asked the Secretary to the Admiralty, Under whose authority the Mediterranean Squadron is now visiting a number of Adriatic Ports, and for what object, whether by way of international courtesy or for the purpose of improving the navigating knowledge of the officers?

Sir, the Mediterranean Squadron is engaged, under the orders of the Board of Admiralty, in its summer cruise, which is undertaken for the purpose of exercising the officers and men in fleet evolutions and manœuvring. The visits made in the course of the cruise to various ports afford an opportunity for the exchange of international courtesies.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If the Government of the United States has made any remonstrance or representation to Her Majesty's Government concerning the sending of pauper emigrants to America?

No, Sir; no remonstrance or representation on the subject has been received by Her Majesty's Government.

asked the Vice President of the Council, Why the Bill for the Higher Education in Wales, mentioned in the Queen's Speech, has not yet been printed?

Sir, the Welsh Bill has not been printed because it has not yet been introduced. The Bill is ready, and I propose to introduce it as soon as I see any prospect of making progress with it.

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, If he will lay upon the Table of the House the draft form in which the amended list of Dormant Funds in Chancery will be published in future?

Sir, I do not think it necessary or desirable to lay on the Table the headings under which the now list will be prepared; but when they are finally settled I will show them to the hon. Member.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether his attention has been drawn to a Reuter's Telegram from Alexandria, dated the 25th of June, to the effect that—

"The functionaries of the different consulates have voted addresses to Omar Pacha Lufti in recognition of the real services rendered by him as Governor of Alexandria on June 11th 1882, the day of the massacre;"

and, whether the functionaries of the British Consulate took part in this address; and, if so, whether they acted on instructions from the 'Foreign Office or with the permission of the Foreign Office?

The Foreign Office have no information whatever with regard to this matter.

Perhaps the noble Lord will be good enough to say whether he will at onto seek information?

It is very possible we may shortly have a despatch from Sir Edward Malet in which this matter may be referred to.

I, or rather my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst), will repeat the Question on Monday. Then we shall expect to have an answer.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether he is aware that the barracks which have lately been erected at Newcastle on Tyne contain no bath room for the use of the men; whether it is a fact that a beard of officers has reported that a bath room is necessary; and, whether, inasmuch as the head quarters of several Militia regiments are shortly to be transferred to Newcastle, he will give directions for the erection of a bath room without delay?

Sir, it has been recommended that a bath room should be provided in the new barracks at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and steps are now being taken to carry out the service.

asked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether Unyabelu (called Mapoch) is now beseiged and hard pressed by the Boers; whether having sent to ask a promise that he should not be hanged in case of surrender, the Boers have refused to accept anything but an unconditional surrender; whether this same chieftain during the Transvaal War, when the British garrison of Lydenburgh wore hard pressed, set out with several thousand men, at the request of Captain Ritter of the Border Police, and was only prevented from attacking the Boors by the news of the Capitulation; and, whether, after these offered services, Her Majesty's Government will not at least intercede with the Boers for the life of their friend? The hon. Member added, that he thought he ought to state that the information referred to in the third paragraph of the Question came from Downing Street.

Sir, we know Mapoch is besieged; but how far he is hard pressed is uncertain. We have no official information as to the second Question. The third Question I have already twice answered to the hon. Member, and I do not think the observation of the hon. Member calls for any further remark.

Is it true?

As to the fourth Question, all I can say is that I hope, as I believe, that unless murder is proved against Mapoch, the Transvaal Government would not make him forfeit his life should he fall into their hands; but without fuller information the Government do not propose to make representations in the matter.

As the hon. Gentleman says the Government has no information, and, as far as I can make out, they do not intend to ask for any, I should like to ask, do they intend to wait until this unfortunate man is hanged before they do anything, as was the case with Suleiman Sami?

No, Sir; if we take any steps we shall not wait till he is hanged. Afterwards,

asked whether the facts stated in the third paragraph of his Question were not accurate?

said, he had twice supplied the hon. Member with the facts in regard to Mapoch's offer of assistance to the British troops. Captain Ritter, of the Border Police, no doubt communicated with Mapoch, inquiring if he would come to the assistance of the besieged British troops, and Mapoch expressed his willingness to do so. But whether the action of Captain Ritter would have been sanctioned by his superiors, the hon. Member must be left to judge, seeing that Mapoch's offer of assistance had been refused previously by superior officers. There was no information that Mapoch had started for the relief of Lydenburgh. It was not likely he had done so, because 48 hours after the communication referred to came the news of the cessation of hostilities.

asked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether it is a fact that a convoy of arms and ammunition sent by the Viceroy of India to the Amir of Afghanistan has been captured, after a sharp fight in the Kyber Pass, by the Afridis; and, if so, who composed the escort, and what is the value of the munitions captured?

If the hon. Member will repeat his Question on Monday I hope then to be able to answer him. I may say that if the matter had been considered important by the Government of India, they would, no doubt, have given us full particulars by telegraph.

asked the Vice President of the Council, Whether, in view of the recent disaster at Sunderland, any steps will be taken by the Education Department to instruct or caution school managers to insure the due supervision and care of school children brought together in large numbers for the purpose of entertainment in theatres, public buildings, or other similar places for popular public amusement?

Sir, if the managers of schools cannot of themselves read the lesson taught by the terrible disaster at Sunderland, I am afraid that no Circular from the Education Department, in a matter which is outside of our jurisdiction, will induce them to do so. But I do not understand that the children attended the entertainment collectively as scholars of public elementary schools. If they had done so, the managers and teachers would have been responsible, not only for their good conduct, but for their safety. The objectionable feature of the case was, as I understand, that the giver of the entertainment was allowed to go the rounds of the schools in the town to tout for the sale of tickets to individual scholars. This ought, under no circumstances, to have been allowed; and I trust that the recent catastrophe will prevent the recurrence of such an objectionable practice. The Department is considering whether a paragraph cannot be inserted in the Code calling the attention of managers to the importance of children not being taken to any entertainment, school treat, or excursion, unless they are under proper guidance and control.

asked the Postmaster General, Whether, since the death of the late Controller, the authorities of the Post Office Savings Banks have issued nearly two millions of receipts and orders for repayment bearing his signature; and, whether the signature of a dead man is considered a valid receipt in Savings Bank business; and, if not, whether either the Postmaster General or Mr. Cardin was aware of the issue of these documents?

Sir, in reply to the hon. Member, I may state that no possible inconvenience can result to the depositors from using the printed forms containing the signature of the late Controller until his successor was appointed. As it was possible -that there would be considerable delay in filling up the appointment of Controller, instructions were recently given that the forms should be stamped with the name of the Assistant Controller. A new appointment has, however, been made to the post of Controller, and printed forms bearing his signature will be got ready with the least possible delay.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether legal opinion has been taken with regard to the validity of these documents, in case of fraud, being admissible as evidence?

I showed the answer I have just given to the Solicitor to the Post Office, and he said I was perfectly right in stating that no inconvenience could arise.

I am sorry to press the right hon. Gentleman—the question is whether these forms are or are not admissible as evidence in cases of fraud?

I can only say I have, consulted the Solicitor to the Post Office, and I answer on his authority. The hon. Member seems to forget that these printed forms which are sent out are merely formal, and it has been several times proposed that they should be abolished. What really is important is the entry in the depositor's book.

Are they admissible in evidence? I must press the Postmaster General to answer that [Cries of "Order!"]

The right hon. Gentleman has already answered the Question.

Who is the new Controller?

Mr. Compton, the gentleman who has for many years been the Assistant Controller. He was appointed last Monday.

asked the Postmaster General, Whether it is a fact that the postage on a newspaper to Newfoundland, the oldest British Colony, and the nearest American land to England, is one penny, while the postage to Canada is only one halfpenny?

There is not, Sir, as the hon. Member supposes, a difference in the postage on newspapers to Newfoundland and Canada. As stated in The Post Office Guide, the postage on newspapers, both to Newfoundland and to Canada, is ½d. for each paper not exceeding two ounces in weight, and 1d. for each newspaper over two ounces, and not exceeding four.

I wish to ask Question of the Government; but, if they prefer it, I will give Notice of it. It is, Whether they will have any objection to lay on the Table of the House the answer, if any, sent to the Despatch of the Governor General of the Dominion of Canada, which enclosed a Memorandum to which I yesterday referred from the Privy Council of the Dominion of Canada, making a specific offer to cooperate with Her Majesty's Government in some well-devised scheme for promoting emigration from Ireland to portions of the Dominion, and further to co-operate in the furtherance of proper arrangements for their transit, and also for their reception in Canada on arrival? I wish to ask the Government whether they have any objection to lay on the Table the answer sent to that Despatch, and also to any other proposals which have been made by responsible authorities other than the Canadian Government in regard to any proposal to facilitate emigration?

Sir, as to proposals from responsible authorities other than the Canadian Government, that is a subject on which I shall be glad to have Notice of the Question. With regard to the answer to the Despatch referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, that, unless I am much mistaken, has been already laid on the Table.

said, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, when making his arrangements between now and Monday relating to the despatch of the Business before the House, would be good enough to take care that some opportunity should be afforded him, either on the Estimates or in some other way, of bringing that very important subject under the notice of the House.

On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Wilton (Mr. Sidney Herbert), I wish to ask the Secretary of State for War a Question of which he has already given him private Notice, Whether there is with our troops in Egypt a sufficiently largo staff of medical officers and sufficient supply of medicines to cope with a possible serious outbreak of cholera among them; and, if not, whether the War Office will send out an adequate medical staff together with the requisite medicines to meet that possible contingency?

Sir, there is a sufficient staff of medical officers in Egypt to meet all probable requirements; and a reserve of medical officers is in readiness to proceed there if necessary. The supply of medicines in Egypt is ample, and addition will be made to the supplies now in course of shipment of any articles which may seem likely to be useful in the event of an outbreak of cholera among the troops. Instructions have been sent to the General Officer to take every possible precaution to avert an outbreak of cholera among the troops, calling attention specially to the Indian Regulations on the subject; and a reply has been received that these instructions had been already anticipated, and that there was no immediate apprehension regarding the troops.

Perhaps the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be able to answer this Question now, although I have not given him Notice of it. It is, Whether any information has been received other than that which appears in the public Press with regard to a telegram from Arabi Pasha to Said Bey Khandeel, implicating the former in the massacres at Alexandria, which it has been alleged by the Egyptian Public Prosecutor has been discovered; and whether, considering that the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) has stated in the House that the Khedive himself was the instigator of the massacres, and that he has undertaken to prove that charge, any steps will be taken by Her Majesty's Government to see that Said Bey Khandeel, now on his trial for being connected with the massacres, will be allowed to put questions to witnesses for the prosecution, and to call witnesses on his behalf, with a view of proving his own innocence by endeavouring to show that the massacre was instigated by others, and that he himself acted under superior orders?

This Question raises a great number of complicated issues, and I think it is only fair that the hon. Member should give Notice, and put the Question on Monday, when there will, no doubt, be a full and satisfactory answer given to it.

I will put it on Monday.

I should like to ask the Home Secretary, Whether he will proceed with the Bill to-night which deals with Scotch Business, or whether it is to be taken on Monday?

I hope to go on with it to-night. Members will, no doubt, like to see the Bill; and, therefore, I will bring it in to-night, in order that it may be printed.

said, he quite admitted that the Attorney General had great difficulty in framing a clear definition with regard to the conveyance of voters; but he thought they must have some sort of restriction placed upon the practice of lending carriages to be used systematically in order to carry electors to the poll. The Attorney General would probably remember the fact that this was a moot question at the time of the last Reform Bill. He (Mr. Labouchere) recollected that there existed then a very strong feeling that the conveyance of voters to the poll ought to be made an illegal practice; but this was not carried, because it was felt by a large number of county Members that they would be placed at a very great disadvantage if the lending of carriages were prohibited, because, as a matter of fact, the people who owned private carriages in the majority of cases were Conservatives. He was certain that if there were what might be called a carriage franchise there would not be so many Liberals sitting in that House, while certainly there would be exceedingly few Radicals. There was no doubt it was an enormous advantage to a candidate to be able to send electors to the poll in carriages. He did not mean to say that a man who was taken to the poll in a carriage would vote for the candidate who conveyed him there; but it was probable that, under the circumstances, he might not vote at all. Speaking as a borough Member, he could say that, as a rule, the Conservatives in the neighbourhood of his borough sent in a large I number of carriages which were systematically used to carry electors to the poll, and that practice was not confined entirely to the more wealthy class, because, as the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) had told them, in the borough which he represented, all the butchers were Conservatives, and lent their carts for the purpose of taking people to the poll to vote for the Conservative candidate. From the Conservative point of view, he regarded it as perfectly right to vote against any restriction being placed on the lending of carriages; his difficulty was in understanding how Members of the Liberal Party could vote against such restriction. It was a clear advantage to the Conservatives, but it was a clear disadvantage to the Radicals. Hon. Members knew this very well. He was speaking to Gentlemen, every one of whom had taken part in elections, and when it was seen that the Conservatives all rallied to oppose the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen), they all knew it was very much to their interest that the 6th clause should not be passed in its present form. They might take it also as a matter of fact that when Radical Members voted for it, it was equally for their interest that the clause should be altered. Carriages were used at elections purely for Party purposes. There were more Conservatives than Liberals, and very few Radicals at all, who had carriages; and consequently the clause, in its present shape, would give an advantage to Conservatives as against Liberals, and an advantage to Liberals as against Radicals. He trusted the Attorney General would make some concession in this matter. He did not want to pin his vote to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle, and he was quite sure that if the hon. and learned Gentleman would intimate his willingness to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Heneage), his hon. Friend would, with the view of not impeding the progress of the Bill, be quite willing to withdraw the present proposal. But there must be some restriction placed upon the systematic lending of carriages in large numbers by candidates or committees, because hon. Gentlemen on those Benches could not understand what was the distinction between the case of a man being allowed to lend a dozen or 20 carriages to a candidate, and the candidate himself being allowed to hire them. The lending and hiring of carriages for electoral purposes appeared to them to be precisely the same thing in principle, because it gave a distinct advantage to the rich man over the poor man.

said, he was sure the Committee would have heard with regret the tone in which the hon. Member for Northampton bad just spoken. The hon. Member, no doubt, expected, by his mode of treating this question, to obtain a few additional votes; but it must be evident to hon. Members opposite that if the rest of the Bill were to be discussed in the same spirit, there would be little chance of its being finished for some time. For his own part, he should not imitate the example of the hon. Member. They were asked to prevent a man lending his carriage to a neighbour for the purpose of taking him to the poll. But, lie asked, was there any corruption in a man lending his carriage for that purpose? [Mr. LABOUCHERE: Hear, hear!] If that was the opinion of the hon. Member he did not think it would be useful to take up more time in the hope- less attempt to convince him to the contrary. But there were persons outside that House who were not of his opinion; persons who looked upon the proposal of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) as an attempt to interfere with individual liberty. He trusted it would never be said that a person who acted in good faith should not be allowed to convey a voter to the poll in his own carriage. As the question had been fully discussed, he had no wish to detain the Committee any further than to say that if the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle were carried, it would very much influence his views with regard to the Bill as a whole.

said, he could not think that the tone in which the hon. Member for Northampton had supported the Amendment was calculated to facilitate the progress of the Bill. If the adoption of that Amendment had been a matter of difficulty before, the speech of his hon. Friend had made it impossible. But, looking at the principle which the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle contained impartially, and without any Party view of the question, he was bound to say it was one which Her Majesty's Government could not accept. The 6th clause had now been under consideration for three days, and the whole subject of conveyance had, in his opinion, been very fully discussed. Under those circumstances, he hoped the Committee might be allowed to come to a decision on the present Amendment without the expenditure of further time. The object of the Government in introducing this clause was two-fold; first, they wished to prevent corruption as it was accomplished by the hiring of carriages; secondly, they wished to prevent the incurring of great expense, because in the matter of expenditure the rich candidate had a great advantage over the poor one. But when it was proposed to make it the law that a man should not be permitted to lend his carriage—where, he asked, would that principle end? He thought the corruption involved in a man taking another to the poll under such circumstances was of very small extent, and certainly there was no increase of expense occasioned. Voluntary effort could not be checked. If a man possessed a large amount of eloquence, of talent, or influence, it was impossible to prevent his using them in furtherance of his own candidature. There was one view of the question, however, which he would lay before the Committee, which he hoped would meet the objection taken by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and which he would himself wish to see carried out. After the speech of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), it was rather difficult to propound that view to the Committee, seeing that his hon. Friend had spoken from a Party point of view. But he could assure the Committee that the suggestion he had to make had nothing of a Party character about it. A person might possess 40 or 50 carriages, and it was possible he might say to a candidate—"I will lend you all my carriages; I ask no payment to-day." That proposal might be accepted, and thus, by the indirect action of the person who owned the carriages, there would be a preponderance of carriages on one side; and although there might be no payment at the time, yet, sooner or later, the candidate, or other persons on his behalf, would be asked to make good the cost. To guard against that he had thought it right to prepare a sub-section, to the effect that—

"A person shall not let, lend, or employ for the purpose of the conveyance of electors to or from the poll any public, stage, or hackney carriage, or any horse or other animal kept or used for drawing the same, or any carriage horse or other animal which he keeps or uses for the purpose of letting out for hire, and if he lets, lends, or employes such carriage, horse or other animal, knowing that it is intended to be used for the purpose of the conveyance of electors to or from the poll."

