I do not propose to move any Amendment to the second reading of this Bill, nor will it be necessary for me to speak at any great length on the subject; but several disputable statements were made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he introduced the Budget the other day, and I especially wish to observe more fully than I have done on one statement which he then made. I wish to call attention to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said as to his nominal responsibility for the deficit. The Chancellor of the Exchequer used very strong language disclaiming all responsibility for the deficit. Of course, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer is not responsible for the whole of that deficit, but he is responsible for a large part of it. It is true that his Resolution which was adopted by the House makes it a partner with him in responsibility for the removal from the Budget of the proposal about the Death Duties, and I think the amount we proposed to raise in that way was £250,000. So far, he is responsible in partnership with the House; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer is, as I will show, alone responsible for a very large increase in the deficit in consequence of his refusal to introduce into his present Bill any provision for increased duties on liquor. I will ask the House to consider what was the Amendment which the present Chancellor of the Exchequer carried on the second reading of the Budget Bill. It was in these words, and I ask the House to weigh them—

"This House regards the increase proposed in the Duties levied on Beer and Spirits as inequitable in the absence of a corresponding addition to the Duties on Wine."

Now, Sir, that Resolution left the Chancellor of the Exchequer entirely free to impose any addition to the duties on spirits and beer, provided a corresponding addition wore also made to the duty on wine; and he is in a particularly favourable position for such a proposal, because, as he told me in answer to a Question the other day, the Government proposes to abandon the two Resolutions which were adopted by the House in Committee of Ways and Means, which raised the superior limit of the 1s. duty on wine from 26 to 30 degrees. That abandonment leaves the Government entirely free as to the Wine Duties. They are no longer restrained, as we were, by the negotiations which were going on for several years with Spain. Those negotiations have come to an end, and, therefore, it is quite in the power of the Government now to increase, if they should think fit, the Wine Duties in the same proportion as it was proposed to increase the duties on spirits and beer. It is therefore clear that the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are entirely responsible for not proposing an increase in the duties on wine, spirits, and beer. The responsibility for the absence of any such provision in the present Bill is entirely theirs, and they cannot shift that responsibility on the House or on anyone else. If that is the case—and I think there can be no doubt about it—the present Government is distinctly responsible for between £1,500,000 and £2,000,000 of the deficit. I pass now to the way in which it is proposed to deal with the deficit, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer states as being estimated at between £3,500,000 and £4,000,000. His plan is simplicity itself—namely, to add £4,000,000 to the Debt. Of course that, in future years, could be paid off out of the Sinking Fund like all other Debt. We proposed to add nothing to the Debt; but to take the deficit out of the Sinking Fund of next year direct. I cannot conceive what the difference between the two operations is, for which the Chancellor of the Exchequer takes so much credit. It is really the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. I have no objection to the manner in which it is proposed to deal with what is called the New Sinking Fund; and, indeed, I admit that this is an improvement on my plan. I should now like to refer to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said as to the Expenditure for which provision is to be made—I mean the increase upon the Expenditure as we left it. I am not going to refer for a a moment to the attack on the Admiralty, because the Committee about to be appointed will deal with the whole matter; but I wish to refer to the statement as to War Office expenditure which the right hon. Gentleman made, and which I think requires some further explanation. He used these words—

"Of the sum estimated by the War Office, a certain portion was duo to the provision which had been authorized for the defence of our principal coaling stations and commercial harbours, an item for which, in spite of its great importance, and in spite of the pledges given to Parliament last December by the First Lord and the Secretary to the Admiralty, no provision had been made in the Army Estimates."

I do not attribute a wilful mistake to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but I am bound to say that this is incorrect. The ordinary Army Estimates provided £198,000 for works and armaments for Colonial coaling stations, in addition to £67,000 which was to be provided by the Indian and Colonial Governments, and in addition to £35,000 which had been provided in the Supplementary Estimates of last year, and to £9,000 also provided last year by the Indian and Colonial Governments. My noble Friend the late Secretary of State for War made a short statement on March 19 in moving the Army Estimates, when he stated that work had been begun at Aden and Hong Kong, and enumerated the other stations at which work was to be com- menced this year. It is true that no provision was made for the fortification of commercial harbours at home; but he referred to this subject in the preliminary discussion of the Estimates, and promised a more detailed statement of the views of the Government on the proper Vote. While, therefore, it is true, as stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the Vote of Credit included a sum of £200,000 which was required for the submarine mining defence of the Home and Colonial ports and the acceleration of the armaments of some of the latter, it is the case that this was in addition to the £198,000 provided in the ordinary Estimate for defence of coaling stations, of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not seem to be aware. I come now to what is of graver importance—I mean the declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to indirect taxation, its prospects, and the powers of this House to increase it. Now, it seems to me that the greatest caution is necessary in dealing with this most important question. Everyone knows the dangers which are ahead, and which were so well indicated by my lamented Friend the late Mr. Fawcett when he described what might be expected in future days from a Parliament popularly constituted. He warned us, in pregnant words, of the impatience of indirect taxation which such a Parliament might exhibit; those who elected it being interested in lavish expenditure on war, but careful to throw all the charge for it, the taxation required to meet it, on property. Therefore, Sir, with that warning before us, I think that whatever a Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes as to direct and indirect taxation, he should be careful not to use, without absolute necessity, strong language, which could not fail to have great weight with the House and with future Ministers deprecatory of increased charges, even on an emergency, upon the consumer; and I must say that I was, above all things, surprised at the words which the right hon. Gentleman used, coming, as they did, from a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer. How often have hon. Gentlemen opposite, whether in power or in Opposition, proclaimed the necessity of adhering to the principle laid down by my late right hon. Friend. So lately as in November last, when it was my duty to pro- pose to Parliament a small additional charge on property for the Soudan Expedition, in the shape of an increase of 1d. in the Income Tax, I was vigorously attacked by several hon. Gentlemen opposite, warning me of the impolicy of relying alone upon taxes on property; and they received from me answers which appeared to be acceptable to the House generally, to the effect that although towards the end of the year it might be impossible to have recourse to anything but the Income Tax when a large addition of Expenditure was necessary, that was a practice which ought not to be adopted by Parliament in the Budget at the commencement of the year, but that both direct and indirect taxation in these circumstances should be had recourse to. Let me remind the House of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in his Budget Speech. He used these words, which I have taken from the best report I could find—

"We have arrived for the purposes of Revenue at the limits of increased taxation on the most important taxed articles of consumption except perhaps one article—namely, tea."

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to correct him. I prefaced these words with the remark "in such times as these."

I accept the correction; although the words really occurred later in theright hon. Gentleman's speech, and I am about to quote them; although I hardly see how they qualify his statement. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to say—

"The scheme to increase the duties on beer and spirits is financially unsound."

He said, further—

"The Revenue from these articles is notoriously decreasing…The Inland Revenue authorities now assure me that the yield from the increased tax on these articles would not have approached the low estimate he (I) had formed of it…The principle that the whole of additional taxation in times like these should not fall upon property cannot he carried into effect without the addition of some one or more articles to our Customs tariff."

Now, in the comments which I am about to make on this most important statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer I am sorry that I cannot have the spoken support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian; but if he had been able he would have taken part in this debate, and he entirely agrees with me in the principles which I now advocate. It appears to me, Sir, that these words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer sound the knell of indirect taxation. They are very important, and they evidently were deliberately spoken; and I repeat that, whatever our individual sentiments may be, they sound the knell of indirect taxation. In passing, I would say that I am not prepared to assent absolutely to the assertion of the right hon. Gentleman that there is a notorious decrease in the Revenue from spirits and from beer. There was some years ago, between 1876 and 1881; but matters are different now. As to beer, that is certainly not the case, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer can hardly have looked at the figures for the last few years. The official figures are as follows:—In 1882£–3 the Revenue from beer was £8,400,000; in 1883–4 it was £8,488,000; and in 1884£–5 it was £8,545,000. The increase has not been a rapid increase, but it is an increase; and there is not, therefore, a "notorious decrease," as the right hon. Gentleman stated. In the case of spirits there is a slight decrease, but it is very slight. In 1882–3 the Revenue from spirits was £18,570,000; in 1883–4 it was £18,436,000; and in 1884£–5 it was £18,295,000. So that, although there is a decrease in those three years in the Revenue from spirits, that decrease is under 1 per cent per annum, and certainly is not such a decrease as should interfere with financial operations which on other grounds may be advisable. Perhaps I may be allowed to read to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the advice given to the House by a Predecessor of his with respect to the duty on spirits. Lord Iddesleigh, on April 16, 1874, used these words as to an increase in the Spirit Duty—

"That is one source of Revenue which is still open to us upon an emergency, for I verily believe it would be possible to increase the duty without diminishing the consumption, and without raising the danger of illicit distillation. But that resource we keep as a reserve for the future."—(3 Hansard, [218] 666.)

That was the language of Lord Iddesleigh in 1874, and in his subsequent speeches I never heard him use any words qualifying the advice which he then gave to Parliament. I take, again, the question of the Beer Duty. The actual duty on beer is only 20 per cent on its value; and I am confident of this—that the Inland Revenue authorities have never told the right hon. Gentleman that the duty on beer, considered upon Revenue grounds, could not be raised so to produce more Revenue.

was understood to explain that he had referred to spirits.

In his speech the right hon. Gentleman spoke of every article now subject to duty except tea; and, therefore, he included not only spirits, but all other articles now taxed. Therefore, I take it as being beyond question that the Revenue from beer, regarded solely as a question of Revenue, might be increased from '2d., the present rate, to 3d. a gallon—that is to say, to 9s. a barrel—with the greatest possible ease. If any Member will read the discussions which have lately appeared on this subject in The Economist—one of the best authorities outside this House, they will see it distinctly shown that a very large increase of Revenue could be raised with perfect safety from beer. I am not speaking of the political and other aspects of the question, but only of its Revenue aspect. From that source £11,000,000, instead of £8,500,000, could easily be obtained. Then as to the duty on wine, that is one of the important branches of Revenue of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke. The present duty on wine averages 1s. 9d. a gallon, or 25 per cent on the value. Before 1860 it was 5s. 7d., or 80 per cent on the value. The duty received from wine in 1856–7 was £2,016,000. In 1884£–5 itwas£l,230,000. Who can doubt for a moment that, if it were a question of Revenue only, we could easily obtain in all £2,500,000 from wine? Therefore, as to beer and wine, there is no question that a very large amount of additional Revenue might with perfect safety be raised upon sound Revenue grounds, putting aside altogether for the moment political and other considerations. I do not think the assertion can be disproved when I say that it would be perfectly possible to raise from liquor, if Revenue only were considered, between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000 more than is raised at present. Lot those who are conversant with the subject discuss it with the figures which I have given to the House, and they will find that that calculation can be substantiated. Of course, I do not say that this increase of duty should be now, or at any particular time, obtained. In fact, in the Budget which the House set aside I proposed much less. But, in settling what duties should be increased, besides the general question as between property and consumption, we have many considerations to weigh in addition to those of Revenue; for instance, we have to look, first, at the distribution of incidence as between England, Scotland, and Ireland; secondly, at the effect on the producer of the raw material; and, thirdly, at the effect on our trade with foreign countries, which send us articles of drink. But I repeat that, excluding all considerations which are not Revenue considerations, the amount raised from liquor might be increased by £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 a-year. I am now only answering what appeared to me at that time, and what I still think was, a very incautious declaration in the mouth of a Minister as to the impossibility of raising more Revenue by indirect taxation. Might I even now hope that the right hon. Gentleman will qualify that declaration, by which, coming from the Leader of the Conservative Party in this House, I fear that much mischief has been done? I do not believe that whatever may be the emergency after that declaration, if unqualified, the right hon. Gentleman or any Minister would dare to increase, to any considerable extent, the Revenue obtained from indirect taxation. I have thus felt myself bound to enter my protest—a protest in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian concurs—against the language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this respect. I admit that after our defeat by the right hon. Gentleman the contest is for the present, over; and we can now do little more than struggle for a fair distribution of taxation on property. But if in this struggle the landed interest should suffer, let them remember to whose fatal Amendment they owe their misfortune.

in moving the following Resolution, of which he had given Notice;#x2014

"That, in view of the rapid extension of local rating and of the continuous imposition of the Income Tax, it is desirable that the province of Local Eating and of Imperial Taxation be severally readjusted and defined, and that a common authority and common measure be provided for the levy of both rates and taxes so as to regulate their incidence upon the principle of assessing the rate or tax upon the real or upon the net annual value,"

said, he did not-attach to the recent remarks of the Chancellor of the Exchequer the importance which had been given to them by the right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken; but he thought the House would agree that whatever articles were necessary for the sustenance of the people should be provided as cheaply as possible, in order that our working classes might stand the competition of the other nations of the world. But it was not so much to indirect as to direct taxation that he wished to drawn attention. The charges which he proposed to deal with comprised Imperial taxation to the extent of about £22,000,000, and local rates to the amount of £30,000,000. It was perfectly remarkable how the local rating and the local indebtedness of the country had increased. In the year 1871 local rates amounted to £17,000,000. in 1880 to £25,000,000, and now they were £30,000,000. The £30,000,000 of local rates, together with £21,000,000 of Imperial taxation, formed the matter to which he desired to draw the attention of the House. The growth of local rates was remarkable in the amount annually levied; but it was still more visible when they examined the question of local indebtedness. In the year 1871 the local indebtedness of the country was £63,000,000, in 1875 it was £93,000,000, in l879 it was£128,000,000, and in 1883 it was £159,000,000. Contrasting these figures with the liabilities of Imperial finance, they found that in the years he had mentioned—namely, from 1871 to 1883 —the public Debt had diminished by £48,000,000, and the local indebtedness had increased by £96,000,000. This was a very remarkable contrast, and the growth of local indebtedness was far larger than it ought to be. The local debts had been incurred by virtue of authority given through Private Bills, and when he considered how those Bills were carried through Parliament he was not astonished at the result. He knew that it was practically impossible for Local Authorities to act rigidly on the maxim that the Expenditure and the Income of the year should balance one another; but he thought they should not, in their Private Bills, be allowed to borrow for more than 30 years, so that each generation should pay its own debts. The only portion of England now provided with a perfect system of administration in regard to local rating was the Metropolis; and ho was of opinion that the Act under which the rates were levied in London ought to have been extended to the country a long time ago. In the Metropolis the accuracy of the local assessment was tested by the amount charged under Schedule A; and the Income Tax levied under that Schedule was, in the gross assessment, almost identical with local taxation. In the country, however, there was a 10 per cent difference between the actual gross value of property and the amount at which it was assessed for local purposes; and, this being the difference on the average of all assessments, it is obvious that individual discrepancies must be still larger. The object which he had in view in moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice was that the salutary and scientific rule already adopted in the matter of local legislation should be applied to Imperial legislation also, and that the Income Tax, among other taxes, should be subject to the rule of being levied not upon gross value, but upon net. Under his plan capital would pay considerably more and industry considerably less than at present. The adjustment of Income Tax which he proposed had been greatly misunderstood or misrepresented. The adjusted Income Tax, which had been the subject of controversy ever since its proposal by Mr. Disraeliin 1853, wasnot a graduated Income Tax at all. Assuming three different kinds of property of the nominal value of £1,000 each a-year—interest from money in the funds, rents of land, and rents of houses—while the real income from interest of money in the funds would be £1,000, the real value of £1,000 derived from rents of land would be £900, and from rents of houses £800. It was quite clear that if they charged one and the same rate upon all these properties they must in fairness first reduce the assessment to what was the real value. Mr. Disraeli's proposal was to charge upon the gross or nominal income a rate diminished in proportion to the outgoings—a proposal agreeing in principle, though less perfect in operation, with the process of reducing gross incomes to net incomes, and then charging an uniform rate. That principle had existed since 1869 in the Metropolis Valuation Act. The present system, from beginning to end, favoured wealth and pressed hard on property. In the Customs and Inland Revenue Bill there was one portion to which he referred with great gratification—namely, the clause which imposed an annual charge upon Corporations in lieu of Succession Duty, which they might be called upon to pay if their property was precisely on the same footing as other properties. The Bill assumed that this annual charge was not to be levied on the gross rental at all, but upon rental with such deduction as might be necessary to obtain the real value of the property. This Corporation Tax was, in fact, the adoption, with respect to Corporations, of an Income Tax constructed precisely upon the conditions which he advocated in the Income Tax levied upon all incomes. He found that the present Probate Duty, which produced £4,000,000 sterling, was almost entirely composed of the newly enacted charges of 2 and 3 per cent. But why should the Probate Duty be 2 or 3 per cent? The original Probate Duty was simply a Stamp Duty imposed to certify the title of the administrator of the property bequeathed or inherited. He looked upon the Legacy and Succession Duties in quite a different light from the Probate Duty. The Probate Duty, as he had said, was simply a Stamp Duty, but in the case of legacy and succession the State constituted itself a joint heir with every subject of the Crown, and took a portion of the substance according to the proximity of the heirs, rightly taking the least from the children and the most from those who were strangers. Therefore he did not raise any objection to the continuance of the Legacy and Succession Duties. He thought they might fairly continue as at present, and he entirely concurred with his right hon. Friend near him that they ought to do away with those fictitious distinctions which merely complicated the matter. The more simple they could make the operations of finance the better they were understood. He wished to give relief to those who were suffering. He thought it was a cruel thing, when the father of a family died, that they should come down on the widow and children for 3 per cent of the property. The result of that was often to destroy their homes and make them break them up. Legacy Duties ought to be levied in such a way as to be most easily paid. He trusted that the House would support him in his Resolution, with a view to persuading the Government to introduce at no distant period a comprehensive adjustment of our fiscal system. The right hon. Member concluded by moving his Amendment.

