, who expressed his surprise and regret that an hon. Member who was animated by so many humane sentiments and was free from so many of the prejudices of his political Party should have taken up an attitude on the exercise of the clemency of the Crown more in keeping with the spirit of an academic Judge Jeffreys than of an enlightened politician representing a great Lancashire constituency. It attacking the exercise of the clemency of the Crown by the Home Office, the hon. Member attacked what had become by custom a part of the Constitution. He protested emphatically against the Amendment and the Speech by which it was supported, because England alone among civilised nations did not differentiate between political prisoners and ordinary malefactors. But he would take a wider ground and refer to a wider feeling on this question. He asserted that there was in the popular mind of Great Britain and Ireland a conviction that the sentences inflicted in Courts of Justice invariably erred on the side of severity rather than on the side of leniency. He went also so far as to say there was a belief in the popular mind that the power vested in the Home Secretary of mitigating the too great severity of the law was a wise, just, and humane power, and he was convinced that until there was a Criminal Court of Revision and Appeal, the conviction would remain in the public mind that it would be wrong to interfere with the exercise of this humane power by the Home Secretary. ["Hear, hear!"] They had now in Ireland what was called an interesting new movement, and they found noble Members of another place following the practice of some of their ancestors and leading the Irish people in the direction of revolt against some phases of English rule. They had been told that it might be possible to have the episode of Boston repeated in Irish history—[laughter]—and that a no-tax agitation was possible in Ireland. If those principles were advocated and carried to their logical conclusion some of those noble lords might make the acquaintance of penal servitude. He would ask the hon. Member for Salford whether he could imagine, with peace to his mind, Lord Castletown condemned to be yoked to a cart in Dartmoor, drawing manure and coals and stones about, as he himself was when in that prison. Could he imagine Lord Mayo being condemned for six years to live in a semi-darkened cell, 7ft. long by 4½ft. wide, and not allowed to exchange a word with his fellow-prisoners? ["Hear, hear!"] He appealed to the hon. Member whether it was not wise even from a Unionist point of view to allow this dispensing power to remain intact in the hands of the Home Secretary, because it was possible that in future Tory Prime Ministers might arise more wise and more patriotic than Lord Salisbury, who might look in the direction of Salford for an ideal Home Secretary, and he was sure that in such a contingency the hon. Member would only be to too glad to mitigate the rigours of penal servitude in the instances to which he had referred. [Laughter and "Hear, hear!"] One could imagine, on hearing the speech of the hon. Member on Friday night, that such a thing as the curtailment of sentences by a Home Secretary was scarcely ever known until the right hon. Gentleman opposite was placed in that responsible position. But they knew that it was of almost constant occurrence, and that the Home Office had again and again to interfere, in response to popular feeling, by way of tempering justice with mercy. He believed he was right in saying that whilst the right hon. Member for Fife was Home Secretary he released two or three alleged dynamitards—and he hoped he released a large number of ordinary prisoners—on the ground that they had been sufficiently punished by the sentences already undergone. ["Hear, hear!"] Lord Llandaff, who, as Mr. Matthews, was a former Home Secretary, went so far as to reverse inside of a few hours—wisely and humanely—in the case of Mrs. Maybrick, the sentence passed by one of the highest Judges of the land, and he believed he also liberated several alleged dynamitards and political prisoners even before they had undergone more than half the terms served by the men who were released a short time ago by the present Home Secretary. ["Hear, hear!"] But worse than that remained to be told, for even amongst the elect there had been clemency agreed to in matters of this kind. The hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet was a member of Lord Beaconsfield's Administration in 1877. He was Chief Secretary in that Government, and he was bound to say the opinion prevailed in Ireland that the right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to the best of his ability to do what he could for a country which he understood no more about than any other ordinary Englishman. [Laughter.] During that model Ministry six Fenian prisoners were released. Three of them had been tried by court-martial in the Army, one of whom had been sentenced to be shot and two to penal servitude for life. The civilians were dealt with by two of them being sentenced to penal servitude for life and one of them to 15 years'. These six men were all young men when they went to prison. There were only two of them now alive, and one of them was he who was then trespassing upon the indulgence and kindness of the House. ["Hear, hear!"] The Tory Party was not the only offender in this respect. He was, however, bound to say that, speaking for himself, he owed a debt of gratitude to the Tory Party, for he had been imprisoned three times by the Liberals and released twice by the Tories. [Laughter.] In 1870 Mr. Gladstone released some 20 or 25 political prisoners who had only undergone an average of about three-and-half years of their sentences, and yet juries had gone on convicting prisoners ever since, Judges had passed sentences, and the law had been administered without any infringement upon justice. ["Hear, hear!"] In fact, during the last thirty years he did not think there had been a Home Secretary who had made less use of the prerogative of the Crown in this respect than the Home Secretary who was now impeached by one of his colleagues below the gangway. ["Hear, hear!"] On this vital matter of the exercise of the power by the Home Office, he would quote some words that he was sure would be received with great respect by the House—words spoken on the 1st August, 1876, on a matter submitted to the House in his own behalf and others then in prison by Mr. O'Connor Power, who was then an ornament of debate in that House. The late Mr. John Bright, speaking on the occasion, used these memorable words, directly applicable to the issue raised by the hon. Member opposite in his Amendment:—

"He regretted" (The Times report of the speech said) "that he had not on the previous occasion said what he had long thought with regard to what was called the Manchester outrage. There was one man shot dead and three persons were hanged for that murder. It had always appeared to him that the course taken by the Home Office on that occasion was a very unwise one. In a case of this kind to have hanged three men for one fatal shot was a mistake—a mistake according to the ordinary practice of our law, and a great mistake when looked at in its political aspect. He knew that it had been denied that this was strictly a political case or that the severity was resorted to because it was a political case. But he had always held the opinion that it was solely because it was a political case that three men were hanged for the murder of one man. The other day a trade outrage was committed near Bolton. A man was killed and three men were convicted, but they were convicted of manslaughter and not of murder, and unless the Manchester outrage was not viewed as a political offence, he could not see that it was different from the Bolton case he had described."

No one would assert that any statesman of our age had a greater regard for the integrity of justice and for the character of the Courts of Law than the orator who shed lustre on that House for so many years—John Bright. The hon. Member opposite, not content with trying to double-lock the door upon the Irish political prisoners still in goal, had attacked, in very bitter terms, those who had been released. The hon. Member said that reports were made by four doctors on four different occasions, that reports were also received from the regular medical officer of the gaol and the regular inspector, and that all these gentlemen testified that the prisoners were shamming madness. He would tell the hon. Member that "shamming" was invariably charged against prisoners who showed symptoms of insanity. He admitted that there were many among the baser criminal class who did pretend to be mad in the hope of obtaining release, but it was nevertheless true that there was no condition of life more calculated to engender mental disease than imprisonment. It could be shown from statistics how unfair and unjust the hon. Member had been in his strictures on the unfortunate men who had been liberated. The Protestant chaplain of Wandsworth Prison had recently published an article proving that whilst the annual ratio of insanity among the general population for 15 years was eight per 10,000, the ratio of insanity among prisoners was 226 per 10,000. Could it be thought singular that out of the 15 or 16 Irish political prisoners two or three should have shown symptoms of madness? When men had been subject to the rigours of penal servitude for 13 years it would be almost a miracle if none of them were to show signs of mental aberration. The hon. Member had commented upon the way in which one or two of the released men were received in Ireland, and he seemed to think that the presence of one of these gentlemen at a public meeting which he addressed pointed to demoralisation among the Irish people. Here was an example of the "unctuous rectitude"—[cheers]—to which reference had lately been made. Of course they had not all enjoyed the great advantage of being brought up under the moral influence of Salford and Manchester. [Laughter.] He would tell the hon. Member why the release of these political prisoners was acclaimed by the Irish people. Being a Celtic race the Irish had long memories, and they recollected that one of England's favourite practices in Ireland in the past was to employ the spy and the informer. The reason why Irish political prisoners were occasionally sent into that House was because Irishmen wished to protest against their country being ruled by gentlemen having the prejudiced views of the hon. Member for Salford. This alleged demoralisation in Ireland might be compared by the hon. Member with profit with something that occurred not many years ago in this centre of civilisation, and of moral, benevolent, and Christian progress in London itself. ["Hear, hear!" and laughter.] There was the trial, in 1857, of Dr. Bernard, who was accused of being an accomplice of Orsini's, and of making the bombs which were thrown in Paris and blew several innocent people into pieces. Although his guilt was manifest to everybody, Dr. Bernard was at once acquitted by a London jury, and The Times of the following morning declared that even if Bernard had been proved guilty, it was not the duty of Englishmen to judge French conspirators according to the rigid laws of English morality. ["Hear, hear!"] The jury were actually banqueted for their verdict by the citizens of London. The hon. Member had alluded to the courageous conduct of the late Home Secretary, describing it as "doubly courageous considering the pressure behind him." That being the statement of the hon. Member, he wished to ask the right hon. Member for East Fife whether the Irish Members had ever made any unfair proposal to him or suggested a deal or done anything of that kind.—[Mr. ASQUITH: "No, never!"]—If then in the case of the Home Secretary of a Government which the Nationalist Members held in power there was nothing of the sort it was monstrously absurd for the hon. Member to suggest that something of the kind might have occurred under a Unionist Government. ["Hear, hear!"] Then the hon. Member had called attention to abuse of the late Home Secretary in American papers, saying that in the last few years "Bloody Asquith" and "Ruffian Asquith" had been prominent headlines. But the attacks upon the right hon. Member had not been confined to American writers or Irish-American writers. Englishmen went to America occasionally and dabbled in journalism, and even in conspiracy—["hear, hear!"]—and whilst the late Home Secretary was in office an Englishman was attacking him openly in America, and suggesting at meetings of Irishmen that the right hon. Gentleman should be assassinated, and that the British Embassy in Washington should be broken up with dynamite. He warned the hon. Member for Salford to bear in mind in future that all that was written in American newspapers did not come from the honest enemies of the country. The right hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet on Friday made a very serious statement. He said that the Government were now apparently going to rely for support on the representatives of those who were called the bulk of the Irish people.—[Mr. JAMES LOWTHER: "I referred to things published in the recess. The statement was not mine."]—He understood the right hon. Member to say that the failure of justice at the Old Bailey in Ivory's case was associated with a general tendency of that kind. What did the right hon. Gentleman mean? Did he mean to insinuate that the Nationalist Members had entered into any compact with the Home Secretary with the object of defeating the ends of justice at the Old Bailey? He regretted that he could not discuss the question of the recent trial on that occasion, and trusted that before many days they would have an opportunity to throw some light upon it. ["Hear, hear!"] He asked the House to consider the spectacle presented to the world by what occurred in that Chamber on Friday last. The hon. Member for Salford's Amendment practically amounted to a vote of censure on the Government for releasing four or five men convicted of a political crime; yet on the same afternoon the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs answered a question put to him by an hon. Member of the Opposition, the reply being headed in The Times as "Political Prisoners in Turkey." From that reply one gathered that all prisoners in the Sultan's capital were being released; yet not many months ago a band of desperate men entered a bank in the middle of the day and flung down dynamite bombs among women and children in the streets of Constantinople. He held that the life of a woman or a child, be they Turks or Matabele, English or Irish, were of the same value. ["Hear, hear!"] They had here a Government, generally supported by the hon. Member opposite, compelling the Sultan to release these bomb-throwers at once, while the world saw the same Government doubling the bars of its prison doors against the release of four or five Irish political prisoners. [Cheers.]

