said, he had an Amendment to move which he did not believe would be opposed.

said, he had no objection to the Amendment.

said, he wished to make an appeal to his hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Mr. Arthur Arnold), who had given Notice of his intention to move the re-committal of the Bill with respect to Clause 5, to state his objections to the clause at once, rather than defer the third reading until another day. He made the appeal on account of the short time now left for the disposal of Private Bills. He was quite prepared to answer any objection his hon. Friend might make.

said, he should be most happy to adopt the suggestion of his right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means; and he would at once, in a very few words, explain the reasons which had induced him to place an Amendment on the Paper. It would be in the recollection of hon. Members that last year the House, on his Motion, unanimously adopted a Standing Order with regard to Estate Bills, which provided that the Committee should specially report to the House any case in which a Bill contained a provision extending the term or area of land in settlement. It further provided that such Report should be printed and circulated with the Votes. The Committee on the Ramsden Estate Bill had, in pursuance of that Standing Order, made a Report to the House, and he was obliged to call attention for a moment to the nature of that Report, because the Committee over which his right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means had presided had done their best in the interests of the passing of the Bill to attenuate the requirements of the Standing Order. Under a Private Act of 1867, the Trustees of the Ramsden Settled Estates obtained power to expend £50,000 in the purchase of hereditaments in the neighbourhood of the family estates at Byram in Yorkshire. It was proposed by the Bill now before the House to vary that power of settlement, and to ask the sanction of the House to expend the sum I of £50,000—the same sum authorized in 1867 to be expended in land at Byram—upon property in the neighbourhood of the town of Huddersfield. Although his right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means, in reporting on the Bill, called attention to that fact, he suggested that although, under the Standing Order, a Report had been rendered necessary, still there would not be, under the provisions of the Bill, any real extension of the area of settled land, because the price of land was higher in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield than it was in the neighbourhood of Byram; and, therefore, £50,000 expended in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield would purchase less land than at Byram, and consequently there would be no extension of the area of settled land. He thought he could dispose of that contention by simply pointing out that the Chairman of Ways and Means had felt it his duty, and the House was certainly indebted to him for it, to report the Bill to the House, as coming within the Standing Order. The plain matter of fact was this—that the House of Commons was asked, at that moment, to sanction the expenditure of a sum of £50,000 in the purchase of property to be added to the settled land of the Ramsden estates—that was to say, that land, now free land, in the neighbourhood of the town of Huddersfield was to be purchased in order to be converted into settled land. He was glad that he had nothing of a personal character to say in regard to the Bill, except that he had every reason to believe that his hon. Friend the Member for the Eastern Division of the West Hiding of Yorkshire (Sir John Ramsden), to whom the Bill specially referred, was an excellent landlord, as he was certainly a valuable Member of Parliament. But if there was any case in which the House would be disposed to object to the settlement of land, it was in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield, because there was no town in the Kingdom more close in regard to settled land than that borough. He believed that the Ramsden estate extended over the whole, or practically the whole, of that town. In such a state of things, he did not think it was desirable, in the interests of the people of this country generally, that the system should be extended, and he hoped that every hon. Member who was interested in land reform would oppose the Bill.

asked why the system of settling land should not be extended?

said, his reason for objecting to the extension of the system was that it was opposed to the interests of the people; and it was for that reason that he proposed to ask the House to consent to the re-committal of the Bill, in order that Clause 5 might be struck out. In doing so, he could not refrain from renewing the expression of his gratitude to the House for having passed the Standing Order, nor could he refrain from reminding the House that this was probably the first occasion in the history of Parliament in which the practice of settling land had been brought up at the Bar of the House of Commons by the responsible officials of the House as a practice which was contrary to the public interests. He was delighted that that occasion should have occurred; and, as he had already said, he hoped that all those who took any interest in land reform, in regard to which this question of settlement formed the key-stone, would give him their support in resisting the provision of the present Bill, and in asking the House to re-commit the measure in order that Clause 5 might be struck out.

interposed. He said that the action taken by the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Arthur Arnold) was in the nature of opposition, and therefore the Bill must stand over until tomorrow.

said, his right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means had appealed to him to go on.

The hon. Member has made a hostile Motion to the Bill, and it is therefore necessary that the discussion should stand over until tomorrow.

I certainly cannot withdraw the Motion.

In rising to move that this Bill be now read a second time, I will be as brief as circumstances will permit. I am perfectly aware that I am dealing with no new subject; and, while I explain some of the provisions of the Bill, I must claim some indulgence when I say that, to me, this is a perfectly new subject, and that I am addressing large numbers on both sides of the House who are, so to speak, experts on the question of land in Ireland. At this period of the Session I am quite certain of this—that I should not only be doing an injury to the prospects of this measure by making a long statement, but that I should weary the House by recapitulating the different stages of legislation with regard to land in Ireland. Still more do I think that I ought to avoid as much as possible controversial topics; and although many sitting around me may from time to time have found serious objections with the land legislation of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gladstone), yet I think this is no occasion for us to raise fresh controversies, or to try to prove that the prophecies we made in bygone days have been fulfilled. The House will ask us to be, at all events, practical, with the knowledge that it is impossible, even if we should wish it, to put the legislative clock back again. We consider it is our duty to take the existing state of affairs in Ireland as we find them, and to endeavour to find a remedy for a condition of things which we think more or less disastrous to the best interests of that country. Whether this Bill he a good or a bad one, whether it passes or not, I do not think that we ourselves or the House will regret spending some hours in endeavouring to promote a better state of things in Ireland, and create a stir in the land market of that country, which is now in a state of absolute stagnation, and the infusion of energy, enterprize, and the outlay of capital into its chief industries. It must be admitted that this particular branch of land legislation in Ireland has been taken up in bygone years by prominent Members on both sides of both Houses of Parliament, and, therefore, the utmost ingenuity would not suffice to bring it within the range of Party politics. It may be said that this is not a perfect Bill, and that some of its details are capable of amendment; but what I would urge on the House is this—that if in its main provisions it proceeds on the lines of previous proposals put forward from both sides of the House, and if its guarantees as regards State money are adequate, Her Majesty's Government may fairly claim, not only that it should receive due attention, but also favourable consideration for its adoption by a majority of the House. There are very strong reasons indeed why, even at this late period of the Session, this question should be dealt with. As regards this matter of the purchase of land in Ireland, it is true that for years there has been an agitation existing; but I think that Parliament it self has been very much to blame as an agitator. I will explain my meaning in this way. It is now 15 years since proposals of this nature were made in a practical shape in the Bright Clauses of the Land Act of 1870. Since then the 5th part of the Act of 1881 has further attempted to deal with this question of land purchase; and, subsequently, in 1883, a Resolution was brought forward by the noble Lord the present First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton), which met with the almost unanimous acceptance of both sides of the House. Since then the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan), in a speech of remarkable ability, also brought forward a measure attempting to deal with this vexed question; and we have something more than an intimation that, if the late Government had remained in Office, further proposals would have been made. It may be assumed, therefore, that for the last 15 years abortive proposals have been continually made on this subject, and it is impossible for any interest, and especially for suck an interest as that of land, which is easily upset by false hopes and constant agitation, to thrive under such conditions, and not to be affected thereby. In having brought forward these abortive proposals, Parliament is in some respects a sinner; and I venture to urge upon the House that the time has arrived for something like decisive action to be taken—that the time has arrived to make a final effort in the right direction, and to promote, as I before observed, something like a movement in the land market in Ireland. In dealing with a measure of this kind, the main thought that will arise in the mind of any man anxious for the future of land in this country will be, in the first place, how far it is good for any community that a Bill of this sort should be universally adopted—I mean, that supposing such a scheme as we proposed should meet with universal adoption, how far it would meet with the adoption of the tenant farmers themselves. I have always held with regard to the question of tenant proprietors in England and Ireland, that there is some land far more suitable for the purpose than that in other localities. I have always held that you cannot deal the same with unfertile land as with fertile land. From my own slight experience as a farmer, I can say that there is a vast amount of land in some districts in Ireland, such as parts of Galway and Mayo, where with a certain acreage and a certain amount of stock, a balance may be made in favour of the cultivator, yet, if small holdings were created in those very districts, it might produce something like disaster to the proprietors. These are mere matters of surmise; but I would ask the House to believe that Her Majesty's Government have brought forward this Bill, at this period of the Session, by reason of the fact that, at the present moment, land is practically an unsaleable commodity in Ireland. If, therefore, a change for the better can be brought about, the Government will consider that the object of their Bill has been amply obtained. I will not detain the House long by the very slight sketch which I propose to give of the scheme of the Bill. The first and most prominent feature of the present measure which strikes the ordinary reader is, that it is entirely permissive in its character. Transactions in land under the Bill, not as regards price, but sale, also, are entirely voluntary on the part of the owner. In the next place, we propose to amend certain proposals contained in the 5th part of the Act of 1881, and also to further amend that Act by extending some of its provisions. The clauses of the Act of 1881, with regard to the purchase of holdings, were, no doubt, accepted at the time as likely to be successful; but we all know that, when put to the test of experience, they practically failed—indeed, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Border Burghs stated, in moving a similar Bill on this subject last year, as regarded the Act of 1881 and particular clauses of the Act of 1870, that if their combined action had resulted in enabling one tenant in 400 to purchase, that would be the maximum. The right hon. Gentleman at that time, by his Bill, enlarged the scheme of the Act of 1881 by providing that there should be two advances, one of a guaranteed and the other of an unguaranteed character. He proposed that the unguaranteed sum should be at the rate of £4 10s., and should not exceed three-fourths of the purchase money. The guarantee was to be of a local nature. I have heard that that is a proposal which, if it ever had been submitted, would not have met with the acceptance of Parliament. That scheme, however, is not the one before the House. The chief changes that we propose are that all future loans are to be granted for 49 years, at a charge of £4 per annum for every £100; and that where the loans are guaranteed, the advance is to be for the whole of the purchase money. There is a further prominent feature in the Bill, which is that power shall be granted to the Land Commission to convey an indefeasible title to the new owner by a vesting order. Then there are other changes to this effect, that the Land Commission shall only lend the whole of the purchase money where the landlord or some other person shall deposit one-fifth as a guarantee. I am aware that this question of guarantee is one which may lead to controversy. It is true that the offer is a very large and considerable one, and that the system of granting the whole of the purchase money is one that is, I believe, comparatively new, being introduced for the first time by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Border Burghs, in the proposals which were made by the late Government for legislation of this nature. But if legislation of this character is sound in itself, and if the principle has been adopted again and again by Parliament, then Her Majesty's Government are justified in proceeding further on the same lines and in advancing the whole money on the ground already mentioned. It has been urged, in some quarters, that this is too large an offer to make, and that you are placing other tenants in a disadvantageous position, perhaps, in making such a large and wide proposal; and it has also been urged that we are offering too much in the shape of a bribe—that the result will be a rush into the land market of tenants, land-jobbers, and others, and that the scope of the Bill will be extraordinarily extended. For myself, I am not afraid of any such extraordinary rush into the land market—neither can Her Majesty's Government be fairly accused in these proposals of gambling with the present situation. The present stagnation in that direction is simply lamentable; and if the Government can produce anything like a movement as regards purchase, then the Bill will have justified itself. Well, now I have further to add, with reference to this advance by the Land Commission, that 3 per cent is to be charged on the deposit of one-fifth, and that, of course, in case of failure, the Land Commission are to make use of that deposit in order to provide against loss, and they are also to be guaranteed a power of sale, which shall only be exercised as a very last resource. Then another proposal is—and it is a large proposal in the Bill—to place a charge on the Irish Church Surplus as a guarantee to our scheme. That may also be subjected to adverse criticism. First, considering that this measure is a very large advance on any previous measure of the same kind, and that it is more distinctly for the benefit of Ireland, I do not see why a fund exclusively Irish in its character should not be set apart in this way, and utilized in its support. But it must be understood that it must be regarded as to be only made use of as the very last resource, and so that any loss that may be sustained will have to be made good. There are other means, too, to be realized; for it will be the duty of the Court to make good any loss by the deposit, and to sell up the tenant, and realize, before they fall back upon the fund to which I have alluded. Then there is another change, which I have already mentioned, and that is the vesting order guaranteed by the Land Commission, and which was also in the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Border Burghs. We propose to extend that, not only to the holding, but to the interest in the holding also. That is done with this view—that the land should be conveyed by the cheapest possible process. We assume that any tribunal appointed under an Act like this would take every possible means in their power to ascertain the title of any land they propose to convey, so that it should be conveyed, as far as they were concerned, secure from any future civil or legal process. I should like to say one word as to the machinery by which this Bill is to be carried out. It is proposed, as hon. Members are aware, to add two fresh Commissioners to the Land Commission for the purpose of carrying out the Act.

Will the right hon. Gentleman name them?

I have always noticed in a Bill of this kind, when it is introduced, that where a Commissioner is to be appointed, the name of the gentleman to be appointed creates more excitement and interest and discussion than the whole of the other provisions of the Bill put together. I cannot, therefore, I suppose, expect to experience any immunity as regards that matter. Of course, the Government are anxious to meet the general wishes of the House in this respect; and I think, at all events, the House will naturally expect their names to be given before we go into Committee on the Bill. I have not had sufficient experience of these vexed questions as to the working of that Court to be able to form a judgment on the course we propose It is enough for me to mention that the question has been most carefully considered by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and other Members of the Government, who have given a vast amount of attention to the question for many years; and I need not tell hon. Members that, if these proposals are to be carried out successfully, there will be an enormous onus thrown on the tribunal, and the Government, therefore, are very anxious that the Court shall be as strong as possible. The proposal in the Bill is to give the Land Commission power to appoint a solicitor, who would deal with the vexed question of title. Other powers will also be given, the aim of which is to strengthen the tribunal under the Bill, to which I need not now further allude. I shall not detain the House more than a few minutes longer. The House is quite aware that this Bill, which is bristling with legal technicalities, is not an easy question for a layman to handle. I will, however, give the House its main features before I sit down. One main feature is, that in the case of any sale, it being a voluntary act between landlord and tenant, one-fifth of the purchase money is to be devoted to the guarantee fund. The next important change is the advance for a term of 49 years of the purchase money at a charge of £4 for every £100. As to the working of the Bill itself, I will give one short example before I sit down. In the case of a tenant who is paying £10 rent, if he buys his land at 20 years' purchase, say, £200, under the Bill, the charge of the Land Commission to the purchaser will be £8 per annum, and the proportion of the tenant's rate will be something like 12s. a-year. The purchaser will, therefore, pay at the rate of £8 12s. per year for 49 years, as against £10; and, at the end of 49 years, the land becomes the absolute property of the late tenant. It may be said that that is a very large offer; and it may also be noted that it creates a great deal of discrepancy between a purchaser under this Bill and other tenants; but I believe these matters will very much settle themselves, if the Bill he adopted by the House. But hon. Members must also remember that, it the Bill has any successful result at all, it will improve the demand for land, and most likely prevent anything like a considerable diminution of rent. I have to thank the House for listening so patiently to a somewhat imperfect statement, and for having accorded to it a consideration which it has scarcely deserved. Her Majesty's Government are most anxious that the Bill should become law in as speedy a time as possible. Although this is a late period of the Session, and although, only a very short space of time has elapsed since they Lave accepted Office, yet, looking at the state of things in Ireland, where the difficult questions relating to the land are of the most vital importance as affecting all interests in that country, the Government refuse to sit with their hands folded, and to do nothing to promote a better and more prosperous state of things in the interests of the whole community. The right hon. Baronet concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

said, that, as far as he personally was concerned, he desired to support the principle of the Bill. As he understood the Bill, it might be divided into three parts. The first related to the guarantee, which consisted of the deposit of one-fifth, and the advance of the whole of the purchase money; the second related to the legal machinery by which the Bill was to be worked; and the third related to the use to be made of the Church Surplus Fund. He was in favour of the first point; but so far as regarded the legal machinery which the Bill provided, he was not in a position to condemn it, inasmuch as that legal machinery constituted a portion of, and indeed was a transcript of, the Bill of the late Government, for which he (Mr. Walker) was himself, to a great extent, responsible. The deposit of one-fifth of the purchase money was a substitute for the guarantee of the Local Authority provided by the Bill brought in by his right hon. Friend the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. Trevelyan); but he (Mr. Walker) must confess, however, that he preferred the machinery which the present Bill provided. But when he came to the proposal relating to the Church Surplus Fund, he looked at that in an entirely different manner, and he could not quite agree with the proposal embodied in the Bill. That fund, as he understood it, was set apart in order to be devoted to great national objects, such as Education and Imperial purposes, and it was in the hands of the State still. He could not, therefore, understand why the State should guarantee the State in the way proposed, or why that fund, whatever its amount might be, but which was said to amount to about £1,000,000, should be diverted to what appeared to him to be an illegitimate purpose, from its otherwise legitimate one—namely, to serve one of two purposes; either to increase the price of land unduly, or to secure the debt of the improvident man at the expense of the provident one. The dedication of that fund for the object mentioned seemed to him to be unnecessary, and contrary to the principle of the Act of Parliament. This use of the Church Surplus was an unnecessary excrescence on the Bill, and it would be impolitic to apply it in the manner proposed. He wished now to advert to two or three matters which had struck him in the reading of the Bill. He did not think that the provisions by which it was proposed that £5,000,000 should be allocated to the purchase of land so as to create a peasant proprietary was at all sufficient. Unless the Act was to be a tentative measure, it appeared to him to be a ridiculous sum for such a purpose. The proposal in the Bill of the late Chief Secretary for that purpose was to allocate £20,000,000. He desired, too, to see a few alterations made in regard to the legal machinery. Power was given to the Land Commissioners to declare that a sale was made subject to a mortgage or charge. In his opinion, that provision was extremely objectionable. Another matter worthy of notice, looking to the future working of the Bill, was that of the purchasers under the Act of 1870, excluding glebe tenants, who would occupy a peculiar position under it; but the position of the purchasers under the Act of 1881 was one which would require serious consideration. If they were left in their present position, much heart-burning would be created which the right hon. Gentleman who moved the second reading of the Bill would have to answer for. Therefore, how they were to be dealt with was a matter for his consideration. Again, in the case of tenants belonging to a village or town which formed a portion of the estate that was about to be sold, he thought these tenants should not be left out in the cold. Provision ought also to be made to prevent a loss accruing to the landlord for the investigation of title and other legal formalities, in case the sale of the property was not carried out. That portion of the Bill he (Mr. Walker) pro- posed to remedy at a future stage. The working of the Act would depend upon the persons who had to carry it into effect; and, therefore, before the Act could be criticized fully, it was necessary to know to whom its administration was to be intrusted. He hoped, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland would soon be able to name the persons by whom the Bill was to be administered. If it should once get into the minds of the Irish people that the Act was passed for the purpose of enabling the landlord to sell his land at an increased price, it would be certain to be a dead letter. On looking at the 17th clause, hon. Members would see how important it was that the names of those persons should be known to the House; for it would be seen that the Lord Lieutenant had the power to provide that those two Commissioners should specially attend to the business imposed on the Land Commission by this Act. What would be the result? This Act imposed upon the Commission duties of a most important judicial character; and supposing, as he thought himself entitled to assume, that the two new Commissioners were laymen, were they to be charged alone with the execution of this judicial business, from which the legal Chief of the Commission was excluded? Then there was the important question of the value of incumbrances to be considered. The Bill gave power to the Commissioners to apportion incumbrances, annual charges, and so forth, and he thought it ought also to give them power to capitalize, commute, and to value those charges. He alluded to these difficulties with the most friendly feeling towards the Bill; for, however much he might doubt the wisdom of certain provisions, the object of the Bill had his most entire approval.

