I move that this Bill be read a second time this day six months. The Bill down for Second Reading to-day never attracted my attention until this morning, and until I saw that the Bill was down for Second Reading to-day I was unaware that such a Bill existed. By this Bill it is proposed to put a tramway and tramroad from Llandudno up to the top Of Great Orme's Head, and I say that Great Orme's Head does not require that tramway and tramroad. I am sure that a great many hon. Members of this House are perfectly well acquainted with the natural charms of this district, or, at any rate, are sufficiently acquainted with them to know that there is not the least necessity for this tramway; and, if such a tramway or railway is made, it must very seriously affect the prosperity of the town of Llandudno. The town of Llandudno does not want any such tramway or railway; but, unfortunately, there exists a small section of the population which thinks that the attractions of the place can be enhanced by such a railway. I will now very briefly call the attention of the House to one or two clauses of the Bill. Section 59, subsection 5, says—

"No furnace, chimney, or other similar building shall be erected nearer to Llandudno than the point marked B on the deposited plans."

I do not think that a check of that kind is likely to do very much for the good of the town of Llandudno. But there is a far more serious objection in the following sub-section. May I point out to the House that at the top of Orme's Head the cemetery of Llandudno is placed, and that the only way to get to that cemetery is by the road on which it is proposed to construct a tramway? The sub-section says—

"The company shall make provision for the conveyance at a reasonable and fixed charge, and in a decent and seemly manner, of corpses for interment in the St. Tudno Cemetery."

I want to ask hon. Members to consider the meaning of these words, and to reflect upon them. How can an ordinary funeral, where the hearse is drawn by horses, go up a narrow road, alongside of which there is a tramway or railway, on which carriages are running? No horse would face it under such conditions. If, on the other hand, it is proposed to take corpses to the cemetery by this tramway, how can anything be more incongruous or unseemly than to have a funeral procession mixed up with ordinary holiday traffic? There is a very large excursion traffic in that district. Railway and steamers bring excursionists into Llandudno by thousands and tens of thousands in the summer months; and how could a funeral procession pass up to the ancient cemetery when there is a tramway in the very road by which the funeral procession must necessarily pass? I do hope that hon. Gentlemen who are much better acquainted with Orme's Head than I am will support me, or, at all events, will assent to some course by which the House may have some further interval, so that we may have an opportunity of forming a judgment as to whether this Bill should be allowed to have a Second Reading or not. There is one phase of the subject which I have not touched upon. Some years ago, a large part of the Orme's Head was bought by a builder for speculative building purposes, but up to the present time no houses have been erected there. I very much fear that the erection of this tramway is calculated to enable builders to proceed with the erection of buildings there; and, in the interests of preserving one of our finest natural promontories, such as this undoubtedly is, I do hope that the House will not allow the Bill to proceed to a Second Reading.

The hon. Member asks Welsh Members to support him, on the grounds that he has placed before the House, in opposition to the Bill. I am bound to say, however, that the course which the hon. Member has taken is an extremely inconvenient one, unless, indeed, the House will assent to the adjournment of the Debate for a week or a fortnight, as the case may be, in order that hon. Members who are interested in the matter may have an opportunity of familiarising themselves with the matter, and, above all, in order that my hon. Friend who represents Llandudno in this House should have an opportunity of communicating with his constituents. It is, I think, obviously undesirable, under the circumstances, if there is to be any serious objection to the Second Reading of this Bill, that the Debate should now proceed; and, therefore, Sir, I beg to move that the Debate be adjourned for a week, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman who is in charge of the Bill may be able to assent to that proposal.

I certainly assent to the hon. Gentleman's proposal that the Debate should be adjourned. I had no idea that there was to be any opposition to the Bill, and I never heard of any opposition. The Bill was certainly put down for Second Reading "by Order," but no notice of opposition was given. As a matter of fact, the parties promoting the Bill were not present, and I do not think that anybody thought it at all likely that any opposition to the Bill would arise. I think it right, therefore, that all parties should have an opportunity of being heard in the matter; and, therefore, I support the Motion for the adjournment of this Debate.

I quite agree to the adjournment.

I do not intend, Sir, to occupy the time of the House at any length, but the circumstances under which this Bill conies before the House are peculiar, and I beg to move as an Amendment to the proposal for Second Reading—

"That in the opinion of this House it is undesirable that permanent powers be given as sought for by the London and North Western Railway (Steam Vessels) Bill, but that they be granted for a term of ten years."

I will just read to the House a clause which might be usefully inserted in the Bill—

"The Company shall at all times provide all reasonable and proper facilities, including conveniently timed and arranged trains for the conveyance over their railways of passenger and other traffic passing between England and Ireland, viâ Holyhead and Kingstown or Dublin, in vessels other than those owned or worked by the Company, and shall accommodate, manage, and forward such traffic as expeditiously as and on equal terms in all respects with traffic using the Company's own vessels between the said ports or any of them. The Railway and Canal Commission shall have the like jurisdiction to hear and determine any complaint of a contravention of this enactment as they have to hear and determine a complaint of a contravention of Section 2 of the Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1854, as amended by subsequent Acts. A complaint under this section may be made by any steam packet company working steam vessels between Holyhead and Kingstown or Dublin or by any of the authorities mentioned in Section 7 of the Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1888, without proof that the authority is aggrieved by the matter complained of."

The Act, which the London and North Western Railway Company seeks to pass without any discussion, as I understand it, has a preamble, which reads as follows—

"Whereas the London and North Western Railway Company (in this Act called 'the Company') are partly owners and partly lessees under the Crown for a long term of years of the Inner Harbour at Holyhead and the works and premises connected therewith, and have expended large sums of money in the extension and improvement of that harbour in pursuance of the powers conferred upon them by the several Acts of Parliament relating thereto; and whereas the Company, under the authority of Parliament, own, maintain, and work a station and a railway on the River Liffey at North Wall, Dublin, and under like authority hold all the share capital in the Dundalk, Newry, and Greenore Railway, and maintain and work that railway, together with piers or landing places at Greenore and Greencastle, in the Lough of Carlingford."

So that this preamble sets forth that the railway company are part owners of the harbour at Holyhead. In my opinion it is most objectionable that railway companies should own harbours at all. I think that these public utilities should not be owned by private companies, and I put it to this House that when the railways were granted certain monopolies it was never contemplated that they should apply to harbours, and that there should be a power on the part of private railway companies to exercise a monopoly over passenger and goods traffic using these harbours. There is no country in the world but England that would grant to railway companies such facilities as these. It is said that in the management of the communication between London and France these powers are perpetual, but the circumstances are entirely different and exceptional with regard to the traffic between England and Ireland. The London and North Western Railway Company own a part of the line between Chester and Holyhead, and, owing to the geographical difficulties in connection with running a new line between these two points, the London and North Western Railway Company have a perfect monopoly between England and Ireland, or between London and Dublin; that is to say, that they monopolise the traffic between two capitals of two nations. Now, Sir, I contend—and I think it will not be denied by any Member of this House—that this is an exceptional position, that ought not to be allowed to be occupied by any railway company. I see that the; President of the Board of Trade is here, and I am very glad of it, because this is a matter which affects his Department, which is supposed to have a certain amount of control over railways. The fact is that this state of things would not be allowed to continue, only that the railway interest absolutely rules the House of Commons. It rules the Government, and rules the Board of Trade, and, in a word, rules the Legislature. I remember last Session, when there was a Debate of this kind, on a similar question, that it was closured absolutely on the Motion of an hon. Member, who is a director of the London and North Western Railway Company, on a matter concerning his own company, which was under Debate. I consider that it is nothing less than a public scandal that a railway director should be permitted to closure discussion in the House of Commons, when the conduct of his railway is under consideration, and I trust, Mr. Speaker, that the railway directors on this occasion who are present will abstain from voting on this Motion when it comes to a Division, because I mean to press this subject to a Division. The House of Commons has passed over questions of this sort far too lightly, and considering the enormous influence that railway companies exercise upon the commercial fortunes of the kingdom, I say that this House has been lax in its duties in permitting such Bills, affecting such large interests, to pass without discussion or debate. What are the circumstances under which these powers are asked for? The London and North Western Railway Company comes to this House, and asks for perpetual powers in regard to communication which they exercise between England and Ireland. We have a perpetual Coercion Act in existence, with regard to the political destinies of Ireland, and I am certain that this House ought to consider before it grants another perpetual Coercion Act in regard to the commercial destinies of Ireland, because, after all, that is what it comes to. The London and North Western Railway Company control everything in regard to communication between this country and Ireland. Of course, when they come to this House they put a plausible case before it, and make certain statements. Take the present Bill. The third portion of the preamble on the top of page 2 of the Bill says—

"And whereas the Company have established and for many years past conducted to the advantage of the public an efficient service of steam vessels between Holyhead and places in Ireland, and it is expedient that the powers hereinafter mentioned should be conferred upon the Company, and that the Company should be authorised to apply their funds to the purposes of this Act."

Now, this lays down as a statement of fact that the Company have done all this for the advantage of the public during the past. What is the real fact? That statement has been contested for years past. So long ago as 1853—almost half a century—this Company did not give satisfaction to the public who were travelling between England and Ireland, and I find that in May, 1853, it was ordered—

"That a Select Committee be appointed to examine and report upon the present state of communication between London and Dublin via Holyhead as regards the expeditious conveyance of mails, the transport of troops, and the conveyance of the public generally, and the Irish representatives in particular in their attendance at this House."

So that so long ago as 1853 this subject engaged the attention of this House, and that state of things has been going on ever since. The London and North Western Railway Company pursued the even tenour of their way until public attention was drawn to the way in which they were conducting their business, and the result was that after a certain amount of discussion, and after a certain amount of public attention had been focused upon their doings, we did obtain what the Company considered concessions; but what they regard as concessions I only regard as rights, that concession being that third-class carriages had been added to the mail trains. I was speaking yesterday to one of the principal officials of the Company, and he told me that it was a great compliment that third-class carriages had been given to passengers between London and Dublin. But the fact is that in every railway in the United Kingdom there is third-class accommodation. I know, as a member of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, that we have the greatest difficulty in approaching the London and North Western Railway Company, and I assert here fearlessly that if this Company is given perpetual powers with regard to its ships it will set at nought Parliament, and everybody else who seeks to control it in the future. This is a question which every Unionist ought seriously to consider, because the more reasonable the communication between England and Ireland, the more chance you have of preserving the Union. Personally, I wish that the communication between us was cut off entirely, so that we should have to be allowed to conduct our own legislative business in our own country, and not be troubled by the high fares and the difficulties of communication which the London and North Western Railway Company places in our way. I do not wish to delay the House too long, but this is a matter of great importance, and it is one that affects the producers and manufacturers, and the travellers between Great Britain and Ireland. It may be said that this is one of those Irish questions which have been agitated in this House for years. The President of the Board of Trade knows that I have been consistent on all railway matters for years from all points of view. I believe that railways ought to belong to the State, and not to private companies. I should like to point out this fact, that it has been given as the decided opinion of people who have had experience in these matters that the cost of transit of manufactured articles by our railway companies exceeds by a million and a half of money what the cost of transit of the same goods would be if carried by the State managed railways of Germany and France; and yet here we have a private railway company absolutely asking this House of Commons to give perpetual powers in order that they may control our business and the passengers and goods carried between England and Ireland. I trust that the result of the few words I have said will be that the House will consider very seriously before it gives the powers which are sought for under this Bill. I do not wish it to be understood that I am entirely in opposition to the London and North Western Railway Company. On the contrary, I admit that their service is wonderfully good; but to give a company a monopoly I say creates a dangerous state of affairs which ought not to be sanctioned by this House. I will conclude by moving the Amendment which stands in my name, and I ask the House to carefully consider this question, because it is one of extreme importance as regards communication between England and Ireland.

Do I understand that the hon. Member moves that the Bill be read a second time this day six months, or the Amendment which he handed to me, and which is as follows?—

"In the opinion of this House it is undesirable that permanent powers be given as sought for by the London and North Western Railway Company (Steam Vessels) Bill, but that they be granted for a term of ten years, and that the following clause be added."

That, the hon. Member will observe, does not read logically without some addition.

Well, I will stand by the first part, or any part that the House will accept.

seconded the Amendment.

I rise with great diffidence as a director of the London and North Western Railway Company to make any observation upon the speech of the hon. Member opposite. I rather gather from some parts of his speech that he thinks that on railway Bills a railway director, especially a director of the railway promoting the Bill, should not appear at all in this House on the subject. I will assume that the hon. Member is fair enough to admit that when any question conies before this House both sides ought to be heard, and if that is the case it appears to me that it would be scarcely fair that those who know the circumstances of the case in connection with the Bill should, at any rate, not have an opportunity of being heard and of putting the views of the railway company before this House in order that the House may judge of the merits of the question under dis- cussion. With regard to railway directors voting upon a Bill, that is another question altogether, and I regret that the Committee which sat upon that question has given no direction whatever to enable railway directors to know what, in their opinion, the House ought to do. That is a minor matter, but I certainly do say that in cases of this sort those who represent the interest which is bringing forward the Bill, so long as private Bills are allowed to be brought in, should have an opportunity of saying what they can in defence of them.

May I say that I never intended to say that hon. Members should be closured and not given an opportunity of giving the opinions of those whom they represent? That is an entirely different thing to voting upon questions in which they have a direct personal interest.

I have had great difficulty in discovering what the hon. Member's objection really is. The grounds upon which the Company brought forward the Bill are simply these: in 1848 the Company was granted by Parliament the precise powers, and no greater powers than those which appear in this Bill. At that time it was a novelty for a railway company to be allowed to use their capital for purposes of promoting the owning and running of steam ships. It was to some extent an experiment, but Parliament has from time to time not only renewed those powers which were given in 1848 for a term of years, but has gone further in regard to other companies, and has given perpetual powers such as are sought for by this Bill. I believe I am not exaggerating when I say that perpetual powers have been given to every railway in the United Kingdom, and certainly they have been given to every railway company that has asked for them. I think he admitted that, but he said that there was an exception with regard to the London and North Western Railway Company, because that Company forms the only communication to the ports to which these steamships sailed. But the hon. Member must be aware that there are many places of the same kind, and it is impossible, unless you have the whole country cut up among competitive railway companies, that the circumstances should not exist which he brings before the House—namely, that one railway company has one line of communication. It may be called a monopoly to that port, but I can assure the hon. Member that it is not exceptional in the case of the London and North Western Railway Company at all, but it exists in many other companies which have similar powers. The hon. Gentleman seemed to think—and I notice that the same idea very often occurs in speeches on Railway Bills in this House—that this Bill contains some concession of very great value to the Company, given to the Company for the Company's benefit. I quite admit that the duty of a railway director is to take care of the interests of the shareholders, but Parliament must recognise that these railway companies do give to the public certain benefits, and I think it is desirable that they should be encouraged in doing so; and it appears to me that Parliament and the public have also gone further, and have desired and clamoured for railway companies to spend more and more capital, in order to give greater and greater facilities to the public. But how can railway companies expend their capital for the public benefit, unless they bring Bills into the House? I can assure the hon. Member that there are many cases in which Bills are brought forward which are not so much in the interests of the shareholders as they are for the public benefit, because the shareholders would rather not expend the capital; and I would venture to tell the House that in this case the London and North Western Railway Company are only seeking the same powers as have been granted to all the other companies in the country, and I know of no reason why the London and North Western Railway Company should be excluded from the enjoyment of those powers, which are not so much for the shareholders' benefit as for the public convenience. I may say that there have been no petitions presented against this Bill. I do not see how there can be, because there can be no objection, when Parliament has granted these powers from, time to time since 1848, to continuing these powers. The only difference in this Bill is that we ask for these powers to be perpetual, instead of being for a term of years, and I cannot see that that makes any very great difference. We are only asking for what has been granted to other companies, and I confidently appeal to the House to give its sanction to the Second Reading of this Bill. I believe that it will be for the public benefit. But the House ought not to expect railway companies, unless they have some perpetual interest in their works, to expend large amounts of money, or, at any rate, to expend so much as they would do if they had permanent powers, through which they might look for some return for the capital expended.

I am not quite sure that the House has accurately grasped the point which is at issue, which is a very simple point, and one which is very simply and easily understood. The London and North Western Railway Company is, as everybody knows, a great carrying company between England and Ireland. In 1848 as the hon. Baronet has said, this Company obtained powers for a certain term of years to run steamers between Holyhead and Dublin, and these powers have from time to time been renewed by Parliament. Now, on this occasion, the London and North Western Railway Company come to this House and ask Parliament to give up the control which it has up to the present maintained in its hands, by only giving leases for terms of years, and ask for perpetual running powers over the Channel. The objection that Irish Members have to this proposal is this: we believe that this is an effort to create an absolute monopoly of traffic between England and Ireland. At present the London and North Western Railway Company has a monopoly so far as Holyhead, but from Holyhead to Ireland they have not a monopoly. I believe that the oldest steam shipping company in existence is the Irish Steam Packet Company, which runs packet steamers from Holyhead to Kingstown, and if perpetual powers be given to the London and North Western Railway Company as asked for under this Bill, I think those powers will be used to crush out this old Irish company, and establish an absolute monopoly between London and Dublin. That is the point at issue. It is a very easy point to understand, and I have no other reason for intervening on this subject than to elucidate that point, so that hon. Members may grasp it and understand, at any rate, the position of the Irish Members, who are only anxious to prevent what they fear will be a monopoly if these perpetual powers are given. Why should the London and North Western Railway Company object to having these powers for terms of years renewed from time to time? I think it would be a very unwise thing for the House of Commons to release the power it at present possesses over this Company, and I trust that, under the circumstances, the Bill as it stands will not be proceeded with, and that the Amendment of the hon. Member for the St. Patrick Division of Dublin will be accepted.

The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has somewhat narrowed the grounds of opposition to this Bill. The position of the hon. Member was different from that taken up by the hon. Member for the city of Dublin. The hon. Member for Waterford thinks that if the House grants the request of the London and North Western Railway Company the position of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company will be seriously endangered. Let me point out to the hon. Gentleman that the competition which exists between the London and North Western Railway Company and the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company can always be under the control of the House. The City of Dublin Steam Packet Company runs into Holyhead Harbour under a contract which is renewed from time to time by this House, and it does not in any way compete with the London and North Western Railway Company as far as general cargo goes. At the present moment an arrangement of the most amicable character exists between the two companies, and as far as this Bill is concerned the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company are not under the apprehensions which are felt by the hon. Gentleman opposite; for, if they were, they would take the ordinary course of presenting a petition against the Bill, but that has not been done. No petition has been presented by any of the great organisations connected with the commerce of Ireland against this Bill, and I think I may appeal to the hon. Gentleman upon this ground, as to whether the fears he has expressed are well founded. Every exertion has been made to increase the communication between England and Ireland, and to promote further and better tourist arrangements. Is the step which the hon. Gentleman opposite is taking likely to encourage this movement? What has the London and North Western Railway Company done for Ireland? They have spent, between Holyhead and Dublin, over a million of money, and no other Irish company has spent anything like that sum in promoting the interests of those who desired increased facilities for communication between England and Ireland, and by this Bill the London and North Western Railway Company are only asking from the House of Commons those powers which have been granted to every other railway company owning steam packets in the United Kingdom. It is true that Holyhead Harbour is to a certain extent under the control of the London and North Western Railway Company, but from that very harbour, or a portion of it, there is competition by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, and, as far as other interests are concerned, there is most direct competition from Liverpool. If the London and North Western Railway Company are largely interested in Holyhead, so are the Great Western in Milford, the London and South Western in Southampton, and the Great Eastern in Harwich. There is really no substantial ground for the objection of the hon. Gentleman opposite upon that point. The hon. Member for the City of Dublin alluded to the fact that the service of the London and North Western Railway Company did not give satisfaction. But we have no evidence of that by any public body, and I will remind him that the service has been recently very largely accelerated, and, so far as the mail service is concerned, the Company has done everything that has been asked of it by the Post Office, and it is most anxious to do all it can for the purpose of improving its services. I submit to the House that neither the hon. Gentleman who has moved this Amendment, nor the hon. Gentleman who has seconded it, has given any substantial ground for the position which they have taken up with regard to this Bill, and I hardly think it is in the interest of any class in Ireland to place any impediment in the way of investment of capital by railway companies in that country. The London and North Western Company is only asking for the same facilities and the same protection as have been granted to other companies, and they do it as much for the benefit of the future of Ireland as for the benefit of their shareholders.

Mr. Speaker—

The hon. Gentleman has lost his right to speak by seconding the Amendment.

I raised my hat at the same time as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Water-ford. Had he not done so, I should have said what I wish to say now.

I will not stand in the hon. Member's way if the House has no objection.

