I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, with regard to the demand which has been made upon the voluntary managers in Sowerby township for the supply of increased accommodation, whether he is aware that there is already ample accommodation for infants at Sowerby, at Millbank, and at Triangle Schools within the district; that there is full accommodation for the older children of the district at the two former schools; and that the total accommodation in the three schools exceeds the number of children on the books by 147 places, and the average attendance by 311 places; and whether, in these circumstances, the demand will be pressed?

The figures given by the noble Lord are, I believe, substantially correct. In consequence, however, of the gradual shifting of population from the hill to the valley, there is, in the opinion of the Inspector of the district (which is confirmed by a census which has been taken by the School Board) a deficiency of accommodation for about 100 to 120 older scholars in the Triangle part of the district. I am not prepared, however, to press any demand upon the managers of the Sowerby Schools to provide for the deficiency; and I do not think that any proposals which were liable to be interpreted as a demand should have been made to the managers. I regret to find that no letter has been addressed to the School Board on this matter. They should have been communicated with as to the deficiency in the first instance. A letter will now be written to the Board, and the Department will carefully consider their views on the whole subject, including the question of the deficiency.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether the Petty Sessions' Clerk of Newcastle West and Drumcollogher, County Limerick, will be continued in those positions, serious complaints having been made from time to time for neglect of duty, and also his suspension in 1890 and 1891 for grave offences?

I have made inquiry into the antecedents of this man, and find they are extremely unsatisfactory. If he is again reported His Excellency will certainly take the gravest notice of his conduct.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, what action will be taken in connection with the Officer Commanding O Battery Artillery, who acted in contravention of The Army Act, 1881, in assigning billets for horses exclusively to the Petty Sessions Clerk, Newcastle West, county Limerick, the allotment of billets being entirely in the hands of the local police authority?

There was no billeting at all upon the Petty Sessions Clerk, who was not a person liable to have billets drawn upon him, but he seemed to have a good deal of stabling, and to have voluntarily offered to put up a number of horses to avoid billeting them in twos and threes all over the town. This was done merely in the interests of the public service, the commanding officer accepting accommodation to the extent of 33, not 65 horses, the billets for the remainder being obtained in the regular way through the police. There was no regulation to prevent a commanding officer from using his discretion in making an arrangement of this kind, and it was considered a preferable plan to having the billets scattered all over the town.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Government of India have the power to set aside the Rulers of Native States in alliance with Her Majesty, without having first obtained the consent of the Home Government, as appears to have been done in the case of the Maharajah of Bhurtpore; and whether he will lay upon the Table Papers relating to the setting aside of this Prince?

In their dealings with the Rulers of Native States, as in other matters, the Government of India use their discretion whether or not to obtain the approval of the Secretary of State in Council before taking action. It is not for the public interest that the Papers relating to the Bhurtpore succession should be laid on the Table.

I beg to ask the President of thy Local Government Board whether the opinion of the Law Officers has been yet obtained upon the question of the powers of parish councils to hire land compulsorily for allotments for the use of the village tradesmen or others not employed as labourers; and, if so, whether he will inform the House what the opinion of the Law Officers was?

replied that he had not yet received the opinion of the Law Officers.

asked when it would be received, as some time had passed since he first raised the question.

said, he had communicated with the Law Officers, and expected shortly to receive their opinion.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what action has been taken by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the case of Mr. Peter Fitzpatrick, J.P., County Monaghan?

wished, before the Chief Secretary for Ireland answered, to ask whether, in view of recent disclosures as to certain companies in Belfast, any steps would be taken in the case of directors who were on the Commission of the Peace?

Order, order! That question does not arise out of the Question on the Paper.

The Lord Chancellor has inquired into this matter. The gentleman referred to was appointed to the Commission of the Peace about 10 years ago. It appears that the charge made against him was investigated by a competent Bench of Magistrates, who, by a large majority, dismissed the charge, and the Lord Chancellor does not consider he would be justified in setting aside this decision. There was no irregularity in the attendance of the Magistrates on the occasion, and the four Justices appointed by the present Lord Chancellor were authorised at the time of their appointment to attend the Petty Sessions at which the case was investigated.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether Dr. Gallagher and others of the Irish prisoners at Portland are suffering from excessive ill-health; and, if so, whether he will order a special medical inquiry to be held?

All the prisoners referred to, with one exception (John Curtin) are now in good health. The prisoner Gallagher was admitted in the hospital for anæmia on May 1. He was discharged from the hospital on the 30th, having gained 41b. in weight, and expressing himself as very well. The prisoner Curtin is at present in the hospital, and I have had a special inquiry made by Dr. Gover into his condition. He shows some improvement, and his case is being carefully watched.

I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with regard to the fact that up to the present time not one of the 115 Votes in Supply of the Civil Service and Revenue Departments Estimates, involving the expenditure of more than £32,700,000, raised by the taxation of the people, has been voted by this House, whether there is any precedent for this state of Supply on the 10th June, when the House has been sitting since the first week in February; and what steps the Government propose to take to secure due consideration of the expenditure on the Civil Service and Revenue Departments, without any further delay?

I am afraid I cannot give a good account of the progress made in Civil Service Supply. But the nearest year I can give is that of 1887, when, on May 31, there had been one Vote taken in Civil Service Supply. In 1892, at the same date, there had also been one Vote taken in Civil Service Supply. We were unfortunate this year in requiring two days to get the Speaker out of the Chair, otherwise we might have equalled those years. I find that by June 30 in 1887 there had been six Votes taken. I hope by that date this year we shall equal that record. But the hon. Member asks me what steps the Government mean to take. Well, I hope, and expect, that we shall get more time. Then we shall get more Votes.

asked, whether he was to understand that this was the worst year on record concerning Supply?

Yes, by one Vote. If we look only at the Civil Service Estimates, the number of days devoted to Supply generally has not been less but greater than in many recent yeurs.

That was by May 31 in 1887? We have now reached June 10.

But it is not easy to get Votes when the House is not sitting.

Did not the House in that year rise for Whitsuntide?

I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Government intend to take steps to accelerate the passage of the Welsh Church Bill, so that the Irish Land Bill may get into Committee in time to ensure its proper consideration?

It will be my duty—I think on Thursday—to ask the House to give the Government further time for the transaction of Government business.

said, he would repeat the question on Thursday.

asked the Leader of the House what business he proposed to take that night in the event of the Scotch Bills not taking the whole of the evening.

The Outdoor Relief (Ireland) Bill will certainly be taken, and I suppose the Conciliation in Trades Dispute Bills. I am very glad the noble Lord anticipates such a rapid progress of business, which I hope may be fulfilled.

asked if he was to understand that the Light Railways Bill would not be taken?

Oh no; we shall take all the Bills to-night.

Will No. 11 in the Orders—the Local Veto Bill—be taken?

If the hon. Member will only curb his impatience I will promise him it shall be satisfied.

This Session?

asked whether, for the convenience of Members interested in the Local Veto Bill, the right hon. Gentleman would say whether the Second Reading would be taken this Session?

Certainly.

asked the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs a question of which he had given him private notice—namely, whether there was any treaty obligation on Great Britain (as distinguished from a mere discretionary right) to interfere in the affairs of Armenia by making war upon or otherwise coercing the Porte with respect to reforms demanded by the ultimatum lately delivered to the Porte by England, Russia, and France, and if there were such a treaty obligation whether he would specify the treaty or the particular article or articles creating such obligation, and lay a copy of such article or articles on the Table of the House for the use of Members.

I can only answer by referring to the Treaty of Berlin, laid before Parliament (No. 44, 1878).

asked whether it was not a fact that by that Treaty there was no such obligation, and that the only obligation was that the Sublime Porte should undertake to carry out certain reforms according to local requirements and make them known to the Powers.

said, that if the Treaty of Berlin was the only Treaty, well and good; but he wished the hon. Baronet to specify the articles relied upon, so that the House might form a judgment on the matter.

That is a matter of which the hon. Member should give notice on the Paper in the usual way.

asked whether copies of the Bill would be immediately in the hands of Members, and whether the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs could give some idea of its scope.

replied that the present Bill was to take the place of an Act passed two years ago to enable Her Majesty's Government to carry out an agreement with Russia as regarded sealing, or the catching of seals, in certain parts of the Pacific. That Act, which was passed in 1893, expired in July next. It was therefore urgent that another measure should be passed to take its place, and this Bill was intended for the purpose. In the main it resembled previous Acts, which were about to expire. But some changes had been made. He proposed that the Bill should be printed and distributed as soon as possible, if the First Reading was passed now, so that hon. Members might have an opportunity before the Second Reading of comparing the Bill with the previous measures on the subject.

asked whether the consent of the Dominion Government had been obtained to the Bill, and whether any matters of compensation which arose had now been settled. He hoped that the Bill would not be taken after hours, otherwise he should strongly oppose it?

said he would prefer to postpone answering this question until after the Bill was printed.

said: The Instruction standing upon the Paper in the name of the hon. Baronet the Member for North-East Manchester is not in Order. The Bill is one for giving greater protection to those employed in industrial employments involving risks, and to expand by instruction the operation of the Bill to all cases of sudden death without reference to risk of employment of any kind would be going quite outside anything relevant to the Bill.

in moving—

"That the Order be discharged, and that the Bill be committed to the Standing Committee on Scotch Bills,"

said that this was one of the Bills which was mentioned in the discussion on the Motion for setting up a Standing Committee on Scotch Bills, as proposed to be referred to it, and he did not think that any objection would now be taken to the reference of the Bill to that Committee. He begged to move the Motion which stood on the Paper in his name.

said, that he did not rise to oppose the Motion. At the same time, he thought that the House was entitled to some further explanation from the Government than the reason given by the Lord Advocate. He wished to know why the procedure which was taken two years ago in reference to a similar Bill was now being departed from. The Bill to which he alluded was referred to the Standing Committee on Law, which was composed largely of lawyers versed in the law and practice of Scotland, England, and Ireland, and he should not have been averse to having the light of the experience of those hon. and learned Gentlemen thrown on a Bill of this kind. The Scotch Committee did not appear to him to be specially fitted for the consideration of this Bill. The Bill was to a certain extent a lawyer's Bill, because it affected legal procedure in Scotland, and the duties and procedure of the Crown Office in that part of the United Kingdom. He was afraid that the course which the Government were taking in this matter indicated some distrust of the Standing Committee on Law, which was, in his opinion, one of the strongest Committees of the House.

said, that the answer he had to give to the right hon. Gentleman was a very simple one. In 1893, when the reference of an analogous Bill was made to the Standing Committee on Law, the Standing Committee on Scotch Bills unfortunately did not exist, or else he had no doubt that that Bill would have been referred to it. The Government not being able to get what they regarded as the best tribunal, were obliged on that occasion to accept the second best, namely, the Standing Committee on Law. His right hon. Friend, in saying that the Standing Committee on Scotch Bills were not well versed in law was doing a great injustice to that Committee and also to himself as a Member of it, because there were on that Committee a large number of distinguished members of the English as well as of the Scotch Bar, and therefore he did not think that the Committee would fail for want of legal talent and experience. He could scarcely imagine any Bill that could be more appropriately referred to the Standing Committee on Scotch Bills, than the present one, seeing that the promoters of the measure would have the advantage of the views of all the Scotch Members with regard to it, together with the very valuable assistance of the other hon. Members who had been added to the Committee.

said, that he could not allow the present Motion to pass without drawing attention to the state of affairs that existed with regard to the Bill of two years ago. When that Bill came back to the House no further progress was made with it in consequence of an Amendment being put down with regard to trial by jury, as the Government could not undertake to give time for the discussion of that Amendment. If the Government attached any importance to the question of trial by jury he thought that it was due to the Standing Committee on Law, and to the people of Scotland interested in the question that the few hours which were necessary for discussing the question should have been found for the consideration of the Amendment which was embodied in the present Bill in Committee of the whole House. He hoped that the present Bill would meet with the fate of its predecessor arising from the same cause.

said, that this Bill was of an extremely technical character, and there was not the slightest chance of a large number of the Members of the Standing Committee on Scotch Bills taking part in the discussion upon it. He thought that the Standing Committee on Law would have been a more satisfactory one to which to remit the measure, but as they now had the Scotch Committee, he supposed that they must send something to it.

remarked that when this Bill came back to the House he presumed that some discussion of its provisions would be required. He wished to know whether the Government really intended to provide time for that discussion. He found that the Government had already got down 19 Bills of importance on the Paper for Second Reading.

Order, order! This hardly arises out of the question whether the Bill is to go to the Committee of the whole House or to the Scotch Grand Committee.

said, that the argument he was pressing was this, that if the Bill was to go to the Scotch Grand Committee on the understanding that when it came back it was to be discussed, time would be gained by allowing it to go before the Committee of the whole House at once rather than to send it to the Scotch Grand Committee.

That argument applies equally whether it goes to the Scotch Grand Committee or to the Committee of the whole House.

asked, when it was proposed that the Committee should meet?

said, they hoped it would meet next week, but they must see the state of the Committee and the work going on there.

formally seconded the Amendment.

said, the Debate had not so far turned upon the contents of the Bill. But his hon. Friend had brought forward a very serious Motion, which, if carried, would undoubtedly kill the Bill; and, while he had, in the course of his speech, made many interesting remarks, with some of which he heartily agreed, he did not think his hon. Friend had brought forward any reason why the House should decline to proceed with the Bill. It was quite true that the Bill had a title which his hon. Friend had described as high sounding. It was called the Local Government (Scotland) Bill, and it was a measure for the purpose of supplementing and completing the machinery of the Act of 1889. He would have chosen a humbler title, but he did not know that the House was very greatly concerned with that form of ambition on the part of the Government; and while he admitted that the title might embrace greater questions, yet he thought, on the whole, that it was very appropriate to the Bill. His hon. Friend objected that the people of Scotland were not interested in the Bill—that it only interested those who were employed in carrying out the Act. That was a very great exception. When they were introducing an administrative Bill it was very high praise to say of that Bill that it interested those who were concerned in the administration. His hon. Friend thought they ought to decline to proceed with the Bill because it did not make provision for three questions which he regarded as of considerable importance. The first was in reference to the acquisition of land by compulsory purchase for the purpose of erecting workmen's dwellings, public halls, and public reading rooms. The hon. Member included in those conveniences for the public the provision of recreation grounds, but he must have forgotten that by the Bill of last year parish councils were enabled to acquire and to maintain recreation grounds for the community, and that they were able to obtain the necessary land by compulsory purchase. With that first part of the Amendment he heartily agreed. The Government had a Bill drawn which would entirely carry out all his hon. Friend asked for, and they were prepared to pass that Bill if they could find the time to do so. They were also prepared in Committee on this Bill to consider any proposition that might be raised and which might come within the scope of the title of the Bill. He did not think that in the Bill, as it stood, it would be possible to deal with the question of the local assessment of unoccupied land. It would raise questions that would take the whole of the Session to discuss, and he doubted very much whether they could be solved by this Parliament. With regard to the question of abolishing the existing standing joint committee in counties, that might be started in Committee upstairs on this Bill. On that point the Government had had no serious practical complaints, and if it was necessary to pay the price, in order that this Bill might be sent upstairs, of leaving that question of the Standing Joint Committee alone, he must say he should be prepared to pay it. As to that part of the Amendment which dealt with the payment of reason able travelling expenses to county councillors, it was a proposal with which the Government were heartily in sympathy, and he had certainly brought down on himself a good deal of criticism for having strained the existing law to enable money to be paid to councillors under certain circumstances in some of the large, straggling areas of the Highlands. It must be remembered that when the Fishery Bill was before the House of Commons it was proposed, not in Committee upstairs, but in Committee of the whole House, that the expenses of the Members of the Fishery Committee should be paid, and that proposal was accepted without a Division. If that question were brought forward in Committee upstairs, and it was one which could be placed before the Committee, it would, no doubt, be seriously considered, and he confessed that he should like to get the opinion of the representatives of the whole of Scotland upon it. But for the reasons alleged by his hon. Friend to refuse, on the Second Reading of a Bill of this nature, to send it upstairs was a course in which he trusted his hon. Friend would not get many to support him, and he hoped, therefore, he would not persist with the Amendment, especially as he did not gather from his speech that he was hostile to the Bill, except in so far as he regarded it as a partial measure.

said, that with regard to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Mid Lanark and the opinions expressed by the Secretary for Scotland he did not see that hon. Members on his side of the House were called on to interfere in what appeared to be a little domestic quarrel. He understood from an answer which was given by the Lord Advocate a short time ago, that the Government had drawn up a Bill dealing with one of the most important points referred to in the Amendment; but it seemed as if the hon. Member for Mid Lanark was losing patience a little. He seemed to be a little doubtful about what might be the prospects of any such Bill in the future. Perhaps the hon. Member thought that unless he got the provisions he wished inserted in this Bill, there would be little opportunity of securing them in the measure, that was promised. On that point, however, he did not feel called upon to express an opinion. He did not at all agree with the hon. Member for Mid Lanark as to the provisions of this Bill being of a comparatively unimportant character, nor with his view that its provisions had not been and would not be much discussed by the various local authorities in Scotland. Last week he attended a meeting of the County Councils Association at Edinburgh, and the provisions of the Bill were thoroughly discussed at the conference, together with other matters of local government not dealt with in this measure. What he regarded as one of the most important changes contemplated by the Bill was laid down in the 8th Clause, which provided for a change in respect to the system under which the Public Health Rate was levied in counties in Scotland. The effect of that clause, if it were passed, would be to do away, as far as the Public Health rates in counties were concerned, with the system of deduction and classification—a system of rating which was extended to counties in respect of these rates by the Local Government Act of 1889. He thought that every county rating authority in Scotland would agree that the present system under which they had to levy a county rate was a thoroughly bad one, inasmuch as the amount having to be raised by a rate, fixed by the County Council, the system under which the rate had to be raised was to be fixed, not by the County Council, but by the Parish Councils. He thought he was correct in saying that, in 1869, two years after the passing of the Public Health Act, 1867, the whole amount raised by the public parochial authorities under that Act only amounted to something over £6,000, whereas, in 1893, a sum of £69,000 was raised by rate and was supplemented by a sum of about £40,000 from the Treasury. These figures showed how large a sum of money was being dealt with through the rates levied under the Public Health Acts. He thought they might well feel some timidity when they saw how these local rates tended to grow. In 1848, all the rates in Scotland only amounted to £900,000, whereas, in 1893, they were £3,779,000—a rise from 1s. 9d. to 3s. in the £. The House would, therefore, do well to watch jealously the way in which the rates were now proposed to be levied, and the transferring of the burdens of those rates from the shoulders of those who now bore them to the shoulders of others. The system at present in force was one of classification and deductions. Section 37 of the Poor Law Act, 1815, provided that assessment should be levied—

"under deduction of the probable annual average cost of repairs, insurance and other expenses, if any, necessary to maintain such lands and heritages in their actual state, and all rates, taxes, and public charges payable in respect of the same."