whose rising was received with cheers, said: The hon. Member who has just sat down has made a very interesting speech to the House, but I trust he will not expect me to follow him into all the questions he has raised, and which I venture to think are not very germane to the immediate Amendment now before the House. I hope, however, it will be some satisfaction to my right hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet, who spoke on Friday night, that he has succeeded at last in securing some compliments from an Irish representative. [Laughter.] The hon. Member has spoken about the general dispensing powers of the Home Office and the responsibility of the Secretary of State in advising the exercise of the prerogative of mercy. I apprehend that if I were to go into that subject in detail you, Sir, would rule me out of order; but I do desire to say—although, perhaps, it ought not to be said by one holding my position—that, delicate and difficult as are the duties of the office which I hold, I believe that the general exercise of that power, has in its results afforded satisfaction to the public sentiment. [Cheers.] I assure the House that in this matter there never has been from the beginning any compact between the Irish Member and myself or any member of the Government, any more than there was a compact with the right hon. Gentleman who preceded me in the Home Office. [Cheers.] I should have thought it hardly necessary to deny this [cheers] had it not been for the underlying feeling—I will not say for the express argument—of my hon. Friend who moved this Amendment, and for the observations of the right hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet, who had some leaning apparently that way. My right hon. Friend quoted certain words of mine, which he was perfectly justified in using, having a tendency to prove that I thought these particular prisoners were political prisoners. ["Hear, hear!"] I have admitted, as those who have gone before me have admitted, that these men might be described as political prisoners in the sense that they were tried under the Treason Felony Act. This cannot be denied, and in a sense it is fair to believe that there were political motives which guided them towards the disastrous crimes which they unfortunately sought to commit. I have admitted it, but I expressly added in the same speeches that you must go beyond such motives. I said, as my predecessor said, that when you find men dealing with dynamite in the way in which these men were found guilty of dealing with it, they were guilty of crimes which, in the opinion of the civilised world, were atrocious, and against which society required the strongest protection of penal laws. But I strongly repudiate any special treatment of these prisoners. On the other hand, I would have no worse treatment. I have seen it inferred that because these prisoners had been guilty of these crimes, and because it was generally felt they ought to receive severe punishment, they were to be exempt from the ordinary rules of mercy with regard to health. I state most emphatically, without the slightest qualification or reserve, that in advising the exercise of the prerogative of mercy in the case of these four men last August I acted solely and entirely on medical grounds. [Cheers.] I have no arrière pensée whatever in the matter; I felt myself absolutely forced to come to the conclusion to which I came. I only regret that other circumstances, for which I blame no one, did not allow me to make this explanation more expressly before the country. As regards the question of there having been any special treatment, I have followed the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman opposite with regard to men who had been found guilty of these crimes—that they ought to be, and would be, subject to exactly the same rules as other prisoners sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. That is the rule on which I have proceeded, and that is the rule followed by those who have been my predecessors in office. There has been no idea whatever of taking into account the supposed existence of political motive or of dealing with these men either better or worse than we deal with other prisoners. My hon. Friend who proposed the Amendment quoted certain figures. He said that out of an average of 4,500 convicts in our prisons, five were released in 1894, and five in 1895, while last year, out of nine dynamite prisoners four were released. My hon. Friend drew an inference from those figures which was scarcely to be expected from a gentleman of his capacity. In the first place I should like to tell my hon. Friend that these Prison Department figures are not quite complete. The total number of men who have on medical grounds been released from convict prisons during the last four or five years was 16 in 1893, nine in 1894, 13 in 1895, and 20 in 1896 which includes the four men whose release is now under consideration. Secondly if you want to make a fair comparison as regards these releases between one year and another, I submit that my hon. Friend should make his comparison either between the one year's set of long sentence prisoners and the others, or between all the prisoners in the one year and all in the other, and he should not take out a certain number of prisoners who have been sentenced to long terms of penal servitude and whose cases may naturally call for the exercise of the special powers of the Crown, and compare the figures for those prisoners with the figures in another year for all prisoners indiscriminately. I come now to what I have substantially said before. In dealing with these prisoners I have pursued the general practice of the Home Office, a practice which has been in existence for many years, and in which I am sure I shall be corroborated by the right hon. Gentlemen opposite who have held this office. Shortly stated, that practice is this. When the Secretary of State is satisfied upon a medical certificate that continued imprisonment will endanger life or reason, he is justified, nay, he is called upon to exercise the prerogative of mercy. I do not speak of other conditions which must of course attach to the question of release, because they are not absolutely necessary for the purpose of my argument; but I say that this is a perfectly sound proposition, and I am surprised to hear that a contrary belief should be entertained. I am confident it is the general belief of the country and of this House that when a long sentence of penal servitude is inflicted it is not intended to be a sentence of death, or a sentence which should commit a man to the lunatic asylum. [Cheers.] What is the duty of the Home Office? I submit it is the duty of the Home Office to satisfy itself by the best means it can command—which of course are its own medical officers, and when necessary medical men of great position who are not connected with the Home Office or with the prison service—if prisoners are reported to be in a dangerous condition that such is indeed the case, and when it is so certified, it is the duty of the Secretary of State to act. I think my hon. Friend who moved the Amendment questioned me as to the practice with regard to approaching insanity. I assert what is very well known to my predecessors, that although under the law as affecting our convict prisons special precautions are not required to be taken by means of medical reports as to insanity that may come on, yet in the Local Prisons Acts this point is specially mentioned. It has been for years past the practice of the Home Office—and I believe the humane and proper practice—to satisfy itself as to the probable effects of continued imprisonment, and to take care that if reason or life are likely to be endangered, steps should be taken to restore the prisoner to his friends. If that proposition be established—and I venture to think it is not an unduly merciful view of the administration of our prison system—then I say that the action I took with regard to these four men is amply justified. The right hon. Gentleman who preceded me at the Home Office, in speaking of this matter in Scotland in the autumn, was good enough to acknowledge that be fully accepted my assertion that I had been guided solely by medical considerations. I thank him for accepting that statement from me, and I wish that others in this House had accepted it with equal frankness. My right hon. Friend said in the same speech that when he left Office in June, 1895, the condition of these particular men was not such as to call for any intervention on the part of the Home Office. I have had, of course, opportunity of seeing all the information which reached my right hon. Friend, and I say most unhesitatingly that it amply proves he was perfectly right in the action he took. [Cheers.] What took place subsequently? About December of the same year, having had, as was most natural, representations from the friends of the men, and being anxious to obtain the highest and best medical authority as to their health in view of further Parliamentary inquiries and discussion, I ordered a special inquiry. I secured the services of Dr. Maudsley and Dr. Nicholson, and when we met Parliament in the spring of 1896 I was able to say that all the facts before me amply endorsed what had been represented previously to my right hon. Friend, and that on medical grounds there was no case whatever for advising the clemency of the Crown. In the course of last summer, as a consequence of representations which I received from the friends of one of these prisoners—Daly—and in consequence of a report which I immediately called for from the prison doctor, I thought it necessary to order a fresh inquiry. I was able then to get a report from Dr. Gover, who was the medical inspector under the Prison Commission, a gentleman of 40 years' experience, who knows more of prisoners in our gaols and their habits and customs than any medical man in England, and who has had the greatest experience of malingering and shamming. I received a report from him in the month of July, and in that report he strongly recommended the release within a month of Daly and the other prisoners, but I speak now especially of Daly. Dr. Gover said Daly was unable to bear further imprisonment. He expressed the strongest opinion that he ought to be released within a month. I do not hesitate to say that if I had been dealing with the case of an ordinary long sentence prisoner who had been 13 or 14 years in penal servivitude, upon that report I should have asked for no further advice. [Cheers.] But such has been the public notice called to these cases, and such has been the strong advocacy on the one side and the strong feeling on the other, that I thought myself justified—nay obliged to ask for an opinion independent of the Home Office. I accordingly immediately sent down two doctors, one of whom had seen Daly and the other prisoners in the previous December, Drs. Maudsley and Buzzard, and they, with the opinion of Dr. Gover before them, corroborated it. That corroboration extended not only to the case of Daly, about whom I imagine there has been some feeling of doubt, but it extended to the case of the other three prisoners. What, therefore, was my position? About August 1, when this question was raised upon the Estimates, I stated that I had just received a Report—the Report to which I have just alluded—and that it called for my very serious consideration, and I hinted that in all probability I should feel obliged, in accordance with the practice of the Home Office, to advise the clemency of the Crown with reference to certain prisoners whose names were contained in that Report. Of course, I was aware—nobody in my position could help being aware—of what would be said. It would be said, as it has been said "Oh, this is part of some arrangement." Even at the risk of such an imputation as that, I deemed it my duty to act. [Cheers.] Of course, I might have delayed my action and kept these men longer in prison, gradually letting them out, the worst cases first, in order that it might be done quietly and without public notice. I thought the most straightforward course was to inform the House of Commons. [Cheers.] Accordingly, on the earliest day after I had formed my opinion, I came down and stated it to the House of Commons. [Cheers.] My only regret is that, owing to the shortness of the period during which Parliament sat, there was not time for questions to be put or further explanations to be made. That is really the whole case. As regards these particular prisoners, my right hon. Friend the Member for Thanet said that I had no business to turn dangerous lunatics out into the world—["hear, hear!"]—and he quoted the unfortunate cases of Gallagher and Whitehead. I wish to state most emphatically that, according to the opinions I had before me, these men at the time of their release were not mad. The opinion of Dr. Gover, corroborated by Drs. Buzzard and Maudsley, was that they feared continued imprisonment upon men of that excitable temperament and somewhat weak intellect would produce insanity, and therefore I arranged that the men should be discharged and taken away to their friends in the hope of recovery. Discharge, unfortunately, acted upon them in a contrary direction. Gallagher and Whitehead both went out of their mind, and I regret to say are at present in a lunatic asylum. But at the time of their release they were not fit subjects for Broadmoor, and could not have been sent there. I believe there is no one in this House, not even the hon. Gentleman who has attacked the clemency of the Home Office, who wishes that long-continued imprisonment should end in lunacy. [Cheers.] Unfortunately, all penal discipline has to be arranged to meet the cases of the worst characters, but there are differences of temperament and constitution, both physical and mental, and it must occasionally happen that the course of a sentence of long imprisonment operates in one way upon one prisoner and more disastrously upon another. It is for that reason that anybody in my position has to do his best to act upon the best medical opinions he can procure. It is a very delicate and difficult duty for any medical gentleman to undertake. It is very difficult indeed for him to ascertain what will really be the effect of imprisonment if continued. It is very difficult for him to say whether a certain condition of mind or body may not arise from constitution and be contained within the man and not be due to his punishment. While I do not for a moment mean to say that any of my medical advisers have been at fault in this matter, I do say that, if there has been any mistake, it is only natural that in circumstances of such great difficulty there should be from time to time the apparent result of one man being let out too late and another too soon. I go back to what I began with. The only thing that has been special in the treatment of these prisoners is that in consequence of the frequent attention which has been called to them in Parliament, in consequence of the great feeling in Ireland, and in consequence of the general desire on the part of every Member of the House to know whether the allegations made were true or not, more care was taken in getting special medical opinions with regard to them than is the case with ordinary convicts. I do not think I am to be blamed for that. [Cheers.] I shall be very much surprised if even my hon. Friend who moved this Amendment thinks after my explanation that I had any other course open to me last August—[cheers]—than to follow the general practice of the Home Office—I believe a thoroughly sound, useful, and valuable practice in the interests of common justice even more than of mercy—that practice being to see that continued imprisonment does not permanently endanger life or reason. [Cheers.] Notwithstanding the somewhat personal observations of the hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment I will say no more, for those observations have been answered sufficiently by my right hon. Friend. [Cheers and laughter.] I am glad to have had an opportunity of explaining my position to the House fully and frankly. [Cheers.]

Although I think it will be almost universally regretted that the hon. Member for Salford should have seen fit to intro-duce an Amendment worded like this, on grounds so slender—[cheers]—yet I cannot think that the Home Secretary will look upon it altogether as a matter for regret, seeing that it has afforded him, in the speech which he has just delivered, an opportunity of vindicating his conduct in a manner so plain, straightforward, and unanswerable that it is unlikely we shall hear any more of the injurious and, I must say, the reckless suspicion—[cheers]—which from time to time during the past few months have been bruited abroad. For my part—and in this particular matter I think I speak the sense of every man on this side of the House—I never for a moment believed that there was, or that there could conceivably be, any of those suggested compacts or secret arrangements between the Government and a section of their political opponents which the imagination, not of Liberal speakers, but of too-zealous supporters of Her Majesty's Government, has conjured into existence. [Cheers.] It is a suspicion dishonouring to the manliness of our public men; and it is a suspicion which, in this particular case, was transparently ridiculous, because, in the present condition of parties, I do not know that my hon. Friends below the gangway have anything to offer which, even if the Government had had the disposition to enter into a corrupt bargain, it would have been worth the while of the Government to accept. [Laughter and cheers.] That aspect of the case may be once and for all left out of view; and all I wish to say now is with reference to the general question and the application to this particular case of the rules which ought to govern the action of the Home Office in the dispensation of the prerogative of mercy. As regards these particular prisoners, there has been, as the right hon. Gentleman said, an absolute continuity of treatment in the Home Office from the time they were first imprisoned to the present moment. ["Hear, hear!"] It has been suggested that during the time we held office some exceptional severity of treatment was shown to them by myself or by those for whom I was responsible. There is not a shadow of foundation for that statement. [Cheers.] These prisoners were treated while I was at the Home Office exactly in the same way—neither better nor worse—as all the other inmates of our convict prisons. I myself released six of them during my term of office, and four of those six upon precisely the same grounds as those on which the right hon. Gentleman has acted in the present case—namely, having medical reports submitted to me which showed that continued imprisonment would be dangerous to the prisoners. ["Hear, hear!"] I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for making out so clearly—and I accept his statement of the matter—that not only at the time I left office, but for nearly six months afterwards, the most careful medical inquiry from absolutely impartial and independent sources confirmed the conclusions of the medical advisers whom I consulted—that it was not possible, consistently with the rules which govern the Home Office in these matters, however strongly I might have been and was inclined to do it if I could, to advise the exercise of the prerogative of mercy. [Cheers.] I must say that in matters of this kind, and I do not care who holds the office, as regards the exercise of this prerogative of mercy, a more responsible and thankless task cannot possibly be cast on the shoulders of any man. ["Hear, hear!"] Whoever he is, he is bound to be governed by the best medical opinion he can obtain. If he can be shown not to have directed an adequate medical inquiry into cases even of suspected illness, and much more of suspected insanity, then he is shown to have been guilty of a gross dereliction of a primary duty. ["Hear, hear!"] But so long as he does what we have always done, not periodically but constantly—kept these prisoners under the supervision of the most competent medical men—and so long as these advisers have reported that there is no sufficient ground for letting the prisoners free, then he is bound to keep them where they are. But directly the medical advisers report that continued imprisonment would be dangerous to life or reason, the Home Secretary is equally bound not to delay a moment in setting the particular prisoners free. ["Hear, hear!"] Those are the rules, not of policy, but of humanity and common sense, which have guided and which continue to guide the Home Office. [Cheers.] The hon. Member for Salford, in his general attack upon the exercise of the prerogative of mercy by which he prefaced his speech, compared the secret procedure of the Home Office in these matters to the operations of the Star Chamber. The Star Chamber proceeded by secret and tortuous methods to punish people who had been guilty of no legal offence. But in the dispensation of the prerogative of mercy, as governed by rule, the Home Office proceeds in the opposite direction, and proceeds to deal with persons found guilty of a legal offence in such a spirit of humanity and mercy as will reduce excessive punishments and liberate men who have unfortunately been reduced by imprisonment to a condition of body or mind where continued detention would be inhuman. [Cheers.] Those are the principles on which the Home Office has always proceeded, and I am certain that they will meet with the unanimous approval of the House. [Cheers.]

said that both the right hon. Gentleman and the Home Secretary seemed to accept the principle that in regard to all political prisoners the prerogative of mercy must only be exercised on medical grounds. That was a principle to which he could not for a moment agree—[Nationalist cheers]—and it was not the principle on which the Home Office had acted. So recently as the case of Egan a prisoner was released by the right hon. Member for Fife, not on medical grounds, but because it was thought that there were doubts as to the prisoner's guilt.