I hope I shall prove that I deserve the courtesy extended to me by not taking up the time of the House. I gathered from the right hon. Gentleman who spoke on behalf of the Government that the Government were not going to be impartial on this question, and by their action they are going to prove what I believe to be the case—that the London and North Western Railway Company are masters of the Government. I had hoped that a question which so primarily affects Irish interests and the Irish people would be allowed to be decided on its merits, and that the Government would not throw their weight in the scales in favour of this important Company. The right hon. Gentleman, who seemed to hold a special brief for the Company, asked us to remember what the Company had done for Ireland. I asked him to kindly remember what the Company have been doing for themselves, and I would ask him and the representatives of the Company in this House: do they think that anyone in the House is so simple as to believe that what they do is done for the honour and glory and benefit of the Irish people, and not with an eye to their own business? They are there for commercial purposes. But that is an entirely different thing to allowing them power to control the people of Ireland and to use the people as they please. Now, Sir, I have had experience recently of the dealings between this Company and the Government. I am not at liberty at present to say what they are, but I think it will be seen very shortly that they are really masters of the Government. They are not only the mail carriers, with a monopoly of the mail service between London and Dublin, but they also carry mails between Dublin and the North Wall, and the result of giving them these perpetual powers will be that they will run out of existence the City of Dublin Company. They are masters between Holyhead and Dublin, as they are masters of the road between London and Holyhead. What are we to expect then? At present they make what terms they please, as I shall have an opportunity of proving on a future occasion in this House. It has been said that other companies get perpetual powers. All I can say is that the granting of perpetual powers is a mistake to any railway company, and if that sort of thing has been allowed to pass on other occasions we are thoroughly determined that it shall not pass unchallenged now, because the powers they already have are absolute, and you cannot get into or out of Ireland without their fixing any price they please. They can make any terms they like, and if they succeed in removing the City of Dublin Company, then you will be handing the sea over to them, and they can fix what terms they like there as well as on the land. It is a question not only for this House, but for the taxpayers of Great Britain and Ireland, because their money has to go to pay for these mail contracts, and they should have a voice in deciding whether this Company is to have a monopoly or not. I say it is a most reasonable thing to ask that a limit should be put to the term during which the Company shall run their boats. No one has troubled them for the last 14 years about their contract, but it is a very great check that periodically at least they will have to come here and ask the House for permission to renew it. There have been many accidents upon their boats—unfortunately too many. I am not afraid to say what none of the Gentlemen who have spoken on the other side can say, that I have not a shilling in either Company, and I can therefore say this for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company with a clear conscience, that although they sent the first steam vessel across the Atlantic, they have never

I rise to ask a question of privilege. Cannot the vote of a director of this Company voting in this Division be disallowed?

Of any railway director?

No, Sir, of any railway director of this Company voting on this Bill.

That is not a matter for the Speaker—it is a matter for the House. The only Rule on the subject is that a Member having a direct pecuniary interest of a personal and not of a public character ought not to vote. It is for the House, and not for me, to say whether a Member has or has not come within this Rule.

Am I at liberty to move that any director of the London and North Western Railway Company who has voted in this Division shall have his vote disallowed?

Not in such terms. If the hon. Member can name any Member whom he can say has so voted he is at liberty to move that that vote be disallowed, but he cannot make a roving Motion.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether careful observations were taken by Colonel Ellis, 2nd W. I. Regiment, to determine the geographical position of Waima, within one month after the unfortunate collision between French and British troops; and, if so, whether the result of such topographical observations, was communicated to Her Majesty's Government; and, whether such portions of any dispatch from Colonel Ellis on the subject as may relate to the position of Waima, can be communicated to the House without prejudice to the public service? Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that on Saturday I became aware that the dispatch referred to in the second paragraph of the Question was published in the London Gazette. but as it seemed to have passed unnoticed I put the Question on the Paper.

Yes, Sir, that is so. It was impossible for Colonel Ellie to determine with accuracy the position of Waima, as he did not possess the necessary instruments. The position was approximately determined by two officers of the expedition, but mot with sufficient accuracy to enable Her Majesty's Government to assert that the place was in British territory. In April 1894 astronomical observations were made by an officer of the Sierra Leone Government with the view of determining the position of Waima. These and all other available information were examined by the Director of Military Intelligence, Who reported on 19th June, 1894, that—

"on the evidence now forthcoming it is quite impossible to assume that it (i.e., Waima) is either west or east of the'13th meridian;"

i.e., is in British territory or otherwise. In 1895 another officer of the Sierra Leone Government, in company with the present Governor, made further observations, but it was not until 1896 that the position was finally determined by Major Grant and Sir F. Cardew. It does not seem to be necessary to lay the only paragraph in Colonel Ellis's dispatch that relates to the position of Waima, inasmuch as it has already been published in a supplement to the Gazette of February 28th, 1894.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War, with reference to his statement that certain bearer companies, field hospitals, and ammunition columns are from time to time mobilised for training, whether he can say what percentage of men and horses on these different occasions during the past three years were actually those that would have performed these duties had there been complete mobilisation, and what percentage of them were temporarily borrowed from other units forming parts of the three Army Corps for Home defence?

No mobilisation such as my hon. and gallant Friend contemplates has been attempted, but the men and horses available are exercised in drawing from store and moving the equipment needed for an army taking the field, and considerable experience is thus obtained.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he can state the number of evictions for non-payment of land assessment in the Presidency of Madras during the last ten years and the previous ten years, and the amount realised by the sale of the personal and real property respectively of the defaulters; Whether he is aware that Mr. Clark, Deputy Commissioner of Settlement in Madras, reported in 1894 that, in consequence of the inequalities he had found in the mode of assessment, he recommended that the whole of the soils in the delta should be reclassified; whether the classification of soils for land assessment in the Madras Presidency is made on the same principles as in the Bombay Presidency; and, if not, what are the differences and the grounds for such differences; whether this matter has been brought under the notice of the Madras Government repeatedly during the last six years; and, if so, what was their reply; and, whether he can state the quantity of arable land lying waste and available for cultivation in the Madras Presidency were due encouragement afforded by low rates of assessment for the agricultural population to take it up?

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will send him a memorandum on the subject of the many Questions he has put to me, as it is difficult to compress the necessary information within the limits of a reply to a Parliamentary Question.

On behalf of the hon. Member for Galway I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland why no decisions have yet been given on a number of appeal cases, heard before the Land Commission in Belfast on the 30th November last?

The number fo cases referred to is 33, and I am informed that in 24 of these the question was raised as to the apportionment between the parties of increased letting value due to tenants' improvements. Sir Edward Bewley, who presided as Judicial Commissioner on the hearing of the appeals, retired from office before the question was decided, and it will be re-argued at an early date. In the remaining mine cases judgment has been withheld, I understand, for various reasons, such as re-survey for area, etc.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Indian Government are proposing that all acknowledgments of debt exceeding 20 rupees, which, under the existing law, are liable to a fixed duty of one anna shall, when attested by a witness, be liable to an ad valorem duty as a bond of its amount; and whether, as it is customary in India for such documents to be witnessed, the Government have taken into consideration that poor persons will suffer heavily by the payment of heavy stamp duties, or otherwise be deprived of an important safeguard from fraud?

The provision in the Bill to amend the law relating to stamps to which the hon. Member refers has been altered by the Select Committee. All acknowledgments will now continue to be liable to a duty of one anna only unless they include a promise to pay, or some agreement of that nature. If they contain such a promise or agreement, they are bonds, and must be stamped as such— under the old law as well as under the law now proposed. I do not understand that the Government of India ever intended to alter the law, but only to make it clearer.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board when the Return will be issued which was moved for last Session relating to the land which has been acquired by local authorities for allotments and small holdings under the Local Government Act, 1894?

The Return for which the hon. Member asks is one affecting some thousands of the authorities, and consequently involved considerable labour. It is now complete, and is being set up in type, and will very shortly be issued.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War how many of the Headquarters Staff of the Army now employed in administrative duties at the War Office are detailed for employment in the Field Army in case of mobilisation for defence; what arrangements have been made for replacing them; and whether their substitutes are being specially trained in those administrative duties which mobilisation would make especially arduous and needful of trained experience?

The Secretary of State does not consider it expedient to state the number of officers now at headquarters who, under present arrangements, would be employed with the Field Army on mobilisation, but care will be taken that the work at headquarters is amply provided for, and progress towards decentralising mobilisation arrangements is being continually made.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, why the Post Office now refuses to accept in this country small boxes of flowers when sent from abroad; when was the new rule made, and why some notice in regard to it was not published abroad, so that the great inconvenience and annoyance to the public it has caused might have been somewhat mitigated; and whether boxes of primroses can still be sent by post in this country?

My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has asked me to answer this Question in his absence. The Post Office does not refuse to accept boxes of flowers sent from abroad, when the proper channel—the letter or parcel post—is used. It is only when they are irregularly sent by sample post that they are stopped and sent back. The transmission of consignments of cut flowers by sample post has never been provided for by the Postal Union, though for some time past the Post Offices of France and other countries, where there is a considerable industry in cut flowers, have sent to this country by sample post consignments of flowers which were not bonâ fide trade samples. An endeavour was made to alter the regulations of the Postal Union so as to establish the practice; and, pending the authoritative decision of the Union on the question, the Postmaster General refrained from returning such flowers to the country of origin, according to the strict rules. Since, however, the decision of the Union, that no exception is to be made in favour of cut flowers, the Postmaster General has been obliged to order the return of all packets erroneously sent into this country by sample post. The Order came into force on the 1st of this month, and full (six weeks) notice was given to the foreign post offices concerned. Primroses, like any other flower, can still be sent by post in this country.

I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether the attention of his Department has been called to the state of the boots of the English regiments now serving on the Nile after three days' marching has he been informed that the majority of the men arrived at the Atbara in practically a bootless condition, and that the soles of the boots were found to consist of two strips of bad leather with some shoddy material between them; and whether he will give the name of the contractor who supplied these boots, and the price paid for them?

No official report has been received in respect to the boots of the English regiments now serving on the Nile. I am informed that the character of some of the ground over which the troops had to march was such as to destroy boots even of a high quality. The boots supplied to the Army in Egypt are not made of shoddy materials. They are hand-made English boots of the best procurable hide. Between the outer and the inner soles strips of this leather have to be inserted to produce a level tread, as a solid piece would render the soles inelastic and unsuitable for marching. The boots are supplied by various contractors, and the price varies according to the contract rate.

Will the hon. Gentleman take the trouble to ascertain, with reference to these boots, what are the proportions of piecework goods to day work hand-made goods?

I understand that the boots to which the Question refers are all hand-made.

Yes, but I want to know whether they are produced by day-work or piecework.

I do not think it is possible to ascertain that.

It is a very important thing to "Tommy."

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Northampton machine-made boots can be produced exactly as good as handmade?

I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Bill for the superannuation of teachers in public schools will be introduced?

I do not think that this Question is one which should be addressed to me. However, I do not suppose such a Bill will be introduced until there is a reasonable chance of proceeding with it.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the British Minister at Buenos Ayres has been instructed to protest against the attempt on the part of the Argentine Government to compel British insurance companies trading in its territory to lend money to it, under colour of requiring a guarantee or deposit in certain bonds expressly created for that purpose, and unmarketable in the ordinary course; whether he is aware that certain insurance companies have declared their intention to withdraw from the country rather than comply with this requirement; and what reply, if any, has been received from the Argentine Government?

In the absence of my right hon. Friend, I will answer this Question. Yes. Her Majesty's Minister at Buenos Ayres was instructed on the 11th ult. to protest against the provisions of the new Argentine Budget Law, which required foreign insurance companies to deposit special issue bonds in excess of their market value as an infringement of our treaty rights. Mr. Barrington has, however, reported that, as the result of negotiations between the representatives of some of the companies and the Argentine Minister of Finance, the latter had consented to give Treasury bills for the amounts to be deposited, and that the companies were prepared to accept this as a temporary arrangement.

I beg to ask the Attorney General for Ireland whether he can state if it is required to put the names and qualifications of women upon the requisition forms now being distributed in Dublin city and county; and whether it is intended to issue another requisition form later on for the purposes of the proposed Local Government (Ireland) Bill?

The present requisition forms, having been issued under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, only require the names and qualifications of men to be stated. If the Local Government (Ireland) Bill be passed giving the qualification to women, as proposed, of course new requisition forms will have to be issued.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware of the Resolution passed by the Dublin Corporation regarding the existing distress spread over large areas in the South and West of Ireland; whether the Local Government Board have inquired into this matter; and whether the Government intend to start reproductive works to give employment and sustenance to the people in certain acutely distressed districts?

I have seen the Resolution referred to in the first paragraph. The Local Government Board are kept informed from week to week of the condition of the people in the distressed unions, and as they have full information before them in regard to the localities mentioned in the Resolution, no special inquiry appears to be necessary. Relief works subsidised by the Government have been opened by the Boards of Guardians of every union in counties Mayo and Galway, in which exceptional distress is believed to exist, and about 4,300 heads of families, representing over 20,000 people, have been authorised to be employed, and the Board cannot find that the guardians have refused relief to any persons who really required it. It is, however, difficult to reply to indefinite complaints as to the insufficiency of relief measures, but if any of the local relief committees or other persons interested in the districts concerned will bring under the notice of the Local Government Board the case of any destitute families who they think have not been sufficiently provided for, the Local Government Board will then be in a position to take action in the matter. The guardians of the unions in Cork and Kerry, in which distress is alleged to exist, have been offered financial assistance in affording relief to the people on the same lines as in Mayo and Galway, but they have not so far thought it necessary to accept the Government aid, and are relieving all persons who need assistance from the rates in the ordinary way.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he can state when the Report of the Tuberculosis Commission will be issued?

I have inquired at the Home Office, and I am informed that the Report of the Tuberculosis Commission will probably be presented to-day.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, why, and at whose suggestion, the conveyance of mails over the direct mail road from Kilkenny to Castlecomer, and vice versâ, was discontinued, and when; by what route are these mails now sent; and what advantages, if any, are secured by the change?

The reply of my right hon. Friend to this Question is as follows: The day mails to and from Castlecomer were formerly sent by way of Kilkenny, but for the last two years they have, at the suggestion of residents of Castlecomer, been forwarded viâ Ballyragget Station, a considerable improvement having been effected by the change in the hours of the post.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he has exercised, and, if not, whether he will exercise, the powers conferred upon him by the Conciliation Act, 1896 (Clause 2, sub-section (a)), and inquire into the causes and circumstances of the differences at present existing between the majority of the employers and their workmen in the collieries of Monmouthshire and South Wales; whether the late Sliding Scale Committee was registered under the Act of 1896 as a Conciliation Board, constituted for the purpose of settling disputes; and, if so, whether its name has since its termination been removed from the register; and whether, as empowered by the Act (Clause 2, sub-section (b)), he will take such steps as the Board of Trade may deem expedient for the purpose of enabling the parties to the present differences to meet together by their representatives under the presidency of a Chairman mutually agreed upon, or nominated by the Board of Trade, or by some other person or body, with a view to the amicable settlement of the differences?

The Board of Trade have informed themselves as to the progress of events in the South Wales coal trade which have culminated in the present dispute, as will be seen from the reports recently published in the Labour Gazette. They will continue to watch the matter closely, but no formal inquiry appears to them likely to promote a settlement at present. The late Sliding Scale Committee was not registered as a Conciliation Board, under the Act of 1896, not having made the necessary application. The question of whether and when the Board of Trade should act, without having received any request for their intervention, is a delicate and difficult one. Premature action may have the effect, not of promoting, but of retarding a settlement. In the present case there is the less reason for the action suggested by the hon. Member, as the only obstacle to a meeting for the purpose of discussion seems to be the fact that one of the parties would not be empowered to settle, while the other would. I do not think it is unreasonable that both parties to a conference should be endowed with the same powers, and I earnestly hope that further consideration may lead to this result.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that in the city of Belfast the Municipal Council collects the city rate, that the Belfast Water Commissioners collect the water rate, and the Poor Law Guardians the poor rate, each body having separate collectors in different offices charging poundage fees, and that each rate is collected annually in advance; and whether he will consider the advisability of embracing the collection of these several rates in one department by a clause to be inserted in the Local Government Bill, the collection to be made twice a year instead of once a year, as at present?

Under Clause 23 of the Bill, the poor rate will be collected in every urban district by the Council of that district, and under clause 36, sub-sections 5 and 7, it will be made half-yearly. I have no information before me as to the water rate, this Question only having been put down yesterday.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Government can now give any information as to the probable date on which they will introduce their Bill to amend the Agricultural Holdings Act?

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can state when the Bill for amending the Law relating to Agricultural Holdings will be introduced?

I cannot at present mention any date for the introduction of a Bill for amending the Law relating to Agricultural Holdings.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can state the nature of the instructions, if any, which have been given to our Ambassador at Washington in reference to the present dispute between the United States and Spain; whether any, and what, representations have been made to the Government of the United States by Her Majesty's Government in concert with any other European Powers; and whether Her Majesty's Government have made any representations, either by themselves or in concert with other Powers, to the Government of Spain with a view of securing such concessions as would lead to the establishment of peace and order in Cuba?

Her Majesty's Ambassador at Washington was authorised at the end of March to join with the representatives of the other Great Powers in a friendly representation to the Government of the United States in favour of peace, provided he were first of all assured that such a representation would be well received and was likely to be of use. Sir J. Pauncefote did, in consequence, join in a representation made to the President on 7th April. On 9th April Her Majesty's chargé d'affaires at Madrid joined with the representatives of the other Great Powers in a verbal and identical communication to the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, expressing the opinion that the Spanish Government would do well to consent to a suspension of hostilities, which might lead to an honourable peace in Cuba.

Are we to understand that no further representations are to be made?

No further representations have been made.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the representations which were made to President MCKinley, in which Her Majesty's Government took part, have been resented by public opinion in America as an unwarrantable interference with the responsibilities of the Republic?

I doubt the fact, Sir, and I am sure that so far as it is the fact, if that feeling is held by any section of American opinion, that opinion must have been formed under a misconception. I have given to the House an account of the instructions we furnished to our Ambassador, which I think will convince both the House and the public that we certainly have not intruded ourselves unnecessarily.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if the assurances of the Russian Government that the ships of all nations will be admitted at Port Arthur, Talien-wan, and any ports Russia has acquired or may acquire by way of usufruct or otherwise from the Chinese Empire, are in writing or merely verbal, and if they include an undertaking that British goods shall never be taxed at such ports beyond the five per cent. levied under treaty at the ports of China, and never be subject to any greater restriction or disability; and, in such case, if Her Majesty's Government will invite the Government of His Imperial Majesty the Czar to conclude a treaty embodying these conditions, and enter into negotiations for a like arrangement with respect to British trade with His Imperial Majesty the German Emperor and the French Republic as regards any ports or territories leased to them, or otherwise placed under their commercial influence by the Emperor of China?

I think it would be better if my hon. Friend would wait until the Blue Book is in his hands, which, I believe, will be published on Thursday or Friday. He will find in it full materials to answer his questions.

Yesterday the right Ron. Gentleman appealed to the House to postpone the discussion on the Foreign Office Vote. That was readily assented to, of course, but then the right hon. Gentleman suggested taking in its place the Colonial Office Vote. I have taken means of ascertaining the feeling of hon. Members on this side of the House, and I think it would be better that the principal Colonial Office Vote should not be taken so early as Friday, as there are several very important matters to be discussed in connection with that Vote. I, therefore, ask the right hon. Gentleman not to take the principal Colonial Vote on Friday.

Of course, after the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman, I think the best plan will be not to take the Colonial Vote at all on Friday. I would then go on with the Civil Service Votes remaining in Class 2 in their order. I should propose to take the Foreign Office Vote on the first Friday available after the Under Secretary is well enough to take full charge of the Vote.

The Home Office Vote might be postponed—it having; been taken first by special arrangement on the Vote on Account—in order that we may discuss certain matters as to which inquiry is taking place. I therefore hope that it will not be included in the Votes taken next Friday.

When will the Money Resolution for the Irish Local Government Bill be taken?

The money Resolution authorising the Irish Local Government Bill will be taken immediately before reaching Part 3 of the Bill. As to the Home Office Vote, the object of arranging the business of Supply was to give opportunity for discussing matters which had not received full discussion in the previous year, but the Home Office Vote has been discussed, and probably that may be postponed to a later date.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a notice on the Paper as to the financial relations between England and Ireland? It was put down at the request of a Conference of Members representing all parties in Ireland. I have to ask if the right hon. Gentleman can now give an undertaking to allow a day for the consideration of the subject at a reasonable period of the Session. If so, I am prepared to withdraw the Motion.

Yes, Sir, I am prepared to find a day for the discussion of the subject of the financial relations between the two countries, but, of course, I cannot pledge myself as to the time. It is evident the Debate cannot take place before the termination of the Committee stage of the Irish Local Government Bill. I, however, desire to find a day as soon after that as possible. Before concluding this conversation about the business of the House, I wish to say that, after consultation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies, I think it would perhaps be best to fix finally that Friday week should be given up to the Colonial Office Vote.

The right hon. Gentleman has correctly stated the position. That was also my impression. But I would like to remind the House that I have given a pledge that I will not proceed with the very important work of the rearrangement of the administration of Rhodesia until the House has had an opportunity of discussing the subject. The proposals of the Government are before the House, and the Government are anxious that the opinion of the House regarding them shall be expressed. Unnecessary delay would be injurious. Yesterday the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition pointed out to me there were reasons why it would be inconvenient to take the discussion so early as next Friday, and when I suggested Friday week I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say he thought there would be no objection. There is no necessity for absolutely fixing the day at this moment, but I should be very glad indeed if all sections of the House will agree that the important discussion on the administration of the company should not be very long postponed.