observed that he did not propose to follow his right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Hubbard) into the wide field of subjects, not unfamiliar to the House, over which he had ranged; but he could not help feeling that he had done the previous Conservative Government an injustice in his remarks upon their endeavour to apply to the whole country the same principles in respect of valuation which were applied to the Metropolis. Had the House been allowed to adopt that proposal, considerable incidental advantage might have accrued to the Exchequer; but his right hon. Friend, instead of assisting the Government in that direction, was constantly occupied in placing an obstructive Amendment against the Valuation Bill, and did his utmost to prevent its becoming law. He had heard with surprise the comments of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Childers) upon the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ho (Mr. Sclater-Booth) had not understood his right hon. Friend (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) to state that indirect taxation would never under any circumstances be increased. What his right hon. Friend meant probably was that the limit of addition to the taxation of certain commodities appeared to have been practically reached, and that great difficulties would be placed in the way of any Chancellor of the Exchequer who should endeavour to select any one of those commodities for the purpose of taxing it additionally, and so raising any important sum of money. Although experience had shown in a practical way the great difficulty in which Governments or Chancellors of the Exchequer were placed who endeavoured to augment the Spirit, or Beer, or Tea Duties, or the duties on other articles of consumption, he was not on that account persuaded that no means could be found by which a more equitable and satisfactory state of the public mind might be brought about which would enable a Government on either side of the House to deal with this subject without exciting the acrimony of the Party contests which had accompanied previous endeavours to deal with these subjects of taxation. The relative incidence of these taxes was pronounced ex cathedra by the Chancellor of the Exchequer from time to time, and few people had the knowledge or opportunity to contest his decision; but they found that when, after making his Financial Statement, he proposed to increase the duties on this or that article of consumption, a great party came forward to thwart and oppose his proposition; and the practical result was that he found himself obliged to surrender. He, however, deeply regretted that the circumstances of the moment were such that his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was unable to propose anything in the way of alleviating or reducing existing anomalies. He thought it would be to the advantage of the country if the House of Commons were to pay a little more attention to the principles on which this indirect taxation was levied, and would endeavour to arrive at an understanding as to what should be the normal amount of them. In that case, without doubt, the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be much more easily accomplished. There would be no endeavour to trip up a Government by rousing up the enemies of a particular tax, and a much more fair and just system might possibly be arrived at. He would throw it out as a suggestion whether by bringing a Committee of the House into immediate contact with the heads of the Revenue Department, and enabling some dispassionate scheme to be propounded as to the principles which ought to guide the indirect taxation of the country, entirely separated from the Parties of this House, a good work might be done, which would be of great assistance to future Chancellors of the Exchequer, on whichever side of the House they might sit. He felt that for the present, and probably for the future, the great mass of indirect taxation must be considered to be for the most part fixed upon the articles of luxury, on quasi-luxuy, and upon the drinks consumed by the public at large; and with the exception of sugar, which he should be very glad to see brought into the same category, he did not know that there was any other article of consumption which could be fairly included in the list of Revenue-producing commodities. The attention of the House might fairly now be given to the Customs Duties generally, and the system on which they were levied. He thought the time had arrived when the great volume of articles of consumption imported from abroad, without imposing any restriction upon their consumption, might have a small duty levied upon them. He did think that by charging a small duty, or rather registration fee, on such commodities they might raise an important sum, certainly enough to defray the cost of the Customs Establishment. He took it that the duties of the Custom House officers in boarding a ship bringing goods from foreign countries was simple and easy enough; and if the charges were as low as he would desire them to be, it seemed to him that they would be a kind of guarantee of the information contained in the statistics compiled by the Custom House officers, and would make them more reliable and worthy of greater attention. He did not for a moment pretend that in this way any large sums could be collected; but so far as they could be they would be of such a general and comprehensive character that they could not be objected to from Party or interested motives. He would only add, in conclusion, that he believed if some such inquiry as he had suggested were made, perhaps in the next Session of Parlia- ment, the consequence of it would be not to embarrass, but to greatly facilitate the operations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to place the public finance of the country upon a sounder and more satisfactory footing.

said, there seemed to be a prevailing impression that this was a modest and unpretentious Budget, and one of no great importance one way or the other. So far from that being the case, it appeared to him to involve consequences of the utmost gravity, and to be one of the most momentous for many years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that "under the circumstances" it would scarcely have been possible for him to take any other course than that which he had adopted. But the right hon. Gentleman, more than anyone else, was responsible for the circumstances in which he now found himself. The Budget itself sinned against the two great cardinal principles which had hitherto been held as regards finance by the Conservative Party—namely," under any circumstances "to pay one's way; and, secondly, that" the increased expenditure should not fall wholly on property or on those payers of Income Tax who are by no means synonymous with the holders of property." "When Sir Stafford North-cote took Office on the formation of the last Conservative Administration he made an excellent speech, in which he clearly proved that we had not done enough in the direction of repaying Debt, and he brought in a Bill to quicken this process. Such, then, were the wise principles enunciated by the Leaders of the Conservative Party; such were their principles; but their practice was, unfortunately, very different, for Sir Stafford Northcote was never able in any one year fully to carry his own Act into operation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, not only now proposed that they should pay off no Debt whatever, but he proposed that they should borrow no less than £4,000,000. The second principle, which had always been most strongly advocated by hon. Gentlemen opposite, had been that any necessary increase of taxation should be equitably divided between the different classes of the community. In the present instance the increase of expenditure was agreed to by hon, Gentlemen opposite. The difference of opinion had not been as to whether the expenditure was necessary, but as to how the money should be raised. The right hon. Baronet objected to the proposals of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer; and even if he was not bound to bring forward an alternative plan then, now that he was in Office that responsibility certainly devolved on him. They could well imagine the indignation which would have been expressed by hon. Gentlemen opposite if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) had proposed to raise £5,500,000 by an increase in the Income Tax without any addition whatever to the indirect taxation. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone further than that. He had stated that we had "arrived at the limits of increased taxation on the most important taxed articles of consumption," with, perhaps, the single exception of tea; and that it would be impossible to raise the duty on tea because it would be so intensely unpopular. The right hon. Gentleman had not only done nothing to carry out his own principles, but he had done a great deal to prevent anyone else from carrying them out either. It would in future require a bold Chancellor of the Exchequer—though he hoped they might find one strong enough in case of need—to propose any increase in indirect taxation. Under these circumstances, he could not join in congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer on any part of his Budget. Ho preferred the course proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract, because he saw very little use paying off Debt on the one hand, and borrowing on the other. It was a serious matter, and one greatly to be regretted, that during a time of peace, instead of meeting the increased Expenditure of the country by a bold and manly increase of taxation, they were resorting to the weak and ignoble course of adding to the indebtedness of the country.

said, he must express his regret at hearing from the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Childers) that the death-knell of indirect taxation had been sounded by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Mr. CHILDERS said, he had referred to increased in- direct taxation.] If the right hon. Gentleman meant the opposite of what he (Mr. Newdegate) and two other hon. Gentlemen near him understood, the right hon. Gentleman should not have used the word "knell," but the word "carol," over the prospect of reviving indirect taxation. Perhaps the House would allow him (Mr. Newdegate) to mention what the repeal of indirect taxation had cost the country within his own memory. Between the years 1840 and 1854, inclusive, the amount of Customs Duties which the Legislature had repealed or reduced was £10,092,719. In mentioning these figures, he asked the House to remember that he had begun his career in Parliament by supporting the late Sir Robert Peel in the abrogation of a part of that indirect taxation of £10,000,000, which chiefly consisted of Custom Duties. Where ho had differed with the right hon. Baronet was on the repeal of the Corn Laws; and with regard to that question he would tell the House where he got his education. It was in the United States of America that he was taught to recognize the value of the Corn Laws, not as a commercial measure, not as a measure of finance, but as a measure of national self-defence. Between the years 1800 and 1805, the First Napoleon endeavoured to establish the "Continental System," a combination of Foreign Powers, the object of which was to starve out the people of this country; and he had been so nearly successful that in the absence of a Corn Law the people of London mobbed King George III., and subsequently hailed the adoption of a Corn Law, which provided them with food. Now that the Navy of England was weak, this, he thought, was a matter which deserved careful consideration. At the period to which he had referred the naval supremacy of this country was questioned, and continued to be so, until the victories of Nelson, which culminated at Trafalgar, put an end to Napoleon's projects in combining Foreign Powers against England on the sea. As an old Member of the House, he had seen the Corn Laws repealed; but in what he was saying he did not advert to the Corn Laws. He reverted to the subject of indirect taxation generally, and called the attention of the House to the fact that from 1840 to 1854, inclusive, not less than £10,092,719 of indirect taxation had been repealed. Again, from 1855 to 1869, inclusive, £9,255,526 of indirect taxation was repealed. From 1870 to 1874, inclusive, £6,924,245 of indirect taxation was repealed. So that within the period from 1840 to 1874 not less than £26,272,490 was the amount of indirect taxation repealed. It was important to notice what the nations of the Continent were doing at the present moment. Germany, which was not the most stupid nation in the world, had re-imposed a Corn Law, and other im-port duties. The French Republic had also re-imposed a Corn Law, and taxation upon foreign imports. According to the present system in this country, taxation by Customs Duties, on imports to largo amounts, seemed to be abandoned. Let this House remember that it stood before the country self-condemned by its own act; it had invoked a new, and he (Mr. Newdegate) hoped a wiser, House of Commons. Why should this House, standing in that peculiar position, endeavour to preclude its Successor from the use of a method of indirect taxation which its Predecessors, and not inferior Parliaments, had so largely used? As matters stood, the House seemed to think that it had little to fall back upon in the form of indirect taxation, except that which might be effected through the Exchequer. He (Mr. Newdegate) felt unable to speak more at length, but begged, as one of the senior Members of the House, to apologize for having uttered these few sentences upon that which appeared to him a very grave subject.

said, ho wished to draw attention to the omission of Clause 3 of the Bill, introduced by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, granting power to the Commissioners of the Treasury to alter the alcoholic scale of the Wine Duties from 26 to 30 degrees. The House was aware that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract proposed to take power to charge the 1s. duty up to 30 degrees in order to enable the negotiations with Spain, which were approaching completion, to be carried out. He heard with regret that evening from his right hon. Friend that the negotiations were now at an end. He believed that was not the case. He found in a letter dated the 22nd of May, from Madrid, that the Minister for Foreign Affairs made this statement:—

"That on her part Spain is ready, and always has been ready, to carry out strictly the engagements she has contracted, and it is her wish to give sincere and loyal proof of this towards Great Britain."

In the reply sent by Lord Granville to the Spanish Minister on the 8th of June he found those words—

"Her Majesty's Government have made no alteration of their intention to alter the lower half of the alcoholic scale to 30 degrees."

This being the case, he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be able to confirm his statement that the negotiations had not been broken off. Ho thought that this country had been treated in a most unjustifiable manner by Spain. It was insufferable that a Power of the standing of Spain should have refused to grant Most Favoured Nation treatment to Great Britain. Although this country had received fair expressions from the Spanish Government, the acts of the latter had not corresponded in any degree with their expressions. The right hon. Gentleman must admit that this question of the Wine Duties had been thoroughly threshed out. What was the use, therefore, in postponing the negotiations? They had been brought almost to a conclusion, and to his mind no useful purpose would be served by breaking them off now in order at some future time to resume them. He thought the best course for the Government to pursue was to send an ultimatum to Spain calling upon that country to fulfil the engagements which it had entered into in the declaration of December, 1884. Large quantities of British goods had been sent from Yorkshire and Lancashire to Spanish ports. They were now lying in British vessels, and could not be imported into Spain because they were liable to pay duty under the general tariff; whereas, when they were sent from this country, an agreement had been entered into between the two Governments that British goods should come under the conventional tariff. There was no reason why the present Government should not renew the negotiations and carry them to a successful issue. At the present time the Spanish wines brought into this country reached 40 per cent of the whole amount imported, whereas France contributed only 30 per cent, Portugal 20 per cent, Italy 4 per cent, and all other countries 6 per cent. When they came to regard the alcoholic test, it was found that up to 20 degrees Spain only exported 1 per cent, whereas France exported 92 per cent. Between 20 and 30 degrees of alcoholic strength Spain exported to this country 78 per cent, France 8 per cent, Portugal 4 per cent, and all other countries 10 per cent. In the higher scale, reaching from 30 to 40 degrees, Spain exported 50 per cent, France practically nothing, Portugal 37 per cent, and all other countries 13 per cent. Considering the assurances that were given by the late Government, it took the House by surprise when the late Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs stated that the negotiations with Spain had fallen through. He hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would assure the House that the negotiations with Spain had not been broken off; but that they would be carried on and completed. He still expressed a hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Committee on the Bill would take power for the reduction of the Wine Duties, otherwise the whole matter must be postponed for another year to the great injury of British commerce.

said, he must express his surprise that the late Chancellor of the Exchequer should be of opinion that it was still possible to raise a large amount of additional Revenue from an increased duty on beer. The figures which the right hon. Gentleman himself had given showed that any large increase of that duty would yield little or nothing. The right hon. Gentleman had proposed to increase the duty on beer by 4/25 but had estimated the increase of the Revenue at only 2/25 The increase ought only to have been £1,500,000, but he put it at £750,000. Again, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, during the Crimean War, imposed an increased duty on malt. In the first year the quantity malted fell off in the second year⅙ He (Mr. Hicks) believed an increased duty of instead of giving an increased Revenue, would probably cause a decrease. The right hon. Gentleman then said that the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer had sounded the knell of indirect taxation. He (Mr. Hicks) did not so understand it, and if it meant that he could not agree with him. For himself, he did not believe that we had reached the limits of indirect taxation. On the contrary, he thought that the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Hampshire (Mr. Sclater-Booth) were sound views, and that the country would, in a short time, call upon the House to return to a larger and wider system of Customs Duties. The name of the Excise had been hateful to the English people ever since it was imposed. The price of barley for the last 12 months had been 31s. per quarter, and taking beer at 25s., which was the duty imposed at 6*. Si. per barrel, the duty at the present time upon the raw material was no less than 80 per cent; while if the additional duty had been imposed according to the Budget of the right hon. Member for Pontefract, the duty some weeks ago would have been about 90 per cent on the raw material. With regard to the proposals of the right hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. J. G. Hubbard), he believed that they would increase the very great injustice now inflicted on owners of real property. As to Probate Duty, he would suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a simpler and less troublesome method of collecting the duty might be advantageously adopted; and that details should not be required on affidavit for probate, but the property sworn to at a lump sum, as in former years, leaving the items for residuary account. The present system caused great and unnecessary trouble to executors, and delay, and also great additional trouble to the Office; and he thought it was a great hardship that the recipients of small legacies, who were in many cases servants and other persons in humble life, should have 10 per cent taken in the shape of duty from the sums left to them. Another matter well deserving of attention was the bounties on foreign sugar. If the present Government remained in power, as he felt confident they would, he believed they would redress that grievance, and not suffer an important home industry to be oppressed through the bounties given by foreign Governments.

expressed his dissent from the views advanced by his right hon. Colleague in the representation of the City (Mr. J. G. Hubbard) with regard to a remedy for the inequalities of the Income Tax. Neither could he agree with his suggestions in respect to the Probate Duty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had declined to face the difficulties attaching to the duties on leasehold and freehold property. For his own part, he was an advocate of the placing of leasehold and freehold property on the same footing for purposes of taxation. If no Probate Duty was to be paid on leasehold property, as was suggested by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Hubbard), leasehold and freehold property would be put on an equality with respect to Succession Duty. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) was the only Chancellor of the Exchequer who had attempted to remedy the injustice which had existed so long in the taxation of leasehold and freehold property under the Death Duties. Take the case of a large landowner, who had let land, in this Metropolis, on building leases for 80 or 90 years, on which land had been built numerous streets and large squares of magnificent houses. Some 40 years had already expired, during which time Probate Duty on the full value of the leaseholds and also Succession Duty had been paid by the successors, and would continue to be paid during the remainder of the lease, on the transfer of these leasehold houses, by death. At the termination of the building leases the ground landlord would let the houses at rack rentals on leases for 21 years, the Probate Duty on which would be of small amount; and the freehold estate, now of great value and consisting of the whole of the houses built upon the estate, and let at an enormous rental, would pass by death to successors on the payment of Succession Duty only, according to the value of the lives, and a very large sum would be lost in perpetuity to the Exchequer. Take the case of a father leaving a leasehold house to one son, and a freehold house to another son. The one would have to pay Probate Duty on the full value of the house, and also Succession Duty; the other would have only to pay Succession Duty according to the value of his life. He asked if these anomalies were not most unfair, unequal, and unjust, and ought they not to be remedied at the earliest opportunity? The right hon. Member for North Hampshire had suggested a number of small duties on articles now imported free, which he proposed to register. Was he not aware that the expense of collecting a small duty was as great as that of collecting a large one? It was not surprising that the hon. Member for South Warwickshire had cheered that proposal, which was only a disguised form of Fair Trade, and, as such, he protested against it.