A person acting contrary to this provision would be guilty of an illegal practice, and liable to the penalties provided. There would be a Proviso to the effect that nothing in this sub-section would apply to any carriage horse or other animal lent to a person for the purpose of conveying himself to the poll. The whole object of the proposed sub-section was to prevent that which was really objectionable in the conveyance of persons to the poll—namely, the employment of carriages and animals with the probability of their being paid for by-and-bye. He trusted that this proposal would commend itself to hon. Members on both sides of the House, as affording a solution of the difficulty that had been so long under consideration.

said, he was not going to discuss the proposal of the hon. and learned Attorney General on that occasion. His object in rising was to say that the question of conveyance had now been before the Committee for three days; and he looked upon it as rather extraordinary that, at the last moment, a new sub-section dealing with the subject should be produced by the Attorney General. He thought that there had been ample time, during the three days' discussion which had taken place, for the Government to have made up their minds. For his own part, he altogether objected to discuss the alteration proposed by the Attorney General until he saw it in print. He thought that it would have been better to bring forward the proposal in the form of a now clause; at all events, it would be a waste of time to discuss it on that occasion.

said, he would readily join in any request which the Committee might think it right to make with regard to the proposal of the Government. Unless the Committee wished to pursue the subject then, he was quite willing to accede to the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The delay in bringing forward the clause was due to the desire of the Government to ascertain the wishes of hon. Members; and they believed they had at last succeeded in drawing a clause which would meet the requirements of the case in a satisfactory manner.

said, he was sorry his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General had made the statement they had just listened to, because he did not think it would tend to advance the Business of the Committee. They were now engaged upon a particular Amendment, which had been strongly urged upon the acceptance of the Committee by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), and the proper course was to proceed to dispose of that Amendment. But, in order that the Government might be assisted to do something, a sop was now thrown out to the Committee in the shape of the hon. and learned Gentleman's proposal. If that proposal had emanated from anyone else than the Attorney General, the hon. Member who made it would have been immediately called to Order. He ventured to submit one remark upon the clause of the Attorney General—namely, that it would facilitate more corruption of the kind they were considering than anything else which could be devised. There was nothing to prevent one voter hiring a carriage for the conveyance of himself, and then taking a large number of his friends with him. Great difficulties were presented by the clause proposed by the hon. and learned Gentleman; and he would ask him not to go into these minor and petty details, and then there would be a much better chance of getting to the end of the Bill.

said, he took no Party view of this subject; but he considered that the proposal was one of very considerable importance. He was not going to discuss the Amendment of the Attorney General; but he would take the opportunity of pointing out that it met only one part of the question then before the Committee—namely, that part of it which related to the job-master. He admitted that the proposal of the Attorney General would meet that one difficulty; but they were now upon a question of private carriages. The hon. Member for Northampton had spoken as if carriages were an article of luxury; but that was not always the case. By far the larger number of "carriages" were used for purposes of trade and business. If he might be permitted to refer to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen), he would suggest that when it came forward the word "persons" should be substituted for "person;" and he was glad to see that his hon. Friend assented to that view of the case. It was not reasonable that a farmer should, on election day, be limited to carrying a single person to the poll.

said, that, although they were asked to make provision for the prevention of the hire of carriages, there was another plan by which corruption could be effected, and that was the purchase of carriages. The Bill did not prevent a man purchasing any number of carriages. and he might do that on the understanding that when he had made use of them they should be taken back at a certain price. It appeared to him that there was great scope for corruption in an arrangement of that kind. It was quite practicable for a man to buy both horses and carriages, and then return them in the manner he had described. He trusted the Attorney General would consider the necessity of meeting that particular form of corrupt practice. ["Divide!"]

said, the principle involved in the Amendment before the Committee was too serious and important to be stifled by cries of "Divide." He thought the question raised by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) was not to be disposed of by references to the particular phraseology of the Amendment, or by offering to support the Amendment which followed it on the Paper. The question they had to decide was as to whether the principle which the Committee had already adopted should be applied logically, impartially, and completely. The Committee had accepted the principle of prohibiting the conveyance of voters to the poll in hired carriages; and hon. Members on those Benches asked that that principle should be extended to the prohibition of carriages that were lent for the same purpose. The working of the carriage system at elections was this. Two or three days before the election took place, a circular was sent out to all the carriage-owning friends of the candidate, asking how many carriages they would place at the disposal of the committee on the polling day. In reply to this circular, carriages were sent, decorated with the colours of the candidate, the servants wearing rosettes, &c. The carriages were thou apportioned to the various districts precisely in the same manner as hired cabs. He and his hon. Friends contended that a man who, by his social position or family influence, could command a largo number of private carriages, had a distinct advantage over the candidate who did not occupy the same social position, or whose political opinions were, perhaps, not in harmony with the carriage-owning class. They said that under the present system, which compelled a working man to vote either in his breakfast or dinner hour, and under which tho polling places were at a considerable distance from his residence, there was a great advantage to a man who possessed the means of locomotion. The Committee had prohibited the hiring of carriages, and he asked that the principle should be extended impartially to the lending of carriages It appeared to him that when the Attorney General said that the ownership of carriages was one of the effects of wealth which they could neither disregard or neutralize, he was placing wealth on the same level with the possession of brains. But the object of the Bill, as he understood it, was to destroy, as far as possible, the influence of wealth in their electoral proceedings. The Government said, in effect, that the man who was in possession of sufficient money to be able to give 200 guineas for the permanent ownership of a carriage might permit that carriage to be used for the promotion of his eleotion; but they said, at the same time, that the man who could only pay two guineas for the hire of a carriage for that purpose should not be allowed to do so. That proposition need only be stated nakedly to the Committee, and its weakness would then be manifest. He was satisfied that if this question were settled on the principle proposed by the Government the settlement would not be a permanent one, because the working classes of the country would not be content to see such an obvious advantage given to the wealthy candidate. He appealed to all sections of the House to remedy this manifestly one-sided legislation; and he was sure the Attorney General could easily construct a clause that would put a stop to the practice of placing at the disposal of Committees a large number of private carriages on the day of election, which was quite as objectionable as placing at their disposal a large number of cabs.

said, that the discussion which had taken place on this Amendment had been extremely valuable, although it had not been entirely characterized by the absence of Party feeling. He thought it would have been well if the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) had taken to heart the observations of the Attorney General, who had recommended that the discussion should proceed without any tinge of Party feeling whatever. The hon. Member, however, had not followed that recommendation. Moreover, the hon. Member appeared to have departed somewhat from the issue before the Committee. He had said that one of the objects of the Bill was to prevent the carriage of voters to the poll. That was quite true; but then the hon. Gentleman proceeded to draw a very strange analogy between that and the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen), the object of which was to prevent the lending of carriages. Now, the argument introduced by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, as to the advantage being entirely on the side of those individuals who were in possession of carriages, was altogether wrong and fallacious. He (Baron Henry de Worms) represented a large constituency of working men, and he was able to say that in that district there were more Liberals who polled in waggons and carts than there were Conservatives who polled in carriages. If the hon. Member could see corruption in Conservatives going to the poll in carriages which cost 200 guineas, he would like to know whether he would say there was corruption in driving Liberal voters to the poll in coal waggons? In point of fact, the two cases were in principle identical. There was some plausibility in the argument that the result of an election might be influenced by the wealthy class who had carriages, simply by the latter being drawn up under the windows of the committee room, ready to take voters to the poll; and the lion. Member argued, with that show of purity which characterized the Liberal Party, that they would not avail themselves of similar advantages if some wealthy Liberal, anxious to promote the Liberal interest, were to place his carriages at their disposal on the day of an election. But not only had he seen a great number of Liberals carried to the poll in carts, but he knew that a great number of rich Liberals had placed their carriages at the disposal of the Liberal Committees. He entirely denied that there was any predominance of carriages on the side of the Conservatives; on the contrary, he asserted that there were quite as many carriages in the possession of Liberals as in the possession of Conservatives; and he maintained that if the Conservatives had any advantage from lending their carriages, the Liberals also, even the extreme Radicals, could adopt that less fashionable but more commodious vehicle, the cart.

said, so far from his being, as had been stated, opposed to the proposal of the Attorney General, he entirely agreed with it. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) had discussed this question as if it related only to the rich man's carriage, and, no doubt, he spoke with perfect accuracy with regard to the boroughs in his district on voting day. He could assure him, however, that he had seen in the boroughs in which he had been present on election days a much greater number of what might be called poor men's carriages being used by the committees than he had of rich men's carriages. There were a certain number of men who took a lively interest in the polling, and who lent their carriages; but, as a rule, the Conservatives were not those who took the keenest interest in it. Costermongers carts and flys were often largely used at elections. Therefore, he did not think this matter should be debated as if it were entirely a question of rich men's carriages. It would be impracticable to say, in the case of Irish counties, for instance, that a voter driving to the poll should not convey other voters with him, and he was sure it would be equally so in many places in England. But his hon. Friend wished the Government to adopt one of two Amendments on the Paper as offering a systematic way of getting rid of the difficulty; but lie did not see how it would be possible, even if it were right to do so, to prohibit the lending of carriages to committees. He thought that his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General had gone as far as possible in that direction, in the proposal he had sketched out. No doubt a number of decisions would turn on the point as to whether the lending of carriages was occasional or systematic; but he thought it would be a danger to the Bill to adopt the proposal of the hon. Member.

said, the Government were guilty of inconsistency in opposing the Amendment, and he thought their inconsistency was made more clear by the Amendment of which the Attorney General had given Notice, because it placed a restriction on a man's using his property as he had a perfect right to do, so long as he did not use it for an improper purpose. They were told in the case of the election of a Member of the Government at Hastings that the Liberals were using carriages of all kinds, as well as banners and other insignia; and according to the description given, the town looked as if the occasion were that of a Royal visit. He had no doubt that this was the dying effort of the Government in favour of the system they were about to put an end to. To be consistent, this clause should say that a man should not lend his house, nor have any bill exposed on his premises. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South - West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross) had declined to discuss the proposed Amendment of the Attorney General, and he (Mr. Lewis) would not then go into the question; but he trusted the quiescence of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench was due to the fact that they considered discussion inopportune, and not to any sympathy on their part with the proposal, because if it were intended that a jobmaster should not lend his vehicles to friends on polling days, it amounted to such an encroachment on the liberty of the individual as he should have thought even the Attorney General would not have suggested. The hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) believed that in the interest of his theory of liberty and purity of election, a man should not be allowed to lend his carriage to take a friend to the poll. Well, he desired to go to a Division on the Amendment of the hon. Member, and it would then be seen to what extent the very remarkable principle which it contained had the sympathy of the Committee. Hon. Members on the Conservative side of the House were by no moans impelled by any question of inconsistency to follow the hon. Member.

said, they were not there to discuss the question from any Party point of view; but they were there as reasonable men of business to discuss a matter they were all concerned in. If the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General would accept either of the Amendments on the Paper he (Mr. J. Cowen) should be ready to support that Amendment; but the hon. and learned Member did not seem inclined to do that. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) had expressed the matter properly when he had said that the letting of carriages or the lending of them would open the door to corruption, for if a jobmaster lent his conveyances to a candidate or his agent, there would be little difficulty in finding a means by which he could be repaid for his act of kindness. The persons they were trying to strike at were the large manufacturers, colliery proprietors, railway companies, and persons who had a large number of conveyances at their command, which they could make use of at an election, and, by so doing, largely influence the result. He had no desire to prolong the proceedings of the Committee, and should be willing to alter the language of his Amendment, if he could make it meet the wishes of hon. Gentlemen around him.

said, he had no doubt of the sincerity of the conviction that compelled the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) to make this proposition; but he desired the Committee to consider whether they were not endeavouring to do that which was really impracticable—whether they were not creating offences which would render the conduct of an election absolutely impossible? It would be a different thing altogether if the offence were only to apply in cases where it was committed with the knowledge of the candidate; but the Committee knew perfectly well that there were always a large number of persons at an election who would endeavour to bring about the employment of vehicles, without the knowledge of the candidate, or his agents. Such persons as these would never be able to understand the extraordinary provisions which wore sought to be incorporated into this Bill. It appeared to him that if this condition were inserted in the measure, no single election would be able to withstand a Petition if it were presented against it. It would be impossible to conduct an election in such a manner as to prevent some enthusiastic partizan or another, lending a carriage of some kind to a voter, whether it was a costermonger's barrow or some other vehicle, for the purpose of taking a neighbour to the poll. The corollary of the suggestion was that an election day in this country should be a day of national fast and humiliation. The public-houses were to be shut up, persons were not to go out in their carriages, and the livery stable-keeper was not to go on with his ordinary business. The livery stable-keeper was not to be allowed to earn money on the election day. He was to be deprived of the means of earning his living, and he (Mr. W. H. Smith) was not sure that even the eating house keeper would be allowed to take in customers. The result of all this would be that the Government would succeed in producing a code which would be disregarded on all sides, and would have to be repealed in the course of a year or two.

said, he wished to make a final appeal to his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, who must have observed ere this that the proposal he had made was not likely to command the assent of the Committee in such a way as to meet, at all events, the objections on the Liberal side of the House. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. W. H. Smith) had, no doubt, indicated very clearly that the effect of this Bill would be to put a stop, during the election day, to some of the ordinary amenities of life. On the day of the election, nobody, however distantly associated with the candidate, was to be allowed to treat his friend, or do anything which by any means could be construed into a corrupting influence. If they enabled gentlemen by means of their carriages to take their more humble neighbours to the poll to vote for a certain individual, they were simply empowering gentlemen to that extent to exercise a corrupting influence. They could not possibly prevent some slight influence of this kind being exercised—an influence which might not be considered absolutely pure. What he understood they were trying to do in this Bill was to prevent the employment of carriages as an undue influence for the purpose of directing the action of voters. He (Mr. Rylands) did not hesitate to say—and it was well that this should be understood—that unless this clause was amended in the way now proposed, it would be quite competent for a candidate to buy up all the second-hand carriages in his neighbourhood from the different carriage proprietors for the purpose of conveying electors to the poll. Of course, if such a thing as that were done some convenient mode could easily be found by which the conveyances could be re-sold to their original proprietors. Such a thing was quite possible under this Bill, and to his mind the Government were bound to deal with the question in such a way that if a man used his own carriage he should be precluded from purchasing or acquiring possession of any other conveyances for the purpose of the election. He thought that if they did away with the use of conveyances at all they should do away with the facilities that individuals might have for using their own conveyances. He trusted the hon. Member for Newcastle would withdraw the Amendment, and allow them to take a Division on that of the hon. Gentleman the Member for South-East Lancashire (Mr. Leake).

said, they had only got to the 6th clause after the long period they had devoted to the measure. The subject they were now discussing had been quite fully debated, and a majority of almost two to one had declared in favour of saving their own pockets, and practically disfranchising a portion of their own constituencies. He deeply regretted that they had arrived at that decision, although he had, at the same time, admitted that there was a great deal to be said in favour of limiting the inordinate expenses of elections. So far as he was capable of understanding the Amendment, if it was carried it would be perfectly legitimate for a man to convey one elector to the poll; but it would be a crime or a misdemeanour for him to convey two or three. With all possible respect to the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen)—and there was no man in the House whose ability and independence he had a higher opinion of—he considered that the proposal was not one which the Committee should accept.

(who rose amidst cries of "Divide") said, if the Committee would allow him to say a few words upon this subject he would promise not to intervene for more than a few moments. He did not often trouble the Committee, and therefore he trusted that, with their usual courtesy, they would grant him their indulgence. He entirely sympathized with the object of his hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle, but believed that as the proposal was drawn it would go very far beyond that object. It would be simply intolerable if an elector was not to be allowed to convey his neighbour to the poll on the morning of an election. In his own case, for instance, he should be prevented from taking his own son with him in his carriage to the polling place. What he should propose to the hon. Member for Newcastle would be this—that after the word "carriage" he should insert in his Amendment "but this shall not prevent any person from using his own carriage for a single journey during the day." The effect of the Amendment, unless these words were inserted, would be to allow an elector to take a neighbour before breakfast to the poll, another after breakfast, another at lunch time, and another at dinner time, and in this way to make as many journeys as he possibly could, provided that he did not take more than one person at a time. The object of the hon. Member for Newcastle was, no doubt, to obviate the advantage which the rich man had over the poor man by the fact of his possessing carriages.

said, he wished to have a very simple question answered. Take, for instance, the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. J. Howard), who might go to the poll in his carriage. He would be driven there by his coachman, and consequently the coachman would go with him; would he and the coachman, if the latter voted, be guilty of a corrupt practice?

said, he hoped he was correct in understanding that the Attorney General intended to bring up a new clause on this subject. Would the Committee excuse him for suggesting to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General that the principle involved was one of great importance, and the principle to which he wished to allude was this—that the system of uniformity in the franchise had never yet been admitted into the electoral arrangements of this country. He was happy to say that during the passing of the last Reform Bill, with the concurrence of a large number of Gentlemen who then sat on the opposite side of the House, he (Mr. Newdegate) succeeded in adding a number of seats to the county constituencies. This was done in opposition to the Leaders on both sides of the House, and he hoped the Attorney General would not forget this fact in drafting his clause. In the county constituencies of this country there was a union in the representation of labour and property—if such property was dis- tinguished from a mere working man's property—and in framing his clause the hon. and learned Member would have an opportunity of either abandoning or continuing that distinction which was yet characteristic of the Constitution of the country.

said, the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) had informed the Committee that the aim of his Amendment was to strike at the wealthy colliery owners and manufacturers; but he would remind the hon. Member that in Ireland they had neither the one nor the other. He (Mr. Shell) should vote against the Amendment.

said, that, as an Irish Member, he should also vote against the Amendment.

remarked, that he had had no opportunity for some time of saying that which he was anxious to say—namely, that as it was the general wish of hon. Members on that side of the House that he should not persist in his Amendment, he would withdraw it, and let the decision be taken upon the next Amendment on the Paper, which was not quite so strong as his.

Does the hon. Member wish to withdraw his Amendment? [Cries of "No, no!"]

intimated that it was his wish to withdraw the Amendment.

Is it the pleasure of the Committee that the Amendment be withdrawn? [Cries of "No, no!"]

said, he had on the Paper the following Amendment, to insert after Sub-section (c) the following words:—

"No person shall lend a carriage or horse to any candidate, election committee, or agent, or to any other person for the purpose of conveying voters to and from the poll, and every person lending or borrowing a carriage or horse for the conveyance of voters to or from the poll shall be guilty of an illegal practice; no carriage licensed to ply for hire, and no carriage or horse kept or ordinarily used by any jobmaster or other person for hire, shall be used by the owner to convey voters to or from the poll, and any owner who shall so use such carriage or horse shall be guilty of an illegal practice, and anyone who shall lend or borrow such carriage or horse for the conveyance of voters to or from the poll shall be guilty of an illegal practice."

This Amendment had somewhat changed its complexion since they had entered the House, in consequence of the promise of the Attorney General to bring up a clause. That promise was perfectly satisfactory to him (Mr. Leake) and those who thought with him that the lending of carriages ordinarily kept for hire should be prohibited. Therefore, so far as that part of the Amendment which referred to carriages and horses kept by jobmasters was concerned, he should not propose it. However, with few words, he begged to put forward the first part of his proposition. It was aimed, as the Committee would perceive, at the systematic lending of private carriages to any candidate, election committee, or agent, for the purpose of taking the voters to the poll, which was an evil all Members very seriously suffered under. The use of carriages in this way involved the employment of men on the boxes to show the drivers where the voters were, and it originated a large number of electioneering oppressions which Members desired to put a stop to. It seemed to him impossible, in the present feeling of the Committee, to altogether prohibit the private use of a man's own carriage or conveyance. The difference between his proposal and that of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) was that he left intact the power and privilege of a private owner to take voters to the poll from the beginning to the end of an election, so long as he took them himself. Seeing that his (Mr. Leake's) proposal contained that limitation, he thought the Committee would have no difficulty in accepting it.

rose to Order. He wished to take the Chairman's opinion upon this point. The hon. Member had stated that he intended to confine his Motion to the first part of the Amendment on the Paper. Would the hon. Member be in Order in adopting such a course?

said, he was hesitating as to whether he was not obliged to stop the hon. Member, as his proposal very much resembled an Amendment which had just been negatived.

said, he would call the Chairman's attention on that point to the marked difference between the proposal of Ids hon. Friend and that which the Committee had just negatived. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) proposed that any person who lent his own carriage or provided any other carriage to convey voters to or from the poll should be guilty of an offence; whereas his hon. Friend said that no person should lend a carriage or horse to any candidate, election committee, or agent, or other person for this purpose. There was nothing in the Amendment which had been negatived by the Committee. He admitted that later down there was a portion of the Amendment which had been negatived, and which, if it reflected the general character of the Amendment, would make the proposal out of Order; but there was certainly a distinction between the proposal to lend a carriage to a candidate, or agent, or committee, or any other person and using one's own carriage.

I did not say the Amendment was entirely out of Order. I said it resembled very much the Motion just negatived, and that I was hesitating whether I ought not to point out to the hon. Member that resemblance.

suggested that in the interest of saving time it would be as well to allow the first part of the Amendment to be put. It was clear that the question raised by the Amendment must be formally decided by the Committee, though it was immaterial whether it was decided upon the present Amendment, or upon that of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen). He hoped the Division was now prepared to go to a Division upon the question.

said, he hoped the Committee would not think of taking a decision on this Amendment, because it was not in accordance with the ground upon which the House of Commons was usually in the habit of coming to a Division—namely, the ground of common sense. If it passed this Amendment, it would be solemnly and deliberately, in the face of the country, enacting a most transparent sham. It would be ridiculous to say that no person should lend a carriage or horse to any candidate.

I rise to Order. The Amendment has not yet been put from the Chair.

I understood that the hon. Member (Mr. Leake) was about to move his Amendment.

I will move my Amendment, and then read the terms of it.

We have got the terms of it.

Does the hon. Gentleman move the second part of his Ammendment?