said, the reason he had blocked the Bill was not because he disapproved of its principle—that of the purchase of land by tenants—for that had been for a long time a great desire of his to see carried into effect, but because he believed that the measure was wholly inadequate for the purpose proposed, and that, therefore, it would be an abortive one. He had been in great hope, when he understood that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne) was going to bring in a Bill dealing with the subject, that it would be an effective measure, one that would be of great service in enabling tenants to purchase their holdings; but, as it was now framed, he felt compelled to look upon it with great disappointment. He had searched high and low throughout the Bill to find one redeeming feature in it; but he could discover nothing in it that would commend it to his notice. The most that could be predicted in its favour was that it might be wholly inoperative; but he was afraid that, if it passed, instead of being inoperative, it would be highly dangerous on the one hand, and, to an absolute certainty, it would be exceedingly costly and expensive on the other. The Body which would be appointed by the Bill to carry out its conditions, would be the Land Commission; and those who knew anything about Ireland were fully cognizant of the working of the Land Commission to know that, by its working, the Purchase Clauses of the Land Act of 1881 had been rendered nugatory. In proof of that, he had only to refer to the Return which had been called for by himself, which showed the manner in which the Land Act had been worked. It showed where tenants were anxious to purchase, and where purchasers were anxious to give a fair and not at all an extravagant price for their holdings, that the officers of the Land Court, by precept and by advice to hold on a little longer and they would get the land cheaper, had dissuaded them from carrying their intentions into effect, or they had declined to advance the money. Thus, in one case in the county of Mayo, where the landlord and the tenant had agreed that the purchase of the holding should be carried into effect at the price of 16½ years' purchase, and the security was considered so good that the local bank had undertaken to advance the remaining one-fourth of the purchase money, the Land Commission had interferred to prevent the landlord from selling and the tenant from purchasing at that price, and had refused to advance the three-fourths of the purchase money, with the result that they themselves eventually bought the unfortunate proprietor out at 12 years' purchase. In his opinion, the present deadlock in the Irish land market was entirely due to the action of the Land Commission, to whom it was proposed to intrust the carrying into effect of the provisions of the present Bill. Why did not the Government propose to intrust the working of the Bill to the Landed Estates Court, which was an excellent tribunal, exactly suitable and competent for the purpose, and which, in any case, would have to be referred to in almost every transaction? That Court had full power to carry out sales; they had the power to apportion, and the knowledge how to apportion incumbrances, and commanded the confidence of the mortgagees? Why was that admirable Body to be ignored, and why should they be paid for doing nothing? The proposal in the present Bill was to appoint two officers, and that two fresh offices were to be created, and more public money was to be; spent unnecessarily. Those two officers had not been named; and he contended that, inasmuch as their appointment would cause an expenditure of public money, that hon. Members should be informed as to whom the Government intended appointing. But it appeared that the Government were going to bring in two officers, about whom the House had no knowledge whatever at present, to carry out the most important, complicated, and difficult duties that had ever-been intrusted to any gentlemen in connection with the Irish Land Question. Those officers would have power over the sale of about one-half of the entire land of Ireland. They proposed paying them £2,000 per annum. They could not get good professional men—they could not got men worth their salt and in decent practice—who would accept the position for so small a remuneration. The Government proposed to put a couple of men in an inferior position amongst others at a salary not exceeding two-thirds of that of the gentlemen among whom they would have to sit according to the proposed constitution of the Court. If the work was to be done in that way at all, it would be infinitely better done by appointing one thoroughly good man who should be well and adequately remunerated for his services. If the Government got the Landed Estates Court to do the drudgery, he believed there would be plenty of really competent men to be obtained who would do the work proposed to be given to the two Commissioners gratis; but it would not be pus- sible to get men to undertake the duties of the office if it were to be in any way associated with the Land Commission unless they were paid adequately for their services. He wanted to know why it was that the names of the proposed Commissioners had been kept secret? He should have thought that if the Government had been able to secure the services of really good men to work the measure, instead of being ashamed of their names, they would have been only two anxious to make them public. The success of a measure of the kind depended upon the character and stability of the men by whom it was administered. He spoke the views of moderate men on both sides of the House, when he complained that the names of the proposed Commissioners were not given, so that hon. Members might criticize them at that stage. It had been said that the names of the Commissioners under the Land Act had not been made known until just before the measure had reached the Committee stage in that House; but it must be recollected that that Bill had been introduced in that House, whereas the present measure had been introduced in the House of Lords. There was a great deal in this Bill that savoured of sham to his mind. It was going to be a sham Court. If, as he had said, the proposed Commissioners were good men, the Government would not be ashamed to name them. The sum of £5,000,000 put down for expenditure under the measure was a sham, because nothing under £20,000,000 would enable the measure to be successfully carried out, and the proposal to reserve one-fifth of the purchase money was even a greater sham still. Under a reasonable Act, he believed a great deal might be done with the sum of £20,000,000, as proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary for Ireland. They were told that this was a noble and generous measure, and that the tenant was to have the whole of the purchase money. Well, he supposed that if the tenant who bought the land was, for that purpose, to receive the whole of the purchase money, the person who sold the land should also receive from that tenant the whole of the purchase money. But it was to be otherwise. Whilst the whole of the purchase money would be advanced to the tenant, the vendor would only re- ceive four-fifths of the amount, the other fifth being absorbed by the State in the event of the tenant not paying his instalments. That was equivalent to the State promising £1 and paying 16s. The probability was that the provisions of the measure would be taken advantage of only by men who were utterly broken down in resources and in credit, and who were so hard pressed by their creditors that they would accept anything. He did not believe that the provisions of the Bill would be taken advantage of at all, because another sham connected with the measure was—and the noble and learned Lord who introduced the Bill knew it perfectly well—that the tenants had not the slightest intention of availing themselves of the provisions of the Bill. They did not mean to buy their holdings. They were imbued with the idea that they were going to get the fee simple of the land without paying for it at all, and he believed they had been very much encouraged in this belief by the action of the Land Commissioners. In Ireland at the present moment there were those who regularly bought the interest in their holdings; but that was a very different matter from purchasing the holdings. When a tenant was willing to give 16 or 18 years' purchase, agitators stepped in and said—"Hold on and you will get your holding without doing that;" and it was not likely that tenants, because of that or any ether Bill, would immediately spring up and give a fancy price for their farms. They knew very well what was thought by a certain class in the North of Ireland on this measure. They knew what was the opinion of Mr. Michael Davitt, and those who were associated with that gentleman, upon it. He had spoken very strongly at public meetings, and had called it a "Bill for the Relief of Pauper Landlords." He advised, and in very clever and very strong language he had almost ordered, the tenants not to purchase their holdings; and he (Colonel King-Harman) had very good reason to believe that that advice would be acted upon. It might be that there would be found a man here and there more enterprizing than his neighbours who would be willing to purchase; but the Bill would not be taken advantage of generally. A landlord might get offers to purchase a farm here and a farm there; but that would introduce a system of having small farms dotted indiscriminately over an estate, which would be objected to by the landlords, who were opposed to anything but a continuity of holdings. The unwillingness of tenants to avail themselves of powers of the sort was shown by the fact that last year only 241 applications to purchase came before the Land Commission, and out of those 241 cases there were 144 where single tenants would have purchased their holdings, and there were nearly 100 where tenants in twos and threes wished also to do so, and the landlords would not agree to that. Beyond that, a great many of those were refused by the Commission because the tenant and landlord had agreed upon what the Commission considered was too high a price. In most cases the Land Commission would not give 16 years' purchase, though in two cases they had allowed 26 years and 28 years. But it so happened that in the former case the landlord was a Member of the present Government, and in the latter case a Member of the late Government. He did not mean to impute any motives to the vendors in those cases; but the circumstances were somewhat suspicious. He would tell the House that although some landlords would not sell, they would do what they could to assist in the formation of a peasant proprietary. They would give leases in perpetuity, fee farm grants, &c. He would ask whether the Government would try to make this a good and useful Bill by granting some powers for the granting of perpetuity leases and fining down rents? If the Government were really anxious to do a great amount of good with the measure, that would be really the very best thing which they could do. If they would advance the whole of the money for the purpose of fining down rents, it would do a vast amount of good to both landlords and tenants. He objected to the measure as it stood, because it seemed to have been brought in in much the same way in which railways were made abroad in Russia. The Czar took a map and a ruler and drew a line from one place to another, and said—"We are going to make a railway between those two places," irrespective of the difficulties which existed in the physical conformation of the districts over which they were to pass. Just in the same headlong way the Government said—"We are going to give you a Purchase Bill." In his opinion, the Government had had the opportunity—indeed, they had it still—of working out this matter in a statesmanlike manner, but had not taken advantage of it. They ought to look the matter boldly in the face, and not to run away from it. If the Government had consulted men of experience who lived in Ireland, without confining the matter within the narrow limits in which it had been kept, they would have found out what would have been best for the country. He hoped, however, they would even yet bring forward a measure which would be acceptable to those for whom it was intended, and which would realize the result which was desired.

said, he desired to speak entirely for himself, and not—as he had been unable to consult with them—on behalf of those hon. Members with whom he had been usually associated in matters of this kind during the past couple of years. He was well acquainted with the views of both landlords and tenants in the West of Ireland, and believed that they would be favourable to the measure. He was very much struck with the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman); but he (Colonel Nolan) believed that £5,000,000 was amply sufficient, for he believed there certainly would not be £5,000,000 worth of land sold before the new Parliament met; and even if there was, and more money were needed, it could be applied for. He thought that there were many little faults in the Bill which might be taken exception to; for he believed that the lawyers, in drafting measures of the kind, adhered too much to the old system of feudal tenure. The best way would be to destroy the whole entail and feudal system. He believed that its machinery was a distinct improvement on that of the Land Act, although, as far as it went, the machinery of that Act was good and proper. In the case of this Bill, however, he did not think the guarantee was at all necessary; for it appeared to him that the most important point in the Bill had escaped the notice of the previous speakers, and had only been mentioned incidentally. That was the reduction of the rate of interest from 5 per cent to 4 per cent. Now, he regarded that as the most important part of the Bill. By that it would be possible for the tenant to purchase his land by the payment of a rent not exceeding the amount he was now paying. Therefore, he supported the second reading of the Bill; and, on the whole, he would like to see it pass very much, especially as it proposed to enable the tenants to purchase under terms that would insure the whole of the advance at 4 per cent. It would afford an opportunity of seeing whether they were willing to purchase on the terms offered to them. There was, however, one important blot which might be easily got over in Committee, and that was that there was no provision for increasing the holding of the tenant. He thought it would be quite possible to introduce a clause which would enable a tenant not only to purchase his own holding on the terms mentioned in the Bill but also a few adjoining acres of a grass farm with the consent of the owner. There were many tenants who would be very desirous to obtain a small piece of grass land; and there were, in many places, vast tracts of land which, under the strict rules of economy, should not be all under grass at all. If some provision were introduced into the Bill which would enable tenants to acquire small portions of such grass land near their holdings, he believed that it would meet with very great favour in both Mayo and Galway. It would give the Bill a great impetus, and with such a clause he believed that the Bill might be a considerable success. He should, therefore, at the proper time, move the insertion of a clause of the nature he had sketched. It would, doubtless, be a salutary provision, and he hoped the Government would see their way to agreeing to it. Of course, there was much to be said against the Bill, and certain political difficulties had to be taken into consideration; but he believed that if they were, at that stage of the Session, to enter into any such matters, and to re-open the whole agrarian question in Ireland, the Bill would not have the slightest chance of becoming law.

said, he hoped sincerely that the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member opposite (Colonel Nolan) would not be taken up by the Government. The idea that a tenant should be able to insist upon obtaining portion of a neighbouring property——

No, no. I did not say they should insist at all.

resuming, said, he believed that there would be no difficulty in making a purchase under the present law, in a case where both parties were agreed. He thought that they could understand the introduction of the cloven foot in any other case of that sort. He was sure that they all hoped to see a settlement of the differences between landlords and tenants in Ireland. He did not think, however, although he should, be heartily glad to see the reverse, that it was very likely that the Bill would be very largely taken advantage of. Unfortunately, besides other strong reasons, property in Ireland was so much subject to mortgage that it would be very difficult to arrange matters respecting sales in such a way as to satisfy the claims of mortgagor, mortgagee, and purchaser. It was, also, from that cause, almost impossible to acquire a good, clear title to small portions of land under the existing legal provisions. As to the remarks with regard to the Church Surplus, it did not seem to him that the Bill was open to objection on that account. Indeed, he could not understand why so many references had been made to that fund. It seemed to him that hon. Members had forgotten that Parliament had long since given up the idea of restricting it to the purposes originally intended. No doubt, when the Irish Church Act was passed, there was a solemn pledge given by Parliament as to the objects to which that Surplus was to be applied. But no sooner was that pledge given than there was the greatest eagerness on both sides of the House to get rid of it; and when his hon. and learned Friend opposite (Mr. Walker) objected to this fund being pledged under the Bill, he ought to remember that it was also pledged under the Arrears of Pent (Ireland) Act of his own Government in 1882. In fact, he (Mr. Lewis) had been under the impression that Parliament was solemnly pledged to use it only for certain purposes; but that pledge was no longer recognized on either side of the House. Then he (Mr. Lewis) was of the opinion that £5,000,000 was quite enough to provide in the first instance for the purposes of the Bill. Looking to their ex- perience of the Bright Clauses of the Act of 1870, no one could be so sanguine as to suppose that even under this, as it had been termed, most generous measure, £5,000,000 would not be sufficient to meet any demands that were likely to arise before the next Session of Parliament. He also thought the Government were quite right to make it a tentative measure. They might, after it had been tried, enlarge the amount, and introduce such amendments and alterations as experience would point out in the way of extension. Then, as to the Bill itself, it proceeded on the lines of old measures, for the House would recollect that by the Church Act of 1869, three-fourths of the purchase money was to be advanced at 4 per cent, repayable in 32 years, but not by way of annuity, but by way of advance of three-fourths of the purchase money at 4 per cent, the capital being repayable in 64 equal half-yearly instalments. That was rather an onerous bargain. In 1870 the first Irish Land Act passed, and then two-thirds of the purchase money was to be advanced, repayable by way of annuity at 5 per cent—that was to say, 4 per cent for interest, and 1 per cent for sinking fund. Then came the Land Act of 1881. Under that there was the same term of 35 years for the annuity, and three-fourths of the purchase money was to be advanced at 5 per cent. What was the Bill now before them? Surely they must all be impressed by the unfortunate relations which existed between landlords and tenants in Ireland, and by the great puplic interest which were involved in those circumstances, and they must, therefore, all desire the Bill to succeed, even if they did not think that it would. Did it then, he would ask, present features of an attractive character? He thought it did. First, the rate of interest was only 4 per cent—that was 3⅛ for interest and £1 per cent for sinking fund. That was, it seemed to him, a most generous and liberal offer from the State. Where he thought the Bill was onerous and would require alteration was in regard to the deposit of one-fifth of the purchase money. He maintained that if they were to regard the tenantry of Ireland as an honest respectable set of men this deposit was not necessary. Let it be remembered that the security which the State would hold against its advance was not only the landlord's interest in the property, but also the tenant's, which in many instances in the North of Ireland was worth more than the landlord's. The tenant's interest would be included in the mortgage just as well as the landlord's, and thus they would have a double security for the purchase money. He believed that the real mode of settling the Irish Land Question originally would have been by the institution of a liberal and generous system of land purchase. Half the misery and the public scandal produced by agrarian disputes in Ireland or by the unpleasant relations between landlord and tenant would have been avoided if the Bright Clauses had been made the primary instead of the subsidiary portion of the Land Act of 1881; and his great fear was that this retention of one-fifth of the purchase money would be a great impediment to the success of this measure. But as regarded the deposit, he must point out to his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman) that the deposit would not necessarily come out of the landlord's pocket. If a tenant was anxious to buy he might agree to make the deposit himself. He must say that he far preferred the mode of guarantee which the late Government proposed to adopt in their last Bill. His belief was that that was a matter of vast importance to the safety of society, to the goodness of the debt, to the validity of the change, in making a guarantee of the district of the Poor Law Union binding the whole population to see that no defaulters were in their midst—he thought that morally that was one of the most valuable features in the Bill of the late Government, and one which would have carried them over difficulties of a financial character. It would have tended to promote, in the most powerful manner, the peace, good order, credit, and safety of the State. However, that was gone by, and it could not be denied that the security under which they were now asked to sanction an advance of public money was most ample. He next came to a most important and serious point which he thought the House should consider. There were a few purchasers under the Bright Clauses of the Act of 1870, who were now paying 5 per cent annuities for 35 years. In what position would they stand after the passing of the Bill? They would naturally say—"What fools we were when we took advantage of the provisions of the Act of 1870, when we might have had better terms by waiting; now we are left in the lurch with an annuity which involves 4 per cent, whereas those purchasers who have delayed until the present time will have the full amount of the purchase money advanced to them." It was, of course, possible to rectify the position of matters with reference to the small numbers of persons who had so purchased, and it would be only fair to do so. If it was not done a good deal of soreness would be left behind which might be the source of future controversies and disputes. He asked the House also to consider the position of those persons who had purchased under the Irish Church Act of 1869, and whose position was still worse, for they had purchased on the basis of the then existing rents, which had since been reduced under the operation of the Irish Land Act of 1881 from 20 to 25 per cent. Nor was that all, for the purchasers under the Church Act paid a higher rate of interest, with a shorter term of repayment, than under this Bill. These men ought to be placed in such a position that they would suffer no disadvantage from having bought before the Land Act of 1881. The present Bill should provide for all the points he had mentioned; and in that case it would be, even more than at present, a measure worthy the support and sanction of the House, and one that ought to be supported in a generous and thorough spirit, with no desire to carp at or criticize, but with an earnest wish that it might prove to be one tending to settle many of those problems with which the Irish Land Question was surrounded. That the provisions of the Bill taken as a whole in practical detail were generous, liberal, and fair to the landlords and tenants, while they were perfectly safe to the State, he ventured to affirm; and while he must press, without as he trusted any danger to the State, for a relaxation of the provisions with regard to the retention by the State of one-fifth of the purchase money as a guarantee, he did most earnestly press on the House not to pass by the grievous cases of hardship which the purchasers from the Irish Church Commissioners and those who had received advances under the Acts of 1870 and 1881 would suffer, if they were held to the terms of purchase laid down in those Acts, which compared so unfavourably with those embodied in the present measure. Let the House not falter in doing an act of fair play and justice to a body of men not connected with any particular Party or belonging to any particular class of society. The Bill was capable of being made a useful measure, and he hoped it would receive the sanction of the House.