That was a system which applied equally to owners and occupiers, and to all Poor Law and Public Health rates. But the system of classification went beyond that, and provided that where in any parish a system had been adopted by which one class of subjects, as they were called, were rated at one rate, other classes of subjects might be rated at different rates. There was sound reason for this when the system was adopted. What was aimed at was that it was intended to approximate the individual contribution to the rates to the individual means of contributing to those rates. The system of classification amounted in many Scotch parishes to this: Houses might be taken as Class 1, factories and workshops in Class 2, railways and canals in Class 3, and land in Class 4. The effect of this in parishes which had a classification, was to throw a less burden on some subjects than on others. That was a perfectly right and proper thing. He desired to call the attention of the House to the effect which this clause in the Bill would have in sweeping away the whole system of classification. He would take, for example, the case of a parish of the gross rateable value of £5,000, of which, say, £2,000 was houses and £3,000 agricultural land, and where, under the existing system, a sum of £140 had to be raised for public health purposes by the county authorities. Under the present system of classification and deductions, the amounts paid would be as follows: By owners of house property, £25; by owners of farms, £43 15s.; by occupiers of houses, £50; and by occupiers of farms £21 16s. 8d. only. Under the proposed new system the £25 would be raised to £28 2s. 6d., the £43 would be about the same—namely, £42 3s. 9d., but the, amount payable by occupiers of house property would fall to £28 2s. 6d., while the contribution of the poor agriculturists would rise from £21 16s. 8d. to £42 13s. 9d. This was the point he desired to impress upon the House, for undoubtedly the effect of sweeping away the system of classification and deduction would be to throw an additional and heavy burden on agriculturists wherever classifications had hitherto existed. He could understand it being argued that, after all, classification did not exist in every parish, but then it must also be borne in mind that in a purely agricultural parish there was no necessity for classification. It was certain that unless some system of classification in mixed populations were continued, a hardship on agriculturists would undoubtedly be inflicted. There were, he suggested, two ways in which the objection which he entertained might be overcome. In the first place, it might be overcome by allowing the counties themselves to fix the system of classification which was to apply to the whole of each county, or, in the second place, the Government might propose to deal with this question as it had been dealt with in the House before, in respect of boroughs, by Section 94 of the Public Health Act, 1867. Passing from this most important question to the consideration of the next clause in the Bill, which dealt with the powers conferred upon County Councils to make by-laws in respect of "houses," he was bound to say that he viewed this clause with very great apprehension. He thought Clause 9 would furnish more grounds for discussion in Committee upstairs than any other clause in the Bill. It was, moreover, so large and inclusive, that he thought no County Council would be ready to adopt it. The Secretary for Scotland (Sir G. O Trevelyan) had stated that this clause proposed to give no further powers to the Scotch County Councils than were now exercised by the English County Councils, but he had failed to discover any similar powers conferred by the English Act. Under the Public Health Act, 1890, special powers were given to urban authorities, and those powers might be adopted by rural authorities. But there were provisions in Clause 9 of the present Bill which went further than anything contemplated by the Public Health Act. Clause 9 provided that County Councils might from time time make by-laws with respect to various matters connected with houses, and then paragraph (e) of Sub-section 4 provided—

"In this section the expression 'house' includes schools (not being public schools within the meaning of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1872), factories, and other buildings, in which persons are, or are intended to be, employed."

In the Factory Bill upstairs, which applied to the United Kingdom, provision was made that at least 200 cubic feet of air must be provided or persons working in factories and workshops. The clause in this Bill would go beyond that. In his opinion it was undesirable that Scotch County Councils should be given the power to issue factory regulations which night go beyond the general factory law of the country. What was really essential was—that provision should be made under which, before any buildings were erected in counties, the sanitary inspector and the medical officer would have the right to see the plans and to give or withhold their consent to them in respect of the conditions of drainage. At present the sanitary authorities could go in after buildings were erected and say: "This is all wrong. You must take all these drains up; they are unsatisfactory." As long, however, as a building was in course of erection, the sanitary authorities had no power to do anything. That was wrong. He had already spoken of the apprehension felt with regard to the probable increase of the public health rates. All the expenditure under this clause would be additional expenditure falling upon these rates. The following special provision had been inserted in the clause:—

"A district committee, or a County Council shall, for the purposes of this section, be entitled to require the services of the medical officer and sanitary inspector of the district or county respectively."

He was sure that the existing local sanitary officers would be unable, in many cases, to render these additional services. They would require additional payment, and in many counties the existing staffs would have to be largely increased if the provisions of this clause were really intended to be carried out effectively. The effect of what had been done by the Legislature in recent years, with respect to factory inspection, had been to remove a large amount of work from the shoulders of factory inspectors who were paid by the State, and to throw it upon the representatives of local authorities, namely, the sanitary inspector and the medical officer who were paid out of the rates. He regretted, therefore, that it should now be proposed to make a serious addition to the already large demands made upon the public health rate. If the by-laws which were to be agreed to under this clause were really to be passed by the County Councils, it ought to be made perfectly clear that no representatives from the police burghs or burghs would be entitled to vote on the subject of the adoption of such by-laws. Regulations which affected only the rural parts of counties ought not to be passed by the votes of the representatives of burghs. The hon. Member for Mid Lanark had referred to the clause conferring power to deal with infected milk supply. Very strong criticisms had been passed upon this clause, which said—

"If the medical officer of any district has evidence that any person in the district is suffering; from infectious disease attributable to milk supplied within the district from any dairy situate within or without the district," etc.

One result of the clause apparently was to give power to the medical officer of a district to go into another district and to supersede, as it were, the medical officer of that district in the matter of inspection. Strong feelings were entertained by medical officers on this point, and practical effect might be given, much more effectually to the intentions of the framers of the clause. He suggested that the earlier part of the clause should be made to read as follows:—

"If the medical officer of any district has evidence that any person is suffering from infectious disease attributable to milk supplied from any dairy situated within the district, or that the consumption of such milk is likely to cause disease to any person in or without the district."

By this change they would avoid the overlapping of medical authority, which should be prevented if possible. By Clause 12 an entirely new power was proposed to be given to the County Road Boards, and he did not understand why at this stage of their career these Boards should be entrusted with a power of borrowing money which they had not possessed up to the present time. At the annual meeting of the County Council Association in Edinburgh a resolution was passed unanimously declaring that it was desirable to introduce in this Bill a clause providing for the total abolition of County Road Boards. With that recommendation he heartily agreed, for he believed that a County Road Board had now no work whatever to do. Under Section 16 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1889, the County Road Board was to be appointed by the County Council out of their own members. The executive work of road administration under this system was performed not by the Road Board but by the district committees of the Board. The Board met twice a year, received the reports of the district committees, and solemnly handed over these reports to the County Council. That was practically the only function which the Road Board discharged. But two statutory meetings in the year must be held, and it being known that the duties to be discharged were only nominal it was often exceedingly difficult to secure a quorum at the meeting of the Board. Under the existing system of county government there was no necessity for a County Road Board, and he therefore urged the Government to do away with the institution, and thereby to simplify the procedure relating to road administration. There was another point to which he wished to call the Lord Advocate's attention. In this 12th clause it was said—

"That a County Council might declare that any cartroad or bridle-path or footpath or footbridge which was not maintained out of public funds should be maintained as if it were a highway."

These words might exclude certain roads in Inverness-shire and other counties which were maintained out of the resident grant, which was a public fund. He suggested the adoption of the word "assessment," in order that these particular roads might not be excluded from the operation of the clause. The 3rd clause in the Bill made provision for the erection of county buildings, and it was proposed that the expenses incurred should be defrayed out of the general purposes rate. County buildings were used for various purposes: for the meetings of the County Council, for the transaction of the business of the Justices of the Peace, and also for the meetings of the various district committees. The rate for county buildings was a rate levied upon boroughs as well as upon counties, and he thought the House ought to make provision by which the cost of erecting county buildings should devolve partly upon the county general rate, but that a certain proportion of it should be made a charge upon the district rate. With regard to the borrowing powers in the fourth clause, the proposal to extend the period of repayment to 30 or 40 years—was, no doubt desirable; but it seemed anomalous, when they were making that provision in regard to certain classes of county expenditure, that they should leave the matter of police stations out of sight altogether. The county councils were building a large number of police stations, but by the Act of 1857 the limit of repayment was placed at 20 years, and he suggested that the time had come when that term should be extended in accordance with the borrowing powers proposed by this clause. He ventured to appeal to the Government really to make an effort in this Bill to define more clearly—firstly, the position of county medical officers and sanitary inspectors in regard to boroughs; and, secondly, the voting powers of the representatives of police boroughs at meetings of county councils and district committees. He knew nothing which more hampered and retarded the progress of business in regard to county council administration, than the undefined powers of the borough representatives. He gave a concrete example of the anomalies of the position. In the lower ward district of the county of Lanark, it was proposed to appoint a new road surveyor, salary being fixed by a meeting of the county council at £300 a year. The gentleman who got this post was appointed by a majority which consisted in the proportion of 11 to 3 of representatives of police boroughs who paid no portion of the salary, and had nothing whatever to do with any administrative act which this official might discharge. That, of course, was an altogether undesirable state of matters. The duties and responsibilities should be so defined and laid down that it should be impossible for borough representatives to vote in any matter in regard to which they had no responsibility for expenditure incurred. If the Government would take in hand the matters to which he had ventured to call attention, they would do a great deal to promote the easy and effective administration of local affairs in Scotland.

felt he ought to apologise to the House for intervening in a Scotch Debate, but he ventured to suggest that the Government might find this Bill a convenient opportunity for remedying the defects in Scotch Local Government with regard to labourers' cottages and workmen's houses. He was aware that when English Local Government was being dealt with it was suggested that the Bill should contain some provision which would enable land to be taken, and labourers' cottages to be built by parish councils under proper restrictions. It was then said that it would be hopeless to insert such a provision, because in another place there was no probability of its being passed. Things had moved a little since then. At that time the opponents of the Government were saying that the English Local Government Bill was a revolutionary measure, and one which the people in our villages would find would saddle them with great expense. The Act had now been in operation for some time, and the Tory Party were now saying that so far from the Act being a revolutionary measure it was a very trifling measure and did very little. For his part, he believed they were nearer accuracy when they said that the Local Government Act for England was a small measure which effected little than when they spoke of it as a revolutionary measure which it was dangerous to introduce. The experience of the English Local Government Bill having been that their opponents now said it was only a trifling improvement, he thought the Government might now have been a little bolder than it was perhaps possible for them to be when the English Bill was brought in. That such a measure was needed in Scotland, at least as much as it was in England, could hardly be disputed by Her Majesty's advisers. He spoke not only with the knowledge of Scotland which an Englishman had—and which, perhaps, was not very great but he spoke from a perusal of the reports of the various Commissioners who were sent out by the Labour Commission to report upon the state of affairs in Scotland. Mr. Rutherford, in his report, summing up the whole matter, stated that in regard to the cottage accommodation over the whole of the districts with which he had to do, he was aware that there was a larger area where the supply of cottage accommodation was insufficient than the area where it was found sufficient. Mr. Pringle, in his report, stated that between Inverness and Dingwall there were many places where the labourers' cottages were improper, and where they could only be described as utterly unfit for human habitation. The same complaint ran through most of the reports. When dealing with Perthshire, Mr. Pringle said that in many places the labourers' cottage accommodation was good and fairly sufficient, but he pointed out with regard to the dwellings of the crofters, that they could only be described as wretched hovels attached to the crofts, and many of them quite unfit for human habitation. He thought it was plain from these reports that in Scotland there was, at any rate, need for increased housing accommodation for the working classes. He found also the same complaints that were made in England as to the tenure of these cottages. There was in some districts of Scotland the same system that prevailed in many English districts, by which the cottage was not let direct by the landlord to the labourer, but was let with the land to the farmer, and, therefore, the labourer was entirely at the mercy of the farmer with regard to his tenancy. That was to say, the moment he ceased to be employed he had to leave his cottage. That was a condition of affairs in England of which the labourers complained strongly, because they said it left them too much under the power of the farmer. Where they had any difficulty with their master it meant that not only had they to seek employment elsewhere, but they must leave their homes and move to some other house which was a serious matter where house accommodation was limited. That system of letting the cottage with the farm was complained of in Scotland. It was also complained of in England, and that was the reason why they ventured to think that in Scotland, and in England also, it was necessary that power should be given to the local authorities compulsorily to buy cottages, or to buy land and then to build cottages. He thought that under proper control, and subject to proper conditions, this power was necessary to make local Government complete, whether in England or Scotland. He had regretted ever since the English Local Government Bill was passed that such a provision was not inserted in that Bill, and failing that he could not help regretting that the same omission should now be made in regard to the Scotch Local Government Bill.