It may perhaps be for the convenience of the House if I mention that on Thursday we shall take the Budget, on Friday Civil Service Estimates, Class 2, on Monday the Second Reading of the Criminal Evidence Bill. On Tuesday we shall commence the Committee stage of the Irish Local Government Bill.

Is the right hon. Gentleman able to say when the London University Bill will be taken?

It is obvious that that Bill cannot be taken until we have disposed of the Committee stage of the Irish Bill.

The first criticism that occurs to me in reference to this Bill is that it is an exceedingly small product for the long labours of the Royal Commission. That Commission existed and worked for six years. It produced a library of information on this subject, and as a result we have a little Measure of five clauses, three of which are the operative clauses of the Bill—the chief clauses of the Bill. I do not make this comment by way of reproach to the right hon. Gentleman who has introduced this Bill. I think that he has exercised a wise prudence in putting it into the simple form I have described, with a view of avoiding the difficulty of criticism, which might otherwise interfere with the easy passage of the Measure. Now, the Bill as it stands has some four points which are important, but it also has some serious omissions. I will deal first of all with those points of the Bill which really form the chief reason for its introduction, and they are alterations in the vaccination law as it now stands. They refer to the age at which the operation is to be performed; the places in which vaccination is to be offered to the parents of the children; the use of a new form of vaccination—of vaccine matter or of vaccine lymph; and, lastly, the sections which deal with penalties. These are the four principal points in the Measure as they occur to one on reading it over. The omissions which I regret, and to which I will call attention later on, are serious matters which the House ought to notice. The Bill really is an attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to introduce a new means of applying vaccine matter to children as a protection against serious disease. It is, indeed, a State experiment with a form of lymph which was known under the name of calf-lymph, but which, on the scientific investigation of a distinguished medical man, Dr. Sydney Monckton Copeman, has been altered to such a form as, I think, preserves not only its old characteristics of efficiency, but does something more. The form in which he proposes that lymph should be used is such as to obtain greater efficiency; it has as large powers of protection, and has certain advantages which the other form of lymph never had, inasmuch as it is not likely to convey any infection of erysipelas or tubercle, or any similar diseases. The discovery to which I refer is that by mixing lymph taken from the calf with glycerine, you are enabled from a single calf to obtain vaccine sufficient to vaccinate from 4,000 to 6,000 children. In some places abroad where this practice has been carried on, as many as 15,000 children, it is stated, could be vaccinated from one calf. This matter, when mixed with glycerine, is not only efficacious for its purpose, but it contains no possibility of any contamination by syphilis, and it is free from any possibility of conveying tubercle or any other disease of that kind. This discovery we can hardly speak of too highly; if experience confirms its value as hitherto, I think it will be a discovery only second to Jenner's in importance in protecting people from the ravages of a most serious malady. I think it is right to say this much, because I think the discovery adds a certain amount of reputation and distinction to the British nation. The glycerinated lymph has been largely used on the Continent, and I think the President of the Local Government Board exercised his discretion wisely in sending two of his principal officers to the Continent to see how it was being applied. In Paris, in Berlin, in Geneva, in Cologne, and in Brussels the use of this lymph has become the habitual method of vaccination. That by itself is a proof of its value, but I can say from personal experience, in regard to children and grandchildren of my own on whom this lymph has been used, that I have been surprised at its efficacy and at the comparatively small amount of inflammation produced by it, as compared with the old form of calf vaccination. One advantage it has in addition to those I have described is this, that it can be produced not only in large quantities, but it can be preserved without losing any of its efficacy. After being kept for six or seven months it has, notwithstanding, given the splendid result of 96 to 97 per cent. of success in the cases in which it was used. I think the right hon. Gentleman has taken a wise step in putting in the forefront of his Measure the introduction of this new form of vaccine, and I congratulate him on the singular fitness of the fact that he who was the first President of the Board of Agriculture should have introduced calf lymph. The nest point to which I refer is that the lymph is to be used under different conditions from those under which vaccination has been performed hitherto. The first alteration, as one reads the Bill, is the age limit. The Royal Commission, reporting on this matter, recommended that the ago should be extended. They recommended that the age should be extended to six months. They advised this extension of the age on the ground of the experience in Scotland. In Scotland it has certainly had a remarkable effect. Deaths from vaccination there are much more rare than deaths from vaccination in England. They are, however, not common in England; they are very uncommon; but the figures as regards England and Wales are these: One death occurred in 14,159 vaccinations in England and Wales, whereas in Scotland only one death occurred in 38,872 vaccinations, so that the mortality in England was more than double what it was in Scotland. The probable cause of that—at all events, one of the causes—was the extension of the age in Scotland to six months. Now, in England, the age at which children are vaccinated is three months. Children at that ago are less able to resist any serious influences that may affect them when they are vaccinated—they have much less resisting power. Therefore the extension to six months would be advisable not only in the interests of vaccination, but in the interests of the children. The Commissioners also stated that they found, from their inquiries in Scotland, that this extension of the age was not a very serious detriment as regards the number of children vaccinated. I think that is an important point made by the Report, of the Royal Commission. The general feeling in this country is this: that early vaccination is useful, because you thereby do not miss so many children as yon do when you leave the time longer. In Birmingham, for instance, I am told that 10 per cent. of the children are lost by removals during the first three months. The opinion of soma advocates of vaccination in Birmingham is that if the age were raised, as is proposed in the Bill, to 12 months, they would probably lose 50 per cent. by removals. This is a strong objection from the point of view of the efficiency and the universality of vaccination. At the same time, I think that the advantages of vaccinating children at a later age are so great that we ought not to be deterred in extending the age, at all events, to six months, if not to the 12 months as proposed in the Bill. There is no doubt that, if you allow the children to get stronger before the operation is performed, you will have less objection on the part of the parents. I think that the extension of the age, even if it goes a little too far, is very important in the present state of the law. I do not intend to say much more about this; it is a matter which I have no doubt will be discussed in Committee, as most points in this Bill will have to be discussed and considered very carefully. The next point in the Bill, which has attracted a great deal of attention outside, is as to domiciliary vaccination. Now, the present system is carried on by the employment of public vaccinators. When vaccination is performed, children are required to attend at stations in order to be vaccinated. This is objectionable in many ways. It, first of all, brings a crowd of children to one locality, which is very often the means of spreading infectious disease among them; mothers are very often kept a considerable time waiting at the stations, and sometimes, as proved by recent cases, deaths occur from erysipelas. The omission of the requirement that children should be brought to the vaccination station would be popular, especially in large towns, but I do not know that the public vaccinators would be equally pleased at having to visit the children, because in some towns going round to the houses to vaccinate children would not be free from certain inconveniences, and possibly discomforts. In the town of Leicester, for instance, there might be difficulty for the vaccination officer in his domiciliary visits, and there are other places in the country where there might be considerable difficulty in carrying out the practice in this way. I hope if the Bill becomes law that the system of stations will not be altogether dispensed with. They might be especially useful in regard to the new system of vaccination with this lymph, because, in country districts, in every village one room could be used, and parents need not go a great distance or a second time. I think that with vaccination stations judiciously maintained, and under the rules of the Local Government Board, a system of domiciliary vaccination could be arranged. It would be a very useful adjunct, and it might be a means of inducing a larger number of parents to allow their children to be vaccinated at a later age. This point of domiciliary vaccination will have to be discussed in Committee in many of its details, with some modifications in the direction I have suggested. Now I come to the fourth point in the Bill, and I am sorry to say I cannot speak of it with the same amount of pleasure and satisfaction as I have spoken of the previous points I have referred to. In regard to the extension of the age, and in regard to calf lymph, I think the right hon. Gentleman has taken a wise step; I think he has taken a step which is likely to make vaccination more popular and to make it less hurtful to the children. I think he deserves congratulation on introducing a new vaccine lymph to this country. With reference to domiciliary vaccination, I think the Bill is proceeding on wise lines. But when I come to the other clause of the Bill I cannot give it the same amount of satisfactory criticism. According to clause 2 an order Tinder Section 31 of the Vaccination Act of 1867, directing a child to be vaccinated, will not be made on any person who has been previously convicted of non-compliance with a similar order relating to the same child. This clause is inserted in order to enable the right hon. Gentleman to meet to some extent the recommendations of the Royal Commission, which practically do away with compulsion. That may not be the opinion of many Members of this House, but I think that any one who will give a careful study to that Report, and consider what effect it will have upon the minds of persons—especially those who have an objection to vaccination—will come to the conclusion that that Report practically killed compulsion in its old form. It did more than that. The Royal Commission suggested in the first place that there should be something done with reference to repeated penalties. The Commissioners made up their minds that a repetition of the penalties was very irritating, did more harm than good, and was probably the cause of the agitation which has sprung up in the country with reference to vaccination. In order to support what I have said, perhaps you will allow me to read one or two sentences from the Report with reference to stronger means of compulsion—

"We do not stop to inquire whether it would be justified in adopting such a method, for we are satisfied that no such measure, if proposed, would have any chance of acceptance; indeed, few even of the most ardent advocates of vaccination have hitherto made such a proposal. Nor, again, do we think that a proposal to substitute for the pecuniary penalty now imposed a more stringent form of punishment, such as imprisonment, would have any greater chance of acceptance."

The further fact remains, and we cannot overlook it, that the administration of the law is in the hands of Boards of Guardians which are popularly elected bodies in the various parts of the kingdom, and that a large number of these are opposed to the administration of the law. No less than one-fifth of the Boards of Guardians are not carrying the law into effect. Thus you have large classes of the community opposed to, and representative bodies refusing to carry the law into effect. I say that the law is an irritating law, which probably does more harm than good. A considerable majority of the one-fifth were against the administration of the law in its present form, and a certain proportion were waiting the Report of the Royal Commission before they decided what they would do. That being the case, I had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman, when he came to meet those difficulties, would have taken another course than the course he has taken. The Royal Commissioners gave him an alternative. While they said they wished to abolish these repeated penalties, they also said that they thought that the honest objector ought to be met and his objection recognised. I am not surprised at their taking this view when we know that not only local authorities do not carry vaccination into force, but that magistrates will not convict the offenders. Whew you come to that position it is necessary to examine the alternative scheme in the Royal Commissioners' Report. They think that there should be another method of netting over this difficulty: they think that a person who hits it serious, honest objection to the law is not likely to be compelled by these penalties to accept vaccination. They point it out in it sentence of great force, regarding the administration of the compulsory sections, which I will quote:—

"Such a parent has often become a focus of hostility to the Vaccination Laws; his neighbours and his friends take his side; he is regarded as a martyr; and he and they frequently become agitators against the Vaccination Laws."

The agitation in this country has been fostered by fining, and forcing the law on the people who are honest objectors, and the result is that they and their neighbours and friends are all banded together. There are whole unions in England where the law has fallen into disuse. Taking the whole country, we have at least 20 per cent. of the children going without vaccination altogether. There is another even greater cvil. Every public vaccinator is required to vaccinate efficiently and thoroughly for the protection of the child brought to him, but I am sorry to say that there are a number of practitioners, members of the profession to which I belong, who have been willing to do sham and inefficient vaccinations and to give certificates. Thus we have a large number of the 80 per cent. of vaccinations recorded in England and Wales that are useless vaccinations as regards the protection of the infants; and so we see a very large number of people who have been inefficiently vaccinated put down as catching small-pox, find bringing the whole system of vaccination into undeserved disrepute. I think that is a condition of things that is very undesirable, and it is the result of the compulsory sections of the existing Acts. There are practitioners who are vaccinating hundreds of children every month, and who make a single mark, and then give a certificate of successful vaccination. That certificate is practically worthless, and ought not to be accepted, and I hope in one clause of this Bill the Local Government Board will take powers to ensure that vaccination, whether done by the public vaccinators or private vaccinators, shall be done in such a way as to be an effective protection against the disease from which it is intended to save the child. I was led into this digression for a moment in speaking of the proposal with regard to honest objectors. The alternative the Royal Commission proposed was that the honest objector to vaccination should have a way of escaping from being prosecuted by the law. The passage is—

"After careful consideration and much study of the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion that it would conduce to increased vaccination if a scheme could be devised which would preclude the attempt (so often a vain one) to compel those who are honestly opposed to the practice to submit their children to vaccination, and at the same time leave the law to operate, as at present, to prevent children remaining unvaccinated owing to the neglect and indifference of the parent. When we speak of an honest opposition to the practice we intend to confine our remarks to cases in which the objection is to the operation itself, and to exclude cases in which the objection arises merely from an indisposition to incur the trouble involved. We do not think such a scheme impossible."

There is the alternative before the right hon. Gentleman which he did not take. He did not take it, I daresay, because he was anxious, as the guardian of public health in this country, to get its many children vaccinated as possible. I believe that to-morrow he would get more children vaccinated if he would accept a conscientious declaration on the part of the honest objector. Is it not an extremely illogical position for the Government to take up, that a man who suffers two penalties should escape the duty he owes to the law? To a rich man a fine of 30s. or £2 is of no consequence, but it falls very heavily on a poor man who may have an income of only £1 or 30s. a week. That man, if he conscientiously objects, ought to be allowed in a Court of Justice to make a declaration before a magistrate; and I think the law ought to be administered in such a way as to involve the dropping of compulsion altogether. Compulsion, as it is at present, is shown to be ineffective, is shown to be doing harm by the way in which children are vaccinated, is not adding credit to the law, and is giving dissatisfaction throughout the country. If the local authorities will not carry out the powers of compulsion, I think we are better without them. We can go to those people who have honest objections to have their children vaccinated and empower them with proper formalities to declare that they are opposed to vaccination. In that way I believe you would have more children vaccinated than at the present time. And you would have this additional advantage: you would make no martyrs from the enforcement of the law. Every man who is imprisoned for a breach of the Vaccination Law makes hundreds of converts—or perverts, if you like to term it so—to his view of the Vaccination Law, and he does more harm to the efficiency of the vaccination in his district than the most rigid administration of the law would do in the opposite way. That being my view, I feel bound to say that I hope in Committee—I do not propose to vote against the Second Reading of this Bill, because even if it passes as it stands it is an improvement on the existing law—we shall have an opportunity of moving to omit a portion of the section in question, so as to bring about an alternative by means of which a man, having a conscientious objection, can escape any penalty under the Vaccination Acts. I should be glad to see in this Bill a clause introduced which would repeal the penalties altogether, because I believe, by careful action on the part of the officers, by the good-will of the medical profession, and by the spread of the knowledge of the benefits of vaccination, more good can be done than by the compulsory clauses of any Act of Parliament. It is unnatural to Englishmen to yield to force, and the sections which impose penalties, and may lead to imprisonment, have done a great deal of harm, and I hope a wiser course will be taken before the Bill passes through Committee. Having said so much with reference to these points in the Bill, I want to refer to one or two things which are omitted in it, to the disadvantage of the general health of the country. In the first place, there is nothing in the Bill about re-vaccination. I do not want to make re-vaccination compulsory, but I do want to see some system introduced in this country by which re-vaccination may be offered to the whole community at suitable times. This is done in Continental countries with great effect. In Germany—which is an example to us in some respects—since the re-vaccination laws have been introduced, there has been a remarkable diminution in the prevalence of small-pox. Since the law of 1874 was introduced into Germany, which goes in for compulsory vaccination, and re-vaccination at the age of 14, remarkable results have been attained. The death-rate, which used to be, under the old law, not less than 309 per million, fell from 1874 to 1892 to 15 per million, and during the last 10 years has been only seven per million. These are wonderful results, and ought to make the President of the Local Government Board, and the representatives of the public health departments in this country, anxious to introduce this beneficent system of re-vaccination, without making it unpopular by penalties and compulsory clauses. During the last year of which we have records there were in Germany only 27 deaths from, small-pox out of fifty millions of people, and more than half those occurred on the frontiers of Germany, near countries which are less protected, in consequence of the nonexistence of the vaccination laws; so that you have on all hands the most striking record of the benefits of this system of doing vaccination a second time. Now, there is one illustration with reference to another country which, I think, it is important I should refer to, and that is with reference to Italy. In Italy the death-rate used to be about 355 per million. In 1888 compulsory vaccination was introduced into Italy, and re-vaccination at the schools, and in 1891 and 1894 the death-rate, fell from 355 per million to as little as 65 per million; so that, you see, the enforcement of this beneficent system of repeating the operation has had a most marvellous effect upon the reduction of the death-rate from this loathsome disease, not only in Germany, but in other places. Now, I think these points indicate that we ought, in this country, to have some system of re-vaccination, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will turn his attention to that point, and will propound in Committee some clause to be introduced into the Bill by means of which re-vaccination will not be enforced on individuals, but will be offered to individuals at the age of leaving or of entering school, so that you may have these protective influences against serious disease in this country as in other countries. In this Bill you have a clause which gives the Local Government Board powers to modify the regulations of vaccination officers. The clause says that the Local Government Board shall have the same power of making rules and regulations with respect to public vaccinators that they have with respect to vaccination officers. I should like that rule extended to all persons vaccinating, so that you may bring under the same rules all private practitioners who vaccinate, in order to keep up some control of the method in which vaccination is performed. If you simply make a rule for a few hundreds who vaccinate publicly, and make no rule for the thousands who vaccinate privately, you will have the same system of sham vaccination going on which exists, to the discredit of the country, at the present time. I therefore hope the right hon. Gentleman will be willing to give even larger powers to the Local Government Board, so that we may have the opportunity of insisting that this operation, when it is done, is done properly, so as to protect the interests and guard the health of the community against the propagation of so grave a disease. I have thought it right. Sir, to make these comments on the Bill as it stands, because I think the Bill is one which, while it improves the law, has omitted to do certain things which ought to be done for the public health. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not only have the credit, before this Bill is placed upon the Statute Book, of doing something to improve vaccination by the introduction of this new glycerinated lymph, but that he will also make the law more popular, and the vaccination of children more efficient, and thus add to the general well-being and health of the community.

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to my hon. Friend opposite, and I agree with almost all that he has said on the subject. I may, perhaps, begin by congratulating the President of the Local Government Board on having had the courage to grapple with so thorny a subject and one so beset with difficulties. I fear, however, that the Measure before the House only touches the fringe of a large subject, though I gladly acknowledge that it is an honest attempt to meet some of the difficulties at least, and so deserves support. I therefore venture to offer one or two criticisms, not in a captious spirit, but in the hope that, having had some experience, I may possibly strengthen the hands of the President of the Local Government Board, and possibly also add to the suggestions which have been made by my Friend on the opposite side of the House. It is high time that something was done to improve the law of vaccination. I believe it is computed that one-third of the children in England and Wales, or about 300,000, are unvaccinated, and, with the object-lesson of Gloucester before us, the House can understand the mass of explosive material there is in any given town or community. Now, Sir, with the permission of the House, I will say one or two words on the various points which were laid before the House on the introduction of the Bill by the President of the Local Government Board. First, we will take the glycerinated lymph, which is about to be introduced. I cannot help thinking that my right hon. Friend was most fortunate when it was necessary to do something to improve the law, in the circumstance that glycerinated lymph had been discovered. When I say "discovered," I may point out that the discovery was made by Dr. Copeman Monckton in 1891, and yet hitherto it has never been adopted systematically in this country. I think it is most likely, when once adopted, to remove many of the objections of the parents, which I have no doubt are conscientious, arising from the fear that by the introduction of foreign material into the bodies of the children harm may be done, shall show presently that these fears have been greatly exaggerated, but, at the same time, if the proposed system is once adopted I think it will tend to allay a great many apprehensions on the subject. Now that it has been adopted in other countries, I have been frequently asked how it is, seeing that it was discovered in this country, its adoption in Great Britain has been so long delayed. Well, Sir, I can only say it is probably because we have, in the first place, no Minister of Public Health in this country, and no municipal laboratories. In other countries they have not only a Minister of Public Health, but they have municipal laboratories. In Germany, and elsewhere, a great deal more attention is paid to matters of public health than in this country. Sir William Turner, the distinguished President of the Medical Council, and who was towards the end of last year in the United States, tells me that the laboratories for public health in New York are so magnificent that they are real palaces, and the organisation is so perfect that there was not a single case of small-pox. This is the more remarkable because of the great number of immigrants arriving there from European countries. Science is not well treated in this country. You would scarcely credit it, but the Royal Society of Edinburgh—the centre of the best scientific work in Scotland—has failed, year after year, in getting a paltry £300 from the Exchequer; and this, notwithstanding that the revenue amounts to something like £107,000,000 in the present year. Now, this glycerinated lymph has been investigated in Berlin, Paris, Geneva, and other centres by that excellent officer of the Local Government Board, Sir Richard T. Thorne, and Dr. Copeman, and so far as they are able to make out, the results are very satisfactory. The treatment of the lymph is very simple. Dr. Copeman found that if he mixed 50 per cent. of sterilised glycerine with distilled water, and added calf lymph to it, it did not impair the efficacy of the lymph, but destroyed all other germs. The diseases most feared by parents from vaccination are syphilis, erysipelas, and tubercle, but there is reason to believe that the number of cases where these diseases have been communicated by vaccination has been greatly exaggerated. Dr. Robert Lee says that out of his experience of 30,000 cases in the Sick Children's Hospital, there was only one in which syphilis was supposed to have been transmitted by vaccination, and this was not clearly proved. The Royal Commission, in its Report, says—

"If, in some instances, syphilis has been inoculated with vaccination, it cannot have been to any substantial extent."