said, as the subject-matter of the Bill was one in which he had taken much interest for some years past, and had had a part in previous legislation, he would claim the attention of the House for some comments on it. It was when the present Government were last in Office in 1878, that he moved for, and presided over, an important Committee for inquiry into the working of the Bright Clauses of the Land Act of 1870 with a view to ascertain the best means of facilitating the acquisition of their holdings by tenants in Ireland; and, after that Committee had been appointed, he subsequently carried a Resolution in that House against the opposition of the then Government, calling upon them to give effect to the recommendations of that Committee, and to legislate on the subject. It had always been his belief that if they had then acted in a generous spirit on that Resolution and the Report of that Committee, much that had since occurred in Ireland might have been avoided. Popular opinion in Ireland was at that time in favour of the tenants becoming owners of their holdings. The best evidence of that was to be found in the fact that three-fourths of the glebe holders of that time became owners of their holdings under terms very far less advantageous than those now offered. The opportunity was lost on that occasion—no action was taken. Then followed the land agitation in Ireland; and, later, the Land Act of 1881. He had no desire, however, to rake up past controversies; but he desired to refer to the Report of that Committee, as it laid down certain principles within which the State might safely lend its aid to such a proposal, which he still himself adhered to. The fact was, that in the turn of the wheel of events the position of Parties seemed to have become reversed on this question. At the time he spoke of, it was the tenants of Ireland who were anxious for the opportunity of purchasing their holdings, and who desired an amendment of the Land Laws in Ireland in order to obtain full security, and the landlords were somewhat supine. As far as he could see, it was now the landlords of Ireland who came forward, and were urging the State to offer inducements to tenants to purchase their holdings, and who were offering splendid bribes with that object, while the tenants were supine upon the point. He was afraid that, even when this generous Bill was passed, in the present state of Ireland it would not have much effect. The real fact was that, at the time he spoke of, there appeared no prospect of obtaining any considerable amendment of the land tenure of Ireland; and it was vastly more important than it now was to move in the direction of full ownership. In 1881 the Land Act was passed, and that completely changed the position of the Irish tenants. It gave them a security of tenure, and a security of the improvements which they themselves effected in their holdings far beyond what was expected in 1878. The Land Act of 1881 was one of the greatest land reforms that was ever effected in any country, and one which might be defended on its merits upon economical grounds and upon grounds of justice; but since then it seemed to him that the Irish tenants had been far less eager and anxious to avail themselves of facilities for purchase of their holdings. The same Act embodied all the recommendations of the Committee of 1878, and the terms then offered by the State were extremely liberal. It was his belief that, in any ordinary times, the amended Bright Clauses would have produced very considerable effect; but the times had not been ordinary, and, in fact, it must be admitted they had not had much effect. That had been due to several causes. One point was that which he had already alluded to—namely, that the Tenure Clauses of the Act of 1881 had given such complete security that there was no longer the same motive or anxiety for becoming full owners as before. The second was that there was still so much uncertainty as to the future—when expectations, referred to by the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Lewis) and the hon. and gallant Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman), were being held out by a political Party so powerful in Ireland as that represented and led below the Gangway that further great amendments would be made in the Land Act and land tenure, leading possibly to a further reduction of rent—it was not to be expected that tenants would be very anxious to enter into bargains with their landlords for the purchase of their holdings upon terms based on the present rents.

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. I never suggested anything' of the kind.

said, he did not put the words in the mouth of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but alluded to the feeling entertained by the tenants in Ireland.

I said they thought they would get the land for nothing.

said, that the hon. and gallant Gentleman now went farther than he (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) had suggested. Personally, he did not believe the Irish tenants expected to get the land for nothing. On the contrary, they must expect them to wait and see the result of the General Election, and the views which the next Parliament might have upon this subject. It was his belief that that feeling would remain, and that, until all expectations of further great changes or reductions of rent were removed, no considerable effect would be given to any proposals for facilitating the purchase of holdings, even if the present Bill were passed with the most liberal offers. He knew that of late years many landlords had made most liberal offers to their tenants under the Act of 1881, proposing to leave the remaining one-fourth of the purchase money on second mortgage upon such terms that the tenants would pay less in the future in the shape of interest and instalments of the capital than their previous rent, and had met with no response to them. The offers had been invariably refused in the spirit to which he had alluded. The uncertainty as to the future had equally operated to prevent the sale of the landlord's property in the Landed Estates Court. In the uncertainty as to the future, the possibility of further agitation to reduce rents, it was not to be wondered at that purchasers should be unwilling to invest in land in Ireland. He was aware that some high authori- ties, such as the Duke of Argyll and, he thought, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith), had attributed the block in the Landed Estates Court and the unsaleability of land to the fact that they had, by the Land Act, created a dual ownership of land, and that so long as property in land was not absolute that unsaleability would continue. He thought that was an error. It was a misconception of the effect and meaning of the Act of lb81 in relation to what existed before. In fact, before the Act of 1881, in a great part of Ireland, and certainly in Ulster, and on all well-managed estates elsewhere, a dual ownership of land had practically existed. By the custom of Ulster the tenant's interest was practically secure, and no landlord could deal with his land in the same absolute manner as in England. The Act of 1881 only gave full legal effect to that custom, and extended it over the whole of Ireland; but the existence of the previous custom and the practical dual ownership of land in Ulster did not prevent land being bought and sold for very fair prices, and, indeed, at a higher rate than in other parts of Ireland, where there was no such complete custom protecting the tenant's interest. It was his (Mr. Shaw Lefevre's) confident belief that the unsaleability of land at the present moment was due not to the dual ownership of land, but to the uncertainty as to the future—to the fear of further changes in the Act. They must recollect that purely agricultural land in England was now almost as unsaleable as it was in Ireland. Although they had had no Land Act here, there had been great reductions of rent—quite as great as in Ireland—and there was as much uncertainty here, not of a political character, but of an economic character, as to the future prices of agricultural produce, that land was almost unsaleable. Now, the Bill before them was mainly promoted in the interest of landlords. It was their hope that by its means they would be able to remove the block in the Landed Estates Court, to restore to land its saleable quality, by inducing the tenants to buy, and by using the State credit for the purpose. In fact, the terms offered in it formed, in his opinion, the most splendid bribe which had ever been held out in that direction. It proposed to reduce the rate of interest at which the State was to lend money from 3½ to 3 per cent; to extend the time of repayment from 35 to 49 years; and to advance the whole of the purchase money without any local guarantee. There was, indeed, a provision that one-fifth of the purchase money was to be retained by the State until that proportion of the purchase money was repaid by the annual instalments—that was, for 15 years. He could not, however, regard this provision as of any real importance or any real security to the State, for the real danger to the State was not the default of an individual, but a general movement in Ireland directed against the State for the reduction of the interest. The State, through the Land Commission, would be in direct relation to the occupying purchaser, and would be responsible for the collection of the whole of the interest. The retention of one-fifth of the purchase money was no security as between the State and the new purchaser; it would, however, be very inconvenient to the owner of the property who sold by keeping him out of his money for a long period, and it was of the nature of those provisions which would be knocked away, either in Committee or in the future. He would venture to suggest, therefore, that the Government would do wisely to abandon it. Setting aside that provision, let him look at the effect of the operation, and let him illustrate it by a case. Suppose a holding of £50 a-year, and let them presume that 20 years' purchase was agreed upon between the tenant and the owner. The purchase money would be £1,000, the whole of which the State would advance, retaining, however, one-fifth of it for 15 years. By reducing the interest to 3 per cent and spreading the repayment over so long a period as 49 years, the annual sum payable by the tenant purchaser would be only £40 a-year; of that, however, £10 a-year was practically an annual investment by the tenant purchaser in redemption of the fee, and adding, therefore, to his interest every year. It was only the interest of £30 which would compare with his previous rent of £50. Even with the instalment of the principal, and even if they added his share of local taxes now paid by the landlord, the tenant purchaser's payment would be much less than his previous rent, and he would become owner without any exertion whatever of his own. Now, let him point out the effect of this, if it should be largely adopted in Ireland. Suppose any landlord, for the purpose of relieving his property of incumbrances, were to sell to one-half of his tenants upon those terms. The effect would be that one-half of his tenants would be paying rent for ever, and the other half would be paying considerably less than their rent for a term of years; in fact, the real outgoing would be only three-fifths of their previous rent. What would be the views of those who would be paying rent for ever? Would they not complain greatly of their position? It appeared to him that the terms of the Bill were so generous, that if they were adopted to any large extent, and any considerable proportion of tenants were to become owners on such terms, it would be a considerable source of danger in the future. It would give rise to great discontent among those who were not favoured in that way, and they would either see an agitation to make the terms universal and compulsory, and for the general expropriation of landlords, or they would have a fresh agitation for a further reduction of rent on the part of those who remained tenants. He would also point out that there was another possible danger. Supposing these terms were largely accepted and a great number of tenants became owners of their holdings, and the State received their rents and practically was in the position of landlord, having advanced the whole purchase money, and being responsible through the Land Commission for the collection of the whole of the rent and of the whole instalments for a period of 49 years, there would be danger—unless there was some intervening local authority to act as a buffer. His right hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan), in his Bill of last year, made provision for such local authority by requiring that there should be a local guarantee for the interest. That, however, did not give satisfaction, and in the absence of good local government in Ireland it was impossible to provide for any such security. He could not but hope, however, that in the new Parliament, with a greater extension of local self-government in its truer sense, some such provision might be passed which would provide a guarantee against the possible danger to the State to which he alluded. He looked upon the measure as tentative, and he ventured to hope that if any extension was to be made beyond the very moderate total contemplated by this Bill—namely, of £5,000,000—it would, in his opinion, be desirable that the operation should be effected, not directly through the Imperial Exchequer, but through the Local Authorities, who would be responsible for the collection of interest. But for the reasons he had stated, that until the Irish people saw what the disposition of the new Parliament would be upon the point, he did not think there would be any great application of this measure. Whenever the Irish people knew that no further extension would be made of the principle of the Irish Land Act, he had no doubt that a great number of applications under the Bill would take place. For the reasons he had stated, he believed that the Government had acted wisely in limiting the scope of the Bill to £5,000,000, leaving to future consideration the terms on which the measure might be extended, if, hereafter, it should be found desirable to do so. There was one other point which he wished to mention, and that was with regard to the purchasers of the glebe land of the Disestablished Church of Ireland. He could not but think that a very strong case had been made out by his hon. Friend (Mr. Lewis) in favour of the inclusion of these purchasers in the more liberal terms granted by the present Bill. It should be remembered that when the purchases under the Disestablishment Act were made the price of land was at its maximum, and that these persons gave 24 or 25 years' purchase upon their rents. They had not benefited by the Land Act of 1881, and their rent had been taken at an amount from which it might have been reduced if they had remained in their condition of tenants. He believed that many of the purchasers of glebe land had gone through much suffering and hardship in the endeavour honestly to pay their yearly instalments to the State. Looking at the whole position, and the fact that when these purchases were effected the price of land I in Ireland was at its highest, he thought that these persons were entitled to great consideration from the present Government. So he thought, also, were the purchasers under the Land Act of 1870, though not the purchasers under the Act of 1881. The latter had not so strong a case; for they bought subject to the possibility of their rents being reduced by the Land Commission. On the whole, looking at it merely as a tentative measure he should give the Bill his support, though, recognizing that it had danger in it as regarded the future, he should reserve to himself the liberty of making any conditions which might be thought desirable with regard to any future extension of the scheme.

said, that had it not been for the concluding words of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) he (Mr. Plunket) should not have known that the right hon. Gentleman intended to support the present Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was partly philosophical and partly historical; and it was condemnatory generally of everybody and everything excepting his own earlier share in the discussion of the question; in all other respects it was as hostile a speech against the Bill as could possibly be made. Every warning that could be given to the House and public had been urged by the right hon. Gentleman. He urged every objection as strongly as he possibly could, while every objection that he made would apply equally, and some more strongly, to the Bill of last year, for which the late Government was responsible, than to this measure. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted that the scheme proposed by the Bill of last year, requiring that there should be a local guarantee for the payment of interest, was utterly unworkable. The present Bill offered a different and much more valuable guarantee; but against it the right hon. Gentleman urged the dangers that would arise to England and the Treasury from that provision, forgetting that the same objections would apply even more strongly to the Bill introduced by his own Government—in fact, a more effective speech could not be made against the principle of any and every scheme for facilitating the growth of a peasant proprietary in Ireland, in its practical aspect, and of the necessity of State-aid, than that which the right hon. Gentleman, who prided him- self upon being the original apostle and the present champion of the principle, had just made. It was quite true that the right hon. Gentleman, as Chairman of a Committee of which he (Mr. Plunket) was also a Member, made certain proposals with the view to creating a peasant proprietary in Ireland, and that he (Mr. Plunket) felt it his duty to oppose such proposals. He was in favour of creating a solvent peasant proprietary in Ireland, if possible; but be was free to admit that if he had known at that time what was coming in future years he should have been less careful of small dangers, and more willing to accept considerable risks, than he was at the time. He did not, however, wish to make any comparison unfavourable to the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. He fully admitted that the views of the right hon. Gentleman were then, no doubt, considerably in advance of his (Mr. Plunket's) own views with regard to a peasant proprietary. But the proposals the right hon. Gentleman then made, if carried out, would have proved utterly inadequate, as well as those would which he (Mr. Plunket) was prepared to make at that time. As to the other contentious part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech—the historical—he must just say one word. The right hon. Gentleman could not, if he tried, have more successfully thrown on the floor of the House a larger number of contentious questions, nor have offered stronger inducements to the Irish people to refuse these terms, in the hope of getting something more given them, than had been done in the speech which he had just delivered. If they were to approach the Bill in such a spirit as that, they might as well not be wasting the precious ebbing hours of the present Session upon it. In all the other speeches the question was approached in a spirit of friendliness, with the single exception of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman), who had strong feelings upon it, and who had, he (Mr. Plunket) must confess, struggled manfully against the bad times which the landlords of Ireland had endured. He would not attempt to answer his hon. and gallant Friend's criticisms of the Bill. They were founded mainly on his distrust of the tribunal which was to have the working of the measure. He was sorry he could not give the House any idea as to who the new Commissioners would be, although he had no doubt that those who had framed the Bill in this large and generous spirit would be guided by the same spirit in the appointment of the Commissioners. He believed that the names of the Commissioners would be declared before the next stage of the Bill; and then, if hon. Members, like his hon. and gallant Friend, were not satisfied with those Commissioners, they might take such steps in the matter as they might think fit. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Walker) had spoken generally of this Bill with praise. There were one or two matters with which he expressed dissent, the first of which was that he did not think the Church Surplus should be applied to the purpose of the Bill. That was a very fair and clear objection for him to raise; but it should be remembered that any deficit arising by means of the Bill must be paid out of some public fund. And, if a public fund, why not an Irish fund? Then the right hon. and learned Gentleman objected that £5,000,000 was not enough to allow for the purposes of the Bill; but it must be borne in mind that it was only an experiment. If the experiments were successful, he did not believe that Parliament would hesitate to enlarge the scope of the Bill; but if the Bill was not to succeed, no question could arise as to whether the sum would be sufficient, and nothing more than the money provided by the Bill could be spent, and nothing more could be wanted. He did not wish to go through the clauses of the Bill, because they all knew it was very thoroughly threshed out in "another place;" but there seemed to be a feeling amongst some persons on one point on which he would like to say a word—namely, that this was a Landlords' Relief Bill. He would point out that the position taken up by his hon. and gallant Friend behind him (Colonel King-Harman) did not make it appear as if the Bill were, in his hon. and gallant Friend's opinion, a very large measure of landlord relief. But even he were to concede that it was, to some extent, a Landlords' Relief Bill, let the House consider the real state of the case. When the Land Act of 1881 was passed, it was admitted on all hands by its authors that the landlords of Ireland had been called upon to make great personal sacrifices for the public good; but they were told, by way of consolation, that though they might be called upon to make such sacrifices, they would get in exchange greater security and truer value in that which remained. He would put it to the House, had that promise been kept? Was it true, or was it not true, that the interest of the landlord in Ireland was at this day absolutely unsaleable? It was not only unsaleable; but it seemed to him that whatever small value it still possessed was being rapidly taken away. This had been called a Landlords' Relief Bill. Suppose there were nothing to be said, but that it was a Landlords' Relief Bill, would not there be some arguments in justice and equity for some such proposition as this? Was not the nation bound in equity and honour to fulfil the pledges on which the Land Act was passed? He did not wish to argue the Bill as a measure in the interests of any class, and more especially for the relief of the landlords. He put it on the ground that it would be a great advantage to the State, and a great advantage to all classes in Ireland, if the question could be brought to a happy and successful conclusion; a great advantage through them for this country too, which was asked at present to take a large share of the risk necessarily attendant upon such a measure. In support of his contention he claimed the authority of the late Prime Minister, the senior Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright), and he also claimed the authority of the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Hartington), and every great statesman who had legislated upon the Irish Question during recent years. Under those circumstances, he ventured to ask the House to take a friendly and frank view of the question; for if every person were to stand out on his own individual crotchet, and opposition was offered to it, the Bill could never pass. There must be some mutual concession. This was admitted to be a tentative measure; but now at this time, when there seemed to be a cessation of violence and animosities in Ireland, he called upon and appealed to the House to take advantage of it; and if he might be allowed, he would speak in words not only of entreaty, but in words of warning, to hon. Members of the landlord class, who might not like all that was in the Bill; he would speak, and in words of earnest appeal, to every Irishman who loved his country and desired the union of all classes in that country, to lend their aid on this occasion to the Government which had undertaken to do that of which the greatest and the severest criticism that could be uttered was that, for once, at all events, the English Government had been too generous in dealing with an Irish question.