No; I do not.

said, he had been going on to say, when interrupted, that the Liberal section of the House of Commons appeared to be anxious to redress a fancied inequality between the rich and the poor man; and they, therefore, came forward with every appearance of generosity and liberality to say that they would prohibit the use of carriages at elections, because they imagined that the rich man who would convey voters to the poll in his own carriage would, as a rule, lean to the Conservative side, whereas the poor man, who had no carriage in which to drive a voter, would, in most eases, belong to the Liberal Party. They imagined that while the Conservative voter would be driven to the poll, the Liberal voter would have to trust to his legs to get there. That was the ground upon which the Liberal Party, headed by the Attorney General, were assuming their present noble attitude. They proposed to solace their consciences with this Amendment, to which he would draw the attention of hon. Members not belonging to the Liberal Party.

"No person shall lend a carriage or horse to any candidate, election committee, or agent, or to any other person for the purpose of conveying voters to or from the poll, and every person lending or borrowing a carriage or horse for the conveyance of voters to or from the poll shall be guilty of an illegal practice."

That was to say, that a man owning a carriage or carriages could convoy voters to or from the poll as much and as often as he liked, and so long as he did not go through the form of lending these carriages to the candidate there should be nothing improper in the practice. Let them mark how absurd this would be. The use of carriages would be as free and unrestricted as possible. The Attorney General, if he were a candidate, would have six or seven carriages, and would be able to convey any number of voters to the poll so long as he did not "lend" a carriage or horse to any candidate, election committee, or agent. Would those who supported the Amendment explain what they meant by the word "lend?" Did it mean that there was a legal document, or a formal offer of the use of the carriage for the day, or for a certain time for a consideration; or did it mean nothing at all, and that the owner of the carriage might convey voters to the poll as often as he pleased, as long as he did not go through the form of lending it to a candidate, election committee, or agent? Did not every hon. Member see the humbug of this matter? They had the Liberal Party, as he had said, with the Attorney General at its head, saying that they wanted to put a stop to this distinction between rich and poor, and under cover of this sham they were saying that they had put a stop to the inequality, and that henceforth the rich and poor man would be placed on an equality. If, after this exposure of their intentions, the Liberal Party insisted on this Amendment, they would only be increasing the confusion which upon these questions they were covering themselves.

said, he had stated that the Government could not accept the principle contained in this Amendment, and he was rather surprised to hear the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) attack them and the Liberal Party as he had done on the ground that they were adopting this Amendment as a sham. They had stated that they could not endorse the views entertained by the hon. Member who had brought forward the original Amendment, and that a Division should be taken upon the present Amendment in order to gather the views of the Committee upon the matter. He trusted that hon. Members would now allow them to proceed to a Division.

wished to point out to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney Gene- ral that it was of no use making appeals to the Committee if he did not stick to his guns. If the hon. and learned Gentleman had continued in the position in which he was on Tuesday when the Committee separated, there would have been no difficulty about this question at all, as they were quite prepared at that time to go to a Division. What, however, had happened now? Why, when the hon. and learned Gentleman was challenged by hon. Members below the Gangway, he put forward the extraordinary statement that he was in the hands of the Committee, and that he wished to follow not the principle which the Government had hitherto adopted, or any principle that was in his own mind, but simply that which might be agreeable to the Committee. Then the hon. and learned Gentleman threw down on the Table an Amendment which was exceedingly objectionable to him (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) and to hon. Members sitting near him; but in all probability, when it came to be argued, it would be found to carry out the views of hon. Members below the Gangway on the other side of the House. However, it was not to say this he had risen, but simply to protest against this backwards and forwards policy. Surely the hon. and learned Member had had plenty of time to consider the matter, and to make up his mind what he was going to do.

wished to ask the Mover of the Amendment whether he considered that a person who lent a tricycle to another person for the purpose of proceeding to the polling place would come within the scope of the Amendment?

resumed the Chair. Message to attend the Lords Commissioners;— The House went;—and being returned;— Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to several Bills.

The next two Amendments are in the name of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). But it seems to me that they apply generally to the cost and sale of articles, and to matters of trade during an election, and that they do not properly refer to any corrupt practices; nor do they even state that the expenditure is incurred by the candidate. Therefore it does not seem to me that these expenses in any way come under the purview of the Bill. Certainly the first Amendment does not, and the second, which relates to the expenditure incurred in making provision for ballot boxes, would be more properly introduced into the Ballot Act. I should not, therefore, consider that it would be in Order to put either of the hon. Member's Amendments from the Chair.

wished to submit that the first Amendment was in Order.

Does the hon. Member rise to a point of Order?

said, he did. He contended that the first Amendment was in Order in this way. [Cries of "Order!"]

I have already ruled that the Amendment is irregular, and cannot be put. If the hon. Member has any point of Order to raise I am ready to hear him; but I cannot hear him in support of the Amendment.

wished to remark, on the point of Order, that one of the most common forms of corruption consisted in paying excessive prices for things that might be legally required, and he thought the object he had in view in bringing forward the Amendment was perfectly within the scope of the present measure. It must be well known that one of the most direct means of corruption was the practice of paying extravagant prices for goods and services which might not be of an illegal nature in themselves. He, therefore, submitted that the first Amendment was not irregular in providing for the insertion of the following Sub-section—

"No payment shall be recoverable for any work done, services rendered, or goods supplied during the progress of any election contest at any higher rate than the usual charges for similar work, services, or goods in ordinary times; in all cases when a claim is made or an account furnished at twice what is fair no costs shall be allowed to the plaintiff, and the Court may order the costs of the defendant to be deducted from the amount decided by the Court to be due; in all cases when three times or upwards of a fair price is asked no payment whatever shall be recoverable, and in case proceedings are taken the plaintiff will be liable for the costs of the defendant."

In regard to the second Amendment, he proposed in the same clause to insert another sub-section to provide that—

"When ballot boxes and other apparatus have been paid for by candidates for county elections, they shall be lodged in the custody of the sub·sheriff for the time being, and shall be supplied for the use of future elections without charge to the candidates, except for necessary repairs; and, notwithstanding the maximum limit for fitting up polling booths, furniture, hire of rooms, &c., it will not he competent for any returning officer to pay more than is reasonable or fair for such necessaries, or be able to recover more than is reasonable or fair for same."

Perhaps the Amendment might more reasonably come under the Ballet Bill, if that Bill came before a Committee during the present Session. But, certainly, in regard to the first proposal he respectfully submitted that it very properly raised an important question in regard to a most common form of corruption, and was not, therefore, irregular. [Cries of "Order!"]

The Amendment does not seem to me to be one which I can put; and, in my opinion, it is clearly out of Order.

said, he wished to move an Amendment which was not upon the Paper. He proposed to make a slight change in the first paragraph of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar); and he would move—

"That any payment for any work done, or services rendered, or goods supplied during the progress of an election contest at any higher rate than similar work would be done for, at any other time, shall be deemed to be an illegal and corrupt practice."

I am unable to put that Question. It seems to me to resemble almost in actual words the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), which I have already ruled to be out of Order.

in the absence of the right hon. Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross), wished to move an Amendment of which the right hon. Gentleman had given Notice—namely, in line 30, to insert the word "knowingly." The clause would then read—

"Subject to such exception as may be allowed in pursuance of this Act, if any payment or contract for payment is knowingly made in contravention of this section either before or after an election," &c.

said, he accepted the Amendment, and he intended further on to submit a clause to relieve innocent persons from penalties which they might have incurred inadvertently; or, rather, he intended to extend the clause already in the Bill in regard to other illegal practices. he made this statement now in order to show that in this direction, and also in regard to other matters, he wished to do all he could to prevent any serious consequences falling upon an innocent person.

moved, in line 31, after the word "before," to insert the words "the issuing of the Writ." he was not quite sure that the clause as it had now been altered did not accomplish what he desired. The point which he wished to raise by the Amendment had reference to the expenditure which might have been going on for weeks or months previous to the election. For instance, he wanted to provide that the extensive preparing of canvassing books or other expenditure in that direction should be deemed an illegal expenditure if it took place before the issue of the Writ. But probably the Attorney General might say that the insertion of the word "knowingly" embraced all he had in view. He would, however, propose the Amendment, in order to afford an opportunity to the Attorney General for explanation.

said, he did not quite apprehend what the hon. Gentleman meant by saying "before the issuing of the Writ." An Amendment to that effect might apply to the very day before the issuing of the Writ. He hoped his hon. Friend would not press the Amendment.

said, the Amendment was really the same in effect as that which was moved at au early stage of the Bill by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Raikes)—namely, to fix the particular time at which the election might be said to have begun. In the case of the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the Committee came to a decision that it was impossible to fix a time.

said, he thought the Amendment they had already agreed to did accomplish what he desired, and he would, therefore, not press the Amendment.

said, he presumed the word "knowingly" would be held to apply to anything that might occur after an election?

Yes.

said, if that were really so, the clause would be most objectionable, and would leave a loophole open for corruption. He thought the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) was a very fair one. If they proposed to convict a person of illegal practices, they ought to show that the acts which constituted the illegal practices were committed knowingly. He did not think the onus of proving that the act could have been known to the candidate should be thrown upon the person prosecuting.

asked if the hon. Member was in Order in discussing a question which had already been decided?

said, the remarks of the hon. Member were not out of Order.

said, that, if the hon. Member who had interrupted him had read the Amendment, and knew anything of law, he would not have been so ready to interrupt. He had no doubt the hon. Member would have been more patient if he (Mr. Callan) had been entering into a disquisition upon railway matters, and had been pointing out the best and easiest means of grinding down the rights of the public. He thought the President of the Local Government Board would fully appreciate the point he was desirous of raising—namely, whether, if the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) was withdrawn, the word "knowingly" would apply equally to the time before, during, and after an election. He wished to emphasize the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newcastle, because he thought that by saying it should apply to anything that had occurred long before an election was ridiculous; and it ought to be confined to what occurred during or after an election. Unless the Amendment were adopted, a loophole would be left open for corruption, which he was satisfied the Attorney General did not desire. He did not see what substantial objection the Attorney General could have to the Amendment, and he hoped he would accept it.

wished to move an Amendment which had been placed upon the Paper by the right hon. Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross). It was one of several Amendments, which all hung together, and one of which had already been agreed to. The present proposition was to insert, in line 34, after the word "contract," the words "knowing the same to be in contravention of this Act." The section would then read—

"Any person receiving such payment, or being a party to any such contract, knowing the same to be in contravention of this Act, shall also be guilty of an illegal act."

moved, in page 3, to leave out the whole of Sub-section 3, which provided—

"That where it is the ordinary practice of an elector to allow for payment the use of any house, land, building, or premises, for the exhibition of bills and advertisements, or it is the ordinary business of an elector to exhibit for payment bills and advertisements, a payment to or contract with such elector, if made in the ordinary course of business, shall not be deemed to be an illegal practice within the meaning of this section; but such elector shall be deemed to be employed for reward for the purpose of the election, within the meaning of the enactments mentioned in Part Two of the Third Schedule to this Act, and accordingly shall not be entitled to vote, and if he votes his vote shall be void."

The hon. Member said, his reason for moving the Amendment was that last Session the House agreed to the principle that, under no circumstances whatever, should an elector who received payment for services, or any act done by him during the election, be allowed to take any part in the election. That seemed to him to be really the main principle of the Bill of last year; and in moving the rejection of this sub·section he was anxious to raise that question at once. He had put down, further on in the Bill, Amendments which would raise the question again; but this was the thin end of the wedge, and if the Committee were of opinion that no elector should receive payment, under any circumstances, during a contested election, then he asked them to support him in this proposition. He knew it would be argued against him that electors in such a position were to be deprived by the Bill of the privilege of' voting; but, on the second reading of the Bill, he had mentioned' to the House that such a provision would have very little practical effect. It had happened in his own case, and he believed it had happened in other cases, that the object of a candidate would be to engage for hire certain voters whom he knew to be against him. That happened to himself when he stood for the borough of Athlone; and it was likely to happen again in many other constituencies, and for that reason he begged to move the omission of the whole of the sub-section.

said, he thought it would save time if the hon. and learned Attorney General would answer a question he wished to put to him. The sub-section spoke of payments and contracts with an elector, in the ordinary course of business. He did not quite understand what that meant. How long back did it refer to? How many elections might there have been going on? Suppose it had been done at the last election, would that be sufficient? He was afraid the clause, as it stood, would give rise to no end of litigation. Supposing a person actually occupying particular premises had gone away, and a new person had come in, would the words "ordinary course of business" still apply to the person who succeeded? He did not profess to be a lawyer, or to understand legal terms; and, therefore, he should like to know whether this was an ordinary mode of expression in an Act of Parliament?

said, the sub-section was intended to cover a case such as that of Willing, the advertising agent, who let hoardings for the exhibition of bills. Several speakers the other day, in discussing an earlier sub-section, pointed out that some such provision must be made, and that was the effect of the debate which occurred last year. The principle of the Bill was that, where an elector was employed, he was employed of necessity, and he was not to vote, and this sub·section forbade him to vote. In answer to the question of the noble Lord as to whether the disability would attach to the premises or to the individual, he took it that it would follow the individual, and not the premises. It would depend upon the business of the individual. In regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Sheil), if he followed the hon. Member's arguments correctly, he understood him to point out that the insertion of this sub-section would be in conflict with the general principle of the Bill.

said, it would be in conflict with the principle of the Bill of last Session.

said, he thought not. The Bill of last Session laid it down as a general principle that where an elector was employed and paid he was not to vote, and the adoption of the present sub-section would still prevent an elector, under the same circumstances, from voting. Seeing that there was this restriction in the clause, he did not think it necessary to accept the Amendment. It was not a new subject, but one that had been discussed before, and a necessity for some such provision had been fully admitted.

said, the right hon. Gentleman was of opinion that some sub-section of this kind was necessary, and he had given as an illustration the business of Mr. Willing. Now, he (Mr. Ritchie) understood that Willing carried on a business in which he contracted for placing advertisements generally on hoardings. He thought there should be no misunderstanding as to what was prohibited under the clause. He would mention a case, and he would ask if it would come under the sub-section. He knew there were many persons in his own constituency who let the upper part of their houses for the purpose of having them placarded with bills of all kinds; and he wanted to know if the case of such men would come under the clause in the event of notices connected with the election being stuck up during a Parliamentary contest? In many cases the upper part of a house was constantly let for the exhibition of all kinds of advertisements; and would a man be prohibited from using the upper part of his house for a similar purpose during an election time?

asked what would happen in the case of a man who bad only entered shortly before an election upon premises on which this practice of letting advertisements had been carried on for some time previously? He thought there ought to be something put into the clause to protect individuals who occupied the house as well as the owner of it.

said, his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board would be perfectly aware of what was done in the borough of Chelsea and other parts of London. It was not only advertising agents who took hoardings of this kind, but there were a large number of persons in the Metropolis who pursued a business of their own in the house, but whose ordinary practice it was to let the outside of the house for advertising purposes. He saw the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) in his place, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman would bear him out that even in Westminster, where they were now situated, it was the ordinary practice of a very large Humber of persons to put up beards or placards in front of the house, and to receive some slight payment for doing so. Now, it was very clear that if they left in the words "ordinary business," they would not only include an advertising agent, but would leave the door open to an elector to say—"If you will allow me two, three, or four shillings a-week, or whatever you like, I will exhibit your notices;" and, as they all knew, that was a most insidious mode of bribery. He thought if the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Shell), instead of moving to leave out the entire sub-section, would. Allow the words "the ordinary business," or "the ordinary course of business," to be struck out, he would accomplish all that he desired. He (Mr. Labouchere) was certainly of opinion that some limit ought to be put upon the practice.

wished to put a question on a point of Order. The proposal before the Committee was to leave out the whole of the sub-section; but he (Mr. Lewis) had an Amendment later on to leave out only part of it.

said, the Question he had put was, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."

in reply to the observations of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) and the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie), said, that, undoubtedly, if the practice of letting out promises for electioneering notices and advertisements during a contest was resorted to on a large scale, it would come under the head of bribery.

said, he had never seen so plainly the advantage of living in London or Chelsea or the City of Westminster as he did now. He found in the Bill of the President of the Local Government Board 11 lines constituting this sub-section, inserted for the legalization of certain practices in London, Chelsea, and Westminster, which were corrupt practices in the ordinary acceptation of the term. They were told that this Bill was a Bill to reduce the expenditure incurred at elections, and yet these 11 lines were inserted so as to leave a loophole for extravagant expenditure in certain constituencies. No matter what inconvenience an elector might be put to, it had been made illegal to hire a carriage for the convey- once of any voter to the poll; and if he happened to be old or infirm, he might be required to walk five, six, or seven miles, or from any more remote distance, to the polling place. That was done on the ground of saving expense. And yet they proposed to make no exception in the case of advertisements. The Government had prepared most carefully a most elaborate provision by which to offer a loophole for corrupt practices in London, Chelsea, and Westminster. He thought the Committee ought not to be called upon to waste their time upon any proposal which virtually amounted to one for providing exceptional treatment for London, Chelsea, and Westminster.

said, he concurred in the view expressed by the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill). he could not help thinking that there would be some difficulty if they retained the latter part of the clause as it stood; and, instead of saying "the ordinary course of business," he would suggest the propriety of making the clause read, "when in the ordinary course of the business of an elector."

suggested that the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Sheil) should withdraw his Amendment, and that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board should be taken strictly at his word, when he said that this sub-section was solely inserted to meet the case of an advertising agent such as Willing. If that was the intention of the clause, and if it was the desire of the Government to put down with rigour anything like the practice of displaying electioneering bills in windows, shops, or public-houses in return for payment, which was a most fruitful source of corruption, particularly in the Metropolis, he thought that the Committee ought to set their face against it. In order to cover the parties whom the clause was intended to protect, he would move, as an Amendment, to leave out the word "elector," and to insert the words "advertising agent." He thought that would exactly, according to the President of the Local Government Board, cover all whom the Government desired to protect.

said, he did not agree with the noble Lord. He did not think that the President of the Local Government Board had said that that was the sole object of the clause. The right hon. Gentleman had only given Willing as an illustration. It would be unfair and ridiculous for the Committee to take up the position suggested by the noble Lord, and to impose a penalty upon all persons who were in the habit of making a considerable sum of money annually from letting their houses, and depriving them for ever hereafter from letting them for advertising purposes. [Mr. GORST: During an election.] An election was the very time when the practice became most remunerative. [Laughter.] He had no doubt the noble Lord who laughed at that would see it was self-evident that on such an occasion as an election the possession of an advertising station was most valuable, and it might be let without the slightest trace of corruption in the matter. His understanding of the way in which these places were let was this—the proprietor contracted with some advertising agent to put up beards on his walls—either Mr. Willing, or some other person—and in return he received an annual sum for the use of the walls. He thought it would be a monstrous thing to deprive such persons of the opportunity of doing that; and it would be equally monstrous, when an advertising agent had hired the walls, to deprive him of the right of exhibiting electioneering notices at an election time. If the clause were only drawn to meet cases such as that of Willing, he thought there was considerable risk of committing an injustice towards other persons, who might be deprived of the right of letting their houses for advertising purposes, and also to an advertising agent, who might be deprived of a good opportunity for exhibiting bills.

said, he thought that the words suggested—"in the ordinary course of business"—would meet the case. It was an ordinary practice for a publican to lot the whole of his house during an election time, and to get paid for it. With respect to other cases where beards were put up outside houses, he presumed that the protection would only apply to places where that practice was carried on as an ordinary course of business. There were hundreds of boroughs where the advertisements only appeared at an election time, and, in such cases, it could not be held to be the ordinary course of business.

said, he thought the best course for the Attorney General to take would be to induce the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board and the other Metropolitan Members to leave the House, and then the rest of the House would be able to deal with these corrupt practices. The hon. Member who had just spoken asserted that it was the practice in the borough of Chelsea for an elector to let the whole of his house; and, if he did so, then he lost his vote, which, no doubt, he would have given to the Tory side. He thought the clause, as it stood, would open the door to an enormous amount of profligate corruption; and, unless the Attorney General would accept the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), or one similar to it, he could not vote for the clause. He would ask the Committee to look carefully at the clause as it stood. Anything might be done by a non-elector, from exhibiting bills to the sending out of any number of cabs he liked; and it was just possible that another way of profitably utilizing cabs would be discovered in employing them for the exhibition of placards. Besides that, every elector made it his ordinary business to allow his house to be used for the exhibition of bills, or to allow it to be hired for such purposes, on the occasion of an election. The President of the Local Government Board said that if an elector did that he would lose his vote; but everybody knew that that part of the Ballot Act was really a dead letter. The electors did receive payment for their services; and they wont and voted all the same, although, no doubt, they might be struck out on a scrutiny; but that was not done in one case out of a thousand, and the consequence was that all persons who received payment went and voted, and would continue to receive payment and go and vote after this clause was passed.

expressed a hope that whatever the Committee did they would keep this clause as strictly as they possibly could. He would support anything that could be done to put down the present extravagant waste of money. Who on earth was over induced to vote for a particular candidate simply because he saw the name of the candidate posted up on a beard? No man was ever induced to vote because he was told to do so by a large placard, except, perhaps, those who were paid for posting the placards.

said, he entirely shared the views of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst). The Bill of last year made it an offence to pay anybody for exhibiting advertisements. That, he thought, was going a little too far; and, therefore, he had altered the clause, and had limited it to a prohibition against the electors themselves. There was nothing to prohibit a non·elector from doing these things; but what the Bill did was to provide that where any payment was made to an elector it should act as a disqualification in regard to such elector's vote. They did not say it should not be done; but they provided that if it were done then the elector should be disqualified from voting, even if it were done in. the ordinary course of business. The noble Lord suggested that the words "ordinary course of business of an elector" should be inserted, so as to make the matter quite clear. That was the intention of the clause, and he was quite willing to accept the noble Lord's Amendment. His hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. M'Laren) asked what would be the case if a man took a house which had been let shortly before for that purpose. He thought the clause would sufficiently provide for that case if it said "in the ordinary course of the business of an elector." Whether a house was taken for the purpose of posting advertisements during an election or not the purposes for which it was let were to be such as to constitute it an ordinary course of business. He advised the Committee to accept the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill).

