moved—

"That any Petition of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, praying to be heard against Clauses 37 and 38 of the Bill, and so much of the Preamble as relates thereto, presented five clear days before the meeting of the Committee, be referred to the Committee, and that the Petitioners may be heard by themselves, their Counsel, and Agents on their Petition against the Bill."

The right hon. Baronet said he first wished to make a little explanation on a side issue, arising out of some remarks made by the hon. Member for Islington, who, having sympathy with the Motion, complained of a distinction being drawn between the clerks in the employment of the company and their railway servants. On the part of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants there was no desire to draw any such distinction; the suggestion for the distinction came from the company. The Amalgamated Society contained a good many clerks, and some stationmasters among its members. In this Bill the society objected to Clauses 37 and 38, and upon these clauses they desired to be heard before the Committee. Clause 37 was the Savings Bank clause, and to that clause they had objections, which he had already stated to the House, and which, therefore, he would now only touch upon briefly. The workmen did not desire to invest their savings with the company, because they objected to their employers being in a position to obtain knowledge of their pecuniary condition and they pointed out that it might have a bearing on rate of wages or on strikes under certain circumstances. Personally, he did not approve of these Savings Bank clauses in Railway Bills, and thought them outside the scope of such Bills and the purposes for which railway companies existed; but as he regarded this Bill as less objectionable than the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bill, to which he had given notice of a similar Motion, and upon which he believed he had the stronger case, he did not propose, as far as he personally could affect the challenge, to take a division on both Bills. The objections to this Bill had been somewhat modified by the fact that on Clause 38 the company had agreed to make it plain, and had given an undertaking that it should not be compulsory on the servants of the company to join. The Great Northern Company had circulated a statement of their view, in which were one or two statements to which he would have to take exception. They said that the promoters had received no objection from their servants to either of the clauses. That might be so, so far as the knowledge of the company extended; but it was not the case in fact. The servants of the company, from different important stations, had held a meeting, and he had met them. They expressed the strongest objection to the clauses, and if they had not done so to the company itself it was probably because of the somewhat delicate relations between the servants of a great company and their employees, and the reluctance of the men to come forward with objections to the course proposed. Though the argument had more force as against the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bill, it had a general application to both Bills, that the representative Society of Railway Servants ought to be heard before the Committee to whom these Bills were referred. The men held a very strong opinion on the proposals in the clauses, and there were points of detail on which they desired to be heard. The House had agreed to an Amendment of the Standing Orders, by which the Miners' Federation, and other bodies, had been given the right to be heard on Mining Bills or Bills of a description on which their interests were affected. This was a principle that ought to be extended, not only as regarded this Bill, but in regard to all Bills of a similar character; and the Chairman of Committees would do well to allow the representation of this particular body on the present occasion, and to propose an Amendment of the Standing Orders, by which such representation before Committees should be made general in future.

seconded the Motion. It seemed to him an eminently reasonable proposal. In the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants there was a great organisation, which represented the opinions of a great body of men; and he could not conceive, any railway company having any objection to the expression of the opinion of the men on a matter in which they were so much interested. They had a precedent lately in the conduct of the North-Eastern Railway Company, which, when it got into difficulties with its own servants, raised no objection to receiving and hearing representatives of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and he certainly thought there were some provisions in these special clauses which fully justified the Motion his right hon. Friend had made. For instance, one of the clauses said, "Every such deposit shall be charged on the net profits of the company." It ought not to be a charge on the profits merely, but ought also to be charged against any property the company might have. Seeing that they had got cash or money from these men, they ought to be responsible in anything they had got to make it good. It gave another illustration of the desirability of hearing the representatives of the men on this point; it was a reasonable and moderate Motion, and he hoped the House would accept it without a Division.

said he might point out to the House how much in the judgment of those who were competent to know, the influence of the Committees upstairs was destroyed by these constant attempts inside the House to fetter the free-will of a Committee to deal with questions after hearing the evidence. He might point out from his own personal knowledge how by this constantly growing and mischievous tendency railway enterprise was strangled and Measures for the interest of the public and the workmen themselves were deterred from being prosecuted because of the dangers to which, through this novel mode of procedure, Railway Bills were subjected. He would, however, confine himself to the specific merits of the proposal now before the House. He should say the main question, which should decide Members would be whether or not these railway savings banks were or were not advantageous to the railway employees at large. He thought he should be able to satisfy the House that they were. He spoke with some interest on this question, because the first railway savings bank was instituted in 1860, with the approval and sanction of that House, by his predecessor in the chair of the South-Eastern Railway Company, Sir Edward Watkin, who first applied it in the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway, of which he was Chairman, and who subsequently introduced it in the South-Eastern Railway, of which he afterwards became Chairman. They were now in force in ten leading railway companies, to the great advantage of the men, and the Great Northern Railway Company now sought, most wisely, as he ventured to think, to introduce one into their company. What were the advantages which the men derived? First and foremost, they got in his company, through the savings bank, 4 per cent. interest on all deposits, with a security as good as Consols. Where elsewhere could they obtain that? They might put in as a deposit any sum from a penny upwards. In their schools at Ashford they had nearly 500 children who put the pence which now came into the pockets of their parents through free education as deposits into the savings bank, and, having early imbibed this habit of thrift, it was invariably found that they continued as depositors when, as grown-up men, they had entered the service of the company. Indeed, it was not an infrequent instance in his company that they had three generations at the same moment contributors by deposits to the savings bank—the grandson in the Ashford School, and his father and grandfather still in the service of the company. There was also the enormous advantage that they could make their deposit straight, on pay-day, to the station-master or whoever else the, paymaster might be, so that their savings bank stood between the men and the public house. [A laugh.] Hon. Members laughed, but he said that was an enormous advantage, and he could actually furnish illustrations of widows and orphans who had subsequently come and thanked the company for that which they had done in providing means for them which they knew would otherwise inevitably have gone to the public house. In the next place, these deposits could be withdrawn at seven days' notice, and in the case of urgency and illness or in other pressing need could be withdrawn immediately. The right hon. Baronet said there was something inquisitorial in the companies' servants being the receivers of these deposits, so that the men's savings were known. He would put this fact before the House, on his honour in stating it, that, excepting the officer who received the money and the auditors to the bank, the amount of the deposit, or the fact even that a man was a depositor, was absolutely and totally unknown to the chief officers and directors, and he would pledge his honour that in every case where a man came before them with an application, either for an increase of salary or for the receipt of a pension on leaving the service, the fact whether he was or was not a depositor was totally and absolutely unknown to the directors, who dealt with the case solely and exclusively upon the ground of length of service and the number of those who might be dependent upon the applicant for support. The charge, therefore, as to anything inquisitorial or as to a man's private affairs being known to his superiors, was totally without foundation. When the leaders of the Railway Servants' Amalgamated Society were acting in the interests of the men they had his sympathy, but when they were acting, not in the interests of the men, but with the view, perhaps, of getting power for themselves, because they felt the advantages given by the company weakened that power, then his sympathy was not with them but with the men whose interests they were seeking to injure. He hoped he had been able to satisfy the House that if they valued the interests of the men they would, by an overwhelming majority, reject the Resolution which had been moved by the right hon. Member for the Forest of Dean.

said the hon. Gentleman had given the House an eloquent disquisition on the virtue of philanthropy and thrift, but he had not applied his speech to the Amendment before the House. Hon. Members on his side were not denying the virtue of either personal or collective thrift. What they said was that the men interested in both should have an opportunity of going before a Committee of the House of Commons and proving, first, their bonâfides as a thrift agency, and, secondly, giving their view of this question from the railway workman's point of view; and that could only be done by an association speaking on behalf of the men collectively. The hon. Member said that private enterprise had frequently been strangled and damaged by Instructions of this kind being in front of railway legislation. He ventured to say that this Instruction was only one of many that railway legislation would have to confront in this and similar questions if railway directors were going to extend the benefits of railway enterprise. The hon. Member said this particular form of savings bank was welcomed by the men from Ashford. He would confine himself to Ashford because he once worked there for nine months and knew the railway men. The pathetic figure about three generations of workmen having invested in the South Eastern Railway Savings Bank hardly squared with the facts as to what really existed at Ashford, and what the men desired. An ordinary penny savings bank at Ashford, such as the National Penny Bank, would give the people, without the slightest suspicion of compulsion or intimidation, just as good an investment as that provided by the railway company, and they would be able to withdraw their deposits at 24 hours' instead of seven days' notice. He objected to these banks in connection with railway companies. They interfered with private enterprise in the best sense of the word. It was competition by compulsion with private banks and the Post Office which prevented workmen from giving to building socities, trades unions, and friendly societies what the railway companies claimed a lien upon them for, and the fact that the employees invested the money in the savings bank operated to reduce wages when trade was bad, and prevented a rise of wages when trade was good. There were 30,000 depositors in fourteen railway savings banks who had £2,200,000 to their account. They were not platelayers, shunters, or goods guards, but mainly skilled artisans, clerks, station masters, and others. The fact that the average deposit was £75 indicated the high wage of the depositor. It was said that these railway banks encouraged thrift. He did not believe it. But why should the men be restricted to one form of investment? Many workmen were desirous of saving money to buy a house, a small piece of land for an allotment, or to lend to relatives in business but the compunction exercised upon them by the fear of losing their employment, or not getting their proper share of promotion if they did not join the savings bank impelled them to invest, whereas if they had absolute freedom they would not do so. The hon. Member let the cat out of the bag when he said that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants wanted to destroy the railway banks because it would destroy their power and lessen their influence. The obvious retort was that the railway companies wanted to compulsorily direct the savings of their workmen to keep them from their friendly societies and trades unions. He hoped the House of Commons would do justice to the men and provide that they should not be constrained to invest in railway savings banks, but be left free to make their investments as their opinion dictated. It was said that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was not a large or influential body. It had 44,000 men employed in the railway service, and 1,000 or 1,500 on the Great Northern Railway. But it was not fair to judge this Instruction from the point of view of one trade union. There were five trade unions in the railway service, with a membership of betwen 60,000 and 70,000 men, who had a right to a locus standi before the Committee equally with the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. There were seven or eight other trades unions with another 50,000 members, who had also a right to be heard before the Committee. Beyond these there were five millions of members of friendly societies, and at their conference on 21st March 1894, they unanimously voted against this system of savings banks and compulsory accident, benefit, and pension funds. When were the companies going to cease extending their operations? They originally came to Parliament to acquire and run a business for the carriage of goods, minerals, passengers, and stock. But now they ran hotels, refreshment rooms, private privilege cabs, savings banks, and other things.

reminded the hon. Member that the Question before the House was whether the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants should be heard before the Committee.

bowed to Mr. Speaker's ruling, and concluded by hoping the railway servants and members of friendly societies would be allowed to put their case before the Committee. He believed the Committee would be impressd by the facts and figures they would put before them, and he trusted the House would unanimously throw out for the last time this attempt to introduce another chloroforming agent to seduce workmen from their friendly societies, trades unions, and savings banks which they wanted, but did not desire from their employers.

said that no compulsion would be introduced if the clause were inserted in the Bill. It was precisely because the humbler class of railway servants were unable to enjoy the benefits of existing societies that the Great Northern Railway proposed to found savings banks, and because the superannuation fund was scarcely suited for them. He contended in reply to what had been said by the right hon. Member for the Forest of Dean, that railway servants had shown a great desire to join these banks in connection with the companies. As to the employers knowing the amount of the men's savings, no deduction could be made from the deposit, which was absolutely the property of the depositor, and the railway company could not lay a finger upon it. The interests of the men were looked after by the Registrar of Friendly Societies. The clauses under discussion were submitted to and approved by him, and it was necessary to obtain his approval of the rules or any alteration or Amendment made in them. ["Hear, hear!"] As to the second clause before the House, the Superannuation Fund was purely optional. The joint lines to which it applied constituted a very large proportion of the mileage of the Great Northern Company, there being 524 miles of them. Without this clause the railway servants who belonged to the Superannuation Fund of the parent company would, when promoted to better posts on the joint lines, suffer an injustice. In two years the general Superannuation Fund had received something like 1,400 applications, a considerable number of them from the joint lines. The Superannuation Fund was enacted in 1872, and brought into force in 1875. There was ample protection for the men in the Savings Banks, and this Bill only gave the men on the joint lines an option of joining—there was no compulsion to join the Fund. The Amalgamated Society only represented some of the railway servants—["hear, hear!"]—in varying proportions according to the different districts and lines. The Great Northern Company recognised that every servant had a perfect right to belong to this society if he wished, and also had a perfect right to abstain front it. He thought it was the officials of the society, and not the men themselves, who objected to these schemes. There were a vast number of men not represented on this society who desired to join the Superannuation Fund and Savings Banks.

said he represented a large number, not of railway men, but of the working classes generally, and, from his experience of them during the last ten years, he ventured to assert that they were one and all averse from any system which tampered with their wages or savings. They looked on attempts such as these as a desire on the part of capital to take advantage of labour, and to gain another weapon by which to operate against the working man when the interests of capital and labour clashed. There might be no direct compulsion, but the compulsion, though indirect, was equally potent. Working men, as a rule, preferred to invest their money in Friendly Societies, controlled by their own class; they did not demand these Savings Banks controlled by their employers. They were told that the applications were voluntary, but he should like to know whether they were obtained through officials of the company. He believed the reason why hon. Members did not want the Amalgamated Society to be heard was because the society represented a large number of railway employees who were dead against schemes of this kind. They were led to suppose that the railway companies were doing this in the interest of their employees; but the whole tendency of the present age was for the employer to protect himself, just as did the employees.

