I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade, if he has yet heard from Her Majesty's Consuls on the Rhine as to the reported establishment, with the aid of the German Government, of an export service to London of West-phalian coal at 6s. a ton in flat-bottomed sea barges carrying some 700 tons each, and making the cross-channel passages as the weather permits?

I have received Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls at Berlin and Dusseldorf, which I shall be happy to show to the hon. Member, but it does not appear from these Reports that any State-aided exportation of coal from Westphalia is likely to be established, nor is it probable that 700-ton barges could be employed in this traffic on the Rhine.

The right hon. Gentleman has dwelt upon the phrase "State-aided"; can he say whether there is any exportation of coal from Germany to London, State-aided or otherwise?

I believe that it is the fact that a limited liability company has been established for the purpose of exporting coal from Germany to London, out it is not State-aided.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the rates on the State railways have not been reduced in favour of this company to an extent that is equivalent to State aid?

I have already offered to give the hon. and gallant Gentleman all the information on the subject which we have received from Germany.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware whether preferential rates are offered on the German State lines of railway?

I will inquire, if we have not already got the information. I am not quite certain of the fact, but I think that preferential rates are granted on those lines.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether, in accordance with Section 21 of the Indian Councils Act (24 and 25 Vic. c. 67), the Governor General has transmitted to him authentic copies of The Cotton Duties Act, 1896, and the Act to amend the Indian Tariff Act of 1894, and whether, under that section, he will disallow those Acts on the ground that they increase the burden of taxation on the poorest class in India, while lightening the taxation on those who are comparatively well to do; if not, whether, by Executive Order, he will remit both import and excise duties upon the coarser cloths used by the poorer classes of consumers; and, will he state whether Members of the Council of the Secretary of State have recorded Minutes with regard to the rearrangement of the cotton duties; and, if so, will he place such Minutes upon the Table of the House?

I have received copies of the Acts named in the Question, and have informed the Government of India that those Acts will be left to their operation. It is probable that the poorer classes of the population of India are the principal consumers of the cloths made in Indian mills from counts of 20 and under, which are now taxed for the first time; but, for this among other reasons, the duty has been reduced to 3½per cent. ad valorem, and, considering the enormous number of consumers, this additional taxation, upon a very small proportion of the cotton cloth consumed in India, represents an infinitesimally small increase of cost to the individual purchaser; while, on the other hand, the duty on yarns has been abolished, so that the whole products of handlooms are untaxed. It has been found by experience on more than one occasion that it is not advisable to fix a standard of quality below which goods are exempt from taxation, and, in these circumstances, I do not propose to advise the Government of India to remit the duties recently imposed by the Legislature. Minutes regarding these two Acts were recorded by two Members of Council and by myself. There will be no objection to laying these Minutes on the Table if the hon. Baronet will move for them.

In consequence of the unsatisfactory nature of the answer of the noble Lord, I beg to give notice that at the earliest possible opportunity I will call attention to this arrangement as to the Cotton Duties, which relieves the rich at the expense of the poor.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether it is required by the Inland Pattern and Sample Post regulations of the Post Office, that the trade, as well as the name and address, of the sender shall be printed or stamped on the label of the packet; whether he is aware that, in a recent instance at Liverpool, a well-known merchant was fined double the deficient postage at the letter rate, on the ground that the cover of the parcel, though bearing his name and address in printed characters, also the words "Sample Post," did not contain a printed statement of his trade, but only a written statement of his trade; whether he will take into consideration that this rule excludes poor traders who cannot afford printing from the benefits of the Sample Post; and, whether this rule excluding written particulars is in force in any other country in Europe?

The Inland Sample Post Regulations require the trade, as well as the name and address, of the sender to be printed or stamped on every sample packet. The particular instance at Liverpool to which the hon. Member refers cannot be traced, but, if the regulation in regard to the printing or stamping of the trade was not complied with, the packet was liable to letter postage. There is no question of excluding "poor traders who cannot afford printing." The particulars required can be impressed with an india rubber stamp, the cost of which is very small, and the Postmaster General does not see his way to abandon this regulation. The Post Office is not able to say whether a similar regulation is in force in other countries.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with reference to the establishment of a Central Registry Office for Births and Deaths in Belfast, whether his attention has been called to a report of the Belfast United Trades and Labour Council, adopted at their last meeting, and in which they assured the Registrar General of the great advantage to the working classes which the establishment of such an office would confer; whether a central office can be established there under the existing law; and, if he will make further inquiry with a view of considering what can be done in the matter for the convenience of the working classes of Belfast?

The Registrar General has again carefully considered the question of the sufficiency of the existing arrangements for the registration of births and deaths in Belfast, and has suggested to me the desirability of holding a public inquiry, at which all persons locally interested may appear, either personally or by solicitors. In this way the facts can be more fully investigated, and I have authorised the Registrar General to hold the inquiry in Belfast as soon as he can conveniently arrange to do so, and to give due notice of the date upon which the inquiry will be held.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, whether he will consider the desirability of arranging for the visit, at an early date, of the Channel Squadron to Belfast Lough?

I am not able to add to what I have already stated.

Will the right hon. Gentleman favourably consider the communication I put before him a week ago?

I think my answer covers that.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether, inasmuch as the Proclamation of the Government to the tribes on the occasion of the Chitral Campaign, entered upon on the 1st April 1895, declared that its object was the protection, in the interest of Chitral, of the Nari villages, he would state whether the Nari villages handed over to Afghanistan under Paragraph VIII. of the Supplementary Agreement of 9th April 1895 are the same Nari villages as those referred to in the Proclamation; whether these villages are the ancestral possession of Chitral; and, if so, would he state on what grounds Chitral has been deprived of them in direct contravention of the Proclamation; and, whether the consent of the Suzerain of Chitral, the Maharaja of Kashmir, has been obtained to the cession?

The Proclamation referred to the objects of the Chitral expedition and to those alone. The Agreement of the 9th April 1895, completed certain delimitation proceedings between the Government of India and the Amir of Afghanistan which commenced long before any expedition to Chitral was contemplated. The Nari villages included in Afghanistan by the Agreement of April 1895 were no doubt villages to which the Mehtar of Chitral laid claim. This claim was not proved, and the Mehtar's right to villages not then in his possession and to which neither Chitral nor its Suzerain had made out a title, was not confirmed.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, why, when the Irish Constabulary authorities were recently advertising for tenders for Irish woollen material for policemen's overcoats, the advertisements were published in none of the Cork newspapers, though Cork is the principal seat of the woollen industry in Ireland; whether he is aware that in consequence of this the advertisements escaped the notice of the Cork manufacturers until it was too late to tender; whether, under the circumstances, the time for supplying samples will be extended; and, whether, in future, such advertisements will be published in the Cork newspapers?

The advertisements in question were inserted in the four daily newspapers, as well as in a weekly general advertising medium, all of which are published in Dublin and circulate throughout Ireland, including Cork. It was considered that the publicity thus given to the matter would be sufficient, and as proof of its sufficiency I may mention that applications for specimens of the cloth have been received from various parts of Ireland, including three from Cork and its vicinity. There is no reason to believe that manufacturers who may intend to forward samples will not be able to do so before the 23rd instant, the date mentioned in the advertisements. However, I am willing to extend the period by a week beyond that date. Upon the information at present before me, I do not think any advantage would be gained by inserting these advertisements in the Cork newspapers. Such a course would necessarily involve their publication in local newspapers elsewhere at a considerable additional expense.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) how many cases of chronic but not dangerous lunatics sent from Belfast District Asylum are now in Belfast Workhouse; (2) whether the names of these patients are still retained, as required by Statute, on the books of the asylum; and, if not, why not; (3) whether the Medical Superintendent or Board of Governors of the Asylum have any control over or duties to perform towards these patients while their names still remain on the asylum books; and, (4) whether the Governors receive anything, and, if so, how much towards the support and maintenance of such patients, and how much they contribute to the Board of Guardians in respect of their keep and maintenance there?

There are at the present moment in Belfast Workhouse 77 harmless lunatics, who were sent there from time to time from the District Lunatic Asylum. Their names are not retained in the books of the asylum, as they are not maintained in the workhouse by contract with the guardians under the provisions of the 9th Section of the 38 and 39 Vict., cap. 67, but were discharged absolutely from the jurisdiction of the Asylum Governors under the 11th Section of the same Act. The reply to the third and fourth paragraphs is in the negative.

I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether the managers of a voluntary school held under an ordinary trust deed made in accordance with the School Sites Acts will be able, under Clause 25, to borrow from the county councils?

Yes; they are subject to the provisions of the Charity Trustees Act.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that, previous to the taking over of the telephone wires by the Government, subscribers to the National Telephone Company in Kettering were charged threepence for three minutes' conversation between Kettering and Leicester, but that since the Government has taken over the trunk wires the Company has given notice that the charge will be increased to sixpence; and, whether, having regard to the large amount of transactions thus carried out between these towns, he will take steps to have the old tariff of charges retained.

The Company, after acquiring various telephone systems throughout the country, were gradually adopting a uniform scale of charges for trunk conversations. That scale gives 6d. as the rate between Kettering and Leicester, and in explanation of the fact that only 3d. was being charged, the Postmaster General supposes that the company had not had the time to apply their scale in this particular instance before the wires became the property of the State. He does not see his way to make the charge less than 6d. I may explain that Kettering is in an area of which Northampton is the trunk centre. The charges are calculated from Northampton, and while under this arrangement Kettering pays more to Leicester than it would if it were the trunk centre itself, it pays less to many other towns.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether it will be possible for one or more of Her Majesty's ships of war to be stationed in Cardigan Bay at the time of the visit of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Aberystwyth for the purpose of being installed as Chancellor of the University of Wales?

Yes, as I have already stated, a ship will probably be stationed in Cardigan Bay during the visit of the Prince of Wales to Aberystwith. ["Hear, hear!"]

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that the, postal officials, while allowing the use of an oval stamp to mark the senders name and address on the stamped side of a post card, have recently begun to inflict a fine when the date is also enclosed in such stamp; and whether, in view of the general use of dated address stamps, and the convenience to the public thus afforded, he will direct that, the date, if enclosed in an address stamp, shall in future be allowed to appear on the front of a post card?

There has been no recent alteration of practice in taxing post cards, as might be inferred from the Question of the hon. Member. While the sender's name and address may be impressed with an oval stamp on the front of a post card the addition of a date renders the card liable to charge. The Postmaster General is, however, considering the various regulations bearing on the subject, and until he has had the opportunity of thoroughly investigating them, he wishes to reserve the fullest liberty to maintain any or all of the existing rules

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether there are any official returns of the quantities of butter, bacon, lard, and eggs, with their approximate value, exported from Ireland to Great Britain annually; and, if not, whether steps will be taken to obtain such returns for publication?

The trade between Ireland and Great Britain is regarded as part of the general coasting trade, and the Official Trade Returns relate only to imports and exports from and to foreign countries and British possessions. There is consequently no official information available as to the exports from Ireland to other parts of the United Kingdom of the articles mentioned. The inquiry at the end of the Question should be addressed to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether a constable of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is employed as janitor or sexton in the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle; has a special tour of duty been arranged so as to enable him to discharge this duty; how long is he so engaged, and was the engagement made with the cognisance of the Police Commissioners; how many policemen in Dublin occupy positions other than their legitimate ones; what was the number of civilians who applied for the position of sexton in the Chapel Royal; and, will the Government seek to recover the penalty from the employer or paymaster, under the Act 6 and 7 William IV., c. 29, s. 22?

A constable has been appointed assistant-verger in the Chapel Royal. No special arrangement has been made for the discharge of his duties; as a policeman he performs his full share of police duty, and his duties as assistant verger occupy only one hour and a half of his leisure time each week. He was appointed to the Chapel Royal in February last, with the cognisance and consent of his officers. I am not aware of any member of the Dublin Police occupying a position that is not legitimate. The provisions of the Act in question apply to constables employed as domestic or menial servants, and obviously are not applicable to the present case.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether Mr. Mallon, a prominent official of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, is allowed £95 per annum for the keep of a horse and groom, as laid down at page 73 of the Dublin Police Code; (2) whether the duties of such official's position necessitate the expenditure of this sum; and (3), whether he is aware that the same official dispensed with the use of a horse last year although in receipt of the allowance referred to?

The reply to the first and second paragraphs is in the affirmative. It is not the fact, as alleged in the third paragraph, that Mr. Mallon dispensed with a horse last year although in receipt of the allowance referred to.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether in a recent case the Irish Local Government Board, having been requested by resolution from a Board of Guardians to hold a sworn Inquiry as to an allegation that a particular Guardian was violating the law by acting as a Contractor to the Board, refused to do so on the ground that any individual acting as informer could vindicate the law by suing for penalties; whether sworn Inquiries had previously been held in similar cases; why the Local Government Board have made a change of practice; and, whether, in view of the odium and the risk of law costs which would have to be incurred by a private individual in enforcing the law in such cases, though he would have no interest in the matter but a public one, the Local Government Board will in future exercise the powers which the law gives them to secure pure local administration?

The Limerick Board of Guardians recently requested the Local Government Board to hold a sworn Inquiry relative to the allegation that one of the Guardians of the Union was concerned in a contract for the supply of goods to the Workhouse, but as the Guardian in question denied the truth of the statement, and as no prima facie evidence was forwarded supporting the allegation, the Local Government Board, acting according to their usual practice, did not consider that sufficient grounds had been given to grant an Inquiry. The Local Government Board have held sworn Inquiries in cases of the alleged connection of Guardians with Union contracts where such allegations have been supported by corroborative evidence, and the Local Government Board have not departed from their usual practice in this case. If, however, any corroborative evidence is forthcoming in support of the allegation in this case, the Local Government Board will reconsider the matter.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, whether he is aware that the Irish Board of Works charge interest at the rate of 3⅜ per cent. on loans under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts in Ireland, though the Act enables loans to be made at 3⅛ per cent.; and, if so, why; and at what rate of interest are such loans made in England?

The interest on such loans, whether in England or Ireland, is required by law to be such a rate not less than 3⅛ per cent., as the Treasury may from time to time authorise as being in their opinion sufficient to enable the loans to be made without loss to the Exchequer. Having this condition in view the Treasury has fixed the following rates, which apply equally to Great Britain and Ireland:—

• 3⅛ per cent. for loans repayable within 20 years.
• 3¼ per cent. for loans repayable within 30 years.
• 3⅜ per cent. for loans repayable within 40 years.
• 3½ per cent. for loans repayable within 50 years.

It has always been customary to prescribe sliding scales for loans of this character, giving the most favoured rates to loans of shorter currency.

asked whether that applied to the Board of Works in this country?

So far as I understand, it applies to the Public Works Loan Commissioners in this country equally with the Board of Works in Ireland.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether the position of male sorter at the General Post Office, Dublin, cannot be competed for without a nomination from the Comptroller of the sorting office; who conducts the examination for this position, and is the result of the examination published; whether it is the case that in London no nomination is required in order to compete for the same position, and that all persons within the limits of age are eligible to be examined, that the examination is held by the Civil Service Commissioners, and the result gazetted; what the reason for the difference between the London and the Dublin practice is; and, whether the Postmaster General will now abolish the system of nomination in Dublin?

The situation of sorter, or more correctly sorting clerk, at the General Post Office, Dublin, is filled on the nomination of the Secretary in Dublin, subject to a qualifying examination by the Civil Service Commissioners, which is published. A similar course is followed in every other town except London, where the situation of sorter is filled by means of competitions held by the Civil Service Commissioners, and the results of such competitions are gazetted. The question of extending the system of open competition to Dublin and other large towns is now undergoing consideration.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether any steps have recently been taken to complete the objects of the Home Office Committee of 1887, appointed to inquire into the accommodation provided for prisoners in the court-houses in England and Wales; and, how many of the places of detention in these courthouses still continue in a defective condition?

It was stated in 1891 by the Home Secretary of the day, in reply to a similar question, that, as a result of the action taken by the Home Office on the Report of the Committee, the accommodation, at court-houses for prisoners brought up for trial might at some 150 places be regarded to be satisfactory. I am happy to be able to say that since that date a satisfactory result has been arrived at also in the majority of the 40 or so remaining cases in regard to which correspondence was then going on. In a very few cases the local authority has failed to comply with the requirements of the Secretary of State, and, in default of fresh, legislation, I am unable to compel them. I may add that the matter is one to which attention is paid by the inspectors of prisons and prison governors, who report, annually, and call attention to any defect that may call for remedy.

asked if the right hon. Gentleman would give the names of the local authorities?

I am unable to do so at the present moment.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if he can state the circumstances under which a woman named Mrs. Barrett was dangerously wounded on the evening of Thursday the 7th instant at Bangor-Erris, county Mayo, by a bullet fired from the immediate neighbourhood of the local police barracks; can he state by whom the bullet was fired; and, what steps the Government propose to take to bring the parties alleged to be guilty of this outrage to justice?

It is a fact that Mrs. Barrett was wounded by a bullet fired from a rook rifle. The shot was not fired by the police, and is alleged to have been fired by Dr. Lavan. I understand the woman was out of bed a few days after the occurrence, and that at no time was her life considered to be in danger. It is under consideration whether a prosecution should be instituted in the case, and I am unable therefore to enter more fully into the details.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with regard to the fact that the Carlow County Infirmary is provided by law for the treatment of the poor and destitute of that county and its expenses provided almost entirely from the public funds of the county, whether he is aware that there are grave doubts in the minds of the ratepayers of the county as to whether that institution treats any of the poor and destitute of the county, and whether the law as to the admission of the patients, the area from which such patients should be admitted and the manner of admission, is carried out, and as to whether the funds of the institution are spent to the best advantage; and, whether he would, under these circumstances, consider the necessity of directing that this institution be inspected, as directed by law, by the Local Government Board Inspector, who would also inquire into its general administration, and also that all institutions provided for the treatment of the poor and destitute and paid for out of public funds shall be regularly inspected by a government official as directed by law?

I have not completed my inquiries into the matters to which this Question relates and will ask the hon. Member to postpone it until to-morrow.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if he will give the names of the baronies in county Carlow in which arrears had been erroneously represented and the amount of these erroneous arrears which had been illegally collected, the names of the ratepayers from whom they were collected, and the amount in each case?

The baronies referred to are Idrone East, in which a sum of £2 6s. had been erroneously represented; Idrone West, £12 5s. 9d.; Rathvilly, £3 3s. 5d; and Forth, £40 10s. 11d. The auditor is not aware whether these sums were levied off individual cesspayers, or distributed over the entire valuation of the baronies, but he presumes the latter course was adopted, in which case the excess on the barony of Forth would only amount to about three-eighths of a penny in the pound on the valuation, while in the other baronies it would be scarcely appreciable.

asked if the right hon. Gentleman would find out whether these sums paid by private people had been paid twice over?