I wish to point out to the Committee that unless the Amendment of the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Sheil) is withdrawn it is impossible to put another.

said, he would, with the leave of the Committee, withdraw the Amendment, if by that means he could facilitate a decision being arrived at upon the matter. At the same time he did not think that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board altogether met the difficulty which he (Mr. Sheil) had pointed out, and which he regarded as a very important one—namely, that voters might be employed to disqualify them. The Attorney General seemed to be surprised that such a thing could occur; but it certainly had happened to him (Mr. Sheil) and to others. As far as he was personally concerned, he had lost an election in consequence of acts of that kind, and he was afraid it might happen again.

said, that, before the Amendment was withdrawn, he should like to have the matter perfectly clear. He would take the case of a cheese-monger in a Metropolitan borough. The cheesemonger had a shop in a prominent position, and he let the upper part of his premises to Willing. Upon the part of the premises so let there were boards upon which all kinds of advertisements were put. At a time of election would Mr. Willing be able to exhibit the bills of a candidate? That was what he wanted to know.

said, that would not be the case of the cheesemonger at all, but the case of Mr. Willing.

said, the premises would be those of the cheesemonger.

remarked, that the person to whom the money would be paid would not be the cheesemonger, but the advertising agent.

pointed out that the cheesemonger would get payment from Mr. Willing. The cheesemonger was an elector, and the premises were his; and would he be under any penalty for letting the premises to the advertising agent?

said, he would be at liberty to let his premises to the advertising agent.

said, that under those circumstances he would withdraw his objection.

said, that if that were so then the clause would be highly objectionable.

said, that in order to avoid confusion he thought it was only right that the Attorney Ge- neral should consider this point. He had heard a good deal—and, indeed, a good advertisement it had been for one particular advertising agent in the Metropolis—about the practice now pursued at an election time; but, before the Amendment was withdrawn, he wished to call attention to the case, not of an individual or to a limited class of electors, but to a large class of individuals, known as the sandwich boardmen. That might appear to some Members to be a very small matter; but they would be aware that a practice very largely prevailed in some constituencies of employing the electors or the relatives of the electors in carrying around sandwich beards, and in otherwise becoming the medium of advertisements for the purposes of an election. In the clause as it stood the employment of a person in that capacity was prohibited, provided that he was an elector, or unless it was in the ordinary practice of his business or trade. The clause prohibited the use of any house, land, or building for advertising purposes; and he wished to ask the Attorney General whether a man would be allowed to make use of his own person for the purpose of advertising? It might be said that this was an infinitesimal point; but he wished to point out to the Government that in their desire to take cognizance of the interests of the constituents of the President of the Local Government Board they had entirely overlooked one of the most fruitful forms in which electoral corruption was promoted. He would, therefore, direct the attention of the Attorney General, not by way of jest, but seriously, to the case of those electors who engaged to constitute themselves advertising mediums, and to promote the objects of the election, with the view of considering whether that ought to be a disqualification or not. One of the Members for Chelsea had already candidly admitted the employment of electors for advertising purposes, with the avowed object of obtaining their vote.

said, the right hon. Gentleman was labouring under a positive misapprehension. He (Mr. Firth) had said nothing of the kind.

said, he was glad to find that the hon. Member had been the unconscious cause of drawing the attention of the Committee to a serious evil, and of putting the Committee on their guard against it. He (Mr. J. Lowther) had intended to propose an Amendment in the clause; but it was not necessary to do so, because it might be moved in a subsequent paragraph. He would suggest to the Attorney General that in re-casting the clause he should consider the propriety of introducing some words to meet the objection which he (Mr. J. Lowther) had urged.

said, he had now an Amendment to propose. It was not at all clear, since the explanation given by the Attorney General to the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie), whether the Amendment accepted by the Attorney General would meet the object which he (Lord Randolph Churchill) had in view. He would propose, therefore, to leave out all the words after the word "where," in line 36, down to the word "it," in line 38. The words he proposed to strike out were—

"Where it is the ordinary practice of an elector to allow for payment the use of any house, land, building, or premises for the exhibition of bills or advertisements, or."

The clause would then read—

"Provided, that where it is the ordinary business of an elector to exhibit for payment bills and advertisements, a payment to or contract with such elector, if made in the ordinary course of business, shall not be deemed to be an illegal practice within the meaning of this section."

The object of the Amendment was to prohibit payment in all cases where the business was not the ordinary business of the elector, because he saw, in the first lines of the sub-section, a loophole for electoral corruption. He did not think it necessary, if it was only intended to protect the advertising agent, to retain the first part of the sub-section at all. What he wished to point out to the Attorney General was this. If the hon. and learned Gentleman was right in what he had stated to the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie) that payment to Mr. Willing—who was only taken as a type of the class who advertised the addresses of the candidates—would be legal, no matter how the promises were taken, or what price Mr. Willing paid for them for that pur- pose, it was quite evident that they were converting Mr. Willing into a tremendous corrupting agent. Of course, as he had stated, he only took Mr. Willing as a typo of the class. If this course were taken it would be very easy to pay a largo sum of money to an advertising agent, and to say to him—"There are So-and-so, and So-and-so, and So-and-so, whom I wish to advertise my bills; and you must pay them so much for the use of their premises." In that way the candidate might give an advertising agent a large sum of money for the purpose of posting advertisements; and the advertising agent would be able, under cover of such an operation, to purchase, for a considerable sum, the premises of persons whom it might be considered desirable to assist pecuniarily. The Committee were drawing the law very strict, and they were inviting all kinds of evasion in regard to it; and he could see a most obvious evasion of this clause if they were able to make use of the advertising agent as a briber. He wanted to stop the practice of hiring beards and shop windows for advertising. If they permitted the proposal of the Attorney General, the local advertising agent would be converted into the man in the moon.

said, he was really at one with the noble Lord and the hon. Member for Staffordshire in the wish to stop the exhibition of bills in windows. The Bill had been drawn with one object; and the question was how far they should go in making it elastic, so as to allow legitimate ordinary business to go on. What they were now discussing was a very small matter, hardly worth occupying time, whether they accepted the noble Lord's Amendment or not. If they struck out "practice" and inserted "course of business" they would provide all that was necessary; and he hoped the noble Lord would accept that as carrying out all that he wished to effect. The clause dealt with two different things—the ex- hibition of bills, and exhibition of bills for payment. If they decided not to allow any payment to an elector, that would be going further than the Bill went; but he thought the Committee might accept the noble Lord's first Amendment. With regard to the President of the Local Government Board, the right hon. Gentleman had never paid any sum for the exhibition of bills.

said, he had referred just now to the case of a humble class of men whose mode of life had apparently escaped the notice of the framers of this Bill. If one of the large contractors employed a number of electors in the capacity he had indicated, would they become responsible? For instance, a large number of persons might be employed in order to prevent their giving their votes. Was the elector who accepted service during the election, not as a principle, but as a subordinate of another elector who was a contractor, or of a contractor who was not an elector, to be disqualified from voting?

said, this was an important portion of the Bill, and it was to prevent the difficulty pointed out that he had inserted a maximum in the Schedule. There was the great safeguard. It was impossible to trace employment to any contract so as to prevent the carrying on of an occupation, because, if that were done, a person who received weekly wages in a printing office would be subject to disqualification. That could only be met by indirect means in the Schedule.

wished to know what was the object of legalizing the placarding of a vacant house with the address of a candidate? It was, of course, satisfactory to know that the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had done nothing of that kind; and he did not see why, if that practice was not required for Chelsea, it should be required for any other borough. When an election was coming on, great pressure was put upon a candidate or his agent to allow a vacant house to be placarded all over with the candidate's address, which had already been sent to every elector. That opened the door to corruption, whether the owner of the house was an elector or not, and he was sure they could not do better than prevent that practice for the future. It was all very well to say there was a Schedule; but before that Schedule was done with, the amount to be allowed for the ordinary expenses of an election would be largely increased. He hoped the Attorney General would accept the noble Lord's Amendment, and prevent this practice in the future.

said, he also hoped the Amendment would be accepted; but he would go further than the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk.) It was very desirable to put a stop to this practice altogether; and he would ask the Attorney General to agree to strike out this section altogether on Report.

said, the more this matter was discussed, and the more the Government departed from their own provision, the more the Government put themselves into an illogical position in which it was impossible to give effect to any part of their proposals. It was more and more the case that they got over all difficulties by falling back on the maximum. There were many cases in which the maximum was not spent; and he joined in the appeal to the Attorney General to revert to the original intention in regard to the present clause.

said, this was simply a question of the difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. The Attorney General had made a very reasonable offer; and the hon. Member for Gloucester had shown how easily a man might be misled in talking about matters he was not practically acquainted with. Everybody acquainted with the business of advertising knew that whenever there was a vacant house it was seized upon by bill stickers. He was disposed to think that the proposal of the Attorney General met the question. He agreed that everything ought to be done to repress this practice; but he thought the Bill fairly accomplished that.

said, he was very sorry to have said anything offensive to the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles W. Dilke); but what he had said was in joke. He should like to join in the suggestion whether the Attorney General had not better go back to the Bill of last year, and prohibit placarding altogether. It was of no use, for every elector received the can- didate's address by post, or read it in the newspapers, and nobody was likely to stand in the street to read a poster upon a house. Nobody's vote was influenced by those placards, and this practice could only be used for the purpose of corruption.

said, he thought the observation of the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) very unreasonable. What was the whole section but tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee? The maximum scale provided for all these minute details, and pernicious practices upon which long debates took place. The more they attempted to deal with all these details the more they were surrounding the candidate with pitfalls.

said, this was no matter of mere detail; but if the Committee would accept the noble Lord's Amendment, the Government would also be ready to do so.

moved, in page 3, line 42, to omit all the words from the word "section." He wished to know why a man should be disqualified because lie was employed, not provisionally for the purposes of an election, but in the ordinary course of his business, to print the address of a candidate, such a person, he thought, ought to fall within the category of a bricklayer, or a stationer.

said, the clause had been very much altered by the omission of the words dealt with by the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), and the Committee had now greatly limited the number of persons who would be liable under the Bill. He, therefore, was disposed to accept the Amendment.

said, disqualification would only apply to the chief person who accepted a contract, and not to those employed by him; but in the particular business dealt with by this clause there were peculiar facilities for employing a large number of electors provisionally. An advertising agent did not require skilled hands, but could get any number of men for his purpose at a moment's notice. Did the Attorney General still adhere to the view that electors might be employed to any number without forfeiting their votes?

said, he thought he had answered that point very distinctly. That question did not at all arise on this section, which only dealt with a voter and contractor, and not with the persons employed.

said, he thought it was high time to consider this question. The Attorney General, when he said this Bill could be revised, and then submitted to Parliament, took no cognizance of this important point. There was no provision in this Bill for dealing with a matter which he thought might become a fertile source of corruption. An elector might be engaged to exhibit a bill or a sandwich board, in order to prevent his being able to vote; and if it was to be laid down that a voter who was engaged for hire should not be allowed to vote in any case, that ought to be provided for in the Bill. He saw no reason why a principal contractor should be debarred from voting; and he should certainly press the omission of these words, unless the Government gave an assurance that they would deal with the matter later on.

said, he thought the Attorney General was right in assenting to this Amendment. If the right hon. Gentleman wished to raise the point, he could do so upon the question of illegal payments.

could not agree with his right hon. Friend that the present was not a proper time for dealing with the subject; but, at the same time, he thought it would be better to raise the point again upon a later section.

said, he thought the definition of expenses in this clause was very vague; and he, therefore, proposed to amend the words so as to make the clause read—

"When the payment is a payment on account of, or in respect to the conduct or management of an election."

A great deal was to be left to the Judges; but he thought this Amendment would make the definition more distinct than it was at present.

said, he thought the proposal a valuable one, and he should be happy to accept the Amendment.

said, he proposed, as a consequential Amendment, to omit the words "or incidental to."

wished to know, before these words were omitted, what would be the effect of the omission? The clause ran—"Shall be incurred by a candidate at an election." If a canvass was carried on in view of an election some months afterwards, would any such expenditure be included in the maximum, or excluded? It seemed to him that such expenditure would be incidental to, if not at, an election.

said, it was difficult to define exactly what the expenses were; but the hon. Member's words referred, he thought, to an election itself. Canvassing a borough months in advance was a process of which, he believed, the borough would be glad to be relieved; and this clause would limit that very much.

said, the Amendment he now wished to propose raised the same question as that last discussed to a certain extent. The clause had been improved by the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst); but he proposed to insert "as hereinafter defined." This clause proposed to declare that any expenditure in excess of a certain sum allowed in the Schedule was illegal, and that any candidate incurring such expenditure would be disqualified for life from representing the same constituency. That was a tremendous penalty; but in the largest constituencies the risk would be increased, because it would be impossible for a candidate to keep such an absolute control over the operations in a large area as in a small area. As to what was meant by an election if an election always took place at exactly the same time, there might be good reason for saying a man must not exceed a certain amount; but suppose an election was unduly postponed, a candidate was forced to incur expenditure in consequence of that prolongation, and then he would be unseated. He would assume that some Peer died, and his eldest son being a Member of the House of Commons, succeeded him in the House of Lords. Upon that, a candidate, knowing that a vacancy must occur, went down to contest the constituency; but if the new Peer delayed proving his title the candidate must carry on the canvass, and so he might incur expense beyond the sum allowed by the Bill, and for that he might be unseated after all. Was that right? He proposed his Amendment in order to get some idea from the Attorney General as to what was an election, and when election expenditure was to commence?

wished to remind the Committee of what occurred in 1868. Parliament was dissolved in November; but at the Prorogation in August it was known that that Parliament would not meet again, and the consequence was that there was an election campaign extending over two or three months. That might easily occur again, and, therefore, he supported the Amendment.

observed that, although the noble Lord proposed his Amendment, he shirked all responsibility of saying what an election was. He presumed the noble Lord felt the difficulty of defining an election, and what was it that he asked? He supposed the noble Lord asked that some limit of time should be fixed. If they fixed the limit at one month that would allow expenditure for any length of time outside that month. A candidate might go down and for a month make a house-to-house canvass, and employ as many agents as he pleased, and then say he had not done that within the mouth as fixed by the Bill. An arbitrary fixing of time would only enable a man to evade the law. He remembered the case of the Election of 1868, and he thought that was an example that Lad better be avoided; for he did not think the prolongation of a canvass for six or eight months was advantageous either to a candidate or a constituency. He could not give an absolute definition, but he thought there was some rule of construction which might guide them. If a candidate only made periodical visits to a constituency, merely to place his views before them, he did not think that would be au electioneering campaign. No machinery would be required for that; there would be none but simple expenses, and there would be no difficulty in the Judge seeing whether there had been a continuation of action, or whether it was only general. Under these circumstances, lie did not think they could meet the practical difficulty by a limit of time. They had fixed the amount of election expenses, and they could find out by common sense what expense belonged to the election and what did not. He was willing to reconsider that question when they came to Sub-section B, and he hoped that in view of that pledge the noble Lord would not insist upon his Amendment. He should be glad of the assistance of the noble Lord in respect to expenses; but he could not accept this Amendment.

said, the observations of the Attorney General showed how extremely difficult it was to define anything in the Bill. Whenever they came to a point at which the intentions of the candidate had to be considered, they were driven back on the Judge. The Attorney General said the Judge would have to consider this, that, and the other; but nothing could be worse than to leave it to the Judge to determine whether a man's intentions and acts were fair and proper. He knew there was great difficulty in practice at the present time in regard to election expenses. Many Members and candidates made up their returns so as to include all the expenses they had incurred up to the last farthing, and that was the intention of Parliament; but in many cases only the amount spent after the issue of the Writ was returned. That was an evasion of the Act; but he thought the observations of the Attorney General showed the difficulty they were now in. A man might, in order to recommend himself to a constituency, go down, take great interest in their local affairs, and spend a great deal of money; but, according to the Attorney General, if he did not appear in the character of a candidate he would not come within the limits of this section, and he could practically carry on a canvass which could not be so treated. Such facilities for evasion were traps, and were exceedingly injurious to a constituency, and to the morality of Parliamentary life. He did not see how the difficulty was to be got over; but it seemed to him that these provisions tended rather to the creation of offences and of dishonest men, who would make use of the strict terms of the Act in order to attain their own ends. He hoped some means might be found for defining the period at which an election might be said to commence fairly and honourably between all parties, and that he hoped in the interest not only of individual Members, but of purity of election and of the rights of the constituencies themselves. But any attempt at a definition only seemed to create fresh pitfalls; and, therefore, he should wait for some further explanation from the Attorney General before he would attempt to say what course he should take.

said, he agreed with the general principles laid down by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith), who saw the immense difficulty of defining the date of the commencement of an election. The date of issuing the Writ had been mentioned; but there might have been expenses before that time, which clearly were election expenses. For example, he (Sir Charles W. Dilke), in preparation for the Election of 1868, issued his address in June, 1867, and therefore he was before his present constituency as a candidate from Juno, 1867, to November, 1868; and so were his former Colleague, Sir Henry Hoare, and the two candidates of the opposite Party. They wore all candidates from that time, and they returned their expenses from June, 1867. On the other hand, he knew cases in which persons had appeared before constituencies and had incurred no expense at all—they had merely made themselves known in the simplest way. His own case, however, would show how far back the expense might go, and how unwise it would be to draw a fast line.