observed, that while the intervention of an English Member was welcomed in a Scotch Debate, it was somewhat dangerous for an English Member to enlighten them on Scotch matters. The hon. Member for Maldon had told them that when a cottage was occupied by an agricultural labourer in Scotland in connection with a particular farm, the farmer could bring the tenancy of the cotter to an end on very short notice. If the hon. Member had known the custom in Scotland he would know that the agricultural labourers in Scotland occupied these cottages as part of their wages, and they were entitled to a great deal longer notice than a week. They were entitled to at least forty days' notice, so that their position was not quite so hard as the hon. Member would lead the House to understand. The hon. Gentleman further said it was prophesied that the English Local Government Bill would be a revolutionary one, and very expensive to work. He did not think that any Unionist Scotch Member said that their Parish Council Bill was a revolutionary one, but several of them ventured to prophesy that some of its clauses would turn out expensive, and they had already had experience of that in the very unfortunate provision, making the election of the first council in spring, and not at the time the election for the county council took place. This had resulted in a very large expenditure, which was quite unnecessary. The Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Mid Lanark raised three questions of considerable importance. The first, that of taking land for providing workmen's dwellings, was one he himself would be inclined to give favourable consideration to, if put in a separate Bill, and if thoughtfully and carefully worked out. But he thought it was far too large a subject to be dealt with in a Local Government Bill of this description. The other two matters relating to the Standing Joint Committee and the payment of the expenses of County Councillors were questions as to which the majority of the County Councils in Scotland had not found any grievance. At present the County Councils took the position of Commissioners of Supply, and if there was to be an increase in the number of constables or a new police station, they had power to give their approval to the expenditure, so that in very important matters the Standing Joint Committee could not act without their sanction. He thought the Government were well advised in not dealing with these questions in a Bill, the main purpose of which was to amend and remedy certain defects in the Local Government Act of 1889. He considered that on the whole the Bill dealt satisfactorily with the questions with which it dealt, though it was open to criticism in regard to certain details which could be discussed in the Committee upstairs. There were, however, one or two points which appeared to him to affect matters of principle. In the fourth clause a very large power was given to the Secretary for Scotland with regard to exempting certain districts from local taxation. Undoubtedly, it had been the tendency of the present Secretary for Scotland to extend this power. That was largely done by the Bill of last year. He did not complain of the way in which that power had been exercised, but unquestionably some of the inquiries which were held under that Bill were conducted by those who did not inspire great confidence as to their inquiries, and he thought, if this power were to be given, the inquiry into the subject should at least be made by some judicial authority who should present a formal Report to the Secretary for Scotland. Again, he thought it was a sound principle that, when Parliament had made over any part of its duties to a local authority within a certain area, no other local authority should be entitled to deal with these subjects. He found in this Bill, in certain matters which might not be of very great importance, two local authorities were given powers to deal with the same subjects. The County Council were given powers to maintain footpaths, and by the Bill of last year the Parish Councils were entrusted with the duty of maintaining all public ways which were not administered by the County Council. He thought the further powers given to the County Council with regard to allotments quite unnecessary. The duty of seeing that people who wanted allotments got them was already entrusted to the parish councils; and there was a danger that if this duty were given to two authorities one would leave it to the other to discharge, and so between them nothing would be done. He objected on somewhat the same grounds to Clause 11. That clause gave power to the medical officer of one authority to go down to the district of another medical officer and make an inquiry; and if he thought; that the milk of any farmer within that district was infected, the Local Authority for which he acted could summon the farmer before them. It seemed to him that that provision would certainly lead to conflict and confusion. The county of Dumfries, which he had the honour of representing, was a large milk-producing county, and sent milk to populous centres throughout the country. There might, therefore, be in that county a case such as this. A farmer of the county might think it necessary to summon the medical officer of the county to see if there was a case of infectious disease on his farm, and the medical officer, after an examination, might decide that there was nothing wrong. But it might be that on the very next day the medical officer of Dundee, to which the farmer sent his milk, would visit the farm, and coming, perhaps, to a different opinion, the farmer would be summoned within 24 hours to appear before the Town Council of Dundee. That would be putting the farmer to unnecessary trouble and expense. The dairy-farmers of the kingdom carried on their business under the most stringent regulations, and had to compete with the dairy-farmers of other countries who were not subjected to the same restrictions. He, therefore, thought it would be unwise to impose any fresh regulations of a vexatious kind. It should be remembered also that in a case such as he had mentioned the farmer was not only prevented from sending his milk away, but he was also prevented from turning it into cheese and butter, and he got no compensation for his loss. It was plain that the clause must be reconsidered by the Government. If it should be thought necessary to give power to one Local Authority in this way to take independent action in the district of another Local Authority, it should be done through the Local Government Board or by communication with the medical officer of the district from which the infection was supposed to come. This was, he thought, a very important matter, for the interests of the producers as well as the interests of the consumers should be considered; and, while every precaution should be taken against the risk of infection, it should not be done in such a way as to impose unnecessary trouble and expense on the farmers. Another point he wished to deal with was the position of police burghs in the administration of the Public Health Acts. He thought the police burghs had good reason to complain that, while they had to contribute to the cost of the county medical officers and sanitary inspectors they were not entitled to the services of those officials. He was aware that it was difficult to deal with this matter in a satisfactory manner; but, at the same time, it must be kept in view that in those small areas the Public Health Acts were not worked in so thorough and efficient a manner as the large areas. It had been suggested that it might perhaps be admissible that all burghs under a certain population should be included in the counties for public health purposes; but he did not think that that would altogether meet the difficulty. Probably the difficulty might be settled by giving the burghs some inducements to accept the services of the county medical officers. He agreed with the hon. Member for Renfrewshire that Clause 9 went a little too far. He thought its operation should be limited to matters that affected the sanitary conditions of buildings. There was a danger that the local authorities might not exercise their powers under such a clause, as they might be apprehensive of going beyond the public opinion that backed up those local authorities. He was surprised that the Government, if they thought any amendment of the existing law necessary, had not inserted in the Bill a clause dealing with the sanitary condition of all existing labourers' dwellings. The Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn, which had passed its Second Reading, dealt only with a limited class of labourers; and the attempt which he (Mr. Maxwell) and other Members were making to enlarge the scope of that Bill would have been obviated if the Government had inserted in the present Bill a clause dealing with all labourers' dwellings. In conclusion, he had only to say that when amended in a few details to which he had drawn the attention of the House, the Bill would, he thought, be a useful and beneficial measure.

said, that when the last Scotch Local Government Bill was before the Grand Committee, an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn, to give powers to the Parish Councils to compulsorily acquire land for the erection of workmen's dwellings, led to considerable discussion, and was opposed by the Secretary for Scotland. He was one of those who thought there was something in that amendment and who approved of its principle. He had never heard of a case where it was difficult to obtain land for the erection of workmen's dwellings owing to the opposition of the landowner; and the Mover of the Amendment had failed to instance any such case. But to obviate any such difficulty that might arise in the future, he voted for the Amendment, which was carried by a large majority, despite the protest of the Secretary for Scotland, who said it would wreck the Bill. Eventually the Amendment was struck out by the House of Lords, and the Bill restored to its original condition when introduced by the Secretary for Scotland. But the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy came down to his constituency and denounced him as one of those who had destroyed what the hon. Member called this beneficial proposal.

I denounced the House of Lords.

said, that all the House of Lords had done was to restore the Bill to the position it occupied when introduced by the Secretary for Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the Amendment would wreck the Bill, and the House of Lords, thinking that the right hon. Gentleman was speaking sense, knocked out the Amendment, Gould they conceive a more ridiculous state of affairs than that. What step was his hon. Friend going to take under the present circumstances? The Secretary for Scotland was not going to accept the Amendment from the hon. Member for Mid Lanark. Was the hon. Member going to denounce the right hon. Gentleman when he next went down to Kirkcaldy? He (Mr. Cochrane) thought there was something in the principle of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Mid Lanark, and that with certain safeguards some such Amendment might be adopted. The hon. Member for Essex (Mr. Cyril Dodd) did not quite understand the Scottish system of engagement by the term for a year. One of the reasons the hon. Member urged in favour of the proposal was that if an agricultural labourer were turned out of his cottage he should be able to get accommodation elsewhere. If an agricultural labourer were not required on a farm where was he to get work? And if the farm cottages were to remain vacant there would be a great waste of money. Generally speaking, it seemed to him there was not much of a very contentious nature in the Bill, and that the whole measure might have been passed in the time spent in discussing whether they should set up a Scottish Grand Committee, a very roundabout and cumbrous method for securing the passing of the Bill. There was one matter personal to the county he had the honour to represent. Clause 3 provided for the acquisition of county buildings. The case of Ayr was a very special one, and the clause did not meet it. The County Council there had buildings they held under an Act of 1816. The buildings were vested in Commissioners as trustees, and they were occupied jointly by the Council, Sheriffs Officers, and the Burgh Mayor. The burgh contributed about £500 out of the £30,000 which the county buildings and prisons collectively cost. The county had not taken advantage of the Sheriff's Court Houses Act, and counsel, whose opinion had been taken by the county authorities, maintained that the trustees could not divest themselves of their trust. The consequence was the county paid about £200 per annum for the repair and maintenance of the county buildings, of which about half should be returned on account of the Sheriffs Court House. If the right hon. Gentleman could not amend the clause so that it would meet the case of the county buildings of Ayr, perhaps he would afford facilities for a private Bill to meet the case. Clause 8, which dealt with the future condition of rates, was one which no one could find any fault with, but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would prevent the possibility of a farmer living in a special water district being heavily rated in respect of a water supply of some neighbouring village from which he received no benefit at all. He agreed with all the hon. Member for Renfrew and others had said as to Clause 11, which dealt with infected milk supplies. It seemed very cumbrous and unfortunate that a medical officer in one district should be able to interfere with the duties of a medical officer in another district. It also appeared to him that the efficient working of the clause depended entirely upon the medical officer getting evidence. It was sometimes very difficult to get evidence. The Notification of Diseases Act was not adopted in all the smaller burghs in Scotland, and it was to the smaller burghs where the small dairies and small shops were they might look very frequently for the origin of the infectious diseases. It was in those very places there would be difficulty in obtaining evidence. And after an order had been made there was nothing in the clause, he was afraid, to prevent a dairyman selling milk out of his district. He could not see any words which would prevent a man who might live on the borders of two different districts supplying milk in one of the districts. If there was anything in that point it ought to be carefully looked into. Certainly in any case a medical officer of one district should be compelled to give official notice to the medical officers in neighbouring districts of the existence of any infectious disease. In many districts there were evasions under the Pleuro-pneumonia Acts; removals of cattle took place owing to the want of official knowledge being imparted to neighbouring districts. Reference had been made to the question of compensation. He thought that a farmer who had shown no negligence, but had faithfully carried out all the regulations of the Public Health Acts should be entitled to reasonable compensation if his trade were stopped in the public interest. That was the principle adopted in the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, the Cattle Plague Act, the Pleuro-pneumonia Act, the Act dealing with insects destructive to crops, and also in certain of the Public Health Acts. There was another point the Lord Advocate promised him last year he would consider—namely, the removal of the disqualification for the County Council, which existed in respect to the supply of road material. He noticed the right hon. and learned Gentleman had the point in mind, and therefore would not say more in regard to it. He wished the Road Boards had been entirely done away with. Some of the evils which resulted from the present rather cumbrous method of procedure would be remedied by the Amendments which had been put down, to the 58th Section of the Bill, but there were certain other inconveniences which arose, owing to the indefinite delay which took place in the proceedings of the Board. As to the exclusion of some of their best men from the magisterial bench if it were not ultra vires he should like to move an Amendment to that effect, simply because men happened to be writers or solicitors they were debarred from sitting on the bench. He instanced the case of a writer who had never practised and who was called in to make a quorum of three. The conviction was quashed on the ground that this J.P. was not qualified to sit as a magistrate. He thought they ought to improve the Bill in this direction.

said, he rose to draw attention to one or two matters. With regard to the Standing Joint Committees, they were told there had been no great feeling regarding them. But this was not so in his constituency. There was a feeling that justice had not been done to the principle of representation, and that the present County Government did not represent all the component parts and all classes of the community. His complaint was, that by means of the Joint Committees, additional power had been given to the landed class— the class which already had too much power in the counties. Another point, upon which he wished to say a few words, had not yet been referred to—he meant the position of the police burghs. That matter came under considerable discussion in the Scotch Grand Committee last year. He had many representations made to him from different parts of his constituency, where there were large and important police burghs, such as Buckie and Keith, much larger than many Royal burghs, and the desire, therefore, was, that these should be placed in the same position as Royal and Parliamentary burghs. One other point he had to refer to, and that had reference to working men's dwellings. The proposal of the Bill was to make an arrangement for getting fresh dwellings. That was good; but he was sorry to say that in his neighbourhood they were suffering from the gradual loss of those dwellings they already possessed. In some cases agricultural labourers' dwellings had been pronounced unfit for human habitation, and the remedy had been to pull them down. That, of course, had been a serious thing for the men and their families, and it also raised a difficulty for the medical and sanitary authorities, because they were afraid to condemn these dwellings which, though unfit, were better than no dwellings at all. He had brought this matter under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman, and he trusted he would give it his careful consideration.

said, that there were only three points touched upon in that discussion to which he wished to address a few observations. One of these was the public health clauses in the Bill, and other matters touching upon public health. The right hon. Gentleman would remember that in 1892, when the then Government had a Burgh Police Bill, a large number of clauses were put in by the Committee after careful consideration, but the supporters of the right hon. Gentleman deprecated in the strongest manner the House passing those public health clauses, because, as they said, it would tend to stave off a Public Health Bill for Scotland. Here they had the present Government going to deal with public health matters in a Local Government Bill, and therefore staving off any large scheme of that kind during the life of the Government. He wished to refer to two other matters, quarries and ferries. There seemed to him to be no fair spirit in dealing with ferries. The ferries were mostly in private hands. At present, the fares can be regulated by the Justices. It was now proposed that the County Council, a body representative of the public who use the ferries, should have the final regulation of the fares. He agreed there should be some regulation, but what was done should be fair; and at the least an appeal ought to be provided against the decision of the local body to some Central Department, such as the Board of Trade. Then as to roadside quarries. Under the old Turnpike Acts the local authorities had power to take stones, gravel, and other material for mending roads, from the estates through which the roads ran. At the time that power was given none of the modern appliances had been introduced, and no compensation was provided, probably on the ground that to improve the road was to improve the adjoining estates, and the effect of the exercise of the powers was comparatively insignificant. But with the modern appliances and steam machinery those powers became very different. To give them to the County Councils was apparently to carry out the policy of the Turnpike Acts, but really it was to depart utterly from the spirit and intention of those Acts. Even under the present very limited right of the public authorities in this respect, he had known cases of considerable hardship to the private landowner, involving him in considerable pecuniary loss; and the owner would run still more risk of loss in the future if the clause in the Bill were passed without some such restriction as could easily be suggested. The provision would lead to very grievous injustice. His main purpose in addressing the House was to invite some further explanation of the position of the Government with regard to the Bill. A supporter of the Government, the hon. Member for Mid Lanark, had moved the Resolution which the House was discussing, and as the hon. Member had been told on the authority of his Leader that if the Resolution were persisted in it would kill the Bill, he supposed that the hon. Member would withdraw it. But the Secretary for Scotland had referred sympathetically to certain of the views propounded by the Resolution, and those views might be brought forward again in the Scotch Grand Committee. They were highly contentious. The proposal of the hon. Member was that no legislation of this kind should proceed unless the Government intended to abolish the Standing Joint Committee set up under the Act of 1889. The Secretary for Scotland introduced such a proposal in the Bill of last year, but it was withdrawn, because it was so contentious. It would not be too much to ask for a similar undertaking this year, but he should not be satisfied with that. His experience in the Scotch Grand Committee last year had made him think that the Government were inclined, on Bills of that sort, which were apparently non-contentious, to use the Scotch Grand Committee for the introduction of highly contentious matter. The Government had already expressed their willingness to take into consideration certain highly contentious matters. But if they opposed them in Committee, it would only mean that their followers would be afforded the unwonted luxury of voting against and defeating the Government, without the Government reconsidering their position, although the matter had been declared to be vital. That was exactly what took place in the Committee last year on a matter not so important as this; and he feared that the Secretary for Scotland, after all that he had said that day, had not only given no guarantee that what happened last year would not happen again, but had actually expressed his willingness to consider an Amendment on the lines of the Motion now before the House. If, after considering those Amendments, the Government came to the conclusion that they were inadmissible, the Government would be defeated in Committee by their own supporters, and on Report the Government would inform the House that they were going to acquiesce in the decision of the majority of the Scotch Members. Thus a measure which, according to the declaration of the Leader of the House, could not be sent to the Scotch Grand Committee unless it were an uncontentious measure, would be converted into a contentious measure in Committee, and would be then supported by the Government because it had passed through Committee. Unless the Government made their position perfectly clear, there would be an abuse of the conditions under which alone the House had allowed the Scotch Committee to be set up. The Opposition at least were entitled to assurances on the subject from the Secretary for Scotland.

said, he could not understand the point which had been raised by the right hon. Gentleman, because the Secretary for Scotland had made it perfectly clear that at any rate he would not be disposed to consider an Amendment proposing the abolition of the Standing Joint Committee. But the most vital point in connection with this discussion was the absence from the Bill of any proposal to give power to the local authorities to purchase land for workmen's dwellings. The right hon. Gentleman could hardly urge that that was a contentious matter which raised opposition on either side of the House; because the right hon. Gentleman himself took an active part in the work of the Select Committee which unanimously reported in favour of such a provision. The Secretary for Scotland had every reason to be perfectly satisfied with the discussion on the Bill. The Bill, as it stood, was certainly a good Bill. It contained many proposals which would be of great advantage in the working of Local Government in Scotland; and there were several clauses, particularly the ninth, which he regarded as of great importance. But the complaint of Members on the Ministerial side of the House was that the Bill did not go far enough. After the unanimous Report of the Select Committee, which was composed of Members from both sides of the House, and which had taken evidence from all parts of Scotland, they complained that the Government had not embodied the proposal to which he had referred in the present Bill. The hon. Member for Ayrshire had made it a grievance that he (Mr. Dalziel) in common with some of his colleagues went to Scotland and complained of the action of the Opposition in respect of this proposal for the provision of workmen's dwellings as contained in the Bill of last year. What was the history of the case? The proposal was certainly not in the Bill as first introduced, and the Secretary for Scotland certainly stated that if it were, carried it would endanger the passing of the Bill. But in spite of that the Scotch Grand Committee adopted the proposal, and the Secretary for Scotland was respectful enough to the Grand Committee to accept its decision on the point. But the right hon. Gentleman thought the proposal would endanger the passing of the Bill in another place, and he proved to be right. The House of Lords were responsible for throwing out the proposal: certainly it was not the Government or their supporters. Would the hon. Member for Ayrshire suggest that if his Friends on both sides of the House had supported the proposal, the Secretary for Scotland would not have embodied it in his Bill at the first, and that the House of Lords would not have passed it into law? When the question was brought forward on Report last year, the Secretary for Scotland made a declaration that, if assent were given at that time to the action of the House of Lords the Government would bring forward another Bill this year to carry out the spirit of the proposal. But in the present Bill that proposal found no place. Truly, the right hon. Gentleman said that another Bill had been drafted which would embody this proposal. That was satisfactory to some extent; but did the right hon. Gentleman seriously think that such a Bill would pass into law in the present Session, and still more in the present Parliament? Considering the amount of Scottish legislation before the House, in the light, of past Sessions, he would be a bold man who would say that, a Bill which had not, yet been introduced would be passed through Parliament in the present Session. He hoped that the view held by the right hon. Gentleman would be justified by events. But at present they had arrived at Whitsuntide, and the right hon. Gentleman was still confident that a Bill which had not yet been introduced, raising points of considerable importance, would pass into law during the present Session, or even during the present Parliament. He would look forward with interest to the end of the Session in order to see whether the right hon. Gentleman's view would be justified. But if the Government had meant business with regard to the housing of the working classes, giving power to local authorities to deal with the question, they would have found a place for the necessary provisions in the present Bill. It was a matter of urgency, and he therefore hoped that the Government would not lose sight of the proposal. If it were possible to embody it in the present Bill upstairs he hoped the Government, would do so, and that they would do all they could to carry the provisions into law at the earliest possible moment.

