said, he had to move, as an Amendment,

"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire whether it is desirable to take measures to bring the action of the Charity Commission more directly under the control of Parliament, and to give it more effectual means of dealing with the business which will come before it."

The Charity Commission, the hon. Gentleman pointed out, consisted of two parts—one constituted 41 years ago for dealing with charitable trusts, and the other constituted 25 years ago for dealing with endowed schools. The major department, as he might term it, for dealing with charitable trusts had its origin in a very long continued and exhaustive inquiry by a Royal Commission, which sat from the years 1818 to 1837. Then in 1835 a Select Committee was appointed by the House of Commons, it being composed of its most experienced Members, and including Sir Robert Reel and Lord John Russell. That Committee drew up a very interesting and valuable Report, which formed the basis of a Bill that was not passed till 1853. By that Act the Commission was constituted for dealing with charitable trusts. The Act was amended in 1855 and amplified in 1860. The Act of 1853 fell far short of the recommendations of the powerful Select Committee of 1835. It, however, gave considerable powers of investigation; it enabled the Commissioners to apply to the Court of Chancery for orders with respect to charities; and in case these proceedings were insufficient, it empowered the Commissioners to introduce new schemes into Parliament, which schemes had to go through all the stages of Bills. Application to the Court of Chancery was found to be a cumbrous and costly proceeding; and the passing of schemes through Parliament fell through and became abortive. A Select Committee of the House in 1884 again examined into the matter, and in their Report drew special attention to the fact that the Charity Commission was not represented in Parliament, that there was no Minister responsible for its schemes, and that no Members were interested in conducting them through the various stages. This was the reason why the system became abortive. By the Amending Acts of 1855 and 1860 some defects were remedied; but the remedies applied by the Act of 1855 did not nearly approach the recommendations of the great Committee of 1835. An Amendment introduced into the Act of 1860 had a more vital effect, by exempting charities of a greater annual value than £50 from the prescribed procedure, and by that Amendment the Act was shorn of much vitality and force. The Charitable Trusts Department was thus founded upon three Acts of Parliament, the latest of which was passed 33 years ago; and that fact alone was sufficient to show that occasion must have arisen for some change in the matter of procedure. He had been very much, struck by the magnitude of the interests affected. It was difficult to get at accurate figures, but a voluminous and careful Digest, which occupied many years in preparation, was laid before Parliament in 1876. It showed that the cases known to the Charity Commission at that time numbered 36,000, that the trustees connected with them held 524,000 acres of land, and that the income administered amounted to £2,200,000. Since that time a great many additional trusts had been discovered. Of the total number of trusts no fewer than 4,805, with an annual income of £227,000, had been founded since 1837. He now had to deal with the Endowed Schools Department of the Commission which was created in 1869 by an Act of Parliament. It was admittedly more or less of an experiment, and the duration of the Act was limited to four years. In 1873 there was another Committee, into whose inquiry more or less acute political and even religious controversy entered. The result was that in 1874 an Act was passed which put an end to the Endowed Schools Commission as constituted, and transferred all its powers and duties to the Charity Commission, to which two members were added. The Act expired in 1879, and he believed he was correct in stating that since that time the Commission had been kept alive by the Expiring Laws Continuance Act. Such briefly, and without minute details, were the origin and objects and powers of the Charity Commission. As to its constitution, it was sufficient to point out that there was a Chief Commissioner, with second and third Commissioners on the charitable trusts side, and 10 Assistant Commissioners (five of whom appeared on the Estimates, however, as temporary Assistant Commissioners); and on the endowed schools side there were two Commissioners and seven Assistant Commissioners. Thus the whole staff of the Commission consisted of one Chief Commissioner, four Commissioners, a Secretary, and 17 Assistant Commissioners. He left out of sight the position of Parliamentary Commissioner, which had been filled by the hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench (Mr. J. W. Lowther), and also by the hon. Member for Merionethshire (Mr. T. Ellis), but at the present moment it was not filled by anyone. The expenditure of the Commission was £15,000 in 1854; £27,565 in 1874; and the Estimate this year was £40,380. He thought he would carry with him the assent of the House when he said it was eminently desirable that there should be occasional investigation into the working of these extra-Parliamentary bodies; and even the Commissioners would assent to this, because their Reports were strewn with suggestions as to the modifications of their powers, which could hardly be carried out in legislation without being first embodied in the Report of a Select Committee. There were ample precedents for this Motion. In 1873 they had an inquiry by a Committee into the operation of the Endowed Schools Act; they had similar inquiries in 1884 and 1885 into the working of the Charitable Trusts Department, and again in 1886 and 1887 into the endowed schools work. Some very valuable recommendations were made by these Committees. Eight or ten years having gone by he thought his-proposal one which would commend itself to the House. And he believed it would be felt by many Members that this was a particularly opportune moment for his Motion. The Local Government Act of last Session, which would ever be associated with the name of the right hon. Gentleman the present Secretary of State for India, who displayed so much tact and statesmanship in conducting it through the House, cast new and onerous, duties on the Charity Commissioners. His Motion was divided into two parts. But the first and, he was free to confess, the vital part—that portion relating to the new duties he had just touched upon— was as to whether it was desirable to take measures to bring the action of the Charity Commissioners more directly under the control of Parliament. He thought it would be agreed that the present position of things was inconvenient. The Government were not responsible for the Charity Commissioners. They had a Parliamentary Charity Commissioner who sat at the Board, and was therefore a connecting link, but he had no controlling or dominant voice in the work of the Commission, and really Parliament had no control over the Commissioners themselves. They might one day have the reductio ad absurdum of the system in seeing the Government compelled to support the grant of money in the Estimates for a policy of which they did not approve. The Committee of 1884 suggested the appointment of a Sessional Committee to deal with schemes just as the Commons Committee now dealt with enclosure proposals. The recommendations of the Committee of 1886Z–7 were to the effect that the responsibility of the Commission to Parliament should be clearly defined and made complete. It was in the hope that that might be the outcome of the proposed Committee that he brought forward this Motion. Finally, a word as to the spirit in which he made his proposal. He indulged in no carping criticism as to the labours of the Charity Commission. They had in the Commission a great engine for good. They had there men of high character and great ability, who were doing their duty to the State. To the Chief Commissioner and the indefatigable Secretary he was much indebted for their unvarying courtesy. But no human institution was perfect; and he had no doubt the Commission in its working might be improved by a healthy examination by it carefully constituted Select Committee. When one went into the rooms of the Commission at Whitehall he found them rather stuffy: they smelt rather of the schools; but if the windows were thrown open a little wider, and the healthy breezes of public opinion admitted, they would get more business-like common sense in its proceedings. It was in no spirit of hostility or carping criticism that he brought forward his Motion, but he earnestly and respectfully commended his Motion with the belief that its acceptance might strengthen and develop the powers for good of the Charity Commission.

said, he proposed to follow the example of the hon. Member for Rushcliffe in casting no aspersions on the conduct or policy of the Charity Commission, and he did not think it would be necessary for him to detain the House at any great length. The Motion was one which he thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer might accept without demur. He might remind the House that when a Select Committee was appointed some years ago the whole question of the charities was in a state of chaos. There had been a very long investigation, and many important facts had been brought to light, but there had been no well-defined policy; indeed, he ventured to say there was still no such policy in regard to the poorer charitable institutions. But since then circumstances had vastly changed. The changes which had been continually taking place and the circumstances of the people rendered it necessary to deal with the charities which had been left, and which might be given in the future, in a somewhat broader spirit than had been exhibited hitherto. Indeed, Parliament had found it necessary to apply many charitable bequests to purposes differing from those for which they were originally left; although, of course, the purposes were kept as nearly analogous as possible. He believed that the Commissioners themselves felt that they required larger powers and greater freedom in dealing with these charities, for at present they were constantly bound and hampered by existing provisions which were really out of date. It was with a view of enlarging and defining their powers that this investigation was now asked for. he hoped that hon. Members would agree with him that the proper time for making that investigation had come, and for having a Parliamentary Commissioner in the House in order to give Members a better means of dealing with the subject. At present the position was peculiar, as the Government had to defend acts and expenditure for which they were not responsible. They ought to have in the House a Representative able to answer all questions and to indicate the policy of the Commission. The position of the Commissioner would not be actually on a par with those of the other Charity Commissioners. He hoped that such an appointment would be made, for it seemed to him that if such a Commissioner were appointed he would have a very practical position in the House, and would be found of great service and assistance in dealing with the various questions as they came up. The Act of last Session proposed that there should be some Representative of the Charity Commissioners appointed with a seat in that House. He trusted that this part of the subject needed no further arguments on his part to induce hon. Members to assent to a Select Committee being shortly appointed. As to the second part of the Motion—namely, the desirability of bringing the action of the Charity Commissioners more directly under the control of Parliament—such a course was unquestionably now necessary in consequence of the growing need of the country. What was essential was that they should have the charities honestly, faithfully, and well administered, with due regard to the intentions of the testator, and ensuring that the class intended by him to be benefited should reap the benefit. He could not suggest a better way of securing that than by having a careful investigation made in the first instance of those charities which seemed specially to require to be under the direct control of Parliament. He was sure that if a Committee were appointed they would deal with the question faithfully and well. At present he did not think it could be said that many of the charities were properly and satisfactorily administered, or that they were administered with a due regard to the provisions under which they were specially bequeathed. He did not think that a lengthy investigation by the Committee would be necessary, looking at the facts that they would have before them; but he did think that if a Select Committee were appointed, it could do much to further the object in view, and if it were not too hampered by the terms of Reference the result of their investigations would be of the greatest value, and some useful legislation would be the result.

said, nobody would complain of the length of time occupied by the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution; on the contrary, any criticism made would be on the ground that their speeches had treated the matter too superficially, and had glossed over altogether the really important points where difficulties might be expected. The hon. Member for Rushcliffe gave a very rapid historical survey of the causes which had led to the appointment of the Charity Commission, but he made no suggestions for improving the present method of administration; he did not deal with the causes which were said to necessitate the present stops being taken, nor did he make a suggestion as to the way in which the Charity Commissioners were to be in fact brought under the more direct control of Parliament in the future. He was very anxious to be informed on these two points; but, to his regret, as soon as the hon. Member got to the crux of the question, he looked at it steadily in the face and then quickly passed on to some other unimportant detail. A good deal of the speech of the hon. Member was taken up in considering the question of how far the Commission could be brought more directly under the control of Parliament. That was a separate question.

