On Order for Committee on Agricultural Land Rating Bill being read, to move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee to make provision for the setting apart such portions of the funds therein provided as will amount to the whole of the outdoor relief given by rural Poor Law Guardians."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to make provisions for the equal division between occupiers and owners of so much of the rates to which the Bill applies as are not defrayed under the provisions of the Bill."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to insert Clauses providing for an equitable division of the rates between the owners and occupiers of agricultural land."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to provide for the division of local rates between the owner and the occupier of agricultural land."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to insert provisions to extend the operation of the Bill to Ireland."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to insert provisions to secure that the deficiency which will arise in each parish from the provisions of the Act he made good by the owners of the agricultural lands in the parish."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to defer the consideration of the sum to be set apart out of the funds provided by the Chancellor of the Exchequer until the respective proportions for Ireland and Scotland, based upon the acreage of rated agricultural land in each country, be ascertained."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee to omit the counties of Wales (including Mon-mouthshire) from the operation of the clauses providing for the exemption of agricultural land from one-half of certain rates, and to make provision for the transference of the proportion of the annual grant, to which such counties would otherwise have been entitled under Clause 2 of this Bill, to their respective county councils under such conditions and for such purposes as now apply to the Probate Grants."

To move—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to divide the Bill into two Bills, and to embody all clauses and sub-clauses which relate to or affect land assessed at twenty shillings per acre or under, and land assessed over twenty shillings per acre respectively."

With the permission of the House, I will deal at once with all the various Instructions upon the Paper. The first proposed Instruction, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Leicester, is out of order, it being a mandatory Instruction to a Committee of the whole House, and further, because it is an. Instruction that part or the whole of the funds which by the Bill may be handed over to a board of rural Poor Law Guardians, shall be spent in outdoor relief. That is a matter of Poor Law administration, and is altogether outside the scope of the Bill, which does not deal with the distribution of the fund. Moveover, the fund is made up of other rates besides poor rates. As regards the second, third, fourth, and sixth proposed Instructions, I will deal with them together. They propose to throw the whole or part of the rates upon owners. The case stands thus. By the present law the whole rate is paid by the occupier. The Bill proposes that one-half of the rates which now fall upon the occupier shall be taken from his shoulders and put upon the shoulders of the Imperial taxpayers. Any Amendment which proposes either to make the relief more or less, or to put the burden upon the shoulders of other persons such as owners, who have some relation to the land, would be in order without an Instruction. The Instruction is therefore out of order, because its objects can be accomplished by Amendments moved in Committee. No. 5 is in order. No. 7 is out of order. The Committee have power to negative the clause as to providing funds, or they have power to postpone the consideration of the clause until a later period of the sitting of the Committee, but it would not be proper, after the House had referred the Bill to a Committee, to endeavour, by an Instruction, to postpone the consideration and report of the Bill by the Committee for a wholly indefinite time, and so practically defeat the reference of the Bill to the Committee. No. 8, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Carnarvon, is out of order. The first part of it is an Instruction to omit the counties of Wales (including Monmouthshire) from the operation of the Bill. That is out of order because it is in the power of the Committee to limit the area of the Bill. The last part is out of order because it has nothing to do with the question of relieving from rates, but proposes that sums of money should be given to the County Councils of Wales to deal with in a wholly different manner. With regard to Instruction No. 9, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Tyneside, and which proposes to divide the Bill into two Bills, and to embody in them all clauses and sub-clauses which relate to, or affect, land assessed at 20s. per acre or under, and land assessed over 20s. per acre respectively, that is out of order. There are cases where an Instruction to divide a Bill into two Bills may be in order; but to be in order the two parts into which it is proposed to divide the Bill must be two parts which are either separated in the Bill, or into which the Bill may naturally divide itself. The Bill in this case refers equally to land above and below 20s., and all its provisions apply to both, arid it will not be in order to draw an artificial line at 20s. or any other figure, and then instruct the Committee to divide the Bill into two Bills on that basis. The only Instruction, therefore, which is in order, is that which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Londonderry, and which proposes to extend the Bill to Ireland. I therefore call upon Mr. Knox.

What I said had reference to the Income Tax.

said, the Income Tax assessment was based upon the rent, and the ratable value was based upon the rent, and they were practically on the same standard.

No, in England they are not.

said that as a matter of law they were both based on the same standard, which was the rent. If the real value of the agricultural land in Ireland was not £9,000,000, but, say £11,000,000, then Ireland would be entitled to a third of the sum that England got. He had been struck with the very low amount of the rates in England as compared with the rates in Ireland. They had heard of extreme cases where the rates were 7s. in the pound, but there were baronies in Kerry where the county rate alone was 6s., without allowing for the Poor Rate.

Order, order! The hon. Member will not be in order in discussing on this Instruction the relative claims of England and Ireland. If the Instruction is carried, when the Bill is in Committee it would then be competent for the hon. Member to draw such a distinction.

said, the Bill was to relieve a certain burden in England, and he was endeavouring to show that this was a very heavy burden, from which they in Ireland ought to be relieved also.

said, that the hon. Member would be justified in giving figures to show that Ireland required this relief.

said he quite understood. He thought he had mentioned before that his main contention was that the relief proposed to be given to England was a relief which Ireland needed, and which Ireland ought to have. In Ireland, in many parts of the country, they had to pay extraordinarily high rates, which, in places, amounted to 6s. in the pound. That was an enormous rate, and he defied them to show how it could be justified. In some parts of the north of Ireland the rates were excessively severe, He had tried to work out the figures, and he found that the agricultural rate was not less than 4s. in the pound. No one on either side of the House contended that the agricultural rate was as great as that anywhere in England. The general average was 2s. 2½d.; therefore, they wanted that Bill in Ireland in finitely more than the farmers and landlords in England did. It was argued that they did not want relief in Ireland so much as in England because a large part of the land was pasture, and that the burden on pasture was not so great as the burden on arable land. He had two answers to that In the first place, no distinction was drawn in the Bill between the two. Relief was given as much in the one case—indeed more in one case than in the other, and if they included both in England they should include both in Ireland. It was not the fact that at the present moment there was a larger proportion of tillage in England than in Ireland. There were parts of Ireland, undoubtedly, where the country was almost entirely in pasture, but there were other parts where there was a larger proportion in tillage than in any part of England. He would take the figures with regard to a county with which he was familiar—Down. The total area of Down was 609,000 acres; about a quarter of that was mountain, and therefore could not be considered—the Mourre mountains. Of the remaining 450,000, according to the last return, 273,000 were in crops. That was an enormous proportion, and he did not think anything like that could be shown for any county in England. [An HON. MEMBER: ''Yes!"] He hoped the hon. Member would give the House the figures. [''Hear, hear!"] They could not say, therefore, that Ireland did not deserve that relief on the ground of pasture. He should take another county—Tyrone; and he could not understand how the hon. Member for South Tyrone could agree to giving to the East Riding of Yorkshire relief which was refused to the farmers of South Tyrone. The area in Tyrone was about 745,000 acres, and of this about 250,000 acres were under crops. There, again, there was a large amount of mountainous land, and of the total under crop 95,000 acres were under corn crops. With the exception of Lothian, there was nothing like that of which he was aware. They could not lay down pasture on account of the nature of the land. The chief crop in Ulster was flax, but flax had fallen in price more than wheat. The Ulster farmers were the men who had worked harder than any other men in the United Kingdom to preserve the Union. They had sent agents through the length and breadth of the country; they preserved the Union, and now they were told that they were not entitled to the same treatment as the farmers in this part of the United Kingdom. He could hardly appeal to hon. Members around him on the ground of sympathy and gratitude; they owed nothing to the farmers of Ulster, but the farmers of Ulster owed a great deal to the Nationalist Members. He appealed to hon. Members opposite to say whether they were going to exclude from the benefit of this Bill the farmers of North-East Ulster. The pressure there on the agricultural interest was as great, at least, as in any part of the United Kingdom. The cultivated area in Ireland was 15,000,000 acres, as against 27,000,000 in England and Wales. He did not say that the cultivated area was as much as half that of England and Wales, but it was at least a third; but if they took the area of the crops and left out permanent pasture, Ireland came out not far from half. In the number of cattle they were not very far behind. Although the present Government had got into power on the cry of the Union, they were no more reconciled than ever that Ireland should be treated as an integral part of the United Kingdom. It was alien to their ideas, and they were no more reconciled than they were 100 years ago to treat Ireland on a level of equality with England. There was another argument in favour of including Ireland in the Bill. A great deal had been said about the relief going to the landlords. It had been argued with some force by Liberal Members that the whole of this relief would go to the landlords, and they justified this on the grounds that the rent was adjusted from year to year, and even from sale day to sale day, and that there was no competition for farmers. In Ireland, neither of these arguments applied. Rents were not adjusted from year to year, but for 15 years, and he argued that in the case of Ireland the relief would go largely to aid the farmers. They would therefore be doing in Ireland what they said they wished to do in England—they would give relief to the occupiers. He should be well content if the Government would agree to give them half the county rate in Ireland, without touching the Poor Bate at all. It would be inadequate compared with England, still they would accept it. If they did that Ireland would get £600,000 or £700,000 instead of the maximum it would get under the scheme of the Bill of £200,000. The hon. Member was further referring to the Probate Duties when—