said, he most earnestly congratulated the Government upon the introduction of the Bill. He would point out to hon. Members that on the 15th of May the late Prime Minister announced that his Government had determined to abandon the Land Purchase Bill, and to renew the Prevention of Crime Act in some shape or form; but he (Mr. T. A. Dickson), on the following day, told the electors of County Antrim that that Session a Land Purchase Bill would be passed, and that there would be no renewal of the Prevention of Crime Act. As an Irish Liberal Member, he was extremely glad that his prophecy had been fulfilled. He was not as sanguine as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir William Hart Dyke) as to the character of the measure. The right hon. Gentleman had said this was a final effort on the part of the Government to settle the Land Question; but he (Mr. T. A. Dickson) only regarded it as an experiment. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for County Dublin (Colonel King-Harman) was not able to see any redeeming feature in the Bill. He (Mr. T. A. Dickson) thought there were three redeeming points in the measure which, if they had stood alone, were sufficient, in his opinion, to have justified its introduction. Those points were—in the first place, the Bill provided for the advance of the whole of the purchase money; in the second place, the purchase money was to be advanced at a reduced rate of interest; and, in the third place, the period of repayment was to be extended from 35 to 49 years. He confessed, however, that he was a little disappointed with the Bill in some respects, and chiefly that no reference was made to the case of the glebe tenants, of whom there were 5,000 or 6,000. There was no class of tenants in Ireland who had a stronger claim upon the consideration of the House. They bought their land, in 1869, at an extreme price. They had no option; because, if they refused to buy, they knew the land would be sold to land speculators. Mr. O'Brien, who valued the land for the Central Commission, valued the land as he found it. Indeed, he admitted, before a Select Committee of the House, that in his valuation he included the tenant's own improvements. Furthermore, the necessity was imposed upon the glebe tenants of finding one-third of the purchase money; and that they could only acquire from money lenders, at an enormous sacrifice. He (Mr. T. A. Dickson), therefore, maintained that the glebe tenants had every right to be generously and favourably considered in connection with this Bill. The hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Colonel King-Harman) objected to the Bill because the working of it was not to be entrusted to the Landed Estates Court. He (Mr. T. A. Dickson) was glad that the Landed Estates Court was not charged with the duty of putting the Act in force, because it was a Court in which the people had no confidence; and, therefore, he thought that any such provision would be fatal to the Bill. He quite agreed with the creation of new machinery to deal solely with land purchase. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had also suggested that there should be a fining down of the rents; but the adoption of the suggestion would certainly not be satisfactory to the tenants, who were determined to be either tenants or owners. He (Mr. T. A. Dickson) quite approved of the proposal to vest the Land Commission with discretion as to whether the whole or part of the purchase money should be advanced, and would point out that, in some cases in the North of Ireland, it would be safer to advance the whole of the money than to advance half of it. In other districts he, too, was of opinion that the Bill would not be largely availed of by the tenants for some time to come; but he nevertheless thought it right, and the duty of the Government, to create proper machinery for bringing the landlord and tenant together.

said, that he had put an Amendment on the Paper, with a view to move the rejection of the Bill, for the reasons given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), with whom he agreed upon the subject. He would not, however, press the Amendment. At the same time, he believed there were great dangers in this Bill. The right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir William Hart Dyke) stated that the Bill had been brought in because the measures of the last 15 years had proved abortive. Now, he (Captain Aylmer) considered that the measure of 1881 was fully as liberal as any Parliament ought to grant. The failure of the Bills of the last 15 years was owing to two circumstances. In the first place, there was an extraordinary disinclination on the part of Irish tenants for some years back to become purchasers of land. He had made many inquiries, and he had come to the conclusion that they had no desire to become purchasers. The other reason for the failure was because the system, of officialism and redtapeism which prevailed in Dublin prevented purchases being carried out in any reasonable time. They had been told that this Bill had been brought forward to relieve the landlords. The Duke of Argyll, in "another place," said that, as land had been made unsaleable in Ireland, it was only just to bring in a Bill which would make it saleable. He (Captain Aylmer) himself was of opinion that the Bill would make land still more unsaleable than ever. He had the greatest wish to see peasant proprietors established in Ireland; but when they were going to make them artificially the effect would be quite the reverse of what was desired. A tenant who had to pay £100 a-year rent for land would, under the Bill, have to pay only £75 a-year for a given time. He was satisfied that when that was found to be the case the Land Courts would be unable to fix a rent of £100 a-year for that land. The effect of that would be to reduce its value. He believed the Bill was a very dangerous Bill, and that it was full of pitfalls. To make the Government the sole landlord of Ireland would be dangerous and anomalous, and put them into a position they would be sorry for. But as he felt assured that, at that late period of the Session, he would not be followed into the Lobby by more than two or three Members, he would not put the House to the trouble of a division. He thought the Government should not have inter- terfered directly with the land, but should have endeavoured to have dealt with the question through the Land Act.

said, he cordially supported the Bill as a wellmeant effort to remedy the present deadlock in the land market. It was most desirable to pass a measure to facilitate the purchase of their holdings by occupiers, which had been so long promised. He would remind the House that great expectations had been founded in Ireland concerning this measure, and it would be impossible to estimate the disappointment that would follow its rejection by Parliament. The Bill was extremely liberal in its provisions. It afforded an easy means of enabling the landlord to sell who wished to do so, and the tenant to buy his property; while it brought to bear no compulsion on either party. He therefore trusted the Bill would not meet with serious opposition from any part of the House. Its principles had been advocated in Ulster by gentlemen representing both political Parties, not only on local grounds, but for high Imperial reasons. He saw there were various Amendments to be moved when the Bill got into Committee; but he would express the hope that the action of hon. Members in whose names those Amendments stood would not be allowed to delay or endanger the Bill.

said, he did not entertain any very sanguine expectations of the success of the measure; but he believed it to be an honest endeavour to meet a difficulty, and he hoped it might succeed. He thought the sum of money proposed to be allocated to the purpose was sufficient. It was an experiment, and if it succeeded Parliament would be willing to increase the sum. He objected to its being supposed that this was a landlords' Bill. For the first time, he believed, in the legislation of this country, it was suggested that the seller should become security for the payment of the purchase money by the buyer. ["No, no!"] Well, he knew of no Act in which that principle was already embodied. Was it to be supposed that the tenant, who was purchasing a farm for £200, would provide the fifth part of the money, which was to remain in the hands of the Land Commissioners for 10 or 15 years? Could anyone believe that the tenant would provide the £40? Or was it to be supposed that a third party would come in between landlord and tenant and advance the money? Therefore, the security must come from the landlord. If it did not come from him, then from whom else could it come? And if the security was to be given by the landlords, what chance was there of the Bill being largely availed of? He was not at all surprised that those who held property in Ireland and England should be desirous to get rid of the Irish property. Parliament had recently inaugurated such legislation towards landed property in Ireland, and so great a depreciation in its value had resulted in consequence, that those landowners could not but think that at some future time Parliament would go still further. The landlords of Ireland might be divided into three classes. One class was nearly hopelessly insolvent, and the Bill could do no good to them. There was a second class, who were mortgaged heavily, but not too deeply. But they were mortgaged sufficiently deeply as, with the assistance of the late legislation, to put them in a very precarious position, and leave them a very small margin to live upon. Unless these men got a fair price for their land they could not live. The third class, who would avail themselves of the Bill, would be comparatively small in number. The position of Irish landlords for many years past had been anything but agreeable. They had been deprived of their former position, and now they saw Parliament year by year reducing the amount of their rent. It had been said that it was difficult to explain why land was unsaleable in Ireland. To him the explanation was very simple. It was because of the constant, persistent, and determined agitation kept up by hon. Gentlemen opposite below the Opposition Gangway. No matter what Act was passed embodying concessions, they immediately began agitating for a further one. They were now apparently sitting in a most demure, lamb-like attitude; but when this Bill was passed they would shortly disperse themselves over Ireland and use language not at all suited to the very quiet position they now assumed against those robbers, rascals, and murderers, the landowners. They would, no doubt, be yet heard to say to those who came to hear them—"What do you think Parliament has done? Parliament has given the landlords the full value of their land. Will you stand that?" Of course, the answer would be "No, no!" And they would also be asked not to be such fools as to give any money to the landlords, when they might get all they wanted and reach their desired end by following the lead of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). They would be asked, why put money in the hands of those rascally landlords? Now, what was this proposal? He would examine it briefly. It was, he believed, in effect, that, by purchasing under the Act, every tenant should not only get his own holding, but also a slice of somebody else's grass land. The House must know that on many estates in Ireland there were tenants who had large farms, chiefly grass lands, and these were to be found in Meath, Mayo, and Galway. These large tenants, as he understood it, would, under the operation of the Act, be ousted, and slices of these large holdings would be given to the small tenants. If the House of Commons sanctioned anything like that, he could assure them that there would be much indignation in Ireland. He should be extremely glad to see the Bill succeed; but he hoped that what had been said by the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Lewis) and other hon. Members would be considered by the Government, and that was to afford some relief to those glebe tenants who came in and purchased under the Act of 1869. Those tenants purchased at an extremely high rate—24 or 25 years' purchase—those terms having been made by the officials of the Church Commissioners, who went round and valued, and made the tenants l>ay through the nose for it. These glebe tenants were bound under very strict terms, and if they failed at the end of a half-year to pay their instalments they received notice that legal proceedings would be taken against them. He believed that many of them had borrowed, not only the fourth part of the purchase money which they originally paid down, but had also been obliged to borrow since to pay up their instalments. They were, therefore, heavily charged with debt, and the future in store for them was a very gloomy one indeed. The position of those tenants would be a most anomalous one if they were not included in the Bill, for they would be shut out from the benefits of recent legislation and become so many pariahs, so to say. Later on in Committee he (Mr. Macartney), if no one else did, would make a proposal respecting these tenants, which he hoped the Government would accept, as it would bring these glebe tenants under the Bill.

I am very glad to see that the opposition of the Irish landlords, as represented by the hon. and gallant Member for the County Dublin (Colonel King-Harman) and the hon. and gallant Member for Maidstone (Captain Aylmer), is not a real or sincere one, and that it has come to an end; because I think it would have been a misfortune if this Bill, subject to some Amendments, were not to be passed into law this Session. There seems to be a dispute as to whether the Bill is more in favour of the landlords or of the tenants; and I am bound to say that the action of hon. Gentlemen who put down Amendments to the Bill, and then retreat from those Amendments, shows that, in their opinion, they consider the measure is likely to be more in favour of the landlords than of the tenants. However, I do not propose myself to express any opinion upon that point, and will only Bay that the Bill appears to me to offer facilities to the landlord who is not able to sell his land and who desires to do so, to find a purchaser for it; and it also appears to me to offer facilities to a tenant who is desirous of buying his land to purchase it if he wishes to do so. For the rest I will only say that, judging by public indications and appearances, the Irish landowners are looking, more than the Irish tenants, for help from a measure of this kind; and I cannot help thinking that their attitude is a wise one, and that if they had adopted this attitude some years ago, however much worse it might have been for the tenants, it certainly would not have been any the worse for themselves. Taking the whole case as it stands, looking at the Bill merely as experimental, involving only the expenditure of a comparatively small sum of money—£5,000,000 sterling—I cannot see that very much mischief can be done, either to Irish landlords or to Irish tenants, by its passage; whereas, on the other hand, some knowledge may come to us, from the experience derived in its working, which may tempt all parties interested in the question—the tenants, the Government, and the land- owners—to go further in the future, and perhaps to arrive at a final solution of this very important and difficult Land Question in Ireland. With regard to the details of the Bill to which I object, I would simply say this—that I cannot understand why the Government desire to take from us the only public fund we have left in Ireland, the only money that we have left for any purpose whatever, for the purpose of providing an additional security to those securities which already exist in abundance. If you give the Land Commission, the body which is to be entrusted, practically speaking, with lending the money to those desirous of purchasing, and, therefore, practically speaking, entrusted with the duty of preventing too high a price from being given; if you give to them the Church Fund to fall back upon as an extra security, the inevitable tendency will be to allow higher prices to be paid for farms than prudence would dictate—the Land Commission will, under those circumstances, look less closely into the security and into its nature. They will say that, as regards that portion of the purchase money, they have an absolutely unimpeachable security to fall back upon; and the necessary consequence will be that the Land Commission will be inclined to give a higher price, or, rather, allow a higher price to be given to the landowner than the circumstances of the time and other matters would prudently permit. The same thing applies to the retention of one-fifth of the purchase money. If that provision be left in the Bill, it will inevitably form a bone of contention between the tenant and the landlord. There will be a tendency, undoubtedly, upon the part of the tenants to look upon that one-fifth as a portion which ought to be discharged by the landlord and not by the tenant; there will be the tendency on their part to borrow on the land more than it is entitled to by that operation, and to turn over to the landowner the loss involved to that extent. I think it would be far better for the Government to place the Land Commission in the position of having to scrutinize narrowly the security that may be offered them, and the price that will have to be paid, with the understanding, on the part of the tenants, that the price they now say they are willing to give for their holdings, and the annual instalments neces- sitated by that price, will be strictly demanded from them in the future. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone (Mr. Macartney), who last spoke, said that many of us do not desire the landowners to get anything at all for their land. [Mr. MACARTNEY: Hear, hear!] I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I desire in reference to this matter. I desire that the tenants should not pay anything more than they are perfectly certain to be able to continue the payment of to the State as annual instalments hereafter; and I think that tenants purchasing in these times, when there is so great a depreciation in the price of agricultural produce, that the only remaining articles of produce, butter and cattle, have fallen in value 50 per cent within the last 12 months, when we see that the bottom of the fall has not apparently been reached, and that the downward process is still continuing—I say, in the interests of public honour and morality, in the interests of the State and of the taxpayers of this country, as well as in the interests of the tenants themselves, we should warn them not to incur liabilities which they may be unable hereafter to fulfil. Let them pay, by all means, a fair price for their holdings; but let them not be tempted to undertake annual payments which, from the depreciation in the price of farm produce, it may be absolutely impossible for them to pay. That is the view that I take of this question of purchase. I have always held, since making my entry into public life, that it is eminently desirable that the Irish Land Question should be settled permanently upon the basis of an occupying ownership. My mind has not at all been altered by the passage of the Land Act of 1881. I do not think that the Irish tenants are to be blamed for failing to purchase their holdings. Up to the present moment they have been occupied in getting their rents fixed in the Land Court; and immediately after the rents have been fixed has come this great depression in the prices of agricultural produce, which will undoubtedly make it exceedingly difficult for many of the tenants, if the depression remains permanent, to pay the judicial rents. Therefore there is further need of caution and deliberation on their part before they purchase and involve the State in their misfortunes. At present it is the Irish landlords and the Irish tenants who have to face this question of agricultural depression; and if you leave in the Bill inducements, such as the security of the Church Funds, or the retention of one-fifth, you inevitably offer inducements to all parties to agree to the paying of too high a figure for the land; and if the holdings are purchased at too high a price the difficulties of the tenant will be proportionately increased, and that may be the result of offering the further guarantee. As this is to be an experimental measure only tentatively dealing with the question, and as possibly larger, much larger, measures may hereafter spring out of it, if it succeeds, I am obliged to feel the greatest anxiety that, whatever is done under this Bill, if it become an Act, should be done well, and that no loss should result to the public from the expenditure of these millions of money. It is evident, if the Land Question is to be settled on the basis of purchase, the advance by the State will have to be very large; and it would be a very poor encouragement for the English taxpayers and Irish farmers if any of the provisions of the Bill were, under the surrounding circumstances in Ireland, to tempt the latter to pay an impossible price for their holdings, a price at which they would not be able to keep up the annual instalments hereafter; and I hope, therefore, there will be no attempt on the part of the Land Judges to bolster up the value of land artificially, or to refuse fair and reasonable offers from the tenants of those encumbered estates in Ireland with regard to the purchase of their holdings. I think the Irish tenants should be treated, at least, as reasonably in this matter as the land jobbers were in the bad times of 1847 and 1848. There was then no attempt on the part of the Land Judges artificially to bolster up the price of land, and estates were put up in the open market, and knocked down to the highest bidder. I think that should be to some extent the case on the present occasion. If that principle be adopted now, and tenants are tempted to come forward, I have no doubt that the deadlock in the land market will soon be terminated, and such prices will be given by the tenants for their holdings as will be fair, and as will render it possible that they will have a reasonable hope of being able to pay hereafter the instalments fixed upon. Another matter was mentioned in the course of this discussion which I should like to allude to. It is the important question of the glebe tenants. Appeals have been made by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House that the purchasers under the Church Act, who bought their holdings at a much higher rate than those contemplated by this Bill, should be put in the same position as purchasers under this Bill. Now, these purchasers were divided into two classes—there were persons who came forward and bought land over the heads of the tenants in the open market, and who were assisted by the funds of the State to do so, and there were those bonâ fide tenants who purchased their own holdings. In respect of the first class of persons, I do not see how you can fairly ask that a Bill, which is intended to enable tenants to become the owners of their holdings on more reasonable terms, should be so stretched in its provisions so as to enable land speculators, admittedly men who bought land in the open market as an investment and speculation, to obtain better terms than those bargained for. On the other hand, I admit I should be very glad if the Government could see their way to give bonâ, fide occupying tenants who purchased under the provisions of the Irish Church Act the same terms that this Bill proposes to give. These tenants undoubtedly bought at a very high price—occupying tenants bought, I think, at an average of two years' higher purchase than the ordinary purchaser gave for the same class of land at the time. I think that ordinary purchasers who were not tenants bought on an average of 22 or 22½ years' purchase, and I think the occupying tenants were obliged to pay 23½ or 24 years' purchase. In that way they paid a higher price, and their annual instalments were higher. However, I would certainly not reduce in any way the terms they have covenanted to give; but I would give them the advantages of this Bill, so far as the terms of repayment go and the interest. In this way you could gradually lighten the very heavy burden which they are suffering from. From 24 and 23½ years' purchase a lower price has ensued, which has gone down to 20 years' purchase. I do not think, therefore, you ought to reduce the amount of purchase money which they consented to give, because the fund that you gave it to is a public one. But neither the Imperial Exchequer nor the Church Fund need suffer in the slightest degree by the interest on the purchase money being reduced, as it may be, by an arrangement between the Treasury and the Church Commissioners, to enable the Church Commissioners to borrow at the lower rate provided for in this Bill. I am glad that there has been no political acrimony excited by the introduction of the measure. I am also glad to see that the Conservative Party have so far been educated on the Land Question as—I will not say to settle it on the lines of the Land League, because this very small measure of £5,000,000 sterling cannot be considered in any sense as even an attempt to settle the Land Question—I would, however, remind the House that the much-abused Land League was formed first to do away with rack rents and prevent landlord oppression and eviction; and, secondly, to enable every occupying tenant to become the owner of his holding upon fair terms, objects for which no abuse or ridicule was thought to be too strong at the time, but which, I am glad to say, now appear to be becoming rapidly absorbed into the political creed of the Conservative Party. I trust that this Bill, so far as it goes and when amended, may enable the tenants to become the owners of their holdings.