said, he was afraid that candidates might be led into some trap owing to the connection of this section with the Interpretation Clause. If hon. Gentlemen would look at Clause 60 they would see there was a definition of who was a candidate. A man might spend money and not regard himself as a candidate. It was possible that, when he absolutely became a candidate, he would find he had incurred expense under Clause 7 in excess of the maximum. The Committee ought to take great care, therefore, that they did not lay a trap for honest people, who might honestly believe that they were doing what was perfectly right, and yet, when they came to investigate the matter, they might find they had trusted to the Interpretation Clause, and they had spent money before they became candidates within the meaning of that clause. When they came to make a return of their expenses they would find they bad been mistaken in the view they had taken, and that they had dropped into a pit-fall. He hoped the Attorney General would take a note of the point he had raised.

was understood to say he would guard against such a case occurring.

said, that, according to the statement of the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke), a candidature might continue, within the meaning of this Act, for 18 months. If that were really so, were the personal expenses of a candidate under the Act to be limited? Was there no limitation on the personal expenses of a candidate?

said, there was no limitation upon the sum that a candidate might expend for his legal personal expenses. A candidate might spend what he liked, if he would only return the sums he spent.

said, a maximum which was fair for an election which went on for three weeks could not possibly be fair for an election which went on for 18 months. He hoped the Government would find some means of relieving them from a dependence upon Judge-made law.

said, he thought there should be as short a time as possible between a Dissolution and the constituents going to the poll. When General Elections arose, they could not be in the least certain what would be the influence bearing upon a Prime Minister in deciding how long the election might last. At the time of an Election, what the different Parties were mostly concerned in was which Party was likely to win. Candidates might have very indiscreet supporters, who, in their excitement, incurred expenses and laid traps for candidates which, if they fell into, would lead to unpleasant consequences. He (Mr. James) was inclined to think that the clause would find good work for the lawyers in the shape of Election Petitions. He could see the difficulty and objection there was in defining the commencement of an election; but he was afraid, with the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Lewis), that the Bill would very likely be a hard one for honest men, and an easy one for unscrupulous men. There were knaves and fools, and he feared that, as this clause was drawn, there would be found knaves ready to take advantage of it.

said, he considered the question raised by the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton) was one of immense importance, and that it was in no way met by the answer of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General (Sir Henry James). They were not there merely to pass the Bill, but to make it a workable measure. It seemed perfectly absurd that when an objection was raised they should be met with the answer on the part of the Government that either it would be considered later on, or they should suggest some means of getting the Government out of the difficulty they had created. His right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) gave the Committee his experience in regard to the Election of 1868. He (Baron Henry De Worms) also was a candidate in 1868. he issued his address in the month of August; but he did not think of returning his expenses until after the election really began He should like to know whether, in the memorable case of the Prime Minister's canvass in Mid Lothian, the expenses of the special trains which were used in conveying the right hon. Gentleman to different parts of his constituency were returned as legitimate expenses connected with the election? There occurred in the Bill the words "before, during, or after an election." He would like to know from the Attorney General what the word "before" was to be understood to mean. At what period was an election supposed to commence? Because, after all, that was really and truly the gist of the whole question. He was desirous of knowing what the expenses wore which should be considered election expenses, and when those expenses legitimately commenced. His hon. Friend the Member for Hertford (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had raised an important point—namely, that as to the difference between personal and election expenses. It was very necessary the Committee should know whether a subscription given to a charity would be reasonably considered as part of the expenses in connection with an election. He took it to be the fact that as soon as one election was over the next one virtually began. Whenever a difficulty of this kind arose, and a matter was not defined and not capable of being explained by the Attorney General, the hon. and learned Gentleman invariably fell back upon the decision of the Judges. They had to deal with the Bill on its merits, and if it was so obscure and so complicated that it could not be construed by ordinary common-sense individuals, the Government had better throw it up altogether. He might remind the Attorney General that the Judges had denied that they had any jurisdiction in matters of equity; one Judge had said they had; but the majority of Judges had maintained that they had not. He hoped that before the clause was disposed of the Attorney General would give the Committee some definition, and not trust to Members on the Opposition side of the House helping him out of the difficulty he had got into.

thought that if there was one thing that Members on all sides were agreed upon it was the expediency of putting a stop to extravagant expenditure at elections by fixing a maximum of expense. ["No!"] Well, that was a matter upon which the majority of Members was agreed; indeed, the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Lewis) had picked that out as the one bright spot in the Bill—[Mr. LEWIS: The one workable.]—the one workable part of the Bill. But, according to the hon. Member who had just sat down, they must give up the Maximum Schedule altogether, because of the difficulty of defining when any election began.

said, he did not say so. What he did say was that all they had to do was to find when the actual expenses of an election commenced.

maintained that if they fixed any time they must give up their Schedule of maximum expense, because whatever time they fixed they would have unlimited expense previously. It was absolutely impossible to fix a date without at once providing for the evasion of the maximum expenditure. The hon. Member for Greenwich (Baron Henry de Worms) said they did not want a matter of this sort to be decided by Judges; but they wanted common sense to decide it. He (the Solicitor General) thought this was just one of those matters that common sense could decide. He was certain that if a man honestly endeavoured to carry out the provisions of this part of the Bill he would be subjected to no danger. The hon. Member said also that they talked of the Judges dealing equitably in the matter; but the Judges themselves had said they had no equity power. But it was proposed to give Judges the fullest equity power, and if they did that, was not a candidate perfectly safe—["No!"]—as safe as it was possible to make him? He could not conceive the slightest danger or risk to any person who honestly meant to carry out this clause. It was said whatever maximum they fixed would be an improper maximum if the candidature was an exceptionally long one. A person might make himself known to a constituency for a very limited amount; he might address meetings and otherwise make known his views at very small cost, and when he knew that the total amount he had to spend was only so much, whether his candidature was short or long he could "cut his coat according to his cloth." If he honestly endeavoured to do that the promoters of the Bill had taken care that any accidental miscalculation or mistake could not hurt him. He (the Solicitor General) submitted to the Committee that in doing that they had done all they could practically do. If any hon. Gentleman could improve upon that they were quite ready to listen to him with the utmost satisfaction.

said, the further they proceeded with the Bill the more clearly they saw how absurd and ridiculous its provisions were. Early in the discussion he proposed that an election should be supposed to commence 28 days before the polling day. There was a definition at once, and he put it to the common sense of the Committee—a faculty to which Ministers were always appealing, but which they never used—ho put it to the common sense of the Committee whether 28 days before an election would not be a better time than the 17 months' candidature of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke), or the four or five months' election which was inevitable in 1868? It was all very well for the Attorney General (Sir Henry James) to say—"Oh, I don't approve of the length of time given in 1868;" but it was possible this Parliament might expire under somewhat similar circumstances. It was possible that at the end of next Session, or the Session after, some Bill might pass for altering the electorate—perhaps the extravagant ideas of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) might be adopted. [Question!"]

I must call upon the hon. and learned Gentleman to deal with the Amendment before the Committee.

said, he was trying to do so, and he did not think it would have been suggested to the Chairman's mind that he was not addressing himself to the Question if it had not been for the howl on the other side of the House. He maintained he was sticking closely to the Question when he said that the Attorney General was wrong in saying that they could not have again what happened in 1868. He was saying that an alteration might take place in the constituencies of the country, some Reform Bill might be carried, and it might be the avowed policy of the Government to dissolve Parliament a short time after. Parliament might expire in August—it might be in the interest of the Government, probably for some reason of their own, not to have the election until November. He asked if it was fair to have a period of three months during which election expenses might go on, and compel men to narrow their expenses within the paltry limits of this Bill? Twenty-eight days would be a good time to fix, because when a vacancy occurred an election was generally held within that time. He did not want to make imputations, but the only class of men this clause would help would be the candidates who held cheap meetings all over the country, lecturing to Radical constituencies, making at a cheap rate political promises that could never be kept, and promising things that could never be given, acts to which decent men, who desired the expenses of the election contest to be honestly carried out, could not and would not resort to. That, he contended, was the worst sort of political corruption, of which there was a monopoly on the other side of the House. There were such terms in the Bill that he was sure it would operate unjustly if carried into law.

desired to make a few observations of a strictly practical nature. It had been said that the longer an election lasted the greater, necessarily, was the expense. His own experience was rather the other way. No one who knew anything of electioneering could suppose that if an election lasted for 12 months they must, necessarily, spend even twice as much money as if it only lasted one month. Long elections, as a matter of fact, were often cheaper than those hastily conducted, because the greatest expense was generally incurred in the hurry and confusion of the last few days of an election taken suddenly. At the last General Election he came before the constituency of the Tower Hamlets, which numbered 44,000 electors, 16 months before the election actually occurred, and during those 16 months he did not spend more than £50 or £60. The consequence was that when the election came on, such was their state of preparation that his Party were able to conduct the election at a much smaller expense than would be allowed under the Maximum Schedule of the Bill. It was during the last few days of hasty and excited elections that great expense was usually incurred; and he, therefore, hoped the Attorney General would adhere to the clause in its present shape.

said, it seemed to him that if the Government were in earnest in desiring to put down corrupt practices, it would be logical for them to omit entirely the words "whether during, before, or after an election," because then the clause would be confined to election expenses of all kinds incidental to the election. He wished also to offer this suggestion as a practical way of mooting the need for a definition—namely, that the election should be taken to commence at the time when the candidate issued his election address, because that was the moment at which his decision was irrevocably taken to become a candidate. The Attorney General had said that a man might never issue an address; but, unless the candidate wished to advertise his desire to evade the provisions of the Bill, it stood to reason that he must issue an address at some time or other, when he resolved to become a candidate, and, in his (Mr. Stuart-Wortley's) opinion, it would be monstrous to hold a candidate responsible under this Act for the expense incurred in making his views known to the electors, perhaps, two or three years before an election.

said, he desired to remind the Committee that they were now debating a point which was debated and decided by the Committee some three weeks ago. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) had reminded the Com- mittee of that fact by making over again the speech he (Mr. Gorst) well remembered the hon. and learned Gentleman made on that occasion. Upon the clause relating to treating the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Raikes) proposed that corrupt practices could only be committed three months before, or during, or after an election. The Committee thoroughly considered the Amendment, and it was ultimately decided, by the Gentlemen who sat on the Front Benches, that it was impossible to define the commencement of an election; as a matter of fact, if they defined the commencement of an election by any means whatever, corrupt expenditure would be incurred before the day fixed arrived. They were now only repeating what they had already done; they were now trying to determine the precise date on which an election was to commence. They could not do it; no one could propose such a definition, no one had done it, and no one was able to do it. Certainly, the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Stuart-Wortley) had ventured to do it; but it was simply wasting the time of the Committee to go on endeavouring to find that which it would be a very good thing if it could be found, but which the collective wisdom of the whole Committee had, as yet, been unable to find.

said, he was much amazed at the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, who put himself before the Committee as a practical man having a practical suggestion to offer. That suggestion was that an election should be held to commence when a candidate issued his address. He (Mr. Callan) issued no address; he never addressed the electors, but they elected him on trust, and he hoped he was fulfilling that trust. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce) had also spoken about electioneering expenses as a practical man; he had said that the longer the period of preparation the cheaper was the election. He (Mr. Callan) did not know whether there was any Member of the Committee who would agree with the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets in this; but he (Mr. Callan) was certainly of opinion that if, during 16 months, the hon. Gentleman only spent £50 or £60, his position was a most enviable one. He trusted the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Attorney General) would resist all limitations whatever; certainly if he attempted to fix any limit of time, outside which an expenditure in a constituency would be illegal, the hon. and learned Gentleman might as well abandon the Bill altogether.

said, he should not have taken part in this discussion but for the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) just now referred to an Amendment which he (Mr. Raikes) proposed upon the very first day the Bill was in Committee. The question raised by that Amendment was not similar to the question now under consideration. The proposal he submitted to the Committee on that occasion related to treating, and was to the effect that treating, to be considered a corrupt practice, should have taken place three months before, during, or after an election. If the Attorney General had accepted that Amendment he might have saved himself a good deal of subsequent discussion. Now they were called upon to consider a question which was not identical to the one he formerly raised; the question now under consideration was as to illegal practices. It might be difficult for the Attorney General (Sir Henry James) to find a date at which an election was to commence, having regard to the cost of the elections as defined by the Schedule; but he (Mr. Raikes) thought it would be pretty clear to most Members of the Committee that the expenses in question were certainly calculated to be merely the actual expenses of an immediate election. He was still of opinion that some date should be fixed at which the expenses should not be considered election expenses. If that course were not adopted they would certainly have to make some alterations in the Schedule dealing with the amount a candidate might legally expend.

said, he hoped the Government would adhere to the clause, and for a variety of reasons. One great source of corruption with regard to electioneering affairs was not the work of the candidate at all. There were always a few people who were exceedingly anxious to be bribed, directly or indirectly. The consequence was that a candidate was fleeced in all manner of ways, and the result of making it an illegal practice to submit to be fleeced would have a very salutary effect. There were subscriptions for cricket clubs, yacht clubs, race meetings, and the like. All these things came within the rule of illegal practices, if the subscriptions were given to any large extent. He very strongly objected to subscribe to anything of the kind, and a few years ago he positively refused to subscribe to a race meeting at Cavan. In January last he was in Cavan, and he got some posting done. The proprietor of the hotel was not an elector, or, strictly speaking, if he had been, what he (Mr. Biggar) did would have brought him within the province of an illegal payment. He was charged much beyond the ordinary trade price. Had he paid such a bill, and this Act had been in operation, he supposed he would have been guilty of committing an illegal practice. That sort of thing was exceedingly common. He might give the Committee the benefit of another illustration. Some time ago he and a few friends took dinner in an hotel in the county of Cavan. The person who kept the hotel was an elector, and he charged them at least three times the ordinary trade price. He believed that such a thing as that would have been held to be an illegal practice under this Act; and he considered, in the interest of Members who were fleeced by their constituents, the learned Attorney General ought to resist any alteration of this clause. he was of opinion that one of the good things of this Bill was the discouragement to the levying of black mail on Members of Parliament, or those who wished to become Members of Parliament.

said, that they in the City of London had to go to considerable expense in the way of advertisements—to far greater expense, in fact, than candidates in other constituencies. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General probably only put his address in a weekly paper in Taunton, and, therefore, his expenses in advertising must be very trifling. The candidates in the City of London, however, had to advertise in The Times, The Standard, The Daily News, The Daily Telegraph, The Morning Post, The Morning Advertiser, and several evening papers. [An hon. MEMBER No; not The Times.] An hon. Gentleman said he did not put his advertisement in The Times; he (Mr. R. N. Fowler) supposed that if this Bill passed they would be practically prohibited from doing so. If a candidature was to last for 16 months, as in the case of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles Dilke), the candidate must advertise; and he (Mr. R. N. Fowler) did not see how, in the matter of advertisements alone, they could conduct elections as they had hitherto done.

said, he had not yet heard any practical illustration given of the differences between General Elections—between, for instance, the General Elections of 1868, 1874, and 1880. They all knew that the Election of 1868 was, from force of circumstances, inevitable at the end of the autumn of 1868; there was practically a four months' contest. In 1874, however, they had a totally different state of circumstances. It would be in the recollection of most Members that the Dissolution took place all in a moment, and that the contest in many constituencies only lasted a week—one week as against three months in 1868. Now, what was the case in 1880? There was an intermediate period somewhere between three and four weeks. They therefore saw in the case of the three General Elections he had referred to a totally different state of things as regarded the basis of expenditure; and he had no doubt many hon. Members of the Committee were as much astonished as he was to hear of the extraordinary experience of one of the Members for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce), that the longer the election the cheaper it was. He could only say that it would be a very beneficial thing if the hon. Gentleman could give them all a lesson as to the mode of conducting a cheap election. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Baron Henry de Worms) conducted their elections upon very different principles. The one—namely, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board—returned his expenses from the very first moment he appeared before the constituency of Chelsea, whereas the hon. Member for Greenwich only returned his expenses from the time the election proper com- menced; in fact, his hon. Friend (Baron, Henry de Worms) took a very commonsense course. They saw what a different result might have befallen those hon. Gentlemen had Petitions been brought upon the state of facts disclosed. The 60th clause of the Bill defined the meaning of the word "candidate." He entreated the attention of the Committee to this point. The 60th section of the Bill said—

"In the Corrupt Practices Prevention Acts, as amended by this Act, the expression 'candidate at an election' means, unless the context otherwise requires, any person elected to serve in Parliament at such election, and any person who has been nominated as a candidate at such election, or has been declared by himself or by others to be a candidate."

One was to infer from that that a candidature at an election did not commence until a man was declared to be a candidate. But that was not the obvious meaning of the words "before, during, or after an election." They, therefore, again came face to face with the difficulty which the Attorney General would not meet—namely, the inequality of the circumstances of one General Election as compared with another. He considered that it was exceedingly important that this matter should be dealt with practically by the Government before this part of the Bill was disposed of.

said, that after the wide difference of opinion which existed in reference to his Amendment he would not put the Committee to the trouble of a Division. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had said that this Amendment had been previously discussed. That was not exactly the fact, because ill the one case they were dealing with corrupt practices, and in the other case with illegal practices. A corrupt practice was always a corrupt practice, but was under this Bill not from its being inherently bad, but because it was committed during an election. He, therefore, wished to define the limits of the period during which an act otherwise innocent would be illegal.

in rising to call attention to the fact that the Minister whose duty it is to bring forward the Educational Estimates in this House has never any power of appointing the officers to whom the administration of the Votes is entrusted; and to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that there should be a separate Department of Education,"

said, the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) had a very similar Motion on the Paper, and he would have been glad to surrender his place to the noble Lord; but it would be an advantage that he should speak a little later, and to a larger House. This was no new question. As long ago as 1856 the late Lord Derby said—

"It appeared to him well worthy of consideration, whether it would not be well to supersede the Privy Council altogether in this matter, and to have a Minister as the Head of a Department, who should have no other duties to perform, and who should be, in fact, responsible for the education of the people. … He had a strong feeling that the institution of a Minister of Instruction was desirable, and that the subject should be altogether separated from the Privy Council."—(3 Hansard, [140] 815–6.)

In 1862 the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox) brought forward a Resolution calling on the House to affirm that for the Education Estimates and for the expenditure of all monies voted for the promotion of Education, Science, and Art, a Minister of the Crown should be responsible to the House. Sir John Pakington, in 1865, moved for a Select Committee to inquire into the constitution of the Committee of Council on Education, and urged, in the course of his speech, that—

"The great duty of superintending the various branches connected with the Department of Education should be entrusted to some one responsible Minister—some Minister who should be regarded as a State officer of high authority, who should have the sole conduct of that Department, and be solely responsible."—(3 Hansard, [177] 849.)

The Committee was appointed in 1865, and re-nominated in 1866. They examined numerous witnesses, and among them the then Vice President of the Council and his Predecessor, Lord Aberdare and Lord Sherbrooke; and it was remarkable that those two right hon. Gentlemen gave totally opposite versions of the position of Vice President—one considering that he was practically an Under Secretary of State, the other being of opinion that his position was materially different; one considering that he was responsible to the House of Commons, the other that the Vice President was responsible to his Chief only. Lord Russell, also, who was questioned with reference to this particular point, said that he found it very difficult to make up his mind on the subject, but would say generally that the Vice President was more responsible in certain cases than in others; while, in some instances, when—

"The question depends on the discretion of the Lord President, it can hardly be said that he is responsible at all."

Lord Russell expressed the opinion that at the time he spoke a Minister of Education was not necessary; but he added that the time might come when we should have a national system of education founded on rates. He said—

"Before this could be done there are great difficulties which would have to be got over; but if ever they should be got over, then I say that a Minister of Education would be desirable."

