said, that when his speech was interrupted at midnight yesterday he was proceeding to examine the grounds on which the demand of those who promoted the Bill was based—he meant the demand for extending its provisions universally and uniformly to every part of the country. He ventured to say that on this subject there had been a considerable shifting of position on the part of those who represented the miners—in the Miners' Federation. They used to be threatened, not so very long ago, with the horrors of a universal strike if this Bill were not passed, and appeals were made to Parliament to pass this Bill in order to preserve the country from the miseries which such a strike would involve. But they hoard little about the universal strike now, and the reason was obvious. On this question a universal strike was impossible so long as there were important districts in which the Organisations of the miners were opposed to the Bill. This, however, brought him to a very important point. The fact that there were these Organisations opposed to the Bill was the justification put forward for not accepting an Amendment to apply the principle of local option in regard to the Bill. What did that mean? It meant simply this: that this legislation was sought simply and solely in order to coerce those districts which were unwilling to come under the provisions of the measure. Had it really come to this: that in the endeavour to coerce districts embracing considerably upwards of 100,000 miners, Parliament was to be asked to assist? If it were so, all he could say was that their traditional liberties must indeed be in danger. There was only one justification in any degree plausible which he could imagine for legislation of this kind, and it was that such legislation was urgently demanded in the interests of the health or the safety of those who were employed in the mines. As a matter of fact, in the former history of this question this plea was frequently put forward, but it had been fairly examined by the Royal Commission on Labour, and he did not hesitate to say that it had been completely upset. The conclusions at which the Commission arrived were that the miners were not in an exceptional position as regarded the unhealthiness of their employment, but, on the contrary, that their employment was on the whole more healthy than the average of employments, and that as regarded safety the Eight Hours Bill would not promote safety nor diminish the risk of accidents, but would be likely to have the effect of increasing them. These conclusions arrived at by the Royal Commission were not disputed in the Minority Report. And further than that, in the Debate of yesterday there was not a single claim put forward for this Bill on the ground of health and safety. This was a very striking fact, and he could not say how far, in the first instance, pleas more on the ground of health and safety were put forward by the miners with thorough conviction: but he had no doubt that it was those pleas which secured for this Bill a great deal of the sympathy which it received, and a great deal of the support which was given to it by those who had no personal interest in the question electorately or otherwise. If this high ground of health and of safety was abandoned, as he had no doubt it had been, what remained? There remained the lower ground of self-interest, and that alone. Yesterday, only three hon. Members spoke against local option, and each of them opposed the Amendment on the ground alone that if it were passed those districts which adopted the Bill would be unfavourably affected as compared with those districts which did not. That was really the only argument which had been put forward against the Amendment. It was surely a new and indefensible doctrine that Parliament was to be called in in order to redress the balance between one district and another. But the inequalities between districts did not apply alone to hours of work. There were inequalities as regarded wages, and in other respects. Were they, then, to extend the principle of this legislation to all these inequalities, so as to bring about uniformity all round? Properly regarded, the Bill was nothing but a step in the direction of collectivism. They might as well be asked to go the whole way and take the mines directly under the management of the State. That would be a conclusion which would be not unsatisfactory to some Members of that House; for example, to the Member for Battersea (Mr. John Burns), but was that a step which the House generally could contemplate? What the Bill actually proposed did not amount to this, but it was in this direction and was sufficiently absurd, for it meant that more than 100,000 miners were to be brought under the yoke of uniformity, and subject against their will to the conditions of this Bill, in order that the Miners' Federation might be assisted to reduce the output and to keep up the price of coal in the hope that by that means they would be able to maintain wages. To put the matter in other words, what Parliament was asked to do was to help the Miners' Federation—the most powerful organisation of workmen in the world—to coerce the districts of South Wales, Northumberland, and Durham, in order that wages might be kept up, and the price of coal raised to the consumers all over the country. A more impudent claim had never been put forward by any body of men, yet it was for this claim that the Government gave exceptional facilities.

said, he had listened carefully to the arguments put forward by the promoters of this Bill——

said, he would ask the Chairman whether the Debate upon the Amendment to the Amendment would not be limited to the subject-matter thereof?

said, Yes; the discussion must be confined to the substitution of "district" for "county."

said, that with regard to the Amendment which had just been moved by the hon. Member opposite, so far as he was concerned he could not see, whether it was accepted or not, that it would make very much difference to the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr. Whether they took the county or the district, it did not affect the principle of the thing. There was one matter which had pleased him in the course of the Debate which had taken place. He was led to understand from the statement made by the hon. Member for the Ince Division, who was one of the promoters of the Bill, that the promoters were not disposed to accept any Amendment to the Bill. Now, the Member for Sunderland had his name upon the Bill, and might, he presumed, be considered to be a pro moter of the Bill——

said, he understood this Amendment would be accepted. Might he suggest that it be made at once, so that the lines of the Debate might not be limited.

said, he did not know what authority the right hon. Baronet had for saying that the Amendment would be accepted. He himself was not in a position to say whether it would or would not be accepted.

said, that as he understood those in favour of the Amendment would accept the Amendment suggested, it would be convenient that it should be accepted at once, so that a general discussion might be taken upon the amended Amendment.

said, he should be glad to know what was the meaning of the word "district."

said, that a subsequent Amendment proposed to define the districts. It provided that the districts were to be determined by the Home Secretary, and would be found on page 15.

said that, so far as he was concerned, he was prepared to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Leeds. He was not, however, prepared to accept the hon. Gentleman's definition of "district." He rather questioned the ability of not only the present Home Secretary but Home Secretaries in general to define what was a district.

said, he did not explain his Amendment in his speech. He put down in the Amendment what he conceived to be the meaning of a district.

continuing, said, he was glad to find that among the promoters of this Bill there was one, at all events, who had exercised his usual independence of character, and had not concurred in the decision which had been come to by the hon. Member for Ince and his friends to refuse all compromise on this subject whatever. The hon. Member for Sunderland had not only agreed to support this Amendment, but had made a good and sensible speech in its favour. He hoped that the example set by him would be followed by others, and that they might find a means of corning to a compromise which would satisfy the districts represented by himself and the hon. Member for Merthyr. This Bill was one of vital importance to the district he represented, and he must say that in his opinion it was being pushed forward with very great haste. He thought that when a great change of this sort was contemplated it would be a good thing that it should he subjected not only to full and complete discussion in that House, but that the details of the measure affecting the change should be thoroughly thrashed out in the constituencies which were specially interested in the question. He ventured to say that the provisions of this Bill and the effect of the Bill were most imperfectly understood, not only in the mining constituencies but throughout the country, and he should have preferred it to have been held over to another Parliament, when its provisions would have been more thoroughly discussed in the country, so that the constituencies might be fully aware of the effect likely to ensue. A great deal had been said as to the large number of miners who were in favour of this Bill; but he maintained, notwithstanding what had been said by the hon. Member for Ince and his friends, they had no reliable information as to the opinion of the great bulk of the miners within the districts they represented. In Durham and Northumberland there was a small percentage of miners who were in favour of the Bill, as against a large percentage who were opposed to it. What had the Federation districts done to enlighten them on this question? He would like to know whether those hon. Members who supported the Bill had ascertained the feeling of their constituents with regard to its proposals. He was certain that there was a large number of men in the Federated districts who wished to have nothing whatever to do with the Bill, and he would not be satisfied with the mere assertion of one or two gentlemen that that was not so. If Parliament sought to pass an important measure of this kind—a measure which proposed to take away the right of every miner in the country to use his labour to the best of his ability and judgment—they were in duty bound to see that the application of the principle was put forward in such a way that it would cause the least possible amount of friction and the least possible injustice. The measure was entirely in the nature of an experiment. He defied any man to state accurately what would be the result if it became law. In fact, if ever there was an occasion when the House of Commons had been invited to take a leap in the dark this was one. There were many districts which would suffer by this measure much more than others. It was all very well for hon. Members who came from Yorkshire and Lancashire to say that if this Amendment were passed great injury would be done to their districts; but they said nothing about the much greater injury that would be done to the districts represented by himself and the hon. Member for Merthyr. He maintained that the effect produced by the Bill in its present form would be much more disastrous to their districts than it would be to the districts represented by the hon. Member for Eccles and the hon. Member for Ince. There were some parts of the country where very little effect would be produced. In Yorkshire and in Staffordshire they practically had the benefit of this measure already, and the Bill would make very little difference there. It would increase the cost a little, but it would be a mere trifle to the effect produced in other districts which were not so fortunately placed as they were. The hon. Member for Merthyr had made an admirable speech, much of which would stand for a defence of Durham and Northumberland in this matter; but he maintained that whatever strong arguments they might have to support their case, it was almost impossible to get the ordinary Member of Parliament to understand the practical and the technical difficulties that they would have to contend with in this measure. Durham and Northumberland would specially suffer under this measure. He asserted, however, that they had special claims, for they constituted about the largest coal-producing district in the country, and were among the oldest collieries working in the country. Durham had been working for very many years, and he certainly thought they had carried on their work there in as safe and practical a way as any coal-producing district could. If they looked at the loss of life which took place in Northumberland and Durham they would find that they compared most favourably with other districts. In Durham and Northumberland at the present time the hewers did not work on the average more than from six to seven hours, and if the existing hours were to be shortened the probability was that the men would be so pushed to earn a living wage that they would neglect the ordinary precautions for preserving their own lives and limbs. To make this a compulsory Bill applicable to the North of England would also put the coalowners at a great disadvantage in the selling of their coal. Already they had very great difficulty in maintaining their trade owing to the strong and active competition to which they were subjected in all parts of the world. The export trade of Durham was about 50 per cent, of the whole, and it was all to districts where this keen competition existed. Large collieries were now open in Australia, New Zealand, China, and elsewhere, and in his own experience he had seen the Northumber- land and Durham coalowners lose one market after another. The South American markets had almost disappeared owing to the competition of New Zealand and Australia, and he had been told the other day by a large merchant that the time was not far distant when the whole of the coal used east of the port of Aden would be produced by India, China, Japan, and Australasia. Comparing the production of this country with Australia, Germany, Japan, China, and the United States, since 1883 the United Kingdom had gone up from 160,000,000 to 183,000,000 tons, while those other countries had gone up from 210,000,000 to 296,000,000 tons. Under these circumstances nobody could deny that foreign competition played a most important part in connection with this question. Notwithstanding that freights had so largely decreased, there was the utmost difficulty in maintaining our hold on foreign markets, and foreign competition was as real in coal as it was in agriculture or any other industry that now felt the weight of competition with the foreigner. The County of Durham had also special claims to consideration, because it had large manufactories which were entirely dependent upon the price of coal, and then again, upon those manufactories hundreds and thousands were dependent for their daily bread. Surely at a time like this—when every industry was suffering from depression—it was most unwise to have promoted a Bill like the present. Another strong claim that Durham and Northumberland had was that their methods of working their mines were altogether different to those which prevailed in other parts of the country. It was true that boys in those mines worked 10 hours a day, but it was a gross libel to describe them as galley slaves. Theirs, however, were not the only districts in which the boys were worked 10 hours underground. [An hon. MEMBER: "No."] There were many boys in the district represented by the Member for Ince who worked 10 hours, and there were great advantages in the Durham system over theirs. They were far healthier, stronger, and happier than the hands employed in manufacturing towns; and as soon as they reached the age of 19 or thereabouts and became hewers, they only worked about 6½ hours per day. The boys who work exceptionally hard were the hand-putters, but they formed only a very small proportion of the boys employed in the Durham mines, and they had inducements to work hard, for they were on piece-work and earned good wages. If the boys in the Durham and Northumberland mines were compared with those employed in the factories of his hon. Friend the Member for Ince and in other factories, it would be found that the former were the stronger and healthier. Out of 100 occupations, at the head of which stood that of the clergyman, there were only 30 showing longer lives than that of the coal miner. Then, again, there could be no doubt that the adoption in Durham and Northumberland of a compulsory eight hours' system would greatly increase the cost of production. He admitted that there must be a limit, but he maintained that they were carrying the limit too far. He found that in 1890 two-thirds of the pits in Durham were working practically 11 hours a day. They decided to reduce that to 10 hours, and it entailed a good deal of discussion, because it was thought that it would be a very serious charge in the shape of cost. What had been the result? In one colliery, particulars of which he had with him, there were 325 men employed in 1890, and it required 390 men to get exactly the same quantity. Another colliery produced 358,000 tons in 1890, and in 1891, with the reduction, they produced only 321,000 tons. These were facts which the Committee could not get over. Taking the County of Durham, what was the effect produced? In 1890 the amount produced in the County of Durham was 30,265,000 tons, and in order to do that 86,799 men were employed. When two-thirds of the collieries reduced their working time one-half, the quantity produced was 29,807,000—showing a reduction of 457,000 tons, while the increased number of men employed was 5,789. So that to get a decrease of 1½ per cent, they were obliged to employ 6 per cent, more men. Between 1888 and 1891 Durham increased its output to 142,000 tons, while he found that in Yorkshire they increased the output to 2,213,560 tons. One undoubted effect of the shortening of the hours would be to injure seriously all the old and weakly men who were hewers, and who could not put on the additional power of work that shorter hours would entail. The tendency would be to drive employers to select young and sturdy men, to the great detriment of the older hands, to whom at the present time every leniency and consideration were shown. It had been said by some of its friends that the Bill was promoted with a view to avoiding strikes, but in the North of England he believed it would rather have a tendency to promote them. In the North they had now Conciliation Boards and Joint Committees who were able amicably to adjust matters as between employers and employed. How would it be if such a Bill as this were passed? It would destroy to a large extent the value of the work done by these Conciliation Boards during the past 20 years.

I rise to Order, Sir. May I ask whether the hon. Member is speaking to the Amendment?

May I ask, Sir, whether I am not showing cause why Durham should be excluded from the Bill?