Concerning erysipelas, à priori, one might expect some increase of mortality if vaccination were a frequent cause of death. When I look back upon my own early experience, I am almost aghast when I think of the risks we ran in those days. It is only since the celebrated M. Pasteur's time that we have come to understand what germs of disease are carried in the atmosphere, cling to our clothes, and are contained in the dust that lies upon our tables. M. Pasteur taught that the smallest puncture in the skin might fester, not because of the state of the blood, but because of germs inoculated from without; and yet I have seen the table in the vaccination room covered with dust, possibly containing the germs of erysipelas. Notwithstanding these risks, little damage was actually done in the process of vaccination. Dr. Cory, in his evidence before the Royal Commission, said that there were two deaths in 32,000 cases, and one per cent. of sore arms. He further says—

"You would be astonished to see the hideous stuff some people will make in a pot, and put on the places; they cannot leave the vesicles alone."

Punctures have been poisoned again and again by mischievous dressing; and possibly, if the requisite precautions had been taken, there would have been even fewer cases. The Commission also says—

"We believe that the cases in which the virus of erysipelas is conveyed at the time of vaccination are rare."

There is one very curious fact which I should mention to the House. Both erysipelas and syphilis produced a higher mortality at Leicester than in England and Wales generally, where vaccination was practically discontinued. With reference to tubercle I need not detain the House, because there is very little evidence indeed of harm from that. The Commission says—

"We do not find any facts to warrant the assertion that the increased mortality from tabes mesenterica and scrofula, or any part of it, was due to vaccination."

Now, Sir, admitting that some harm has been done by vaccination, it is not easy at any time to do a great amount of good without some modicum of harm. All medical efforts are relative; if they were absolute no one would die. If you were to look into the history of many remedies you would find that misadventures may attend all of them. It is well known, for instance, that no one can avail himself of the administration of chloroform to relieve pain without some risk of death. I believe if you were to inquire into the history of those two very simple domestic remedies, Epsom salts and castor oil, you would find that in some cases the effects had gone much farther than had been intended or expected, and harm had resulted. The great thing in the use of all remedies is to do the greatest amount of good with the least possible harm. It is entirely a question of proportion. Unfortunately, there are always people possessed of what I may call the "anti" mind, who, with a perverse ingenuity, fasten on the harm and refuse to look on the other side of the question. A distinguished scientific friend of mine once said: "I always try to teach my pupils to think to scale as well as work to scale." Now, these people who are always dwelling on the harm do not think to scale. They concentrate all their attention upon the mischief. They anatomise it, they put it under the microscope, they magnify it, photograph it, and allow it so to fill the field of their mental vision that they cannot see its surrounding relations, and so lose all sense of proportion. No better example of this tendency always to dwell upon the harm is to be found than in the case of the remedy of M. Pasteur recommended for rabies. All the cases that went wrong under his treatment were instantly reported in the papers, and dwelt upon and magnified in their importance, and yet the agitators persistently ignored the fact, pointed out by M. Brouardel, that in former days 50 per cent. of the people bitten by dogs mad, or supposed to be mad, died from hydrophobia, while under the Pasteur system the mortality is reduced to 1 in 400. This is a remarkable result, and I believe, these statistics are perfectly true. There seems to me to be some analogy between the practice of vaccination and the slight harm it brings us occasionally and railway travelling. A great many people go to Scotland every year, and yet a number of people are killed and wounded by the way every year. We are, however, I take it, not going to stop railway travelling because accidents occasionally happen. The obvious thing is to stop the accidents and prevent the misadventures. The Report of the Commission says, in reference to the harm that comes from vaccination—

"A careful examination of the facts shows that although some of the dangers said to be attendant on vaccination are incontestably real and not inconsiderable in gross amount, yet, considered in relation to the extent of the vaccination work done, they are insignificant in amount."

The wonder to me is not that sometimes damage occurs, but that misadventures are so rare, especially when we consider the ignorance of the parents, and when we consider also how incautious concerning antiseptic precautions medical men were in former times. Experiments made by Dr. Monckton Copeland have shown that the germs of such diseases as syphilis, erysipelas, and tubercle were destroyed by glycerinated calf lymph. He mixed sterilised glycerine and water with the lymph, and found that it destroyed all extraneous germs, but did not impair the efficacy of the lymph. The advantages, I may point out, therefore, are the following: in the first place, the glycerine destroys all the microbes, but does not destroy the efficacy of the lymph; secondly, it may be preserved for an indefinite time without losing its strength; and, thirdly, if diluted, it will suffice for a much larger number of children. In Berlin one calf was enough for 15,000 vaccinations: so that it is a very economical process. Fourthly, I may point out there is no necessity to continue arm-to-arm vaccination in the vaccination room, and, besides this, there is no occasion to open the vesicles, which may bring about contamination in some cases, and so produce sore arms in some form or other. On this subject of glycerinated lymph, I notice that there is a gentleman writing to the journals who is already on the warpath. Mr. A. W. Hutton writes that, some years ago, Sir George Buchanan gave the history of an outbreak of impetigo in the island of Ringen, in which 342 persons were affected, and it is officially acknowledged that it was due to the use of glycerine lymph from the Government depôt. Well, Sir, it is not very long since we knew how to make pure glycerine, and in its impure form Sir George Buchanan may well have expressed his disapproval of the use of glycerine for the purpose indicated. Let me take the second point of my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board, that of domiciliary vaccination. This, I have no doubt, will have a beneficial influence. In the first place, domiciliary vaccination will tend to lessen the objection many people have to vaccination. I saw only the other day an account in which it was stated that there was only about three per cent. of vaccination defaulters in Scotland as compared with England and Wales. The people of Scotland appear to be much more teachable, or else they are much more intelligent, and this deserves to be noticed as one of the results of better education. There are one or two advantages which domiciliary vaccination possesses which I should like to point out to the House. It saves the risk of children being infected by aggregation. A great number of poor children kept waiting in the vaccination-room are exposed to the danger of catching scarlet fever, measles, and whooping cough, and when they come to be vaccinated in this room it may, from the crowding, be full of germs of disease, and the vaccination is very likely to go wrong. At the same time, I hope that the President of the Local Government Board will not do away, as my hon. Friend opposite has said, with the vaccination station on certain days, with certain precautions. The atmosphere must be purified, and great care taken that no children are allowed to mix with the rest who are suffering from any infectious diseases. I think one of the great advantages of adopting this domiciliary vaccination will be that medical men will be able to persuade a great many parents who have had con scientious objections before, and who have probably been "got at" by agitators, to have their children vaccinated. They will then be able to represent to the parents the advantages of this treatment. Certain objections have been pointed out in various medical journals, but perhaps I may be permitted to say that these objections are not all valid. No doubt this Measure will give a great deal more work to those who do the vaccinating. They will have to visit the homes of the poor, and, consequently, the vaccination officers should have increased pay. It has been said in some constituencies the people would not receive the vaccination officer very favourably, and one hon. Member has said that they might possibly do him some bodily harm. But I may point out that in Chicago, where there are all sorts and conditions of men, and where many of them are keenly alive to repressive restrictions, the system of domiciliary vaccination has had the very best possible effect, and very few children remain unvaccinated. In Chicago they produce very effective vaccination by persuading people to submit their children to it. Some years ago I was told that in France all the parents were paid a very small sum for bringing up their children to be vaccinated. This plan was very successful, and it was surprising how some parental scruples as to dangers of vaccination were removed by the few sous paid. This leads me to say that in the Bill brought in by my right hon. Friend there is no provision made for paying medical men when vaccinating private patients. This was pointed out as a very desirable thing in the Report of the Commission, paragraph 530, of which I have made a note. I think it is very desirable, where the patients are too poor, if the Local Government Board can see their way to do it, to make some arrangement of this kind. It must be remembered that a great many of the patients attended by medical men are very poor. They can only just afford to pay for medical attendance, and they shirk having their children vaccinated if they have to pay for it. I believe that if some arrangements were made by which, if certain results were obtained in vaocination, the private practitioner could be recompensed, as well as the vaccination officers, vaccination would be very much promoted, and so many children would not escape vaccination. When done by the family's own medical man it would diminish the reluctance of the mother, and it would also diminish the number of those who escape vaccination. There must necessarily be some safeguards. All children must be vaccinated in one way, and not allowed to escape a perfect vaccination. The number of insertions should be uniform, and the results submitted for inspection. I may point out that it is not necessary to inspect every child, but sample cases might be taken of thorn, and, when the inspectors send in their return, then they might receive the same fee for vaccination as that which is paid to the Public Vaccinator. The third point in the Bill is the extending of the age limit to 12 months, as in Germany. I see no great objection to this so far as the risk to the children is concerned, because, judging from the experience of Germany, it seems that children are less liable to take small-pox when unvaccinated during the first 12 months. The objections which have been raised to this may have some validity, but I think they may be overcome. In the first place, it is said that when the child is older the vesicles after vaccination are much more likely to be injured by creeping about and coming in contact with contaminating matter. Then, it is pointed out that the removals of children under 12 months would make it very difficult to follow them up. I think, on the whole, that I should be very much disposed to adopt the suggestion which has been made, that instead of the period being extended to 12 months, it should be limited to six months. This, I think, would save a great deal of trouble. It would make the time more uniform, and there is no valid reason why there should be one time in Scotland and another in England. In saying this, I think we ought to supplement any default it brings by vaccinating all unvaccinated children who are attending school, and we might very well imitate Germany in this particular. In Germany all children must be vaccinated on entering school who have not been previously vaccinated, and all must be re-vaccinated at 14 before they leave school. This is also the case at Chicago, which is under an entirely different régime politically, and where people are much more free to do as they like. In Chicago no children are permitted to attend school who have not been vaccinated. It must be remembered that the early infant is an object of much sympathy, and compulsory vaccination when the time comes for going to school may be looked upon with less aversion than at an earlier period. If a child were offered vaccination at the time of entering school, and again upon leaving it, it would be less objectionable, and fewer children would escape being vaccinated. This leads me to say that there is no provision in this Bill for re-vaccination. One of the points brought out in the evidence before the Vaccination Commission, and which was forced upon the minds of the medical profession by experience, is that vaccination is not absolutely permanent, but that a re-vaccination is necessary for better protection, although the effect of primary vaccination never entirely passes off. The celebrated Dr. Jenner, to whom we owe so much, was wrong when he supposed—with pardonable enthusiasm—that vaccination, gave an absolute immunity throughout life, and that this remedy for small-pox would last during the whole life of a patient. It has been proved as the result of observation, that when 10 or 12 years have elapsed after the first vaccination, although it may modify small-pox at subsequent periods through the whole life, it will not protect a person from taking smallpox again later. I think, therefore, that there ought to be some provision made for re-vaccination as well as for primary vaccination. In reference to re-vaccination I may point out that the anti-vaccinationists have made much capital out of the fact that a number of people at Gloucester who had been vaccinated took small-pox, but they omit to state that the largest proportion of them were over 20 years of age, and were far away from the time when their vaccination was more efficacious. In point of fact they had not been re-vaccinated. In the recent epidemic at Middlesbrough the same thing came out, and it may be noted that nearly half of those unvaccinated (46.6 per cent.) died, and only 8.2 of those who were vaccinated. Here again the greatest number of vaccinated who were attacked were over 20 years of age, when the protection of infantile vaccination was less than at the earlier period. It may seem hard to impose upon parents an obligation to which they object, and of which they do not see the value, but the object of the State should be the welfare and the happiness of the greatest number, and the good of the children above all things. The danger of allowing a large number of children to remain unvaccinated has been very clearly seen at Gloucester, and I may be permitted to point out that, just in proportion to the stringency of the vaccination regulations, so was small-pox diminished and protection furnished to the community. Medical men think that vaccination is just as essential to the welfare of the child as the provision of food and raiment. The fourth question is the proposal to remit penalties after two prosecutions. Around this must centre the largest amount of discussion. Some will say it is a weak-kneed measure, and others will say that it is tyrannical. Certainly, as my hon. Friend opposite has said, it is very illogical. We never think of letting a man off who has been tried for drunkenness and convicted once or twice, but we fine him again. And so you would not be disposed to let a parent off who had neglected a child. If he had been fined once or twice, you would certainly tine him a third time, a fourth, or even a fifth time, if necessary. Medical men think vaccination is absolutely essential for the welfare of a child, as it will prevent disease, and man think there certainly ought to be no remission of penalties; at any rate, there ought to be something which is almost equally efficacious. Still, the object of the Measure, as I understand it, is to promote vaccination and not to make martyrs, and there is much to be said on both sides of the question. The recommendations of the Commission certainly need very careful consideration before this Bill is passed. It is confessedly a very difficult subject. I think I should be disposed not to remit penalties absolutely, but, when the parent has a conscientious objection to vaccination, not to give it up altogether, but to suspend it for a time—say till the schools days come. This would be a great, deal more logical than the remitting of the penalties, and it would be very much the same thing as telling a prisoner to come up for judgment when called upon, If vaccination were offered again, when a child enters school, parents might not then object. I have just one further suggestion to make, and it is this: All parents who insist that their children shall not be vaccinated, and who have persistently ignored it, should, after being fined once or twice, be compelled to subscribe to isolation hospitals. Isolation hospitals have been again and again proposed as an alternative to vaccination, and no doubt they are the next best thing, though they will not take the place of vaccination. I certainly think that all parents who have conscientious objections should at least pay something in the way of insurance against the dangers they might bring upon their families and the community generally when vaccination is not properly carried out. I am sure this will appeal to some of my friend's upon county councils and to sanitary authorities. I believe it has been calculated that to properly equip a hospital for small-pox patients for all the purposes required it would take about £300 a bed. Now, taking into consideration the number of patients who were stricken with small-pox at Gloucester, and accepting the estimate at £300 per bed, the sum required would amount to £24,000, and in Middlesbrough to £54,000. Consequently, it is only fair that those people who produce this danger should pay for the safety of the others. There is another point. I think the administration of the law should be transferred to the sanitary authority, and should not be left to Boards of Guardians, who are too often in conflict with the law. Boards of Guardians have been constantly shirking their duties. They are allowing vaccination to go by default in the case of a large number of children, who come to be a source of danger not only to their own locality, but to the whole of the community. I feel quite sure that if vaccination were entrusted to the sanitary authority it would be much more efficiently carried out. I trust that I shall not be out of order if I say a few words calling attention to the proofs of the efficacy of vaccination and the necessity for such a Measure as that which has been introduced. Scientific men have great difficulty in understanding the attitude of those who object to vaccination, for if any scientific fact is ascertained beyond all reasonable doubt it is the potency of vaccination to prevent the spread of small-pox. And yet the agitation against vaccination has assumed very large proportions. The anti-vaccinators are really the noisiest faction. They have had the field almost entirely to themselves. The anti-vaccinator, by his perfervid oratory and facile pen, has reiterated again and again statements, many of which are too absurd for refutation. They have stated half-truths and denied the advantages of vaccination. They have exaggerated the dangers and disported the figures, and in this way an amount of antagonism has been stirred up against vaccination out of all proportion to what it ought to have been if the thing had been grappled with earlier by those who knew better. It was the same spirit arising from ignorance which produced the riots in Bombay quite recently, when stringent measures were attempted for staying the plague in India. It was the same kind of ignorance which made the populace in Sicily threaten to bench the medical officers who, at the risk of their lives, went out there to try to stop the ravages of cholera. I cannot understand how anybody who has studied the history of vaccination can doubt its efficacy. Some of the objections to vaccination have been very absurd. In the early days of vaccination a child at Peekham was said to have lost its former natural disposition, which was absolutely changed to the brutal by vaccination, so that it ran about on all fours bellowing like a cow, and butting with its head like a bull. In another case it was said that "a lady's daughter now coughs like a cow, and has grown hairy all over her body." Such an agitation can easily be set on foot, for there are people always to be found with oblique mental vision, and they generally adopt more than one "anti" subject. It seems that the possession of high intellectual attainments is no bar to the acceptance of "anti" ideas, and the same person may run the whole gamut of "anti" agitations, and even throw spiritualism into the bargain to make up the complement. These people seem quite incapable of weighing evidence, even when their intellectual capacity in other directions is not deficient. Sir, history is full of examples of crowds of people being led off in wrong directions by organised agitators. We all of us have just had recalled to our minds, by his death, the case of the Tiehborne Claimant. A great number of people believed in him, and even many scientific men believed that he was the real claimant. They had no capacity for weighing evidence, and therefore they were led wrong. A celebrated quack doctor at the beginning of the present century, St. John Long, who was twice tried for manslaughter, boasted that he had produced most remarkable cures, and people ran after him in crowds. One person, a peer, actually swore that he had seen him draw pints of a fluid like mercury from a patient's brain as the result of his treatment. All this is deplorable. Possibly these "anti" agitations in a liberal country may be regarded as the tares and weeds springing up amongst the stronger wheat, hoe growth of liberal ideas. No effort should be spared to convince those who have taken an antagonistic attitude, and who are likely to be swayed by evidence. The voluntary efforts that have been made recently in this direction are very great, but I think the Government ought also to do something in this way. They may put something in the hands of every anti-vaccinator in the way of a statement showing what is in favour of vaccination, and what evils it averts. I cannot understand anyone who has studied the history of smallpox and vaccination doubting its efficacy. People are too apt to forget what happened before vaccination came into practice. I remember my grandfather telling me that at the beginning of the present, century every third person he met in the street was marked with smallpox. Now we very rarely see anyone marked with small-pox. It is to be recollected that when we meet people marked with small-pox they only represent those patients who have recovered, and an enormous number of these lose their sight. Sir Gilbert Blaine said that at least two-thirds of those who went to the Indigent Blind Asylum had lost their sight through small-pox. Mr. Simon, the respected former medical officer of the Local Government Board, said that small-pox ravaged more fiercely than the most ruthless of wars. It exterminated whole races, and in Quito, according to De la Condamine, it destroyed upwards of 100,000 Indians. The annual ravages of small-pox in Europe alone, before vaccination was adopted, was half a million, and it was a constant source of terror to all civilised nations. Ago was no security, for a man might have it at 70 years of age. The disease was so loathsome that when a patient died with it there was a very panic towards the corpse. As indicating what has been done by vaccination, I may quote from my distinguished predecessor Lord Playfair, who years ago made one of the most convincing speeches as to the value of vaecinationtion ever made in the House. Lord Playfair, in 1883, pointed out on the authority of Dr. Farr, the Registrar General, that the mortality during the last century was 3,000 per million for the whole country. In the first forty years of this century vaccination was promoted by charitable agencies, and under this the mortality from, small-pox fell to 600 per million. In 1841 Parliament gave funds for gratuitous vaccination, and by 1853 this mortality had fallen to 305 per million. In 1853 vaccination was made compulsory, but without the means of enforcing it, yet the deaths again fell to 223 per million. In 1871 the Board of Guardians were compelled to appoint vaccination officers, and since that period the average mortality has been 156 per million. Voluntary efforts reduced the mortality in the last century from 3,000 to 600 per million; gratuitous vaccination reduced it to 305; obligatory laws, inefficiently administered, reduced it to 223, and the same laws under vaccination officers effected a further reduction to 156 per annum. The hon. Member for the Chesterfield Division proposes that this Bill should be read a second time this day six months. The hon. Member has written a pamphlet on this subject, but I understand he is not opposed to vaccination, because he has had his own children vaccinated. This contention nevertheless is that the Gloucester epidemic was due, not so much to a lack of vaccination, as to insanitary conditions, to polluted water, and sewer malaria, and he asks, if that is so, whether small-pox may not be prevented by improved sanitary conditions without vaccination? Well, more than a thousand Medical Officers of Health have expressed an opinion to the contrary. The hon. Member proposes another Commission to inquire into this, but such a proposed is merely beating the air. There is no doubt that sanitary conditions will prevent the spread of some diseases, notably typhoid, but sanitary conditions will not prevent unvaccinated children taking small-pox if there is infection about, and will not prevent a child getting the disease in a public conveyance, such as a cab or an omnibus. The Vaccination Commission pointed out that, although sanitary conditions are generally improved throughout the whole of the land, there is no diminution in measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough; and the Commission—

"fails to see why improved sanitary conditions should enable children to escape attacks of small-pox and not those of other zymotic diseases."

There are one or two other points in the Report to which I wish to refer as convincing evidence of the value of vaccination. One has been alluded to by the hon. Member opposite, who pointed out the remarkable diminution of small-pox in Germany as the result of vaccination, I may remark further, that, in the Prussian Army, previous to 1835, isolation was rigidly tried, yet the small-pox rate was higher than in the whole general population. In 1834 every soldier, whether previously vaccinated or not, was vaccinated, and then the proportion at once was reduced until, in 1869, it was, in the Army, exactly .11 per 10,000, as compared with 3.7 in the civil population. The French Minister for War wrote that, in the war of 1870–71, the Germans, being well vaccinated, lost only 459 men from, small-pox, while the French Army, being less well vaccinated, lost 23,400, a loss, which, the Minister for War added—

"would have been saved to France by carefully carrying out obligatory vaccination. Does not this loss represent quite an army in itself?"