reminded the hon. Member that the Instruction was confined to the application of the Bill to Ireland.

said his contention was that if they did not get relief now they would not get it at all—at least that it would be a long time before relief would be given. He looked upon it as one of the main duties of Irish Members in that House to try to relieve the Irish tenant, the occupier, from the terrible burdens which were pressing him down. It was those burdens which, in the main, were pressing him down. They had now an opportunity, to some small extent, of redressing the injustice, and of relieving the Irish occupier of the heavy burdens he had to bear. Let them take the case of a small farmer in the North of Ireland. His case was a hard one. He had a farm of 25 acres. He had to pay £1 an acre and, in addition, 4s. an acre, not including local rates. If they gave to the poor man what they proposed to give to the much richer farmer in England, he would be relieved to the extent of 2s. per acre per year. That would be no small relief to him. It was the difference between a little comfort and penury. They were living on a narrow margin, and they worked as no other men in the three kingdoms worked. It was a cruel shame that a Government which contained so many Members from Ulster should propose this legislation, and refuse to the poor Ulster tenant that which it gave to his richer brother in England. He said it was a matter of common justice and common honesty, if the opposite Party believed in Unionist principles, that Ireland should be included in the Bill, and he begged to move his Instruction to that effect. [''Hear, hear!"]

seconded the Instruction. If they did not get this matter put right now it would be impossible to do it hereafter. It had been explained that for the purposes of that Bill £2,000,000 were available, and that out of this sum England would get £1,500,000. Ireland and Scotland to be dealt with afterwards. Before proceeding to give away three-fourths of the total, they should consider the case of Ireland and Scotland also. The case of Ireland deserved the sympathy of the House. Ireland had to live by agriculture exclusively. As to local rates. In England the local rates were controlled by the localities—the public could help themselves; but in Ireland the local rates were, to a large extent, settled by that House. There was no popular control of local rates in Ireland. Therefore, while the rates of England had been falling, they had been rising in Ireland. In 1807 the average rate in England was 4s. 5d., in 1867 it was 2s. 8d., and in 1894 it was 2s. 2½d., so that there was progress downwards. He turned to Ireland. He believed that the real reason why the Bill was not extended to Ireland was that the Government could not exactly tell what the local rates were, and they were afraid of falling into an Irish bog. But there was a Blue-book dealing with the question. Still they had no clear evidence as to what the local rates were. He had made several efforts to secure information from the Chief Secretary, but he had been put off with half promises to give the information. He next called attention to the fact that, notwithstanding the grants from the Imperial funds, the local rates had risen. He believed they increased something like 5 per cent. last year. Therefore he made the point that, as rates were rising in Ireland, whereas they were going down in England and Wales, there was a good claim for the provisions of the Bill being extended to Ireland. His hon. Friends who represented Ireland had been trying to get the Leader of the House to say when the Irish Bill would come in, but it was a most extraordinary thing that they could not get to see that Bill. If the Irish Bill were only a single principle, as the Leader of the House said the English Bill was, why could they not have it? It ought to be simple and brief, and he could not see why there should be any delay in bringing it in. He hoped the result of this Division would be to put a stop to proceeding for England and Wales until they knew what were the precise provisions in regard to Ireland. He feared the money would not remain to do justice to Ireland if they proceeded with the English Bill, and he was afraid that, unless the Instruction was adopted, they would never see justice done to Ireland in this matter. There had been a greaat deal of dispute about the facts with regard to Ireland. There was a great deal of difficulty in dealing with the Irish case, because they had not got an exact story of what the rates were in Ireland, and how much money it would require to pay half the agricultural rates. Altogether, three suggestions had been made—one by the Government, and one or two others by Irish Members, and by Members in other parts of the House—with regard to how they might get at the priniciple of the Bill with regard to Ireland. The first proposal, made by his hon. Friend who had just sat down, was that the acreage of land should be taken into account, and that the money should be distributed in accordance with the acreage of land in the two countries. The second proposal was that the division should be according——

Order, order! Those are not matters that seem to me to be pertinent to the Instruction. In the Bill, as I understand, there is no sum mentioned of £2,000,000 or £1,500,000. All that is mentioned is that half the rates on agricultural land shall be paid by the taxpayers. The Instruction asks that that provision should be extended to Ireland, and that does not involve any discussion of what would be a just and proper way of distributing the relief to Irish rates. That is a matter which, if the Instruction is carried, can be discussed in Committee, or when the Irish Bill is brought in.

said, he would be guided exactly by the Speaker's ruling, but he was going to give to the House certain figures which he thought would prove his point, which was that if the Government proceeded as they were doing there would not be enough left for Ireland.

The hon. Member is not entitled to go into that. There is no sum mentioned in the Bill. It has been stated that it will amount in England, I understand, to £1,500,000, and the statement has been made that there will probably be £500,000 more, or something of that kind, available. The Instruction asks that the provisions of this Bill shall apply to Ireland—that, whether there be money or not forthcoming for that purpose, half the agricultural rates in Ireland shall be paid just as they are in England. The hon. Member may not, on this Instruction, go into the financial question.

said, the figure he was going to give was to show the proportion, of rating assessment in England and Wales on the one hand and in Ireland on the other, and the difference between the two countries in this matter.

The hon. Member is entering exactly on that field which I prohibited.

asked if it would be in order to refer to the amount of assessment for Income Tax, which had been discussed a good deal during the Debate?