The Question is, whether you are to put this power in the hands of the majority of the workmen employed in any district.

said, he was showing that Durham had a very strong claim to local option, but he was not surprised that his hon. Friends, the supporters of this Bill, who produced no argument and illustration of their own, should exhibit impatience when it came from the other side. They seemed to think they could as easily make upon Northumberland and Durham the impression which they had made upon Her Majesty's Government. If he were not to do his duty, and to strongly represent the case of Durham as he was striving to do, the probability was that somebody else would represent Chester-le-Street after the next Election. He was sent to Parliament because he understood mining questions, and so long as he had a seat in the House he would not hesitate to express his opinion upon such questions. What would this Bill do? There were only three methods by which it could be worked. The first would be to have one shift, which meant a complete departure from and a complete break-up of the whole system that now existed in North- umberland and Durham. He was sure the men would never consent to such a change. The second plan would be to adopt two shifts of men and two shifts of hoys, but here there was the difficulty that they could not get the number of boys that would be required, so that there was little or no chance of working a double-shift system. The third alternative would be to have three shifts of men and two shifts of boys, which was equally impracticable, and he maintained that however they strove to apply this to Northumberland and Durham in many of the old pits all plans were equally impracticable. He opposed the Bill because he believed it would seriously injure the Counties of Durham and Northumberland. He maintained that the House of Commons ought to listen to the voice of 120,000 men in the Counties of Durham and Northumberland whom this Bill would affect. The miners of the North had a perfect right to manage their own domestic affairs—quite as much right as the people of Ireland. Was it to be supposed that the thrusting upon them against their will of such a Bill as this would increase their respect for the law? He did not wish to utter threats, but it was quite possible that if 120,000 men made us their minds to ignore a law of this kind Parliament would hesitate before it attempted to thrust that law upon them. He opposed this Bill because he believed it was unequal in its burden upon the country and unjust in its application so far as the North of England was concerned, and he should not cease to oppose it in every possible way, because he believed that in so doing he was not only carrying out the wishes of the people he represented, but that his action would be for the advantage of the whole country.

said, he had the misfortune not to be in sympathy on this question with his colleagues in the representation of Durham, but observations he had been able to make during a not limited period had convinced him that among the miners of the county there was daily growing a sense of sympathy with the objects sought by the promoters of the Bill. No doubt the progress of that sentiment had been to a large extent checked, and properly checked, by the great authority and not undeserved influence of those who were the leaders of the' miners; but not with standing that properly-exercised influence and the great weight of the arguments that might be adduced against the application of an Eight Hours Bill to Durham, there was a growing feeling that it was only just and reasonable that the Legislature should intervene for purpose of assisting the miners in other districts of England to obtain that fair measure of labour which combination had hitherto been unsuccessful in securing for them. It was a remarkable fact that the most powerful and leading advocates of the application of an eight hours law were to be found amongst those who were formerly opposed to any legislative interference at all, and as an instance of that he need only mention one name, that of Mr. Cowie, the respected representative of the miners of Yorkshire, who had been convinced by the experience of recent years that combination by means of Trade Unions was entirely incompetent to grapple with the question. He was bound to say at the outset that he did not concur with the strong observations made by the the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyne, as to the "galley slave-like" treatment of boys underground. He agreed that 10 hours' work for lads underground as compared with the 7½ or 8 hours worked by the men was an invidious distinction, and one which ought to be abolished, seeing that it necessarily clashed—as was graphically stated at the Miners' Conference—with the sentiments of the boys themselves. In these days when the Imperial Government and Local Authorities were striving to bring education of a high standard within the reach of the humbler classes it certainly was antagonistic to the efficient working of the educational system that boys should be kept in the mines for the long period of 10 hours, and he believed that the miners of Durham themselves had awakened to the conviction that it was an improper thing that their boys should be allowed to work such long hours.

Might I ask what reasons the hon. Gentleman has for making that remark?

said, his hon. Friend challenged him to state his authority. He thought he could give ample and most conclusive reasons for the statement. He had frequently spoken at meetings in his own constituency against the system of allowing boys to remain in the pit so long, and the miners had always received his observations with sympathy.

Is that all the proof you have?

said, he had not had the opportunity of consulting every individual miner, and he frankly admitted that he could not give any further proof; but he thought his experience was sufficient to show that the miners of Durham were awakening to a sense that 10 hours was an excessive period for boys to work underground. He would like to add that he was perfectly certain that if the hon. Member who had interrupted him or the hon. Member for the Wansbeck Division of Northumberland believed for a moment that the boys were suffering under any grievous wrong, they would be the first to raise their voices against a continuance of it. He fully acknowledged that they did not believe any such wrong existed. He had listened with interest to the Debate which had been carried on by those who were intimately associated with the coal industry of this country, and he had noted—as no doubt others had done—what had been said as to the danger likely to accrue to mining if this measure were carried. The very same arguments against legislative interference with labour were adduced in 1872 on the occasion of the Mines Act as had been advanced in that Debate.

Never by the men.

said, he was prepared to admit that legislation in the interests of adult male labour was a comparatively recent departure, but it was not altogether novel. It had been found necessary for the Legislature to interfere in respect of the Employers' Liability Act to prohibit men from contracting themselves out of its provisions, and in the Coal Mines Regulation Act it had been found necessary to insert stringent Rules. He might multiply these instances of legislative interference with adult male labour. But that was not the point he wished to speak upon. He wished to deal more particularly with the employment of boys over long hours.

Order, order! That is not the point of the Amendment, which raises the question of local option.

said, the reason why local option was demanded was that the retention of boy labour in its present form was necessary, and could not be done without. Therefore, he submitted that the point he was making was pertinent to the Amendment. He would only say further, with regard to the interference of the Legislature in this matter, that in 1872, in the course of the Debate on the Mines Act, they were told by Sir George Elliott, a most distinguished member of the trade, that it would be a grievous wrong to the coal industry of Durham if the boys' hours were limited, and he added that he was prepared to pit the boys of Durham against against any who might be produced from other parts of the United Kingdom. Indeed, following the same line of the hon. Member for Durham, he spoke of them as skipping like March hares when they left the pits.

When did I use such poetical language?

I only said the observations followed the same line. He ventured to suggest that unless they could have put before them—chapter and verse—some intelligible grounds for assuming that a measure of the kind now before the Committee were passed disastrous consequences would follow in contradistinction to the results which accrued from similar legislation in 1842 and in 1872—unless the opponents of the Bill were prepared to prove that the results they depicted were certain to follow, then the Committee was entitled to treat their arguments with as little respect as the effects of the 1842 and 1872 legislation justified them in treating the arguments advanced in those years. It was curious to note the community of feeling on this subject between men who had the interest of the working classes so much at heart, and those who represented the capitalists of the county. He could not help thinking that that feeling was due to the fact that the coal trade of Durham could be carried on on a more economical basis under the present system than the trade of other districts could. The output in Durham in 1890 was 368·4 tons per man, while in Lancashire it was only 268·6 per man; and the selling price of coal in Durham was, in 1889, 5s. 9d. per ton, as compared with 6s. 6d. in Lancashire and, he believed, in Yorkshire. Then it was obvious that this system of short hours for the men, combined with long hours for the boys, had managed to work very economically and very effectively in the County of Durham, and had enabled the county to trade to better advantage than other districts. Under the unequal conditions at present existing as between Durham and the other coal-producing districts of Great Britain, the latter were certainly able, substantially and practically, to hold their own. But while he made those observations in favour of the general principle of the Bill, he did not see any adequate reason why the system of local option should not be adopted. He had listened with attention to his hon. Friend the Member for Ince in order to find out what strong reasons he could advance against the permitting of local option. The hon. Gentleman stated that unless the conditions in different districts were equal, one district would be subjected to the temptation of working longer hours in order to compete with other districts. But unequal conditions already existed. Unequal geological conditions, unequal hours of work, unequal rates of pay, unequal facilities for haulage all existed as between the various coalfields; but, notwithstanding those varying conditions, it was found that the coalfields of Lancashire and Yorkshire and Wales enjoyed a trade which did not appear to run the slightest risk of being materially injured by the system prevailing in Northumberland and Durham. He did not think it was fairly to be expected that if local option were adopted there would be any fitful or capricious change in the manner of working coal in order to enable a district which was not within the magic circle successfully to compete with the districts which were within it. The hon. Member for Morpeth had recently told them that of the miners of Northumberland, 11,840 worked less than eight hours per day, and 15,874 more than eight hours. Of course, that included boys, and so forth. The figures given by the hon. Baronet the Member for Barnard Castle were to the effect that only 53 per cent. of the miners in Durham were coal-hewers, and the remaining 47 per cent., he took it, were men who worked more than eight hours a day. He repeated that while in sympathy with the principle of the Bill, he did not feel at liberty to vote against an Amendment which, in the belief of a very large number of persons immediately interested, would be disastrous to the industrial interests of Northumberland and Durham; but he believed that if the Bill were first made applicable to those districts desiring it—which would be Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, and probably the bulk of South Wales—it would be found that before very long there would grow up in Northumberland and Durham a strong conviction of the advantages which would accrue to the community from a general adoption of the measure. For those reasons he pressed his hon. Friend to reconsider his determination to refuse to admit the principle of local option. He was sure that if his hon. Friend would admit that principle rather than allow the Bill to perish, he would be better serving his cause than if he endeavoured, in defiance of the opinion of a very large minority of those interested, to press the Bill through as it stood.

said, that before he moved the Amendment which stood in his name he would like to controvert one or two of the statements of the hon. Gentleman who had last spoken, and who had endeavoured to make out that something like 50 per cent, of the men employed in Northumberland and Durham were working over eight hours. As a matter of fact, 71·54 per cent, of those who were employed in the County of Durham were working under eight hours, and 76·68 per cent. of those employed in the County of Northumberland were working under eight hours. It followed that the numbers who would be directly affected by this Bill would be 28·46 per cent. in Durham, and 21·32 per cent. in Northumberland. Another statement which the hon. Member made was that in the County of Durham 368 tons of coal per man per annum were raised and sold at 5s. 9d. a ton, whilst in Lancashire 268 tons per man per annum were produced and sold at 6s. 6d. per ton. On these figures the hon. Member had based an assertion that in the County of Durham employers were more eager to produce fuel economically; but when the hon. Member made that assertion, he was undoubtedly misleading the House, and showing a want of knowledge of facts which should be well within the knowledge of a Representative of Durham. The coal in the County of Durham differed materially from the coal in many other parts of the country. It was, to a large extent, soft coal and brittle coal, and nobody was going to pay for coal of that kind the prices which they would pay for hard round coal. This was a sufficient answer to the figures which the hon. Member had chosen to make use of. The hon. Member also alluded to the ballot which had been taken in Northumberland and Durham on the subject of this Bill. In that ballot 56·6 of the miners voted against the Bill, 26·3 for it, and 21·1 were neutral, many, of course, being absent from causes over which they had no control, and some being employed at the time. Of those actually voting 66·6 voted against the Bill and 33·3 in favour of it, so that there was a majority of 2 to 1 against it. Those who voted, he might add, included all boys over the age of 16.

Eighteen.

said, he thought the age was 16, but he accepted the correction. He claimed that these figures were very significant. Side by side with them the fact was to be borne in mind that in the district of the Miners' Federation the men had never been balloted at all. The inference which he drew was that the Miners' Federation know the weakness of their position, and that any figures they might obtain would not tell in their favour. Some indication of the feeling amongst the miners generally was, however, afforded by the Birmingham Conference. From what occurred at the Conference he was led to conclude that only one-third of the total number of men employed underground who were represented were in favour of the Bill; and that was the only public indication they had of a reliable character as to the extent to which the Bill was approved by the miners themselves. Some figures, however, also appeared in the Labour Commission's Report which indicated what were the views working men themselves took of the Bill. In 1890, at the Liverpool Trades Union Congress, 193 delegates voted for legislative interference and l55 against, while 109 were neutral. Three years afterwards, when the Congress was held at Belfast, the 193 for legislative intervention had dropped to 92, and the 155 against had fallen to 80, but the 109 neutral had increased to 265. Those figures went to show that there was no marked interest taken by those represented at the Trades Union Congress in the promotion of the Bill. He had never understood why the Federation refused to give evidence before the Labour Commission, unless it was that its leaders felt they would not be able to stand cross-examination. An experienced man, an engineer who had looked into the question, wrote to him some few months ago, not with a view to publicity, but because he (Mr. J. A. Pease) had asked for his opinion as to whether the adoption of an Eight Hours Bill for miners was practicable in the County of Durham, and that gentleman declared that, from whatever point of view the question was looked at, it seemed to him that the first effect of such a measure would be to reduce wages. If the Bill passed through Parliament without the addition of the local option principle he believed it would produce frightful misery in the County of Durham, and although the hon. Member for Eccles might think that a large number of the Representatives of Northumberland and Durham were speaking on the question, it must be remembered that it was one which vitally affected their constituents, and they felt bound to raise their voices in that House and do their best to protect those constituents and the livelihood they earned at so much risk. If the Bill passed as the hon. Members for Eccles and Ince desired that it should be passed, either it would become as much a dead letter as the Eight Hours Mining Bill had become in the United States, or the miners in the North of England would refuse by tens of thousands to conform to its provisions, and a nice position the Home Secretary would be placed in if he was called on to build a gaol for the honest, hard-headed, and industrious working men of the North of England. The number of boys in Northumberland and Durham was 16,090, and of those 6,000 were under 16. They, he admitted, were underground for 10 hours, and he regretted it, as did everyone who had anything to do with the coal industry in those counties. But even though they might wish to find some means of reducing the hours worked by those boys underground, it was desirable to look at the matter from a practical point of view. Taking, as an example, one large colliery in which 659 men and boys were employed, he found that the average time taken up in travelling to and from work underground was an hour and 16 minutes, while the interval during which the boys were not on duty was an hour and 13 minutes, so that they were only actually on duty for seven and a-half hours. He would put it to hon. Members who sympathetically viewed the position of the boys in Northumberland and Durham whether it was better that those boys should for three or four years perform 10 hours' work underground—many of them having practically only light work to perform—and for the rest of their lives should work seven hours underground, or that for the whole of their lives they should be employed for eight hours hard and fast. The boys did not suffer physically during those three or four years, and although he and others would like to see the number of hours reduced, he believed that, taken altogether, the system was beneficial for men and boys. Some experiments were, however, being conducted with a view to reducing the hours during which boys worked, and he was not sure that negotiations would not be entered into very shortly with a view to securing by voluntary arrangement some further reduction. Conciliation would, however, be needed on the part both of men and employers; and it might also be that some sacrifice would have to be made by parents if the hours were to be reduced without a material increase of the cost of the work. However that might be, he believed that a voluntary arrangement would enable the Counties of Northumberland and Durham to carry on their mining industry not only to their own satisfaction, hut in a way which would not compete injuriously with other districts which might approve of the Bill, and wish to place themselves within its scope. The Reports of the Labour Commission stated that coalmining presented a range and variety of conditions such as could be found in few other industries, and be thought it unfortunate that it should have been selected for such an experiment as that proposed by the Bill. The measure seemed to him, in fact, a Bill to restrict output, and such restriction must mean a lessening of the production of wealth which the community desired should be distributed among its members in the shape of food, clothing, shelter, and wages. He believed, whatever might be the fate that night of the local option Amendment, that if it had been considered earlier in the Session, it would, without doubt, have been carried, and that it was only because of the late period to which the discussion had been driven, that there was any danger of the Amendment being lost. He begged to move, as an Amendment to that Amendment, that the words "two-thirds majority" should be substituted for "a majority." There was, he submitted, some precedent for placing at that figure the majority which should decide whether the Bill should apply to a particular district. In the coal-mining industry in his own county it was required that there should be a two-thirds majority before a strike could take place; and a two-thirds majority was mentioned also in the Local Option Bill of the Government with respect to the liquor traffic. There wore some advantages in having something more than a bare majority of one, since it would secure stability and firmness, and promote satisfaction when the arrangement had been arrived at. On those grounds he moved the Amendment, but the point was one of detail, and he would be guided by the sense of the Committee with regard to it.