No. Sir; I really cannot undertake to make these inquiries which the hon. Gentleman is constantly asking me to make.

I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman——[Cries of "Order!"]

The hon. Member cannot comment on the answer given him.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in England the rates paid by farmers are being reduced, while in Ireland they have to pay them twice over, and the Government will not do anything in the matter?

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether the official report of Mr. Lewin Hill's evidence before the Departmental Committee on the Post Office Establishment in its original form, and before correction by Mr. Hill, was similar in terms to the report given in the Postman's Gazette, so far as the passage reflecting on Irish candidates is concerned; whether a fresh transcript of the official notes could still be had; and, whether in cases of this kind there is any check on the alteration of their evidence by witnesses in the proof in a manner which ultimately makes the official record an incorrect report of the evidence actually given?

The remarks referred to were no part of the official report. The passage inserted in a rough proof, contrary to Lord Tweedmouth's instructions, and struck out by the Secretary to the Committee, corresponded substantially with the report in the Postman's Gazette. A copy of the proof in question could doubtless be had, but it would be most unusual to call for a proof of evidence given before a Committee in the form in which the Chairman of the Committee had directed that it should not be given. The Secretary of a Committee of this kind, of course, exercises supervision as to what alterations are made by witnesses in the reports of their evidence. But as I have already stated, this particular alteration was made, not by the witness, but by the Chairman of the Committee.

was understood to ask whether any rebuke had been addressed to Mr. Lewin Hill?

I am not aware of any.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if he will state the grounds on which Mr. Justice O'Brien, after sentencing Sergeant Dunton to three years' penal servitude, recommended his release; and, whether the learned Judge recommended the reduction of his own sentence from three years to one week?

I informed the hon. Gentleman on Friday last that it was on the recommendation of the learned Judge who tried this case and at his instance that the sentence imposed was remitted. Communications of this kind between the judges and the Executive Government are confidential Documents, and I cannot state the grounds on which Mr. Justice O'Brien based his recommendation.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War, if he can state what were the mitigating circumstances in Sergeant Dunton's case which induced the Military authorities to permit his continued service under Her Majesty after being sentenced to three years' penal servitude; whether there is any precedent for permitting a convict sentenced to three years' penal servitude to continue in Her Majesty's service; when Sergeant Dunton's rank was reduced, and whether he drew pay as a Sergeant for any time after his release; whether it was at the instance of Dunton's immediate Military superiors that he was retained in the army, and, if not at whose; and, whether, before coming to this decision, the Department made any condition that Dunton should compensate the woman he married or contribute to the support of his child?

The mitigating circumstances were that the Lords Justices considered that the case was such that they discharged the prisoner at the close of the Assize, that he had theretofore been a soldier of exemplary character and that his wife had been unfaithful to him. The sentence of penal servitude having been remitted, the question of precedent did not arise. Dunton was reduced to the rank of private immediately on the receipt of the report on his case. During the few days which intervened between his discharge from prison and his reduction he was entitled to pay as sergeant. He was retained in the Army at the instance of his Military superiors. The condition referred to in the last part of the hon. Member's Question is not within the province of the Military department but stoppage can be made from a soldier's pay, under an order of a Court, for the maintenance of an illegitimate child.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with regard to the fact that in August of last year the Irish Land Commission, by a letter from its president, Mr. Justice Bewley, informed him that if the Land Bill to be introduced this Session were such as to affect the decisions on application to refix judicial rents, it would be easy and proper for the Land Commission to instruct sub-commissioners to defer judgment until the Bill was passed, will he state whether the Land Commission have given any such instructions?

No instructions of the nature mentioned have been given to the assistant commissioners before whom some of such applications are now pending, and the Commissioners are not aware that any application by the parties or their solicitors to postpone the decision in such cases has been made and refused.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that in a recent case where a gentleman residing at Wellingborough sent by inadvertence an unstamped postcard, which was refused by the addressee, the officials posted it back to the sender in an enclosed envelope marked returned letter, on which twopence was demanded and paid, under the belief that it was an ordinary unpaid letter; and whether this system of obtaining the deficient postage and fine in such cases from the sender is warranted by any regulations; and, if so, whether he will direct that the envelope employed shall be marked returned postcard instead of returned letter?

The case referred to by the hon. Member cannot be traced at the Returned Letter Office. The treatment of the card, however, appears to have been correct. A private card does not under the Treasury Warrant become a post card unless it has a half-penny stamp attached. Such a private card posted unpaid can only be treated as an unpaid letter, and if refused by the addressee it is at the Returned Letter Office placed like an ordinary letter in an envelope, the sender being charged twopence on delivery. The recovery of this charge from the sender is authorised under the Post Office Act of 1840. The Postmaster General does not concur in the suggestion of the hon. Member that the envelope should be marked returned postcard instead of returned letter.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Local Government Board whether he can give the names of the Commissioners and state the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, recommending the appointment of experts; whether the question of compensation has been considered; and whether it will be included in the Government Measure?

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will also answer a question of mine couched in identical terms to this which has twice appeared on the Paper, and which had been postponed until after Whitsuntide.

I cannot hold out any expectation that the Measure will be brought in this year with regard to tuberculosis. But my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board hopes to be able to give the names of the Commissioners and the order of reference shortly after Whitsuntide.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he has any information which will enable him to state the number of houses, if any, erected in the villages of Legoniel and Greencastle by moneys advanced under the Artisans' Dwellings Act; and if he is prepared to supply the names of the persons or firms who have received or are receiving such advances?

The Local Government Board are informed by the Clerk of the Belfast Union that no houses have been erected in either of these villages by moneys advanced under the Artisans' Dwellings Act.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, how many representations under the Labourers' Cottages (Ireland) Act have been made to the Monaghan Board of Guardians since the Act came into operation, and how many cottages, if any, have been erected in Monaghan Union under the Labourers Act; have any reports been received from any medical officer of the union as to the necessity for the better housing of labourers in certain electoral districts of the union; and, if so, will he recommend the guardians to give effect to such reports?

One representation has been received by the Monaghan Guardians since the end of 1893, at which time 12 such representations had been submitted. No cottages have been erected in this union under the Labourers Acts. A Report from one of the medical officers was made in March 1894, as to the condition of the houses in one of the electoral divisions of the union, and it appears from the Report that the dwellings with three exceptions were in good order. In two of these cases the landlord promised to execute necessasy repairs. If further representations are now lodged and rejected by the Guardians, and should the parties making them appeal to the Local Government Board, the matter will be duly considered.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Post master General, whether the Mayor of Sligo has made representations to the Postmaster General concerning the postmistress of Athlone; what is the nature of such representations; and will he state the conclusion at which the Postmaster General has arrived?

asked whether it was in order, having regard to the fact that the Mayor of Sligo was a Member of the House, that a Question should be asked as to any communications between an hon. Member and a Minister of the Crown?

I was not aware, nor were the Clerks at the Table I understand, when this Question was put down, that the Mayor of Sligo was an hon. Member of this House—I believe the hon. Member for Leitrim. But knowing now that he is a Member of this House I certainly think the Question is one which ought not to have been put on the Paper—["hear, hear!"]—because the Question really asks a Minister what private communications have been made to him in the course of his duty by a Member of this House. That is a kind of Question which I think ought not to be asked, and, certainly, if I had known when the Question was referred to me, that the Mayor of Sligo was a Member of this House, I should have refused to allow it to be put on the Paper.

May I be allowed, as a matter of personal explanation, to say that the hon. Member had a Question concerning the postmistress of Athlone upon the Paper, and when I told him I would traverse it, he took it off the Paper, and it was only in consequence of that that I put this Question upon the Paper.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether he has any information regarding the projected exhibition to be held at Lisbon next year to celebrate the fourth centenary of Vasco de Gama's discovery of the route to India; and, whether the Portuguese Government has invited England to take an important part in that exhibition; if so, whether it is intended to comply with such request?

Beyond what I have seen in the newspapers I have no information regarding the projected exhibition. No invitation for India to take part in the exhibition has reached me.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, whether he can now state to the House the result of his inquiries into the conditions of work of the attendants of the National Gallery; and, whether he will sanction such addition to their numbers as may be necessary to carry out the Resolution of the House with reference to the Sunday opening of the National collection of pictures?

I understand that those of the National Gallery staff who attend on Sundays do so voluntarily under the inducement of a higher rate of pay. As I have already explained to the hon. Member, the present arrangement is only a tentative experiment intended to provide the necessary data for making permanent arrangements, and I am therefore not yet in a position to say what the permanent arrangement will be.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether the money proposed to be given to certain ratepayers, under the Agricultural Land Rating Bill, will be annually provided by Parliament?

It will not be necessary under the Bill that the amount should be annually voted by Parliament.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, when he hopes to introduce the Irish Light Railways Bill?

Not before Whitsuntide.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether he is able to indicate the nature and extent of the American land claims in the Crown Colony of Fiji, which, are reported to be engaging the attention of the Committee of the United States Senate on Foreign Relations; whether he has any official information as to the statements on which these claims are founded; and whether any such claims were advanced when the Fiji Islands were ceded to the Imperial Government?

A petition signed on behalf of some 30 persons claiming to be United States citizens was presented to the United States Government in 1887 praying for the intervention of that Government in the matter of their claims under grants, or alleged grants, of land from natives in Fiji prior to the cession of the islands which had been wholly or partly disallowed by the Land Claims Commission appointed by Her Majesty's Government to adjudicate on all land claims under such grants. No definite information as to the extent of the claims, or the grounds upon which the particular decisions of the Lands Commission in respect of them are impugned, is in possession of Her Majesty's Government, but an agent of the United States Government was dispatched to Fiji in 1890, and it is understood that he has presented a voluminous Report on the subject. The claims were all advanced before the Commission, which was appointed immediately after the cession, and the general nature and extent of these and the other claims heard by it, and the statements on which they are founded, may be granted from the Reports of the proceedings of the Commission laid before Parliament in C. 3,584 and C. 3,815.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty will he explain on what grounds the request of Lord Brassey, Governor of Victoria, to the Admiral in command of the Australian Station to arrange for periodical visits of one or more of Her Majesty's ships to the harbour of Melbourne was declined; and, whether he would consider the desirability, without derogating from the position of Sydney as the recognised head-quarters of Her Majesty's Fleet in Australian waters, of giving effect to the suggestion of Lord Brassey and the desire of the people of Melbourne, as embodied in that suggestion?

The Admiralty have no knowledge of any correspondence on this subject having passed between the Governor of Victoria and the Admiral in command of the Australian Station.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can see his way to issue instructions to the Royal Irish Constabulary not to attend at any execution of a decree for any Irish loan society unless where an information has been sworn by some responsible person that reasonable grounds exist to apprehend a breach of the peace?

No, Sir; the Executive Government cannot issue any instructions of the nature suggested. The police have certain duties imposed upon them by law in the execution of the warrants, and the Government cannot take it upon itself to abrogate these duties.

I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education if it is proposed by the Government to insert in the Education Bill clauses proposing the establishment of a system of retiring allowances for aged or infirm teachers in public elementary schools, or to introduce a separate Bill for that purpose; and, if the latter be the case, at what date he hopes to be able to introduce the Measure?

It would not be practicable to introduce clauses dealing with the superannuation of teachers into the Education Bill, and the Government do not see their way to introduce a Teachers' Pension Bill until after the provisions of the Education Bill have been settled by the House. ["Hear!"]

I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether Clause 12 of the Education Bill, Section 1, Sub-sections (e), (f), and (g), is intended to apply to private schools, owned by private persons, which receive no public money whatever?

Yes, Sir, it is intended to apply.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, (1) is he aware that, at a recent inquiry in the County Cork Gaol, the solicitor, Mr. Julian, who was employed to defend the case, was not allowed the attendance of his clerk; (2) why the application of Mr. Julian to have the case postponed, in order that the defendant should have the services of another solicitor, was refused; and, (3) is he also aware that Mr. Julian required a shorthand writer to take down the case, in consequence of suffering from a sprained wrist?

The fact is correctly stated in the first paragraph. It appears that Mr. Julian requested that the inquiry should be adjourned in order that another solicitor might be employed, and this having been declined as unreasonable, he requested that the warder should be allowed to conduct his defence on the lines pointed out by Mr. Julian. The latter course was adopted, and Mr. Julian interviewed the warder before the inquiry was opened, and instructed him as to how he should conduct his defence. Mr. Julian's application for a reporter to be admitted to the inquiry was refused in accordance with the invariable rule, as the inquiry was in no sense a public one held in open Court.

Will the right hon. Gentleman look into this matter, and see that there is fair play?

Yes, Sir, I will look into it in the ordinary course.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he can state the amounts expended out of Science and Art Department Vote, and out of grants for technical education under the Local Taxation Act, 1890, for agriculture in Great Britain in 1895–6; what amount, if any, was paid for purposes of Diseases of Animals Act from the Cattle Pleuro-pneumonia Account of Great Britain in same year, in addition to the £65,000 voted and the £165,000 drawn from the Local Taxation Account; how much of the £50,000 voted for swine fever for the United Kingdom went to Ireland; and what balance is now to credit of Cattle Pleuro-pneumonia Account of Great Britain?

I regret that I am unable to supply the information asked for by the hon. Member in the first part of his Question. It relates to the business of my right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Council rather than to my own. The total payments out of the Cattle Pleuro-Pneumonia Account for Great Britain in 1895–96 were £216,769. The receipts were £25,000, not £65,000, as stated in the Question, from the Exchequer; £165,000 from the Local Taxation Account; and £27, 223 from the sale of carcases, &c. £40,000 out of the Exchequer grant of £50,000 for swine fever went to Ireland. The balance to the credit of the Cattle Pleuro-pneumonia Account for Great Britain at the end of 1895–6 was £887, and at the present moment it is £15, 378.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, what amount was received towards the Cattle Pleuro-pneumonia Account of Ireland out of the £50,000 voted for Swine Fever for 1895–6; was that amount and the £10,000 Grant in Aid of the Account all expended, and was any additional sum drawn from the General Cattle Diseases Fund; and, what is the balance now to credit of the Irish Cattle Pleuro-pneumonia Account, and of the General Cattle Diseases Fund respectively?

A sum of £40,000 out of the grant in aid of £50,000, was paid to the Pleuro-pneumonia Account for Ireland in the last financial year. This payment, with the item of £10,000 referred to, was not all expended. No additional sum was drawn from the General Cattle Diseases Fund. The balance to credit at the end of the year was £12,223. The balance to credit at the present date of the Irish Cattle Pleuro-pneumonia Account is £9,180, and of the General Cattle Diseases Fund £411.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, whether any tender for carrying out the alterations to H.M.S. Black Prince, the training ship at Queenstown, have yet been accepted; and, when it is expected that the ship will be ready for the reception of the boys?

No tender has yet been accepted, but the question is under consideration. The date cannot at present be given for the reception of boys, as it is dependent on the completion of the work by contract.

I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works, whether he can now state what new regulations have been made with regard to preaching and playacting in Hyde Park; and, whether he proposes that the same rules should apply to both?

I am not in a position to state precisely the terms of the new regulations it is proposed to make with regard to performances for money in Hyde Park, but when the rules have been framed they will be laid at once upon the Table of the House.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, whether complaints have reached him of French luggers fishing off the Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire coast stealing the nets of the line fishermen; and, if not, whether he will investigate any case where the allegations can be put before him?

No complaints of the nature referred to have reached me. If information of any specific charge of such theft is made to the Fishery Board the matter will at once be investigated.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, on what principle the amount of the Irish equivalent grant of £40,000 (the distribution of which is regulated by the Land Purchase Act, 1891) was arrived at; what were the amounts of the local licences, the proceeds of which were handed over to the counties in England, for the year 1888–9 and the year 1895–6 respectively; and, what was the amount of the local grants in England withdrawn in 1888?

The equivalent grant of £40,000 to Ireland was calculated on the basis of 9–91ths of the gain to Great Britain resulting from the substitution of the licences for the old grants in aid. No proceeds of these licences were handed over to the counties in England in the year 1888–89. The figures for 1895–96 cannot yet be accurately stated. Their yield in intermediate years is given in the finance accounts for those years. House of Commons Paper C 5,344, which was presented to Parliament when the Local Government Bill of 1888 was introduced, shows that the grants to be withdrawn in England amounted to £2,582,434, as against £2,969,873 yielded by the licences.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he can state on what plan there will be allotted to Scotland a grant from the Exchequer which shall secure to that country a sum of money applicable for its benefit equivalent to the contribution which Scottish taxpayers will be required to make to the expenses of education in England under the Education Bill brought in by Her Majesty's Government, that Bill not proposing to confer any educational or other benefit upon Scotland; and, in what form it is intended to bring before the House such equivalent grant?

The Question of the right hon. Gentleman is couched in a rather argumentative form, and I do not intend to make a debating reply to it. The Government might be prepared to deal with the subject of Scotch education, and I still entertain some hope to be able to lay before the House before Whitsuntide the conclusion at which the Government has arrived.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, when the Agricultural Rating Bill for Scot land will be introduced?

Not before Whitsuntide.

On behalf of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. EDMUND ROBERTSON): I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can now state whether the relief provided in the Scotch Rating Bill will be limited to agricultural land?

I do not think it is expedient to describe the provisions of this Bill before it is introduced.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he has observed that on Tuesday last the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the City of Dublin presented to the House of Commons a Petition in favour of an amnesty of the Irish treason-felony prisoners, now undergoing penal servitude in English goals; and, whether, in view of the position of the petitioners and the feeling entertained by Her Majesty's subjects in favour of the Petition, he will at an early date give the House an opportunity of discussing and considering the Petition?

The hon. Gentleman is aware that this subject has already been discussed this Session, and a speech of some length dealing with it was delivered by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I do not think it would be possible to renew Debate on this Question.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he will consider the Question of amending the practice of the House so as to give Members an opportunity of balloting for priority in moving Amendments in Committee to any Government Bill, and thus to prevent the repetition of such inconvenience as was manifestly sustained by Members owing to the rush to the Table immediately after the Second Reading of the Education Bill on Tuesday night?

I do not gather that any public object would be served by carrying out the suggestion, even if it were possible. No Amendment will be excluded.

I beg to ask the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India if he is now in a position to state to the House the terms of the Resolution as to the Indian, contingents to be sent to Suakim?

said, he had not the terms of the Motion with him, but he thought he could lay the Motion on the Table to-night.

said, he desired to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies a Question, of which he had given private notice—viz., whether it was the fact that Advocate Cloete had been appointed Her Majesty's representative at Pretoria, and whether he could give any information as to the sentences on the Reform leaders?