said, there were some points in the Bill to which he should like to call attention. In the first place, there was the eighth clause on the question of public health rate. The only reason for dealing with the question was a technical one and the great complexity which the present system produced. The vast number of different rates which had to be imposed in each county was a matter of complexity which fell on paid officials whose duty it was to work out those difficult arithmetical sums. In order to meet that technical difficulty, however, it was proposed to make a serious change in the whole incidence of rating. That was too high a price to pay for the mere obtaining of symmetry, however desirable this might be in itself. It had been pointed out that a serious burden was thrown in many cases on farmers by the change. It would double the amount thrown on farmers, greatly increase the amount thrown on the railways, and diminish the amount to be paid by occupiers of houses. He submitted that they could not make a great change in the incidence of rates without raising a great deal of feeling and without raising a great many other questions concerning the incidence of rates. If the Government were anxious to deal with this difficult question there were many ways to deal with it. They might have a statutory classification imposing a classification which would be pretty fair for the agriculturists, but which, so far as it altered the classification in the opposite direction, would be opposed in other counties; or they might leave the counties themselves to arrange the classification, or it might be done by districts. There were many plans by which, without abolishing classification and throwing the whole burden on the unfortunate agricultural community, the present system could be amended, but all plans were open to the objection that they opened up a great question with regard to which the; people were at present tolerably satisfied; and he thought that wisdom dictated—" Let sleeping dogs lie." Then there was the ninth clause, dealing with public health. He thought that this was open to a great deal of criticism which might, be more suitable for the Committee upstairs. There were many provisions in that clause which seemed to him to be extremely fancy provisions. His idea was that they had the power under the Public Health Act, to deal with nuisances in existing houses, but they had not the power at present to prevent houses from being erected in which those nuisances would exist, and with power to abate them. Power ought to be given to prevent the creation of those nuisances, and which, when created, they would have the power to abate. There should be a power to control the erection of houses placed in the hands of the county authorities. If the Government however, were going to touch the question of public health at all why did they not do so on a much larger scale? In Scotland the Public Health Act needed amendment; therefore, why not amend it so as to bring it up to date with the provisions of the English Acts? There was a Bill before the House to which the Government had privately shown themselves favourable. That, was the Bill dealing with Farm Servants' dwellings? To amend the Public Health Acts was needed, not for farm servants alone, but for all classes. Why favour one class? He strongly objected to class legislation of this kind. If a reform was needed, let it be carried out for all houses throughout Scotland; but he objected altogether to the selection of a particular class of the community, like the farm servants, whose houses required no more care than the houses of their neighbours. He should like to see all houses treated alike. Why, then, did not the Government go further and take what provisions of the Public Health Acts were considered to be expedient and of general advantage, and insert them in this Bill, if they really wished to deal with public health? Another point was, the position of representatives of police burghs on the County Councils and district committees. These representatives were put to great trouble in going through elections, and much feeling was aroused; and after all what was their power? Their only function was to make up a quorum, but they had no power to interfere in the action of the District Council to which they had been elected. This was absurd, and he should like to see the Bill put the election of these representatives on the same footing as the representatives of other burghs; let them be nominated by the Commissioners instead of being elected. The Bill contained a Dairy Clause, and here the question of compensation was raised. Supposing a dairy to be shut up, the results would be very serious to the farmer. It might happen that the closing of the dairy arose through no fault of the farmer. One of his children might have caught scarlet fever at school, and the dairy would be closed for a long period. This was an extreme hardship to the farmer, and it seemed to him that it was one of those cases where compensation might fairly be granted by the Treasury, as in the case of pleuro-pneumonia and cattle disease. What action did the Government propose to take with regard to the amendments upstairs? Was the Secretary for Scotland going to say: "I am bound by the decision of the Committee, and I support the Bill in the form in which it came from the Committee?" It would quite clearly be a breach of faith if the Government were to introduce in Committee a batch of contentious Amendments, and it would be just as much a breach of faith if the Government were to allow their supporters to carry contentious Amendments over their heads, and not to use their utmost strength, both in the Committee upstairs and subsequently in the House, to prevent that being done. He thought that the House ought to have an assurance to the effect that the Government were pledged to the Bill substantially as it left the House to go to the Committee.

said, that he did not propose to enter into any very lengthy discussion of the details of the Bill, but as his hon. Friend the Member for the Partick Division had endeavoured to elicit from the Government a statement that they would not accept contentious Amendments in Committee, he thought he was entitled to remind both the House and the Government that no one could have listened to the arguments of the different speakers in that day's Debate without having one conclusion forced upon his mind—namely, that the proposition to introduce into the present Bill a provision for the acquisition of land compulsorily for the erection of workmen's dwellings had obviously very deeply impressed the House. He was entitled, he thought, to remind the House very briefly of the course which that proposition ran last year in the Grand Committee, in the House, and in another place, in order to show that its supporters had special claims for urging on the Government the necessity of giving some favourable assurance with regard to it of a stronger character than the Secretary for Scotland had yet given. The right hon. Gentleman had said that he had another Bill drawn for the introduction of that provision based on the Report of the Feus and Leases Committee; but it had already been pointed out that to introduce it in another Bill would be practically equivalent to shelving the question altogether, for there would be no possible chance of another Bill passing through Parliament this Session. He would remind the House of the very special position this matter had attained in Parliament. The Amendment which he had the honour to introduce last year in the Grand Committee was carried by no less a majority than two to one, and was supported by every one of the usual supporters of the Government, though not by the Members of the Government themselves. It then came down to the House, and was supported, on the Report stage, by a majority of between two and three to one. Therefore he thought they might well urge the Government to give some explanation why a provision of that importance was not introduced into the Bill now before the House as a part of the Bill itself. Last year the Bill went to the House of Lords and came back with that clause expunged. The Government were asked to re-introduce it, but they objected to do that, not on the ground of the non-importance of the clause, but solely on the ground that to do so would endanger the passing of the Bill. According to the Times Report, the right hon. Gentleman on that occasion, said that—

"The Report by the Feus and Leases Committee was a very strong Report, and it was impossible that it could remain without result. The Government heartily endorsed the recommendations of the Committee, and at the first Opportunity they would bring in a Bill to embody these recommendations, but the rejection of the Lords' Amendment at this period of the Session would seriously imperil the Bill."

That was the only ground on which the Government objected to disagree with the Lords' Amendment. It might be alleged that this important matter was not introduced in this Bill because it would infuse an element of contention into it. That, however, was hardly an exact statement of the case. Since the Report of the Feus and Leases Committee the matter had practically ceased to be contentious. That Report was issued 23 days after the Grand Committee had ceased its labours last year, and was all in favour of a provision of this character being introduced into the present Bill. In that Report there was a paragraph which stated that the want of land for the erection of workmen's dwelings was a "public evil demanding a remedy by legislation," and it went on:—

"The remedy which, the Committee suggest is that the local authority, whether town council, county council, or other elected body, should be empowered to purchase land by agreement, or compulsorily, for the purpose of building dwellings for occupation by workmen or other persons."

Therefore, he ventured to impress on the Government that the introduction of a clause to that effect must be held to be no longer contentious, and he begged the Lord Advocate, who would no doubt indicate the mind of the Government on the subject, to give some assurance that the Government would either themselves bring forward or support such a clause in Committee upstairs, or would at all events now give the House clearly to understand what had been the dominating reason in their minds for omitting this important matter from the text of the present Bill.

said, he wished to say a few words on the Amendment, because he could not help thinking that the declaration of the Secretary for Scotland was, as it stood, very oracular and ambiguous. He did not propose to examine at present the question whether there was any particular necessity for legislation in the direction suggested by the hon. Gentleman, who had just sat down. The hon. Member for the Maldon Division of Essex said that he had read from a Report applying to the county of Perth-shire. The two passages the hon. Gentlemen read were passages from two perfectly different Reports. The first passage, which praised the condition of labourers' dwellings in the county of Perth, was from a Report which did apply to that county, whereas the other passage which the hon. Gentleman read applied to quite another part of Scotland. Although the housing of the working classes was not in itself a contentious subject, there was no doubt that it might be dealt with in a contentious spirit; and the hon. Member who had just addressed the House had forgotten that one of the great objections to this Amendment last year, and an objection which was taken by the Secretary for Scotland, was that it would have wrecked the Bill—not, as the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy had too ingeniously tried to make out, in the House of Lords, but in this House. The objection taken by the right hon. Gentleman was that, when you deal with the housing of the working classes, you must deal with it on a well considered scheme, and not by a crude and ill considered proposal like the Amendment, simply putting it in the power of a county council to acquire land and saying nothing more about the purposes to which it was to be devoted. If the Amendment now proposed had been incorporated in the Act of last year, it would have accomplished nothing that its supporters desired, for either it would have remained a dead letter, or else it would have been likely to lead to a vast misapplication of public funds. He took that view last year when he said that, if the proposal had passed as it stood, county councils might have transferred the ownership of nearly all the land of the country without any regard to the erection of workmen's dwellings. The point he pressed was that the subject was one that required careful treatment. The Secretary for Scotland had practically given his adhesion to that proposition by saying that the Government had got a Bill prepared for dealing with the subject. He wanted to know why it was not introduced as part of this Bill. Was there a good reason for withholding it? If there was a good reason, then he protested against the Secretary for Scotland allowing someone else to propose, by way of Amendment, what, as the responsible Minister, he would not adopt in the framing of this Bill; there were great difficulties in the way of introducing a proper scheme by way of Amendment. If the right hon. Gentleman came to the conclusion that a scheme ought to accompany this Bill, then he ought to stick to his guns, and he ought not to allow it to be brought in as an Amendment. It was not an imaginary but a real danger that the county councils or other local authorities, who were provided with money for building purposes and authorised to act as house agents, would become parties to building speculations and jobbery. Non-contentious provisions to guard against such abuse could not be supplemental to a clause introduced as the substitute for a complete scheme; and if the Government had such a scheme they ought not to allow it to be concealed in the form of an Amendment.

said that, as he was satisfied with the explanation of the Secretary for Scotland, he begged to be allowed to withdraw the Amendment.

said, his hon. Friends who had objected to the withdrawal of the Amendment could hardly have calculated the effect of a refusal.

, rising to order, asked whether it was not competent for the House to negative the Amendment, objection being taken to the withdrawal?

It was competent; but I understood that the challenge which was at first given was not insisted upon, and that the objection to the Amendment being withdrawn was dropped.

said, he would now avail himself of the opportunity of responding to some of the appeals that had been made to him during the course of the Debate. The Amendment which had been disposed of contained three propositions; and with reference to one of these he had to say that the question of a Joint Standing Committee had been before the House already in connection with the further question whether this was or was not a contentious Bill, and he considered that the Government were bound not to make that part of the Bill, and not to support it in the Committee upstairs. With regard to the questions put to him as to the conduct of the Government in the Committee upstairs, some of these questions were not altogether happily framed. The Government would not be at the pains to defend themselves from any vague, airy, and prospective charges of breaches of good faith. In the position of the Government in the past there had been no breach of good faith. The Act of last year effected a great change in local administration. One charge had been made and reiterated against the Government, and it was that they supported the conclusions of the Committee rather than risk the Bill, an attitude in which he was supported, if not in words, at all events by the cheers of the leaders of the Opposition. Having taken that attitude with regard to an Amendment, supported by Members of the Opposition, he was bound to maintain it with regard to an Amendment moved by his own supporters. Then, if the Government had not accepted the Lords' Amendment, they would have taken upon themselves the responsibility of depriving Scotland of the Act for a year, and perhaps for several years. In regard to the future, a good many proposals had been made in the course of the Debate, and some of them involved thorny and contentious questions. With regard to these he was not going to bind himself by pledges beforehand. The Government acted with good faith last year—and intended to do so again—in giving effect to the real opinions of Scotch Members upstairs in dealing with a Bill which would give general satisfaction to Scotland. When the Committee came to a close there would be nothing hon. Members would be able to charge him with inconsistent with what he had said to-night.

said this was a convenient opportunity to endeavour to extract from the Government some foreshadowing of what their policy was likely to be upstairs, in elucidation of what the right hon. Gentleman had just said. He would tell the House the chief objection they had had all along to the constitution of the Committee last year—and it was not much better this year. The chief objection was, that, owing to the peculiar position assumed by the Government in that Committee, especially towards the Amendment of the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn, the ordinary rule of Government responsibility was absolutely disregarded. The objection went far deeper than anything that could be brushed aside by protestations of good faith. That was not the ground of accusation. It was that the so-called success of the Committee depended very much on the unjustifiably peculiar position assumed by the Government during the Sittings of the Committee. He would point out the extreme peculiarity of that position. The Government brought in a Bill in which their followers thought there were certain conspicuous omissions. One of these was attempted to be sup plied by an Amendment brought forward by a supporter of the Government. That Amendment was regarded by the Government as so important and vital to the Bill that they assured the hon. Member that it would be fatal to the Bill if persisted in. It had no reference to what the House of Lords was going to do, because the purpose of a responsible Member of the Government, in making that remark, was to induce their supporters to withdraw that Amendment. Their supporters saw their opportunity, and were afforded the rare luxury of voting down their own Government without affecting, the least in the world, governmental responsibility; and that on a matter on which the Government had declared their support vital. This was the plain English of it. There was no accusation of bad faith. The accusation went far deeper, and to the very root of the position which the Government assumed last year, and which he maintained from a constitutional standpoint was utterly false. They wanted an assurance that this would not be repeated. It was proposed to send another Scotch Local Government Bill to a Committee constituted practically as it, was Last year; and there had been more than shadowed forth an intention on the part of supporters of the Government to move Amendments adverse to the Bill—to include certain proposals which were not in it; and all they wanted to know was, whether the Government intended to repeat the conduct of last year. The hon. Member for Mid Lanark proposed—in a Resolution which he was wise enough to withdraw—that no legislation whatever affecting local government for Scotland should be proceeded with unless it provided for the purchase of land by public bodies for workmen's dwellings. That was a very taking proposal, but he (Sir C. Pearson) did not think the country would find the Opposition side of the House lag in the least behind the opposite side in the promotion of it. But was not the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman's assertion that opposition would be fatal to the Bill last year this: that he saw that the introduction in the Local Government Bill of powers to local bodies to purchase land would draw with it large proposals both in the way of the compulsory taking of land and the advance of money? Unless they allowed local bodies to go into the matter with absolute recklessness and become land-mongers and house-mongers—unless they were prepared to do this—the thing must be carefully safeguarded. He believed the Secretary for Scotland said on that occasion that the complexity of the clauses which it would be necessary to introduce into the Bill—even, if the minor proposal of the Member for Elgin and Nairn were introduced—would, of itself, be fatal to the passage of the Bill. There was a still more singular proposal now—to resuscitate, by way of Amendment to a Bill, which was sent to the Grand Committee on the footing that it did not raise contentious matters in a Party sense, the abolition of the Standing Joint Committee. That Committee had two functions: A pecuniary function—to safeguard the expenditure of capital; and an administrative function, in the way of control of the police. The Secretary for Scotland knew very well that that would make the Bill a highly contentious measure, and last year he dropped that clause as a condition of being allowed to go into Committee. [Ministerial cries of "Oh!"] Yes: Section 51 of the Bill of last year, which contained the proposal to abolish the Standing Joint Committee, was abandoned before the Committee stage, so contentious was it considered to be. Barring protestations of good faith—which no one thought of impugning—the House had received no assurance from the Government, during the discussion that had taken place, that they would not take the, same course as last year. In that case, what would happen? Here was a Bill sent to a Grand Committee on the assurance of the Leader of the House that, if it contained any contentious matters, it would not be sent there; because the practice of sending contentious Bills to the Committee would tend to break up the system of Grand Committees. Amendments were imposed on a reluctant Government by its fervent followers, notwithstanding the struggles of the Opposition to save the Government. The Government declared it vital as the only important Scotch measure of the Session, stood the brunt of an adverse Division, and instead of resigning—he did not expect them to do that—or even considering their position; instead of showing the remotest indication of a sense of Governmental and Ministerial responsibility attaching to such a situation; they came to the House and said:—

"It is true that proposal was withdrawn from the Bill, and that the Bill would never have gone to that Committee if that proposal had been in it. But we have been over-ruled by the majority, in which our own supporters voted against us; and we are going to adhere to the views of Scotland so expressed."