I released Egan because I thought that he had been sufficiently punished.

said that, at any rate, it was not on medical grounds. On more than one occasion the Home Office had released large numbers of Irish political prisoners from motives of public policy, and it would be a monstrous thing that the Home Secretary should regard the suggestion that he might release political prisoners on grounds of public policy as a slur on his honour.

I never said anything about my personal honour. I simply stated the true reasons which had induced me to release these men.

contended that if it should appear to the Government that the release of prisoners would allay public irritation and conciliate large sections of public opinion, without encouraging crime, the Government were amply justified in releasing those prisoners on that ground alone.

, who was received with cries of "Divide," said he was sure the House had listened with pleasure to the Home Secretary's complete vindication of his conduct. But that pleasure would be mingled with regret that that explanation had not been given on Friday instead of being delayed till Monday. After hearing the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury, he did not expect to hear such a complete vindication from the Home Secretary; because the speech of the First Lord seemed to be east on the old rule, "When you have no case, abuse the plaintiff." [Loud cries of "The attorney," and laughter.] He had listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Salford and had read it three or four times; but he had failed to find any of the attacks or insinuations for which his hon. Friend was so severely trounced by the Leader of the House. [Laughter.] Some phrases, perhaps, were not happy, but his hon. Friend had had to speak amid the continual interruptions of a certain section of the House. But his hon. Friend had carefully guarded himself over and over again from any imputation against the Home Secretary's personal honour. His hon. Friend distinctly declared that it was only the right hon. Gentleman's judgment and discretion which he called in question. A more straightforward speech he had never read. [Ironical cheers and cries of "Divide!"] The Home Secretary would surely admit that any Member had a right to call his discretion in question, especially when it had previously been done all over the country. The affair did look ugly, though the right hon. Gentleman had shown that he had acted in the most admirable manner. As to any bargain with the Irish Members, such a thought ought not to have entered anyone's head. Not only had the Irish Members nothing to sell, but, as the question had been raised in connection with the Land Bill, the Government had every inducement to keep the prisoners in gaol, for it was their own supporters, and not the Irish Members, whom they had an interest in conciliating over the Land Bill. He wished to vindicate the position of the hon. Member for Salford. [Laughter.] Disagreeable as it must be to question the discretion of one's leaders—[ironical cheers and laughter]—private Members had a right to do so, without being trounced in the very severe way in which the Leader of the House had trounced the hon. Member for Sal-ford. [Ironical cheers and laughter.] The supporters of the right hon. Gentleman followed his lead with great pleasure; but he did not call the manner of the right hon. Gentleman leading; he called it driving. [Ironical cheers and laughter.] He protested against any attempt to limit the private Members' liberty of criticism.

said that he had given notice in the proper quarters that he should not press this Amendment to a Division. [Nationalist cries of "Oh!"] His object had been to state on the floor of the House what he had stated elsewhere in the autumn. He thought it was his duty to do that; and he thought that he had done it without imputing dishonourable motives to anybody. He thought he had stated his case with some temperateness, and he thought it a case of sufficient gravity to bring before the House in the form of an Amendment to the Address. His desire was to afford an opportunity to the Home Secretary to make a statement such as the right hon. Gentleman made that day, which he had had no opportunity of making during the last Session of Parliament; and which he had not made anywhere until now. Having attained that object he begged leave to withdraw the Amendment. [Irish cries of "No."]

It is the pleasure of the House that the Amendment should be withdrawn? [Loud cries of "No, no!" from the Irish Benches.]

, who was received with cheers, said they should not have opposed the withdrawal of the Amendment if there had fallen from the hon. Member for Salford one single word of regret for having moved it. That Amendment was not merely an offence to the Government, but it was an offence to the 80 Irish Nationalist Members of the House. [Irish cheers.] He should like to point out that the hon. Member, who now stated he only wished to give the Government an opportunity for explanation, began his speech on Friday night by sneering at the Maamtrasna Alliance. Why did the hon. Member resurrect the Maamtrasna Alliance? Why did he suggest that there was some complacency on the part of the Nationalist Members because of the Land Act of last Session. If there was one section of the Conservative Party which more than another had reason to be disaffected to the Government because of that Land Act it was the Irish landlord and Orange Party. But to the credit of those Gentlemen be it said that, smarting though they were under the passage of a Measure which had further reduced their rents, there had not fallen from any one of them a single word of condemnation of this act of clemency and mercy. [Cheers.] The complaint had come entirely from men of English race, English feeling, and English thought—men who had received more favours, in honours and emoluments, from the Government than the whole Irish Unionist Party put together. [Renewed cheers.] He had always been proud of being an Irishman; but he felt prouder than ever of the distinction that night when he found that the Irish landlords and the Irish Orangemen on the benches opposite, although smarting tinder the Land Act of last year and although the policy of dynamite would have had a serious effect on their fortunes, had not joined in the miserable opposition to this bare act of justice to a handful of unfortunate men who for many a long and weary year had been pining out their lives in the agony of penal servitude. [Cheers.] The opposition had come instead from that distinguished geologist—[cries of "Order" and Irish cheers]—who had already received many favours from the Government, and who, perhaps, had good light to feel annoyance now that there was no longer any hope of expecting more. [Laughter and cheers.]

proposed, at the end of the Question, to add the words,—

And we humbly represent to Your Majesty our regret that Your Majesty's Advisers have expressed no intention of promoting legislation in furtherance of the report of the Select Committee on Food Products, which disclosed the existence of unfair and nefarious competition with Native food producers by Foreigners and others, to the great detriment both of the commercial and agricultural interest of the people of the United Kingdom.

He thought his Amendment deserved the support of all classes of the House. There could be no difference of opinion as to the importance of the subject, especially when it was considered that our policy of Free Trade had opened our ports to the whole world. No doubt consumers had benefited more by that policy than any other class of the community, for it had had the effect of reducing the prices and extending the varieties of commodities. The general trade of the country had also been served materially by Free Trade. In fact there was probably only one class who failed to appreciate that policy, and those were the agriculturists, who have had to bear the brunt of the burden of Free Trade. But, notwithstanding that, the farmer had never expressed his inability to hold his own provided the competition of the foreigner was only fair. His Amendment dealt with the competition that was unfair and nefarious. He did not think it would be contended by the Government that this question had been suddenly sprung upon them, because the urgency of legislation in the matter had been frequently urged upon them and their predecessors in office during the last four years. Bodies representing the agricultural, commercial, and consuming interests of the country had again and again made representations to the Government that further legislation was necessary to prevent the evils of adulteration from continuing. The Chambers of Commerce had been very active in the matter. The Central Chamber of Agriculture, and innumerable agricultural associations in England, Scotland, and Ireland had taken part in the movement. The public analysts of the country, whose experience of the administration of the existing laws to prevent adulteration was, of course, most extensive, had also been persistent in their efforts to obtain some amendment of the present unsatisfactory Food and Drugs Act. The outcome of the agitation was the appointment of a Select Committee in 1894, which was reappointed in 1895, and continued to take evidence until July, 1896, when they submitted a unanimous Report to the House. The Report set out that a considerable portion of the imports of the country were adulterated, that adulteration of food was largely practised throughout the country, and that the laws dealing with food adulteration needed amendment. There was, therefore, no reason why legislation on this most important question should be delayed. It was not a Party question; and the Government had nothing to apprehend in the way of Party opposition should they undertake to legislate on the subject. Consequently it was with considerable surprise that the supporters of this movement against food adulteration found no reference to the question in the Queen's Speech, although there was a promise to introduce a Bill to improve the Water Supply of the Metropolis. He was sure that if the Government had studied the Report of the Food Products Committee they would have thought that the purity of the food supply of the Metropolis was far more urgent than even the question of water. It could not be satisfactory to learn that adulteration was increasing. Samples taken of all kinds of articles showed that the percentage of adulteration in 1888 was 10.8, while in 1893 it had increased to 12.9, and in London it was 17.1 per cent. The articles most adulterated were, of course, milk and butter. The returns supplied to the Committee showed that over 25 per cent. of the milk sold in the metropolis was adulterated, and it was estimated that Londoners paid annually for water sold under the guise of milk no less a sum than a million and a-half sterling. Butter was found to be adulterated in the Metropolis to the extent of 20 per cent. In the country, according to the Local Government Board Return, the amount of the adulteration of these two articles was somewhat smaller, but Mr. Lloyd, the consulting chemist and analyst to the British Dairy Farmers' Association, informed the Committee that during the past twelve years in his official capacity he had made analyses of thousands of samples of milk taken throughout the whole country, and this record showed that the average proportion of adulterated milk was 24.8 per cent. These figures were very serious indeed, especially as the largest quantity of milk was always consumed by the youngest portion of the population. But they in, no sense disclosed the full gravity of the case, because there was abundant evidence to show that many of the local authorities failed to make use of the Acts, so that they had become practically a dead letter. He urged that the administration of the Acts by the local authorities should be made compulsory instead of permissive. The effect of the permissive character of the Acts was that in 45 country districts, with an aggregate population of three millions, only one sample for every 5,730 persons was taken during the year 1893. It was proved by the Local Government Board Return that in 50 towns, with populations ranging from 60,000 to 135,000, not a single sample of butter was submitted to analysis by the local authorities. In 16 municipal boroughs, including Northampton, Colchester and Dover, not a single sample of any kind whatever was taken at the instance of the local authority in 1893. In Sunderland too, where the Acts were disregarded, the local authority considered they were adequately remunerating the borough analyst by giving him a salary of £5 a year. The amount of adulteration was proved to be in direct ratio to the manner in which the Acts were administered. In Birmingham milk was adulterated to the extent of 19 per cent., in Liverpool 18 per cent., in Manchester 5 per cent., and in Salford 3 per cent. The results in Manchester and Salford were due to good administration of the Acts, and nothing else. The same thing was seen in the Metropolis, where in Marylebone the adulteration found in samples taken was only 6 per cent., while in the adjoining parish of St. Pancras it was 43 per cent. So flagrant was this neglect that it had become necessary for private associations to band themselves together into Vigilant Committees in order to carry out the Acts. He hoped the Government would pass in due course a Consolidated Adulteration Act. Where it was ascertained that falsified food products were coming into this country steps should be taken to prevent them being circulated, they should be seized, and, if necessary, confiscated. The Government had done something in the way of taking samples at the port of entry, for example, 100 samples of shipments coming from Germany were tested, and no less than 30 were found to be falsified. Of 147 samples taken of consignments from Holland no less than 62 were found to be adulterated. But the Government did not seize these goods, and he understood, from an answer given him by the President of the Board of Agriculture last year, that the reason was that the Law Officers of the Crown advised him that a seizure could not be made until the adulterated article was sold, as until then no offence was committed. With a view of testing the validity of this opinion the Committee heard the evidence of Mr. Follett, who admitted that goods to which a false trade description was applied could be seized and confiscated, and that to apply to any goods a description as to their composition not in accordance with the facts was an offence against the Merchandise Marks Act. When asked, however, why adulterated Butter to which a false description had been applied had not been seized, he revealed, to their surprise, that under the existing law the shipper had the right within 21 days after the arrival of a shipment to amend the description on the Bill of Entry, thus putting a premium on deceit and fraud. The Government should take steps to remedy such an anomaly, which a three-line Bill would sweep away. Much inconvenience was caused to traders by the great uncertainty that existed in the laws as to adulteration. Conflicting judgments were frequently given as to the use of "preservatives." Some magistrates held that putting preservatives in food products was an offence; others that it was not. In Birmingham there had been a a great many prosecutions of traders for using preservatives, but the City Council there had discontinued their action in the expectation of legislation by the House. Traders in the country were naturally much harassed by the uncertainty of the law, and trade in consequence was much unsettled. With regard to the standard of purity of food, the Committee recommended the establishment of a Court of Reference, which should decide what constituted a standard of purity in various articles. He hoped legislation would be introduced establishing such a Court. The question was urgent, and ought not to be indefinitely delayed. The present law was insufficient to deal with the matter, and further legislation was necessary. There was practical unanimity on the subject if the Government would introduce a Bill, and points on which there was any difference could be settled in a few days.