I think it is out of order.

said, he felt himself to be in a very great difficulty. He could only, then, insist on his point that nothing would be just under the provisions of the Bill except to make inquiry in Ireland, and he should like to see inquiry made as to what the amount of local rates was. He thought that before this Bill went a step further they ought to have the same information with regard to Ireland as they had got for England, and to see that sufficient provision would be made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have half the rates paid in Ireland as was proposed under the present Bill. He thought Ireland's claim in this respect was very strong upon the present occasion. What they were asking for was that local taxation in Ireland should be equitably considered, in the same way as it was proposed in the Bill to treat the local taxpayer in England and Wales. Ireland was bested in 1888, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer appropriated the revenue from licences for the purpose of assisting local rates. Instead of giving Ireland the same proportion as England and Wales of an increasing revenue, she only received a fixed grant, arid he considered that Ireland had been cheated, by the allocation which had taken place during the last eight years, of something like £40,000.

The hon. Member is now dealing with a totally different matter. The history of what has taken, place under the Act of 1888 has really nothing to do with this Instruction. I am not at all denying the importance of these matters, but they are not germane to the Instruction.

said, he was only using this as an illustration of how Ireland was hardly treated eight years ago, and that she ought to be kindly treated now. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in conjunction with the President of the Local Government Board, to consider that, as Ireland did not receive all she had a right to claim under the first great Tory Bill in relief of the rates, they would deal liberally with her on the present occasion.

I understand that the charges that are made against us are, first, that we are going to do nothing at all for Ireland, though we propose by this Bill to give what is called a bounty to English agriculturists; secondly, that we will not disclose our intentions of what we are going to do; and. thirdly, that what we are going to do is not enough. As to the first suggestion, I will only say what I have already stated in my speech on the Budget, and what has been stated by other Members of the Government, that we intend to propose for Ireland a grant from the Imperial Revenue for local purposes, not by any means necessarily for the purposes of this Bill, in the same proportion as compared with the grant which will be given for local purposes in England under this Bill, as that which was settled by the legislation of 1888 and of subsequent years.

The right hon. Gentleman speaks of a ''grant.'' That is an ambiguous phrase. Is it to be by Estimate or by Bill?

Certainly by Bill, as in 1888. Any proposal of the kind must be by Bill, and must form part of the legislation of the Session. I may remind the hon. Member that in 1888, when, as now, the proposals with regard to England dealt with matters which were essentially different in England and in Ireland, the Irish grant was made by a separate Bill. As to the time when the Irish Bill will be introduced, I suggest, with all respect to hon. Members, that the greater the facilities they give us for proceeding with this Bill, the sooner they are likely to see the Irish Bill. I cannot say when that Bill will be produced, but we are pledged to legislation on the subject, and that is all that can be said at the present moment. I come to the question whether such proposals as we could make with reference to Ireland should properly or conveniently be included in this Bill. The hon. Member for Derry has himself shown that they could not be. He admits that there is a complete difference in the rating system in Ireland and England. In the course of his observations he naturally discovered, and fairly stated to the House, that in Ireland half the Poor Rate and all the Poor Rate under £4, was paid by the owners. I think he said that he would be satisfied if the occupiers in Ireland were relieved of half their county cess and half the Poor Rate. But the hon. Member will observe that that would be placing Irish local taxation in a different position from that in which we propose to place English local taxation by this Bill. In England, under the present law, the whole local taxation is paid by the occupiers, and we believe that under the proposals we make, especially having regard to the fact that the duration of the Bill is proposed to be temporary, the relief given by this Bill will go to the occupiers rather than to the owners. It will be clear to the House, that by the suggestions of the hon. Member, Ireland would not get the same relief from local taxation as England. I come to what, after all, is the real point of the hon. Members' proposal. It is, assuming we are sincere in our intention that Ireland shall receive the proportionate grant fixed by previous legislation, that such a grant would be unfair to Ireland; and he bases that view on an idea that our proposals in this matter rest on an entirely different basis from that which I claim for them. I look upon these proposals as a grant from the Imperial revenue to local purposes in the three kingdoms, precisely of the same nature as the grant made in 1888. ["Hear, hear!"] In that year Parliament sanctioned a grant of considerable amount from the Probate Duty for the relief of local taxation in England, Scotland and Ireland; and precisely in that way, we in this year propose that a similar grant should be made from the Death Duties on personal property for similar purposes in the three kingdoms. We have taken the same proportions as in 1888, but the hon. Member ignores all that, and suggests that our proposals are simply a dole to agriculture. He claims that, as we give a relief of a certain amount to agriculture in England, we should give precisely in the same way a corresponding amount in Ireland. ["Hear, hear!"] He rests that claim first on the amount of local taxation in Ireland, but I think he entirely misled the House on that matter. He quoted a single barony in Kerry in which the county cess amounted to 6s. in the pound. I have here a Return presented to Parliament on the Motion of the hon. Member for East Mayo showing the amount of county cess over a series of years, ending 1894, in the different counties in Ireland. I find many cases in that Return in which the county cess was under 1s. in the pound in the year.

Will the right hon. Gentleman quote one barony?

There are a number of them in county Meath of 9¾d., 9d., and 10d. [HON. MEMBERS: "In the year?"] This is the annual county cess on an average of five years. There are a dozen baronies in a single county. In a great majority of cases the county cess in Ireland averages between Is. and 2s. in the pound in the year.

Give the average amount of the whole year.

I do not think I can I will come to the particular barony referred to by the hon. Member; it is a barony in county Kerry. Why was the county cess so high in that barony? It was very materially affected, first of all, by the heavy charges to which it was liable on account of certain railways, and of an accident on one of the railways. Then I turn to other baronies in Clare and Galway, where the charge was high, though nothing like 6s. in the pound. I find that they were disturbed districts, where there was an addition to the county cess on the ground of extra constabulary, or compensation for malicious injuries; and those are things which, according to the hon. Member for West Islington, are not under the control of the population of Ireland.

I was alluding broadly to the system.

But the system is as much under the control of Ireland as it is in England. ["No!"] The Guardians are elected; all the county cess that is not obligatory is voted by the Presentment Sessions, before it goes to the Grand Jury. ["Oh, oh!"] I am not saying that the representative system is complete, that is another matter; but what the hon. Member attempted to convey to the House was that there was no local control in Ireland over local taxation; it unquestionably is not controlled by this House.

I said, no public control. That is all the difference.

I must now ask whether there is any real desire in Ireland for the particular form of relief which the hon. Member has suggested. In my belief, if he did not believe that under his proposal Ireland would obtain a larger grant from the Imperial Exchequer than under the proposal of the Government, we should not have heard very much about the desire of Ireland to be relieved in this particular way, because the whole history of past legislation is this. Where, in 1887, 1888, or 1890, grants were made from the Imperial Exchequer for local purposes in the three kingdoms, the grants made to Ireland were not devoted to the relief of local taxation in the way in which they were devoted in England, but in several cases they were devoted entirely to other purposes. Take the grant of £50,000 in 1887, when considerable additions were made to the grants from the Imperial Exchequer for the maintenance of highways in England and Scotland. In Ireland the money was devoted to certain local works and certain local industries. Again, in 1888, a grant of £40,000 was made to Ireland as corresponding to the transfer for purposes of local taxation in England and Scotland of certain licences which did not exist in Ireland. That money was spent, not in the relief of the ratepayers, but in building labourers' cottages.

For two years it was not paid.

