Commissioner. He hoped some such cruel mercy as that indicated in the closing words of Sir Hercules Robinson's despatch did not commend itself to the Government. When Faust had determined upon the destruction of Marguerite, even Mephistopheles consented to shorten the period of her agony. He hoped the Government would not be more cruel than the Fiend himself, and that they would at least take no measures which would prolong fruitless contests, and would embark those unhappy Natives in struggles which could have but one end. It was no business of his—having laid before the House and the Government the deplorable condition of these unhappy peoples, who were once British subjects, amen- able at least de facto to our rule, and loyal and friendly to Her Majesty to the last—to devise the remedy. He had heard it suggested that the terms of his Resolution pointed to a fresh South African war. He repudiated any such suggestion. The Resolution merely pointed to energetic action on the part of the Government. He had scrupulously endeavoured to take out of the Resolution everything which might seem to make it one of Censure on the Government, or which would in any way embarrass their action. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Cartwright) embodied a truism which seemed in this connection to be out of place. He should have thought this was a case of "absolutely unavoidable obligations." He was grateful to the House for having allowed him, as temperately as possible, to indicate the plain facts of this most painful case. Such were the plain facts of this case, and he trusted they might have on the part of the Government an assurance that it recognized the serious nature of these questions to the Natives, and that they would immediately take some active measures to put a stop to the lamentable condition of things he had described.

in seconding the Motion, reminded the House that on the first night of the Session he had called the attention of the Under Secretary for the Colonies to certain statements which had appeared in a newspaper published at the Diamond Fields containing accounts of atrocities such as had seldom been seen in the history of the world. His hon. Friend answered that he was going to lay Papers on the Table of the House, and, having done so, the Papers were found to confirm the newspaper reports, and to rest upon no less authority than that of Mr. Rutherford, Assistant to Mr. Hudson, the English Resident. But it was said the argument was merely a tu quoque argument; that the Conservative Party had left a damnosa hereditas to the Liberal Party, and were themselves responsible for what had occurred. To that he replied that the annexation of the Transvaal by the late Government was a measure of which they were proud. Who were the Boers? They were a body of men who had left the Cape Colony in consequence of the abolition of slavery in that country, and from that time forward their career had been a career of rapacity, cruelty, and murder. He was aware that they had a patron in that House in the Secretary to the Treasury, and he wished the hon. Member had been present to defend them, because in the whole world there was nothing to equal the atrocities committed by the Transvaal Republic. Two years ago he had listened for two hours to the hon. Member for Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone) on that subject, but without being able to discover that the hon. Member was aware that there were any but White inhabitants in the Transvaal, whereas its inhabitants consisted of 40,000 Whites at the outside, 5,000 being Englishmen, and 750,000 Natives; and he thought that to annex the State in which 750,000 Natives were oppressed by 35,000 Dutch Boers was a measure of which Her Majesty's late Government had every reason to be proud. Two years ago they were told a great deal about blood-guiltiness. Now, he was a man of peace, who detested war, but if ever there was a just and righteous war in this world, it was the war in the Transvaal. But the Prime Minister had been persuaded that it was not right to continue it, and had made an ignominious peace. He (Mr. R. N. Fowler) did not wish to put a question of this kind upon the same footing as a monetary transaction; but he was convinced that, as he predicted at the time, for the sake of saving 5,000 human lives, 50,000 had been sacrificed. It was all very well for gentlemen at home to suppose that the Boers thought they had not defeated the English. He had travelled through the Free State since the war, and he constantly heard it asserted that we were beaten in the war, and that we would never have surrendered if we had not been defeated at Majuba Hill. While that impression remained, while we were despised by our late subjects, the power of influencing the Boers was practically nothing. It was a miserable business; no Englishman could think of it without blushing. Two years ago the people were living contented and happy, and now they were being oppressed, driven from their homes, and murdered by the Boers; and where was it to stop? There was no prospect of such a thing unless the Chiefs consented to give up their land to the Boers and to retire towards the Desert, only to be driven out once more when it became convenient to the Republic to make fresh acquisitions of territory. There was only one course to pursue, and that was to take a decided line, and to vindicate the power of England. When they made peace with traitors, and those who believed in nothing but physical force, they must expect such horrors and atrocities as those which had been so forcibly depicted by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham.