The words of my Motion are—

"To give it more effectual means of dealing with the business which will come before it."

said, be would deal with that presently. But the main point before the House was the proposal that the Charity Commissioners should be represented by a Minister in the House—a Minister to be called, he supposed, the Charities Minister, or the Minister of the Interior. He thought the House might have fairly looked to the hon. Member himself for some light and leading in the matter. he had performed a prominent and useful part on one of the Committees in connection with the matter, but he had now given them no indication of his views. The House might fairly ask why a Select Committee was now thought to be necessary at all. They had a great mass of evidence on the subject of charities already to hand, and no new subject for inquiry had been mentioned. Those who wanted information had only to turn to the Blue Books for the past few years, and to the Annual Reports of the Commissioners themselves. The question had also often engaged the attention of the House, and several Bills had been introduced, some of which had passed the Second Reading, and therefore most hon. Members were familiar with the subject. He ventured to suggest that there was ample material to work upon already to hand, and that the appointment of a Select Committee was unnecessary. If the charities were so badly managed now by the Charity Commissioners at Whitehall, he failed to see how the fact that they were to have a Ministerial Representative in the House would in any way secure the better administration of the charity trusts. His hon. Friend had pointed out numerous cases in which Special Committees had been instituted with reference to particular charities, but he seemed to have forgotten altogether the fact that nearly the whole of one Session in 1883 was given up by a Committee to the subject, as was also the Session in the following year.

The hon. Gentleman is not quoting my words.

said, he thought he was fairly quoting the argument of the hon. Member, which was that the numerous inquiries which had taken place formed a precedent for a further inquiry. He would go further, and state that a great part of the Session of 1883 was taken up by an inquiry into the working of the Endowed Schools Act, in the course of which the action of the Charity Commission was thoroughly inquired into. The whole of the Session of 1884 was taken up by a Select Committee which was appointed to inquire into the working of the Charitable Trusts Act as worked by the Charity Commission. The whole of 1886 was taken up by the Select Committee that inquired into the working of the Endowed Schools Act as administered by the Charity Commission, and a considerable portion of the Session of 1887 was similarly taken up, and then, after the lapse of only seven years, the hon. Member came and said now was the time to have a thorough and a searching inquiry into the whole working of the Charity Commission. It seemed to him that they did not let the plant live, because they were always pulling it up to see how it was getting on. He regarded it as a most unnecessary proceeding to inquire into the whole working of the Charity Commission, because, as the hon. Member pointed out, the latter part of his Instruction to the Committee would raise the whole of that question. The hon. Member must know, from having served on the Commission, what very delicate subjects were touched upon, and what considerable friction frequently arose; and when friction arose, it meant a great expenditure of time in investigating and getting to the bottom of the matter, so that it was not very likely a Committee with such a wide Instruction as this would be able to conclude their investigations this Session, beginning at so late a period as it would be before this Committee was appointed. But, in addition to that, the hon. Member also informed them that the very point which he was now anxious to refer to a Select Committee had so recently been inquired into as last Autumn. The hon. Member informed the House that a Departmental Inquiry had been ordered and held by the Treasury, and he did not think he was committing any breach of confidence when he said that amongst others, he (Mr. Lowther) himself was summoned by Sir Robert Hamilton, the Chairman of that Committee, to give evidence before them, and he detailed his evidence before that Committee. The Report of such Committee, he presumed, was now in the hands of somebody, probably the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had not received a copy of the Report, and, so far as he knew, it had never been made public; but the Report was in the office, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer or (he Vice President of the Council would lay that Report upon the Table of the House, at all events the House would be in a better position to judge how far (his very question, which the hon. Member now desired to go into, had been considered, and what were the views of Sir Robert Hamilton and the other very capable gentlemen who acted with him on that Committee in this particular. So much for past investigations. But the hon. Member said that the present was a very suitable time to inquire into the whole working of the Charity Commission; that the Local Government Act would come into force in November, and that it was desirable, if it was to do any good, that the new Minister for Charities and the whole paraphernalia which was to be set up, should be established and in working order before that Act was in force. Was that a reasonable proposal to make? Was it possible, with all the work the House had before it, and so short a time in which to transact it, that so thorny and difficult a subject could be adequately dealt with before that period? The hon. Member said it was a good time to inquire into the working of the Charity Commission. Of course, if they were making such inquiry it would necessitate the constant attendance of at least two of the Commissioners and probably of the Secretary. Already the work of the Charity Commission was considerably increasing in consequence of the Parish Councils Bill being about to come into force. Already applications were arriving at the Commission daily, and almost hourly, asking for advice, assistance, and instruction as to how far the Parish Councils Act, when it began to operate in November, would affect the particular charities in each locality. The work of the Commission, therefore, was already beginning in this very particular, and it seemed hardly a suitable time to take away two Commissioners and the Secretary twice a week for the whole of the Session in order that they might attend regularly upstairs instead of allowing them to carry out their duties in their office in Whitehall. He thought both the Mover and the Seconder of this Motion fell into one great error in the general view they took of the work of the Charity Commission. That great error was that they seemed entirely to have overlooked the fact that the great bulk of the work of the Charity Commission was construing Acts of Parliament. The Charity Commission, when they were established, were established almost as a branch of the Court of Equity. They had to administer the law. They could not, in the great bulk of the work that they dealt with, give scope to any private opinion which they might have, or to any great views of policy which they might desire to introduce into the administration of the charities. They had to administer the law as they found it, and not as they would wish it to be. They were, just as much as the Court of Chancery itself, bound by former decisions of the Court; they were tied up very narrowly by the Acts of Parliament of 1853, 1855, and 1860, and other Acts; they could not go outside the corners of those Acts, and he could not think that a Minister would be in a position, unless he were a legal gentleman, to administer these Acts of Parliament and to construe them, which was at present the ordinary everyday duty of the Charity Commission. If the hon. Member would look at the words of the Act which constituted the Commission, he would find that out of the three Commissioners two were obliged to be barristers of 12 years' standing. Why was that provision introduced, and a standing so very high as 12 years, which was an unusually long term, insisted upon? The reason was because it was intended that the Commission should relieve the Court of Chancery of a great part of the work which they did, and, therefore, it was necessary that the Acts should be administered by gentlemen of legal training who were capable of construing the difficult Acts with which they had to deal. During the four or five years he was at the Charity Commission he was certainly very strongly impressed with the fact that practically it was so difficult to put one's own views and desires into the administration of these charities because of being tied up in certain directions by the law which the Commission had to administer. There was another inquiry on this matter—that of the Schools Inquiry Commission—who reported that the work of the Charity Commission was divided into five heads. The first of these was the protection of charities against frauds or adverse claims. Surely that was a matter with which the Charity Commission were fully as capable of dealing as a Minister sitting in this House. It was not a matter in which policy could enter at all, but was solely and simply a matter of the construction of legal rights. The second head was "the authorisation of leases, mortgages, and sales." The same remark applied here. The third head was "the appointment of trustees," and there he admitted that questions of policy might arise, and he was sorry to think that questions of Party policy might very likely enter into that. He thought it was very desirable that they should not enter, and that was why he should be strongly against a Minister having' charge of this matter, and its being taken out of the hands of an independent body who were not swayed and did not alter from time to time, as the gentlemen who came and went from the Treasury Bench. The next head was the removal of trustees or musters, and lastly, the power of framing new schemes. There, again, the matter of policy did enter to some extent; but in that very matter of framing new schemes the Charity Commission were not able to go one inch outside the doctrine of Cy-près as laid down by the Court of Appeal. In his opinion, it would cause great mischief to introduce a Minister to deal with these matters, which it would be far better to leave in the hands of an administration independent of the changing politics of the day. That was the' original recommendation made by Lord Brougham's Commission; made by the House of Commons Committee in 1835, and made by Lord Chichester's Commission in 1849. These three inquiries went fully into the matter, and recommended as the result of their investigations that this Commission should be an entirely independent body. Nothing had occurred since to alter the status of the Commission, and it would be a great mischief if Party politics were allowed to enter into the administration of these charities. As he said, during the course of the Debates on the Parish Councils Bill, the Charity Commission was not a very popular body. The Tory Party thought it too Radical, and the Radical Party thought it too Tory; therefore, the probability was, that it did justice. Lord John Russell was strongly of that opinion, because he said in introducing the Bill to the House—

"It would be better that the question of the general superintendence and administration of charities should be altogether separated from any political question and from the interests of any Party."

There was one other matter. As he had said, the action of the Charity Commission was subject to appeal to the Court of Chancery. If any person was aggrieved by any decision arrived at in the construction of different Acts, that person had the right of appeal to the Court of Chancery. He should not envy the position of a Minister in that. House if his decisions were appealed from to the Court of Chancery and he was overruled. If it happened once, it might pass; but if it happened more than once, he thought the Minister would never hear the end of the mistake which the Court of Chancery would have held he had made. He remembered some years ago his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth, who was Solicitor General, made some obiter dicta with regard to licences, and it was afterwards held that his view of the law was not correct. It was a great many years before his hon. and learned Friend heard the last of that from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the position of a Minister would be even worse if he, in the capacity of a Minister, gave a judgment which was subsequently overruled by the Court of Chancery. He had only this to add: If the Government thought it was a desirable and opportune moment to hold a full investigation into the affairs of the Charity Commission, and to inquire into this very matter upon which they themselves, through their agents, were at the present time informed, it did not rest in their (the Opposition) months to oppose them. He was speaking entirely in his individual capacity, and not in any way as representing his hon. Friends on that side of the House when he said that he could not conceive a, more inopportune moment for the sake of the Charity Commission and for the sake of the House itself. It was admitted it was impossible to make any change before November, and any changes which would have to be introduced would have to be introduced by legislation. He fully admitted that the powers of the Charity Commission required alteration, but he was sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would admit that to attempt seriously to deal with a Bill of that kind, which would largely increase the powers of the Charity Commission, would be adding to such an extent to the already heavy load he had to curry that it would really break his back. He should regard it as a very mischievous thing if they were to introduce anything in the nature of Ministerial control which would tend in any way to bring Party politics to bear in these matters. He would only say that during the four or five years he had the honour of a seat at the Board of the Charity Commission he found no difficulty and no friction arising His position was simply this: that he was in the House to answer any questions that might be put (hiring the course of the Session. When the Vote came on, although he was not responsible for the details of the Vote, he was responsible for, and ready to reply upon, any points relating to the policy of the Commission. If any point had arisen upon which the judgment of the majority of the House was contrary to the policy of the Commission, then there was no doubt that a Vote would have been passed at the instigation of the Government stating their view as to the policy that ought to be followed, and there was no doubt that in such a case the Charity Commission would have at once followed the policy indicated. He hoped that no friction had arisen— although he was rather inclined to think such was the case from the way the matter was dealt with by the Mover of the Motion—between the hon. Member whom he saw opposite who had acted as the fourth Charity Commissioner in this House—

