This Bill proposes to transfer the management of the Glasgow bridges from the bridge Trustees to the Local Authority, which is the Corporation of Glasgow. It further proposes to widen Glasgow Bridge, and to expend certain sums of money, for the purpose. These provisions do not prejudicially affect my constituents, and with them I shall not trouble the House. But there are other provisions, which, in my opinion, not only prejudice the interests of my constituents, but interfere with the authority of Parliament. My constituents are grouped in certain burghs in the county of Lanarkshire, outside the municipal boundaries of Glasgow; and the nearest point in these burghs to the Glasgow Bridge, which it is proposed to widen under this Bill, is some two miles distant. All these burghs oppose this Bill through their Local Authorities; and the chief ground of their opposition is that this Private Bill will vitally interfere with the provisions of a Public Act of Parliament still in full force. In 1878 an important Act was passed by Parliament, called the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act. That Act was the result of protracted and important negotiations between the public beards and others interested in the maintenance and repair of the roads and bridges in Scotland, and a special inquiry was directed to be made into the relations which existed between the town of Glasgow and the adjacent counties of Renfrew and Lanark, together with the police burghs which are situated in those counties. As the case was a peculiar one a Special Commission was appointed to inquire into the circumstances connected with it, and the result of the protracted negotiations which followed the inquiry was that the Act to which I refer was passed, and a special provision was inserted in that Act applicable to the relations of the City of Glasgow with the counties of Lanark and Renfrew and the police burghs. There are some general provisions in the Act; but the special provision I wish to call attention to is to this effect. It is provided that if there be any contention as to whether the bridges across the Clyde afford accommodation for the traffic of the counties and burghs outside Glasgow, in such a case it would be necessary to settle the portion of the burden to be borne by the City of Glasgow, by the counties, and by the police burghs outside. For that purpose elaborate machinery is provided by the Act. The case has to be investigated by two Special Commissioners appointed by the Secretary of State, who was formerly the Home Secretary, but is now the Secretary for Scotland. The two Special Commissioners so appointed are to conduct an inquiry in the locality; they are to report to the Secretary of State; the Secretary of State is then to determine as to whether the burden shall be laid upon the adjacent burghs and counties for the support, management, maintenance, and repair of these bridges; and, if so, how the burden is to be allocated among the burghs, counties, and Glasgow respectively. It is further provided that the determination of the Secretary of State shall be laid on the Table of both Houses of Parliament for 40 days, and that it shall not be effective until it has so been laid upon the Table. All the machinery for deciding questions in reference to the accommodation of the traffic and the allocation of the burden is elaborately provided in this Act; and, as I have explained to the House, any contentious question is to be determined under this Act by a series of public transactions. And now, Sir, what does the present Bill—the Glasgow Bridges Bill—propose to do? It proposes, by a stroke of the pen, to sweep away all the elaborate machinery which is provided in this important Act of Parliament; it authorizes the Local Authorities to fix a sum for widening the Glasgow bridges, and to apportion the burden not only for managing, maintaining, and repairing the bridges, but for watching, lighting, and cleansing them; and having fixed the sum to be charged upon the counties or the police burghs, as the case may be, the portion of the burden to be borne by each is to be determined by a single Commissioner without any review by Parliament or by any other authority at all, and the police burghs are to be bound to pay what this single Commissioner chooses to say they are to pay. I think the House will agree with me that this Private Bill proposes, in an irregular way, to override an Act of Parliament only recently passed, and still in full operation. It overrides it in the following particulars:—The Act of 1878 vests the determination as to the liability for these burdens with the Secretary of State. This Private Bill takes the determination away from the Secretary of State and vests it in a single Commissioner. In the second place the Act of Parliament provides for a local inquiry on the spot. The Private Bill dispenses with the local inquiry on the spot. In the third place the Act provides that the determination of the Secretary of State shall be subject to the review of Parliament, but the Private Bill dispenses with the Secretary of State and his determination, and does not allow Parliament to have any voice in the matter whatever. Fourthly, the Act limits the purposes for which the expenditure is to be allocated to the counties and police burghs to three—namely, the management, maintenance, and repair of the bridges, whereas the Private Bill, while preserving those three purposes, extends the liability still farther to the watching, lighting, and cleansing of the bridges. We maintain that it is unnecessary, inexpedient, and unjust, to interfere in this way, by private legislation, with a Public Act of Parliament. We say that it is an evil precedent for Parliament to establish, that those who are interested in Private Bills are to override Public Acts by Private Bills. The result will inevitably be that Private Bills will be constantly coming into collision with Public Acts, and we shall be liable to all sorts of mischief which must arise therefrom. These being the facts of the case, we have had to consider what course we ought to take under the circumstances. We are convinced that this House by a very large majority would refuse to sanction the overriding of an Act of Parliament in the way I have pointed out, if I were to ask hon. Members to do so, because I am satisfied that they would not submit to have the authority of Parliament interfered with in this manner. But I must say that there are some valuable provisions contained in the Bill—not valuable to my constituents or to the counties generally, or to the police burghs outside Glasgow, but valuable to the City of Glasgow; and we, therefore, do not wish to ask the House to reject the Bill summarily. When the Bill has been read a second time it will be necessary to refer it to a Committee upstairs, and the Committee to whom it is referred will know how to deal with these objectionable clauses, if the measure gets so far as the consideration of clauses. Under these circumstances, I shall not object to the second reading; but I wish to enter a very serious protest against this dangerous innovation of allowing a Private Bill to interfere with public legislation. I shall reserve to myself the right when the Bill comes back again from Committee, if it ever should come back, with these objectionable clauses in it, to ask the House to take the provisions of the Bill into consideration at a future stage; and I have very little doubt that if these objectionable clauses re-appear the House will have no hesitation in rejecting, them.

I happen to represent one of the counties interested in this Bill; but I do not think it is necessary for me to detain the House at any length after the admirable manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for the Particle Division of Lanarkshire (Mr. Craig-Sellar), has described the provisions of the measure. But there is one point which I should like to lay before the House, and it is this—that if the Bill is to pass in the shape in which it is presented to the House it will give exceptional powers to the Commissioners of Supply of the Counties of Lanark and Renfrew—powers which are not at present enjoyed by any of the Commissioners throughout the rest of Scotland. The Commissioners of Supply can assess the owners of property in the county, but they cannot assess the occupiers. By the Roads and Bridges Bill all roads and bridges are kept up specially and provided for by a Road beard, composed of the Commissioners of Supply and the representatives of the ratepayers. In that way it is provided that taxation and representation should go together, and in all cases in which taxation is imposed it falls both upon the owner and the occupier. But if this Bill is to pass in its present shape the Commissioners of Supply for the counties of Renfrew and Lanark will be called upon to provide funds from the owners for purposes which both owners and occupiers hitherto have been called on to pay. I certainly think that that is a very strong point against the provisions of this Bill, seeing that it places the Commissioners of Supply for these two counties in a totally different position from the Commissioners of the rest of Scotland, and confers upon them most exceptional powers. With regard to the other provision of the Bill, as my hon. Friend has said, some of them are valuable, no doubt, to the City of Glasgow, and I have no wish to interfere with them as far as Glasgow is concerned; but I hope the House will not allow the objectionable provisions to which its attention has been called to pass, if for no other reason than that they involve the upsetting of a Public Act of Parliament which is working well. I trust that the House will carefully consider the matter, and, personally, I propose to take the same course as my hon. Friend (Mr. Craig- Sellar)—namely, not to challenge a division at the present stage of the Bill, but to allow it to go up to a Committee with the understanding that if it is sent back to the House with these objectionable clauses still in it, it will be strenuously opposed.

The object of this Bill is, in the first place, to transfer the control of the Glasgow bridges from the Trustees acting under the Glasgow Bridges Consolidation Act of 1886 to the Glasgow Local Authority. The promoters of the Bill have been advised that very serious questions may be raised as to whether, under the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act of 1878, the bridges and undertaking of the Trustees were transferred to the Local Authority of Glasgow, as defined by that Act, and the administration of the bridges has consequently been continued by the Trustees. It is deemed essential that all uncertainty upon this point should be removed. When the Roads and Bridges Act was passed the promoters of the present Bill were advised that by that Act the bridges of Glasgow were not transferred from the Trustees, who then acted as they are now acting, so far as the bridges are concerned, for the Glasgow Local Authority. This Bill provides that the transfer shall now take place from the Trustees to the Local Authority—who are the Magistrates and Town Council of Glasgow. The next object contemplated by the Bill is the widening of Glasgow Bridge. This has been found to be absolutely necessary. Not only have the foundations of the bridge given way, from various causes, but the bridge itself is wearing down, and is becoming altogether unequal to the vast amount of traffic which passes over it. It has, therefore, become essential that the bridge should be enlarged and strengthened. There are other considerations of a subsidiary character in connection with the Bill. One is that the sum of £31,639, paid to the Trustees by the Caledonian Railway Company, under an Act passed in 1875, and directed to be applied to the widening and strengthening of Glasgow Bridge, should be handed over to the Glasgow Local Authority; but the money cannot be applied and the work set about without an Act of Parliament. The promoters of the Bill do not say that the Burgh, of Patrick and other burghs re- ferred to by my hon. Friend (Mr. Craig-Sellar) are to contribute towards the widening and strengthening of Glasgow Bridge; they simply ask that the Secretary for Scotland should nominate a Commissioner to inquire into the circumstances of the case, to determine whether or not money should be contributed by these burghs, having regard to the extent to which the bridges accommodate the traffic of the burghs and of the counties of Lanark and Renfrew. The object of this mode of procedure proposed by the promoters of the Bill is to save expense and time, and in the simplest manner possible to enable the Corporation of Glasgow to take possession of those bridges. They are now administered by a Trust which is a Mixed Commission consisting of Commissioners of Supply and Commissioners appointed by the Corporation of Glasgow. That Mixed Commission was appointed many years ago when the bridges were maintained by tolls. They are now maintained by the city rates, and it is most desirable to ascertain clearly and put beyond all question that they are placed under the control of the Local Authority of Glasgow. It is also essential to ascertain in the shortest and cheapest way possible what portion of the burden should be borne, if any, by the counties and police burghs, and what portion by the City of Glasgow.

One of the objects of this Bill is to obtain the appointment by the Secretary for Scotland of a Commissioner to ascertain whether the counties of Lanark and Renfrew and the police burghs outside the City of Glasgow shall contribute towards the widening and strengthening of Glasgow Bridge. Now, it appears to me that the districts and burghs round about Glasgow ought not to be liable to contribute towards the maintenance of the whole of the bridges in Glasgow, seeing that, by the passing of the Roads and Bridges Act in 1878, the ratepayers of Glasgow have to maintain them. The same Act also provides that the ratepayers of Govan and other suburban burghs should maintain the bridges and roads in their own districts. We think that as a matter of simple justice, if the inhabitants of the outlying districts are to contribute towards the maintenance of the Glasgow bridges, that the inhabitants of Glasgow should, on their part, contribute towards the maintenance of the bridges in the suburban districts.

Allow me to say a word on behalf of the Division which I represent—East Renfrew. I think that the Town Council of Glasgow are pressing forward a measure which certainly affords an instance of how the public money may be spent, and absolutely thrown away. They have, I am afraid, acted throughout this matter in a very high-handed manner; and I am convinced that if they had consented to unbend themselves to a small extent, and had seen the different parties interested, many of the objections which have been urged by the last three speakers would have been unnecessary. What is the effect of the action of the Corporation of Glasgow in the matter? They have introduced a Bill in which they are attempting to impose rates for the maintenance of the Glasgow bridges upon the suburban burghs, and upon the constituency which I have the honour to represent. Their intention is to levy the rates upon the burghs and county of Renfrew; and they propose that my constituents shall keep up, maintain, light, watch, and cleanse the bridges in the centre of the City of Glasgow. Now, Sir, the Roads and Bridges Bill of 1878 underwent full discussion in this House; and this question was settled at that time, both in regard to the police burghs and the counties of Renfrew and Lanark, as well as the City of Glasgow. So far as the roads and bridges of the county of Renfrew are concerned, the existing arrangement was not arrived at until after a very searching investigation, which extended over many years. It was begun in the time of Mr. Bruce, now Lord Aberdare, who was then Home Secretary, and it was continued during the time that Sir E. Assheton Cross held the same Office. It was ultimately settled that in order to place the counties of Renfrew and Lanark in a fair and just position the City of Glasgow should contribute £12,500 a-year as some sort of compensation for the heavy traffic, chiefly in. building material, which went from those counties into the City of Glasgow. But what does this Private Bill propose? It provides that the counties which the Roads and Bridges Act enacted should be paid so much a year—£12,600 I think —shall be taxed for the maintenance of bridges which, by the Roads and Bridges Act, were made over to the City of Glasgow. If the only wish of the City of Glasgow was that the Trustees should transfer their rights to them there would have been no difficulty; but such rights would have been freely accorded to them. My constituents object, and very properly object, to be taxed in order to keep up the bridges within the City of Glasgow; and you might, in my opinion, just as well tax a man in Edinburgh, or Liverpool, or Newcastle who may send goods to Glasgow for the cost of maintaining these bridges, as tax the county of Renfrew. I may also inform the House that, so far as the traffic from the county of Renfrew to Glasgow is concerned, the road traffic is diminishing rather than increasing. A large and fine station—the Great Enoch's Station—has been opened in Glasgow, and another extensive range of buildings has been constructed at the College Street Station, so that the traffic of the county of Renfrew does not now pass in anything like the same amount over the bridges of Glasgow that it did before the passing of the Roads and Bridges Act. Taking all these matters into consideration, I think that this Bill is most unjust, and I am quite sure that when it reaches a Committee upstairs it will be thrown out, or, at all events, divested of the objectionable provisions which it at present contains. To-day we simply enter a protest against it, in a desire to prove to the House of Commons that even on general principles the practice of bringing in a Private Bill which would, if passed, impose a heavy expenditure upon small suburban burghs and county communities is most objectionable. And I wish it to be understood that this course has been taken by the Town Council of Glasgow even before an attempt was made to make an arrangement with those who are vitally affected by the provisions of the Bill. I therefore second the proposal which has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for the Partick Division of Lanarkshire (Mr. Craig-Sellar). [An hon. MEMBER: No proposal has been made.] Then I join my hon. Friend in the protest he has made against the Bill, and I hope that the House, when it comes back from Committee, will signify its disapproval of its provisions, and will do justice to the parties who now complain of them.

The hon. Member for Renfrewshire (Mr. Finlayson) has raised a much larger question than that which properly belongs to the Bill; and yet, if that question were discussed, I believe it would be found that the case of Glasgow against the counties is a very strong one. The chief allegation of the hon. Member—in fact, it was the only remark he made which was pertinent to the present question—was that the county authorities had not been approached properly in the matter before the Bill was entered upon. Now, I am able to say that that is altogether an incorrect statement. Every effort was made on the part of the Corporation of Glasgow to obtain proper co-operation from the county authorities; and it was very largely because they have not been met by the county authorities that this Bill has been introduced.

in rising to call attention to the disturbances of the peace in the Metropolis; and to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, no reform of the administration and organization of the Metropolitan Police Force will be satisfactory unless provision is made for such reform of the government of the Metropolis as will insure to representatives of the ratepayers of the Metropolis a direct control over their own police,"

said, he had to apologize for the necessity of bringing forward a Motion of that character in the House of Commons. The Metropolis, however, had no Representative Body, and they were therefore obliged to put many Questions to Ministers and Notices on the Orders of the Day which ought not to occupy the time of this House, and which the House was not at all well-qualified to deal with. In bringing forward that subject, he would say at the outset there was very little in the evidence taken by the late Committee of Inquiry that was not summed up in the Report. He had no intention to give any Party complexion to the question he was raising; but he must say it seemed clear to him that there was one thing that was perhaps made more clear by the evidence than it was by the Report, and that was that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Childers) was not at all to blame for what had occurred in London on the 8th instant. The right hon. Gentleman practically entered upon the duties of his Office on the Monday, and by midday he had done all that any other Home Secretary had done—namely, inquired if the arrangements providing for possible contingencies were complete and sufficient. He had made what certainly seemed to be a rather perfunctory inquiry; but no further or more particular inquiry had generally been made by any Home Secretary in the experience of the late Chief Commissioner of the Force, Colonel Henderson. It was stated that it was in the power of the Home Office to alter any arrangements that were submitted by the Chief Commissioner; but, as a matter of fact, the Home Office never did so. That might be an unfortunate condition of circumstances; it might be an error, or it might not; but if it was it was one of system, and was not to be charged on the Home Secretary, who had been only two hours at the Office. The evidence showed conclusively that there was a great want of efficiency in the direction and organization of the Police Force in London; and it was to be trusted that not only would the administration and organization of the Metropolitan Police he investigated, but that it would also be thoroughly reformed. He had nothing to say against the conduct or behaviour of the ordinary police-constables; but he considered that among the superior officials of the Metropolitan Force there had long been, and still was, a grievous want of organization and of attention to duty, as well as of ability to know how to fulfil the duties imposed upon them. He trusted the inquiry to be made would be a complete and thorough one; that no branch of the Force would be omitted, and that no scandal would be hushed up. He refrained from commenting on the condition of the police, because he felt confident that an inquiry directed by the present Home Secretary would be complete and exhaustive, for his light hon. Friend was new to the Office, and could not yet have fallen into the toils of the officials. As to the composition of the crowds in the gatherings that had occurred, wild statement shad been made. They heard very little about red flags being waved when the Conservative Party were in power, and they saw very little of them when the Liberal Party were in power, and, as representing one of the most absolutely working-men constituencies in London, they might allow him to say that he believed that the working men of the Metropolis, whether employed or unemployed, were as orderly and law-abiding, nay, were as willing and able to share in the government of this great Metropolis with justice and success as any other portion of the community. His Resolution was so worded as not to reflect upon any person, and not even upon the police. There were two other points to which he wished to call the attention of the House, and which were patent to every-one, from the Report. The first was, that there was no proper control over the Police Force of London, for the Home Office exercised a most inefficient and superficial control over it, and the only way in which the Home Office could exercise a control, which was anything but the control of permanent officials, was through, and by, the inquiry and authority of the House of Commons. The other point was, that the House of Commons was loaded with the responsibility of what he might call being the Vestry for London. They had that day been occupied, and had frequently been occupied before, as they might be in the future, with business that ought to fall upon the Vestry, or Municipality, or mere Watch Committee of London, and that, to a very great extent, to the detriment of Imperial interests. He thought it was a shame that that House, which had for its primary duty the consideration of those interests, should be required to fulfil the duties of a Watch Committee for London, as it was called upon to do in the present case. The London Police were paid for by the ratepayers of the Metropolis in as large, or even larger, a degree than in any large town in England, and yet there was not a shadow of control exercised over them except by the authority of the House of Commons, which he, for one, could not look upon as being in any way efficient for the purpose. He could not for a moment conceive how it could be expected that Members of that House, who came from all parts of the country, should understand the affairs of the Metropolis, of which many Members who lived in it themselves were absolutely ignorant, or how they could be thought to be efficient controllers of the police of London. On the contrary, it frequently happened that the consequence of the absence of municipal control over the police was, that whenever a riot or disturbance occurred it was always made use of as a stick to wallop the Party in power, and thus a political aspect was given to the occurrence which it had no right to assume. This question of the control of the police was really a part of the great question of the government of the Metropolis, and it was high time for that, if for no other reason, that the House had brought before it by the Government in power some proper and feasible scheme for the government and regulation of the affairs of the Metropolis. But for the intimation given by the Government a few nights ago, he should have given a wider scope to his Motion. He protested against the control exercised by the Home Offie over the police; and he hoped an effort would at length be made to place the citizens of London in possession of the control of their police, which was the greatest guarantee for good order and security. In a vast centre of population those who held the command of the police were the masters of the situation; and it was time that those on his side of the House showed that they had sufficient confidence in the people of London to allow thorn to have the control of their police. In conclusion, he begged to move the Resolution that stood in his name.