said, he hoped that his right hon. Friend would not put the House to the trouble of a division, as it would make very little difference, in the present state of Parliamentary affairs, whether his Motion were carried or not. Among the many unfortunate political circumstances that had occurred during the present year one of the worst things that had happened to the country had been the introduction of such a Budget as was now before the House. Ho recognized that it arose from stern and unadvoidable circumstances; but those in any way acquainted with financial matters must admit that it was not a Budget which was creditable to a great commercial country. He believed, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, that the Budget did not represent his right hon. Friend's financial views, but that it was a Budget of necessity, and not of correct financial policy. There was a large deficiency to be met, which was provided for partly by increased income tax, partly by suspension of the Sinking Fund, and partly by loans. It was unfortunate that at a time when it was desirable to show financial strength, with a view to foreign complications, it should be found necessary so soon to have recourse to the method of loans. Absolute necessity was the only excuse for such a policy. He never took a Party view of financial matters if he could possibly help it. It was quite right to criticize, but all Parties had a common interest, and that was to raise the necessary taxation in that manner which was most convenient and easy to every class of the community. He had merely risen in order to emphasize, as strongly as he could, what he believed to be the view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself with regard to the character of the present Budget. In conclusion, there was one question he would like to ask, and that was—What had become of the money which was paid upon Spirit Duties between 1st of May and the time when the additional duties were abolished? He believed some of it had been recovered, but it must have been a difficult and inconvenient process, and he would like to know whether all of it had been recovered by those who had paid it?

said, he regretted that while the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had given the go-by to much that was meritorious in the Budget of his Predecessor he had not also hardened his heart and foregone the £150,000 which the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Childers) had expected would accrue to the Revenue from the duty on bodies corporate and incorporate. The long list of exemptions took out of the Bill the only bodies worth taxing—namely, the great holders of land in mortmain. In his opinion the Bill would inflict on the Corporations to which it did apply an infinity of vexation, and on some of them great injustice, and all this would be done for the sake of an almost infinitesimal revenue. As a Fellow of a College and as a Bencher of an Inn of Court, he took an interest in the second part of the Bill. What, in the estimation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would be the operation of that part of the measure upon the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge? There seemed to be an impression that those Colleges were exempt, but this was not the view of his hon. Friend who sat near him; and he had been told that the view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that the stipends even of those Fellows who were engaged in tuition in the Colleges would be exposed to the tax. With regard to the Inns of Court, no part of their income was, in the language of the exemption, "legally" appropriated for the promotion of education, or for any other purpose which would bring it within the exemption, although, in fact, it was so applied. Consequently the effect of the Bill would be to levy a tax of 5 per cent upon the whole of the income of those bodies for which they already paid Income Tax. He hoped the Bill would not leave Committee without such Amendments being introduced as would remove the very considerable grievances he had indicated.

said, he thought that successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, through regarding the Income Tax as a temporary tax, had failed to recognize the inequality of the present mode of levying it. If it were to be perpetual it was necessary to remove those inequalities. He heartily supported the Amendment, because it was not right that one section of the community should pay an unfair proportion of the Income Tax in order to save the pockets of others. Under existing circumstances he did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have acted more wisely than ho did in regard to the Budget he had presented to the House. He, however, heartily approved of the proposal of his right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London to remedy the inequalities of the Income Tax, which now pressed most unfairly upon the owners of small properties. In taking this step the right hon. Gentleman had hit a blot in the Income Tax regulations, and the country would owe a deep debt of gratitude to him.

said, he wished to call attention to the Income Tax charged in Schedule B on the occupation of land, and hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would take into consideration the practicability of its abolition. The charge on the existing rate was 8d, the portion under this Schedule being fixed at 4d. in England and 3d. in Scotland and Ireland. The rate, however, ought to be only one-third of 8d. for Scotland and Ireland. Even those rates of charge was burdensome, because it was a tax on the profits of farmers, which were assumed, and not real. It gave great dissatisfaction, while the amount raised by it was very trifling. No doubt the farmers could claim exemption on proof of profits not being realized; but the necessity of keeping elaborate books prevented farmers from establishing their claims to exemption.

said, the present financial condition of the country was one of the greatest gravity. The Expenditure of this year, he believed, had not been equalled in this generation. He should never cease to regret that the Party to which he belonged was, in the first instance, responsible for this extraordinary outlay, and that, instead of being checked by the Party opposite, the latter lent every encouragement to the most extravagant proposals which proceeded from the late Government. If the Expenditure had been extraordi- nary, our present position in regard to the Budget was still more singular, and even inexplicable. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer belonged to a Party which had been always understood to defend a combination of the systems of direct and indirect taxation. Apologies for the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been made that night by hon. Members, who said be bad not struck the death-knell of indirect taxation by any utterance of his; but in the country the right hon. Gentleman would be judged, not by his utterances, but by his action. He had produced a Budget in which he had deliberately thrown overboard the proposals of his Predecessor; and, so far as he grappled with the great deficit under which the country was suffering, ho bad laid it entirely on real property, and he had made it almost impossible that we should in the future fall back upon any substantial Revenue from indirect sources. In one respect be (Mr. Illingworth) differed from his right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), inasmuch as he had been an advocate for nearly the whole of his life of the principle of direct taxation, both in local and Imperial finance; and, therefore, he saw a future in which we should be confined to direct taxation without any anxiety or alarm. He had considerable sympathy with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in being obliged to bring in a miserable and make-shift Budget, in which he had been compelled to do the thing that he did not-wish to do—that was, to lay increased burdens on real property; and had neglected to do that which he would have liked to have done—that was, to put new burdens upon personal property; and in which he bad been obliged to suspend the operation of the Sinking Fund, on which his late Colleague set so much store. He (Mr. Illingworth) was glad the sham of the Sinking Fund was exploded, for he had contended, over and over again, that it would be wise not to set up the practice of reducing the National Debt in good times and in bad times equally. The right hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Hubbard) drew attention to the fact that of late years the loans of municipalities had largely increased, and he and some other Members appeared to think that this was an evil and a danger to the communities. So far from that being the case, he (Mr. Illingworth) believed that there was no investment that had added so much to the prosperity and the stability of our large towns as the enter-prizes of which these loans were the representation. How could the municipalities otherwise provide a boundless supply of pure water, which would benefit the community for endless generations? It was impossible that the expenditure could be met at the time that it was incurred. He did not hesitate to say that for substantial purposes of that character even 60 years was an unnecessarily short period within which to limit municipalities in the repayment of capital, though he admitted that in sewerage works, and, perhaps, street paving and improvements, the time now generally understood to be the limit was reasonable. Not long ago in his own town, where they had used those borrowing powers very largely, one of the best-informed and most experienced officials of the borough stated, at a public meeting, that if their gas and water works, which were the main items that bad run up those large loans, were to be handed over to Companies, they would sell for a very large premium, and, so far from the outlay being a burden on the town, it was a valuable investment. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman who had manifested an undue anxiety as to the position of towns on asking Parliament for those loans might rest assured that in 99 cases out of 100 the outlay was a wise one on the part of the municipalities, which were as well capable of taking care of their affairs as Parliament had shown itself to be in Imperial matters. Some Members on the other side had shown a disposition to resort to the taxation of imported commodities in order to relieve the Chancellor of the Exchequer from the difflculty of putting taxation altogether upon real property. He was surprised to hear the right hon. Member for North Hants (Mr. SclatorBooth) talk about raising large sums which should be a substantial relief of the Exchequer by very small import charges. Nothing was more absurd than that idea. The charge upon the imports must be substantial, otherwise the relief would be very trifling. If Members wore to discuss import charges, he only wished they would speak plainly, so that the country might understand what was intended. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would save his own Party from confusion if he would, by a plain declaration, state at once, as his Predecessor in the lead of the Conservative Party stated, that it was impossible for this country to return to anything like import duties, and that those who advocated such a change were only indulging in an allusion. He was not sorry, upon the whole, that just before a General Election there should be this deficit and this increased taxation. If the deficit pointed a moral, it would not be altogether useless. We had had wars, purposeless wars, in his opinion; we had had extravagant expenditure; and we were now cowardly enough to accumulate debt instead of meeting the expenditure immediately. He hoped the country would learn the lesson, and teach it to many Members.

I think, if the country does make the inquiry suggested by the hon. Member as to who has been instrumental in raising the National Expenditure, no one on this side of the House will have much cause to fear the result. My right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Hubbard) has raised in the Motion which he has made a subject of great importance and interest. It is one of which I may almost say he has made a life study. For something like 30 years he has continually brought forward this question, and he expressed his views on a certain occasion so effectively that he obtained the appointment of a Committee to investigate it; but he has not been able to carry the question further than he carried it then. As long ago as 1861, my right hon. Friend obtained the appointment of that Committee. It was a very strong Committee, and after full inquiry they reported that the plan proposed did not, in their opinion, give a satisfactory basis for the practical and equitable re-adjustment of the tax, and they were not prepared to offer to the House any suggestions. The matter has been frequently discussed since that time. It has been debated by a right hon. Gentleman of far greater experience than I can pretend to—by the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone)—and I think there has been a general conviction that, although, no doubt, there are anomalies in the present system of assessing the Income Tax, yet no change in that system could cure all these anomalies, while it might substitute even greater anomalies for them. I am not implying that the speech which my right hon. Friend has delivered does not deserve consideration. I shall give it such consideration as is in my power; but what has fallen from him to-night shows us something of the difficulty of dealing with this subject. He has shown, while dwelling on the great importance and usefulness of arriving at one basis for all direct taxation, that, so far from being able to do this, Parliament had not even been able to establish a uniform basis for the poor rate and county rate throughout the country. If we cannot do that as to the poor rate and the county rate, surely the prospect of establishing such a basis for Imperial as well as local burdens is not encouraging. I think the result of this scheme might be very considerably to relieve certain Schedules of the Income Tax at the cost of other Schedules—[Mr. HUBBARD: Of course.]—and that one Schedule which would be more heavily burdened would be that relating to land—a thing which I do not think my right hon. Friend would desire. I do not wish to pursue the subject now, because the Motion raises so many important questions that I do not think it would be possible satisfactorily to discuss them at present. All I can say is that I shall give attention to the statement he has made, and that I shall endeavour to approach it without prejudice. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Childers) has made, in a spirit which I wish to acknowledge, some observations upon the Budget. In the first place, he stated to the House that, in his opinion, I could not fairly abjure all the responsibility for the deficit. Well, the part of the deficit for which I may be said to be responsible amounts to £1,550,000. Of course, I am responsible for that amount; but I did not find anything in the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman to show that he really believed that I could have persevered with the increased Beer and Spirit Duties. He pointed out that it was perfectly consistent with the Resolution I carried against him to propose an increased duty on beer and spirits, as well as on wine; but he did not intimate that, if I made that proposal, he would himself support it, much less did he hold out any hope that it would be accepted by the House of Commons. I think it is perfectly obvious that my Motion was carried, not only by those who wished to see a corresponding increase in the Wine Duties to the duty proposed on spirits and beer, but also by the support of those who objected altogether to any increase in the duties on beer and spirits. The House practically negatived the increased Beer and Spirit Tax; and, therefore, I have abandoned it. The right hon. Gentleman put forward some very remarkable theories as to the sort of Budget which might be expected in the future, perhaps even from himself; because, as I understood him, he said that a very largo increase of Revenue might, in his opinion, be raised from those very articles of indirect taxation to which I have just alluded. He talked of raising £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 from intoxicating liquors; he spoke of increasing the Beer Duty by 50 per cent. If he thought it possible to make such a large increase in those duties, why did he not take more from that source in his own Budget? He may reply to me that he did not make these suggestions as proposals which could be practically carried out. I do not charge him with any intention of carrying them out; but I submit to the House that if he is to be exonerated from such an intention, I may be equally exonerated from having ever proposed an increased duty on tea—a charge against me which even in this debate has been repeated by no less an authority than the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock). The argument of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the possibility of an increase in the duties on beer, spirits, and wine, was this—that, as a Revenue question, such an increase would be possible; and he referred to it in connection with the statements which I ventured to make in my speech the other day when I said that, in my opinion, in such times as these I feared we had arrived, for the purpose of Revenue, at the limits of increased taxation on the most important taxed articles of consumption. The whole of that sentence was governed by the comparison which I drew as to the amount of indirect taxation which could be levied in times of prosperity and times of depression such as that through which we are now passing. I stated to the House that in times of prosperity such as this country had formerly experienced it was a very easy matter indeed for any Chancellor of the Exchequer to obtain from the annual increment in the consumption of such articles a very much larger increase in indirect taxation than the comparatively small amount of £1,350,000 which the right hon. Gentleman desired to raise. I did not in my remarks sound the knell of direct taxation; what I did was simply to endeavour to show the House that in such circumstances as those in which we were at present placed—in times of depressed trade and decreased consumption—you could not raise increased Revenue from articles of consumption already highly taxed. I will endeavour to prove my case from the argument of the right hon. Gentleman in opening his Budget to the House of Commons. As the House will remember, the right hon. Gentleman proposed to raise the duty on spirits from 10s. to 12s. per gallon on home-made spirits, and on foreign and Colonial spirits from 10s. 4d. to 12s. 4d. a-gallon. The right hon. Gentleman said—

"This we calculate will produce during the present year, under the head of Customs and Excise, about £900,000. Of course, this is based upon some reduction in consumption. At the present time the consumption is about 36,000,000 gallons, producing about £18,000,000 a-year. If the higher duty produces only £900,000 more, a simple sum in arithmetic will show that the consumption will have fallen below 32,000,000 gallons."—(3 Hansard, [297] 1155.)

What I argued was that increased taxation was not based upon sound financial principles when you could only obtain it by a process which would so seriously reduce the consumption of the article on which you levied it. Again, the same remarks will apply to beer. The right hon. Gentleman this evening told the House that the receipts from beer had increased to a small extent within the last three years. That, no doubt, was a fact; but what was the right hon. Gentleman's own estimate of the yield of the increased duty he proposed to put upon beer? He said—

"By increasing the duty on beer from 6s. 3d. to 7s. 3d. per barrel of 36 gallons, he hoped to get during the year £750,000, or about 9 per cent more than the present Revenue."—[Ibid.]

The increase ought to have been more than that—it ought to have raised the receipts from beer from £8,500,000 to £9,860,000. Instead of that, the right hon. Gentleman only put the receipts at £9,250,000.

was understood to say that he had spoken only of the increase in the first year; but, of course, any addition to a tax would, no doubt, cause decreased consumption.

But the House will remember that the right hon. Gentleman proposed that the duty on beer should only last for a year; and therefore, so far as the statement went, it applied to the whole time for which he proposed to increase the tax. The increase in the receipts from beer during the last three years has been very small, while the receipts from spirits are decreasing, so that the right hon. Gentleman would not have been too cautious if he had put his Estimate for the Beer Duty at a lower figure than he did. The right hon. Gentleman has alluded to one part of my remarks on the Budget in which I referred to an increased expenditure of £200,000, which had been included by the War Office in their revised Estimate of the Vote of Credit. That expenditure was understood to be for the defence of certain commercial harbours and military ports. The right hon. Gentleman complained that I had omitted to state that there was already included in the Army Estimates a certain sum for expenditure of the same kind. My statement was a quotation from the Budget Speech of the right hon. Gentleman himself. The item of £200,000 to which I referred was for expenditure of the same general kind, but for a different special purpose to that included in the Army Estimates. In his Budget Speech the right hon. Gentleman, speaking of this matter, said—

"But I must also point out to the Committee that in the Army Estimates of this year there is no provision for the defence of our commercial harbours, or for the improvement of the seaward defences of our great military ports. As to these, statements were made in both Houses on the 2nd of December last, by Lord Northbrook in the House of Lords, and by my hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty (Sir Thomas Brassey) in this House, and they pledged the Government to full consideration of the Report on these subjects, and to probable proposals for large expenditure in future years."

What I said was that we had made, in the original Army The Chancellor of the Exchequer Estimates, provision for our coaling stations to the extent of £200,000.

I was speaking of an expenditure for a different special purpose. I think I have now alluded to all the points to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk), who complained that I did not insert a clause in the Bill now under the consideration of the House enabling the Treasury to raise the limit of the 1s. duty on wines from 26 to 30 degrees, I may say that I deliberately excluded the clause, because the negotiations with the Spanish Government had come to an end. The House is acquainted with the manner in which those negotiations came to an end. I do not wish to apply any strong language to what occurred; but it amounted to a treatment of this country by the Spanish Ministers to which it can hardly be possible to apply anything but strong terms. Certain Treaty arrangements were entered into which this country loyally accepted, and which the Spanish Ministry failed to carry through. Under these circumstances, the position was entirely changed from what it was when the right hon. Gentleman opposite included this provision in his Budget Bill. I have excluded this power for two reasons—first, its presence in the Bill would have the effect of keeping the wine trade in a state of uncertainty, from which, I am advised, it has already suffered so much; and, secondly, I was anxious to intimate that, however much it may be to our interests to conclude commercial negotiations with Spain, yet it is of very much greater importance to Spain than to us. I do not wish, after the treatment we have received from Spain, to put a provision in the Act which would have seemed like weakness on the part of this country. Those are the reasons why I deliberately excluded such a power from the Bill; but I can assure the House that we desire a better commercial footing with Spain than we at present occupy, and that Her Majesty's Government will do their best, consistently with the interests of the country, to obtain it. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Shield) referred at length to the exemptions set forth in the clause of the Bill which deals with the new tax to be imposed on corporate property. That is a matter I do not think it desirable to discuss now—it is more fitted for the Committee stage; but this I will venture to say—that I was rather surprised to hear from the hon. Member a desire to increase the number of exemptions. They are sufficiently large at present. The hon. and gallant Member for Kincardineshire (General Sir George Balfour) asked me some questions with regard to the Income Tax. I may say that there is nothing in the Bill relating to the Income Tax which is at all at variance with previous Acts of the same character; but I cannot undertake to make any change in the direction suggested by the hon. and gallant Member. I am a farmer myself, and I should be glad to be exempted from Schedule B; but I do not believe that the House would deliberately strike out that Schedule from the Bill, although it does not yield a very large revenue, without a very careful consideration of other matters affecting the general incidence of the tax. For myself, I must say that I think it would be better for the agricultural interest to keep Schedule B as it stands than to make the alteration in the system of assessment suggested by the hon. and gallant Member. I do not think that there is anything else with which I need trouble the House. I heard with great interest the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Hampshire (Mr. Sclater-Booth), which I shall take into consideration. The hon. Baronet the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) and the hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. Illingworth) said something about the iniquity of not paying off our debts, of appropriating the Sinking Fund, and of carrying over a large deficit to next year. I do not think that these doctrines, however much they may be preached by financial purists, are very popular at the present moment, for surely there are very few persons, either in the House or in the country, who consider that either the circumstances or the taxation of the present year are of a normal character. We certainly do not live in what can be called peaceful or prosperous times, and there could be no year in which it could be more thoroughly justifiable to pause in the system of repayment of our debts which we have adopted in times of more prosperity, and of expen- diture on a more peaceful scale. I repudiate the desire which has been attributed to me by some speakers in this debate of doing anything which would be likely to put an end to our system of indirect taxation. I think that the right Gentleman said more than he actually intended in that respect, and I do not think that my words were open to such an interpretation. My only desire is to meet existing circumstances in the best way in my power; and if it is my lot—as I hope it may be—to deal with this matter next year, I trust that I may be able to deal with it in a way which will show that I adhere to, and endeavour to put into practice, the principles I have professed as to the relations between direct and indirect taxation.