These questions were only put into my hand as I entered the House. My hon. Friend would confer a personal favour on myself if he would put all questions regarding South African matters on the Paper. ["Hear, hear!"] With regard to the Questions he now asks me, I may say that Sir Jacobus de Wet has expressed a desire to be immediately relieved from his official duties in consequence of illness, and under the circumstances Advocate Cloete has been temporarily appointed to take his place. Her Majesty's Government have no intention of making a permanent appointment until they have had an opportunity of conferring with Sir Hercules Robinson. With regard to the prisoners, I have no information.

May I be allowed to explain the reasons——

No attack has been made on the hon. Member, so as to justify a personal explanation.

asked the right hon. Gentleman whether his request for notice was intended to apply to the case of appointments like the present made by himself and of which he therefore had ample knowledge.

The hon. Gentleman will, of course, act on his own discretion. [Opposition ironical laughter.] My request is that all questions referring to South Africa should be put on the Paper.

asked leave to move the adjournment of the House in order to call attention to a matter of definite and urgent public importance, viz., "The effect of the Indian cotton duties as recently rearranged, which are causing grave dissatisfaction in India by increasing the burden of taxation imposed upon the poorest classes of the consumers." The pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. SPEAKER called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, whereupon nearly all the Members of the Opposition, save those on the Front Bench, rose in their places.

inquired whether the hon. Member was entitled to move the adjournment, inasmuch as he had only a few moments ago given verbal notice of his intention to bring the question forward on an early day?

said, in absolute strictness the hon. Member might seem to have disentitled himself to move the Adjournment by giving his notice, but if the hon. Member told him that in so doing he only referred to the Motion he now proposed to make he would not prevent the hon. Gentleman from proceeding.

signified his assent, and then said, that very grave dissatisfaction existed in India because a new and uncalled for tax had been placed upon the necessaries of the poorest classes of the Indian consumers. The House was aware that the poorer classes in India already bore more than their fair share of taxation. ["Hear, hear!"] The great problem was to make the well-to-do bear a little larger share of taxation, and almost the only way to do that was to tax the finer classes of cloth, which were only worn by the richer people. The import duties upon the finer cloth was approved of by public opinion in India, but it appeared to be a very inopportune time to put a new tax of 10 lakhs of rupees upon the poorer classes when the taxes which fell upon the richer classes were being reduced by 50 lakhs. The sting of the thing to the people of India was that the new tax was quite unnecessary, and, in their opinion, was only imposed in order to give satisfaction to the Lancashire people. The people in India had been advised not to use Lancashire-made goods at all. Surely from a political point of view such a state of feeling as the giving of such advice exhibited ought not to be allowed to exist another day. There was no need of fresh legislation, because the noble Lord could, in his executive capacity, by a stroke of the pen, remove the grievance which was being felt throughout India. This Motion was in no sense a Party one. He made no attack upon the Government, and far less did he wish to make an attack upon the noble Lord, who he was convinced had given great attention to the subject and decided it in the way that appeared to him to be the best all round. But the noble Lord laboured under the great disadvantage that he had never been in India, and therefore could not appreciate the strength of the feeling which existed in that country on this question. All classes were united upon this matter, rich and poor, official and unofficial, Indian and Anglo-Indian. The noble Lord should not take comfort from thinking that the agitation had ceased. He would refer to the letter from a leading Maharajah, which Lord Roberts read with approval in another place. That letter said that when the people of India protested openly against any Measure it was a compliment to the British nation, because it showed they hoped to get justice. The Maharajah added:—

"If we had no faith in England and Englishmen all agitation would have ceased, and there would have been a death-like calmness, not perhaps a very desirable thing in the political world of India."

The fact was that, if open agitation in this matter had ceased in India, it was not because the people had become indifferent, but rather because the grievance complained of had sunk deeply in their minds, and because they had become hopeless of receiving justice. It was not unfrequently the case that when outer symptoms of discontent were suppressed real danger began. He therefore begged the noble Lord to look into the real merits of the case and not to be deceived by mere outward appearances. The whole point of this controversy had reference to the question of Protection. When in 1895 Sir Henry James moved the adjournment of the House on the question of the Cotton Import Duties, the ground on which he did so was that Lancashire complained that the duties were Protective in their nature—that on the finer counts the Protection was partial, but that on the coarser counts, owing to the tariff of 1894, it was absolute. Under that tariff all cotton goods imported were made liable to an ad valorem duty of 5 per cent. and by way of countervailing duty the excise was placed on yarns above 20's. The argument of Lancashire was that this gave partial protection to the Indian mills as regarded the finer counts, because Lancashire paid upon the manufactured article, whereas the Indian mill owners only paid upon the raw material—namely, the yarns. Lancashire further argued that absolute protection was given with regard to the coarser goods of 20's and under, because there was no excise on the yarns of those counts. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, who was Secretary for India at that time, did not admit the plea of Protection, but he said that he was willing to make further inquiries, and that, if it was shown that Protection existed, he should be prepared to take measures to remove the injustice. The late Chancellor of the Exchequer concurred in that view, and therefore the only question really at issue was the point of Protection, and this was confirmed by the present Secretary for India, who at the time of the last Indian Budget promised to eliminate from the duties everything savouring of the nature of Protection. With the object of dealing with the question, two Bills had been brought in by the Government of India, but he complained that this legislation went far beyond the necessities of the case. It dealt with the alleged evil of Protection in regard to the complaint of Lancashire, but it went far beyond that and did an injustice to the people of India. It removed the excise duty from yarns and placed it upon woven goods—upon the manufactured article. The effect of this was to remove the grievance of Lancashire with regard to the finer counts, while it imposed a similar injustice on the Bombay millowners, because they had to pay twice over on the stores used in their mills. But the Government of India, without any necessity, went much further than this by reducing the duty on the finer counts from 5 per cent. to 3½ per cent., and thereby needlessly sacrificed a large amount of revenue. As to the coarser counts, also, there was the object of removing all Protective influence. That might be done by placing the Lancashire producer and the Bombay producer on the same level in either of two ways—by having neither import nor excise duty, or by having both import and excise duties on the coarser counts. The universal opinion in India had been in favour of having neither import nor excise duty on the coarser counts, so that no tax should be placed on such articles used by the poorer classes. But, without any sufficient reason, that wish was put aside, and an excise duty had been placed on the industries of India. This step had caused great indignation in India, and it was for this reason that he had brought the matter forward. The Government having gone, as he had said, beyond the necessities of the case, the responsibility rested upon them of showing to the House that they were justified in the course they had adopted. It had been stated that Custom-house arrangements made it impossible to carry out the wishes of the people of India in the matter; but that could hardly be the fact, for the Government of Bombay had declared that there was no insuperable difficulty in remitting the duties on the coarser counts, and in 1878 greater difficulties of a similar character were successfully overcome. In 1878 the line tried to be drawn was at 30's, near the bulk of Manchester goods, so that the matter then was much more difficult to deal with, but it was grappled with successfully. Now the line proposed is 20' s, and there is much less practical difficulty. Then there was another important point. The sole declared object of the re-arrangement of the duties was to get rid of protection. But the result was to create protection on a large scale in favour of hand looms and mills in native States. These together consumed three-fifths of all the yarn used in India. He was a friend to hand loom weavers and to native States, but from an economic point of view he must say they should not be given an unfair advantage. His main objection, however, was that the re-arrangement relieved the richer and taxed the poorer. In the matter of food the poorer classes of India were very heavily taxed. There was no heavier tax known to the world than the Salt Tax, for the working man in India had to pay 40d. by way of duty for every one penny of value. Therefore he had to pay very heavily for his necessaries as regarded food, and it was not now the time to put a further tax upon his necessaries, that is, upon the wretched clothes he wore. It might be said that the amount was small, but then his means were small. The average income was 1½d. a day, and there was not much room for taxation out of that. Therefore he came back to his main contention, that, whereas the Government had taken off 50 lakhs from the taxation of the finer cloths worn by the richer, they had done very wrong in putting 10 lakhs on the coarser cloths worn by the poorer, and he appealed to the noble Lord by a stroke of the pen to remove that grievance, which would have a very beneficial effect throughout India. He believed the Secretary of India somewhat questioned the statement that the coarser cloths were worn exclusively by the poorer classes. He thought it stood to reason that the coarser and cheaper fabrics would be worn by the poorer classes, and that seemed to be the view taken by all the authorities. That was the opinion of the India Office when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton was Secretary for India, and he did not know what further information had led the noble Lord to an alteration of that opinion. It was the basis of the whole complaint that the coarser cloths were worn by the poorer people. The Bombay Government, which he regarded as the highest authority on this matter, referred to the duty as a burden of taxation to be borne by the poorer classes, and that view was supported by the Native gentlemen in the Viceroy's Council. He thought it was a little fantastic to say that the poor people wore the more expensive and finer cloths. His contention was that this tax upon the poor was uncalled for, and that it was very injurious both to the people it affected and in the feeling it had produced throughout India. He had no wish that this should be a Party Motion at all, and he appealed to hon. Gentlemen on the other side who were acquainted with Indian matters. He regretted that his old friend Sir George Chesney was no longer in his place to raise his voice against this tax, as he did on a former occasion, but there were other Anglo-Indian Members still sitting in the House. There was his hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green, who was a direct representative of India, and the hon. Member for Cardiff, and, if he had been present he would have made his appeal to the hon. Baronet the Member for Manchester, who was for a long time Governor of Bombay, and also his hon. Friend the Member for Central Hackney, who had had a long experience in India. He felt confident that those hon. Members would be prepared to confirm what he said as to the strength of the feeling on this matter throughout India. Every representative association had put in its protest against what had been done. The Chambers of Commerce were at one with the Association of Millowners. It was a very remarkable thing that the Chamber of Commerce of Bombay should have taken this view so strongly, because it consisted entirely of gentlemen engaged in the import trade of cotton goods, and they pointed out that only two members of the body had any interest whatever in the Bombay mills. Public meetings had been held in different parts of India, and in every case the strongest possible protest had been sent in. He did not know what was the real feeling of the Government of India in this matter. They seemed to have changed a good deal from their original position, and he would like to ask the noble Lord if he would explain how that conversion came about. He had read the Blue-book with very great care, and there was a curious hiatus between the important Dispatch sent by the noble Lord on the 5th of September last and the telegram from the Government of India of the 16th of January, from which it appeared that the Government of India had found salvation from the Secretary of State's point of view. He should like to know if they could be favoured with the correspondence which took place between those dates. He thought he might also safely appeal to the Lancashire Members. He wished to make no attack whatever upon them for pressing their case as strongly as they could, but he would appeal to them to be satisfied with what they had got in this matter. They had received a very great concession in the remission of 1½ per cent. upon the import trade, and he would appeal to them not to oppose the proposal to remit the excise and import duties on the coarser counts. They now paid the same import as excise, and they had this advantage with regard to the double payment of taxation of stores. He really did not see why they should in any way oppose the removal of the import duties on the coarser fabrics. They had, too, at present a monopoly in drills, which were not made in India at all. Therefore this concession would actually be a benefit to them so far as drills were concerned. They had also pointed out that they were anxious to manufacture more of the coarser materials. If they were successful in doing so, it would also benefit them if the duty was taken off. If the Lancashire Members were agitating so strongly for the removal of these duties altogether, surely it was illogical for them to object to a portion of the duties being removed. He also wished to appeal to the sentiment that was so forcibly put by the First Lord of the Admiralty when he pointed out how very unfortunate it would be if India and Lancashire should come into collision upon this matter. He did not wish to dilate upon the question of boycotting or of any hostile measures that might be taken in India, but it was a matter, he thought, that Lancashire should consider carefully. When they remembered that Japan, China, and America were running this country very hard in the matter of finer fabrics, it would be very unfortunate if their customers in India were to take their custom to those countries instead of to the Lancashire mills. He did not think this would be any sacrifice at all, but even if it were, it would be worth making in order to remove the feeling of indignation and to draw more closely the bonds between the people of this country and of India. He would appeal to the whole House, and remind them of what the late Viceroy said upon this subject of the financial treatment of India. Speaking in another place, he said:—

"There was never a moment when it is more necessary to counteract the growing impression that our financial policy in India is dictated by selfish considerations."

This was a matter in which the people of India were exceedingly interested, and they would watch eagerly what the decision of that House would be. He trusted that that decision would be in accordance with right and justice, and humanity. ["Hear, hear."]

, in seconding the Motion, said, he could not claim to have spent the greater part of his life in India like his hon. Friend the Member for Banffshire, but he was very much struck with the words used by the late Secretary of State (Sir H. Fowler) on a memorable occasion when his right hon. Friend said that every Member in this House was a Member for India, and remembering those words he took occasion to spend the greater part of last winter in a visit to that great Dependency. No one could do so without being deeply impressed with sympathy for the teeming millions of the peaceful, patient Indus- trial classes of India, and with a desire to do whatever was possible in a Parliamentary capacity to promote their welfare. He must admit that in moving through India he was not a little struck with the strong Conservative—he might say Imperialist—sentiments of our countrymen in India among the mercantile and manufacturing classes, and even the official classes. But he found that their Conservative and Imperialistic views had been not a little shaken by the attitude taken by a number of leading politicians in this country when in Opposition, and subsequently when they acceded to power, with regard to this question of the cotton duties. Wherever he went he heard nothing but admiration expressed for the firm attitude taken by the late Secretary for India, and on the other hand he heard nothing but resentment and strong disapprobation with regard to the course taken by a number of other politicians in—what was considered in India—the placing of local and provincial before Imperial considerations. Three things, he thought, must have struck everyone who had had time to look through the Blue-book which they received on Saturday morning. Those who had read the speeches of the able Finance Minister, Sir James Westland, in introducing this Measure before the Council, must have felt that with him it was forced work, at all events, that he had very scanty respect for either the statements or the method of procedure adopted by those who took a leading part in the recent Lancashire agitation. Another impression which would be produced was that not only the non-official but that some of the most distinguished official members of the Indian Council were strongly opposed to the unsettlement of what they considered had been wisely settled in the time of the late Secretary of State. In the third place, they would find that it excited not only the opposition but the strong denunciation of the mercantile classes, and the public generally throughout our great Indian Dependency. There would be found in those papers telegram after telegram, message after message, resolution after resolution, representation after representation, from leading Chambers of Commerce in India supporting the views put forward by the Chamber of Commerce in Bombay, and it should he distinctly remembered that the members of those Chambers of Commerce, more particularly in Calcutta, were not identified with, nor interested in, the Indian cotton manufacturers in Bombay or other districts of India. They based their objections on solid and incontrovertible principles, and put forward statements of fact which, he thought, to every unprejudiced mind must be irresistible. In passing, he might observe that no stronger or more powerful statement was probably ever written on an Indian subject than that put forward by the Bombay Chamber of Commerce on these duties. During his visit to India he had many opportunities of meeting with commercial gentlemen, and he found that they were very strongly impressed with the view that those changes were not dictated by considerations for the interests of the people of India, but from political considerations in the home country. He would be glad if hon. Members would turn to the very able speech of the Hon. Patrick Fairplay. That gentleman was not a cotton manufacturer or cotton merchant, but was a most enlightened merchant in Calcutta, and on this and on other questions put forward most statesmanlike views. His contention was that if there was a surplus to be disposed of it would be better in the interests of the Manchester and Lancashire manufacturers that that surplus should be devoted to the construction of railways and the opening up of India for the distribution of the Manchester and Lancashire goods, rather than to be frittered away in the manner in which the Home Government had selected. Not only did the Hon. Mr. Playfair speak strongly on the matter, but three of the Native representatives of the provinces—the Hon. Sahib Balmant Rao, representing the Central Provinces; the Hon. Ananda Charlu, representing the Madras Presidency; besides the Hon. Mr. Stevens, all spoke equally strongly. He would not weary the House by many quotations, but he might be permitted for a minute or two to select a passage from one of these speeches, namely, the Hon. Ananda Charlu. That gentleman said:—

"I am deeply grieved to find—I say this far more in sorrow than in anger—that our Finance Minister and the Government of which he is the adviser have allowed themselves to be overpowered by the unreasoning outcry of Lancashire, and to be tempted and drawn out of their safe and incontrovertible stronghold. I beseech the responsible Ministers who have the power, if they possess the will, to see that our interests are not ruthlessly jeopardised. To my Anglo-Indian colleagues—my non-official colleagues in particular—I have a word of earnest prayer. I know that most of their class believe in a Conservative Ministry, and that they are demonstrably partial to it. I know also that many Conservative Members who constitute the bulwark of that Ministry have entered Parliament pledged to look after the interests of Lancashire in India, I mean no offence when I therefore say, what I cannot help feeling, that my Anglo-Indian colleagues would be in the last degree reluctant to impair the bulwark. But I shall beg of them to bear in mind that while India is safeguarded against foreign inroads by the strong arm of the British power, she is defenceless in matters where the English and the Indian interests clash, and where (as a Tamil saying puts it) the very fence begins to feed on the crop. In all vital matters relating to India, England holds the whip-hand, and men, sent out to us to watch those interests on the spot, are placed directly under that whip-hand. It requires preternatural strength of conviction and fortitude to withstand the flourish of the lash wielded by that whip-hand when the English and Indian interests stand mutually opposed. I am painfully conscious that I have spoken with considerable warmth, but I could not carry a smile on any lips or play the role of a soft-tongued courtier when I am face to face with a gross injury which is in store for the masses."

Not only did these representatives of the Native provinces speak, but the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, the Hon. Alexander M'Kenzie, also strongly protested. Sir Alex. M'Kenzie said that—

"Sir James Westland has not dealt with what to my mind is one of the principal objections to the Measure, that is the protection and favouritism shown to one special item of our import tariff while there are undoubtedly many other items in that tariff which have equal claims to consideration. As a Free Trader myself, I shall rejoice to see the day when we revert to Free Trade altogether, but as long as our finances require us to realise duties of this kind I can see no particular reason why cotton should be more favoured than woollen or other goods in the tariff."

These were the remarks of an able and trusted servant of the Crown, and he referred to them particularly, because during his visits to India he had seen that other industries there, in consequence of the cheapness of labour and their having the raw material at their doors, were seriously affecting some of our home industries. There was the paper-making industry. The time was when almost every pound of paper used in India was exported from this country. Now there were several large and flourishing paper mills in India which had obtained almost the whole of the Government contracts, and were supplying the commercial classes with the whole of their paper. The consequence of this was that there had been a very large and serious reduction in the exports of paper from this country to India, and that was one of the causes why the paper industry in this country was now seriously depressed. Then there was another industry with which he was personally acquainted. It was that in which his own constituents were directly engaged. It had been for a number of years a very large and prosperous industry.