said the right hon. Gentleman had appealed directly to him, otherwise he should not have addressed the House. It was obvious that the question they were discussing was not the advisability of establishing Savings—["hear, hear!"]—Banks, or their merits or demerits. The only question before the House was whether a certain society which claimed to represent the railway servants of a particular company should be entitled to appear before the Committee with regard to certain clauses in this Bill. If the interests of those railway servants were injuriously affected, he thought the House would be anxious that they should be represented before the Committee in accordance with the usual practice in regard to those whose interests were injuriously affected. He did not himself see, however, how they were injuriously affected. There was no necessity for the men to join these Savings Banks, and it was open to them to abstain from doing so. In the second place, the Standing Order of the House laid down that certain persons or societies, if they sufficiently represented the agriculture, trade, mining, or commerce of any district to which a Bill related, should under certain circumstances have a locus standi. It was clear that, under that Standing Order, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants did not come in, and if they were to admit them he thought they must either amend their Standing Order or introduce a new Standing Order in order to provide for their admission. For these two reasons he must oppose the Instruction.

asked how the miners could be heard under the Standing Order.

said he was anxious to give a right vote on this question. He entirely agreed with his right hon. Friend that everyone who had a grievance should be heard, but in saying that he did not think these men had any grievance was, he thought, rather to prejudge the question. He thought any large class of men who imagined that they had a grievance should have an opportunity of stating their case. In the present instance it would occasion no delay. They were told, and it was not contradicted, that this society represented four thousand, or some substantial number, of the servants of the railway company. No harm would be done by allowing them to be heard before the Committee; but if they were not allowed to be heard, having, as they thought, a real grievance, they would be dissatisfied, and think that they had been deprived by the House of a remedy to which they were entitled.

said that the Chairman of Committees, who had put the case very fairly before the House, had referred to Standing Order 133B. That Standing Order declared that where a Chamber of Commerce or a Shipping, Mining, or Miners' Association, sufficiently representing agriculture, land, mining., or commerce in any district to which a Private Bill related, petitioned that their interests would be injuriously affected by the provisions of the Bill, it was competent for the Committee on the Bill to hear them. That asserted a principle in regard to certain interests that they should have a locus standi before Private Bills Committees, which they were not allowed by the general rule. The question was whether the Standing Order should be confined to the particular interests mentioned. The Chairman of Committees had thrown out a suggestion that the Standing Order might be amended. But it would take sonic time to alter a Standing Order, owing to the slowness of the procedure of the House, and if the House was prepared to alter the Standing Order so as to admit classes like those now under consideration, surely they ought to do it in this particular case by a vote of the House. He thought that by so doing the House would be acting in accordance with the spirit of the Standing Order, for there was no reason for a distinction being made between a Miners' Association and a Society of Railway Servants. The Chairman of Committees had said that he could not see that the railway servants were injuriously affected by the provisions of the Bill. At all events, the railway servants claimed the right to be heard; and what injury could possibly accrue to the railway company by those men being heard before the Committee? Most of the interests, allowed a locus standi by the Standing Order, represented not labour but capital. Out of the bodies mentioned, only one, the Miners' Association, could be said to represent labour. The House ought not to admit the large number of Associations that represented the capitalist classes, while they admitted only one body representing the labouring classes. He did not desire to injuriously affect in any way the great railway interest of the country, who carried on their business so much to the advantage of all classes of the community. But surely it must be to the interest of this railway company to allow their servants to be heard before the Committee. He had heard of the case of a single land-holder opposing a Bill. Here was a large class of men who fancied, rightly or wrongly, that they had a grievance, and why should not the House allow them to be heard, seeing that it could be in accordance with the principle of the Standing Order. The Motion would only give the railway servants a locus standi. It would not decide anything in their favour as opposed to the railway company. It merely conformed to the general principle of our legislation, whether public or private, that all persons having an interest should be heard.

said he could not follow the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in his reference to the Standing Order. If the course suggested by the right hon. Gentleman were pursued, it would set an entirely new precedent. The Standing Order referred to Chambers of Commerce, shipping, mining or Miners' Associations. Those were general terms. They could not be held to include a society which, according to the hon. Member for Battersea, represented one-tenth, and according to the hon. Member for Islington, one-fifth of the railway servants.

said that the right hon. Member was wrong on both points. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants hail 44,000 members, and there were six other societies which, with the Amalgamated Society, represented between 70,000 and 80,000 railway servants.

said the hon. Gentleman had put his case far better than he could have put it himself. He was leading gradually up to the point which the hon. Gentleman had put so clearly and distinctly before the House. He had said that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants represented one-tenth of railway servants. The hon. Member for Islington said that it represented one-fifth. In connection with the Bill before the House, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants represented 4,000 out of 25,000 servants employed by the company. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was, as the hon. Member for Battersea had pointed out, only one out of seven such societies. If the House were to follow the suggestion of the Leader of the opposition and allow one society out of seven to be mentioned in the Standing Order, that would be an innovation for which there was no precedent.

said that the railway directors were the only hon. Members of the House who objected to the principle of the Motion, which was that a society representing so many thousands of men had a right to come before a. Private Bill Committee of this House, and he challenged any hon. Member not a railway director to defend the action taken up by the railway directors. The railway directors seemed to think that the interests of the workmen would be very well looked after by the railway directors. The hon. Member for Doncaster had said that if they admitted one of these societies they would have to admit all of them. He could understand that objection coming from a railway director, but not from any other hon. Member. The real case was this, that hon. Gentlemen, railway directors on the other side of the House, objected to what they considered was an interference between the railway companies and their employees. The railway dirctors were trying to influence this House in a direction that led to the paying of larger dividends to their shareholders. He would vote on one principle and one principle only, namely, that it was perfectly right that a large society of working men, such as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, should have a locus standi to appear before a Private Bill Committee of the House, in regard to a Bill affecting their interests.

said that the. Debate had raised two distinct issues. The first was the general principle whether these societies should be allowed a locus standi before a Committee? That was arguable, but it was not the Motion before the House. The Motion was a, distinct assertion that one particular society should be heard, not on the general merits of the Bill, but in opposition to two clauses which were the most beneficial clauses that could be put into any such Bill. These two clauses were to enable savings banks to be started, the depositors being given the best security which the railway company could offer—their claims were to rank immediately after the debts of the company. He had been engaged for many years in endeavouring to promote schemes of thrift, and to induce employers to do their duty in that respect to the workmen; and he could not conceive anything more calculated to promote the well-being of the workpeople than these clauses, which, be it noted, did not make the scheme compulsory; if the trade union which objected to the clauses had objected to such clauses not being included in the Bill, he should have thought it a reasonable proposition. Here was an enormous corporation wishing to do its duty to its workmen, and those who professed to represent labour opposed the proposition. It was true that the trade unions, to their honour, had made similar provisions for encouraging thrift; but, would even the hon. Member for Battersea say that too much was done in this direction? It was said that the real object of the clauses was to injure the trade union. But if a large employer could, by promoting the well being of his people, make them so contented and satisfied that the trade union had not so much to do, that was not an evil, but a great good. Was it creditable that such a proposal should be to the detriment of the workman? The man with something in the bank was in a better position to make terms with his employer than the man with not a shilling in the world. The House ought to consider whether these clauses did not tend to industrial peace.

Order, order! That is a question which may have to be discussed before the Committee. It is not the question before the House now.

said that he himself was very interested in railway workmen, of whom he had a great number in his own constituency. He did not know what their views were, but he could not conceive them objecting to these clauses. He did not speak as a director, he had never been one, nor as a shareholder; but simply as one who had worked to promote thrift all his life.

said that the Instruction related to Clauses 37 and 38 of the Bill. The 37th Clause established a Savings Bank. The 38th Clause set up a Provident and Superannuation Fund, not for the first time, but upon the lines of the Great Northern Act 1872. That Act, nearly a quarter of a century old, laid down principles which were good enough in those days, but which should not be extended at the present date. The Great Northern Act of 1872 fixed the fund as extending only to old and disabled servants of the company. The present Bill extends it to servants of another company—another class, and a large class is therefore admitted to the fund. Now, a superannuation scheme depends upon being based on sound acturial calculations, upon the rates to be contributed, the conditions of retirement, and solvency; but this old legislation of 1872 was so extraordinary in its provisions that the Motion now before the House should be accepted so as to give a locus standi to those whose wages which under a scheme framed under the power of that Act might be compulsorily stopped might have the opportunity of amending the Bill before the Committee upstairs. Under the Act of 1872, the company may make a contribution up to the amount of the wage-earners' contribution, not exceeding 2½ per cent. the amount contributed by wage-earners to the fund, provided a general meeting of shareholders so assented. The voting of the money on the part of the company was purely voluntary. There was no compulsion on the shareholders to vote any contribution. One year they might do so, another year, in which a strike might have taken place, they might arbitrarily refuse to vote any sum whatsoever, and thereby seriously affect the solvency of the fund. On the other hand, the men's contribution might, under the scheme framed under the powers of the Act of 1872, be made compulsory, and their wages might, under such a scheme, be stopped up to 2½ per cent. of the amount. In substance, therefore, the funds would be the contributions of the wage-earners. It would be made up essentially of contributors' money. Now the Committee of Directors and Chief Officer of the company were, by the Act of 1872 empowered to settle a scheme to deal with this fund of wage-earners, and power by the Act of 1872 is given to them to insert therein provisions to settle what class, what length of service, what amount of contribution is to be obligatory on the wage-earners, under what circumstances the wage-earning contributor to the fund is to cease to be entitled to participate, and what proportion (if any) of the sums contributed is to be payable in the event of death before allowance is granted.

The hon. Member is entering into details which are not justified by the question before the House.

said that he was pointing out that the powers of this particular Act authorised the scheme drawn up by the directors and engineer to make its provisions compulsory on the men, whilst by Statute it was voluntary on the shareholders. They were so extraordinary in many respects that it was essential that the wage-earning contributors should have a locus standi upstairs in settling the terms on which their funds were to be dealt with. A superannuation fund was a very complicated and difficult thing to manage. The Royal Civil Service Commissioners reported:—

"That experience has proved it is most difficult, if not impossible, in such a case to prescribe beforehand any scheme of contribution which shall be so adjusted as to supply the requisite amount without surplus or deficiency."

And, although they had the public revenue to fall back upon, the Commissioners considered it expedient to establish a superannuation fund. In this case, owing to the shareholders subscriptions being voluntary, it would be impossible to rely on its income or actuarily base any calculations as to what contributions would make the fund a solvent fund. The company's officials were to undertake this duty. The powers of the Act of 1892 allowed of a scheme being framed which might, if so settled, confiscate a wage-earner's deferred or stopped pay which he had contributed to the fund, if he left the service in consequence of reductions or alterations in the establishment—if he retired before he had earned a superannuation—if he were discharged even without cause. In the case of the Tyne Improvement Act 1890 the right hon. Member for Bodmin, then Chairman of Committees, insisted that in that case, at all events, that the scheme established by that public body, and not a commercial body trading for profit, should contain provisions to allow the wage-earning contributor under all circumstances to take away on leaving the service his own contribution, with simple interest at 2½ per cent. thereon; and would not permit any scheme to be framed which did not secure the return to the wage-earner of his own contribution, which in equity belonged to him as much as if he laid deposited them in a savings' bank in his own name, instead of leaving them in the company's hands, as a banker, for the purpose of accumulation. For these reasons he supported the Motion.

said that there were 60,000 men in the men's organisation; it was an organisation which had proved very powerful in stopping strikes; and it certainly was not an organisation which should be stifled by the House of Commons. Railway directors always opposed any attempt to preserve the liberty of the subject. He would point out to the Chairman of Committees that, if his ruling was obeyed by the House, it followed that, in future all the trade unions and trade organisations would be denied the right of hearing in the private Committees of this House in eases where their liberties and also their earnings were at stake.

moved:—

"That any Petition of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants praying to be heard against Clauses 25 and 26 of the Bill, and so much of the Preamble as relates thereto, presented five clear days before the meeting of the Committee be referred to the Committee; and that the Petitioners may be heard by themselves, their Counsel and Agents on their Petition against the Bill."