For the sake of clearness, perhaps I may be permitted to say that I gather from the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman that he gives up for the present the clause raising the superior limit of the 1s. Wine Duty from 26 to 30 degrees; but that he proposes to renew the endeavour to secure improved commercial arrangements with Spain. If he does so I am satisfied. By abandoning all reference to the rate of the lower duty we shall be free, and the negotiations might be much more satisfactorily continued.

Yes; I quite understand that, and it is what I propose.

said, that upon the understanding that the Government would require from the officials of the Inland Revenue and Local Government Departments a careful consideration of our present systems of local and Imperial taxation, and an honest Report upon the practicability of their adjustment, he withdrew his Motion.

said, that the Amendment which stood on the Paper in his name was to the effect—

"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the excessive use of moisture in the manufacture of Tobacco, and to the mode in which Duties are now levied upon that article."

Seeing, however, that it was obviously useless at that period of the Session to ask for a Committee to inquire into anything, he did not seriously wish the House to appoint the Committee proposed in his Amendment. He desired, however, to make an appeal to the right hon. Baronet the Chancellor of the Exche-quer to add this question to the many others which he had already promised to consider in the autumn. The question was well worthy of consideration; because the moisture used in the manufacture of tobacco was so excessive as to amount to adulteration on a wholesale scale, to the depreciation of tobacco, to the detriment of the Revenue, and to the great injury of the poorer classes of the country who indulged in it. The tobacco imported into this country in 1883 amounted to 49,500,000 lbs., and from that 84,000,000 lbs. of commercial tobacco were made and sold over the counter. About 34,500,000 lbs. were, therefore, sold over the counter without having paid duty. In fact, it consisted of water which had been used in the manufacture of the article.

I must remind the hon. Member that there is nothing in the Bill now before the House which deals with tobacco. He will, therefore, not be in Order in speaking upon this subject.

said, he did not put down the Amendment on the Paper without consulting the authorities of the House, including the Speaker, as to his right to raise the question upon the second reading of the Customsand Inland Revenue Bill; and he assumed that the Amendment having been placed on the Paper was an indication that he would be in Order in moving it.

There must be some misconception on the point, as it never came under my notice. The hon. Member cannot be in Order, because the question which he has raised is not dealt with by the Bill.

said, he wished to know how it would be possible to raise the question, if it could not be discussed on the Bill now before the House?

The hon. Member can make a Motion to that effect on going into Committee of Supply.

in rising to move, as an Amendment—

"That, in the relief of destitute paupers out of any Poor Rate, this House declines to draw a distinction in favour of enfranchising those who obtain it in the form of medical treatment and those who are compelled to accept it in the form of bread,"

said, that on Monday last, or, rather, at about 3 o'clock on Tuesday morning, Her Majesty's Government asked leave to introduce this Bill, and a short statement was then made by the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill. That statement did not by any means satisfy general expectation on the introduction of so important a measure, so far as the information on which the Bill was founded was concerned. The number of Members in the House at the time was very few—he believed about 42—and they were given to understand that on the second reading the right hon. Gentleman would make a full statement, with reasons why the Government had introduced the measure. There was one point, the most important of all, as to which the House was in need of information, and that was the number of persons that would be affected by the measure. The right hon. Gentleman gave the House distinctly to understand that, before the Government proceeded with the measure, information would be given, at all events, upon this point.

said, that he had not given that promise. All that he had promised was that information would be given at a later day, and it should be so given.

said, that then the right hon. Gentleman was making out a worse case for himself. The information ought to have been given on moving the second reading at the commencement of the debate. What possible use could it be in the end? The House was now going to consider one of the most important questions that had ever come before it during the time that he had had the honour of a seat in it—a question, too, that had been rushed upon it. Under these circumstances, it would have been more consistent with Parliamentary practice if the right hon. Gentleman had furnished the House and himself, a humble Member of it, with information essential to the adequate consideration of the Bill before the House. The result of the treatment of this important question was at once to drive hon. Members below the Gangway to resist its progress. No one could fairly object if hon. Members met the measure in such a way as to secure time for its consideration. He would again call attention to the extraordinary circumstances which surrounded the case. On Tuesday morning the Government took the first reading, and, with the greatest difficulty, were induced to concede to hon. Members time until to-day for the consideration of the measure. The report of what took place at that time in the morning, though accurate as far as it went, was, of course, very short. But now hon. Members had an opportunity of telling the country what the Government really did on Tues- day morning. All they had then submitted to them were the vaguest generalities; and he expressed the hope, therefore, that the House would assist him in chocking the progress of this measure until a more suitable opportunity arrived for discussion. The Bill was brought in after 2 o'clock in the morning, and in bringing it in the right hon. Gentleman made a dry statement; but he gave the House to understand that he would make a full one on the second reading. The Government obtained the first reading, but not without some opposition. But for the division that was taken at 3 o'clock on the morning the Bill was introduced, and the apprehension of a "Count out," the Government would have proceeded with the second reading on the same day. For his part, he could not see the necessity for this haste. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) had got a Bill before the House aiming at precisely the same results, with this distinction—that the hon. Member for Ipswich, basing his reasons for his Bill upon the ground that a vast number of the new electorate would be taken by surprise, asked merely for a measure which, though retrospective, was temporary in its character. The President of the Local Government Board had taken the feather out of the hon. Member's cap, and introduced a Bill which was much stronger. The effect of the hon. Member for Ipswich's Bill would be that a number of poorpersons who might have been unexpectedly deprived of the franchise would not be disfranchised before they had time to consider their position. The Government had taken the hon. Member's ewe lamb and amplified it, with mischievous and dangerous additions, simply to secure the popular vote? Then, as to the merits of the question, he wished to put fairly the state of the case dealt with by the Bill. Sickness alone was not a qualification for medical relief. For instance, he (Mr. Pell) himself, or his servant, might be sick, and yet they could get no assistance from the Guardians; the condition precedent was destitution, and his Amendment referred to the relief of destitute paupers. A person applying for medical relief was exactly on the same footing as a person applying for bread, except that his case was not so strong. One applicant was sick, another had not had food for 24 hours; and the Board of Guardians, dealing with both cases and admitting the destitution, made both paupers, and ordered food in one case and medicine in the other. It was now proposed to make a legal distinction between the two cases by giving the vote to the man who accepted medicine, and withholding it from the man who accepted food, by conferring it on the man who accepted that which 1d. a-week subscribed to a medical club or dispensary would have provided him with, and withholding it from the man who accepted the food which a subscription of 1d. a-week would not have provided for him. They had no right to make a distinction between the two paupers, and, as it were, to confer a sort of dignity on the pauperism that might have been most easily provided against. But the matter could not rest here. Why should they confine this exemption to medical relief? Before three years were over they would be having all paupers demanding the exemption; and the old and wholesome rule, which drew a distinction between paupers and free men, would be broken down. In the absence of information which should have been furnished by the Government, he had just examined a Return which was furnished to the House in 1870, on the Motion of the present Speaker, which showed the amount of outdoor and indoor medical relief given in that year. The population of England and Wales was 22,000,000; in that year the country was in a flourishing condition, and there were 1,000,000 paupers. It was remarkable, but true, that, when times were at their best, pauperism was at the highest. It was not so much want that made paupers, as an impulse on the part of the Guardians, who, when their own pockets were full, were disposed to be generous with other people's money, particularly when generous impulses coincided with the inclination to keep up the supply of cheap labour. The Return showed that 840,388 persons then were receiving outdoor relief, and only 106,323, or under 13 per cent, were also sick and in receipt of medical relief. It did not follow that all the 106,000 would come under the operation of such a Bill as this; for, as he understood, the Bill was intended to apply to outdoor paupers only, and not to indoor paupers. That supposition was confirmed by the President of the Local Government Board. The last Return of pauperism in England and Wales was for 1883, when the population was 26,500,000. Times were much worse; but the outdoor poor had sunk to 500,000, roughly speaking, or under 600,000. If the same percentage were taken of this number as he had taken of the 106,000, there would be found only 78,000 in 1883 who were in receipt of medical relief, some of whom had other relief also.

Can the hon. Gentleman state the number of women and children?

said, ho should come to that presently. The Return of 1870 gave the sex and age in classes, and showed that there wore 46,000 female paupers over 16 years of age. The pauperism of these persons did not pauperize any other adult. But if a woman was under 16 years of age the parent was pauperized. He would take away the 46,000 women over 16 as not affecting the calculation, with the exception of those who were married. If the married women became paupers, of course they pauperized their husbands. Thus, there were 60,000 persons left, whoso sickness carried with it disqualification, in 1870, being 8 percent of outdoor pauperism at that time. If they took 8 per cent of the 600,000 paupers of the later period, there were only 48,000 who pauperized those dependent on them. He would give every chance to the advocates of the Bill, and would assume that 22,000 female paupers over 16 were married; these he would add to the 48,000 he had already mentioned. Thus, there would be a total of about 70,000 who would be affected by this Bill. Of course, he was giving figures which related to a particular day, and not the number for the year, for which, no doubt, an addition would have to be made. But of this number how many were in receipt of medical relief only, and did not receive money or food or other assistance? Among this number were nurses. Was the allowance of nurses to disqualify? That was an important question, as orders for nurses were often given, which resulted occasionally in bringing a daughter from service into a pauper home, who might otherwise be earning her bread. He presumed that orders for brandy, gin, and mutton might come under the head of medical relief. It must also be remembered that no relief could be given except through the relieving officer. The Guardians might order on the doctor's recommendation; the relieving officer alone could give these extras. He hoped he should not be charged with taking an extravagant view of the case; but he had had great experience. He knew of one case, where the Guardians had given an order for 2 lbs. of mutton a-week for a man who, the doctor said, was in a low condition. The relieving officer refused to carry out the order, and, when remonstrated with, his answer was that if the man wanted mutton he had better have one of the 50 sheep killed which belonged to him. One of the chief uses to which medical orders were put was for what was technically known as "preparatory"—that was to say, an introduction to outdoor relief. The prohibitory order interdicted Guardians giving outdoor relief to able-bodied paupers. The order was, however, evaded by the grant, in the first instance, of a medical order to a "prepared" pauper, so as to place him in the class of not able-bodied; after which came the order for full and continuous outdoor relief, with beef and liquor, under the colour of medical assistance. But, after all, when the number of those who received only medicine was calculated, how many would the Bill really affect? Not 20,000—he dared say not more than 10,000. What was 10,000 out of the 2,000,000 who were to be enfranchised? This Bill afforded a curious instance of extremes meeting. When his Friends sat on the opposite Benches they used to refer to the Kilmainham Treaty. This, however, might be called the "Curemainham Treaty," and was something like a Treaty between the extreme Radicals and the Tory Government. They Were urged by their present Leaders to vote against the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Christ-church (Mr. Davey). Hon. Members were also urged by the late Government to oppose that Amendment. Both Front Benches, after opposing that Amondment, and the moderate and consistent measure of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Ceilings), were now thrusting him aside and pushing forward the Bill before the House, which he could not but characterize as a piece of ignorant and mischievous philanthropy. He believed that the day would come when, as one of the results of the present spread of education, the good and true men of England, the provident and thrifty men who were members of benefit societies, would condemn this legislation. The hon. Member for Ipswich argued that a very large number of persons would be disfranchised if some Bill of the kind was not passed, and only proposed a temporary measure, which would have given a warning to the recipients of medical relief, and relieved them of the consequences of a surprise at the coming General Election, so that their votes might not be lost to the liberal Party. The Minister who had the administration of the Poor Law, bidding higher, now proposed, however, to remove for ever the disqualification, and thereby encouraged people to be thriftless and to misspend upon themselves money which ought to go to benefit societies and sick clubs. Ho would like to know why the Government thrust aside the moderate Bill of the hon. Member for Ipswich, and brought to the front this monstrous measure? He was astonished to find the hon. Member for Ipswich and the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board racing together; the latter, he thought, quite as free-stepping as the former, and, in fact, a little faster. As a matter of fact, the number of persons who would be disqualified on account of the receipt of medical relief would be very small. For instance, in a rural Union of which ho was a Guardian, there had, in the last three years, been only two cases in which medical relief alone had been received. No doubt, in some Unions, a more lax system had prevailed. In Bradfield Union, in Berkshire, during the years 1874, 1875, and 1876 there were no fewer than 2,124 cases of medical relief. This was so serious that the Chairman of the Board of Guardians took the matter in hand, and, by offering medical relief only as a loan, he reduced the number of cases in the years 1877, 1878, and 1879 to 116. The people, when told that they would only be given the medical relief on loan, and that they would have to repay the Board for it, mostly refused it, and said they might as well have their own doctor. It would be well if this system was adopted in other Unions throughout the country. In these cases there would be no disqualification, as the payment of fees was only deferred. It had been said in the House that there was no great difference between the qualification for admission to a hospital and that for obtaining medical relief from the parochial doctor; but there was a vital difference. Whereas, in the first case, it was sickness pure and simple, in the second it was sickness combined with destitution. In regard to the registration of voters, the law provided that in the ease of a poor person who had failed to pay the rates his registration might be objected to. The pauper who received relief in the shape of medical aid was to be allowed to vote; the other was to remain disfranchised. A Conservative Government, he presumed, would in time remove this disqualification. It would say that it was an unfair thing that this honest man, whose wife might have carried off the few shillings laid up to pay the rates to spend in the gin palace, should be disfranchised, and that payment of rate shall no longer be insisted upon in order to secure a man the franchise. Such unwise concessions were fraught with dangerous and mischievous results. The consequence of giving medical relief confirmed the persons who received it in improvident habits, and it led others to argue that as those who received such relief were allowed to remain on the Register they were as much entitled to similar relief without disqualification. He would ask leave to quote the words of a paper read by the Rector of Shotley, at a Poor Law Conference at Ipswich on this subject—

"The immediate consequence of giving a sick man a medical order may be that he is sooner restored to health and enabled to resume the labours of his calling. 13ut is this the only consequence? Are there no other results sure to follow which, as true friends of our fellow-men, we ought to take into account? Suppose the consequence of giving medical relief to a particular individual is that he is confirmed in improvident habits, and that his neighbours are discouraged in and deterred in future from efforts to secure medical attendance for themselves. Suppose the granting of medical relief to be a grievous obstacle and impediment to any general system by which the working classes might be enabled at a small cost to obtain medical attendance without submitting to the degradation of pauperism, and that they are thus induced to keep themselves always on the brink of destitution in order to qualify themselves for the relief provided for the destitute alone. Ought they not to make us think twice before we make easy the descent from independence into pauperism."