said, he feared the House would think him somewhat presumptuous in venturing, so soon after his admission to that distinguished Assembly, to intrude upon its deliberations; but as he listened to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst), he could not help feeling that the sooner another side was represented to the House than the picture he painted the more advantageous it would be for the veracity of the discussion. The hon. and learned Member had told the House a great deal about the Native Chief Mankoroane, and he endeavoured to show that we had, in some way or other, bound ourselves to the protection of Mankoroane; but the fact was, that in the despatches of Lord Kimberley and Sir Hercules Robinson in April last year, the latter especially thought that Mankoroane was himself alone to blame for the troubles that had come upon him. In truth he left his home, where he was living unmolested, to take part in hostilities without reason. With reference to Montsioa, very much the same story might be told, and he was as little deserving of the sympathy of this House or of the English people as Mankoroane. In addition to this, the action of the Agents, both the Transvaal Agents and the Boer Agents, had produced bad results. One of our own Representatives wrote that he did not consider that our Agents were of any assistance to the Government; they were mainly active in egging on several of the Chiefs in hostilities which might result in very serious consequences. With reference to the attitude of the Boers, it was worth remembering that they had always held seriously, and not merely out of a desire to defy the British Government, that the disturbances arose from the impracticable way in which the boundaries were defined. [A laugh.] Hon. Members might laugh, but the Boers of the Transvaal were not the only persons who took that view; for when Sir George Colley, whose tragical death all Englishmen deplored, visited the territory, he made an official Report, which led Lord Kimberley to say that he believed Sir George Colley was of opinion that it was out of the question to maintain the boundary laid down in 1871. A new line of territory was required; and when we were responsible for the government of the Transvaal we had the same views of the impracticability of the Transvaal frontier line. [Mr. GORST: The Transvaal Government had a new line.] After the disturbance arose which resulted in the war, it would be found that as late as February last Sir Hercules Robinson wrote to say that, up to that date, the Transvaal Government appeared to have done their best to maintain neutrality; and, so far as he (Mr. John Morley) had read and understood the transactions, from the beginning to the end the Transvaal Government did nothing of which we had any right to complain. ["Oh, oh!"] That he would seriously maintain. They published proclamations, they issued warrants for the arrest of marauders, they sent Joubert as commandant to the frontier, they stationed guards, they did all that a Central Government could do—a poor and weak Government—to maintain the peace on a difficult frontier, with a number of freebooters on the borders. Those freebooters were not all from the Transvaal; they came also from the Orange Free State, from Griqualand West, and from Cape Colony itself. He believed, moreover, that it was perfectly clear that most of the ammunition came from the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In one place in the Blue Book it would be found that Mr. Hudson himself, the British Representative and Resident, said he should like to be allowed by Sir Hercules Robinson to make representations to the Orange Free State Government to induce them to act against the constant flow of ammunition. Now, it seemed a very bold thing to assert that the Transvaal Government on the whole had done its duty; but, in fact, all the terms of the Convention could not possibly be maintained. Here the fault lay not with the Transvaal Government, but with the Convention. He, for one, wished that the Convention had never been made. He wished that the present Government, within a month of their coming into Office, had come out of the Transvaal "bag and baggage." The fault of the Convention was that it imposed on the Transvaal Government the duty of maintaining peace on a borderland where nobody could maintain peace. Why did the Cape Colony refuse to accede to the proposition that they should take possession? Because they knew perfectly well the trouble and expense of keeping a peaceful frontier made it impracticable. The Transvaal Government found this incessant disorder on the frontier, and they found that the British Government were doing nothing, and they knew that practically nothing could be done by us. It was indispensable that the Transvaal Government should somehow get peace on the frontier. Letters were written that these Chiefs were willing to make peace and to cede their territory nominally to the Transvaal Government. But there could be no doubt to anyone who carefully read the letter of Mr. Bok to Mr. Hudson, on page 44 of the last Blue Book, that the Boer Government intended to submit these arrangements to the British Resident at Pretoria for the approval of Her Majesty's Government. Apart from all this, the question, after all, was what could be done to put an end to these disturbances in Bechuanaland? It seemed the High Commissioner tried to get the Free State, Cape Colony, and the Transvaal to institute some sort of police; but they declined, and therefore there was nothing left but annexation by Great Britain, or leaving it to be absorbed by the Free State, or else, finally, leaving it to its own devices. He hoped this country would not interfere in any way, and would not send a single man to clear away the marauders. It was not our affair. If hon. Members thought we were under any obligation to the Chiefs of Bechuanaland, he would refer them to the despatches of Lord Kimberley in July last year in reference to the proposal to send a joint force into the country, and it would be there found that Lord Kimberley expressly repudiated all obligations to these Chiefs or to the Transvaal Government. On July 13, 1882, Lord Kimberley, in his despatch to Sir Hercules Robinson, said that in consenting to take part in sending police, Her Majesty's Government did so only on this occasion as an exceptional measure to facilitate the action of the Local Government, and could not undertake the duty of preserving tranquillity, which properly belonged to the Government of the adjoining territory. Lord Kimberley thus expressly repudiated any obligation on our part, and he hoped that we should still maintain that attitude.