No such inference must be drawn from anything I have said.

was glad to hear it, because he was afraid, from the way in which the hon. Member put a hypothetical case, that friction had occurred. He believed that the fact of a Commissioner being present in the House, and being in touch with hon. Members both in the Chamber and also privately in the Lobbies and elsewhere, was a great advantage both to Members of the House and also to the Charity Commission itself, and he should be very 1oth to disturb an arrangement which had been so highly recommended by those who had considered the subject.

said, he was very glad to hear the Mover and Seconder of this Motion say that they had not in their mind any desire to pass any hostile reflection upon the Charity Commission, or upon the able men who administered the work of that Commission. He believed they had the entire confidence of the House and of the country, and he hoped that anything said of these gentlemen would be said entirely upon that footing. The hon. Member for Cumberland had spoken, in the able way he always spoke, on a matter with which he was very well acquainted; but he was sorry that the hon. Member, during the five years he was at the Charity Commission, thought he was a member of an unpopular body— being unpopular with the Tories for one reason and with the Radicals for another. There was an intermediate body which was strongly represented at Birmingham, but no commendation of the Charity Commission had come from the right hon. Members for West Birmingham and Bordesley, so that the Commission was unfortunate in the respect that it had been criticised in many quarters. One reason for that was not the fault of the Commission or of the Commissioners, but the fault of the position which it occupied. The hon. Member had referred to Lord Brougham's Committee in 1835, and to its having represented in its constitution a Committee independent of Parliament. There was another Commission at that time still more important—namely, the Poor Law Commission—and that Commission was independent of Parliamentary control. One of the most acute and intelligent writers who had ever treated of the constitution of such bodies—the late Mr. Bagehot—said of the Poor Law Commission—

"The experiment of conducting the administration of a Public Department by an independent and unsheltered authority has often been tried, and has always failed. Parliament always talked at it until it made it impossible."

That was the position of the Charity Commission. Parliament talked at it and criticised its action. The hon. Member said there had been Committee after Committee on this subject. Why had there been? They had had Committee after Committee because there was something with which Parliament was dissatisfied. In spite of the ability and character of the gentlemen who composed the Poor Law Commission, it was found impossible to sustain it. The same objection applied in a great degree to all independent authorities of this kind. Parliament became inquisitive; it became more or less a judge when they had bodies of that kind; and unless they could satisfy Parliament and the House of Commons that the matters were being administered in the way that was desired, they would always have Debates, Committees, and Inquiries of this character. The hon. Member for Cumberland had given a great many reasons why this Motion should not be acceded to. He understood the hon. Member himself said that he considered the Commission was too much tied up. That was the very reason why the Commission should have Parliamentary representation. A Parliamentary Representative would state what should be done. There were, for instance, restrictions which ought to be removed, and provisions passed for protecting and freeing the hands of the Commission so as to enable them to do what they ought to be able to do. The hon. Member seemed to think that the legislation with regard to charities and the Charity Commission, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, could not be altered. That was not so, and the moment they brought the Commission into Parliament they would find what were the obstacles in the way of its legitimate and beneficial action, which could be best removed by legislation. The hon. Member also said that the Commission consisted of lawyers of 12 years' standing, and that led him to think that the Bills must have been drawn up by lawyers. In moving for this Committee there was no intention to declare in any manner the exact method in which the change proposed should be carried out—whether it should be in the relation in which the Local Government Board stood towards the Poor Law, or in the relation in which the Treasury stood to the Commissioners of Woods. Whatever might be the arrangement, he could not but think it would be to the advantage of the Commissioners themselves, as well as to the interests with which they were entrusted, that they should be brought more directly into relation with Parliament. With that portion of his hon. Friend's Motion, therefore, he was in accord. As to the second part of the Motion, it had been urged by the hon. Member for Penrith as an argument against the appointment of a Committee that the demands upon the Charity Commissioners at the present time were so heavy that a member of that body could not be spared to attend to give evidence. That was hardly to be regarded as an argument against the adoption of the Motion.

said, his point was that it was not an opportune moment, just at the time when applications were pouring in from all sides to compel the attendance of two Commissioners, and perhaps the Secretary, before a Select Committee.

said, that no doubt the House of Lords had, in the Local Government Bill, thrown some additional work on the Charity Commissioners, and this furnished an additional argument for giving them more effectual means to enable them to carry out their useful work. He should be extremely sorry to think that the Motion had anything of a Party character about it. But he did think that it would be well to give the Commissioners some more effectual means of discharging the onerous duties which they had hitherto so well discharged. Therefore, he heartily assented to the Motion.

said, he did not know whether the Vice President of the Council would take part in the discussion; but if the right hon. Gentleman did so, he hoped he would take the opportunity of informing the House whether the Government had come to any decision with regard to the Departmental Report which had been alluded to by some of the preceding speakers. he thought it was a pity that they were not put in possession of the views of the Government on this Report, and also made in some degree acquainted with its contents. With regard to the general question, he thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer was fairly to be congratulated on the lightness of heart with which he had accepted a proposal to add to the already formidable body of his colleagues in the Government. If the Charity Commission was strengthened in the manner the right hon. Gentleman had indicated, the Department would undoubtedly benefit by having a high official to tight their battles in Parliament; but he was not convinced that there would be any corresponding advantage to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He agreed that it would be well to give the Charity Commissioners more effectual means than they at present possessed to discharge their duties. He referred particularly to a point that had not been touched upon—namely, the very inadequate means the Commissioners had of securing the proper audit of the charity accounts, and he hoped the Treasury would afford them increased facilities in this direction. The remarks of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the hon. Member for Penrith must have convinced the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution that the question was one which could hardly be disposed of so speedily as they seemed to think possible, and that such changes as they appeared to indicate would involve long and anxious consideration in that House. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green had spoken of securing greater local control over the charities, but hon. Members who remembered the discussion on this point in connection with the Local Government Bill would probably feel that any proposal to further divert existing charities from the purposes for which they were intended would meet with strong opposition. He shared the opinion that the present was not an opportune moment for the appointment of a Select Committee, especially as the effect of the Reports presented by Committees during the past 10 years had been that, on the whole, the duties of the Charity Commissioners had been faithfully discharged. No complaints had been made of the manner in which the Commissioners had discharged their duties by the hon. Member who moved the Motion. he confessed, therefore, that the programme of the Government was sufficiently full to make it perhaps advisable that any step of the kind suggested should be postponed until some further acquaintance with the working of the Local Government Act was obtained. He feared there was a disposition to enter with too light a heart on the question of transferring the working of our charitable system from a non-political body to members of a political Party. He was persuaded that any such change would be disadvantageous to the administration of charity. The Commissioners, in their Report for 1893, stated that their action in applying to the relief of the sick and aged charities hitherto distributed in doles had encountered frequent opposition; but that, when once established, the system was most free from friction and discontent. he believed that there was considerable danger that if the Department were presided over by a gentleman with a seat in the House, it would find it less easy to resist the political pressure of certain constituencies, and the change would not be at all conducive to the fair and proper distribution of the charities.

said, there was no want of inquiry into the subject of the Charity Commission, but there was a want of the House in carrying out the results of the inquiries which had been held. A very good Commission sat in 1884 under the presidency of his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board, and the recommendations of that inquiry had not been carried out. For three years he, with a number of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House, and with the general approval of the two Front Benches, had endeavoured to carry a Bill to put the recommendations of the Commission into operation. But as the Loader of the House had pointed out, every effort at making the Charity Commission more effective for its work had been stopped by the action of the right hon. Members for West Birmingham and Bordesley, whose most violent energies were always aroused against every effort to reform the Charity Commission. He had listened with great interest to the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham in introducing this Motion; but he thought his hon. Friend had rather misplaced the importance of the two parts of his speech. It was useless to alter the constitution of the Charity Commission unless they gave them power to carry out the work they had to do. The Commission had no power in the case of a charity over £50 a year without calling into action the power of the Attorney General and a very expensive Chancery suit that might almost swallow up the charity. The Charity Commission was utterly powerless in those very cases where its powers were most needed, and there had been an absolute waste of the charity funds of the country and an absolute loss of money, owing, he believed, to the delay in carrying out the very moderate and very sensible recommendations of the Committee of 1884. He thought there was no use in inquiring further into the matter unless the Government intended to carry into effect the recommendations of the Committee, and give to the Charity Commissioners the powers necessary to save those charity funds which were now wasted.

said, that as he had had the honour of serving on the Committee of 1886 and 1887 perhaps the House would bear with him while he submitted a few cursory observations on the Motion. He could not help learning from his experience on the Committee how severe was the injury done to the Charity Commission by the conduct of that inquiry. The Committee had had before them as witnesses members of the Commission, and some were constantly in the room; but it must be borne in mind that all the time was not occupied in the room, for the Committee had to make inquiries in the office of the Commission itself in consequence of complaints made and accusations brought before the Committee. He had reason to know that the service of the Commission had been greatly injured by that long inquiry; and if the House granted a new Committee fresh difficulties would be created for a body they all desired to strengthen. He wished to confirm what his hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon had said with regard to the recommendations of the Committees not having been carried into effect by the House. The Committee of 1887 had made several recommendations, none of which had been carried into execution. One was—and he doubted the wisdom of its policy— that every new scheme of the Charity Commission should be submitted to a Standing Committee. Another recommendation was that the Commission should be strengthened by the enlargement of the numbers of the Assistant Inspectors. That recommendation had, to a certain extent, been carried out—not by the Treasury, but by the County Councils. Power had recently been given to the County Councils to contribute to the expense of inquiries; Inspectors had been appointed to hold the inquiries, and the cost fell very largely on the County Councils. A further recommendation was that the official staff should be strengthened and increased, but that had not been carried into effect either. In fact, if there had been any shortcomings on the part of the Commission during the last few years, he believed they had arisen from the neglect of the Treasury to carry out the recommendations of the various Committees. He was all the freer to make that remark, as a Conservative Government had been in Office during many of those years, and, therefore, he was complaining of his own political friends. A desire had been expressed that there should be more complete control by Parliament over the Commission. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion had quoted the recommendations of the Committee in 1887 in that respect, but he had entirely omitted to quote the Committee's concluding words. The Committee, after stating that the responsibility of the Commission to Parliament should be made more clearly defined, added—

"This may be more readily accomplished by appointing a Minister of Education."