thought no Member of the Committee who, like himself, had sat through the whole of the Debates for two days past, but would allow that the discussions had been most important and interesting, largely conducted as they had been by Members more or less directly interested.

reminded the right hon. Gentleman that the only question before the Committee was whether "two-thirds" should be part of the Amendment.

pointed out that the decision by two-thirds majority was a very well-known system, and it would, if adopted, meet the requirements of the South Wales districts. Unless the local option principle was favourable, he considered the Bill would be the cause of great injustice to the colliers of South Wales, and of an amount of misery of which the hon. Member who introduced the Bill had no knowledge. Only last year he happened to pass through the South Wales colliery districts, and there ho found a number of colliers who had been driven from their work simply at the orders of agitators' paid delegates. They could give no reason for having left their work, but they had given up their weekly wage, their wives and children had been reduced to semi-starvation, and their state of misery might have been avoided if only the local option two-thirds majority system had been in operation directing their conduct. The hon. Member for Rhondda knew perfectly well the miserable state of things brought about by the paid agitators.

No.

The only question before the Committee is that of "two-thirds" or "bare majority."

said, if the two-thirds majority had been adopted as the system for giving effect to local option, then such strikes as that to which he had just alluded would not have taken place, and the misery and desolation over the district would not have followed. The same principle applied under this Bill would save the men from the consequences of hastily yielding to the influence of agitators.

said, it was remarkable that the Committee received no advice on this important subject from Members of a Government who found time at the end of a weary Session for an important measure such as this, but did not take the trouble to assist in the discussion, and allowed the Treasury Bench to be empty for hours. It was only to be expected that a champion of local option like the Chancellor of the Exchequer should join in the discussion and sup- port the proposal, and yet in common with the Irish Members he took no part in discussion and probably would merely give a vote against the Amendment.

reminded the hon. Member that discussion should be confined to the question of "two-thirds" or "bare majority."

said, the few remarks lie had to offer were in support of the Amendment. The feeling of the mining classes generally had not been properly appreciated. It had been said by the opponents of the Amendment that the vast majority of the Miners' Federation were opposed to anything in the nature of local option. As he was given to understand that only the question of a two-thirds majority could now be alluded to, and that he could not enter upon the Amendment generally, he would only say that he had great pleasure in supporting the proposal for the two-thirds system as the only fair solution of the question when put to a district.

said, he had considerable sympathy with the Amendment, but ho would suggest to the hon. Member that, in the interest of those who desired to express themselves on the Main Question, the Amendment should be withdrawn.

said, he did not wish to insist on the Amendment, though there was more to be said in its favour than against it. In deference to the general view he would ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

said, as the Amendment now before the Committee was as to the adoption of the principle of local option in the application of the Bill, he, as one having no interest in the great industry immediately concerned, desired to explain the reasons that influenced his vote. He found great difficulty in deciding upon the vote he should give. To his mind the clause as it stood and the clause with the Amendment would be almost equally objectionable. In the one case, by the clause being passed unamended Parliament would deprive the labouring man of the liberty to work for such hours as he thought proper, and under the Amendment this power would be given to the majority of the labourers in a given district. Under the Amendment, if it became law, there would have to be constituted an entirely new Register of voters with special qualifications in regard to this matter, and he felt there would be great difficulty in the plan. At the same time, he was strongly opposed to a cast-iron rule in regard to working hours or other regulations of adult male labour, and therefore preferred the greater elasticity the Amendment would afford in various districts. In the Amendment, and, indeed, in the Bill, it was assumed that there was only one party to the contract, the employés; and the votes of the employés were, under the Amendment, to decide whether the Bill should be applied. But surely the employer had a large interest in the question? He, under the security of existing law, embarked his capital in the business, sinking a large amount in building, plant, &c, and under the Bill and Amendment the employer would be exposed by ex post facto legislation to have altogether new conditions imposed to handicap him in the conduct of his business. The Bill, whether with or without the Amendment, was a form of veiled protection, and protection in the most unscientific and clumsy form. It proposed to give to the workman protection in regard to the time for which he might sell his labour, forcing the purchaser of that labour to pay more for it, and so in a sense this was a system of protection. Just in the same way as a farmer who had wheat to sell might have protection for the labour by which he raised that wheat, so would, by the Bill, protection be given to miners' labour. But it was protection in a clumsy and unscientific form. The men were to he prevented from working more than a given number of hours, although health, strength, and inclination might induce them to extend those hours, and yet, at the same time, they would be exposed to all the competition of foreign labour and to that competition increased. Scientific protection placed a duty upon imported goods, and thus gave protection to home labour; but here was the labour left exposed to foreign competition, and protection was simply for the purpose of levelling up or levelling down the hours of labour in the various districts of the country. It had not been realised what an increased charge would be levied on trade industry and every household in the country. It had been said by the hon. Member for Merthyr, in the speech in which he quoted from the hon. Member for Rhondda, that the passing of the Bill would give employment to 20,000 more miners in South Wales to produce the same quantity of coal as was produced without this restriction. This was confirmed by a supporter of the Bill, who stated that the effect of the Bill would be to raise the cost of getting coal in all cases 4d., and in some cases more, per ton. The hon. Baronet (Sir J. Pease) estimated the extra cost of getting coal if the Bill were adopted at 6d. per ton, and, translating this fact into figures, this extra 6d. per ton in the production of coal, taking the total production in the United Kingdom to be 180,000,000 tons, meant an increase to the consumers of no less than £4,500,000 in the course of the year. The House should not lightly propose such an immense additional charge on the industry and everyday expenses of the country by a measure hurriedly passed immediately before the close of a long Session. Another figure would illustrate the effect of the Bill. One of our keenest competitors was the United States, and 6d. per ton would pay the carriage of coal in that country for 120 miles. To that extent, therefore, the Bill would carry back the area of our coalfields from the port of shipment. This was no idle fear, as would be shown, by the figures in reference to the competition between British and foreign coal producers. Coal could be delivered to-steamers in the port of New York at 11s. 6d. per ton, delivered alongside the vessel, but that coal could not be delivered in the port of London for less that 16s. or 17s. per ton. We pretended to ourselves that we had cheap coal, through which our industries flourished, but we would, by the Bill, add 6d. per ton to the cost of producing coal, while there was the enormous discrepancy existing in the cost of coal in those two great commercial ports. Why was the Bill urged with such vehemence? No one had ventured to say that coal mining was an unhealthy occupation, and in the face of established facts such a statement could not with truth be made. The proportion in the total number of miners of men employed up to the age of 60 was larger than in any other industry. The only valid argument in favour of the Bill was contained in the half-and-half speech of one of the hon. Members for Durham, who first led his hearers to sup pose that he was going to oppose the Amendment, basing his opposition on the employment of boys, and who finished by saying he would support the Amendment. If it were true that boys were employed in any of our coal mines for unfairly long hours, he would vote for an inquiry into that matter, and, if necessary, would support legislation in the boys' favour, similar to that already passed in favour of women and children employed in factories and workshops. That, however, should be dealt with separately and distinctly, and afforded no reason for such a Bill as this with its effect on trade and industry throughout the whole country. Ho felt that if once this step were taken, with or without the introduction of the local option principle, similar legislation could not be refused to other industries when asked for. There had been indications in discussions at Working Men's Congresses of the set of ideas in this direction——

rose to Order. The hon. Member was not addressing himself to the Amendment: ho was considering what might possibly happen should the Bill become law.

understood the right hon. Gentleman to be arguing for the Amendment and against the Bill.

said, he preferred the Bill with the Amendment, although with the Amendment adopted his objection would not be removed, as it would afford some degree of elasticity to the operation. His strong objection to the Bill with the Amendment was that, if it passed, it would encourage other claims, which could not be resisted, for similar legislation in the interest of other industries. Parliament had no right to impose on workmen in this country an additional tax on coal for household use (which would also affect wages in regard to the cost of coal for manufacturing purposes), and yet refuse to other workmen the same protection to labour as would by the Bill be extended to miners. If the Bill as amended were proceeded with——

reminded the right hon. Gentleman that the Bill as amended was not before the Committee; the Question simply was whether the proposed Amendment should be adopted.

bowed to the ruling, but in following the course of the Debate he had heard the question of foreign competition discussed. The Bill would increase the cost of production, and in the result would affect this country unfavourably in regard to foreign competition as well as seriously and prejudicially affecting the home consumers. In deference to the Chairman's ruling he would not further press that point, but he apprehended be would not be out of Order in alluding to the argument put forward by the promoters of the Bill against the Amendment, that it was desirable to put mines in every district upon a somewhat equal level. In other words, as the mines of Northumberland and Durham were at the present time working more economically and with greater advantage to the miners than were mines in other parts of the country, therefore a Bill should be passed which would handicap those mines, and put them on a level with mines in the Midland districts. Against such a proposition he supported the Amendment; but should the Amendment become part of the Bill, he should vote against the Bill in its ultimate stage, believing that to pass such a Bill would be one of the worst day's work the House could do for the interests of the working classes of the country.

said, only a few words would be necessary to explain why he should vote in favour of the Amendment. He voted for the Second Reading of the Bill with the intention of supporting certain Amendments in Committee, of which this was one. He had no interest in the coal trade, but he had a considerable number of miners in his constituency who, he believed were largely, if not unanimously, opposed to this local option proposal. He would like to please those mining constituents of his by the vote he gave, but he was quite unable to see that in order to please them he should vote for putting a burden on a large number of men in other places who believed that it would result injuriously to themselves, their employers, and the public interest, The Bill with this Amendment would give those who desired the change the opportunity of getting it, but he could not think it fair to forcibly impose the Bill on large minorities who did not desire it. This was his reason for supporting the Amendment, and he was not deterred from giving that support by the threat that if the Amendment were carried the Bill would be withdrawn. The responsibility for the loss of the Bill must rest with those who withdrew it, not upon those who desired these modifications in its terms.

said, he did not take the same view on this subject as his colleague in the representation of Merthyr. Either he or his hon. Friend must be mistaken in the estimate formed of the views of the miners of the district, but each was prepared to take the responsibility of the position taken up. This was somewhat beside the question, but it was evident that each was more or less honest in his convictions, and offered his opinion in the House for what it was worth. The immediate question was whether or not there should be any option in regard to the application of the Bill. The passing of the Second Reading of the Bill by a large majority established the principle that there should be legislative limitation of hours of work in mines, and the question now was should some districts be excepted from the general rule. In his view eight hours' hard and honest work in a mine was as much as any man could possibly do; after that he ought to have rest. What a man did in the way of work beyond that eight hours was of very little value to himself or his employers. He could speak with some knowledge on the subject, for mining had for him a life-long interest, and he did not hesitate to say that eight hours' work in a mine was all that could be expected from a man having due regard to his own health and the safety of those who worked with him. He submitted that no man should be allowed to work more than eight hours in the bowels of the earth, his own interests and those of his family being alike opposed to it. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that the reason of the opposition to the Bill was based on their knowledge that the men would have the cards in their own hands if the Bill passed, and would insist on being paid a fair day's wage for what they considered to be a fair day's work. He was quite prepared to admit that if the Bill passed into law the men would still insist on having a fair day's wage, and he held that they were entitled to it. He noticed that throughout the Debate they had heard nothing from the Representatives of Cornwall and Devonshire as to the metalliferous mines of this country. It was the rule in all metalliferous mines in the world that no man should work more than eight hours a day; why was it not the rule in coal mines? On that point he would try to throw some little light. He himself was not interested to the extent of one farthing in collieries, but he was a Representative, in conjunction with his hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr, of a colliery district, and he had endeavoured to ascertain why the owners objected to the Bill before the Committee. The two grounds alleged were that it would restrict the output and that it would prevent competition with foreign producers. Well, the eight hours' limit could not restrict the output in Northumberland and Durham, where it was alleged that the men already only worked six and a-half and seven hours. But what happened in Northumberland and Durham? The boys and hauliers were sent down to arrange for the work of the day—to get the trams to the face ready for filling, and the roadways clear.

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will excuse me for laughing; but this is the most amusing statement I ever heard in my life.

I may call attention to the fact that the only question raised by the Amendment is whether there should be local option or not in respect of this Bill.

said, he was endeavouring to give reasons why owners refused to assent to having the law made compulsory, and wished to have it left optional when he was interrupted by his hon. Friend, who apparently thought he did not know a mine from a mule, though probably he had been acquainted with mines almost as long as the hon. Gentleman. He thought it had been admitted all through the Debate that the boys in Northumberland and Durham were oftentimes engaged for 10 hours a day; and if that was the case it appeared obvious to a person of ordinary understanding that the boys were there for the purpose of facilitating the work of the men. What the miners of South Wales said, however, was that they desired that no one should be allowed actually to work in the mines for more than eight hours per shift. The hon. Baronet the Member for Chester-le-Street had stated as one of his grounds of objection to the Bill that in Northumberland and Durham the men would only be able to work one shift. The principal objection of his hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr, however, was that, by a limitation of the hours of labour, the double shift system would be introduced in Wales. The Representative of one colliery district, in fact, objected to having one shift, while the Representative of another objected to Slaving two.