The company alleged in their statement that the Pension Fund was not compulsory upon any servant of the company, and that was so stated in the Bill itself. He was personally intimately acquainted with the facts of one of these funds, where the same provision was supposed to exist that contribution was not compulsory; but members of the fund concerned—he was not speaking of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company, for he did not know how that might be—but members of the fund had assured him that though it was not supposed to be compulsory, in fact it was so. The company also stated that the railway servants had not claimed the right, to be represented by petition before the Committee; but the fact was, they had not the right, and to obtain the right was the object of the present Motion; and, should the Motion be carried, they would present their petition to-morrow, which was the last day for doing so. The company also said that the question of the right of such bodies to be heard on petition had been considered by the House, and a Standing Order had been passed upon it. This was the Standing Order to which allusion had been made by the Leader of the Opposition; that Standing Order was amended last Session to allow the Miners' Federation, and other bodies, to be heard on petition. He confessed he thought it was right that the House should take one step at a time. That Amendment was in the nature of an experiment; but surely the time had come for an extension of that experiment, and this was an occasion when that extension could very properly be made. In any case, this was an opposed Bill, and the granting of this Motion would not make the difference between an opposed and an unopposed Bill; the addition of one more petition would not add to the cost of the Bill to any great extent. It was the case with regard to some of these pension funds that, though a man left the service under circumstances that entitled him to a good character, he was not entitled to take out the money he had paid into the fund. This was a statement literally accurate as regards some of these funds; and there was at the time a railway man within the walls of the House who had been so treated, after contributing to the fund for many years. One of the points upon which a locus standi was urgently desired arose on the clause on page 27 of the Bill. It was provided that five officials of the company—the chairman, the general manager, the secretary, the chief engineer, and the chief mechanical engineer of the company—should prepare a scheme, and the clause was in words previously used in other Acts of this description. This committee of five would determine the circumstances under which any person who had been a contributor should cease to be entitled to participate in the benefit thereof, and what portion, if any, of his payments he should be entitled to receive. It was important that the representatives of the servants of the company should be heard on a clause of this kind. Such a clause in similar words in previous Acts had been interpreted to mean that a man leaving the society should not withdraw any part of the money invested. There was strong ground for allowing the men to be heard on the constitution of a committee to make such rules. On Section 26 there arose a question such as had not arisen in previous Bills. The Registrar General of Friendly Societies had made a Report in the strongest possible terms on this clause. His Report was not before the House, but it must come before the Committee. Such Report, however, coming before a Committee on an opposed Bill, where the opposition was upon other grounds, was not usually very fully dealt with, the Committee looking rather to other grounds of opposition than to these Departmental Reports. By the kindness of the promoters of the Bill he had been allowed to see this Report. In language unusually strong for such a document, the Chief Registrar condemned the clause; and it was only right that such a Report should be supported by evidence before the Committee. His main objection to the clause was, that it empowered the company to use money compulsorily contributed for purposes other than that for which it had been deducted from the men's wages. On page 31 would be found a repeal of Section 53 of a previous Act obtained by the Company. Upon this the Chief Registrar said that this section had been adopted by both Houses of Parliament, after very great care had been given to the matter. It was the action of the late Chairman of Committees that led to very careful consideration being given to the matter. The company had offered the omission words in the clause, but still the effect would be to virtually repeal the section in the other Act. These were the grounds upon which the society strongly urged that they might be allowed to be heard; and therefore he made the Motion.

seconded the Motion, which anyone who would look at the clauses of the Bill must admit was a most reasonable Motion. His right hon. Friend had drawn attention to the clause which constituted the committee to have control of the fund, and it would be seen that the men had no representation at all. Yet the Bill invested that committee with powers of a far-reaching character. This committee was to decide if contributions should be compulsory or not, who should be excluded from participation in the benefits of the fund, whether a man should recover any of his payments into the fund on leaving, or whether his representative should recover the balance on the death of a contributor. These were surely matters upon which the men should be heard.

said, in reference to the speech from the right hon. Baronet that he really could not see what injury it was proposed to inflict on railway servants by the Bill. They were to be allowed to invest money at 4 per cent., and he failed to see where the injury came in. Personally he should be pleased to invest at such a rate. He was afraid the right hon. Baronet had got his information from Mr. Harford, who did not represent more than one-tenth of the railway servants.

said that was not so. He had been asked by the Amalgamated Society to oppose these Bills, and he had carefully looked into the matter.

said he would not detain the House, but they had heard some extraordinary statements, which he certainly could not accept.

remarked that the Chairman of Committees on the last Bill said he could not see how the railway servants could be injuriously affected by it, and he made that his strong ground, for opposing the Resolution. The right hon. Gentleman also said that the previous Bill did not operate compulsorily upon the servants of the company. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the Bill now before the House. First of all this scheme was to be framed by a committee of five persons—the chairman, the general manager, the secretary, the chief engineer, and the chief mechanical engineer of the company. Such committee by a majority could determine what class of servants of the company should be entitled to contribute: therefore the fund was not open to all, but only to such classes as the majority of this committee decided should have the benefit of it. ["Hear, hear!"] Besides determining who were to participate in the benefits of the fund, and what length of service was to entitle a participation, the committee were also to decide "to what extent such contributions shall be obligatory upon them."

pointed out that the promoters of the Bill had agreed to withdraw this clause, together with a further section, which stated "it shall not be compulsory on any servants of the company 18 years of age and upwards to become a member of the fund," and which, it was thought, might have made it appear compulsory for those under 18 to do so.

observed that no intimation of such a withdrawal had reached those representing the men until that moment. ["Hear, hear!"] The committee had also the power of saying what, if anything, should disqualify any servant of the company from becoming a contributor to the fund for the purpose of participating in its benefits. That was a power given to the committee to act against any individual, and it was to prevent operations of such an invidious character that the Amalgamated Society existed. ["Hear, hear!"] Again they were to say "under what circumstances any person having been a contributor to the fund shall cease to be entitled to the benefits thereof." That was to say, a man might have gone on for years contributing to the fund and, contrary to the principles of any decent insurance office nowadays, there was no surrender value to be given to him; while, if he gave offence to his employers, this committee had power to declare that, though he had contributed for years, he might receive nothing. Was it fair the men should be left in this situation? [Cheers.] Another section gave the committee power to say "what proportion, if any, of the sums contributed by any person or by the company to the fund shall be payable to his representative in the event of his dying before he becomes entitled to a pension or retiring allowance or gratuity." That was to say they had absolute uncontrolled discretion if a man died, from any cause, before he became entitled to a pension to determine whether any or what amount should be given to his family or representatives. Surely this was eminently a scheme as to which the men were entitled to be heard. ["Hear, hear!"]

said he was not a director of the company, but he had taken great interest in the Bill. From the speech he had just delivered the Leader of the Opposition appeared to have misunderstood the whole purpose for which the railway company had promoted the Bill. He should like to put the exact facts before the House. This great railway company was debarred by statute from giving any allowance to its old servants who had served it well in the past but were unable to work any longer, and it asked the House to confer that power upon it. In his opinion that was a most generous proposal, yet hon. Members opposite said it was a scheme by which the company were going to tyrannise over their men, and do them endless harm. The right hon. Gentleman said the committee of five gentlemen appointed under the scheme would have power to do certain things which would be disadvantageous to the men. They would have no power to do anything of the kind. ["Hear, hear!"] All they would have power to do would be to draw up a scheme, which would then be submitted to the men, who could themselves decide whether they liked it or not. ["Hear, hear!"] The men were to be fully and adequately represented on the committee, a concession, he ventured to think, greater than any other railway company had ever given in connection with a Bill of this kind. ["Hear, hear!"] To assert that the committee could do anything unjust to the men was, therefore, to assert that which the Bill did not permit. As to the portions of the Bill which he had stated were withdrawn, he might say that the company had never desired from the beginning that the scheme should be compulsory, although it was offered to every class. If the right hon. Gentleman I bought the Bill did not carry out that intention, he submitted that the proper way to secure Amendment would be in Committee. ["Hear, hear!"]

We think the persons interested should be there when the Amendments are made.

observed that the right hon. Gentleman had objected to the committee having power to say under what circumstances any person having been a contributor to the fund should cease to participate in the benefits, end had said that they might by this clause punish a man who had displeased his employers. That was not the intention of the clause at all, and the whole scheme, as he had said, would be submitted to the men for approval. This particular clause had been inserted so that there might be some provision for dealing with the case of men who had been convicted of felony or any gross misconduct of that kind, and convicted, not by the company themselves, but by a Court of Law. As to the provision giving the committee the power to decide what proportion, if any, of the sums contributed by any person to the fund should be payable in the event of death before he became entitled to a pension, he urged that that was a most generous arrangement on the part of the company. They said that in the event of a man ceasing to be employed in their service, whether because he was dismissed for misconduct or because he wished to cease his contributions, or because he had removed, he should have returned to him the whole of his subscriptions, plus 4 per cent. on his money during the time he had subscribed. A more generous proposal could not be made.

That is not in the Bill.

said that the right hon. Gentleman did not seem to realise that this was a scheme which the committee was to draw up and submit to the men, who could take it or leave it as they liked. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean had stated that the Registrar of Friendly Societies had made a strong Report against this Bill. No doubt the Report referred to had been made, and the contention which the Registrar advanced deserved serious consideration. But it was obvious to anybody who had had experience of friendly societies and knew the difficulties of starting a lodge, that the benefits which this fund offered were infinitely superior to anything which a friendly society could offer. ["Hear, hear!" and "No!"] He had inquired the feeling of lodges—he was a member of many lodges—and he knew of no lodge which could afford, except by much higher contributions than were proposed in this Bill, to give the same benefits as would be given by the present proposal. He ventured to think the suggestion of the Chief Registrar that if the company only wanted to help their servants they could establish a friendly society, would inflict serious injury, because, in the first place, the men themselves had no desire to establish a friendly society, as it would entail considerable time, and be of doubtful result, and, in the second place, no friendly society could offer the same benefits as a society to which a company added largely by generous donations While the officials of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants might possibly be against this Bill, their opinion was not shared by the men, who took a very different view. The hon. Member here read the following extracts from a letter which he stated he had received from a man who had been employed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company for 20 years as a signalman:—

"On reading your speech in this morning's Manchester Courier, re the Druids, etc., I was pleased to see you were going to support the Bill re Old Age Pensions, which my Company, the L. anal Y. Railway Co., are promoting on behalf of their servants. I have been in their employ above 20 years, as a signalman, and of course, as you know, we are a class of servants that have not got any big wages, £1 6s. per week was the highest paid in this district till the last two years; now £1 8s. is the top price, so that it has not given us any opportunity to provide for old age. I hope add trust all Members of the Unionist Party will support the Bill, as I have not heard one word from any members of the staff of any department against it, but just the reverse. I am a member of the Amalgamate Society of Railway Servants, but this matter has not been brought before the members in any shape to ask their opinion. Therefore I say Mr. Harford has no right to oppose the Bill till it has been submitted to the members of the Society."

["Hear, hear!"] In view of the fact that the men had generally approved of the scheme, and that it wits not a compulsory proposal, he thought the House would be taking upon itself a very serious responsibility if it accepted the Instruction. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that many proposals might be made with the best possible intentions, but yet might contain elements prejudicial to those they were meant to serve. The first question for the House to consider was whether these particular conditions should be allowed to go unquestioned before the Committee. Was it right to deny the men the opportunity of putting their objections before the Committee? The right hon. Gentleman who moved the Instruction must have convinced the House that there was a fair ground for a case being stated before the Committee. The only other question to consider was who should have the right to state the case of the men. It might be said that the Amalgamated Society did not represent the majority of railway servants, but was there anyone else better qualified to do so? In the absence of any evidence of a locus standi being given to anyone else, he should vote in favour of its being given to that Society. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that his first objection to the course proposed was that this clause to which, objection was taken was entirely a voluntary clause. The scheme was to be prepared by a Committee and submitted for approval or rejection to the servants of the company. He did not see, therefore, how the men could be injuriously affected. It was obvious that if the company wished to make the scheme a success, as he presumed they did, they would offer the very best terms they could to the men. It was also indisputable that, the scheme could not be altered by the Committee when it was once submitted and approved. It could only be altered by the managing committee, on which there would be representatives of the men. His second objection was that in this matter it was sought to go behind the Standing Orders of the House. If it were the deliberate policy of the House—and he expressed no opinion upon that policy—that trade unions should be represented in Committees upstairs to oppose Bills by which they thought their members might be injuriously affected, that policy ought to be stated openly and fairly and frankly, either by a fresh Standing Order or by an Amendment of the present Standing Order. If the course now proposed were adopted, whilst a certain number of associations were compelled, under the Standing Orders, to go before the locus standi court and show that they represented the court and show that they represent the interest they claimed to represent, and that that interest was affected by the Bill, in this case this particular society would be singled out and given a locus without having to go through the mill like other societies.["Hear, hear!"] It was most important to note that it appeared from the letter just read that the officials of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants had never consulted their members on the subject. The House, by assenting to this Instruction, would be giving a locus standi to the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants to oppose a Bill of which many members of the Society were in favour. In these circumstances he should vote against the Instruction.

maintained that the Chairman of Committees had no right to say that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants had been given no authority to intervene in this matter. 44,000 men had been discussing this Bill and similar Bills in their branches and newspapers, and had specifically authorised their representatives to oppose the particular plan under consideration. The Chairman of Committees said that it would be invidious to give a single society a locus standi, and to deny it to others. The way out of that difficulty was to allow other societies who had a bonâfide interest in the Motion to be represented. He thought that the Standing Order, which conferred the right of being heard on Miners and Mining Associations and on Chambers of Agriculture and Commerce, ought to be generously interpreted to include the men who were interested in the subject matter of this Bill, directly and indirectly, and who numbered 100,000. What the men objected to was the proposal that five officials, representing the company, should be empowered to draft the scheme. The men were not to be consulted in the drafting of the scheme, and he ventured to say that the scheme was to be imposed upon the men because they were not free agents in the matter. Even if the scheme drawn up by the officials should be approved by the men and put into operation for 12 months, any scratch meeting of the shareholders, a certain number being present, would be able to turn the scheme upside down, and break up their Pension Fund. These were not the conditions under which the Odd-fellows, the Foresters, and Hearts of Oak did business. They were not subject to the capricious whims of directors. He traversed the statements of the hon. Member who had spoken for the railway company. To withdraw Sub-section A would not be consistent and compatible with other Sub-sections. He declined to accept the hon. Member's statement with regard to the generosity of this railway company. To the Insurance Fund of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway the members contributed £11,000 in the half-year, while the company contributed only £750. This lack of generosity in respect of accident insurance did not encourage a belief that the company would be very generous in assisting the Pension Fund. He would refer to the Return of the London and North Western Railway Company in these matters, and give a few figures—

said that the hon. Member appeared to him about to discuss details which it would be more appropriate for a Committee upstairs to consider.

said that the fact that these details could not be discussed in that House showed how necessary it was that the representatives of the railway servants should be heard before the Committee. Under the circumstances of the case, the railway company could not provide anything like the same pensions as were provided by the Oddfellows, the Foresters, and Hearts of Oak. If these societies were allowed, he believed that they would prove upstairs that this proposed Pension Fund was an insidious attempt to impair railway thrift and to damage good friendly societies.

believed that the railway company was acting with entirely good motives. He also believed that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants were acting in the interests of the members. If a hearing were given to the representatives of the men, their only object would be to amend two clauses of the Bill, so that any scheme proposed by the railway company might be brought up to date, and rendered satisfactory to the Registrar of Friendly Societies. It had been said that the scheme would not be settled by Parliament or by a Committee, but would be settled entirely by the directors and responsible managers. In those circumstances he could not see that there would be anything wrong or unfair in allowing the men's representatives to appear before the Committee. There were cases in which it was absolutely necessary for that House to depart from usual custom, and, in his opinion, this was one of them.

asserted that this question had been thrashed out in every branch of the Amalgamated Railway Servants Association, and that all the branches were absolutely opposed to this arrangement. The Bill would give the managers and officials of the railway company power to draft the scheme. If the company were itself providing the funds there would be very little objection to the plan. But they were asking the men to provide the money, whilst they claimed the right to pay it out as they might think proper. [Cries of "No!"] The company was afraid of hearing the opinion of the railway servants upon this question. If they were not afraid they would not object to the representatives of the men being heard before the Committee. Every section of the community that would be affected by proposed legislation had a right to be heard before such legislation was added to the Statute Book. He should, therefore, vote for the Instruction.