And it has since been used to form a reserve fund for the purpose of land purchase. In 1890, when additional beer and spirit duties were devoted to the relief of local taxation in England and Scotland—for the superannuation of the police, for instance—in Ireland the corresponding grants of £78,000 and £40,000 were devoted, in the first place, to national school teachers; and, secondly, to intermediate education, but not in any way to relief of the rates. Therefore, in past years there has never been the same desire in Ireland, as there has been in England, to devote any grant that might be made from the Imperial Exchequer to the relief of local taxation. Why has this been so? Because the circumstances have been entirely different in the two countries. In England, for many years past, all those on whom the burden of the rates fell have complained of an injustice in having solely to bear that burden on account of the enormous amount of personal wealth in England which was not liable to it at all. I have figures here which would show from the Income Tax Returns, that the annual income assessed in England to Schedule D is something like seven or eight times as much as the annual value, of agricultural land. The income assessed to Schedule D in Ireland is hardly anything more than the annual value of the land assessed to Schedule B. Therefore there has never been that sense of injustice, I will venture to say, in the matter of local taxation in Ireland which has been felt in England. The hon. Member claims that the grant which is to be proposed for Ireland should be increased on the ground of the state of agriculture in Ireland. I believe that the state of agriculture in the two countries is entirely different. What is the case in Ireland? No doubt rents have been reduced in Ireland of late years by the Land Courts, but I suspect that that has been largely a transfer of the interest in the holding from the owner to the occupier, and that the result of that reduction very often has been that the price which the occupier could obtain for the tenant-right, if he chose to sell it, has been increased. [Irish laughter.] Who ever heard, at any rate in the south and east of England at the present day, of a man who would pay anything for tenant-right to go into a farm? I say, from my own knowledge of the south and east of England, that it is extremely difficult to induce an incoming tenant to pay the ordinary compensation for unexhausted manures and improvements of that kind, which everybody admits ought to be paid by everyone who takes a farm. In Ireland, I suppose no one who wants to let a farm, whether in the north or in the south, has any difficulty in finding a tenant. In many parts of England it is very difficult to find tenants at any price whatever, and large tracts of land, as will be seen from the Reports of the Agricultural Commissioners, are either cultivated unwillingly by the owners or practically left uncultivated at all. The suggestion of the hon. Member is based upon a view to which we cannot accede. Our proposal is to give from the Imperial revenue a certain sum for local purposes in the Three Kingdoms, in the proportions which have hitherto been adopted, and that proposal will be carried out in all good faith when the proper time arrives.

could not reconcile the right hon. Gentleman's remarks with the accounts of this Bill which had hitherto been received from the Treasury Bench. The Bill had been put in the forefront of the legislation of the Government as the result of a Royal Commission appointed to inquire into a national calamity, and it had been pressed on the House as an immediate relief with respect to that national calamity. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a very Separatist speech, had dealt with this as a largesse from the Imperial revenue to England, Scotland and Ireland for certain purposes more or less dissimilar, but which would ultimately be devoted to local objects. Was it contended that there was no agricultural depression in Ireland? [Irish cheers.] One of the complaints which those who represented agriculture made was that the burdens of taxation upon that depressed industry were unjust and excessive, and from which to a certain extent agriculture ought to be relieved. That was a common calamity, a common burden, and ought to be relieved out of common funds—from the revenues of the United Kingdom, to which all the three countries contributed according to the taxation levied upon them. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted that Ireland was an agricultural country, and nothing else; its income arose from agriculture. For his own part he admitted his absolute inability to comprehend Irish local taxation, but he knew it spent a great deal, for instance, on the relief of the poor. Was the Poor Rate included in the county cess? No. Then he said there were few English counties where the county rate was as high as the figures the right hon. Gentleman read out. The heavy rate in England was the Poor Rate, and the Poor Rate and the County Rate really were the rates on which the whole of this case was rested. The average rate in England was about 2s. 2½d; he rather thought it was 2s. 4d., including in that an allowance for the School Board rate. Practically, the rates in England were a little over 2s. in the pound. He did not think they were much less in Ireland. The figures which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave the House amounted to this—that Ireland paid a heavier county taxation than England did under similar circumstances. There were many arguments which, bearing in mind the Speaker's ruling, he could not use, but he put the case simply on this broad ground—that this was special legislation for a special purpose, to relieve the special calamity of agricultural depression, which extended to Ireland as well as to England. The burden of local taxation was heavy in Ireland as in England; and whereas in England there were a large number of other classes of ratepayers who might make a claim, those other classes did not exist to any extent in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman pressed the distinction between owner and occupier; he hoped he would do that later on. The land was really the interest which was being benefited, and they ought to apply the same arguments to Ireland. Personally he had no special love for Irish landlords, but he saw no reason why the Irish landlord, whose rents had been heavily reduced, should not have the same benefits as the English landlord if he was to get it out of common funds. Parliament ought only to grant public money for public necessities, and if public necessity required that a grant should be made in relief of agriculture, it ought to be applied fairly all round. He wanted to see Ireland included within the scope of Unionist legislation. [Irish cheers.] They were not going to distinguish between necessitous and non-necessitous districts in England. Lancashire and Essex would alike share in the grant, although the average rent of Lancashire was 40s. an acre, and that of Essex only 10s. Why, then, should they draw a distinction between England and Ireland?

said, that even in a prosperous county in the north they thought themselves lucky if they got off the county cess at less than 2s. in the pound; so that, adding the Poor Rate cess, it appeared they paid one-third more than the English county rates came to. In some unfortunate Unions the burden was greater. He should feel a difficulty in voting for the Bill unless Government gave them in Ireland something approaching a fair share.

desired to point out, in answer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the Presentment Sessions were little more representative of the people than the Grand Jury itself, and their proceedings were only regarded as a farce. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should give the Bill another name—''A Bill for the Relief of Local Taxation." If the Bill were really intended to relieve the distress in agriculture, then it ought to be extended to Ireland, where the distress was just as great as in England. It was absurd to draw any distinction between pastoral and arable land in this matter. The urgency for the Bill in Ireland was as great as in England, and by all the principles of justice and fair play the relief ought to be extended to Ireland. In England the law of supply and demand automatically regulated rents, and it was asserted that the law regulated rents in Ireland. But the official figures proved that the average reductions in Ireland had been little over 20 per cent. There was no necessity for mixing up the Poor Law system and the county cess as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had done. It would be perfectly easy to apply this Bill to Ireland under the county cess, which, with a few trifling exceptions, was paid by the occupiers. The relief would go almost immediately to them. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Down had pointed out that in one of the most prosperous of the Irish counties the average cess was over 2s., and it was likely to be considerably more than that in the less prosperous counties. If the English occupier was entitled to have half the burden of the rates borne by the State, on what principle of justice could the same relief be denied to the Irish occupier? The acreage of ratable land in England was, according to the official figures, 32,745,000 acres; in Ireland, according to the most authentic source available, it was 15,178,000 acres, or nearly one-half of the English acreage. The total assessment of land in England and Wales was £26,250,000, and that of land in Ireland was, according to an answer given by the Chief Secretary, £8,937,000, or about one-third of the English assessment. The exclusion of Ireland from this relief was one more lesson to the Irish people of the false and hollow character of the Unionist policy, which was only invoked for the benefit of Great Britain and the detriment of Ireland.