said, he felt bound by the interest he felt in South Africa and the Native races amongst whom he had spent so many pleasant years to raise his protest against the neglect of duty on the part of the Government, which had reduced this country to the despicable position we now occupied with reference to the Bechuana Chiefs. The hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley) had laid down several premises without making deductions from them, and had drawn a variety of conclusions without premises. The fact was, we had remained during a year and a-half passive spectators of the outrages; and so far from our raising one finger to enforce the Articles of the Convention to restrain, or to force the Transvaal Government to restrain, the lawless bands of Boer Banditti—the scum of the Transvaal—who had attacked our old Bechuana allies, we had proved ourselves as helpless to save, and as powerless to protect, as if the Transvaal Convention had been so much waste paper, or as if Majuba Hill had brought about an unconditional surrender to the Boers. Not only had we been passively neutral, but we had been actively and malevolently neutral, for when these loyal Chiefs Montsioa and Mankoroane implored our assistance we simply sent them an official messenger. When they begged that, at least, the prohibition to purchase powder for the defence of their lives should be relaxed, we wrote them a page on neutrality and the intricacies of the Foreign Enlistment Act, and explained that ammunition could only be supplied to persons who did not require it for such an unrighteous purpose as the defence against freebooters of their lives, and the lives of their wives and their children. There was no more sickening and disheartening reading than that which was to be found in those Blue Books, which contained a long and dreary record of official impotence. What terms of reprobation would be too strong for a London magistrate to use to a big hulking policeman, who should be found to have confined the discharge of his duty to mere verbal remonstrance, while a brutal ruffian was robbing and beating to death some innocent man, woman, or child, before his very eyes? Well, our position as between the Transvaal Boers and those outlying Tribes was precisely that of a policeman. When our Government handed over 750,000 Natives within the Transvaal boundaries to the Boers, whose mode of dealing with them had throughout their history been written in three words, slavery, ill-treatment, extermination, it undertook to protect the Native Tribes outside those boundaries from the encroachments of the Boers and the Boer Government. If it was said that the Boer Government could not prevent those encroachments on the outlying Native Tribes, why, then, was the Transvaal handed over to a Government which was unable to govern? He appealed to Her Majesty's Ministers to shake off their apathy, and endeavour to repair the errors of the past. All these outrages would have ceased at once if they had only sent a few companies of soldiers last year to Montsioa's territory, to show that they were in earnest, and meant to maintain the Convention. If this could only be done by armed intervention, let it be done now. If those marauders were allowed to take any of that territory, they would only be encouraged to go on attacking other neighbouring Chiefs; they would extend their attacks to the lands of Secheli and Khame on the West, and then to the more fertile slopes of Swaziland and Zululand; in short, wherever there was grass and water to take and Boers to covet them we should have repetitions of those outrages, and, sooner or later, this country would be forced into intervention. If, however, the intervention came later, it would assume the proportions of a very serious Transvaal war. Was British honour, then, to continue to be dragged through the mud as it had been in South Africa? And not only was that the case with the honour of England, but also with the reputation of Christianity. Was Christianity, identified as it was in Bechuanaland with 50 years of English missionary labour, to be identified also with the cowardice of England and of Englishmen? Let Her Majesty's Government say at once whether they intended to abandon their allies, Montsioa and Mankoroane? If they grudged the expenditure which their own disastrous policy had entailed, and must entail on the country—if they refused that armed intervention which they knew that but for the expense they would adopt themselves, and which both honour and humanity demanded—let them at once say that they had neither the courage nor the resolution to repress with a strong hand those murderous marauders, and that filibustering and private warfare were in those regions to become the order of the day, or at least to have the tacit sanction of their impotence in its repression. Then, there was many an Englishman in the Diamond Fields, and throughout South Africa, and many a man also in England who, if he realized that national disgrace, would be ready to give up a few months of the London season or a few months' sport on the Rocky Mountains to become one of a band of volunteers in a righteous cause, of a band of volunteer allies of the Bechuana Chiefs, in order to do what an individual could do to repair the default of his Government, and to fire an English bullet in defence of that English honour which—none the less shamefully because done in that distant corner of the world—had been prostituted in so shameful a manner by the carelessness or by the cowardice of the Government.

in moving, as an Amendment—

"That, in view of the very grave complication, that must attend intervention in the affairs of the native populations on the Western Fontier of the Transvaal, this House is of opinion that the action of British authorities in those regions should be strictly confined within the limits of absolute unavoidable obligations,"

said, that the hon. Member who had just sat down had made a very valuable comment upon the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst), who had said that in regard to these energetic measures which he called upon the Government to pursue he would not enter into any detail, but would merely indicate what should be done. The hon. Member had emphasized that indication with the word "intervention." It was desirable that the energetic action to which the hon. and learned Member invited the Government should receive some attention, and should be considered fully in its meaning and bearing. For himself, he held that the difficulty and the evils with which they had now to contend had arisen out of the Convention with the Transvaal Government. The hon. and learned Member for Chatham's description of the border warfare between the Transvaal and Bechuanaland was, he believed, quite correct with some unimportant exceptions. That land was a land of lawlessness, of warfare, and of robbery, peopled by freebooters; and the Native Chiefs, not with standing much that was said in their favour, were little better than the marauders who were invading that territory. Again, nothing could be truer than the demonstration given by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham, that in regard to the Convention the action of the Boers had been in absolute violation of its terms. But the principal question which the House bad now to consider was, what were the practical means at our disposal to cope with the difficulty which confronted us? The Convention was violated within 24 hours by the illegal raising of the flag of the South African Republic. The mode in which the boundary line was settled was illustrative of the manner in which our South African policy was carried out. That boundary line was drawn by Colonial officials who were ignorant of the subject with which they were dealing, and the result was the exclusion of a large number of Transvaal citizens. The Blue Book contained from first to last records of the protests on the part of the Transvaal Government and the impotent rejoinder of the Commissioner at Cape Town. The point at which they had arrived was the absolute violation of the Convention by an act perfectly illegal according to the terms of the Convention. The Transvaal Government had annexed portions of territory outside their boundary. The question was, what was to be done? The hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had asked the Government to take immediate steps to secure the safety of the Tribes on the borderland. But this involved serious responsibilities. It behoved the Liberal Party to be well upon their guard before they endorsed a political principle which must inevitably lead to the same consequences against which they protested two years ago. He was convinced that if they pursued the principle advocated by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham, they must not only annex, but they would be obliged by the inevitable force of circumstances to establish a permanent police force; in other words, to assume the responsibility of an African Empire which would extend from sea to sea. It was not, however, possible to exercise any real restraining authority through a hollow Suzerainty; but they could still draw back, and if they drew back they must do so absolutely, and not in a halfhearted manner. If they did not seize this opportunity, they would be involved in further complications; and the course he recommended, which would be a far more dignified course for the Government to pursue than that proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst), was that they should make a frank and free reversal of the policy of this country in that part of South Africa, that they should undo the Convention as 30 years ago the annexation of the Orange State had been undone by the Sand River Treaty, and wash their hands of any interference other than was absolutely unavoidable in those regions. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