I beg to ask the Secretary the Treasury whether he will state the number of decrees granted by the County Court Judge of Roscommon under the Suck Drainage Award; the amount of the decrees in each case, and the rent of each holding on which these decrees were given, and the observations of the County Court Judge in giving his decision on these cases; ill how many cases the decrees have been realised, and the amount and costs paid without the intervention of the Sheriff; and the number of cases where the sheriff has executed the writ of fi fa., together with his costs?

The number of decrees is 382. To state the amount and rent in each case would be obviously impossible within the ordinary limits of an answer to a Question on the Paper. I understand that the County Court Judge made some remarks about some inaccuracies in the documents and about the absence of the process server who should prove service. The decrees settled without the Sheriffs intervention have been 239 under £2, with costs 6s. 9d. each and 7 over £2, with costs 13s each. 136 decrees have been lodged with the Sheriff. Of these, 87 under £2 have been realised, with costs 8s. 3d. each, 9 over £2, with costs 14s. 6d each, and 3 over £10, with costs £1. 4s. 6d. each.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will state the number of decrees granted by the County Court judge of Galway under the Suck Drainage Award; the amount of the decrees in each case and the rent of each holding on which these decrees were given, and the observations of the County Court Judge in giving his decision on these cases; in how many cases the decrees have been realised and the amount and costs paid without the intervention of the Sheriff; and the number of cases where the Sheriff has executed the writ of fi fa., together with his costs?

The number of decrees is 499. Here again, to state the amount and rent in each case would be obviously impossible within the ordinary limits of an answer to a Question on the Paper. I understand that the Recorder made no observations at any of the Sessions. The decrees settled without the Sheriffs intervention have been 173 under £2, with costs 6s. 9d. each, and 16 over £2, with costs 13s. each. 310 decrees have been lodged with the Sheriff. Of these, 151 under £2 have been realised, with costs 8s. 3d. each, and 7 over £2, with costs 14s. 6d. each.

Am I to understand from the reply that about half the number of decrees have been realised?

Yes; 158 out of 310.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Departmental Committee, which was appointed last Session to advise the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office regarding the issuing of printing and stationery contracts, in accordance with the findings of the Select Committee, has made its report to the Treasury, and whether its publication as a Parliamentary Paper will be sanctioned?

Yes, Sir. The Committee of which my hon. Friend the Member for East Donegal was Chairman sent in its Report last September, and the Report shall be presented to Parliament as the hon. Member suggests.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he has any intention of proposing legislative measures for prohibiting or restricting gambling in option or future contracts representing fictitious agricultural produce and metals; whether he is aware of what is being done in this direction by other countries; whether Her Majesty's Government have asked the Hungarian Government for a copy of the Official Report of the International Agricultural Congress, held at Budapest last September, and whether he would lay upon the Table the section of the Canada Criminal Code of 1892, which came into operation in March 1893, prohibiting gambling in prices?

No, Sir, I do not propose to introduce legislation on the subject referred to by the hon. Member. If there is any particular country of whose action in the matter the hon. Member desire, to be informed, I will endeavour to ascertain the information for him. A copy of the official Report of tile International Congress held at Budapest figs been asked for, and we are informed that it is in the press. If the hon. Member will Move for the sections of the Canada Code to which he refers, there will be no objection to them laying on the Table.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Government will consider the advisability of the suppression of private asylums, and make other and more suitable provision for paying patients?

No, Sir, I am not aware of any sufficient reason for disturbing the arrangement made only six years ago by Parliament with regard to licensed houses.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been called to a statement, published by the London Missionary Society, concerning the terrible straits to which the Protestant natives of Madagascar are reduced since the conquest of the Island by the French Republic; that at least 20 Protestant places of worship have been taken possession of by the Roman Catholics with the sanction of French officers; and that Protestants are threatened and ill-treated on the ground that British missionaries are their friends; and, whether the British Government will endeavour to secure the liberty and property of the Protestants according to the assurances given to Lord Salisbury at the time of the French expedition to Madagascar?

I have seen the statements as to the Protestant natives of Madagascar, and can assure the hon. Member that the position of British missions and of British subjects generally in Madagascar is receiving the earnest attention of Her Majesty's Government, who are about to address representations to the French Government on the subject. ["Hear, hear!"]

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he has received an answer from the Town Council Tunbridge Wells respecting the letter from the National Telephone Company on the alleged insufficiency of the local telephone service, stating that, not withstanding the changes Made, there is still a lack of secresy so that subscribers' conversations can be overheard; that the Corporation declares the service inadequate; that there are only four call offices in the borough—three of these not properly equipped; that the rentals are unduly high; and that altogether there are less than 80 subscribers, being fewer than there were in 1895; whether he is aware that, in the event of a licence being given under the Treasury Minute of 23rd May 1892, a local company could be formed which would be prepared to establish and work an exchange at a much lower rate, and that 140 residents have already promised to join as subscribers; and whether, in the interests of the town, he will grant such a licence?

Yes, Sir. An answer has been received, and I am aware of the representations which have been made; but the Government are not prepared to entertain the application for a licence to a local company at Tunbridge Wells. As far as can be seen at present, the National Company are using their best endeavours to render their service efficient, and should they fail to render it efficient, the Postmaster General will carefully consider what steps it may be desirable for him to take.

Arising out of that, may I ask whether the Postmaster General will institute an Inquiry into the alleged inefficiency of the service at Tunbridge Wells?

I gather that the Postmaster General will be willing to make inquiries whether the service is efficient or not.

Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire into the charges made by the telephone company, as well as the inefficiency of service?

Yes; I consider that part of the general Question.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is now in a position to state the general policy of the Government on the question of telephones, and their management and administration in this country?

Before the right hon. Gentleman replies, I wish to ask him a Question, of which I have given him private notice, namely: As notice of his intention to make a statement regarding the Government policy on the Telephone question was recently made, will he consent to postpone doing so until Thursday next, to allow representations to be placed before him on this subject by the Telephone Committee of the Glasgow Municipal Corporation, which meets to-morrow for the purpose of preparing them, and which are necessary on account of statements recently made in Glasgow to the Statute (Labour) Committee of the Corporation by the hon. Member for North-East Manchester, formerly Postmaster General?

I do not think the Corporation of Glasgow will be in any way prejudiced by my answer. In reply to the hon. Member, I have no change of policy to announce. Her Majesty's Government do not propose to take any steps to acquire, either by compulsion or agreement, the business of the National Telephone Company, which, as the hon. Member is aware, is conducted under a temporary licence front the Government. But the Postmaster General will carefully inquire into any complaints which he may receive from any locality of the inefficiency or inadequacy of the service which the company is supplying, and should he consider that such complaints are well founded, and that the inefficiency or inadequacy of the service is due to the fault or neglect of the company, he will carefully consider, on the merits of each case, what steps it may be desirable to take to remedy the defect.

Do I understand that in 1911 the Government policy is, in taking over the whole telephone service of this country, that they will not recognise any claim for "going value" or "unearned increment" made or to be made by the National Telephone Company?

My hon. Friend will understand by the answer I gave the other day that the Government stand by the answer given in Mr. Arnold Morley's letter, supposing this purchase is not made before the licence expires. The Government can give no guarantee what will happen or what the successors of the present Government may do. At all events, we are not prepared to purchase.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether his attention has been called to the frequent and strong complaints made from the industrial districts of East Stirlingshire and the Coatbridge Districts of Lanarkshire with reference to the inefficient service of the National Telephone Company; and what steps are being taken to remedy a state of things so detrimental to the trade and requirements of these districts?

The Postmaster General has not had his attention called to any inefficiency in the service of the National Telephone Company in the districts referred to by the hon Member.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the assets of the Liberator Building Society, the House and Lands Investment Trust, and the Lands Allotment Company were transferred in July 1895, to the United Realisation Company by order of the Bankruptcy Court; whether the fees payable thereon to, and claimed by, the Board of Trade have been ascertained; and, if so, what is the amount thereof; if not, if he can state any reason for the exceptional delay, and whether the fees include the expenses of the special manager appointed and of the staff employed by him?

The scheme under which the assets of the Companies mentioned were sold to the United Realisation Company was sanctioned by the Court on 22nd June 1895, but, owing, to objections raised by that Company, the transfer of the various properties has not yet been completed. The final settlement, of the fees due to the Board of Trade has been a matter of considerable difficulty, owing to the complicated nature of the transactions. It is now awaiting the completion of certain accounts by the United Realisation Company. The fees chargeable will be exclusive of the expenses of the Special manager and his staff.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War when it is intended to appoint the new Adjutant for the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the, Manchester Regiment?

The appointment will be made as soon as a suitable candidate can be found. No officer in the territorial regiment is available at this moment.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Land Commission in Ireland have purported to fix fair rents in a number of cases without specifying the details required by the schedule enacted in the Act of last year; and, if so, in how many cases this has occurred; whether Her Majesty's Court of Appeal has decided that such details are necessary, and that the omission of them invalidates the orders; what course the Land Commission intend to take with reference to cases in which such omission has occurred; and whether there is any power of awarding costs against the Land Commission in appeals taken to rectify such omissions; if not, how the costs are borne?

I am afraid I must ask my hon. and learned Friend to defer this Question until to-morrow.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if lie will explain the cause of the delay in giving decisions in the land cases which were heard at Lisnaskea. County Fermanagh, on the 2nd of January last; why the Sub-Commissioners have not as yet inspected the holdings of those tenants whose cases were heard at Clones, County Monaghan, on the 5th and 6th of February; how many cases in the counties of Fermanagh and Monaghan in winch the originating notices to have fair rents fixed were served before the 1st of last November have not as yet been listed for hearing; and when will there be another sitting of the Sub-Commissioners to hear these cases; and whether it is intended to appoint additional Sub-Commissioners so as to prevent an accumulation of arrears of business and to dispose speedily of cases in which notices to have fair rents fixed have been served?

It is necessary to make local inquiries in reference to the first and second paragraphs of the Question, and I would ask the hon. Member to postpone it until Thursday next.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether consideration has been given to the complaints of the Friendly Societies, that they are seriously prejudiced by the raising of the charge of money orders under 11 from 2d. to 3d.; that the number of orders under £1 for contributions of members and for sick pay is enormous in the year, and the loss from the extra 1d. in the Hearts of Oak Society alone is estimated at £11,000 a year; and, whether the Postmaster General will, in view of the discouragement to thrift caused by the charge, reduce the rate for sums under£1 to 2d.

I must refer the hon. Member to the answer which I Leave on the 23rd ultimo to the hon. Members for South Somerset and the Leominster Division of Herefordshire. But I may add that the hon. Member is mistaken in supposing that the loss from the extra 1d. in the Hearts of Oak Society alone is estimated at £11,000 a year. As a matter of fact the difference between 2d. and 3d. on all orders for £1 and under issued by the Post Office does not reach that sum, and the Hearts of Oak Society only takes out a proportion of the orders.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if an officer in the Volunteer force has a right to call for a Court of Inquiry, in the event of his services being dispensed with, or being requested to resign his commission?

A Court of Inquiry may be convened by the Officer Commanding any body of troops to take and report evidence when an investigation of facts appears to him desirable. Such a court has no judicial power, and can express no opinion on the conduct of any officer or soldier. No officer of any section of Her Majesty's forces has the right to demand a Court of Inquiry.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the last issue of contract boots to the members of the Metropolitan Police Force is to be in April next and the first weekly issue of boot money in October, thus calling upon each man to advance the value of a pair of boots to the authorities.

The dates are correctly stated in the Question, but the inference which the hon. Member draws from them is wrong. The April issue of boots with those already in the men's possession will in all probability last beyond the time when the men will have received by weekly allowance the cost of a new pair: and they will not be called upon to procure a new pair until one of those pair has been condemned. The dates I should add are those which were mentioned to the men when the choice between the two systems was given them.

Am I to gather from the answer that the men will practically be defrauded of a pair of boots? [Laughter.]