It was impossible to exaggerate the mischievous consequences to the poor which would inevitably result if this Bill became law, without the introduction in Committee of some softening Amendment. He trusted, however, the House would pause before passing such a measure; and he would, therefore, move the Amendment standing in his name on the Paper.

seconded the Amendment.

said, the hon. Member who had just spoken (Mr. Pell) had been somewhat unfair in the remarks which he had made to the Government. On Tuesday everyone knew that, if this measure had not been opposed by hon. Gentlemen opposite, it might have been got through in time for the voters to be placed on the regular lists. But the opposition offered to its passage, not only by hon. Members on the Government side, but by hon. Members on his (Mr. Jesse Collings') own side, had prevented that object from being attained. The hon. Member laid great stress on the information with respect to the number who were disqualified. For himself, he (Mr. Jesse Collings) did not take into consideration whether the number was 10 per cent or 50 per cent. The question was one of principle; and he held that when they passed a Reform Bill they should take care not to enfranchise with one hand, and then, with the other, to disfranchise a number of those whom they were supposed to enfranchise. He could not accept the compliment which had been offered to him, on the ground that his Bill was only for one year. It was made for one year against his will, and only to enable him to bring it before the House at all. It had been drawn by the hon. and learned Member for Christ-church (Mr. H. Davey), who was now unable to be present; and it was intended to be retrospective, and he believed it was so, although all doubt on that point might have been removed by inserting a tew words in Committee. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) said that he preferred his (Mr. Jesse Collings') Bill to that of the Government; but for himself he would willingly give two of his own Bills for the one now before the House. As to the alleged appropriation of his "ewe lamb," he certainly asked for no sympathy on that account. The hon. Member further said that the measure was taken up in order to get the popular vote. That was a grave charge against the Government. In the long run the tools would fall to those who could use them. He and his Friends were true believers in the temple in which, for the moment, they were all worshippers; but hon. Members opposite were mere conformists to a creed which in their hearts they disliked. So long as the peasantry of this country remained in the condition to which they had been reduced, from the state of rude abundance in which they were at one time, to the position of mere hirelings, with a workhouse in return for what had been taken from them, it could not be expected that they would possess the virtues and excellences for which the hon. Member for South Leicestershire seemed to look. He (Mr. Jesse Collings) was himself no lawyer; but he believed that parochial relief of any kind did not disqualify a county voter till the Act of 1867 was passed, and the hon. Member opposite wished to make a new disqualification in making it affect a newly-enfranchised class. The overseer of a small parish in the West of England informed him that there were in that parish 29 agricultural labourers' families, and that 20 of those men would be disqualified, although they themselves belonged to clubs, on account of then-wives or children receiving medical relief. Again, a medical officer of health in a borough in Lancashire informed him that, as there had been an epidemic of small-pox in the place, he had persuaded the people to send their suffering children to a hospital in which the Guardians of the Poor paid for the food and medical attendance; and the fathers of those children, who had been pressed into the hospital for the good of the community, would be deprived of their votes. He would give another instance—from Somersetshire. A gentleman of very good standing, who had canvassed a number of the Liberal voters, said that out of 20 he had waited upon 18 would be disfranchised. Surely that was a very considerable percentage. He had received a letter from a gentleman well known in that House; but he was not authorized to give the name, in which the writer spoke of a town which had 1,900 inhabited houses, and said the conclusion he had arrived at was that the receipt of medical relief would have disqualified rather under one-fourth of the voters in that town, and, about one-third of those who resided in the villages scattered throughout the division. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire had talked a great deal about the "Guardians of the Poor." He (Mr. Jesse Collings) thought that was a misnomer altogether. It should be Guardians of the poor rate elected for the administration of the poor rate. He had come to the conclusion that the Guardians, instead of being elected, as the Poor Law intended they should be, to look after the interests of the poor, were elected by men of property to keep down the rates, which they succeeded in doing by the exercise of cruelty and oppression. ["Oh, oh !"] He knew very well what he was speaking about, and it was certainly from an opposite point of view from the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken. There was one thing which certainly required to be altered in connection with the administration of the Poor Law—namely, the giving of one vote for a particular rental, and then increasing the number of votes until they reached six for a £250 rental.

rose to Order. He did not see that the remarks of the hon. Member had any reference to the provisions of the present Bill.

said, he knew that his remarks might be distasteful to some hon. Gentlemen opposite; but ho had been challenged by them in reference to this question of Guardians of the Poor, for whom they posed as the champions, and he said again that the Guardians were not elected to care for the poor, but to save the rates. The hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) opposed the Bill from the point of view of political economy, or what he was pleased to style political economy, the exactitude of which position, however, he (Mr. Jesse Collings) disputed. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) said that destitution ought to be the only ground on which relief was applied for or granted. In passing, he would remind the hon. Member of the responsibility he assumed for himself by his Amendment—that there should be no difference made between parochial aid when received in the form of medical relief, and when received in the shape of bread. It might be an open question whether the hon. Member wished to include that or not. It was a very suggestive Amendment. The hon. Member stated that destitution was always the ground on which this relief was demanded and given.

I said that that was the only ground upon which it could be legally given.

said, he disputed that altogether. There were a large number of cases—one or two in every Union—in which medical relief was given, not for simple destitution, but because extra medical skill and help were required beyond what it was in the power of the ordinary wage-earner to command. Might he give an instance or two? He was afraid to appeal to the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) in regard to anything connected with the humanity of the situation. Let them take the case of confinements, for instance. Did the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Pell) know how the poor managed in such cases? [Mr. PELL: Perfectly.] Then the hon. Member would admit he was right when he said that they often gave some poor old woman 2s. 6d., or 3s., or 5s. ["No, no !"] Hon. Members might say "No, No!" but he said "Yes;" and ho was glad to have the opportunity of enlightening them from the labourer's point of view. They had heard enough from the property and the Guardian point of view; but, as a matter of fact, in the case he had mentioned, the husband would give a few shillings to some poor old woman, who frequently got into a difficulty in regard to the case; for sometimes very difficult cases would occur even among the labouring classes, and then the parish doctor was called in. He would give the House some idea of the extent to which serious oases took place by referring to the Farnham Union, a place which the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Onslow) ought to know something about. In that Union there had been 60 cases of the kind in one half-year. [Mr. ONSLOW: What cases?] The cases to which he was referring were cases which did not come under the head of ordinary destitution, but which, from their gravity, demanded medical skill, which it was out of the power of the ordinary wage-earning class to provide cases such as broken thighs and arms, operations, and difficult confinements. Then, again, there were cases in which a certificate of lunacy was required. He had been unable to find out whether that came under the head of medical relief; but he believed it did. He had received a letter from one of the Visiting Justices of Surrey, in which the writer pointed out that a large number of poor men had their wives or children afflicted with lunacy. How was a poor man to pay £1 for a lunacy certificate, or £3 for attendance on his wife, in case of dangerous confinement? [A laugh.] An hon. Member laughed; but it seemed to him (Mr. Jesse Collings) that it was a disgraceful thing for a man, who was in a position to command every luxury and the highest medical skill, to laugh be-cause, unfortunately, cases sometimes happened in which the poor agricultural labourer was obliged to call in the parish doctor in the attempt to save, in the case of a confinement, what sometimes, even by the exercise of the highest medical skill, it was found impossible to save—namely, two lives. In the list he held in his hand of the Farnham Union, 60 cases were mentioned which extended over half a-year; and the expenditure upon them, in that single Union, amounted to £86. He thought that was an answer to the hon. Member who talked of destitution being the only ground on which medical relief could be legally given. Was it destitution? Did not poor people pay rates? If they paid rates, they were entitled to a fair assurance against misfortune. Would the hon. Member propose in that House to relieve from rates ail houses from £ 15 downwards which were inhabited by persons of the class the hon. Member sought to deprive of their privileges? He did not anticipate that the hon. Member would be prepared to do anything of the kind. The political economy of the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) was not to be commended, nor was it necessary that he should discuss it. The hon. Member said that the receipt of medical relief was corrupting and degrading, and ought to be an absolute disqualification for the exercise of civil rights—that was to say, that poverty was to be regarded as a crime, punishable with the loss of all civil rights. If a labouring man had the misfortune to break his leg, and was unable to pay the doctor £3, his hon. Friend would therefore deprive him of his rights of political citizenship. It was political economy run mad. It was setting up an abstract principle, and dealing with it in the manner and to the extent with which they might deal with the North Pole and the Solar System, instead of remembering that they were dealing with human beings. Assuming the theory to be right, surely it was to be regulated by the common necessities of human life. He thought it was highly dangerous to teach that degradation was synonymous with poverty. Were free education and free libraries degrading in the hon. Member's opinion, because they certainly came within the same category? The poor were bitterly insulted by having their poverty described as degrading. The arguments which were employed were the abstract arguments of the schoolman and of the Professor; but all humanity was against them, and, in the end, humanity would prove victorious. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Poll) had spoken of hospitals and dispensaries. He (Mr. Jesse Codings) believed that the free relief given by charity was, or should be, more demoralizing than the relief given by the community in their corporate capacity, which was what he understood by the poor rate. The hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) had cheered the declaration that a man should go into clubs. How could men go into clubs when they could hardly get a bit of bread for themselves and their children? Ho declined to treat the question as one of a mere set of opinions, with no reference to the varying needs of human beings. Poor relief, in his mind, should not imply degradation, although poor relief had necessarily had degradation attached to it, owing to the miserable administration of the Poor Law. Passing by that question, he wished to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. A. J. Balfour) to another matter, seeing that the right hon. Gentleman had been defeated on Tuesday by his own Party, in pressing forward a measure which he had evidently every desire to pass. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire seemed to look upon it as something marvellous that there should be anything like sincerity in a Leader of his own Party. To show how this question of medical relief might be made to operate, he would cite one or two cases which had been communicated to him. He had received a letter from a gentleman in Somersetshire, informing him that the doctor and the relieving officer of a particular parish were Members of the Conservative Party; and only the other night one of the Liberal voters was done out of his vote by the parish doctor pulling out one of his children's teeth, and reporting the case to his co-worker and, relieving officer. He could read letters giving dozens of similar cases; but he would not trouble the House with them. He would only give the substance of them, which was to this effect—that unless a large number of voters who had received medical relief were placed on the list before the General Election, the Franchise Bill might as well not have been passed at all, because the lists must be published by the 1st of August, and there would be no time to reinstate the names of these voters. It was quite true that they would have until the 25th of August to make their claim; but it was well known that the bulk of the agricultural labourers were not in a position to send in a claim. Therefore, he pressed on the right hon. Gentleman to complete his measure by ordering the proper officers to make out supplementary lists, which should contain the names of all persons who had been left off the regular lists by reason of their disqualification, owing to the receipt of medical relief. There was a letter published the other day by the hon. Member for Kendal (Mr. Cropper), to which, if the House would allow him, he would refer. His hon. Friend said it had been represented to him that if the view of the hon. Member for South Leicestershire were adopted, many persons who were not paupers would be deprived of their civil rights, owing to the receipt of medical relief. His hon. Friend gave the instance of an engine driver, who went to a doctor because a spark had flown in his eye. It was said that the parish doctor could not put a man upon the list of paupers without an order from the relieving officer; but he (Mr. Jesse Collings) ventured to say that the majority of persons who received medical relief received it without any application on the part of the head of the family for an order. He had obtained evidence, in addition to his own knowledge, to bear out the contention that the medical officer had a carte blanche, as in the case of the child's teeth to which he had referred, to use his own discretion in cases in which relief was wanted. He had received letters describing the marvellous activity of the parochial medical officers in regard to the health of poor families within the last few weeks. Hon. Members would probably have noticed a case which occurred a few days ago. A woman was run over by a carriage and taken away to the workhouse, because there was no room for her in Charing Cross Hospital. The woman died, and the Coroner drew attention to the hardship of the fact that in consequence of the accident to the woman, and the taking of her to the workhouse, her husband would lose his electoral rights. If that were the case, would the hon. Member for South Leicestershire tell him that all these persons were not illegally made paupers? He (Mr. Jesse Collings) believed that they were. He believed that every man whose family received medical relief without an order from the relieving officer, and without an application for such relief, was illegally converted into a pauper, and in the majority of cases which occurred in many parts of the country it would be found that this was the case. He was quite aware that the medical officer would send in his report, in which the name of the man would be mentioned, and in some cases he would ask for an order after the report had been sent in; but he (Mr. Jesse Collings) contended that that was not an application for relief according to the Poor Law. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. A. J. Balfour) would set the Local Government Board to work and insist upon the overseers putting all these men on the list who had been illegally disqualified. If that could be done, there would be a large number of those whose names had already been struck off who would be reinstated. And now with regard to clubs. Hon. Members opposite who knew anything about clubs would know that many of them were semi-charitable institutions supported by a large subscription list got up in the neighbourhood. It was quite true that the members generally paid a small sum per week, but they did not pay the value of the services they received; and, therefore, he contended that they received charity in the highest degree demoralizing. A system of demoralization was introduced which did not belong to medical relief given out of the rates. Private charity certainly did demoralize. It made the recipient a sort of dependent upon those who dispensed it. Medical relief had not that effect when dispensed from the rates. Ho had received a curious letter from an old labourer, and he would invite the attention of the advocates of domestic economy to these facts—for it certainly passed all understanding how persons in this rank of life could make both ends meet with the miserable means at their command. This labouring man said his wages were 11s. a-week, and out of them he paid 2s. for rent, 1s. 6d. for coals, 6d. for school fees, 4s. for bread, and the balance—3s.—was expended in butter, tea, sugar, meat, clothes, and so forth. He added—"Now, how can I pay for medical attendance?" The letter was very badly spelt, but the badness of the spelling was made up by the logic. He admired the ease with which hon. Gentlemen inside that House and outside, whose breakfasts and dinners came round with the regularity of the seasons, preached thrift and economy and every other virtue to these poor men who had to live on 12s. a week. Ho particularly wished the right hon. Gentleman to do what he had asked him, because he had seen a letter from Mr. Edward Strachey—for as the letter had been published he could give the name—in which that gentleman said that, as a member of a Board of Guardians in North Somerset, he had moved that the relieving officer should be instructed to warn all applicants for medical and other relief that its receipt would disqualify them from voting at the next election, and to Ms surprise it was objected that such action on the part of the Board would be illegal. He had positive proof that there was a wonderful amount of activity just now among the overseers and those who were acting with them in obtaining the omission from the lists of those who were disqualified by the receipt of medical relief. The question resolved itself into this— They had passed last year a Reform Bill; were they now prepared to undo one-half of it, for it was a question whether they were going to disfranchise with one hand those whom they had enfranchised with the other? He hoped the House would wisely resolve not only to pass this Bill, but to make it effectual by adding to it the provisions he proposed. He admitted the desire of the hon. Member for South Leicestershire to protect the Poor Law; but he had a mistaken notion of the object and intention of the Poor Law. It was intended to be a beneficent helper, giving national aid to the deserving poor; but, in its administration, it had been converted into a weapon of degradation. An old man, who had worked hard through life, who ought to be respected as an old soldier, was degraded by the Poor Law into the position of the lowest of mankind. There would soon be a Party in this country who would demand that men who had served the community as good industrial soldiers should be treated, not as degraded beings, but as men who had deserved well of their country, who had fought the battle of life in a manner and under difficulties of which we had no conception, and who were entitled to receive very different treatment from that which had been shadowed forth by hon. Members on the other side of the House. He regretted that the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) should have considered it necessary to block the Bill, because he (Mr. Jesse Collings) should have thought that the hon. Member would have given way to the wishes of the large number of people who would lose the franchise if the views of the hon. Member were adopted. They had already passed an enfranchising Bill; and not to pass the present measure would be nothing more nor less than to disfranchise directly those whom they pretended to enfranchise.

Sir, the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. Jesse Collings) has asked me one question of a business-like character, which will answer at once. I propose, in Committee, to suggest a clause for the consideration of the House, which I believe will get over all the difficulty with regard to placing the voters which this Bill will enfranchise on the Register. I do not think there is anything else in the hon. Gentleman's remarks which calls for notice. In fact, his speech appeared to me to be more or less in the nature of a general discussion on poverty in general not very relevant to the question before the House; but I hope my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) will, when he considers the length of the speech which has just been delivered, acquit me of conspiring with the hon. Gentleman opposite to rush this Bill through the House. My hon. Friend complained very much that I had not given more statistical information. Some information of a statistical kind I shall have to give before I sit down; but I would ask the hon. Member whether his objections are really to be met by statistics at all; whether it is not with him simply a question of principle; and whether the number disfranchised, be it large or small, is a question which concerns his argument? The principle embodied in the Bill has a very curious Parliamentary history. It has been four times before the House of Commons, in the last Session and the present, and on each occasion it was opposed very strongly by the late Government, three times on its merits; and though I admit that when the measure was in the House of Lords, after it had left this House, the late Government changed their minds, yet up to the time that the Bill left the House of Commons the late Government were opposing on its merits the principle of the measure. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan), with a cynical disregard of facts, has said—

"The Conservative majority in the House of Lords have only just now taken advantage of the difficulties we were in with regard to registration to disfranchise wholesale all those working men in rural districts who have had recourse to medical relief; and they do this without notice, at the same time that they are coupling enfranchisement with medical relief in Ireland."

The repentance of the late Government upon this question was a death-bed repentance; and it was made so late that they could not give the House the benefit of a last dying speech and confession. The House has never heard from any Member of the late Ministry the slightest defence of the relaxation which this Bill proposes; but though such an explanation has not been given in the House, it has been given in an authentic form outside, for it appears that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), after consultation with his Colleagues, announced that the reason why the late Government had changed their minds upon this question was because they were convinced by the debate on the Report of the Registration Bill that the numbers to be disfranchised were so great that, in order to prevent the Reform Bill being a farce, the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Christ-church (Mr. H. Davey) ought to be accepted. The exact words of the right hon. Gentleman were—

"Now that the full effect of disqualification had been made clear by the discussion in the House of Commons, the Government had decided to accept the Amendment which was carried on the Motion of Mr. Davey."