said, that, in his opinion, the speech just delivered contained the strongest possible arguments in favour of the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham. It was perfectly clear that three things had resulted from the mixture of sham sentimentality and pusillanimity which had been the policy of the Government towards the Transvaal—namely, the oppression of the Natives of the Transvaal and its neighbourhood, the breach of the Convention by the Boers, and the humiliation of the British Flag. In the speeches on the other side of the House no really successful effort had been made to deal with the case raised by the Motion. The statement of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley), that the Boers had done everything in their power to maintain the observance of the Convention, was not supported by a single fact. The proposal of Sir Hercules Robinson that a force of 200 police should be organized to maintain order on the Western borders of the Transvaal had been called a reasonable proposal by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst), and the Prime Minister had assented to that view. Yet the Transvaal Government had refused to join hands in such a humane and sensible plan. He agreed that it would have been better for the honour of the British Government and British Flag if the Government had, when they first came into Office, renounced the Transvaal rather than conduct so inglorious a war and conclude so ignominious a peace. But the Government were now bound to carry out the Convention, which they had assured Parliament in 1881 would protect the loyal Colonists and the Natives also. Was not the plighted word of the Government to bind the nation? The Convention had been violated in the grossest way by the Boers, and the men who had been loyal to the Queen had been abandoned to the grossest outrages. The Boers of the Transvaal were, as the hon. Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire (Mr. Guy Dawnay) had said, the scum of South Africa. They were adventurers, who trekked from the Cape Colony, where slavery was abolished, in order to continue the practice of slavery elsewhere. They had plundered and enslaved the Natives, and had been known to shoot them down for mere practice. They might be Protestant, as they were described to be in the Mid Lothian speeches, but only in the sense that they protested against right, justice, and mercy. They certainly were not God-fearing. Under the Sovereignty of the Queen, Bechuanaland was peaceful. The inhabitants lived undisturbed between 1877 and 1880, when a change of policy was effected in deference to the opinions of a few philosophical and academical Radicals, who were the friends of every country save their own. He wished to know why the despatches of the Royal Commission had not been fully published? Was the country not to know the evidence given by the Natives in the summer and autumn of 1881? To Lord Wolseley, one of the Chiefs, when he heard of the proposed surrender, said—"If the British rule dies, we die also." The Blue Book lately published showed how true those words were. A gentleman had told him that morning that in Pretoria, shortly after the capitulation, he met an old white-headed Kaffir weeping. On being asked the cause of his distress, the old man said—

"My father was slain by the Boers; my brother was slain by them; and I have had my cattle stolen by them. I did hope that the Queen was going to protect me for the future; but now you are going to give me back to my enemies."

Another Chief said—

"Our backs had been sore for 20 years, when our White Mother came and healed them. Now you are opening our sores again."

The honour of the country demanded that the Government should take efficient measures to secure these unfortunate Natives against the gross and unjust oppression to which they were being subjected in consequence of our ungenerous and inhuman abandonment of them. Chiefs like Montsioa had courageously sheltered and defended our brethren, British Colonists, in the Transvaal during the struggle in 1881. Thereby these loyal Natives had incurred the hatred of the Boers who were now exterminating them. It should not be forgotten that it was our intervention in 1877—an intervention which was not protested against by the present Prime Minister, and which was approved by many of his followers—which saved the Natives from oppression for several years, and which also saved the miserable slave-driving Boers themselves from bankruptcy and ruin. The present Government had reversed, wherever they could, the wise and statesmanlike policy of their Predecessors, and the consequence was to be seen in the state of Ireland, of Egypt, and of the Transvaal. Everywhere they had produced the same results—disturbance, anarchy, and ruin.