said that, as an English county Member, he must excuse himself for speaking on the subject of the Bill, upon the ground that for 15 years he had not uttered a word in that House on the Irish Land Question. When the Land Bill of 1870 was introduced, he endeavoured to prove that, instead of extending the Ulster tenant right to the whole of Ireland, they ought to go in at once for State-aided peasant proprietorship. That he was right at that time was evident from the fact that after experiencing the working of the Acts of 1870 and 1881, they had found it would be much better that there should be a solid landed proprietorship, and that those who cultivated should own the land, rather than there should be a sort of bastard ownership which had existed during the last 15 years. At the same time, unless those who purchased their holdings showed a greater amount of assiduity and hard work than he thought was generally practised by some of the small tenants of Ireland, he feared that they would not succeed as well as the House desired. There could not be a worse system than prevailed in Ireland at present, as far as concerned the interests of both landlord and tenant. Irish tenants, with the exception of those who first acquired the tenant right, were really under two rents; for the interest of the money locked up in the purchase of the tenant right was a second rent paid by the tenant from which he could not escape, and the liability passed from one occupier to another. The hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Macartney) had told them that, in some instances, the tenant right was worth more than the fee simple. There were three interests involved in the cultivation of land, although they might all exist, in some instances, in the same person. There was the man who supplied the dead capital, the man who supplied the working capital, and the man who did the labour. All three might be rolled into one—the peasant proprietor—but still they must co-exist. However well he might cultivate the land, the only way in which a small farmer, whether owner or occupier, could succeed, was to do the work of two agricultural labourers and live at the expense of one. In that case, if the Irish peasant could fulfil those conditions, the Bill might be a success. There was much point in the remarks of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) with respect to a probable fall in prices. The hon. Member had said that, in the last few few months, stock had fallen 50 per cent. He (Mr. Clare Read) was not aware of any such fall in England, though prices had undoubtedly gone down. But in this there lay a great danger, and in a few years the purchasing tenants might find themselves as owners in a much worse condition than their tenant neighbours. He believed the Bill was the only possible corollary to the two Irish Land Acts; but he could not endorse its principle, nor could he give it support upon any ground of political economy; but as to its expediency there could be no doubt. Therefore, under the present circumstances, he hoped it would become law as speedily as possible, although it would add another page to our history, whereby the State would become, in a more real sense than ever, the father of the people.

said, that he shared in the anxiety of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) lest tenants under this Bill should engage to pay too high rents for the next 49 years. Even if the freehold were bought at 20 years' purchase, the tenant would pay less than his present rent by way of instalments, and in about 10 years the State would lose the security of one-fifth the price deposited at the time of the purchase. Then, about the same period, would come the revision of rents, as the 15 years' term of judicial rent would then be on the point of expiration. If rents should then be still further reduced, serious discontent would arise among the purchasers under the present Bill, for the tenants who took advantage of it, and bound themselves for 49 years to pay a certain rent to the State, might find themselves in a very much worse position than those of their neighbours who might have their rents considerably reduced. That being the case, there would be great danger that the State would not receive the rents agreed upon, so that the loss would fall upon the British taxpayers. ["Oh, oh!"] As an English Member, he was entitled to take into consideration the possible effect of the Bill upon the British taxpayers. The right hon. Baronet the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach; had hinted at the possibility of an increase of the duty on tea; and it was possible that every house holder in the town he (Mr. Thomasson) represented, and in the Kingdom also, might hereafter find that he had to pay an increased duty upon that article in order to make up the loss to the Exchequer from the failure of Irish tenants to perform their contracts. Many of these householders were women, who were unrepresented, but whose interests the House ought not the less to consider. The State was running a great risk in this Bill. It was buying a rent charge of 3⅛ per cent, while running the risk that in 10 years' time the rents on which it was based would not be paid. He was afraid that the worst of such a state of things would be that the idle and thrift less among the tenants would be benefited at the expense of the more industrious and of the English taxpayer, and that the measure would produce discontent in Ireland. He would much rather that the rents of the industrious tenants who had invested their money in their farms should be reduced by a revision of the Healy Clause of the Land Act than that the question should be dealt with as was proposed under this Bill. It had been frequently remarked that the Bill was merely an experimental, and not a final one; but, in his opinion, there had been more than enough of experiments of this nature, and he was afraid that considerable danger might result from the measure. For instance, if it were largely taken advantage of, the State would become the landlord of a large part of Ireland, which was a most undesirable position for the State to be in, as it would have to exact the rents to the uttermost farthing in justice to the British taxpayer, which would increase the difficulties, already great, of governing the country. It would, in his opinion, be wiser not to try any further experiments in this direction, but to have postponed the consideration of a measure dealing with such large, important, and complicated interests, leaving the question to be dealt with by the new Parliament if it was considered that the present Parliament had not solved it satisfactorily.

said, he rose to express a hope that whoever concluded the debate on the part of the Government would give the House some assurance that those landowners who purchased their land for residential and not for speculative purposes under the provisions of the Act of 1870, and also the purchasers of glebe lands, would be favourably considered under the Bill. He thought, however, that, in respect to those persons, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was quite right in drawing a line of distinction between those who bought land for speculation and tenants who bonâ fide purchased their holdings. The latter, it seemed to him (Sir Hervey Bruce), deserved the same treatment as if they had purchased now. He was glad that the Bill had been introduced by the present Government; for, although he did not think it by any means a perfect Bill, or one which would at once solve the problem of the Irish Land Question, still it was the thin edge of the wedge, which might be driven home until better relations were established between landlords and tenants in Ireland. Indeed, he thought that if the sentiments and opinions contained in the speech of the hon. Member for the City of Cork were carried out the Bill might be the beginning of better days for Ireland, by doing much to place the Land Question in that country upon a more satisfactory footing.

said, he most heartily approved of the Bill, which, in his opinion, would confer a great boon upon the people of Ireland. Its provisions were good, and with some slight but necessary Amendments it might be made a good working measure. In the belief that it would be a boon to both parties, he desired to see it pass as soon as possible; and, so far as he was concerned, he would aid its passage by making it as perfect as possible. With that object he should make several suggestions to the Government when the Bill reached the Committee stage.

said, he hoped that before the debate closed Her Majesty's Government would announce their intention of standing by their proposal to reserve one-fifth of the purchase money. After the best consideration he could give to the subject, he did not think the Government would be justified, considering their duty to the country, in giving up the security constituted by the retention of that money. It must be remembered that the terms offered by the Government in this Bill were of perfectly unexampled liberality. No company or association of capitalists in the City of London would advance money on such terms. By the Bill money was to be advanced for the purchasers under it at 4 per cent, which was not merely interest, but sinking fund; whereas he ventured to assert, with great confidence, that no one would lend money on an Irish security under 5 per cent for interest alone. That being so, the Government were entitled to have every possible security for the repayment of their advances; nay, more, they were bound to demand it, for they were Trustees of the public, whose interest they were bound to protect. Their duty involved the exaction of a proper guarantee for their advances. What, then, was the guarantee which the Bill provided? It was simply the retention of a certain amount of the purchase money. During the 10 years the portion of the purchase money thus retained could be assigned, charged, or otherwise made available as a security by the person to whom it belonged. He did not think that an unfair arrangement; and, in the interest of the taxpayer, he thought it ought to be maintained. He would again repeat the hope that before the debate closed they would have some assurance from the Government, and it would be maintained. Then as to mortgages, which were one of the difficulties he saw in the working of the measure, the Government might desire to purchase certain portions of a mortgaged estate. If they paid the money to the landlord, the estate would not thereby be discharged from the mortgage. The Government would have to consider how that was to be met, and he thought they would have to place themselves in such cases in the position of the mortgagee, by paying off the mortgage and taking an assignment of it. He wished every success to the measure; but he was not very sanguine as to the results that would flow from it. He hoped it would lead to a settlement of the Land Question in Ireland; but he was afraid that it would only increase the demands of the tenants, to whom so much had been given. Ten years hence, when rents were revised, as they were to be under the Land Act of the late Government, they might be reduced; and then the tenants who had purchased under that Bill on the basis of the existing rents might think that they had made a bad bargain, and had paid too much, and in that case there might be a revival of irritation and discontent. That, however, to a great extent, was a matter of speculation, and, at all events, of opinion. What he confessed did seem to him certain was that the Government were bound by their duty to the taxpayer of this country to take every precaution that no loss to him should accrue from the present measure.

said, he thought the Government might feel satisfied with the almost unanimous approval with which the Bill had been received by Irish Members on both sides of the House; and, so far as the criticism which had been passed upon it was concerned, it would encourage them to press the Bill on with as much expedition as possible. He thought the discussion had given the Government some assistance in carrying out their Bill. It was not his intention to enter into the details; but he wished to state what would be probably the views entertained by the Government of the suggestions which had been made. The Bill dealt with the question from two points of view. It dealt first with the machinery by which it was expected that the tenant might be able to secure the fee simple of his holding; and, in the second place, with the means by which he could procure the purchase money. As to the first point—the machinery—that was to say, the tribunal to which the carrying out of the measure was to be entrusted—he could not agree with his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman) that it would be wise to place the duty on the old Landed Estates Court. He admitted that it was a Court fully competent to deal with this question; but without, in any way, speaking to its disparagement, he could not help feeling that the measure would not be carried out as well, if left to that Court, as if it were entrusted to the Special Commissioners who would be appointed under the Bill. The Judges and officers of the Landed Estates Court were in the habit of trying large cases; and it was not to be expected that they, who were mainly engaged in dealing with large estates, would be able to descend and adjudicate upon matters connected with the transfer of the small holdings between landlords and tenants. Then, if the Government left it in the hands of the Land Commissioners in Ireland, he did not think the Bill would be carried out very vigorously; because they had already in hand more work than they would be able to do in an effective way in the ordinary course of their duties. They were appointed originally to fix the rent of land between the landlord and the tenant; and they had large arrears of work on hand, which they were not likely to get rid of for a long time to come. Under all those circumstances, the Government thought it best to appoint two Commissioners, to form a special tribunal for carrying out this measure. Objection had been taken because their names had not been published to the House. Before the second reading of a Bill was surely not the time to announce the names of the gentlemen whose appoint- ment depended solely upon the passing of that Bill. Before a position of this kind could be accepted by a gentleman with credit to himself, he must have an assurance that the Government were in earnest and would pass the Bill. Under the Land Act of 1881, the names of the Commissioners were not announced until after a later stage than that at which he hoped to mention the names of the two gentlemen who would be selected under the Bill. As the Government were anxious that the Bill should be efficiently carried out, the House could rest assured that they would only appoint gentlemen who were fully qualified to discharge their duties zealously and with ability, and who would receive and retain the confidence of the public and of the Executive. There was a provision of the Bill which had not been referred to, and which he considered a very valuable one. The Executive had taken power to transfer some of the officers from the Landed Estates Court to the Land Commission, for the purpose of carrying out the investigation of titles. These officials would bring a large amount of accumulated knowledge to the work. As to the provision which the Bill made for enabling the tenant to purchase, reference had been made to the guarantee as a condition precedent to the purchase money being advanced. It was obvious that the State ought to be in a position, when enabling tenants to purchase their holdings, to take care that it should be protected from loss, especially when it was advancing so much as £5,000,000. It would be a rash and imprudent thing to ask that the advance should be made, unless there was some guarantee that the State should not suffer. They had made two provisions in this regard; one was that the vendor should allow a part of the money to remain in the hands of the Commissioners. But this would only remain till such time as the purchaser had paid instalments equal to the amount left by the vendor. The tenant's interest would then become the guarantee. When they asked that this one-fifth was to be retained, they did not ask that it should be retained without making some return to the landlord or the vendor. He would be paid at the rate of 3 per cent, and at the same time he would not be entirely deprived of the use of his capital; for if the country was prosperous, and the tenant paid up his instalments punctually, the landlord could raise money on the security of that fifth which had been retained; so that, while it was being retained by the State as a security, he would be receiving an advantage from it, and would be enjoying it. With reference to the next guarantee, the Church Surplus Fund, there had been some adverse criticism. The sum now vested in the Church Temporalities Commission amounted to something between £600,000 and £700,000. He hoped it would not be necessary to resort to that at all, and that this fund would still remain for such National purposes as Parliament might be disposed to apply it to. Should it, unfortunately, be necessary to use it, it seemed to him, and to the Government as well, that it was a most natural thing to apply this National Irish Fund to an Irish object when required. Adverse criticism came principally from his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dublin County, who had declared that the Bill was likely to be abortive, or a "sham," as he described it; but there was one answer to his criticism about the £5,000,000. They must remember that they were now at the end of a Parliament, and on the eve of a General Election, and they would shortly have a Parliament elected by different constituencies to those which had hitherto elected Members, and it would not be desirable to apply a larger amount of State funds than was likely to be absorbed in the interim. If the Bill was a success, he believed there would be no difficulty in getting further funds. He wished to make one other remark, and that had reference to the tenants who had already purchased under the Acts of 1870 and 1881, also the glebe tenants who purchased under the Church Act of 1869. He assured hon. Members that this matter had received the consideration of the Government; but the more they considered it the greater were the difficulties which confronted them. It would always be an argument against doing anything to say that there was a certain number of others who had purchased in antecedent years under other circumstances. The tenants who purchased under the Acts he had referred to paid their purchase money under the law as it existed. It would be wholly impossible for the Government to reduce the amounts paid by those tenants, and he thought there would be the greatest difficulty in reducing the interest. No doubt, however, something might be done, and it was a matter which would continue to receive the earnest attention of the Government. It had been paid by some that this was a landlords' Bill, and by others that it was a tenants' Bill. It appeared to him that the great recommendation of the Bill was that it was neither a landlords' Bill nor a tenants' Bill, but that it was a Bill from which both landlords and tenants might derive certain advantages if they availed themselves of it. He wished to point out, what had been already pointed out by the hon. Members for County Londonderry (Mr. Lewis) and for Monaghan (Mr. Findlater), that although this Bill might not be perfect in every part, yet if the House approved the principle the best way to allow the principle to be carried out was to permit the Bill to pass a second reading, and to make such Amendments as were necessary in Committee. A Bill might be killed either by active opposition or by protracted discussion; but he hoped that hon. Members would see in this Bill the germ of an earnest effort to do something for Ireland, and would therefore withdraw their opposition in order that its merits might be tested, and that, therefore, they would permit the Bill to pass. As he had been permitted to say so much, he might, perhaps, add a hope that as the House had now spent a very considerable time in discussing the principle of the measure, and as the Government intended to put down the next stage for an early day, hon. Members would now allow the discussion to cease, and the second reading of the Bill to be taken.