hoped that the operation of the Bill would he extended to Ireland, though he did not do so from any love of the principle of the Bill itself. He did not support the application of the Bill to Ireland because he thought its principle was a good one; on the contrary, he thought the burden of local rates should fall on the land, and that anything which interfered with that principle was itself objectionable. But as long as a proposal like the present was made, he was utterly at a loss to understand how any distinction could be drawn in respect to its application between England and Ireland. If it was right and just that agricultural land in Great Britain should be relieved from local charges, there was all the more reason why agricultural land in Ireland should be so relieved. A most remarkable speech had been made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because the right hon. Gentleman, himself a Unionist, was not merely content with defending, so far as the Bill was concerned, the principle of separate treatment of Ireland, but he went on to give a series of examples establishing in his mind not merely that separate treatment of the two countries in financial matters was absolutely necessary in that particular case, but that it was the natural and normal state of things for all financial purposes. The other day, when the hon. Member for Islington (Mr Lough) suggested a recognition of that state of things, the right hon. Gentleman declared that any such suggestion was diametrically opposed to the very principle of Unionism. It appeared to him that if they held that separate financial treatment must necessarily be extended to Ireland on every occasion when they made an allocation of the Imperial taxation, it necessarily followed that they should have a separate Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a separate Budget for Ireland. On what principle could a single Budget for the two countries be defended if they once established the principle that separate treatment for Ireland was necessary? When it was a question of imposing burdens and obligations, the Unionist principle was that Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom to be treated exactly like England and Scotland, but the moment there was any question of any benefit being derived by Ireland in consequence of the union of the two countries, then the amount of Ireland's contribution to Imperial taxation was computed to the very farthing, and the share to be given to her calculated with the utmost nicety accordingly. The right hon. Gentleman actually thought it an argument against the Instruction to say that it was moved simply because Ireland would get more money under the plan it proposed than, under the Government proposals. Why, of course. The most important function of the Irish Members in that House was to watch and check the deliberate system by which the British Treasury Department over-reached their country on every possible occasion. Indeed, the principle on which the Treasury officials seemed to act, whenever any new financial proposal was made was to put their heads together and say: ''Come, let us see how we can rob Ireland." Now, he understood the object of this Bill was to relieve agricultural distress by reducing the rates on agricultural land. If that be the object of the Measure, he took it that the relief ought to be the greatest where the distress was the most severe. As he read the Bill, it was practically one which attempted to redress the injury which Free Trade had done the English agriculturist. It was an attempt to make the urban localities which had benefited by Free Trade pay for the injury Free Trade had undoubtedly done to others. Free Trade had affected Ireland more prejudicially than any other part of the United Kingdom. In fact, the injury it had done Irish agriculturists was tenfold greater than that it had done English agriculturists. Any proposal, therefore, made in Parliament to benefit agriculturists ought a fortiori to apply to Ireland. What were the arguments to be used against it? It was not suggested that agriculture was not an important industry in Ireland, and it could not be pretended that agriculture in Ireland was not depressed. Anyone acquainted with the circumstances of Ireland knew that there was very acute and keen depression. In many districts tenant right was absolutely unsaleable. He quite admitted that in other districts of the country that was not so. There were places where they would get large sums for tenant-right, but taking Ireland as a whole prices for tenant-right instead of being higher were lower than before the Act of 1881. That was the direct result of the fall in prices and, the Irish tenant of the present day, holding as he did under the system of land courts, and with the right of having his rent reduced and paying only a judicial rent was far worse off in point of the actual money he was able to earn than the tenant who held under the conditions prevailing between 1870 and 1880. Upon every ground it was plain that a gross injustice was being committed to Ireland by failing to apply the Bill to that country. A distinction had been sought to be drawn between the two countries as regarded the operation of the Bill because it was said that Ireland was so largely a pastoral country. The hon. Member for Londonderry had dealt with that argument by showing that in Ulster particularly there was quite as large an area of tillage as there was even in the most distinctively tillage district of England. That was a state; of things which, though existing most largely in Ulster, prevailed also in other districts throughout Ireland. It was quite a fallacy to say that depression in agricultural values only existed in the case of tillage, and it was also a fallacy to say that even the pastoral districts of Ireland were not affected by the fall in the prices of corn and other products of the tillage farms. The great bulk of Ireland was neither exclusively tillage nor pastoral, but a mixed class of farming was carried on, therefore outside the purely tillage districts the fall in prices of corn and other tillage products had hit the Irish quite as much as the English farmer. There was no single; ground upon which the restriction, of this Bill to England could be defended except the one so frankly avowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, namely, that this particular dodge had been hit upon by the Treasury for securing that Ireland should get the least money out of the proposals of the Government. They often heard complaints about Dublin Castle, but the real Enemy of Ireland was not Dublin Castle, it was the English Treasury. The English Treasury was an elaborate machinery for robbing Ireland. It had done Ireland incalculably more harm than Dublin Castle ever did, and the attack of the Irish Members, in his judgment, should be more directed at that institution than it had been. If distress was to be subsidised by Imperial Parliament the subsidy ought to be greatest where the distress was most, and if agriculture was to get relief, the relief ought to go where agriculture was most important. But the Treasury gentlemen, seeing that the result of the application of a fair and equitable doctrine would be to give Ireland the largest share, cast about in their minds for a method of finding out some scheme which would cut down the amount which would otherwise be allocated to Ireland. He should like to see an Irish Chief Secretary who would deem it his duty as an Irish official to see that Ireland got justice from the English Treasury, and then such a Bill as this would be impossible. Unfortunately, part of the system of the English rule was that they should have an Englishman put into the position of Irish Secretary, and it almost necessarily followed that he took little interest in matters of this kind, important as they were, regarding them as not belonging to his Department. The Bill inflicted a great injustice on Ireland. He did not think it a Bill sound in principle, but any unsoundness in it was rendered ten times worse by the fact that it provided that any benefits given under it should be given to the larger and richer island. He was glad to hear the hon. Member for Down get up in his place and, as he understood him, support this proposition by his voice, and he hoped he would give effect to his opinion by voting for the Motion. He hoped that the Irish Members from all quarters, and the English Members who desired to do justice to Ireland, would unite in supporting this Instruction.

appealed to the House to come to a decision upon the Instruction. By the ruling from the Chair the Debate was necessarily narrowed down to such a point that it was impossible and improper to discuss the general financial relations between England and Ireland, nor did he think under any circumstances that this was a convenient or suitable opportunity for embarking in this larger controversy, more especially as a Commission was sitting at this moment whose Report might contain suggestions leading to some final conclusion upon that perplexed question. He would only repeat what had been said before—namely, that this Bill was one which, from the nature of its framework and provisions, was incapable of being conveniently extended to Ireland, however much it was in the abstract desirable to do so. But it was not desirable to extend the Bill to Ireland, because the methods by which the object of the Measure was carried out were not applicable to the conditions of Irish agriculture. It was quite true that the Bill was intended to relieve agriculture. It was also true that Irish agriculture, though it had undoubtedly suffered was not, on the whole, in so evil a plight at the present time, as English agriculture. [Irish cries of dissent, and an HON. MEMBER: "That is not the opinion of the Irish people!"] That was the conclusion he had arrived at from studying the facts. However that might be, the particular method the Government had selected in this Bill for relieving English agriculture arose out of an inequality and injustice in the incidence of local taxation which did not exist in Ireland, and, therefore, if Irish agriculture was to be relieved, it must be on a different principle. This principle was applicable to England and to England alone, because it dealt with a condition in local taxation which was peculiar to England. Under these circumstances it seemed to the Government perfectly clear that the proper principle of allocation between the three countries was the one already defended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. ["Hear, hear!"] That was the case of the Government in a nutshell. They were precluded by the decision of the Speaker from going into the general question, and he hoped the House would now permit them to get to work on the clauses of the Bill, and would consider the time had come when they might take a decisive vote one way or the other on the Instruction now before them. ["Hear, hear!"]

could not admit that the description of the Bill given by the First Lord of the Treasury was correct. The right hon. Gentleman said it was a Bill which was intended to redress a grievance and an injustice in reference to local taxation which did not exist in Ireland. He would prove that that was an absolutely incorrect and uncandid description of the Measure. If it were a Bill having for its object the relief of an injustice in reference to local taxation, it would apply to local taxation generally all over the country. The injustice in respect of local taxation was not confined to agricultural land, and if that were the real object of the Bill it would be a Bill applying to the local taxation of urban as well as of agricultural districts. They knew quite well that the Government had introduced this Bill for the purpose of relieving agricultural distress in England.