said, he was able to begin by saying that, however he might have to controvert certain statements made by the hon. Member who opened the discussion, and by others, he could fully join in all the expressions they had given vent to in condemnation of the acts which had been going on on this Western border; and he had no desire, nor did he believe it to be necessitated either by his views or position to minimize the events which had there occurred. They were, undoubtedly, a disgrace to humanity. But they had not to consider them as abstract propositions; they had to view them in relation to the responsibilities, the capacities, the obligations, and last, though not least, in relation to the interests of the Empire for which they were, for the time, responsible. He would like, first of all, to very considerably modify the picture the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had presented to the House of the state and condition of Bechuanaland. The hon. and learned Member had represented it as perfectly Arcadian, and the inhabitants as a pastoral and industrious people who had never engaged in any warfare, and had at one time been loyal and peaceable subjects of the Queen. He (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) was sorry to be obliged, in the interests of truth, to shatter that picture. He must inform the House—which the hon. and learned Member for Chatham had not done—that the disturbances and internecine feuds of these Bechuana Chiefs had been going on ever since we had had any knowledge of the country, and that was since 1851; and it was the culmination of those disturbances which brought about the application to Governor Keate—of which they had heard to-day—to come forward and settle the difference among the Tribes and their neighbours by making awards. As to what the hon. and learned Member had said about the Natives having at one time been de facto though not de jure placed under the British Crown, he would, first of all, tell him that it was the act of Colonel Warren, who was in no way authorized by his superiors to enter into such negotiations; and he would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), who was in Office at the time, whether he had not declined to ratify what had been done. One of the causes which led to this subordinate officer interfering in these territories was that these peaceable friends of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham made war in 1878 upon Griqualand West, and were concerned in the murder of Mr. Thompson. The Tribe was dispersed by force, and then Mankoroane offered himself and his people as British subjects. The reason assigned for making that offer was that it was done in consequence of his having lost control over his people, so many of its Chiefs having broken out in revolt against him. In a great number of individual instances, however, the people, he was happy to say, had profited by the lessons of civilization. There was no doubt that missionary efforts had been to a considerable extent successful in this territory; but they had only been individual efforts, and they were like scattered drops in the ocean. The normal condition of this territory was one of perpetual struggle for pre-eminence, one Chief being banded against another, and availing himself of any assistance or any allies to carry on the war. Why, if these Chiefs were united, and they all formed one happy family, did anyone suppose that the Boers, even armed as they were, would be able to carry on successful invasions of this sort? No; the Boers were profiting by the condition of the Tribes themselves, and, as a matter which threw considerable light on this district, he would refer—if he would not be out of Order in quoting from a document which was not before the House—to a passage he had seen in the Report of the Civil Commissioner at Kimberley, written four months ago, and sent to the Secretary for Native Affairs at Cape Town. The Civil Commissioner, writing from a thoroughly impartial standpoint, complained very much of the state of things in Bechuanaland, but said his belief was that the Boers were so fearful lest the Tribes should combine together, and make a descent on the Transvaal, that they were taking the bull by the horns and going into this territory to stir up the Tribes and dis- turb Native domination. That was a striking opinion from an impartial observer. He wished to show that these Natives were a fighting race who did inspire some sort of terror in the Boers, and who, if they were united, would be able to hold their own much better than they did. The Chiefs had at their kraals European White advisers—alluded to by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham. Now, these White advisers were, in nine cases out of ton, not a whit better than the wandering Boers. They had been frequently charged with being the causes of these wars, and they were the gentlemen who signed those pathethic documents that were sent into the Colonial Office and the Capo Government, alluding in legal and Parliamentary language to the different clauses of the Convention of Pretoria. These men went into the country to mate their fortune, and having attached themselves to the various Chiefs, were naturally most anxious for British intervention, because, as they well knew, the value of any land they might have acquired would instantly be doubled. The House must not allow itself to be misled by the language of these addresses. He did not wish to run down the Chiefs in question, but only asserted that one side was about as good as the other; that the allies of the Boers were neither better nor worse than those of the British. It was open to argument that the men mentioned in the Resolution had a special personal claim on the English Government, for he did not don't that some of our superior officers, including Sir Bartle Frere and Sir George Colley, had made certain promises to these Chiefs. The Government owned that, and hoped to be able to show in a substantial way their belief that the claim existed; but the moral claim of Mankoroane and Montsioa and that set of Native Chiefs was disposed of by the fact that they had not joined us with the intention of making sacrifices for the English Government, but because it was necessary for them to take one side or the other, and because they thought our alliance more likely to profit them than that of the Boers. Without following the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett) into a discussion on the rights or wrongs of annexation and retrocession—a question for which neither the time nor place was suitable—he wished to say one word on the subject. The other day, in answering a Question in the House, he had frankly stated that during our occupation of the Transvaal these outrages on the Natives had ceased. That statement had been met from the other side of the House by a loud cheer, which expressed the view taken by hon. Gentlemen opposite, that the Government, having given up the Transvaal, were practically responsible for all that had since occurred there. But hon. Gentlemen opposite had entirely forgotten that the Transvaal was annexed while they were in Office, and in order to protect the Boers from the Natives. It was his opinion that the Zulu War, and that against Secocoeni had, by the destruction of the Native Forces, done more than anything else to hand over the Natives to the power of the Boers. It was the action of the late Government, not of the present, that had improved the condition of the Boers. Now, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had read a passage of the Blue Book, in which the High Commissioner had given certain pledges to certain persons at the time of the retrocession. He (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) wished to draw attention to this—that the address of Sir Hercules Robinson was made to refer only to the Natives of the Transvaal.

What I read was part of a speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, and not the address of the High Commissioner.

said, he referred to the earlier part of the hon. and learned Member's speech, in which the hon. and learned Member alluded to the pledges given when the Convention of Pretoria was signed. The terms of that Convention were familiar enough to the House; but that Convention, let him begin by asserting, imposed no obligations on Her Majesty's Government. There might be obligations on Her Majesty's Government in reality, but that Convention placed no obligation on Her Majesty's Government; it only gave them a right to remonstrate when circumstances justified it, and when our interests were imperilled. As soon as the Convention was signed, Her Majesty's Government appointed a Resident at Pretoria, and he would venture to assert that if the hon. and learned Member looked at the Blue Book, h would find that the Resident had done his duty by reporting to the British Government all that occurred and remonstrating with the Transvaal Government. These remonstrances had not been entirely fruitless, because, as the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley) had pointed out, the Government of the Transvaal, as soon as the disturbances broke out, issued a declaration of neutrality at the instance of our Resident, Mr. Hudson, in October, 1881. General Joubert went to Montsioa's frontier; and he (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) appealed to the fairness of all Members who had looked at the Blue Books which gave an account of the proceedings of General Joubert, to say whether they did not think that General Joubert was bonâ fide and straightforward in what he did. He (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) believed he was. He believed the General intended to enforce the programme of neutrality; but what happened? Why, directly he left the frontier, the very frontier guards he had left there turned round and joined in the fray. But they could not make General Joubert responsible for that. The fact was, that no one realized what the state of things in the Transvaal was now. The whole population, not only in the Transvaal, but their brethren in the Orange Free State and in the Cape, sympathized with the Boers in the Native territory—they had a small knot of men in the small capital of Pretoria, with no large population to create or foster a public opinion, struggling by themselves against the universal feelings of sympathy of all the people. Well, they could not hold men too tight when that was the case. At any rate, they could not go to war with them for not doing what they were perfectly unable to do. The Triumvirate at Pretoria, whether they were willing and desirous or not—and he would not enter into that question—of prosecuting the men subject to the State who were violating the law, had neither the money, nor the men, nor the power to do it. Her Majesty's Government had continued to make remonstrances; but they had not contented themselves with that. Sir Hercules Robinson suggested to the Secretary of State that a proposal should be made for a joint expedition of police. That proposal was made in all earnest- ness and bonâ fides by Her Majesty's Government; but how was it received? The Cape said—"Oh! yes; we will join with you, but only on the condition that the Orange Free State and the Transvaal will join also"—knowing perfectly well that neither of them would. They went to the Orange Free State, who said—"No; we do not think it constitutional to go beyond the border." The Transvaal followed up the example of the Orange Free State, and, as a matter of fact, they were in such a peculiar state that he did not suppose they could afford the money even for 100 policemen. That meant that there was no assistance to be got from any of these territories—that the Dutch element at the Cape, which was two-thirds of the whole, would not give Her Majesty's Government any assistance in carrying out any repressive measures. But they had made a second attempt since the Papers which had been laid on the Table of the House had been distributed to Members. Having found that they could get no assistance in the general suppresion of the marauders in Bechuanaland, they made another proposal three weeks or a month ago, to the effect that they would be willing to pay the whole expense of a mounted police force to go into this Bechuana territory in order to arrest any British marauders and bring them back to trial, and the Cape were asked to give facilities or assistance, not pecuniary, but such as allowing them to pass through their territory. The answer that came back was—

"You will do no good by merely arresting your British subjects, because they are but a small proportion o£ the total number, and the effect would be inconsiderable."