Quite the contrary, Sir.

If the boots are made to last longer than they have hitherto lasted, are not the men thereby defrauded out of a certain amount of shoe leather? [Laughter.]

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he can state the amount of contraband tobacco confiscated by the Customs during last year, and how it was disposed of?

The quantity of contraband tobacco in various forms confiscated by the Customs during the year ending the 31st December 1896 was 6,987 lbs. This quantity being collected in the Queen's warehouse in London served to increase the stock of seized tobacco already accumulated there, and front this stock the undermentioned quantities were distributed during the year in question.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will give a Return for the year 1896 of the insane who committed suicide (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 298, of Session 1896)?

I am not aware that any useful purpose would be served by continuing the Return which was granted the hon. Member last year; and as it proved a very troublesome one to prepare, I am afraid I must decline to agree to it. The number of persons generally who committed suicide will, of course, appear in the Judicial Statistics in the ordinary way.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he can state the arrangements that have been made for the reception and quartering of the Colonial troops visiting England in connection with the celebration of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee; will an effort be made to concentrate, as far as practicable, the various Colonial contingents; and would it be possible to set apart the whole of one of the London barracks for their accommodation?

The arrangements for the reception of the contingents of Colonial troops are under consideration. The details cannot yet be stated.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the case of Patrick Hanley, of Derrymoglan, County Roscommon, who was in the 88th Regiment for nearly five years, served in the Indian Mutiny, being present in many engagements, including Cawnpore, Lucknow, and Calpee, and received four wounds, two from bullets, a sabre wound and also a wound on the left leg which, owing to some mistake, was not recorded, although it was the most severe and painful one; is he aware that Patrick Hanley was discharged as unfit for further service, and granted the sum of 8d. per day for life, and that he is now over 60 years of age and no longer able to work; and whether, under the circumstances, the War Office will consider the desirability of increasing this old soldier's pension?

The case of Patrick Hanley will be referred to the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital for their consideration.

I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, if he will inform the House who are the members of that Committee?

,: The members of the Committee of Council are the Lord President of the Council, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Secretary of State for the Colonies—[Laughter]—the Secretary of State for War, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the First Lord of the Admiralty—[renewed laughter]—and the Vice President. [Much laughter.]

May I ask whether this Committee ever meets?

I cannot answer that Question without notice—[laughter]—and I doubt even with notice if I should be allowed to disclose the proceedings of a Committee of the Privy Council. [Renewed laughter.]

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is in a position to inform the House, having regard to the large sums of public money now being expended in India in relief works, if the Government of India are carrying forward irrigation works of importance in the parts of India now affected by famine for the mitigation or prevention of subsequent scarcity of food in those districts in the future?

In addition to the minor irrigation works which have been recently undertaken in relief of famine, the Government of India are engaged in the construction of very considerable irrigation projects, averaging a capital expenditure of three-quarters of a crore of rupees per annum up to the year 1900. These projects will largely afford protection in the future to the parts now affected by famine, besides; affording similar relief in portions of India which have not been affected on this occasion.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can state if it is a part of the scheme for the autonomy of Crete that the Governor shall be a Christian, shall be appointed by or with the consent of the Powers, and shall not be removable by the Sultan?

It is impossible for us to pledge the other Powers to any course until their decision has been arrived at. The questions raised by the right hon. Gentleman are very important, but they have not yet been determined.

asked whether the Under Secretary could indicate when he would be able to make a statement on the subject?

No, Sir; I am afraid I cannot.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it is the case that the reinforcement of Candanos and other Turkish garrisons in Crete was prevented, while the proposal, assented to by all the other Great Powers, to prohibit the importation of arms and volunteers for the insurgent forces was rejected by Her Majesty's Government, and what steps have been taken to effect the rescue of the troops and the loyal population whose lives are consequently in jeopardy?

In neither case is, there any foundation for the statements advanced in the Question as to the action of Her Majesty's Government. On the contrary, the Admirals have acted in perfect accord throughout, and concerted efforts, the nature of which I have already communicated to the House, are being made to rescue the blockaded Mussulmans at Candanos.

Do I understand my right hon. Friend to say that there is no truth in the paragraph which refers to the refusal of Her Majesty's Government to assent to the Austrian proposals in August last?

I have said that neither statement in the first part of the Question is true.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman a Question—of which I have given him private notice—namely, whether there is any truth in the statement to-day's paper that a joint force has been landed with orders to proceed Candanos, and to use force if there is resistance on the part of the insurgents?

That is not the Question of which the hon. Gentleman gave me private notice. I have a long Question front him here of a very different character. [Laughter and cheers]

I gave the right hon. Gentleman private notice of two Questions, and possibly he may be able to answer this Question now as arising out of his answer? [Cries of "No!"]

I will answer the whole Question later on, if the hon. Gentleman will permit me.

Is it not a fact that it is established by the Blue-book that the Powers prevented the dispatch to Crete of four battalions out of five sent by the Turkish Government?

Order, order! The hon. Member will not be in order in asking what is established by the Blue-book.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is able to give any further information respecting the Mussulmans besieged in Candanos?

From reports which have been received from Her Majesty's Consul at Canea, and Rear-Admiral Harris, it appears that on the 4th instant Her Majesty's ship Rodney, with Her Majesty's Consul on board, left for Selino Castelli with orders to do all that as possible to relieve Candanos, which is situated three hours' journey inland. The Captain of Her Majesty's ship Scout, reported on the 6th instant, that Candanos was in no immediate danger, though the Mussulmans were closely blockaded. This is the latest information that we have received.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in the contemplated arrangement for utilising as police in Crete Turkish soldiery, any, and what precautions will be taken to secure the inhabitants from murder, outrage, and rapine by the proposed Turkish constabulary; whether any inquiry will be made as to the antecedents of the men to be told off on constabulary duty, and whether men who were implicated in the atrocities in Armenia and Constantinople, or were engaged in active service on behalf of the Sultan in the recent disturbances in Crete, will be employed on police duty in Crete; and whether an assurance will be given that inquiry will be made into the antecedents and character of Turkish soldiery undertaking police duties in Crete?

It may be taken for granted that in any future police arrangements which made be made, every precaution will be taken to provide for the security of the inhabitants, and that in recruiting for the Gendarmerie, the fittest men will be selected. We have not heard of the landing of 500 men, nor, of course, can I specify in advance what steps may require to be taken for the relief of the beleaguered Mussulmans at Candanos.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is intended that this Turkish constabulary shall be under the command of Christian officers?

I can give no detailed information at the present stage of the Question.

Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to say that an investigation will be made into the character of the men—[cries of "Oh!"]—constituting the Cretan-Turkish police, having regard to the fact that that police was engaged in murdering their officers while he was engaged in praising them in the House of Commons?

The hon. Member is now putting in a slightly different form the Question standing on the Paper which I have already answered. [Cheers.]

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will state to the House the terms of the original Note addressed by the Powers to Turkey, and also of the supplementary Note relating to the removal of the Turkish troops from Crete presented on Friday last to the Porte; and whether the Notes addressed to Turkey have been presented in the form of an ultimatum and a fixed term assigned, as in the case of Greece, for the compulsory assent of the Porte to these terms. [Cheers.]

Although it is rather late in the day, I am glad to say that I have at last been able to lay on the Table of the House the two Notes, the Note to Greece and the Note to the Porte, and I have satisfied myself that there are at this moment in the Vote Office as many copies as Gentlemen are likely to ask for. With regard to the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's Question, I have to say that neither the Note to Greece nor the Note to Turkey was in the form of an ultimatum; but there is undoubtedly, as he has pointed out, a difference in the form of the two Notes, which is justified by the fact that Greece was notoriously acting in defiance of, or against the wishes of, the Powers of Europe, while Turkey was purely on the defensive and has shown no desire, so far as we know, to resist in any way the policy which the six Great Powers have agreed upon. ["Hear, hear."]

Will the right hon. Gentleman say why the Notes to which he has referred were not issued simultaneously?

I don't know.

I wish to ask the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs what instructions have been given to the mixed forces landed at Selino. Are they to attack the insurgents in case they meet with opposition?

That, again, is not the Question of which the hon. Gentleman has given me private notice; and I must decline, therefore, to answer.[Cheers.]

I hope I may be excused, under the circumstances, for asking my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary a Question of which I have not given him notice—it is, whether any replies have been received to the Collective Notes from the Ottoman or the Greek Governments?

We have not yet heard.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received a Copy of a Resolution adopted by the Bawnboy Board of Guardians at their Meeting on 22nd February, advocating payment of expenses to all common jurors in Ireland, and what action is intended to be taken thereon?

Representations to the effect stated have been received from one or two Boards of Guardians. The Question, obviously, is one which could only be considered in relation to Great Britain and Ireland, and must be dealt with in a general Measure applicable to the Three Kingdoms, if dealt with at all.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether ha can state the number of workmistresses employed in Irish National Schools for the year ending 31st December 1896, how much their remuneration amounted to, and the average per teacher?

It has not been found possible in the short space of time since this Question was placed on the Paper to ascertain the number of workmistresses employed during the year ended 31st December 1896, but the Commissioners state that the close of the September quarter of last year the number was 880. The salary of workmistresses (who are not employed for the full school day) was raised in 1886 from £8 to its present rate of £12 a year, and the result fees earned vary from £1 to £2 10s. a year.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether any steps are being taken by the Post Office authorities to facilitate an early delivery of letters in Ballyconnell, Bawnboy, and Swanlinbar, by the employment of the Cavan and Leitrim Railway train service?

The Post Office is not taking any steps in the matter referred to, for, as stated in the answers given to the hon. Member on the 22nd of June 1896 and 1st of February last, the trains running on the Cavan and Leitrim Railway would not afford so convenient a service to Ballyconnell, Bawnboy, etc., as that afforded by car, and the cost of establishing trains specially for the mails would be altogether beyond what the circumstances would warrant.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, can he now state whether a sub-post office will be established at Moate-Farrell, County Longford, in response to a petition recently presented from the inhabitants of Clonbroney?

I am happy to say that the result of the inquiry formerly promised has been favourable, and that a sub-post office will shortly be established at Moate-Farrell.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Naval Police have recently reported the presence of Danish trawlers in the protected waters of the Moray Firth; and what steps the Government propose to take in order to uphold the Law and preserve the intention of Parliament?

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that a Danish trawler has been constantly fishing for the last few weeks in the Moray Firth; and whether, having regard to the strong feelings aroused amongst those interested, owing to a foreign trawler being able to fish in waters from which British trawlers are excluded, the Government propose to take any steps to prevent the continuance of such a system in the future?

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that a Danish trawler, Dania, has been seen by H.M.S. Jackal trawling in the Moray Firth within forbidden limits, and that she is about to land her catch at Aberdeen; whether the Government have power to prevent the landing of fish thus caught; and what progress has been made in the negotiations for the revision of the North Sea Convention, so that such trawling may in future be prevented?

I will answer the Questions of the hon. Members for the North Division of Aberdeen, Banffshire, and Elgin and Nairn together. On the 28th ultimo the Fishery Board received a report from the Commander of H.M.S. Jackal to the effect "that the Danish trawler E. 46 Dania was this forenoon discovered seven miles E.N.E. off Tarbetness with her port otter trawl down." In consequence of this and other reports, the Secretary for Scotland has given instructions to the Fishery Board to prevent, under the powers of Section 8 of the Herring Fishery (Scotland) Act of 1889, the landing or sale in Scotland of fish from the Dania caught within the area prohibited by their bye-laws. As regards the negotiations for the revision of the North Sea Convention referred to by the hon. Member for Banffshire, I have nothing to add to what has already been stated in this House by the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and myself.

asked whether there was any power of prohibiting foreign vessels from fishing outside the territorial waters?

said there was no power of preventing fishing, but if the hon. Member would refer to the section of the Act to which he had referred he would see that there were certain powers to prevent the landing of fish so caught in Scotland.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that the Dania was proceeding to Hull, and whether there were any powers to prevent the landing of such fish there?

said the Act to which he referred related only to Scotland. He knew nothing more about the movements of the Dania than what he had stated.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether the Postmaster General has received a Resolution unanimously passed on the 8th February at a special meeting of the Commissioners of the borough of Enniskillen, protesting against the delay in the morning mail service, and urging upon the Post Office authorities and the Treasury, as an imperative necessity to meet the requirements of business, that the mails now detained at Dundalk from 7.20 a.m. till 9 a.m. should be dispatched at once by mail train for Cloneen, Bundoran, and Omagh, distributing the letters en route at the different stations; and whether the Postmaster General, having regard to the inconvenience and commercial loss entailed by this delay, will take steps in accordance with the terms of the Resolution?

The Postmaster General has received a copy of the Resolution referred to. The mails for Enniskillen now reach Dundalk at 8.1 a.m.—not at 7.20 a.m.—and are sent forward by the 8.57 a.m. train. As stated in reply to another hon. Member a few days ago, the question of improving the service I will receive attention in connection with the revision of the day mail services now in hand, and the Postmaster General will place before the Great Northern Railway Company the strong desire for improvement which exists, in the hope that the Railway Company may be able to effect the desired improvement which the Post Office would not be justified in carrying out by putting on a special train at public cost. If such an arrangement should be made by the Company, Clones, which it is presumed is intended by Cloneen, is on the way to Enniskillen, and would, of course, participate in any improvement of the service to Enniskillen, but Bundoran, which is a long distance beyond Enniskillen, would, it is feared, be in any case excluded from the advantages. As regards Omagh, the mails do not go viâ Enniskillen but viâ Portadown, and suffer no detention at Dnndalk.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether any Report has been received at the War Office of the circumstances attending the wreck of the Warren Hastings on the island of Réunion; and whether the Report can be made public?