In Germany, with its population of more than 50,000,000, since 1885 only 1,164 deaths from small-pox have been recorded, and this notwithstanding its extended frontiers. For those who object to the eccentricities of the figures, I take, another example, in connection with the Gloucester epidemic In the case or Wotton Asylum there were 800 patients within the city of Gloucester. It was not in the best sanitary condition, and the patients were so overcrowded that Dr. Craddock reported that, in some wards they "were packed like herrings in a barrel" While the superintendent was debating whether the whole of the patients should be vaccinated became small-pox was raging round, it suddenly broke out in the asylum, instantly all the patients were vaccinated or re-vaccinated. Out of the whole, only four were attacked, and this was among a people of low vitality, and who were not living in the best sanitary conditions. What could account for this except vaccination? Here is another case equally striking. It is in connection with the outbreak of small-pox at Warrington; and Dr. Saville reports that, of 800 re-vaccinated individuals in the garrison, the only sufferer was a militiaman? who had not been re-vaccinated. And yet the inmates of the garrison mixed freely with the townspeople. In the same place an outbreak in the principal ironworks, where some 1,400 hands were employed, was suddenly checked within a fortnight by re-vaccination. Fully one-third of the population of Warrington were re-vaccinated, and not one of all the number contracted small-pox, although the whole town was permeated by the infection. Such incidents appeal especially to what is called the "man in the street." In conclusion, I will give a brief summary of the conclusions of the Commission as to vaccination. These, were (1) it diminishes liability to be attacked by small-pox; (2) it modifies its character, (a) less in amount, and (b) milder; (3) protection is greater in the year immediately succeeding the operation, and may cover a period of nine or 10 years; (4) effect rapidly diminishes after the period of highest protective influence, but is considerable afterwards, and is, possibly, never altogether lost; (5) power to modify severity lasts throughout life (6) re-vaccination restores protection, and, therefore, should be repeated; (7) where most thorough the protection is greatest. After seven years' investigation, the recent Commission has confirmed in every important particular the great advantage of vaccination to the community; it has extended and, enlarged the evidence; and if it has shown certain limitations to the great good vaccination brings, and made clear that in some few cases evils have resulted from vaccination, it has also proved that such, cases are infinitesimal as compared with the number of people vaccinated, and it has indicated how these misadventures may be avoided. I have been repeatedly asked what I have to say of the evidence of certain exports—distinguished men—who gave evidence against vaccination before the Royal Commission. Well, Sir, this is eminently a question of authority, but it is quite possible to pin faith on the wrong person; and I think none of us will be disposed to place the names of those scientific gentlemen who gave evidence before the Commission in opposition to such names as Lord Lister, Sir James Paget, and Lord Herschel, who was chairman of the Commission, was trained in weighing evidence, and who was so thoroughly convinced of the value of vaccination that he thought there could be no question about it. The dissentient report of the Commission showed great ingenuity in the manipulation of figures, and I only wish that ingenuity had been expended on a better cause. The dissentients went into the question prejudiced, and were not likely to alter their minds by any amount of evidence. Finally, Sir, I trust the Measure proposed by my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board may, in some degree, have the good results expected from it, and may further the practice of vaccination, which most scientific men consider one of the most beneficent of discoveries. It is injurious to the Commonwealth when ignorance takes the form of opposition to the teachings of science, and it is lamentable to reflect that, so long as public knowledge lags behind, the wise and prudent must suffer from the ignorance of those who know no better. It is especially lamentable when innocent children must suffer from the ignorance and prejudice of their parents.

My hon. Friend, the Member for the Ilkeston Division, in his speech criticising the Bill, does not—as I understand—agree with a single clause of the Bill, and is dead against the fundamental principle of the Bill; and yet he tells us he is going to vote for the Second Reading. The hon. Member for Edinburgh and St. Andrew's Universities did all in his power to damn the Bill with faint praise. I regret that the right hon. Gentleman who has charge of this Bill was not more explicit in opening the Debate. In discussing a great Measure like this—and it is a great Measure—the House wants to know, in the first place, what it is going to cost the local authorities to carry it out, and whether the taxpayers or the ratepayers are going to pay the cost. The House may be pretty certain that if people are to have the choice, as this Bill gives them the choice, of being vaccinated at a public institution or a private house, they will prefer to be vaccinated in a private house, and will not go to a public institution. That is perfectly certain. And how is the cost to be met? There is no indication in the Bill whether we are going to have a Government grant to cover the cost, or whether it will come out of the rates and taxes. Another very important point is that the Bill does not in any way deal with the question of who is to administer or put the law in force. The recommendations of the Vaccination Commission, which sat for seven years, and took evidence on all aspects of this question, are not in any way carried out by the proposals of this Bill. The Commission stated that there were other things to be done besides vaccination for stamping out small-pox. They also recommended a complete system of compulsory notification, but there is not a word in this Bill about that. They recommended immediate hospital isolation, but again there is not a word of that in this Bill. They also reported in favour of better sanitation. If sanitation had nothing to do with small-pox, yet these very able gentlemen, who had been considering this question for years, clearly thought it had. But there was not a word in the Bill about improved sanitation. A few years ago, I was as strongly in favour of vaccination as anybody in this House, but a perusal of the Government Reports raised doubts in my mind; and I am beginning now to believe that we are at the wrong end of this question, and that sanitation, isolation, and cleanliness in the habits of the people will do more to destroy small-pox than vaccination. The hon. Baronet, who has just sat down, has referred to Gloucester. I myself visited Gloucester after the epidemic, and will tell the House what I saw with my own eyes. The drainage in this city of 40,000 people went into the river Severn, below the bridge. There was a tide which took this drainage five or six miles beyond a pumping station, which pumped the water from the Severn into the mains, and the people of Gloucester were washing themselves with and were drinking this contaminated water. The hon. Member for Gloucester is present, and if I am wrong he will be able to contradict me.

It is not the case that water was pumped from the Severn for drinking purposes.

The water pumped from the Severn was the ordinary drinking water. That is what I was told. This went on for five or six months. The Government Report on the epidemic, signed by Dr. Sydney Copeland, states that in the month of August "a most mysterious thing occurred." A small-pox epidemic continued from January or February till August. There were 122 cases in July, and in August the epidemic had absolutely ceased—Dr. Copeland says "mysteriously ceased." But Dr. Copeland ought to have inquired what was the nature of this mystery. The explanation was most simple. In the month of July the city of Gloucester opened new waterworks, and the whole city had a good, wholesome supply of water. Immediately that was done the epidemic "mysteriously ceased." Another very extraordinary thing is that, according to Dr. Copeland's report, 190 re-vaccinated persons in Gloucester took the small-pox. We have understood, up to the present time, that a person re-vaccinated was safe for the remainder of his life, or, at least, for a number of years; but here were 190 persons who took small-pox only a, mouth or two after re-vaccination. Then we have the case of Middlesbrough, which, I believe, has the largest percentage of vaccinated persons of any town in the United Kingdom. Yet in Middlesbrough there has been a very serious rise in the rate of small-pox. With regard to the Bill before the House, it is a Measure that will please nobody. It is not a good Bill for Leicester, and Leicester will have nothing to do with it. The Commission on Vaccination reported that they wished to see a less severe law put into force more uncompromisingly than at present could be done. But how is that going to work at Leicester, or at any other town where there is a majority of the guardians against compulsory vaccination? This is how I understand it is going to work, First, the persons will be summoned before the magistrate, and then there may be an adjournment, and a medical man will be sent to the house to try and persuade the Parents to have their children vaccinated. If that is not successful, the parents will appear a second time before the magistrates, and there will be another adjournment until there is a conviction, causing people who object to vaccination a considerable loss of work. The objectors can be fined to the extent of £1, and if they decline to pay, they can be imprisoned, precisely in the same way as under the present law. The only difference is that once fined or imprisoned they cannot be fined or imprisoned again. But the law can be so administered that they can be punished almost indefinitely by the loss of work, as the result of constant adjournments of the hearing. They recommend it on those lines. They say it would conduce to increase vaccination if any scheme could be devised which would preclude an attempt—"Preclude an attempt!" This is merely "an attempt" to get the people vaccinated. They recommend that we should preclude any attempt to compel those who are honestly opposed to the practice to submit their children to vaccination. Now, there are a great number of people who do so object, and they are growing in this country, and they will continue to grow if legislation, of this kind is not repealed, and unless legislation is made absolutely free on the lines of the recommendation of the Committee—from for those to have the benefit of vaccination who consider it beneficial, and free for those who honestly believe that they are injuring their children, and the future lives of their children, by having them vaccinated. That is what is really wanted by the country—doing away with these repeated penalties and with imprisonment. Now, what is it that this Bill proposes? Lock at Clause 4. I have already explained how it will work. A man can be had up any number of times before the magistrates and fined. [The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD: No, no! That is wrong, unless he has been previously convicted.] Unless he has been previously convicted, Exactly. The magistrate can adjourn the case any number of times until he is convicted. Thai is the point. There are in this Act provisions against what is called repeated penalties; but there are no provisions against repeated penalties against anyone who has been had up repeatedly before the magistrates. The real question at issue between us in the country and here in this House is, whether we are to continue the old system, and, perhaps, almost the last, of the old and worn-out systems of imprisonment and fines for those who have a conscientious opinion, rightly or wrongly held, and held firmly by people who believe that they have control of their own bodies and of their children, and that they should not allow the State or anybody else to tell them what they should do with their bodies or with their children. It is a question of the freedom of parents, to do what they think right with their children—freedom of conscientious opinion, freedom from imprisonment and fine. Mr. Speaker, as this Bill does not carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission, and does not do away with imprisonment for conscientious belief in this country, at the end of the Nineteenth century, I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to second the Amendment of the right hon. Member for the Chesterfield Division of Derbyshire. It is not my intention to travel over again the ground of the hon. Gentleman opposite who has spoken in favour of this Bill, because my knowledge of vaccination is only limited to my own experience as a poor law guardian in the East End of London, and I am one of those guardians who absolutely refused to carry out the present Acts of Parliament dealing with vaccination. Although medical men, from their point of view, may state that the decrease of small-pox is due to vaccination, on the other hand, I, as a layman myself, claim that that is absolutely wrong. For the last five years the Mile End Board of Guardians have refused to carry out the Vaccination Act, and with what result? In 1893, we had 116 cases and 8 deaths; in 1894 we had 42 cases and 4 deaths; in 1895 we had 49 cases and 1 death; in 1896 we had 1 case and no death, and in 1897 we had no cases at all. Well, now, that is a demonstrative proof that vaccination, so far as its compulsory character is concerned, has absolutely failed. Some hon. Members may smile, but these are figures which I challenge them to dispute. There has been a decrease in the deaths of children under the age of 12 months, and for seven years past the average of these deaths has been less for the whole of London, although the death-rate in the East End is higher as a rule. The people of Mile End are strongly opposed to vaccination, and when candidates come forward for the Poor-Law Board of Guardians, let them label themselves Liberal or Tory, they absolutely stand no earthly chance of being elected unless they are opposed to compulsory vaccination. The effect of the attitude of the Mile End Board of Guardians upon this question has been to convert the boards in the adjoining districts of Bethnal Green, St. George's in the East, Poplar, and Whitechapel; and those boards to-day are absolutely refusing to carry out the compulsory Vaccination Acts. In 1895 the small-pox broke out in the Salvation Army shelter in Whitechapel. In that case, the Local Government Board sent one of their officials down to the Mile End Board asking them to open their vaccination station at hours apart from the certified hours. But what happened? What reply did the Mile End Board of Guardians give to the official sent down by the Local Government Board? Why, Sir, they absolutely refused to open the station. It was at the period of the water famine at the East End of London, and we said to the official of the Local Government Board, "What we want is not vaccination, but water in the East End of London," with the result that the epidemic did not spread, but very soon disappeared. We have in Mile End to-day, Sir, 16,000 children unvaccinated, and out of 13 deaths that have occurred during the last five years four were of children who were not vaccinated. If any hon. Members dispute my authority, I have here, Sir, the certificate of death of one of those children, whose death was laid to the door of vaccination, and not to their want of vaccination. In the whole of East London we have 25,131 children who were born during the year 1896 in the ten Parliamentary divisions of East London, and out of that number only 7,980 were vaccinated. Now, however much medical men may sneer as to the reason of the decreasing population, so far as the sanitary point of view is concerned, I claim that it is due to the Public Health Act dealing with London, and passed by this House in 1891, that small-pox has decreased. The reason for that Act coming into force—and, mark you, I speak with regard to the poor law guardians as a member of a district vestry—was that the vestries were largely manipulated by the house-mongers of the district, whose sole object was to evade our sanitary laws, and the sanitary inspectors were practically given over to them. It was not until that Act came into operation that we were able to compel our local authorities to carry out the Sanitary Acts, with the result, which is due to those Acts being in operation, that small-pox is practically a thing of the past, so far as London itself is concerned. [An HON. MEMBER: Who passed those Acts?] I do not say who passed those Acts—this House passed them. But, Sir, while hon. Members opposite are so willing to take credit for passing the Act of 1891, one hon. Member, in his speech this afternoon, practically accused the working class of being open to bribery, so far as vaccination is concerned. What did the hon. Member opposite say? He stated that in France when working men were offered a few sous to have their children vaccinated they had them vaccinated. But the workmen of this country, who go to prison rather than have their children vaccinated, are not the men to be tempted by the bribe of a few sons. But as a matter of fact, Sir, we have had fewer cases of small-pox of late than we had for two hundred years, and yet the Vaccination Acts have not been enforced. Isolation, in conjunction with sanitary arrangements, has been the means of preventing epidemics of small-pox in this country. But, Sir, if the right hon. Member who introduced this Bill into the House of Commons this afternoon had the courage of his opinions—he believes either in the principle of vaccination, or he does not believe in it—if he believes in the principle of vaccination why does he not have the courage of his own opinions and not add one penalty and put the law into force if a man will not have his child vaccinated? If, however, he does not believe in the principle of compulsory vaccination, then why introduce this Bill into the House at all. It is wrong in principle and bad in practice. It has failed, Sir, in its objects in the past, and upon this Measure medical men themselves differ in opinion upon this question as much as lawyers do upon Acts of Parliament that have been passed through this House. I feel certain that nothing will satisfy the great majority of the population outside this House but the total abolition of the compulsory Vaccination Acts. And what is more, Sir, it is—like other Measures brought forward by Gentlemen on the opposite Bench—class legislation. Because a workman cannot afford to put his band into his pocket and pay one or two pounds in the shape of a fine, the result is that he has to go to prison, and going to prison means, perhaps, loss of his employment, which brings suffering upon his wife and family. Bui it is easy for a rich man to put his hand into his pocket and pay as many pounds as the law demands of him as a fine. For these reasons, Sir, I hope the House will reject this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, the Government have no cause to complain of the manner in which this Debate has been conducted, or of the hon. Member, or his friends, for, so far as I have been able to judge, the House, with the exception of the mover and seconder of the Amendment—so far as I have been able to collect its opinion upon this subject, while the Bill has been subjected to natural and proper criticism, it appears to me to have met with a very considerable amount of general support. Sir, the hon. Member who moved the Amendment complained greatly of me because, as he said, I had made no speech at the beginning of the Debate this afternoon, and because he was left in perfect ignorance as to how the expense of this Bill was to be paid—whether it was to be paid by loan, or grant, or out of the rates—and because I had not said a word about the questions of notification and hospital isolation. May I be permitted, Sir, to say that I had already stated on one occasion that the cost of this Measure would be met precisely as the cost of vaccination has been met in the past? With regard to notification, the hon. Member, I think, can hardly be aware of the practice in respect to notification at the present time. Of course, notification would be given under the Notification of Diseases Act. That Act is compulsory in the metropolis at the present moment. It is true that it is optional in other districts in the country, but what are the facts with regard to those very districts? The Act is practically in force at the present time with regard io 28,000,000 out of the whole population of 29,000,000 in this country. Again, Sir, with regard to the compulsory provisions for hospital isolation, under the Public Health Act the local authorities may provide—and can provide, if it is so desired—hospitals for that purpose now. Under the Isolation Hospitals Act it is the fact that county councils everywhere at the present moment have absolute power to form districts, and to require the provisions of that Act to be put in force subject to certain restrictions. The hon. Member was very anxious to know what would be the cost. He said there would be a great deal more work under the Bill, and there must be more remuneration for the officers employed, and, consequently, the cost of the Measure would be greatly increased. Well, Sir, I have looked into that question, and perhaps I may take this opportunity of saving a word with regard to the increased remuneration of the officers who are to be employed, for that is a subject upon which they will naturally take very great interest. Now, as to remuneration, both vaccination officers and public vaccinators and subject at present, and they will be in the future also, to the approval of the Local Government Board. Their duties will be increased to same extent, no doubt, and I quite recognise that there must be some alteration in their remuneration. What I propose is this: that both classes of these officers shall be remunerated in future by two methods. First, by a payment, based on the number of births, to cover all their general duties; and, secondly, by a payment in each case for successful vaccination. To encourage this—and we think it very desirable to encourage it as far as is possible—we consider that the fees for the latter duty should be higher than those for the former. With regard to the amount of those fees, in the first place, it is a matter, we conceive, for arrangement between the local authorities and the officers themselves whom they employ; and it is subject in all cases to alteration and to approval by us at the Local Government Board. Circumstances, of course, vary greatly in different districts of the country, and in all those districts peculiar circumstances must be taken into consideration. In addition to this, under the system of awards which exists at present, and which will also be continued in the future, there will be the award which is certified at the present time by the Local Government Board, and which is paid by the county councils, and which is not to exceed, under the existing law, one shilling in the case of each successful vaccination. Well, now, with regard to the cost of all these operations, I have looked into this matter, and what I find is this: I do not wish to delay the House, for I know there are other hon. Members who desire to speak, longer than I can help, but I find that the amount raised by public rates in the country at the present time is practically a sum of about £35,000,000 of money, and the whole cost of vaccination expenses at the present time is £78,000 a year. Now, if the cost of vaccination is doubled—and I think that is extremely unlikely—it would amount to an addition of less than half a farthing in the pound on the rateable value, and even if it were trebled it would be less than a farthing. Well, now, Sir, I pass from that question for a moment only to others which have been raised by hon. Members. What I have to say is this: that the absolute efficacy of vaccination for the prevention and mitigation of small-pox appears to me to have been absolutely demonstrated by the experience, not only of this country,, but by the experience of the world. Take, for instance, Germany, which has been spoken of this afternoon by the hon. Gentleman opposite, the Member for the Ilkeston Division. By the Report of the Commission which has recently sat, it is shown that they have gone fully into this question, if anything more were needed, and, after the interesting speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh University to which we have listened this, afternoon, I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Member will acquit me of anything in the nature of discourtesy if I decline to enter into any argument upon the subject. The hon. Member appears, however, to be under a complete misapprehension as to the working and operation of the Bill, and, therefore, it may perhaps be convenient to the House, and very desirable, that I should say just a word or two, as briefly as I can, upon what will be the procedure to be adopted under the new regulations. Now, in the first place, the registrar—I am speaking now of compulsory vaccination as opposed to the existing system—in the first place, the registrar of births and deaths at the time of a birth gives information to the parents as to his or her duty with regard to vaccination. He also gives, at the same time a list of births to the vaccination officer, and it will become, under this Bill, the duty of the parent to have the child vaccinated within twelve months from that time. The parents may employ either a private or a public vaccinator, as they please. If the parent requires the attendance of the Public Vaccinator his duty will be to give notice of the time at which he will attend; and whichever officer is employed, if he vaccinates successfully, his duty is to send a certificate to that effect to the vaccination officer, who already has the list of births, and by comparing that list with the certificates which he receives, he will be able to ascertain at once who has, and who has not, been vaccinated. If the parent has employed neither the one nor the other officer by the end of nine months, then it becomes the duty of the Public Vaccinator to call at the residence of the parents and to offer to vaccinate the child, giving due notice of the time at which he will do so. I have heard it said that the home of the parents is to be invaded against their will, but there is no provision and no intention whatever of that sort contained in this Measure. The duty of the vaccinator is to present himself and to offer to vaccinate the child, if it is desired, and is thought convenient that he should do so. Then, if at the end of twelve months, the Public Vaccinator having duly made this offer, the child has not been vaccinated, then the parent will become liable to prosecution, but the Public Vaccinator must give notice before taking any proceedings. Now, I may also mention that, under the powers which we possess already, we propose in future to make it the duty of the vaccination officer to institute the necessary proceedings. That will be a change from the present practice with regard to vaccination to which I, for one, attach very considerable importance. [Mr. BAYLEY That is not in the Bill.] I said under the powers which we possess already. The hon. Member does not appear to be aware that under past Acts of Parliament the Local Government Board possesses powers of the very widest description. It will also be the duty of the public vaccination officer to take proceedings for the enforcement of the second penalty if it should be necessary for him to do so. Something has been said about the difficulty in connection with removals, in consequence of the age being postponed to twelve months, but it will be part of the vaccination officer's duty to make every inquiry as to these removals, and to ascertain the districts to which the removal has been made.

Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to state who pays for these prosecutions?

They are paid for out of the rates. They are paid for by the local authorities who take these proceedings. Of course, if they do not take them, there is nothing to pay. If they do, the cost is paid by those who take the proceedings. I think I have now said sufficient with regard to the procedure under the Bill. Now, Sir, I turn to what is, to me, a much more agreeable subject.

Will the right hon. Gentleman explain whether the new vaccination officer will have power to take proceedings without the authority of the Guardians?

Certainly, unquestionably, under the regulations we propose to make.

Then the ratepayers will be called upon to pay the cost?

Of course they will. Now, Sir, I come to the speech of the hon. Member for the Ilkeston Division. The hon. Gentleman was good enough to express very considerable approval of the Bill, but he also dealt with some omissions in the Bill to which he referred, and I think it will be convenient if I take the omissions to which, he referred first. And, first, he dealt with the question of re-vaccination. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman in the importance which he attaches to re-vaccination. I should have been glad myself to have included provisions for re-vaccination in this Bill, but I am still more desirous than I am of doing that of getting the present Bill passed into law during the present Session, and I frankly own that I had some fears as to whether, if I were to overload the Bill with an unnecessary number of new provisions, I might fail altogether in my primary object. With regard to re-vaccination, the evidence and experience of Germany has been very remarkable, but on one point it appeared to me that the Member for the Ilkeston Division was not quite consistent, because, while holding up to us the example of Germany, he was opposed to a continuance of compulsion. The hon. Member forgot that those very remarkable and striking results in Germany had been obtained under a system of compulsory vaccination. Then, sir, the hon. Member was in favour of some further provision, I think, for the inspection of children when they enter school. In that way the hon. Member thought that children might be inspected. To both of these I attach quite as much importance as the hon. Gentleman does himself. I do not know that it might not be possible to make some additions of this sort. Then I come to the question of private practitioners, and there I am perfectly well aware that a recommendation was made by the Royal Commission to the effect that private practitioners should receive fees for every successful operation of vaccination which they performed. The hon. Gentleman asked me to put large powers in the Bill in Committee in order to check the inefficiency of a great deal of vaccination that goes on now. Well, Sir, I say that any recommendation coming from the hon. Gentleman—knowing, as I do, how large his experience is—will be received by me with the greatest consideration, and in that respect I shall be glad to reconsider the position, and anything which, he may suggest. But, at the same time, I am bound to point out that there are very considerable difficulties in connection with this proposal, some of which, I think, may have escaped his attention. In the first place, it is not the practice in Scotland to-day as he suggests, and the whole object I had in view in promoting this Measure was to assimilate the practice as much as possible in England to that of Scotland. Then, again, I do not understand why a burden should be imposed upon the rates which has hitherto been, I may say even cheerfully, borne by the people themselves. Again, there are practical difficulties. In the first place, the work of all public vaccinators is carried on under the direct regulations and supervision of the Local Government Board, and their work is rigidly inspected in order that it may be ascertained as to whether those regulations have been strictly adhered to. If they have not been, and the work is improperly done, the practitioner guilty of that improper work will be dismissed by the Board. But it is impossible that we should have any such control over the private practitioners in the country, who number no less than 21,000. The work of all those 21,000 private practitioners would have to be inspected. That is a difficulty of a practical character which I am afraid it will be very difficult to get over. Now, Sir, I come next to the points in the Bill, of which the hon. Gentleman was good enough to approve. I do not think I need say anything with regard to the new lymph which it is proposed to use in the future. That appears to have met with general approval on the part of everyone who has considered the subject. On the question of age the hon. Gentleman thinks that the advantages, on the whole, of the age proposed by this Bill, outweigh the objections. I know that some people prefer that the age should be six months, and perhaps I may be permitted to say a word upon that point. My inclination, I admit, in the first instance, was to assimilate the practice in England to the practice in Scotland. In Scotland the ago is six months, but then I found there was this objection to make the ago six months in England. At present the stations in nearly every case—certainly in the cases of the rural districts—are attended only half-yearly, and, consequently, the vaccination of children who happen to attain the present age of three months, at a time when there is no station attendance, is necessarily postponed till next half-year, which takes them up to the ago of nine months, and I am advised that the proportion of these children is very considerable indeed—certainly one-half, and more probably two-thirds of the whole; and, therefore, to have made the ago in the Bill six months would have been to curtail in many cases a very considerable proportion of the time, which, I think, would not have been desirable. The main reasons, of course, for extending the age are the reasons which have been given by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House, and in regard to which I entirely concur with them, and upon the whole I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages which have been pointed out. For that reason I have put that age into the Bill. Then, in regard to the question of stational vaccination, which, I understand, is, upon the whole, approved of by the hon. Gentleman, he urged upon me a point which, I think, is well worthy of consideration, and which I may assure him I have not forgotten. He said, "Do not get rid of the stational vaccination altogether, because there are times and occasions when it will be of the greatest possible use." What I want to point out is this. Stational vaccination is only abandoned in this sense—that it will cease to be compulsory, and children will no longer be required to attend for the purpose of having lymph taken out of their arms and used again for others. But there is nothing in the present Bill, and there is no evidence of any intention on my part to prevent the guardians from still making use of stational vaccination, if they find it to be preferred, whenever they desire. As a matter of fact, we always know that when there is an epidemic of small-pox there is a rush of the population to be vaccinated at once, and we contemplate, especially in populous districts, that stational vaccination will be made use of in the future under circumstances like that, and I shall be only too glad and too ready to listen to any other suggestion upon that point. Now, Sir, I come to the question which I think is the last upon which I shall have to trouble the House—namely, the question of repeated penalties, which, so far as we know, are still the subject of such acute differences of opinion. Upon this point there appears to be a very general misapprehension in the minds of a large section of the public—sometimes in the minds of people who, I think, ought to know better. I have seen it stated, and commonly stated—I do not know whether it has been stated to-night in this House, but I want to take this opportunity of correcting it—that anybody, by paying a trilling fee upon one occasion, can purchase exemption from the operation of the Bill. That is quite a mistake. Whether the fine to be imposed is going to be trumpery or not is a matter which rests entirely with the magistrates, over whom, of course, I have no control whatever; but, as a matter of fact, all the defaulters will be liable under this Bill to two different prosecutions. Under two clauses of the Act of 1867 the same state of things exists. Under both of those clauses defaulters can be penalised. The first of those is Section 79, under which a parent who neglects to vaccinate his child will be liable to a penalty, and the second is Section 31. Under Section 31, if a registrar or an officer of the Board of Guardians informs a magistrate that he has reason to believe that a child in the union under 14 years of age has not been successfully vaccinated, the magistrate may summon the parent of the child then and there, and he can make an order directing the vaccination of the child within a certain time. If that is not done, then the parent becomes liable to another prosecution and penalty, and this kind of order, under the present law, may be repeated again and again ad infinitum. Defaulters, therefore, under the Bill will be liable to two prosecutions and two penalties for neglecting vaccination, but, under the Bill as proposed, the repetition of these orders, which can be made without limitation at the present time, will be prohibited in the future. That is the exact position under the Bill, which I thought perhaps it was desirable to explain. I am quite aware that in some quarters, at all events—although that aspect of the Bill has not been criticised here to-night, but from a great variety of different quarters very much information has reached me—this proposal in the bill repealing the imposition of repeated penalties has met with a great amount of disapproval, and I am prepared to make this admission: that if the system of repeated penalties has been effectual in securing the vaccination of children whose parents object to it, then I admit that there would be a great deal to be said for its retention. But I am afraid there are a great deal too many records which show that, so far from succeeding, the effect of that system of repented penalties has been rather of an opposite character. I do not think it can be denied by anyone who considers this question dispassionately that one result, at all events, of this repetition of penaltes has been to make martyrs of a number of—certainly I think very misguided, but at the same time very well-meaning—people, and to excite an amount of antagonism and direct hostility to the whole system of vaccination which I do not think myself would over have existed without that incentive. Then, again, whenever this question of repeated penalties has been the subject of any public inquiry by any responsible body they have always been, unanimous in support of its repeal. There was a Committee which sat in the year 1871. They reported unanimously in that sense, although Parliament has never thought fit, until now, to give effect to their recommendation. Then again, there was a Royal Commission which has recently reported, and so strongly were they of that opinion that no less than six years ago they took an opportunity of making an ad interim report in which they made a unanimous recommendation for its repeal. In addition to that there is a letter very well known which was addressed to the Board of Guardians—I forget how many years ago, I think it was in 1872—but it made recommendations to the Board of Guardians, and this letter has been repeated over and over again since then, and praccally in the same direction. Well, Sir, it seems to me that it would have required very strong and convincing reasons to justify me in setting aside this weight of authority upon this particular point, and I do not find any such reasons whatever in any arguments which have been addressed to me hitherto. If it was simply a question as to whether vaccination should be enforced or not, and if it was certain that the retention of the repealed penalties would ensure this enforced vaccination, then I should not have a doubt myself on the subject, and I should have retained the system of repeated penalties; but this cannot be so, and it certainly is not borne out by our experience; and what we have now to consider, in my opinion, is whither or not the system of repeated penalties would or would not be most likely to bring about that antagonism to the principle of vaccination of which I have already spoken. This is a question which I admit is fairly open to argument, but, giving the subject the best consideration in my power, I have come to the conclusion that the balance of argument, and certainly the balance of authority, is in favour of the proposal which I have made, and therefore. I have inserted it in the Bill. Now, Sir, I come to the question which is raised by my Friend the Member for Ilkeston. Now he, on the one hand, complains because the Bill does not go much farther than this, and does not accept the other recommendation which was made by the Royal Commission. The Royal Commission, he says, has killed compulsion. He says you cannot compel vaccination, because one-fifth of the representative authorities in the country are entirely opposed to compulsory vaccination. The local authorities would not carry out the principle, and, therefore, my hon. Friend says you had better accept the position and acknowledge that you are much better without compulsion. Well, Sir, in the first place, I would say with respect to this that I am not altogether without hope, and very considerable hope, that with an improved and amended Bill like that which I have endeavoured to lay before the House, containing proposals which will entirely alter the present system—which removes many grievous objections to vaccination, and which gives great facilities for vaccination—much of the opposition to vaccination may, and very probably will, die out in the future, and that we shall find that the local authorities throughout the country are prepared to enforce it much more readily than they have been in the past. But there are two other reasons why I do not like to accept this proposal. In the great majority of cases where people neglect vaccination, it arises from indolence, from carelessness, and from other causes on the part of people, rather than from any rooted opposition to the practice. ["No, no!" from the Opposition.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite say "No, no!" but I have taken great pains to obtain all the information which is possible, and which is in my power, upon the subject, and I believe I am stating a fact which is absolutely accurate. All such cases as those I have mentioned will be met and provided for by the Bill as it stands at present. There is another reason—and I will be perfectly frank—there is an active and powerful body of men at the present moment who desire the total repeal of the vaccination laws, and I am glad to see that I am borne out in that statement by the limited number of Members on the other side of the House. I repeat, there is an active and powerful body of men who desire the total repeal of the vaccination laws, and who are zealously working to procure their abolition altogether. Well, Sir, with their powerful organisation, with their zealous and restless energy, nothing in the world would be simpler than to arrange for conscientious objections to be presented by the thousand. But what I am afraid of is this: if I accepted the proposition of the hon. Member for Ilkestion, we should see in a very short time, in a number of large districts throughout the country, that vaccination would be done away with altogether. I have no wish whatever to raise any argumentative contentions, but I must have different arguments to these which have been advanced in favour of this proposition which have been submitted to me as yet, before they could make a convert of me upon this particular point; and I, for one, should not be disposed to encourage, in any way what's ever, vaccination becoming a dead better. I am as strongly convinced as any Member of this House that vaccination is an absolute necessity, and is to the best interest of the community as a whole, and I think it would be nothing short of a national calamity if it fell into anything like general disuse. So long as I am responsible for the conduct of the vaccination laws nothing will induce me to sanction, or to suffer, anything of the kind. What is the best mode of enforcing then may, I admit, remain to be proved in the future. I honestly believe myself that the course I have adopted is the right one. If it fails, which I do not and will not and cannot believe. I should not hesitate for a moment, again and again if it were necessary, to ask for any additional powers that were needed to enforce vaccination throughout the country. It seems to me I have same right to hope, some ground for believing, that no such powers will be required. In the Bill which the Government has introduced we have done our utmost to remove, on the one had, every legitimate grievance and every possible objection that can be and has hitherto been raised: while, on the other hand, we have sought to provide, and especially for the poorer classes of the country—and I absolutely deny that this is a question between the rich and the poor—facilities with regard to vaccination which have never been enjoyed before. It must also be remembered that when this Bill becomes law we shall have assimilated the practice in England as nearly as possible to the practice in Scotland, where vaccination has never been at any there the difficulty that it has sometimes been with us. Why am I to suppose that under these circumstances, when the people in England and Wales have been placed in a position of similar advantage to the people of Scotland, that they are going to be less reasonable, or less sensible, than their fellow countrymen and friends on the other side of the Border? It would be an insult to their intelligence if I were to do so, and until the contrary is proved I shall decline altogether to believe it. Sir, I ask the sanction of Parliament to this Bill, because I am persuaded that it is conceived in the best interests of the whole population of the country, and especially of its poorer classes; and it is in that spirit that I commend it to the judgment of the House of Commons, and I earnestly hope that the House of Commons will allow it to be read a second time this afternoon.

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, has, in the course of his speech, made an announcement of the first importance to which the attention of the House, and of the county, ought to be at once emplatically called. The right hon. Gentleman has told the House that, by the rule-making power which he possesses under the existing Act, it is his intention, as part of the effect of this Bill, to authorise in each district the vaccination officer to commence prosecutions without the authority of the local guardians. Sir, I think I am not exaggeration when I say that the country will regard that announcement with amazement. Speaking for myself, that announcement opens, to my mind, a prospect which I cannot contemplate without serious alarm. What does it mean? Hon. Gentleman who laught do not appear to me to appreciate the gravity of the situation. I will endeavour to enlighten them. What does it mean? It means that in Leicester, and in Mile End—respecting which my hon. Friend spoke so well a little while ago—and in many other parts of the country which I might mention, where the local feeling is absolutely opposed to vaccination, and where that local feeling is at the present moment represented by the guardians, and where the guardians, as I think, very properly give effect to that local feeling—by the fiat of the right hon. Gentleman an officer of the guardians is to intervene, not only without the authority of the guardians, but, in spite of the express instructions of the guardians, is to commence prosecutions. Sir, I am glad that that announcement has 'been made before the Second Reading of the Bill. Voting now for the second reading of this Bill will mean something very different from what voting for the second reading of the Bill would have meant before the announcement was made by the right hon. Gentleman. A vote now—and let every hon. Member clearly understand this—in support of the second reading of this Bill will mean that the hon. Member who gives it endorses the announcement of the policy which the right hon. Gentleman has made. The cheers are not so loud now from the other side, I think, as they were a moment ago. Very well, then. I will appeal from the House to the country, and I certainly think the answer of the country will be very different from that which hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to anticipate. Now, Sir, this announcement emphasises the insidious character of one clause of this Bill, Clause 2, which, under the plausible pretext of making provision against repeated penalties, really asks the House of Commons to set its seal, and its sanction, upon prosecuting parents who have conscientious objections to the vaccination of their children. It is perfectly true that if you pass that clause you are preventing a parent being prosecuted more than twice, but you are at this time of day, giving the seal of your approval to the prosecution twice over of a parent who has conscientious objections to vaccination. The effect of it will be really to sharpen that weapon of oppression which has become a little dull of late. May I turn for a moment to the comic side of this clause? The vaccination law is professedly a law of public health, and the usual type of punishment for a violation of a law of public health is, in the first place, a certain penalty for the original offence, and then an additional penalty for every day during which the offence is continued; or, in other words, obstinacy in resisting the law is regarded as a serious aggravation of the original offence. But this Bill is contrary to every principle of sound criminal jurisprudence, and contrary, in particular, to the practice which is now becoming happily established in our criminal courts. This Bill strikes down the first offender, while it allows the habitual offender to go free and triumphant. It does seem to me that that is a most ridiculous result. Now, may I refer for a moment to Clause 1, Sub-section 3, of this Bill? As I read this Bill a condition precedent to liability to prosecution will be the offer, and the refusal of vaccination from glycerinated calf lymph. This is a penal statute, and with a penal statute everything ought to be definite and precise; but here I would submit that it is really trifling with Parliament to ask it to introduce into a penal Statute such a term as "glycerinated calf lymph" without any scientific definition, and, indeed, without any definition at all of the nature of glycerinated calf lymph. There is not a word as to the ingredients of the lymph or as to the preparation of it. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney General what is the meaning of glycerinated calf lymph within the meaning of the Bill. Nobody heard of it until six or seven years ago, and six or seven years hence glycerinated calf lymph will follow all its predecessors of empirical compounds into the limbo of oblivion. As a climax of folly, the right hon. Gentleman, as he told us the other day, has made arrangements with the Medical Institute of Preventive Medicine for a supply of this calf lymph. [The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD: I said nothing of the kind.] The right hon. Gentleman said he had made arrangements with the authorities of the Medical Institute of Preventive Medicine for the supply—[The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD: No, I did not. I said I had made arrangements to obtain the necessary premises for its supply.] Are we to under stand that there are to be simply relations as between landlord and tenant between the Government and the Institute of Preventive Medicine? There is something far more than such relations between these two bodies. Really, I presume the Medical Institute of Preventive Medicine is to supply this lymph, or is to be in some way responsible for it. That certainly is an arrangement which I do not like. If there is one body which is unpopular and distrusted by the people of London it is the Medical Institute of Preventive Medicine, and yet this Institute is to take some part—what part the right hon. Gentleman will not explain—in regard to the supply of this lymph. I think that is an arrangement which will not generally commend itself. Now, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman alluded to the existence of a body of men in this country—with whom I may say I have no connection—who he said were seeking to repeal entirely our vaccination laws. Sir, if there is one thing which will give additional strength to the efforts of these men it will be the passing of this Bill, which the right hon. Gentleman has put before the country, because after all the proposal to repeal the penalties is only a compromise. It is a compromise, I say, and must be taken as such. But if that compromise is not accepted, then I say that the body to which the right hon. Gentleman refers will receive a large number of adherents, because others who do not at present belong to take the offensive and to carry the war into the enemy's country, and the question will be fought as to whether it is right that public money should be lavishly spent for a purpose, the usefulness of which has never been proved, and which at every stage of its history has been put forth on the community under cover of promises, which in all cases have been broken. Before I sit down I want to refer to some observations made by two distinguished medical gentlemen, one speaking from this side of the House and the other form the opposite side. I do not think the medical profession will thank either the hon. Member for Ilkeston Division or the hon. Baronet the Member for the Universities of Edinburgh, and St. Andrews for the references made to the members of their own profession. The hon. Member for Ilkeston charged the members of his own profession with making sham operation, with pretending to vaccinate children, and actually giving certificates under their hand, if not under their seals, that the children had been vaccinated, when, as a matter of fact, it was all a sham. Does not that open out an alarming prospect? It is admitted on both sides that it is common ground that vaccination is a dedicate operation, the safety of which depends entirely upon the conscientious discharge of his duties by the medical man operating. And yet we are told by a very distinguished member of the profession that there are many men who carry out sham operations in order to support the system. He said such cases disturbed the statistics—one or two cases would not disturb the statistics—and I say it is a very serious thing for the hon. Member to bring such a charge against the members of his own profession. The hon. Baronet the Member for the Universities said that he stood aghast at the risks which they ran in vaccinating in the days of his youth. Yes, Sir, in the days of the youth of the hon. Baronet vaccination was supported in this House by just the same arguments as now, and the statement of anyone on these Benches who said in those days that we were running great risks would be denied then, as I presume it would be denied now. These statements made by such distinguished members of the profession will, I think, be taken to heart by the country, and they will make the country all the more determined that the system of compulsory vaccination shall no longer be continued.

The hon. Member who moved the rejection of this Bill made two statements regarding my constituency to which I desire to refer. The hon. Gentleman stated that the city of Gloucester was supplied with water from the Severn at a point where, owing to the tidal nature of the river, the sewerage of the city passed. He also stated that city of Gloucester was in a very bad state, and that the outbreak of small-pox was mainly due to the unsanitary state of the city. I most distinctly deny both these statements. For many years past Gloucester has not taken any supply of water from the Severn.

Do I understand the hon. Member to say that no water has been taken from the Severn?

Order, order! The hon. Member is now referring to what has been just stated.