seconded the Resolution.

said, he trusted the House would not adopt the Resolution of the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. James Stuart). The hon. Member occupied a considerable time in telling the House that he was not going to do so, and then proceeded to make a speech on the government of London; but he did not advance one single argument in support of the great change he advocated, nor did he offer any proof that, if the control of the police were in the hands of the Local Authorities, or in the hands of a single Municipality of the Metropolis, instead of the Home Office, the riots would not have taken place. He believed himself that if that had been the case, the riots would have been worse. At the same time, he blamed the Home Office for what occurred, though he did not make an attack upon the present Home Secretary, who had held Office too short a time to be responsible for the riots. It could not be said that the police was anything but efficient; indeed, in his opinion, it was a most able and efficient force. It was true that, on the occasion of these riots, there was a miscarriage; but he contended that it was due rather to particular and accidental circumstances than to the fault of the police. The hon. Member for Shoreditch had stated that the House should only be occupied with questions of national importance; but it must be borne in mind that the peace of the Metropolis was a question of national importance; and, even if there were a Municipality of London and a riot occurred, it would most certainly form a subject of debate in the House of Commons. There was no doubt that the present condition of affairs was unsatisfactory as regarded the connection of the police with the Home Office, and he did not think the case had been much improved by the Report of the Committee of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, or by the promise of the right hon. Gentleman that a Departmental Inquiry should be held into the organization of the police. The Report excluded the subject of the composition of the mob, which he thought it most important to investigate; but there was no promise that such an investigation should take place, and a Departmental Inquiry on the part of the right hon. Gentleman into his own responsibility with regard to the preservation of order would, he thought, be hardly satisfactory to the country at large. To assist him the right hon. Gentleman had called in certain of the permanent officials of the Home Office, and he (Lord Algernon Percy) was bound to state that he agreed with the hon. Member for Shoreditch, that when permanent officials of the Home Office inquired into the responsibility of that Office, no satisfactory result could be arrived at. The Report, moreover, appeared to be somewhat unfair. It was excessively condemnatory of the police; but some of the reasons upon which the Report was founded were circumstances beyond the control of the police, and it was therefore very hard that they should be blamed for them. He did not think that the police were entirely and alone in fault on the 8th of February. For instance, on page 9 of the Report it was mentioned that there were no telegraphic communications between the police in certain places and Scotland Yard; but there was no evidence to show that the Commissioners of Police had the power to establish a telegraphic system between Scotland Yard and dependent districts. The question was, who was responsible for the existence of such a state of things as made the occurrence of the events of the 8th instant possible? It seemed to him that the Home Office was clearly responsible for that unsatisfactory state of things; for within recent times there had been two inquiries into the organization of the police, but no resulting action had been taken by the Home Office. Why were the recommendations of those Committees not carried out by the Home Office? The fact was that on the recent occasion the Police Force appeared to have been lulled into a false sense of security, owing to previous demonstrations having passed off peaceably. They failed to recognize that the circumstances were not usual; but if they were to blame in this the Home Office was equally so, for the Home Office, too, laboured under a similar misapprehension, and the right hon. Gentleman did not even take the precautions adopted by his Predecessors, in similar circumstances, and arrange to be supplied with information by the police from time to time during the day. His Predecessors had generally made arrangements of that kind on extraordinary occasions. He might instance the case of the Reform Meeting in Hyde Park, in 1884, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was then Home Secretary, and his right hon. Friend who was Home Secretary in 1875, made arrangements for receiving telegrams every half-hour, as well as messages at intervals during the day. The House, he thought, ought to be given more information with respect to the treatment which that very valuable public servant, Sir Edmund Henderson, had received at the hands of the Home Office Authorities. The right hon. Gentleman yesterday expressed some amount of regret that the services of Sir Edmund Henderson could not be obtained upon the Committee; but did it not strike the right hon. Gentleman that if he had asked that officer to reconsider the question of his resignation, until after the inquiry had taken place, instead of so readily accepting it, he would have had the advantage of his assistance upon the Committee? The precipitancy with which Sir Edmund's resignation was accepted seemed to give some idea of the intention of making him a scapegoat; and he submitted to the House that a man who had so well served his country, was entitled to better treatment at the hands of the Home Secretary. The House might well turn its attention to the question, whether public demonstrations ought not to be controlled to a greater extent than heretofore. He did not say that they ought to be stopped altogether, although there was far less reason for holding such meetings than existed a few years ago, when working men had fewer means of making their wishes known. But it was a question for consideration whether processions that monopolized the streets should be permitted any longer—whether such demonstrations as that of February 8th should be allowed—for he had received many communications from many tradesmen complaining that when these demonstrations took place their trade was materially injured—the fact was that London submitted to mob law on these occasions. If the mob behaved quietly, well and good; if it did not, the House had seen what was the result. If the House chose to acknowledge and bow down to mob law, it must expect to see very strange things from time to time. The kind of language used at the meeting in Trafalgar Square had been repeated; and the law ought to be amended, so as to bring summary punishment upon people who used such language, and in that way render possible the dealing with men like Messrs. Burns and Hyndman. A good deal had been said, of late, as to the panic that prevailed among the public; but if there really was a panic, it was not because of the mobs, but because an uncertainty existed as to the intention of the Government to support law and order at all hazards. While the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department was trying to prosecute Messrs. Champion, Burns, and Hyndman for the part they had taken in this demonstration, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Chamberlain) was parleying with them, and the Prime Minister, through his Private Secretary, was expressing himself ready to receive any communications, in writing, on their behalf. That seemed to show that the present Government was destined to be no more unanimous than its Liberal Predecessor. Unfortunately, the past actions of Her Majesty's Government and the speeches which had been delivered by some Members of the Government contained much to cause such uncertainty. One Member of the Government had actually been subpœnaed by the Socialists as an "expert in agitation." The speeches of the Socialist Leaders and of some of the Members of Her Majesty's Government were so similar that it was difficult for the non-legal mind to understand how it was that the right hon. Gentlemen was enjoying the sweets of Office, while the Socialists were being tried in a Criminal Court. ["Oh, oh!"] One of the Socialists had made a great point, in his speech in Trafalgar Square, of the fact that after the dynamite scare Parliament had taken immediate action, the deduction being that if they produced a scare_by riot, action would again be taken by Parliament. The speech of the Prime Minister, at Dalkeith, in 1879, when he declared that the blowing up of Clerkenwell Prison had brought certain matters within the range of practical polities, the deduction again clearly being that if the Irish committed acts of violence, the attention of Parliament would be called to their demands. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman did not mean to urge them again to acts of violence, but the result was disorder, and disorder that went for 22 months unchecked, because, as the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board said, at Liverpool, to have stopped the agitation would have been to have checked reform. The speech of Mr. Burns in the the Park and some utterances of the President of the Local Government Board about the murder of a French Minister at the time of the French Revolution, read line for line. It would be excessively interesting if the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board would inform the House and the tradesmen of the Metropolis generally as to the amount of "ransom" required by the persons who made such "short work of private ownership" of property in South Audley Street, and so thoroughly enjoyed themselves in the process, because the inhabitants would then know what to expect under the circumstances. The people of this country had a right to demand that the Government would perform that which was the first duty of a Government—namely, the maintenance of law and order; and that they should not be subject to a repetition of the terrible scenes which had been witnessed in Ireland, where crime had been allowed to run unchecked, and where, at the present moment, the Government refused to enforce the law of the land.

said, that, in his opinion, it was desirable that an investigation should take place into the character of the meeting referred to, and of the men who called it together. He contended that a demonstration need not necessarily be the prelude to a riot. That demonstrations might be unaccompanied by any disorder was proved by the events of July 21, 1884, in which he, along with others, was personally concerned, when a procession of 120,000 men passed through the streets of London, which were lined by 750,000 people. Yet not a window was broken, not a person was injured, neither was there a flower trampled upon. One reason of this was that the men who were responsible for order on that occasion were men who had the confidence of the working men of London. They were not in the pay of the Tory Party, which now condemned the late riots. Many of the men responsible for the late riots were hired to disturb public meetings in the Metropolis. They were encouraged to create an assemblage of persons in Trafalgar Square, which it was known would probably lead to riots. There were several very curious circumstances about the matter. The riots took place on the very day that the Home Secretary came into Office; these meetings of the unemployed were being called together in various parts of London about 12 months ago, and were continued down to the very day on which the Liberal Government left Office; as soon as the Tory Government came in, last June, these demonstrations suddenly ceased, and although the distress went on accumulating nothing more was heard of them until the Tory Government left Office and the Liberals returned to power. It might be that there were reasons for this; and he believed it was because, during the time the Tory Government acted as caretakers, these men were hired by the Tory Party in various parts of the country to disturb the peace and order of their opponents' meetings; and these very men, as soon as the Liberal Government came into power, again disturbed the publicp eace by calling tumultuous meetings in Trafalgar Square. It was exceedingly convenient for hon. Members on the other side of the House to ignore altogether the character of the men who called the meetings together, and to fasten all the blame upon the Socialists. He (Mr. Howell) had no sympathy with the Socialists; but it was a singular fact that those men were hired by the Tory Party, and several of them appeared in various constituencies, by the help of Tory money, as bogus labour candidates. He would like to see a Royal Commission appointed; and he hoped that, for his own sake, the Home Secretary would see that a full and complete investigation was made, not only as to the rioting which took place, but as to the character of the men who called the meeting together. He would take that opportunity of stating his full and decided concurrence in the views upon the subject expressed by the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. James Stuart). It was his firm conviction that the police of the Metropolis ought to be under the control of aduly elected Municipal Authority. The Report of the Committee did not give sufficient clue to the reason why Sir Edmund Henderson' resignation was tendered and so hastily accepted; but it was within his (Mr. Howell's) recollection that something like pressure was brought to bear upon Sir Edmund Henderson to resign his position on the occasion of the demonstration in Hyde Park, in 1874, not because of the tumult, but because of the peaceable character of the proceedings. Now he had resigned his position the Tory Party, had got up a mock sympathy with regard to him.

said, he did not propose to follow the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Howell) into the extraordinary disclosures he had made with regard to the disposition of Tory money. The reason why he (Mr. Burdett-Coutts) ventured to address the House was because here presented a constituency which lay at the heart of the Metropolis, and was contiguous to those scenes of disorder which were the subject of the present debate. He might say, in answer to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green in this connection, that he was reminded that, in his small electoral experience, he had suffered great inconvenience at the hands of men who certainly acted as if they had been hired by the other side. He wished to ask the House whether they were satisfied with the way in which this inquiry had been conducted, and with the manner in which Sir Edmund Henderson had been treated? He ventured to think that the Home Secretary, in the whole of his elaborate statement, entirely missed the point most prominent in the public mind—namely, what part the right hon. Gentleman himself, the Minister of the Crown responsible for the safety of the Metropolis, played in this matter? The qustion was, how far had he accepted, either before or after the event, the responsibilities attaching to his high Office—responsibilities rendered the more grave by the fact that this was no ordinary demonstration. He (Mr. Burdett-Coutts) was aware that the Chief Commissioner had stated that it had not been the custom for the Home Secretary to give special instructions with regard to these demonstrations; but bethought that there might be some who would not accept this definition of the functions of the Home Office. He was not speaking of instructions in detail as to the management or disposition of the Force; but he thought that where there were special circumstances attending a public meeting, and arising from peculiar conditions which were known to the public, and which were altogether exceptional, it was necessary for the Home Office to take upon itself the responsibility of giving orders for more or less stringent measures to provide against an outbreak. There were several circumstances which should have led to an amount of attention greater than ordinary being paid to this demonstration. First, there was the condition of large masses of people in this city—a condition of irritation; secondly there was the internecine character of the demonstration. Again, public opinion had not supported the police in dealing with these demonstrations. Public opinion had been very delicate on the subject. The police had been educated up to believe that they had no right to interfere, or even to show themselves, and the slightest attempt on their part to do so had been construed into an attempt to coerce the rights of popular demonstration and free speech—as if, indeed, speech, be it free or secret, which led directly to outrage, had any rights at all in a civilized community. It had grown to be a custom in this country not to interfere with these demonstrations, and not to have a sufficient force at hand to keep order if disturbance should arise. It rested on the Home Secretary to cast aside that ordinance of public opinion, and give support and authority to the police in taking precautions against violence. It had been left to the event to justify them in doing so. If they had taken the matter in their own hands, and, without the justification of these outrages, had broken a few heads in Pall Mall, the country would have rung with protests. The Home Secretary, if anyone, should have foreseen this difficulty in which the police were placed by custom and public opinion, and not have been in such haste to abandon them, because they had not done what he himself had not the courage to tell them to do. If the right hon. Gentleman abnegated his authority, and became a perfect nonentity in such circumstances, he was depriving the 'citizens of that protection which, by virtue of his Office, he was bound to extend to them. It was the duty of the Homo Secretary to take such an initiative as would enable the police to cope with violence. It was absurd to talk about the police being demoralized and disorganized. On Sunday the police had been able to cope with a far more dangerous crowd than that which assembled on the occasion of the riots. The police could not be expected to exercise foresight, if the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Home Department was himself entirely blind to the course of events. But, although the right hon. Gentleman had failed to initiate or to support, he had shown an extraordinary promptitude in finding someone to blame. He (Mr. Burdett-Coutts) complained both of the Committee and its Report. He knew not what right this Committee had to investigate the question. It was not a Committee appointed by that House. Was it a Committee the composition of which the House would approve? He could claim to speak with a free hand, untrammelled by official considerations which might keep the Front Bench silent. He found no special qualification in any Member of the Committee for passing judgment upon so difficult and delicate a question as police organization, at least so far as the three civilian Members of the Committee were con-corned, and he regretted that two Members of the Party to which he belonged had consented to serve upon it, especially when it was presided over by the Home Secretary himself. To the fourth Member—the most distinguished of English soldiers, and a man, moreover, of singular fertility and breadth of mind—he found this objection—that, being imbued with military instincts and trained to military habits, he was called upon to deside on a purely Civil Force. As to the fifth Member, the Home Secretary himself, the objections to his sitting on the Committee were dictated by the most ordinary considerations of fair play and justice. He would not deal in detail on the recommendations contained in the Report; but its character could be judged from the suggestion that the Chief Commissioner should sit in Trafalgar Square in a cocked hat for the crowd to jeer at. The Home Secretary, by the course which he had adopted, had passed an emphatic and wholesale condemnation on all his Predecessors—on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross), and especially on the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir William Harcourt), during whose protracted tenure of the Home Office the disorganization of the police had gradually developed into the state in which his right hon. Colleague now described it to be. The police, the most temperate and efficient force in any capital in the world, were incensed at the humiliation which had been heaped upon them in the person of their Chief Commissioner. And he thought it was a dangerous thing to goad the police into irritation by such treatment as that. He had spoken from no Party motives. That might be seen by the fact that he did not conceal his regret that two Members of his Party had accepted seats on that Committee, which had been most unwisely appointed in a moment of panic. And if his remarks seemed to have any personal bearing, they were personal, mainly, to an officer, to whose long service the population owed such a debt of gratitude, whose character for conscientiousness, modesty, and loyalty was unsurpassed; and to whom, from the beginning to the end of this most painful business, there had been absolutely no chance given, save to do what he most certainly had done—fold his cloak around him and fall like a gentleman.