Reports have been received from the officers commanding the wings of the King's Royal Rifles and the York and Lancaster Regiment and other details on board the Warren Hastings, and also from the officer commanding the ship. It appears that the ship got out of her course and struck the rocks soon after 2 o'clock on a pitch-dark night. The troops, numbering over 1,000, were mustered at once, and the captain of the ship reports that but for the perfect discipline observed and the prompt obedience to every order given, many lives must necessarily have been lost. I propose to lay the Reports on the Table, and I think the House will feel that the individual acts of heroism in saving life recorded in them, and the perfect order maintained during the landing of the women and children in darkness with the ship at an angle of 50 deg. and momentarily expected to capsize, are worthy to be recorded in the annals of these regiments and of the British Army. [Cheers.]

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether Messrs. Kelly and Agnew, representing the Local Government Board, inspected labourers' dwellings in the Castlefin and Cloughard Electoral Divisions in County Donegal the year before last; (2) whether a scheme was made for building a number of cottages to replace those condemned as unfit for habitation in each of those divisions; and (3) what is the cause of the delay in erecting them?

The reply to the first paragraph is in the affirmative. A scheme was made for the erection of 13 cottages in the Union, four of which were to be in Cloughard Electoral Division. None were proposed to be built in Castlefin Division, but having regard to the proximity of the sites of the four cottages mentioned to Castlefin Division, that Division and Cloughard Division were combined into one area of charge for the expenses of the scheme so far as it related to those four cottages. I do not understand that there has been any exceptional cause for delay beyond pressure of work on the Inspector, and the fact that the loans originally applied for were found to be insufficient and fresh applications had to be made to the Treasury. All the requisite preliminaries are now practically completed, and the Inspector will advertise for tenders for the erection of the cottages at an early date.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Inspectors of Irish Fisheries have been applied to by the Conservators of the River Shannon to request Her Majesty's Government to place a gunboat on protection duty at the mouth of the River Shannon, as it has been discovered that a French fishing fleet are shooting their mackerel nets within the limit, and in such a manner as to prevent the run of salmon, to the great detriment of the national fishery; and whether he will recommend the Lord Lieutenant to favourably consider such request?

An application of the nature referred to in the Question was made to the Inspectors of Fisheries, who replied that in the absence of a bye-law prohibiting mackerel fishing there was no ground on which the Inspectors could support the application. It is a fact that French fishing boats annually visit the South West Coast of Ireland and fish for two or three months, but the Inspectors have no evidence before them to show that these vessels fish within territorial limits.

asked whether it was the fact that these French fishing boats had not the right to come within a distance of three miles of the shore?

said he believed that was so; what he had stated was that the Inspector had no evidence that they did come within that distance of the shore.

I beg to ask the Attorney General whether the revision of the Rules of the Supreme Court is now complete; when the Rules are likely to be issued; and whether the whole of the Revised Rules will be issued at one time or by instalments?

I am informed that the revision is not complete, and it is not possible to say when it will be complete, as there are still many points to be considered. But the Rules will probably be issued in sections, and some important alterations will be made.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Education Department or the Treasury have any list or statistics of the Voluntary Schools which are considered to be "necessitous schools," with the amounts estimated to be required to relieve the necessity of such schools; and whether the amount of the aid grant of £616,000, proposed to be paid by Parliament under the Voluntary Schools Bill, has been based on, or fixed in accordance with, any such list or statistics; and, if so, whether the Government will lay such lists or statistics upon the Table of the House?

The Department have no statistics in such a form as can be laid upon the Table of the House, but the Department has satisfied itself, by careful inquiry, that the amount asked for is not greater than is required to meet the necessities of Voluntary Schools.

moved, in Sub-section (2) to leave out the words "as the Department think best," and to insert the words "in accordance with a scheme to be formulated by the Department and laid before Parliament in manner hereinafter provided." The Education Act of 1870 afforded a striking contrast to the method adopted by the Government for the distribution of the grant under this Bill. Under that Act all schools were placed on an equal basis; there was no distinction drawn between schools in town and country, prosperous and unprosperous, sectarian or undenominational, all had an equal claim on the Exchequer, and if they passed the required examination that claim was satisfied. The next point was that there were expressed conditions upon which Voluntary Schools could claim this grant. Those conditions were explicitly set forth, and there could be no dispute about them. The definition of a necessitous school in the Act was also clear and explicit. It said that when a school existed in an area the rateable value of which could not produce a certain amount in proportion to the number of children in the school, a certain aid grant was to be given to it. It was, therefore, impossible that there could be any favouritism between schools on the part of the Department. The Department could not pick and choose in the distribution of the money. It was to give the money to schools in certain districts which were clearly defined by Act of Parliament. But that was not all. In addition to all those conditions which circumscribed the discretion of the Department in the distribution of the money, the Act said further that a Minute must be prepared by the Department, and that that Minute must be laid upon the Table of the House for the space of one month. So much for the Act of 1870, which was passed by a Liberal Government. Then came the Education Act of 1876, which was passed by a Conservative Government. Under the 19th Section of that Act there was a further grant made to necessitous schools. In that Act again there was a clear definition of a necessitous school—which was a school in a district with a population of 300 or 400—and no discretion was left to the Department to pick and choose. The Act of 1870 dealt with a grant of £10,000 or £15,000; the Act of 1876 only granted a few thousand pounds; but the present Bill dealt with a, grant of £600,000. How was it proposed to deal with the, money? No Minute or regulation was to be laid before Parliament. The distribution of the money was left absolutely to the Education Department, in consultation with the school associations. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury—if the right hon. Gentleman did him the honour of replying to his Amendment—whether he could point to a single precedent of a proposal of this kind having been incorporated by any Government in a Bill? There had been an increasing tendency in Acts passed of late to leave the real practical work of legislation to be done by the Departments. Last year, for instance, a large sum of money was given for the relief of rates in agricultural districts. The bulk of the work in the way of regulations was left to the Local Government Board. But this Bill went beyond the Agricultural Rates Act. The regulations of the Local Government Board under that Act were to be laid on the Table for ten days and discussed. But under this Bill there were to be no regulations laid on the Table. The House simply voted the money, and said to the Department, "Spend it as you please." What might happen? There were £600,000 to be distributed among the necessitous schools; and there was to be a distinction between town and country. Yet there were absolutely no regulations by which the Department was to be guided in its discrimination. There was nothing to prevent four-fifths of the money being distributed among the towns, and only one-fifth in the country districts. Before any such scheme was put into operation the opinion of the House of Commons ought to be invited upon it. What the Bill amounted to was the establishment of a bureaucracy. He begged to move—

said that there was no repugnancy between the 2nd Sub-section, and the 3rd and 4th.

Does not Subsection (a) of Sub-section (3) limit the discretion of the Department?

said that Sub-section (2) referred to the distribution of the grant to individual schools. Subsection (a) of Sub-section (3) referred to the allotment to the associations.

But the Education Department is bound to pay over the lump sum to the associations?

No. The payment will be direct to the school. The hon. and learned Gentleman, continuing, said it was impossible for the House of Commons to act, in the manner suggested by the Amendment, as a satisfactory Court of Appeal in the distribution of the grant. It was not a matter of general regulation but of individual discrimination as between schools. Sometimes 5s. per child would be too little, and sometimes it would be too much. How could the House engage in an inquiry with reference to the necessities of a particular school? Any question of general principle as raised by Section 97 of the Act of 1870 the House could deal with; but human ingenuity could not devise a tribunal more unfitted to decide between the claims of school and school than the House of Commons. He hoped the Committee would have no hesitation in rejecting an Amendment which was utterly unpractical and inconsistent with the whole scheme of the Bill.

regretted that the Government had not accepted the Amendment, at least in some modified form, because a principle of the greatest importance was raised. In the sub-section under discussion the general distribution of the funds was dealt with. By this sub-section it was to rest with the Education Department to determine to what schools, in what manner, and in what amount the fund was to be distributed. Sub-section (3) provided for the allotment to particular associations, and Sub-section (4) provided for the actual payment of the grant by the Department. At every one of these stages, it was the contention of the Opposition, the matter ought to be submitted to the jurisdiction and determination of the House. [Cheers.] He had an Amendment down on the subsection dealing with the allotment to associations, to give to the House of Commons a final voice as to the constitution of those bodies, and as to their government in the exercise of their large and novel functions. ["Hear, hear!"] The preliminary step, with which the Committee was now dealing, was also of very great importance, and he demurred to the suggestion that this was purely a matter of detail. One of the main grounds for the Amendment was a desire to elicit from the Education Department, in the form of a scheme to be laid on the Table of the House, a statement of the general considerations or rules which they intended to apply, first of all in determining the all-important question of what classes of schools among the Voluntary Schools were to be treated as "necessitous;" and, next, in determining by what scale the grant was to be reckoned. The Amendment was not put forward in a spirit hostile to the scheme of the Bill, but on grounds which eight to be generally accepted—the first being constitutional principle, and the Other being administrative convenience. As the law stood, not a penny of public money was voted for educational purposes as to the expenditure of which the House had not by Act of Parliament an absolutely complete control. There was, first, the Parliamentary grant prescribed by the Act of 1870, and its developments. Not only were the conditions under which that grant was given fixed, but the amount in which it was given and every condition applicable to it were prescribed by a code laid on the Table of the House every year. Section 97 of the Act of 1870 expressly provided that no addition to or subtraction front these conditions should be valid without the House having an opportunity of expressing its views. [Cheers.] As to the fee-grant given under the Act of 1891, was that left to the discretion of the Department? Many hon. Members opposite would have preferred to see a greater degree of elasticity allowed; but Parliament, on the face of the Act, prescribed what should be the figure of the grant, and there was no possibility or power on the part of the Education Department to vary that amount from year to year or as between school and school. It was quite true that there was a provision in the Act—which he did not think had been applied in many cases—under which the Education Department were empowered, in certain very special circumstances, to vary the amount of the grant, but it was expressly provided that the Education Department should report annually all eases in which they had sanctioned the imposition or augmentation of fees under this particular section. That was the state of the case at present, and now, for the first time, this Bill proposed to leave the distribution of this very considerable sum to the absolute and uncontrolled discretion of a Government Department. The Government Department was to be at large as regarded the class of schools to whom the money was to be given, as regarded the scale of amounts in which the money was to be distributed, and, what was still more important, as regarded the constitution and allocation of these voluntary associations, which were intended to be the means and instruments of the Department in the actual distribution of the money. He asked hon. Gentlemen opposite whether they could produce any Parliamentary precedent in any part of their legislation in any Department in which an uncontrolled and practically irresponsible power had been given over money to be voted annually by Parliament from the taxes, either to any Government power or, still more, to any voluntary association constituted altogether outside Parliamentary authority. It might said that Parliament did retain an indirect and, at the same time, effective control in the fact that, when the Education Estimates came on for discussion, it was open to hon. Gentlemen to move to reduce the salary of the Vice President of the Council. Assuming for the sake of argument that the salary of the Vice President was still to be the natural Parliamentary opportunity for raising questions as to the administration of the Department, it was too much to expect that, at the fag end of the Session, perhaps in a single night, those who had objection to, or wished to criticise, the distribution of this fund among the diocesan associations of the country should be shut up within the narrow limits of that particular opportunity, and that that should be represented to them as if it were anything more than an illusory and shadowy Parliamentary control. ["Hear, hear!"] What they wanted, in this as in all other cases of a grant of public money, was that that House should have an absolute control from first to last. The Duke of Devonshire, speaking as late as February 12th last, at a more or less private meeting of the Liberal Unionist Association, made this observation:—

There was nothing, therefore, in what I said on that occasion which would in the slightest degree prevent either the Government of which I am a member or myself from supporting a proposal made to Parliament to sanction a special aid grant to certain schools, whether Voluntary or Board Schools, which might require such aid, such aid to be granted on conditions to be prescribed by Parliament itself, and not to be left to the discretion of the Department."

They were seeking to give effect not only to the views of the Duke of Devonshire, but to the only legitimate method of Parliamentary control, when they said that the schemes for the distribution of this aid grant should be laid on the Table of the House. He would point out, further, that they were acting not only in accordance with previous legislation as regarded elementary education, but with the vast body of legislation in other Departments which was strictly relevant to the subject. What was done in the case of the Endowed Schools Act, where they were dealing with a strictly local fund? So jealous was Parliament in that case that, apart from the Commissioners constituted by the Act and the Education Department, which was placed over the Commissioners with an ultimate voice as to the manner in which those endowments should be allocated, an express provision was made that the schemes should be laid on the Table of the House, and that not until a sufficient time had elapsed for Parliamentary criticism and approval should those schemes come into operation and become law. Again, in another case of a very similar character—that of the City of London Parochial Charities in 1883—exactly the same procedure was followed, and again this was a case of a fund in which there was only a local interest. Finally, there was the case of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, which dealt with funds jointly produced by rates levied in the counties and by contributions from the Imperial Exchequer. Primarily the proposals for the allocation of that fund were left to the discretion of the joint committees; above the joint committees were put the Charity Commissioners, and above the Charity Commissioners there was the Education Department. If, when the matter had reached that stage, any objections were taken, Parliament required that the schemes should be laid on the Table of that House, and the vast majority, if not the whole, of those schemes had in fact been laid on the Tables of both Houses of Parliament. He asked the Government how, in view of that absolute unbroken stream of Parliamentary precedents, both where they were dealing with Imperial grants and even where they were dealing with local educational endowments, they were going to justify their action in now, for the first time, setting aside the principle which had hitherto been embodied in legislative proposals of this kind and which had been recognised by both Parties in the State? This was a prin- ciple to which they attached the highest constitutional importance, and, unless the Government had made up their mind that every Amendment of every sort or kind was to be rigorously and arbitrarily excluded from the Bill, he could not understand why they should not accept the present Amendment. ["Hear, hear!"]

said the right hon. Gentleman opposite had recommended this Amendment on the ground that it was in accordance with precedent. He gathered the Amendment was that every year, before allocating the money, the schemes under which it was to be allocated to the various schools were to be laid before the House of Commons.