That was a clear and definite recommendation, but it had not been carried out. It referred, however, to the educational side only, and had no reference whatever to the Charity Trust side of the Commission. He believed there was a great danger, if they had a Minister in charge of charities, of bringing the political element into the administration of the Charities. In the case of the Local Government Act, which was passed last Session, with the agreement substantially of both political Parties, the only time when any heat arose was when the question of the charities came up for consideration; and he thought they should avail themselves of the lesson thus emphatically taught them. Another reason against such an appointment was that the work done by the Charity Commission was essentially judicial. The making of law was a good thing, and the administration of it was a good thing; but what he believed to be a bad thing was confusion between the administration of law and the making of law. They would have in the changes of Parties—the right and proper changes of Parties—in the House from time to time sudden changes of policy with regard to the charities, and those changes of policy must interfere in a manner highly dangerous with the administration of the trusts. he felt, however, that although the Charity Commissioners were not fully represented in the House, they had always responded to public opinion in recent years. There could be no doubt that many of the complaints made before the Committee in 1886 and 1887 had received full attention from the Commissioners. They had taken less money from the purposes of doles for the purposes of education, and had given more prominence to the technical side of education than formerly. In these points the Commissioners had acted in accordance with public opinion. He doubted very much whether there would he anything gained by a fresh inquiry, but as the Government had assented to it he would not express his opposition to it further. The Charity Commissioners had passed safely through the somewhat severe ordeal to which they were exposed by the inquiries of 1884, 1886 and 1887. Though those Committees did make some recommendations, the action of the Commissioners was substantially vindicated, and they came forth from the inquiries with increased public confidence and with greater strength in the powers of a moral character which they possessed and which they had used so much to the advantage of the country.

said, that two complaints had been made in the course of the debate against the Mover and Seconder of the Motion before the House. One was that they had presented their case in so superficial away as scarcely to justify the House in adopting the Motion, and the second was that they had suggested nothing in the way of remedy or change. With regard to the first complaint, he thought he was right in attributing the course pursued by his hon. Friends to a motive which hon. Gentlemen opposite should not fail to appreciate. His hon. Friends did not wish to appear, in asking for this Select Committee, to be moving a vote of censure on the Charity Commission. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Penrith had admitted that the Charity Commission was a very unpopular body. The hon. Gentleman had stated one cause; it would be quite easy to name others. But he intended to follow the good example of the Mover and Seconder. There were, however, two points to which he would make reference, because they formed part of the case for the appointment of a Select Committee. One was the delay—the intolerable delay as some expressed it—that took place in the discharge of certain duties of the Commission. He was not referring to the preparation of new schemes for the administration of charities, because those schemes might require protracted consideration. He was referring to the appointment of new trustees and matters of routine, which many people thought might be disposed of more quickly than they had been hitherto. He was in possession of information which showed that in some cases such matters had been in hand 9, 12, and even 15 months, when a much shorter period would have sufficed to deal with them. Ten years ago so many complaints were made, that pressure was brought to bear on the Commissioners, with the result that there was considerable improvement; but now he was informed that the delays were as great as ever. The second point to which he wished to refer was the arrears of work which the Commissioners themselves acknowledged. His hon. Friend behind him said, "What is the use of considering the constitution of the Commission unless you give them more power?" Well, he (Mr. Carvell Williams) would ask, "What is the use of giving the Commission more power if they do not make use of the power they already possess?" The Report of 1892 contained the admission that there were 2,474 charities, the particulars of which had come into the possession of the Charity Commissioners, but which they had not yet had time to enter on their Registers. A second statement was that the accounts rendered by the trustees of charities to the Charity Commissioners, in accordance with the Act of Parliament, were nearly 8,000 fewer in 1892 than they were in 1889. The Commissioners accounted for that falling off partly by reason of the increased employment of their staff in preparing Statistical Returns for the County Councils and partly because of increased applications for information; so that it was impossible for the staff to give the same amount of attention to the accounts as was given in previous years. Well, if that had been the result of the creation of the County Councils, he left the House to judge how much greater results were likely to follow the passing of the Act to which reference had already been made. The hon. Member (Mr. Lowther) himself had told them that already applications for information were coming in at a great rate. The hon. Member might be sure that these were but as the drops before the coming shower. The hon. Member behind him (Mr. Rathbone) had on this occasion, as on some others, insisted on the necessity for investing the Commissioners with greater powers than they now possessed. He (Mr. Carvell Williams) said frankly that he had always opposed that, because neither he nor a large section of the public had confidence in the administration of the existing Commission. They thought that it was not constituted so as to adequately represent public opinion, and that its methods and procedure were not in harmony with the characteristics of the times. As soon as the required changes in that direction were made, he for one should cease to be an opponent of the powers of the existing Commissioners. Complaint had been made by the hon. Member (Mr. Lowther) of the absence of remedial suggestions. Well, he (Mr. Car-veil Williams) was inclined to suggest that, while on the one hand they might increase the powers of the Charity Commissioners, and give them more work to do, it would also be highly desirable to relieve them of some portion of their burdens. Their work was very easily divisible, and be could see no reason why the work of collecting information, and such like, should not be put upon County Councils and other Local Bodies. He was in favour of the adoption of the principle of devolution in the case of the Charity Commission, and of the popularising of that body. It had been pointed out that the functions of the Charity Commissioners were, to some extent, legal functions, and that they could not be discharged except by legal experts. He had no desire to take out of their hands work which required legal knowledge and experience. Hut there were other functions which might with great advantage be placed in other hands than theirs. He thought, too, that the Local Authorities should have much greater powers than they now possessed in regard to the framing of now charity schemes. He did not share in the feelings expressed very frequently while the Local Government Bill was before them, as to the paramount necessity of having regard to the wishes and intentions of donors and pious founders. he would modernise the charities, and remove the power of the dead hand as much as possible; but so long as these charities existed he desired that, by means of the Charity Commission and legislation in the House, they should be administered so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest possible number.

said, he only desired to emphasise one remark, and that was as to the powers of Local Authorities and the consideration paid to them by the Charity Commissioners at the present time. His experience showed that the representations of Local Bodies to the Charity Commission, with reference to schemes bearing upon personal aggrandisement affecting their localities, had not received the attention they ought to have received. He thought that Local Authorities ought to have greater power to make their voices heard, and when the Committee came to consider the work of the Charity Commissioners they should take that into consideration. Another thing he strongly protested against was the aversion of the Commissioners to anything like popular control. They had erected harriers against the appointment of local trustees, thoroughly cognisant of the needs of a locality, in the shape of a rateable qualification. In this way they had prevented men being appointed as trustees, although the people in the district who were mainly interested in the trusts had conferred the highest honour upon those men by choosing them as their Representatives in Parliament. He thought that the time had come when the Charity Commissioners ought to pay more heed to local demands than they had paid in the past, and he hoped that one of the results of this investigation would be the sweeping away of the barriers to which he had referred. It was only with the one desire of emphasising the absurd position taken up by the Charity Commission that he had risen. He was delighted that a Committee was to be appointed.

said, it was to be regretted that both the last speakers had introduced an element of controversy into the Debate which, happily, had been absent until now. For his own part, he welcomed more Parliamentary interest—he would not speak of control—in the administration of the Charity Commissioners. He would add that he hoped Parliament would do more now in relation to these matters. It was well to have control, but had Parliament always exercised that supervision and care in relation to the work of the Charity Commission which it should have done? He ventured to think that in the past Parliament had neglected its duty in two respects. Educational schemes had been systematically brought before the House at a time when Parliamentary criticism was impossible— namely, after 12 o'clock at night. From that point of view Parliament itself was very much to blame, and if delay had taken place Parliament had contributed to it by its inability or unwillingness to find time to discuss these subjects. Take another case in which Parliament had neglected its duty. The Charity Commission was unpopular a few years ago because of the diversion of charitable funds to educational purposes. He did not say there was nothing to be said for it. In some cases the charitable funds were wasted and were better applied to education; hut, on the other hand, the House had now come to the conclusion that that policy was both wrong and a mistake— that the diversion from the poor to the middle classes of those funds originally left for the poor was unjustifiable both in principle and practice. Parliament was to blame in consequence of the unseasonable hours at which such matters were discussed. He hoped that Parliament would take care in future that such discussions should take place at a time when they would be effective. They should give Local Bodies more control over the administration and application of charities. These bodies were on the spot, and had a better opportunity of judging what would be advantageous to them than anyone else, and a reform in that direction might very well take place. He only wished to add that, in his opinion, the Commissioners had done a great public work in the help they had given to technical education in Loudon. Their action had not been marked by those delays and subjects of criticism which had been applied to them in other directions. As a Metropolitan Member, he thought London was greatly obliged to them for the gradual rise of those industrial institutions which were so material to the development of London.

said, he was anxious to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, the large number of accidents caused by the indiscriminate carrying of Pistols and Revolvers calls for immediate legislation."

He did not think he need offer any apologies to the House for bringing this matter before it. It was a subject he had taken an interest in for a long time, and the object of the Motion was one which he knew had the sympathy of many Members in all parts of the House. He had seen it stated in several newspapers that his bringing the matter forward was a work of supererogation, the Government having shown that they were in favour of the principle of the Motion. He was aware that the Government had brought in a Bill, and no one regretted more sincerely than he did that that measure had failed to pass into law, but he did not think the Motion was a work of supererogation, for the reason that he had put the word "immediate" into it. His only fear was that perhaps the insertion of that one word would prevent the proposal being received with favour by the Government, because he felt sure that if it had not been inserted the Government would have had a great deal of sympathy with the Motion. He had put the word in, because he felt that the time was come when this great and growing evil must be seriously and determinedly grappled with. He did not propose to go into the merits of the Pistols Bill of last year. He did not know that it would be in order to do so, but he might be permitted to say that the Bill was in a rather peculiar position. The whole Session was a peculiar one, because, while it was practically given over to one Bill, the Government gave a pledge that no measure of a contentious nature should be proceeded with. There was one hon. Member who took a strong and active part against the Bill, and, unfortunately, that Member was able to procure 37 hon. Gentlemen to go into the Lobby on a Motion for the Adjournment of the Debate, and these were quite sufficient to show the Government that there was some contentions matter in the Bill. The Government having given that pledge, of course there was nothing further for them to do but postpone the Bill. What hon. Gentlemen could have found contentious in the Bill he was bound to say he could not understand. They were not friendly to armed burglars, and they could not be in favour of allowing young children—mere babies— to go about carrying these absolutely useless and extremely dangerous weapons to the great danger of themselves and their unfortunate neighbours. Here was a case reported in all the newspapers yesterday—

"Fatal Revolver Accident.—A J arrow Correspondent states that between 4 and 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon Miss Kathleen O' Brady Jones, daughter of the Rev. O'Brady Jones. Vicar of St. Luke's, Wallsend-on-Tyne, met with her death under painful circumstances. She had been taking part in a rehearsal for a concert which was to have been held yesterday evening, and was leaving the hall with friends, when a boy named Dewar, aged 15. presented a revolver with which he was playing and pulled the trigger, under the impression that it was unloaded. The weapon went off, the bullet being lodged in [the girl's light temple. She died half an hour later. The revolver belonged to another lad, and was only purchased yesterday morning. Dewar, who is the son of respectable parents residing in the neighbourhood, is now in custody. The affair seems to have been purely accidental."