Order, order! The hon. Member must confine himself to the question of the cotton duties.

bowed at once to the ruling of the Speaker. He went on to say that it might not be out of order for him to allude to a question which he put some time ago to the Secretary for India, and in which he referred to one serious inequality in the competition between English and Indian industries. It was an industry where they were allowed in India by the Factory Act to work Saturday and Sunday, night and day all the year round. He appealed to the Secretary for India to use his influence in order that something like the Saturday and Sunday holidays which we had in this country might be established in that Indian industry; but the noble Lord relied simply on the legality of the Act, and gave no promise that he would interfere in the matter. The only other brief extract he would take from the Blue book was a telegram which summed up very much the whole of the case. It was a telegram from the Hon. P. M. Mehta, President of the Bombay Presidency Association, to the Secretary of the Government of India, and was as follows:—

"I am instructed by the Council of the Bombay Presidency Association to telegraph to you the following Resolution passed to-day: 'That the pending proposal with regard to Cotton Duties before the Council is calculated to cause serious discontent among people, inasmuch as, coming on top of various recent Measures, it leads people to firm conviction that their interests are being constantly sacrificed to those of a section of the British community; that it is a measure of grave political and economic impolicy to put an excise on coarse cloths worn by the poorest classes, especially when it is done after remitting a portion of duty paid by richer classes on finer cloths, and that avowedly for no existing substantial reason, but, as admitted by Finance Minister, solely for purpose of enabling Lancashire to make experiment; that intense and real excitement and indignation prevail among all classes of people at proposed legislation; and the Council venture to urge that such policy cannot fail to be extremely detrimental to the best interests of the Empire.' "

Large public meetings, with thousands attending them, had been held in all the great centres of population in India to protest against this alteration of the Cotton Duties. He felt interested in this question, because he was satisfied that the Lancashire agitation was based on a delusion, and was promoted by the cry that a great reduction of exports to India took place in the earlier months of 1895. Five months were a very limited period in the course of trade, and prominence was not given to the fact that in the year 1894 great speculation, great over-trading, and an excessive export of those cotton goods took place. The excess of exports to India in 1894 over the average of preceding years was not less than 357,000,000 yards, and in the first nine months of 1895 the reduction only amounted to 134,000,000, leaving an excess of 233,000,000 yards. He would like to bring another very striking fact before the House with regard to alleged Indian competition. Besides what the Bombay manufacturers sold for their own home market in India, they exported in 1893–4 about 54,000,000 yards of piece goods. That seemed a pretty large quantity, but there was imported from this country in the same period no less than 2,366,000,000 yards, chiefly from Lancashire. So that the Indian exports, which it was contended were to damage and ruin, the Lancashire trade, amounted to only one-fortieth of what they imported from Lancashire. He would detain the House no further than to read a communication which he had received that morning from a gentleman who had spent more than a quarter of a century in India, and who was very intimately acquainted with both its financial and commercial interests. That gentleman wrote:—

"It is very unfortunate that the British Parliament has ever felt called upon to dictate to the Government of India the way in which its revenue shall or shall not be raised. The people of India who pay the taxes have the first claim to decide how the taxes shall be levied, and what those taxes shall be. The British Parliament has been until very recently regarded by the people of India as their last resort in search of equity and justice. It has been looked up to as the palladium of their rights. Magistrates might go wrong—men are but human—those charged with the government of the country might be led astray—such things do occur, but it was felt that the pulse of the British Parliament beat strong to help the oppressed, to do justice in scorn of consequences, and that self-interest and greed for gain might be searched for vainly within its walls. I very much fear that the recent action of the Secretary of State, which has been echoed in Parliament, has gone some way to dispel this cherished illusion. It must be borne in mind that, not with standing its many millions, the average income of the people of India is extremely small. Therefore, if a tax is to touch these millions, it must be on articles of daily use by them. There is an extremely heavy tax on salt, and a duty of 3½ per cent. on all cotton piece goods, whether imported into or manufactured in India by power-looms. Government by mandate, which is the name now given to the interference of the Secretary, is not calculated to cement dependencies to the mother country, and it has certainly not tended to increase the loyalty of Her Majesty's Indian subjects, than whom it would be difficult to find a more peaceable. law-abiding, and orderly people."

["Hear, hear!"]

said, he did not question the right of the hon. Baronet to make use of the forms of the House to call attention to this matter, but thought it was unfortunate that he had done so. It was, in his opinion, one of the most difficult and, perhaps, one of the most dangerous questions that Parliament could be called upon to deal with. The hon. Baronet had alluded to the political danger of a collision between the public opinion of this country and of India. So far as he knew, Lancashire had never objected to the Indian Government's having complete control over its taxation. What Lancashire contended for was the principle of perfect equality of treatment, and that, if India was to remain a part of the Empire, perfect equality of treatment was what Englishmen had a right to demand. So long as taxation was imposed on that principle, the political danger would disappear; but the moment it was attempted to differentiate between the industry of one country and the other, both were brought into collision. So long as the principle of perfect equality was established, there was no fear of any wide difference of opinion between those who lived in these islands and those who lived in India. His predecessor in office, in giving his assent to the tariff of taxes of 1894, deemed that he had established that perfect equality of treatment, and declared, in most unmistakable terms, that, if it could be shown that these duties were in any way unequal in their application or protective in their character, he was bound to consider any such representation with the view and desire of eliminating from the duties any vestige of Protection. ["Hear, hear!"] That was the attitude the right hon. Gentleman took up, and he was bound to say that he had endeavoured honourably to fulfil his pledges. ["Hear, hear!"] The previous duty which was in force was a 5 per cent. Customs duty upon all cloth goods and yarns imported into India; but the duty supposed to be equivalent to the Customs duties raised by the Excise was 5 per cent., not on the finished value of the cloth, but on the initial value of the yarn before it was woven into cloth, and all yarn below 20 counts was exempted from taxation; consequently it was demonstrably clear that all English goods which went to India under 20 counts paid a 5 per cent. duty from which similar goods made in India were exempt. All cloth above 20 counts paid on the finished value of the cloth against the excise levied on the initial value of the yarn alone. He did not say that the difference was very substantial, but theoretically there was a case of Protection. Anyone who looked at the able statement drawn up on behalf of Lancashire would see that the case was unanswerable—namely, that the duties as imposed did not comply with the sole condition which accompanied their imposition. In these circumstances the attention of the Indian Government was called to the fact, and they were asked to reconsider the tariff with a view to bring it into harmony with the Parliamentary condition on which alone it was sanctioned? The hon. Gentleman had referred to the hiatus which occurred between his letter of the 5th of September, and the telegram of the Indian Government of the 16th of January, and wanted to know what was done in the interval? The Government of India were acting, as far as they could, on the instructions contained in his letter, and were endeavouring to ascertain how they could possibly amend the tariff so as to bring it into conformity with the distinct pledge given to Parliament; and they were forced, after exhausting every conceivable method, to come to the conclusion that the only possible way to maintain these Cotton Duties in accordance with that pledge was to adopt the system which the hon. Baronet now condemned. The hon. Member said that he did not ask for very much. The hon. Gentleman only asked that a line should be drawn across cotton goods, and that the Government should say that, inasmuch as there was but little competition between England and India in the lower counts, all those counts should be free, and that taxation should be imposed on cloth above a certain standard. The first reason why they should not adopt that course was that it was not in the interests of the poor consumer that they should do so; and the second was that this tariff which they had sent out was, in his judgment, calculated to impose a greater burden upon the poor consumer than the tariff which it succeeded. The hon. Gentleman seemed to think that all economical and industrial forces were stationary, and that if they drew a hard-and-fast line and put a tax upon one side, that tax would leave things much as they were before. But all these forces were moving, and if they introduced merely a comparatively slight change they would cause a disturbance out of all proportion in gravity to the change. If they drew a hard-and-fast line, as had been proved over and over again, over a great mass of commodities, and said that all above a certain quality should be taxed, that would cause a rise in the price of all commodities to which that taxation applied. But they could not exempt those on the other side of the line from rising in price also. ["Hear, hear!"] They rose in sympathy. The primary object of these duties was that the Government should obtain as much as possible of the enhanced price, but the whole of the enhanced price of the yarn and cloths below 20's, which would be paid by the consumers under the proposal of the hon. Baronet, would go into the pockets of the producers. ["Hear, hear!"] The hon. Baronet was unconsciously advocating, not the interests of the poor consumer, but of the Bombay producer. Economically, his proposal was altogether unsound. As long as there was a duty on yarns it was possible to distinguish between the qualities of the yarns. Many of his hon. Friends had been connected all their lives with the cotton trade, but he did not believe that one of them would say that when yarns were woven into cloth that they could as accurately discriminate between what was above and what was below a certain line. The moment they attempted to draw such a line they would land themselves in endless difficulties. If they put a tax upon any particular article, it was essential that they should put a tax upon any substitute for it. The experiment was tried in India in 1878, and it had absolutely broken down. An exemption was made on certain classes of cotton goods, and the result was so extraordinary that he almost hesitated to quote the figures. He, however, had tested their accuracy. Before the slight alteration was made, the free goods imported from England amounted to 9,000,000 yards, the amount of duty-paid goods being 358,000,000 yards. In the first six months of the next year, the duty-paid goods fell to 323,000,000 yards, and the duty-free goods rose to 99,000,000 yards; while in the subsequent year the duty-paid goods fell to 164,000,000 yards, and the duty-free goods rose to 360,000,000 yards. Sir James Westland, in his statement contained in the Blue-book, said that he had received a letter from one of the import merchants of Calcutta, in which the writer said:—

"As regards, however, practically the whole of what is technically called 'grey goods,' of which the bulk of the Lancashire imports consist, they are used by the same class of consumers as take the production of the Indian mills, and if they can, owing to their passing free of duty, obtain the latter on more favourable terms than the former, then unquestionably the tendency will be towards a decrease in the demand for those least favourably situated."

Further on Sir James Westland said:—

"Another document which I only received last night comes from Manchester. It says, after referring to the argument which the Manchester merchants put forward, in which they asserted that the relief of goods under 20's, was sure to react in the form of restricting the demand for goods over 20's. On Tuesday I had a very remarkable confirmation of my opinion in the shape of two pieces manufactured by one of the Petit group of mills at Bombay from 20's yarns, which have totally supplanted an English-made cloth, the yarns being 28's in the twist (the 'reed' threads) and 32's in the weft (the 'pick' threads) The remarkable feature of this case is the wide difference in the yarns and the 'reed' and 'pick' of the substituted and supplanted cloths. That 20's should be substituted for 22's or 24's and 12 or 13 threads per quarter inch for 14 or 15 we were quite prepared for, but that substitution should have at once gone so far we did not expect. These are two pieces of further evidence received since the Bill was introduced, and confirm the view the Government of India has taken in this matter, and on which it has based its policy, that there is no permanent solution of the difficulty in any system which will leave a dividing line at any point, and tax the cloth which is above that line, and exempt from the tax the cloth which is below it."

The moment differential treatment was attempted difficulties arose. The one thing which trade was afraid of, and which paralysed it, was a fear of legislation which would alter existing terms of competition. So long as taxation was to be on perfectly equitable terms, whether the tax was raised or whether it was lowered, did not very much matter to the competitors, because both could compete on perfectly equal terms. But the moment they differentiated by legislation, the result was to bring the two competing industries directly into conflict with each other. That had been one of the troubles in the past, and, warned by the past, the Government had, after looking into this question from the Imperial and broadest point of view, felt that they must not have recourse to legislation which would bring two great industrial communities not only into trade competition, but into political competition with one another. ["Hear, hear!"] Then the hon. Baronet said that he brought forward this Motion in the interests of the poor; but, if they looked for the source of such proposals, they could often be traced to the Bombay millowners. He, for one, had not the least objection to the case of the Bombay millowners, or any other millowners, being properly represented before that House, and they were entitled to perfect justice and equality of treatment; but it should not be said that their case was put forward in the interests of the poor. Had the hon. Baronet ever attempted to find out what proportions of cloth the power-looms in India supplied to the population? If not, he would be surprised to hear how small the proportion was. He had some figures showing the proportions of yarn consumed by the power-looms and by the hand-looms, which he would lay before the House. The power looms, it was estimated, consumed 78, 000,000 lbs. of yarn, and the hand-looms consumed 311,000,000 lbs. of yarn. It was further estimated that the imports from Lancashire amounted to no less than 308,000,000 lbs. of yarn; and, therefore, out of nearly 700,000,000 lbs. of yarn woven into cloth, the power-looms of India absorbed only 78,000,000 lbs., and if exported cloth be deducted, they scarcely supplied 10 per cent. of the cloth which was consumed in India. It was quite a mistake to assume, as the hon. Baronet did, that the coarser cloths were worn by the poor, who, whether for reasons of cost or of greater durability, bought the cloths imported from England. The tariff which had been introduced reduced the burden of taxation upon the consumer, the tax upon imported goods having been reduced by 3½ per cent. He had not a reliable statement of what proportion of imported cloth was consumed by the poor of India, but he was perfectly certain that more than half of it was bought by them. The enormous mass of yarn utilised by hand-looms was free from taxation, and consequently its products were cheaper than they had been. ["Hear, hear!"] He thought he had shown that the proposal of the hon. Baronet was one to which the House could not assent. He owned that he felt great satisfaction at having been able to bring about an arrangement that put an end to the agitation which previously existed, and he believed that arrangement was a perfectly fair one. The hon. Gentleman who spoke second told them that a great many people in India objected to it, but he did not tell them what their arguments were. It was the misfortune of these trade disputes that the natural sympathies of those residing in the localities where the industry was situated were always in favour of that industry. It was a matter of sentiment rather than of argument, and that had in the past constituted the main danger of this question. So far as he knew the agitation had absolutely quieted down. It was seen now that they had made a just and fair settlement, and the proposal of the hon. Baronet, though a small one in itself, would in reality knock away the keystone of the system which had superseded that which was previously in force. For these reasons he hoped that the House would not only reject the proposal which the hon. Baronet had made, but, inasmuch as he had brought forward no arguments in support of it, that they would not consider it necessary to continue the Debate at any length. In supporting the Government the House would endorse the view that they had contrived to bring about an equitable and judicial solution of as contentious a matter as could be brought before any Government. [Cheers.]

said, the three speeches which had been delivered had severally illustrated the extreme inconvenience of the mode in which this question had been brought before the House. There had been no notice upon the Paper, and there had been no intimation, except a rumour in the Press, that possibly this question might be brought forward within 48 hours.

said that he had sent an intimation to the Leader of the Opposition.

said, the right hon. Gentleman only received that intimation that morning, and he did not conceive that to be an intimation to the House, which was entitled to have full notice. This question, the gravity of which it was impossible to exaggerate, had been brought before them in a manner which he thought prejudiced it, and which would tend to produce an unfortunate effect in India. He should be prepared, at the proper time and under proper circumstances, to defend his own action, and also to criticise what had been done since he held office; but hon. Members had not had this Blue-book in their hands many hours, and for his own part he candidly confessed that he had not had time to carefully read it. He knew nothing of the correspondence which had passed between the noble Lord opposite and the Government of India; he was only aware that certain proposals had been adopted which really carried out in their main character his own original proposal. The old controversy had been raised between Lancashire and India, and the question as to the limit of the amount of the Excise Duty which had been levied by the Government had also been raised. He wished to point out to the House that these were grave questions which ought to be discussed in a regular manner, so that the House could arrive at a decision which would carry some weight with it. They were asked to vote upon the question "That this House do now adjourn"; but could any body undertake to explain to the people of India what that meant? Practically it was a vote of censure upon the Government for the action they had taken, and which had received the approval of the Legislative Council of India. It was suggested that the noble Lord should withhold his assent from this Bill, which, no doubt, originally emanated to a great extent from himself, or had his full approval. He had no doubt the noble Lord had followed what Lord Salisbury laid down in his celebrated Dispatch as to the relative positions of the Legislative Council and the Secretary of State, and the great mischief which would accrue to the public interests, and especially to commercial interests, if there was any collision between these two powers. No doubt the Legislative Council fully understood what the noble Lord was going to do. They could not suppose that the noble Lord was going to upset the work of his own hands, or that the Legislative Council was going to repeal what it had just passed. If the noble Lord were to adopt the suggestion that he should arbitrarily annul what he had presumably assented to only within the last three months, that would be a course deserving the censure of the House, and would be without precedent and incapable of defence. ["Hear, hear!"] He deprecated this premature, immature, and inconclusive Debate. He was, he believed as strong a Party fighting-man as any man on that side of the House, but he never would consent to, throw India into the vortex of our Party politics. At this moment, when they had a fight with the Government on a question in regard to which strong Party feeling was aroused, and when they were on the eve of another Party political fight of perhaps greater magnitude, there was no pressing necessity to throw this question into the cauldron of political strife, and if it were done it would, he Relieved, produce a very unfortunate effect. He hoped his hon. Friend would not go to a Division, but if he did the result would be that the House, without any opportunity of fairly and fully discussing the Papers, would commit itself to an approval of the action of the Secretary of State. The hon. Baronet said that the action of the noble Lord was very much disapproved in India; he knew nothing at all about that, but if that were so, how important was it that their decision upon this question should not be arrived at in a hurry? The discussion of this question ought not to have a Party aspect. He should decline to defend his own action, or censure that of the Party opposite. He hoped they should not have a revival of the controversy between Manchester and India, until they had an opportunity first of seeing and reading what Lancashire wants, and what was the reply of the Chambers of Commerce, and especially of India, as to the case put forward by Manchester. Lancashire Members had a right to be heard. Reference had been made to the admirable speech of the Finance Minister of India, and by chance he had come upon this passage:—

"I have heard it argued, and it has been argued to-day, that they are in some respects precisely the classes who ought to contribute to present necessities; inasmuch as the same fall in the rupee which has rendered it necessary for us to enlarge our revenue has been to them a source of advantage. To them it means higher prices for their agricultural produce, and more active trade in carrying it away to the markets. Those who argue about oppressiveness of taxation and the inability of these classes to meet the demand, altogether forget, it seems to me, the figures with which they are dealing. The whole tax which we intend to obtain by cotton duties is put down at 105 lakhs of rupees; the number of people who pay it—for nearly every soul in India wears cotton cloths—is something like 287,000,000; and the result of these two figures is to show that the average contribution of each person to the tax is about seven pies, a little over half an anna. It is a tax which by the nature of its application is to some extent graduated according to the means of the payer, and we may safely say that the vast mass of the population to which I have referred will not be called on to pay on the average more than half an anna, and that the poorest classes—those who cannot afford to indulge in even such luxuries as a good dhuti—will not have to pay, even if they used taxed cloth, more than a quarter as much, or, say, one pie and a half. To talk of this as oppressive taxation is a misuse of words."