There was not the slightest trace of that change of opinion shown in the debate; and it would have been very odd if there had been. As far as I can judge from a study of the debate, the only evidence of the large number to be disqualified was given by the hon, and learned Member for Christchurch, on the authority of an anonymous correspondent, who asserted that probably one-fifth of the newly-constituted voters would be disfranchised if the Amendment now embodied in this Bill were not carried. The facts which I am about to give to the House will show that it would be more accurate to say one-fiftieth than one-fifth; so that the only reason given by the late Government for its change of opinion is purely imaginary. I may tell the House that there are no statistics in the possession of the Government that would clearly set forth what the House wants to know. Therefore, as soon as I had command of official machinery, I set to work to try and find out what I could on the subject. I wrote to the Inspectors of the Local Government Board in various parts of the Kingdom, asking them to ascertain from representative Unions—urban, semi-urban, and rural—howmany male persons above 21 have received medical or surgical relief for themselves, their wives, or their children, in the year ending Lady Day, 1885. [Mr. JESSE COLLINGS: Are they all rural Unions?] I have already said that I asked the Inspectors to give Returns from representative Unions, comprising urban, semi-urban, and rural Unions. I obtained Returns from 124 Unions, with a population of 6,626,000; and in making out the average for these Unions I find that it is 2£·5 per 1,000 who have received medical relief. [A. laugh.] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) seems to regard the proposition as ludicrous; and the reason may, perhaps, be that he is chiefly acquainted with Birmingham. Out of the 124 Unions from which I have received Returns, Birmingham stands eighth from the top for the amount of medical relief given; and whereas the average for the list was 2£·5 per 1,000, for Birmingham it was 7£·6. To return to the general question, I have separated, as far as possible, the Unions which are purely agricultural from the Unions which are purely urban; and I find that the rate per 1,000 for purely agricultural Unions is 2£·2, and for Unions chiefly, if not wholly urban, it is 2£·7, showing that the amount of medical relief given in towns is slightly more than that given in the agricultural districts. [Mr. CHIL-DERS: Medical relief only?] Medical relief only. Again, I have tried a different system of comparison; I have lumped the two classes together—the almost exclusively agricultural and the semi-urban, and compared these with the purely urban, and the rate in the former is 2£·1, with 2£·7 in the latter; so that, if we manipulate the figures in that way, we again find that the amount of relief given in the rural and semi-urban districts was slightly loss than in the urban. I shall be glad to show the originals of these statistics to any hon. Member who may take an interest in them. I think that inferences of some interest may be drawn from these statistics. In the first place, the particular contention of those who object to the Bill on the ground that, if we take away the stimulus of the vote, people would more readily accept medical relief, is done away with. In the semi-urban districts the number per thousand is slightly higher than in the rural districts, and in the urban districts it is higher than in either. I also draw this conclusion—that there is no ground, on the face of these statistics, for supposing that this Bill would seriously injure friendly societies, because those institutions chiefly nourish in towns. ["No, no!"] I think that is so, where, as I have already stated, the amount of medical relief is higher than it is in the country districts. Nor do I think it would have any serious effect upon friendly societies; because, after all, most friendly societies do much more than give purely medical relief. They give wages during sickness, insurance against death, fees for burial, and so forth, and I do not think that any man would be prevented from joining a friendly society in consequence of the notion that the small fraction of the work of the friendly societies represented by medical relief is going to be done by the rates. I hope we may, therefore, infer from the figures I have given that this measure, in effect, is very much smaller than has been supposed. If that be true, it is also true that under the existing law there are inequalities which it is very difficult to maintain. Those inequalities are of two kinds. They are either natural or accidental, or they are the result of legislation. The natural and accidental inequalities are those which arise from the fact that, in certain boroughs and districts, there are large charities, from which the poorer classes may draw relief without losing their votes; whereas in other districts there are no such charities, and the poorer classes are there either reduced to take the medical relief and to lose their votes, or to sacrifice that relief. The legislative inequalities are of very recent origin, and were introduced by the late Government, not very long ago, in the case of Ireland. In Ireland, as the House is perfectly aware, medical relief does not disqualify; and, therefore, if this Bill does not pass, there can be no doubt whatever that you will have, among the poorer classes of England, a feeling that they are being treated with greater hardship and greater inequality than their Irish fellow-subjects. My right hon. Friend sitting near me the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) warned the late Government that if they gave to people in Ireland who accepted medical relief a vote, they would also have to give it to people who accepted medical relief in England. The late Government were very late, indeed, in learning that lesson themselves. Admitting, as I do, that the Bill removes certain inequalities very hard to defend and maintain, I yet most freely grant that the change which we ask the House to introduce into the Poor Law is one of a most grave and momentous kind, and I fully grant that it rests with the Government to justify the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) has given his views frankly as to why such a Bill is necessary. He has told us that the existing law is a monstrous injustice, an intolerable thing, and an iniquity, although his Friends defended this monstrous injustice, intolerable thing, and iniquity, three times in this House. [Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Hear, hear!] Those are the views of the right hon. Gentleman; but they are not the views of Her Majesty's Government. If Her Majesty's Government had thought it an intolerable wrong, we should not have tolerated it since 1867. If we had thought it an intolerable thing, we should not have opposed the alteration in the law at the end of this moribund Parliament; and if we had considered the present law to be an inquity, we should have proposed some wider scheme than that suggested, in the first instance, by the hon. and learned Member for Christchurch (Mr. H. Davey), and afterwards embodied in the Bill of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings). Sir, the reasons of the Government are of a different kind. What is the objection which, in the minds of the majority of this House, has so long prevented a relaxation of the law? It has been thought by the House that to disqualify those who are obliged to receive relief out of the rates is a method of teaching the lesson of thrift and self-dependence —a most valuable, if stern and austere lesson. That was the lesson which it was the intention of the law to teach the labouring classes of this country. Does any Member of this House think that, whether this Bill be passed or not, that lesson will continue to be taught? Does not every Member in this House know that the recent action of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) has entirely altered the position of this question? The lesson tow hich I have referred is no longer taught to the labourers of this country. The labourers no longer say, when they have lost their rights as citizens, and have sunk in the scale of citizenship through want or misfortune—"We will struggle to the best of our ability to restore our position." They no longer say that, but they say a very different thing. They say—"A political Party or class desire to keep us out of our just rights for their own selfish and political ends;" and I hold that that is a lesson not worth teaching to any class of the community. Let me endeavour to make myself clearly understood. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly aware that the whole strength of the Liberal organization throughout the country, from the Cabinet Ministers of high standing and the future Leaders of the Party down to the humblest wire-puller of the Caucus, has been occupied during the last month in impressing upon the agricultural constituencies of this country that they are kept out of their rights, and that the whole and the sole reason why a particular Party and a particular class are keeping them out of those rights is that purely selfish motives may be served. Instead of the disqualification teaching, as it was intended to do, a stern lesson of the necessity of industry, self-exertion, self-reliance, and self-respect, it now teaches nothing but class prejudice and bitter political feeling. That is the lesson which is being spread abroad by the exertions of the right hon. Gentleman and his followers from one end of the country to the other. The salt of the old law has lost its savour; it is trampled under foot by contending factions; it is fit only to be cast away. I am bound, before I sit down—and I hope it will be admitted that I have not been as long as either of my Predecessors—to say something respecting the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell). It alleges that there is no distinction between the different forms of destitution. My hon. Friend asserts that every kind of destitution, however caused, and however it is to be remedied, ought to be classed together. If my hon. Friend is of that opinion, he ought not only to object to this Bill, but to that provision of the Education Act which enables a child to get education. [Mr. PELL: I did object to it.] My hon. Friend will admit that I am not introducing, from that point of view, any innovation in legislation. I will go further; and I will not only say that the Legislature has drawn a distinction between one kind of destitution and another, but that it has also drawn the particular distinction which the Bill now seeks to enforce. This was done by the Municipal Corporation Acts, when it was enacted that a man who had received medical or surgical assistance from the trustees of some charity should not, on that account, be disqualified from being enrolled as a burgess. Not only have distinctions, therefore, been drawn between one kind of destitution and another, but distinctions have been made between one kind of relief and another long before this legislation was introduced. As a proof of that, I need go no further back than the Irish case. My hon. Friend asks the House to decline to draw a distinction in favour of enfranchising those who obtain relief in the form of medical treatment and those who are compelled to accept it in the form of bread. It is too late to ask the House to do that. The House has drawn such distinction in the most emphatic language. It has done so this very Session. Not only has the House drawn the distinction that my hon. Friend asks it not to draw, but the natural feelings of mankind have drawn a distinction between the case of a man put out of work by some unfortunate accident, but prepared and able to support himself, if helped, and that of a man who gives up the battle of life and asks to be supported out of the rates. I do not say that the distinction is as profound as I should like; but, as I have said, it is a distinction which has not only been recognized by the House, and it is one which is justified by the natural feelings of mankind. No greater proof of that could be shown than in a fact which has come to my knowledge—namely, the circumstance that in more than one constituency at the present time the agents of the two Parties have declined to make medical relief a ground for seeking to take a man's name from the list of voters. I object to my hon. Friend's Amendment, because it asks the House not to do that which it has done more than once in the most emphatic manner; and I also object to it because I think that by the Amendment my hon. Friend is allying himself with those from whom he differs most profoundly. I think the time might come when the hon. Member for Ipswich would say—"Why do not you extend this relief from disqualification on account of the receipt of medical aid to every other kind of aid from the rates, since you have to-night announced that, in your view, there is no distinction between the two cases at all?" If my hon. Friend's object is to defer such an event as long as possible, how can he consistently go into the Lobby and do the very thing that will promote it? The hon. Member for Ipswich contends that because my hon. Friend announces that there is no distinction, in his mind, between medical relief and outdoor relief, both should equally be made no ground for disqualifying voters; and, in his premises, he finds an ally in a Gentleman who differs most profoundly from his conclusion—I mean the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney), who belongs to what may be called— I will not say the antiquated, but the ancient school of the Liberal Party The hon. Member draws his creed from the ancient traditions of the Liberal Party, at a time when the Liberal Party held very different opinions from those which they now hold. The hon. Member still believes in what is, perhaps, the most glorious page of Liberal history—he still believes in the Poor Law Act of 1834, and in that belief he stands, as far as I can see, very much alone among his Friends; but how can my hon. Friend, holding that belief, vote for the abolition of the only distinction which now divides us from the removal of all disqualification on account of outdoor relief? I hope that my hon. Friend will turn these things over in his mind before he gives his vote. For my part, I am quite clear as to the vote which I am going to give, and the grounds for it. I do not think that the House ought to be asked to accept any Bill on Party grounds. It is not on Party grounds that I appeal to hon. Members to support the Government in the Lobby to-night. The grounds we take are of a wider kind. We ask the House to throw away the husk now that the kernel has been destroyed. The spirit which has animated the Poor Law, with regard to this matter, has been destroyed by the action of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Chamberlain) and his Friends, and all that the Government now wish is to cast away a useless and worn-out machinery.

Sir, I have listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman with the greatest possible interest, as I always do listen to his speeches, and I may say that there is no one in the House who is a more sincere admirer of the right hon. Gentleman's ability than I am; but I have listened to him with special interest on this occasion, because there was a mystery about his speech, and I was not able to discover, until the concluding sentences of it, whether the speech was in favour of the Bill or against it. The right hon. Gentleman told us, in his concluding observations, that he is quite clear as to the way in which he is going to vote; and I think it will come as a revelation to the House, after a speech, the greater part of which has been against the principle of the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman has introduced. The right hon. Gentleman has certainly contrived most admirably to dissemble his love for the Bill, which has been introduced on the authority of the Government of which he is a Member. At the outset of his remarks the right hon. Gentleman said there was no necessity for him to reply to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings). That appears to me to have been very natural on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, who evidently has very little sympathy with the views of my hon. Friend. Indeed, he has very little sympathy, I am afraid, with the clients of my hon. Friend. At any rate, if he has any sympathy with the agricultural labourers of this country, he has contrived, in a matter which closely concerns them, to keep that sympathy absolutely to himself. Not one word has the right hon. Gentleman said which showed any consideration for the difficulties of this class, the necessities of their condition, the sacrifices they are called upon to make, or the circumstances under which this medical relief becomes necessary; but he has supported the Bill wholly and entirely on the ground that a statement made by me, after the resignation of the late Government, has rendered it impossible for a Conservative Government any longer to offer opposition to it.

I referred, not to the late Government, but to the organization over which the right hon. Gentleman presides.

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman could have paid me, or the organization over which ho has mistakenly said that I preside, a compliment for which we can be more grateful than that, in this question, and perhaps in many others, it may control the action of Her Majesty's present Government. Now, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman has given us a portion of the history of this discussion, and he has told us, with perfect truth, that the matter has been more or less before the House of Commons on four separate occasions, and that on three of those occasions the continuance of the enforcement of this disqualification was supported from the then Treasury Bench. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to whatever credit he can obtain from the fact that he has followed the late Advisers of the Crown. But the right hon. Gentleman has omitted to continue the history. He has omitted altogether to tell the House that when the effect and character of this disqualification became evident, and when a majority of the House of Commons decided that it should be removed, that decision was frankly accepted by the late Government, and when the matter was again raised in the House of Lords the Ministers present in that House supported the decision of the House of Commons, and it was only reversed by a majority of Tory Peers But even if it be admitted that the Liberal Government were to blame for the view they took at the outset, at all events their repentance came a little earlier than that of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Their repentance came from information given in the course of the discussion of the matter; but that discussion had no effect upon the right hon. Gentleman or his Friends.

We had subsequent information.

Then will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the information was that subsequently brought him to a real repentant stage? We know what converted us on this side of the House. For my own part, I did not require much conversion, because I had never voted for this disqualification; but, speaking for the late Government as a whole, I may say deliberately that we had no idea that a provision which had existed so long in the boroughs, without serious objection, was open to so much objection when it was to be applied to the new constituencies in the counties. The effect, however, of this provision in the counties had become evident to us, at all events, in the course of the debates; and it was proved to our satisfaction, though not to that of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, that the circumstances of the rural population varied very much from those in the borough constituencies, and that this provision would have a most serious effect in disfranchising many of those whom we desired to enfranchise. Accordingly, these facts were brought to the knowledge of the House of Lords by the then Ministers; but, in spite of that, the House of Lords re-imposed the disqualification which the House of Commons had removed. That was the position of the late Government, and it was a satisfactory and a consistent one, which I am perfectly prepared to defend both here and in the country. But now let us see what is the position of hon. Members opposite and of the right hon. Gentleman himself. Up to the time when the House of Lords, on the Motion of Lord Balfour, re-imposed the disqualification, hon. Members opposite were all of opinion that no case had been made out for its removal. Has any case been made out since? Not a bit. Then, why does the right hon. Gentleman stand up in his place-—evidently to show that he does not believe either in the propriety, the morality, or the necessity of the measure, and, nevertheless, to propose it? What does the right hon. Gentleman seek to do? The right hon. Gentleman has been kind enough to attribute the passing of this measure to the personal influence of the humble individual who is now addressing the House. I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that my personal influence will continue, at all events, as long as a Conservative Government is in Office. But that does not altogether satisfy me. I want to know whether there is any other influence at work with the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends, and what other reason there is for the present Government bringing in this Bill, except my personal influence? What is the reason of the sudden conversion of the Conservative Party on this question? I believe that, as the Conservatives are now in power, they are anxious to show the future agricultural voters that "Codlin is their friend, and not Short." I have nothing more to say. [Ironical cheers.] I like to hear those ironical cheers. I take them as a compliment, because they show that hon. Members opposite do not wish me to say anything more, and that, therefore, I have said enough for my purpose as to the history of this matter. I will now turn to the merits of the case. The right hon. Gentleman has given to the House—I confess that I could not follow them very closely—some figures which, he said, were compounded from experience in the boroughs and rural districts. But the House has to look to the figures obtained from the rural districts alone, and not from the boroughs. In fact, this question affects boroughs in but a very slight degree; and, possibly, the boroughs might never have asked for a change of the law in this respect as far as they are concerned. In the counties, however, it is very different. I do not know from what sources the right hon. Gentleman has obtained his information; and, unless we are supplied with a Bo-port from the whole of the country, I venture to think that statistics from selected constituencies will be altogether insufficient and unsatisfactory.

I did not select the constituencies from which the figures were obtained.

Possibly I am in error upon that point, and the constituencies have been selected, not by the right hon. Gentleman, but at his instance. There are many other cases besides those which have been cited by the right hon. Gentleman, which are known to me and my Friends, and the information which I have received, shows that, unless this Bill is passed, the disfranchisement, through the reception of medical relief, will be of the most serious character, amounting, in some cases, from 25 to 30, and in others to 50, per cent of the electors. [The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD dissented.] The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head; but if he reflects for a moment, he must see that that must necessarily be the case. The extent of the disfranchisement must vary in different places and at different times. It varies in respect of the circumstances of a particular character. I have heard of one instance, in which an epidemic of measles broke out in an agricultural district, and the labourers there were invited and pressed to receive medical relief for the purpose of preventing the infection from spreading, and is it to be said that because these people consented to receive that medical relief for the benefit of the community, they are unfit to exercise the franchise, and are to be deprived of all their civil rights? Probably they would have no choice between parish relief and incurring a debt which they could never pay. But, even without these exceptional cases, very strong grounds have been made out in favour of the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman has so unwillingly introduced. I do not care about the motives of the right hon. Gentleman—I am grateful to the Government for having adopted the Radical platform in this and in a good number of other instances. It is a great satisfaction to me, that although I do not admit that this Administration is likely to be very long-lived, yet, at all events, in the course of its brief existence, it has taken its stand upon the Radical platform. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for having introduced this Bill against his will, and I am still more grateful to him for having adopted the clause of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) which makes it retrospective. [Cries of "No !"] No; it is not the clause of the hon. Member for Ipswich, neither is this Bill that of the hon. Member for Ipswich; but both the clause and the Bill are singularly like those of my hon. Friend's. Let the present Administration take all the credit they can get for the introduction and passing of Radical measures. I am content to have those measures, and so long as they continue to introduce and to pass them, I shall recognize, in that respect, the advantage of having a Conservative Government in Office.