This was what the Opposition were concerned about. It seemed to him that it would have the effect he had indicated, and it was only fair to give the Government ample and distinct notice that if the Bill became contentious in its passage through the Committee, and turned out to be a measure which would never have reached the Committee stage had this Amendment been, broached by the Government before it went there, the passage, of the Bill through its future stages would not be so easy as the Government might suppose. He again—although, he was afraid, hopelessly—invited the Government for an assurance upon the matters to which he had referred.

said, the House was entitled to have an answer from the Government to the appeal of his hon. Friend. The question was much too serious to be passed over in silence when put formally, as it had been, to the Government. No questions of personal good faith were raised, but one much more serious—of how Ministers were to conduct business through the House. The Secretary for Scotland had actually taken credit to himself for having, on the floor of the House, upheld the concessions made in the Committee He could not, personally, remember any such concessions. The Bill was altered in certain points by the general sense of the Committee, and not in concession to the views of any particular section. Assuming there had been, concessions, was any virtue to be assumed by a Minister who, in order to meet and conciliate opposition, made concessions which might be unpalatable. Could credit be claimed for having adhered to such concessions subsequently. Where a man had made a bad bargain and paid the price, he must stick to it. That was one thing, but it was a different matter where they allowed themselves to be overruled and pressed from behind into a position in which they were completely unable to assert themselves and carry their point. [Ministerial Cries of "Oh?"] It wax a question not so much of good faith as of the mode in which the business of the House was to be conducted, whether, when a Minister had made a concession in order to got rid of the Opposition to a Bill, he should allow himself to be over-ridden by his own supporters, and compelled to set aside; the arrangement he had entered into with his opponents. A Minister was not entitled to allow his hand to be forced by those over whose actions he had control, and he was bound, on his Ministerial responsibility, to exercise that power to the full where he had made any agreement with the Opposition on the footing that his Bill was to be carried through. He, therefore, thought that before this Bill went to the Scotch Committee they were entitled to some further assurance than the mere airy declaration of good faith which the right hon. Gentleman had made.

hoped that the Government would not give any assurance of the kind suggested by the hon. Member for Partick (Mr. James Parker Smith). They had spent a great deal of time in reducing the Standing Committee on Scotch Bills into a microcosm of the House, whatever that might be, but if every Amendment that might be brought up in the Standing Committee was previously to be discussed in the House, and if the Government were to be pledged to accept or to reject those Amendments, they might as well give up the Standing Committee altogether. It would be perfectly impossible to conduct the Committee upon those lines, and he hoped that the Government would be left perfectly free to deal with the Amendments as they thought fit in Committee.

said, that there was one point upon which he thought the House ought to have some information from the right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary for Scotland. The Bill as it stood proposed to amend the Local Government Act of 1889. Did the right hon. Gentleman propose that it was to be open, to his followers, or to the Opposition to introduce in Committee Amendments dealing not only with the Local Government Act of 1889, but also with the Local Government Act of last year creating parish councils? If such questions were to be opened up, an enormous number of Amendments might be moved in Committee. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would adhere in the Bill to what he believed was his intention, namely, that the measure should be an Amendment of the Act of 1889 only, and that the Government would not allow subjects which were irrelevant to that Act to be dealt with in this Bill.

asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland, which of the two Bills now referred to the Committee would take precedence.

said, that he hoped it would be convenient that the Fatal Accidents Bill should come first. That was the intention of the Government.

said that, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had intimated that he could not assent to any modification of the clause in the Bill which enabled Irish voters to exercise the franchise, notwithstanding the fact that they were receiving outdoor relief, he had no course left but to move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months. No doubt the Government thought that it would be as well to insert this clause in the Bill in view of the approaching General Election, but he failed to see why the Irish voters should be dealt with in this respect upon a different footing from that occupied by the rest of the voters of the United Kingdom. He was not aware that at the present moment there was any exceptional distress in Ireland which would justify any different treatment of that country in this respect. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time upon that day six months.

said, that he did not rise to second the Amendment.

, in seconding the Amendment, said that the Bill sought to make a great difference between the pauper voters of Ireland and those of England and Scotland. The question of poor relief in England had been the subject of inquiry upstairs, and at the commencement of this Session an unusually large Committee, consisting of 25 members, had been appointed to receive evidence upon the subject. If the Irish voter receiving out-door relief were to be allowed to exercise the franchise, why should not the same privilege be extended to pauper voters in England, in which the working population were suffering in consequence of agricultural depression and other causes. He had a strong opinion on the subject of pauper voting, but he did not desire to raise that question on that occasion. He wished to protest against any difference being made between the Irish pauper and the English and Scotch pauper in this respect. He was aware that he should be told by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary that this Bill was based upon one that had been introduced by the late Government, but that did not affect the propriety of the present proposal, seeing how greatly, circumstances had changed since the previous measure was introduced. He thought that that part of the United Kingdom which the Prime Minister had described as "the predominant partner," ought to be treated fairly in this matter, and that if State aid were to be given to the Irish pauper, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to find a little money for the relief of the English pauper also. The policy of this measure had regard to votes, and from that point of view the unfortunate peasant farmer and agriculturist in England, who was suffering from great depression, was not so important to the Government as the Irish voter. He thought the question of the relief of distress ought, to be treated as a whole. The relief of distress in England and Ireland was similar, and the Report of the Committee to whom this subject had been referred, which he hoped they would produce before long, would be of some use in regard to distress in Ireland. Ireland had many advantages and privileges over England, and he protested in the interests of England against this unfair treatment.

said, he did not propose to discuss the Bill from the standpoint of his hon. Friends opposite. He understood that the law in regard to the receipt of poor law relief in ordinary cases was the same in Ireland and England. He wished to elicit some information from the Chief Secretary in regard to this Bill, which had been some time before the House, and which provided that Poor Law Boards should be authorised before the 1st September, 1895, to grant fuel and food on the authority of the Local Government Board. He had very considerable doubts in regard to the whole system of outdoor relief in Ireland, which, he thought, had been granted on many occasions to evicted tenants, and others who had nothing to do with evicted tenants had had to bear most of the burden. There was no ground for saying that there was any exceptional distress in Ireland at the present time. He never paid the slightest attention to any demand for relief works from hon. Members opposite, because the moment any work of that sort was set on foot by the Government other districts were certain to hear of it, and to think that they had as good a right to it. All these applications required to be most closely sifted if open fraud was not to be perpetrated on the ratepayers. What was true in regard to relief works was true in regard to outdoor relief. He did not oppose the Bill in any way if the Chief Secretary could make out a good case for it. The third clause of the Bill seemed to assume that Boards of Guardians had been authorised in some way to act at a time when distress did prevail. If the Chief Secretary had authorised them to so act without the authority of Parliament, trusting to receive an indemnity, he was very far from denying that that was necessary. He wanted the law in Ireland to meet the necessities of Ireland; if it harmonised with English law, so much the better, but if it did not, why should they be tied to a similarity with English law?

said, the hon. Member for South Tyrone had not made a single observation of which he had the slightest reason to complain. In his remarks upon the inexpediency of a rash authorisation of outdoor relief in Ireland he thoroughly concurred. He agreed also as to the risk which any Government ran which once undertook open relief works. He had had some experience in regard to the matter in 1886, when it was his unfortunate lot to bring in a Bill for the relief of distress, and had found that a rush was made the moment it was known that there was any public money going. He had been carefully on his guard during the time that he had had the administration of the funds that Parliament had already voted since last December, and though he had been charged by some Gentlemen opposite with being one of the most parsimonious Ministers that Ireland had ever had, he did not regard the charge as a very serious one. He agreed with the hon. Member for South Tyrone that a Minister with money to dispose of in relief works had very wisely to keep his eyes open. The hon. Member, however, had done what he conceived the hon. Mover and Seconder had not done, he had read the Bill. [Mr. BANBURY: "I have read it."] The argument of the hon. Member for Peckham and the hon. Member for Islington fell to the ground; the argument that now it was summer and that therefore this Bill was not wanted had no application. He had been obliged to do what his predecessors in his present Office had had to do before, he had to authorise Boards of Guardians to give outdoor relief under conditions which, in the ordinary way, it was not legal to do without the authority of Parliament. He had been obliged, as other Chief Secretarys before now had been obliged to do, to take the responsibility of authorising that irregular form of outdoor relief, trusting to Parliament to indemnify him. He had taken the responsibility upon himself of authorising the boards of guardians in various unions—there were about 15 or 18 of such unions—to give outdoor relief in circumstances where, under the ordinary law, they would not be empowered to do so. He had been very careful to direct the Local Government Board, before authorising the boards of guardians to take these steps, to be vigilant, so that the money should not be given in a reckless way, or for irregular purposes, and from the conversation which he had had in Dublin last Saturday with the officer of the Local Government Board, to the best of their knowledge, this power, which he now asked Parliament to indemnify the boards of guardians for exercising, had only been used to meet cases of exceptional distress. He believed when the Report of all that had been done was before them, and for which this Act would indemnify the Boards of Guardians and the Local Government Board in Ireland, it would be found that there had been no extravagance and no misuse of the powers which the Government had taken upon themselves. The hon. Member who moved the rejection of the Bill took up the extraordinary position of opposing it because, as he remarked, he was not aware that there was now any exceptional distress in Ireland; but the hon. Member forgot that Parliament had already voted £35,000 in the form of a Supplementary Estimate, and would, he hoped, vote £35,000 more when, some day or other, the Estimates again came up for the relief of exceptional distress. Hon. Members moved the rejection of the Bill in ignorance really of what had been done in that House. It had been suggested that the Government had brought in the Bill because an Election was probably near. They would be very curious persons if that were so, because all the powers to be exercised under this Bill would extend only to the 1st of September. The hon. Member who seconded the rejection of the Bill thought the Measure was going to alter the law in Ireland and make it different from the law in England. But they were not altering the general law in Ireland; they were only taking an exceptional power for a very short period of time to meet exceptional circumstances. The hon. Member talked as if the money to be given for outdoor relief in this irregular way in Ireland came out of the pockets of the British taxpayers. But not a penny of it did. This was not a Bill for enabling the Boards of Guardians to relax the rules of outdoor relief, but to enable them to dispense with that outside assistance which the hon. Member in a general why very properly deprecated. The Bill was one to empower the Government to authorise Boards of Guardians to grant outdoor relief where, under the Gregory Clause, it would not be legitimate or lawful to give outdoor relief. The Gregory Clause for made the granting of outdoor relief to small landholders holding land above a quarter of an acre. It was, in the long run, far cheaper for the State and for the Union, and far better for the people concerned, that, where exceptional distress arose, those poor people should be enabled to remain on their land instead of being turned out on the roadside. What they were authorising Boards of Guardians in Ireland to do under this Bill would not in the least affect that great, broad and most important question which gentlemen were considering upstairs. The receipt of outdoor relief in those exceptional circumstances under this Measure was not to impose electoral disability upon the recipients, as was the case under the ordinary law alike in Ireland and England. The Government were not thinking of the General Election when they introduced this provision. They introduced it, partly because it was the right thing to do, and partly because it was in the Bill passed by the right hon. Member for Thanet when he was Chief Secretary, partly because it was in the Bill which he (Mr. Morley) brought forward in 1886, and because Parliament in 1880 and 1886 took the commonsense view and said it was not fair to impose an electoral disability for the receipt of some small measure of outdoor relief, the power to grant which was to extend over a period of four or five months only, though it might be perfectly fair in the case of a regular pauper receiving outdoor relief. He hoped, in view of what he had said, that hon. Members would withdraw their objections and agree to the proposal for the Second Reading of the Bill.

had no desire, after the speech of the Chief Secretary, to refer to the objections taken by the two hon. Members who had spoken against the Bill, and he hoped they would respond to the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman and allow the measure to be read a second time. It should be remembered that the Bill had been blocked for a considerable time, and it was now absolutely necessary that it should become law. One thing that had struck him in the short discussion that had taken place was, that the hon. Member for Islington, who was so well informed about things in general, should have displayed such great ignorance on this matter. He only hoped the constituents of the hon. Member would appreciate the fact. The hon. Member claimed that this was exceptional legislation for the Irish people, and he actually found fault with the Bill because he said the money of his constituents was being so spent. It was a very astonishing thing to find that an hon. Member, who posed as one fit to legislate for the Irish people, should deliberately obstruct the Bill on those grounds, when really the effect of the Bill was simply to give the Irish people and their Poor Law representatives the power to deal most effectively with their own money. With regard to the 3rd Clause on which one of the hon. Members who opposed the Bill founded his objection, he must say that no comparison could be drawn between people who wore compelled to seek temporary relief for exceptional distress and those who might be considered ordinary paupers. The cases were not at all similar, and it would be monstrously unfair that the people of a whole country side should be disfranchised simply because exceptional distress compelled them to apply for a short period for a certain amount of outdoor relief. The system of outdoor relief, instead of maintaining people in the workhouses, was an economical one. Distress could be relieved more cheaply and more directly by it, and it did not force the poor into the workhouses—of which the Irish people had an abhorrence—and compel them to break up their homes. He repeated that the. Bill was absolutely necessary, and he would appeal to hon. Gentlemen to withdraw their objection, for this reason if for no other—that one of his own Leaders, the right hon. Member for Thanet, when he had to deal with the matter as Chief Secretary, made a proposal precisely similar to that which was now submitted. He was surprised to hear the hon. Member for South Tyrone say that he would never dream of granting relief to the; Irish people if hon. Members on the Irish Benches asked for it.

I never said any such thing. I said it was necessary that all those applications should be carefully sifted.

said, if the hon. Member did not make exactly the remark he had quoted, he certainly said something very much like it—that he would never grant any relief on the representation of the Members on those Benches. [Mr. T. W. RUSSULL: "No, No"!] He could not understand what object the hon. Member imagined he could have in coming there and asking for relief for the people in the County of Clare for instance, on insufficient grounds, when nothing could be easier than for the Chief Secretary to ascertain by inquiring in a very short time whether such an application was warranted or not. He thought he was right, in saying that in the County of Clare some of the Poor Law Guardians had acted on the authority of the right hon. Gentleman to give outdoor relief in the Union of Kilrush and others, and he contended that the remark of the hon. Member for South Tyrone was not justified.

["Hear, hear!"] Certainly it is an indemnity Bill.

retorted, that it was all very well to say "hear hear,' but it would have been better if the House had been informed that such was the case, because it would have prevented any apprehension or misapprehension on the subject. His hon. Friend the Member for Peckham took the Bill as it stood. The hon. Baronet gave a summary of what he had already said, as a matter of courtesy to the Chief Secretary, who had just re-entered the House.

took exception to the statement that this was an indemnity Bill. If, he said, the hon. Member had read the Bill—

I have read the Bill. Of course I have.

If he has read the Bill he will see that the powers are to extend until 1st September next. I have never said there is no occasion now for a resort to those powers. Never.