In this case be did not ask for legislation against the boy. One sympathised almost as much with him and his relations as one did with the relations of the victim, but one did ask for legislation which should make it impossible for mere babies to go about carrying these very dangerous and useless weapons. The Home Secretary knew very well that the case was not an isolated one by any means. he could give the House countless instances of the same kind. It was the Home Secretary, he thought, who disliked so much legislation by Press Cutting Agencies. But Press Cutting Agencies had their uses. He (the Marquess of Carmarthen) had been for years a subscriber to Press Cutting Agencies, and the only information he asked them to send him was accounts of accidents caused by pistols and revolvers. Since the Home Secretary introduced his Bill, be had asked from one of these Agencies the comments made upon the measure in the Press. He had been supplied with a large number, and they were all favourable to the Bill, save as to one or two practically small matters of detail. A further point was this—the coroners in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Devonshire had strongly supported the Pistols Bill, and juries had in every instance endorsed their remarks as to the danger attending the indiscriminate carrying of firearms. That alone was sufficient testimony to give him the right to demand legislation. But there was further evidence. There was the information supplied by the Home Office. The Return supplied last year showed that the number of fatal cases of this kind treated at hospitals was, in 1890, 10; in 1891, 22; and in 1892, 27; while the number of non-fatal cases was, in 1890, 59; in 1891, 72; and in 1892, 95; so that in each class there had been a steady increase; and he believed that that increase had been maintained in 1893, although the Returns supplied did not go beyond 1892. Of course, there were a number of cases which were not treated in the hospitals. In like manner the number of inquests in such cases had grown from 139 in 1890 to 180 in 1891, and to 217 in 1892. As be said, he had not the statistics for 1893, but from all he had been able to learn there was quite as much—he thought even more—injury inflicted by revolvers in 1893 than in 1892. An hon. Member for one of the Divisions of Lancashire, who opposed the Bill last year, said, "Why should not Englishmen have the right of protecting themselves?" No one wanted legislation, or asked for legislation, which would prevent responsible householders from arming themselves against burglars if they thought it right. What he did ask for was legislation which would strengthen the ordinary law, which would make it imperative on every one who carried arms to take out a licence, and would prevent young children from carrying dangerous weapons about. He had, he thought, said enough to show that there was some reason for this legislation. If the Go- vernment took exception to his proposal that there should be "immediate" legislation, he hoped they would, at any rate, re-introduce the Pistols Bill, and send it to a Committee. They should do something to put a stop to this great and growing evil. He was conscious that he had not made out so strong a case as might have been made out. He wished some one of more power and influence had taken it in hand, but he had interested himself in the subject for a considerable time and felt keenly in regard to it.

said, he would only say one or two words in reference to the Motion, as the noble Marquess had really exhausted the subject. It was within the knowledge of everyone that pistol accidents were increasing day by day. The law was already very stringent with regard to the carrying of revolvers by burglars. The punishment meted out to a robber who was armed was always much more severe than that to one who was unarmed. The proper way to deal with the indiscriminate use of revolvers was to place a heavy tax upon them. He should think that revolvers and pistols ought to be dealt with under the gun licence; and he should suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was, as he understood, somewhat short of money, that he should put the heaviest possible tax upon revolvers. This would he a very useful tax. The evil was growing year by year, and these weapons were becoming more and more toys, and could be bought for a very few shillings. From the instances quoted by the noble Lord, it was evident that they had become mere playthings in the hands of children. He did not think the word "immediate" ought to present any difficulty to the Government. An opportunity would occur when the Chancellor of the Exchequer could deal effectually with this growing evil by the simple expedient of putting a heavy tax on revolvers in the Budget Bill.

The noble Lord who moved this Motion, and the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, must know that so far as I am concerned they have been preaching to the converted. I have more than once expressed pretty much the same opinion as they have now expressed upon the danger of the indiscriminate carrying of revolvers, and last Session I did what I could to provide legislation to put a stop to the practice. I believe that if the House had not treated the measure which was introduced as a contentious measure we should have already seen its fruits, and that many of the accidents which had recently happened would have been avoided. I do not recede from the position I then took up, and I should only be too glad to see a Bill of the kind passed into law. I do not adopt the view altogether of the hon. Member for Preston that this is a matter which can be efficiently dealt with by taxation. Inquiries which we have made convince us that it would not be sufficient to meet the evil to impose a higher tax. I am satisfied that the lines upon which we proposed to proceed were right—that any person who buys one of these pistols should be compelled to produce a licence; that each pistol should be identified by a particular mark; and that the seller should enter the name and address of the purchaser in a book, just as is now done in the case of the sale of poisons. These are practically the proposals which were in the Bill of last year, and it is not thought that these provisions would hamper or seriously injure the trade. The Motion of the noble Lord asks us to say that this is a matter which calls for immediate legislation. I say frankly that if I saw a possibility of the Bill which I introduced last year being treated as a non-contentious measure I would re-introduce it with pleasure; and if in the course of the Session I receive satisfactory assurances which convince me that it will pass as a non-contentious measure, I will undertake to say that I will re-introduce it. At the same time, I am bound to acknowledge that after the experience of last year, when no less than 37 hon. Gentlemen voted for the adjournment of the Debate, thereby strangling the Bill for the Session, I do not see any prospect that the measure, if re-introduced, would be treated as non-contentious. Therefore, I do not see how I can accede to the Motion of the noble Lord, which declares that this is a matter for immediate legislation. If I were to do so on the part of the Government the Bill would enter into competition with, and even take precedence of, other measures to which Her Majesty's Government are already pledged. While agreeing most heartily with the noble Lord as to the necessity for legislation on the subject, I am afraid that I must ask the House to negative the Motion as introduced.

said, it ought to be borne in mind that the claim was put forward that certain Bills should be treated as non-contentious at a time when the House was brought together under exceptional circumstances. What took place was the outcome of an attempt to improve the Rill. Apart from that, he must say that there were many Parliamentary chances arising dining the Session which might be taken advantage of if proper vigilance were exercised in order to pass the Bill. But, meanwhile, he should like to ask the Home Secretary whether it was not possible to do more to meet the necessities of the case by administrative action? When he was in the Department a Circular was sent out to the authorities inviting them to increased vigilance in prosecutions for the carrying of pistols, the idea being to bring home to the public mind the fact that a pistol was a gun under the Gun Licensing Act of 1870. There was no doubt that many people were under the impression that a pistol could be carried without a licence, and that they believed that it was only for the carrying of a gun that a licence was required. He must say that he had found a certain supineness on the part of the Inland Revenue Authorities in prosecuting persons who carried revolvers without a licence. Their object was to get as much as possible for the Revenue, and they did not see any use in attempting to exact a £10 penalty from the class of people whom they wished to stop carrying revolvers. He could not help thinking that something more might be done by closer administrative action. He did not quite see why the Motion of the noble Lord should be negatived, because it was not at all necessary to adhere to the word "immediate"; and he contended also, that even if that word wore adopted, it would not involve the dislocation of the Government programme of legislation. He remembered an occasion when the Conservative Party was in Office, when a Motion was brought forward relating to the use of schools for public meetings. The Motion was not resisted, and it was passed unanimously; and the claim was put forward that the Government ought to postpone all other legislation in order to comply with the terms of that Motion. But that, of course, was an untenable claim, and he was sure that the Home Secretary need not oppose the Motion of his noble Friend upon any such ground. He could promise that the same amount of support would be again received from the Opposition for the Bill. It was his belief that the central principle of the Bill of last year was a most valuable one, and he thought it should be made an offence for a person to carry a revolver in a public place.

said, he desired to cordially acknowledge the support which the Bill of last year had received. He did not agree with the last speaker that there had been supineness on the part of the Inland Revenue Authorities. There were very great difficulties in the way of the Inland Revenue officers, because it was not easy to ascertain who were carrying revolvers, and who were not. Unless in the actual commission of an offence the necessary evidence was not forthcoming. Moreover, they found that it was of no avail to prosecute children for offences against the Inland Revenue. Magistrates would not convict in cases of the kind. Another point in connection with the matter was that there was no power to confiscate the firearms. The Government, however, would do what they could to ascertain the feeling of hon. Members who opposed the Bill last year, and if it appeared that the measure would not be further opposed the Government would re-introduce it.

said, that with all deference to what had fallen from the First Commissioner of Works he wanted to point out that the real matter of complaint was that the gun licence was not applied to pistols and revolvers. If a man carried a gun without a licence he was prosecuted, but if he carried a pistol without a licence he was not prosecuted at all.

It is a question of evidence.

Evidence in regard to a pistol would be as good as evidence in regard to the carrying of a gun. If a man is proved to be carrying a pistol without a licence he is liable to prosecution, and ought to be prosecuted.

You can see if a man is carrying a gun, but you cannot see if he is carrying a pistol.