I was just coming to the point to which the hon. Member refers. From my boyhood, 50 or 60 years ago, water has been obtained from two reservoirs, one at Robin's Wood Hill and the other at Witcombe. Some years ago, I think not later than 1891, during a draught in the summer, water was taken from the Seven, in order to supplement the supply from the reservoirs. I must tell the hon. Member and the House that, for the last seven or eight years, no water has been taken from the Severn for drinking purposes, and at the present moment there is an admirable supply in the city. As the horn Member has stated, the new waterworks were opened in July, 1896, and there is now, I believe, no city in England better supplied with water, and I can tell the House, on the authority, not only of Dr. Coupland, but also of Mr. Read, the city surveyor, that the drains of the city will compare favourably with those of any other city or town in England. The outbreak of small-pox in Gloucester, which caused the illness of not less than 2,000 out of 40,000 inhabitants, was in no way caused by the insanitary state of the city. The mortality was certainly very great, but of that mortality less than 10 per cent. were of the vaccinated or re-vaccinated class, whereas 40.8 per cent. died among the unvaccinated class. But the hon. Member stated that 190 persons who died had been vaccinated or re-vaccinated. Now I may state that, of that number, 86 were vaccinated within a fortnight of the small-pox attacking them, and before the effects of the vaccine could have any effect upon them. I apologise to the House for making this explanation, but I did it in justice to my constituents.

I move that the Debate do now adjourn.

Tills Bill is to give power to destroy certain documents relating to occurrences between the years 1690 and 1715, in order to remove the congestion in the Record Office, which is now very great. And it is desirable that there should be room for the storage of really valuable documents. The greatest care would be exercised that no valuable historical documents would be destroyed.

I would like to ask the Attorney General whether any of the records to be destroyed refer to Ireland?

Not that I am aware of, but I will make inquiries.

The more of these Irish records that are preserved the better.

I should like to know whether any of these documents refer to Scotland.

I will make inquiries.

I distinctly trust the right hon. Gentleman will give his attention to this matter. If the records refer to Scotland, they ought to be kept.

This Bill simply provides that any person who has already been consecrated and appointed need not be obliged to be consecrated a second time.

, in rising to call attention to the subject of public education, and to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is essential to a just and efficient system of National Education that there should be within reach of every child in England and Wales a public elementary school under local representative management, and that there should also be provided increased facilities for the training of teachers in colleges free from sectarian control"—

said: Mr. Speaker, in moving the Resolution which stands in my name on the Paper I shall come as quickly as possible to the facts of the case. I regret that the Government have not seen their way to grant a whole evening for the discussion of a question of such interest, especially at the present moment; but, fortunately, the facts of the case are substantially admitted. I shall, therefore, only state them briefly. First of all, we have 8,000 parishes in England and Wales, where the schools are managed exclusively by one sect. The aggregate population of these parishes amounts to 9,000,000. But that is not the whole case so far as area is concerned, because in several School Board districts you have a Church majority, with the result that they exercise their predominance upon the boards for the purpose of confining as much as possible the area of free and undenominational schools. This is the settled policy of the Church Party, and therefore I need not give instances. Instructions are frequently given to Churchmen to return as many Church candidates as possible to the School Boards, with a view to limit the number of Board schools, and to give a prior right to the Church Association to establish schools rather than to School Boards. The result, so far as half the population of this country is concerned, is that the only schools within reasonable access of the children are under the exclusive control of one sect, so far as management and the appointment of teachers are concerned. The case would not be such a grievous one if that sect were, like the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, practically the one large Christian denomination in the country, all other denominations, so far as numbers are concerned, being absolutely insignificant. But that is not the case. I find that the leading Nonconformist denominations have 1,900,000 communicants. The Church of England has only 1,778,351. The scholars and teachers in the Sunday schools of the Nonconformists number 3,375,791, and in the Sunday schools of the Church of England, according to their own books, 2,418,412. It will be seen that the Nonconformists have nearly a million more scholars than the Church of England, and yet more than half the day schools of the country are controlled by the sect which is in the minority, the whole of the teachers being drawn from that sect. In several of these 8,000 parishes the majority of the children attending the schools are children of Nonconformists. I find that in a private and confidential report, published by the National Society, Prebendary Richards, who represents the National Society in Bangor, states that 60 per cent. of the children attending schools in that diocese are the children of Dissenters. I think it will be fair to state, from the figures of the National Society, that 75 per cent. of the children attending the Church schools in Wales are the children of Dissenters. Well, now, what is the grievance? The first grievance is this, that in those schools the only religious instruction which is given to the children is instruction which is given in accordance with the principles of a faith in which they do not believe. The alternative is presented to them of either no religious instruction at all, or religious instruction according to the faith of the Church of England. The second grievance is that, although in a large number of those parishes the majority of the children are the children of Nonconformist parents, not a single child of a Dissenter can enter the teaching profession in those districts except on condition that they abandoned their faith. When the House takes into account the fact that the teaching profession is the only profession to which the State assists a poor child to climb, I think they will agree with me that the present state of things is a scandal and a gross injustice to a very large proportion of the population. That the Nonconformists of this country should receive worse treatment at the hands of the State than is meted out to Parsees and Mahometans in the State schools of India, is, to my mind, a gross scandal. I find that in the schools of the Church of England the aggregate salaries of teachers amount to £2,869,349 a year. These Church schools receive £3,300,000 from the State in the way of grants. That means that, practically, the whole of the salaries of the teachers of the Church schools are paid by the State, with a good surplus besides. This enormous State patronage is dispensed by one sect amongst the children of that sect only. Now we come to the training colleges, and the state of things in regard to those colleges is equally bad, if not worse. There are 44 training colleges. Of these, 33 are denominational—30 Church of England and three Roman Catholic. There is no Conscience Clause in operation in these 33 training colleges. Every pupil who enters those colleges must be an Anglican or a Roman Catholic. The total income of these colleges is £138,923, and of that sum only £8,000 are received in voluntary contributions. They are, therefore, practically maintained out of State funds, to which men of all sects and creeds contribute. What makes matters still worse is that the education given in the denominational schools is inferior to that given in schools where perfect religious and civil equality prevails. I do not think it is necessary to prove this. The grants are less, and, therefore, it must necessarily be so. In the first place, they have not got the same funds as the other schools have. They never will receive the same generous measure of support as schools in which everybody is treated on a basis of perfect equality. The sense of fair play in the average Britisher is too strong to allow of that. And what is the result? You have got overworked and underpaid teachers. I do not think it will be necessary to quote anything in support of this, but I will read a statement from a report issued by one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools for the Metropolis. The Inspector says—

"It is painful to compare the lot of a Voluntary pupil teacher with that of a Board pupil teacher. The Board pupil teacher has reasonable time for study, and is taught by an efficient staff of teachers. The Voluntary pupil teacher is required to do much more work in school, and has to attend at a district centre two or three times a week, and must complete so much written home work on the other evenings for his centre that the time for systematic, thoughtful study is practically nil. Many Voluntary pupil teachers fail to do even fairly well at the examination."

That must necessarily be the case. Voluntary schools can never demand the same funds as Board schools. It is as much as they can do, by means of bazaars and all sorts of extraneous devices, to keep their schools together. So long as you only draw your teachers from one sect, the result must be to limit the area of your selection, and you are bound to get a poorer staff. The more you widen the area of selection, the more do you increase your chances of getting better teachers. This is especially the case in districts where the majority of the children belong to> Nonconformist parents. I have stated what are, roughly, the facts of the case, and I will now come to the remedies. The remedies I suggest in reference to the training colleges are, first, that their number should be increased, as the accommodation they afford is not half sufficient for the number of teachers, and that they should be free and undenominational. My second suggestion is that you should have the same Conscience Clause in the present denominational colleges as you have in the denominational schools, not that I think it will be worth very much, but it will be better than nothing. Not merely in regard to training colleges, but also in regard to schools, a Conscience Clause, which puts the alternative to the child that he must either have religious instruction in accordance with the principles of the Church of England or no religious instruction at all, is practically worthless. You ought to frame your Conscience Clause so as to put the alternative to the child of having such religious instruction as his parents would recommend, and allow him to withdraw from, that part of the religious instruction which may be offensive to his parents. The third suggestion I would make with regard to training colleges is that in the day training colleges the amount of £70, which is now granted to day training colleges which are absolutely undenominational, should be increased, so as to put them on the same footing as the residential colleges which are denominational. Lord Salisbury, in his reply to the Wesleyan deputation, admitted the grievance, which, he said in effect, was an intolerable one, and suggested that where there was a substantial number of Nonconformists, they should build another school for their accommodation. Speaking for myself, I think this is the worse thing you could do in the rural districts, where the schools are too small as it is. Statistics show that the smaller the school is, the less efficient it is. What I suggest is this, that where it is only possible, consistently with the exigencies of efficient education, to support one school, that school ought to be under popular control. Something may be said about the grievances of denominationalists. I submit they have no real substantial grievance in a case of that kind, as they could readjust the time table so as to give their children such dogmatic teaching as they want at hours which will not interfere with the teaching of the other children. If Churchmen were in the majority they would control the schools still. If they were in the minority, why should they control the schools? Even admitting that there is an injustice, which is the greater injustice—that you should compel the children of a minority in a district to remain after school-time in order to receive dogmatic religious teaching, or that you should force upon the children of a majority doctrines of which their parents disapprove, and exclude the children of a majority from the opportunity of entering the teaching profession? The greater injustice is the second, and it ought to be remedied. A good deal is said about the inalienable right of a parent to call upon the State to teach his children his particular theories or ideas about religion. I challenge that inalienable right altogether, and for this reason—there is no leading dogma which divides one church from another in this country which is accepted by the majority of the people of this country; there is no leading dogma which divides one church from another which is not repudiated by the majority of the people of the country. I submit, therefore, that no parent has a right to call upon the State to teach his particular theories about either religion, science, politics, history, or anything else, so long as those theories are not accepted by the majority of the people of the country. It is not a question of the right of a parent to call upon the State to teach his own doctrine to his own children. It is a question in these rural districts of the right of a parent to call upon the State, not to teach his own doctrines to his own children, but to teach them to his neighbour's children, and at his neighbour's expense. I object to that altogether. If there is an inextinguishable right vested in a Churchman or a Catholic to call upon the State to teach his theories of religion at the expense of the State, is there not the same right vested in the Nonconformist parent? The Nonconformist parent says—

"Teach my child the Scriptures and the principles of morality in such a way as shall not be offensive to my neighbour."

The Anglican parent says—

"Teach my child the doctrine of my creed, whether it is offensive to my neighbour or not."

I submit that, if it is impossible to maintain two systems in these rural districts, the undenominationalist has the prior right to consideration. Of the two claims made upon the State one is formulated in a manner which shall enable the whole population to participate in its benefits, the other being formulated in a manner which shall confine its privileges exclusively to one sect and to one creed. I say that the first claim is entitled to the prior consideration at the hands of the State. The School Board says that every ratepayer, whatever his creed, has a voice in the management of the schools, and that every child, whatever denomination he belongs to, has an equal right to every privilege which the Board can confer. With regard to the Voluntary schools, the privileges are monopolised by one sect, and the control is also monopolised by one sect. The difference is as great between the two systems as between the British and the Russian policy in China—or what used to be the British policy until we took Wei-hai-Wei. The one is the policy of open ports, and the other is the policy of closed markets. The question is whether the Church of England in these rural districts is entitled to say that, because it has expended money upon building these schools and maintaining them, the prior right of consideration is vested in them? I submit, Mr. Speaker, that if there is a right vested in Nonconformists to have their children taught in a way which is not offensive to the consciences of their parents, no amount of money expended by any other sect can deprive them of that right. Every parent is entitled to ask at the hands of a civilised community that his children shall receive an education which will fit him for a useful career, and no man—no syndicate of men—can buy up the rights of citizenship of their neighbours. Who are these voluntary subscriptions paid by as a rule? They are paid by the landowner, and by the gentlemen who have invested capital in a district, and it is to their interest—it is their duty—to spend money upon education in that particular district. It is to their interest to do so, because they improve what is practically their wealth-producing machinery. They reduce crime, and, consequently, increase the security of their property. Moreover, the State has recognised, at any rate since 1870, the duty which attaches to property of maintaining the burden of education in England and Wales, and throughout the whole of the country. Unfortunately, these voluntary subscriptions are too often utilised in order to enable the local capitalist to evade the full performance of his duties in these districts. I do not know whether I have given the House the case of the quarry districts, but it is a very striking one. In the Penrhyn quarry district the Church schools are substantially maintained by the owner of those quarries. He contributes £400 a year to these schools, but they are Church schools, and the children who attend them are the children of his own tenantry and his own quarrymen, the majority of whom are Nonconformists. The whole teaching is absolutely inconsistent with the doctrine of the majority of the tenants and quarrymen of Lord Penrhyn. Moreover, the children of these Nonconformist quarrymen are excluded from entering the teaching profession in these schools. In the adjoining quarry district there are no Voluntary schools, and a School Board rate of 1s. 9d. in the £ is charged. The schools are infinitely better, as has been proved by results. They have an excellent system of schools there, and everybody gets fair play. The child of the Churchman is taught side by side with the child of the Nonconformist, and they get equal advantages. But what would happen in the Penrhyn district if Lord Penrhyn had to pay a rate of 1s. 9d. in the £ to maintain these schools? Why, instead of contributing £400 a year, he would have to pay £2,100 a year. He gives an inferior education—an incomparably inferior education—and excludes the children of the majority of his quarrymen from benefits which they are entitled to claim. In too many cases these voluntary subscriptions are utilised to enable gentlemen in Lord Penrhyn's position to evade the full performance of their duty, to discharge it partly, and to attach to the part performance of their duty terms and conditions which the State would not permit them to attach to the full performance of those duties. If the education given in the Voluntary schools were superior, I could understand their supporters saying they had a prior claim for consideration in these rural districts. But it is not. Indeed, so far as secular education is concerned, it is admittedly inferior. [An HON. MEMBER: No.] An hon. Member says "No." Well, I am looking at the results all round, and judging from those results. I do not think there is any doubt upon the subject. The grants earned by Voluntary schools are very much less, and I think it must necessarily be so, because these Voluntary schools cannot possibly maintain the same standard of efficiency, for financial reasons, which is maintained by the Board schools; consequently, the education is bound to be inferior. It is said, it is true, that the secular education is somewhat inferior, but the moral instruction is better. I very much doubt, judging from the results, whether that is so. Take the cases of Birmingham, which is a Board school district, and Liverpool, which is a city of rampant denominationalism in schools, and everything else. Looking at the criminal statistics, which give a test of the amount of self-restraint inculcated and disciplined in a district, what do we find? The criminal statistics in Liverpool are three times as high as those of Birmingham. Again, London is far more of a Board school district than Liverpool, and, although there is the same class of population to deal with, the criminal statistics in Liverpool are three times as high as those in London in proportion to the population, and the same results will be shown to be applicable all over the country. I observed, in the evidence given before the Royal Commission, that in Huddersfield there are 7,000 children attending Board schools and 4,000 attending Voluntary schools, and yet 27 of the children convicted of crime came from Voluntary schools, and only five from the Board schools. There were seven children convicted of criminal offences some time ago, and the Church papers said this was the result of the godless education given in Board schools. It was found, however, on investigation, that these children came from Voluntary schools. And, really, I am not at all surprised. I do not think anybody can be who reads the remarkable speeches delivered last week at the teachers' annual conference at Cheltenham, especially the speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Ham, who denounced Voluntary schools as supplying an inefficient education, and condemned the buildings as "dismal, dingy dens, in which he would not kennel his dogs." That is not the way to teach morality to children. The nature of a child is like that of a plant, and one gleam of sunshine produces a healthier growth than a ton of theology. I will give the House an example of the sort of catechism which is taught in the Church schools at Cardiff, in order to produce a moral, intelligent, and high-minded race of citizens—

Question: Who alone is the true ruler of Christ's Church in this diocese?

Answer: The Bishop of Llandaff.

Question: How are we to know when men are true or real pastors?

Answer: They must be priests or deacons ordained by the Bishop or chief pastor.

Question: Are Dissenting ministers ordained?

Answer: No.

Question: Would it then be right to join any of their congregations?

Answer: No; it would be very foolish and wrong.

This is the religious instruction which is to develop a fine race of citizens in this country. We are spending £3,300,000 a year to maintain it, and all the children of Nonconformists are excluded from their rights of citizenship in order to teach this sort of rubbish. It is not surprising that Nonconformists have objected to such a system. The wonder to me is that their churches, which number five millions of the population of this country, have tolerated it so long. I shall be surprised if they tolerate it much longer. To drive the children into "dismal and dingy dens" in order that they should be taught how much more important a person the Bishop of the diocese is than Mr. Jones, the Methodist minister, is not religious or moral instruction, and it is not the sort of thing we are voting millions of money each year to maintain in this country. The country is pretty sick of this sort of doctrine, and the scandal of it is that it is getting worse and worse year by year. The educational efficiency of the country is being lowered at a moment when our commercial supremacy has been undermined and imperilled by nations who are better educated than we are, and educated in a way which does not outrage the consciences of the majority of the population. Whilst priests are wrangling as to who shall be greatest in the kingdom of Heaven, the children are suffering. I think it is the business of this House to intervene in order to protect the children, and it is for that reason that I move the Resolution which stands in my name.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to briefly second the Motion which has been proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon. I am quite sure, after the very able and effective speech which the hon. Member has delivered, that very few indeed will regard the grievance, which has been raised by this Resolution, as an empty one. I think the time is fast coming when these grievances cannot be lightly regarded or passed over. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman, who is leaving the House at this moment, when he was conducting his Voluntary Schools Bill last year, acknowledged the grievances of the Nonconformists in the thousands of villages in this country, where the Church of England school is the only school; but at the same time that he acknowledged those grievances he was conducting a Bill through this House to make the present state of things permanent, so that the grievances could not be removed. Having acknowledged the grievances and passed his Bill, he went down to Norwich and delivered a speech in which he defended his action. He told Nonconformists that, if they were not satisfied with what he had done, there would be worse to follow. I think it ill became him to threaten Nonconformists in that fashion. Supposing we were to take him at his word that worse was to follow, and accept the present condition of things, I ask the House, would the noble Lord the Member for Rochester, who is in his place tonight, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, be equally agreeable to accept the present condition of things as satisfactory? On the contrary, we have frequently been told by the noble Lord and his friends that they are not yet satisfied, that the whole of their demands have not been granted, and that they will go on making these demands on the Government until they are completely satisfied. I therefore do not think we should be secure long if we were to accept the advice of the Leader of the House, and be content with the present state of things. May I remind the House that when the Education Act of 1870 was passed education was not compulsory? Where a Church school was the only school in a village or town, the law did not compel the children of Nonconformists to attend that particular school. It was not until some years later that the added grievance was placed upon the shoulders of Nonconformists, and their children were forced by the law to attend the schools of the Church of England. I have not forgotten the protest then made by the present First Lord of the Admiralty, who put this example to the Conservative Party: Supposing the only school in a village were a Unitarian school, would you be content if the law compelled you to send your children to that school? I am quite sure hon. Members opposite would not be content with that. Now that the Government has removed what had been called an intolerable strain, I think we have a right to demand that they shall proceed to remove what has long been felt to be an intolerable injustice. I should like to deal with that part of the Resolution which refers to training colleges. The history of training colleges, is somewhat extraordinary. The effort made by the Government of the day in the thirties—and which was frustrated by the bishops in the House of Lords—to establish an unsectarian normal college was the first attempt to set up an unsectarian teachers' training college. Singular it is that from that day to this no Government has been successful in an attempt to establish such colleges, and, in addition to that, the failure of the Government and the success of the bishops at that time was the cause of the introduction of the theological controversy into the education question, which it has disturbed to the present day. The present colleges, which, though they are voluntary in their inception, are almost entirely maintained out of State funds, are unsatisfactory to myself and to my hon. Friends around me. We have two complaints to make: in the first place there are not enough of them, and in the second place they are all denominational in character. With regard to the inadequate provision provided by the training colleges, may I point out that the whole accommodation in residential training colleges in this country only provides for 3,400, and that this year there were 3,840 who were desirous of securing entrance into the colleges, although there were only 2,200 vacancies, so that there were more than 1,600 teachers in this country, having successfully passed the Government tests in the Government examination, who were unable to find places provided for them by the Government in these training colleges. Now, Sir, the Education Department appointed a Departmental Committee to inquire into the pupil teachers system, and that, of course, very materially affected the existence of the training colleges. This Departmental Committee reported that, in the course of their inquiry, the question of the sufficiency of the existing accommodation of the training colleges was raised, and was answered emphatically in the negative. It may be argued that, of course, the managers of these colleges ran those successful candidates, but this Departmental Committee goes on to say that of those who, having passed the examination, failed to get into the colleges, the larger number drifted into the teaching profession through the side door of the certificated examination for acting teachers; and the Committee proceeded to condemn that in strong terms. Again, they say—

"We are strongly of opinion that every facility should be given by the Education Department for the extension of training college accommodation."