Either there is distress now or there is not. If not, then it must be an indemnity Bill, to give the sanction of Parliament to what the Chief Secretary, in his high discretion, has authorised to be done in Ireland. His hon. Friends, in the circumstances, objected to these extraordinary grants for the relief of distress being given in Ireland, when no such grants were made when similar distress arose in England. His hon. Friend the Member for Islington also objected that whereas any kind of out-relief caused disqualification in England it did not cause disqualification in this Bill. He had listened very carefully to the speech of the Chief Secretary, and he understood him to say that this Bill was brought forward to meet certain sudden and extraordinary distress to which Ireland was more liable than other parts of the kingdom, mainly owing to the precariousness of the potato crop; and that unless the small tenements and occupiers got such relief as would enable them to tide over the crisis their property might be sold up, which would result in their being ruined altogether. That, as the right hon. Gentleman had said, would be a matter of grave national regret, and it was to obviate such a calamity that this relief was to be afforded. That, as he understood it, was the Chief Secretary's answer as to why there should be this difference of treatment as between England and Ireland. He did not say that answer was insufficient, but the House ought to be informed whether it was the real answer or whether there were other and better answers. He thought his hon. Friend had done good service in calling attention to this question of differential treatment, which was one of grave principle, and in pressing it on the Government, so that a full and sufficient explanation might be given to Parliament.

remarked that the hon. Baronet who had last spoken had found it necessary to explain what the hon. Member for Islington (Mr. Bartley) meant in his speech. The speech of the hon. Member for Islington did not display much knowledge as to the scope and object of this Bill, and it was indeed a speech as far away from the point as the speech they had last listened to. There was a rule which was sometimes applied in that House which dealt with tedious repetitious and irrelevant arguments, and he thought if that rule had been vigorously enforced on this occasion the Debate would have been very materially shortened. The Gentleman who moved the Rejection of the Bill was equally at sea with regard to its principles. He would like to appeal to the hon. Member for South Tyrone, and ask if exhibitions like that which they had just witnessed in connection with simple Irish matters, permitting the Irish people to spend their own money for the relief of their own neighbours amongst whom they lived, would not be enough to convert fair-minded Unionists to the necessity of permitting the Irish people to deal with their own affairs? He did not say that the speeches displayed want of capacity. It was not that, but it was absolute indifference to the merits of the question at issue, seemingly for the purpose of talking round the subject and expending an amount of time for the purpose, he presumed, of preventing other business of the Government coming on. He hoped the House and the Members of the Government present would note what kind of thing they had to put up with, and take some practical step to shorten discussions of this kind. As an Irish Member he felt a certain amount of humiliation in having to sit and listen to pure absurdities of this description in connection with Irish affairs. They had had an exhibition of gentlemen talking on Irish Poor Law, who had some knowledge, perhaps, of Stock Exchange matters, but who knew as much about the condition of Ireland—and cared less—than he knew about the condition of the inhabitants of Mars. He declared, of the Unionist exhibition of that evening, that if it had been possible for the people of this country to have seen and heard it, it would have had a good moral effect, and that the fairplay and fair-mindedness of Englishmen would have been so influenced by it, that they would for the future be allowed in that House to escape such an absurd waste of time on any similar occasion.

said, the hon. Member for Monaghan had spoken of the Members of the Opposition wasting the time of the House as if hon. Members for Ireland had never wasted one moment of their times. The Chief Secretary had met the objections of the hon. Member for Kingston on the good old plan of accusing him of not having read the Bill, an assertion which he presumed the right hon. Gentleman did not believe for one moment when he made it. [Cries of "Order!"] He thought he was in order in suggesting that his hon. Friend the Member for Kingston had read the Bill, and that it was obvious he had read the Bill when he was speaking,

The hon. Member is not entitled to state of another Member that he said something which he did not believe to be true of another Member. The hon. Member must withdraw that expression.

said, of course, he must respectfully withdraw, and he ventured, with very great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, to tell him he did not for one moment intend in the least to accuse him of having made an assertion which he did not believe. He desired to emphasize the point raised by the hon. Member for Islington—namely, the part that England not unnaturally, but, he thought, very properly, played in this matter. They objected to Clause 3 of the Bill, because it applied a great principle to an exceptional piece of legislation. The right hon. Gentleman said this was exceptional legislation for exceptional distress, but was there never exceptional distress in England? In his own part of the country, in the recent great coal strike, they had very exceptional distress. Was there then any proposition on the part of the Government to allow the franchise to be exercised by those unfortunate people who, through no fault of their own, were compelled to draw upon the rates? He thought they were right in protesting against such exceptional legislation, even though it only affected a very small Bill, and in demanding that whatever was extended to Ireland should at the same time be extended to England.

hoped the hon. Member for Monaghan would not consider he was talking round the subject or endeavouring to obstruct Government business, because as far as the business of the Government went, they were all waiting for the Light Railways Bill, which they were anxious to see brought on. He had lived some years in Ireland; he was aware that chronic distress did exist in that country, and hon. Members were perfectly right in coming there to ask for relief to be given to men who had sent them to Parliament. But there were other places besides Ireland. Distress existed in the east of England just as much as in Clare or Kerry, and the fault they found with the Government was that they did not recognise this fact. This Bill was supposed to be for the relief of distress, but did hon. Members opposite think there was no distress in England? Their own Commissioner, Mr. H. Pringle, in his Report published last year, referring to Essex, said that the distress in the East of England was so great and crying that the Government should at once take exceptional and extraordinary measures in order to relieve it. The Government thought the distress in Ireland was of an acute nature at the present moment. He did not deny it, and if that was so they were quite right in bringing in this Bill. But why leave out all thought for that part of England which was suffering as much as Ireland at the present moment. He spoke from the agricultural Members' point of view, and he thought they might enlist the Chief Secretary on their side and consider him as an agricultural Member, because in April 1892, the right hon. Gentleman came to Braintree, in Essex, and told them if they voted straight at the next General Election, he, in conjunction with providence, would cause the prairies of Essex to wave with golden grain. The Chief Secretary, not long ago, said ho objected to this system of sops and loans when applied to Ireland. How very inconsistent the right hon. Gentleman was, because he was now promoting a Bill, not for doles out of the English pockets, but what was practically the same kind of thing when applied to Ireland, whilst he left those in England who needed relief just as much as the Irish farmers, entirely out in the cold. Why should they in Essex, when they needed relief, not be tarred with the same brush with which the Government were going to tar the people of Ireland who also wanted relief?

did not rise for the purpose of opposing the Bill, but having heard the speech of the Chief Secretary, he wished to say a few words. The right hon. Gentleman found fault with the hon. Members for Peckham and Islington because they based their Opposition to the Bill on the ground that one measure of treatment had been meted out to England and another to Ireland. He thought that that objection was a very strong and a very valid objection, not only in regard to this Bill, but also with regard to a great deal of the rest of the proposed legislation of the Government. They had, for instance, the Evicted Tenants' Bill. He believed no measure was more unpopular in the country, because it proposed to give a large amount of relief to certain sections of the Irish population, while the English population who were in equal, if not in greater want of relief, had no such consideration shown them. The same argument applied more or less to that Bill. Under that Bill certain advantages were proposed to be conferred upon a portion of the people of Ireland, and certain privileges were to be given to those people. That was to say, that, if they were relieved, the disabilities in regard to voting which still extended to the English electors under similar circumstances were to be removed in the case of the Irish. That special favour, if shown to Ireland, would add to the increasing feeling that existed in England in regard to the exceptional treatment of Ireland. He had had experience of that feeling in various parts of the country, and he found that there was nothing which touched the English people more keenly than the knowledge that the Government were exceedingly sensitive of every complaint from Ireland, while they were neglectful of all such complaints coming from England. That was put down by the people to the belief that Her Majesty's Government depended for existence on the Irish votes. He did not know whether the public mind was justified in holding that opinion, but he knew that it existed and that there was a strong feeling in consequence. There was another point to which he would like to refer, and that was the peculiar way in which relief was often administered by Irish Boards of Guardians. If he had known that this Debate was coming on, he could have fortified himself with a number of very interesting cases to illustrate the extraordinary way in which the Irish Boards of Guardians often administer their relief. He heard of one remarkable story which occurred under the last Radical Government of '80 to'85, when the present Chief Secretary held that office. It was discovered that in one case the number of persons to whom relief was granted exceeded by 700 the whole population of the Union. The case was investigated, and it was found that the relieving officer had made returns in apparently proper form; but when he was asked where he got the extra names, he replied that he got them from the grave-stones. That was an example of the loose way in which relief had on more than one occasion been administered in Ireland. Then when a certain section were anxious to get relief for their constituents, they were told that the first thing necessary was to get up a famine. A famine accordingly was artificially got up, and relief came afterwards. He did not say that was a usual course, but it had been done on more than one occasion. His hon. Friends' main contention was quite justified—namely, that the Government did favour the Irish in all these questions of relief, whereas they left the undoubted distress—and the even greater distress which in recent years prevailed—in England entirely without any attempt at relief, and he thought an argument based on that ground was one deserving of the consideration of the House.

said, the chief argument on the Opposition side of the House against this little Bill was, that it was part and parcel of the system of exceptional legislation that Ireland too frequently received as compared with England, when claims for similar benefits were made on behalf of England. He at once admitted the truth of the complaint, but was it not due to the fact that they had denied to Ireland the right to self-government? The responsibility for that state of things was involved in a larger and deeper question than the question now before the House; and a question which the House would have to settle one day—and sooner than some hon. Members seemed to think. But let them discuss from a rational point of view the objection which had been urged against the Bill. If exceptional distress were to prevail in England, by their splendid system of town and county government they would be able to relieve distressed workmen, at the current rate of wages, without involving the disfranchisement from which workmen in Ireland could not escape under the existing law. Therefore the answer to the objection which had been raised against the Bill was not to blame Ireland for the exceptional treatment she received, but to extend to Ireland the means by which, through the initiative of local authorities workmen in Ireland would get that relief which workmen in England, Scotland, and Wales now got in times of exceptional distress. He was not particularly desirous of giving to Ireland that which he was not prepared to give to England as well. But what were the facts? During the past twelvemonth exceptional distress had prevailed in certain districts in Ireland. Relief had been given—not out of Imperial funds, as had been implied, but out of local rates levied by the local authority. In consequence of that relief numbers of voters had been disfranchised; and the simple object of the Bill was to secure that deprivation of political rights should not follow on relief in exceptional—but not chronic—distress. The hon. Member for Islington said that was preferential treatment for Ireland, and therefore an injustice to England. The hon. Member had his remedy: let him move that the provisions of the Bill be applied to England, Scotland, and Wales, as well as to Ireland. But let them not deny to Ireland the justice asked for in the Bill because they, as Englishmen, had not the courage to bring in a Bill on similar lines to meet cases of relief in exceptional distress in England. The hon. Member for Islington also said that this Bill would prejudice the question now before the Unemployed Committee. But if English workmen laboured under disabilities or disadvantages in periods of distress, as compared with Irishmen, two Bills had been brought in for abolishing all political disqualifications through the receipt of relief in periods of exceptional distress and if the hon. Member for Islington was sincere in his protest against Ireland alone getting what England also ought to have let him put his name on the back of those Bills. He sincerely trusted that this little Bill would pass. His only regret was that it was confined to Ireland. But he was sure that the local authorities of England, Scotland, aud Wales would also seek those powers, which all local authorities ought to have, so that honest workmen who received relief in times of exceptional distress should not be deprived of their votes.

said, that undoubtedly the Bill was an improvement on the Bill of last year. The Bill of last year was a skeleton Bill. That description could not be given to the present measure, but still it was devoid of many of those properties which would enable it to become a vital, active, and living measure. The Bill might be roughly divided into two parts. One dealt with conciliation, and the other with arbitration. With regard to conciliation he thought the Bill ineffective and inadequate to a large degree; and as to arbitration it was either useless or dangerous, so far as it tended to effect that object. Clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill gave to the Board of Trade power to do certain things which it had already got ample power to do. The Board got power to endeavour to bring parties in a dispute together, and to endeavour to effect a reconciliation between them if possible. That was to be done either by the action of the Board of Trade itself, or by the action of persons whom they were to nominate for the particular dispute under consideration. If the Board of Trade thought their action was likely to be more authoritative or productive of better results if they had this statutory power to do that which they had already got the inherent power to do, he was sure there could be no objection to granting it; but don't let hon. Members imagine that the granting of such statutory power would be productive of any very great or beneficial results. There was in the two clauses one provision which, if it was ever acted upon, might be of a very valuable character, and that was the provision which enabled the Board of Trade, or their nominees, to make a report upon the dispute in question. But what was to be the character of the report? Was it to be merely a report upon the causes and circumstances of the difference, an historical resumé of the situation, or was it to be a report upon the merits of the dispute with a suggestion or recommendation as to what should be done in order to bring the dispute to an end. If it was to be of the former character, it would be to a large extent useless; if of the latter character, it might be very valuable. Neither side to a great industrial dispute could carry on the conflict long if the force of public opinion was against them; but there was the difficulty of forming an intelligent and well instructed public opinion. If there could be an authoritative body—a body whom the public could trust—to make a report as to what ought to be done in the future, much would be done to bring a conflict to a termination. He would he told, truly, it would be for any Government or any Governmental Department to make a report which would even have the suspicion of having a partisan character; that it would be dangerous for a Government to decide, as it were, upon the merits of the opposing parties in the case of a great industrial conflict. Granted, and therefore he said the intervention for this purpose of the Board of Trade or their nominees was far less likely to be valuable than the intervention of an outside tribunal, some Board of a more permanent and independent character than the Board of Trade or their nominees could possibly possess. If Clauses 1 and 2 were useless, Clause 3 was even more useless, because it gave power to the Board of Trade to make inquiries, and to talk over the expediency of forming a Board of Conciliation or Arbitration in a particular district. He should have thought there was no necessity to give statutory powers to the Board of Trade, or, indeed, to any other public body to talk. Clause 4 he regarded as the most important clause of the Bill. It gave power to County and Borough Councils to appoint Boards of Conciliation for their county or their borough and to bear certain expenses connected with or incidental to the work of the boards, but he should have expected to find in the clause or in some other clause, something bearing upon the constitution of the Board. He should also have expected to find something laid down for the guidance of the county councils as to the duration of office which the members of the Board should hold. He should have expected to find something relating to the duties which the Boards would have to perform. One would naturally like to know how were these Boards to be brought into active work. Was it to be upon the joint requisition of the employers and the employed, or would they be bound to take action upon the requisition of either the employers or the employed. Or was it in certain cases to be left to their own initiative to take action. Of all that there was not a word in the Bill. Again, he would like to know what these Boards were to do when they were appointed. Were they to be merely Conciliation Boards, that was Boards for the purpose of bringing the parties together, and, if possible, effecting a reconciliation, or were they to be something more. Boards of the nature of Arbitration Boards which should, in case conciliation failed, be able to inquire into the matter and make an award, which, as he had already pointed out, would be of the highest value. He now passed to the arbitration provisions. It would be generally admitted there must necessarily be a considerable number of cases where methods of conciliation would fail. He found that in Clause 5 there were powers given to the Boards to require the attendance of persons, and to take evidence if necessary. There was not the necessary result that the Boards should be empowered to produce some result of their labours by making an award or something equivalent to it. Of course he did not suggest that the award should have compulsory or binding force. He did not suppose anyone in the House would suggest such a thing, but without any provision of that sort at all there would be a strong force in the shape of public opinion which could be brought to bear for the purpose of enforcing the award. How was the matter of arbitration dealt with? Clause 6 provided that where there was a written agreement to submit to arbitration a present or future difference, all the provisions, with the exception of two, of the Arbitration Act 1889 should apply. The provisions of the Arbitration Act which would apply included the power of enforcing by legal process any award that was made by the arbitrating body, and they included the power of enforcing the payment of costs by the unsuccessful party. He did not think he exaggerated when he said the incorporation of any such powers in the Bill would be received with the utmost resentment and indignation by the whole of the working classes of the country. But that was how the matter stood according to the Bill as drawn. What was the meaning of the words "written agreement"? What might be intended was an agreement signed by every one of the employers and workmen whose interests were concerned. If that was meant the clause would be absolutely useless because, was it conceivable that in a great strike involving the interests of hundreds and thousands of workmen they could get every workman to sign an agreement consenting to refer the matter to arbitration? In a comparatively small dispute every workman might be got to sign the agreement, but even in that case the award would be enforced by legal process which would be objectionable and impossible in the last degree. They could not make a man work for a certain wage; and, therefore, to apply the provisions of the Arbitration Act of 1889 to the case of trade disputes was not only unreasonable but absurd and impossible. It might be that there was another meaning attached to the words—that not every single workman was a party to the dispute was to sign the agreement, but only representatives of the employers on the one hand and of the workmen on the other hand. If that were the meaning, it was, again, open to the gravest objection. It was to force men to accept the decision of a tribunal which they had never practically agreed to, and to enforce such an award would be impossible. As far as the Bill dealt with arbitration, it appeared to him to be useless or dangerous, and if this clause were to remain in the Bill, it would have to be largely remodelled in Committee. He had suggested—not in an unfriendly way, he hoped—what he thought were the defects of the Bill. But he desired to express, on behalf of himself and many hon. Gentleman on the Opposition side of the House who were interested in this question, gratitude to the Government for having brought in this Bill. Many of the defects could be remedied in Committee; and he hoped that it would be converted, if not into a perfect measure, into one which would be satisfactory for the purpose of promoting those great results desired by all, and of putting an end to those disastrous industrial disputes which had done so much to ruin our trade and bring misery on the working population.