Besides, Sir Hercules Robinson said—

"You must not imagine you are going to do this with a small force, because the moment you come by yourselves into these territories and not joined by the Transvaal or the Orange Free State Government, it will be the signal for the Dutch element in every part of South Africa to flock in shoals to the assistance of the Dutch."

An hon. Member opposite (Mr. Guy Dawney) seemed to think that volunteers would go out from this country to fight on the other side. Well, it was not unnatural, if persons so many thousands of miles from the scene of the conflict were inspired with a desire to volunteer, that the Dutch at the Cape and in the Orange Free State should join those who were so much nearer to them who had sprung from the same race and who spoke the same tongue. It was clear that this was a large undertaking; therefore, Her Majesty's Government had said at once that they could not incur the responsibility of an enterprize of such magnitude, seeing that it would have to be supplemented by further operations. The Resolution of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham assumed the complicity of the Transvaal Government in the cruel and treacherous attack made upon the Natives of Bechuanaland—which assumption he (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) ventured to say and believe was far beyond what the evidence presented to them warranted in taking as proved, though there was ample evidence that the Transvaal Government had benefited by the action of the marauders, and were willing to take advantage of it. The failure of the Convention was a matter that commanded the serious consideration of Her Majesty's Government; but there was no evidence that the Transvaal Government had participated in any of the cruel and treacherous attacks made on the Natives. The hon. and learned Member asked them to resolve that the House was of opinion that some energetic steps should be immediately taken to secure the observance by the Transvaal of the Convention of 1881, so that the Native Chiefs might be preserved from the destruction with which they were threatened. He (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) wished the hon. and learned Member had the courage to tell them in definite language what were the energetic measures he would propose. The hon. and learned Member had very wisely and diplomatically left that alone; therefore it became necessary to ask the House what he could possibly have meant? He (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) could only conceive two operations. Did the hon. and learned Member mean that we should declare war against the Transvaal? It seemed to him that, independently of the rashness and the wildness of such a proposal, it would be rather a hard measure to go to war with the Transvaal for not doing that which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, the Transvaal hitherto had not had the power to do even if they had had the will. It might be said, as the other alternative, "You could send up a force into this territory;" but would the House consider what that implied? We might send out a force at considerable expense; we might clear the country of these marauders; but when we had done that, could we retire? Could we do the work once for all? No; for directly we withdrew, the marauders would come back again. Therefore we should have virtually to maintain a force there, and that meant the annexation of the country. Well, it might not be a very terrific thing to propose to the country and the House of Commons that we should annex a tract, the fee-simple of which, he supposed, would not be worth more than a third or half what the expense of the expedition would come to. But did they suppose that we could go and virtually annex this Bechuanaland, and remain there? It would be the old story of being led on from point to point. If we were to go and virtually annex this Bechuana territory, we should be beginning again to do what we decided at the time of the Sand River Convention not to do. At that time we resolved, as our settled policy, not to entangle ourselves North of the Vaal River. We reversed this in the annexation of the Transvaal; but the country very wisely undid that. If we annexed the Bechuana territory, or established a Protectorate, which was tantamount to annexation, we should have again to go North of the Vaal, and begin the pursuit of other conquests. There was an illustrative case in point he might mention. When the Boers went first to Natal, to escape from British authority, we formed a sort of protectorate over a Tribe called the Amapondos, on the borders of Natal. In process of time the Amapondos got hungry, crossed the border, and plundered the cattle of the Boers. Very naturally, the Boers, in self-defence, and to retaliate and punish the Amapondos, crossed the border and attacked them; whereupon the Natives applied to the British Government for protection. At that time we were not so experienced in South Africa as we are now, and did not know how soon one step would lead to another. We replied to the application for protection, certainly; and we forebade the Boers to attack the Amapondos. The Boers replied that they were not British subjects, and would do as they liked. What was the result? War broke out; great loss of life and great expense occurred; the Boers were defeated, and we found ourselves obliged to annex Natal, and the Boers flew off, first to the Orange Free State, and then to the Transvaal, where we followed them. Well, if we established a Protectorate over the Bechuanas, and substituted Transvaal for Natal and Bechuanaland for Amapondoland, history would repeat itself in the parallel. He would appeal to no less an authority than Sir Bartle Frere, who was himself, as they all knew, the apostle of the forward movement, and who, in a despatch of September, 1878, referring to a Report sent by Colonel Lanyon about his proceedings in these very territories, wrote as follows:—

"The narrative furnishes a graphic picture of the difficulty of our position along many hundred miles of the Colonial and Transvaal border. It will he seen by the Report that far beyond the Colonial boundary are to be found European settlements of traders, farmers, and missionaries, who have for years lived not only unmolested, but as honoured and valued guests of Native Chiefs. It is not till some time of exceptional excitement occurs that the protecting Chief finds his real power has long since departed; that, unless supported by the all-prevailing authority of the British Government, he has only the choice of taking part with the disaffected of his own class, who wish to plunder and drive out the White man, or of being punished for supposed complicity with the marauders and murderers. That, by some form of Imperial Protectorate, this painful dilemma should be avoided, is the natural desire alike of the extra-Colonial Chief and of the Europeans he harbours and is supposed to protect. How such Protectorate can be established, without indefinite extension of our responsibilities, is a problem difficult of solution."