said, that a certain amount of modesty and diffidence gene- rally characterized hon. Members when for the first time they spoke in the House of Commons. But one would have imagined, seeing that the hon. Member who had just spoken was not in any way afflicted with that hindrance, that he had been an habitual speaker in that Assembly for many years past. The hon. Gentleman had dealt pretty freely with the qualifications of the Gentlemen who formed the Committee of Inquiry, and had spoken in disparaging terms of the whole of them; but it was quite obvious from his speech that the hon. Member himself would have had no difficulty in placing his hand upon at least one Gentleman who possessed the qualities which he considered necessary for such an investigation. The hon. Member spoke of the qualifications of the Gentlemen who composed this Committee for inquiring into the delicate organization of the police. He (Mr. Ritchie) ventured to say to the hon. Gentleman that, so far as his experience went, what the Committee had to do was not to inquire into the delicate organization of the Police Force, or into the relations, not easy to be defined, which existed between that force and the Home Office, but they were called upon to inquire into the reasons why such a lamentable break-down occurred. He was bound to say that when he was asked to take part in the work of the Committee, it never occurred to him, for a single moment, that the question was one which involved either an acquittal of the Home Secretary from the responsibility which he undoubtedly lay under, or that it involved any question connected with politics of any kind whatever. He considered that he was only performing his duty as a Metropolitan Member in taking part in an investigation which it was undoubtedly the duty of the Home Secretary to take in hand. It was quite clear that the Home Secretary was responsible to the House of Commons for the preservation of public order in the Metropolis, and if the right hon. Gentleman had not given sufficient orders to the executive body at his command, it was for that House to form for itself an opinion upon the point, and for the right hon. Gentleman to justify his conduct to the House of Commons. He asked the House, whether if the right hon. Gentleman had undertaken such an inquiry by himself, as he might have done, it was likely that it would have commanded the confidence of the House of Commons, or of the people of London? Whatever might be the qualifications of the Gentlemen who composed the Committee, there was no one who would charge any one of them with a desire to suppress facts, or to screen the Home Secretary, or to disguise, in any shape or form, the responsibility which lay upon him. It was made perfectly clear and evident by almost the first paragraph in the Report that the Committee never undertook that duty. There was another point which they felt could not be adequately dealt with by the Committee, and that was the investigation into the origin of the disturbances. He felt very strongly, and he might say that he induced his Colleagues on the Committee to think with him, that such an inquiry was highly desirable and necessary; but, at the same time, he felt, from the constitution of the Committee and from the manner in which the investigation was carried on, it was not a body competent to carry on an investigation such as that. Such an inquiry, he held, ought to be of a public character, where the evidence would be published day by day, and where those who were accused would have an opportunity, in the public Press, of seeing the charge of which they stood accused, and, if necessary, of giving evidence to refute it. Therefore, they had no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that it was not their duty to make such an inquiry into the relative responsibility of the Home Office in the matter. The hon Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Howell), in the course of a violent harangue altogether unsuited to the subject which was under discussion, and which, perhaps, might very properly bring upon him the attention of the force whose conduct he had been impugning, spoke about "hired Tory agitators;" and when he (Mr. Ritchie) regarded the extravagance of his language, and the effect which usually followed such extravagant language, he began to wonder whether the hon. Gentleman was himself a hired Tory agitator—["Order, order!"]

The hon. Gentleman is now employing language which is hardly in accordance with the proper order of Parliamentary debate.

said, he withdrew it. He gave it not as his own opinion, but as the opinion which might be formed by the language of the hon. Gentleman himself; but he withdrew it. He had some recollection of a recent case in which the hon. Gentleman had been engaged with some of those whom he (Mr. Ritchie) imagined were not unlikely to have formed a portion of that meeting; and he could very well understand, looking to the result of the case to which he had referred, that the hon. Gentleman might have been very anxious to take the present opportunity of retaliating upon those who were successful in a certain trial.

On the point of Order, I beg to ask if the hon. Gentleman is not exceeding the proper latitude?

said, he was referring to a report in the public Press, and he did not think he had used a word which was not entirely justified by the result in that case. It was not surprising that the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. James Stuart) had taken the opportunity of bringing forward the case of London government. But when he (Mr. Ritchie) looked around, and wondered what had become of the valiant leaders of the cause of reform of London government, and saw that their place in the House know them no more, he was very much afraid he could not congratulate the hon. Member upon the popularity of the cause which he had taken in hand; for if there was one thing which had been more clearly shown than another at the General Election, it was that the people of London had no faith in their would-be leaders. The hon. Gentleman said that he would have introduced some words into his Resolution to the effect that the reform of London government was urgently desirable, if it had not been that the Home Secretary had promised him that the matter would receive early attention. Let not the hon. Gentleman lean upon such a frail reed as that. He had seen questions of a similar character put to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he was Home Secretary, Session after Session, and year after year, with answers regularly given that he, too, was very anxious indeed to introduce a Bill of the kind; but, with one abortive exception, the Sessions passed away without the Bill seeing the light of day. They knew what effect that procrastination had had in reference to one important matter—he referred to the question of the water supply—and they knew that at the present time the ratepayers were suffering to a very large extent annually in consequence of that question having been so postponed. But there was one exception which ought to be made—not with standing that the right hon. Gentleman had promised that London should have the control of its water supply and other matters—he had never promised that the London Government Bill would give the London population control over its police. The right hon. Gentleman's experience of the Office of Home Secretary had convinced him that such a transfer of the police from the Home Office to a central Municipality for London was not one calculated to add to the efficiency of the force, but one that might in dangerous and in excited times have the very opposite effect. So that what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreditch was asking the House to assent to was the postponement of a pressing question. For his own part, he (Mr. Ritchie) was not prepared to relegate it to the dim and distant future which the hon. Member desired; and he maintained that there was nothing more pressing in connection with the government of London than the placing of the police on a proper footing. With reference to what had been said by his noble Friend (Lord Algernon Percy), the Committee had passed no censure on the police at all. What they had pointed out was the great desirability of having the faults which existed remedied; and he thought his noble Friend would see that it was part of the duty of this Committee to point out in what it was the police system had failed, and also to show where those arrangements were faulty. He was inclined to think that there ought to be a public inquiry into what the relations were between the Home Office and the police. He did not think that a mere Departmental inquiry, such as was contemplated, would give satisfaction to the public. The public wanted the whole thing to be publicly investigated. He knew that a great deal had been said; but, after the matter was now all over, he had no reason to think that he did anything more than his clear duty in joining the investigation which took place. One word as to the character of the mob. As regarded that point, he entirely agreed with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreditch. Like that hon. Member, he was the Member for one of the most working-class constituencies in London; and he said that it was unfair and unjust to charge the unemployed working men in the East End of London as being in any degree the authors of these riots. He was certain that there were none who would welcome more cordially than his constituents a public inquiry into these disturbances, because it would free them from the blame that had been unjustly cast upon them.

said, he was of opinion that the chances of London Municipal Reform were not so distant as imagined by the hon. Gentleman who had last spoken (Mr. Ritchie). For himself, he deprecated any interference with the legitimate right of public meeting in London, and regretted that the noble Lord opposite (Lord Algernon Percy) should have suggested the prohibition of these assemblies altogether.

said, there was this to be considered—that as the shopkeepers of London enjoyed special advantages in living in the Metropolis, they also must expect to incur special disadvantages. The police were admirably organized for the preservation of the ordinary peace of the Metropolis, and no man deserved greater credit in that respect than Sir Edmund Henderson; but they were unprepared for what was really the strategical duty of dealing with large disorderly crowds. He trusted that the reforms which might be recommended would not obstruct upon some near occasion the accomplishment of the reform which he suggested—namely, the division of the Police Force into two bodies under separate controls, that, in his view, being the best solution of the question. In that way the ordinary police, comprising nearly the whole number of the force, should be given to the Metropolitan Corporation, for he quite agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Shore-ditch (Mr. James Stuart) that they were often engaged in discussing matters which would really more become the Watch Committee of a Municipal Corporation than that House. But the nation had the same right to the control of the police required for the protection of the Parliament, the Palaces, and the Public Offices, all which belonged to the nation, which the Metropolis had to the control of the ordinary police. And this special police might be conveniently bined with that required for emergencies such as that which had lately occurred, forming a body which should be permanently under the control of the Home Office.

who had on the Paper an Amendment to the effect that compensation ought to be provided at the public expense, said, that as a Member for one of the constituencies that had been invaded and bombarded he claimed to say a few words. Generally speaking, in his opinion, there was no question but that after the stone throwing had begun 60 useful and determined men, such as were to be found in the police, could have stopped the riot at any moment. That had been clearly shown by the Report, since an Inspector—Inspector Cuthbert, with 15 men at his command—in Oxford Street, had been able to break up and thoroughly to demoralize the mob, diverting them into bye-streets, and thereby saving a great amount of damago to tradesmen. The tradesmen and others who suffered damage were paying a very high police rate, and that rate was regarded practically as an insurance against such possibilities occurring as that which had occurred on the 8th. In one parish, which had suffered heavily, the police rate last year had been nearly £35,000. The other day the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had told them—and they had all been delighted to hear it—that compensation would be given to those who had suffered damage. But he (Lord Charles Beresford) understood that that compensation was to be given out of money paid partly by the ratepayers, and partly out of a public fund. He thought that that was not quite fair to the people to whom compensation was to be given, since they would indirectly be compensating themselves out of their own pockets. He thought that the Government should find the money for this compensation, since they had the entire charge of the police, and were responsible for what they had done—and for what they had not done—on that day. Many tradesmen had suffered severely, not only from the sacking of shops and breaking of windows, but also from the feeling of uncertainty which had resulted. They might be told that it was a bad precedent to form; but, in his humble opinion, it would be a good one that the Government should pay the damage, as it would be good guarantee that such a disgraceful occurrence did not happen again. The amount was only about £12,000—a very small sum for the State to pay, but of great moment to the tradesmen who had suffered. There had undoubtedly been an extraordinary want of energy and resource shown on that occasion. He was not blaming the police; they were as fine a body of men as it was possible to conceive, and who had often very irksome duties to perform; but they had been in the position of disciplined men waiting for orders, knowing what ought to be done, and, with the exception of one Inspector, no one seemed to have grasped the situation properly at the moment. He had been glad to hear what had been so kindly said on both sides of the House with respect to Sir Edmund Henderson, who certainly had no other course than to resign; and he hoped the Home Secretary would say more than he had already said in recognition of that officer's services. They ought to bear in mind what the Chief Commissioner had done. For 17 years he had commanded a force of 12,000 men who had been doing the police work for 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 of people, insuring their safety, and providing for their comfort and enjoyment; and for all that he thought he did deserve a word or two more of commendation. With regard to the inquiry, while not wishing to appear to say anything disrespectful with regard to his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, he did think that the position which the right hon. Gentleman held, by placing himself at its head, was rather a ludicrous one. His position was like that of an admiral who had got into difficulties, had then ordered a court martial upon his subordinates for the blunders for which he himself had been responsible, and then made himself presi- dent of the court. He could not help thinking it would have been better if someone else had presided at the inquiry. With regard to what had fallen from one hon. Member, he could not agree that meetings such as these should be stopped; but he thought that they ought to be regulated, and not to be allowed in inclosed places such as Trafalgar Square; there was, however, no reason why they should not be allowed to take place in the Parks. In going to the Park those who were to take part in the meetings could be kept under proper control. It was, in his opinion, an excellent safety valve to permit people to meet to thresh out questions which agitated the public mind. With regard to the proposed re-organization of the police, he hoped that there would be a public inquiry, and not a Departmental Committee. Indeed, a Committee composed of Members of the House would be more satisfactory.