The right hon. Gentleman who has just addressed the House concluded his remarks by congratulating the Government upon having raised Radical politics to a higher plane, and I certainly think that if they can succeed in doing that they will establish no mean claim upon the gratitude of the country. If any proof were wanted of the necessity for it, it will readily be found in the two speeches which have just been delivered on the other side of the House. In rising to make a few observations upon the Bill, I may explain that I do so for two reasons. First of all, that I have the honour to represent one of the largest agricultural constituencies in the Kingdom, and one which will still remain so under the provisions of the new Act; and, secondly, because I have, within the last fortnight or three weeks, addressed that constituency at no less than nine or ten public meetings, and I find that this question is one which commands their undivided attention. I am exceedingly glad, from conviction, to be able to support the Bill of Her Majesty's Government, and, in standing upon that platform, I rather think that I occupy a position which both Parties in the State are trying to attain, but which neither have occupied very long. I am not able to support the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell), although, in matters connected with local taxation, I have generally agreed with the views he has expressed. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. A. J. Balfour) seemed to consider the speech of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jessie Collings) as scarcely worthy of attention, and I so far agree with him that I think most of the arguments adduced by the hon. Member in that speech were not worthy of the attention of the House. Nevertheless, as they were not addressed so much to the House as to persons outside of it, and as the speech itself appeared to be intended not so much to convince the House of the merits of the Bill as to convince the country that the political opponents of the hon. Member are the enemies of the working classes, I certainly think that the observations of the hon. Member deserve some notice. I and many other hon. Members on this side of the House, who have lived all our lives among the agricultural labourers, listened with bowed heads to the homily addressed to us by the hon. Member who has lived all his life in towns, but who, nevertheless, takes so much pains to enlighten us from the labourers' point of view as to what they really want. The hon. Member spoke of the cruelty and oppression exercised by Poor Law Guardians, and I understood him to say that with a few honourable exceptions they make it their business to take care of the interests of the ratepayer only, whereas they ought to be the guardians of the poor. Has it ever occurred to the mind of the hon. Member that a person of ordinary intelligence, who desired to do his duty, might possibly be both, and that there is nothing inconsistent in his being the guardian of the ratepayers and also the guardian of the poor. Has it never struck him, when he talked of the poorer class of ratepayers, that those are poor persons who are required to pay rates, and who ought to have their interests guarded just as much as those who receive relief? Many persons who are very poor indeed are nevertheless called upon to contribute towards poor rates, and of my own knowledge I can say that, in the country districts, they form a class who have suffered more than any other during the late depression of agriculture. The fact that the hon. Member must have known of the existence of such persons ought to have convinced him that the guardians of the poor ought not only to study the interests of the pauper, but to watch carefully those of the ratepayer, and in so doing it will, I think, be found that the two duties are not inconsistent with each other. The hon. Member went into a very curious argument, and one which I should not have expected to hear from either side of the House, when he proceeded to describe friendly societies as demoralizing institutions.

I am sure that the hon. Member does not wish to misrepresent what I said, but he is absolutely doing so.

I wrote down the hon. Member's words at the time.

Will the House allow me to say that I never used the words "friendly societies" throughout the whole of my speech.

The hon. Member may have said "clubs," which came to the same thing.

Nor "clubs."

I hope the hon. Member will not draw a verbal distinction as to whether he meant "clubs" or "friendly societies."

I neither spoke of clubs, nor friendly societies.

Friendly clubs, then. I have the words "friendly societies" on my notes, but it may possibly have been "clubs." The hon. Member spoke of clubs to which working men belonged, and I am quite prepared to argue the question out in the House; for I believe I can convince not only the House, but even the hon. Gentleman himself, that what he was talking of was what we generally call "friendly societies."

Not at all.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the institutions to which the working classes belonged, but to which they were not able to contribute sufficient themselves to enable them to secure the benefits insured for, and which, therefore, had to be further supported by the subscriptions of charitable individuals. Those were the institutions —call them "clubs" or "friendly societies," or what you will—of which the hon. Member spoke, and he said that they were demoralizing on this extraordinary ground—that, whereas it was demoralizing for a person to accept charity from a private individual, it was not demoralizing to accept what he was pleased to call public charity in the shape of out-door relief. Has it ever struck the hon. Gentleman that charity, to be charity at all, must in its very essence be voluntary? You cannot call the sum wrung from the ratepayers, perhaps against their will, charity; it is an abuse of terms to call it public charity. I understood the argument of the hon. Member to be that, while it is not degrading to accept Poor Law relief, which is public charity, it is degrading for a poor person to accept private charity. Now, I must say that my experience, and I think I am borne out by the ex- perience of human nature, is altogether contrary to that. We constantly find, in the rural districts, persons of the higher and of the lower class who are on terms of perfect friendship, who entertain the greatest respect for each other, and yet the one is constantly in the habit of giving to the other, and the other readily accepts the gift. But we do not find the existence of such a feeling between the Poor Law Guardians and the poor persons who apply for relief. They know, although they may not be able to define the distinction, that in the one case it is charity, because it is given from the heart, but that in the other it is not, because it is wrung from an involuntary contributor. The hon. Member went further, and he charged hon. Members on this side of the House, as if it were a peculiar thing, with lying-down at night in warm beds, with the luxury of comfortable pillows. I do not think that that luxury is confined to one side of the House; I should imagine that the beds we occupy are very similar to those occupied by hon. Members opposite, and I do not know that the bed which I myself occupy is warmer than that occupied by the hon. Member. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, such arguments as these are scarcely fair as between class and class; but they have the effect—I am sure unintentionally—of obscuring the real merits of the question. One word with regard to the merits of the question itself. For my part, although the right hon. Gentleman below me said that, logically, it might be very difficult to separate the two things—medical relief from other Poor Law relief—yet I am perfectly certain that we all of us do see the difference, and that we see it exemplified every day in the working of the Poor Law. We find that, constantly, the great difficulty we have in our agricultural villages is to get the poor to send for a doctor at all; and it is certainly not desirable, by any steps we may take in this House, to add to that difficulty. Then, again, there is a difference between the giving of ordinary Poor Law relief and the medical relief which must be given to persons who live in an infected district. For instance, an epidemic may be raging, or one of those cases may occasionally occur in a labourer's family which the hon. Mem- ber has pointed out, and which may be difficult to deal with. The calling in of medical aid from the parochial officer, in such a case, surely ought not to place the person who receives medical relief of that kind in the same category as those who receive it in the ordinary form of Poor Law relief. We must remember that, in all cases, disqualification, whether by the receipt of medical relief or otherwise, is intended to be a deterrent. In one case it is a deterrent to a person from keeping up the battle of life, when by going on he might be able, by his own exertions, to place himself in an independent position; but in the other it is a deterrent to him from sending for a doctor when overtaken by a sudden visitation. If the hon. Member for Ipswich will allow me to say so, I think the weakest part of his speech was that in which ho failed to recognize the great benefit derived by the working classes from an honest independence. A man may be deterred from making an effort to secure an honest independence when he obtains the ordinary Poor Law relief; but that is not the case when the question is simply one of obtaining medical assistance. Perhaps the House will allow me to call attention to a fact which only came to my knowledge within the last few days during my visit to Lincolnshire. It is, however, a fact of some significance, and one which I think the House will do well to bear in mind on future occasions. When a case of this sort comes before a constituency, and the electors of the country generally, it is most important that we should be able to discuss it on its merits, instead of being simply discussed, as has now become necessary, as a mere Party Election cry. I have found it extremely difficult in my constituency to discuss this matter calmly upon its merits with the electors of the division. Even although I am myself able to say that I never voted against this disqualification being removed, but, on the contrary, that before the present Government had given notice of their intention of bringing in a Bill I was in favour of it, the question put to me within the last few days was not—"What are the merits of the question? "but—"Is it the Tory Party or the Liberal Party who want to deprive a poor man of his vote because he has received medical relief?" I think that that is not a good example to set; and I am afraid that if I must charge any individual in this House with the responsibility for such a state of things having arisen it is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain). The right hon. Gentleman has attempted, not, I think, with very much success, to defend the line of conduct which he has thought it right to adopt on this question; but, curiously enough, he has brought the history of it down only to a certain point. I will venture to remind the House that there was a further stage which the right hon. Gentleman ought to have mentioned. He has carried the history of this question down to the time when it left the House of Lords; but it has since that time again been before the House of Commons. He has said that the conversion of the Members of the late Government was brought about after the previous discussions in the House of Commons, and while the measure was in the House of Lords. Ho says that that conversion was complete—that as soon as he found there were a number of voters in the counties who would be disqualified by the receipt of medical relief, and who would be greater than in the boroughs—a fact which I understand my right hon. Friend below me (Mr. A. J. Balfour) to deny—[Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!]—as soon as the right hon. Member for Birmingham became convinced of that, al though he has never condescended to explain upon what grounds—and my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board says there are no grounds at all—from that moment he dates the conversion, and the complete conversion, of himself and his Party. The assertion of the right hon. Gentleman is that it was after the Bill left the House of Commons, and while it was undergoing discussion in the House of Lords, that the change was brought about. But when the House of Lords restored the Bill to the condition in which the Government twice insisted upon placing it, the measure came before the House of Commons once more for consideration. The House must remember that this was after the complete conversion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite to the merits of the Bill. But how did the right hon. Gentleman act when the question of rejecting or accepting the Lords' Amendments came before the House? A final attempt was made to alter the decision of the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, by a majority of 170 to 66, agreed with the Lords' Amendment retaining the disqualification; and among the Members who voted in favour of retaining it were the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone) and 12 of the Colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), whose complete conversion had been entirely and once for all accomplished on the previous discussion in the House of Commons, and was announced to the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. Thus, on the first opportunity when that conversion ought to have borne forth the fruits of repentance, when the Lords' Amendment was before the House of Commons and might have been altered, instead of voting for altering it, and voting for what the right hon. Gentleman says was his conviction at that time, all the Members of the Government who were in the House at the time voted in favour of retaining the disqualification. In the light of that historic fact, I must say that the statement recently made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham outside this House appears to me to be one of the most extraordinary ever put forward by a responsible politician. The right hon. Gentleman is reported—and, I believe, correctly—to have said—

"What the Tories have not dared to do in the House of Commons, they put up their confederates to do in the House of Lords, and by making medical relief a disqualification for the franchise, they took away with the one hand what they gave with the other. This is monstrous injustice. It is an iniquity which, if not set right in this Parliament, it will he the first duty of the new Parliament to correct; and I do not doubt the country will be able to judge between the two Parties in the State."

I do not doubt that they will. I put it to the House whether that speech, if it gave the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, ought not to have read in this manner—"What the Liberal Government have three times done in the House of Commons, the Tories have done in the House of Lords." That is how the speech, to have been a complete exposition of the facts of the case, ought to have read; but that would not have suited the purpose of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bir- mingham. I think truth is one of the greatest, if not the prime, necessity of English politics, and it has always been held to be so. Of course, I have nothing to do with the reputation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham. It is neither better, nor worse, as far as I know-—except that he is in a more responsible position —than that of many who go about the country imposing upon the credulity of the people. But I do say that I believe that truth is still so valued in English politics that the people of this country will never allow a statesman to lead who has once been convicted of so gross an attempt to mislead. I have risen simply for the purpose of giving one or two reasons for my own wish to support the Bill, and also to lay before the House the significant fact that it has become impossible any longer to discuss the Bill upon its merits in the country, the reason of that impossibility being the perversion of facts—I can call it nothing else—which has been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham. That has been my task. It will be the task of the right hon. Gentleman to reconcile the statement to which I have referred with the conduct of an honourable and a truthful politician. I cannot conceive a more difficult one.

said, that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had stated in his speech that this question was one of a momentous character. Those were words which, from the subject itself, and from the speeches which followed that of the right hon. Gentleman, appeared to him to be well-advised; and it would have been almost impossible to listen to the three or four last speeches made without thinking that the question had not been discussed in a spirit adapted to the occasion. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Finch-Hatton) said that he would endeavour to give some reason in support of the vote which he would be prepared to give. He (Lord Edward Cavendish) confessed that that was a question which had received for a long time anxious attention on his part; and he had come down that evening to listen to the discussion that would take place, in order to hear the arguments which would be used by Her Ma- jesty's Government to justify themselves in bringing this measure before the House. He should have been very glad indeed to have heard arguments adduced in that debate which would have enabled him to support the measure brought forward; but ho regretted to say that that was not the case, and he felt that the Bill was not only not necessary, but that it was a Bill calculated to do a considerable amount of harm. It was calculated still further to increase the difficulties of those administering the Poor Law, who conceived it to be their duty, as far as possible, to relieve only those who were absolutely destitute, never forgetting that there were thousands of ratepayers who were themselves only one degree removed from pauperism. The Poor Law system was of the most delicate and sensitive character; and it seemed to him that if they once introduced the principle contained in the Bill of removing the disqualification for electoral rights of those who received medical relief, they would be destroying one of the great safeguards against pauperism. He had said that he considered this Bill an unnecessary Bill; and for that statement he would briefly give his reasons. For many years he had taken part in the affairs of two probably as large Unions as there were in England, with a large population for the area they covered; and in those two Unions, one of which had a population of 20,000, and the other a larger population, he found that there was not a single instance of medical relief having been given last year in the case of the former, and that in the other Union, with a population of 40,000, or nearly as largo as the now constituencies that had been created, there had been only 17 cases of medical relief, and in many of those no vote would have been lost. It was the opinion of the vast majority at the conferences of the Poor Law Guardians, that medical relief was, in numbers of cases, only the beginning of pauperism, and that the spirit of independence being once sapped, resort to the Poor Law for general relief soon followed. The position of the two Unions with respect to medical relief, which he had just referred to, was due to the fact that everyone in them who took an interest in Poor Law affairs tried to induce the poorer population to join provident societies. He believed that the reason why medical relief in those Unions had been so slight was that this system had very extensively prevailed. If that was the case in those two Unions, he failed to see why it should not be so in other parts of the country; and he thought himself justified in saying that if the measure were passed as it would be passed by the two Front Benches, the discouragement that would be caused by reducing the number of persons who joined these provident societies would be most disastrous in its effect upon the country. Ho would ask the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board the question how far ho intended to go in this direction? Was he prepared to go farther than the Bill before the House? [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: No, no!] The right hon. Gentleman dissented. It was difficult to say how far the Government would be prepared to go; but they had shown themselves very apt pupils of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) by adopting the measures coming from that side of the House. Was the right hon. Gentleman prepared to carry out the hon. Gentleman's theory —that no Poor Law relief should be a disqualification? If so, he (LordEdward Cavendish) would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he would have the courage to introduce a Bill to remove every disqualification of the kind? The right hon. Gentleman might be assured that this question would be pressed upon him still further, and that the time would come when he would be obliged to say whether or not he was prepared to extend the franchise to paupers. He regretted that the measure had been introduced at all, and he regretted far more the rivalry which there seemed to be between the two Front Benches to outbid each other in appealing to the prejudices of the people.

said, he did not wish to give a silent vote on this occasion. It appeared to him from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), as contrasted with what had been said by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. A. J. Balfour), that there were still two opinions as to whether this measure would have a large or small operation. His (Mr. Selater-Booth's) own opinion had always been that it would have a very small operation; and if his right hon. Friend could rely on this Bill as expressing the whole of that which he intended to do, and if he could rely on the existing machinery for carrying it out, he thought its operation would be very small indeed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingharn had mentioned a case with in his knowledge, where 50 per cent of the population would be disfranchised unless the Bill became law. He gathered that the right hon. Gentleman was alluding to a case in which, owing to an epidemic, a large number of persons were maintained in hospital at the cost of the rates. But he (Mr. Sclater-Booth) would point out that those were cases which would not be met by this Bill. The Bill did not touch them. They were very hard cases, and they were of frequent occurrence in London; and he had always desired to see a change in the law by which the hospitals in London and elsewhere should be treated not as pauper establishments. In reading the provisions of the Bill he was disappointed to find that so little security had been provided as to the mode in which relief would be administered. He entirely trusted the Report of the Inspectors of the Local Government Board, who were as energetic a body of men as it was possible to find, and when they said that only 2 per 1,000 of the population would be brought within the purview of the Bill, he was satisfied that they knew exactly what they meant—that was, that only 2 per 1,000 of the population took medical relief with the addition of medical comforts which supported life, and which, in nine case out of ten, in his experience, accompanied it. But how was the overseer to discriminate between the two cases? He should have thought that the Local Government Board, with its great machinery, would have afforded some assistance in this matter by introducing clauses into the Bill, or by some other means. "When they came to consider the Bill further, he thought they ought to look into this part of the subject. When he had the honour to occupy the Office now filled by his right hon. Friend, he was constantly entreated by the advocates of private Poor Law administration to enforce upon Boards of Guardians throughout the country the desirableness of giving medical relief on loan. The subject had been very often discussed, and the doctrines relating to it wore very well known. The Union referred to by the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) was in his own neighbourhood, and he was aware of the careful administration and watchfulness with which the Guardians had been able to get rid of medical relief altogether. In other Unions, which were not so well administered, that had not been possible, and they had heard of instances referred to by the hon. Members for Devonshire and Somersetshire, where 19 or 20 per cent of the neighbouring population would be excluded from the franchise if this Bill did not pass. Here they had to balance between political considerations, when, at a moment like this, they were enfranchising vast numbers of the people, and the strict doctrines of political economy which, if pushed too far, would sometimes provoke reaction. He had always declined, in his own cas9, to advocate, by any pressure of General Orders, the enforcement upon the Guardians of the method of giving medical relief on loan, as he had distinctly pointed out that in London and in the large cities in the North there was so much hospital accommodation to be obtained gratuitously that it was absurd to expect a greater amount of political virtue from the inhabitants of villages than was required from the inhabitants of towns. So long as the great London hospitals failed to extract a small payment from persons using the hospitals who were very well able to pay, so long he would not be inclined to put medical relief on the same basis as workhouse relief. At the same time the distinction was a very slight one, and he thought it was for his right hon. Friend to take care that while the Bill went so far it should go no farther. No one in that House, with the exception of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Ceilings), had advocated the extension of the franchise to out-door paupers. The outdoor pauper had been described as a labourer who fell a victim to circumstances and became the recipent of outdoor relief. There must be some of that class for whom they all had the utmost sympathy; but the instances were very rare of fathers of families being outdoor paupers, and he did not believe that the description given of the out- door pauper was, in many cases, at all accurate. He felt and believed that more harm would be done by rejecting the Bill than by pushing it forward. He thought that in many parts of the country, under ordinary circumstances, for disqualification in respect of receipt of medical relief, the individual voter would not be so much responsible as the Guardians, who had imperfectly administered the law. Therefore, provided that in case the Bill went on, they were assured that the Local Government Board were prepared, on their responsibility, to secure that the Bill should act in the way that had been described and within the limitations that had been laid down, he was, for his part, content that it should bo read a second time.