May I explain that in South Wales the boys work shorter hours than the men, and that if you introduce a double shift you increase the hours of the boys?

replied that he was not born in Palestine; he was born in South Wales. With regard to the question of foreign competition, he submitted that if the Bill were passed they would be exactly in statu quo. Wages on the Continent at the present time were undoubtedly lower than they were in Durham or in Wales, and foreign competition thus was and would be possible; but to say that the men of Wales were of necessity to work a larger number of hours than they ought to be called on to work, due regard being had to their health, simply because some men on the Continent were working for very low wages, was, to his mind, a poor answer to the supporters of the Bill before the House. He had been surprised on the previous day by a passage in the speech of the Member for Merthyr, in which his hon. Friend somewhat misled the Committee, though not, he was sure, intentionally, by saying that a ballot had been taken in the constituency they represented, and that the men in that locality were, by a large majority, in favour of the application to the Bill of the principle of local option. The only vote that had ever been taken in the Merthyr district was as to whether the eight hours should count as from face to face or from bank to bank. There was not a collier in the Merthyr or Aberdare Valleys who was opposed, so far as he knew, to the reduction of the hours of labour in the collieries of South Wales—he had never even heard the question raised. His hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr advocated in 1891 eight hours from bank to bank; then he advocated eight hours' winding——

Where did I advocate that in 1891?

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put"; but the Chairman withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

resuming, said, that his hon. Friend, after advocating eight hours' winding, advocated eight hours from face to face, and then eight hours within a radius of 100 yards from the bottom of the shaft, while now he advocated local option. He would put a case—a case, say, where men and owners had combined in objecting to the principle of the Bill. They would assume that 2,000 men were engaged in the pit, and produced 1s. per day in the value of coal more than they would in the event of the Bill becoming law. They would admit that those 2,000 men obtained an advantage of 6d. per man per day, and that the proprietor of the mine also obtained a similar sum per man per day. That advantage, in the case of the proprietor, would amount to no less than £15,000 a year; and he contended that it would be better to suffer the workman to lose his 6d. per day and the owner his £15,000 a year than to allow the men to remain in the bowels of the earth working amid the coal dust for objectionably long hours day after day and year after year. The House was continually engaged in legislation dealing with cruelty to animals and to children, and in restricting the hours of labour of women and infants, and he submitted that the time had arrived for restricting the hours of adult labour in the mines. He thought the Amendment ought not to be carried, and he trusted that the Committee would not carry it, though at a later stage he would be prepared to vote for an Amendment making the eight hours apply as from face to face.

The Committee will, I think, feel indebted to the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down for breaking the monotony of the Debate. I do not know exactly how many speeches have been addressed to us this evening, but they are a great number, and, with one exception, every speaker hits spoken in favour of the Amendment, while the promoters of the Bill have not ventured to say a single word against it. That appears to us to be rather an extraordinary method of conducting a discussion in this House, though I have no doubt that as time goes on we shall be entirely used to it. Apparently, with the new Unionism and new Radicalism, a new form of discussion has sprung up, and hon. Gentlemen who promote a Bill, having ascertained beforehand in the Lobby whether they have a majority at their back, remain obstinately silent, moving the Closure from time to time, and testing the patience of the Chairman, and in that way endeavour to ram their measures down the throats of their opponents without taking the trouble to explain them. Perhaps they are wise in that. Having to defend proposals such as this before the House, and having declared that even the slightest deviation from the proposals in the Bill is to be followed by its withdrawal, they are, perhaps, very wise to refuse to allow any discussion, any examination of details, or any criticism. I should hardly think that they will be very much obliged to my hon. Friend below me, because, although he rose to oppose the Amendment, he seemed to me to give away the whole case by the statement he made at the commencement of his speech. He said, and I entirely sympathise with him, that eight hours' good work at the face, in all the discomforts of a mine, was as much as any human being should be submitted to, and that he was prepared to alter the Bill, so that the only thing it would prevent would be work extending over a longer period than eight hours carried on at the face of the coal. Well, Sir, we are all agreed as to that. But that is not the issue between us. I have taken the trouble to look at the Returns prepared some time ago, and I find there is hardly a district in which at the present time the average of work at the face exceeds eight hours. Where eight hours is ex- ceeded it is only by a decimal point, and I think there would, in no part of the House, be any objection to reducing it to eight hours. But we have a much larger question than that to decide. We are obliged to consider this Hill as raising the question whether all over the United Kingdom, as soon as this Bill is passed, work in mines is to be restricted to eight hours from bank to bank for everybody employed in the mine. We know perfectly well that that will, in many cases, reduce the work at the face to seven, six, and even five hours, and of course, therefore, greatly reduce the number of hours of bonâ fide work which can be put in at the mine. Now, Sir, I wish to address myself particularly to the promoters of the Bill, and I think I am entitled to do so as a friend of their object. I would remind them that in 1891, when they were in a small minority in this House, and when the very idea of legislative interference with the hours of labour was scouted in all parts of the House, I supported them and defended the principle of their Bill and voted for the Second Reading; but at the same time I said that whenever a Bill of this sort was read a second time I should claim my right to examine its details, and to endeavour to introduce into it that elasticity without which, I am convinced, it would disappoint its promoters, and fail of its avowed aim. But I adopted the principle of your Bill. My hon. Friend below me, in his speech against the Amendment, adopted the very convenient method, which I have noticed has been adopted by gentlemen who occupy a more prominent position, of saying that the Amendment violates the principle of the measure. That is a very convenient argument, because it dispenses with argument. You need only say "the Amendment violates the principle of the Bill," and then, because the principle has been affirmed on the Second Reading, you can add "I cannot discuss an Amendment which violates this principle." Let us ascertain what is the principle of the Bill. The principle of the Bill is, I venture to say, the right of the Legislature, under certain circumstances and for good cause, to interfere with the hours of labour of adults in mines. That is the principle of the Bill. Whether that right shall be exercised is purely a question of expediency, and this Amendment is purely a question of ex- pediency and not a question of principle at all. It is a question of whether, granting that we have the right to interfere in any district or all districts, it is expedient to stereotype this interference over the whole country, or whether we should limit that interference to those districts which are most desirous of it, and where we may well be convinced by the evidence we have received that such interference will do little or no harm. Let us, then, look at the matter from that point of view. Is it expedient to press a measure of this kind against a small minority? I say for myself, yes, it is. It was with that view that I supported the Second Heading of the Bill. It is in that sense that I am in favour of compulsion in certain eases, where you have an individual or a few individuals, or a very small proportion of a class behaving in a cantankerous manner, and preventing something which the vast majority believe to be to their advantage. Then I hold that it is right for the State to interfere, and to give the majority the power of controlling a small minority. But does that principle go so far as to cover the case of a very large minority? I say no, and that I may explain the ground on which I base that opinion. I go to the very bottom of our representative system. What is a representative system? It is a means of learning beforehand on which side of a question force lies. Without our civilised arrangements every question must lie decided by force, and the strongest, of course, gain their way. By means of a representative system you find out which party is the stronger, and we have always been content to accept the decision of the stronger party without, resorting to physical force to determine the matter. But it will be seen at once that, although in a case whore there is a majority of two to one Providence would no doubt be on the side of the big battalions, as Napoleon said, and the majority would win; yet when yon come to a small majority it is not at all certain, if you come to force, that the majority will win. Is it contended that if you left this to be decided on the spot without legislation, without an appeal to law, in Northumberland and Durham, that the people who are in favour of this Bill would be able to carry it into effect? Clearly not. Unless you can bring the whole force of the country at your back to coerce the recalcitrant opponents of the Bill in Northumberland and Durham you could not possibly carry out your proposal in those countries. And even if you take the whole of the country there is undoubtedly a very large minority opposed to the Bill. If you take the miners in the North at 120,000 you must add a considerable number for those in South Wales and other districts, and my hon. Friend will admit that, although the Representative Bodies are on one side, there are a great number of individuals in places like the Midlands who are entirely opposed to this legislation. You have over the whole country a very considerable minority entirely opposed to this legislation. I do not say that that is a reason against the legislation—if I thought it was I should have voted against the Second Reading—but I do say that that is a reason why my hon. Friends should march cautiously. It is a reason why they should make some concession, and not stand in the irreconcilable attitude they have taken up. What is the objection that is taken to the Bill by this large minority? It is that the lessening of the hours that would take place in certain districts, especially in regard to the labour of boys in Northumberland and Durham, would very materially lessen the output of coal; that the result of that would be to raise prices; that that would lessen the demand for labour and the opportunities of the people for obtaining occupation and probably the amount of the wages they would receive. That is the statement which is made as to the probable result of this legislation in those districts, and it will be observed that everybody would suffer. The employer would suffer, no doubt. If he is making any profit he would have to submit to a sacrifice of those profits. The workman would have to submit to less wages and, above all, to a decrease in the amount of employment open to him, and the public probably would have to suffer, because the price of the article would be raised as far as it could be without materially affecting the demand. I do not want, myself, to lay too much stress on this argument. I pointed out on the Second Reading of the Bill that people are rather apt to take a too gloomy view of the probable result of changes of this kind; that the reduction in the output might not be so large as was feared; and that in many trades a reduction of hours had not led to a reduction of output. But then I venture to say that if that should be the result I do not think that the main object of the promoters of this Bill would be gained, because I cannot help thinking that one of their objects is to secure a reduction in the output—that is to say, that a certain number of men shall produce less coal than they do at present—and to secure that if the output is to be maintained it shall be by the employment of a larger number of men. Still, I admit that there may be some compensation in the case of a change of this kind, and it may be found that more work will be done per hour than is done at present. The hon. Member for the Ince Division said, "Oh, our ancestors heard the same story over 200 years ago, and you have cried 'Wolf' so often that we do not heed you when you call 'Wolf' now." I venture to say that attitude on the part of an influential representative of the working classes is a very dangerous attitude at the present time. My hon. Friend must see there is a point beyond which you cannot increase prices. It is an open question, which should be considered with the utmost care, whether you have reached that point in connection with the coal trade. Do not let us shut our ears to arguments which may be used in the matter. If we met every contention with the same blank denial and refusal to entertain it our commercial supremacy would sooner or later disappear. I say, speaking generally, and dealing only with the old-established, ordinary, and old-fashioned businesses of the country, which have no monopoly, and which hold no supremacy because of the possession of an invention, or something of that kind, that the margin of profit has at the present moment almost entirely disappeared. Many of them are being carried on at a loss; and when my hon. Friend says we have heard these jeremiads often before, and nothing has resulted, he is mistaken, for something has resulted, and whether our warnings were correct or not, it is certain that the trade of this country is worse than it used to be. The hon. Gentleman may be right in saying that the working classes have not suffered to any great extent; their wages are higher and better, and their work is less exhausting than it was 20 years ago; but at the same time the average percentage of profit obtained by the capitalist has been very materially reduced. That is a change which I am not sorry to have seen accomplished, only there must be a limit. Take the case of a person who has invested £100,000 in a mill and machinery, who finds he is no longer making a profit. He cannot close his mill at once; that would be a loss of capital; so he goes on working, even at a loss, hoping for an improvement, until the whole of his free capital has disappeared, and it is not, in fact, until he is bankrupt that the mill is closed and the workpeople go to join the ranks of the unemployed. I would urge the Committee not to treat this as a purely illusory danger, for it is a real danger which we ought always to have in view. When a Vast change of this kind is proposed I think it behoves those who propose it to be certain of each step as they take it, to follow the ancient ways of Liberalism, and to be satisfied with half a loaf rather than have no bread, and to feel, at least, that the change is unlikely to do more harm than good. Experience has shown that gradual progress is infinitely safer for the country and infinitely better for the projects of reform we wish to promote, and I would entreat my hon. Friend, as one who is friendly to this movement, to consider whether he will not gain more by taking to-day a Bill which he can have at this moment, and which can be passed into law during the present Session, than he will by refusing every Amendment and insisting upon the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill? It appears to me that if my hon. Friend insists upon the Bill in its present form and at this period of the Session, he has not the ghost of a chance of passing it this year. Does my hon. Friend believe he will be able to pass the Bill in its present form during this Session? I do not know what the men of Northumberland and Durham are, but I know if they were Irishmen this Bill would take a month to pass. On the other hand, if he would allow this amendment to be made, without necessarily admitting the grounds or reasoning upon which it is urged upon him, reserving to himself the right to demand more when the opportunity comes, I believe he would secure a very useful Bill, oven at the end of this exhausting Session, and he would gain for all of us a vast amount of useful experience, which would enable us with absolute certainty to proceed further, or with equally absolute certainty to retrace our steps. What argument has been offered to us which would prevent them from adopting this course? There are three arguments. In the first place, there is the argument of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, which is the philanthropic argument, and which amounts to this—that my hon. Friends behind mo from the North are such inconsiderate fathers, and their sons have to work such long hours, that it is absolutely necessary that he from Staffordshire should step in and defend the health and material welfare of their children. I do not think we are at all justified in taking such an unfavourable view of the character of our Northern friends, and that, at any rate, is not such a serious argument as to be sufficient to induce us to make such a change as this. When we were asked to interfere in the case of the Factory Acts, the Coal Mines Regulation Acts, and other Acts, there was always shown a tremendous case of cruelty, indifference, and neglect affecting large numbers of the population which justified the interference of the Legislature, but there is nothing of the sort here. The boys in the North were strong and healthy, and he should think they would be the first to resent interference. The second argument is that if you pass this Bill with the local option clause, you will be giving an undue advantage to the districts which will vote themselves out of the Bill. In the first place, I wish to say I do not think that is true. Whatever advantages, if they are advantages, these districts will have after the Bill has passed, they have now, and the real object of gentlemen who hold this argument is not to prevent them from getting the advantages which they have got now, but to take away the advantages which they have got. Let me point out how that arises. You have extraordinary differences in the conditions of trade. You have mines in which the coal is much more expensive to win than it is in others, or mines which are far from markets, and which would not be able to lie worked if the people had not in some way or other overcome the natural disadvantages. It is these methods which they have adopted for overcoming the natural disadvantages and putting them on equal terms with other districts, that you will take away from thorn. It is the most remarkable thing to notice how, in the course of these two days' Debate, the whole argument has been transformed from the argument on the Second Reading of the Bill. On the Second Reading it was to our common humanity that the promoters of the Bill made an appeal; it was said that men were working too hard and too long at a disagreeable and dangerous employment, and that therefore there should be some interference. But not one word, except from the Member for Merthyr, have we heard about the argument addressed to our humanity. What we have been listening to is ignoble strife and competition between different coalowners on the one side and coalowners on the other, between different districts and between individual mines, and I do say it is a most dangerous precedent if this House is going to interfere with a question of commercial competition, and is going to lay its strong hand on one set of tradesmen and take it away from another set of tradesmen. We have been looking with regret on the spectacle which has been presented to us by the Houses of the Legislature in America, where we have seen Senators and Representatives struggling for their personal interests or the personal interests of those whom they represent, without the least regard for the good of the nation. Are we going to follow that evil example, and are we going to throw ourselves into what has been shown by the whole course of the Debate to be a mere struggle between rival commercial and pecuniary interests in this country? Are we going to have to throw a balance into the one side or the other? No, Sir; on that ground, if on that alone, I would say we ought to press for this local option in order that these districts may fight it out themselves without asking the House to give a preference to one side or the other. There is a third reason which has not been alluded to in the course of this Debate, and which, I think, must weigh very materially with the Member for the Ince Division and other hon. Members in inducing them to reject anything in the form of a compromise, and that is the idea that by forcing a stereotyped eight hours throughout the country they will reduce the output, and that, as a result, either prices will go up and wages will be raised, or, if the output is to be maintained, a larger number of persons will find employment. I ask how on earth it can be expected that this result will be attained? Does the hon. Gentleman think he can fix the price of a product like coal? Can he altogether evade the effect of competition? Yet they would have us believe that they can force up the price. We have heard a great deal about competition. We have heard about foreign competition and foreign coal. No one, however, has considered it necessary to speak much about it during this Debate except to say that it was not so bad as it was expected to be. Surely, however, if you are going to increase the price of home coal it is clear that you will increase the demand for foreign coal, and that every ton of foreign coal sold means that one ton less of English coal sold, and so many more people out of employment. The commonest laws of economics cannot be voided for the benefit of my hon. Friends. But there is another point to be considered. Suppose you were dealing with the home trade, and that the foreign trade was not to be counted at all. In other words, suppose you could draw a circle excluding all foreign coal, then, no doubt, you could raise the price of coal. But, I ask, for how long? Surely you would keep the price up only so long as the consumers could afford to pay the increased price. But, again I ask, is the condition of trade throughout the country such that it could afford to pay an increase for the coal that it necessarily must consume? I am thinking especially now of the vast ironworks, and I say it is absolutely impossible for them, and also for many other great industries throughout the length and breadth of the land, to hold their own against foreign competition if the price of coal is to be increased. What would follow? These great centres of consumption would be closed. How then, in the long run, is this increase in the price going to benefit anybody? My view is that what the hon. Gentleman proposes to do—that is, to lessen the output and increase wages—is mathematically impossible. But I know that it is of no use to argue with those who hold these views. You cannot convince a man who thinks he can square the circle or make water run up hill. I do not press my opinion with any hope of bringing conviction; but I put it that supposing you are right and I am wrong, and supposing that good results would follow from your plan, still I would ask you why should not you, as you cannot get these results this year, consent to a compromise? You can gain nothing under the Bill this year, and if you agree to a compromise, we shall have a year's experience upon which to decide what is the best course for us to adopt in the future. The new method of discussing important matters seems to me, however, to render any appeal of this kind useless. I wonder how the hon. Baronet the Member for Barnard Castle (Sir J. W. Pease) and the hon. Member for Durham (Sir J. Joicey) like this state of things now that it is to be applied to themselves? They were very ready to Closure us on a former occasion after two days' discussion in Committee on an important Bill, and tonight we shall have been two days discussing this Bill, and I suppose to-morrow that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he is prepared to mete out equal justice to his friends as well as his opponents, will come forward again and stop further discussion by his guillotine method. I should like to know how those hon. Gentlemen will vote on that occasion? When my hon. Friend behind me, the Member for Mid Durham (Mr. J. Wilson) wanted, by the vote of this House, to coerce no less than 500,000 persons by the provisions of the Employers' Liability Bill, the hon. Baronet the Member for Barnard Castle strongly approved of the guillotine being applied on that occasion. It strikes me that some of these chickens are coming home to roost. I sincerely hope the lesson will not be altogether lost on some of my hon. Friends. I do not think I can do more than to once more ask those who have the conduct of this Bill whether they will not yield to circumstances, and take what they can instead of losing everything by claiming too much? If they will not do that I confess that the best course this House can take, and that another House can take, if they take my advice, which I do not suppose they will —I say, if a majority in this House is determined to ram the measure down our throats, the best thing is to allow them to do it in the crudest possible form, because the sharper the lesson and the deeper the wound, the sooner shall we come back again to the policy of reason and common sense.