said, he thought that probably the time had now come, after so many speeches upon this question, when he should state on the part of the Government, and on his own part, what he proposed to do with respect to the Motion before them, and also the Motion of the noble Lord opposite (Lord Charles Beresford), should that noble Lord have an opportunity of moving it. The noble Lord had, indeed, practically been speaking to the Motion which stood in his name. The noble Lord had suggested, on the point of compensation for damages, that the Government should find the whole of the money required for that purpose; because if the ratepayers paid half of it, as was proposed, possibly those who had suffered damage would be paying a small fraction of the compensation to themselves out of their own pockets. But if the public, the taxpayers, paid the whole of this charge, the tradesmen who had suffered would still be contributing, only the amount would be divided among a much larger number of persons; and although the amount might be different the principle would be just the same. He confessed he could not see the force of the noble Lord's argument, and he had not, up to that point, been persuaded. With regard to points raised by other hon. Members on both sides of the House, the hon. Mem- ber who had moved the Amendment (Mr. James Stuart) by means of it wished the House to declare at once that the representatives of the ratepayers in the Metropolis should have direct control over the police. As he (Mr. Childers) understood him, the hon. Member did not wish to prevent the inquiry proposed into the organization and administration of the police; but he did propose that the House should now pass a Resolution which should conclude the question whether in the future, at some reasonably distant time, the police of the Metropolis should be placed under local control, instead of under the control of the Executive Government. He was afraid that he could not accept that Motion; his view was this—they had, at the present moment, urgent need of dealing with the question as to the police arising out of the recent inquiry. As to the Bill with regard to the Metropolis, which he hoped at no very long date to introduce, he declined at the present moment to declare its provisions; the Government must have entire liberty of action in this matter. When the London Government Bill was introduced, it would be quite sufficient time, when it was being discussed, to discuss the question of responsibility for the Metropolitan Police. In the meantime he did not commit himself or his Colleagues in the smallest degree to any course on that subject; but he asked his hon. Friend, on his side, to give the Government liberty of action, and not to fetter them, as the Resolution would fetter them, in carrying out a particular measure with respect to the responsibility for the Metropolitan Police until they came to deal with the question of the government of London. If the hon. Member would trust him in that respect he hoped he would not press his Amendment. As to the general question of what happened on the 8th of this month, and the inquiry that had since taken place, and his own conduct in the matter, he might, perhaps, be excused if he did not reply in detail to the suggestions of the noble Lord the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Lord Algernon Percy) in attacking some of the speeches of his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government and of his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Chamberlain). Whatever opinions his right hon. Friend might have on political questions, they had nothing whatever to do with the subject which the House was now considering, which was the conduct of those responsible for public order on the 8th of this mouth. The real question before the House was, whether he (Mr. Childers) acted properly in the course he took on the 8th; and whether he acted properly in appointing the Committee which assisted him in his investigations; and whether he acted properly in the announcement ho had made to the House of a proposed further inquiry into the administration of the police? Those were the real questions before the House. From different points of view, his conduct—he did not say his motives—in certain respects had been attacked, not in violent language, but in a very intelligent and clear manner; and it was his duty to place before the House his reasons for the course which he took, and he should submit himself to the judgment of the House in connection with them. The noble Lord who had attacked him (Lord Algernon Percy) admitted that ho only came into Office a few hours before these events took place; but he said that the course he (Mr. Childers) took was unwise in many respects, and that he was not blameless in the direction he gave to the police. He would lay before the House, with sincerity and candour, exactly what took place. When he came into Office, he took over the Home Department at 11 o'clock on the morning of the 8th of February. As soon as he came into Office, it was his duty to see the gentlemen responsible for different parts of the administration of the Home Office. One of his first acts was to request the Commissioners of Police to come to him, and to state what was the position of police questions at that amount. One question he put was whether they had made sufficient preparations for what was then going on in Trafalgar Square—for when he spoke the meeting had, to a great extent, already collected. The arrangements of the Commissioners had been completed two days before; the Chief Commissioner saw his (Mr. Childers's) Predecessor on the previous Friday, and on Saturday all details were arranged. He asked the Chief Commissioner if his arrangements were satisfactory, and if there was any way in which he could assist him? He replied that ample arrangements had been made. He again asked if there was anything left in which he could be of assistance, and was told no, everything was completed. Even then he was not satisfied, and asked the Chief Commissioner if he was aware of the peculiar character of this meeting—that it was not a meeting of one party, such as the Reform demonstration, or the Tichborne demonstration, but that two parties were engaged in it, the Fair Traders under Mr. Kenny, and the Socialists brought together by Mr. Hyndman and Mr. Burns. He asked him whether he was prepared for that? Both the Chief Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioners said that they were perfectly well aware of the nature of the meeting, and had made all necessary preparations. He asked how many men they had brought together, and they replied that altogether they had 600 or 700 men in readiness. They explained that a portion, 60 or 70, were actually in Trafalgar Square, and that 563 men were held in reserve. They assured him, therefore, that they had made all preparations. Knowing that the Chief Commissioner had been in communication with his Predecessor, knowing the great experience in matters of this kind that gentleman had, and in view of the fact that he (Mr. Childers) had himself only been in Office half-an-hour, he thought nothing would have been more foolish than for him, as Secretary of State, to interfere in anyway, even if interference were required. He had said before, and he repeated, that the relations of the Secretary of State with the Chief Commissioner were very much the relations which existed between the Secretary of State for War and the General Officer of the Army sent on an Expedition. It was the duty of the Secretary of State, in the first instance, to discuss with the General Officer the plan of the campaign. In the year 1882 it had been his duty to discuss with Lord Wolseley, with the greatest minuteness, the plan of the campaign which ended in the battle of Tel-el-Kebir on the very day Lord Wolseley, in his room, said it would take place. There was no point of detail of that campaign which he had not gone carefully through with Lord Wolseley, before the latter left England. That was the position of the Secretary of State for War in relation to the Army. Very similar was the Constitutional position of the Secretary of State with the head of the Police Force. He discussed, in the first instance, any point which the Chief Commissioner thought fit to bring before him; he asked him for further explanations; and then the responsibility lay upon those who had to carry out the orders. It was a great mistake to think that these separate functions ought to be mixed. The general idea of everything being concentrated in the hands of the Minister was considered the wise idea; on the contrary, he thought it was a very foolish idea. The responsibility of the Minister and of the executive officer ought to be quite clearly distinct. When the orders had been settled, it was for the officer to carry them out; and the Minister who interfered would be a foolish Minister, instead of a wise Minister, as some people appeared to think. Another point had been made by the hon. Member for the Abbey Division of Westminster (Mr. Burdett-Coutts). He said that, notwithstanding his recent accession to Office, there was a prevalent idea in the public mind that something dangerous might be anticipated on the day of the meeting, and he ought to have made further inquiries and taken steps to avert the danger which all the world expected. The hon. Member seemed to him (Mr. Childers) to be one of those who were wise after the event. What was the general impression on the public mind to which the hon. Member referred? He had looked at the newspapers—and they offered a tolerably clear indication of what the public mind looked forward to. On Monday morning in The Times there was not one single mention in any part of the paper of any apprehension, or even of the meeting itself. In one other paper, The Standard, there was an article on the distress, and incidentally it was mentioned that some of the distressed classes would meet in Trafalgar Square, without the smallest reference to any apprehension of what actually arose. In another newspaper there was no reference to the meeting; while in another, in an article under the head of "The Unemployed," it was said that the Chairman of the General Labourers' Union, at a meeting on the previous Saturday, stated that they had asked Sir Edmund Henderson not to send a large body of police to Trafalgar Square, because the men themselves would be able to keep order. This was the only reference in that or any other paper. He had taken the trouble to analyze what appeared in the papers published on the 8th of February, such as The Times, The Standard, and The Morning Post, and he said most distinctly there was not a scintilla of fear or apprehension expressed in any of them. He thought that, under those circumstances, he, at any rate, ought to be entirely exonerated from any blame in not taking more steps than he actually had taken when he saw the Chief Commissioner of Police and inquired from him what were the arrangements he had made, and got from him, in a conversation of some length, the details and facts as to those arrangements. The hon. Member for Westminster said that he (Mr. Childers) had abnegated his own authority and become a perfect nonentity. He had not done so. Had he fussed and fidgetted in matters of detail he would have abnegated his authority; but he did not do that; he held the sound doctrine as to the relative responsibility of the Secretary of State and the heads of the police in maintaining order in London; and he thought he had shown, from the facts he had stated, that no neglect of duty or personal abdication of authority could be charged against him. Then the hon. Gentleman, after stating that he should have had more foresight, went on to say that it was the custom not to give the police sufficient force, and implied that he ought to have given them sufficient force. Now, the force consisted of about 11,000 or 12,000 available men, and out of that number there were on the ground on that occasion between 600 and 700 men. Where was the necessity for more? Anyone who read the Report of the Committee would see that it was the disposal of the force, and not its amount, that really was in fault in that case. The hon. Member also remarked that the police were deeply incensed by what had happened on that day, and, subsequently, that they would do no good by irritating them, and he ended by saying that those unfortunate people had fallen under a baneful star. Now, he (Mr. Childers) did not know how they could have fallen under a baneful star; but he would say—and he had thought it his duty to ascertain carefully the feel- ing of the police—that there was no evidence whatever that they were deeply incensed, or that they felt goaded by irritation; but, on the contrary, the disposition of the police at the present time was admirable. He could not speak too highly of the character of that fine body of men—the Metropolitan Police. There had been times when they were popular, and also times when they were unpopular; but, as he had said, at present the disposition and efficiency of the officers and men was excellent, and could not be too highly spoken of, subject to the observation in the Report of the Committee, as to which he and his hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Ritchie) entirely concurred. He hoped, therefore, that the House, in dealing with that question and in approving or otherwise the action he had taken, would dismiss altogether from its mind the suggestion of the hon. Member for Westminster, and would rest content with the condition, mental and physical, of the Police Force at the present time. He thought he had now shown that his action on February 8 was wise, and was the only action which, coming as he did into Office while the meeting was actually going on, he could have taken. But he had also to justify what he had done since the events of the 8th and what he proposed to do. Well, his first step—and that had not been attacked—was to take efficient measures to prevent any further similar events by strengthening the Police Force itself, and by providing that military assistance should be at hand, if any were wanted; and next, he did his utmost to calm the public mind. And he told the House this—that, in spite of the newspaper story that instead of calming the public mind they took steps to irritate it, there was no foundation whatever for that assertion. They had those 11,000 or 12,000 men scattered over a vast area, and some particular policemen might possibly have said something that was alarming to a shopkeeper here or there; but nothing whatever of the kind was done by the order or direction of any superior officer. They, on the contrary, did their utmost to quiet the public mind, and by Thursday all those stories vanished into thin air, and the public were calmed and satisfied. That was his first duty, and, as he had stated before on several occasions, he had done it. His second duty was to punish those who had committed these outrages—not merely the poor wretched people who had thrown stones, or been guilty of breaking the shops and stealing, but those who were the real instigators or encouragers of the riots. The noble Lord opposite had suggested that they had allowed these "agitators," as they had been called on the other side of the House, to go at large for 10 days before they were apprehended, or brought to a Police Court; and yet the moment afterwards ho admitted that they had proceeded against them as soon as they could, because the noble Lord recommended that they should alter the law in order to make its operation more speedy. But those two charges were wholly inconsistent with each other. The Home Office had acted immediately in the matter. On Tuesday, the day following the riots, the first step they took was to collect evidence, and the moment they were told by their Legal Advisers that they could take proceedings, the proceedings were immediately instituted. He himself had been in favour of summary proceedings in the matter; but he had found it impossible to take them. Of course, his mouth was closed as to what might be the upshot of those proceedings, and it was impossible for him to say more in regard to them. Then the third step he took was to make a searching inquiry into the conduct of the police on that occasion. It had been suggested that he himself either ought to have conducted the inquiry on his own responsibility, or that he ought to have appointed some other body outside of his responsibility to conduct it, and then have acted on their Report. The reason why that was suggested was that, in that matter, ho was himself personally responsible; but was it not as clear as anything could be, from what he had stated, that with the events of February 8 he had nothing to do; and, therefore, he should have been a coward if he had shirked a searching inquiry. But it was urged that ho should have made the inquiry himself. If he had done so, what, he asked, would the same people who were now attacking him for the line lie had taken have said if, having just that day come into Office, he had undertaken to make the inquiry himself? Had he been for some months in his Office, and had had time and information on which to base an inquiry made by himself, that might, perhaps, have been a right thing to do. But what were the facts? Overwhelmed by what had fallen on him in connection with those events, he felt it his duty to associate with himself able and competent men to conduct such an investigation. Had ho selected proper men? Their names would, he thought, satisfy the House on that point. They were selected with no political bias. He had asked two Gentlemen from the other side and a noble Friend on his own side to act with him, and also Lord Wolseley. The hon. Member who had said that a gentleman who was a soldier could not pass judgment on civilians, and, therefore, that Lord Wolseley ought not to have been associated with that inquiry, little knew the mind of Lord Wolseley. For himself, he (Mr. Childers) knew no man who was at once so thoroughly fair-minded towards civilians, and so capable to inquire into a question as to the discipline of the police, as that noble and gallant Lord. Well, he thought he had justified the course he had adopted as being that which he thought the best for arriving at the bottom of that question. He had not evaded in the smallest degree his responsibility. He concurred entirely in the results of that inquiry; but the steps which he had taken in consequence had been taken on his own responsibility, and not on that of the Committee. He had always thought that the responsibility upon the Minister at the head of a great Department ought to be plenary and complete; and nothing would induce him to qualify or diminish that responsibility. He now said that he was competent, and it was his duty, as the head of the Department, himself to undertake further inquiries how they should apply to the organization and administration of the police what the Committee had discovered, and how he could, under his own responsibility, do his best to put that organization and administration into an efficient state. He had stated to the House the nature of the inquiry which he proposed to make. There was a suggestion, however, that the House could carry on that inquiry much better than he could. From that suggestion he entirely disagreed. After a Minister had himself made an inquiry and had decided on a particular course of action, if Parliament disapproved of what he had done, then was the time for Parliament to in- terfere. Not only that, but he would point out that the work which a Parliamentary inquiry might do had already been done by the Committee which had just reported. If, however, Parliament should consider further inquiry still necessary, he should submit himself to the result of it. He excluded altogether from the scope of the inquiry what might be called the political, rather than the administrative, element — namely, the origin of the riots, the persons who formed the mob, and who created the disturbance. That was a totally different question; and with respect to it he confessed that he agreed with the suggestion that it was a matter worthy of being considered. But, so far as he was personally concerned, he would not abdicate his responsibility in dealing with any Department for the administration of which he was responsible. Whatever faults he might possess, that of shirking responsibility had never been one of them; and he would always adhere to his principles in that respect, whatever his conduct might be as a Government official. There were smaller questions which had been raised, but which he thought the House would not wish him to discuss in detail. The noble Lord the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, spoke of the telegraphic arrangements, suggesting that the deficiency in this respect was due not to the police, but to the Home Office Authorities. Of course, in a matter of that kind, the Police Authorities could not take possession of the telegraph system and place telegraph instruments in their different rooms. He would admit that a great improvement might be made in that direction; but it was not really a matter of blame, either to the police or to himself, and he had already given instructions which would have the effect of carrying out the recommendations of the Committee more fully, perhaps, than was originally designed. Then, again, with reference to the admission of waggons into Hyde Park, it had been suggested that they should not have been allowed to go into the Park; but he found that permission for waggons to enter the Park had been in existence for the last two years. The Police Authorities, in allowing these waggons to enter the Park, exercised a very wise discretion. If they had been stopped on Sunday last the probability was that a large crowd would have collected at the entrance gates, and much disorder would have occurred, and that the police would have had very considerable difficulty in maintaining order. These were details, however, which he trusted he would be able, in the conduct of the inquiry which it was proposed to institute, to vigorously carry out as soon as the new Chief Commissioner had been appointed; and he thought the House might trust him, however guilty he might be of error of judgment with regard to details, that he would do his best to put the administration in this respect on a sound and effective basis. With reference to Sir Edmund Henderson, he had already said that for many years he had been a most efficient public servant; and no one regretted more than he (Mr. Childers) did the circumstances in which that gentleman had thought fit, after the Report of the Committee, to tender his resignation. In dealing with a public servant in these circumstances—and no one could have been more gentlethan he had been in doing so—he submitted himself to the House, and asked it not to adopt any Resolution which would imply that he had been remiss in the discharge of his duty.

said, he did not think it was possible to enlarge too much on the personal responsibility which attached to the Secretary of State for the Home Department in this matter, and most certainly nothing which he would venture to suggest would be at all calculated to depreciate that responsibility. The right hon. Gentleman had told the House that the responsibility of the Secretary of State was complete and entire with regard to the maintenance of the peace of the Metropolis, and had pointed out that it was the duty of the executive officers under the Secretary of State to take directions, after that official had made himself acquainted with the various circumstances of the case, to conduct the required operations. He said it was also the duty of the Secretary of State to place entire confidence in that officer. He (Mr. W. H. Smith) thought the particular feature which struck one in connection with the events of February 8 was this—that there did not seem to have been a sense of responsibility in any quarter which attached to those who had the care of the peace, the order, and the security of the Metropolis. He was not going to bring any charge against the right hon. Gentleman; no charge rested against him; but he asked if it did not strike hon. Members that it was an extraordinary occurrence that the right hon. Gentleman should have been allowed by the administrative officers of the Department to sit at the Home Office up till 6 or half-past 6 o'clock that evening, and to have been unaware of the events which were known almost in every other part of London shortly after their occurrence? It appeared to him that, both at the Home Office and at Scotland Yard, a feeling seemed to have existed that the arrangements which had been made had been adequate for all contingencies, and that it was nobody's duty to follow up the arrangements, and see that the events which were not at first foreseen should be guarded against. Great stress had been laid on the fact that the newspapers contained no indication that riots were expected. He would admit that people going about to fulfil their ordinary avocations on this Monday had no expectations that a riot would occur, that windows would be broken, men robbed, and shops plundered. There remained, however, the fact that men were gathered together on that day, under conditions which gave an opportunity, to those who chose to avail themselves of it, to combine for purposes of riot and robbery. One would have thought that, under those circumstances, surely it was someone's duty to have watched over this gathering of people, and to have made it impossible for the bad characters to commit the riots and the robberies which took place. It had been remarked that those riots were not committed by working men. He had had great experience of the Metropolis, and he would express his own conviction that the unemployed working men had no part whatever in the disturbance. The people called Social Democrats were, he believed, remarkably few in number, and he should not like to charge them with a desire to commit robbery, or to aid in the destruction of property; but there was in the Metropolis a largo number of low characters, who were called loafers by some, and pickpockets and thieves by others, who availed themselves of an opportunity of this kind to reap a rich harvest. It was also well known that a large number of persons attached themselves to a gathering of this kind, for the purpose of robbing citizens, breaking windows, and looting shops. He thought the events that had occurred, however sad they might be—and there could be not the slightest doubt they were extremely so—would be very useful in this sense, if in no other—if they pointed to the necessity of a greater sense of responsibility on the part of persons in authority concerned with their prevention, and if they enabled, in the future, the Home Secretary and the police to anticipate any disturbances which might occur. A policeman might not be able to anticipate an act of robbery or of violence; but here was an organized body of men, whose possible acts it was surely the duty of the police and of the Executive Government to anticipate and to prevent. A great deal had been said about the right of public meeting. He respected that right as much as anyone did, and he thought that it would be a grave matter indeed for a Government to interfere with the right of public meeting; but, in his opinion, there was no greater danger to the right of public meeting than the conduct of those promoters of them who failed to make proper provision against riot and disturbance. In his opinion they were bound to use all the influence they possessed to sustain the Government in maintaining order. He wished to keep clear of personal controversy, for this was too grave a matter to be made a personal, a Party, or a political question. He was exceedingly glad the right hon. Gentleman had declared his intention not to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. James Stuart), who sought to connect this question with the future government of the Metropolis. This was a question which concerned a population larger than that of Ireland, with more diversity of interests. The area included the centre of government and the Houses of Parliament, and the suggestion was that the police of the area was to be controlled by the watch committee of a Municipality which had yet to be formed. In regard to the point, no responsible statesman had ever endorsed the suggestion that the police of the Metropolis should be controlled by a municipal government, and he should be surprised to hear it made by anyone holding a responsible position in the Government. He further believed that the majority of the ratepayers of the Metropolis had no desire to have the control of their own police. ["Oh, oh!"] There might be a minority who had that wish; but he spoke as having represented Westminster for 18 years, and, having mixed largely with all classes, he maintained there was no desire on the part of the majority of the ratepayers and the inhabitants to have the control of their own police. ["Oh, oh!"] Though by no means adverse to municipal government, he held that the majority had no desire to control the police of a large Province which included part of Essex, nearly the whole of Middlesex, and parts of Surrey. He recognized the fact that, in the absence of a Municipality, Metropolitan questions had to be discussed in that House; but still the Metropolis did not occupy a very large share of the time of the House. No doubt, the municipal government of London might be improved; but he believed the majority of the inhabitants were opposed to the constitution of one body for that purpose. He wished to confirm the remark that had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, as well as by other speakers in the course of the debate, that the disposition of the police was excellent. From his knowledge of and intercourse with them, he believed that the temper, feeling, capacity, and disposition of the rank and file of the Metropolitan Police were as good as those of any other body to be found in any part of the United Kingdom. They were perfectly capable and willing to do their duty; but they must have orders. No blame attached to them for the events of Monday fortnight, because the necessary orders wore not given to them, and the necessary foresight was not shown. No doubt Sir Edmund Henderson had rendered admirable services to the public in the past; but it was impossible to shut one's eyes to the deplorable facts now brought to light. The mistake was grievous in its character; and while recognizing to the full the claims of Sir Edmund Henderson to a generous consideration, he felt that no other course could have been taken than the one that had. He would not go into the personal question, although he could have wished that the Home Secretary had not taken the Chair of the Committee. But he would not quarrel with the view taken by the right hon. Gentleman, whose acceptance of responsibility was worth much to that House. The selection of Members of the Committee must rest with him alone, as also the provision of machinery to secure the desired results. He did not wish to share that responsibility with the right hon. Gentleman in the least; and, therefore, he said to him—"Act as you like; take what steps you please." The House of Commons and the country would willingly provide a sufficient body of men to protect the interests of the Metropolis. He thought that an inquiry by a Committee ought to be made in fairness to the working men of London, in order to get a little more light as to that dangerous class of persons who were hanging upon the skirts of every movement, and who, whatever they might call themselves, whether Radicals or Social Demagogues, were ready to avail themselves of every opportunity to put their hands in other people's pockets. He considered that the police themselves ought to have a little more knowledge and a little more power than they had to enable them to deal with that class, who were a dangerous element in the centre of a great population. The class might be small in number, but they seized upon and availed themselves of any popular excitement. He hoped, therefore, inquiry would be undertaken by a tribunal of a public character, and that it would be complete and searching, and sufficient to satisfy all who were interested in the good name of the working classes of this country. He was glad to know that compensation was to be given to those who had suffered by the riot; it was only reasonable, although one-half would practically come out of the pockets of the taxpayers of the United Kingdom, and the other half would be paid by the ratepayers of the Metropolis, and he should not grudge his contribution to it. The point to be aimed at in the future was that the ratepayers, who paid largely for a force to maintain order and security, should be able to feel that they could rely upon it. Otherwise, consider what the result would be. The peaceable citizens, driven by a feeling of insecurity, would take measures to protect themselves, and no disaster could be greater than that the people of this Metropolis should come to the conclusion that any Government were unwilling to take on themselves the responsibility of the duty of keeping order and protecting property. If that were so, it would not be long before the old spirit of Englishmen would revive. If they could not induce the Government to protect them, they would take steps to protect themselves, and then would come a period of evil and mischief which would be a bad omen for the liberties and happiness of this country. What was essential was that there should be security for all who honestly pursued their avocations, and that, under proper regulations, men should still enjoy the right of public meeting.