["Hear, hear!"] He was sorry to have interposed in that Debate, but he thought it due to the House to make these few remarks. ["Hear, hear!"] The changes made by the noble Lord were of great gravity, and they could not be properly discussed on a Motion for the Adjournment. ["Hear, hear!"]

agreed as to the great inconvenience that must ensue if this subject was to be sprung upon the House in this manner. The Motion appeared to be based upon the argument that the consequence of the alteration of the duties would be an increase of taxation upon the poor of India. He should like to know at what percentage the hon. Baronet fixed the poor of India? He did not think he should be over-stating the facts if he were to put it at 80 per cent. or 90 per cent., and yet the noble Lord had pointed out that the amount of duty-free goods consumed in India previous to the alteration of the duties was only one-tenth of the total consumption. Unless the hon. Baronet was prepared to argue that the poor classes of India were not more than one-tenth of the whole population, the superstructure he had raised was entirely dissipated. ["Hear, hear!"] At present all the people of India were called upon to pay was 3½ per cent. additional taxation upon one-tenth of their consumption, whereas they were relieved to the extent of 1½ per cent. upon nine-tenths of their consumption. The position of Lancashire was clear. They had pointed to the increasing and fierce competition taking place between India and Lancashire. They had showed that, whilst they in Lancashire had a retrogressive and stagnant trade, in India there was a developing and progressive trade. They had stated that, while in Lancashire millions of spindles were stopped, in India the cotton factories were paying dividends of from 10 per cent. to 25 per cent., and that during the year subsequent to the imposition of these duties the shares of the Bombay mills increased in value to the extent of 1,600,000 tens of rupees. Taking those facts into consideration, it could not be argued that India was suffering. It had been contended and proved that the duties were protective. Up to 20's counts they were absolutely protective. The hon. Member gave an example of the way in which an inferior article made in India was made to pass as of Lancashire manufacture, but said he would not enlarge upon this matter, as it would be brought out if a Debate rose upon the question. They had got what they claimed and asked for. They had asked that their position should be rendered identical with that of the Indian manufacturer, and that there should be an equalisation of duties. In granting them that, he thought the noble Lord had removed the bone of contention between Lancashire and India—["hear, hear!"]—and they now joined hands with the Indian manufacturers in an attempt to get the whole of the duties abolished. The imposition of the duties in India had been referred to as costly and vexatious. It had also been said that this was protection in favour of the handloom manufacturer against the power loom manufacturer. A duty of 3½ per cent, was protective, in the mind of the hon. Baronet, when it came between the power loom manufacturer and the handloom manufacturer, but, according to his contention, and that of many hon. Members on the same side of the House, a five per cent, duty was not protective when it was imposed upon Lancashire goods against Indian goods. ["Hear, hear!"] Agitation and excitement had, no doubt, taken place in India, but he believed, from representations he had had, that they had died down. They also took place in Lancashire when the people felt they were being treated in a distinctly unfair manner. ["Hear hear!"] He believed the present arrangement was one agreeable to the manufacturers of both Lancashire and India. Whether the duties rose or fell was a matter of no importance to Lancashire manufacturers so long as they were not placed at a disadvantage in competition with Indian manufacturers in the Indian markets, and they all paid alike. [Cheers.]

suggested to the hon. Baronet the propriety of withdrawing his Motion, as he considered that the time of introducing it was not judiciously selected. He agreed with the hon. Member for Stockport as to the reasonable measure of contentment resulting from the action of the Government in altering the duties, but he still hoped to see them entirely removed, as altogether undesirable. That question had best be discussed, however, when the financial affairs of India were debated, and he hoped that that time would be early. The hon. Baronet the Member for Dundee, a little exercised in his mind by what had taken place in the House last summer, took a trip to Bombay last winter, dined with a number of gentlemen connected with the trade of Bombay, and came back impressed with the notion that the Lancashire people were most selfish. On that point he must have some better evidence than that supplied by the hon. Baronet.

I hope it will not be necessary to put such a Motion after the appeals which have been made from both sides of the House.

thought his hon. Friend would act wisely if he withdrew his Motion, but he hoped the Leader of the House would give them a promise that the Indian Budget should be brought on at a time when this subject could be adequately discussed.

said, that no one was more anxious than he that the Indian Budget should come on at a time when Indian matters could be adequately discussed; but he was not the obstacle to the progress of business. He felt that this was not a time when this subject could be properly discussed, and, therefore, he hoped the House would dispose of the Motion without a Division. ["Hear, hear!"]

understood the right hon. Gentleman would do his utmost to bring on the Indian Budget on an early day, and, therefore, asked leave to withdraw his Motion.

said, that just before the conclusion of the Debate on the Amendment the other night, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton complained that no notice whatever had been taken of the speech made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin. In not replying to him he certainly did not mean any discourtesy to the right hon. Gentleman, but it appeared to him that the right hon. Gentleman spoke to an Amendment which was quite different to that of the hon. Member for Northamptonshire and that it would be inconvenient to discuss two Amendments at the same time. He had stated already, he thought with sufficient distinctness and clearness, his reasons for opposing the Amendment now before the Committee. Undoubtedly the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin was, in some respects, much less objectionable than that under discussion; indeed, in some respects and subject to certain conditions, there was a good deal to be said for the right hon. Gentleman's proposal. He signed the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission, which recommended a division of rates, but the view of the Government was that, if that principle was to be adopted at all, it must have attached to it three conditions, all of which were wanting in the present Bill. If such an arrangement were made at all it ought to be made as a permanent arrangement, and ought to apply to rates of every description. ["Hear, hear!"] They had already agreed to make this Bill a temporary Bill, and in addition to that it applied to rates which fell upon land only. The third condition was one of the very first importance—viz., that if the owner was to bear directly any portion of the rates he must have fair and adequate representation. ["Hear, hear!"] There was no provision of that kind in the Bill, and he was not prepared to in-cumber the Measure by any such provision. He was rather surprised at the attitude of right hon. Gentleman opposite upon this question, because in 1893 they refused to adopt the principle of division of rates although strenuously pressed to do so by some of their supporters. He did not now refer to the hon. Member for South Molton. That hon. Gentleman had been quite impartial in his condemnation of both Parties, but he recollected that, although the hon. Gentleman did screw up his courage to put upon the Paper an Amendment to the late Government's Bill under which the rates would have been divided, when the crucial moment arrived he withdrew the Amendment. There were others who took a very different action. Mr. Rathbone, for instance, summed up his speech on the 6th of November 1893 by laying down three conditions, one of which was that the rates should be divided between owners and occupiers, and that, to guard against too great laxity in increase of debt, owners should be given representation on the governing body. On the 21st of the same month, Mr. Rathbone moved an Amendment, the foundation of which, he said, was a direct division of rates between owner and occupier. To his speech the Government of the day turned a deaf ear, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton apparently so much disapproved of it that he would have none of it. The reason was not very far to seek. The Government had themselves made the division practically impossible by refusing the representation of the owners. Having refused to adopt the principle in 1893, they called upon the present Government to adopt it in a totally different Bill. There was no feeling, or a very small one indeed, on this question. In reply to the Central Chamber of Agriculture, only three reports in favour of the proposed division had been sent in. Only that morning he had received a letter from a gentleman whom the House would at once recognise as an authority on this question, and he should like to read it to the House. It was from Mr. Clare Sewell Read, who, writing from Honingham Thorpe, Norwich, said:—

"I hope you will continue to oppose the Amendment of your Rating Bill for the division of rates between landlord and tenant. When, some thirty years ago, a similar proposal was before the House, I am reminded that I said it might be more covenient for a heavy-laden ass to carry its load in two panniers, but I hoped he would not be such a donkey as to imagine he was not carrying the whole load. I was then somewhat in favour of the proposed division, as landowners in quarter sessions had autocratic control of the county rate, and as ex officio guardians, had direct representation in dispensing the poor rate. All this is now altered. County, District and Parish Councils are all elected by a constituency, the great majority of whom pay directly no rates. It seems, therefore, an injustice to call upon the owners of the land to pay half those rates over which they have neither representation nor control. The great spending body are the Guardians, and the farmers in rural districts are still in a large majority, and, being the chief ratepayers, are naturally interested in keeping the rates within reasonable bounds. Now that Parliament appears willing to give the tenants some substantial relief from rates, what cause is there for dividing the remainder of the burden with the landlord? It is nonsense to say that this just concession will all be taken by the landlord I will answer for the East Anglian tenantry, that if we get it we mean to keep it "—[Cheers]—"but when any substantial benefit comes from better times, we farmers shall only be too glad to share our profits with our labourers and our landlords." [Cheers.] You are aware that the Central Chamber of Agriculture, at the end of its last meeting, passed a Resolution by a small majority in favour of dividing rates between owner and occupier. But, as the total of the division did not number above one-half the Members of the Council who were present early in the day, a different decision would have resulted in the morning."

[Cheers.] He had only further to add that for the reasons he had that afternoon and previously stated, her Majesty's Government could make no concessions on this point, and therefore they must positively refuse to accede to the Amendment before the House. [Cheers.]

said that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chaplin) had taunted the late Government and himself both on Thursday night and again now that the best and most legitimate opportunity of dealing with the question of the division of rates between owner and occupier occurred upon the Local Government Bill of 1894.

I said it was a much better opportunitity.

replied that they would not quarrel about the comparative or the superlative, but as there were many new Members who cheered the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman he would like to recall the circumstances which attended the passing of the Bill of 1894 through that House. That was a Bill which created an entirely new local authority in every parish in Great Britain. It reformed all existing local authorities except municipal boroughs. It dealt with the local administration of London; and it also dealt to a large extent with the administration of the poor-law. That Bill occupied more time in passing through the House than any other Bill with the one exception for the last 60 years. It took 57 days of Parliamentary time. It was 34 days in Committee. The Opposition put down 1,025 amendments, of which they moved 402—[laughter]—and yet throughout the whole of that long time he only moved the Closure twice. [Cheers.] During the progress of the Bill constant appeals were made to the Government to abandon one-half of the Measure, on the ground that it was overladen and too large to be passed as one Bill. Therefore any addition to it would have been fiercely contested. ["Hear, hear!"] But if it was a Parliamentary impossibility in 1894, as it undoubtedly was, there was yet another reason for not dealing with the matter. They were then following a precedent. In 1888 the then President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) was asked and refused to burden his Bill with this condition of the division of rates between landlord and tenant. The still further reason why he (Sir H. Fowler) could not deal with this subject in 1894 was that they had not, as the President of the Local Government Board now had, two millions of money to give away. [Cheers.] That very fact made this the proper opportunity for dealing with the matter. [Cheers.] They had authorities on this question. The last two Commissions which had sat on agricultural matters—the Duke of Richmond's Commission and the recent Commission—had not ignored the question. The Duke of Richmond had given his view of the matter, and his opinion had not been altered. The right hon. Gentleman had again and again called their attention to the report of the recent Commission on Agricultural Depression, and had stated that the House ought to attach great importance to the views it had expressed. But he had not called the attention of the Council to the special reservations of Mr. John Clay, who signed the majority Report, and who was not altogether adverse to this legislation. Then, in addition, there was also the present First Lord of the Admiralty. It was impossible to ignore his statements upon this question, not so much because he was a Member of the present Government, as because he was one of the greatest living authorities upon the subject, and because he was committed, both Parliamentarily and legislatively, to endeavour to carry out the Amendment of his hon. Friend for Northampton, as modified by the Amendment of the Member for Bodmin now proposed. In his well-known letter to the late Sir Julian Goldsmid, the right hon. Gentleman said:—

"To defend my proposal as to the Division of local rates between landlord and tenant would extend this letter far beyond reasonable limits. I have fully argued the matter in the draft Report submitted by me to the Select Committee upon Local Taxation of 1870, and to that I would venture to refer you for a detailed exposition of my views of the advantages, both economical and administrative, which would result from such a division of the rates."

There was but one quotation that he would make from that Report, in which the whole question of the incidence of rates were argued with very great ability, and the division was defended with great power by the right hon. Gentleman—

"The majority," he said, speaking of the farmers, "have no lease at all, and stand in relation, to the landlords under which rack-rents are on the whole unusual. If tenants holding at will, or on a yearly tenancy, had to pay rack-rents, there can be little doubt that every increase of rates imposed upon the tenant would render it necessary for him to demand a reduction of rent, otherwise the reduction of his profit would leave him in the end no option except to throw up his farm. But, as a matter of fact, it appears that a great portion of the farms in England are not rack-rented. If so, it is clear that any increase in local burdens must fall upon the margin between the actual rent and the rack-rent, and so far diminish the advantage derived by the farmer from his actual rent being below a rack-rent, and, till that margin was exhausted, it would naturally be useless for him to apply to his landlord to readjust his rent. It may further be stated that even where that margin is not great, and where the occupier is paying a full rent, he would be in practice at a considerable disadvantage in applying for a reduction of rent in consequence of increasing local burdens."

And then the right hon. Gentleman argued very strongly the disadvantage which the tenant was placed at in taking the initiative, and showed that, though ultimately the burden of the rates fell upon the landlord, there was an intermediate period during which it fell upon the occupier, and that the occupier could not, without disturbing his tenancy, which was a greater grievance to him than ever paying that additional rent, obtain the relief he needed. Then they had the experience of Scotland; they had the experience, to a great extent, of Ireland; and they had the pledges of this Government upon the question. He would like to call the attention of the Committee to what were the last words of the last Conservative Government upon this question—words by which he thought they were bound to-day, and which they ought now to carry out. They spoke through the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the present First Lord of the Admiralty, who said:—

"From what I have said on previous occasions on this question I do not recede, with the saving of existing contracts and securing to the owner a voice in the expenditure of the rates, and I am authorised to say on the part of my Colleagues that that is their view also. We consider that, while it is not possible in this Bill to deal with the division of rates between owners and occupiers, as it would involve the settlement of many other matters which it would be impossible to put into this Bill, we will certainly consider how the division recommended by the Richmond Commission should be carried out. We have been asked how far we can pledge ourselves to deal with the matter by legislation. We cannot pledge ourselves to deal with the question within six months. We cannot say we will undertake at any given moment to deal with it; but we will say this—that we consider that the whole question of rating has still to be dealt with. It is a chapter that has not been concluded, and it is a matter that we should have been glad to include in this Bill if it had not been impossible to do so. Though we cannot pledge ourselves to any particular date, we shall deal as soon as we can with this question of rating, and take into our best consideration how we can secure the division of rates between owners and occupiers."

Well, this they contended was the occasion. [Cheers.] This was a short Bill; it was a simple Bill. [Ministerial cheers.] The First Lord of the Treasury said it was a one-clause Bill. [Ministerial cheers.] Well, then, how easy to add to a Bill of one clause one other clause such as that suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin—namely, that, reserving existing contracts and upholding them, for the future rates should be divided as they were in Scotland, between the owner and the occupier.

Which rate?

said, all rates. There was also the point of adequate representation. It had been said that. Quarter Sessions had an autocratic-power of taxation, but Parliament had very properly put an end to that autocratic power, and had invested the representation in the occupiers of the county. He took it that the landlords who lived in the county were occupiers in that county, and therefore they had their representation, and in the Bill of 1894 the owner was made one of the electors, and therefore the owner had representation. They were now dealing with the burdens on the land. It was said that this was a Bill for the relief of agriculture. Why should not the owner as well have some share? They were not disputing that: but the Amendment before the House was that the State should pay one-half of the rates, the occupier one-fourth, and the owner one-fourth. That appeared a fair and equitable division so far as this relief was concerned. Here was£10,000,000 of public money being taken for a specific purpose, and therefore from this time they contended that there should be relief given to the occupier from the landlord as well as from the State, and that he should have the opportunity of defending himself from what otherwise must inevitably happen, the obligation to pay this half of the rate, because, for the reasons set forth so clearly by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, he was put at a disadvantage in initiating a change. [Cheers.]

I trust the Committee will not be betrayed, by the speech to which we have just listened, into discussing the general question of whether the system of half-payment by owner and occupier is better than the existing payment entirely by the occupier. That is not the question which divides the House at the present time. Speaking for myself, both as a Member of the Government pledged by the statement made in 1888, and by many other declarations to the system of dividing the rate, and accustomed to that system in Scotland, where it works admirably, I, at all events, am not going to say one word against it. I think it is the best system, and therefore it is a waste of Parliamentary powder and shot to bring forward arguments showing that it would be a change for the better if that change could be introduced into this country. The only question before the Committee—and I hope my hon. Friends will remember this—is whether we shall risk the destruction of this Bill by overloading it—[Opposition laughter and Ministerial cheers]—or whether we should endeavour to introduce into a Measure in no sense connected with this subject—[Opposition cries of "Oh!"]—and in no sense leading on to this particular reform, a Measure absolutely unsuited to the general framework of our scheme. [Opposition cries of dissent.] It is unsuited to the framework of our scheme because our scheme is a temporary scheme. [Cheers.] It is unsuited to the framework of our scheme, because it relates to agricultural land alone, and absolutely excludes all connection with urban land—[Cheers]—and because it does not even deal with what is commonly called the agricultural interest alone, but only affects the rates of that part of the agricultural interest which is exclusive of buildings and houses, though they are absolutely necessary to the carrying on of the agricultural industry. [Cheers.] There is a third reason, which is, that if you introduce the Amendment which has been suggested you will inevitably raise the question of special representation of owners. I am not sure whether that discussion would be in order in such an Amendment or not—in other words, whether, if the Amendment of my right hon. Friend were introduced into the Bill, it would or would not be in order to introduce and discuss a series of clauses making an alteration in our existing local government. I am inclined to think it would be out of order, but, whichever alternative you choose, observe the inconvenience of the situation in which the Committee would be placed. If it is out of order to discuss the question of representation, then you will require the Committee to make an alteration in our system of local taxation, and yet deprive them of the opportunity of making the incidental altera- tion in our local government possibly following logically from that alteration. If, on the other hand, it is in order to discuss the question of representation, I beg the Committee to notice that we shall find ourselves embarked on a great Measure of reform of local government. [Cheers.] Both of those alternatives are intolerable alternatives. What the right hon. Gentleman opposite said in passing his Measure in 1894, and what my right hon. Friend the present President of the Local Government Board said of his Measure in 1888—namely, that it would be overweighted by any proposal of this kind, that it would necessarily and inevitably lead to discussion so prolonged and so intricate that the Measure would be smothered in the amount of new matter thus added—all those arguments are at least as applicable to the present Measure as they were to the Measures in regard to which they were originally used. [Cheers.] I hope my hon. Friends will abstain from the superfluous and unnecessary task of discussing whether it is in the abstract a good or an evil alteration in the incidence of local taxation, and that, if they think it necessary to address the House, it will be simply to give their view of whether or not they think the passage of this Measure would be facilitated by the enormous change proposed by my right hon. Friend. [Cheers.]