said, although, no doubt, the Commttee would be anxious to divide, yet some reply would be expected from the promoters of the Bill to the powerful speech to which the Committee had just listened. His right hon. Friend began his speech by asking whether or not any serious Amendment was to be accepted, and whether this Amendment and other Amendments on the Paper would be opposed; and he seemed to say that this Amendment represented his views. There was a slip made by the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment yesterday in referring in terms of commendation to another Amendment which appeared on the Paper. The colleague of the hon. Member who made this Motion, and to whose speech the right hon. Gentleman alluded, said he should support another Amendment, which was one to which they would come later, and which placed a point of 100 yards from the shaft as that from which the eight-hours day should be taken. His right hon. Friend had stated that throe arguments had been used in support of this Amendment, and he had traversed two out of the three at considerable length. He would first dispose of the argument of colliery against colliery, and one part of the country against another part of the country. They thought, without putting it too high, that there would undoubtedly be a considerable amount of inconvenience and some cost in all parts of the country in bringing the new system into effect. But changes of this kind had been imposed upon the coalowners of this country on former occasions, and they had been resisted, and resisted in very strong language—in 1872, when there were prophecies of the ruin of the industry, and again in 1887. They admitted that there would be cost and trouble, and they said it was unfair that the masters of Staffordshire and Lancashire and the Bristol districts, where the hours were long and the mode of working very slow—they said it would be unfair to put them to all this inconvenience when their rivals and competitors in trade were not inconvenienced in the same way. That argument was met by saying they were not competitors in trade. He could not admit that for a moment. The seaborne' trade of Northumberland and Durham was very large, but a very large proportion of that coal arrived in London, and came into direct competition with the coal produced in Federation districts. It was owing to the high rates of the Railway Companies that this seaborne coal got the advantage. He laid much more stress upon the philanthropic argument of the right hon. Gentleman. He did not see how it would be possible for any of them who were concerned in promoting this Bill, and who had been supporting it for years past, without sacrificing every principle and argument, to give up the case of the Northumberland and Durham boys. It was said they should not express more concern for the boys in this district than did their fathers. As to carrying this change against the wishes of the great minority, the right hon. Gentleman seemed to have forgotten his own arguments about minorities on former occasions. He admitted that it would be a serious thing, even in the name of philanthropy, to coerce a large minority. But he had exaggerated the matter. With regard to Northumberland and Durham, his hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Sir J. Joicey) had referred to 120,000 men, but the last ballot taken on the subject showed that the majority was only 36,000.

said, he had spoken of 120,000 men as being connected with the mines, and not as being miners.

went on to say that very large sections of Federation districts had been balloted upon this Bill, and in those sections there had been virtually no minority; whilst, on the other hand, in Northumberland and Durham the ballot showed 36,000 against the Bill and 14,000 or 15,000 in favour of it.

Out of 72,000 who were capable of voting.

said, his point was that hon. Members ought not to quote 120,000 as being against the Bill when, as a matter of fact, only 36,000 voted against it. Then there was the question of the boys. The men in the North worked sometimes as little as five and a half hours, and never more than seven hours, as far as lie had been able to ascertain, and he had been in pits both in Northumberland and Durham.

What pit was the right hon. Gentleman down in Durham?

I will give my hon. Friend the names privately. In connection with this question I went down two pits in Northumberland and five or six in Durham.

Which were they?

said, his hon. Friend surely did not doubt his word upon the subject. He found that the men worked from 5½ hours to 6½ or 7 hours, while the boys were below ground 10 hours, and worked from 9 to 9½ hours. He understood that the case of the hand-putters was given up by his hon. Friends, who did not contend that the state of things with regard to them was defensible. There were very few of these handputters now, and they were confined to a few old-fashioned pits. The case of these handputters, however, was very hard. They worked naked, and their work was very hard.

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not make us out to be greater barbarians than we are by saying that we work naked.

I saw men working naked with my own eyes. I admit that this work is confined to old-fashioned pits.

Will you name the pit where they work naked?

said, Walker, near Newcastle, was a hot pit and an old fashioned pit. What had been ignored throughout the Debate was that the hours of the boys had been regulated by Statute. Many of the masters had complained of the introduction of the 54-hours week for the boys, but that provision was introduced, and the result was that they were not able to employ their boys now for more than 54 hours a week. One week in the fortnight the boys worked only 50 hours, but in the other week there had to be an extra shift of boys in order to take the places of the boys who otherwise would have to work overtime. The work of the boys was hard and dangerous, and when it was said that they were merely in charge of trains it must be remembered that in the course of their occupation they had to lift enormously heavy weights, and they developed a lifting capacity which no man could keep up to.

They are all Sandows.

said, the House had been told over and over again that eight hours were quite long enough to be below ground. These boys were 10 hours below ground, and they did work which was very severe indeed. His hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. J. Wilson) and other supporters of the Amendment were committed to the view that this was a state of things which ought not to continue, and which it was the object of the Miners' Association in Durham to bring to a close. They offered no suggestion, however, as to how it was to be brought to a close, and this was why he (Sir C. Dilke) said it was impossible for the supporters of the Bill to avoid pressing the philanthropic argument.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman had anything to say about the case of the boys in South Wales?

said, he had nothing to say about them. He had dismissed the South Wales case by saying he was certain that the South Wales Members meant to support, not this Amendment, but another Amendment on the Paper. He knew that the feeling in South Wales, as far as there was a feeling there against this Bill, was a feeling against the eight hours bank-to-bank provision, and not against legislative interference. His hon. Friend the Member for the Wansbeck Division (Mr. Fenwick) had in 1887 spoken of work done by women on the pit bank of a very similar character to that done by the boys at the bottom of the pit as being very arduous. He knew that his hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck and Morpeth (Mr. Burt) felt very strongly about the case of the boys. They knew that the boys did not get a fair chance, and that the present state of things ought to be brought to an end. The Members for Chester-le-Street (Sir J. Joicey) and Barnard Castle (Sir J. Pease) said there was a difficulty in making any change in Northumberland and Durham. The witnesses from Northumberland and Durham before the Labour Commission never brought out the fact mentioned that evening, that there were If collieries working in Durham where a system that would easily adapt itself to this Bill was in force.

The Labour Commission was quite aware of the fact, as they sent an inquiry both to owners and men.

said, that was afterwards, and he thought it was in consequence of a letter from himself to the Labour Commission that the inquiry was made. There was not a word about it in Mr. Patterson's evidence, nor was any evidence given from Durham on the subject. All that was said was that the system proposed was not workable, and yet there were If collieries actually working on it—three shifts of men and two shifts of boys. The hon. Member for the Tyneside Division (Mr. J. A. Pease) had made a mistake in quoting the Labour Commission with regard to the neutrality of the Federation districts on this question. He had quoted an analysis of the votes of the Trades Congress at a meeting at Belfast. That analysis ought never to have been issued by the Labour Commission. The vote was taken at a very empty Congress without any debate, and, as a matter of fact, every single one of the delegates who were described by the Labour Commission as neutral were sent to the Congress to vote in favour of the resolution. As to the arguments about foreign competition, such competition was of entirely different kinds. As to the competition of France and Belgium, the mines in those countries were extremely deep, and we had nothing to fear from such competition, whilst in Germany the mines were far from the sea, and consequently the competition was not serious. As a matter of fact, the contracts for coals required for the German Army were now being made in this country. There was, however, quite a different kind of competition—that of Tonkin, Japan, New Zealand, India, and America in steam coal. Nothing that could be done in Great Britain could affect the development of such coalfields as these. They lay, many of them, on the route of trade, especially the Japan and Tonkin fields. Whatever was done here, those fields would be developed, and undoubtedly in course of time they would supply stations like Singapore even more largely than they did at present. It had been said that the promoters of the Bill intended to treat all alike—the strong and the weak, the old and the young, the man with 11 children and the bachelor. Well, were men at present allowed to choose their hours of work, and to work as long as they pleased? Certainly not; they were absolutely at the discretion of those who fixed the hours of the pit. The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Sir J. Joicey) had said that under the proposed new system the old men would not be able to continue at work, but he had known cases in which old men had not been allowed to continue at work because of that very county average to which allusion had been made.

said, there were exceptions.

said, he was very glad to hear it, and he hoped they were small exceptions. To conclude, he thought local option might be an excellent thing in such cases as shop hours, but was not applicable to a Bill of this kind. In his opinion, it would be better to risk the loss of the Bill for a year or two than to accept the Amendment now before the Committee. The principle of this Bill was that of a uniform eight hours all over the country. The question of what the eight hours meant was a question not of principle, but of detail. He should be willing to accept the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr (Mr. D. A. Thomas), although he was not favourable to it, rather than lose the Bill; but he thought it would be better to drop the Bill than to accept the Amendment now before the Committee.

rose to continue the discussion, but.

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

I beg to move, Mr. Chairman, that you do now report Progress. I do so in order that we should hear a statement from the promoters of this Bill as to what they intend to do.

I beg to move that you do report Progress.

The Motion was moved by my right hon. Friend for the purpose of extracting from the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill a statement, and all he has done is to make a Motion in his own name, which he is not competent to do. He has given no information on the subject in reference to which the Motion was moved.

It has been stated frequently in the course of the Debate that it would be impossible to proceed with the Bill in these circumstances.