said, that he trusted his hon. Colleague in the representation of Shoreditch (Mr. James Stuart) was satisfied with the promise given by the Home Secretary, and would not press his Resolution to a division. A desire had been manifested on all hands that an investigation should take place into the causes which led to the disturbance, because, at present, the House was not in possession of any information which would lead it to a right conclusion as to the promoters of it. Everyone knew what had happened; but what they wanted to know, and what people out-of-doors wanted to know was how it happened. When the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie) rose, it might have been expected that he would throw some light on the subject. The hon. Member had for some years enjoyed the friendship of the promoters of the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and on more than one occasion he had attended their meetings and been associated with them in their enterprizes. He hoped he did not do the hon. Member injustice when he said that he was strongly inclined to believe—and that belief was shared by many outside the House—that the hon. Member could, if he so desired, afford a considerable amount of information with regard to the doings of the gentlemen in question. He hoped, however, that an opportunity of giving that information at a future inquiry would be afforded to the hon. Gentleman. As, however, the hon. Member had not thrown any light on the question, perhaps the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) would assist him. He believed that the noble Lord, from his connection with a well-known agitator who was frequently within the precincts of that House, could, if he desired, throw a considerable amount of light on the disturbances which had taken place. He (Mr. Cremer) was not insinuating that the noble Lord had any connection with the original promoters of the meeting; but that he was connected with another agitator who, not many years ago, was parading the Metropolis with a fez on his head and a Turkish flag in his hand trying to get up an excitement among the people. Some asserted that the agitator to whom he alluded had inspired the noble Lord to found the new Tory Democracy, and that he had been the guide, counsellor, and friend of the noble Lord for some years past. But as neither the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets nor the noble Lord had afforded the House any information, perhaps the hon. Member for the City (Sir Robert Fowler) could throw a little light upon the subject. There were certain Gentlemen who, free lances themselves, had always a number of men at their beck and call, who could always be despatched to any part of the Metropolis, or any part of the United Kingdom, and who would engage to get up a meeting or to break up a meeting for a sufficient consideration. Many of the meetings promoted by the Municipal Reform League had been defeated in their operations by means of disturbances which had been traced to the sources to which he had referred. They were anxious that these people should be unmasked; that these parasites, who, for many years, had paraded themselves as the representatives of organized bodies of working men, should have their true character made known, as they were exceedingly desirous that, for the future, they should be rendered innocuous, and that could only be done by the light being let in upon them. There were agitators and agitators; he had himself been one, and so had many of his hon. Friends. But the result of the agitation of himself and his hon. Friends was that they were landed on the Benches of the House of Commons as Members of that House. But the men to whom he was referring belonged to no such agitation as that. They had no organization, but met in some public-house from time to time to concert their plans; prepared their own newspaper reports; in fact, they lived on paragraphs and subsidies. That was the character of the promoters of the Trafalgar Square meeting. All real working men organizations were public, well known, and registered under the Trades Union Act; but the men in question had no visible means of subsistence, yet they did live, and lived well, and for some time past they had been living in clover, and were ready to work for any cause. Sometimes they were advocates of Sugar Bounties, at other times they figured as riverside workmen, advocating bridges over the Thames or tunnels under it; then they were heard of as leaders of the Metropolitan Labourers' Union, advocating or opposing Cattle Diseases Bills. They had also been concerned in numbers of bye-elections; but their golden harvest was the General Election. He was glad that the Party opposite pressed for this inquiry, though some awkward results might follow. It might surprise lion. Members opposite to hear the kind of information which he and his Friends were prepared to give; and he hoped the hon. Member for Westminster would not regret challenging an inquiry, because on the Radical side of the House they had everything to gain, while he was afraid several Members on the Opposition side would find that they had a great deal to lose by it. These men went down to Birmingham to oppose the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary to the Home Office (Mr. Broadhurst), and as soon as the working men of Birmingham discovered that they resolved to return the hon. Gentleman to Parliament. These men, too, had by their opposition also secured the return of his hon. Friend the Member for West Ham. If he was not mistaken, the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington, or some of his Friends, had some kind of connection with the Social Democrats who took part in this demonstration, and could make some interesting disclosures of the methods and practices of that class of men.

The hon. Member is travelling wide from the Question. I must remind him that the subject before the House is the administration and reorganization of the Metropolitan Police.

said he bowed to the authority of the Chair. He regretted the absence of the leader of the movement for municipal reform from that House, but that gentleman had been succeeded by others who would carry the movement to a successful issue, and would cordially support the proposal for placing the police under the control of the Municipal Authorities.

said, he had listened with surprise to the speech of the hon. Member who had just sat down, and had fully anticipated that the hon. Member would be called to Order. The hon. Member forgot altogether, if he had ever read, the terms of the Amendment under the consideration of the House. He had, apparently, come down to the House full of insinuations, which he had cast wholesale against all who sat on the Conservative Benches, and as to which he could not, or did not, produce a tittle of proof. He spoke, indeed, of conclusive evidence; but his notion of conclusive evidence appeared to be simply his own statement, which the House were called upon to accept as proof. He (Sir Henry Holland) was quite ready, and so were the Members on that side of the House, to have a full inquiry into the origin and character of the meeting. They were not afraid of the discovery of any Tory plots or conspiracies such as had been denounced by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Howell), nor of any Whig plot; for that hon. Member was not content with attacking the Conservatives, but brought a ridiculous charge against the late Home Secretary (Sir William Harcourt), that he had put pressure on Sir Edmund Henderson to resign, and had relied upon the fact of a meeting going off too quietly in support of that pressure. There could be no fear of dealing with such charges as these, so vague and unsupported. As regarded this Committee, it had been no pleasure to him (Sir Henry Holland) to act upon it, but very much the reverse. He was an old friend of Sir Edmund Henderson, and highly valued that friendship; and nothing but a sense of public duty would have induced him to undertake the painful task which he had been called upon to discharge. The hon. Member for the Abbey Division of Westminster (Mr. Burdett-Coutts) said that he (Sir Henry Holland) and his Colleague the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie) had no special qualifications for the task, as he understood, because they were civilians. Then the hon. Member went on to find fault with Lord Wolseley's appointment because he was a military man. But if they were disqualified because they were civilians, and Lord Wolseley was disqualified because he was a military man, who on earth could be found with the necessary qualifications unless it was the hon. Member himself? The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets had fully explained their reasons for acting on this Committee, and their position as regarded the Home Office and the public, and he would not re-state them. All misapprehension and all questions as to the desirability of himself and his hon. Friend serving on this Committee were removed, when it was distinctly understood that the action and conduct of the Secretary of State and the Home Office were not to be inquired into by the Committee, but only the conduct of the police. For himself, he never could understand how it could have been supposed possible that an inquiry into the conduct of a high officer of State and his Department could have been entrusted to a quasi-Departmental Committee by the Secretary of State; or how an inquiry into the conduct of the police could interfere with, or shield the Secretary of State from, a public inquiry, if thought necessary. Their position was, however, made quite clear by the opening paragraph of the Report. As to the Report itself, some faults had been found with it, partly, he thought, from the misapprehension of the scope of their inquiry; some because the critics had hardly studied the Report itself. He ventured to think that the noble Lord (Lord Algernon Percy) when he said that the Report was unfair, in that it condemned the police for things which were beyond their control, had not observed the plan of the Report. The Committee began by a bare narration of the facts; they then proceeded to point out special errors of judgment displayed on the 8th; and then they pointed out the defects of the system. They did not blame the police for those defects; and indeed, to a certain extent, the defective system formed an excuse to the Police Authorities for not being able to stop the rioting. In those defects they recognized that some justification could be found for the action of the police, while recommending im- mediate attention to the defects themselves. The hon. Member for the Abbey Division of Westminster was pleased to ridicule the Committee for having suggested that Sir Edmund Henderson should have sat at the base of the Nelson Column in full uniform, with cocked hat and spurs. He (Sir Henry Holland) need hardly assure the House that there was no such recommendation, or anything like it in the Report. The paragraph was simply an outcome of the fertile imagination of the hon. Member. The Committee found fault with Mr. Superintendent Walker, who had sole control in Trafalgar Square, for not remaining in one place, where his constables could find him. The Superintendent was in plain clothes; he was hustled about in the crowd; he fell amongst thieves, and his pockets were picked. An officer who was in command on such an occasion ought to remain in a certain place where he could be found, and to have with him men to act as messengers if necessary. The Committee had not only no fault to find with private constables; but recognized that they were a very hard-working, capable, and excellent body of men. Among the superior officers there was not enough power of initiation; but that criticism did not apply to the constables. He heartily agreed with what had been said in "another place" by Lord Aberdare with reference to Sir Edmund Henderson, and to the excellent public work he had done. It would be a bad day for this country when such services as that officer had rendered were forgotten. He was nevertheless, to a certain degree, responsible for the defective system of organization. In that respect he had failed. He (Sir Henry Holland) was glad to know that the Amendment was not to be pressed; because he felt satisfied that to remove the police from the control of the Executive Government, who were responsible for peace and order, and to place them under the control of a representative Body, however excellent, would be a great mistake.

said, he would not indulge in any insinuations, but would make a plain statement with regard to the part which the Tory Party had played in connection with certain agitations. He agreed with the opinion that had been expressed that a number of people assembled in Trafalgar Square with the knowledge that a not might occur; and he was prepared to produce evidence before a Committee of Inquiry to show who were the people who brought together those who were likely to take part in the riot. He would undertake to show, if an inquiry were granted, which now seemed certain, that during the six weeks preceding the day of the meeting in Trafalgar Square largo sums of money, far exceeding any legitimate allowance for expenses incurred in convening a meeting of that kind, were supplied to Mr. S. Peters by leading Conservatives, Members of both Houses of Parliament. ["Oh, oh!"] He undertook to show that part of the money was paid by cheque; that some of the cheques were payable to bearer, and others to order, and crossed; and also to prove that the cheques reached the hands of the bankers, and to produce some of the beershop keepers at whose establishments the proceeds were spent by the sober patriots who were called on to aid. He thought it fair to add that he had communicated his intention to Mr. Peters, who denied in writing that any cheque had reached him; but he must say that the signature to this reply to his communication was the same as that which he had seen on the back of some of the cheques to which he had referred. He did not think it would be in keeping with the decorum of the debates in that House to continue this personal matter, or to weaken the effect of the charge he had made by any other words; and he, therefore, left it there.

said, he was at the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and saw there several of his constituents who were out of employment, and they were very glad to see him amongst them. [Laughter.] Well, it was the duty of a Member to look after his constituents. The first speeches which he heard were in favour of Fair Trade, and he saw nothing in them to object to. A large number of the men present were out of employment, and many of them were starving. He was told by some of them that they had had nothing to eat that day, and he sympathized with them very much. Speeches were subsequently delivered, enforcing the argument that to behave quietly would not avail, and that it was necessary to proclaim by agitation that those present were in distress. He followed the crowd through Pall Mall and into Piccadilly, where he was struck by the careful manner in which the constables protected the shops where windows had been broken. When he arrived near the Achilles Statue he heard speeches delivered by men, who addressed the mob very much after the manner attributed to the President of the Local Government Board when the right hon. Gentleman spoke at public meetings. Soon afterwards eight or ten people seized him. Some of them thrust their hands into his pockets, and others tried to tear open his overcoat; but he prevented them from getting his watch. He was, however, thrown down, and would have been molested still further had not one of the leaders of the Democrats protected him. The men who seized him did not look like starving men. They appeared, on the contrary, to be very well fed; but they had a very bad and criminal aspect. He did not, in the least degree, blame the Home Secretary for what occurred that day as regarded any imperfect arrangements on the part of the police. There was a want of organization in the whole affair; that was his opinion, speaking as an eye-witness; but he did feel that it was to be regretted that the Home Secretary was the Chairman of the Committee of Inquiry. He also thought that Lord Wolseley, as Adjutant General of the Army, ought not to have sat on a Committee which was practically inquiring into the conduct of the head of the police, which was essentially a civil force. He strongly objected to any transfer of the control of the police, and hoped that, whatever reform there might be in it, or the government of London, the control of the Metropolitan Police would be kept in the hands of the Home Office whichever Party might be in power.

said, he felt bound to congratulate the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had just spoken on the narrow escape he had experienced. He (Mr. Howard Vincent) recognized that it would not be proper for him, who had been so long intimately connected with the Police Force, and under the control of the Home Department, minutely to criticize the evidence taken by the Committee, and the Report of the Committee upon it. But he could well understand that hon. Members, who represented those whose property had suffered, and whose lives had been imperilled, should speak in indignant terms in regard to the want of protection afforded by the police on this occasion. It must, however, be borne in mind that this was really the first time, within the memory of the present generation, that anything of the kind had occurred. The right of public meeting had never been contested in this country, and very wisely so; for, no doubt, public meetings acted as a safety valve in letting off the steam of popular discontent. But he ventured to say that not one in ten of those who took part in those demonstrations had the smallest sympathy with their object. The great majority merely looked for a little idle amusement. It had always been the practice of the police not to give exaggerated or undue importance to these meetings, and not to arouse susceptibilities by displaying a large and unnecessary force. It had also been the practice to hold a considerable number of men in reserve in case their services were needed; and this precaution had, it would appear, been amply taken on this occasion. The control of crowds by the English police, and especially by the Metropolitan Police, had long been the admiration of foreign authorities. It was not for him to criticize the handling of the police on this occasion by one whose brother officer he had long been; but he might point out that Sir Edmund Henderson had for 17 years discharged the arduous duties of Chief Commissioner of Police in such a manner as to endear him to every man under his command, and to raise the Metropolitan Police Force high in public estimation. It would be exceedingly to be regretted if the outcome of this debate were to deprive the Police Authorities of that freedom of action and that unfettered responsibility which was absolutely necessary to the efficient discharge of their duty. He was free to admit that there were many matters in connection with the organization of the Metropolitan Police susceptible of remedy. He would not enter into these matters in detail; but he would venture to point out that among matters requiring early attention was the provision of proper headquarters instead of the present miserable premises in Scotland Yard; and, secondly, the constitution of a proper system of in- struction in police duties for the rank and file of the force. Speaking of that splendid force, however, as a whole, he could only remind the House of the eloquent tribute paid it by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when Home Secretary—

"That it was not surprising the police sometimes went astray, were sometimes in the wrong; but it was marvellous how seldom. Their work was generally done with a fidelity, a diligence, and a discipline which were the admiration of all who took the trouble to make themselves acquainted with it."