The result of the evidence given before the Committee was that the Chairman, in his draft Report, proposed—

"That there should be a Minister of Public Instruction with a seat in the Cabinet, who should be intrusted with the care and superintendence of all matters relating to the national encouragement of science and art and popular education in every part of the country."

At the moment, however, when the Committee were about to discuss the Report, Ministerial changes took place; and the Committee consequently decided, though with great regret, that they could not enter with advantage on the discussion of the question. They, therefore, contented themselves with reporting the evidence. In the year 1868 Mr. Disraeli's Government introduced a Bill to create a sixth Minister of State. The Duke of Marlborough, in bringing forward the Bill, said that—

"Having fully considered the subject, Her Majesty's Government have come to the conclusion that there is enough work and a sufficiently large field of enterprize to engage the attention of a special Department of the State; and it is, therefore, the intention of the Government to propose that Parliament shall empower Her Majesty to appoint a Secretary of State, who shall have the whole range of educational matters under his consideration and control."—(3 Hansard, [191] 120.)

Lastly, in 1874, the right hon. Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) once more brought the matter before the House, and urged the same view with his usual ability. On that occasion he was supported by the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), to whom the country was indebted for the Act of 1870, the Magna Charta of our educational system. The right hon. Gentleman in the debate of 1874 made a most powerful speech. He pointed out that we had to fight a battle against ignorance, which was a misery to many and a danger to all, and that we were not likely to gain the day unless we had a responsible General. He might quote the Prime Minister himself, who said in the same debate—

"He must admit that there was much to be said in favour of the general principle that the expenditure of money with the view to the promotion of education in science and art should be placed under the control of a single responsible Minister."

It was true that on that occasion the right hon. Gentleman supported the Previous Question; but in doing so he added—

"I am ready to admit that you are entitled to expect that we should show you that we have advanced, and are advancing, in the direction which you suggest."

He had now quoted the opinions of three Prime Ministers, and as many Vice Presidents of the Council, in support of this proposal; and he trusted his right hon. Friend and the House would not think him unreasonable in asking them now to take the final step. Every argument adduced in former years had been strengthened by succeeding events. The funds devoted to education were far larger; in fact, the Education Office might be said to have become a great spending Department. In 1856 the sum devoted to Class IV. was £500,000. Even in 1862, when the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox) brought forward his Resolution, the sum was £2,266,000, which he called an "appalling amount;" but it had now risen to £4,750,000. He did not know what epithet the noble Lord would now find strong enough. But the magnitude of the expenditure was by no means the strongest argument. They were sometimes, indeed, told that there was a Minister of Education, and that the President of the Council was that Minister. But the President did not conduct the Business. Sir Ralph Lingen, in his evidence before the Committee of 1865, told the Committee—

"I have transacted all Business with the Vice President with the most trifling exceptions, and those quite accidental."

The Vice President, he said, "did infinitely more work than the President;" and that, he believed, had been equally true down to the present time. The Vice President, in fact, did all the Office work, and all the House of Commons work. He was in constant communication with the officials, knew the Inspectors, and watched over the working of the Office; and yet the appointments, and, what were even more important, the promotions, rested with the President. Moreover, the President was now to be Minister of Agriculture, and this would surely give him plenty to do. He need hardly say that he was making no attack on the noble Lord the President of the Council. No one expected him to fulfil the duties. He should, perhaps, be told that the present system secured a spokesman in both Houses of Parliament, and that it had, on the whole, worked well. But, considering the character and qualifications of those who had held the Office of Vice President of the Council, no system could have really broken down. The arrangements had worked fairly well, in spite of the system. Of course, he did not know the secrets of the Office; but, if report spoke true, the system had caused great friction, and thrown much additional labour on the Vice President, as well as on the chief officials, and must have often placed them in very difficult positions. No man could serve two masters. The arrangement of the Edu- cation Office could not be compared with that which placed a Secretary of State in one House and an Under Secretary in the other, because there we had one recognized Head, and everyone knew where the responsibility rested. But in this case the division of functions was very ill-defined, and while the Vice President did the duty, the President had the power. Things were done really by the one, and nominally by the other. The Vice President was chosen for his knowledge of educational subjects; but the President was selected on quite different grounds, and yet the real power rested with the latter. He had all the appointments; the arrangement of the staff and the distribution of their duties were settled by the President, and that though the real work of the Department was done by the Vice President. There was, indeed, one way in which he trusted that the duties of the Vice President would not be lightened. He trusted that in any changes which might be in contemplation with reference to Scotch Business, there would be no proposal to separate the English from the Scotch Education Department. To do so would be a great mistake. At present, the Scotch and English experience benefited one another. They acted and re-acted most beneficially. To separate them would create a number of intricate questions which did not now arise. Moreover, they knew that in the ad·mirable staff of the Education Department there were a large proportion of Scotchmen, who worked very much to the satisfaction of the country. Further, under the present system, the Head of the Department was never in that House; and it was a remarkable anomaly in our system that the Minister who was responsible for the appointments and the Estimates was never in the House of Commons. He knew he should be told that Lord John Russell was for a time President of the Council while a Member of that House; but that was an exceptional case, and they all knew that it was very unlikely to recur. Another important respect in which the present system appeared to be inconvenient and anomalous was as regarded the reception of deputations. The Vice President made himself conversant with the question; he was thoroughly master of it; and yet the official answer was given by the President, after, perhaps, a short consultation with his Colleague. Only last week an important deputation came up from Wales on the question of intermediate education—a question to which his right hon. Friend the present Vice President was known to have devoted great attention. But a short answer was given by the Lord President, and the Vice President did not appear to have been allowed to say a word. Moreover, the legislation of 1870, 1873, 1876, and 1880 had altogether altered the condition of affairs. We had now a great national system, the most efficient working of which was of the greatest importance. It was remarkable that ours was the only considerable nation of Europe which had not a Minister of Education. In France, so important was the post considered, that the Minister of Education was not unfrequently the Head of the Government. At the present moment, the Minister of Education, M. Jules Ferry, was also Prime Minister. And yet there was no country in the world where a Minister of Education had such onerous or important duties to fulfil. In other countries, moreover, the grants were generally made in lump sums; and he believed ours was the only one where there was an individual examination of children, with payment by results. No one would deny that there would be plenty of work for a Minister to do. Besides the very important duty of administering the large and increasing grant for elementary education, he would have to consider the various schemes framed by the Commissioners under the Endowed Schools Act. The relations of primary and secondary education were becoming every day more important. At present, schemes were made; but no power existed to ascertain from time to time that they were working efficiently. Moreover, the Government had undertaken to deal with Welsh intermediate education. He would only add, in conclusion, that if his right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Council was, as the country, no doubt, considered him to be, really Minister of Education, then we had the anomaly that the Minister of Education was not Head of his own Office, and was under the Minister of Agriculture. On the other hand, if we were told that the President of the Council was the Minister of Education, then we were in this extraordinary position—that the Minister of Education undertook none of the duties of his Office. In either alternative it was most desirable that a change should be made, and the whole question placed on a more satisfactory footing. It was not necessary to say that he had no desire to press the particular words of his Resolution, if any other proposal in the same direction would be more acceptable to Her Majesty's Government; or, if Her Majesty's Government preferred to suggest a Committee, he would willingly do so; but he was anxious that some step should be taken in the direction indicated by his Motion. The whole subject was as vast and intricate as it was important. There were various other considerations which ought to be urged. There were, however, many hon. Members to speak, and he was reluctant longer to intervene between them and the House. Moreover, while conscious of the imperfect manner in which he had brought the question before the House, he felt that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair), the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton), and others would amply make up for all deficiencies on his part. He hoped the Government might be disposed to look favourably upon the proposal. To use the words of the Prime Minister himself, during the debate of 1874, he trusted we should be able to show the country that we had advanced, and were advancing, in this direction. He thanked the House for allowing him to bring this matter forward; and he sincerely trusted that the Government would see their way to meet them with respect to the Motion he now begged to move.

said, he agreed with the hon. Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) as to the anomaly which now existed between the official and the Parliamentary position of the Vice Pre- sident of the Council. Nothing was more opposed to the principles upon which they generally acted than to impose upon the Vice President of the Council the administration of funds, while he had no direct responsibility as to the selection of the agents and machinery of that administration. In 1864, in consequence of the alleged mutilation of the Inspection Reports, which produced the resignation of Mr. Lowe, a Select Committee was appointed to examine into the duties of the Vice President. Two Lord Presidents, Lords Granville and Russell, and three Vice Presidents were examined, and they all stated that the Lord President was alone responsible for the administration. But since 1864 the anomaly had increased tenfold, for in that year the whole amount expended on education was only £840,000. In 1880–1, it was £2,536,000; in 1881–2, 2,683,000; and in 1882–3, £2,749,000. Thus the annual increase was nearly £100,000, and the Education Vote had thus become a very serious item in our public expenditure. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance that a full investigation should be made of that expenditure, and that effective Parliamentary control should be exercised. It was inconsistent with our general Parliamentary system that such an expenditure should be subject to the control of a Minister who was almost invariably a Member of the other House of the Legislature. The Education Department was every year becoming a great spending Department; and it had the advantage over other spending Departments, that oven the most rigid economists were little disposed to criticize it in an unfavourable sense. It was thus specially desirable that the Head of the Department should be an active and influential Member of the Lower House. Of the anomalous character of our pre·sent arrangements no stronger instance could be given than that of the right hen. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), who was admitted into the Cabinet as Vice President, and thus placed upon an equality with his Chief. Sir Ralph Lingen, the Secretary to the Department, stated, before a Select Committee, that the Vice President did nine-tenths of the educational work of the Office; and yet, while Mr. Forster did this and the bulk of the Parliamentary work, it was the President who dispensed all the patronage. Another disadvantage of the present dual system was that it was difficult, and might sometimes be impossible, for the President of the Council to unite in himself the qualities which went to make a good Minister of Agriculture, and that practical, scientific, and technical knowledge which was required by a good Minister of Education. The views which his hon. Friend had so well expressed were no new ones; but had been expressed by Lord Derby in 1856, and by Lord Russell in 1865, both of whom expressed their decided opinion that, as education advanced in the country, a separate Department would have to be created with a Minister directly responsible to Parliament at the head of it. Then there were great institutions of the country which were managed and controlled by private bodies, and to which large sums of public money were annually voted. No Parliamentary control could be exercised over the spending of those sums. The British Museum, for instance, received £142,000 a-year. He did not for a moment suggest that the money was not well administered; but it was against public policy that such a system should exist, as placed the administration of such funds under the control of irresponsible Trustees. The soundness of the general principle for which he was contending had been admitted by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister himself, when the question was brought forward by the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox). Then there were the National Galleries in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, all of which were administered by bodies over whom Parliament exercised no efficient control. There was, in fact, an utter confusion in our present administration of education funds. In the Scotch Universities, for instance, the Regius Professors were appointed by the Home Secretary; while in the Queen's University in Dublin they were appointed by the Lord Lieutenant. As to the system of endowed schools, and those directly endowed by the State, they had still a lively recollection of the Report on these schools some years ago, which exposed a system of jobbery and waste of something like £700,000 a-year. At that time there was no Minister to whom the care of these schools could be intrusted, and the result was that the House had to delegate its authority to a Commission, which was still in existence. But a delegated authority was always very untrustworthy; it was subject to no external pressure or outside opinion, but was apt to resolve itself either into an easy obedience to its own internal lights and prejudices, or else to a blind submission to the influence of a master mind, who was threatened with no serious opposition or the pressure of public opinion. Schemes were made for the reform of schools; but Parliament had no means of knowing whether the schemes were working well or ill. No reports were made as to the result of the schemes, nor had they any power to inquire into the working of the schools. In short, Commissions of this kind were not sufficiently exposed to the pressure of public opinion. If they were really in earnest about secondary education, it was necessary, in regard to all schools in possession of large endowments, that Parliament should have some power of being able to test whether, in return for their large revenues, they were able to show any corresponding system of educational efficiency. It was idle to hope for any permanent improvement until these schools were rendered liable to some efficient system of control by Parliament. They could not reasonably hope that such a system would exist so long as the Minister who superintended these matters had no direct responsibility, or any real control over the Office or the resources which were at hand. For these reasons he supported the Resolution of his hon. Friend.

said, he had a Notice on the Paper, the effect of which was similar to that of his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London. It ran as follows:—

"That, in the opinion of this House, the recent important addition to the duties of the Lord President of the Council offers a favourable opportunity to put an end to the dual system of administration at present existing in the Education Office, by relieving the Lord President from direct responsibility for that branch of the Privy Council, and by making the Vice President of the Committee of Council upon Education the legal head of that Department."

His noble Friend (Viscount Lymington) had raised another question. All he (Lord George Hamilton) suggested, and all that his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) proposed, was that the Vice President should be the Head of the Education Department; but whether they were inclined to enlarge the scope of his powers and duties in the manner suggested by the noble Lord was another question. He hoped it would be understood that in supporting the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London he did not take the same view as the noble Lord. With that view it was his intention to refer mainly to the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London. The noble Lord had spoken disparagingly of the Lord President; but if any hon. Member believed that by relieving him of all educational work his duties would become nominal, he entirely misunderstood the responsibilities of his Office. The Privy Council had invested in it more latent power than any other Department of State. At the commencement of the last century large administrative and executive powers were invested in it, and the King presided over it. When, little by little, the innovation of a Cabinet Council superseded it, there was still left to it certain inherent authority. No one must, therefore, estimate the responsibilities and duties of the Lord President merely by the ordinary routine duties he had to perform. As an illustration, they were all somewhat startled to see that an outbreak of cholera had recently taken place in Egypt. Supposing that that scourge were to spread, and it became necessary to enforce quarantine regulations, those duties would fall on the Lord President of the Council. Further, there was an anomaly as regarded the salaries of the Lord President, and of the Vice President. As a rule, the salary regulated the duties, but the salary of the Vice President was equal to that of the Lord President; though the position of the former in the Education Department was inferior to that of the latter his knowledge was necessarily greater as to the growing wants of education in the whole country, from his being brought in daily contact with educationalists. The proposal made that night was strictly in accordance with precedent. For some time the plantations and trade of the country were in the hands of the Lord President; but when the Colonies developed and trade grew so as to necessitate separate Departments, the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade were established, but no one would say that, therefore, the authority of the Lord President was much diminished by that dissociation. The present proposal, as pointed out by his hon. Friend the Mover, was practically that made by the Government 15 years ago. In the Report that was issued at that time, two points were made perfectly clear—first, that the great mass of the educational work was necessarily performed by the Vice President; and, secondly, that the Lord President, both by law and Order in Council, was directly responsible for everything done by the Vice President. The duties of the Vice President were entirely confined to education, and were considered in the discussion on the Estimates under Vote 4. If Vote 4 were abolished altogether the Privy Council would not be affected. He had had the advantage formerly of serving in that Office as the subordinate of the Duke of Richmond, whose knowledge of men and great practical experience made him a very pleasant Chief to serve under. Supposing anyone of less experience, or anyone disposed to make a less legitimate use of his authority, ever occupied that position, he believed that the present system would be found to be impossible. The relation between the Chief and the subordinate officials of the Privy Council did not resemble that in any other Department. If, for instance, the Under Secretary of State for India were asked a Question in the House he would give the opinion of the Head of his Department as a matter of course; but the House would not be satisfied with that from the Vice President—they would want his own individual opinion. If one official was subordinate to another at all, he ought to be thoroughly subordinate; whereas, if a difference of opinion arose between the President and the Vice President on any educational point, the President, whose experience of the Department was far less than that of the Vice President, would have to give way, for no Government could afford to spare a Vice President whom the House believed discharged his duties efficiently in consequence of a difference of opinion with the President, who was, as a rule, less well informed respecting the Business of the Office. He thought the time had arrived when they should make the Vice President President of the Council of Education. He did not propose to abolish the Privy Council, but to give the Educational Department a distinct legal Head by making him the Head of that Department of the Privy Council which related to education. He was not altogether without precedent in the proposal he made, for Her Majesty's Government had already recognized it in the Order in Council relating to Agriculture, in which the name of the Vice President did not appear; and there could be no doubt that a sharp division had been recognized between the educational and other Departments of the Office. If the Lord President had at this time very large additional duties imposed upon him, in reference to agriculture, it was a fatal blot to continue to make him responsible for the Education Department. The Vice President had, up to the present time, performed the entire duties of the Education Department, and Lord Carlingford, although a nobleman who had held many Offices, had as yet had nothing to do with Education; and he did not think the noble Lord know the working of their educational system. The change was really very small, and it would be a great relief to the permanent staff. He did not wish in the smallest degree to lessen the influence and dignity of the Lord President, nor did he think the change would have that effect so long as the present form of Government existed in this country, and the same onerous duties continued to be discharged by him; but he had given his reasons why he thought the Vice President ought to be placed in the first class of officials, and he trusted the Government would consent to his suggestion.