I wish to congratulate the House on the introduction of this Bill, and I do so as representing a constituency having a large Irish population, in whom I take a very keen interest. The Bill is a generous Bill, and in that respect it is politic, for all legislation dealing with Ireland, in order to be politic, ought to be generous. The Bill, in my opinion, also contains within itself the seeds of something like a final settlement of the Irish difficulty as regards the Land Question. I especially congratulate the House upon the very friendly way in which the Bill has been received by all sections of opinion, and especially by the section which is led by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). I do not think we can too highly congratulate, both ourselves and the country at large, upon the great change in the tone of Irish opinion in this House. It is a matter for very hearty congratulation that we have at last reached a method of speaking about Irish questions which is a great deal more rational than what has been the custom for many years past. I believe, myself, that if this Bill is heartily accepted by the Members of the Party who follow the lead of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, it will pave the way, at no distant date, for a very wide extension of its terms. It, no doubt, is an experiment; but that experiment may be developed to a very large degree, and may become the means of settling the controversy about the land in Ireland. I wish to say how entirely I approve of the measure, and how heartily, speaking from the Liberal side of the House, I wish it God-speed. I think it is a thoroughly wise measure. It has already produced excellent effects on public opinion, and I join with all who have discussed this subject in hoping and trusting that it will turn out to be a solution of one of the greatest—if not the very greatest—of Irish difficulties.

said, that if the Bill were intended to be the beginning of the general purchase of their holdings by tenants, it was unreasonable to suppose that the Church Surplus would offer any security for the payment. It might be a valuable security if the purchases were not to exceed £5,000,000; but it would be of no value if the Bill were extended beyond that. He considered the Bill carried out the principles of the National League, therefore he was very anxious that it should succeed; but its success depended not so much upon what was in the Bill as upon its administration. He also thought that what the Government ought to do was to regard the measure as an experiment, a commencement with the question of Land Purchase, and should give the Commissioners instructions that they must, if possible, conduct the business in such a way as to deal with the whole of this £5,000,000 of property within the next three months after the Bill had become law. If the Commissioners waited till the landlords could screw an extravagant price from their tenants no business would be done. He believed that many tenants wished to buy their holdings; but they wanted to buy as cheap as they could. He thought that the first transactions ought to take place at the present price, and a beginning might be made by the new Commissioners buying properties which had been some time in the Landed Estates Court.

said, that he was very much inclined to think that the people who called themselves the Colonists were but a very small number of persons at either end of the telegraph wire leading to Australia, and he had seen papers which led him very greatly to doubt if the Australian Colonists really wanted this Bill. If the Australian Colonies saw their way to any complete scheme of federation he wished them God-speed. He knew, however, that New South Wales and New Zealand had both declared their dislike to the Bill and their intention not to accept it; and it was, therefore, very doubtful whether it was worth while for Her Majesty's Government to proceed with the measure. It was for that reason that he had blocked it. Personally, he did not object to the Bill, with one important exception, and he should be glad to see the Australian Colonies and Her Majesty's Government settle the matter between them. But he decidedly objected to that clause in the Bill which enabled the Australasian Colonies to deal with what was called the relations of Australia to the Islands of the Pacific. He did not know what was meant by that expression; but he had very grave doubts whether it was prudent to put such a provision in the Bill. Dealing with the question of New Guinea and the disputes which had occurred with regard to the Islands of the Pacific, he must be allowed to express the opinion that it would be imprudent to give to Australia, so long as it remained under the British flag, the power to assume protection over the Natives of the Islands of the Pacific. The alienation between this country and Germany took place with reference to the excessive pretensions of Queensland to deal with one of the Pacific Islands. He believed that the Australians would be much better off if they followed the example of the American Colonies, and developed their own territories, and did all that it was possible for them to do in that direction, without seeking foreign possessions, and endeavouring to entangle themselves in foreign complications.

said, he much regretted that a Bill of that importance should have been brought before the notice of the House on such scanty information, and when hon. Members were in possession of so little information as to the sentiments of the Colonies themselves. It was true that a certain number of Parliamentary Papers had been presented; but the information which they contained was, he thought, hardly sufficient to enable the House to appreciate the whole bearings of the question, and to understand what were the feelings with which the proposals had been received in the Colonies during the last few months. He thought it would have been valuable to the House if the Colonial Office had prepared a sort of explanatory Memorandum giving a view of the whole matter and a justification of the whole Bill. When the House of Commons was asked to undertake a function so large as that of drawing up a Constitution for communities already great, and which were likely to become infinitely greater in the future, it ought to approach a task of that kind with a due sense of responsibility and on accurate information and knowledge. He thought also there was no evidence to show that this Bill, or draft Constitution, had really been satisfactorily discussed and considered in the Colonies themselves. It appeared to have emanated in the first instance from a small coterie or conclave of Prime Ministers, and the House had nothing to show them that the best minds of our Colonies had been properly brought to bear in the consideration of the subject. The Bill would have come before the House with greater authority if it had reason to believe that proper pains had been bestowed upon it, and that proper efforts had been made to obtain full publicity and discussion for it in the Australian Colonies themselves. He thought that the circumstances he had mentioned made the position of the Imperial Parliament not quite a satisfactory one in dealing with this matter. In considering the character of the Bill, and its liability to a certain line of criticism, he said it was clear that it was a very scanty, fragmentary, and imperfect sketch of a Federal Constitution. Looking even at that important clause which provided that any one Colony could withdraw from the federation, he said if the House were free to debate the subject at length a great deal of time might be spent over the consideration of this clause alone; because a federation, which offered to any member of it the right to withdraw as soon as its wishes were not gratified, was clearly a federation of the feeblest and most transitory kind. He was content, however, that they should pass the Bill in the form in which the Colonial authorities had asked us to do so, and as a matter of favour to them; but the responsibility for its formation would substantially rest more with them than with us. He looked with more hope to the establishment of closer relations between the Executive authority here and the Colonies than to a federation among the Colonies themselves. The real value of this Constitution seemed to him to be in the provision which it made for the introduction of uniform legislation among the different Colonies, and particularly for the introduction of a uniform system of legal process and of private law in those matters in which the inhabitants of different Colonies were most likely to come into relation with one another. The experience of the United States, which was the great source of experience in these matters, showed how much advantage there was in having—how much might be lost by not having—a uniform system of legislation on certain subjects of common interest. It would be, for instance, of immense advantage for the United States to have a uniform Law of Marriage and Divorce. It was one of the great difficulties which legal reformers had to deal with in America; and he was glad to see that the Federal Council, under this Bill, had power to legislate on these subjects, on quarantine, on bills of exchange, and other such matters. As regarded the utility of the Federal Legislature, if he might so call it, for the purpose of introducing a uniform system of private law, he thought it would be very desirable to increase the size of the Council, for he thought, as at present devised, it was too small for the adequate discussion of the subjects with which it would have to deal. But in that, as in other respects, he looked upon the Bill more as a first sketch than as a complete Constitution; and he could not help believing that further legislation would be required, and that the outline contained in that measure would have hereafter to be filled up and developed in various particulars.

said, he wished, after the word "copyright," in line 41, to have the word "bankruptcy" inserted. It was true that unless the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Stanley) were favourable to this Amendment it would not be of use for him to propose it; but he wished to point out that bankruptcy was a subject upon which, of all others, it was desirable that there should be uniformity of legislation as between the different States. If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman did not object to this proposal, he would suggest to him that the word "bankruptcy" might be properly included in the clause.

said, he thought he could undertake that the attention of the Federal Council should be directed to the question raised by the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce); but he would venture to ask the hon. Member not to press the Amendment. If the hon. Member would look to Clause 4 he would find that there was power to refer to the Council any matter of general interest, and that, therefore, the subject of the Amendment was already within the scope of the Bill.

said, he admitted that it was within the scope of the Bill. He thought it desirable, however, to emphasize the particular subject of bankruptcy for the reason he had given; but after the expression of opinion on the part of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, he had no objection, with the permission of the Committee, to withdraw his Amendment.

said, he had placed on the Paper an Amendment which was intended to make the clause clearer in respect of acts done between the date of assent and the time of annulment. He apprehended that upon a strict legal construction of the clause a Court of Law would hold that an act done between the date of giving assent and the date of annulment would be protected. Subject to the opinion of the hon. and learned Solicitor General he thought that would be so; but he also thought it would be worth while to make the matter quite clear, so that acts done after assent given by the Colonial Government would be certain of being protected. If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies did not object, he should like to have the words of his Amendment introduced into the clause.

said, he regretted very much to have to ask the hon. Member (Mr. Bryce) not to press this Amendment. He thought it would be premature to deal with the question; and he was afraid, if these words were to be put into the Act, that it might lead to the presumption that the rule hitherto existing had been disturbed. He understood that the Amendment might draw a distinction between the custom prevailing in one Colony and the customs prevailing in others. For that reason, and because he thought the Acts in question would be protected by the clause as it stood, he asked the hon. Member not to press the Amendment.

said, he regretted that the Amendment he was about to ask the Committee to assent to was not upon the Notice Paper. He understood that his Predecessor in Office had given a promise that the words after "Council" to the end of the clause should be omitted, and others substituted relating to the repeal of certain Acts. It had been held that it would be distinctly productive of harm if a law, passed by the assent of the Colonies united in Council, should be repealed by a particular Colony, which might be the Colony in respect of which that law was originally passed by the Federal Council. In moving this Amendment, he pointed out that power was taken providing that no assent would be given to any Act which did not contain proper safeguards for all that might take place under the provisions of this clause.

said, he had no wish to delay the further consideration of the Bill; but he might be allowed to remark that this was a very tentative measure. He was not sure, however, that it would be less likely to succeed on that account. He thought he should be expressing the general feeling of the Committee by expressing regret that the most important of the Australasian Colonies—New South Wales and New Zealand—were not included in the Bill, because he thought that nothing like a complete federation policy could be obtained without those two Colonies giving their adhesion to it. He thought, however, that their union with the Colonies could not be injured or damaged by the confederation of the Colonies amongst themselves, and that the tentative way in which the Bill had been passed would conduce to all the Colonies joining in the movement hereafter, which would be lasting, and for the good of the whole.

said, the Amendment he rose to move, although verbal, was one of considerable importance. It had been admitted, in a former discussion on the Bill, that the words "if not a Member of the House of Lords" were merely permissive, though if they meant anything at all they pointed to the new Secretary being a Member of the House of Lords; but if they meant nothing, then he said that they might as well be omitted. He accepted the declaration which the hon. Member for Buteshire (Mr. Dalrymple) made on going into Committee, that it was not intended to allocate this Office either to the House of Lords or to the House of Commons. Therefore, he might assume that the words were not intended to imply that this officer should be a Member of the House of Lords; but, at the same time, the putting in of the words pointed to the probability of his being sometimes a Member of the other House of Parliament, and therefore he thought they were dangerous, and ought to be omitted from the Bill. He admitted that the circumstances in which the former Bill was introduced had given some excuse for the introduction of the words, inasmuch as there was a very eminent Scotchman thoroughly versed in and able to manage Scotch affairs, and more popular in Scotland than any other—he meant the Earl of Rosebery—who had the misfortune to be a Member of the House of Lords; therefore, he said that the circumstances were peculiar. But if the new Secretary were to be a Member of the House of Lords the arrangement would be attended with the utmost inconvenience. Let hon. Members imagine what the state of things would be if the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, instead of being a Member of that House in which he was present every day to answer Questions, were a Member of the House of Lords. Why, Irish Members would not be able to get their Questions answered; and he said that if they were to constitute a Secretary for Scotland, Scotch Members would want to get at him every day and have their Questions answered. It seemed to him only reasonable, then, that the new officer should be a Member of that House, and not of the House of Lords, so that he might always be present to give information upon the various subjects connected with Scotland. Again, all the present Ministers who sat in the House of Lords had Secretaries in the House of Commons; but in this Bill there was no provision for anything of the kind. There was a provision for a certain staff of secretaries and clerks, but there was no provision for any one of them having a seat in that House; and, therefore, if the new officer were to be a Member of the other House of Parliament he would be utterly unrepresented in the House of Commons. Then to say that the Lord Advocate could give answers with regard to a Department not his own would be humiliating to the Lord Advocate, who, in that case, would not express his own opinions, but be merely the mouthpiece of another person, with whom he had no official connection. Having shown the great inconvenience that would arise from the Secretary for Scotland being a Member of the House of Lords, he wanted to make the Bill state clearly one way or the other what was intended; and, therefore, bearing in mind the statement of the hon. Member for Bute (Mr. Dalrymple) that the words "if not a Member of the House of Lords" did not carry the meaning that the new officer was to be a Member of either House in preference to the other, in the interest of statesmanship, grammar, and good drafting, he begged to move that they be struck out of the clause.

said, his recollection did not entirely agree with that of his hon. Friend who had just spoken. According to his recollection, when the former Bill was before the House two years ago, his hon. Friend made almost the same speech against these words as he had made that night, and he (Mr. J. B. Balfour) had the honour of answering it. He thought it was the feeling of the House at the time that there should not be a restriction in the Bill upon the selection of the Crown of a fit officer who might be found in either House. It would seem that his hon. Friend had rather shifted his ground, because he had now hinted that there should be something like a plain intimation in the Bill that, so to speak, the other House of Legislature should be excluded. He submitted that the Committee should adhere to the decision arrived at two years ago after some hours' discussion.

said, he thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman the late Lord Advocate had omitted two points in connection with this subject. It was true that an Amendment of this kind was brought forward two years ago, but it was brought forward by the right hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir H. Drummond Wolff), and it was supported by Scotch Members now on those Benches. But it would seem from the silence of right hon. Gentlemen opposite that it was not considered worth while now to discuss an Amendment of this character. This clause was taken almost verbatim from the Local Government Board (England) Act of 1871; but the clause in that Act which corresponded to the clause in this Bill did not contain these words. He asked why were these words introduced into the present Bill, unless there was some intention of a Member of the House of Lords being generally appointed to this Office? If the words meant nothing he could not see what objection there could be to removing them; if they meant anything they could only have the meaning he had applied to them. Therefore, he thought they ought to have a distinct statement from Her Majesty's Government as to what was meant by putting them into the Bill.

said, he could assure hon. Members that, as far as the present Government were concerned, there was no thought of giving preference to one House or the other; nor did he believe there was any such intention on the part of the late Government, although, of course, he know nothing whatever about that. Her Majesty's Government only wanted to appoint the most fitting person to the Office. But the words being in the clause he should be extremely sorry if they were struck out, because it would seem as if they meant to give the preference to a Member of the House of Commons.

said, he had put on the Paper an Amendment to Sub-section (2), the object of which was to insert after the word "Schedule" the words—

"And generally all powers and duties of the Scotch Education Department as defined by 'The Education (Scotland) Act, 1872,' in relation to education in Scotland."

He might mention that, besides his own Amendment, there was another Amend- ment standing on the Paper in the name of his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce), which went a very long way in the same direction as his own, the object of both being to insure, as far as they could, that the transfer of the powers and duties with regard to education in Scotland from the Education Department to the new Minister for Scotland should be thorough and real. At this point he should like to say, with regard to certain objections which had been made to their contention that the Minister for Scotland should be a real personage, that he was sure that there was no part of Scotland where there was any wish to go in the direction of what was called Home Rule. He moved that these powers should be transferred to the Minister for Scotland, because they wished him to have as many important powers as they could give him; but, coming from Scotland, he could speak with some authority in saying that he did not believe that with any true and thorough Scotchman, from one end of the country to another, there was any wish to go in the direction of Home Rule. He, for one, looked upon that in reference to Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as an idle dream. If there were anything which would make Scotchmen unwilling to approach the question of the repeal of the Union, it would be the idea that Scotland was being made a stalking horse in this matter of Home Rule. But he did not wish to pursue that subject any further. And while they objected to Home Rule for Scotland, they disliked the idea of English Home Rule in England; and they looked forward with increased hope to the future, when Scotland, having one-sixth more than the present number of its Members, would speak with a louder voice than hitherto, not only in the affairs of Scotland, but with regard to the affairs of the Empire. They wished to improve the administrative machinery under which Scotland was governed. They had their Scotch Boards, and other Scotch Departments, and in many respects they were a self-governing community; and they wished that the educational institutions of the country, which were not less national than other institutions, should be in the hands of a Scotch Minister. The Bill had assumed its present shape, if he might say so, almost unawares; it had passed through a certain ordeal of discussion in "another place;" but, so far as the subject of education was concerned, it was a Bill entirely different from that which was introduced in the House of Lords. The shape in which it was introduced in the other House of Parliament was the shape to which he desired to restore it by the words of his Amendment. When the Bill was before the other House in that shape an Amendment was printed and circulated among noble Lords to the effect that it was proposed to omit all mention of the Education Act, and to substitute the words "President of the Council" in the clause, by which the new Minister to be appointed by the Bill would not have all the powers of the Education Act conferred upon him, but would be simply President of the Council by virtue of the Bill. That Amendment, which was put on the Paper and circulated, was never thoroughly discussed in the House of Lords; and when, next day, the Bill was printed it was found that other words had been inserted. It was in that way that the Bill came into its present shape. He had been gratified to hear some remarks made by the right hon. Gentleman the late Home Secretary (Sir William Harcourt) on the previous evening, from which he gathered that they would have his powerful support for the Bill as presented to the other House of Parliament. The Scotch Education Department, whose powers he wished to see transferred to the new Minister, was a Body called into existence by the Scotch Education Act of 1872. That lawfully constituted Body, which ought to be supreme in educational matters in Scotland, was not supreme, because they were, unhappily, in the hands of the Vice President of the Council. If any hon. Member looked into the Statutes he would find that there was a constituted authority for the management of Scotch educational affairs, and he would find in the Scotch Education Act of 1872 no reference whatever to the Vice President of the Council. The Vice President of the Council obtained his authority under the Act of 1856; but, inasmuch as this system was started in 1872, it would appear to be meant by the Statute of that year that the Board of Education should be supreme in educational matters. Well, that Body, constituted as he had shown, practically never met at all. [Mr. MUNDELLA dis- sented.] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) shook his head; but he had been told that it had been characterized by the Earl of Rosebery, who knew the state of affairs in Scotland very well, as a "phantom Board." He had been informed that, even in the important annual work of the Department for the purpose of introducing the annual Code, it had not been the practice to summon the Council together. His right hon. Friend might say that the Government were about to inaugurate a different state of things. But they were now regulating matters by Act of Parliament; and he should like to know, and have it stated on the face of this Act, who was really to be their authority in future over Scotch education matters? If there was one point which more than another had characterized Scotch education, it was the thoroughly local character of that education. In England it was the Privy Council on which the whole system of education depended. It was entirely different with regard to Scotland. They had long had in Scotland a national and local system of education; and he said that those who told them that educational interests in Scotland could not be looked after without the aid of the Education Department of the Privy Council were putting aside all the teachings of history. And when it was attempted to be pointed out, as it was last night by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair), that it was due to that Department that Scotch education had so progressed, he replied that the progress of Scotch education had been mainly due to the old laws of Scotland, under which there was no Central Department whatever. It was those laws, the local energies of the Scotch people, their parochial efforts, and their love of education, which they had to thank for education in Scotland being now so far advanced. As in the past so it would be in the future. He said that the main basis of the educational system of Scotland was to trust to the local bodies and school boards, and not to the Central Government in England or elsewhere. He did not think that in every case the Education Department had done everything it might have done to assist local efforts; and that, he maintained, was its principal duty. He knew it would be impossible to get from the Late Vice President of the Council anything like a sympathetic opinion on that point; but they must not be governed in these matters by Departmental considerations. They had to look at the question from the general point of view of the people of Scotland. They had had last night an eloquent speech from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir. Lyon Playfair) against the Bill; but he would ask if he meant to toll them that Scotch education would have been in a worse position if it had been his business, from a sympathetic point of view, to superintend the administration of education in Scotland? He spoke of no secondary interest, and not merely of the interest of a small country attached to a larger one; but if this had been the main business of some distinguished Scotchman—that to which he looked to make his credit and fame—then he said that Scotland would have been much better off in the matter of education than it was to-day. He would not trespass longer on the time of the Committee, further than to say that he did not wish to differ from the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce). His own Amendment, however, seemed to be the more thorough-going, and he preferred it for the reason that it made the matter perfectly clear, and therefore he asked the Committee to accept it. Finally, he thought that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department should explain to the Committee clearly what line Her Majesty's Government meant to take up with regard to this matter, and whether they intended to make the educational transfer as thorough as he and his hon. Friends desired it to be. He believed there was strong feeling amongst Scotch Members in favour of making that transfer real and substantial.