So difficult, that he (Mr. Ashley) advised them not to try. If they once undertook it, they would find themselves carried further and further. He had already alluded to the fact that if we used force against the Boer marauders, we should find ourselves surrounded by people all sympathizing with those we were going to oppose; and he would further submit this. Suppose we went to the territory of the Bechuanas, and kept the Boers within their own frontier, preventing them from attacking the Natives, saying, "You shall have nothing to do with these people; we take them under our protection, and you shall not come forward and attack or punish them;" would not the correlative also be that we must, if necessary, prevent the Natives from attacking the Boers? He believed those who were familiar with South African history would say that it was most likely that before many years had passed there would be an attack on the Boers by the Native Tribes; at any rate, he felt certain that if such an attack were made, and we had interfered to prevent the Boers from punishing the Natives, the Boers would have a perfect right to call upon us to protect them. [Mr. B. N. FOWLER: No, no!] The hon. Member who said "No!" belonged to the Corporation which possessed the best police force in England, and was perfectly willing to undertake the police management of the whole of the world. That was what it came to—that we must be prepared to undertake the duties of police throughout the whole of South Africa. Let them remember the peculiarity of these territories. None of them had natural boundaries—all the boundaries were artificial. There was nothing to stop us between Bechuanaland and the Equator, and if the hon. Member (Mr. B. N. Fowler) was prepared to go to the Equator with his constables. Her Majesty's Government declined to accompany him. The hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had made allusion to the powder question, and said there was great one-sidedness in the arrangement. He (Mr. Evelyn Ashley) would draw the hon. and learned Member's attention to the fact that the Colonial Office had thought that the embargo on the sale of powder should be taken off, and had said so to the Cape Government; but that Government had declined to remove it. But the hon. and learned Member, if he thought over the matter, would see that there was another reason why powder had not been obtained. Reference to the Blue Books would show that the Chiefs neglected to pay for the powder.

That applies only to Mankoroane, and not to Montsioa.

said, he had no evidence in Montsioa's case. Across the borders of such territories as the Transvaal and the Orange Free State there were always traders going about selling powder. The Chiefs would experience little difficulty in getting powder if they would pay for it. Her Majesty's Government had done what they could to get the embargo removed from the introduction of gunpowder from the Cape; but the Cape Government had refused to remove it, saying that the policy of neutrality which they had adopted would prevent them as long as the war between the Native Chiefs lasted. The Home Government had said that they did not look upon what was going on in Bechuanaland as a war in the strict sense; but this had had no effect on the Government at the Cape. And now, he thought, he had touched upon all the main points of the hon. and learned Member's speech. He would sum up the case of the Government by saying that they did not think that either the interests of this country or the obligations they had imposed on them would justify their making an expedition into South Africa, with all its necessary consequences. They were of opinion that it would be unstatesmanlike, he might say almost a criminal act, to send, out such an expedition. Taking the construction of the Convention in its most exaggerated sense, it only gave the right, and did not impose a duty, to interfere. These Natives, however strong might be our sympathies, had never been received under our rule, and had no claim to our protection beyond that which he owned appealed strongly—namery, our common humanity. But statesmen could not afford to yield to the natural impulses of humanity. [Laughter.]Well, hon. Members knew perfectly well what he meant. An irresponsible individual, when he saw wrong being committed, might very well follow natural impulses; whereas the man with responsibilities resting upon him was bound not to follow every unregulated impulse. If he did, he might be doing more harm than good; ill-directed impulses might lead to very great evil. The view of Her Majesty's Government, as had been laid down by the Earl of Kimberley in a despatch to Sir George Colley, of May, 1880, was that whereas in the South African Colonies there was no natural boundary, the complications incident upon the contact of White Colonists with Native Tribes must arise wherever the border line was drawn, and that if British jurisdiction was to be continually extended further and further into the interior, on the plea of such complications, there was practically no limit to the operation. Some plan should be devised whereby the Native Chiefs in these parts, who, it was ad- mitted, had some claims upon the British Government, might be provided for with safety and comfort in some form or other. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite seemed convulsed with laughter at every observation he made which was not strictly in accordance with what they had hoped he would say. The operation to which he alluded was a simple one, and had been carried out with regard to certain Chiefs at the time of the retrocession of the Orange Free State. They had been provided with a place in which they could live in peace in Her Majesty's Dominions. There was nothing ridiculous in that. Her Majesty's Government had already communicated with Sir Hercules Robinson, and had asked him to let them know what proposals he would like to make in reference to this question. The larger policy of the employment of force was one which they did not think they wore called on to adopt. He would merely say, in conclusion, that the policy of the constant advance of British troops wherever there was suffering and wherever there was oppression, was a policy they could very well understand being advocated by those on the spot; but statesmen in this country were bound to take a broader view of the subject. Those on the spot, whose horizon was perforce narrow, were often inclined to parody Swift's advice to servants, and, having ascertained what were the resources of the Empire, claim to obtain the greater portion of them to be expended on their own concerns; but those who surveyed the scene from a more central standpoint were bound, unless they saw that they had obligations absolutely imposed upon them, and that they could do the thing effectually, not to imperil the interests committed to their charge by entering into ventures of this sort. There was, however, no such obligation, and those who were daily compelled to survey the burdens and responsibilities of the Empire would shrink from any such proposal. They would frankly acknowledge that we were only now reaping what we sowed by the original mistake of the annexation of the Transvaal, but they will decline to get out of one mistake by means of a greater. The Government had taken the measures which they thought best when they retired from the Transvaal, and remonstrances had been addressed to the Boers on this question, and as long as the Convention remained, remonstrances would continue to be made. Her Majesty's Government would not neglect their duties in this matter, but they would not go beyond them. He believed that the Boer Government were very much more amenable to the pressure of the public opinion of the civilized world than many people imagined; and it was a striking fact that during the 18 months or two years which had elapsed since they had been independent, there had been few or no complaints against them in connection with the Natives within their borders. The letter to which the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham had called his attention to on a former occasion, and on the subject of which a telegram had been sent to Africa, did not appear, when read with care, to contain any charge against the Boers that could be sustained. He had expressed his belief that the Boer Government were very amenable to public opinion in this country, and he believed they would be much more so if we, who condemned the acts of their irresponsible citizens on the border were, at any rate, just in our judgment. He deprecated above all things, both in the interest of South Africa and in the interest of England, any attempt to blow up feeling between the people of this country and the Dutch; and he looked forward to the time when amongst the Natives the terms "Dutch" and "English" would be forgotten, and allegiance would be paid to those only who treated them with justice.