I think, Sir, there can be little doubt that this is a question which is not only of great interest in itself, but is very fit for the attention of the House; and my hon. Friend who made the Motion has shown that it has, on various occasions, attracted that attention in a serious form, and even the attendance at 9 o'clock this evening was a distinct proof of the great interest that is felt upon this subject by a large number of the Members of the House. But my hon. Friend will admit, as a candid man, that upon the various occasions when the House has given its attention to this subject, it has not found itself in a position to proceed to any positive and practical arrangement in lieu of the arrangement that now exists. The question I would place before the House is, whether the time for proceeding to make such a change has yet arrived? In my opinion—I do not conceal it—the time has not arrived, and I think it would be an error if the House were to commit itself by an abstract Resolution to-night to a change, the grounds of which, and the character of which, it is quite impossible for us, in the course of this discussion, adequately to examine. Several topics have been raised, to which I will refer with the view to remove them, if possible, from the field of discussion. My hon. Friend thinks there is a great difficulty in the fact that that person who brings forward the Education Vote has not the power of appointing the officers to whom the administration of the Vote is entrusted. My answer to that is twofold. In the first place, in the Education Department there is an arrangement under which the President of the Council invariably communicates with the Vice President, and takes him into consultation on matters of patronage. There is no arrangement of that nature, so far as I am aware, in any other Department of the State. Therefore, so far as patronage is concerned, there is in practice no difficulty whatever; but, at any rate, there is a provision made which gives to the Representative of the Department in this House a power and a control in respect of patronage such as the Representatives of other Departments in this House—not being Chiefs of Departments—in no respect possess. But what is the value of this argument carried to its logical conclusion? The upshot of it is that every Head of a spending Department ought to have a seat in this House. That may be said. But you have got a Constitution to work with a double Chamber. There is one point, and only one, on which I feel I can speak with confidence and even with authority, and that is that I venture to say the House will make a fatal error if it does anything to increase the difficulties of constructing the Government in this House. The construction of a Government is the most difficult work that any public man is ever called upon to undertake, and I may illustrate what I have said by an anecdote of Sir Robert Peel, who said to me the morning after he resigned in 1856—"Nothing in the world shall induce me again to undertake the labour of constructing a Government." But if you are to proceed by laying down cast iron rules, under which the Heads of every spending Department are to sit in this House, you will destroy that discretion and freedom of choice which it is absolutely of importance to preserve if you wish to have Governments constructed that are to be of tolerable efficiency, or to give any satisfaction to the country. To say that not only the Minister of Finance, but the Head of every spending Department is to sit in this House is a principle incompatible with a Constitution founded on the principle of a double Chamber. I believe there is no person who has ever held the Office of President or Vice President of the Council that will say that a practical difficulty has ever arisen in regard to the administration of patronage. In truth, I believe that with respect to the patronage of this Office it is not only desirable, but greatly necessary, to preserve it free from any taint of political influence. I may compare this Department to the working of the Revenue Department in that respect. All promotion in the Revenue Department has been preserved to the nonpolitical Member who presides over the Department, and the present arrangement is of no inconsiderable advantage in this respect, that it has effectually kept all patronage out of the reach of political influence and mere Party connection. It was next observed that a very favourable opportunity is to be found for acting upon an arrangement of this kind, in consequence of the appointment of what may be called an Agricultural Department. The noble Lord appears to think that the President of the Council is a man oppressed with Business; and, if you deprive him of the Business connected with education, he will still have upon his shoulders as much as the strength of any ordinary mortal will enable him to carry. That is not my opinion. My opinion is, that the President of the Council, as he now stands, is a man very moderately worked, and that he is not likely to undergo any increase in his duties in consequence of the agricultural arrangement. The contention is that the bulk of the Business ought to be done in this House; but if the bulk of the Business is done in this House, a proportionate amount of influence will fall into the hands of the person who does that Business; and I believe I am right in saying that it is the opinion of the present as well as of the late Lord President of the Council that the position will be relieved of duty, and will not have additional duty thrown upon it in consequence of the now arrangement. And then it is said that in every foreign country there is a Minister of Education. But did my hon. Friend reflect upon the vital and essential difference of the position of a Ministry in a foreign country from that of a Ministry in this country? Did he reflect that the system of representation in each Chamber by men being Members of each Chamber is unknown in foreign countries; and that there the provision made is usually to this effect—that the Ministers shall be persons extraneous to the Chamber, or, whether extraneous or not, having the power of appearing in each Chamber to give an account of the affairs of his Department? Does not my hon. Friend see that that is a difference so vitally underlying, so deep, and so near to the root of our institutions, that it, in fact, governs the whole question, and that if you live under a system in which you are bound to provide for the representation of Parties in two Houses of Parliament, the conditions are essentially different, and in that respect you can draw no arguments from one to the other? People may say that it is a secondary matter whether Ministers shall have seats in the Chambers, or have a right to speak in the Chambers; but that is not the result of my experience. A great many matters that are called Constitutional changes are, in my opinion, things of much less importance and consequence than that rule of established law by which Ministers of the Crown must be not only speakers in, but Members of one of the two Houses of Parliament; on the one hand, responsible to the Crown, and on the other hand, responsible as the Representatives of the people, or Members of the House of Lords, and having the feelings of the Chamber in which they sit. I think that is a vital difference, and I do not believe it would be in the power of man—you may talk of the payment of Members and 20 other things—but I do not believe it will be in the power of man to suggest a more vital change in the institutions of this country than if you wore to pass a law by which you were to be content with—instead of having a seat in this House—the Ministers of the Crown having leave to state their opinions before you without the responsibility which arises from their being like yourselves, Representatives of the people, and in all respects as responsible as you are. But now, again, Sir, there is a great desire for an effective restraint on the expenditure. But will anybody say there is a less effective restraint upon expenditure in the case of education, so far as the subject-matter admits of comparison, than in the case of the naval and military charges? My hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty simply moves an Estimate to the amount, say, of £10,000,000. Have you, through the medium of his personality, any more effective check over the expenditure than you have over the expenditure of the Board of Education? No doubt the expenditure of the Council of Education is different in this respect from that of the Admiralty, that it is very largely governed of necessity by fixed rules, and that whatever system you establish, it must be to a great extent inflexible. But I will venture to say that the constitution of a Department, whatever may be its weaknesses or its faults, certainly gives to the House of Commons a security of fully as great a control through a responsible person, over the expenditure of a Department, as is given in other cases, perhaps even where the Head of the Department sits in this House, and certainly more than is given where the Head of the Department does not sit in this House. Well, Sir, what I wish to point out is this—that, in my opinion, it may be very unobjectionable; it may be proper and becoming, if it be thought fit, that the House of Commons should institute an inquiry into this subject, and make a careful examination of the facts; but I think that it is plain from the course of this debate that you are not in a condition to proceed with an examination of the facts. The three speeches we have listened to at the commencement of this debate proposed three plans. My hon. Friend who has made the Motion proposes the appointment of a separate Department of Edu- cation. The noble Lord does not go so far as my hon. Friend; he does not propose to take the Ministry of Education out of the Council Office; but he proposes to leave it in the Council Office as a Department of that Office; and I quite agree with the noble Lord that the Committee of the Council is in this instance an essential element in the history of this question. I do not know whether the Committee of the Council practically did much work under the last Government. I do not think it has done much under the present Government; but during the Government of which I was formerly the Head, the the Committee of Council did considerable work; and I wish to point out, as results are concerned, the critical and vital points of that system have not been discussed and settled from the year 1840 up to this time. It is a very important question whether that system should be kept alive or not. The noble Lord thinks that it should be; my hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) proposes the wider plan of the completely separate Department of Education, and the noble Lord the Member for Barnstaple (Viscount Lymington) goes further still. If that be so, I think I have made good my statement, which, perhaps, appeared a little startling at the first moment, that the three speeches with which the debate commenced proposed three plans, and it will be well for the House to know more of the comparative merits and practicability of these plans before committing itself to a broad declaration in special terms that a change ought to be made, and before committing itself to words which would still remain open to great dispute and a great variety of interpretation. My noble Friend the Member for Barnstaple engages in criticisms on the use of delegated authority, with respect to which I do not doubt that they have considerable force; at the same time he will have to learn more and more as he grows older, in what I hope will be a brilliant and successful career, the extreme imperfection of even the best contrivances of human government. I can assure him, at any rate, that after my long experience my opinion of human government, taken at the best, whether in Conservative or in Liberal hands, is that it seems every year that I live to verge a little further from the ideal; and, although it may be true that delegated authority has great faults, yet you cannot afford to dispense altogether with the assistance of delegated authority. Take, for instance, such a question as endowed schools. I think this is a matter for further inquiry; but it is probable that you might find that in dealing with these old foundations there was necessarily involved so much of a judicial element that they could not be quite safely intrusted to the sole influence of political action. You are almost compelled to interpose between the popular change and the important public interests the action of a body which, though I grant it may be open to criticism, as a certain amount of freedom from purely Party influences, and is not liable to the sudden and sharp mutations which may, in certain circumstances, attend upon changes of Government. As I have said, this question is one that deserves the attention of Parliament. I have no desire to withdraw the subject from his attention. I have no dogmatic proposition to lay down in answer to the Motion of my hon. Friend. I could not affirm it, and I should be sorry to meet it with a negative, because I hold it to be a subject calling for more information and for more inquiry; but happily the Motion which is made from the Chair, that the House should go into Committee of Supply, gives to those who think as I do the power to say by voting for that Motion that they do not think the time has come when a definitive Resolution can be framed on the matter. I will venture to offer a few words more on that point, to show that there is meaning in my words. There are three propositions which I think may very fairly be stated to the House. In the first place, I have very great doubt whether, even if we had a plan ready for altering the present arrangements in regard to education, it would be wise for us to make any declaration on the subject by way of Motion at this moment. But, secondly, we have no plan, and I do not think the time has arrived for it; and, thirdly, the subject ought to be a great deal more examined before we commit ourselves to a final opinion whether there should be such a plan or not. On the first proposition, I may say that every Member of the House—which is an Assembly of business men—knows perfectly well that our administrative changes are made piecemeal, and must continue to be so made. A great deal is to be said in favour of what is called a patched house, for most of us find that it is the most comfortable house in which to live. Let the House observe that we are not at this moment quite idle in the matter, and if we have this piecemeal reconstruction we must be content to take the changes in order and in succession. We have proposed to put into action a plan with regard to agricultural affairs; but that plan has not yet received the definite sanction of the House, and it may be reversed by the House. We have prepared, and are about to submit, another plan of administrative change for the better administration of Scotch Business; but we have not yet been able to make it known, and therefore cannot tell what will be the judgment of the House in regard to it. We know, however, that it touches upon the territory we are now dealing with, and I think the House ought to arrive at conclusions on these subjects before committing itself to any general declaration on the question of education. But I come to my second proposition—that we have not got a plan, and that the time has not come for making a plan, presuming that it ought to be made. I would point out to the House that the Business of the Council Office in respect to education has been in a state of almost incessant flux and change. At one time, it only superintended elementary education; but it has gradually come into contact with a great number of other subjects, seine of which are widely and others totally and fundamentally distinct from elementary education, and yet that are more or less similar in subject-matter. The business of endowed schools, of secondary education, the settlement of most important academic questions connected with our great Universities—these are subjects of an order distinct from the mere administration of primary education; and it may constantly happen that you may get the man who is most specifically fit, by pursuits, habits of mind, and inquiry, to deal with primary education, but who, at the same time, would be a very secondary workman indeed with regard to some of those other classes of subj ects. Nor have we yet reached the point when we can say that this process of mutation and extension in the business of the Council Office has reached its close. At any rate, it is very clear to my mind that you ought not at this moment to commit yourself to declaring peremptorily that a change should take place until you see in its fundamental bearings the nature of the change to be made. Now, let me point to one of the most vital questions in this matter, with respect to which I should be sorry if the House took any precipitate step. There is at the root of the contention of hon. Members who have supported the Motion the assumption or doctrine that the Representative of Education should be a Cabinet Minister, and should sit in this House. My contention is, that though they may be ripe for inquiry they are not ripe for decision, a proof of which is that their plans differ from one another. I wish to bring this point sharply to the attention of the House, which, I say again, I am sure would commit a serious error were it now to deliver a definite judgment in the shape of a vote before minute and careful inquiry. I have never served on this subject, except as a Member of the Committee of Council upon Education, in which capacity I have taken part in important discussion and decisions. But there is certainly considerable difference of opinion in this House on the subject. The noble Lord opposite (Lord George Hamilton) has served in the Office, and I may take him as an authority. The right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) served long in it, and carried the Education Act, and, therefore, I accept him as a great authority. Lord Norton, a man of high authority, served in the Office; and there are differences of opinion between them, though they are in favour of the change. There are other authorities who oppose the change, and the House will do well to hear what they say on the matter. There are Earl Granville, who was President of the Council; Earl Spencer, who was President until a recent date; Lord Carling-ford, who is now President of the Council; and, finally, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, with respect to whom I have received the most distinct information that he has a very strong opinion in favour of the maintenance of the present system. I do not wish to go so far as to bind myself to the maintenance of the present system. I have admitted that there are presumptions which might tend in favour of change. All I desire is that we should take all natural and reasonable methods to ascertain, before we commit ourselves, that we know what we mean, and that the thing should be practically beneficial. Perhaps I should remind the House that one of the consequences of the arrears of Business in this House is that we have travelled during the present Session further than has been done at any former period in the matter of promises—of drawing Bills upon the future. No 'doubt, we shall redeem them; but we cannot say that we have any immediate prospect of doing so, and, therefore, it is time that we should be cautious of going further. I do not wonder at the contention of my hon. Friends behind me that this business ought to be represented by a Gentleman sitting in this House; but I entreat them not to force us to adopt a declaration upon that subject. I could wish to have the opportunity of explaining to the House the effect of the multiplication of great Officers of State, particularly if you limit them to sitting in this House, upon the efficiency of the Cabinet. The efficiency of the Cabinet depends in a great degree upon its Members, and there was no more remarkable proof of the sagacity of Lord Beaconsfield than the manner in which he contrived to keep down the number of Members of the Government sitting in the Cabinet. It sounds very plausible to add one or two more Ministers to the Cabinet; but every experienced person knows that the larger the Cabinet the less able is it to do its business efficiently. I am not arguing against any change, but only this particular point as to the increase of the Cabinet. We have already gone far in that direction. There are now no less than 11 great Offices, the holders of which must be Cabinet Ministers. In former times there were not so largo a number of persons sitting in the Cabinet, and it was an immense advantage to have a very considerable choice of Offices, the holders of which might or might not be in the Cabinet. It is impossible to describe all the considerations which make it desirable to maintain freedom of choice with regard to a large number of Offices. As we now stand, I do not hesitate to say that the number of Offices, the holders of which are in the Cabinet, is absolutely inconvenient; and I firmly believe that if the number were increased to 12, or at any rate to 13, the addition, however good, would render the machinery of the Cabinet less workable and efficient. I hope that the House of Commons will not bind itself by a distinct pledge on this subject. Nothing pains me more than when the House of Commons, if it ever has done such a thing, comes to a Resolution which is evidently destined to remain a barren and sterile Resolu·tion. After all, this is a question which must be dealt with by a responsible Government. You cannot settle administrative matters of this kind until they are completely and clearly worked out in all their parts and supported by a clear mass of authority. It may be said of the authorities whom I have quoted as being unfavourable to change that they were all Presidents of the Council. Besides them, I have two most formidable Vice Presidents. There is not a more judicial man in this country on all practical questions of administration than Lord Aberdare, and he sides with the President. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: He was President.] But he was also Vice President; consequently, he has the advantage of looking at the question from both points of view—that is, from a comprehensive and impartial point of view. Therefore, I lay the greatest stress on Lord Aberdare's opinion. Then there is Lord Sherbrooke, who had a very strong opinion against this change. He served long as Vice President, and introduced changes of great importance and value, and I place him, therefore, on a level with my right hon. Friend who carried the Act of 1870. His authority is one that I think the House ought to consider before it commits itself on this question. I wish to say that I have no foregone conclusion in this matter, and that my mind is perfectly open. All that I want to do is to point out that there is considerable danger in rushing to any rash and precipitate conclusion. There is no urgent necessity for incurring the dangers of the change. I cannot honestly say that the work of this Department is worse done than the work of other Departments. If I were to hold that the Vice President of the Council is not a functionary of sufficient weight to represent the Department in this House, there are, at any rate, two things to be said in his favour. He is in quite a different position from an Under Secretary of State. The noble Lord has pointed out that an Under Secretary lies to refer in a much greater degree to the Secretary of State than the Vice President of the Council. The Vice President is a substantive personage in the House, and has to speak for himself as much as for his Department. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER dissented.] That is no inconsiderable advantage, if you take into view that in the system of government it is absolutely necessary you should consider a division of the Ministry between the two Chambers; and perhaps I may add, there is a special necessity in the case of a Liberal Government, which is not so fortunate as to command a majority in the Upper House, that makes it not the less, but the more desirable that its Departments should be efficiently represented in that House. I know of no likely circumstances in which it will not be found necessary to give some share not only of the dignified, but of the working Departments of the Government to the Upper House. The Office of Lord President of the Council is one eminently fitted to be filled by a Member of the other House. It is uniformly held by a man of rank, and almost uniformly by a Peer, for the Lord President of the Council has many duties to perform in immediate connection with the Sovereign. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) says, if you make a man subordinate, make him thoroughly subordinate. I dissent altogether from this sweeping doctrine, which I think neither safe nor Conservative. There is a remarkable instance to the contrary which I will point out. The old organization of the Board of Trade, which Parliament some years ago altered, was of this character; it was represented, not by one, but by two substantive personages. It was under that organization that the whole of our Free Trade system was worked out. The reformation of the Tariff was worked out under that system, the question of the abolition of the Corn Laws was carried, and nearly all the political and economical measures which have since been carried out, except what have been done by the Treasury, were worked out by the Board of Trade. We must not be too ready to go forward and to affirm the proposition that there can be no circumstances of administration in which it may not be found necessary to have two Gentlemen representing the same Department in both Houses, especially when, as in this case, the superintendence of elementary education is allotted to one, and the super intendence of secondary education, of academical education, and the regulation of endowed schools is intrusted to the other. I state these matters entirely as arguments against any precipitate conclusion. The noble Lord who spoke in favour of this Motion seems to be in solitary blessedness, so far as regards the practical statesmen of his Party. The noble Duke who was President of the Council in the late Government is not of the same opinion as himself. I submit to the House, in conclusion, that the time has not yet arrived when we can judiciously set about the construction of a plan, and that when we do set about it there are many points to examine with respect to it which have not yet been settled by adequate inquiry, and by adequate concurrence of authority. If it be, indeed, the pleasure of the House that an inquiry should be instituted, to that course Her Majesty's Government would have no objection. We should freely concur in it, and we should give it every assistance in our power; but I do very earnestly express the hope that the House will not prematurely run the risk of doing mischief—with little hope of doing good—and of considerable and very practical embarrassment, by committing itself to a definitive conclusion upon a matter of great importance which is still unripe for final discussion.

said, he had stated his views so fully on the subject in 1874 that he did not intend to make a long speech that evening. If that question were not ripe for settlement, he did not know when it would become ripe. In 1856 the matter was brought before the House, on the ground that the Vote for Education had increased to £500,000. Now it amounted to close upon £4,000,000. A Bill was then brought into that House by Sir George Grey, and into the other by Lord Granville, for creating a Vice President of the Council; and the reason given for the Bill was that a responsible Minister in this House was urgently required. But, in 1864, it was discovered that he had no responsibility. A Committee was then appointed to consider the relations existing between the President and the Vice President of the Council, and it was found that the Vice President was nothing more than an Under Secretary of State. For a great many years every Prime Minister had been telling them that the question was becoming ripe for a settlement, and that it was time to consider whether we ought not to have a responsible Minister of Education. Four of the most distinguished Prime Ministers had expressed opinions to that effect—Lord Russell, Lord Derby, Mr. Disraeli, who brought in a Bill for the creation of a sixth Secretary of State for Education, and, lastly, the present Prime Minister himself expressed views largely in the same direction. It ought to be ripe for settlement, if it was not. The House ought, now that we spent such enormous sums, to say whether there should not be a Minister directly responsible to that—the peoples' House—for the education of the people. At all events, the Minister ought not to be always in the other House, as he was at present. The education to be dealt with was the education of the people, and, surely, their Representatives were chiefly interested in it, and not noble Lords, who looked down upon them as if from a balloon. The noble Lord opposite, who had spoken with such ability, had cautiously expressed the views of the Conservative Party, and would be content if the Vice President had a certain amount of responsibility. But the Duke of Marlborough had introduced a Bill of far larger scope. [Lord RANDOLPH CHI: But the Liberal Party would not have it.] But the Liberal Party were a Party of progress, and would now go much further. The Primo Minister had quoted Presidents of the Council who were not in favour of the proposal. Naturally they were not. But two noble Lords who had been Vice Presidents, and one of whom was also subsequently President, had expressed different views. The Duke of Richmond had said—"I am the Minister of Education." But the Lord President was not Minister of Education. He was Manager of a large number of primary schools in Great Britain, and of a few schools connected with the Science and Art Department. He was not even the Mi- nister of Primary Education. He had no control over the primary schools in Ireland, where a very loose system was carried out. In that country, especially, which it was so necessary to educate, and where 40 per cent of the people could not read and write, it was absolutely necessary to have a responsible Minister of Education, with direct Ministerial responsibility in that House. There were, in addition to the requirements of ordinary education, large Votes for Museums and National Galleries. The British Museum and those great Galleries were administered by Trustees or Commissioners, with no direct responsibility to that House. Then there were arising Provincial Museums and Galleries, in Birmingham, Nottingham, Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester, Derby, and Glasgow, and those Provincial Institutions asked for the loan of our National Collections. But they always received the reply that Parliament had forbidden them to do so. In this year's Estimates a Vote was put down in their aid. The Vote was sure to increase. These Provincial Museums had a fair right to complain that they were not fairly treated. Then there were the endowed schools, which were under the control of irresponsible Commissioners, and Parliament had a perfect right to ask what those endowed schools were doing for the cause of higher education. Those endowed schools had been re-organized by a delegated Legislature, which had formed them by schemes; but we had no knowledge whether they were looking well or ill. They wanted to know which. Why did Parliament interfere with their ancient modes of working? They found that in England, those endowed schools, with £600,000 a-year, had been taken from the poor and handed over to the rich. Parliament said that they must be applied to the benefit of the people. Had they been so applied? They had no means of knowing. The new schemes might be working well, or they might be working ill; but, as we had no inspection or superintendence in the matter, we were left in perfect ignorance whether this delegated legislation had succeeded or failed. It was from these reasons he had long advocated that they should have only one responsible Department for Education. The House had no idea how much money was spent on education. They voted to the Home Secretary large sums for industrial schools; to the Local Government Board, large sums for workhouse schools; to the War Office they voted money for military schools; and to the Navy, money for naval schools; and not one of these was under the Education Department. Such a state of things was so totally against public policy that its existence at this moment was scarcely credible. He saw, from what had fallen from the Prime Minister, that if he had moved now the Resolution which he proposed in 1879, his right hon. Friend would not refuse it, and he should himself have been satisfied with it. That Motion was to the effect that a Select Committee should be appointed to consider how the Ministerial responsibility under which the-Votes for Education were administered might be better secured. There was nothing in that Resolution which said that the Minister should not be the President of the Council, or that he should be a separate Minister. But he wanted to know why all these Educational Votes were under no one distinct administration, under no co-ordination? And if a Committee of that kind were granted, they should have got one step towards securing that that should be done.