seconded the Amendment, because he thought some amendment of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act was necessary, not only in the interests of purchasers of agricultural but of other kinds of produce. It was not a Party question. The committee were appointed two and a-half years ago by the late Government. The hon. Member for Ilkeston (Sir W. Foster) was the first Chairman, and when the work became too arduous, and the long sittings almost were him out, they appointed as Chairman the Under Secretary of the Local Government Board, to whom, at the end of the two and a-half years, they passed a unanimous vote of thanks. It was a most important subject, because so many agricultural products were adulterated, and thereby the farmers were undersold. Almost every county had an analyst, who was supposed to analyse samples of food, but the system was so lax that a great many cases of adulteration escaped notice altogether. In one county only 24 samples of milk were taken in a whole year. In other countries even fewer had been taken. It was similar with butter. Frequently when articles were analysed, and a conviction was obtained, appeal was made to Somerset House whether the article was adulterated or not, and the Somerset House analyst was at variance with the opinion of the county analyst. The Board of Reference proposed would give its decision in such differences. The Committee found the adulteration of milk a difficult matter to decide upon. It was difficult to decide whether milk should have 3 per cent. of fat in it or not. Some analyst said good milk ought to have more per cent. of solids; others said it was pure milk if it had 2 or 2½ per cent. If it were proved that milk had come straight from the cow he should be satisfied. The Board of Reference would deal with this matter, too. An immense amount of butter mixed with margarine was sold as pure butter. It came chiefly from abroad, and was difficult to detect. The Committee on Food Products recommended that, for the protection of the public, there should be a law that margarine should not be coloured and passed off as butter. If sold in its natural colour—white—the public would know it when they saw it. Legislation on the subject would be hailed with the greatest pleasure, not only by the commercial but by the agricultural community. The Central Chamber of Agriculture, at its last meeting, unanimously passed a resolution asking the Government to introduce legislation and take away from agriculturists the severe burden they had at present to bear of having to compete with foreigners who sent so many adulterated products into this country. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that, important as this subject might be to England, it was of even greater importance to Ireland, which was an agricultural country, depending exclusively on agriculture. The almost profligate neglect of the interests of Ireland as regarded the adulteration of food was a flagrant instance of the inability of the House to legislate properly for Ireland. The aspect of the subject which particularly interested them in the South of Ireland was the adulteration of butter. The Cork Butter Market was probably the greatest institution of the kind in the world. It was much more important formerly, but even now there was no other butter market in the world of equal magnitude, and probably there was no city in the world in which the butter trade was of so much commercial importance. The butter trade in Cork had practically been paralysed by the adulteration that went on, and the existing state of the law. What he would explain to the House was that the Trustees of the Cork Butter Market had for the past two years been in a state of the utmost perplexity and embarrassment owing to the failure of that House to deal with the question raised in the Food Products Committee Report. Here again Ireland, as in so many other matters, was unfortunately differentiated against. The districts in England where the Food Adulteration Acts were put into force were the very districts where Irish butter was sold. The hon. Member for Devonport had referred to the special degree of activity with which the Manchester and Salford Corporations had put those Acts into force. So far from blaming those local authorities, he thought their activity in this matter was greatly to their credit. But he did call attention to the fact that it was in these very districts of Manchester and Salford, and in other parts of Lancashire, that the Cork butter trade found its principal market, and therefore it was the Irish butter trade that was differentiated against. In the districts where Irish butter was most largely consumed they had the local authorities prosecuting time after time, while in other districts of England, where Irish butter was not so largely consumed, there was utter neglect on the part of the local authorities to put the Adulteration Acts into force. The principle thing in connection with the Irish butter trade had arisen not on the point of adulteration as it was ordinarily understood, but on the question of water in butter. There had been the greatest difference of opinion even amongst experts on this question, and there had unfortunately been the greatest difference of practice on the part of the Courts who had had to consider the question. In Ireland there had been numerous prosecutions, and owing to the difference of the practice in the Courts of England and Ireland, the unfortunate exporters of Irish butter had been reduced to their wits' end to know what they should do. The matter had grown so acute that within the past month or two the Trustees of the Cork Butter Market had contemplated approaching the Chief Secretary for Ireland with a view of solving the difficulty in which they were involved. The difficulty arose in this way. The English magistrates took their views of butter adulteration from Somerset House, and at Somerset House they had arrived at a standard which he did not quarrel with, but under which an excess in the proportion of water in butter was sternly and stringently punished. In consequence of the action of the Salford authorities the parties interested in the Irish butter trade thought it would be a good thing to get the law put into force in the same way in Ireland as in England, and that they should go to the seat of the mischief and prosecute the farmer who sold the butter to the merchant. But when they did that in Ireland they found that a wholly different class of evidence was given before the magistrates, and that whereas in England the man who sold the butter was certain to be convicted, in Ireland there was no similar practice at all, and that it depended on the whim, as he might call it, of the particular magistrate or County Court. Judge whether or not he would put into force in Ireland the law which was stringently enforced in England. That was the difficulty. If there was a law prescribing a standard, and enacting that a certain percentage of water should be illegal, then it would be a simple matter. He did not know whether that was possible or not, for he dared say there was something to be said on both sides of the question. If they had the control of their own affairs in Ireland this was a question on which they would have been able to legislate, and on which they would have legislated. It was a subject of great complaint that in a matter so vital to Irish agriculturists as the butter trade, that House did not set itself in motion to end the deadlock which had arisen in the Irish butter trade. It had now come to this, that no Manchester merchant would buy butter from the Cork market without getting a guarantee from the exporter. Un the other hand the exporter had no means whatever of getting a corresponding guarantee from the merchant who sold to him, while the merchant had no means of getting a guarantee from the farmer. The matter was one urgently calling for legislation in some direction so as to settle the question. He asked that some legislative conclusion should be given to the Report of the Food Products Committee, and that something should be done by that House to save the Irish butter trade from practical extinction. In Ireland they suffered the keenest competition from Denmark, Sweden, Normandy, and France. Did any one of the Legislatures of those countries neglect the interest of the butter manufacturers as this Parliament neglected the interest of the butter producers in Ireland? No. The butter trade from Norway, at any rate, had been largely created by the fostering hand of the Legislature. Similarly there was the minutest legislation on the question in France to protect and promote the trade in butter. It was owing to this that Normandy and Danish butter was able to-day to compete not merely in England but in Ireland itself with Irish butter. Ireland was differentiated against, too, by the neglect of the Customs Authorities in England. Another grievance in this matter was the question of margarine. If the Irish butter producer adulterated his butter with margarine or any produce of that kind he was speedily prosecuted and punished, but the manufacturer of margarine in Holland had free access to the markets of this country, the Customs Authorities all over England having over and over again refused to enforce the law against him. This Government had professed itself to be the protector of agriculture. If they really had the interests of agriculture at heart, then, both in England and Ireland they would be well advised in devoting themselves to the Report of this Committee on Food Products, and in endeavouring to do for English and Irish agriculturists what foreign Governments had done for the agriculturists of their countries. The Irish agriculturists were placed in serious competition with foreign producers in the English markets, and, therefore, the Government were bound to induce Parliament to devote a portion of its time to the consideration of this important subject. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that all sides of the House must look forward with interest to the statement which would be made on this question by the hon. Member for S. Tyrone, the Under Secretary of the Local Government Board, who had discharged with so much ability the duties of Chairman of this important Committee. ["Hear, hear!"] The hon. Gentleman could scarcely fail to express his appreciation of the recommendations of the Committee, which in all probability he himself drew up and assented to. His only fear was lest the hon. Gentleman, in making his announcement, should minimise the importance and the difficulties of the question. One of the greatest difficulties they had to encounter was to fix a standard of purity in regard to food products. The traders maintained that a certain amount of adulteration was necessary to render their products saleable, but the correctness of the assertion was questioned by many witnesses of experience who gave evidence before the Committee. The Committee, when they came to consider their Report and to draw up their recommendations, designedly omitted to refer to this contentious matter. The Committee appeared to be of opinion that it was not so much the provisions of the Adulteration Acts that were in fault, so much as the machinery for enforcing them and putting them into operation. It could not be doubted that the failure of the Adulteration Acts was due to their defective machinery. That the Acts had failed in carrying out their object was proved by the fact that they were rarely enforced. The recommendations of the Committee were 23 in number, and with one exception they all referred to the improvement of the machinery of the Acts. The first recommendation of the Committee was that the provisions of the Acts should be enforced by the local authorities, and the others also referred to the improvement in the machinery of the Acts. He expected that his hon. Friend the Secretary of the Local Government Board would lay some stress upon the nineteenth recommendation of the Committee, which related to the establishment of a standard of purity. The recommendation of the Committee upon the point was carefully and designedly drawn up in a somewhat vague manner. In his view it frequently happened that small Measures, such as that which the Government were asked to introduce upon this subject, were of more benefit to the community than large Measures that involved the fate of Ministries. Although the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment might not have authority to pledge his Party on the subject, yet he could not doubt that the fact of his having raised this question would have some influence, and he believed a Bill on the subject, if introduced by the Government and framed on the recommendations of the Committee, would receive the most careful consideration from all sides of the House. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that he was not in the least degree disposed to minimise the importance of this question, because no one could have sat upon the Committee which had been referred to without being impressed by the deep interest which was taken in the subject by large sections of the community, and he could assure hon. Members that he had deemed it his duty to draw the serious attention of the Government to this matter. ["Hear, hear!"] The real question before the House, however, was not whether legislation on this subject ought to take place, but whether or not it should take place at once. The Select Committee in question was appointed some three years ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, and it reported in August last. The Report covered 50 pages of closely-printed matter, and dealt with such a mass of detail as was seldom found in the Report of any Select Committee. He might also say that the Report dealt with matters of a most contentious character. The question, therefore, was whether in these circumstances Parliament was bound in January to legislate upon this subject in priority to any other. The hon. Member who had brought the matter before the House had stated that a Measure dealing with it would pass without difficulty, but he had his doubts upon that point. ["Hear, hear!"] It was quite true that the question did not involve any Party interest, and that it did not divide the two sides of the House, but some of the recommendations of the Committee certainly did raise questions of importance between the towns and the country. ["No!"] Any one who had sat upon the Committee or had looked at its division lists would know that in the divisions the representatives of the large cities voted one way and the representatives of the agricultural districts voted the other upon many of the issues that were raised before them. Let him take the question of food standards. It was impossible to get magistrates or other authorities to agree upon such a standard, and unless a standard was established all legislation on the subject must fail. The Committee agreed that such a standard could not be set up by Act of Parliament, but that it should be established by a Board of Reference, which should consist of scientists and men selected from the mercantile community, and that their standard should be made to have the effect of law by an Order in Council. He had merely to state that fact in order to show the enormous difficulty which the matter involved. Take the question of milk. Let them assume that the Board of Reference set up a standard of 3 per cent. of fat in the case of milk, and that that was legalised. Much of the milk sold now contained more than 3 per cent. of fat, and although they would thus bring the adulterated milk up to 3 per cent. they would offer an inducement to those who sold better milk to work down to what was the legal standard. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Kearley) maintained that many local authorities would not put the Act as it stood into operation, but he did not indicate how the difficulty could be met. What was the whole trend of our legislation? It was to trust the local authorities of the country, and to cast upon local authorities the responsibilities that were now taken by the central authority. In the Committee it was proposed that the Local Government Board should have the power to take samples in all the places where the local authority failed to do their duty and to prosecute; but he could tell the hon. Gentleman that that the Local Government Board, over-weighted as they now were, were not prepared to do.

remarked that what he had suggested was that the duty should be made compulsory so far as the local authorities were concerned.

admitted that in some cases the local authorities failed to act. That fact only emphasised the demand he made for time to consider a question so full of difficulties. There was only one other matter to which he wished to refer. The Committee, against his draft Report, carried an Amendment which prohibited the colouring of margarine, and the mixture of margarine with butter. That proposal was strongly resisted by all the representatives of the great towns on the Committee, and he had been informed at the Local Government Board by a deputation that to carry out that proposal meant the total destruction of the margarine trade. He did not wish it to be understood that he was arguing against the recommendations of the Committee; he was simply trying to show that, so fur from this being a non-contentious matter, it was full of contention, and contention of the most difficult kind—that between town and country. Having dealt with the merits of the question, he came to what the hon. Gentleman would probably think of greater importance. During the recess a draft Bill was prepared. It had been carefully considered, and was now being so considered, and all he could say was that the whole question was receiving almost daily consideration at the Local Government Board. They were trying to get over the difficulties, and he hoped that at no distant date the Government would be able to submit a Bill to the House dealing with the entire question. ["This Session?"] That was not a question for him, but one which must be put to the Leader of the House. He hoped, however, that in view of the statement he had just made the hon. Member would not think it right to take a Division.

was glad to hear from his hon. Friend that a Bill on this subject had been drafted, and that it rested with the Leader of the Government in this House to tell them later on whether they were likely to see the Bill this Session. He hoped that in this instance time would permit a Bill to be submitted to the House this year. In the interest of public work it was desirable that the fruits of a Committee's labour should not be delayed too long. He did not believe that the difficulties in this case were as great as his hon. Friend supposed. ["Hear, hear!"] The fact was that the legislation required on this subject was legislation, not for altering the principle of the law, but for improving the administration of the law for improving the machinery by which the law was carried out. The Local Government Board thought there ought to be one sample of food taken for every thousand people in a district. That was not a high standard to be aimed at. In some places a sample was taken for every 300 people, but in some counties only one sample was taken for every 15,000 inhabitants, showing an almost total neglect of the law as it stood. The consequence was that in those localities adulteration went on with injury to the home producer and general injury to the health and well-being of the people. The Secretary to the Local Government Board spoke about centralisation. Centralisation was not wanted in the direction of making the Local Government Board an active intervener in the detection of adulteration, but it would be a great help even to the largest and most advanced centres of local government if there were some body in London, such as a Central Board of Reference, to which there could be resort for assistance. Therefore, when the Committee suggested the creation of a scientific body, which would be a source of strength to any local body trying to administer the Acts, he thought the recommendation was such as to warrant some more definite promise than they had yet received from the Government. The Birmingham City Council, for example, were anxious to make up their minds as to whether the unlimited use of antiseptics in the treatment of health or not, and they resolved, after obtaining all the information they could, to refer to a body in London—that was the Local Government Board in London—for information as to how they were to be guided with reference to the quantity of antiseptics permissible in foodstuffs. At present there was no authority to whom they could appeal. That was certainly a flaw in our existing arrangements, and until such a body was constituted they could not expect the law to be efficiently carried out. In the absence of such a body, too, they could never expect uniformity of judgment on the Bench in cases of adulteration, and he was confident that if there were such a central authority to refer to, the law would be enforced in many districts where it was now neglected. The hon. Member for South Tyrone, while approving of the principle, spoke of the difficulties of setting up standards in regard to certain articles of food, but he thought it might be done in many cases. In regard to milk, for instance, he did not think the difficulty was insuperable, or that it would involve any injustice or injury to the trade. At all events, he was sure that if some Board of Reference were created on the lines indicated by the Committee—a body in whom the public would feel confidence—an important step would be achieved towards improving the general quality of the food of the people. ["Hear, hear!"] The evidence given before the Committee showed that an enormous amount of adulteration was going on in articles of food mostly of foreign production. The result of this was to so lower prices that in many cases our own producers were forced out of the market, while at the same time it operated strongly against the general production of food in the country. ["Hear, hear!"] It was obvious that the production and supply of good food was a matter of great importance to the health, and vigour, and character of a nation, and this was an object to which every Government should attach importance. ["Hear, hear!"] The Government had professed a desire to undertake social legislation. Here was an opportunity then for them to achieve a great work in this direction, and, in view of the facts and recommendations presented by the Committee, he would urge them to give their attention to the matter as soon as they possibly could. ["Hear, hear!"]