said, that this was a Bill which was usually debated in the dinner-hour and in odd fragments of time when the continuous discussion which was necessary was truncated by the rules of the House. But without animadverting too much on this evidence of the regard in which the Government held their own production, he would point out that it was no longer contended that the previous Bills on this subject effected any real or substantial change in the law, or gave any powers which were not already possessed. The present Bill did confer some new powers. It gave to the local authorities powers, which, without enactment, might be held to be ultra vires, to appoint organisations foreign to their original purposes. It conferred on the arbitrators powers to compel attendance and the ancillary power to administer oaths and order the production of books and documents. That was a serious and substantive addition to the law. Further, it was proposed that, where a written agreement existed, the provisions of the Arbitration Act in the modified form should apply. He could understand that in the case of the Bills previous to this, which gave no new powers, and merely expressed the pious opinion of the House and its academic desires, it might have been contended that something like a Parliamentary sanction was necessary to give a satisfactory locus standi to any Courts of Inquiry or Boards of Arbitration. It might be so, but in previous Debates he had pointed out that the same result would be perfectly well attained by a mere Vote in Supply to provide for the necessary expenses of sending down an officer to any district where his services were required. And he doubted whether more recent experience tended to confirm the view that Parliamentary sanction was necessary. It was not found necessary in the case of the London cab dispute, in the case of the boot-trade dispute, and—most conspicuous of all—in the case of the great coal strike. In the latter case he was interested himself, because he represented a constituency in which coal formed a larger portion of the material necessary for production than it did in any other town in the United Kingdom. In that case the result was attained by the purely voluntary, and—if the assumption of the previous Bills was correct—illegal intervention of a Department. Another remarkable instance where Parliamentary sanction was not thought necessary was the establishment of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade. That was a more remarkable departure than the active intervention of the Board of Trade in labour disputes. In the case of that new Department there were Inquiries and Reports which were none the less so because they were periodic and rendered according to a carefully—elaborated system. No doubt, that Department had been established with good results; but in one respect it required more Parliamentary sanction than the present proposal, because it was completely subversive of all the present principles of our Civil Service. Appointments were made which were in their method completely repugnant to the spirit on which our Civil Service was organised. If statutory powers were not found necessary in this instance, it was strange that they should have been thought necessary in the case of the Bills of 1893 and 1894. He congratulated the Government upon having at last nerved themselves to the task of putting something into their Bill which could really be called an enactment—which would add to, and possibly improve the law. If there was a standpoint from which statutory powers might be regarded as desirable, there was another standpoint from which it must be regarded as extremely undesirable. This Bill would make it almost inevitable that the Board of Trade, and that Department alone, would be appealed to. To begin with, the Board of Trade was not the true Labour Department. The Home Office was in much more direct and constant communication with labour. But even if the Board of Trade were what it pretended to be, he was not sure that it was desirable that the Board of Trade should be the only Department to which the parties to a dispute should be able to appeal. He had in mind the coal strike of 1893. The right hon. Member for the Brightside Division of Sheffield was at that time President of the Board of Trade, and no one could have been more fitted to intervene in such a dispute. But the hon. Member for Normanton at that time went round from platform to platform saying that the one thing he would not consent to was the intervention of the right hon. Member for the Brightside Division. Ultimately the intervention came from a totally different Department, and the one perhaps most remote from questions of this kind. Now the proposals of the Bill would tend to fix procedure, and to limit the choice of mediators. No one could doubt that this Bill would receive a Second Reading; and he was glad of it; for it was an inoffensive little measure which might be the germ of something in the future productive of good results. He was glad too that the Government had at last seen the real necessities of the situation, and that to do any real good the law must be changed.

said, that before the hon. Member for the Hallam Division spoke, he thought he had some criticisms to make on the Bill, though he approved of its purpose; but he found himself disarmed by the criticism of the hon. Member, which he thought to be in the main far from reasonable. He entirely dissented from the view that the previous Bills on this subject were entirely unnecessary. He had reason to know from the circumstances in his own constituency that it would have been highly advantageous if the Board of Trade or any Department had had a statutory locus standi in the case of the Scotch coal strike. The examples which the hon. Member had cited were entirely beside the point. In the coal strike, the boot strike, and the English coal strike, the parties appealed to the Government to come to their assistance. But in the case of the Scotch coal strike he knew that, so far from the Government being appealed to, overtures from the Government were received with great coldness; and he was certain that if the Government had publicly tendered their good offices, or had endeavoured to force them upon the parties, they would have received a snub from the coal masters to which no Government could be expected to subject themselves to. It was of great importance that the Government should have a statutory locus standi to interfere. He had some doubt whether the machinery of the Bill was as perfect as it ought to be; and in his judgment it was a somewhat difficult Bill to interpret and to master, because the plan was not so simple as it ought to be; This was a somewhat serious objection and one which might perhaps be capable of alteration in Committee. Altogether, he did not think that the Bill was definite enough. He did not ask for a large degree of compulsion, but he wished to see something like an attempt to establish a system of conciliation everywhere where there was the probability of a trade dispute arising. He was afraid that a Bill like this, as was the case with former attempts in the same direction, would remain a dead letter if a little further definiteness was not given and encouragement held out to the establishment of such Boards. The proposal for County Conciliation Boards might be made more definite in its terms than it was. In his opinion the Bill should contemplate more clearly than it did two stages and not one stage in these disputes. The Bill provided for a process of conciliation, and then it contemplated the possibility of the question being further referred to arbitration, which was a different thing. In his opinion it would be better to regard these two stages as the normal process which disputes of this kind passed through. There should be a system of conciliation so general in the Bill as to be almost universal. If the parties who met for the purpose of conciliation agreed, then there was an end to the matter; but if they did not agree to submit the point to arbitration, then he thought that there should be a second stage; there ought to be a power residing in either party to appeal to a Standing Board to obtain their opinion. The force of public opinion in these cases was one of the most important elements in the question. There ought, therefore, to be a Standing Board of Arbitration in the counties, and also a Governmental or central body to which the parties might appeal if they distrusted the local body.

said, there had been an immense loss during the last few years, caused by strikes, not only to the employers and employed, but to the trades of the country in which large exports were made. During those periods trade had very often been taken by foreign competitors, which we had never been able to recover. It was a great advantage to any competitor to have the hands of his opponents tied for two or three months. It was only by constant industry, low prices, and low cost of production that our opponents were able to defeat us in the markets abroad, where we exported our goods under ordinary circumstances. Public opinion was a most important matter in connection with these disputes, for unless a large strike had the support of public opinion it could not last very long; if, therefore, they could introduce any method by which they could inform public opinion in regard to these matters it would be a great advantage. The public entered upon one side or the other of these disputes in perfect ignorance of the real cause of the disputes, and he welcomed any endeavour on the part of Her Majesty's Government to try and enlighten the public on these matters. Strikes often went on for weeks and months before an appeal was made to any outside authority. In the counties of Durham and Northumberland they considered that they were ahead of other parts of the country. Conciliation had been no new thing with them for the last 14 or 15 years. In Durham and Northumberland they had joint committees, consisting of six representatives of the masters and six representatives of the men, presided over by the County Court Judge as an independent authority. For this purpose the county of Durham was divided into three districts. Splendid work had been done by those joint committees, and they had settled a large number of disputes. He admitted that there had been cases where a decision had been given by a joint committee when difficulty had arisen for a short time afterwards, but when once the decision was given by that committee a dispute rarely lasted for more than a week afterwards, even when it was not at first accepted What he desired was to see the same system adopted in our counties as they had in their three districts of Durham. During the last few years they had had some serious strikes in Durham, one lasted 13 weeks, and the Bishop of Durham was called in as an arbitrator to settle what was practically a slight difference between employers and employed. If they had had an authority in the county to deal with a county matter, as they had to deal with local matters, they would not have found it necessary to apply to an outside arbitrator. If they could adopt the same system in our counties it would be of very great advantage to the whole of the industries of the country. He was thoroughly opposed to any compulsory powers being taken in regard to this matter, because he could not see how they were to be enforced. How could the Board of Trade enforce a decision if the workers were dissatisfied and said they would not accept it? Was the House in a position to compel the workmen to go down in the pits and hew the coal on the terms decided by the Board of Trade? It was utterly impossible. Similarly, if the employers were dissatisfied, could the House compel them to work their mines at a loss? The only way would be to pay that loss, and he questioned if any Parliament would grant power to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to provide for the losses of an industry in that way? It was proposed that the Board of Trade should take considerable powers, but the county he had the honour to represent did not like too much Government interference; they thought they could manage these things very much better than the Board of Trade. There were none who knew better the value that should be put upon the working of a seam of coal than the men who had to work it; and there were none who knew better than they did the value of the coal when it was worked. The Board of Trade should have very little power in such a matter. The only reason he supported the Bill was that he believed in the principles of it, and he was anxious to see in existence some authority which should be able to obtain and to give such information as would enable the public to form a just opinion on the merits of a dispute. While supporting the Second Reading, he reserved to himself the fullest liberty to move Amendments in Committee.

said, it would be generally admitted that the last speech was a very useful contribution to the discussion upon the Bill. All were agreed as to the desirability of attempting to do something in the direction of establishing a better system of conciliation in trade disputes and it would be admitted that the Bill introduced by the Government the year before last was a very feeble effort; but when they looked at the intricacies and difficulties of the subject as illustrated by this Bill, it might be conceded that it would be the exercise of a wise discretion not to attempt to go too far in the first instance. In the construction of the Bill there appeared to have been two minds at work, and the results of their labours were hardly amalgamated. Whatever happened he hoped the Government would accept the advice that compulsory arbitration should form no part of the Bill; indeed, compulsion and arbitration seemed to be a contradiction in terms. He could understand two persons who agreed as to the question to be submitted to arbitration concurring in the further agreement that the result of the arbitration should be binding upon them, and should be capable of being enforced by one upon the other; but, when you had to determine such questions as rates of wages, to say that, an arbitration once held, you were to be able to bring the parties before some unknown Court of Law to make them conform to an agreement, seemed to him to be an impossible and absurd conclusion to arrive at. As bad been urged by the hon. Member for York, the only force that could be relied upon was the force of public opinion; and arbitration would be most successful if it could be arranged that that force should be an important element in the settlement of disputes. With respect to Clauses 4 and 5, he could not help feeling some hesitation as to whether county councils and borough councils were the proper parties to appoint conciliators. There was a difference between conciliators under Clause 2 of the Bill and those to be appointed under Clauses 4 and 5. If a conciliator under the former clauses were paid at all, he was to be paid out of public funds; but a conciliator, or a Board of Conciliation, appointed by a county or a borough council were to be paid out of local funds, and the whole county was to be liable for the payment. The conciliators might be appointed for a trade, or for all conciliation purposes generally. They were to have absolute authority to act for the whole county, or for any part of it. He wished to rail attention to what appeared to him to be a difference of idea on the part of the Board of Trade with regard to conciliation under this Bill and conciliation as had been hitherto accepted by them. In the Railway Traffic Act of 1888 there was a conciliation clause under which the Board of Trade was empowered to intervene and arbitrate between traders and railway companies; but it had always been contended that it had no power to go beyond the giving of advice, and that if the advice when tendered to the railway companies was rejected, the Board could go no further. In its inquiries the Board of Trade had no power to enforce the disclosure of documents or anything of the kind; all it could do was to invite statements to be made, orally or in writing. Now it was proposed by this Bill to form a Board of Conciliation, with extensive powers indeed. We were becoming familiar with the formation of anomalous judicial bodies. The Board of Trade, the Home Office, and other Departments introduced into Bills bodies that conducted inquiries of a judicial character without taking any means to provide that the persons who exercised these judicial powers should have any kind of judicial experience. He objected that the Bill proposed to devolve the nicest judicial functions with regard to the administration of an oath and the production of evidence upon a body which would not be of a judicial character. The Committee before whom the Bill would go should carefully consider whether the powers proposed were proper powers to be given to persons who were described as conciliators; whether it was not desirable that all the process before the conciliators should be of a voluntary character; and whether it was desirable that persons who exercised these powers should be nominated by public bodies popularly elected, and, therefore, subject to popular feeling.

said, he was happily relieved from one task that devolved upon anyone on the First Reading of commending to the House the general aim and objects which the Bill sought to attain, because every Member, whatever criticisms he had passed on the particular provisions of the Bill, had expressed agreement with its general principles, and compatibly with that had expressed the desire that it should be read a second time, and receive further discussion in Committee. That would be the best place in which to discuss it, because anyone who had followed the Debate for three nights would have noticed that all the criticisms that had been offered had turned on the details of the clauses; but the general principles of the Bill had been accepted unanimously, and the observations which hon. Members had made-many of them with great experience and knowledge, great minuteness and acuteness-had gone to an examination of particular points in the Bill, and suggesting Amendments to particular clauses. He-observed, further, that a great many of the criticisms made had been made from exactly opposite points of view. One half of those who had spoken seemed to think the Bill went too far, and others that it did not go far enough. He must leave these opposite censors to reply to one another. Several Members had said they disapproved of giving compulsory powers of obtaining evidence or calling for the production of documents; others thought compulsory power was one of the best points in the Bill. The hon. Member for York thought the proposal for the creation of Boards of Conciliation by local authorities was a valuable one, but several other Members thought it dangerous. Under these circumstances he thought the House would agree in thinking it was right they should fight out those opposing views—between which the Bill endeavoured to sail—in Committee. All he would do now was to explain shortly the general scope of the scheme of the Government. There were two modes by which the great object of preventing trade disputes might be promoted. One was called Conciliation, and the other Arbitration. He distinguished conciliation as that which attempted to effect its object by bringing the parties together and persuading them to agree to a settlement of the dispute. In that case the settlement of the dispute was an active feature, and the element of compulsion was evidently altogether absent. The matter was entirely left to the will of the parties, and it was the object of the Conciliator, President, or Chairman to endeavour to bring the parties fairly together, to leave to the Chairman questions of order, and to help them to arrive at a determination. Arbitration, on the other hand, as they understood it, was where the parties, conceiving themselves unable to settle a dispute by their own consideration, agreed to leave it to a third person to settle. They might do that by meeting on the board and constituting an independent umpire who was to be the deciding voice, or they might constitute a board on which they were not represented, but which was to act as a tribunal of arbitration. Whichever method was adopted, it was plain that his decision was not their decision, but that of the Arbitrator they called in, and the effect and force of his decision sprung from the fact that they had agreed to refer the matter to the Arbitrator. He became their agent to determine the matter, and they bound themselves to accept his decision. Sometimes there would be conciliation, sometimes arbitration. For himself, he believed much more in the former than in the latter. In many cases those who could not settle their differences for themselves were willing to have them settled for them. He had been asked several times in the course of the Debate whether, in the opinion of the Government, there should be any difference in the constitution of the two boards. In the view of the Government, the same board that would be best for arbitration would be the best for conciliation, because each board would possess the two elements of knowledge and of impartiality. He could imagine cases in which, from conciliation, the parties would be willing to go on and turn what was a board of conciliation into a board of arbitration by giving it further scope. It was clear, therefore, that in the cases of boards of conciliation the element of compulsion must be entirely absent, even in the matter of obtaining evidence, because directly coercion in any shape were adopted, the manly attitude that ought to be maintained by the parties to a dispute would be destroyed. Therefore, he should deprecate any amendment which should have for its object the conferring of compulsory powers upon, at all events, boards of conciliation. On the other hand, when they came to consider the case of boards of arbitration, the parties would know that the boards were to enjoy the power of calling witnesses, and, therefore, there was clearly not the same objection to conferring compulsory powers upon boards of arbitration as there was in that of the boards of conciliation. When the Bill got into Committee it would be desirable to confer upon the boards of arbitration some powers which were conferred upon boards of conciliation. It had been suggested, in the course of the Debate, that the Bill ought to specify the exact composition of the boards of conciliation and of arbitration. The Government, on the contrary, thought that it would be far better to leave the question of the composition of these boards an open one. After all, they were only making an experiment in this direction, and they had not as yet sufficient experience to enable them to determine what would be the best composition of such boards. The right, hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London had suggested that the boards should consist of an equal number of employers and of working men; but, in the view of the Government, such an arrangement would be undesirable. It was not absolutely necessary that the boards should consist of employers and working men only, and, indeed, it had been suggested that the boards should consist of five members only, one of whom should be an employer and one a working man, and the remaining three independent, The Government, therefore, thought that, on the whole, it would be better not to specify the composition of the boards, and should leave it to the Government Department to choose the best tribunal that could be obtained. It had also been asked whether it would be best to allow the boards to be chosen by the local authority; but, as had been already pointed out in the case of the great coal dispute and of the great boot trade dispute, many counties were involved, and therefore it would be impossible to fix upon any particular local authority who could have chosen the boards in such cases. He did not exclude the idea of a board with a very large scope of authority, and that was the reason that the Bill had been drawn in somewhat elastic and vague terms. It would, of course, be impossible to enforce the decisions of the boards unless the parties agreed that they should be enforced, and therefore it was proposed that a stake should be deposited. That was tried and suggested in the recent boot-and-shoe strike, and formed part of the agreement arrived at then. It was found to be a very useful experiment. It was suggested by the employers and accepted by the workmen. It was as yet too soon to say whether it would turn out well in practice, and of course it was to be hoped that there would be no necessity to have recourse to it. As to the question of giving powers to take evidence upon oath and to call for the production of documents, the Government had felt that there was difficulty in investing Boards of Conciliation with any such powers. A strong desire had, however, been expressed by the London Chamber of Commerce that such powers should be given in certain exceptional cases where evidence of great value would be obtainable which could not be obtained now. A provision had, therefore, been introduced into the Bill to enable the Board of Trade in extreme cases, and where it was shown and proved to be desirable, to clothe the Boards of Conciliation with such powers pro hac vice tanto. He thought that this proposal would deserve the careful consideration of the Committee, and he would be glad to receive the views of hon. Members to see whether it would be wise or not to go as far as was proposed in the Bill. This was a tentative scheme, and it was a matter for argument to see whether men of experience in such matters desired to see a power of this kind conferred or not. Several speakers had referred to the value possessed by a Report of a Board of Conciliation. One advantage would be, he conceived, the invoking of public opinion in cases where the parties did not arrive at a decision or did not leave their disputes to the decision of an umpire. There might be cases in which one party refused to come before the Board or broke away before the process of conciliation was complete. In those cases it ought to be in the power of the Conciliation Board to go on ex parte, and if they saw their way to produce a Report which they considered a fair and proper Report, they ought to be empowered to make it on the statement of one side alone. This, of course, was a power which ought to be used carefully. He could, however, imagine cases in which one party might be so obstinate or so inflamed by passion that it might be desirable for an impartial body to go on and arrive at a determination on the subject, and throw on the recalcitrant party the onus of refusing to submit to it. Such a case very nearly arose in the Scotch strike of last year. He thought and hoped he had now given a fair statement of the general plan which had inspired the Government with their endeavour to make the Bill as large and drastic as they could. He ought to add, in deference to the criticisms of the hon. Member for Sheffield, that the Government had no desire to constitute the Board of Trade as arbitrator in these matters. The Board of Trade did not desire to be arbitrators themselves, and they thought that they would be far more useful in taking steps to promote Boards of Arbitration. The difficulty which the hon. Member raised could not, therefore, arise, and it would be possible for any one to be proposed as arbitrator in these disputes. Neither, he would add, was it the fact that the Labour correspondents of the Board of Trade held any political office. It was not desirable that they should. They were neither political persons nor permanent officials. They were persons employed from time to time to save the Board of Trade the expense of sending down their own officials. They were, in fact, nothing more than local correspondents of the Board of Trade. He ought, perhaps, to make some reply to the criticisms of his hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green. Both his hon. Friend and the Member for Leeds seemed alarmed at the incorporation in this Bill of the Arbitration Act of 1889; but that Act applied already, whether it were formally incorporated or not. He was advised that trade disputes would come within the terms of that Act, and it was, therefore, thought better formally to incorporate it in the present Bill. It was, however, left open to the parties to exclude its operation in any particular case. Still, however, it was a point on which he had an entirely open mind. The Government thought that to begin to introduce new provisions would be a much more difficult process, because it would tend to throw doubt on the law. The provisions of the existing Acts had been the subject of judicial construction, and the law upon the construction of their words would be a great deal more certain than it would be upon the (Construction of new words. The view of the draftsmen of this measure was that the Arbitration Act covered these disputes; and, therefore, as he had already stated, it was thought better to include the Act pf 1889 rather than, to exclude it, and to leave the parties to apply any part of it they thought fit. If, however, it should appear in Committee that the wish of those who had the best, right to speak was that the Act of 1889 should be left on one side he had no strong feeling on the matter, and he Was perfectly open to reconsider the question. His hon. Friend the Member for Durham had said just now that he was Opposed to any Compulsory powers. He would have liked to remind his hon. Friend, if he had been present, that the Board of Trade had quite lately been invoked in the county of Durham. There had been formed in that county a large conciliation board, and only three months ago that board had asked him to appoint an arbitrator to preside over their deliberations. There was one more criticism which he must refer to, and that was the criticism of those who said that this Bill was not needed because the Board of Trade could do all this already. That was not really so. There had been a number of cases in which the Board of Trade would have acted if they had had the authority of Parliament to do so. They would often venture even to go and risk a refusal. With regard to the boot-and-shoe trade dispute, although the Board of Trade did succeed in bringing the parties to an agreement in that case without the existence of any statutory powers, there were moments in the course of the negotiations when they almost despaired owing to the want of statutory power; and it was probably chiefly owing to the tact and ability displayed by the gentleman who was responsible for the conduct of the proceedings that they Were brought to a successful issue. He would like to add that when this Bill had received a Second Reading he should be prepared to assent to the Second Beading of the other two Bills before the House, and to move that all three Bills should go together to the Standing Committee on Trade, where they could all be properly discussed. He hoped that the Committee would enter upon its work in the same spirit of fairness which had been shown by almost every one who had spoken in this Debate, and he trusted he might appeal with confidence to the House to do its best to pass into law a measure the need for which had been so frequently displayed. He hoped, too, that if the Bill succeeded it might be the means of making arbitration more frequent, of giving greater authority to the decisions of arbitrators, and of opening the way to meet one of the greatest evils that afflicted the industrial interests of the country.