It is very obvious that the right hon. Gentleman is extremely anxious not to face the principle involved in this Amendment, and he has implored his Friends not to enter upon the discussion of it. [Cheers.]

I said I accepted the principle.

But that will not prevent us from discussing it. [Cheers and counter cheers.] The first thing the right hon. Gentleman, if he desires to forward his Bill, should do, is to attain to some agreement on his own Bench as to what this Bill is and what its objects are. We had thought in our innocence that this was a Bill for the purpose of relieving agricultural distress. [Ministerial cheers.] Yes, but an Amendment was moved the other day having reference to the question of agricultural distress and proposing that the provisions of this Bill should apply to the districts where distress existed, and not to those where distress did not exist. [Cries of "No, no!"] That is a sufficiently accurate description of it. [Mr. W. LONG: "No, no!"] What is then? [Mr. LONG was understood to say, "Never mind!"] I will state what the right hon. Gentleman, who says he does not mind, said on that occasion. He said:—

"That hon. Members in saying that the policy which underlay this Bill was that of giving relief to agricultural distress, had fallen into an error."

It was an error to suppose that the object of this Bill was to relieve agricultural depression. The right hon. Gentleman cannot call out "Never mind" to his own words. [Cheers.] "This particular Measure," according to the right hon. Gentleman, "proposes to relieve the pressure of the rates," contradicting, I must say, the author of the Bill, who put it specifically as a question of relieving agricultural distress. It was an error, said the Minister for Agriculture, to suppose it was anything of the kind, but it was a Measure proposed to relieve the pressure of the rates. He put forward this Bill as distinctly a rating Bill, and he said it involved a policy advocated for many years before agricultural depression. That was the view of the Minister for Agriculture. It is a Bill to deal with the question of rating, therefore this question of the principle of rating is, according to the right hon. Gentleman, the very pith and marrow of this Bill, and we are proposing to deal with it on the principle so long advocated by the present First Lord of the Admiralty. [Cheers.] As this is not an Agricultural Depression Bill, but a Rating Reform Bill, we are extremely anxious to know the views of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who for the last 25 years has been a leading authority on rating and of the principle advocated in the Amendment now before the Committee. [Cheers.] I would endeavour, if I could, to reconcile the antagonistic views of the author of the Bill, of the Minister for Agriculture, and of the First Lord of the Treasury, for all three have given perfectly different views of what the Bill is and what its objects are. [Laughter.] Indeed, a great amount of the difficulty we have in dealing with the Measure is because the Government themselves have not made up their minds, or, at all events, have not informed the House of Commons what their view is of the nature of the Bill they have introduced. I will endeavour to reconcile these opposing views. As I understand it, it is a Rating Bill; but, as I think the President of the Local Government Board said, it might have waited for a time, if it had not been for the agricultural depression which made it necessary and advisable to bring forward this Measure. Let us look at it from that point of view. Here is a Rating Bill, a complete change in the system of agricultural rating in this country, a Bill which is to make half the rate payable by the Exchequer. But when you are halving the rate in this way between the occupier, who previously paid the whole, and the nation, who is to pay the taxes out of which the other half comes, how can you say it is not to the purpose to discuss the principle upon which the division of the rates is to take place? [Cheers.] Your very Bill is one for the division of rates, that is its essence, and "why then do you seek to exclude the principle upon which the division of rates ought to be founded? [Cheers.] I suppose it is by the Closure, because you do everything by the Closure. [Laughter and cheers.] You say this is a temporary Bill. Well, if you are going to make this temporary provision about the division of rates, why not make this same temporary provision about the division of rates between farmer and owner, as well as between the public and the farmer ["Hear, hear!"] You do not agree with the view that this relief is to go to the owner. You say it may ultimately, but that for the present it will go to the farmer, and what I have to say will be founded on your assumption that for the present and during the duration, of this Bill the rate will be paid by the farmer. You say that the party you want to relieve, for the present, in agricultural distress, is the tenant-farmer. What we ask is that, as the State is to assist the tenant-farmer by the proposal in your Bill, that the landowner shall also assist the tenant-farmer. [Cheers.] That is the point of our Amendment. The proposition is that the tenant-farmer pays the whole of the rate, and the demand we make in this Amendment is that the landlord shall come forward and help the tenant-farmer by paying a share of that rate of which at present we say the owner pays none and the farmer pays the whole. ["Hear, hear!"] And here the question of agricultural distress comes in, and the question which I venture to say lies at the root of the whole of this discussion is this—Who has suffered most? Who has borne the heaviest part of the burden of agricultural distress? Has it been the owner or the occupier of the land? I affirm that nine-tenths of the burden—I believe I might go further and say 99–100ths of the burden—has been borne by the tenant-farmer. [Cries of "No, no!"] I affirm that enormously the greater share of the burden has been borne by the tenant-farmer and not by the landlord. That is my proposition, and I shall endeavour to establish it. If I establish that proposition, then I have established this—that the section of the agricultural interest who has borne the smallest fraction of the burden of agricultural distress is the fraction which ought to assist the other part who have borne a far greater portion of the agricultural distress, and that is a question which you cannot refuse to discuss in this Bill. [Cheers.] The first question is this. We are told that the tenant-farmer of this country—and I am afraid in a great degree, in many districts it is true—has made no profits, that he has, in point of fact, lost his capital, has suffered most severely, and at least as much and more, perhaps, even in proportion, than the fall in the price of produce. Is that true of the landlord? Is it true that rent has fallen in the same proportion as the profits of the farmer? [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes!"] An hon. Member opposite says "Yes," and he comes from Shropshire, [A laugh.] I will give him some evidence from Shropshire directly, upon authority that I am sure he will not deny. ["Hear, hear!"] Do not let us be told this is not a question to be discussed upon a Bill that pretends to be founded on agricultural depression, and which professes to be for the, relief of the tenant-farmers of this country. I have considered this matter very carefully, and I have read the evidence given before the Commission. I have also read those very important and instructive documents, the Reports of the Assistant Com- missioners; and naturally one of the first Reports that I looked at was that relating to the county in which I reside—a Report furnished by a gentleman extremely well known to every agriculturist, Dr. Fream. In this Report Dr. Fream says:—

"In cases where what were regarded as only fair and reasonable rents were maintained, even in the good times, the tenants have been held together; but on other estates, where old truants were got rid of for the sake of others willing to pay higher rents, the result has been disastrous. Unduly high rents were accompanied by short tenancies; many and frequent changes were consequently the result, and the general tendency of such a policy has been ruinous. It is maintained that those landlords who have been in the habit of making reasonable reductions when asked have done best in the long run; and, on the other hand, that a generation of farmers has been ruined through the lack of timely concessions."

He then goes on to quote a letter, dated October 2nd, which he says was sent to him by a farmer whose family had been tenants on the same estate for two centuries. I do not believe there is any county in England where tenancies have been of longer duration than in the county of Hampshire. ["Hear, hear!"] He says:—

"Since our conversation I have considered the matter somewhat, and writing from a tenant-farmer's point of view, and solely as regards arable land, I beg to append my humble opinion, formed from costly experience, of the causes of the present ruinous state of our in-industry."

He proceeds to speak of bad seasons, and of foreign competition. ["Hear, hear!"] Yes, and he speaks of another thing which I hope the hon. Gentleman who cheers will note:—

"The disinclination and refusal of landlords, in most cases, to meet their tenants. Some, not all, are now offering 15 or 20 per cent, abatement. When, as is the case for the last two years, more than the rent has been lost, this is too little. In seasons like the last two, 50 per cent, should be allowed to tenants of a few years' standing to enable them to hold on."

Then comes another cause for the ruinous state of the agricultural industry:—

"Absence of combination and any real representation in Parliament. Both Houses are overdone with landlords and their advisers." [Cheers.] "The interests of the tenant-farmers are now and have always been neglected."

Now, Sir, there is another tenant-farmer who writes to Dr. Fream. He says:— "Good farmers have not been sufficiently well treated and met by the landlords"—and this is extremely important, and, I must say that, according to my observation, I am afraid it is true—"so long as any balance was thought to be at the bankers, no reduction was made. No consideration was given to the question whether or no the farm paid any interest on the tenant's money. That is the question to which I ask the attention of the House. In this House the term "agricultural interest" is generally used to mean the landlords. [Cheers.] But the agricultural interest is a partnership composed of the landowner, the tenant-farmer and the labourer, and when misfortune occurs there ought to be some equality in the distribution of the loss. ["Hear, hear!"] If you allow the tenant-farmer to lose everything, to lose his profit, to sink his capital, and yet pay his rent, that is not a fair arrangement of the partnership. [Cheers.] That is the whole question. And now I will show the House that while rents have been reduced in many cases very little and in many cases not at all, the farmers have been for years deriving no profit and paying these rents out of their capital. If that is the condition of things in the agricultural partnership, have we not the right to call on the landlords to do something to contribute to the losses of the tenant-farmers, as we do in the Amendment now before the House? [Cheers.] I could multiply these cases indefinitely, because the Returns are full of them. I will take Mr. Pringle's Report on North Durham and Yorkshire. He says:—

"Rents are stated to be everywhere too high and neither the reductions nor remissions have been adequate to the necessities of the farmer, and when they did come they were not large enough."

Now I will come to the county of the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill. I find, as I expected to find, in the evidence personal testimony to the liberality and generosity with which he has himself dealt with his tenants. [Cheers.] The popular impression is that rents have gone down to nothing; but that is not the case. There happens to be in Mr. Wilson-Fox's account of Lincoln shire a table of the rents on several large estates in that county, which is said to be one of the most distressed counties. Here is a statement of the rents on the great estates in Lincolnshire. I take the first, the estate of Sir John Thorold. The rent for 1893 is put at 23s. 5d., and 1893 was one of the worst years we have had. That is a reduction on what it was in the high times; but it is a curious fact, to which I would call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet, that in 1820, the good old days of Protection, it was only 23s. l0d.

Most of the land on that estate is in hand. [Ministerial cheers.]

This is founded on the interim Report. The most material point in the whole thing is whether the rents have fallen in proportion to the fall in the price of produce, and whether the burden cast on the owner is anything to compare with the burden cast on the occupier. [Cheers.] That is the question we raise, and we shall raise it here and elsewhere. [Cheers.] Let it be distinctly understood what the issue is. I say that in this agricultural distress the farmers have suffered immensely more than the landowners. That is the position I am prepared to prove over and over again from every page of the volume before us. I take now Mr. Edward Turner's estate. The rent on that estate is 19s. 2d.; on the Earl of Yarborough' s, 19s. 3d.; on the Marquess of Bristol's, 19s. 6d.; on Earl Brownlow's 22s. 2d.; on Sir F. Astley-Corbett's, 23s. 4d. I quote these estates because they are estates on which the rents have been reduced more than in most other places. It is true that the great landowners have reduced their rents more in proportion than the small landowners; therefore, these are favourable instances of the rentals of that county. But these rents, though they have been considerably reduced from the figure at which they stood in the seventies, are not ruination rents. [Cheers.] They average above 20s. an acre, and what we ask in this Amendment is that out of that 20s. the landowner should contribute something towards the rate that is to be put upon the tenant. That is the basis of our contention. ["Hear, hear!"] Now I come to Shropshire. One of the first witnesses called before the Commission was Mr. Lander, and I am sure the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite will admit that he is a very high authority. He is Chairman of the Joint Committee of the Shropshire County Council and also of the Chamber of Agriculture. In his evidence he said that throughout the county good mixed farms averaged from 26s. to 35s., tithe included. Well, those are not ruination rents. [Cheers.] The whole of Mr. Lander's evidence is founded on statements sent in to the Chamber of Agriculture, and I do not think the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite will contend that Shropshire is one of the most distressed counties.

No.

It is, perhaps, one of the least distressed. Anybody who reads the evidence, will see that, on the whole, in this distress Shropshire has been forfunate. Having given that account of the rentals of Shropshire, what does Mr. Lander say is the condition of the farmers? He says that, the capital of the farmers in Shropshire has disappeared. He was asked, "What has become of their capital, and in what way have they lost it?" and he answered, "They have lost it in their business—the business of farming." [Cheers.] Then he was asked, "Do you mean paying too much rent?" That is rather a searching question to be addressed to the Chairman of the Joint Committee and of the Chamber of Agriculture, and he answers, "Paying too much rent, and they have received too little for their produce." That is the account he gives of the condition of one of the partners in the agricultural interest in Shropshire—"paying too much rent and receiving too little for their produce." [Cheers.] He went on to say that the landowners of Shropshire had as a rule, perhaps, met them fairly, but he was afraid that they would soon be in as bad a plight as the farmers. [Ministerial cheers.] He is asked:—

"You have just stated that the farmers are, aware that they have been paying too much rent. That is not meeting them fairly, if they do not reduce the rent to what it should be, or what the farmer can make out of his land?"

And he answered:—

"Well, of course, a good many landlords are not in a position to reduce rents as much as they would like to do. They have certain charges to meet, and their hands are tied."

Well, that is a very unfortunate position for the landlords, but it does not affect the position of the tenants. [Cheers.] The tenant is not to be over-rented because the landlord has overcharged his land, and that really lies at the root of this question. [Cheers.] Mr. Lander was asked, "Did he think the farmers should suffer on account of these charges?" "Certainly not," he replied; "but I am afraid they have to do so." [Cheers.] Then came the question:—

"If the farmers are of opinion they are paying too much rent, and the landlords think otherwise, how is the question of rent to be settled?"

The answer was:—

"Well, it is a difficult question, but I think it is a matter you might legislate upon."

[Cheers.] That is the evidence of a gentleman, who stands at the very summit of agriculture in Shropshire. Mr. Pringle dwells upon the subject also, and so impressed is he with the unfairness to the tenants of the present system of settling rent that he proposes an elaborate system of arbitration in his very important and interesting Report, which hon. Gentlemen who wish to go to the bottom of this matter should study. ["Hear, hear!"] Mr. Hunter Pringle, dealing with Northamptonshire, gives a table compiled from the balance-sheet of a farm, which shows that, while the clear profit of the farm for a certain number of years was only £4,900, the rent paid was £36,751. [Cheers.] As Mr. Pringle observes, the rent paid was 7½ times the profit. [Cheers.] The estimation upon which Schedule B of the Income Tax was based was that the tenant-farmer should make a profit to the extent of one-half the rent. But here is a rent that is 7½ times greater than the profit. Is that a fair condition of things? Mr. Pringle says it is a perfectly unfair condition of things. [Cheers.] If you waited until you knew what the net profits of a farm were and then divided them into the tenant's share and the landlord's share, do you think the landlord would get the rent he is getting now? No, he would not. [Cheers.] If the tenant-farmer is making no profit at all, if his capital is being consumed in paying rent, on what principle, then, are those rents of 20s., 23s., 26s., and 35s. per acre taken out of the land? [Cheers.]

Is the right hon. Gentleman, making any allowance for the interest on capital the landlord may be spending on the land?

That is not the question. [Ministerial laughter.] I admit that the landlord is entitled to the greater share of the net profit for what he supplies. He supplies what may be called the fixed capital for the farm. But the farmer supplies the working capital—he supplies the industry; and if the tenant-farmers are making on profits at all, but are paying rents out of capital, clearly the present division of the profits of agriculture cannot be a fair one. I am not saying what the exact proportion ought to be, but I say you ought to take what the land will yield and make some fair division of it between the landlord and the tenant. [Cheers.] You are taking an unfair view of the position when you treat the agricultural interest as the landlords' or the landlords' principally; and my proposition is that in these times of agricultural distress the amount of rent which is being levied upon the land is out of proportion to the value of the produce of the land, of which, in consequence, the tenant-farmer gets little or nothing. [Cheers.] If you talk to people loosely on this subject in the street or in society they will tell you that the landlords have reduced their rents to an enormous extent, by 40 or 50 per cent., and that, in fact, there is no rent at all. What are the facts? The rateable value is not, of course, an exact appreciation of the true rent of the land in each particular place; but it is generally a fair test of the value of the land. There are nearly 600 unions in England and Wales. What is the rateable value of the land now as compared with the year 1870—the year, it will be remembered, when the bi-metallic tie was broken, and when other things happened from which disaster has followed ever since? Out of these 580 unions there are 103 in which the rateable value has increased, in 125 unions it has fallen less than 10 per cent., in 131 it has fallen between 10 and 20 per cent., in 149 it has fallen between 20 and 30 per cent. That is to say, there are 509 unions out of 580 where the rateable value has fallen less than 30 per cent. Is it true that the profits of farms have fallen less than 30 per cent.? [Cheers.] There are 60 unions out of the 580 where the rateable value has fallen 30 per cent., and only 22 where it has fallen 40 per cent. It would be much nearer the truth to say that the average fall in the value of land in this country has been from 20 to 25 per cent. Is it true that the fall in the profits of farms has been only 20 or 25 per cent.? You know it has been much nearer 100 per cent. [Cheers.] Is it fair, then, I ask, that the relation between landlord and tenant in the division of the profits of the farm should be continued on its present footing? [Cheers.] Take another illustration. Mr. Pringle gives the net rental for a number of years of a large estate in Northamptonshire. In the year 1880 the net rental of that estate was £9,804; in the year 1892 it was £9,831, or a little more than in 1880; in 1893, which was a year of very great depression, it was £8,858. Therefore this estate had only had a fall of about £1,000 in its net value. Now, what is the condition of the tenant-farmer as compared with the condition of the landlord which I have just described? These Agricultural Reports are unhappily full of instances of the ruin which has attended tenant-farmers who have gone on losing year after year, and are now deriving little or no profit at the present prices of agricultural produce. ["Hear, hear!"] Yet in this year of 1896 the rents have been extremely little reduced—by 20 or 25 per cent. I should say on the average. ["Hear, hear."] Take a farm in Hertfordshire, 350 acres, rent £420, loss to the farmer in two years £634. Compare that with the 20 or 25 per cent. reduction in the rent. [Cheers.] Take a case in Buckinghamshire, 350 acres, rent £500, loss £114, and the remission the tenant got was £10 in these days of ruinous agricultural distress. Mr. Pringle gives another case, a farm of 670 acres, rent £563, loss £532. If there is a loss of £532 upon the working of this farm, what right is there to levy a rent of £563 upon it? We want to have an answer? [Cheers.] The Government profess to relieve what they call the agricultural interest, and they do it upon the theory that the losses of the tenant-farmer are slight compared with those which fall upon the landowner. You may depend upon it that, if you closure the Debate upon this Amendment, there will be a good many farmers of the opinion that has been cited of "A Hampshire Farmer" as to the agricultural interest mainly represented in this House. ["Hear, hear!"] Mr. Pringle gives another case, a farm of 540 acres, rent £350, loss £372. Here is another case in Bedfordshire, a farm of 260 acres, 200 of it strong clay arable land—which ought to be, one would suppose, the worst and most distressed in the country—rent £356— nearly 30s. an acre—and loss £246. Here is another case, a grass farm in Hampshire, 400 acres; in 1893 the rent was £676, and five years' losses were £561, averaging £112 for five years, or 5s. 2½ d. per acre. I dare say the representatives of the agricultural interest have some explanation to give as to their view of the subject; but I maintain that this Bill does not give a fair apportionment of the relief of the distress which we all know exists. I said on the first night of the Debate that this was a much larger question than some hon. Gentlemen seemed to imagine, and that they were raising questions which would have to be discussed, but not on a one-clause Bill. [Ministerial cheers.] That description is cheered. Yes, it is a one-clause Bill, but it is also a one-interest Bill, and you cannot deal with such a question by a one-clause and a one-interest Bill. Farmers would think better of the Bill if landlords were to contribute to the rates as it is asked that they shall by this Amendment. We are not on the Second Heading of this Bill—[Ministerial Cheers]—but we are upon a clause which, depend upon it, is a clause of very great importance, and which will be regarded as such by the tenant-farmers. The question is whether, considering the far greater losses that have been sustained by tenant-farmers than by landlords, the latter shall, in respect of rates, to the small extent proposed by the Amendment, contribute to the relief of the tenant-farmers. That is the object of the Amendment, and I hope it will receive considerable support. [Cheers.]