said, he wished, at the commencement of his remarks, to record his entire agreement in the testimony to the character of the Metropolitan Police which had been expressed by the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken and by others, as to their excellence, both mental and physical. His experience of the force had been that, on the whole, they, to a marvellous degree, fulfilled the duties with which they were intrusted; and it would be a great misfortune if, in a moment of excitement, the House and the country were to believe that the present police organization was entirely in fault, and ought to be condemned. He believed that if, on account of the deplorable incident that had lately occurred, public confidence were shaken in the force, and injustice done to any part of that great system which maintained the security of this Metropolis, it would be of incalculable mischief, and greater harm than good would result. A great many unjust things had recently been said of the police. Well, there were Railway Companies, extremely well managed, on which hundreds of trains were going night and day at express speed for many years, carrying millions of passengers in perfect security. Then a terrible accident happened—an accident due to the carelessness of someone who had never been careless before, and that was very much what had occurred with regard to the recent riot. The persons responsible for the management of the Police Force had had to deal with similar meetings for a great number of years, and they had always done so successfully, no event of this character having occurred before. Meetings had taken place under every circumstance of difficulty and danger, and the organization of the police had been found adequate. Nothing that he had heard or which he had read in regard to what occurred the other day conveyed to his mind the belief that the organization was to blame. It was the result of individual carelessness which it was difficult to explain. The police had very responsible duties to perform, and if any inquiry was held, no doubt they would have many accusers. The hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. James Stuart) spoke in severe terms of the superior officers of the Metropolitan Police. No doubt, discharged servants would bring accusations against these officers; but he could bear testimony to their high character and efficiency. Sir Edmund Henderson was a public servant who, however unfortunate he might have been on this occasion—and it was no part of his (Sir William Harcourt's) duties to pronounce judgment upon that—for a great number of years by his calmness and firmness, by his tact and by his judgment, had done his duty in that great and responsible office which he filled for the protection of the people of London. It had been said, and repeated during the debate, that the Secretary of State was too liable to be overborne in his duties by permanent officials. It was easy for persons who knew nothing of the duties of the Home Office and of the Police Authorities to say that; but the notion of the permanent officials in the Home Office having anything to do with the administration of the police was perfectly ridiculous, and anyone who had ever gone up the stairs of the Home Office would know that. Whatever relations existed between the Home Office and the police were really personal between the Secretary of State and the police. The Secretary of State was responsible for the police in this sense— and it was the very highest sense—he was responsible for them just as the Secretary of State for War was responsible for the Army; that was to say, he was responsible for appointments in the police, he was responsible for their efficiency, he was responsible for their general policy, if he might so call it, and for giving them instructions whether they should allow a meeting to take place or not, and whether they should go in this direction or in that. He was also responsible for placing at the disposal of the police an adequate force for any circumstances that might arise; and he was responsible for the police of the Metropolis to the House of Commons. But when it was contended that the Secretary of State was responsible for the details of the executive action of the police, a more dangerous or more mischievous doctrine it was impossible to propound. In so interfering he would be doing nothing but harm, and he would be doing that for which he was totally unfit. What the Secretary of State had to do was to see that there were proper men in the police, to call their attention to the principal duties they had to perform, and to place a sufficient force at their disposal; but if there were any attempt on his part to conduct their policy so as to say that constables should be in this or that street, whether in individual cases or on occasions of this character, he would be doing exactly what the Secretary of State for War would do if he were to telegraph to a General in the middle of an action to alter the disposition of his forces. Another subject had been referred to by the noble Lord opposite (Lord Algernon Percy), and he hoped he did not mean by that reference that it was inexpedient to allow these public meetings. He was quite sure that no greater mistake could be made than to prevent these meetings. They were placed in London in the midst of a population of 4,000,000. In other towns in the country meetings could be held outside the town; but did they think it was possible to say to 4,000,000 of Englishmen—"You shall have no opportunity for holding public meetings?" What they must do was to regulate these public meetings; and, according to his experience, nothing was easier than to regulate public meetings in London. In these great crowds they might depend upon it that nine out of every ten persons were on the side of order, and would assist the police in maintaining it. The tenth person might be a rough or a plunderer; but if the police were present nine out of every ten persons in the crowd would aid them; and he was perfectly certain that on the very occasion of these riots a very small body of police could have stopped the whole mischief at any point. That was one of the reasons why he had never concurred in the doctrine which he knew was held by some that the police ought not to be "shown." He thought that was an entire mistake. If it should be necessary to have the military in readiness, they should not be "shown;" but the police were a civil force. They came from the people, they belonged to the people, and were a civil force enrolled for the purpose of aiding the people in keeping order; and he had always said—Let the police be seen, let the people know that the police are there. The presence of the police on the spot prevented the very commencement of disorder, and the more they wore shown on these occasions the better, in his opinion, was it for the preservation of peace. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. W. H. Smith) had observed on the information not having been sent immediately to the Home Office. He (Sir William Harcourt) certainly thought that was a great mistake. But let it be understood why it was a mistake. The Secretary of State ought, no doubt, to be informed of everything that affected the peace of London at once. But it had been said that he ought to have directed the operations of the police. That was, he thought, a great mistake, as it was no part of his duty. If the police were overpowered, the Secretary of State would have power to appeal to military force; but, generally speaking, in his opinion, the duty of the Secretary of State was to take care that an adequate force was provided, that the head of the police was informed as to the policy he ought to pursue and the duty he ought to perform, and to advise as to the legal position and action; but after that to leave the executive action and the conduct of his policy on any particular occasion to the responsible officers of the police. Half-a-dozen mounted policemen would have been sufficient to quell the whole disturbance. A great deal had been said about telegraphic communication; but where they were dealing with matters of this kind a few men on horseback were more valuable even than telegraphic communication. Such occurrences as those on February 8 were simply accidents arising out of a piece of carelessness; but they did not affect the general reputation and organization of the police, and it would be very dangerous and mischievous to attack the general organization of the police on the ground of accidents of this character. These fears as to the existing organization of the police were produced by sensational accounts of the occurrences themselves, and by erroneous deductions, both with reference to the mob dealt with, and with reference to the Police Force which had to encounter them. He thought they ought to bring common sense to bear on this matter, and not to allow a spirit of panic to inspire them. The events of February 8 occurred like a railway accident, and just in the same way was much less likely to occur in the future. It was equally certain they had been the result not of a comedy of errors, but of a tragedy of errors, any one of which, if it could have been foreseen and prevented, would have entirely stopped the subsequent proceedings. It was a lesson of vigilance to everybody concerned, from the Home Office down to the lowest officer in the Police Force; but he was perfectly certain that to exaggerate the matter, or to approach it in any sensational spirit, was greatly to be deprecated. If the present system had not been a good one, how could the Metropolis have gone on for 20 years without the occurrence of an accident of this kind? Therefore he entreated the House of Commons not to be led away because of these events. He did not disparage their gravity or their magnitude; but, for Heaven's sake, let them look at the matter in a calm and quiet manner, and bring to bear in its discussion a spirit of cool common sense; and he hoped it would be recognized that far greater mischief would be done than any which had yet been apparent, if there was any attempt to revolutionize altogether what for so many years had worked with such advantage to the people of the Metropolis.

said, that 18 years ago, as Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, he was directed to make an inquiry into the organization of the Metropolitan Police Force; and it was a remarkable fact that in that Report, drawn up by Sir Henry Thring and himself, they put their fingers on all the weak points which had been exposed on the occasion in question. The first of these was the excessive centralization, and the want of superior responsible officers. They pointed out that any day a disaster might occur, through the want of immediate orders, which could only, under the present regulations, be issued from Scotland Yard. They also said the force was far too large to be treated as if it were a single battalion, and recommended that London should be divided into four, five, or six districts, and that each district should have a Superintendent or Commissioner, with powers similar to those of the Chief Constable of a county. Lord Aberdare, in "another place," had stated that he carried out that suggestion, by appointing four or five District Superintendents to manage different parts of the Metropolis. He (Sir James Fergusson) believed, however, that the system was never properly carried out, and that Scotland Yard, retained too much of detail in its hands and never allowed these officers sufficient discretion. He regretted very much that of late years a distinctly retrograde step had been taken. Whether the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) was responsible for it or not he did not know; but two or three of these District Superintendents had been discontinued. There had been two inquiries since.

The most recent Committee disapproved of these District Superintendents.

Very well; but it seemed to him very curious that the present Home Secretary said he was going to carry out the suggestions of the Committee, who had recommended that system at the very outset of their proposals. He (Sir James Fergusson) would put it whether it was right or wise that there should be no discretion outside Scotland Yard to deal with emergencies? The remedy for such fiascos was to take away the present excessive centralization in Scotland Yard; and he implored the Home Secretary not to give way on that point.

said, he looked upon the attacks which had been made upon the present Home Secretary as perfectly unjustifiable. If it was suggested in any way that that right hon. Gentleman was to blame for what had happened, they ought to hear from the right hon. Gentleman the late Secretary to the Home Department what information he had at the Home Office during his tenure of Office, and what steps he took before he left that important post to inform the right hon. Gentleman who was to succeed him as to what was likely to occur. They had as yet received no information from him upon the point.

said, he wished to say, at the outset, how satisfied he was at the assertion made by the Home Secretary as to the general efficiency and excellent character both of the men and officers of the Metropolitan Force. He was glad to observe that the right hon. Gentleman had made use of the words "mental and physical," and he would like to add also the word "moral" in relation to the character of the force. He also desired to bear his testimony during six years of Office to that efficiency, and he was pleased to say that when he returned to Office last year he found both officers and men in as good a condition as he had left them. He was bound also to add his testimony as to the conduct of Sir Edmund Henderson, who had paid so much attention, not simply to the organization of the police, but to the individual comforts and moral training of every member of the force. He knew the past services Sir Edmund Henderson had rendered, and the excellent work he had done in the settlement of the boundary line of Canada, in carrying out the Ashburton Treaty, and in other directions. Afterwards, when brought to this country and appointed, on the death of Sir Joshua Jebb, to the head of the Police Department, he administered for many years the duties of his Office to the satisfaction of those who were over him. As head of the Metropolitan Police Force for a period of 18 years, he had done more to promote the efficiency of the force, and for the happiness and moral training of each individual member of it, than anyone occupying a similar position had done before. Therefore, he was very glad to hope, although this unfortunate circumstance had occurred, that the present Home Secretary fully recognized those services, and that Sir Edmund Henderson would, as he hoped, profit eventually by the way in which he would be treated by the Home Office. The disaster which they all deplored was not, in his opinion, due to any great want of organization in the force. He had read the Report over with the evidence, and if he had anything to say about the Report it would be this—that it was calculated to raise, and have the effect of raising, more distrust on the part of the public as to the working of the force than was warranted by what took place. He believed that the disasters of a fortnight since were not due to a want of organization on the part of the police, but to the fact that the Chief Commissioner evidently underrated the gravity of the situation. So many meetings had passed off quietly that Sir Edmund Henderson did not take into consideration clearly the very peculiar character of the meeting, or rather of the two meetings; and seeing that there was danger of a collision the police ought to have been warned of the intensity of the danger. When he (Sir E. Assheton Cross) was at the Home Office, he always sought to impress upon the police the uncertainty of the elements comprising a large crowd. His own experience was that what they had to fear was not from those who came to hear discussion, but from those who did not come to hear, who mixed in the crowd and who might start it into another channel altogether. He thought that Sir Edmund Henderson ought to have taken greater precautions. He had been asked by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Lockwood) what part he had taken in this matter. He left the Home Office on the Friday afternoon, and he saw Sir Edmund Henderson and asked him about this meeting. He told Sir Edmund Henderson that it was one which required his very careful consideration. He reminded him of the necessity of having a very large force, and he reminded him of his own words used on a previous occasion—"It is not the meeting, but what may come out of it." He said, further, to him, using this exact expression—"Now, mind, these things, to use your own words, grow up exactly like a mushroom; they grow up so quickly that you have not time to change your plans at the moment—that you should prepare for them at the start." That was the warning which he had given to Sir Edmund Henderson on the Friday. He certainly thought Sir Edmund Henderson ought to have had better information as to the class of people who were coming up, and he regretted that he did not take the opportunity of gaining further information about what was likely to take place. Of course, if further information had been gained, proper precautions might have been taken against this new danger. He hoped he had now satisfied the hon. Member. What was the responsibility of the Secretary of State? There was no doubt he was responsible for the peace of the Metropolis, for maintaining the force in a high state of organization, so that it might be capable of dealing at any moment with any sudden emergency that might arise; but he could no more take the actual direction of the police than the Secretary for War could take charge of the Army, or the Secretary to the Admiralty charge of the Navy; but his duty was to discuss with the Chief of the Police all the dangers which were likely to arise. Of course, the communications between the Secretary of State and the Chief Commissioner would depend upon the character of the matter that had to be dealt with; but during his tenure of Office he always felt a deep feeling of responsibility on the subject of maintaining the public peace. Now the possibility of the mob going West was just one of the things which might have arisen in a discussion with the Home Secretary; and although it appeared not to have presented itself to the mind of the Chief Commissioner, it seemed almost impossible to think it had not done so. It was also a great mistake in the first instance not to show the police. It was proper not to show the military until they were required; but the police, being a civil force, ought to be shown. Then a great number of police should have been kept in reserve. In all serious cases he had felt deeply the responsibility for the peace and safety of the town, and he never was easy until he knew that the meeting was over and that the crowd had dispersed. There were several occasions which he could recall. There was one in 1875, when he had reports every half-hour during the time disturbances were going on. There was the case which arose out of the Tichborne trial, when De Morgan came down to present a Petition to the House, and he had to stop him. During all that time, he had constant messages backwards and forwards by constables and by his private secretaries to the Home Office, and to the House of Commons. There was the case only the other day of threatened disturbances in the East End, and he had reports during the whole of that meeting. That practice, besides being a precautionary one, made the police feel that the eye of the Home Secretary was upon them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said:—"What would you do if the riots were going on?" But there was a point on this day when a word from the Home Secretary to Scotland Yard might have secured reinforcements and stopped the whole thing. He hoped, however, that the House would not run away with the idea that the police wanted thorough re-organization. No doubt, they, like almost all other things, were capable of some improvement; but if, in trying to effect it, they upset the whole system they would run a great danger. They had had great meetings, dangerous meetings, during the 18 years, and the whole of them had passed away without the smallest censure; and, indeed, on more than one occasion, the police had received the thanks of that House on account of their behaviour with regard to them.

I should not have risen to say a single word on this occasion if it had not been for one or two observations which fell from the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, which observations I consider to be of an ungenerous character, and unfair and unjust towards the present Home Secretary.

Allow me to explain. I think that the noble Lord is labouring under a mistake. I never intended to do anything of the kind; and I thought that I had carefully refrained from doing so.

It certainly appeared to me that in some of the observations of the right hon. Gentleman he suggested or insinuated that these disturbances were all due to some want of care on the part of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

Perhaps my noble Friend will allow me to interrupt him. I did not understand the right hon. Gentleman to have done that.

Then I beg to apologize to the right hon. Gentleman for having misunderstood in any way what he stated. It appeared to me that in the observations of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to making inquiry during the course of the disturbances the right hon. Gentleman had thrown out some insinuation to that effect against my right hon. Friend (Mr. Childers), and had implied, that if proper precautions had been taken the disturbances might have been avoided. I can only say that, holding the position which my right hon. Friend did of Home Secretary on that occasion, it was perfectly impossible for him to have taken steps to avoid these occurrences, and any interference on his part would have been perfectly unjustifiable, having already an assurance that everything that was necessary for the maintenance of order would be done; and he would have been to blame if, under such circumstances, he had given any counter-instructions. I may say, for myself, having sat on the Committee, and having signed the Report of the Committee, that I signed it with a feeling of regret and very great reluctance, for this reason—I cannot forget that this is the first occasion, during many years, that any charge has been made against Sir Edmund Henderson, and the first occasion since the police have boon under his control that the peace and public order of the Metropolis have been disturbed. The police, on other occasions, have discharged their duties in a manner which reflects the greatest credit on themselves; and during the time the police have been under the charge of Sir Edmund Henderson they have performed their arduous and difficult duties in a most satisfactory manner. It was, therefore, with very great regret that any Member of the Committee felt himself called upon to sign a Report which might be said to reflect upon the manner in which Sir Edmund Henderson has performed the important duties reposed in him. I will only say that if in anyway I have misrepresented the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken I regret that I have done so; but I did feel that under the circumstances in which my right hon. Friend the present Home Secretary came into Office it would have been unjust, unfair, and ungenerous, if any blame were attributed to him for what occurred. It certainly has been attributed to him—I will not say by the right hon. Gentleman, but by other hon. Members—that the disturbances were due in consequence of my right hon. Friend not having taken greater precautions, and from his not having had more frequent communication with the Chief Commissioner of Police. After having very carefully listened to all the evidence which was brought before the Committee, I feel that in no sort of way whatever does any blame attach to my right hon. Friend.

There is a Motion on the Paper in my name—

"That it is desirable that more extended facilities should be given by legislation, to owners of land to improve their estates by means of moneys borrowed on Terminable Annuities from the State."