submitted to the Committee that this was not merely a Scotch question; it was also one in which England was very much interested, because if they separated Scotch education from English they equally separated English education from Scottish. This had been represented as a matter of Scottish self-government, and, no doubt, self-government was a matter that was extremely desirable; but it would not be promoted by this Bill. He deprecated the clause as it stood, and was in favour of the adoption of the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair). The Bill did not give the people of Mid Lothian or Perthshire, or Edinburgh or Glasgow, any additional powers over their own educational affairs; but it merely placed the administration under one Minister of the Crown instead of under another. It did not transfer the administration even to Edinburgh, but left it, as it was now, in London. The object at which they should aim was to secure, as far as possible, the same laws for the Three Kingdoms, and, remembering that union was strength, to maintain firmly the unity of the Empire. But the tendency of the clause was very different. It did not give any additional powers of local self-government; but, on the other hand, it tended to introduce differences between Scotland and England. The tendency even of the same system administered by different persons was to introduce different treatment, and no one who had had the honour of sitting on the Public Accounts Committee of that House could fail to have observed how the same Acts were interpreted in a totally different manner by different Departments. The House of Commons had for many years been gradually assimilating the laws of England and Scotland, to the great advantage of both Kingdoms, and this unfortunate and mischievous Bill was a step backwards. They had all condemned the incongruous arrangement which placed under one Minister the responsibility for education and for cattle disease. But it was now proposed, so far as Scotland was concerned, to aggravate this anomaly tenfold, and impose on one Minister a number of incongruous duties, to perform the majority of which he must necessarily be unsuited. The question before the Committee was, in truth, whether Ministers should be allocated to subjects or to localities. If the clause under discussion passed they could not stop there. The real question appeared to him to be whether they should have in future one Minister for Education, another for the Local Government Board, another presiding over the Home Office, and so on; or whether they should have separate Ministers for different localities—Ministers for Scotland, for England, for Wales, and so on; because if they once took a step in that direction they could not refrain from going further. Surely it would be wiser to have their Ministers according to the subject with which they bad to deal rather than according to the localities. Which was the most natural division of duties, by subjects or by localities? His hon. Friend who had just sat down stated that no one who had been present last night could have failed to mark the want of credit which was given to the Report of the Committee which sat last year. He respectfully differed altogether from the views of the hon. Member. No doubt, the Committee had reported in opposition to the views of the hon. Member and those who agreed with him; but he thought that Members generally would concur with him (Sir John Lubbock) that the Committee was considered at the time a very strong Committee. An assertion had been made that the Committee declined to hear Scotch witnesses; but he believed that was entirely a mistake. None of the Members of the Committee to whom he had been able to speak remembered any circumstance of the kind. The Committee had examined the Heads of the Department, both of whom were Scotchmen. As to the opinion of Scotland on this question, his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) showed them last night that the opinion of the educationalists of Scotland was mainly against the proposals in the Bill. His hon. Friend who had just sat down had referred to the views of the Paisley Town Council and others who were in favour of the clause; but although the Town Council of Paisley had petitioned in favour of it, the school board of that town had petitioned in an opposite sense. In fact, the most important school boards were opposed to the clause in the Bill. So far as he could learn, there had only been one meeting upon the subject held in Scotland, and that was of the Educational Congress at Ayr, where a resolution was submitted upon the question, and the decision arrived at was unanimously in favour of the appointment of a Minister of Education for the whole Kingdom. One member of the Congress, who moved an amendment in the sense of the clause, got no support whatever, and did not press it to a division. This was not only a Scotch question, but he maintained that English opinion should also be taken into consideration. Now, in England he believed there was no one who was interested in education who would not lament a separation, so far as education was concerned, between England and Scotland. They now selected for the Vice Presidency of the Council some statesman whoso attention had been particularly directed to the important question of education, and who could give to it, he would not say his sole attention, but, at any rate, the best of his energies. Having decided the questions which came before him, the whole of Great Britain had the benefit of his experience. But what would happen under the clause? The Minister for Scotland would not be chosen specially from an educational point of view. In the first place, he must generally be a Scotchman. He would have to deal with a great variety of subjects which must more or less be taken into account. But even suppose that they got a man as good, from an educational point of view, as they did now, still he would not practically be so efficient. His time and thoughts, instead of being in the main concentrated on education, would be distracted by problems connected with the other duties which the Bill proposed to throw upon him. He doubted whether among English schoolmasters one could be found in favour of the proposed change. The National Union of Elementary Teachers, at their annual Conference, passed a resolution to the effect that a Minister of Education should be immediately appointed, who should have charge of elementary and secondary education in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and subsequently the executive of the Association resolved that every assistance be given to the educational institutions of Scotland in their opposition to the Secretary for Scotland Bill. There was very general opposition in England to any proposal to separate England from Scotland in the work of education, and there was a nearly unanimous opinion that education would be greatly benefited by maintaining the connection. National education must be considered from a national point of view, and not merely from the point of view of any one locality, however important; because the result of separation would not be decentralization, but disintegration. If they substituted local authority in this case they would find themselves unable to stop there. They had already seen what the tendency was, because when the Bill was first drafted, two or three years ago, it did not include education. Education was now included in it, and there was still every danger of allocating fresh subjects to the Minister for Scotland. In fact, the whole tendency was to separate the administration of the two countries from each other. Of course, if that were done in regard to Scotland, it was clear that it would render it still more difficult to resist the desire for Home Rule on the part of Ireland. The hon. Member stated that he had no desire to establish anything in the shape of Home Rule; but it did not matter what the desire of his hon. Friend was if the adoption of a principle of this kind tended directly to encourage such a measure. It would certainly be still more difficult to resist Home Rule in Ireland; and then there would probably be a similar demand on the part of Wales. Indeed, it was impossible to say where it would stop. No doubt hon. Gentlemen who supported the clause did not concur with him in that opinion. He hoped that they might be right, and that he might be wrong. Again, there was a very strong, he might almost say a unanimous, desire on the part of those interested in education that there should be a Minister of Education, and that he should have a seat in the Cabinet. Evidently, however, the Bill would tend to defeat that object. Scotch Members seemed to regard this as a small matter; but in Scotland itself the Bill was regarded as of much importance. It was stated by some hon. Gentlemen that it was simply a matter of administration; but it seemed to him to have a much wider bearing; and he confessed that he could not help looking upon the proposal with a considerable amount of apprehension. For his part he opposed the clause, because he feared it might prove "the little reft in the lute" which would introduce discord, and destroy the harmony between different portions of the Empire which they ought, by every means in their power, to promote. He, therefore, ox-pressed a sincere hope that Her Majesty's Government would not adopt the Amendment which had been proposed, but would, on the contrary, support that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh.

wished to make an explanation with regard to the statement of his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock), that some Members of the Childers' Committee were not aware that Scotch evidence had been tendered to the Committee and refused. As he (Dr. Cameron) was responsible for that statement he would give his authority. The Secretary to the Scotch Board of Education (Dr. Taylor) wrote as follows:—

"I wrote to Sir Lyon Playfair earnestly recommending that the Chairman, and, at least, one member of the late Board of Education, should be invited to give evidence, and he paid no attention to my suggestion."

I never heard of that suggestion until this moment.

remarked, that if his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) had been in the House last night he would have discovered that the almost unanimous opinion of the House was contrary to the views he had expressed.

said, there had been a mistake about the second reading of the Bill. He, and others, had been given to understand that it would not be taken, or they would have been in their places.

said, he rather thought that the proceedings of last night had conclusively established that, by the general assent of the House, Scotch education was to be transferred from the Vice President of tin; Council to the Secretary for Scotland; and, as far as he could gather, the speech of his hon. Friend was directed against the principle of the Bill, and against the estab- lishment of any Minister at all for the administration of Scotch affairs. He did not rise for the purpose of replying to the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock), but for the purpose of making some remarks on the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. A. Elliot), because he fully realized the great importance of that Amendment. It seemed to him that it very fairly raised the question as to what ought to be the official status and the position of the Secretary for Scotland in regard to the administration of Scotch education. Upon the decision of that question it would very largely depend whether the transfer of Scotch education from the Vice President of the Council to the Secretary for Scotland was to be a step advantageous or the reverse. The propriety of that transfer, he thought, had been generally regarded as involving questions of great delicacy and difficulty; and he did not attempt to conceal that he had regarded it from that point of view. But after the best consideration he had been able to give to the subject, he had come to the conclusion that the advantages resulting from the transfer would outweigh the possible disadvantages which were anticipated by some. But, at the same time, he thought the realization of the advantages depended very largely on what might be the official status and position of the Secretary for Scotland in regard to the administration of Scotch education. He was, therefore, anxious to make some remarks on the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. A. Elliot), because he was in this position—that he sympathized very largely with the views expressed by his hon. Friend; but, at the same time, he was unable to agree with the Amendment he had proposed. He understood that it was the desire of his hon. Friend in moving the Amendment to aggrandize, as far as he could, the position of the Secretary who would be charged with the administration of Scotch education, and in that desire his hon. Friend had his entire sympathy; but he asked his hon. Friend's attention to the fact that if the Amendment he had proposed were carried the result would be to extinguish the Scotch Education Department; and while he wished to see the Secretary for Scotland occupying as prominent and leading a position as possible in connection with that Department, he doubted very much the expediency of extinguishing the Department, and vesting the whole powers at present belonging to it exclusively in the Secretary for Scotland. He asked his hon. Friend to consider whether he was not going a little beyond the point he himself aimed at in pressing the Amendment; and whether the result he desired to secure would not be more effectually obtained if he were to withdraw the Amendment and support the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Fifeshire (Mr. Preston Bruce) who proposed to substitute for "Vice President" the word "President." On the question what was to be the position of the Secretary for Scotland in reference to Scotch education, there appeared to be three propositions before the Committee. There was the proposal in the Bill to make the Secretary a Vice President; there was the proposal of his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) that the Secretary should be an ex officio Member of the Department. There was also the proposal of the hon. Member for Fifeshire (Mr. Preston Bruce) to make the Secretary for Scotland President of the Education Department. He had no hesitation in saying that he was in favour of the view suggested by his hon. Friend, the Member for Fifeshire (Mr. Preston Bruce). It appeared to him that there could be no greater danger to Scotch education than to place it under the charge of a Minister who would not be a Scotch Education Minister in fact, but merely in name. He doubted very much, if the Scotch Secretary were merely Vice President of the Council, or merely a Member ex officio of the Council, whether he would be anything more than a Scotch Minister of Education in name. The effect of the Bill in that case would be to detach Scotch education from the care of the present Vice President of the Council, and, therefore, to lose the benefit of his attention and administration, and to hand it over to a Minister who, in his (Mr. Asher's) opinion, would not have the power that was essential to enable him properly to discharge his duties to Scotland in the matter. There could be no doubt of the importance of everything connected with education to the people of Scotland. There was, probably, no subject in which the whole mass of the people of Scotland were more directly interested than in that of education. To the facilities of education they had hitherto enjoyed they owed more than anything else the position they had occupied in the battle of life. After this Bill passed the Scotch people would look to the Secretary for Scotland and hold him responsible for the proper administration of education. It appeared to him that that was a responsibility which it would not be legitimate or fair to put upon any Minister, unless they gave to him, at the same time, power to deal with it according to his own judgment. If he were merely to be a Vice President of the Council, or an ex officio Member of the Council, he would not have the opportunity of exercising that power and that independent judgment which was essential to the proper administration of his Office. He would be liable to be frustrated by a possible difference of opinion between the Lord President of the Council and himself, on the one hand, and on the other, through want of sufficient authority in himself, to be controlled, to a large extent, by the permanent Department over which he would preside. He (Mr. Asher) did not mean by that to depreciate the great advantage it must be for a Minister to have the assistance of a permanent Department; but there could not be any doubt that, as between the Minister and the permanent Department, the influence of the Minister would largely depend upon whether he was independent or subordinate. He thought that it would be highly disadvantageous to the interests of Scotch education, if the Secretary for Scotland, whom he assumed it was now decided to charge with the administration of Scotch education, were not a person with controlling power in the matter; and he humbly thought that the best way of effecting that object was to accept the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Fifeshire (Mr. Preston Bruce), and not that of the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. Elliot), which took no step to strengthen the hands of the Mi- nister, but to deprive him of the able advice he would obtain from a Scotch Education Department. He wished to see the Minister in the position of a person rather having to take than to give advice. If he were a Vice President he would give advice; if he were President he would receive advice, and act according to his own judgment.

said, he would remind the Committee that it would be impossible ever to get through their work if endless speeches ranging over all the Amendments on the Paper were to be delivered. He would, therefore, confine himself to the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. Elliot). His hon. Friend seemed to have forgotten the speech of the Earl of Rosebery in the other House when he introduced his Bill. The noble Earl said he was desirous to transfer education wholly to the Scotch Minister; but upon examining it he found he would have to pull up all the education of Scotland, root and branch, from the present system, and he said it was impossible to do that on the lines of the Department as it now existed. It was for that reason that the noble Earl altered the Bill, and made the Scotch Secretary Vice President of the Education Department. He did not propose to discuss that question now, because it would come on afterwards; but he entreated the Committee not to agree to the Amendment of his hon. Friend, which was really pulling up the whole root of the education of Scotland without repealing the Acts upon which it had been grounded, or introducing any other measure by which education could be carried on. The Bill at present ran on the lines of the Education Department; but the Amendment proposed by his hon. Friend was a complete upheaval of the whole system, without substituting anything else that was reasonable. He therefore opposed the Amendment of his hon. Friend.

said, he did not understand the Amendment of his hon. Friend in the way in which the right hon. Gentleman understood it. The Amendment proposed to confer on the new Minister all the powers and duties of the Scotch Education Department as defined by "The Education (Scotland) Act, 1872." He saw no reason why the conferring of those powers on the Secretary for Scotland should do away with the Scotch Education Department. There was no reason for apprehending any such consequence, and there was no provision of the kind contained in the Amendment. The Amendment simply proposed to continue in the Secretary for Scotland all the power and privileges of the Scotch Education Department, and the power and privileges of the Scotch Education Department were defined in the Act of 1872, and other Acts relating to education, which would hereafter have to be dealt with. He thought it would be a great mistake, and he quite concurred with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Elgin (Mr. Asher) in thinking that there would be advantage in having the Secretary for Scotland Minister of the Scotch Education Department rather than that a second President of the Council should be established. But he thought his hon. and learned Friend was forgetting that the Education Department up to this time, as far as counsel and advice had gone, had never been anything more than a name. What had they done? [Laughter.] Hon. Members laughed, he presumed, at the idea of his putting such a query, seeing that the Scotch Education Department never met. He had certainly never heard of I a meeting of the Scotch Education Department—that was to say, that the Members of the Department, who were Privy Councillors, had never been called together on any occasion except in regard to the Bill now under discussion, and called the "Heriot's Endowment Bill."

thought that the Committee were wasting time in this preliminary discussion. The point the Committee had to decide and what the Government wanted to know was whether the Scotch people wanted to hand over Scotch educational affairs to a President, a Vice President, or an ex officio Member of the Privy Council. Those were the three propositions which were before the Committee. He did not wish to discuss any of the three alternatives; but he would ask his hon. Friend the Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. Elliot) whether he did not think it a more convenient course to withdraw his Amendment, and discuss the subject on the Amendment of the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce)? He thought that would be far the most convenient course for the Committee to take, and he would recommend it in the interest of progress.

said, he could not withdraw the Amendment at present. He should like, in the first place, to know more distinctly what the Government proposed to do in the matter, and whether his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Elgin (Mr. Asher) represented the views of the Front Opposition Bench? He would remind the Committee that in moving the Amendment he had begun his statement by pointing out that there was no antagonism between his Amendment and that of his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce). He thought, however, that the whole question would be better considered in one discussion rather than in two or three, and he would like that one discussion to be taken now.

in reply to a question from the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. A. Elliot), said, that in the remarks he had made he had only expressed his own personal opinions.

said, the present difficulty of the position was a good deal owing to extreme uncertainty as to what the Government intended to do. As far as he could determine, the Bill of the Government placed the Secretary for Scotland in exactly the same relation to the Lord President as the Vice President now occupied, and, consequent as, it left the question of the patronage of the Scotch Education Department in the hands of the Lord President; secondly, it probably left the Scotch official staff along with the English official staff; and, in the third place, he supposed it implied that in the meetings of the Scotch Committee of the Privy Council the Lord President would preside if he were present. It was something to know that that was the meaning of the clause as it stood; but it was an arrangement which, he thought, was much to be deprecated; and, personally, he would rather take the direct Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. A. Elliot), yet he believed that his (Mr. Bruce's) Amendment would substantially have the same effect. If he had any indication from the Government that they would accept it, he believed the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. Elliot) would withdraw his Amendment.

said, that the Government thought that, on the whole, the Bill as it now stood represented the general bias of Scotch sentiment. He admitted that they had had some difficulty in arriving at that opinion. They did not think that the various Amendments were very profound or very substantial; and, on the whole, they were of opinion that the scheme embodied in the Bill was the best scheme that could be adopted, and they desired to take the opinion of the Committee on that question. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had asked a series of questions as to the precise position which, under the Bill, the Minister for Scotland would occupy. The Government thought the Minister for Scotland should occupy, as regarded Scotch education, precisely the same position as that which was occupied in regard to English education by the Vice President of the Council—not a higher and not a lower position. The Amendment of the hon. Gentleman would, as he understood the matter, put him in a higher position than was occupied by his right hon. Friend near him (Mr. E. Stanhope) in regard to England. He did not think that that would effect any improvement in the matter. To give to Scotland everything that England had appeared to the Government to be adequate and sufficient. Therefore, the Bill as it stood was a sufficient and reasonable compromise between the extreme views expressed by the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce) on the one hand, and those of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh University (Sir Lyon Playfair) on the other. The Government were satisfied, on the whole, that the opinion of Scotland was in favour of the Bill.

said, that at last they had arrived at the deliverance of the Government Bench; but it certainly was not in accordance with the opinion expressed by the right hon. Gentleman last night. As far as he understood the right hon. Gentleman's statement last night, it was that his opinion was that the Scotch Secretary should be made—he thought the word used by the right hon. Gentleman was "Chairman" of the Education Board.

said, that he had never said anything of the kind. What he had said was that the effect of the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman opposite would be to make the Secretary for Scotland Chairman; but he had never said that he thought he should be so.

begged the right hon. Gentleman's pardon; but many hon. Members had been under a similar misapprehension, and had regarded the statement of the right hon. Gentleman in that way. But in regard to what the right hon. Gentleman had now said, there could be no question that the Government did not intend to give the Scotch Secretary effective charge of education. There could no longer be any doubt about that. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) had pointed it out with perfect clearness last night; and there was one part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech in which he (Mr. Buchanan) entirely concurred—namely, where he pointed out that the Scotch Secretary, as Vice President in regard to Scotch education, instead of being practically paramount, as in England, would virtually have no control over education. The nod which the Home Secretary gave just now to the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce) fully confirmed his (Mr. Buchanan's) interpretation as to the result of what the Government proposed to do. His hon. Friend had asked if this Bill would leave all the patronage in the hands of the Lord President, and the right hon. Gentleman nodded "Yes." And when his hon. Friend further asked if it would not also leave the staff for the Scotch educational work in the English Department, the President of the Local Government Board approved. Now, that was contrary to what the Home Secretary had told them last night in regard to Clause 2. [Cries of "No!"] The right hon. Gentleman was asked whether the Amendment proposed by him to be introduced into Clause 2 would enable the officials of the Department charged with Scotch education to be transferred to the new Secretary's Office, and he answered yes; but they now discovered that, although it would enable them to be transferred to the new Office, it was not the intention of the Government that they should be so transferred. [Cries of "No!"] Well, the right hon. Gentleman did not deny it; and now they had a declaration from the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, speaking on behalf of the Government, that it was not the intention to work the Scotch Education Department from the Secretary for Scotland's Office. He, therefore, maintained that the Government did not intend to give the Scotch Secretary effective charge of Scotch education under this Bill. His right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Sir Lyon Playfair) had quoted the Earl of Rosebery, but had omitted to say what the nature of the discussion was which took place in the House of Lords. The Bill, as it now stood, was not in the shape in which the Amendment had been submitted by the Earl of Rosebery; and what the Earl of Rosebery said in regard to the purport of the Bill as it stood was that, it was not taking Scotch education out of the Education Office, nor was it putting education under the control of the Scotch Board.