said, he would like to ask the hon. Gentleman one question. He gathered from his speech that the Government thought they would be able to provide for the Chiefs referred to in safety and comfort. He asked, when were those Chiefs to be provided for, and what was to be done with the lands on which they had hitherto lived?

said, he did not think he should be acting in conformity with the recently established Rules of the House, if he were to renew the debate on the Motion for adjournment now before the House. But the debate was likely to be adjourned, and there would be a further and more convenient opportunity of replying to the question of the right hon. Baronet when the debate was resumed. Explanations, he believed, had been given "elsewhere" on the subject. With regard to the adjournment, he wished to observe that the debate had been distinguished by its practical character, and the subject of it was altogether one of serious importance. That being so, he should be very sorry, as the debate could not be brought to a conclusion that evening, that it should drop. The House was aware of the difficulty in which it was placed with regard to Public Business, and the proposal he had to make was that there should be a Morning Sitting on Friday for the continuance of the debate, on which day, in view of the progress already made, he had no doubt that it would be practicable to bring it to a conclusion.

said, he should renew his question after the conclusion of the debate.

said, the principle of this Bill was similar to that of the Bill on the same subject read a second time last year and the previous year. He asked the House to allow it to pass the stage of second reading, and then if any misadventure were to happen to the measure which the Government intended to introduce, this Bill could be referred to a Select Committee.

said, he had no wish to interfere with the proposal of the hon. Member to introduce a Bill in the interest of the agricultural community; but he thought it would be of advantage to the House that at some early date, if not that evening, they should have some information as to what were the views of the Government on the subject dealt with in the Bill of the hon. Member. The subject of compensation to tenants was mentioned in the Queen's Speech; but, from that day to this, the House had not been made acquainted with the views of the Government. There were, however, two or three Bills before the House introduced by private Members; and, under those circumstances, he thought it would be of advantage to the country if some indication of the Government intentions were given before the present Bill was read a second time.

said, he gathered from the remarks of the hon. Member opposite that the present Bill did not differ materially in principle from the Bills introduced in former Sessions. Having read through the Bill, however, he was of opinion that its provisions were extremely unpractical; and, moreover, they did appear to him to differ considerably from those of the Bills formerly introduced. As there was a Government Bill looming in the distance, he hoped the hon. Gentleman would not then press the second reading, but give the House and the country further time to consider the question. He did not think the hon. Member would lose anything by following his suggestion; because although, no doubt, the question was of great importance, more information should, in his opinion, be afforded than they were then in possession of. A mere reference to what had been done or attempted before in this matter could not be a sufficient explanation to the House of what was contained within the four corners of this Bill; and he, therefore, renewed his appeal to the hon. Member not to press his Motion for the second reading.

said, he agreed with the hon. Member for Wilton (Mr. Sidney Herbert), that the opinions of the Government on this question should be made known as soon as possible; but he thought if the hon. Member would consider a little, he would see that it had not been in their power to take any opportunity for doing so. However anxious they might be to make known their views, there had not been a single opportunity on which they could have introduced the Bill on this subject which they were extremely anxious to lay before the House. It would be an extremely inconvenient course, when the Government themselves were attempting to legislate, that they should express their opinion upon Bills dealing with the same subject introduced by private Members. With regard to the Motion of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Heneage), he was not conversant with the contents of the proposed Bill; but he gathered from what had taken place, that in no part of the House was there so strong an opposition to the principle of the Bill as would justify the Government in opposing the second reading. He was, therefore, willing that this stage should be taken, on the distinct understanding that no further stage should be taken until the Government had been able to announce their own intentions upon the subject which the Bill proposed to deal with. On that understanding he hoped the House, if they were so disposed, would allow the Bill to be read a second time.

said, the noble Lord had given a very good reason why the Bill should not be read a second time, when he informed the House that he did not know what the contents of the Bill were. It was, however, under those circumstances that the noble Lord thought that this Bill, which so greatly affected the interests of the agricultural community, should be read a second time. For his own part, he did not think it possible at that hour (12.45) to go into the merits of the Bill. The hon. Member who introduced the Bill said it did not differ from other Bills which had been introduced in former Sessions upon the same subject. Now, as those Bills differed materially from each other, he was quite unable to understand to which of them the hon. Member referred. Under the circumstances, he thought it unnecessary to take the second reading that evening; and, with the object of allowing further time to those interested in the question to consider the hon. Member's proposal, he begged to move the adjournment of the debate.

seconded the Motion for adjournment. The Government seemed to think it was a good thing to get a Bill read the recond time, although they had not the slighest idea of what it contained. He thought that was one of the worst reasons that could be put forward in favour of the second reading of the present measure.