As the hon. Member suggests that I gave an uncandid description of the Bill, let me recall to his memory that during the Debate on the Second Reading we repeated over and over again that agricultural land suffered special injustice on account of the manner in which it was rated.

said, that the object of the Bill was not to redress the unjust incidence of local taxation generally, but to supply something in the nature of a remedy for agricultural distress. The position of the Government was that agricultural distress in England was much worse than in Ireland, but what ground had they for maintaining that? The distress was due to the fall in prices, and did the Irish farmers obtain better prices for their produce than English farmers? Grants in England had been reduced to a greater extent than they had been reduced in Ireland, and, instead of the condition of the Irish farmer being a condition of less distress and embarrassment, he was really much worse off than the English farmer. In many places the Irish farmers were very far from their markets and had to send part of their produce across the Channel, paying very high rates for freight. If Ireland were included in the scope of this Bill, she would get at least one third of the sum that England was to get instead of only one-eighth or one-ninth, which was all that it was proposed to give her.

The hon. Member will not be in order in discussing that point at length. It is not germane to this Instruction, although it would be germane to the Bill relating to Ireland when it is brought in. The only proposal that can be dealt with now is that this Bill shall be extended to Ireland.

explained that the object of the Instruction was to secure that Ireland should get a just proportion of the grants, and he claimed that a just proportion would be a proportion in strict relation to the ratable value of the agricultural land of Ireland as compared with the ratable value of the agricultural land of England. If the Government were, going to introduce a system of differentiation based on the relative degrees of prosperity and depression in different parts of the United Kingdom, why did they not extend the same system to different parts of England itself? That would be logical, and then the relief would go to counties like Essex, where the agricultural depression had been most marked, and not to comparatively prosperous counties like Devon and Cornwall. He did not understand how hon. Gentlemen opposite, who were always inveighing against what they called separatism, could countenance this differentiation between the interests of the two countries. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had striven to prove that the local rates on land in Ireland were less oppressive than the English rates, and referring to the county cess he had selected Meath as a specimen county, saying that there the cess was only 11d. It was, however, uncandid to put forward Meath as a representative county in this matter. In fact, it stood alone, and the case of other counties was very different. In Carlow, the cess was 1s. 11d.; in Clare, 2s. 11d.; in Donegal, 2s. 10d.; in Galway, 1s. 11d.; in Kerry, 5s.; in Kilkenny, 1s. 7d.; in Leitrim, 3s.; in Mayo, 2s. 1d.; in Sligo, 2s., and in Tipperary, 1s. 10d. Striking an average, it would be found that 1s. 10d. or 2s. was the amount of the county rate, and not 11d. Then, the poor rate in Ireland averaged at least 2s., and, adding that to the county cess, they arrived at a local rate of 4s. in the pound. It was evident, therefore, that if the amount of the rates on agricultural land in England was only 2s. 4d., the local burdens in Ireland were far higher. If this Bill were extended to Ireland, that country ought to receive nearly one-half as much relief as it was proposed to give to England. The Chancellor of the Exchequer used one very strange argument in support of the grossly unfair proposal of the Government. He had said that this grant was to be given to England for the purpose of removing unjust inequalities in connection with local taxation, the injustice being due to the evidence that there was in England an immense accumulation of personal wealth which did not contribute to this taxation. In Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman said, the same conditions as to wealth did not prevail. Therefore, because England was a rich country and Ireland a poor one, England, according to the right hon. Gentleman was to receive an enormously larger share of relief than Ireland. That assuredly was a very strange position to take up. This Bill was one more example of the ruin brought upon Ireland by Unionist Governments. When they were pressed on the question of local self-government for Ireland they were profuse in their declarations that Ireland should be treated not only justly but generously, if she would be content to put up with the Union, but when the Government was no longer hard pressed they forgot all their promises and would not even give Ireland justice. He had only this to say, in conclusion, that the language used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and by the Leader of the House would cause great alarm amongst Irishmen as to the future work of the Land Commissions in Ireland, seeing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer broadly hinted that there was no ground for a reduction of rents in Ireland.

said, he was very anxious that this Bill should extend to Ireland, because he could not see why the English farmers should alone get this benefit. The hon. Gentleman the Member for South Tyrone had said that the Government had thought it their duty to give England the preference in this matter, because England returned the vast majority they had in the House at the present time. Because Ministers were under an obligation to the English constituencies they were to get relief. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had told the Irish Members to wait until the English Bill had passed, and then they would hear what was to be done for Ireland. That had been the method of the Government with regard to Irish matters throughout the whole separation, but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House would see his way to place before the House without any further delay the proposals of the Government with regard to Ireland.

claimed to move, ''That the Question be now put," but Mr. Speaker withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

I call upon the hon. Member, but I hope the Debate will shortly conclude.

said, he would be glad of this opportunity of justifying his position. He was sorry that he could not see his way to support his hon. Friends. He looked upon this Bill as radically bad in principle, and it did not seem to him that to confer its benefits on another country would make it any the juster.

If the hon. Member is going to argue that the Bill should not be extended to Ireland because it is a bad Bill, that would not be open to him. He cannot discuss the merits of the Bill.

said, he merely gave that as a justification for not supporting his hon. Friends in the Division Lobby. Whatever the extent of agricultural depression in England might be, as far as he could judge, it was not any worse in Ireland; indeed, there were indications to show that it was not so serious as in England. It appeared from the Statistical Abstracts that the amount on which Irish landlords paid Income Tax in 1894 was £9,895,000 as against £9,980,000 in 1881, so that from 1881 to 1894 the reductions made by Irish landlords amounted to about 1per cent. During the same period English landlords had reduced their rents by about 20 per cent. In the light of these figures there was no reason why it should be taken that the agricultural depression was as bad in Ireland as it was in England. It had been argued that the ratepayers in the towns were prepared to make sacrifices for the benefit of the agriculturists, so that they might come into the towns and purchase more goods. That was the most extraordinary argument he had ever heard. The hon. Gentleman who advanced it did not make any attempt to show how the extension of this Bill to Ireland would benefit the tenant-farmers of Ire land, and it was admitted by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board that the result of any relief of the rates must eventually go into the pockets of the landlords.

proposed, in the first line, before the word ''after,'' to insert the words ''During the continuance of this Act, that is to say, the period of five years." He said he moved this Amendment in order to give effect to an undertaking which he had given to hon. Members on both sides of the House when the Bill was in the Second Reading stage.

said, he had an Amendment to make this practically an annual Bill, which he was afraid would be cut out by the hon. Member's Amendment.

was understood to say that that result could not be avoided.

said, the right hon. Gentleman had moved his Amendment in deference to the pressure brought to bear upon him by hon. Members on his own side of the House who represented urban constituencies. The only possible ground for introducing this alteration was that the Government proposed to introduce at some future period a Measure dealing with the whole question of local taxation, whether it affected towns or agricultural land. They said that when they got a Report from a Committee which would investigate the matter then they would go into the whole question. But such a Committee could not possibly take more than two years to investigate the whole of the facts. He believed the Government at the present moment had in their possession the whole of the facts, and could deal with the urban districts as well as with agricultural land. The Return which had been moved for by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton two or three years ago gave the whole facts in regard to the rates in urban districts, and established a case, if there was a case at all, for relieving the urban districts. There were no controverted facts that a Committee would have to inquire into; there was no dispute with regard to the amount of the rates in the urban districts, or with regard to their pressure upon several industries in those districts, which were in consequence depressed. The facts were thoroughly well known, and he submitted that this Amendment would be a true test of the Government's sincerity in regard to their intention of dealing with local taxation in towns. The supporters of the Government who represented towns had said:—

"The depression from the rates is very great in our districts, and we are paying three times as much as the rural districts are."