said he regretted the line that had been taken by the hon. Member who had spoken on behalf of the Government on this matter. The hon. Member fully admitted the importance of the subject, and the necessity of legislation; but said that further time was required to give the matter full consideration before legislation was undertaken. Yet this Committee had been sitting for two and a half years, and reported in August last. In the case of the Agricultural Rating Bill, which formed one of the principal measures of last Session, and which, by the way, transferred a good sum of money from the pockets of the taxpayers to the agricultural interest, the Government required very much less time to make up their minds about legislation; and yet he did not think that matter was of greater importance to the country than the one under consideration. ["Hear, hear!"] The question was one of considerable magnitude, because it closely affected the health and condition of the people. He believed legislation on the subject—upon the lines of the recommendations of the Committee—was practicable, although the hon. Member for South Tyrone had read into the Report many more difficulties than it contained or involved. ["Hear, hear!"] This subject of food adulteration, moreover, was of great importance to agriculturists, because fail' trade was necessary to the sale of their own products. ["Hear, hear!"] The Committee had stated that a large amount of fraud was perpetrated in large quantities of the food imported from abroad, and, to some extent, at home. Especially was this the case in regard to butter, which was largely adulterated with margarine, and as the representative of an agricultural constituency he was able to assure the House that enormous interest was taken in the matter by the farmers of the country. In colour, shape, and consistency margarine was made up to exactly imitate butter, and largely sold as such all over the country. It was not butter at all. Much of this so-called butter or margarine—made of inside fat, oil, and milk—came from Germany; it was sold as Hamburg factory butter in Manchester, and in other places as really pure butter, but evidence before the Committee was given that every sample taken of it vas adulterated. It was only fair to our own agriculturists to prevent the importation from abroad of an article so adulterated, and allow it to be palmed off on the people of this country as pure butter. ["Hear, hear!"] Moreover, it was noteworthy that the profit on margarine was 4d. per lb., whereas on genuine butter it was only ld. per lb., and therefore an inducement was given to the seller to press the adulterated article upon the people to the detriment of their health. Then, again, foreign cheese was also largely adulterated, and it was so closely made up to resemble British cheese that the public were often deceived. Why, it was actually a fact that some of the articles imported from abroad, and sold in this country, were not allowed to be sold in the countries from which they came. The British farmer was an honest man, and could not compete with fraud of this kind; and consequently he suffered a grievous injustice under the circumstances. ["Hear, hear!"] The existing Acts against adulteration ought to be strengthened, and fresh legislation also applied to meet the difficulty. The Local Government Board thought one sample per 1,000 persons per annum was not an extravagant number or samples to take, but it had been shown that the number of samples taken in some places was largely below this figure. He might mention that in Somersetshire one sample per annum had been taken to every 379 persons, and the extent of adulteration had been found to be 3·6 per cent.; whereas in Oxford, where one sample was taken to over 14,000 persons, the adulteration was 41·7. There were local reasons which often operated to prevent the present Acts being put in force. One Inspector stated before the Committee that—

"He knew of a local authority in the Metropolis, eight members of which had been convicted of offences under the Acts upon evidence obtained by their own inspector. The result had been that the duties of the inspector under the Acts were now controlled by a committee of the authority, and they decide the cases in which prosecutions are to be undertaken."

Therefore, it was not likely that those eight gentlemen who might be convicted by their own inspectors would be very ready to put the law into operation. Then he contended that the punishment for offences of this kind was altogether inadequate. It had consisted of a fine ranging from 30s. to 40s. It was not at all commensurate with the enormous profits made in the trade, and the Committee recommended that imprisonment should be inflicted where a man kept on breaking the law. This trade was a very largo one indeed. The Committee had reported that there was reason to believe that a considerable proportion of the imports of food into the United Kingdom were adulterated. The imports of butter were two and three-quarter million cwt., of margarine nearly one million cwt., of cheese two million cwt., and of condensed milk half a million cwt., and a considerable proportion of this enormous amount of food was adulterated, and yet the Government could not find time to legislate on the subject. His point was that this was not more an agricultural question than a poor man's question. Milk and butter were the necessaries of life, and it was an extraordinary fact that in the poorer districts of the Metropolis the Adulteration Acts were not so strictly enforced as in the richer districts. In Lewisham, Hampstead, and St. James's, Westminster, hardly one sample in 100 were adulterated, while in St. Pancras 43 per cent., in Southwark 46 per cent., and in Lambeth 47 per cent. of the samples were adulterated. The Government said they had not time to deal with this matter. They had the time to mention foreign prison-made goods. He did not want to know where goods were made, but he did want to know that they were what they purported to be. What encouragement was there for farmers to start butter factories, as they had done and still further hoped to do in parts of the country, and to endeavour to win back from the foreigner a portion of the market they had encroached upon, when the Government, which was so professedly the friend of the farmers, would not help them to see that the produce they had to compete with was pure or not? It could not be said that agriculture had had too much of the present Session devoted to it, for this was the first Agricultural Amendment brought forward. The very first day of last Session the Minister for Agriculture gave notice of a Bill to amend the Agricultural Holdings Act, but this Session Agricultural Holdings only found a place in the Omnibus Clause of the Queen's Speech, to be passed if time permitted. He did think that this Government, which came into power 80 largely through the support of the agricultural interest, might do something to enable the farmers to help themselves.

, referring to the suggestion that local authorities were lax in the administration of the Adulteration Acts, said he belonged to a local authority who had endeavoured to put the law into force. Each prosecution cost upwards of £5, and they thought themselves very lucky indeed if they got a, penalty of 10s. inflicted on a person they prosecuted, if indeed the summons were not dismissed, and a fine of 10s. was, of course, a perfect farce, and was no deterrent. Unless they could obtain better means of enforcing the law, it would become a question with the body of which he was a member whether they should continue to enforce it or not. He thought the local bodies were unfairly blamed in this matter. Either the magistrates should be called upon to inflict severe penalties, or else a radical change should be made in the law, providing for imprisonment instead of tine after the first or second conviction. Otherwise men would continue to defy the law, and local bodies would cease to make an effort to prevent it.

, said he wished to speak as a member of the Committee assenting to the Report, but also because, when Chairman of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, he had moved and obtained the appointment of the Committee. He was bound to say that he thought his hon. Friend opposite in the very vague indication he had given of the possible action of the Government in the future, had not in any way invalidated the ground on which this matter had been brought forward. Without going into any details of the frauds that were committed, or of the minor recommendations, he wished to say, as a member of the Committee, that the Report consisted of two essential heads or divisions. Under one head it discussed amendments in the law and its administration, as to which there was no practical doubt or difficulty whatsoever, and as to which there could be no divergence of opinion; but the other division of the Report was the essential portion, and its nature was an unanswerable argument for dealing promptly with this question. The main recommendation of the Report was that steps should be taken to remove all that sort of difficulty which had beset so many of the Courts, and which had acted as an obstacle to commerce—the uncertainty as to what was meant by certain articles, the uncertainty as to the condition of the law, the uncertainty as to what was adulteration and what was not, and the uncertainty as to what was an honest article and what was not. The main recommendation of the Committee was to take all these questions out of the realm of uncertainty, an uncertainty which now led the Courts into difficulty, and acted as a serious obstacle to the producers of this country, and to obtain accurate and reliable decisions from the highest experts appointed for the purpose of laying down standards which would govern the trade in these articles. Was it not unanswerable to say that the sooner a Court of Reference was set up the better? He had had a great deal to do with the demands of agriculturists for many years, and this demand for protection against adulteration had been one of the demands most earnestly and unanimously formulated by them throughout the country for years past. When the late Liberal Ministry came into power a similar demand for protection against fraud in fertilisers and feeding stuffs had been left over by their predecessors, and the present President of the Local Government Board had failed to deal with it. The Liberal Ministry then dealt with that evil by the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuff's Act of 1893. It was the Liberal Ministry also which appointed this Committee, and after a change of Ministry the Committee had the aid and help of the hon. Gentleman opposite, as the particularly capable representative of the office which would be intrusted with carrying out any legislation that might be passed. It was really absurd that there should be so much doubt and hesitation about the production of a Bill to deal with the question, the main portion of which was contained in so small a compass. The details of administration had been thrashed out again and again by practical men all over the country. The real difficulty of the question, a difficulty he admitted quite as strongly as the Secretary to the Local Government Board, was to determine what was an adulterated article and what was not, and this difficulty would be in a fair way of solution when once a Court of Reference was started. With such a Competent court established there would be a fair prospect of dealing with a vast volume of fraudulent trade which had inflicted much injury upon agriculture and loss upon consumers. To have palmed upon them the hazy outlines of a Bill now in some remote pigeon-hole and not yet even in a final form of preparation, so that it could be laid before the House at any given time, and to which there was not the most distant allusion in the Queen's Speech, was just cause of complaint to Members who took an interest in agricultural questions; and more especially they complained of this conduct from, a Government who by rash and reckless pledges gained so many seats in agricultural constituencies. For years legislation of this kind had been asked for by agricultural associations all over the country, and this indefinite postponement by the Government was ungenerous and unfair to agricultural interests, and he hoped his hon. Friend, unless he received an assurance that legislation creating this Court of Reference would be within a reasonable time brought before the House, would by a Division give hon. Members the opportunity of recording opinions on the conduct of Her Majesty's Ministers in meeting this urgent question with a vague promise. ["Hear!"]

, having sat on the Committee which inquired into this question last Session, said he was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Devonport say that the Report of the Committee was unanimous. There were undoubtedly a number of questions upon which there was substantial agreement, but there were other and very important ones upon which there was much difference of opinion, and on one important point the draft Report passed by the. Chairman on behalf of the Local Government Board was set aside. It would be quite a mistake to suppose that there would be no opposition to a Bill to carry out the Report of the Committee as it stood. It had been very truly said there were matters in the Report which were highly contentious. It was not entirely a Report suggesting improvements in machinery; there were proposals or suggestions in it which affected very important principles. It had been admitted that where the existing Acts had been honestly and fairly adminstered, there had been a great decrease in adulteration, and so far as suggestions were made for the improvement of machinery for the existing Acts there would be no opposition raised. But proposals were made in Committee and agreed to by majorities there as to which the Committee were divided into two distinct parties, the town party and the country party. There was a question whether an article of food, which on the evidence of numerous witnesses had been pronounced nutritious, useful and palatable, was to be presented in a form and colour which would prevent its being used to a large extent. There was another proposal to largely increase the powers of the Customs to seize goods at Custom Houses instead of taking samples and following up the cases. In this Amendment he strongly objected to the use of the word "nefarious." To this he certainly could not assent; the word "nefarious" signified "impious," "base," "felonious," "wicked in the extreme," "abominable." [Laughter.] What had occurred in the punishment of this great crime under the Act? There had been difficulty in inducing magistrates to convict, not only magistrates who were members of local authorities, but Justices of the Peace who were not, and many stipendiary magistrates had refused larger fines than from 1s. to 40s. Clearly this indicated that they did not regard the offence as it was designated in the Amendment. He observed that the hon. Member for Devonport had not used a word which had cropped up frequently in subsequent speeches—"Margarine." That word was much discussed in Committee. If the Report were carried out undoubtedly it would be an endeavour to strike a fatal blow at the sale of margarine. hon. Gentlemen had pleaded for the carrying out of the Act in the interests of the poor. Now the poor were great consumers of margarine, which was not placed before them fraudulently but knowingly as margarine. The Report itself gave a remarkable statement on the point to the effect that the Committee had received much evidence as to the wholesome, valuable, and nutritious properties of margarine as a cheap food, not so palatable as good butter but, unquestionably, well-made margarine was more palatable than bad butter. It was said that margarine was sold as butter, but in fact it could only be sold in wrappers having the word "Margarine" in large characters thereon. The poor were anxious to obtain this article, and they obtained it knowing it to be margarine, though in shops where the customer was well known and wished to conceal the fact of his purchasing this article it might be asked for as "butter." It was not necessary to detain the House by dwelling on the point, but it was well known that this nutritive article was sold at half the price of fresh butter, and with the poor it was often a question whether they could supply this to their families with bread or nothing. He strongly condemned the suggested interference with the trade. He much regretted that so many of his hon. Friends had shown the cloven foot of protection. [Laughter.] They would be far better employed in using their influence with agricultural communities to induce them to do what the hon. Member for South Molton said had been done in Devonshire, to establish and encourage the factory system under enlightened, intelligent management, such as had really been the cause of this competition of which complaint was made. There had been large importations of Danish and other butters, and why? Because Denmark and other countries which had gone into the factory system were able to put on the market an article of first class character, regularly supplied in excellent condition. It was because of its excellence Danish butter had attained its position. Let the English farmers, with their wives and daughters, devote the same attention as the Danish families did to dairy work, let the same attention be given to the preparation and package of the butter for market, and perhaps the consumer would be able to dispense with the supply of foreign butter. ["Hear!"] But the idea among some of his hon. Friends was that anything that was foreign must be nefarious. ["No, no!"] If that was not the idea it was the declaration of this particular Amendment, but hon. Gentlemen who took that line should remember that so far as our exports were concerned we were the most nefarious people in the world. ["No, no!" and laughter.] Certainly foreign manufacturers had equally good ground for such an opinion. Out of samples of butter from fifteen countries only five were found to be in any way adulterated. With regard to the other ten the samples showed "none," "none" all through. With regard even to these five there was in one country, with 21 samples, only two adulterated, and another, with 34, had only five adulterated, He thoroughly endorsed what the Secretary to the Local Government Board had said, namely, that the questions dealt with in this Report were so multifarious, and some of them were of such importance, that he would be making far more haste than good speed if he were to throw on the Table of the House a Bill which, with the well known surplusage of Measures which were to be passed during the Session, would have no chance of getting through. They all knew that the hon. Gentleman applied his mind thoroughly to any subject he might take up, and they might be sure, from their knowledge of his past action, that when this Bill was laid on the table of the House, it would be a Measure which had been carefully prepared with due regard to the important interests that were involved. He thought that instead of an attempt being made to censure the Government for being dilatory they would have been far more worthy of censure if they had precipitately brought into the House a hasty and ill-considered measure. ["Hear, hear!"] For these reasons, as a Member of the Committee, he should certainly support the Government in opposing the Amendment.