said he should like to ask the Chairman for a ruling on a question of some importance. The Amendment provided that the payment of rates by a landowner should take place quite irrespective of any contract to the contrary; it also provided that a collector of rates should get one-fourth from the landowner. This appeared to involve a derogation of contracts which they were not prepared for, and the introduction of machinery which would be absolutely unworkable. It was inconceivable that a collector should get one-fourth of the rate from the tenant, and then, for the other one-fourth, seek the landlord, who might be in another part of the country. Would their voting on the present Amendment preclude them raising other Amendments, for which he thought many would be prepared to vote. These were Amendments which respected contracts, and avoided the inconvenience of the machinery he had called attention to. He wished to ask whether an adverse Vote on this Amendment would preclude entering upon any other question?

would ask whether, if the Committee decided that the owner as well as the occupier should be legally liable, it would not be competent for the Committee to entertain the Amendment providing that the occupier should deduct the landlord's portion of the rates from the rent?

said the Amendment raised a general principle—whether the rates were to be divided between owner and occupier; whether certain arrangements were to be made as to future tenancies. In what proportion the rates were to be divided between owner and occupier, and so forth, were subsidiary questions to the main question, whether the owner was to be liable at all. If the Committee decided that it would not insert the words "and owner," all other Amendments which contemplated the owner being made liable would naturally fall to the ground. If, on the other hand, the Committee inserted the words, it would be open to the Committee to make such limitations with regard to the liability of the owner as might seem to the Committee reasonable.

said they were to understand that for the present they were simply discussing the question whether the owner should in any way whatever be made liable to the payment of rates—[Opposition cheers]—and they had to fall back on the question raised by the Leader of the House whether this was an opportune time to make the owner liable. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that the division of the rates was the best system possible, and, as a Member of the Government, he would naturally be expected to support a Measure to give effect to his opinion. The first objection of the right hon. Gentleman to the Amendment was that this was a temporary Bill, but nobody believed the Bill was temporary in the sense—[Opposition cheers]—of relieving agricultural land of one-half of the burden to which it was now subject. At the end of five years there would be some general scheme for rearranging local taxation, and, whatever it might be, the half remitted now would not be reimposed. This was a permanent relief that would be realised for ever. Why should not the Committee take advantage of that which in form was temporary, but in fact was permanent, to extend a principle which the right hon. Gentleman approved of absolutely and was only waiting for an opportunity to embody it in legislation? This objection was of no weight. The second was that the Amendment would apply only to the land coming under the operation of the Bill. In any future scheme the change could be extended to other forms of rateable property. It was said the progress of the Bill would be impeded by the necessity of supplementing the Amendment by further provisions. To that he demurred altogether; all that was necessary could be done in a simple clause. Great stress might be laid on the want of direct representation for owners on the rate-making authority; but the Leader of the House was far too keen witted to allow that there was anything in that objection. The right hon. Gentleman agreed in the opinion that, under the present system, in the long run, the non-represented owner of agricultural land paid the whole rate. [The FIRST LORD of the TREASURY: "No, I do not."] [Laughter.] Well, he was sorry to hear that; he thought his right hon. Friend had intimated that that was his opinion, but he would not argue it now. On the determination of this point depended a great deal the question whether the Amendment was opportune or not. If the owner of agricultural land did really pay the rates to which the land was subject, there was no force in the objection. The proposal was that the landlord should repay half, and it was objected he had no representation. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton had pointed out that landowners had been made electors of some of our recent rural governing bodies, and, therefore, were represented already. But the tenant was no doubt the predominant ratepayer. He would still be burdened with one-half of the rates, even if he got back the second half; and that would be sufficient motive to him to keep them down, and ample protection for the landlord. A fact stated by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton had a striking bearing on the controversy. The Duke of Richmond, the Chairman of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, which was unanimous in recommending the division of rates between owner and occupier, had introduced it on his own estates. Was he alarmed by the prospect of injustice, or discouraged in doing it because he could not make it perpetual and universal? It was not only useful in point of ad ministration, but just, and established good feeling between landlord and tenant. The supporters of the proposal asked that other great landlords should be invited to do what the Duke of Richmond had already done with a public spirit which all must admire. There was no difficulty whatever, except the unfortunate hesitation on the part of the Government. He would not call it lethargy, but unwillingness to face a new proposition. Of argument there was none. [Opposition cheers.] He regretted that his right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench should set their faces against a principle which the Duke of Richmond approved, and to which the First Lord of the Admiralty was deeply pledged. Hon. Members right and left of him acknowledged it to be just, and many had only been waiting for the Government to accept it to follow their action. Some hon. Members would have a bad quarter of an hour when they met the farmers in their constituencies. He himself, however, was free from anxiety, and he would be glad to meet the farmers in his own constituency. [Cheers.]

said, if it could be shown, as he contended it was shown by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, that the distress had affected the farmer to a much greater extent than it had affected the landowner, then no case whatever could be made out why this Amendment should be refused. They heard a very great deal about rents having gone down, and land having gone out of cultivation, but he should like to ask hon. Gentlemen opposite, did they know of any good land in England that had gone out of cultivation, or did they know of any good land in England that they could not get a good rent for to-day? There were pages and pages in the Report of the Royal Commission which proved up to the hilt that wherever there was any good land in England to be let, there was the keenest competition for it amongst the farmers. It was a fallacy to suppose that the rents of land in England had gone down during the last 50 years, or that laud had gone out of cultivation. He denied both propositions. In 1800 the area under cultivation in Great Britain was 40,000,000 acres, and the rent received was £32,600,000; in 1843, the area under cultivation was 44,000,000 and the rent received was £54,000,000. In 1880, the high-water mark of landowners in Great Britain, the acreage was 47,500,000, and the rent received no less than £69,000,000. So that, in the first 80 years of this century, the rent of the agricultural land in Great Britain went up by no less than £37,000,000 per annum. It had gone down since, he was pleased to say, and in 1894 the total cultivated acreage was about 48,000,000, and the rent received was £56,969,000. It would be noticed, first of all, in connection with these figures, that the cultivated area of England was to-day 4,000,000 acres more than it was 50 years ago, and 7,500,000 more than it was at the commencement of the century. Rents to-day were £2,000,000 higher than they were 50 years ago, which, at 30 years' purchase would make the selling value of agricultural land in Great Britain £60,000,000 more than it was 50 years ago; and the selling of the same land was £720,000,000 higher now than it was in 1800. These figures related to agricultural land only, for it should not be forgotten that the increased selling or capital value of the whole of the land in Great Britain was probably three hundred millions sterling higher to-day than it was at the commencement of the century. Another point which was frequently lost sight of was that no account, whatever was taken of the enormous quantity of land which the landowners had sold during the last 50 years for the purpose of building houses, manufactories and railways. He held in his hand reliable statistics which showed that in 1842–3 the aggregate rentals of houses in England and Wales were of the annual value of £35,000,000, whereas in 1888–9 that value had increased to £120,000,000. That would give the House some idea of the enormous quantity of land which had been taken up for the purpose of building houses. There was no record of the amount of land that had been taken for railways, and therefore he could only estimate the quantity of it.

Order, order! The hon. Member must confine his observations to the subject of the Amendment. I may suggest to him that he should keep a little more closely to the Amendment.

said, that of course he should bow to the ruling of the Chairman, but he merely wished to show it was impossible to estimate the position of the landowners of the country without calling upon them to account for the interest which they were receiving upon the sums of money which they had realised by the sale of large portions of their land, which, being covered with houses, bring in an enormous rental. He thought that the House was equally entitled to learn how much they had received from the railways for land.

Order, order! The hon. Member must leave that part of the question, and must confine himself. more closely to the question before, the Committee.

hoped that he should be allowed to say that the arguments that had been used on both sides of the House justified him in showing that the position of the landowners was better than that of the tenant-farmers, and of course he could not do that without at the same time showing that, in addition to the increased rentals which they were receiving, they held large sums of money which they had realised for the sale of their land. He asked the right hon. Gentleman whether in the interests of justice, he could not see his way to accept this Amendment. The provision in the Bill would afford only temporary relief to the tenantfarmer, and in many cases it would be no relief at all, but if the Amendment were accepted that temporary relief would become a permanent one. It was the man who worked upon the land that paid all the charges upon it, of whatever kind they might be. He should like to ask hon. Members opposite, what would be the effect upon any county in this country if the industrial rural population were removed from it? In that case the land would have no value whatever, because there would be no rental. Therefore it was the fanner and the labourers who gave value to the land. If the right hon. Gentleman who was responsible for this Bill was earnest in his expression of sympathy with the farmers and the labourers he ought to accept the Amendment. It was said that, if the Amendment were accepted it would break existing contracts. But those who put forward that argument forgot that rents were falling all over England, and that they would continue to fall, and that therefore existing contracts must be broken. That House represented the interests of the whole community, and if it were the interest of the whole community that the existing contracts should be broken, the House ought to set aside those contracts. Were hon. Members opposite satisfied with the result of the way in which they had manipulated the land of the country? Why, the course they had adopted was an admitted failure. They told the House that they could not compete with the men who lived 12,000 miles away, and that they were ruined. But their ruin was not as complete as that of the tenant-fanners was. The villages in many parts of the country were being depopulated. Could we call this merry England, when in some counties men had to work for a pittance; of 8s. or 9s. a week? There was only one remedy for the distress of the farmer, and that was the reduction of rent. As he believed that the Amendment would have the effect of restoring to the tenant-farmer some of the ill-gotten gains of the landowner, he should give it his hearty support.

said, that the principle embodied in the Amendment was that the owner should contribute in some measure to the rates which now pressed so heavily upon the tenant-farmer. The First Lord of the Treasury had officially stated that his experience in Scotland led him to believe that a division of the burden of the rates between the occupier and the owner worked satisfactorily, and was fair and just. It had been said that the time for moving this Amendment was inopportune, because this was not a permanent Measure. But did any hon. Member believe that it was not the intention of the Government to make the Bill permanent? If it was right to test this system by relieving the tenant-farmer, how could it be unjust to test their plan, which was to divide the rates fairly between the owner and occupier. That portion of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman could not be sound. The second objection of the right hon. Gentleman was this, that the Bill applied to land only; but the whole argument of the Government was that the pressure of rates bore more heavily on land than on any other species of property. Why, then, did they apply this system of relief to the tenant-farmer by enabling the landlord to share a little in the losses? The third objection made by the right hon. Gentleman was, that if they made a landlord contribute by means of this division of rates between landlord and occupier, they would be acting unfairly to him, because the landlord had no representation or voice in the making of the rates. He did not think that argument would hold water. The landlords had at the present moment a very large representation, not only directly, but indirectly by means of the pressure they could bring to bear on the various rating bodies in the Kingdom. That objection must be a hollow one. If the right hon. Gentleman would put a clause into the Bill giving more representation to the landlords, he was sure there would be no objection on that side of the House, and he urged the right hon. Gentleman to accept this Amendment conditionally on the acceptance of such a clause. He asserted, in the hearing of the right hon. Gentleman, that the objections he had made were perfectly hollow. There was not a sound argument in the whole of his objections, and their character showed the utter want of bona fide of the Government in bringing forward this Bill. So far as relief to the tenant-farmer was concerned, it was a question of keeping up the rent, as had been pointed out over and over again. If the preamble of the Bill were read it would be evident that this of all Bills was the one which was able to incorporate a plan of the kind proposed by the Amendment. It was a Bill to amend the law with respect to the rating of occupiers of agricultural land. They proposed to relieve them to the extent of one-half the rates, and it was the principle of relief whether it was one-half or three-quarters. If it was a benefit to the tenant-farmer to be relieved of half the rates, it was considerably more benefit to relieve him of three-quarters. The tenant-farmer had his eyes and his ears open to this Debate, and if the right hon. Gentleman went to the farmer and said, "We have relieved you of half your rates," they should go to him and say, "We wanted to give you another quarter, but the landlords of this country would not allow it." That was the sort of argument which would appeal to the tenant-farmer of England. The right hon. Gentleman said there was no demand for the Amendment outside. He did not know whether the tenant-farmers had had their eyes open before, but their eyes had been opened by this discussion, and the right hon. Gentleman would find that that demand had arisen and would be voiced by the tenant-farmer in the future. One hon. Member opposite had said that the principle of this Amendment ought not to be introduced because it would require a very complicated system of procedure to carry it out, but that was the sort of excuse which was brought forward by people who were against the principle. It would not be a matter of more than two lines to introduce this procedure into the Bill. A simple provision might be introduced into the Bill to the effect that the half of the rates payable hitherto were to be paid by the occupier, but that he was to be allowed to deduct out of his rent, or any other claim against his landlord, in respect of one quarter, the liability for which would be fixed on the landlord if this Amendment was passed. That would be quite as simple as the payment of the income tax on ground rents was now; it was paid first by the lessee, but he had the right to deduct it. The true fact of the case was, that the Government desired only to help the landlord. He hoped the House would remember when the division, was taken that this was not a question of detail. This legislation was founded on the hurried Report of a hurried Committee, and the Report had been hurried by the right hon. Gentleman himself very skilfully. The foundation of the Amendment was much sounder, and went back to the Duke of Richmond's Committee, and he believed it was the unanimous recommendation of that Committee, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member. Why had he altered the opinion which he held in 1882? They heard that the First Lord of the Treasury was actually in favour theoretically of the proposal, and if the Amendment were rejected, unless it could be more forcibly shown that there was a practical difficulty, the tenant farmer would learn that the sympathy of the right hon. Gentleman only extended to the tenant-farmer's landlord.

said, his only object in rising was to address a few words to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill, whose one great difficulty was that he feared the landowners might not be adequately represented on the assessment committees. His own experience was that they were never better represented on the assessment authorities than they were to-day. He was at a meeting of his own union only a week ago, and he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that they were fully represented. Therefore, if that was the only difficulty of the right hon. Gentleman, he ought to take that assurance, shorten the Debate, and allow them to get on with the business of the House, instead of detaining them by stubbornness. The landowners took full advantage of the facilities placed at their disposal by the late Government on representative authorities. He was much more concerned about another class of persons who might not be represented. He meant the people who were going to pay the piper. The ratepayers of the great towns would have no representation whatever. There were two essential interests in this transaction which would not have, and never would have, any representation on these Boards. Now there was another class left out of sight altogether in the disposition of this public fund, and that was the labourers. They were exceedingly insufficiently represented on these assessment committees; in fact, they seemed to have been lost sight of altogether. They got nothing out of the transaction. The Member for Bodmin supported the principle of the division of the rates, as in Scotland, and there it was not limited to the agricultural interest only. It ran through the whole system of taxation in North Britain. If he had any influence with the right hon. Gentleman, he should advise him to give up this unequal contest. This opportunity should be seized, and the just equalisation of the rates should be provided for in this Bill. If the right hon. Gentleman adopted his suggestion they might make some progress, but if he continued in an obstinate state of mind, why then the Bill would occupy more time; and it would be his fault, and his only. He had no hesitation in declaring his support to this Amendment, and he should vote for it. He hoped the Committee would adopt it, and then he should be in the proud position of giving the right hon. Gentleman help at a critical moment when his friends had deserted him. [Laughter.] Might he say one word as to the outcome of this Debate? There never was a more disastrous collision than that which had taken place between the pretence of a suffering landed interest through a long depression and the hard facts. The bubble had been burst. It had been shown by his hon. Friend that £30,000,000 more rent was paid to-day than at the beginning of the century. The landlords had made complaints for which there was no sufficient foundation, and the country now knew what a hollow pretence and sham it all was, this outcry about landlord suffering.

said, that if hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite had really felt as deeply interested in agriculture as they professed to do, they would have attached more importance to the Amendment. ["Hear, hear!"] During the discussion two arguments had been mainly urged in favour of the Bill. First, that it was introduced in the interests of agriculture; and, secondly, in the interests of the incidence of rating. As to its necessity in the interests of agriculture, a test might be sought by ascertaining the financial position of the farmers as indicated through the bankruptcy proceedings of the country. In the official Returns of the Court of Bankruptcy for last year, showing the numbers of bankrupts in various trades and occupations, he found that farmers stood fifth down on the list, and in 1894 there was not a single landowner who passed through the Court. Those facts were a proof that men of other occupations had suffered even more than agriculturists through the recent depression. With regard to altering or adjusting the incidence of rating, the Bill went on the wrong principle. If the intention was to alter the incidence, efforts should have been made to do it by charging the excessive rates upon the area in which it was spent. It was not accurate to say that the farmers generally were in favour of the Bill as it stood. There were a large number of them in some parts of the country, at all events, who desired that the grant made in relief should be an annual one rather than for five years, and they believed that unless a clause embodying the principle of the Amendment was inserted in the Bill, the relief given by the Government would go to the landlords rather than to the tenant-farmers. On those grounds he heartily supported the Amendment.

said, he wished to observe, in the first place, that he did not oppose the Measure to the extent that some of his friends on that side of the House did. On one or two occasions, indeed, he had found himself voting in the same Lobby as the supporters of the Government. On this Amendment, however, his course was clear and decided in supporting it—[Cheers]—because he felt that the landlord ought to bear some share of the enormous losses which the tenant-farmers had suffered through the agricultural depression. He was surprised at the attitude adopted by the Government towards the Amendment, bearing in mind the object for which they professed they had brought in the Bill. There was no class to whom the Government owed more than the farmers, and no class would be more disappointed if the Amendment and the principle it contained were rejected by them. The Amendment really gave the Government the opportunity of doing something substantial for the tenant-farmer. Without some such provision the Bill would confer very little benefit indeed, for even taking it at its best—even at the maximum value its most ardent supporters attached to it—the Measure touched only the fringe of the difficulty. ["Hear, hear!"] The question of agricultural depression was not one to be dallied with. The need of relief was urgent, and if anything practical and effective was to be done it must be done promptly, and in the most direct manner. [Cheers.] The Amendment was directed to this object. It would insure some direct relief to the tenant-farmer, though he questioned whether any permanent benefit would accrue to the farmer until greater security of tenure and a fair tribunal for the revision of rents were established. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman stated, when he moved the First Reading of the Bill, that the class of people who had suffered most from the agricultural depression were the landlord class.