I beg to propose that the Bill be put down for to-morrow, with a view of then withdrawing it.

said, he undertook now to second this Resolution, and before going into the subject of the different parts of which it consisted he would say a few preliminary words. The Government of India distinctly admitted and knew very well that the educated people of India were thoroughly loyal. The hon. Member for Kingston (Sir R. Temple) had stated that the state of the country and of the people often invited or demanded criticism on the part, of the natives. It was in every way desirable that their sentiments and opinions should be made known to the ruling classes, and such outspoken frankness should never be mistaken for disloyalty or disaffection. Nothing was nearer to his (Mr. Naoroji's) mind than to make the fullest acknowledgment of all the good that had been done by the connection of the British people with India. They had no complaint against the British people and Parliament. They had from them everything they could desire. It was against the system adopted by the British Indian authorities in the last century and maintained up till now, though much modified, that they protested. The first point in the Motion was the condition of the people of India. In order to understand fully the present condition of the people of India, it was necessary to have a sort of sketch of the past, and he would give it as briefly as possible. In the last century the Administration was everything that should not be desired. He would give a few extracts from letters of the Court of Directors and the Bengal Government. In one of the letters the Directors said (8th of February, 1764)—

"Your deliberations on the inland trade have aid open to us a scene of most cruel oppression; the poor of the country, who used always to deal in salt, beetlenut, and tobacco, are now deprived of their daily bread by the trade of the Europeans."

Lord Clive wrote (17th of April, 1765)—

"The confusion we behold, what does it arise from?—rapacity and luxury, the unwarrantable desire of many to acquire in an instant what only a few can or ought to possess."

Another letter of Lord Clive to the Court of Directors said (30th of September, 1765)—

"It is no wonder that the lust of riches should readily embrace the proffered means of its gratification, or that the instruments of your power should avail themselves of their authority and proceed even to extortion in those cases where simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity. Examples of this sort set by superiors could not fail of being followed in a proportionate degree by inferiors; the evil was contagious, and spread among the civil and military down to the writer, the ensign, and the free merchant."

He would read one more extract from a letter of the Court of Directors (17th of May, 1766)—

"We must add that we think the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that ever was known in any age or country."

Macaulay had summed up—

"A war of Bengalees against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons.… The business of a servant of the Company was I simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible."

Such was the character of the Government and the Administration in the last century; when all this was disclosed by the Committee of 1772 of course a change was made, and a change for the better. He would now give the opinion of Anglo-Indian and English statesmen, and the House would observe that he did not say a single word as to what the Italians themselves said. He put his case before the House in the words of Anglo-Indian and English statesmen alone; some of them had expressed great indignation with usual British feeling against wrong-doing, others had expressed themselves much more moderately. Sir John Shore was the first person who gave a clear prophetic forecast of the character of this system and its effects as early as 1787. He then said (Ret. 377 of 1812)—

"Whatever allowance we may make for the increased industry of the subjects of the State, owing to the enhanced demand for the produce of it (supposing the demand to be enhanced), there is reason to conclude that the benefits are more than counterbalanced by evils inseparable from the system of a remote foreign dominion."

The words were true to the present day. In 1790 Lord Cornwallis said, in a Minute, that the heavy drain of wealth by the Company, with the addition of remittances of private fortunes, was severely felt in the languor thrown upon the cultivation and commerce of the country. In 1823 Sir Thomas Munro pointed out that were Britain subjugated by a foreign Power, and the people excluded from the government of their country, all their knowledge and all their literature, sacred and profane, would not save them from becoming in a generation or two a low-minded, deceitful, and dishonest race. Ludlow, in his British India, said—

"As respects the general condition of the country, let us first recollect what Sir Thomas Munro wrote years ago, 'that even if we could be secured against every internal commotion and could retain the country quietly in subjection, he doubted much if the condition of the people would be better than under the Native Princes'; that the inhabitants of the British Provinces were 'certainly the most abject race in India'; that the consequences of the conquest of India by the British arms, would be in place of raising to debase the whole people."

Macaulay, in introducing the clause of our equality with all British subjects, our first Charter of our emancipation in the Bill of 1833, said in his famous and statesmanlike speech—

"That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom which, in order that India may remain a dependency…which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves."

And, to illustrate the character of the existing system, he said—

"It was, as Bernier tells us, the practice of the miserable tyrants whom he found in India, when they dreaded the capacity and spirit of some distinguished subject, and yet could not venture to murder him, to administer to him a daily dose of the pousta, a preparation of opium, the effect of which was in a few months to destroy all the bodily and mental powers of the wretch who was drugged with it, and to turn him into a helpless idiot. This detestable artifice, more horrible than assassination itself, was worthy of those who employed it. It is no model for the English nation. We shall never consent to administer the pousta to a whole community—to stupefy and paralyse a great people whom God has committed to our charge—tor the wretched purpose of rendering them more amenable to our control."

In a speech (19th of February, 1844) he said—

"Of all forms of tyranny I believe that the worst is that of a nation over a nation."

Lord Lansdowne, in introducing the same clause of the Bill of 1833 into the House of Lords, pointed out that he should be taking a very narrow view of this question, and one utterly inadequate to the great importance of the subject, which involved in it the happiness or misery of 100,000,000 of human beings, were he not to call the attention of their Lordships to the bearing which this question, and to the influence which this arrangement must exercise upon the future destinies of that vast mass of people. With such high sense of statesmanship and responsibility did Lord Lansdowne of 1833 break our chains. The Indian authorities, however, never allowed those broken chains to fall from our body, and the grandson—the Lord Lansdowne of 1893—now rivetted back those chains upon us. Look upon this picture and upon that! And the Indians were now just the same British slaves, instead of British subjects, as they were before their emancipation in 1833. Mr. Montgomery Martin, after examining the records of a survey of the condition of the people of some Provinces of Bengal or Behar, which had been made for nine years from 1807–1816, concluded—

"It is impossible to avoid remarking two facts as peculiarly striking: First, the richness of the country surveyed; and, second, the poverty of its inhabitants."

He gave the reason for these striking facts. He said—

"The annual drain of £3,000,000 on British India has amounted in 30 years at 12 per cent, (the usual Indian rate) compound interest to the enormous sum of £723,000,000 sterling. So constant and accumulating a drain, even in England, would soon impoverish her. How severe, then, must be its effects in India where the wage of a labourer is from 2d. to 3d. a day."

The drain at present was seven times, if not 10 times, as much. Mr. Frederick Shore, of the Bengal Civil Service, said, in 1837—

"But the halcyon days of India are over. She has been drained of a large proportion of the wealth she once possessed, and her energies have been cramped by a sordid system of misrule to which the interests of millions have been sacrificed for the benefit of the few. The fundamental principle of the English had been to make the whole Indian nation subservient in every possible way to the interests and benefits of themselves."

And he summarised thus—

"The summary was that the British Indian Government had been practically one of the most extortionate and oppressive that ever existed in India. Some acknowledged this, and observed that it was the unavoidable result of a foreign yoke. That this was correct regarding a Government conducted on the principles which had hitherto actuated us was too lamentably true, but, had the welfare of the people been our object, a very different course would have been adopted, and very different results would have followed. For again and again I repeat that there was nothing in the circumstance itself of our being foreigners of different colour and faith that should occasion the people to hate us. We might thank ourselves for having made their feelings towards us what they were. Had we acted on a more liberal plan we should have fixed our authority on a much more solid foundation."

After giving some more similar authorities, Sir R. Temple and others, the hon. Gentleman proceeded: Mr. Bright, speaking in the House of Commons in 1858, said—

"We must in future have India governed, not for a handful of Englishmen, not for that Civil Service whose praises are so constantly sounded in this House. You may govern India, if you like, for the good of England, but the good of England must come through the channels of the good of India. There are but two modes of gaining anything by our connection with India—the one is by plundering the people of India, and the other by trading with them. I prefer to do it by trading with them. But in order that England may become rich by trading with India, India itself must become rich."

Sir George Wingate, with his intimate acquaintance with the condition of the people of India, as the introducer of the Bombay land survey system, pointed out, with reference to the economic effects upon the condition of India, that taxes spent in the country from which they were raised were totally different in their effect from taxes raised in one country and spent in another. In the former case the taxes collected from the population were again returned to the industrial classes; but the case was wholly different when taxes were not spent in the country from which they were raised, as they constituted an absolute loss and extinction of the whole amount withdrawn from the taxed country; and he said, further, that such was the nature of the tribute the British had so long exacted from India—and that with this explanation some faint conception may be formed of the cruel, crushing effect of the tribute upon India—that this tribute, whether weighed in the scales of Justice or viewed in the light of the British interests, would be found to be at variance with humanity, with common sense, and with the received maxim of economical science. Mr. Fawcett quoted Lord Metcalf (5th May, 1868), that the bane of the British-Indian system was, that the advantages were reaped by one class and the work was done by another. This havoc was going on increasing up to the present day. Lord Salisbury, in a Minute [Ret. c. 3086–1 of 1881], pointed out that the injury was exaggerated in the case of India, where so much of the revenue was exported without a direct equivalent—that as India must be bled, the lancet should be directed to the parts where the blood was congested or at least sufficient, not to the rural districts which were already feeble from the want of blood. This bleeding of India must cease. Lord Hartington (the Duke of Devonshire) declared (23rd Aug., 1883) that India was insufficiently governed, and that if it was to be better governed, that could only be done by the employment of the best and most intelligent of the natives in the Service; and he further advised that it was not wise to drive the people to think that their only hope lay in getting rid of their English rulers. Lastly, with regard to the present condition of India, and even serious danger to British power, a remarkable confirmation was given, after a hundred years, to Sir John Shore's prophesy of 1787, by the Secretary of State for India in 1886. A letter of the India Office to the Treasury said (Ret. c. 4868 of 1886)—

"The position of India in relation to taxation and the sources of the public revenue is very peculiar, not merely from the habits of the people and their strong aversion to change, which is more specially exhibited to new forms of taxation, but likewise from the character of the Government, which is in the hands of foreigners, who hold the principal administrative offices and form so large a part of the Army. The impatience of the new taxation which will have to be borne wholly as a consequence of the; foreign rule imposed on the country and virtually to meet additions to charges arising outside of the country, would constitute a political danger, the real magnitude of which, it is to lie feared, is not at all appreciated by persons who have no knowledge of or concern in the government of India, but which those responsible for that government have long regarded as of the most serious order."

To sum up—as to the material condition of India—the main features in the last century were gross corruption and oppression by the Europeans; in the present century, high salaries and the heavy weight of the European services—their economic condition. Therefore, there was no such thing as the finances of India. No financier ever could make a real healthy finance of India, unless he could make two and two equal to six. The most essential condition was wanting. Taxes must be administered by and disbursed to those who paid. That did not exist. From the taxes raised every year a large portion was eaten up and carried away from the country by others than the people of British India. The finances of that country were simply inexplicable, and could not be carried out; if the extracts he had read meant anything, they meant that the present evil system of a foreign domination was destroying them, and was fraught with political danger of the most serious order to British power itself. It had been clearly pointed out that India was extremely poor. What advantage had been derived by India during the past 100 years under the administration of the most highly-praised and most highly-paid officials in the world? If there was any condemnation of the existing system, it was in the result that the country was poorer than any country in the world. He could adduce a number of facts and figures of the practical effect of the present system of administration, but there was not the time now. The very fact of the wail of the Finance Ministers of this decade was a complete condemnation. He was quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India was truly desirous to know the truth, but he could not know that clearly unless certain information was placed before the House. He would suggest if the right hon. Gentleman allowed a certain number of Returns which would give the regular production of the country year by year, and the absolute necessaries of a common labourer to live in working health. In connection with the trade test there was one fallacy which he must explain. They were told in Statistical Returns that India had an enormous trade of nearly £196,000,000, imports and exports together. If he sent goods worth £100 out of this country to some other country, he expected there was £100 of it returned to him with some addition of profit. That was the natural condition of every trade. In the Colonies and in European countries there was an excess of imports over exports. In the United Kingdom for the past 10 years—1883 to 1892—the excess had been 32 per cent., in Norway it was 42 per cent., Sweden 24 per cent., Denmark 40 per cent., Holland 22 per cent., France 20 per cent., Switzerland 28 per cent., Spain 9 per cent., Belgium 7 per cent., and so on. Anyone with common sense would, of course, admit that if a quantity of goods worth a certain amount of money were sent out, an additional profit was expected in return; if not, there could not be any commerce; but a man who only received in return 90 of the 100 sent out would soon go into the Bankruptcy Court. Taking India's profits to be only 10 per cent. instead of 32 per cent., like those of the United Kingdom, and after making all deductions for remittances for interest on public works loans, India had received back Rs. 170,000,000 worth of imports less than what she exported annually. On the average of 10 years (1883 to 1892) their excesses of exports every year, with compound interest, would amount to enormous sums lost by her. Could any country in the world, England not excepted, stand such a drain without destruction? They were often told they ought to be thankful, and they were thankful, for the loans made to them for public works; but if they were left to themselves to enjoy what they produced with a reasonable price for British rule, if they had to develop their own resources, they would not require any such loans with the interest to be paid on them, which added to the drain on the country. Those loans wore only a fraction of what was taken away from the country. India had lost thousands of millions in principal and interest, and was asked to be thankful for the loan of a couple of hundreds of millions. The bulk of the British Indian subjects were like hewers of wood and drawers of water to the British and foreign Indian capitalists. The seeming prosperity of British India was entirely owing to the amount of foreign capital. In Bombay alone, which was considered to be a rich place, there were at least £10,000,000 of capital circulating belonging to foreign Europeans and Indians from native States. If all such foreign capital were separated there would be very little wealth in British India. He could not go further into these figures, because he must have an occasion on which he could go more fully into them. If only the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India would give them the Returns which were necessary to understand more correctly and completely the real condition of India, they would all be the better for it. There was another thing that was very serious. The whole misfortune at the bottom, which made the people of British India the poorest in the world, was the pressure to be forced to pay, roughly speaking, 200,000,000 rupees annually for European foreign services. Till this evil of foreign domination, foretold by Sir John Shore, was reduced to reasonable dimensions, there was no hope, and no true and healthy finance for India. This canker was destructive to India and suicidal to the British. The British people would not stand a single day the evil if the Front Benches here—all the principal military and civil posts and a large portion of the Army—were to be occupied by some foreigners on even the plea of giving service. When an English official had acquired experience in the Service of 20 or 30 years, all that was entirely lost to India when he left the country, and it was a most serious loss, although he did not blame him for leaving the shore. They were loft at a certain low level. They could not rise; they could not develop their capacity for higher government, because they had no opportunity; the result was, of course, that their faculties must be stunted. Lastly, every European displaced an Indian who should fill that post. In short, the evil of the foreign rule involved the triple loss of wealth, wisdom, and work. No wonder at India's material and moral poverty! The next point was the wants of the Indians. He did not think it would require very long discussion to ascertain their wants. They could be summed up in a few words. They wanted British honour, good faith, righteousness, and justice. They should then get everything that was good for themselves, and it would benefit the rulers themselves, but unfortunately that had not been their fortune. Here they had an admission of the manner in which their best interests were treated. Lord Lytton, in a confidential Minute, said—

"No sooner was the Act passed than the Government began to devise means for practically evading the fulfilment of it…We all know that these claims and expectations never can or will be fulfilled. We have had to choose between prohibiting them and cheating them, and we have chosen the least straightforward course."