But our argument is that there is always evidence of the pistol having been carried in all cases in which an accident happens. Why are not the persons who carry these pistols prosecuted? We believe that it is the slackness of the authorities in prosecuting that is accountable for this condition of things. If the right hon. Gentleman asks what we propose, we say that more stringent steps should be taken by the Executive at once, and that the Public Prosecutor and his officials should be more vigilant in enforcing the law with reference to the carrying of pistols without a licence, especially in the ease of young people. When an accident happens, there is never any doubt as to the actual carrying of the pistol, but the difficulty is that there has been no prosecutor.

drew attention to the necessity for some juster system of Income Tax being adopted by which a lower rate of tax should be charged on incomes derived from industry to that charged on incomes derived from realised capital. He said, it was somewhat unfortunate that this could only be an academical discussion, as the Rules of the House prohibited more than one Division, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to be grateful to him for bringing forward the subject in time for his Budget arrangements. This was a most opportune moment for discussing the incidence of the Income Tax. For four or five years past he had always been met by Chancellors of the Exchequer on both sides of the House by the objection that, however much they sympathised with the general principles of the Motion, however much there was to be said for it, they had arranged their Budgets, but would think of it for another year. A new Budget of a most startling character was now promised, and he would suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer a solution of a very difficult problem. This was not a new subject. The incidence of Income Tax had been a burning question for many years. It had been found that the more the screw was put on, the more the tax realised, though he did not wish to say for a moment that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer was anxious to screw out more than his predecessors. But the fact remained that year by year a larger amount was being realised by the Income Tax, and raised from a deeper and poorer stratum of society. Many thought that trade and industry were not affected by this tax, but, in fact, no tax more affected the trade and commerce of our country than this particular one. Glancing at its history, in 1842, when it was reintroduced by Sir Robert Peel on its present basis, 1d. in the £1 brought in £850,000, while at the present time 1d. in the £1 produced more than £2,000,000 sterling, showing how the tax had been developed in the last 50 years. That was, no doubt, a satisfactory proof of increased prosperity and wealth, but it had another side. It had been said that this being a tax upon the rich which they could afford to pay it did not matter much what the Chancellor of the Exchequer imposed, but that was not the fact, for yearly the tax was pressing harder upon the lower middle and poorer classes of society who were engaged in the work of the country. By the last Returns in 1889 under Schedule D., which included all the workers, professional persons, merchants, people in trade, and others earning incomes, representing one-third of the whole pro- ceeds of the tax, 436,000 persons paid. Of those, 215,000,or about half, paid upon incomes under £200 a year. That was a very startling fact. Another quarter of the whole number, 10(3,000, paid on incomes of £200 to £300, and 63,000 from £300 to £500. In fact, the 385,000 persons paid on incomes of £500 and under, while only 50,000 paid on more. It would be interesting to know that only 21,000 paid on £1,000 a year and upwards. This referred to England and Wales. In Ireland, of course, the proportion of small incomes was even larger. A slight study of the Returns showed that more and more the tax was pressing upon the poorer classes of society. From 1843 to 1870 the numbers assessed at the poorer end remained almost stationary, but in the 15 years from 1874 to 1889 an immense change had taken place in the incidence of the tax upon these classes of the community. The smaller incomes partially exempted had largely decreased from £21,500,000 among 358,000 persons to £8,750,000 among 215,000 under £200 a year. The slightly larger incomes had increased from nearly £9,000,000 among 39,000 persons in 1874 to nearly £13,000,000 among 106,000 persons in 1889. This was very hard upon the lower middle classes, and showed that the net was always being drawn tighter and tighter. From £300 to £500 there had also been a large increase, but only a slight increase from £500 to £1,000, while upon the incomes above £1,000 paying the tax there had been a considerable decrease. Those facts would not be gainsaid by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they showed that more and more the Income Tax was being paid by the lower middle and poorer classes of the community, the classes who ought, on the contrary, to receive the most consideration, and whose industry was largely instrumental in making the country. That consideration alone ought to force on the Chancellor of the Exchequer the importance of imposing a fairer incidence of this tax than existed at present. It was originally intended, as its name implied, to be assessed upon incomes; but it was now far more, for it was charged upon gross not nett income. No allowance was made for repairs to property or depreciation of machinery; assessments were made upon buildings and plant with absolutely no set-off. Again, in many cases, the tax was levied upon much larger incomes than people actually enjoyed. That also had a very important bearing upon the subject. It was often said that many people made false returns and paid upon less than they really earned. That might be so, but these matters were looked after very carefully, and in most cases people paid upon more than they should rather than upon less. Another great grievance in connection with this tax was the mode of collection. They were grateful to the late Chancellor of the Exchequer for abolishing the system of poundage, but there was still a grievance in reference to appeals. The whole system of appeal was, according to many letters he had received on the subject, a farce. The unfortunate person assessed was not allowed any advice or even to be present in the room while the assessors fixed the assessment, and there was no appeal whatever. An amusing instance at Ealing had come to his knowledge, where the owner of a property stated exactly its cost, and was supported by a surveyor, but, nevertheless, he was assessed at infinitely more than the property should have carried. Taking all those points in to consideration, it was clear that a much fairer system was demanded by the public. The only way in which this tax could be fairly adjusted was by making a distinction between industrial and spontaneous incomes derived from real property or securities. Spontaneous incomes and those derived from labour should not be as at present, assessed in the same way. An enormous difference existed between the positions of two men receiving £200 a year each, one from, say, Consols, and the other from his work, whether as professional man, doctor, clerk, or shopkeeper. In the one case the man might fairly spend every shilling of his income; but the man who had to earn his £200 was already taxed to an enormous extent. As a prudent man he must insure his life, and he must put by something to provide for accidents or being out of employment. He would probably be taxed by the exigencies of life as a wise and thrifty man to the extent of £30 of his income, or 15 per cent., paying ordinary taxes in addition like everybody else. That £30 a year the other man might spend, and to tax both equally was absolutely to discourage and even prevent provision for the future in the case of the income-earner, who would so far be greatly handicapped. In foreign countries—France, for example—spontaneous incomes only were taxed. Nobody would gainsay that the two classes of incomes were totally different, and that a man who had an income coming in whether he was well or ill, working or idle, which would on his death be continued for his wife and family, was in an entirely different position from a man whose income was absolutely dependent upon his continuing in health and work. This had been pointed out long ago. In 1842, when Sir Robert Peel reintroduced the tax, Lord Brougham said in the House of Lords—

"It is expedient to make a distinction between incomes arising from capital of every description and incomes arising from labour merely by levying a smaller proportion upon the latter than upon the former."

Lord Brougham was a great authority, and so far from being an aristocrat in anything he was one of the Leaders of the Democratic Party at the time. In the House of Commons also an Amendment was moved to omit the words "profession or trade, employment or avocation." That was the very question he was now raising, and the Amendment was supported by such well-known men as Lord John Russell and Mr. Hume. Against the opinion of such authorities, it was strange that this tax should have been allowed for 50 years to go on being levied in so obviously unfair a manner. Certainly, it was only regarded as a temporary tax in the first instance, and it was supposed would soon be given up. But it had always been, and probably would always be, found one of the main taxes on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer could rely. He thought he had made out a clear case, that it was most unfair to levy this tax upon spontaneous and industrial incomes alike. But it had been said that if a change were made, rich people receiving industrial incomes would benefit, large merchants, bankers, barristers, and others, who could afford to pay a higher rate. That was quite true, but the objection could easily be got over by fixing a limit, no matter where it was put, £1,000 or £500, so long as the principle was adopted that industrial incomes should not be taxed at the same rate as those otherwise derived. If that could be carried out, it would be the beginning of a great change, and would certainly make the Income Tax fairer in every sense. Another objection was that poor people sometimes had small and spontaneous incomes. But those persons were so far, of course, better off than people dependent upon industrial incomes, and there would be no objection to their being allowed a rebate at present under a certain amount. A third great objection was, that it would cause enormous trouble to make a change. No doubt; but that was no reason why the change should not be carried out, if it was fair and reasonable. It was the Chancellor of the Exchequer's business so to frame his Budget that it would work fairly smoothly, and without hardship or injury to any particular class. However, we had at present a system of differential rates for different classes of income. Schedule B was not only at a different rate from other Schedules, but it varied for different parts of the United Kingdom. Different rates were imposed for England, Scotland, and Ireland. Taking all these facts together, he urged that he had distinctly made out a case for an alteration in the present system of levying the Income Tax. The Income Tax represented more than a sixth of the taxes of the country. There had no doubt been several Committees on this subject, including one which sat in 1861, and in connection with which separate Reports were issued by the late Mr. Lowe, the late Mr. Hubbard, and the late Sir Stafford Northcote. In 1861, however, the whole subject of taxation was different from what it was now, and it was pointed out at the time that it would not be fair to alter the system of the Income Tax unless there was an alteration of many other taxes, and especially of the Succession Duty. Since that time great changes had taken place, and the pressure of the Income Tax had been growing more and more upon the middle and lower strata of society. It was urged by some that there should be a graduated Income Tax. In one of the organs of the Government it had been suggested that persons with an income of £100 should pay a 1d. tax, and persons with £200 2d., the tax increasing by 1d. for every £100 of income. Well, he had always held the opinion that the poorer persons in this country paid more per £1 than the richer persons, but he believed that a differential Income Tax was practically impossible to carry out. There would be so much temptation on the part of men to reduce their incomes, because if they went up to a certain amount the rate at which the)' would have to pay would be very largely increased, that he thought such a system would be very pernicious. The proposal he advocated was, however, of a totally different character, and was infinitely fairer in every way than that of a graduated Income Tax. The pressure upon industrial incomes was becoming greater and greater. The amount of the incomes derived from past savings was becoming greater from year to year, and the relative proportions of the two kinds of income showed that the spontaneous incomes were much larger than the industrial incomes. It might be asked what effect the system be advocated would have upon the Revenue. Of course, hon. Members could not conceal from them selves the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was more in need of money than he had been on former occasions, and it might, be said that this was an inopportune time for raising the question. he could not see that this was so, because his argument was not that there should be a decrease in the burden, but that the burden should be better adjusted. If the smaller industrial incomes were relieved or were not increased it would be perfectly fair to add to the spontaneous incomes an amount which would be quite sufficient to make up the difference. He acknowledged fully that in his view the tax on industrial incomes might ultimately be done away with altogether, as in France, and that the Income Tax might be levied on spontaneous incomes only. He did not, however, propose this at present, although such a system would do away with nearly all the difficulties of taxation. All he proposed now was that they should get the wedge in, and should make some difference between the two classes of income. It was possibly unwise from one point of view to tax past thrift, but what was desired was to encourage people to be thrifty. The difference between the spontaneous in- come and the industrial income was so great, however, that some such proposal was necessary. The man who had to work his hardest in order to pull along was handicapped by the Income Tax. He was bound to set aside from 10 to 15 per cent. of his earnings in order to provide against sickness, want of work, early death, and other contingencies. When people, however, pointed out that they were taxed on their small incomes on the same scale as men who derived an absolutely permanent income from an investment, hon. Members would see that it was very difficult for those who advocated thrift to reply to them. He trusted that, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be cogitating how to arrange the fiscal burdens of the coining year, the right hon. Gentleman would take this great opportunity of saying that he would even in a small degree make a change by which a man's industrial income should be taxed at a lower rate than his spontaneous income. If the right hon. Gentleman would do this he would do that which he (Mr. Bartley) was sure would appear just and fair to a large part of Her Majesty's subjects.