My object in placing this Motion upon the Paper was to call attention to the present condition of the landed proprietors of this country. In 1846 an Act of Parliament was brought in by Sir Robert Peel, which allowed £2,000,000 to be lent to the landowners for the improvement of the land by means of drainage. In the year 1850 there was a further grant of £2,000,000 under similar conditions to the landowners of Great Britain, and similar advances were made to the landowners of Ireland at the same periods. Leaving Ireland out of the question for the present, the total amount of the advance sanctioned by Parliament for such purposes was £4,000,000; and that sum was advanced to the lauded proprietors of Scotland and England towards enabling them to effect improvements in their land by draining and building suitable labourers' houses at 6½ per cent upon Terminable Annuities of 22 years. This amount of £4,000,000 was exhausted about the year 1870 or 1871. Now, Sir, not one sixpence of this money so advanced by the State has been lost. I have been informed by the best authority that only in two instances there were arrears, which were in consequence of accidental errors having been made in the accounts; but on each of those occasions, immediately the matter was brought before the landed proprietor who was in arrear, the amount in question was immediately sent to the Office of the Inclosure Commissioners. What I want now is to place for a moment the condition of the landed proprietors of this country before the House. On all sides there has been an outcry for further efforts on the part of the landowners for the improvements of their land. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) proposes to make it a misdemeanour for landowners not to cultivate their land. I certainly think that it is a most desirable thing that they should be placed in a position to cultivate their land. But what is the present position of landed proprietors? There are the same mortgages upon it as there were when the owners succeeded to the property. The tithes on the land are also the same; and although we hear of reductions of rent, we have never heard of one single instance in which tithes have been reduced by 10 or any other percentage; on the contrary, they remain the same as they were upon their accession to the property. In addition, there are charges upon entailed property for younger children; and last, although by no means least, there is a charge for dowers, and what remains longer, as a rule, than any other charge upon the estate, is the charge for dowers. The rent of landed property has declined from 10 to 25 per cent. I am speaking of Great Britain only. I have no wish to exaggerate, but I believe that upon some properties the rent has declined 40 per cent; and many landowners, who are not themselves responsible for the charges placed upon their estates, are called upon now to improve their property, while the taxes on the land have been increased, and the incomes of the owners have fallen. We were told over and over again during the late Election that the so-called owners of land did not own the fee-simple of their estates, but that the fee-simple is the property of the Commonwealth; and that the landlords only hold the property as long as they improve it, and act up to the old spirit of the landed proprietors in the feudal times. Then, in addition, we have heavy local taxes placed upon the land, and beyond those local taxes the Income Tax, which, although it is collected in Ireland upon two-thirds of the rent, is collected in Great Britain upon the full rent. Hon. Members will probably ask why persons engaged in commercial pursuits should not have the same advances made to them by the State to enable them to carry on their businesses as I ask to-night for the landed proprietors? We have heard over and over again that the country is in the greatest distress; and what is the use of the cheap loaf which Free Trade has given us, and the warm jacket which we can purchase cheaper than at any former period—what is the use of these advantages, if a labouring man, however anxious he is to work, cannot find employment, and has not got a penny in his pocket? We have heard to-night—and I fully agree with the principle—that the only way to meet the distress, now only too well known, which exists in large towns such as London, Manchester, Newcastle, Sunderland, Birmingham, and, including Glasgow, in Scotland, is to draw the honest labouring man back to the land. I do not speak of the men who broke windows in the West End a few days ago, because they are men who ought to write themselves down, as similar people did in India when the last Census was taken, as professional thieves; but I speak of the honest labouring men who are only too anxious to work, but who cannot find employment. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir William Harcourt) will see fit to advance another £2,000,000 in aid of the improvement of land, it would immediately have this effect—it would draw the labouring men out of the large towns into the country. The effect would be spread over the whole of Great Britain, and I know of nothing more desirable than that the working men of Great Britain should be so drawn out of the large cities, and employed all over the country upon the land. I have no doubt that I shall be met by Her Majesty's Government with the argument that Companies have been started, and are in existence, who will lend money for the improvement of the land. But hon. Members will remember that private Companies would cease to exist if they did not make a profit. And now, when the landed proprietors' incomes are so much reduced, it becomes impossible for them to go to Companies for advances for improving their estates and employing labourers. It is well known that the value of land is so much depreciated at the present time that a large proportion of the land which requires draining would not pay the interest which any private Company would be obliged to charge in order to secure a profit. What I ask now is that there should be a further sum of money ad- vanced by the State for the purpose of giving employment to the labouring men; and the only useful employment which could be spread over the country for our unemployed working men would be the construction of drainage works. I believe that if the money I ask for were advanced the country would be immediately covered with gangs of drainers, earning from 18s. to 25s. a-week. I hope that in this matter I may have the sympathy of hon. Members opposite who sit below the Gangway, because a large proportion of the men who are usually employed in those works of drainage are Irishmen; and after an experience of 25 years in the constant employment of gangs of drainers I am able to say that there never was a more industrious, orderly, sober, and persevering man than the Irish labourer. Then, again, what would be the immediate effect of giving this inducement to the landed proprietors to commence works of this nature? It would re-act, I believe, over the whole of the country. I would even make an appeal to the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands), who I regret is not in his place, and other hon. Members who watch so very closely every appeal that is made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because I believe they know as well as I do that the improvement of the land will immediately give an impetus to the expenditure of money in other profitable ways—for instance, more fencing would be undertaken, and wire would have to be purchased; and if additional employment is given to the labouring classes, houses will have to be built for their accommodation. Speaking from 25 years' experience, I know that cottage property, over and over again, has been allowed to fall into ruin, because the proprietor has not been able to see his way to put it into that state of repair which the Local Government Board consider necessary for the houses of the poor. I do not complain of the decision of the Local Government Board in this matter; but the practical result is that the houses are allowed to fall into a state of ruin, and no new cottages are built. If this advance were made by the State, there would be an immediate inducement to the landed proprietors to build fit and proper cottages, not only for their labourers, but for other persons engaged in improving the land, and in keeping up a proper state of cultivation upon the land, whether in grass or in tillage. Only yesterday we heard from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland (Mr. Trevelyan) that all over Scotland there is a great wish that every labouring man should have sufficient pasturage for a cow. In the North of England we have endeavoured to carry that out. In many instances these cows graze in common, and go home, if I may say so, each to their own domestic hearth. And what happens? The other day the Inspector of a Local Government Board found a cow residing in an apartment which was under the same roof as the owner, and that was against the rule of the Board in regard to sanitary arrangements. It, therefore, became necessary either to pull that cow-house down or to build a now cottage. The cottager was not in a position to do that, and he paid no attention to the notice; and I think the Local Government Board exercised a wise discretion in not having taken further proceedings. It is out of the question for the Local Authorities to build cottages. It was mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland (Mr. Trevelyan) last night that not only in Scotland, but in other parts of the United Kingdom, are the sanitary laws and regulations infringed. It is all very well to say that the proprietors can go to private Companies and apply for advances from them. But a proprietor who takes that step will considerably diminish his income for the rest of his life; and it must be remembered that a landed proprietor who has younger children to provide for, and, in some instances, widows also, is bound to consider these things; and the result is that, practically speaking, very little improvement, either in the cultivation of the land or in the condition of the houses of the labouring classes, is going on in any portion of Great Britain at this moment. And when I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to grant an advance from the National Exchequer, I wish it to be remembered that the State has actually made a profit by the advances which were made in 1846 and 1850. I believe that the loans have been excellently well managed by the Inclosure Commissioners. I admit that the State has not realized a large profit; but it has made a small one. The Office has been very well managed; and three-fourths of the expense, speaking in round numbers, has been met by the fees paid by the landed proprietors who got the advances. Now I hope that Her Majesty's Government will feel disposed to look into this matter, and grant the advance which I ask for. But there are one or two points in which an alteration would be required in the system under which former advances were made. In the first place, it would be necessary to lend small sums in advance by the State without waiting for any part of the work to be done in the first instance; because at present, when a proprietor receives aid from a private Company, he has to borrow from his bankers, in the first place, until the first instalment of the work is completed. There are many details in connection with the question with which I will not trouble the House. My main point is that the State should do now as it did in 1846, when it advanced £2,000,000 sterling, and as it did again in 1850, when a further advance of £2,000,000 was made to the landed proprietors of Great Britain. I will not refer to the case of Ireland, because that country has had special facilities for purchasing land and improving property granted to it only last year, when I think the sum of no less £5,000,000 was voted by Parliament for the purchase of land at the extraordinarily low rate of 4 per cent, spread over 49 years, such payment for 49 years extinguishing both principal and interest. I do not grudge the people of Ireland their good fortune in obtaining that advance, because I think it was no more than justice to Ireland for the State to make it; but I do say that we poor Saxons should receive some benefit from the State, especially when we consider that the advance, such as I suggest, would not cost the taxpayers of Great Britain anything; but, on the contrary, there would be a profit to the State from the transaction. No doubt, right hon. Members on the Treasury Bench will ask why I do not bring in a Private or a Public Bill to carry out this object, and they will point out that such a course is quite open to me. I have made careful inquiry, and, from the information I have received, I find that it would be utterly impossible for any private Member to succeed in passing a Bill of this nature through the House of Commons without the assistance of the Government of the day. At this late hour I have no wish to detain the House; but there are one or two points which I would like to mention. I am informed that the actual cost of the Inclosure Commission last year for the administration of the Commission was £23,000, and that there was received by fees a sum of £17,000. I do not think that the additional work which my proposal would entail upon the Commissioners would very materially add to the work of that Office; but it would greatly increase the amount of fees received. I daresay the Government will say that it is impossible to advance the public money for this purpose without an Act of Parliament; but in this House we are constantly asked to vote hundreds of thousands of pounds which have already been spent in war, and I do think it is not too much to ask Her Majesty's Government to allow £100,000, or £50,000, or even £20,000, to be advanced at once for this purpose, while an Act of Parliament is being brought forward, out of consideration for the starving multitudes to be found now in every city throughout Great Britain. If the Treasury were to allow advances on the old system, which did so well, and by which the State actually realized a profit, I believe it would have the effect of immediately drawing out of the towns those starving masses who are now crowding them, and who are increasing the distress of the regular population of our large cities. Not only that, but it would afford an opportunity for properly housing the labouring population, and keeping the labouring men of the country fully and well employed, an end we all desire to see accomplished. Then, again, let me turn for a moment to the allotment question. I believe there is an anxiety on both sides of the House to provide allotments for the labouring classes in some shape or other. At all events, I know a very strong feeling on this side of the House does exist in favour of allotments. But what is the use of allotting to anybody land which requires draining? It must be drained in plots of 40 or 50 acres before it can be rendered of any service. Perhaps hon. Members are not aware that in the North of England, and even in some parts of the South, there are enormous tracts of land which could be turned, by a proper system of drainage, from sheep-walks into fair cattle pastures. With these remarks I will conclude by urging that the appeal which I now make to Her Majesty's Government, and to this House, is not only reasonable, but opportune, practical, and, above all things, urgent.

In the absence of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Conybeare), I rise for the purpose of seconding the proposal of the hon. Baronet the Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire (Sir John Swinburne). Although I represent a city constituency, I have been considered conversant with the details of rural economy, and I may say that in my candidature for the St. Rollox Division of Glasgow the Land Question attracted considerable interest; and I am sure that in seconding the appeal of the hon. Baronet I shall be supported by landlords on both sides of the House. I believe that the policy which has been adopted towards Ireland may with advantage be extended to the United Kingdom. Although it may not be considered wise to advance the public money for such purposes as this, I think it would have the effect of relieving the landed proprietors from some of the difficulties of their present situation, and enable them to improve the cultivation of their estates, not only with advantage to themselves, but to the labourers whom it would be necessary to employ. The hon. Baronet has told us that in the advances which wore made in 1846 and 1850 there was not the loss of a penny to the State. I believe that was so; that they benefited the farmer as well as the landlord, and gave a large amount of employment to the labouring men of the district in which works of improvement were carried out. The security is, I think, indisputable; and the Government, in making advances, would take care that the proportion of the money was such as would be repaid. The increased product would at least help to pay the interest, and I believe that in 19 cases out of 20 in Scotland the interest was actually paid out of the increased produce of the land. That of itself is a consideration of no small moment; and, even in the interest of the unemployed, it would be a good application of some portion of the public money, because encouraging reproductive works that would not only pay the interest upon the money advanced, but otherwise be amply secured. Therefore the State would run no risk whatever; a public advantage would be effected, and employment would be given to a large body of working men, who do not know at present where to obtain employment. Under these circumstances, I think the proposal is one which should have the very earnest consideration of Her Majesty's Government, and I think it has been proved that the State would incur no risk whatever, having the security of the whole estate for advances spent on a portion. All would share in the benefit, not only landlords, tenants, and labourers, but the people of towns also, and I think that past experience is enough to justify all that the hon. Baronet has put forward. If those who think it dangerous to spend the public money in this way will only look at the past, they will see there is not the slightest risk incurred by the Government. Although the prices of agricultural produce are now greatly depreciated, I believe that they cannot go much further in that direction, because no foreign country can continuously send in its produce at lower prices than at present; and I think, whether or not the State is prepared to advance a portion of the public money in the way suggested by the hon. Baronet, we ought not to lose confidence in the future of British agriculture.

My hon. Friends who have moved and seconded the Amendment have made an appeal which demands, and which I am sure will receive, much consideration and sympathy from both sides of the House. If anything can be done in the present state of the agricultural interest to alleviate the distress from which we know that it is now so heavily suffering, I feel certain it would command the sympathy of the House and the Government. But the question is, whether the proposal of my hon. Friend (Sir John Swinburne) is really calculated to relieve that distress? It is quite true that soon after the repeal of the Corn Laws Sir Robert Peel proposed and carried, first of all, one grant of £2,000,000, and then another of £2,000,000 more, which I believe were very usefully employed in effecting improvements on land; but we know at that time the land of England was comparatively undeveloped; it was in a condition of hope and expectation; and there was a general confidence, and I think, also, a disposition to invest money in the improvement of land. I am afraid that that sentiment hardly exists now. What were the terms on which money was advanced at that time? The advances were repayable by Annuities at £6 10s. per cent. I cannot help asking myself whether the landed proprietors of Great Britain would be disposed to borrow money at £6 10s. per cent in order to invest it in improvements in land? I am afraid they would not do so at the present time. I do not think they would see their way, on such terms, to any improvements on which they are now likely to receive a return. [Mr. MCCULLOCH: Capital and interest.] No doubt it was capital and interest. There was a Sinking Fund. That is what was meant by Terminable Annuities. But that was what the landowners would have to pay for 22 years. I ask whether it is likely, if a measure of that kind were proposed, the Government would have any demand for investments of that sort. My hon. Friend behind me (Sir John Swinburne) has held out a tempting picture of a number of things that would be done—of cottages that would be built, and the many other improvements that would be carried out under his proposal. But I suppose that few persons can build a house that is suitable for a man and his family for much less than £200. [An hon. MEMBER: Yes.] Then my hon. Friend's experience is better than my own. I doubt whether a cottage can be built for a labouring man and his family for much less than that. And the interest at £6 10s. on £200 is £13 a-year. If, therefore, you only charge the interest for the cottage it is certainly a high rent. If you could, your experience must have been particularly fortunate. £5 a-year is much nearer the rent that would be charged, and that would involve a loss of £8 a-year on every cottage for 22 years. It is not, therefore, a transaction that can be engaged in, to any large extent, without seriously diminishing the landlord's income; and I doubt, therefore, whether there would be any large demand for advances at £6 10s. per cent. Indeed, I doubt very much, from what I know of the present condition of the agricultural interest, whether there would be any real demand for money on such terms for purposes of this character. I quite admit, however, that if advances were made without disadvantage to the country or to the Exchequer it would be faithfully repaid; and I believe that of the loans made in 1846 and 1850 there is only a sum of £17,000 still outstanding. That is not absolutely arrears; but it is money still due, and will be repaid. There has been no loss; but when one is asked to embark in a large loan of this description, one asks one's self what profit will accrue to the borrowers at such a rate of interest; and I confess I did not think that there would be any great demand for money for these purposes. There is no reason to suppose that the State can supply money for all purposes for the advantage of various sections of the community. Be it remembered that it is not to be taken from the local rates, but from the Consolidated Fund. People do not seem to know where the money of the Consolidated Fund comes from, but seem to have a belief that it comes from the pocket of the Chancellor of the Exchequer personally and his Colleagues, and that the Treasury have a well from which money can always be drawn. Persons who are continually asking for grants from the Consolidated Fund do not realize the fact that it comes out of the pockets of the people. If hon. Members realized that the Consolidated Fund is made up from the taxes of the people whom they represent—if that were more frequently realized, I do not think they would show such a constant desire to draw upon it. I do not say that to advance the money for the purpose which my hon. Friend has in view would be a loss upon the Exchequer; but I confess that I am not satisfied, from the information I have received, that there is any great demand on the part of the landed interest for borrowing powers such as my hon. Friend has indicated. I may say that there are many private societies such as those referred to by my hon. Friend which give any accommodation for this purpose; and I do not know that the interest asked is very much higher than that demanded by the Treasury. It may be a little higher, and I suppose it is about 7 per cent. [An hon. MEMBER: 6½ per cent.] 6½ per cent, as I have said, is exactly the amount charged by the Government; and if the demand is not excessive it appears to me that there is a supply from private societies which would meet the particular contingencies that may arise from day to day. It is always a serious matter for the Government to embark in a loan transaction of this kind; and I think my hon. Friends must show a larger case of demand and more complaint of a want of supply than that which exists at the present time.

I should be as willing as any hon. Member to afford the greatest possible facilities for making improvements at a very low cost; but the hon. Baronet (Sir John Swinburne) who moved the Resolution failed to consider and inform the House what the landed proprietors ought to pay; and therefore we are driven to the conclusion that they would have to pay 6½ per cent. Speaking from a somewhat long experience, partly of my own, and partly of those who have gone before me in the management of landed property, I know very well what difficulties were experienced when the loan of £2,000,000 sterling was permitted to be spent on land by Sir Robert Peel. Instead of having the land well drained, it was very badly drained. Although there were Government Inspectors, it was found that many of the Inspectors were very ignorant, and the work was done so badly that it had to be done over again at the expense of the private proprietors, while the interest added largely to the burdens upon property. Then, again, men were induced to do far more lavishly what might have been done much cheaper; and, instead of en- couraging economy, extravagance was the order of the day, not only in regard to draining, but in other matters as well. If a landed proprietor can induce persons to take his land who can make a living out of it, there would be no difficulty in finding 6½ per cent interest; but when the landed proprietor has to do all the improvements himself, and cannot charge one farthing for interest on the capital expended, it would be madness to go to the Government and say—"I will give you 6½ per cent if you will advance a certain sum." I would appeal to the House generally whether that is not the case at the present time? A landlord has to carry out many improvements; and if he spends thousands of pounds upon his land, what does he get in return? He may know that his land is in good order, and well cultivated, and that the tenants are doing their utmost to keep up in these bad times, and steal a march, if possible, upon them; but the struggle is nevertheless a hard one, and many, alas, are failing in their attempt to do this. Then there is another matter which must not be lost sight of. It is said that the landed proprietors are driving many of the cottagers into the towns, and the consequence is that labour is leaving the country. One reason is that a great portion of the land of the country is now so well drained and so well cultivated that there is no employment to be found such as was to be found a short time ago, not only with regard to drainers, but even with regard to the more intelligent of the labouring men. That being so, there is no doubt a disposition on the part of the farming population to gather together in the towns rather than isolate themselves in the country. It is, therefore, not worth while for the landed proprietor to spend large sums of money, ranging from £150 to £200, in building cottages, in order that he may have the satisfaction of saying—"I have got so many more cottages on my estate than I formerly had." It is a great satisfaction to know that his cottages are in good order and repair; and that is all the landed proprietor can reasonably be expected to do at the present time. I have no doubt that this question will come up again in the Bill which is proposed to be laid upon the Table before long; and it will certainly surprise me if the Local Government Board are not prepared to make advances on the part of the Government to assist those landlords who are anxious to give good cottage accommodation. For the reasons I have stated, I cannot support the Amendment; and I certainly do not suppose that the hon. Baronet who moved it will, although not coinciding with the views which I have expressed, divide the House.