He would not believe that the Sovereign and the Parliament who gave these pledges of justice and honour intended to cheat. It was the Indian Executive who had abused their trust. That Act of 1833 was a dead letter up to the present day. Lord Lytton said—

"Since I am writing confidentially, I do not hesitate to say that both the Governments of England and of India appear to me up to the present moment unable to answer satisfactorily the charge of having taken every means in t heir power of breaking to the heart the words of promise they had uttered to the ear."

What they wanted was, that what Lord Salisbury called "bleeding" should have an end. That would restore them to prosperity, and England might derive ten times more benefit by trading with a prosperous people than she was doing now. They were destroying the bird that could give them ten golden eggs with a blessing upon them. The hon. Member for Kingston, in his India in 1880, said—

"Many native statesmen have been produced of whom the Indian nation may justly be proud, and among whom may be mentioned Salar Jung of Hyderabad, Dunkar Rao of Gwalior, Madhar Rao of Baroda, Kirparam of Jammu, Pundit Manphal of Alwar, Faiz Ali Khan of Kotah. Madha Rao Barvi of Kolahpur, and Purnia of Mysore."

Mountstuart Elphinstone said, before the Committee of 1833—

"The first object, therefore, is to break down the separation between the classes and raise the natives by education and public trust to a level with their present rulers."

He addressed the Conservative Party. It was this Party who had given the just Proclamation of 1858—their greater Charter—in these words—

"We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty which bind us to all our other subjects, and those obligations, by the blessing of Almighty God, we shall faithfully and conscientiously fulfil."

It was, again, the Conservative Party that, on the assumption of the Imperial title by our Sovereign, proclaimed again the equality of the natives, whatever their race or creed, with their English fellow-subjects, and that their claim was founded in the highest justice. At the Jubilee, under the Conservative Government again, the Empress of India gave to her Indian subjects the gracious assurance and pledge that—

"It had always been and always will be Her earnest desire to maintain unswervingly the principles laid down in the Proclamation published on Her assumption of the direct control of the Government of India."

He (Mr. Naoroji) earnestly appealed to this Party not to give the lie to these noble assurances, and not to show to the world that it was all hypocrisy and national bad faith. The Indians would still continue to put their faith in the English people, and ask again and again to have justice done. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India, and to the Government and the Liberal Party, who gave them their first emancipation. They felt deeply grateful for the promises made, but would ask that these words be now converted into loyal, faithful deeds, as Englishmen for their honour are bound to do. Some weeks ago the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian wrote a letter to Sir John Cowan in which he stated that the past 60 years had been years of emancipation. Many emancipations had taken place in these years; the Irish, the Jews, the slaves, all received emancipation in that wave of humanity which passed over this country, and which made this country the most brilliant and civilised of the countries of the world. In those days of emancipation, and in the very year in which the right hon. Gentleman began his political career, the people of India also had their emancipation at the hands of the Liberal Party. It was the Liberal Party that passed the Act of 1833 and made the magnificent promises, explained both by Macaulay and Lansdowne. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian to say whether, after the Liberal Party having given this emancipation at the commencement of his political career, he would at the end of it, while giving emancipation to 3,000,000 of Irishmen, only further enslave the 300,000,000 of India? The decision relating to the simultaneous examinations meant rivetting back upon them every chain broken by the act of emancipation. The right hon. Gentleman in 1893, in connection with the Irish question, after alluding to the arguments of fear and force, said—

"I hope we shall never again have occasion to fall back upon that miserable argument. It is better to do justice for terror than not to do it at all; but we are in a condition neither of terror nor apprehension, but in a calm and thankful state. We ask the House to accept this Bill, and I make that appeal on the grounds of honour and of duty."

Might he, then, appeal in these days when every educated man in India was thoroughly loyal, when there was loyalty in every class of the people of India, and ask was it not time for England to do justice to India on the same grounds of "honour and duty?" The right hon. Member also said—

"There can be no more melancholy, and in the last result no more degrading, spectacle upon earth than the spectacle of oppression, or of wrong in whatever form, inflicted by the deliberate act of a nation upon another nation, especially by the deliberate act of such a country as Great Britain upon such a country as Ireland."

This applied to India with a force tea times greater. And he appealed for the nobler spectacle of which the right hon. Gentleman subsequently spoke. He said—

"But, on the other hand, there can be no nobler spectacle than that which we think is now dawning upon us, the spectacle of a nation deliberately set on the removal of injustice, deliberately determined to break—not through terror, not in haste, but under the sole influence of duty and honour—determined to break with whatever remains still existing of an evil tradition, and determined in that way at once to pay a debt of justice, and to consult by a bold, wise, and good act, its own interests and its own honour."

These noble words applied with tenfold necessity to Britain's duty to India. It would be in the interest of England to remove the injustice under which India suffered more than it would be in the interest even of India itself. He would repeat the prayer to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian, that he would not allow his glorious career to end with the enthralment of 300,000,000 of the human race whose destinies are entrusted to this great country, and from which they expect nothing but justice and righteousness. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India the other day made a memorable speech at Wolverhampton. Among other things, he uttered these noble words—

"New and pressing problems were coming up with which the Liberal Party would have to deal. These problems were the moral and material conditions of the people, for both went very much together. They were the problems that the statesmen of the future would have to solve. Mr. Bright once said that the true glory of a nation was not in ships and colonies and commerce, bat in the happiness of its homes, and that no Government and no Party deserved the confidence of the British electorate which did not give a foremost place in its legislation and administration to those measures which would promote the comfort, health, prosperity, well-being, and the well-doing of the masses of the people."

He would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for India that in that spirit he should study the Indian problem. Here in England they had to deal with only 38,000,000 of people, and if the right hon. Gentleman would once understand the Indian problem and do them the justice for which they had been waiting for 60 years, he would be one of the greatest benefactors of the human race. He appealed also to the present Prime Minister with confidence, because he had had an opportunity of knowing that the Prime Minister thoroughly understood the Indian problem. Few Englishmen so clearly understood that problem or the effect of the drain on the resources of India. He saw clearly also how far India was to be made a blessing to itself and to England. Would he begin his promising career as Prime Minister by enslaving 300,000,000 of British subjects? He appealed to him to consider. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India that the feeling in India among the educated classes was Hearing despair. It was a very bad seed that was being sown in connection with this matter if some scheme was not adopted, with reasonable modifications, to give some effect to the Resolution for simultaneous examinations, as was promised a few months ago. The Under Secretary for India assured them in the last Indian Budget Debate that neither he nor the Secretary of State for India had any disposition of thwarting or defeating that Resolution. Indians then felt assured on the point, and their joy was great. But what must be their despair and disappointment when such statements are put before the House of Commons and the country as were to be found in this dark Blue Book. It was enough to break anybody's heart. It would have broken his but for the strong faith he had in the justice of the British people and the one bright ray to be found even in that Return itself, which had strengthened him to continue his appeal as long as he should live. That ray has come from the Madras Government. They had pointed out that they felt bound to do something. They also pointed out the difficulties in the way, but these difficulties were not insurmountable. About the want of true living representation of the people he would not now say anything. Every Englishman understood its importance. The next point in the Motion was the ability to bear existing burdens. Indians were often told by men in authority that India was the lightest-taxed country in the world. The United Kingdom paid £2 10s. per head for the purposes of the State. They paid only 5s. or 6s. per head, and, therefore, the conclusion was drawn that the Indians were the most lightly-faxed people on earth. But if these gentlemen would only take the trouble of looking a little deeper they would see how the matter stood. England paid £2 10s. per head from an income of something like £35 per head, and their capacity, therefore, to pay £2 10s. was sufficiently large. Then, again, this £2 10s. returned to them—every farthing of it—in some form or another. The proportion they paid to the State in the shape of Revenues was, therefore, something like only 7 or 8 per cent. India paid 5s. or 6s. out of their wretched incomes of £2, or 20 rupees, as he calculated, or 27 rupees, as calculated by Lord Cromer. But even taking the latter figure, it would not make any great difference. The three rupees was far more burdensome compared with the wretched capacity of the people of India to bear taxation than the £2 10s. which England paid. At the rate of production of Rs.20 per head India paid 14 per cent. of her income for purposes of revenue—nearly twice as heavy as the incidence of the United Kingdom. Even at the rate of production of Rs.27 per head the Indian burden was 11 per cent. Then, again, take the test of the Income Tax. In the United Kingdom 1d. in the Income Tax gave some £2,500,000; but in India, with ten times the population, 1d. only gave about Rx.300,000, with an exemption of only Rx.50 instead of £150 as in this country. In the last 100 years the wealth of England had increased by leaps and bounds, while India, governed by the same Englishmen, was the same poor nation that it was all through the century that had elapsed, and India at the present moment was the most extremely poor country in the world, and would be poor to the end of the chapter if the present system of foreign domination continued. He did not say that the natives should attain to the highest positions of control and power. Let there be Europeans in the highest positions, such as the Viceroy, the Governors, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, and the higher military officers, and such others as might be reasonably considered to be required to hold the controlling powers. The controlling power of Englishmen in India was wanted as much for the benefit of India as for the benefit of England. The next point in the Motion was, what were the sources of Indian Revenue? The chief sources of the Revenue were just what was mainly obtained from the cultivators of the soil. Here in this country the landlords—the wealthiest people—paid from land only 2 or 3 per cent. of the Revenues, but in India land was made to contribute something like Rx.27,000,000 of the total Revenue of about Rx.67,000,000. Then the Salt Tax, the most cruel Revenue imposed in any civilised country, provided Rx.8,600,000, and that with the opium, formed the bulk of the Revenue of India, which was drawn from the wretchedness of the people and by poisoning the Chinese. It mattered not what the State received was called—tax, rent, revenue, or by any other name they liked—the simple fact of the matter was, that out of a certain annual national production the State took a certain portion. Now, it would not also matter much about the portion taken by the State if that portion, as in this country, returned to the people themselves, from whom it was raised. But the misfortune and the evil was that much of this portion did not return to the people, and that the whole system of Revenue, and the economic; condition of the people became unnatural and oppressive, with danger to the rulers. In this country the people drank nearly £4 per head, while in India they could not produce altogether more than half that amount per head. Was the system under which such a wretched condition prevailed not a matter for careful consideration? So long as the system went on, so long must the people go on living wretched lives. There was a constant draining away of India's resources, and she could never, therefore, be a prosperous country. Not only that, but in time India must perish, and with it might perish the British Empire. If India was prosperous, England would be prosperous ten times more than she was at present by reason of the trade she could carry on with India. England at present exported some £300,000,000 worth of British produce, yet to India she hardly exported produce to the value of 2s. 6d. per head. If India were prosperous enough to buy even £1 worth per head of English goods she would be able to send to India as much as she now sent to the whole world. Would it not, then, be a far greater benefit to England if India were prosperous than to keep her as she was? The next point in the Motion was the reduction of expenditure. The very first thing should be to cancel that immoral and and cruel "compensation" without any legal claim even. That was not the occasion to discuss its selfishness and utter disregard of the wretchedness of the millions of the people. But as if this injustice were not enough, other bad features were added to it, if my information be correct. The compensation was only for remittances to this country. But instead of this—every European and Eurasian, whether he had to make any family remittances or not, was to have a certain addition to his salary. That was not all. The iniquity of making race distinctions was again adopted in this also; Europeans and Eurasians, whether remittances had to be made or not, were to receive compensation; but an Indian, who had actually to make remittances for the education of his sons, could have no consideration. But he (Mr. Naoroji) deprecated the whole thing altogether—to take from the wretched to give to the better-off. This compensation should be cancelled as the first step in reduction. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day in his splendid speech at his magnificent ovation by the Liberal Members, in speaking of the landowners, the burden was always shifted on to other shoulders, and always on those least able to pay. This was exactly the principle of Anglo-Indian authorities. If it was really intended to retrench with regard to expenditure in India, why not begin with the salary list? The Viceroy surely could get his bread and butter with £20,000 a year instead of £25,000. The Governors could surely have bread and cheese for £6,000 or £8,000 instead of £10,000, and so on down till the end of the salary list was reached at Ks.200 a month. This would afford a much-needed relief, because India could not really afford to pay. Sir William Hunter had rightly said that if we were to govern the Indian people efficiently and cheaply we must govern them by means of themselves, and pay for the administration at the market rates of native labour; that the good work of security and law had assumed such dimensions under the Queen's government of India that it could no longer be carried on or even supervised by imported labour from England, except at a cost which India could sustain, and he had prophesied that 40 years hereafter they would have had an Indian Ireland multiplied fifty-fold on their hands. The Service must change from that which was dear, and at the same time unsatisfactory, to one which would require less money and which would at the same time be fruitful to the people themselves. Next, three Secretaries of State and two Viceroys the other day in the House of Lords condemned in the strongest, terms the charge that was made by the War Office for troops in India. But it seemed that one Secretary for India (Lord Kimberley) trembled to approach the War Minister, because each new discussion resulted in additional charges and additional burdens. He also truly said that the Authorities here, not having to pay from their own pockets, readily made proposals of charges which were unjust and unnecessary, to make things agreeable. The consequence was that charges were imposed which were unjust and cruel. In fact, whatever could have the name of India attached to it, India was forced to pay for it. That was not the justice which he expected from the English. With reference to these military charges, the burden now thrown upon India on account of British troops was excessive, and he thought every impartial judgment would assent to that proposition, considering the relative ma- terial wealth of the two countries and their joint obligations and benefits. All that they could do was to appeal to the British Government for an impartial consideration of the relative financial capacity of the two countries, and for a generous consideration to be shown by the wealthiest nation in the world to a dependency so comparatively poor and so little advanced as India, fie believed that if any Committee were appointed to inquire, with the honest purpose of finding out how to make India prosperous and at the same time to confer as much if not more benefit to England, they could very easily find out the way, and would be able to suggest what should be done. Now, with regard to the financial relations between India and England, it was declared over and over again that this European Army and all European servants were for the special purpose of maintaining the power of the British Empire. Were they, therefore, not for some benefit to England? Were they only for the service of India, for their benefit and for their protection? Was it right that they did avowedly use machinery more for their own purposes than for the purposes of India, and yet make India pay altogether? Was it right, if India's prosperity was, as Lord Roberts said, so indissolubly bound up with their own, and if the greatness and prosperity of the United Kingdom depended upon the retention of India, that they should pay nothing for it, and that they should extract from it every farthing they possibly could? They appealed to their sense of justice in this matter. They were not asking for this as any favour or concession. They based their appeal on the ground of simple justice. Here was a machinery by which both England and India benefited, and it was only common justice that both should share the cost of it. If this expenditure on the European Army and the European Civil Services, which was realty the cause of their misery, was for the benefit of both, it was only right that they, as honourable men, should take a share. Their prayer was for an impartial and comprehensive inquiry so that the whole matter might be gone into, and that the question of principles and policy which, after all, was one for their statesmen to decide, should be properly dealt with. They knew that during the rule of the East India Company an inquiry was made every 20 years into the affairs of India. This was no reflection upon the Government; it was simply to see that the East India Company did their duty. There was such an inquiry in 1853, and he thought it was time, after 40 years had elapsed since the assumption of British rule by the Queen, that there should be some regular, independent inquiry like that which used to take place in former days, so that the people and Parliament of this country might see that the Indian Authorities were doing their duty. The result of the irresponsibility of the present British Administration was that the expenditure went on unchecked. He admitted fully that expenditure must go on increasing if India was to progress in her civilisation; but if they allowed her to prosper, India would be able not only to pay her £60,000,000 out of the 300,000,000 of population, but she would be able to pay twice, three times, and four times as much. It was not that they did not want to expend as much as was necessary. Their simple complaint was that the present system did not allow India to become prosperous, and so enable her to supply the necessary revenue. As to the character of the inquiry, it should be full and impartial. The right hon. Member for Midlothian said on one occasion not long ago, when the question of the Opium Trade was under discussion in that House—