The right hon. Gentleman said:—

"We admit your grievance, but we cannot deal with it until we get a Report on the subject."

What was the good of having a Committee to consider this question unless the Government proposed to legislate when they got a Report? If they intended to act upon such a Report, they should act upon it immediately they got it. But supposing that when they had got a Report they found that they had not got the funds, or the time in that Session, to enable them to dispose of the question, it would be easy for them to come to the House with a short Bill for extending the limit for another year or two, and at any rate the House would then have an opportunity of going into the question a second time. To fix five years as the limit was practically to put off the question during the life of the present Government. The Bill would probably become law in the month of June, and five years from that time Parliament would in all probability be dissolved, according to the usual custom. That meant that the Government would allow this matter to be dealt with by their successors. The usual experience of politics taught them that the Government would not be returned again; that was a rule laid down by the Prime Minister himself, when he had spoken of the swing of the pendulum. There would, at any rate, be a chance after five years that a different Government would have to deal with this intricate question. This was a question of considerable moment; the Government proposed to spend two millions on the relief of agricultural land, but on the same principle 13 millions would have to be spent on a similar relief to the towns. Their acceptance or non-acceptance of his Amendment would, therefore, he contended, be the true test of whether they meant to deal with the question, or whether they were simply proposing to put it off by the appointment of a Committee.

supported the Amendment of the hon. Member for Carnarvon. One of the reasons why, on the Second Reading, he had proposed that there should be a reasonable limitation to the period was because, in the view of the right hon. Gentleman and most of his colleagues, the benefit ultimately would go into the landlord's pocket. The period of five years in which to accomplish the result he had described as desirable was too long. Then, what his hon. Friend had urged was extremely important—that it was the duty of the present Government, before the end of the present Parliament, to bring forward a complete scheme for the reform of local taxation. He himself urged this in the interests of London and other great towns, which suffered so much at present, and were not only not relieved, but were actually mulcted under the present scheme. If the Bill ran for five years, it would outrun any reasonable prospect of a continuance of the present Parliament for legislative purposes. The Party in power might possibly be returned again at the next General Election, but the House had considered this matter at the initiative of the present Government, who should deal with it. Hon. Members opposite could not look upon the Bill as a lasting Measure. It was a temporary Measure of immediate relief, and therefore ought not, by its existence, to complicate the final solution of the great question of local taxation and distribution of grants among various portions of the community. That being so, it must be obvious that five years was too long a period for this immediate relief to be allowed to run, and three years was a reasonable period. For himself, he should prefer that it ran for a year only, but he would make it a three years' Measure with a view to a complete settlement of the question being made in the present Parliament if possible, and three years would give either the proposed Committee or Commission ample time to inquire and report, and for new legislation to take the place of this. He also wished for the Bill to be limited to three years because a certain amount of relief was granted to local taxation, and this Bill dealt with a portion of that question of relief. Perhaps the House was not aware how enormously that subject needed the immediate consideration of the Government in connection with agriculture, because the position was that the amount of relief to local taxation in proportion to the ratable value of the places relieved actually varied in this country from 13 to 38 per cent. But the relief granted in agricultural districts was greater than was granted in town districts, and between one agricultural district and another there was as extraordinary a difference as between one town district and another; and as between these two groups, country and town, it was not too much to say that the ratio of inequality in relief from the central body was almost as great as between the utmost limits between one and the other, so irregular was the relief given. He should have, on a subsequent Amendment, to deal with this, and point out that this being a Measure of relief, they should relieve in proportion to the need, and not in that procrustean method of relief which was adopted by this Bill. Whatever plan they might adopt would be only a rough-and-ready plan of relieving the agricultural districts, and there would be borne in upon the Government by their own supporters, more effectively than could be borne in upon them by him, the claim of the towns for consideration in the enormous inequality he had alluded to. It was proposed to give relief where least needed. It would be to the interest of the Government and for the good of the country—with which the way in which local taxation was treated was largely bound up—to make an honourable attempt to settle the question of local taxation throughout the country. If they did it they would have to do it in the present Parliament, and he did not wish their hands to be bound and tied by the existence of this Measure beyond a period of three years. If it continued beyond that time they would be tempted to use it, and they would slide out of this Parliament, as they had slided out of the three or four Parliaments in which he had had the honour to sit, without having had the courage to face this serious and important question. ["Hear, hear!"]

said, there was no doubt that those who represented agricultural constituencies were at one with the Government in wishing to give the greatest amount of relief to the agricultural interest, and to give it in the best possible way. He felt that the limitation of three years would be better than five years. There was now a House of Commons which took a considerable interest in agriculture—[''hear, hear!"]—though some view matters from the point of view of the landlords, and others from that of the tenant-farmers. By fixing upon five years they would make it almost certain that the next settlement of the question would be handed over to a new House of Commons, which, whatever Party might be in Office, might not be as strongly agriculturist as the present one. It was well this House should complete the matter. He was sure the Bill did not do half what it might do with the money that was given; if it gave relief where it was most needed, more good would be done to agriculture. There was another reason why the operation should be limited to three years. If they decided upon five years, a good deal of the relief would by the end of that time have percolated into the hands of the landlords. If the Act were to be renewed every two or three years, the tenants would get the benefit and not the landlords. In the interest of the tenant-farmers, the term of three years was preferable to five years.

said, the President of the, Local Government Board had recognised the general feeling on the Opposition side of the House that this should not be a permanent arrangement, but limited to a certain number of years. The question, therefore, between the two sides was what the period should be. As he understood the matter, the Government admitted that the old system of local taxation pressed unfairly upon the owners of real property, and they were desirous that the relief they were extending by this Bill to the agricultural interest should also be extended to the manufacturing and other interests which, in the opinion of the Opposition, felt the pressure quite as heavily as agriculture. Then the Government said they must have an inquiry, and he agreed with them as to the necessity of an inquiry. It had been assumed that the inquiry should be one either by a Select Committee or a Royal Commission. He hoped it would not be by a Royal Commission, for he thought that had now become the most unsatisfactory mode of inquiry that it was possible to adopt. He put it to the Government whether this was not an inquiry that they should make themselves as a Government. He could not conceive anything more irregular or more unsatisfactory than to base a Government Measure upon an inquiry and Report of a Select Committee, a body chosen upon Party grounds and having no responsibility whatever. Besides, he understood that a Select Committee could not sit this year. The investigation, if made by a Royal Commission, would probably occupy years, but if the Government made the inquiry they would, no doubt, make it in the course of the forthcoming Recess, and they would, therefore, be ready to submit a scheme to Parliament next Session. He trusted the Government would consent to limit the operation of the Bill to three years. That would allow ample time for them either to make the arrangement permanent or to link with it another Measure which would relieve other descriptions of ratepayers. The limitation to five years would only lead to a prolongation of the thorough investigation of the question, and do no good either to the agricultural or the manufacturing ratepayers.