The object of this Debate is to induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the eve of the Budget, to discuss the exact principles on which particular taxes should be levied. I have never known such an attempt succeed, and I have never known such an attempt made in a bolder, or, I may say, a more audacious manner than this has been made by the hon. Member. He must, however, excuse me if I say that "in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." I will not discuss with him whether there ought to be a graduated Income Tax, or whether there should be a difference made between small incomes and large incomes, and whether there ought to be distinctions made in the incomes derived from one source and incomes derived from other sources. Such a discussion would be premature to-night. The hon. Member will have opportunities of expressing his opinions in a much more effective manner than he can do at the present moment, and I will, therefore, ask him to allow me to postpone my statement until it can have more real effect than it can have on the present occasion. With reference to his arguments, they are, no doubt, excellent, but they are not novel. I have heard that speech made for 25 years.

I said so several times.

I should say that altogether I have heard that speech and these arguments 45 times in the House of Commons.

Never answered.

It was supposed that there was an answer given in 1853 by my right hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). The speech has been made year after year. Mr. Hubbard, a lineal ancestor, in a financial sense, of the hon. Member, brought the subject forward year after year, and stated precisely the same arguments. In 1861 a Committee was appointed, of which Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Hubbard were leading members. As the hon. Member says his arguments have never been answered, I would ask him to see the Report prepared by Sir Stafford Northcote as a Member of that Committee. I think everybody would consider that Report a conclusive answer to the hon. Member. If you were to apply to a man with an industrial income a lower rate of tax than you applied to a person who had an annuity of £100 in the funds, the result would be to create an absurdity. The distinction between various incomes must depend rather upon the amount than upon the character of such incomes. It could not be contended that the owner of a great brewery, for example, should pay at a lower rate than an annuitant, because the annuity proceeded from a different source. There is a great deal in the hon. Member's speech with which I agree, and a great deal with which I differ, but he must excuse me if I postpone until another occasion telling him with what part of the speech I agree and with what part I differ.

said, he did not think the very interesting figures brought forward by the hon. Member for North Islington (Mr. Bartley) had justified the conclusion he had adduced from them. The hon. Member said that only 50,000 of the taxpayers in Schedule D paid on incomes of over £500. It would, however, be found that an immense number of those who had incomes of over £500 under Schedule D had also incomes which came under other Schedules. Then the hon. Member said that there were only 20,000 persons under Schedule D with over £1,000 a year, and that the number was decreasing. He (Sir J. Lubbock) did not think anyone could imagine for a moment that there were really fewer persons with incomes of £1,000 a year under Schedule D than there were some years ago. Surely everybody knew that the number of such persons must be much larger than it was formerly. Perhaps the explanation was, that there had been a great tendency of late years for small firms to be absorbed into larger ones, small breweries and other undertakings to be absorbed into larger ones, so that the returns which used to be made by a considerable number of persons were now made as one Return by a Joint Stock Company. The hon. Member had suggested that the owner of Consols ought to pay at a higher rate than the person who derived his income from his own exertions. Consols, however, could not be taxed as Consols, or faith would be broken with the public taxpayer, and a very bad example would be set to foreign countries. It would be inequitable to tax Consols as such, nor did we do so—we taxed income, and the holder of Consols paid on his income. A higher rate of tax could, therefore, not be equitably placed upon Consols than upon other incomes.

said, he had not suggested anything of the kind. He had only referred to Consols as one of the specimens of spontaneous incomes.

said, his point was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer could not deal with Consols unless he was dealing with all incomes. Consols could not be taxed, although the income derived from them could be. The next item of spontaneous income referred to by his hon. Friend was that derived from land, but it had been a very decreasing income of late years, and he could not think that this would be at all a happy moment to choose for adding to the burdens now resting upon the agriculturists. As to houses, a difficulty of a different character arose. The amount required for repairs differed immensely in different kinds of houses. The moment the question of an allowance for repairs was introduced the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be landed in a labyrinth of difficulties from which it would be impossible to escape. His hon. Friend said that it would be easy to distinguish between "spontaneous" and "industrial" incomes. He thought it would be almost impossible. His hon. Friend said that a man who had a spontaneous income was secure, and need not save. Income from savings might be spontaneous, but was not necessarily secure. Could it be said that a man whose money was invested in such securities as Portuguese or Greek funds had a secure income, or that the income of a man who had invested in some industrial undertaking was necessarily secure? Then, how was a distinction to be drawn between incomes derived from Bank of England Stock and incomes derived from the Stock of a small bank, or between incomes derived from a small brewery and a large brewery? The hon. Member had suggested a different kind of tax upon concerns making £1,000 a year from that upon concerns making £500 a year, but of course the number of shareholders or partners would have to be taken into account, and hero another difficulty would arise. The hon. Member added the injustice of Income Tax was worse because it had been going on for so long. He (Sir J. Lubbock) should rather have drawn the opposite inference, because, happily, an inequality which might be very great at first was, if continued long enough, compensated for to a certain extent by other considerations. It was, however, perfectly true that the members of the legal and medical profession derived their incomes from the exercise of their brains, and that other persons might perhaps derive a similar amount of income without any exertion to themselves. The truth was that no tax could be a just and fair one. We must regard the taxation of the country as a whole, and if we found that some taxes pressed heavily on some classes, who should find that others pressed heavily on others, and the result was that some sort of justice was arrived at. Taxes derived from the Customs pressed, no doubt, with severity on certain classes of the people. That injustice was made up to a certain extent by the Income Tax, and in that way one tax to a certain extent compensated for the inequalities that existed in another. The matter was very carefully gone into by the very strong Committee of 1861. Nobody could read the very interesting Blue Book which related to that Committee and fail to see the extraordinary difficulties there was in dealing with the question in the manner proposed by the hon. Member. At the same time, great injustice would be done unless the Income Tax was kept within a moderate and reasonable limit. If it were raised much more than at present all the evils that had been pointed out would be aggravated. There were two points which he thought it desirable that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should consider in his Budget. He had never himself been able to see why the English farmer should be called upon to pay a different rate of Income Tax from the Scotch or the Irish farmer. If there was any reason for a difference originally there was no such reason now, particularly at a time when the agriculturists were suffering so greatly. He urged that they should be placed on the same footing. The other point on which he wished to say a word was as regards the assessment of industrial incomes. One great compensating circumstance in connection with the Income Tax used to be, that in the case of incomes derived from trade it was taken on the average of three, years. If a man had made an average income of £1,000 a year for the previous three years and made more than that amount he could not be called upon to pay more than he returned, but if he made less than the £1,000 he was allowed a rebate. It was calculated by the Head of the Inland Revenue Department before the Committee of 1861 that this privilege was practically equivalent to an allowance of 30 per cent. That had been altered without, so far as he could learn, any sanction to the change having been given by the House, and he submitted that the old method of calculation should be revived, which would to some extent meet the objections urged by the hon. Member for Islington.

said, he should like to point out a case of great hardship in the levying: of Income Tax on industrial incomes. It was the case where male and female school teachers married. When single their incomes were exempted from the tax, but when married the joint incomes were liable. In some cases the expenses of married couples might be less than those of the parties when single, but that could not be so where there were families. He trusted the Secretary to the Treasury would look into the matter. There were not very many cases, he should imagine, but there certainly were some.

said, that no doubt the difficulties in the way of making distinctions as to the manner in which income was derived or in graduating the Income Tax were almost insuperable; but the difficulty had been overcome in some of the Colonies by substituting for a tax on income a tax on property. If the House would consider the matter for a moment they would see that this met all the difficulties and all the objections urged against making the suggested distinctions. For example, a person possessed £100,000; whether he invested the money in Consols or in foreign securities he paid equally on the £100,000. Though his income from foreign securities would be larger his risk would be greater. The system adopted with reference to incomes derived from trades or professions was to fix the number of years' purchase which a trade or profession was worth. A man who was making £3,000 a year from any trade or profession would not pay in the same way as the man who had invested £100,000 in Consols; he would pay 10 years' purchase, or £30,000. In this way the distinction would be kept up very clearly between incomes derived from investments and incomes which were not of that permanent character, derived from trades and professions. This had been done in the colonies, and he had never clearly understood why the same system had not been adopted in this country. He was not going into the question raised by the hon. Gentleman opposite. The hon. Gentleman had fairly stated his case, and, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, it had been stated again and again that the objections to it were technical.

said, he thought the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had treated the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Islington with hardly as much respect as it deserved. He had said that he had heard it 45 times before. Well, he (Mr. Gibbs) should certainly think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer's reply had been made 45 hundred times before. There were two answers always made to anyone who proposed to lighten any tax. The first was that the Budget had not yet been brought out, and that therefore the thing was altogether premature; and the other was that the Budget had been settled upon, and it was altogether too late. It could hardly be denied that the hon. Member had made out a very good case, whether it had been made out before or not, and so far as he (Mr. Gibbs) understood, the only thing urged against it was that it was very difficult to amend the tax. No doubt it was difficult, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his officers were, as they all knew, very clever people, and he was sure that it was not beyond their powers to lighten the burden. It had been pointed out very clearly what great injustice was done by the way in which taxes were altered in the House without anybody knowing anything about it. The manner in which the Income Tax was assessed had been altered, and many people were very much surprised when by practical experience they discovered that that alteration had been made. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would consider these matters, and endeavour to give some relief where it was very much wanted.