I beg, Sir, to move the adjournment of the debate.

I hope the hon. Member will not press this Motion. I am quite sure the House will listen to him with that attention that his remarks are certain to deserve, if he will but make them now; and, in that case, I think we might very well conclude the debate this evening. The Bill will be put down as first Order on Tuesday. I hope hon. Gentlemen who are opposed to the Bill—I think I might even appeal to them—will recollect that this matter ought to be decided at once. I think I may certainly appeal to the great majority of the House to allow the debate to be finished to-night.

said, ho hoped the Government would consent to the Motion for Adjournment. He wished to say that he supported it from no desire to defeat the passing of an enactment. It was perfectly well known by those who took an interest in the question that there were several hon. Members who were anxious to address the House on the merits of the Bill, not in any Party spirit, on the one side of the House or the other. As opinions were much more equal on both sides of this question, and as a large amount of support was likely to be given to his (Mr. Pell's) Amendment, he hoped the Government would consent to the adjournment of the de- bate to enable hon. Members to address the House at some later period.

I do hope the House will support the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in resisting the Motion for Adjournment. After all, although this is a reasonably important question, it is not a complicated one. It is one that lies within comparatively narrow limits, and that has not been discussed to-night for the first time. It has been before the House on several occasions; its bearings are thoroughly well understood. We have had some very able speeches on both sides of the question; we are in a very advanced stage of the Session; and I am quite sure that everybody in the House or out of it will understand the Motion for Adjournment as only meaning an attempt to shelve the Bill. ["No, no!"] No other interpretation can be placed on a Motion of the kind, and I hope that those who, like myself, are sincerely anxious that this Bill should be passed, will resist the Motion for Adjournment as far as ever they can.

said, he begged to offer his support to his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his opposition to the Motion, but upon precisely opposite grounds. He was one of those who objected to the Bill, and who intended to vote against it; but he appealed to the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) and the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Courtney) not to give any colour to the belief that might be created that this was a factious opposition. His opposition — and, he believed, that of his hon. Friend (Mr. Pell)—was one of principle, and ho did not desire to delay the measure from any improper motive. He was prepared to state why he could not support the Bill, and, when the next stage was reached, should certainly do so. The House would listen with great attention to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney), if he liked to make his speech now; or he could make it on the Motion, "That Mr. Speaker do leave the Chair," and he would find the House equally attentive. He (Mr. J. G. Talbot) was sure the sense of the House was in favour of taking the second reading that night.

said, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would accept the Motion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Liskeard. The right hon. Gentleman the late Home Secretary had said the merits of the question were thoroughly understood; but he (Mr. Brodrick) begged most distinctly to say that, so far as he was personally concerned, he supported the Motion solely on the ground that the bearings of the question were not, so far as he could see, fairly understood at this moment. He did not desire to go into the merits of the Bill in the smallest degree. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Balfour) had stated, on the authority of statistics, that no more than 2 per 1,000 of the population would be disfranchised for receiving medical relief; but a right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Chamberlain) had stated a proposition the reverse of that—that, in fact, 30 or 40 per cent of the voters would be disfranchised in some districts. That was a discrepancy which almost made it necessary that the House should have still further time to consider the matter. He was quite sure that nothing like factious opposition was intended by the Motion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Liskeard, and if the hon. Gentleman went to a division, he should certainly support him.

who rose amid cries of "Divide!" said, it was all very well to cry "Divide!" but there were some of them who fought this question when it was not so popular as it was now, and who had fought it on every occasion they could — even when they had the two Front Benches against them. They had to thank neither of the two Front Benches for the position they wore now in. He did hope the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would stand to his guns, and that oven though it might be necessary to go on dividing until 4 o'clock, he would not allow this obstruction to succeed.

said, he rose to support the Motion for Adjournment. [Cries of "Divide!"] He did so on the ground—[Loud and continuous cries of "Divide!"] He thought that those Gentlemen who desired to make progress with the Bill had better hear him patiently, for he was determined to remain there until they were silent. This Motion for Adjournment was a right and proper one, because they had heard from the right hon. Gentleman the late Home Secretary that he was in favour of the Bill, and he thought the House ought to hear from so high an authority in the late Government the reasons which had induced him to change his opinion on this subject. There were many other hon. Members on the other side of the House as well as on that (the Ministerial) side who desired the adjournment. He earnestly hoped, therefore, that in the interests of those who desired to pass the Bill, as well as those who desired that justice should be consulted before expediency, the House would consent to the adjournment of the debate.

said, he wished to say one word before the House divided. The Bill proposed a disqualification in connection with the Poor Law Guardians which had never existed before. He considered it unfair to introduce that disqualifying provision, and the Government, he thought, should take care that the Bill was a qualifying one, and did nothing of a disqualifying character. In Ireland, under the existing law, questions bearing upon Municipal and Poor Law elections were decided by the Court of Queen's Bench, and there was no disqualification before that Court on account of receipt of medical relief. They now said that this Bill should apply in all cases except to elections for Poor Law Guardians. So far as he knew there never had been such a disqualification, and it appeared to him to be a most absurd thing in a Bill of this character to pass such a law by reason of the construction of a Statute which had never existed before. In Committee, he should ask the Government to pass a provision declaring "that the Bill shall not disqualify in any case where no previous disqualification existed."

said, he had lost his right to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice, and he did not wish to make a speech upon it now. He rose for the purpose of asking the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he would so arrange that the Motion to go into Committee on the Bill should be put down as the first Order, so that they might have a fair discussion on that occasion? He did not suppose that the Committee stage itself would occupy a very long time; and, under the circumstances, he did not think his request was unreasonable.

Yes, Sir; we will put the Bill first for Tuesday.

said, he desired some explanation of the Bill. Ho had understood that the object of the measure was to meet a possible deficiency in the working of the Bankruptcy Act. On reading the Bill, he found it was intended that the expense of providing office accommodation was to be met out of the funds of bankrupts estate. There was, however, the further provision that in case of an insufficiency in the funds of the bankrupt estates, the requisite amount was to be made up by the Consolidated Fund. Now, they had already taken a very heavy Vote for Bankruptcy, and he contended that there was no surplus until all the expenses had been provided for. A Bill, therefore, which proposed to provide for the expensive construction of Bankruptcy Courts out of the funds of bankrupt estates, and to charge on the Consolidated Fund any deficiency there might be, was one which ought to be very carefully watched by the House. Before they went into Committee, he would like to know what was the estimate of the cost of the buildings for Bankruptcy offices throughout the Kingdom? It was a very serious thing if, in addition to the very heavy Vote to supply the deficiency in connection with Bankruptcy, the taxpayers of the country were to be called upon to meet an indefinite expenditure for the erection of Bankruptcy offices. He did not think hon. Members would be doing their duty to the people of the country if they did not obtain some idea from the Government as to the probable amount which would be extended on buildings, and as to the sum the Consolidated Fund would have to supply.

said, it would be observed that, in the first place, there must be a surplus on the Bankrupt Estates Account, and that, in the second place, there was a largo discretion given to the Treasury as to whether they would allow any of the surplus to be expended in the erection of buildings. The Treasury would also have ample discretion as to what sums should be expended in providing office accommodation. The amount of accommodation required was under the consideration of the Board of Trade, and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Whitley) might rest assured that the Treasury would not grant any part of the surplus for a building which was not required, and that they would closely check the expenditure. If the surplus was not sufficient to meet the demand, the Consolidated Fund was to be made liable, and he must ask his hon. Friend to place some reliance upon the discretion of the Treasury, and upon their care that the money would not be wastefully expended.

said, he would like to know who had asked for the Bill? It was hardly possible to conceive a case in which the "a" portion of the 2nd clause could arise. He would really like to know what was the case contemplated by the clause? There was a most dangerous provision for shortening the notice. Ho (Colonel Nolan) was Chairman of two Unions, and he was proposed as Chairman of a third, but was beaten by two votes. The ex officio Guardians were in favour of the abolition of the Union, while the elected Guardians, who voted for him, were for keeping up the Union. It was possible that the Bill would bo put in force in that case.

said, that, some months ago, he was asked by the officers of the Newport Union, in County Mayo, to point out in the House the hardship of their position. Their Union had been amalgamated with the Westport Union; and they asked why they should not have some compensation on the abolition of office? It was not in the power of the Local Government Board, or the Guardians, to allow any payment out of the rates in such circumstances. As the Bill enabled Guardians to make some compensation, if they saw fit, he thought it marked a great advance upon the Bill brought in a couple of years ago to enable superannuations to be given to the Union officers. The previous Bill was one which put the power into the hands of the Local Government Board, and gave the local Guardians no power whatever in the matter. By this Bill, they had compelled the Government to come down from their high perch and give power to local Guardians.

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) had anticipated the explanation of the Bill he (Mr. Holmes; had intended to give. It would be observed that there was nothing in the Bill which enabled any Union to be abolished. That was done by different legislation, and when it was done, hardship was very often done to the officers. The object of the Bill, therefore, was to supply a superannuation. In those cases, as the House was aware, under ordinary circumstances, the holder of an office which was abolished was entitled to some kind of superannuation; he was also similarly entitled if he were obliged to resign on account of infirmity. Instead of giving the power, which was done, he believed, by the Bill to which the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Healy) had alluded, to the Local Government Board, it was left in the hands of the Guardians themselves. This was evidently a harmless Bill, but eminently a just Bill. He respectfully asked the House to allow it to pass.

said that the former Bill referred to by the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Holmes) gave compulsory powers to the Local Government Board; but this was a much narrower and different Bill. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had not made himself clear whether the process of amalgamation was intended to be carried out to any large extent. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) had already mentioned the case of the amalgamation of the Newport and Westport Unions, He (Mr. Sexton) was aware that there was a very strong and indignant feeling amongst the ratepayers in the Oughterard district, because of a proposed amalgamation of their Union with an adjoining Union. It might be said that the Bill was one thing and the amalgamation of Unions another thing; but the introduction of this Bill might be regarded as a justification for many amalgamations. He thought the House was entitled to some explanation from the Government why the amalgamations referred to were thought desirable in the face of local opinion. He begged to move the adjournment of the debate.

seconded the Motion.

said, he thought the Government ought to give some answer in regard to the ease of the Oughterard Union, with which ho was well acquainted, and in regard to the Newport Union, with which he was not well acquainted. The Government ought to disclaim that the introduction of this Bill was supposed to amount to the sanction of the House of Commons to the proposed amalgamations.

said that Newport assented to the amalgamation. He was sent a copy of a resolution, asking not only that the amalgamation should take place, but declaring that, if it did not take place, they would cease to pay the poor rate.

said, that, as far as he could gather, this Bill was introduced to meet the hardship to which the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) had called attention. If the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Sexton) would allow the Bill to go through Committee, the third reading should be put down for some day next week, by which time his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland might be able to give some explanation on the subject.

asked if the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not ascertain the facts by Monday, as he (Colonel Nolan) would like to refer to the matter on the Vote for the Local Government Board?

said, he would ask for leave to withdraw the Motion; but he thought it would be well to report Progress at once.

said, he rose to move that the House do insist upon its Amendment. This was a Bill brought forward to enable boroughs to confer honorary freedom upon distinguished persons. When the Bill came back, it was found that an Amendment had been put in it, that a majority of two-thirds should be required in order that the power might be exorcised. Objection was taken to that, on the ground that such a principle was entirely novel; that there was no such regulation in any Corporation in the country, nor in the City of London. It was alleged that the power of conferring the honorary freedom upon persons of distinction, or any persons who had rendered eminent services to a borough, being of a purely complimentary character, ought not to be exercised by a bare majority, inasmuch as the conferring of the freedom of the borough, without the support of a largely preponderating force of opinion among the burgesses, would, by giving rise to frequent and unnecessary discussions upon personal merits, lower the character of the distinction which was contemplated by the Bill, and lead to an undue consumption of public time. It seemed to him that the proposal of the Lords was more likely than the Amendment of the Commons to lead to undue consumption of public time. He, therefore, moved that this House do insist on its Amendment.

said, he must ask to apologize to the House for rising to move the re-commitment of the Bill, in respect of a new clause. As a matter of fact, his attention had only just been called to a possible danger which might result from the operation of the Bill—namely, the inclosure of certain waste and common lands. Hon. Members would be aware that in many manors there existed a custom, with the consent of the copyholders, of inclosing the waste, and as long as the copyholders were unanimous, the danger was very small. But he understood that if the Bill passed in its present form, it would be possible for the lords of manors to continue to deal with the waste for the purpose of creating new copyholds; and there would be much greater danger of inclosing waste and commons under the Act, than there was at the present time. He proposed therefore to add a clause to the Bill, to the effect that after the passing of the Act it should not be lawful for a lord of the manor to create any new copyhold. That clause appeared to him to be in harmony with the Bill, the object of which was to convert copyholders into freeholders. The object he had in view was to prevent lords of manors, after the passing of the Bill, having any greater facilities than they had now for creating new copyholds.

said, the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), having discovered a microscopic grievance in this case, proposed to apply a heroic and drastic remedy. If there was a real apprehension on the part of the right hon. Gentleman that this sort of inclosure would occur at a future time, he (Mr. Elton) was quite unable to imagine why the right hon. Gentleman could not take the usual course of amending one of the Inclosure Acts. It was true that, in one or two manors, there was the custom of the lord of the manor, with the consent of the copyholders and freeholders, inclosing little bits of waste, and that had been declared by the Master of the Rolls to be a valid custom. Being thus established, it was a valuable right, although it was a right which was very rarely used. But notwithstanding that the right existed, the right hon. Gentleman proposed to abolish it, without making any provision for compensation. He (Mr. Elton) thought that some proposal on this subject might be sought from the Inclosure Commissioners. While he admitted that the intention of the right hon. Gentleman was meritorious, he entirely disagreed with the manner in which his proposal was made. He did not want to put his objection on technical grounds; but he would point out that the House had be-fore it a large measure for converting copyholds into freeholds; that the subject had been discussed for three or four years under different forms, and that the Motion which the House was asked to accept by the right hon. Gentleman would insure the rejection of the Bill in "another place." He hoped the House would not assent to the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman to re-commit the Bill, and that they would hear from his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General some arguments in support of that view.

said, he desired to supplement the remarks of the hon. and learned Member who had just spoken (Mr. Elton), and to point out to the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) that there was really no practical danger of the kind he had suggested. He (the Attorney General) perfectly well understood the intention of the right hon. Gentleman, and he quite agreed that he was prompted in this matter by laudable motives in wishing that there should be no more inclosure of waste land; but he would point out that a person who was made a freeholder would have the same right to interfere then as he had before; and he could assure him that this Bill, which was for the purpose of enfranchising copyholds, could have no operation of the kind which he apprehended. He should say, from his own experience, that freeholders were more likely than copyholders to object to inclosure; and as he did not think the right hon. Gentleman would gain anything by the clause he proposed to move if the Bill were re-committed, ho would suggest that it would be better that the Motion for re-commitment should be withdrawn.

Am I right in understanding the hon. and learned Gentleman to say that an enfranchised copyholder will have the same right as he had before he was enfranchised?

Certainly, as I understand the law.

Am I to understand that the enfranchised copyholder will have the right to appear at homage and object to inclosure?

I did not say "appear at homage" at all. I said he could object to the inclosure, and the decision of the homage would not be binding on him.

said, the language of the clause was "every inclosure by a copyholder." Now, where there was a small piece of waste land which had been added to the copyhold existing as it did, the copyholder should have that small piece entered. This Amendment would prevent that. It would not apparently touch the case of a new copyholder.

said, the hon. and learned Member for West Somerset (Mr. Elton) was an authority on the subject of copyholds; and, as he (Mr. Bryee) understood, the hon. and learned Member did not assent to what the Attorney General stated—namely, that the enfranchised copyholder would retain his right to oppose an inclosure. It was an important point, and the Amendment should be accepted in the interest of the preservation of commons near London. He did not think the House would be well advised if it were to allow even a small piece of common to be inclosed. They had reason to regret that they had awakened so late to the importance of stopping the inclosure of commons; and henceforth the inclosure of no part of a suburban common should be permitted. It had been suggested that a Bill should be brought in to amend the Inclosure Acts. Well, every Session of the present Parliament a Bill on that subject had been brought in by the hon. Member for Gateshead (Mr. W. H. James), but it had never got to a second reading, having been persistently blocked by some reactionary Members. If he were told to wait for the passing of that measure, he would answer that he would prefer not to look to the two birds in the bush, but to keep the one in the hand, in the shape of the Amendment of the Bill of the hon. Gentleman beside him (Mr. Waugh).