said, that, he did not approach this question in any way from au abstract point of view, and should not say a word if he could not speak from practical experience of the absurdity of the present system, and its injurious effect upon elementary education throughout the country. He had not a word to say against the President of the Council personally or his Predecessors. On the contrary, if such a system could by any possibility have been made to work satisfactorily it had the best chance of doing so under the management of the Presidents of the Council of whose rule he had had experience. They could hardly pick out men more likely than Lord Ripon, Lord Aberdare, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Spencer, and Lord Carlingford to work such a system with consideration and tact, if only the system was capable of being worked with advantage. But it could not be made to work satisfactorily. For 15 years he had gone to successive Vice Presidents with grievances arising out of the present system, and had received the same reply—"We are very sorry for what has happened; but the power does not rest with us, but with the Lord President." But, as they all knew, the practical responsibility for the work to be done did rest with the Vice President, who had to do it. Now he would just take one case, and that the most flagrant. The entire patronage of the Department was in the hands of the President of the Council. The Vice President had nothing whatever to do with it, and was often not even consulted with regard to the appointment of Inspectors, or about their promotion. They might as well expect a man to manage a business with some other person to appoint the clerks, and to promote them without being obliged to consult with the real manager. Why, no man of business who had any respect for his own character or success would undertake to do such a thing for a moment. This matter was first brought painfully under his notice soon after he entered that House as Member for Liverpool. They had then in Liverpool a first-rate Inspector, who was raising materially the tone of education throughout his district by his admirable management, but he was himself constantly pestered by complaints from the schoolmasters throughout the town; and no blame to them, for in an adjoining district grants were given on requisitions very inferior, and the Liverpool schoolmasters naturally felt very much aggrieved to see inferior men receiving larger grants for inferior work. He had had, moreover, to complain repeatedly to successive Vice Presidents of appointments which he could see plainly they had not made and were not prepared to defend. How could a man who had not the real management of a business know how to select and promote those who had to carry out the work? And, again, how could the man who had to carry out the work be really made responsible for it if he had no share in either the selection or the promotion of his agents? And yet upon these Inspectors rested the maintenance of our national system of elementary education. The best way to secure that appointments of that kind should be free from political influence was to place them in the hands of the man who would suffer in case the business was badly done, and that man was the Vice President of the Council. He hoped either that the Government would agree to rectify this system, or that the House of Commons by a distinct vote that night would compel them to do so.

said, he would not detain the House long, because he thought that the question had been well argued, and that they had come to a substantial agreement upon it. It was quite true that anomalous as was the present position of the education work, it was much better that that system should continue than that the work should be done by a Minister not in the Cabinet. But the contention of his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Play-fair) was that the Minister who, being in the Cabinet, had to deal with education, ought to be the Minister who did the educational work. At present he certainly was not that Minister. There was no question whatever that education had been so managed that the Vice President did the work, and was looked upon throughout the country as the Minister of Education, and the extraordinary anomaly resulted that, having this position, he was not in the Cabinet, and on matters of considerable importance had not the authority that belonged to the Head of the Department. The argument was that education was now so important that the man chosen in the Cabinet to represent the cause of education should be the real head of his Office. It appeared to him that this view was merely in accordance with common sense. A new rule had, he believed, been established within the last few weeks, that the Lord President should consult the Vice President as to appointments. That was an improvement on the old system; but it was desirable that appointments should be in the hands of one man and not of two, and that the country should know who was responsible for them. While he was himself in Office he was exceedingly glad to be without patronage; but that was not the way in which important work should be done, and the Minister whom the country regarded as responsible for the conduct of the Office ought to have the appointment of the officials; indeed, no one framing an Administration for the first time would ever dream of adopting any other principle. The Notice on the Paper was to call the attention of the House to the existing anomaly, and he believed that the ano- maly was admitted to exist, and that the Vice President had not the power of appointing the officials. [Mr. GLADSTONE assented.] He had not this power then, but the Lord President always consulted him. That was exactly what he supposed; the Lord President was the responsible Minister, not the Vice President, though the latter did the work, and was judged by the country according as it was well or ill done. He might ask the House how long such an anomaly would be permitted to continue in the Army or Navy, if the head of the Office were always in the other House, while nine-tenths of the work was done by an Under Secretary? His right hon. Friend said that the anomaly did not work amiss, and that the feeling in Public Offices was such that almost any anomaly could be endured. That might be so; but the question was, whether the time had not come for putting an end to it. Ono argument against its abolition was, perhaps, that the Primo Minister disliked it himself; and he believed he could detect, in the right hon. Gentleman's very strong Conservative feeling against changes in administration, almost the last remnant of his ancient Conservatism. Another argument was that the change would require time. That would be a good argument, were it not for the fact that just at the present crisis many changes were being made. A Minister of Agriculture was being appointed, and the Lord President was to undertake the new duties, so that it could not now be said that without his educational work he would have nothing to do. He hoped hon. Members would not be led away by any Motion of the Council. The Committee of the Council for Trade, or Agriculture, or Education, meant nothing whatever. Persons might imagine that the Privy Council occasionally met for the transaction of business; but they never did so either in England or Ireland. The Minister for Agriculture was the President of the Committee of the Council on Agriculture; but he greatly doubted whether that Committee ever met, or ever would meet. The changes now being made offered an opportunity for entertaining this proposal. The real objection probably was, that it was undesirable to make too much of education, that if we wore to have a Minister of Education he might be pushing things on too quickly. Of course, the one Minister would have charge of elementary, secondary, and University education; it would not be his ideal state of things that they should be divided, any more than the Army and the Volunteers should be under different management. There might be a fear that under one Minister too much money would be spent, or there would be too great an interference with local bodies. No doubt the Education Vote was increasing very largely, and, though there was no desire to stint the Vote, still it ought to be watched, to see that we got value for it. We were less likely to have extravagance or over-interference if we had a Minister who was known to be responsible generally in the House of Commons, or occasionally in the House of Lords. What was complained of now was that there was no really defined responsibility. The man who moved the Estimates and did the work was not the Head of the Department, and he ought to be. The work was done by a Minister who was controlled by another, and the latter was scarcely seen by the public. He did not see why we should continue that Japanese mode of managing affairs—an apparent Minister appearing before the public, and the real power being concealed. he believed the effect of inquiry would be to bring out facts so clearly that it would be necessary to make a change.

said, he followed the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) with the greatest possible trepidation; but he desired to make one or two remarks to the House which, however, he should have hesitated to make if it were not for the fact that a Relative of his at one time held the Office of President of the Council, and at that time he (Lord Randolph Churchill) had an opportunity of knowing the way in which the Office was worked. He was certainly surprised the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had supported the Motion for an Educational Department submitted by the hon. Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock), because, although the right hon. Gentleman was responsible, and solely responsible, for the educational system of the country, he thought he was right in stating that that was the first occasion upon which the right hen. Gentleman had ever made a statement in favour of the appointment of a Minister of Education.

said, he had made a long statement upon the subject in 1874, which was the last time it was before Parliament.

remarked, that that was when the right hon. Gentleman was out of Office; and the opinions of the right hon. Gentleman when in Opposition always differed very widely from his opinions when in Office. It was perfectly certain that the House would not have heard the speech which the right hon. Gentleman had just made in opposition to the views of the Prime Minister if he had been upon the Treasury Bench instead of occupying the position in the House which he now did. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman why, when he brought in that great Education Bill, which established the system of primary education in the country, he did not state these opinions then? The idea was not a novel one, and that was the proper time to have made this change. The right hon. Gentleman left it, however, to be made by a Conservative Government; and the fact that it was so made was quite enough to prevent the right hon. Gentleman from having anything to do with it, or from having a word to say in favour of it. No doubt, when the right hon. Gentleman commenced the system of education which now obtained throughout the country, he might have made the present proposal; but, not having made it while in Office, he had lost his right and title to recommend it now with authority. He (Lord Randolph Churchill) must say that it had been his privilege to listen very often to a very interesting speech from the Prime Minister, but he did not know that he had ever listened to a more interesting one than that which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman that night. The right hon. Gentleman h ad paid. the greatest compliment to the House of Commons which it was possible for a man in the position of the Prime Minister to pay, because he had taken those who were practically inexperienced and, to a great extent, ignorant into his confidence as to the machinery of the Government as regard to education. No doubt, the revelations which the Primo Minister had made, coming from a Minister of his authority, were of the very highest importance, and could not be listened to with too much attention. Nothing could have been more eulogistic of, or more in euphonism with, the Constitution of the country and the defence of our system of government than what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman. He did not believe if any other right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench had exerted himself to the utmost, he could have put forward with so much force the defence of the present system of government. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Play-fair) was not a speech in favour of the Amendment, but it was a speech entirely in favour of inquiry; and he understood, from the assent which the Prime Minister had given to it, that the Government were prepared to assent to the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry, which would no doubt be useful, and which, he presumed, the House would agree to. He did not think it was possible for the House of Commons to order too many official inquiries into our system of government, because he was satisfied that inquiry would lead to useful legislation. What he found fault with in regard to the Liberal Party was, that they were too apt to precede their inquiry by legislation, and to inquire after they had legislated. If they would take a new departure, and inquire before they legislated, he thought they would not regret the result. There was one thing which fell from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) which ought not to escape notice. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Minister of Education, after discharging the duties of his Office in connection with the Privy Council, had only to do with primary education, and that secondary and University education were not sufficiently attended to by him. He (Lord Randolph Churchill) did not know whether the House would be prepared to imitate very closely the system which prevailed in foreign countries of placing secondary and University education entirely under the Government. He had always felt that if there was one thing more deserving of approval in our educational system than another, it was the independence which existed in our University education and the variety which existed in our system of secondary education. There was no country in the world in which there could be found such an amount of independence and such an extent of variety; and he thought it would be most unfortunate if the result of this Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) were to bring all our schools of primary, secondary, and University education to the same cut-and-dried level — all running into the same groove of the Privy Council under a Minister of Education. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) he understood to be in favour of the Motion for appointing an independent Minister of Education, and he had little doubt that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella), who now sat on the Treasury Bench and represented the Education Department in that House, would, if his tongue were not tied, be also, in a certain degree, in favour of it. While he was alluding to the right hon. Gentleman, perhaps he might also be allowed to say that he thought the Motion of the hon. Member for the University of London was somewhat uncharitably conceived, and that it might be taken as a reflection upon, and a bad compliment to, the right hon. Gentleman. [Cries of "No!"] It certainly might be so taken by some ill-natured minds; but, as far as he (Lord Randolph Churchill) was concerned, he was only too glad to have the opportunity of recognizing with all sincerity the ability and earnestness with which the right hon. Gentleman had, on all occasions, discharged the duties of his Office and the intense desire he always seemed to have to place before the House of Commons the fullest statement of the exact condition of the education of the country. If it was in any way a credit to a Minister to be able to get his Estimates easily through the House of Commons, he doubted whether it was possible to find anyone who got them passed more easily than the right hon. Gentleman. He dare say the right hon. Gentleman was more or less in favour of this Motion. Speaking with all respect of right hon. Members who had occupied a position which was, more or less, one of inferiority, he had no doubt that it would be their wish and desire to make the position more independent and supreme. Therefore, anything which came from an ex-Vice President or the present Vice President, although it would be very valuable, must be received by the House of Commons with caution and should be submitted to the inquiry which the Prime Minister was kind enough to concede. He did not know whether the House would allow him to offer an opinion upon the question which had been raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), but the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think it a great grievance that the Minister in the House of Commons who moved the Education Estimates was not in the Cabinet. Now, for the life of him, he (Lord Randolph Churchill) could not see why the Minister of Education should have a seat in the Cabinet. Certainly, when the great educational controversy was going on in the country, with which the right hon. Gentleman's name was inseparately connected, there was every reason why the Vice President should be in the Cabinet, because, at that time, education was one of the most vital and burning questions of the day. But would they say, now that the question of education had probably been settled, and was likely to run in the same groove for a quarter of a century, that it was necessary to lay down a hard-and-fast rule that the Minister of Education should be in the Cabinet? In his opinion, there were many Offices which should take precedence, so far as the Cabinet was concerned, of the Office of Minister of Education; and he, therefore, did not concur in the dogmatic character of the right hon. Gentleman's conclusion. After all, it appeared to him that this was one of those "fads" which were very apt to come from a certain group of Members who sat between the two Columns on the opposite side of the House, and which, when they came to examine them, would be found to be exceedingly unsubstantial, and might be generally summed up in the common expression—"What's in a name?" They had a Minister of Education in the House of Commons at the present moment. They were more fortunately situated, because they had two Ministers of Education; and, as far as the patronage was concerned, he did not know what might be the present state of matters, except that the Prime Minister had stated that as far as patronage was concerned, there was an agreement between the two Ministers. All that he could say on the matter was, that when his Relative was President of the Council, that was invariably the case at that time. Lord Robert Montague was Vice President at the time, and the noble Lord make appointments to several vacancies; and he (Lord Randolph Churchill) recollected perfectly well that there was no separate patronage on the part of the Lord President at that time. The patronage was not swept up into the Lord President's hands, but communications invariably took place between his noble Relative and Lord Robert Montague, who filled the post of Vice President. He could not see that divided patronage was an evil, and it certainly used to be the custom in Ireland, before the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) went there, to divide the patronage between the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary. He was quite aware that that was not after the right hon. Gentleman went there as Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman did away with that rule, and he did away also with the Privy Council; but he did not think the right hon. Gentleman was sufficiently successful in his operations in Ireland to induce him to advocate changes in other Departments. Before the right hon. Gentleman went to Ireland the patronage there was invariably a matter of consultation between the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary. He thanked the House for having permitted him to make these remarks, and he wished also to express his thanks to the Prime Minister for the statement he had made, and also the sincere hope that the House would in every way follow the advice the right hon. Gentleman had given, and accept a Committee of Inquiry.

(who was very imperfectly heard) said, that what he wanted to see was that whenever the Committee was appointed—and he understood the Government to accept the proposal—it should turn its attention not only to the question of how far it was expedient to appoint a Minister of Education, but to various legitimate questions connected with University Education and the public schools. He said that because he believed it was necessary to introduce very serious alterations into the existing system, which produced an effect upon various public institutions that was almost ruinous. At the present moment there was no person in the House charged with the duty of answering Questions relating to the Universities and public schools. There was no opportunity for a Member of Parliament to ask any Question upon such subjects of any person in authority, and it was impossible, therefore, to get a satisfactory answer. It was his duty last year to make an effort to preserve a great public school from rapine. Some time ago the Dean and Chapter of a certain city, in defiance of an Act of Parliament, seized on property which belonged to a school and appropriated it to the use of one of its own members. Wishing to ask a Question with regard to this alleged act of rapine, he found that he could get no answer from any Member of the Government, and he was compelled to have recourse to a Member of the House who happened to be one of the Governing Bodies of the school. He believed there was another school in the same position; and, in point of fact, whenever the Dean and Chapter of a city had anything to do with a public school, they invariably attempted to rob the school of what belonged to it. He thought there ought to be someone in that House officially connected with the Government with authority to answer Questions upon such subjects, and also about the action of the Civil Service Commission. That Body was now practically a great examining University, and upon its decisions depended the distribution of a large amount of patronage and of public money. He did not say that the Commissioners did not discharge their duties in the best possible way they could; but if the House would look at the examination papers they would agree with him that nothing could be more foolish, irrelevant, or improper for the purpose of discovering the capacity of the person examined than the questions asked by the officers who conducted the examination. And yet there was no one in the House who was able to get up and answer any Question on the subject, or say whether the examination papers were proper or not. He contended that there ought to be some person in that House of whom they might ask Questions as to these very important branches of education. There was no such individual at the present moment, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister would consent to enlarge the terms of the Reference, so that they should be wide enough to include the question whether the Minister of Education, whoever he might be, should not be made responsible for every detail, because it would be irrelevant and foolish to interfere with the domestic government of a school, and not to give information when it was asked for. For instance, an Act of Parliament was passed in that House under the last Government which involved the establishment of a new College at Oxford on principles altogether contrary to those which were then existing in the University. If there had been a responsible Minister of Education he did not think that Act would have passed—at any rate, not in the form in which it passed in direct violation of the principles of other existing Acts. He had heard of a School Inspector who abused his position by delivering highly inflammatory addresses. Such conduct was very reprehensible; yet there was no responsible Minister in that House to interrogate about it. There were undoubtedly branches of education in this country which required a certain amount of Parliamentary supervision; and there ought, at any rate, to be in the House of Commons some person charged with the duty of answering Questions not connected with the domestic control of Universities and public schools, but the duty of answering reasonable Questions as to how far the authorities of the schools wore carrying out the duties imposed upon them by Act of Parliament. He therefore hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would not object to extend the terms of the Reference, in order that the Select Committee might inquire how far the Minister of Education might be made responsible for the performance of their duties by the authorities of the higher class schools connected with secondary public schools and University education.

said, they had had for the last three hours an interesting discussion upon a very important subject; but he wished to remind the House that they had also been promised a statement upon another interesting and important subject—namely,there-adjustment of Scotch Business. And in order to enable the Home Secretary to made a statement upon that subject, and to insure that it should be taken at a reasonable hour, he begged to move that the debate be now adjourned. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned." (Sir Herbert Maxwell.)

said, he trusted that the House would allow him to say a word by way of explanation, and he hoped that the hon. Baronet opposite would not press his Motion, seeing that the House had very nearly arrived at the end of the discussion. He rather gathered from the course the debate had taken that the House assented to the suggestion which he had himself thrown out, and which had also been suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair). Indeed, the Prime Minister had in his speech suggested a somewhat similar course; and if that were the general feeling of the House, he (Sir John Lubbock) thought that some such Resolution as this might be adopted—

"That a Select Committee be appointed to consider how far Ministerial responsibility in connection with the Votes for Education, Science, and Art may be better secured."

If that Resolution met the views of the House, and if the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Herbert Maxwell) would withdraw his Motion for the adjournment of the debate, he (Sir John Lubbock) would ask leave to withdraw his Amendment; and, as he technically could not do so, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) to move a Resolution to this effect, which he understood Her Majesty's Government would not oppose and which would meet with the general acceptance of the House.

said, he hoped that his hon. Friend the Member for Wigtonshire (Sir Herbert Maxwell) would not press the Motion for Adjournment, because the discussion was evidently just coming to a useful close. The proposition made by his hon. Friend opposite (Sir John Lubbock) seemed to be a reasonable proposal — namely, that a Committee with fairly wide powers should be appointed. He had no wish to say more, as the question had already been well discussed, except that he always viewed with alarm a serious division of Departments, unless the matter had been well and carefully considered and brought forward on the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government. Under any other conditions it would be a very serious matter, especially when they had a Government Department working fairly well; and they did not know what they were likely to get if they embarked in something entirely new.

I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the Question before the House is the adjournment of the debate.