I wish, for the convenience of the House, just to mention that I do not intend to bring forward the Motion which stands in my name upon the Paper with regard to alien emigration. Looking at the present state of the House, it seems to me desirable to postpone that Motion to some more favourable opportunity. But before the discussion in which the House is now engaged terminates, I should like to enter a caveat against the presumption that the Members of the Opposition generally endorse the doctrines which my hon. Friend has laid down. My hon. Friend holds views with regard to taxation with which I, at any rate, cannot concur. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has stated that a case has never been known in which a gentleman holding his position has been "drawn." The right hon. Gentleman has no disregard for the process of establishing precedents, and I think that everyone who listened to his reply to my hon. Friend must have come to the conclusion that my hon. Friend, at any rate, has beaten the record in having been the first Member who has succeeded in "drawing" a Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am bound to say that the right hon. Gentleman proceeded to reply to his own argument as to what had been the invariable practice in regard to his predecessors, for he certainly was most successfully "drawn." As to the reply of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I do not wish to go into the points on which he dwelt. I was relieved to find that he does not contemplate in his Budget embarking in some of the transactions suggested by my hon. Friend. My hon. Friend guarded himself against being supposed to favour rash experiments of the kind he spoke of; but, at the same time, if incomes below a certain point are to be exempted from taxation, then the bulk of the Revenue must be raised from a small portion of the tax-paying community, and when that is taken concurrently with the suggestion which, I am afraid, is not altogether without "sympathy on the Treasury Bench, under which those who are to pay the great bulk of the taxes have loss electoral power than even that which they now possess, I think it will make most of us chary of endorsing such a proposal. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of attempts which have been made to discriminate between various classes of incomes. As I understood my hon. Friend, he proposed that incomes derived from what he called industries, including profits in business and trade, whether great or small, were in a different category from incomes derived from settled property, whether real or personal. My hon. Friend does not speak benevolently of the unfortunate small freeholder. I for some years represented a large number of small freeholders, upon whom I know well that taxation presses very hardly. My hon. Friend says he does not propose to diminish the amount of money at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exche- quer, but that he only proposes to make the knapsack fit more evenly on the shoulders. What does that mean? It means that under my hon. Friend's suggestion the other Income Tax payers would pay more than they have done hitherto, which I think would be a great hardship upon them. I must own there is something to be said as to the different sources from which incomes are derived. My hon. Friend was on fair ground when he dwelt on the general proposition, but the moment he came to deal with it in detail his difficulties commenced. Now, my hon. Friend spoke of the interest a person has in a sum of money during his lifetime, and suggested that at his death that interest is available to those who succeed him. I am not sure that that is always the case. My hon. Friend knows very well that there are settlements which preclude persons entitled to a beneficial interest for life from disposing of the funds in a manner in which they may think fit. Then my hon. Friend talked about insurance. He said that a prudent person in receipt of an income of modest dimensions is bound to sot aside a part of his income, at least, as an insurance fund. I would remind him that a prudential consideration would equally apply in a large number of cases to persons in receipt of incomes even from settled funds. The Secretary to the Treasury realises that. What I wish to enter a protest against is any system of what is called graduated taxation. I understood my hon. Friend to suggest the exemption of incomes up to £200 a year from Income Tax. I do not think that that would be at all wholesome advice for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take as tendered to him on behalf of the Conservative Party. As I say, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, unlike any of his predecessors, has been "drawn," and I hope the result of this discussion will be to show that any wild scheme that might have been suggested by hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House tending in the direction of differential taxation and graduated Income Tax would certainly not meet with the approval of the great mass of Members in this House.

said, he wished in a word to endorse what had fallen from the right hon. Baronet in regard to the taxation of farmers' incomes. It had been a matter of complaint for years that farmers' incomes were taxed on different scales in England to those in Scotland and Ireland, and he would respectfully suggest to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this would be a particularly happy year to put the English farmer on the same footing as the Scotch and Irish farmers. Scotland and Ireland had been favoured by Providence with a particularly bountiful season, while the English farmer had been impoverished to an unprecedented degree. It would make small difference to the Revenue, and would be a welcome mark of sympathy with the English farmer, who would be still more grateful if he could be furnished at all with an income on which to pay, but he was afraid that to furnish that was not in the power of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In regard to the main question they were debating, it should not be forgotten that the Income Tax was only a matter of pence in the pound after all; but the rates were a matter of shillings in the pound, and personal property and earned incomes were exempt from the burden of the rates.

said, he wished to call attention to the danger to life resulting from floating derelicts in the Atlantic. He should not attempt to occupy the time of the House except for two reasons: first, because he believed the matter to be one of very great urgency—a matter of very great importance to large numbers of people not only in this country but of every country in England and America. Great numbers of passengers crossed the Atlantic every week, and those passengers were all subject to the possibility of a momentary catastrophe which they could not very well contend against. The catastrophe was very different to every other danger to which sailors were liable. There were remedies against other risks, such as fire, but at night they had no remedy against floating derelicts, which were absolutely unseen. He had done all he could as a private Member to direct the attention of the Government to this most important subject. He had put questions to them, and he was bound to say that he had been received with great courtesy by the President of the Board of Trade and the Secretary to the Admiralty. These gentlemen, however, had shuffled off responsibility from one to the other. The question was one which could not be deferred, and, in order that it might receive the attention it merited, he took upon himself to ask a question of the late Prime Minister, which was one of the last questions which the right hon. Gentleman answered on the Treasury Bench. The right hon. Gentleman had given a most satisfactory answer, stating that the matter was one of very great importance, and that it would receive the attention of the Government. It did, in fact, receive the attention of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman had not sent despatches, as had hitherto been the practice, but in answer to urgent questions put from time to time he had telegraphed to Washington to obtain further information. That further information had been asked for since, and they had been told that the Government were considering the matter. Questions of this kind the Government had been considering for a long time, and it appeared to him that the time had now come when the House ought to take some action for themselves. A Petition had been presented to the present Prime Minister signed by 800 masters of vessels, representing 31,000 sailors. The lives of these 31,000 sailors were of as much concern to the House of Commons as the lives of anyone in the country. They should look after those who were in peril on the seas, and they should take care they were not liable to this terrible and sudden catastrophe. It was their duty to limit the danger as much as possible, and they had the experience of another Government as to what could be done, because the American Government had had two of their men-of-war fitted up for the destruction of these derelicts.

Order, Order! I have just ascertained that notice has been given for the Second Reading of a Bill on this subject; therefore, the discussion is out of Order.

hoped he should not be out of place if he once more pressed upon Her Majesty's Government the question of the production of the Papers relating to Siam. They had been promised from time to time that these Papers should be produced, but the hope deferred by the Government made the heart of the Opposition sick. This question of Siam was one on which large sections of Her Majesty's subjects felt considerable anxiety. They feared the British interests had to some extent been sacrificed, that the commercial interests especially had not been safeguarded, and that France had been allowed to obtain a position with regard to Siam that might seriously compromise the independence of that country in the future. He was sorry the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs was not in his place, but it was well known that they intended to raise this question, as their object was to obtain the production of the Papers so as to enable them to judge how far their Foreign Office had been able to go with the Government of France in this matter; whether the Siamese had really been victimised, and whether the independence of the Kingdom, which was coterminous to the south-eastern portion of our Eastern Empire, had been properly protected or not. The extraordinary delays on the part of the French Government in bringing matters to an issue had, he would not say been viewed with suspicion, but had caused grave apprehension as to whether or not Franco contemplated the ultimate absorption of Siam. They were 1oth to take an unkindly view of the motive and conduct of our gallant neighbours, but there had been so much high handedness in the conduct of France, such undue precipitancy in proceeding against Siam, such excessive severity in the execution of terms, that our French neighbours must not be offended with them if they desired to make a stand on behalf of the British side of the question, and endeavour to press the matter forward. He was glad the hon. Baronet had now come to his place, and be hoped the hon. Gentleman would be able at once to inform them whether there was a chance of these Papers being soon delivered. They were told before Easter that immediately after Easter the Papers should be presented, but Easter had come and gone, and yet they did not obtain the Papers. If they seemed unduly hasty in the matter their answer was that they were the only parties who had not got these Papers. Their French neighbours had got their Papers; the French Parliament, the French public and French politicians all knew the French view of the question; but the British Parliament and public did not yet know the views of their own Government. They did not know how these Papers would affect the general question between the two nations, how far they would be able to vindicate their own rights and position, or whether or not they ought to be satisfied with the position of Siam. All interested in this really burning question, which might be of enormous importance in the future, were unaware what considerations were hung up until they could understand what the Papers would show. The future independence of Siam was really the main object, and he would warn the Government that, unless some joint understanding could be arrived at between France and England in respect to the future of Siam, that India would probably not be safe. This was becoming a double pressure; it was a double-barrelled opposition to the progress of the British Empire in the East. There was a war-cloud hanging over both Continents, one on the side of Russia and the other on the side of France, and he did not know which cloud was darkest or the most menacing; but it would be a most dangerous concatenation of events for England if ever there should be a war in which France and Russia were on the one side and England on the other. Just imagine India between two such fires, but that was what they were being threatened with by Russia on the one side and Franco on the other. He had no doubt all this was as well known to Her Majesty's Government as it was to them, but they would like this knowledge to show itself in such vigorous action as might keep back those two advancing Powers, that should keep Russia in check on the one side and Franco in check on the other. There was no doubt this matter of Siam had greatly increased the risks and peril of India which, Heaven knows, were great enough before. He did not think anything so serious to the future safety of India could have happened than this matter of Siam. It had long been foreseen by Anglo-Indian statesmen, and warning after warning had been given. After ail, what did the British Government say? That England had no immediate concern in the quarrel between France and Siam. England had the most vital concern, and to say that, on the part of the British Government, was entirely to give the case away and throw it to the wolves. That was what had happened, and he said it with great regret, because in all other respects he was one of those who greatly admired the manner in which our foreign affairs had been built up. The hope that after all some remedy might he found to mitigate this danger must be the excuse for troubling the Government in the matter. No doubt, it reminded them of the hammer and the tongs, but they were obliged to go on hammering. Those warnings from Anglo-Indian sources ought to be far more respected by the British Parliament than they were. Every one of the misfortunes that had happened in Central Asia had been predicted. Every single prophecy in regard to the advance of Russia had been verified. Now similar warnings were given in respect to the advance of France, and they saw how little they were regarded. Still, they would go on warning and warning in order that the perils that threatened India might be somewhat mitigated. If a sound and conciliatory policy on the one hand, though firm and resolute on the other, were adopted, it would be still possible to preserve the independence of Siam.

said, he did not propose to follow the hon. Baronet in the discussion of the general question because it had been discussed in the House on previous occasions, and since it was last discussed nothing new had happened in the situation to render it desirable that it should be again discussed on the part of the Government. The hon. Baronet's views had often been expressed, they were always received with attention, and they were well known to Her Majesty, but he must dissent from one statement, which was, that the Government had declared that this country had no interest in Siamese affairs.

said, he had not said that; what he said, and still said, was that Her Majesty's Government declared that when the quarrel arose between France and Siam on the banks of the Mekong that England had no immediate interest in that quarrel.

said, that if he remembered aright he did not think anything more was said than this, that England had no immediate interest in certain incidents of that quarrel. But another statement was made last year, to the effect that the Government considered this country had considerable interest in the maintenance of the independence and integrity of Siam, and, of course, those two statements must be taken together. With regard to the production of Papers, he had explained about 10 days ago that the Government were delaying because they thought it desirable that a final settlement of the points at issue between France and Siam should be arrived at before Papers were presented. He understood that now there only remained one point outstanding and still unsettled. That point was the question of the trial of a Siamese official accused of the murder of a French officer. One stage of the trial had resulted in the acquittal of the official. They were not quite certain, but what they heard rather went to show it was probable that there would be further proceedings. He hoped and expected, however, that the final result of this trial would not be long delayed. It was thought desirable still to refrain for a time from publishing Papers, in the hope that a satisfactory settlement of this outstanding point would be arrived at shortly.