If there is any change.

said the right hon. Gentleman opposite recommended the Amendment on the ground that it was strictly analogous to the principle laid down by Parliament in the case of the Endowed Schools Act. Anybody who had had a lengthened experience of that House knew that nothing could give more labour and trouble to the House than this perpetual survey of the schemes of the Endowed Schools Commissioners. That trouble had to be undertaken, not merely because previous legislation had pressed it upon them and without new legislation they could not free themselves of it, but because it was manifest that, where they were dealing with private funds, which they transferred from one body to another body, from one set of people who, perhaps, represented the original beneficiaries of the charity to another set of people who did not represent the beneficiaries of the charity, it was absolutely necessary that those schemes should be brought before a tribunal which should have the right to pronounce upon them. But when, with regard to any scheme, that process was gone through it was gone through once for all; it never had to be repeated; the schemes never had to be surveyed again.

Except when a scheme is changed.

You cannot change a scheme.

Oh, yes.

Not a charity scheme.

It is done under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act.

said that might be so, and he dared say he was entirely wrong; but he did not remember any case in which, after Parliament had assented to a scheme, and which had been brought into full operation, it was again put through the mill and again brought before Parliament. At all events, whether there was the power in existing legislation of revarying these schemes and whether that power was used or not, it was certain that the schemes were brought forward with the intention of their being permanent. Now, let the Committee consider the plan seriously put before it in relation to administrative effectiveness and due economy of Parliamentary time. He believed there were some 14,000 Voluntary Schools in the country. He did not know how many of them would receive a share of the aid grant, but no doubt a very large number would. Each of them, he supposed, would, according to the analogy of the Charity Commission, be presented to Parliament in order that Parliament might pronounce upon it.

explained that the right hon. Gentleman was under a misapprehension. What they wanted was that the scheme should be put upon the Paper, so that the House should be enabled to judge of the principles upon which the Department acted in laying down what were and what were not necessitous schools.

replied that if general principles were all that was asked for, those principles were already sufficiently laid down in the Bill. It had been admitted by both sides that to formulate what a necessitous Voluntary School is amounted to an impossibility. It was impossible to define the degree of necessity or to lay down in a formulated manner the exact grounds and causes from which that necessity might arise. But to think that the Education Department or any other department would have any difficulty in determining, in what proportion the money should be divided between schools A, B, and C, or in coming to a conclusion as to whether schools A, B, and C were really necessitous and really required the aid grant, he did not for a moment believe. The Bill would not be improved by the Amendment. He respectfully submitted that the Amendment, so far from improving the Bill, would only occupy the time of the House by useless and unnecessary discussion, and would not afford any useful guidance to the Department.

said that of course 15,000 schemes could not possibly be laid on the Table and advantageously discussed, but the number of schemes was limited, not by the number of schools, as the First Lord of the Treasury appeared to think, but by the number of associations. Neither the right hon. Gentleman nor the Solicitor General had said one single word to meet the argument in support of the Amendment. What was the real gist of the objection taken to the Bill as it stood? It was that it introduced a grave constitutional change by conferring upon a Department what were in effect legislative powers. They were perfectly familiar with the great discretion imposed upon public Departments, but whenever it was given, the principle upon which the discretion was to be exercised was carefully laid down. In fact the whole growth of constitutional government depended upon the application of that very principle, namely, control by the Legislature over the Executive. The Solicitor General made a somewhat curious excuse for conferring this particular power upon the Executive. He said the Executive could not possibly deal with 15,000 individual cases. That was quite true, and the draftsman of the Bill foresaw that. He had made the associations deal with individual schools, and that was a very significant circumstance. The Education Department, in fact, according to the argument, could not check or control the distribution of this money, and so sectarian bodies were to have delegated to them that which was in substance a legislative function. That was even more serious than legislative delegation to departments; it was legislative delegation to purely sectarian associations. If they were going to give powers so wide as this to a Department, then the constitutional result of that must be that the Department must go down with the Ministry. That was where this Bill, and similar Bills—such as the Rating Bill and the Light Railways Bill—were leading us. This was the Tory method of devolution. They would not have Home Rule, and so they had invented a new method of devolution, which would lead to the introduction of the American system into English politics. Great changes generally came about as the result of small changes not properly considered at the time they were introduced.

hoped the Committee would reject the Amendment. This matter was one of business. A business man in his relations with his subordinates or clerks did not tie them down in regard to every act, he did not dictate to them every act, but he judged of their acts by the results. And so Parliament might be considered in the same relation to the Education Department. The Department was its subordinate, and Parliament would not dictate every act to the Department, but would judge by the results. This Amendment rested upon the proposition, half concealed and half revealed, that Parliament was to dictate every act to the Department. The proposition might with equal force be used as an argument against the existence of the Department altogether. In the second place the Amendment was opposed to the general policy of the Bill. The localities were to come to a decision with regard to the distribution of this money, and then to send up to the Department, but this Amendment turned the machinery so that matters should work downwards, from Parliament through the Department to the localities. If the Amendment were adopted what would happen in the case of the schools that would not associate? Surely it was for the locality to decide whether a school which stood aloof was entitled to the 5s. grant. The distribution of the money must be determined by particular needs and could not be formulated in a general scheme, indeed, a scheme to be adequate for its purpose must be an encyclopædia embracing, a field as wide and varied as human needs. As it was for the localities to decide, so it would be for the Department always to accept the proposal of the localities, unless they were opposed to fairness, sound policy, and common sense. It seemed to him that if the Amendment were adopted the whole policy of the Bill would be turned upside down.

was surprised the. First Lord of the Treasury had any difficulty in comprehending the remarkably lucid speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Fife. [The FIRST LORD of the TREASURY: "I quite understood it!"] Then the right hon. Gentleman took care in replying to affect not to understand it. ["Hear, hear!"] The argument as to 15,000 schemes was all very good for a Parliamentary Debate, but there was no practical life in it. ["Hear, hear!"] What the Amendment was intended to say was that the Education Department, in dealing with this new grant, should, in the first instance, lay down the general principles by which the Department would be guided in administering the fund, that those general principles should either form part of the Code, or in some shape or form be laid before Parliament, and Parliament should have an opportunity of challenging any one of those principles or conferring upon the scheme, as a whole, its legislative approval. There was no question of enormous detail in that. The hon. Member for Peterborough had not had much experience, or he would have known that the rule of Parliament was to trust nobody but itself in the distribution and appropriation of public money. A Department were the servants and not the masters of Parliament, and it was for Parliament to say when it voted public money how and to what purpose that public money should be voted. The First Lord of the Treasury had not touched what was the real crux of the situation—namely, that every shilling of money voted up to the present for educational purposes had been voted in accordance with Code and with schemes which, in every case, had been laid before Parliament. Why were the Government departing upon this occasion from the uniform practice of Parliament? He remembered that when, during the passing of the Parish Councils Act, he pleaded very strongly for some discretion being reposed in the Local Government Board, hon. Gentlemen opposite were very fond of saying, "Ah, well; but there may be a change in the Minister, and, although we may be content to trust the head of the Local Government Board to-day, we should not be content to trust him to- morrow." But suppose there was a change in the Education Department. He know that the whole of this scheme was based on the eternity of the present Administration—[a laugh]—but it was quite possible that there, would be another head of the Education Department, and that schemes might be proposed which would prejudicially affect the interests of Voluntary Schools. Were hon. Gentlemen going to sacrifice for a mere Party victory now what they might hereafter regard as a most valuable protection to themselves? He had found that no Party attached greater value to safeguards which protect, minorities than the Conservative Party when it was, in a minority; but he did not wish to put this matter upon a Party basis. He wished to continue, the uniform control of the House of Commons in such matters; to preserve the continuity of the Education Acts from first to last. If the Leader of the House would not listen to precedents established by Mr. Forster, Lord Sandon, and others, perhaps he would be guided by what he himself had done. In the, Education Bill of last year there was the provision that

"any regulations made by the Education Department for the purpose of this Act shall not come into force until they have laid fur one month on the Table of the House."

[Cheers.] In the face of that provision in last year's Bill, the right hon. Gentleman had told the House of Commons that what was suggested would be a. waste of House of Commons' time. He trusted that hon. Gentlemen opposite, as Members of the House of Commons—not as members of the Conservative Party—would uphold the jurisdiction of the House of Commons in this matter. [Cheers.]

said it was impossible to see how the Amendment would work. In addition to that the Amendment was fairly open to the charge the Leader of the House brought against it—namely, that it might necessitate investigation by the Department, of schemes in respect of 15,000 schools. But, there was yet another objection to the present proposal. This Amendment must, be taken with, the consequential one appearing on page 21 of the Amendment Paper, and the effect of the two Amendments taken together was that no money would be payable to any Voluntary School until after a scheme was drawn, and had lain for 30 days on the Table of the House. The Bill had been brought in in order to remedy a very urgent necessity—["hear, hear!"]—to meet difficulties which were imminent, which were on the point of crushing the Voluntary Schools in all parts of the country, and he was afraid that the drawing up of schemes would be a very lengthy process. If the Amendment were adopted everything would have to be hung up until Parliament met next year, and then 30 days must elapse before the country could get any advantage out of the Bill. He thought that this was an absolute an I complete reason why no support should be given to the Amendment. They wanted the money as soon as possible—[ironical cheers]—and very naturally. ["Hear, hear."] The whole, policy and object of the Bill was to give as quickly as possible whatever money might be granted. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman had referred to him, and it was perfectly true that he had no love for the proposal to devote this large sum of money to be administered by a Government Department at their own sweet will. He had no great confidence in the Education Department. [Opposition laughter.] It was not a, Party question. ["Hear, hear!"] He did not want to say one word against the permanent officials in that Department. [Laughter.] They had always treated him personally with the greatest courtesy. They were most industrious public servants, but, at the same time, the conduct of the Education Department had not been everything that some of them desired. He did not defend a large sum of money being administered by the Education or any other Department. He was not, however, prepared to vote for the Amendment.

said if the Government were going to apply general principles in the administration of the Act he hoped they would be explained, and laid before the Committee. Not a single penny could be distributed by the Department except by the scheme prepared by the governing body of the association. Surely, if it was possible for the governing body to pass such a scheme, it was possible for the Department to place before the House the parts of which it approves or disapproves.

said he was regardless of Party in the matter of administration. When a Minister got to active work he administered the Department in accordance with the traditions of the Department, and he threw Party feelings on one side. A great part of the speeches of Gentlemen opposite had been devoted to what the associations were going to do, and one Gentleman said that the first duty would be to fight the local School Boards with this money. But this money would not go into the hands of the associations. The money was to go direct from the Education Department to the managers of the schools. As to the suggestion that all the schemes should be submitted to the House of Commons, that would be a terrible outlook for the House.

said the hon. Member who had just sat down had practically admitted that the proposal of the Government had completely broken down. The noble Lord the Member for Rochester, who was the champion of the Voluntary Schools, had contended that if Parliament were to keep a tight grip upon this money it would be impossible that the amount could be obtained in time. There was, however, a precedent to be found in the Rating Bill of last year, which was not in as forward a stage this time last year as this Bill now was, and yet the money under it was obtained in time to relieve the landlords and the farmers. But of course if the noble Lord meant that the money could not be provided for the year 1896–7, there might be a great deal in his argument. Subsection (4) of the clause provided that the share so allotted to each such association should be distributed by the Education Department after consultation with the governing body of the association, and in accordance with any scheme prepared by that body which the Department might approve. If the association could devise a scheme for the distribution of the money surely the Education Department would be much better prepared to do so. There was another point that he should wish to refer to, and it was one to which the attention of the Committee had not hitherto been drawn. It was clear from the language of the Bill that the Government did not desire that Parliament should have the control of this money, because by Sub-section (7) it was provided that:—

"The decision of the Education Department upon any question relating to the distribution or allotment of the aid grant, including the question whether an association is or is not in conformity with this Act, and whether a school is a town or a country school, shall be final."

Therefore under the terms of the Subsection it would be impossible to bring the conduct, or the principle on which they acted, of the Education Department before that House at all—one of the great difficulties which hon. Members had had to encounter in moving Amendments of this character was that they really did not know the exact meaning which the Government attached to the term "necessitous" in relation to Voluntary Schools. No scheme for the distribution of this money had been laid before that House, and therefore hon. Members were bound to ask among what classes of schools this money was to be distributed. Did the Government intend to distribute this money among those schools that were necessitous because they were badly managed and were inefficient? For instance, one school that was well managed might have smaller funds than one that was necessitous and behindhand because it was badly managed. In the opinion of many hon. Members badly managed and inefficient schools should not be allowed to share in the distribution of this money. A school, moreover, might become necessitous in consequence of there being no local competition, and the subscriptions falling off, for that reason. In these circumstances he thought that the House ought to reserve to themselves the full control over the distribution of this money. Before he sat down he desired to refer to an Amendment which stood upon the Paper in his name, to the hon. Member's Amendment, which, if in order, he should in due course ask the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair to put to the Committee, namely to insert the words "the Commons House of," before the word "Parliament."