hoped they might now draw this portion of the Debate on the Address to a conclusion. He had really nothing substantial to add to what had fallen from his hon. Friend, which, he thought, was sufficient to show a practical assembly that the Government were not to blame for the course they had taken in the matter. Anybody who had listened to the Debate must be convinced that the subject was one of great difficulty and complexity. It had engaged the attention of a very competent Committee for no less than three years of continuous and arduous labour, and its recommendations were of a complicated and far from being of an uncontroversial character. It must also be evident from the Debate that while there was no party complexion in the matter there was a conflict of material interests between the constituencies represented by gentlemen sitting on different sides of the House, and his experience was that where they found a conflict of material interests the Debates to which they gave rise were quite as long and sometimes quite as heated as any that arose in the ordinary course of warfare between party and party. ["Hear, hear!"] He did not think it would be asserted by any Gentleman that the programme of legislation the Government had put before the House this year was one which would leave them very much time to be filled up by Measures not announced in the Queen's Speech, and the House might rest content with the assurance of his hon. Friend that the matter was under the consideration of his department. The labours they had already devoted to the subject had produced a draft Bill which would require further consideration, but still it was a Bill which had been thrown into some sort of preliminary shape. Those labours would be continued, and he thought it would be asking more from the Government than could fairly be demanded at this stage of the Session to require them to give any sort of pledge as to the period when they would find themselves in a position to deal with the question. ["Hear, hear!"]

observed that they had got an existing law in this matter, and he thought one of the most unsatisfactory things in connection with the answer given by the hon. Member representing the Local Government Board, was that he did not make any promise that there should be a firm enforcement of the existing law. A good deal could be done under that law. He must say that, although he could not agree with all the conclusions of his hon. Friend who had last spoken, he did think there were grave faults in the particular Amendment before them, which savoured a great deal too much of Protection in the latter part. He went thoroughly with the first two or three lines of the Amendment, and if he could get an assurance from the hon. Gentleman that the existing law so far as it could be made to meet the case would be strictly applied, he would readily accept the assurances already given. He wished to give one illustration of how much could be done under that law. There was one trade that had been singled out in this Report from all other trades, namely the tea trade, in which a good many samples had been examined and not one case of adulteration was found. There was a particular section under the Act of 1875 by which the Customs authorities could make a stringent examination of any tea suspected even of being adulterated, and could stop it at the port. The fear of the operation of the Act had been perfectly successful in arresting adulteration, which had gone on to a certain extent before. He thought that Act was capable of a far larger application. When they turned to the article of coffee he was sorry to say the Report was an unsatisfactory one, for every species seemed to be adulterated in this country to a larger extent than any other article. That illustrated the mistake made in this Amendment, It was the foreigner who was hit here. They got all their best, food from foreigners, whilst the worst adulteration was done in this country. An hon. Member had said that the British farmer was an honest man. He might be, but he was not the noblest work of God. He was a very stupid man, because he had been cut out of every trade he ought to command in this country by intelligent foreigners. They got the best butter and the best apples from abroad, because home producers did not follow the same intelligent processes that foreigners adopted. For his part he wished to associate himself with the protest against the Protectionist aspect of part of the Amendment. They wanted to stop adulteration, but they did not want to stop the importation of foreign food. They wanted an equal law to be applied to the foreign and the native adulterator, and if that were done he thought they would have arrived at a most excellent system. If they had an assurance that the existing law would Le enforced in the case of all articles, and the Bill brought forward as early as possible, they might now take a decision on the question.

was willing that the Debate should now draw to a close, and with a view to this result he would ask the right hon. Gentleman, who had said, as he understood him, that at as early a period as possible the Bill would be submitted to Parliament, to go a step further and say it should be brought in during this Session.

was very unwilling to make any promise which might result in disappointment, and which it might not be possible to fulfil to the absolute letter. All he could say, therefore, was that among the large number of measures competing for the support of the Government and the consideration of the House, this was one to which they attached importance. He could not go further than that. With regard to the existing law, he believed that rested not with any central but with the local authority. He would inquire whether or not, it rested with the central authority, and see what could be done.

observed that in view of the right hon. Gentleman's answer he should challenge a division.

had the next Amendment on the Paper, which was to add at the end of the Address the words:—

"But we humbly express our regret that no measure is announced by Your Majesty for a simplification of the registration laws for Parliamentary and Local Government elections, so that duly qualified persons may be placed upon the electoral register without the present unnecessary complications and delay."

ruled that this Amendment was out of order, inasmuch as it anticipated a Bill of which notice had been given dealing with the same subject.

moved, as an Amendment to the Address, to add at the end:—

"And we humbly represent to your Majesty the regret of this House that your Majesty's Gracious Speech contains no promise that any attempt shall he made this Session to pass into law a Bill dealing with the question of manning of British merchant vessels, in accordance with the recommendations of a departmental committee appointed to inquire into the under-maiming of British merchant vessels; and this House further expresses its regret at the continued alarming loss of life at sea."

He said that whenever there had been any shipping legislation brought before the House it had been the usual practice of gentlemen interested to stir up a great agitation upon the ground that the shipping interest should be left absolutely alone, and that no legislation should be allowed to interfere with the management by shipowners of their business or property. This House for many years had interfered with factories, mines, and workshops, and legislation affecting those interests had never produced anything like the agitation there had been in connection with shipping. He did not complain very much of shipowners; the people he had fought and intended to fight were the managing shipowners or shipmongers—the men who induced the general public to invest their money in shipping property on false pretences, and who had no real interest at stake themselves. He quoted from a prospectus issued recently in Cardiff where the managing director of a shipping company was advising people to invest their money in one of their vessels, and promising a return of 45 per cent. on the capital invested. Managing owners had been the curse of the shipping trade. They constantly cut down the number of men employed on board, and, by under-manning the ships, were responsible for a good deal of the loss of life at sea. Whatever loss of life there was at sea at present, he asserted that managing owners were more responsible for it than anyone else he knew. They promised big dividends, which they had not been able to realise, and when it came to a question of actual management they continually cut down expenses in every direction. More especially had they cut down the number of men employed on board. He urged that under-manning was responsible for a considerable amount of loss of life at sea. On January 8th 1894 a vessel called the Port Gareth was lost in Brandon Bay with all hands. In that case there would have been no inquiry but for the fact that one of the apprentices on the vessel had kept a log of the voyage, and had dispatched it to his father a few days before the vessel foundered. From that log it appeared that the crew consisted of a master, two mates and a carpenter, one sail-maker, steward, and cook, six able seamen (all foreigners), two ordinary seamen (boys under 17, one of whom had never been to sea before), and six apprentices, five of whom had never been to sea before. This vessel carried 500 yards of canvas, which the crew had to work. It was found, at the Board of Trade inquiry, that the vessel had been lost in consequence of being undermanned and inefficiently manned. It appeared from the log that before the loss of the vessel a large number of the men were disabled by scurvy and sea-sickness; and the six able seamen were possibly not conversant with English. He would not say that shipowners deliberately sent their vessels to sea in an unseaworthy condition, in order to make a profit from the insurance, but it was a remarkable fact that in the case of the majority of ships lost the owners made a profit by the loss. The vessel he had mentioned was insured for £10,000, and the vessel, if sold, would not have fetched more than £6,000. The penalty imposed on the owner for this loss of 21 lives was a fine of £75. He asked the Solicitor General whether further proceedings could not be taken by Government, and he was informed that under the existing law there would be no chance of a conviction. To show what some shipowners were capable of, he would read a series of letters from one firm, whose name he would give if it were desired, to the captain of one of the vessels which had completed the voyage, and was lying at Falmouth for a week or two awaiting orders. The owners were anxious to get rid of the crew to save pay. The first letter ran—

"In reply to your telegram with regard to crew, we wired you to say that you were only to give the crew salt-beef, no fresh provisions, and keep them hard at work, so that they may get tired of the ship and agree to a forfeit of £3. We cannot hope to pay the crew off without this forfeit.… Use your own boats in going to and from the ship. We are most anxious to keep down expenses."

The next letter read—

"We received your telegram advising us that you had paid off ten men with a reduction of £3 each. As we do not expect orders before four days, we should like you to see that you get rid of as many men as possible."

Then a wire followed—

"If you can get any more of your able seamen or ordinary seamen paid off with forfeit, do so."

Then another letter—

"Make a quick run after you get your orders and have no detention, but get to sea at once. If you are ordered to the Clyde, do not take a pilot, and you will not require much towage. Run up the Clyde as far as possible under sail. As to Liverpool, you will require little or no towage there, and no pilot. We hope you are doing your utmost to keep down expenses at Falmouth, which is a matter of great importance."

There were a good many managing owners who were as ready as these gentlemen, at all times and by all means, to cut down expenses, regardless of tin-safety of the lives of the men employed. Of course, all shipowners were not like that. There were some in the House who would scorn to be parties to any conduct of the kind. But as long as there were men who were willing to undertake such risks for the sake of paltry saving, it was the duty of Parliament to step in to protect the seaman. He induced the right hon. Member for the Brightside Division (Mr. Mundella) to appoint a Committee to inquire into the manning of ships; and for the first time in the history of the country a fair and reasonable Committee was appointed, and all interests were represented. It was not a shipowners' Committee, nor was it a sailors' Committee. It was a Committee composed of men representing every interest connected with shipping. It sat for two years; visited the principal ports of the United Kingdom, and examined 176 witnesses. In fact, no Committee had ever done its work in a more thorough manner. Thirteen out of the 17 members of the Committee had signed the Majority Report, which declared that undermanning did largely prevail in a certain class of vessels, and that it vas a danger to the lives of the sailors who went to sea in those ships. The Report did not agree with the statement that undermanning could be dealt with without further legislation by a more strict definition and enforcement of the existing law applicable to unseaworthiness in regard to the undermanning of ships, and by the punishment of persons responsible for sending such ships to sea. At the present moment it was possible for a Board of Trade surveyor to go on board a vessel, and if he found that the bell on which the time of day was struck was a quarter of an inch short of the measurement provided by the Board of Trade, he could detain that vessel in port as being in an unseaworthy condition. But when it came to the question of the manning of the ship, the surveyor had no power. Yet the manning of the ship was the most important matter of all. The finest ship ever built, if not properly manned, was as unseaworthy as the worst old tub afloat on the ocean; and yet in regard to manning the only authority possessed by the official of the Board of Trade was to see that the officers of the ship had got their certificates. In fact, if the officers had got their certificates, the owners might send the ship to sea without a single sailor, and the officers and the official of the Board of Trade would be powerless in the matter. That being the condition of affairs, he could not understand how the Government could delay any longer in dealing with this question of undermanning. It was a question of life and death to men who went down to the sea in ships. If there were only a few lives at stake he would probably not say so much on the matter. But he knew that every day and every week and every month of the year thousands of men were sent to their doom in consequence of ships in an unseaworthy condition being allowed to leave the ports. He therefore most strongly entered his protest against any further delay in dealing with this most important question. In regard to the Minority Report of the Committee, he should say that a more misleading document had never been submitted to the House. In the first paragraph of that report it was stated that the evidence had not been presented in that unbiassed spirit that was desirable. Had those gentlemen supposed that the seamen who were to be examined before the Committee would give evidence in favour of the shipowners and not against them? Was it not only reasonable to suppose that the seamen would give their evidence in a free and open manner, and speak the truth as to their actual everyday experiences at sea? The Minority Report also declared that the details of the construction of vessels intended to carry passengers were subjected to rules fixed by the Board of Trade. But the complaint was never made that passenger vessels were undermanned. These ships were always well manned, for, were it otherwise, the travelling public would very soon enter a protest. The complaint was that the tramp steamers were undermanned; and this allusion to passenger steamers was really an attempt to mislead the public. There again he had to complain of this one-sided minority report. The Gentlemen who signed this Report knew perfectly well that there was no restriction for the carrying of deck cargo from April to October to the ports of the United Kingdom. The only restriction which existed was that in the winter months vessels should only be allowed to carry three feet of timber to ports in the United Kingdom, but they might carry 12 or 14 feet to any Continental port. As to the qualification of the officers, was he to understand that the shipowners objected to officers passing a Board of Trade examination to prove that they were qualified to do their work? Was that any hardship to the shipowning community? As to the inspection of the accommodation it was a mere farce. The minority on this Committee reported that if the restrictions and regulations under which shipowners now conducted their business were unduly extended, there would be considerable risk, they would feel that their personal responsibility was lessened. But there was no class of employers in the country who had escaped more from legislative interference than had the shipowners. ["Hear, hear!"] He would ask those gentlemen to read the Factories Act, the Railways Regulation Act, or the Coal Mines Regulation Act. He would remind them also that they were able in 1880 to induce that House to deny to seamen the right and protection of the Employers' Liability Act, and some of them came clown and voted that mineowners and railway and factory employers should be saddled with the responsibility of that Act, while they voted against its extension to seamen. The shipowners had for the last 25 years been complaining that, in consequence of legislative interference, the shipping trade was being driven from the country, and yet in that time we had increased our tonnage from about five millions to about 13 millions. The shipowners complained that a wider interpretation had been given to the reference to this Committee than they believed was intended, and called attention to the fact that not only had their inquiry extended to the efficiency of the manning of ships, but it had attempted to measure the degree and extent of labour imposed on the individual members of a crew, and to fix by law a limit thereto. That referred to the question of the manning of the stokehold. It was found, on taking evidence from experts, that the only safe method of dealing with the question of the number of men that should be employed in the stokehold, was not to go by the horse-power of the engines or the tonnage of the vessel, but by the amount of coal that was consumed in the stokehold. He thought himself that two and a-half tons of coal for 24 hours was sufficient for any one man to work. It should be remembered also that, owing to the way in which the coal was worked and handled, the actual amount was sometimes not two and a half tons but five tons. And yet these Gentlemen who signed the Minority Report said there was no necessity to interfere, as, if the shipowner did not employ a sufficient number of men to do the stoking, he would be himself the loser. Published statistics showed that there were more suicides among the firemen in the stokehold of a ship than among any other class of the community; and the reason was that these men were called upon to do more work than they were able to do. When their vessel was in the Red Sea they sometimes came right up from the stokehold and jumped overboard. There was every justification for the State to interfere to give these men protection. These gentlemen claimed that rebutting evidence had been given in regard to the statements made by witnesses about certain ships, and said that where rebutting evidence had not been given no close inquiry into the circumstances was possible. The only rebutting evidence consisted of a number of letters from the owners of various ships, who said that their ships were not undermanned. But they did not come before the Committee to subject themselves to cross-examination, and he contended that their letters were not evidence at all, and that they were not worth the paper they were written upon and should not be quoted as a reason the Government should not interfere. They stated that there had been 33 formal Board of Trade Inquiries held during the last 16 years into casualties to foreign bound and cross Channel steamers of over 200 tons each, in which the Court expressed the opinion that the vessel carried too few hands. But in no case was it held that the vessel was actually lost through such cause. He held in his hand Reports of a number of Board of Trade Inquiries, and he believed that in all there were 33 cases, and in every one the ships were undermanned. While the Courts of Inquiry might not have been able to say that the vessel was actually lost in consequence of being undermanned, if a vessel was undermanned and that led to the vessel stranding or to a collision through being undermanned he contended that the direct cause of loss was undermanning. The Committee talked about the number of vessels in which undermanning was complained of, and endeavoured to compare the number of vessels lost where undermanning was alleged, with the manning scale adopted by the Committee. One word about the conduct of the minority with reference to the manning scale when discussed by the Committee: They threw every obstacle in the way of the majority Report. One Gentleman in fact absolutely declined to discuss the majority Report. But when it came to a question of the manning scale everyone of these Gentlemen endeavoured to reduce the number of men that the majority Report proposed. He himself endeavoured to give a scale more liberal than that proposed by the majority, but the Gentlemen who signed the Minority Report voted against him every time, and then in the Minority Report they complained that the proposed scale of manning by the Committee would actually leave the ships in a worse position than they were at the present moment, Courts of Inquiry having held that they were undermanned. They said the aggregate tonnage of 14 ships was 14,654, and the crew carried was 291. A similar number of vessels of larger tonnage would, under the scheme, have to carry a total crew of 235 "effective hands." There was a difference between 291 hands and 235 effective hands. Effective hands meant men well able to do their work. It was quite possible these ships might have 400 hands, but if not effective they should not be taken into consideration. Then the Report said:

"We have been unable to pursue a similar investigation as regarded the number of hands earned in the stoke hole, in the absence of necessary information with regard to the consumption of coal from voyage to voyage, which is the proposed basis of the manning scale for firemen and trimmers. We submit, however, that the evidence of the witnesses called to prove the prevalence of undermanning amply demonstrates when this is tested by the scale for manning adopted by those members of the Committee, who consider vessels are sent to sea short handed that the assertions are unfounded, and we confidently submit that those who demand legislative interference have signally failed to substantiate their case."

He contended that the evidence had proved over and over again a strong case in favour of legislative interference. It was said it was not competent for the Committee to define a scale for the manning of sailing ships. Why not? If the tonnage of vessels were compared they would be found to be nearly all upon the same scale, and there was no reason why the Government should not by law fix what the actual number carried should be. "As regarded steamers, from the point of view of safety there was no necessity whatever to determine the number of firemen, coal trimmers, and greasers to be employed in connection with the machinery of steamers. Their speed alone would be affected by the number which might be so occupied in the stoke-hole." If this had been written by longshoremen who knew nothing about ships or seamen he would not have said so much about it, but coming from Gentlemen supposed to be familiar with shipping business it was astonishing. They must forget that often on board steamers the bilges got choked through not being cleared when the vessel was in port. If there were only the ordinary number of men to do the necessary stoking on the vessel, where were the engineers going to get the extra hands from to assist in cleaning the bilges and keeping the pumps clear? It was complained that it was not possible to fix the number of men according to the amount of coal consumed. At the present time when shipowners signed a crew on they did not take into account the amount of coal consumed. They signed five, six, or ten men according to the size of the vessel, and it was immaterial to them whether they had to work 40 tons or 60 tons; they had to do all the work, just the same. The question was an important one, because it affected not only sailors and firemen but the welfare of the nation, bearing as it did directly not only on the manning of the Mercantile Marine but of the Navy. The shipowners endeavoured to prove that the chief Board of Trade Surveyor for the north-east coast stated in his evidence that cargo steamers were quite as well manned as passenger steamers. He said there was no such evidence to prove that. They also stated that the superintendent of the Mercantile Marine Office at Cardiff had never heard of a case of undermanning; but if any hon. Gentleman would peruse the evidence he would find that statement also fell, because that official stated over and over again in his evidence that there were a large number of complaints that ships were very much undermanned. The Minority Report also stated that were attempts made to fix the minimum number of men to be employed, the effect would be similar to that which had followed the adoption of the load-line, namely, that it would afford to shipowners a shelter from their proper responsibility, and under cover of the minimum manning scale, there would be an inducement to owners to accept the minimum as removing responsibility from their shoulders, and in many cases a reduction in the number of those now carried would be the result. He asked the gentlemen who signed that paragraph if they maintained that the shipowner who was now carrying 24 hands, believing 24 hands to be absolutely necessary for the manning of his vessel, was going to reduce his crew to 20 hands because the scale of the Manning Committee said that the minimum number for such a ship should be 20. It would be a great reflection on shipowners if they adopted such a course. Then the Report went on to say that the loss of life at sea, especially in recent years, showed that the necessity for further legislation had disappeared. In this connection he would ask the House to consider a few figures. When they were considering the number of men lost at sea they ought to compare it with the number of men who lost their lives in following industries on shore, because he had heard it stated by shipowners that the calling of a sailor or a fireman was as safe as any other calling. During the ten years, from 1886–95 inclusive, the number killed in three of the most hazardous shore industries was as follows:—factory and workshop operatives, 4,168; miners, 10,991; and railway servants, 5,074; or a total of 20,000. During the same period 22,000 seamen were killed or drowned. The total number of people employed in the shore industries he had referred to was 5,370,200, while the total number employed at sea, including fishermen, was 241,000; so that in those shore industries the yearly aver-ago was 2,013, the weekly average 38, and the daily average 5½, while at sea the yearly average of killed and drowned was 2,200, the weekly average 42, and the daily average 6. Out of five and a half million of shore workers the average number of fatal accidents during the ton years had been a fraction less than 3¾ in every thousand, while out of less than a quarter of a million of seamen the average number of killed and drowned had been a fraction over 93 in every thousand, a fraction over 9 in every hundred, and a fraction less than one in every ten in each year. He did not say that all those lives were lost through causes for which the shipowners themselves were responsible, but the same thing applied to the industries on shore, and he said that when it was found that 20,000 men only were killed out of five and a half millions, against 22,000 out of a quarter of a million, he and those he represented had a right to come to the House and ask that some legislation should be passed in order to endeavour to reduce that loss of life. He maintained it was idle for the shipowners to talk about loss of life at sea during the last 10 or 15 years. What about our Lifeboat Institution; what about the improvement of the lights on shore; what about the appliances all round the coast for saving life, and what about the thousands of lives saved annually by steamers on the ocean? If they could get at the actual number of casualties that occurred on board merchant ships, and place against them the various methods that had been adopted for the prevention of loss of life at sea, he thought that it would be found that the shipowners themselves had done but little towards reducing that loss. He wished to know whether that House and the Government would permit this state of things to go on much longer, simply because the all-powerful shipowners asserted that the shipping industry would be ruined if legislative restrictions were to be imposed upon it. He might remind the House that similar arguments as to the ruining of trade by legislation were advanced against the Employers' Liability Acts when they were introduced into that House. In spite of those arguments, however, the Acts were passed, with the result that great benefit-had been conferred upon the workpeople by those Acts, without trade being in any way injuriously affected by them. He asked the right hon. Gentleman on behalf of the Government to hold out some hope to the sailors and firemen of our Mercantile Marine that some Measure would be introduced, having for its object the preservation of their lives. There was this curious fact about the minority Report—namely, that it asserted that the manning scale would not work; nevertheless they recommended that every ship of 150 feet long should be compelled to have at least one certificated officer and three men on a watch. But watches of that strength were never employed on board our merchant ships of that size, and therefore it was evident from the Minority Report itself that our Mercantile Marine was undermanned. In the case of the vessel that ran into the Elbe and sunk her, whereby 375 lives were lost, it was shown that she had only a crew of 12 instead of 16 men—the minimum number required by the Minority Report. In these circumstances he failed to see how the minority were justified in stating that a manning scale was not necessary. In regard to the rating qualification, the shipowners were afraid to adopt the principle that certificates of rating should be obtained either by length of service or by examination, because they thought that, in the event of an industrial dispute, such certificates might be of some advantage to the men. Personally he was not in favour of examination, because he thought that the better practice would be to give certificates only to men who had had a certain amount of experience at sea. He suggested that, in order to prevent the certificates from being misused, the Board of Trade should require a sufficient description of the holder to be placed on the back of the certificate. As to the manning question generally, he had no doubt that the most serious question was that of having an effective reserve for the Royal Navy. That important question would undoubtedly be raised in that House during the Session. There could be no doubt but that we were rapidly losing British sailors and firemen in our Mercantile Marine, and that they were being replaced by Lascars and foreigners. At the present time we had 30,000 Lascars employed in the British Mercantile Marine, whereas 20 years ago there were only 6,000 of them in it. At one time Lascars were employed only on liners, whereas now they were to be found in large numbers on our ordinary cargo ships, on which they were replacing white men on a rapidly increasing scale. Again, there were 30,000 foreigners on board our mercantile vessels, and they consisted not only of natives of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, but of Turks, Greeks, and Italians. Every year British sailors were becoming fewer in number, and he asked whether it was wise or prudent that Great Britain, which possessed the largest mercantile fleet in the world, should be dependent to so great an extent upon the seamen of foreign nations? Many people might ask, "Why don't boys take more readily to the sea service?" Parents objected to pay large premiums to bind their sons as apprentices to the service. When he said that often premiums of £200 were required, hon. Members would well understand the reluctance on the part of parents to send their boys to sea. Furthermore, what had the ordinary able seaman to look forward to after he had served his apprenticeship? Many shipowners did not pay their men more than £3 or £3 3s. per month. Men had to run the risk of being at times out of work, and frequently had to pay their fare from one part of the country to the other, which practically reduced their wages to as low as £2 10s. per month. Could it be expected that lads of spirit and intelligence would flock to our sea service when such conditions obtained? Certainly he should do all he could to dissuade lads from going to sea in the present circumstances. One important question was, how were we to provide a good and efficient reserve unless something was done. Various suggestions had been made. It had been suggested that there should be training ships for the merchant service. It had also been suggested that the Government should subsidise certain shipowners by paying them certain premiums upon every apprentice carried. He hoped the Government would never entertain such a proposal as the latter, but that they would this Session deal with the question of the manning of ships, first of all from the point of view of overwork, and secondly from the standpoint of the loss of life at sea. Seamen and firemen could not, unfortunately, indulge in the luxury of voting at Parliamentary Elections, but if they could not vote themselves they knew those who could, and unless the Government would deal with the question of the manning of ships, in accordance with the Report of the Departmental Committee, he should take every opportunity at every bye-election of writing upon the wall that 22,000 men had been lost in ten years. If this or any Government remained indifferent to the lives of our men at sea, they would soon find that their majority in the House of Commons would reduce, if not quite dwindle away. He thanked the House for listening to him so patiently, and concluded by moving the Amendment to the Address which stood in his name.

seconded the Amendment, and complimented the hon. Member for Middlesbrough upon the admirable, cool, and fair statement of his case. Parliament had often recognised that the sailor was unable to take care of himself in many worldly matters, and in matters affecting his own welfare the sailor was a child, totally incapable of taking his own part. There was no class of the community more entitled to protective legislation than that of our seamen, for the all sufficient reason that they carried on their business on board a ship upon which from the very nature of things there was despotic government. For refusing to do the simplest thing the sailor was liable to be put in irons. As to the necessity of legislation for the protection of the seaman, no one who had read the evidence given before the Committee could doubt it for a moment. Thirteen out of seventeen of the Committee had stated several points on which legislation was desirable, and it was too late in the day now to say that sailors were not entitled to all the protection the House could give. Parliament had passed protective legislation for those who worked in shops, in factories, in mines, and on railways; indeed, there was hardly a section of the community that had not benefited in this way. Then surely the sailor had a right to legislative protection from the unfair conditions which his occupation might impose on him. ["Hear, hear!"] The Committee were appointed to deal specifically with the question of undermanning, and whatever might be said to the contrary the, existence of the evil to a considerable extent had been proved up to the hilt. It had not only been proved before the Committee, but also in Court. The Committee mentioned the case of the Deeside, which was run down and several lives lost, when at the time of the accident only two men were on watch, and one of them had to leave that duty to trim a lamp. That case was heard in the Admiralty Court, and the Judge pronounced a judgment which led to the appointment of the Committee. Instances of the dangers of undermanning were given in relation to two other vessels, and although no doubt could be entertained that undermanning existed, the Board of Trade were advised in each case that a prosecution for that offence would not, under the circumstances, be successful. In presence of those facts there could be no doubt as to the necessity of legislation for the protection of the seaman. Still, he thought the case for the seaman was not as strongly presented as it might have been. The Committee had intimated that they had not received the information and assistance from the masters and officers of vessels which they might have expected. The fact was that the men were anxious as to the consequences which might follow in regard to their employment if they attended and gave evidence. ["Hear, hear!"] One of the most important subjects which the Committee considered was that of the manning of vessels, and they recommended that a scheme should be framed for the manning of both sailing and steam vessels. It was said that there were difficulties in the way of framing such a scheme; but other countries—New Zealand and. Canada, for instance—had framed schemes of the kind, and surely England ought to be able to do so, especially as the matter was one which closely affected the interests of the country generally, no less than those of the Mercantile Marine. The question was simply one of arrangement and organisation. It was curious that while every one admitted the existence of undermanning, such difficulty should be raised about framing a scheme to prevent it. Another specific recommendation was that the undermanning of a vessel should by law be made evidence of the unseaworthiness of that vessel. At present there was no authority to detain a vessel that was undermanned, but the effect of the recommendation, if comprehended in the law, would be that if a vessel which intended to sail for anywhere was undermanned, it should be considered as an unseaworthy vessel and detained. In the case of all the recommendations of the Committee he did not think they could look for anything but the ready acquiescence of the President of the Board of Trade to move in that House for the necessary power to remove those disabilities to which the Committee drew such forcible attention. There was another point to which he would refer briefly—the results following from under-manning. There was no doubt very great difficulty in ascertaining particulars of undermanning. To begin with, a vessel might never be heard of again. Some sixty or seventy vessels disappeared every year. There never could be any information as to whether those vessels were undermanned or not, except sometimes that in the inquiry which took place evidence was furnished as to the number of the crew that the vessel tained. Then again there were many carried when she left the port. Beyond that nothing further could be ascer-total wrecks. They never knew whether the direct cause of the wreck was the want of sufficient hands to navigate the vessel. His hon. Friend drew attention to the proportionate number of seamen who lost their lives as compared with those employed on shore. The magnitude of the figures might have been made much clearer to the House. A few years ago he had occasion to take out these figures for an article he was writing in connection with employers' liability, and he found that in the year 1892 the number of men who lost their lives in their ships as compared with the number of men who were killed in mines or on the railways—the two most dangerous occupations on shore—were very nearly as six to one in proportion to the number employed. This was a part of the question that might very well be made the subject of appealing to the feelings of the House, but he did not think it was at all necessary to do that. He thought they could appeal with confidence to the. President of the Board of Trade to take into his sympathetic consideration the circumstances in which seamen carried on their calling; to consider the specific recommendations of the Committee; and, as soon as possible, to legislate for these circumstances with a view to remove those disabilities under which sailors laboured at the present time.