I said that, in my opinion, they felt it most at the present time.

said, that in either case he entirely disagreed with the right hon. Gentleman. His knowledge of the tenant-farmers in Wales, at all events, led him to quite a different conclusion. ["Hear, hear!"] In Wales, the feeling of the tenant-farmers was one akin to absolute dismay, and unless some relief was speedily forthcoming, the men would not be able to go on. He did not say the landlord class had not suffered; he believed they had suffered severely, and he sympathised with them; but it was absurd to say that they had suffered to the same extent, or nearly to the same extent, as the farmers. There was a vast difference between suffering to the extent of having to give up the luxuries of life and to the extent of having to bear absolute poverty. [Cheers.] Certain bankruptcy statistics relating to the farmers had been stated to the Committee. He should also like to add a few figures indicating the extent to which the tenant-farmers had suffered. While in 1891 the number of insolvent farmers was 304, last year the number had increased to 518, while the aggregate liabilities increased from £340,000 in 1891 to £773,000 last year. In the same report of the Inspector General of Bankruptcy issued by the Board of Trade, it was shown that among all the trades and occupations followed there were only two businesses in which there had been a constant, uniform downward tendency during the last four or five years—agriculture was one, and the silk industry, he believed, was the other All that the Government proposed to do was to allow the farmer half of the rates which he paid on his land. In his judgment, it was most inadequate, and the Government ought to accept something which tended in the direction of this Amendment.

recalled the position in which the Committee at present stood. The principle of this Amendment had received the sanction of the Leader of the House, of the First Lord of the Admiralty, of the Duke of Richmond's Commission, and of the President of the Local Government Board. The Duke of Richmond had carried it into practical effect without difficulty, and apparently with general satisfaction. On the Commission itself there was actually a majority in favour of this principle.

The right hon. Gentleman is quite mistaken. That question was raised, discussed, and divided upon during the Report subsequently issued by the majority of the Commission, and there was a majority against it.

said he was aware of what the right hon. Gentleman stated. But the fact remained that three Members signed a minority Report in favour of this principle; two Members who signed the majority Report dissented in favour of this principle; the right hon. Gentleman himself believed in it as a Member of the Richmond Commission. In addition, there were the hon. Members for East Northamptonshire (Mr. Channing) and South Molton (Mr. Lambert). There were, thus, eight Members of the Commission in favour of this principle, and if they added a former representative of a constituency in Suffolk (Mr. Everett), the number would be brought up to nine out of the 17 Commissioners. The principle, therefore, was believed to be a righteous one, and the only question was whether it was opportune. To whom was it inopportune? It was only inopportune to the Government. He contended that it was opportune for the farmer as well as for the landlord, of whom he did not think so meanly as to believe that he would not grant this small concession to the tenantry in order to benefit the agricultural interest. It was moreover opportune to the landlord, because it introduced the principle in a small way, and the only persons who contended that the proposition was inopportune were Her Majesty's Ministers, who were opposing it on the ground that they had not time to carry it into effect. It must be always remembered that, of the three classes connected with agriculture, the labourers had maintained their position very fairly. Although their wages had fallen, they had not fallen into the condition of former years. The landowner was getting on an average over £1 an acre for his land in the larger portion of the country, and in many districts from £3 to £4 per acre. The hon. Member for East Northamptonshire had analysed 63 accounts of farmers scattered over England, in depressed as well as in undepressed districts, and he found that they farmed 36,648 acres of land. What was the condition of the profits of the farmer in these cases? The profits of the farmer came to about 1s. 3d. per acre. What was the rent received by the landowner? It amounted to 21s. an acre. This showed that the one class out of the three which had been practically starved out of existence was the farming class. It was, therefore, for the relief of the class who had suffered most that he now pleaded.

said, the Leader of the House stated that there was an objection to this Amendment because it would involve a rearrangement of the machinery for the collection of local rating. The right hon. Gentleman meant that if this Amendment were adopted, it would be necessary to provide some machinery for the representation of owners of agricultural land. If it was necessary, when making a change in the incidence of local taxation, to make a corresponding difference in the representation of particular classes, it ought to have been embodied in the Bill at the beginning. Everyone knew that the farmers were at the present time very much over-represented. Rural Assessment Committees were appointed by the Board of Guardians, which mainly consisted of farmers, but there was no proposal to reduce the proportionate representation of farmers on account of this enormous reduction in the payment of rates.

said, the complaint of the hon. Member who had just sat down was that the farmers had too much favour accorded to them by the electorate, whereas the Leader of the Opposition complained that the farmers were the persons who had been sacrificed to their landlords. He agreed with neither. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition seemed to think that the landlords were at the present moment in a condition of exceptional prosperity—or, at least, of relative prosperity.

Relative to the tenant-farmer.

said, the right hon. Gentleman said that whereas the tenant-farmers' losses were palpable, the landlord had only lost a comparatively small portion of his income; and that whereas rents had fallen by a minor percentage, the tenant-farmers' capital had gone entirely away. Then the right hon. Gentleman had a qualm of conscience, for he talked of charges upon estates—he did not mention the Death Duties—and said that landlords had expenses to meet and charges upon them which, no doubt, to some extent, ought to be taken into calculation. But the right hon. Gentleman omitted to inform the House—and he thought the very Reports from which he quoted would have informed him—that in many cases the bulk of the unlettable land on their own estates was in the landlords' own hands, and no account was taken of this in the calculation put before the House of the average rent of those estates which escaped duty. The right hon. Gentleman also omitted to inform the House that, what the landlord had as income was not the gross or even the net rental of the estate, but that margin between the net rental and the sums which came into his individual pocket. And the narrow margin was being encroached upon by the present serious condition of affairs, and, so far from it being true that landlords had, on the whole, largely escaped the effects of the agricultural depression, it was patent to everybody that the landlords, as a class, had suffered equally with all other sections of the agricultural community. The right hon. Gentleman also went on to speak of the rates which fell upon agricultural land. The landlord, he said, ought to relieve the tenant by paying a portion of his rates, because he considered the landlord was in a position to do so. How about the numerous estates which were in the hands of the occupying mortgagees? From the Reports which were before the House, it was notorious that the landlords had suffered to a terrific extent, that they had already met the position to the utmost of their power, and that they were the last community upon which it was fair for Parliament to throw extra burdens. The right hon. Gentleman indicated a more equitable method by which the agricultural—profits, he was going to say, but he ought rather to say losses—might be shared by the various classes engaged in agricultural pursuits. The right hon. Gentleman had come to a doctrine that he had propounded to deaf ears for a long time past—namely, the principle of a distribution by means of a sliding scale of the various changing conditions of agricultural affairs. The right hon. Gentleman indicated his preference for what was known as the sliding scale principle, by which agricultural profits, when they came into existence, might be more evenly shared among all classes of the agricultural community. He would like to read two or three lines from a letter which he wrote some four years ago to a body which had to consider agricultural subjects:—

"In conclusion, I would refer to another important matter which those interested in agricultural matters can deal with themselves without waiting for the action of either Governments or Parliaments, and it is the establishment of a voluntary system upon which rents and wages should be paid upon a sliding scale based upon the selling price of the various productions of the land. By such means all classes would become equally interested in restoring agriculture to conditions under which it could be profitably carried on.

He had always considered that upon that basis alone would satisfactory arrangements be concluded. He would like to say one word upon a subject which had been wholly lost sight of in this Debate—he meant the Amendment now before them. There were, apparently, two alternative Amendments before the House, and he believed they shared at least one quality in common—that of being equally bad. [Laughter.] The Amendment of the hon. Member for Northampton he believed to be extremely objectionable, and he thought that of his right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin was a refinement of that in the direction of being, if possible, even more objectionable. His right hon. Friend appeared to desire to perpetuate and to enforce hereafter that interference with the freedom of contract which he thought was the bane of the legislation of the House. Any tenant-farmer who found the conditions under which land was offered were not to his taste, could find plenty of vacant farms all over England. These were not the days when they should rivet a man to any one particular soil. The whole country was open, and any man with energy and capital who desired to obtain a holding could plant himself almost anywhere he liked. This was not the physiological moment to enter into any of those interferences with the freedom of contracts which had already ruined Ireland, and would very soon complete the ruin of the rest of the United Kingdom. He hoped, as regarded this particular Amendment it would be distinctly understood that if at any time, under any circumstances, and with any surroundinng clauses, any attempt was made to enforce this mischievous principle of the compulsory division of rates and interference with the freedom of contracts, the Conservative Party would offer it every opposition.

said the Chairman's ruling on this Amendment had raised a question of enormous magnitude. He understood they were now discussing the principle of whether the rate on agricultural land should be divided between owner and occupier. The right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken had suggested, by way of an alternative, something in the nature of a sliding scale.

On a voluntary principle.

For rates and wages. He had no objection to the sliding scale, provided it was extended to rents as well.

I said rents as well.

went on to point out that almost all the Commissions which had considered the question had invariably passed a unanimous recommendation in favour of the division of rates between owner and occupier. The Commission of 1886, appointed by a Conservative Government to inquire into town holdings, recommended in that sense, and the House of Commons had itself adopted that principle. In 1874 a decision of the House of Lords laid it down that all mines with the exception of coal mines were not subject to rating, and a Bill was introduced by a Conservative Administration to remedy that defect in the law, and by Section 8 of that Act, the Rating Act, it was enacted that with regard to every mine except a coal mine, unless there was a specific contract to the contrary, half the rate should be paid by the owner. Admitting that the landlords had suffered from the fall in agricultural values, his point was that they had not suffered to the same extent as tenant-farmers. The President of the Local Government Board read a letter written by Mr. Clare S. Read; he hoped he would give equal weight to the evidence, of that gentleman before the recent Commission. For Mr. Clare S. Read stated that in Norfolk the condition of the farms was verging on absolute ruin, and wholesale bankruptcy. In answer to Mr. Chaplin he further stated that the average rent in that district was £1 an acre, and, including tithe, it would amount to a good 30s.

How much is spent in tithe out of that?

Not more, in several cases than 7s. [Ministerial cheers.] Yes, but that left a very respectable sum paid by bankrupt and ruined farmers [Cheers.] The rents of Guy's Hospital were a fair index of the general state of agriculture, because those rents were derived from typical counties. The rents of that institution from lands in Lincolnshire were, in the year immediately preceding the repeal of the Corn Laws, 31s. 11d., and in 1893, 34s. 9d. per acre.

What was the landlord's expenditure?

I will come to that by and bye. On the Hereford estates, in the year preceding the repeal of the Corn Laws, the rents were 20s. per acre, whereas now they were 23s. 7d. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners had estates aggregating on the whole 279,000 acres of agricultural land. They had in hand 4,300 acres, equal to 1½ per cent. Was there any other industry in England which could boast that only 1½ per cent. of its capital was lying idle. Take the shipping industry, the factories, the collieries. [Cheers.] He was told this afternoon by an hon. Member that in regard to the whole factories in this Kingdom, there was not one which paid any dividend at all. ["Hear, hear!"] Yet the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, with only 1½ per cent. of their land which did not produce rent, came there and said that one-half of their rates should be paid on account of agricultural depression. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said something about expenditure, and he would give him the expenditure in that particular case. Starting with the year 1880, which was a year of considerable prosperity in agriculture, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners received 16s. 6d. net per acre, after deducting expenditure. In the year 1892, which was a year of depression, they received 13s. 4d. per acre net. They complained they were receiving nothing, that farmers were being ruined, and the only difference between 1880, which was a year of great prosperity, and 1892, which was a year of depression, was a matter of something like 1s. 6d. or 2s. per acre. He could give a few more cases, but he wished only to refer to one from Wales. The Royal Commission made inquiries in every county of North and South Wales with regard to derelict lands. He observed that the Commissioners in North Wales were Conservatives, and one of them was the agent of Sir Watkin Wynne. Their Report was that there was not a single acre of derelict land throughout the whole of North and South Wales. But what was the case with regard to depression? Their Report was that depression was acutely felt. What was the case with regard to reductions of rent? There had been hardly any reductions of rent from one end of the Principality to the other.

Do I understand the hon. Gentleman to say there has been no reductions of rent on Sir Watkin Wynne's estate? I happen to be a trustee of the estate, and I know.

was glad the hon. Member had referred to this which, he believed, was one of the best managed estates in Wales. But what was the evidence of Colonel Hughes on the report of this very estate? It was that the reductions in Merionethshire only amounted to 10 per cent. He was pressed with regard to reductions in other counties, and he said they would not amount to more than 5 per cent. That was not all. Inquiries were instituted amongst the farmers of Merionethshire with regard to agricultural depression in that district. Circulars were sent out to the farmers, and 27 of them replied. Out of that number only seven of them reported a reduction in their rents, three reported an increase, and with regard to the rest, there was neither a reduction nor an increase. That was a part of Wales where the depression was severely felt, and yet the reductions which had been made were few in number and trifling in amount. What was more, in most of these cases it was reported that the farmers' sons went without their wages. One farmer, who was paying £200 a year in rent, had three sons aged 20, 23, and 27 respectively, who were working hard on the farms without any wages at all. There had been no reduction from the landlord, and yet there had, in this case, been an actual loss of £200 upon the year's working. In a case of that kind, was it too much to ask, on behalf of the tenant-farmers, if the landlords declined to reduce the rents, that at any rate they should bear their part of the burden of the rates, which now fell upon the shoulders of the farmers? The latter were suffering from actual poverty. The right hon. Gentleman said the landlords were suffering. What were they suffering? They were not suffering in the actual and real sense of the word, the same as the farmers who had got their sons working hard like labourers on a farm, and who yet were receiving no wages. He said it was a simple act of justice to come to the rescue of these farmers, and whatever benefit inured from this Bill, should inure entirely to the pockets of the tenant-farmers, who were the real sufferers in the case.

desired to say a word or two about Scotland, which had been alluded to in the course of these Debates pretty often, and alluded to in some cases with very scant appreciation of the real state of things which there prevailed. The Government had told them that in this Bill they had borrowed the principle of classification from Scotland. He wanted the Committee very carefully to consider what that principle of classification in Scotland was, on what ground it prevailed, and what was the manner in which it worked. Classification in Scotland consisted in this—that agricultural land, under certain circumstances, was relieved to the extent of three-fourths of the rates. That was defended by the Board of Supervision—a very eminent Board, which for a very long time managed local government in Scotland—on exactly the grounds upon which the right hon. Gentleman recommended this Bill to the House on the Second Reading. The Board of Supervision had always been of opinion that the rates paid by the farmer were very different from the rates paid by the shopkeeper. The farmer, they said, had an income of, say, £100 a year, and he paid rates upon £300 a year, whereas the shopkeeper, who had an income of £100 a year, paid rates upon a house, say, of £30 a year; and therefore they said: "Let us diminish the rates which the agricultural interest has to pay." That was the argument of the Board of Supervision, and he gave it to the Committee for what it was worth. There was this about it that was observable—they honestly carried it into operation. ["Hear, hear!"] They believed it was the farmer who suffered, and so, what was the system by which they proposed to relieve him? The Committee would learn, for the first time, what the Scotch system was that had been brought forward as an argument for passing this Bill. The system had been adopted in 170 parishes in Scotland. Under it the tenant paid half the rates and the landlord paid half, but the rates which the tenant paid were reduced by three-quarters, whilst the rates which the owner paid was not reduced at all, and he paid every penny of them. In the case of a 3s. rate, for example, the farmer paid 4½d. and the owner paid 1s. 6d. Under the plan of the Government, in a 3s. rate the owner would pay 9d. and the farmer 9d. He held that, as in Scotland, the owner ought to pay the full half of the rate and every penny given for relief ought to go to the tenant. The President of the Local Government Board said that the Scotch system could not be introduced here unless the owner was given representation. But under the Parish Councils Acts of 1894 the whole disposal of the poor-rate, of which the landlord in Scotland paid half, was given to the freely-elected representatives of the people, the landlord having no special representation. It was true that under the Measure of 1889, relating to county rates, owners still enjoyed some representation of a peculiar kind, but that was a survival, and a very partial survival, because the only power they had was to check debt and capital expenditure. The Act of 1894, however, embodied the last view of Scotland on this question, and that view was that it was right that the owner should pay half the poor rate without having any special representation.

desired to continue the discussion.

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

moved to leave out the word "agricultural" in order to insert instead thereof the word "arable," so as to restrict the operation of the clause to arable instead of agricultural land. He said it was unquestionable that the depression had been far greater on the former. They had heard a great deal about the amount of land that had gone out of cultivation, but the last available Report of the Board of Agriculture showed that there was far more land in cultivation in England and Wales now than there was 20 years ago. This was so even in agricultural counties where depression was said to be so great—Essex, Cambridgeshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, and Gloucester—and there was no evidence that the land had deteriorated. The year 1894 was a good year, but he found that the crop of wheat, barley, oats, etc., was heavier than the average of the previous 10 years. Whereas in 1874 arable land amounted to 56 per cent. of the land of the country, in 1894 it had decreased in England to 47 per cent., and in Wales from 39 per cent. to 30½ per cent. Pasture land increased to a greater extent than arable land had decreased. The President of the Local Government Board, in introducing the Bill, said it was one of the Bills mentioned in the Queen's Speech, and was intended to mitigate the severity of the agricultural depression. Later on he modified this, and said the first consideration in the matter was the extreme severity of the depression, and the second the unfair proportion in which land was taxed, especially when compared with the ability to bear such taxation. The Royal Commission was not appointed to consider the incidence of taxation but to consider agricultural depression, and they had the authority of the right hon. Gentleman for saying that rates and taxes had nothing to do with the depression. He said the true cause was the fall in agricultural prices. There was the evidence of the Royal Commission to show that rents were higher now than at the time of the Corn Laws.

The hon. Member has not yet addressed himself to the Amendment, but, is making a Second Reading speech. I must ask him now to approach the question raised by the Amendment.