said, he felt it was necessary for him to say a word now in order to reserve to himself full liberty of action hereafter. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the criticisms on the Bill as only criticisms of detail. With regard to the powers proposed to be given to county and borough councils, that he considered a question of principle at all events. His own impression was that the right hon. Gentleman had failed to appreciate the fact that a great many of the county and borough councils were elected strictly on Party lines. He contended that the county councils were absolutely unfit bodies to be entrusted with those compulsory powers, and he hoped that they would be struck out when the Bill got into Committee. Se agreed with the right hon. Gentleman as to the undesirability of bringing in those compulsory powers, and yet without them the Bill would be confined practically to Clauses 1 and 2. The right hon. Gentleman had told them in the latter part of his speech that if the Board of Trade had been able to do so in certain recent cases they would have Brought those powers into operation.

said, the right hon. Gentleman had misapprehended him. He said nothing about the Board of Trade bringing forward compulsory powers.

said, the right hon. Gentleman distinctly stated that the Board regretted they had not the power.

Certainly, but not compulsory powers.

Surely, if there was regret at the absence of the powers, it was because of a desire to bring them into operation.

said, that what he said the Board regretted was the absence of Statutory power to create a Board of Conciliation. The use of compulsory powers was not even contemplated by the Board.

When the board of conciliation is formed, the Board of Trade, to act at all, must invest the conciliator.

The right hon. Gentleman cannot have read that part of the Bill. It is not provided that the Board of Trade are to have compulsory powers. The powers would be used only in extreme cases for some particular purpose.

said, the right hon. Gentleman had referred to the use of the compulsory powers in extreme cases only, but every case that came before the Board would be regarded as an extreme case. If the Board of Trade thought fit in any of those particular cases, they might appoint a conciliator with all the compulsory powers to summon witnesses, to inflict penalties on witnesses for nonattendance, and, in the event of an employer refusing to come before the Board, to summon the foremen of departments to give evidence. If the compulsory powers were not to be brought to bear the Board of Trade need not act at all, because their action would be entirely ineffective.

Not at all. The Board of Trade would not use the compulsory powers themselves, but only have power to enable the Board of Conciliation to use them where necessary in extreme cases. If a board, for instance, came to them and said they wanted a particular piece of evidence and could not get it without the use of the compulsory powers, then the Board of Trade would consider the application, and require strong and clear proof that the powers were absolutely required before they permitted them to be exercised.

said, he thought they must all look upon this Bill as if the compulsory powers were to be given to the Board of Trade. They knew perfectly well that pressure would be brought to bear on the Board of Trade to exercise those powers, and therefore the House might as well look the fact in the face that if those powers were given to the Board of Trade they would be urged to exercise them. And the Board of Trade would have no right to complain if they were called upon to exercise the powers which Parliament had given them, because it would be very properly argued that, Parliament having entrusted the powers to the Board, Parliament intended the Board to use them. Those were the points to which he wished to direct the attention of the House, because he thought the compulsory powers were extremely dangerous powers, and so far from thinking that the Bill as it stood would tend to settle disputes, he ventured to say, after the greatest consideration, that in his humble opinion it would have the effect of multiplying strikes enormously. For on the face of it the parties who were in dispute would always have the chance of getting something. The compulsory powers were not consistent with the title of the Bill. He gathered from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman that he himself did not think that these compulsory powers should be brought into operation except in the most extreme cases, and he hoped, this being so, that the powers would not be given, for he was confident that they never could be limited to the extreme cases which the right hon. Gentleman contemplated.

said that, speaking generally, he looked upon the Bill as an optional, a tentative, and an experimental measure. The Bill sought to crystallise past experience, and he did not share the opinion that it would be likely to multiply strikes indefinitely. In nine cases out of ten strikes were unduly prolonged because both parties made fools of themselves, lost their tempers, and indulged in unbecoming personalities. What was wanted was that a third party should come in and seek the bed-rock of economic fact underlying the dispute. The county council in trade matters was just as representative of industrial feeling as the House of Commons, and was more likely to be in touch with the actual facts involved in a local dispute. It was proposed to give to the county council the power to nominate a Board of Conciliation with the approval of both parties. If the plan should be unacceptable to either party, it would not apply. How that could lead to a multiplicity of strikes he could not imagine. Another objection that had been raised was that under the proposed arrangement pressure would be brought to bear upon the Board of Trade by powerful organised trades. He recognised that the Board of Trade was sometimes the better for a little intelligent pressure, but he failed to see how it could be intimidated. In his opinion, Prime Ministers and Presidents of the Board of Trade were more fitly occupied in looking after their own Departments than in acting as conciliators. If the pressure brought to bear by organisations was simply directed to the object of inducing local bodies to nominate conciliators, it would be pressure which he should not fear. The Board of Trade was to be given the power to inquire. Shakespeare said that there was no dark- ness but ignorance. Surely a power to inquire must he harmless. Very often neither masters nor men knew fully the facts involved in the dispute in which they were engaged. The Board of Trade might well he encouraged to send a competent reporter to the locality of a dispute. Hitherto the Department's reporters had been fairly impartial and judicial, and he had never known their view of the essential facts of a case to be traversed by either of the parties to a dispute. Inquiry did not involve any tyrannical pressure on either masters or men, and was desirable both in their interests and for the information of the public. The Bill only attempted to do what was done already with the best results in Northumberland and Durham. Other districts had not the industrial experience which had prompted those counties to take the initiative themselves and to establish Boards of Conciliation, but why should not other places be encouraged to follow the good example set by the two northern counties? This Bill had, in his opinion, the minimum of compulsion for either party, and for that reason he defended it. But he dissented very strongly from the alarmist remarks of the hon. Baronet the Member for Durham, who talked of this Bill being vitally necessary to prevent the dislocation of trade and the collapse of manufactures too frequently brought about by strikes. He had heard that kind of story before. It was always thrown upon the poor striker and on the strike leader; but had not the hon. Baronet heard of lock-outs—in this country often, and in America more fre-frequently—being deliberately undertaken by the masters to work off excessive production? He did not believe in those alarmist views, whether put forward as against strikes or lock-outs. In spite of strikes and lock-outs we had this broad fact staring us in the face—that there were more men and boys employed in the mines of Great Britain than ever before, and 22,000 more men than last year. We had sent out to the world 36,000,000 tons more of coal than we wanted for trade purposes at home, and there never was such a large amount of coal output as at the present moment. This girding at strikes, this goading at strike leaders for bringing about the demoralisation of trade, he had heard adnauseam. It was "all my eye and Betty Martin.' He trusted that, after the testimony in its favour, the Bill would be allowed to go to the Grand Committee and be there amended or improved, and that it would be passed into law before this Session was concluded.

said, the hon. Member who had just sat down and himself naturally looked at trade disputes from different points of view. Any Bill, however, which could diminish the animosities engendered by such disputes or diminish the number of them would have his best support. But he could not take the roseate view of the present Bill that the hon. Member for Battersea did. If it was ever to be of any use it must be very considerably licked into shape in Committee. The point which struck him as most objectionable was an Arbitration Board appointed by town and county councils. These bodies were, in his opinion, the least suitable people to appoint such boards. The Northumberland and Durham Board was composed half of workmen and half of employers, all of them thoroughly conversant with the nature of the dispute and of the employment. They could not expect that those who would be appointed by the county councils would have anything like the same knowledge or interest in the matter, and he was afraid in many cases Party politics would be at the bottom of the appointments. Supposing this Bill had been law 12 months ago, and the London County Council had appointed a conciliation board, if he had been an employer of labour in London, and a dispute had arisen between him and his workmen, he should have been very sorry indeed to have allowed such dispute to go to the arbitration of a board so constituted. He thought town and county councils should have nothing to do with such appointments. The hon. Member for Battersea had said that if the parties concerned did not care for a board so appointed they need not appear before it; but they had no option, as the board had power to summon them and fine them for non-attendance. The power of appointment would be taken out of the hands of the Board of Trade and would rest entirely in the hands of the county council. This was a most vital portion of the Bill, and he hoped it would receive the best attention of the Committee.

asked the right hon. Gentleman if he expected the Standing Committee on Trade would be able to deal with the Bill in time for it to be passed this Session. There was now before the Committee a a Bill of great complexity and requiring careful consideration, whilst there was at least one other Bill waiting to go before it. The right hon. Gentleman had suggested that the two other conciliations Bills should be read a second time and considered by the Committee on Trade along with this Bill, so that one suitable Bill could be moulded out of the three. He questioned whether the machinery of the Standing Committee, which resembled very much that of a Committee of the whole House, was adapted to such a process, which could be better performed by a Select Committee, to which he urged the three Bills should be referred.

considered the Standing Committee would be a much better Committee to send the Bills to, and he hoped before long the important Bill to which the hon. Member had referred would be through the Committee, and that it would be free to take this Bill.

But there are other Bills waiting to go before it.

pointed out that the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors (Ireland) Bill had been referred to the Standing Committee on Trade—why he did not know. This Bill appeared to him to be of much greater practical importance, and one with which the Standing Committee were much better qualified to deal than with a liquor Bill. Were they to understand the Government would take measures to secure that the Conciliation Bill should be considered in the first place after the Factories and Workshops Bill, so that, at any rate, there might be some chance of its becoming law in the present Session? He was anxious that the Bill should become law.

was not conversant with the position of the Irish Bill, and before giving an answer would like to consult the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in whose sphere of action the matter lay.

This is rather an important matter. What I want to know is this—are the Government Bills to have precedence before the Standing Committees as against private Bills? They were certainly intended to have when the Standing Committees were constituted, and I hope they will be allowed to have in future.

would, of course, be very pleased if the Bill could go at once before the Standing Committee on Trade, but he did not think he ought to give an answer on behalf of the Government without consulting the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the Leader of the House, with whom he would communicate on the point.

formally moved the Second Reading of this Bill.

seconded, and said, if he spoke at length on this or some other occasion it was because of the remarkable position of the constituency he represented. That constituency was of enormous area, and contained within it, not one, but several districts sparsely populated arid of an agricultural character. But if the population were sparse the people who did live there had taken the keenest interest in the question of light railways. They had already laid down one light railway which was in working order, and they had projected various others for the purpose of developing, not only the agriculture, but the mineral resources of the district. All these projects stopped short precisely where the Bill stopped—at the money. With the view of helping those who projected light railways he rose with pleasure to second the Resolution. The Easingwold Railway, to which he had referred, was practically a light railway. It was only two and a-half miles long, and it might have been made without any very heavy expenditure. It possessed one or two remarkable advantages, for it was a connecting link between a large agricultural district and the much-frequented markets of Thirsk and York. The passenger traffic was, therefore, considerable—probably more than that of any other light railway which might be constructed—and amounted to £600 or £700 a year. Further, the railway had the exceptional advantage of the unpaid services, as Manager and Secretary, of Dr. Buller Hicks. Dr. Hicks had enormously improved the service on the line, and had reduced the expenses, but he had not been able to make the railway pay a dividend. If this railway could be made to pay—he thought, though not a shareholder—it would do more to promote light railways than any efforts of Parliament. He had gone into the figures of the five years during which the Easingwold Railway had been working, and into the figures of the cost of obtaining Parliamentary powers and building the line. The undertaking was hampered at the commencement by some of those counsels of perfection which successive Presidents of the Board of Trade had always thought it necessary to apply to the construction of railways in this country. It had also been hampered by the expense of getting its Bill passed, though those were not the difficulties which had overburdened the Company. The real burden was the difficulty of raising the original capital. The Parliamentary expenses were £1,084, or £434 per mile. That was too much, of course, but even if that could all be done away with, it would not represent the difference between the present partial success and a complete success. The most accurate calculations showed that, had all the capital been available beforehand, so that the Company would have been clear of any trouble with its contractors, and had not needed to be financed by them, and if the railway had been made with the advice of experienced men connected with the Board of Trade, the line might have been constructed for £6,000, instead of for more than £11,000, the actual cost. That was a difference of £2,000 per mile. So that, while the Parliamentary expenses might well be reduced, the real difficulty could only be met in regard to light railways by providing cheaper capital for the construction. The experience of the Easingwold Railway was not exceptional. Mr. Sellen told the Committee that improvident methods of raising money were the largest head of expenditure in connection with light railways.