"I must make the admission that I do not think that in this matter we ought to be guided exclusively, perhaps even principally, by those who may consider themselves experts. It is a very sad thing to say, but unquestionably it happens not infrequently in human affairs that those who might, from their position, know the most and the best, yet, from their prejudices and prepossessions, know the least and the worst. I certainly for my part do not propose to abide finally and decisively by official opinion."

And the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that what the House wanted, in his opinion, was "independent but responsible opinion," in order to enable it to proceed safely to a decision on the subject which was to be considered. He was asking by this Resolution nothing more than what the right hon. Gentle man the Member for Midlothian had said was actually necessary for the Opium Commission. How much more necessary it was when they meant to overhaul and examine all the various departments of administration, and the affairs of 300,000,000 of people, all in a state of transition in civilisation—complicated especially by this evil of foreign rule ! What was wanted was an independent inquiry by which the rulers and the ruled might come to some fair and honourable understanding with each other which would keep them together in good faith and good heart. He could only repeat the appeal he had made, in the words of the Queen herself, when Her Majesty in Her great Indian Proclamation said—

"In their prosperity will be our strength, in their contentment our security, and in their gratitude our best reward!"

and then She prayed—

"and may the God of all power grant to us and to those in authority under us strength to carry out these our wishes for the good of our people!"

He said Amen to that. He appealed once more to the House and to the British people to look into the whole problem of Indian relations with England. There was no reason whatever why there should not be a thorough good understanding between the two countries, a thorough goodwill on the part of Britain, and a thorough loyalty on the part of India, with blessings to both, if the principles and policy laid down from time to time by the British people and by the British Parliament were loyally, faithfully, and worthily, as the English character ought to lead them to expect, observed by the Government of that country.

did not know how far, if at all, the Government proposed to meet this Resolution by accepting it, but could only say that the inquiry upon which the House was asked to enter would be very tedious and very expensive, and that although it might add something to the knowledge of those gentlemen who were not familiar with Indian affairs, it would really only give information which could already be obtained from other sources by any person who chose to take the trouble to look into them. Not one of those who listened to the hon. Member for East Finsbury but must have felt that he put forward his case with a strong conviction that it was a good one, and that he was supporting it by honest argument. He could only lament that the absence of the hon. Member from India during so many years had so far broken his recollection of the state of things that obtained during the time he was in residence that the hon. Member had had to go back to the last century for proofs of Indian maladministration instead of directing his attention to what had been done in India since the government of that country was assumed by Great Britain. They had not now to do with the days of Nabobs, with the state of things exposed by Mr. Sheridan, with what followed after the trial of Warren Hastings, and with what occurred in the earlier parts of this century. This inquiry was asked for to ascertain how India was governed under the Queen, how far that government corresponded with the requirements and condition of that country, and in what respect, if any, that government could be improved. That was an inquiry which had occupied the attention of successive Governments of India ever since Her Majesty assumed the government. It was a great mistake to suppose that the Government of India was not as fully alive as the hon. Member for East Finsbury, or as the National Congress, whose voice he expressed in that House, to the condition of India, to the points that required amendment, and the points on which amendments could be carried out. No one who knew India would deny that, as compared with the United Kingdom, it was a poor country, but, as lie said last year, poverty was a relative term. A man who would be poor in England upon an Indian income would upon that same income be very well off indeed in India. It was idle for the hon. Gentlemen to quote Lord Cromer, and to give as the result of his own inquiries the statement that the average income in India was only 27 rupees a year. No data existed by which a calculation of the average income could be made in an accurate form. Some might suppose that the conditions of life in India were the same as those of this country, where most of the people were employed for wages, and where they had to buy all the necessaries of life in shops and to pay rent for their houses. These expenses required a certain cash income to meet them. But they were not the expenses which were incurred by the Indian people at large. More than 70 per cent. of the whole population of India—of the 220,000,000 under the Queen's direct government—lived upon the land which had descended to them from their ancestors and which they cultivated. They paid no rent for their houses—these had been constructed by their own industry. They had nothing whatever to buy. Their sustenance they derived from the fields they cultivated, their luxuries from the gardens they kept; and their only financial transactions were made when they sold their surplus crops to pay the demands of the Government for the rent of the land they occupied, and when they purchased any additional luxuries for their own delectation. It was impossible that the income of people whoso sustenance was derived in this way could be put into reliable statistics; and the estimate by statisticians of an average income of 27 rupees per head among the natives only came to this: that as far as money transactions were concerned that might be a fair representation of their income, but as far as the necessaries of life and those conditions which made all the difference between poverty and wealth were concerned, these depended upon matters not measured by money, and into whose calculation in India money did not enter at all. He considered that the monetary demands made upon the poor, who were the bulk of the population, were of a very small character indeed. First of all, the rent which the collector paid for his land was not a tax and could not possibly be turned into one. It was very small, amounting to little more than a rupee per man. Measured in money it was only about 1–25th part of the 27 rupees of which the House had heard that night; but when measured by produce it was less than 8 per cent. of the total outcome of the land. Even in the North-West Provinces, where the Land Revenue was higher than in other parts of India, it only amounted to 8 per cent, of the total produce of the land. The bulk of the population of India paid no tax at all, except a proportion of the Salt Tax, and that was about 5d. per head. Even taking the comparison between the United Kingdom and India they would find that instead of the contribution of the Indian individual being very much greater than that of the English peasant, the Indian peasant paid less even in proportion to the 27 rupees than the Englishman did on the average income of £35 or £36 a year. If that were true, as regards the great bulk of the population, how did the taxation of India affect the other classes of the community? No doubt there was very great difficulty in obtaining any tax such as might be expected in this country with its great wealthy cities, well able to bear an Income Tax; but in India, as in other parts of the world, wealthy men were astute enough to successfully avoid to a large extent the Income Tax.

said, he had prepared an Amendment which he believed would effect exactly the same object as the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Channing) had in view, with the Amendment of which he had given notice, but in other words.

thought this carried out the desire of the Committee and the intention of the hon. Member for Northampton, and it appeared to do so in the proper and in a more grammatical manner.

said, he had often found when there was agreement between the Leaders on the two Front Benches there was reason to look on a proposal with suspicion; therefore, that more consideration might be given to the matter he would move the adjournment of the Debate.

hoped his hon. Friend would not arrest the progress of the Bill at a point where there was general agreement. It being after Midnight, and Objection being taken to Further Proceeding, the Debate stood adjourned.

I desire to move that the Bill be re-committed in respect to Clauses 24 and 25, and I am not without hope that Her Majesty's Government may be inclined to accept the Amendment I would suggest in Committee. The Amendment has stood on the Paper for some days, and but for my being accidentally prevented from being in my place last night I would have moved the Amendment when the Bill was in Committee. My object is to effect a change in the law, a proceeding which is perhaps not usual in Consolidation Bills, but the matter is of so much importance, and there is so little prospect of being able to do it in any other manner this Session, I beg leave to submit my Amendment My object is to effect such a change in the law as will in future make it obligatory upon the Board of Agriculture, instead of leaving it a matter for discretion, to order the slaughter at the port of debarcation of all animals coming from foreign countries. That is the practice at this moment. All animals coming into the country are bound to be slaughtered on landing, but there is a discretion vested in the Board of Agriculture to admit animals without slaughter should the Board think fit. I press this now, because during the past three years there have been instances of cattle inspected with disease being landed in this country and in Scotland. These cattle came from Canada, and there the Board of Agriculture very properly exercised their power and insisted on the slaughter of all cattle at the port of arrival. But at the same time great pressure has been exercised from various influential quarters to get this restriction withdrawn, and I think it right that the law should be altered so that responsibility should be borne by Parliament, and not by any Department of the Government. The pressure brought to bear upon the Board of Agriculture was so great that even the President, who ordered a special inquiry and examination of carcases of animals went so far as to say that if, as the result of the examination, traces of disease were not found, he should feel it his duty to make a concession to the demands made upon him.

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon; he is entirely mistaken.

I have not the statement with me now, but I will undertake to say that in those or somewhat similar terms he held out hopes to those who were pressing him that if disease was not found in the course of the examination he would think it right to reconsider his decision.

If there is no disease we are bound by the law.

Not at all. That would be assuming that a country was free from disease: but let me point out that if in an examination of that kind no disease was found, that would not be the slightest guarantee that the country was free from disease, and for this reason: Animals sent to this country at the time when those persons interested in the trade abroad were very apprehensive of an Order being issued here were subjected to the most rigid examination before they were shipped, although the examination gave no guarantee of the soundness of the animal, and the greatest possible care was taken so that any animal to which the slightest suspicion of disease could attach was rejected and not allowed to come to this country. All the animals that came were carefully selected, and there was every chance that they would be free from disease. Under the circumstances, I contend that the special examination was no kind of security to us whatever; but unless I very grossly misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, he did distinctly, in response to the pressure put upon him, hold out hopes that if the examination showed no trace of disease, then under the circumstances he would think it right to reconsider his decision. That was a great danger which the country happily escaped, but it is a danger which ought not to recur, and it is a danger to which we are continually subjected. Great pressure from influential quarters, as I have said, is brought to bear upon the right hon. Gentleman to induce him to relax the restriction. First, there is pressure from the Canadian Government; secondly, from the Colonial Office here; thirdly, from the people interested in ranches and the cattle trade of Canada; and, fourthly, from a limited section of Scotch feeders of cattle in two or three Scotch counties, and a still more limited number of feeders in England. There is always the apprehension that this pressure may be successful, and my desire is to remove that danger in the future. It will not alter the present practice one iota, and whenever a country becomes free from disease, then the Act may be repealed in this particular. But meantime the responsibility should he with Parliament; it should not rest with a Government Department. For this reason I take the somewhat unusual course—but the only one open to me, owing to the Government arrangement of business—of moving the re-committal of the Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman has said very truly that he has taken a most unusual course, and indeed I may say it is an unparalleled course on a Bill of this kind. It is the first time within my experience that such a proposal has been made. This is a Consolidation Bill, and the very object and essence of such a Bill is to consolidate Acts and not alter the law. Of course, we shall resist the Motion, and the only consequence of the right hon. Gentleman's action, if he perseveres in it, will be that this Bill, which is introduced in the interest of the agricultural community to show it will be a great advantage to have a consolidation of complicated Statutes, must be withdrawn. If the Motion is persisted in we must move the discharge of the Order, and the reponsibility will be with the right hon. Gentleman.

I am quite aware of that.

I beg to move that the Order be discharged.

hoped the Government would not relinquish the endeavour to get the Bill through. This codification of Acts was undoubtedly most useful work, and much time and care had been bestowed upon this Bill. Who would be disposed to devote hours of labour to putting the law on a given subject into shape if in a moment of pique the result was to be thrown aside? Certainly this was likely to deter anyone from undertaking this work of Statute Law revision.

hoped the Government would not persist in withdrawing the Bill. Let such a Motion be deferred for a few hours, and perhaps by the morrow the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chaplin) would have reconsidered the case, and would not be disposed to follow a policy of "cutting off his nose to spite his face." Of course, it would be admitted that for farmers it was a very serious thing to allow the importation of live cattle from a country where disease exists.

The Government are willing to accept that advice, and to give the right hon. Gentleman a locus penitentiœ We will defer the consideration of the Bill to Thursday.

I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman means by offering me a locus penitentiœ. I have made a statement in regard to a subject the importance of which will be generally recognised in connection with agricultural interests, and no answer has been made.

Order, order! Objection being taken stops further proceedings, and the Bill stands over. It being after Midnight, and Objection being taken to Further Proceeding, the Debate stood adjourned.

asked if this Bill had received the usual revision by the constituted authorities? On former occasions opportunity had been given to examine such Bills, and to make suggestions which were sometimes useful. He did not in any way wish to delay the Bill; but he asked, had the usual practice been followed? and hoped that some little time would be allowed to elapse between the circulation of such a Bill and its Second Reading.

said, the Bill had received the usual consideration of the Joint Committee, and had been reconsidered since printing. He had an Amendment to propose, but subject to that he could say that no blot would be found in the Bill. The Second Reading was taken last night.

said, he got his copy this morning. Would the Government give an undertaking that, in future, a sufficient interval should be allowed?

thought that if an Amendment was to be made on the Bill, which only came into the hands of Members this morning, it should not now be proceeded with.

said, in the Act of last year the different Acts were numbered, but this year he observed the numbers were omitted. It was convenient to have the numbers inserted.