said this was not the first occasion on which the shipowning industry—which has clone more than any other industry to raise the prestige and to increase and extend the trade and enterprise and commerce of this country—had been held up to opprobrium by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough. The hon. Member had stated that, from his own knowledge, shipowners were accustomed to take on board their vessels such people as carters, farmers, and others of that character, and call them sailors. [Mr. HAVELOCK WILSON: "Hear, hear!"] He remembered that about the time of the appointment of this Commission the hon. Member told the House that on one of the Allan Line steamers the men refused to accept the owners' terms, that hands were collected out of the casual wards of the workhouses—["hear, hear"]—from tramping dens, and from men discharged from gaol. ["Hear, hear!"]

It is done in the East-end of London to-day.

And that out of 20 who signed as seamen, 16 were unable to prove one day's service at sea, and that, out of 30 firemen, not more than five had ever been to sea. That statement came before the Commission, and as it had been made on the authority of the hon. Member's own experience, a Committee of the Board of Trade was appointed to examine into it. He asked the House to measure the value of most of the statements made by the hon. Member that night by the Report of this Departmental Committee upon this particular statement. That Committee stated

"that there was considerable intimidation of the old hands who wished to continue in the ship at the reduced rates; that the crew were duly signed on in the presence of the Board of Trade, the bulk of them producing proof of service; that the emigration and medical officers were satisfied both as to the physical fitness of the crew and of their capacity as seamen; that the Committee were satisfied as to the sufficiency of the crews; that, while the circumstances of the crew's engagement were irregular—

that was owing to the intimidation of the strike created by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough—

"these were forced on the owners; that the Committee considered much of the men's evidence as untrustworthy, and viewed with suspicion the connection of the Seamen's Union with it."

He had ventured to bring to the bar of public opinion a statement made in the House by the hon. Member for Middles-bro', affecting the conduct of shipowners as regarded the treatment of their men, and the class of men shipped. That statement was made at a time when it was impossible for anyone to rise and answer it, and for the time the statement of the hon. Member stood. Fortunately the Board of Trade made an inquiry through their own officers, and the Report from which he had read disproved from beginning to end the statement made with regard to that ship which led in great measure to the appointment of this Commission. The hon. Member for Middlesbro' had stated that his remarks were not so far as manning was concerned to be applied to passenger vessels. But the vessel he had mentioned was a passenger ship. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean (Sir Charles Dilke) in a speech he made not very long ago to the Shipmasters' Society of London alluded to losses from undermanning and gave five vessels, in one of which he said 112 lives were lost. He asked the attention of the House to the opinion of the Court on this case of the vessel in which 112 lives were lost. This was the case of the Roumania. The Court said the vessel was manned "in accordance with the practice of many large passenger vessels"—and it might be said that her crew would have been approved by the Board of Trade. The Report went on to say that the "Court thought there should have been more than four quartermasters." That was the extent of the opinion of the Court as to under-manning, and no one could suggest for a moment upon this illustration of the right hon. Baronet that the loss of the vessel was due to undermanning.

All that I did was to read from the Report of the Committee of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, a list of ships and the heading which was put to it by the Committee. I used no words of my own, I quoted literally the words from the summary used by the Committee.

said he did not know as to the summary, he was simply commenting on the Report of the speech as he had received it, and he asked the House to observe what would have been the complement of the crew according to the scale set out in the majority Report of the Manning Committee, as compared with the actual number. In either case there was a master and three subordinate officers. The Committee recommended a boatswain and six "A.B.'s." As a matter of fact the vessel had the boatswain and four quartermasters, with 21 Lascars, and as 21 Lascars were equal to 14 "A.B." seamen, the crew was beyond the scale of the Committee. Other evidence was given and other vessels were quoted, but not in one instance could the loss be attributed to undermanning. Then he carried the matter a step further. Taking the Report of the Manning Committee there were 33 inquiries into the cases of vessels alleged to have been undermanned, but not in one of these cases could it be stated that the vessel had been lost by reason of her having too few hands. Fifteen of these vessels had a number of hands equal to the scale of the Committee, 13 were short by one, and five were short by two, and as a matter of fact, taking the whole 33 vessels in the aggregate, it would be found that whereas by the scale 299 men would be required, they really carried 308, and these were vessels brought before the Court to be dealt with on the ground of undermanning. If Members would look at the evidence laid before the Committee they would find that if they compared several ships of equal tonnage they would find that the decisions of the Court varied. In fact, it was impossible by any scale to determine what should be the proper number of hands to put on any given vessel. The particular circumstances of build, of the trade in which she was engaged, the position of the steering gear, the provision of labour-saving appliances, were important considerations in a matter of this kind. There were before the Committee 102 vessels named by witnesses as having been undermanned, but upon examination into the facts it was found that if manned according to scale their crews would have numbered 1,111, whereas their crews actually numbered 1,197. After all, the shipowners and those interested in the shipping industry were as keenly alive to the safety of life and the protection of those who intrusted themselves to their ships as any men in this country connected with any industry, and were there that continued loss of life at sea alluded to in the Amendment, he for one would be the last to stand up and ask the House not to take into consideration some legislation to effectively stop such a state of things. But what were the facts? The number of lives lost by wrecks and casualties in 1893 on steam vessels was 576; in 1894 it had fallen to 444; and in 1895 to 370; whilst in five years the tonnage of vessels had increased from 6,000,000 to 10,000,000. For 1896 they had only returns as regarded the loss of life for ten months, the number for that period being 364. This total, however, included the sad loss of 103 lives in the Drummond Castle, and no one would suggest that that accident resulted in any way from the number of men carried by the vessel. In 1893, among the 60,000 men employed in the Royal Navy, the loss of life was 362, whilst in the mercantile marine it was far less in proportion to the number of sailors employed. The sixth paragraph of the Report of the majority of the Commission said:—

"We desire, after hearing the evidence, to express the opinion that the large majority of British ships are managed with ability and judgment worthy of the best traditions of British shipowners, and they are, as a rule, manned with careful regard to the safety of life and welfare of the crew."

["Hear, hear!"] Another test which showed that shipowners were acting fairly with regard to the manning of their vessels, was afforded by the fact that 41 sailing vessels which had been transferred from the British to foreign flags only carried 667 sailors, as against 883 when owned by British shipowners—a reduction of 20 per cent. Not only did this mean a reduction in wages, but the foreigners were allowed to carry much larger cargoes of dead weight than was permissible in the case of British ships. With regard to the question of rating and certificates, he considered the men who were to command the ships and those who had to pay the wages would naturally wish to have the best men and the best work, and they were the most proper persons to choose competent crews for their ships. Complaint was made by the hon. Member for Middlesbro' that foreigners and Lascars were being taken on board British vessels in larger numbers. He was not surprised at that. If there was one person in the country more responsible than another for that action it was the hon. Member for Middlesbro', who had been at the head of great trade agitations. One of the latest efforts of the hon. Member was to inculcate into those who followed him the course that if the wages were in their opinion not adequate they should make up their minds to regulate the amount of work by their wages. That was teaching men to act, he would almost say, fraudulently and dishonestly. It was teaching, them that they might engage openly to do their best in an employer's service, with a mental reservation that they would do less work than the employer had a right to expect. These men were required to wear a button, which had become known as the "skulker's button," and it was not to be wondered at that shipowners would not have men who would wear a badge of slavery, and resorted to the employment of foreigners, many of whom were found to be more satisfactory, more amenable to discipline, and of greater sobriety than many British seamen found about our docksides. If the President of the Board of Trade could find time to bring in a Measure to place undermanning in the category of unseaworthiness, he would find no one more willing or anxious to aid him in his effort than he would be—[cheers]— or the shipowners of the country generally. [Cheers.] If the right hon. Gentleman thought proper to include in such a Measure a provision that no vessel should be deemed to be seaworthy unless a certificated officer were on watch, shipowners and those who signed the minority Report, said that that was a proper and wise precaution, and a security not only for the vessel itself, but for other vessels traversing the sea. They further said that while a manning scale was impossible, and could not be fairly carried into effect with the ever changing character of ships, yet there ought always to be on every foreign-going vessel, whatever its size, a proper and adequate watch, and the extent of that watch was set out in the Report of the Manning Committee. If the right hon. Gentleman wished to give to the Board of Trade power of detention, he for one would not have the slightest objection to it. But he did say that there was no industry in the country where it was attempted to lay down how many men should be employed and who those men should be, and so long as they provided on board a vessel a sufficient watch to secure it against danger, Parliament would have done all that was necessary as regarded the safety of life at sea in that ship. The whole of the Manning Committee recognised that the national bearing of the question as regarded a Reserve for the Royal Navy was a serious matter, and they came to the conclusion that the mercantile navy at present was not the same nursery for the Reserve of the Navy as it was in time gone by. ["Hear, hear!"] He did not see any system by which seamen for the Navy could be raised in the mercantile service to any extent, or men be found sufficient for the purpose other than that recommended by the Committee, viz., the establishment of training ships for the education of boys, who might, when they were not wanted in the Royal Navy, be drafted for service on board merchant vessels. After all, the mercantile marine, like all other industries, was carried on for commercial purposes. They were proud of their ships and of their enterprise, but yet they could not get away from the fact that the merchant shipping was a commercial undertaking. It was no more right to throw the burden of finding a reserve for the Navy on the mercantile marine than to throw the burden of finding a reserve for the army upon any shore employment. On this great question of manning the Navy he thought the country had very nearly reached the maximum number of men that could be drafted from the Mercantile Marine and relied upon or used in the Royal Navy. It was possible that stokers and other men of the same class might be found in larger numbers; but as to seamen with any education as such, he thought they had very nearly reached the extreme limit at which the Admiralty could find men in the merchant service as being proper men for the Royal Naval Reserve. Shipowners had for years been under the control of the Board of Trade more completely than any land industry, and if the House laid down hard and fast lines as to load-line or manning scale of crew, that personal responsibility and interest in the conduct of a business would be taken away which it was desirable should be preserved if that business was to succeed. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that no more important question could be brought before the House than that of the Mercantile Marine, whether it was looked at from the point of view of the enormous importance of the trade, the great amount of capital invested in it, or the enormous influence it had on the general trade of the country; or whether it was looked at from the point of view of the safety and welfare of the vast number of seamen engaged, and with whom the public had the greatest sympathy in the dangers they had to encounter. But the House must be careful, while endeavouring to safeguard the interests and welfare of the sailor, it did not go to such extremes as would cripple a great industry. He could imagine that in the zeal of Parliament to protect the sailor a great injury might be inflicted on the trade in which the sailor was employed. The hon. Member for Middlesbro' spoke of the great loss of life at sea. No doubt the loss of life was very great, but it was not an increasing loss. He thought the loss might be described as of a stationary character, although the number of men employed in ships increased every year. The hon. Member said that in ten years the number of men lost at sea was 22,000. That number did not agree with the information which he received at the Board of Trade. 'Taking the years between 1884 and 1896 he found that the number of lives lost on board merchant vessels registered in the United Kingdom by wrecks or casualties amounted to 10,738.

I said killed and drowned.

understood that the hon. Member quoted the figures as illustration of the loss of life at sea in consequence of undermanning. [Mr. HAVELOCK WILSON: "Exactly."] But the hon. Member could hardly reckon accidents which occurred other than by wrecks or casualties as being the result of undermanning.

I said that there were 22,000 lives lost at sea, killed and drowned. I did not say they were all owing to undermanning.

said the only reason for quoting the figures was to show the consequences of the existing condition of what the hon. Member meant by undermanning. If he took the figures of seamen lost by wrecks or casualties, he thought he might fairly assume that that was the extreme limit of the number lost by undermanning.

No, that is not so.

That is my opinion. On that basis, he found the number, instead of being 22,000 was 10,000. Of course, they would all be delighted if that number could be reduced; but, having regard to the enormous size of the Mercantile Marine, he should imagine the actual figures bore favourable comparison with the number of casualties in any mercantile marine in the world.

That is not true. [Cries of "Order!"]