The Amendment would not be in order.

said that in that case he should not propose it. For his own part, while agreeing with the principle of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Carnarvon, he should have much preferred the sanction of that House, unfettered by that of the other House of Parliament, being required to the scheme to be formulated by the Education Department; but of course, as the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair had ruled his Amendment out of order, he should bow to that ruling and should not move it. ["Hear, hear!"]

who rose amid cries of "divide," said that the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury cried "divide," but in his opinion this Amendment was a most important one, and went to the very root of the Bill. ["Hear, hear!"] The fact was that that House were about to hand over this £600,000 to the Education Department without knowing the principle upon which it was to be distributed. He had no desire to fetter the discretion of that Department, but he thought that the House was entitled to know upon what lines the money was to be distributed. Surely the Government were in a position to give hon. Members some general idea of the principle of the scheme which they had in view, under which this large sum was to be distributed. Such a scheme ought to be laid before that House before this Bill became law. In supporting this Amendment hon. Members were not dealing with the individual schools, but with the associations acting with the sanction of the Education Department, from whose decision with regard to the scheme for the distribution of the money there was to be no appeal. Ought not the Department to lay down certain propositions with regard to management, efficiency, staffing, and teaching in schools? Were they to pay no regard to the amount of the subscriptions? These among other matters were essential to be determined. This Amendment was not moved in any spirit of hostility to the Bill. It was moved with the object of placing the Bill on a more substantial and satisfactory footing. ["Hear, hear!"] Last year they had before them a Bill dealing with a smaller sum of money, in which a certain amount of local control over expenditure was proposed. This year they had a Bill dealing with a larger SUM of money and there was no control at all provided for. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman last year thought it necessary that a scheme for the expenditure of the money should be laid before the House, in order that they might know the grounds on which they were voting the money; but this year he had omitted that proposal, and the Committee were entitled to ask his reason for omitting it. ["Hear, hear!"] There were plenty of precedents for such a safeguard. The right hon. Gentleman had said that this was an experiment. If that was so it was all the more reason why it should be placed on a satisfactory basis. He thought the First Lord of the Treasury ought to abandon the position he had taken up, and say why, when he thought it essential to put such a safeguard in the Bill of last year, he now omitted it. ["Hear, hear!"]

said that the speeches of the noble Lord the Member for Rochester and of the Member for West Ham seemed to him conclusive in favour of some Amendment of this sort. If the money was to be obtained promptly for necessitous Voluntary Schools, it would be better for the noble Lord and the hon. Member to support some such Amendment as this. Without it the Bill was absolutely without meaning. ["Hear, hear!"] The procedure of the Bill contemplated that this money would be withheld until associations were formed, and until the Department had had an opportunity of considering the constitution of these associations, and that then various schemes might be drawn up by the associations for the approval of the Department, dividing the schools within the purview of the associations into necessitous schools, and schools not requiring a share of the grant. It was perfectly obvious that that process would take a considerable time, and he would put it to any practical man to say whether the proposal of his hon. Friend or some such proposal, would not bring this money within the reach of the schools more promptly than the scheme held forth in the Bill? ["Hear, hear!"] The Committee had a right to know the principle on which the question of whether a school was necessitous or not was to be determined. He had recently been in the United States, and had inquired into the principle upon which they acted there. In the State of Massachusetts—

reminded the hon. Member that the only question before the Committee was that a scheme should be submitted to Parliament.

continuing, said that his hon. Friend was asking by this Amendment for an essentially reasonable and practical safeguard, and one which had over and over again been adopted in legislation of this kind. The distribution of this money could only be effected by some definite and plain machinery, and the machinery foreshadowed in the Bill was in the last degree illusory and vague. The whole thing was left to the Department and the associations. The First Lord of the Treasury, in his introductory speech, said that the scheme of the association would in all probability usually guide the Department in the apportionment of the grant to individual schools. The Committee, therefore, had from the right hon. Gentleman the clearest indication that this money would be distributed by the association, and, therefore, they had a right to demand that the schemes in which the money would be distributed would be brought before Parliament. ["Hear, hear!"]

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

(who had given notice of his intention to move, in Subsection (2), after the word "best" to insert the words "after consulting the school attendance authority for the district"), addressing the Chairman of Ways and Means, said: On a point of order, may I ask, Sir, on what ground you have ruled the Amendment standing in my name out of order?

On the ground that it imposes certain duties upon an authority which has been constituted for wholly different duties, and those duties are sought to be imposed by this Amendment without any preliminary Resolution of the House.

moved, in Sub-section (2), to leave out the words "the purpose of helping necessitous," and to insert the word "those." If this Amendment were accepted, the hon. Member said, it would practically leave greater discretion to the Department in dealing with and distributing this grant, and would make it clear that the chief object in voting this large sum of money to Voluntary Schools was to increase their efficiency. They would indicate their view that their definition, to a large extent, of "necessitous" was combined with the question of efficiency, and that any money they voted for Voluntary Schools was to go, not to mere necessity, which, in many cases, was self-created, and therefore did not deserve consideration, but to be used entirely in promoting increased efficiency. The word "necessitous" was one which nobody seemed to be able to define, and which the hon. Member for West Ham had just assured them he was at a loss to find a definition for. Unless, therefore, they had some further definition of the term the Bill would go forth to the public as one in which none of those interested in education would have any light or leading at all in regard to this matter. They had not even had any attempted definition of the word "necessitous," except by the hon. and learned Member for Stroud, who had rushed in where the First Lord of the Treasury feared to tread. That hon. Member's definition of a necessitous school was, to his mind, a ridiculously crude one, because he said a necessitous school was one in which the expenditure exceeded the income. That was only one of very many elements in regard to the question of necessity, and, in many cases, was one of the last considerations which would have to be taken into account in defining necessity. The First Lord of the Treasury practically threw over this definition of his supporter, and admitted that he was not in a position to define what was a necessitous school. In regard to all the questions that had been raised they wished to know from the Government whether, for instance, a school, of which the clergyman was the sole manager, could claim the special aid grant without the Department insisting upon more efficient management. More information was needed as to what the Government meant by "necessitous" schools. He contended that public money would be largely used in many cases, not to relieve educational necessity, but denominational necessity, and would not be used, as they thought, it should be, simply for increased efficiency, but to keep alive schools which, from an educational point of view, had much better become extinct. They also wanted information on the important point what was meant by necessitous schools, especially as between denomination and denomination. Nearly every Roman Catholic School in the country was in every sense of the term a "necessitous" school. Subscriptions to keep them going were raised with difficulty, and these schools boasted with great justice that they had never transferred one of their schools to a School Board. If the Vice President took the same number of Roman Catholic schools as of Church of England schools he would probably see that the former were, on the whole, more necessitous than the latter, and it was a question whether the same amount per head would be voted to the Church of England association as to the Roman Catholic association. Some of the Church Schools would not require any grant; the others in the association would get from 5s. up to £1 per head, while the Roman Catholic, the practically necessitous schools, would at the outside receive only 5s. or 6s. per head. The real point in favour of the Amendment was that, if passed, it would give discretion to the Education Department to allot the grant in the way they thought best for educational efficiency, and if there was put in a word such as "necessity" which no one could define, it would greatly hamper the action of the Education Department, lead to a large amount of money being wasted by its being given to so-called necessitous schools, which could never be efficient, leaving less for poor but efficient schools whose efficiency would be largely improved by the additional grant. On that ground chiefly, and because he wanted some further definition of necessitous schools, he moved his Amendment. ["Hear, hear!"]

said hon. Members opposite were raising the same questions on every Amendment. The hon. Member who had just spoken had several times raised questions which were discussed on the last Amendment. That there should be some control as to subscriptions was a matter they were going to discuss. As had been pointed out, the question of the associations did not arise on the Amendment. The hon. Member had again asked the Government to define "necessitous" schools. The hon. Member knew that an answer had been given. It was an answer that in his own humble judgment was satisfactory. No definition could possibly define the varying conditions or include all the difficulties of a school which might be properly called "necessitous," and to include specific cases which they would all agree would be necessitous, would be the worst thing they could do, because not even the united skill of the Bench opposite assisted by Gentlemen below the Gangway, could define all the cases of necessity that should be included.

said the Government proposed by the Bill to give a special aid grant to necessitous schools, and the onus was on them to define what necessitous meant.

said it was not difficult to say what was a necessitous school. The difficulty was to give a definition which would include all necessitous schools. If the restrictive words in the Bill were cut out by the Amendment, non-necessitous schools would have a right to claim help. The real fact was that the words in the Bill were necessary to guide the Education Department in the exercise of their discretion. The hon. Member had certainly overlooked two cases which rendered the words absolutely necessary. Take a school where the teachers were good but underpaid, and schools which were thoroughly good but carried on at a loss. These were both cases of necessitous schools, and no one could deny that there might be many other cases which the Education Department might regard as necessitous. The hon. Member had asked the question as to what was a necessitous school 15 or 16 times. The only method that could be adopted was to indicate a necessitous school as a school which might be helped, and put upon the Education Department the responsible obligation of fulfilling the duty of helping it. For these reasons the Government regarded the words proposed to be cut out as necessary in the Bill. ["Hear, hear!"]

said the Attorney General complained that the same question was asked again and again; their complaint was that it had never been answered. This Bill, as drawn up, gave no definition whatever of what was a necessitous school. Moreover, it did not give any guarantee that the public funds should not be devoted to schools that were not necessitous. There were many schools that might be necessitous entirely through mismanagement or incompetency, and those schools ought not to have the same consideration as schools that were necessitous from sheer poverty. How were they going to prevent other schools that were not necessitous from receiving equal help from the public funds as the necessitous schools received? The Attorney General utterly failed to give them an explanation, and they might, therefore, fairly conclude that the question they put was unanswerable, and could not be explained. The Attorney General wanted to relegate to a lot of inexperienced country rectors, vicars, farmers and squires a point of law which he admitted that he himself was perfectly incapable of explaining. Surely it was reasonable to appeal to him to give them his assistance. They were honestly desirous of understanding this matter, and they had the right to come to the paid Law Officer of the Crown to help them to give advice to their constituents on a point of such importance. They had the advantage of the presence of the Solicitor General also, and he suggested that the Attorney General and the Solicitor General should consult together for half an hour to see whether they could not frame some definition; or, failing that, to see whether they could not make up their minds to advise their friends to re-draft the Bill. He should support his hon. Friend if he went to a division.

said the House must have been intensely amused at the pathetic appeal of the hon. Gentleman to the Law Officers, but he was afraid that advice was asked for in the spirit of those who had already made up their minds. He had listened carefully to the explanation of the Attorney General, and he had made the explanation of the word "necessitous" perfectly clear to the Committee. As he understood it, the difficulty of putting a definition on the word "necessitous" into the Act was, that any number of cases might arise in which a school ought to be helped out of this fund, but would not be helped if the definition were inserted in the Act. Hon. Gentlemen seemed to think that the Education Department should have an absolute discretion to do what it liked with the public money. As he understood the Bill, the Education Department would have a fixed sum given to it, and, subject to distinguishing between town and country schools, it would be bound by every scheme put before it by an association when once it had approved of that scheme. No scheme of any local association would be approved by a responsible Minister unless that scheme provided for the efficiency of the school; and if the responsible Minister exercised his discretion wrongly it would be open to that House to raise the question. If the Amendment were carried it would mean that the necessity for helping the needy schools would be removed. These words were words of limitation, in that they limited the distribution of this money to necessitous schools; the only complaint was, that necessitous schools were not defined; but he had no doubt those words would be liberally construed by the Education Department and the local associations, whereas, if the words were taken out, there would be nothing to guide the Department.

complained that they had never had anything but evasive answers in regard to this matter.

said he thought the Government were well advised in not attempting to define the word "necessitous." In his opinion it was impossible to do it. As there were an infinite variety of schools, and as each school would have to be considered on its merits, all Voluntary Schools would, practically speaking, claim to be necessitous. If a school was not necessitous in the pecuniary sense it would be necessitous in the sense that it desired to extend the scope of its operations, and it would therefore claim to be necessitous within the meaning of the Bill. The circumstances of the schools were so varied that it would be impossible to define those that were necessitous, and the better and more simple plan would be to administer the grant all round to all Voluntary Schools.

said he found himself in full accord with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. The hon. Member had pointed out what he had ventured to express on other Amendments, namely, that they might define the words "necessitous schools" or leave them undefined as much as they pleased, but they would find in the practical working of the scheme that in 90 per cent. of the schools amongst which the grant would be administered, they would not be able to distinguish between the necessitous and the non-necessitous schools. What would happen was that as in the vast number of cases, there was no absolute distinction between necessitous and non-necessitous schools; between rich and poor schools, the word "necessitous" would in the long run be regarded as a phrase of no meaning. It seemed to him, therefore, that it would be far better to leave out the words "necessitous schools" and say that the money was to be distributed as the Department thought best for increasing the efficiency of the schools. According to a report in The Guardian of February 24, of the proceedings in the lower House of the Convocation of York, which met to consider this Bill, when the sub-section the Committee were now debating was reached, Mr. Mapeland Wood said that in his opinion the sub-section rigidly restricted the Department to helping necessitous schools, and moved the substitution of "those" for "necessitous." The Dean of Manchester then said, "I second that. 'Necessitous' is full of mischief." And the Convocation of York, unlike the House of Commons, agreed to that Amendment.