said, the method of the inquiry, and also the object to which it should be directed, would be subjects for the consideration of Government. The right hon. Gentleman might rest assured the matter would receive his most earnest attention; but he was not now in a position to state what course would be decided upon. The hon. Member for Hoxton gave his reasons for desiring a limitation to three years instead of five. He said that great inequalities would arise, and that most relief would be given where it was least needed, and that the least relief would be given where the depression was the most severe. Those were questions which did not exactly arise on this Amendment. Then the hon. Gentleman said it was the duty of the Government to complete this matter during their tenure of Office. The Government thought it was very likely they would remain in Office not only during the present Parliament—[laughter]—but for some time in addition, and therefore they had no fear as to the completion of the matter. [''Hear, hear!"] Now, what was the case they had presented to the House? They admitted that a grievance was felt by other persons. They had never concealed that; but what they held was that the grievance on the part of the land was greater than that on the part of other ratable properties. For that reason they had elected to deal with land first. If they allowed the experiment to be made for five years, they would have some reasonable opportunity of gaining experience of the working of the system which might be of the greatest use with regard to any decision in the future. The hon. Member for Lichfield expressed the belief that, in the interest of agriculturists themselves, it would be far better to limit the Bill to three years. If the hon. Gentleman asked the agriculturists whether they would rather have the Bill for five or three years, he would find they were unanimous in favour of five years. He was afraid he must ask the Committee to adhere to the period originally fixed.

said, he was glad to find that the Government had consented to limit the scope of the Bill to five years, but he failed to see that the right hon. Gentleman, in what he had said, made the case any stronger for five years than for three years. The incidence of taxation was undoubtedly in an unsatisfactory condition, and an inquiry should take place wherever that unsatisfactory condition of things existed. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would do well to reconsider his decision, and to make the period three years, on various grounds. In the first place, it was very uncertain how long this agricultural depression would continue. It might disappear in the course of 12 months. Landlords, in making rebates to their tenants for six or 12 months, recognised that a change might take place in the position of their tenants, and he thought they ought to proceed in this matter in a similar way. In the course of three years they would see the effect of this relief, though, in his opinion, it was no relief at all, and then they would be in a better position to deal with the whole subject. The right hon. Gentleman said he objected to three years because he considered land was in a different position to any other property. He maintained that that was not a correct statement. In his own constituency they had a large number of mines, and would the right hon. Gentleman tell him that the mining industry at the present time was any more prosperous than agriculture? Was he not aware that every tax that was paid at the present time by land was paid by minerals? His own constituency was a rural district, but as a matter of fact they had all the disadvantages of an urban district, and during the last 10 years the rates had been going up by leaps and bounds, and in all probability would continue to do so. He maintained that if the Bill were limited to three years they would be able to see what these increases were likely to be, and have an opportunity of reconsidering the whole question. Another reason for limiting the Bill to three years was that the country did not realise what its provisions meant, and when it was seen that their large towns and their mining and manufacturing interests in rural districts would be compelled to pay twice as much rate in the pound as agricultural land, there would be very much stronger opposition than hon. Gentlemen opposite seemed to realise. The Government were pushing forward all sorts of Measures giving increased powers to local authorities. They had the Artisans' Dwellings Bill, which empowered local authorities to borrow money on the rates to build houses, the result of which would be a large increase in ratable value; they had the Light Railways Bill, which empowered local authorities——

I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the only question before the Committee is the question as between three and five years.

said, he was endeavouring to show, as a reason why it should be limited to three instead of to five years, that the Bill was to prevent the agricultural interest paying for those sort of improvements which were advocated by the Government. The more he considered the merits and demerits of the Bill, the more he was satisfied that three years ought to be the limit of its operation. He was in favour of the consideration of the whole incidence of taxation, and he was satisfied that when this Inquiry took place it would be brought out that a large amount of property, such as railway and mining property, which was considered as personal property, had been accustomed to pay the same taxation as land, and that the claim for special treatment of land was not so great as the right hon. Gentleman made out. The Government admitted that this was simply an experiment, and that the whole question would be considered hereafter. He trusted, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman would agree to the Amendment.

said, the right hon. Gentleman opposite had said—and he agreed with him—that the agricultural interest preferred five years to three. The agricultural interest, to which he belonged, as he very well knew, would prefer eternity to five years; and a Bill under the guardianship of the House of Lords meant eternity, as far as the House of Lords was eternal; but, as a citizen, he considered that five years was far too long—and that three years was a much better time. He believed that in one respect, if they prolonged the period to five years they would be doing a very ill turn indeed to the very interest they were endeavouring to defend, and for this reason. What was the experience, not in agricultural interests only, but in borough and urban districts, of the results of these subventions from the Exchequer? It was that they led to extravagance, which he would show with half-a-dozen figures. In the year 1884–5 the rates—and he left out both the School Board rate on the one hand and the subventions from the Exchequer to School Boards on the other—amounted to £23,463,000, and the subventions to £2,618,000, in all £26,081,000. Then he would take 1889–90. In that year the rates amounted to £25,047,000, and the subventions to £3,371,000, in all to £28,418,000. That was to say, in five years there had been a growth of £2,337,000, or about £467,000 a year. In the next year he took came the first year of the great subventions—the result of the Local Taxation Act. In 1893–4 the rates amounted to £28,604,000, and the subventions to £6,524,000, in all £35,128,000. So that in the five years before there were great subventions given, the growth of this local expenditure was at the rate of £467,000 a year, and in the four years after these great subventions there was an increase of £6,600,000, or at the rate of £1,650,000 a year. What were the subventions of 1890 compared with those they were asked to make now; and if the result of those of 1890 was extravagance, how enormously greater would be the extravagance which would result from the present subvention? If the Bill was limited to three years, he ventured to say that the extravagance would be encouraged by a good deal less than the difference between three and five years. It had been called an experiment. Was not £6,000,000 of public money sufficient to spend on an experiment? Was it necessary to spend £10,000,000?

said, he should support the Amendment, but on different grounds to those just advanced by his right hon. Friend. He must defend the local bodies from this charge of extravagance that was so constantly launched against them. Subventions had been paid in very large sums to these bodies, but it was the fact that Parliament had imposed a very great deal of extra expenditure upon them. They had County Councils and Parish Councils. He supported them and agreed with them, but they all tended to increase the expense, and therefore it was not fair to constantly accuse these local authorities of this extravagance. The President of the Local Government Board contended that the limiting of this Bill to three years would necessitiate a great deal of inquiry, and a great deal of expense in revising the rate book, and so on. But every one of the arguments used by the right hon. Gentleman would apply just as much to the five years period as to the three years. The blame which attached to the Government was that they had not brought in a Bill which they were prepared to make permanent. The question, indeed, was whether land bore more than its fair share of taxation or not. If it did, then why not make the Bill permanent; if it did not, why bring in a Bill at all? He should prefer that the Government settled this question instead of leaving it as a legacy to their successors. It was said that hon. Members on the Opposition side were not the friends of agriculture. If this was the case, then the Government with their majority should settle the question in the agricultural interest. The promised Inquiry should be instituted as soon as possible, in order to get rid of the feeling of unrest which would be engendered in the rural districts about the different ratable values. He therefore supported the Amendment, believing that three years was the best period if this measure was to be a mere experiment.

while personally in favour of an annual Bill, maintained that three years was the period which should be adopted, because in that time the Committee of Inquiry would have ample time to report on local taxation in this country. The Government before going out of office would have no time to settle a scheme of local taxation and place it on a just and equitable basis. This was an emergency Bill, introduced to meet a grave crisis in the affairs of agriculture.

did not consider that the agricultural depression about which they heard so much was likely to be of a permanent character. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had himself admitted that it was due entirely to low prices, foreign competition, and other causes which might pass away at any moment. There could be no reason in this case for continuing the grant for a longer time than the depression existed.

claimed, ''That the Question on the Amendment be now put."