I rise to answer the challenge of the hon. Member the Seconder of the Amendment (Mr. McCulloch), who assured us that there was no landlord to be found in this House who would oppose the Resolution. Now, I beg to say that I am a landlord, and I oppose it with all my heart and soul. I consider that nothing could be more disastrous than to adopt this system of outdoor relief by the way of loan for the advantage of landed proprietors. I think that the suggestion made to us to-night is one which belongs to a bygone House of Commons, in the days when Members were returned by the landlords, and when the people had no voice in controlling affairs. We all admit the evil of which complaint is made. It is quite true that the landowners are, to a great extent, a poor, miserable, and wretched class, and many of those who drive about in their carriages have not a sixpence to bless themselves with. I do not know any class of the community, taken as a class, who live a more improvident life than the average landowner. In the various professions and businesses of life something is usually done for posterity; some provision is made for widows; some self-denial is exercised, and something, however small, is put by for successors. But in the case of the landed proprietor he never saves a penny; he habitually provides for his widow and younger children by further burdening his property; he lives up to his income; and when any work is to be done on the estate he cannot find the money to do it with, and in times of depression he is sorely pressed. I cannot forgot that an Act was passed by a Tory Lord Chancellor, the late Lord Cairns, to relieve the landed proprietor in the hour of his necessity; and it is by availing himself of this Act, and not by further burdening his property, that he must seek relief. He has possession of the plate and pictures which have been 400 or 500 years in the family, and these he can dispose of. Perhaps he would not be in so unfortunate a position if he had not the electioneering bills of the last century to pay. I could quote more than one instance in which those debts have not yet been paid, but where they remain to this day as a charge on the estate. If an embarrassed landowner really wants to do his duty to the estate let him sell one-half of it, and let some self-made man with ample capital buy up the other portion, found a now family, and do his duty to the country more in accordance with the tone and feeling of the 19th century. So far as the old historic families are concerned, they would be able in that case to do their duty on that smaller scale to which they have been so justly and righteously reduced by their own want of thrift and foresight.

The remarks which have fallen from the hon. and gallant Member (Captain Verney) who has just sat down, combined with those which fell from the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir William Harcourt), induce me to ask the House to allow me to offer one or two remarks which possibly did not occur to those hon. Members before they addressed the House. The last speaker, I have every reason to believe, is a great friend of the agricultural interest. He was returned to Parliament by a portion of a very important county, and he came into Parliament as one whose constituents were fully assured that he would confer, if he could, great benefits upon the agricultural interest as a whole. Now, Sir, I see sitting opposite to me the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings), who is also a friend of the agricultural interest as a whole, and who wishes to restore the prosperity of the land in England. I wish, therefore, to draw the attention of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) to, and, indeed, I will invite him, if possible, to make some remarks on this subject as it now presents itself to the House of Commons. It is proposed to give to landlords facilities for the development of their land by loans. How did the hon. Member who has just sat down describe it? He said it was a gigantic project of outdoor relief. Yet the hon. Member who said that supported the hon. Member for Ipswich on the Amendment to the Address which destroyed the late Government, that Amendment being nothing more nor less than a gigantic proposal of outdoor relief by way of loans to a class. I am not finding fault with the hon. Member for Ipswich, but I am finding fault with the inconsistency of the hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Captain Verney), who poses as a great friend of the landed interest, and who voted with the hon. Member for Ipswich. The hon. and gallant Member described the landlords as very poor, miserable, and impoverished persons. [Laughter.] The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Mundella) laughs. That was precisely the description which was given of the agricultural labourer by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings). [Mr. JESSE COLLINGS: No.] I knew that I should carry the hon. Member with me. But observe the inconsistency of the hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham. He supports the hon. Member for Ipswich in advancing State loans at a very low rate of interest—3 or 3½ per cent, I believe—to this very poor, miserable, and impoverished class of agricultural labourers; but he utterly declines—and, indeed, denounces as flagitious—the proposal to grant loans at a low rate of interest to an equally poor, miserable, and impoverished class. What further marvellous analogy did the hon. and gallant Member draw between the two classes, and on behalf of the Party whose interests he came into Parliament to serve? He said that the landlords lead improvident lives, and that is exactly what was said of the labourer in the argument of the hon. Member for Ipswich. He has always said that the circumstances of the agricultural labourer's life are so indifferent and so unsatisfactory that they have no stimulus to thrift. Now, why is it more desirable that facilities should be given by the constituted authorities to assist the one class, and that they should be refused to the other, when it is said that each has equally spent the money which ought to have made him comfortable in his old age? According to the hon. Member, exactly the same thing applies to the landlord as to the agricultural labourer. Then what is the meaning of the Resolution of the hon. Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire (Sir John. Swinburne), which says—

"That it is desirable that more extended facilities should be given by legislation to owners of land to improve their estates by means of moneys borrowed on Terminable Annuities from the State."

Why is it more desirable that more extended facilities should be given "by legislation to owners of land to improve their estates by means of money borrowed from the State on Terminable Annuities?" Why should the owner of a large amount of land have less facilities than the owner of a small amount? The hon. Baronet who moved the Amendment is an authority on the Land Question; but will he, or will any intelligent man explain to the House why a person holding 100 acres of land should have less extended facilities afforded to him by way of loans on Terminable Annuities for the improvement of his estate than a person holding only three acres? I invite the hon. Member for Ipswich to explain why extensive facilities for borrowing money should be given to the person who owns three acres, and not to the person who owns 100 acres. I ask the House to observe the policy of the great Liberal Party this evening on the Land Question in England, on which we are led to believe, from an authorized person, the Government are prepared to submit to Parliament a distinct and intelligible policy. We have the hon. Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire getting up and proposing that extensive facilities should be given by legislation to the owners of land to improve their estates. That has been denounced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I never heard a more contemptuous way of treating the proposal of the hon. Member for Ipswich. Why does the Chancellor of the Exchequer denounce the present proposal, and why did he support the proposal of the hon. Member for Ipswich that owners of land on a small scale should have extensive facilities?

I said the landowners did not want it.

Oh! The right hon. Gentleman has made a tremendous assumption, and one which has been altogether set aside by recent land legislation. It is stated that the State can only advance money to these poor, miserable, and wretched persons who have led such an improvi- dent life. Why at 6½ per cent? Is there any precedent for that?

That is the sum at which Sir Robert Peel advanced money.

Yes; but we are not living in the days of Sir Robert Peel. We have lent money to Irish landlords in exceptional circumstances, and, I think, at 1 per cent, for the purpose of primarily giving employment. [Cries of "No!"] That was the ostensible purpose. Whether it was carried out or not I will not say; but the ostensible purpose of Parliament in advancing loans to Irish landlords at 1 per cent was to meet exceptional distress and to give employment to persons out of work.

I do not know whether I have made my proposal thoroughly understood. The first object of my Motion is that I think the lending of the money to landed proprietors is not so much desirable as the giving of immediate occupation to a vast mass of people who cannot get employment.

Of course; I entirely concur with the hon. Member, and I am arguing in his sense against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That was exactly the principle which the House of Commons adopted in 1880 when it advanced money to the Irish landlords at 1 per cent; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the purpose of demolishing the case of one of his supporters—the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings)—assumes that by no possibility could the State advance money to the English landlord for the purpose of improving the land and giving employment at a less rate of interest than 6½ per cent.

That includes the repayment of capital.

Of course, the 1 per cent included the repayment of capital. [Mr. BIGGAR: No.] Many hon. Members below the Gangway appear to be acquainted with the circumstances of the case; but my belief is that I am correct in that statement. ["No!"] At any rate, I am correct in this—that the rate of interest was 1 per cent, and the repayment of capital was so low that it certainly did not reach 3 per cent. I wish to know, therefore, why money is to be advanced to Irish landlords at that very low rate of interest, while money is refused to English landlords—that poor, miserable, impoverished class, who have been leading improvident lives, at less than 6½ per cent? I hope the hon. Member for Ipswich will explain to the House his view on the Land Question on a more extensive scale than he has hitherto done. Why, I ask, is money to be refused to the English landlord at a less rate than 6½ per cent, and to be granted to another class, equally poor, miserable, and impoverished, at a rate of interest less than 3 per cent? When the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his speech, was he aware that the hon. Member for Ipswich had introduced a Bill to facilitate the creation of allotments and small holdings of land which has upon its back the names of three Members of the present Government? Surely that may be regarded as, at any rate, an approximate Government measure.

It was introduced before the present Government came into Office.

It was certainly an attempt on the part of the hon. Member for Ipswich and his Friends to put, in the form of a Bill, the Amendment by which he turned out the late Government, and the Amendment which the present Chancellor of the Exchequer supported. At any rate, the right hon. Gentleman was content to take advantage of the hon. Member's proposition. I would, in this matter, ask the House to endeavour to extract from Her Majesty's Government a serious opinion on the subject raised by the hon. Member for Ipswich. Her Majesty's Government upset the late Administration on the question of the land as connected with the agricultural population. [An hon. MEMBER: Not Ireland?] I prefer to take the facts as I find them. The view just expressed from the other side of the House may probably occasion some awkward reflection in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland now sitting opposite to me (Mr. John Morley). As I have said, the late Government were, to my mind, upset on the question of the land, and on the question of advancing the money of the State for the purpose of benefiting a particular class. But I find, shortly after the defeat of the late Government, an earnest sup- porter of the Liberal Party fulfilling the promise of bringing forward a question connected with the land, and advocating State loans at an easy rate of interest for improving the cultivation of the land, while the hon. Member for Ipswich advocated loans for another class of the agricultural population. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the name of the Government, absolutely refuses to have anything whatever to do with the advancing of a State loan, except at a ruinous rate, for that particular class of the agricultural population which the Liberal Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire has taken under his protection. And yet we are told that the Liberal Party are anxious to re-invigorate and restore prosperity to the agricultural population. I cannot imagine a more melancholy divergence of opinion ever exhibited by a Government before upon a subject which is probably one of the largest which can possibly come before the House of Commons. I would appeal, therefore, to the hon. Member for Ipswich, whom I see sitting there on the Bench opposite in so very pensive an attitude, to seize the opportunity for enlightening the House with his views on the question which has been raised by the hon. Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire. I have a good reason for appealing to the hon. Member for Ipswich on this occasion, because both with regard to the question which arose in the last Parliament as to medical relief in connection with enfranchisement and on the subject of allotments for the agricultural labourer the hon. Member has undoubtedly led the Liberal Party. And he has been supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister in the lead which he gave to the Liberal Party. It would be cruel now, when no Party interest can possibly be involved, and when the House is anxious to arrive at a practical conclusion, if the hon. Member for Ipswich, in the face of such disunion, is to leave the House to-night without any guidance.

The House will be glad to congratulate the noble Lord (Lord Randolph Churchill) on the recovery of his old tone. For myself, I felt nothing but the purest pity for him when he was sitting on the Treasury Bench, because then he was only the shadow of himself; and really his ap- pearance, and the way in which he seemed to be overweighted with a sense of responsibility, rendered his appearance distressing to the last degree. The noble Lord has referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) sitting pensively upon the Treasury Bench; but I must say that the tinge of melancholy which overshadowed the countenance of the noble Lord when he was called upon to assume an attitude of responsibility certainly did not sit happily upon him. The noble Lord has twitted the Liberal Party with want of cohesion, and the Government with want of unanimity; but he cannot have listened to the speech made by one of his own supporters, who, speaking immediately above him, doubted the wisdom and advantage of these loans, and expressed his belief that the landlords would not be willing to ask for or accept them. Certainly, then, the disunion on this side of the House is fully matched by the disunion on the other. The noble Lord charges the Chancellor of the Exchequer with ignorance of the terms on which these loans have been granted; but the noble Lord has himself shown that he knows nothing about these loans at all. He referred to the loan made to the Irish landlords. But that was done by a Conservative Administration. It is true the rate of interest, after the Sinking Fund was provided for, was not more than 1 per cent. But let me draw attention to the fact that when the subject of that loan and its profligacy were brought under consideration there was not one of the Irish Members who were identified with the tenant's interest who did not look upon the loan as of no advantage whatever to the Irish tenant. I regard the appeal now made by the hon. Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire as the last cry of a decayed and expiring interest in the country. The noble Lord (Lord Randolph Churchill) endeavoured to strengthen the case of the hon. Baronet by attempting to draw an analogy between it and that of the hon. Member for Ipswich. It is quite true that the case of the agricultural labourer and of the landlord are analogous in one respect—that both are in a distressed condition; but the noble Lord forgot to establish this distinction—that while the landlords are the drones on the land, the agricultural labourer is miserable, wretched, and impoverished, as the noble Lord described him, because every obstacle has been thrown in his way. I regret that we have these two melancholy extremes of the agricultural interest so prominently before us. Their position is not only before the House, but it is realized by the country, from the dire necessities of the case. What has had such evil effect on agriculture has been the mischievous Land Laws, which have placed such tyrannical power in the hands of an idle class, and have led to widespread impoverishment and misery to other classes. I have a great deal of sympathy with the landlord class of this country, in the same way as I suppose some sympathy was felt for the slave-holding class in the evil days when slavery was recognized in this country. Both have been the victims of an evil and mischievous system. But, Mr. Speaker, there is only one remedy for the difficulties of that class, and it was commented upon by the hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Captain Verney). If they are only the nominal owners of the land; if they have not a farthing left; if they cannot relieve themselves from their embarrassments; if selling one-half of their estates will not enable them to free themselves from the embarrassments of the other half, let them do what better people of every industry in the land have been compelled to do from all ages. Why, Sir, nothing is more common than to find men who have struggled against fate obliged to succumb; and who, after offering what they have to their creditors, have gone down to the bottom of the social ladder. I should be sorry that the landlord interest should be obliged to submit to such an ordeal; but why should Parliament be asked to make every sack stand on end? If Parliament has given its almost exclusive concern to the landlord class for the last five centuries, is it too much to give now a very plain intimation to all interested that the future of this Parliament will be to concern itself, not with the relief of the landlord class, but in order to do something on behalf of this sickly interest of agriculture? I can imagine the agricultural interest thriving, although the landlord class may decay; but I cannot understand that the agriculturist should thrive if we are to go out of our way to sustain an idle class. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir William Harcourt) has pointed out to us that if the landlords can afford to pay 6½ per cent for loans which are repayable in 22 years, there are societies and means, besides going to the Treasury, through which these loans may be obtained. The Chancellor of the Exchequer doubted, as he might well doubt, the words of the noble Lord opposite (Lord Randolph Churchill), and said that in the case of the majority of landlords they were very unwilling to lay out money borrowed at this extravagant rate on their estates. But if they are willing, let them proceed as all in this country in need of money are obliged to do—let them go to the lenders. Let it be understood that the State has no money to lend, and that if it had it must get money out of the taxpayers' purse for the purpose, which would be better employed otherwise. I say that we, who are called upon to be the guardians of the public purse, ought to resist all applications of this kind by a class which has hitherto been the most powerful in the State, and that if we are to set aside the rules of economy it ought to be in the interest of those who have been worsted by what Parliament has done in order to give them a better start in the struggle for an improvement of their condition.

Sir, there is one advantage in the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) having come to the rescue of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the present occasion, because we have had from the noble Lord a very distinct avowal that the late Government were turned out of Office on the question of land, and not, as it is sometimes said, on the Irish Question. I am very glad that we have extracted from the noble Lord that very plain statement. The fact is, however, that the Party to which the noble Lord belongs has got from one side of the House to the other. When the noble Lord spoke of the risible attitude of Her Majesty's Government, I could not help thinking that there was a very risible attitude on the part of the late Government—that is to say, they came into power on a promise made to a Party whom, when they got into power, they rewarded with a promise of coercion. That is a risible attitude; and in connection with it no one has assumed a more risible one than the noble Lord himself. The noble Lord was good enough to remind the House of the loans to landlords in Ireland, under the late Government, in 1879; allow me to remind the noble Lord that this is one of the instances in which the landed interest has overriden the country. We have had loans to the Irish tenants and loans to the Irish landlords—loans at the expense of the taxpayer. But I am glad that this state of things has come to an end. The present Parliament does not mean that this Government should continue in that course. There is a desire now to do justice to the taxpayer, and not to prop up the landlords at their expense, which latter class will have in future to conduct their business so as to produce the best result out of the land, or they will have to give way to better men. It is the interest of the country that we should have the best men on the land; and I am of opinion that there cannot be a stronger reason for reform than that three-fifths of the food required in this country comes from abroad, and not out of the land in which we live; and the only proposal we have made to us by the landlords is that we should lend them more of the taxpayer's money at a rate which the taxpayer will lose by. Sir, I do hope that the result of what has taken place will be that the door will be shut for ever on the part of the taxpayer against the rapacity of the landlord.

At this hour of the night I will do no more than move the second reading of this Bill. Its object is to carry out the recommendations of the Select Committee of the House which reported in 1874, which recommendations have been endorsed by the Crofters' Commission to the effect that sporting lands and deer forests in the occupation of persons should be rated in the same way as land in the occupation of ordinary tenants. The measure has the sanction of the principal Officers of Her Majesty's Government, and I hope it will be read a second time.

On the part of the Government I assent to the second reading of this Bill. It seems quite right in principle, although no doubt there will be certain questions to be adjusted in Committee in order to make it clear.

I wish to say that I concur with the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate. The measure is founded on a just view of the propriety of the Valuation Roll setting forth one of the qualities of values of land in Scotland, and that is its capacity for sporting purposes. The mode in which the entry should be made in the Valuation Roll is a matter of detail, and I have no doubt that the Lord Advocate will give such guidance and advice as will put the matter in the best possible shape. I desire to say for myself that it is wholly right that now, when the sporting value of land is a very material element in the actual value, as a matter of commerce, of land in Scotland, that that should appear in a question of rating.

I must express my strong approval of the measure.