Who said that?

said, he was quoting a speech of the Earl of Rosebery in the House of Lords on the third reading of the Bill. The Marquess of Lothian, on the same occasion, asked if it was intended that the Scotch Education Department was to be wholly distinct and separate from the English Education Department, and the control vested in a Scotch Minister upon the Committee of Council. [Cries of "Order!"] He fully appreciated the generosity of the Committee in allowing him to transgress the Rules of the Committee by quoting a debate in "another place." But they had the evidence of the Earl of Rosebery himself in the House of Lords and the statement of a supporter of the Government in the House of Lords that the Bill would not give, in any effective way, the charge of Scotch education to the Secretary for Scotland. And now the Government told them that it had never been intended, in any effective way, to confer the charge of Scotch education upon the Secretary for Scotland. Therefore, in order to test the sincerity of the Government on the subject, he hoped they would have a distinct division—he did not care whether it was taken upon the present Amendment or that of the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce)—as to whether they were to give effective control—yes or no—of Scotch education to the Secretary for Scotland.

said, the hon. Member was mistaken in regard to what had fallen from his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board either last night or to-night. He was not aware that his right hon. Friend had ever changed his mind at all; and the Government were responsible for this part of the Bill long before it came down from the House of Lords. He thought the hon. Member was wrong in saying that the Government did not wish that the Scotch people should have a proper voice in their own educational matters. If the general feeling of all the Scotch Members had been clearly one on this matter, the Government, whatever their own views were, would have felt bound by their opinions; but, unfortunately, the opinion of the Scotch Members was very much divided. There were, as the President of the Local Government Board had stated, three different and distinct views on the subject. One was that the whole of the work in connection with the Scotch Education Department should absolutely and completely pass over to the Scotch Office under the charge of a President, and, although nominally in London, it should be absolutely separate from the Education Department. That was one view of the matter. Another view was that the Secretary for Scotland should simply be an ex officio Member of the Scotch Education Board, which went entirely the other way. A great number of people in Scotland took one view of the matter; but there was also a considerable number of persons who would be quite content with a mean between the two extremes, and that mean had been found in the present Bill. As there was nothing like unanimity in Scotland as to either of the extremes, he thought it would be wise to remain by the Bill as it stood. The hon. Member who last spoke might not have known that there was an Amendment on the Paper in the name of his hon. Friend the Member for the University of Glasgow (Mr. J. A. Campbell), to the effect that the Scotch Education Board should have a distinct permanent Secretary to attend to the business of Scotch education. To that Amendment he attached considerable importance. They considered that if the Secretary for Scotland was to be Vice President of the Education Board for Scotland, it was quite right that he should have a permanent Secretary with an adequate staff. So far as the Government were concerned, they had a real desire to know what the voice of the people of Scotland was in the matter; but, under all the circumstances, he thought it would be better to abide by the Bill as it stood in the absence of any strong feeling in favour of one or other of the three alternatives proposed, and he hoped they would now go to a division, so that they might see how Scotch opinion was running on the point. That could scarcely be done by first having one speech on one side and then one on the other.

said, he hoped the Committee had now really done with the Amendment. He confessed that he was unable to read the Amendment of the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. A. R. D. Elliot) without looking at the other Amendment in the name of the same hon. Member in which they were asked to leave out Clause 6, which would be perfectly destructive of education in Scotland. The Committee were placed in a sort of quandary between making the Secretary for Scotland either President, or Vice President, or an ex officio Member. He sympathized with the idea of making the new Minister an ex officio Member of the Department only; but he thought the Government had acted wisely in choosing the middle course of making him Vice President.

said, he rose to say that, in consequence of the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Elgin (Mr. Asher), he would withdraw his Amendment, so that the division might be taken upon that of his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce).

asked if the hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Buchanan) withdrew his Amendment?

said, he did not propose to take that course at present; and as he wished to say a few words upon the Amendment, he would move to insert, after the word "Schedule," in line 12—

"And all rights of patronage relating to educational offices and appointments in Scotland vested in the Lord President of the Council or the Scotch Education Department."

If the right hon. Gentleman would look at the Amendment, he would see that if the Amendment of his hon. Friend below him (Mr. Elliot), or of his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce), had been accepted by the Government, he would never have thought of moving his own; but, on the understanding that the Government were disinclined to accept either of the Amendments of his hon. Friends, he maintained that his would, to a certain degree, extend the functions of the Vice President created by the Bill, and would give him a more effective charge over Scotch education than he would otherwise have. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), in his evidence before the Childers' Committee, had expressed a strong opinion on the subject in support of the idea that the Vice President or Minister in charge of education should also have the charge of the patronage connected with education. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) had been equally strong upon the subject—that for the effective management of education the Minister in charge should also have the choice of those who were to work out the details of the Department. The right hon. Gentleman had carried his views in that direction, to some extent, during his tenure of Office as Vice President of the Council, and had succeeded in vesting a considerable part of the patronage in the Vice President which had previously been exercised by the Lord President. He (Mr. Buchanan), therefore, thought there was distinct value to be attached to his Amendment, supposing that the Government were unwilling to accept the other two Amendments. As had been pointed out by his right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh University (Sir Lyon Playfair), the Vice President, under the Bill, would not really have charge of Scotch education, and would not have any control over the appointments of those who were to carry out the work of the Education Department. His Amendment remedied one of those defects by transferring the patronage of the Department to the new Minister. He also thought that in support of that Amendment he might quote the opinion of the President of the Council himself, because when the Bill was before the House of Lords, and the Lord President was asked a question as to patronage, he stated that it would remain in the hands of the Lord President, in whom it had been vested by statute, and that it could not be removed except by statute. Therefore, he maintained that his Amendment would simply carry out the view of the President of the Council himself, who had stated that he accepted the Amendment of the Earl of Rosebery in substance, and that he wished to vest the patronage connected with the Scotch Education Department in the Secretary for Scotland.

said, he admitted that it would be a very important thing if the Lord President were to exercise the rights of patronage without consulting the Vice President; but was there the least shadow of ground for supposing that he would do so?

said, that it had been so.

said, the hon. Gentleman forgot that Scotch education was at present managed by the Vice President of the Council. No doubt, there was over that Council a President, and he was nominally vested with the patronage.

Not only nominally, but really.

said, the same thing applied in the case of England; and could anybody suppose that education in England was vitiated by such an arrangement? Of course, in all educational matters the Lord President consulted the Vice President; and as he consulted the Vice President in England, he would undoubtedly consult the Vice President in Scotland, if the Secretary for Scotland were constituted Vice President by the Bill. He did not think that any difficulty could arise, and no danger would exist in regard to Scotch education which had not existed in reference to English education ever since the Education Act passed. He would go further, and appeal to hon. Gentlemen opposite, who looked forward to the time when there would be one Education Minister for the United Kingdom. He would not presume to say how far an Education Minister for the whole of the Kingdom was necessary; but it was perfectly clear that by establishing two Vice Presidents, one for Scotland and one for England, and having over them a President, they left the door open for any future politicians who might so desire to establish a general Education Minister for the whole Kingdom without seriously disarranging the mechanism which this Bill proposed to constitute. Therefore, neither on the ground of existing practical inconvenience nor on the ground of future inconvenience could any difficulty arise; consequently, he was unable to accept the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman. At all events, it was clear that no weight or burden would be imposed upon Scotch education by this Bill, which did not exist at the present moment in connection with English education; and, as hon. Members well knew, the work of English education was very ably and effectively managed by the Vice President of the Council.

thought it would be unfortunate if his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Buchanan) were to press this Amendment, and for this reason—that a good many hon. Members would be constrained to vote against it who still wished to give the Minister for Scotland a real and effective control over Scotch, education. If they divided upon this Amendment they would be voting upon a false issue. He thought the division ought to be taken upon the Amendment of the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce) He took it that if this official were made the President of the Education Board, as he hoped to see him, this patronage would follow from his status and position. But if his hon. Friend insisted upon going to a division upon his Amendment hon. Members who wished to see the same object brought about—but who desired to see it brought about in a different way—would be compelled to vote against him, and their vote would be liable to misapprehension. The proper time for considering the question was when they came to deal with the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce), and a declaration about patronage in the present clause would be superfluous and inconvenient. He, therefore, hoped that his hon. Friend would follow the course which had been taken by the hon. Member for Roxburghshire (Mr. Elliot), and would withdraw the Amendment, leaving the Committee to divide upon that of the hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce).

also hoped the hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Buchanan) would not press his Amendment, which he thought would come a great deal better after they had decided whether the Miaister was to be President or Vice President. When they came to discuss the question of patronage, that was a matter upon which he might have a good deal to say; and if there were any danger of the patronage not being exercised by the Secretary of State, then the Amendment of his hon. Friend might be usefully brought up on the Report.

thought the advice of the late Lord Advocate (Mr. J. B. Balfour) was very good advice, and he hoped his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Buchanan) would take that view of the matter. Personally, he was inclined to enter into a compromise which would make the Secretary for Scotland Vice President and retain the connection with England. He thought that would be the best arrangement, and with that view he thought the Amendment had better be brought forward on Clause 6. One great defect in the present English system was that whereas one man did the work another man had the patronage. He thought the Vice President of the Council ought to be the real Minister of Education, and that he should have all the patronage. It would be a very bad thing for education in Scotland, if one Minister were to do all the work of the Department, and another were to exercise all the patronage. He trusted his hon. Friend would persevere with his Amendment, but not upon the present clause. He thought there ought to be in Scotland one man with definite ideas in regard to the administration of education, who should also make all the appointments.

said, that although he was inclined to agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) as to the propriety of withdrawing the Amendment, he was afraid he could not do it on the ground which his hon. Friend had assigned. He wished to point out to the late Lord Advocate—his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. J. B. Balfour)—that he appeared to be a little timorous with regard to the votes that were given in that House. He would only point out that if the Committee were to carry his Amendment, the Vice President, who, as far as they knew, was going to be appointed under the Bill, would find his hands considerably strengthened, and strengthened in a direction in which they all desired to see them strengthened. And if his Amendment were carried, the Committee would still be able to vote for the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Preston Bruce), which he admitted to be a still more valuable Amendment. But in view of the arguments which had been used by the hon. Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks), rather than put the Committee to the trouble of a division, he was perfectly willing to withdraw the Amendment.

said, he did not understand the observation of the hon. Member that a number of the Amendments which originally appeared on the Paper had been "pooh-poohed." No Amendment had been "pooh-poohed" by the Government. All they desired was to ascertain the opinion of the Scotch Representatives on the matter, and he hoped there would be no further waste of time over collateral matters. In regard to the present Amendment, one reason why he objected to it was that he did not find it in the Bill. The hon. Member had stated that the House was sometimes very wise, and that they had shown their wisdom last year by sending down the Bill with this provision in it. But if first thoughts were the wisest, second thoughts were the best; and when the present Bill came down from the House of Lords, in their maturer wisdom of the present year, they had not included the subject of the Amendment in the Bill. But a much better reason for objecting to the Amendment was that the Secretary for Scotland would have a great deal to do, no doubt, with the question of Scotch education, but this patronage principally related to the administration of the law. The last clause of the Bill provided that—

"Nothing in this Act contained shall prejudice or interfere with any rights, powers, privileges, or duties vested in or imposed on the Lord Advocate by virtue of any Act of Parliament or custom."

The Lord Advocate was one of the great Officers of State for Scotland, and he ought to remain so, and it was not intended by the creation of the Secretary for Scotland in any way to interfere with the legitimate functions of the Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate was the head of the law in Scotland, and was practically the adviser of the Secretary of State, and no appointment was ever made by the Secretary of State which was not recommended by the Lord Advocate. He stood, practically, as far as Scotch legal patronage was concerned, precisely on the same footing as the Lord Chancellor in England. The appointments were nominally made by the Secretary of State, but really by the Lord Advocate, who knew the persons best fitted for them, whereas the Secretary of State really could know nothing about them without consulting the Lord Advocate. He considered that he had given a sufficient reason why this patronage should remain vested in the Lord Advocate and should not be transferred to the Secretary for Scotland.

said, he could not recommend his hon. Friend to go to a division on this Amendment, not because he did not think it an important one, but because he thought it so very important that it was impossible to expect that it would be accepted at this stage. He could not help feeling, however, that the Scotch Secretary, as appointed under the Bill, might, after all, turn out to be not so effective a Minister as the people of Scotland generally expected. If that was the case, it would be on account of the absence of a clause of this kind, and the very distinct saving there was of all the rights of the Lord Advocate, because the effect of that was to leave the Lord Advocate in relation with the Home Secretary and not with the Secretary for Scotland. So long as that was the case, he was afraid that in questions of great importance the Scotch Secretary would not be able to stand against the combined influence of the Lord Advocate and the Home Secretary. However, he thought this was much too large a question to be raised at this stage; and he thought, if the Bill was to go through at all, it must be accepted, substantially, in the form in which it had been presented.

said, he was inclined to think that the advice of his hon. Friend tendered in so friendly a spirit was judicious advice. He confessed that he entertained the fears of his hon. Friend, and was afraid that the privileges of the new Secretary of State might be too much lopped off, and that it might turn out that he was merely an odd man to do a few odd jobs. He would not stand further in the way, but would withdraw the Amendment.

said, that before parting with the clause he wished to put a question to the Government. The policy of the clause was to vest in the new Secretary for Scotland the powers set forth in the First Schedule. Had it been considered if there were any powers and duties of an administrative kind belonging to Sheriffs that ought to be transferred under the Bill, particularly with reference to the supervision of bye-laws submitted under the Roads and Bridges Act and the Locomotives Regulation Act? If they would refer to the Locomotives Act, they would find that the bye-laws were made by the Local Authority, and had to be confirmed by the Secretary of State; but if they would look to the Roads and Bridges Act, they would find that the bye-laws were confirmed by the Sheriff of the county. He saw no good reason, when they were appointing a new Officer, why they should not give him the general supervision of the bye-laws made by the Road Authorities as well as of those affecting locomotives. There was one point which had attracted a good deal of public attention lately—namely, the bye-laws for the regulation of bicycles and tricycles. It was inconvenient to have local bye-laws differing in different counties. In some counties, the Sheriff had revised the bye-laws in a way to give satisfaction to the persons concerned. In other cases, bye-laws had been issued which had created a good deal of dissatisfaction. In England there was but one Revising Authority—the Local Government Board. Why should not the Scotch Secretary have similar authority for all Scotland? He had no wish to press the matter unduly, but he would like to have some assurance that the matter would be considered.

said, he would like to ask a question in regard to a similar point in connection with the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade had certain powers in regard to foreshores. Would it not be right that those powers should be exercised by the new Minister for Scotland instead of by the Board of Trade?

said, that in reply to the question of the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Parker), the right of making bye-laws was always vested in the Local Authority. It had never struck him that the powers of inferior officers should be transferred to a superior Office such as was to be formed under this Bill. He would, however, look into the matter; but he could hold out no hope of any concession in regard to the point.

asked if there was any reason for putting bye-laws for locomotives under one authority, and bye-laws for general traffic under another?

said, he thought there might be. In the discussion upon the Roads and Bridges Bill that had been clearly shown. With regard to the Board of Trade, he would ask his hon. Friend the Secretary to the Board to answer the question.

said, the Board of Trade held the powers as to foreshores under the Crown Lands Act of 1853, and it would be impossible to transfer them without repealing that Act.

remarked, that the powers in regard to foreshores had been managed in a much more liberal spirit by the Board of Trade than by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests; and he hoped the Government would not make any alteration.

asked whether the duties of the Board of Trade with regard to the Commissioners of Northern Lights should not be transferred to the new Secretary?