The right hon Gentleman is familiar with this matter, and I am under no obligation to emphasise it, except to show that the Departmental Committee has reported in the strongest terms that the present provision is inadequate. In addition to that, of course, the needs of the present are not what the ultimate needs will be. The demand for teachers is a growing demand, and we cannot be content with the position as it is at the present time. Now, the day training colleges are treated in some respects very shabbily by the Government; they are undenominational in character, while those colleges which are denominational in character are treated in a far more handsome manner. I think as far as accommodation and provision is concerned, I have proved my case. As regards the denominational character of the residential schools, I have only one or two words to say. Sir, of the students that at the present time are resident in these training colleges, 65 per cent. are members of the Church of England; and yet the Church of England is only educating 42 per cent. of the children at the primary schools of this country and Wales. The undenominational schools educate 50 per cent. of the children; they only have 22 per cent. of the teachers in course of training at the colleges. In addition to that, we know that, although the management of these training schools is left entirely—or almost entirely—in the hands of irresponsible managers, the expense is provided by the State to the extent of 69 per cent.—nearly three-quarters in some cases. That constitutes a very real grievance, because pupil teachers, in the first instance, in thousands of places in this country, find it most difficult to secure appointments in the schools. When we have made that statement in the country, or in the House, we have been laughed at by hon. Members opposite, but proof has come to our aid in the form of a Government Blue Book. And this same Departmental Committee states that the grievances of Nonconformists, in regard both to the lack of facilities for obtaining posts as pupil teachers and subsequent entrance into the training colleges, are very serious—

"and we believe that the State is losing a large number of competent pupil teachers in this way, but we are unable, under present circumstances, to suggest any remedy."

Very well; if the Departmental Committee is unable to suggest any remedy for the case, I say that as long as the Government permits this state of things to continue we may call upon them to provide a remedy for the grievance which has been brought to their notice by the Departmental Committee the right hon. Gentleman himself appointed. Now, Sir, the extraordinary thing is that these training colleges, existing to provide teachers for our children all up and down the country, are under irresponsible management, and yet the money comes from the State. I say these colleges are not as free as the old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and I think that at least we may demand that what has been done with regard to ancient endowments, such as those of Oxford and Cambridge, might be done with regard to colleges being maintained by annual payments coming from the public exchequer. And, Sir, it does not require an Act of Parliament to achieve this. In the code the right hon. Gentleman says that he will not pay the grant unless he is satisfied with the management, and I am sure he has every reason to be dissatisfied with the management, because his inspectors have reported again and again, and year after year, about the notoriously unsatisfactory state of the colleges and their management. One inspector said last year—

"As regards the constitution of the governing body, I cannot help expressing my conviction that there should be on every Committee some representative of the Education Department, and that in the appointment of the teaching staff there should be a right of Departmental veto."

That is in the Report of one of the Government inspectors. Here are two suggestions made by his own inspector which would do a great deal to mitigate the existing state of things: that there should be on the managing bodies a representative of the Education Department, and that the teaching staff should be subject to a Departmental veto. It requires no Act of Parliament to do that, or to insert the Conscience Clause, which my hon. Friend demanded. I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this Motion before the House. I think, if hon. Members opposite think this is a light matter, they will be very much mistaken indeed, and I indulge the hope even yet that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to indicate to us that there is some hope that the Government will deal with some of these matters, at any rate. The right hon. Gentleman has told us there are some phases of education Debates in which he does not shine. He has an opportunity to-night to shine very gloriously in the matter of education; and if he will tell us plainly what is in his mind—as plainly as he told the deputation, which went to him the other day, to which he read a very strong lecture with regard to the duties of the territorial aristocracy in this country—I say, if he will speak as plainly to-night on the question raised by my hon. Friend, I am sure he will meet with every sympathy on this side of the House. I second the Resolution.

No one can hold the office that I do without being peculiarly painfully conscious of the shortcomings of our national educational system, and of the urgent necessity that there is for some improvement. It is therefore with impatience, and with some degree of indignation, that one turns from questions of real importance to discuss a fictitious plank in the creation of a platform, which affords quite needless obstruction to legislation. There is, as I have often said in this House, no religious difficulty in the schools. The difficulty is a difficulty created in Parliament, and is formidable only because it obstructs necessary legislation. Now the Act of 1870 made a compromise. I understand a compromise to be an arrangement in which each party submits to some amount of injustice, and I have always observed that as soon as a compromise is patched up each party thereto struggles for redress of his own grievances, while getting the other party's neck more firmly under the yoke. Under the compromise of 1870 it is supposed that the Nonconformists got rather the best of it in Board schools, because they there have a religion taught at the public expense which is exactly what they teach in their own schools. I suppose that the Church people got rather the best of it in the village parochial schools. Now, I admit, as Lord Salisbury has admitted, that the grievance about pupil teachers, brought forward by the hon. Member for Carnarvon, is, theoretically at all events, a real grievance. I doubt whether, in practice, the grievance, the injustice, is half as bad as either the mover or seconder of the Motion has supposed. In the first place, many of these so-called Church schools are managed by a Committee upon which Nonconformists are represented, and I doubt whether there are many managers of Church schools who would reject any Nonconformist boy or girl who was applicable for a position of pupil teacher because the parents thought fit to take him or her to chapel instead of to church. Hon. Members may laugh, but I doubt very much whether they would object to any great extent. I think that what might occur, what probably does happen, is that sometimes parents send the child to church, and the grievance is in reality not a grievance of the parent, but a grievance of the Nonconformist minister. I should be very much more ready to sympathise with the grievance of the hon. Member, and I should take a good deal more pains to try to find some remedy for it, if the lot of the country pupil teacher was really that happy one which he has described. Now, what is the position of the country pupil teacher? Of course, in what I am going to say I am going to speak generally. There are exceptions; there are exceptions where a zealous and attentive teacher can bring on a boy or girl so well that they take a very high place in the pupil teachers' examination; but the general condition of a pupil teacher is to be a great deal more of a school drudge than a pupil. They have to go to school earlier, often walking long distances; they have to remain behind when the other children go home; they get their instruction partly before school, partly during the play hour, when the other children are in the playground, partly during the dinner hour, when the other children are eating their dinners, and partly after school, when instruction has closed. It is teaching given by a tired teacher to a tired pupil. They have none of the advantages which the pupil teachers in great towns have: no science classes within reach; no pupil teachers' centres where they can receive higher instruction; and in far too great a number of cases the pupil teacher in the country has no chance of ever rising in the profession. They sink into school drudges. They cannot compete in the scholarship examinations with their more fortunate brethren and sisters in the towns. They cannot get into any of the training colleges, denominational or undenominational, and they cannot, consequently, rise in the profession. Well, then, I am sorry to say that there is very little hope of mending this state of things, which the House at large will admit is not a way in which the teachers of the country ought to be prepared. I say there is little hope of mending it, because, as was mentioned by the seconder of the Motion, a Committee was appointed of experts to consider how the position of these pupil teachers could be improved, and before the Committee had even taken their scheme into consideration, or pronounced any opinion upon it, it was denounced from all sides, even from such bodies as the National Society. It has been denounced as a scheme which if carried out would retard the supply of cheap child labour, by which the schools are so often rendered less valuable; and I am afraid that under this dire necessity of having cheap teachers in the schools, in the first place the welfare of these poor little school drudges themselves, and in the next place the national interest in getting better trained and better taught teachers for the rural districts, will have to go. Well, now, what is the remedy which the hon. Member suggests for this state of things? It is practically to replace the village Church school by the village Board school; and in the opinion of the Committee of the Council, from an educational point of view, this would be a retrograde step. I have never concealed from the House my opinion that, as a rule, Board schools in the towns and great urban districts—with some very significant exceptions, because there are very ill-managed Board schools in some of the towns—are eminently successful. They have far better buildings than Voluntary schools. They have a far better staff; not that there are not in the Voluntary schools individual teachers quite equal to any of the Board school teachers, but they have more of them. If you compare the staffs of the general Board schools and those of the Voluntary schools you find at the former far more adult teachers and far fewer child teachers. Besides that, they have more teachers to the number of children. Many of them have the advantage in apparatus, and they produce, as might be supposed, very much better results. If you look at the county scholarship examination, for instance, in any district, London or elsewhere, you will find a far larger percentage are obtained by children in large towns like London, Liverpool, Manchester, than are obtained by children of Voluntary schools; and I am not at all certain, if it came to be a real test, that you would not find that the facts and history of the Christian faith are better taught to the children in the Board schools. I am firmly of opinion that unless some plan is invented by which the ratepayers in the towns and urban districts are empowered, if they choose, to support Voluntary schools out of the rates, a very large number of the latter must disappear, except in the case of those religious bodies which have a sufficiently strong zeal for teaching dogma in the day school. Now, in the rural districts the case is absolutely reversed. The country clergyman is a far better and more competent school manager than parsimonious farmers or ignorant village tradesmen, and the exception to the general inferiority of the village school is generally to be found in those cases in which a clever and energetic clergyman himself manages a board and carries on the school. But, as the hon. Member for Nottinghamshire knows, in this case it is very difficult to leave the catechism, or a suspicion of the catechism, out of the schools. Therefore the real remedy contained in this resolution, the remedy of universal village School Boards to replace Voluntary schools, is one to which the Committee of the Council have the strongest objection on educational grounds. Now let me come to the question of training colleges. This was considered more than ten years ago by the commission presided over by Lord Cross, and the Report of that Commission—of the majority of that Commission—was that the existing training colleges should be allowed to remain as they then were, but that any further colleges should be undenominational, or should have a Conscience Clause. Under that Report the minority raised no objection at all; it was practically the Report of the whole Commission, because although there was a minority Report, the minority did not dissent to that part of the Report of the majority. They also recommended, on the advice of the then Secretary for Education, that the experiment of day training colleges should be tried. Well, new, that is the policy in regard to raining colleges which has ever since been acted upon, not only by Governments composed of the present Party, but by all Government, and in the days of the late Government my predecessor, whose absence from this Debate we, all of us greatly regret, was not able to carry out any of those reforms which this Resolution demands. The experiment of day training colleges has been tried, and tried with very eminent success, and so far from their being treated, as was rather intimated, I think, by the hon. Member for Yorkshire, with less favour than residential training colleges, they are both treated alike. In both cases the rule of the Department is that one-fourth of the expenditure must come from sources other than the Education Department grant. Unfortunately, in the case of the university colleges that have established day training colleges they have not a very large sum at their disposal, and they find that to get this one-fourth is at times very difficult. I will just read a list of the places which have now day training colleges, and I think the House will see it is extensive:—Oxford, Cambridge, Newcastle, the University College at Liverpool, Owen's College at Manchester, the Yorkshire College at Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, King's College in London, Bristol, and Sheffield; then there are three in the Principality of Wales—at Banger, Aberystwith, and Cardiff. All are, I hardly need say. Doing extremely well. All these colleges are undenominational, and there is no difficulty, at any rate in attendance, by Nonconformists exactly the same as by Churchmen. [Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: About the grant?] As I have explained, the grant for these colleges is on the same scale as the grant for the residential training colleges.

Surely not. I believe that £100 is given in respect to each student in residential colleges, and I think £70 in respect to day colleges.

The real difficulty of the day training colleges is that they cannot find the one-fourth expenditure which they have to provide. I should be very glad if they had larger grants. I should be glad to have a larger grant. We want more training colleges, and if we want more training colleges those which are now existing ought to be allowed to remain as they are. They are doing extremely well. About 30 to 40 years ago there was established a training College known as Kneller Hall, which was a Government training college, and although it had for its principal no less distinguished a person than the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was so disastrous a failure that nobody ever thought of opening another. If you want more training colleges I would suggest that the proper way would be through some local educational authority. Some of the local educational authorities—for instance, the County Councils—can, so far as I know, open colleges without legislation. More training should be provided, and that is a thing to which the Committee of Council agreed most cordially. I do not think the question need bear the religious acrimony which was addressed to the House. The desire was to extend the great training college system, to see fresh training colleges and more teachers provided for the work of elementary education. Now, I will tell the House what is my really strongest objection to this Motion. It is acknowledged that this Parliament cannot pass a comprehensive scheme in the development of education. It is, therefore, necessary that the fragmentary efforts of Parliament should not only be in accordance with some settled policy, but should be taken in the order of their urgency. In the minds of all persons responsible for the education of the people there is no doubt whatever as to what is really the most urgent. It is a rule which could be carried out without any disturbance of the compromise of 1870, and it is really supported by the managers of Voluntary schools and Board schools alike. The idea is to get more children into the existing schools, to get them there in a condition fit to receive instruction, and to keep them there until a later age. After 25 years of the operation of the Act of 1870 there are nearly 750,000 children whose names ought to be on the books of some elementary school which do not appear there at all—almost one-eighth of the whole child population. With your School Boards and your attendance officers, and all your Government machinery, of those who are on the books nearly one-eighth are continually absent. Many of the buildings in which the children are collected are insanitary. Many of the children—the percentage unknown—come to the school starved in certain seasons of the year in different places; they are in a condition not only unfit to receive instruction, but in a condition in which it is absolute cruelty to attempt to instruct them. There are also a large number of children—percentage again unknown—who are worked like little slaves for wages for long hours before they go to school and after they go home from school, and in their case it is, therefore, quite impossible that any adequate elementary instruction can be given. And, lastly, as a mockery of your Elementary Education Act of 1876, which declares that it is the duty of every parent to send his child to school to receive elementary instruction from the age of five till the age of 14, there are exemptions, partly in the Acts of Parliament and partly in the bye-laws passed in the school districts, which make this primitive enactment of no effect; so that a large proportion of your scholars—and those the brightest and the most promising—leave school so early as to forget everything that they have learned, and if in after life these children are seized with a desire to go to continuation schools or technical schools, they have to re-learn, at the public expense, elementary knowledge already once acquired at the public expense and afterwards forgotten. Well, now, till these matters which I have shortly put before the House are reformed you cannot compete in technical or commercial education with your Continental rivals. Your higher schools will languish for lack of a sufficient supply of scholars properly grounded in the elements, and your labour and your money will be, to a great extent, thrown away.

The right hon. Gentleman did himself a great injustice when he said he did not shine in educational Debates. There is to me always a charm in the right hon. Gentleman's speeches on the subject of education. There is the charm of surprise; you never know what he will say first or what he will say last. It is a delightful salad in which the vinegar and the oil are well mixed, and gives flavour to all he says. There were some observations at the commencement of his speech which did not receive universal assent. He said that there was no religious difficulty, and he proceeded to illustrate that observation by what he called the compromise of 1870, in which each party was called upon to undergo a reciprocal injustice. Whence arose that reciprocal injustice? It arose entirely out of the religious difficulty. Why was injustice done to the Denominationalists on the one part and to the Nonconformists on the other? It was in consequence of the religious difficulty, and he set one injustice against the other, as if that produced a perfect system of equity. It reminds me of the observation of the great advocate Erskine, who said he had won many verdicts which he ought to have lost, and he had lost many verdicts he ought to have won; but that, on the whole, justice was done. Justice was, no doubt, done to Mr. Erskine, but whether it was done to both classes of litigants is a matter very doubtful. I think we may well condone the earlier remarks of the right hon. Gentleman for the observations he made later. He made a statement, which I think everybody who has studied this subject will recognise the truth of, that the whole system of national education in this country is at present hopelessly neglected. He made an observation, which it does not lie in my mouth to deny, that the present Parliament is incapable of establishing a complete system of education. It may remain, perhaps, for another Parliament to undertake that task, which, on the part of his colleagues, he disavows. I can quite understand that the First Lord admits that statement of the right hon. Gentleman who represents the Council on Education, a distinction we have long ago learned to appreciate. Why is it that our elementary education, in fact that our system of education, is from top to bottom inefficient? It is a very serious thing if that is the case. I think most of us have become more alive to the seriousness of that statement since we have had our attention called to the commercial competition which we have had to face. We have begun to ask ourselves why is it that we, who have been accustomed to regard ourselves as the monopolists of the trade of the world, find other nations treading so closely on our heels? The right hon. Gentleman said, what we all know to be the truth, that we are extremely deficient in the education of our people. Why is that the case? He has spoken of the superiority of the education in the Board schools in the large towns. That is unquestionably the case; everybody knows it is the case; everybody knows it is the case. He has admitted the extreme inefficiency of the education. He has given reason for it in a great part of the country, and that part of the country is that part where Voluntary schools mainly obtain. The Voluntary schools are maintained, as he admits, in a condition of constant impecuniosity. We have a system, consequently, of shreds and patches which arose out of that compromise of which he has spoken, and I think it might not untruly be described as an eleemosynary system of makeshift education. We have a demand for keeping down the standard of these Board schools. For what object? In order that Voluntary schools might not be distanced in the race. Do you ever expect on principles of that kind to establish a sound system of national education which will enable you to compete with other countries whose national education is founded on very different principles, and who are always seeking year after year to obtain higher education and a more complete system by which that higher education can be given? Can anybody who has paid attention to the great and constantly-renewed efforts of Germany in this direction view without astonishment and alarm the elementary education of this country, founded as it is on a system which should prevent competition in excellence, in order to maintain a system of schools which are unquestionably deficient? The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of these wretched pupil teachers, whom he calls young teachers, as drudges. Can you expect to give education through the instrumentality which he has described? He has told us that these schools, spread all over the country, have an insufficient number of teachers. I speak with the respect I feel for the great body of teachers in this country, but everybody knows that these teachers are, to a great degree, underpaid. The first thing we want are teachers who are better paid and better educated. I read with the greatest interest the discussions which took place at the Conference of Teachers last week. They were most instructive discussions, and they reinforced the opinions expressed by the right hon. Gentleman that the education of this country is fundamentally deficient. I hope we shall hear something from those hon. Gentlemen who are competent to speak to us. I do not intend to occupy the House at any great length, for I know we have a short time at our disposal; but I was struck with the illustration of my hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon in reference to the schools in Wales, of which he has spoken. What are we asked to do in reference to these Voluntary schools? We are asked to support them for two reasons; first of all on Denominational grounds. Well, Sir. Denominationalism can never make a sound foundation of a good system of national education. I am prepared to take my stand on that. It is making an appeal to the cupidity of the country to say, "If you do away with the inferior schools it will be very expensive, and we must have these cheap schools." I won't add another remark to that. "We must have these cheap schools, because they cost so little." Education in this country costs a great deal, considering its quality. We are paying now something like £10,000,000 a year. I believe there is no nation in Europe that gets so little for its money as we do for that £10,000,000 which is expended. But, Sir, we cannot afford to have cheap schools in this country, for cheap schools mean inferior schools. The hon. Member for Carnarvon gave an illustration of a landowner who subscribed £400 a year for a school, and if he had paid in proportion to his property the rates would have been £2,100. Those are the arguments constantly put forward to reconcile the people of this country to have inefficient schools and inefficient education. Well, the Vice President of the Council has told us that this Parliament cannot undertake a comprehensive scheme of national education. I think this is an abdication of its duties on the part of the House of Commons in whichever Parliament it is. I ventured to say the other night that we were not overburdened this Session with legislative projects, and, if we cannot undertake the task of a comprehensive scheme of education, we might, at all events, do some- thing to advance the education of this country. Is my right hon. Friend going to do these things he has indicated to-night? I am perfectly conscious that the right hon. Gentleman is a reforming educationist at heart, and if we can only strike off his arms those fetters which restrain, his true inclinations, we might get something for the advantage of the education of this country. I cannot understand the position of the right hon. Gentleman, who is convinced that it is of the highest interest to this country that the education should not be as inefficient as he describes it. He should insist, at all events, on something being done. In these Voluntary schools there are too few masters, and why should we not have additional training colleges? I do not think that at all these training colleges you have an embryo archbishop at the head. It is not necessary, however; there are other resources of civilisation for the improvement of education in this country. Why are these things not to be begun? Here we are with a system of education in this country that all are attacking year after year. Why? I do not blame the authors of the Voluntary schools. On the contrary, they come in to supply a defect, because Parliament does not undertake the duty of establishing national education. We find ourselves in the position of an old building, which is inconvenient, which is not appropriate for the purposes to which it ought to be applied, and instead of setting to work to erect a building appropriate for the needs of the times we patch up the old edifice, which, after all, proves inefficient and ineffective for its purpose. That is the position in which we stand, and I am extremely sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not put in a position to carry his convictions more completely into effect. I do hope that the declarations he has made to-night as to the fundamental deficiency of national education may sink into the heart, not only of the House of Commons, but into the heart of the people of this country, that they will give that impetus and that support to the Government of the day, to whichever Party it belongs, and set to work on a task which I believe to be of the most supreme importance to the future of the people of this country.

I have always regretted that we have not the Bill of 1896, but though that Bill did not find its place on the Statute Book, I am convinced it did a great deal of good. It not only succeeded in educating the country, but it largely educated the House of Commons itself. Indeed, I have been particularly amused to hear both the mover and the seconder of this Resolution advocating some of the very clauses of the Bill of 1896 to which they then most strenuously objected. I believe many of us will live to see the day when the principles of the Bill of 1896 will find their place on the Statute Book of the country to the country's benefit. I am anxious, however, to take the very earliest opportunity of correcting a misquotation which the mover of the Resolution, no doubt unintentionally, fell into, with regard to some of the remarks I had occasion to make on the question of education a few days ago. He quoted me as being in favour of popular elective control of all individual Voluntary schools. So I understood him to say. [Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: No; I said nothing of the kind.] That is how I understood his quotation. The position I took up, and from which I do not depart, is that all the schools of the country should be under control, that we should have some sort of central control in each county, such as the Bill of 1896 sought to establish. In my speech at Cheltenham I was not referring to the local management of Voluntary schools. I agree that there is much to be lamented with regard to the condition of some of our Voluntary Schools. But I disagree with him entirely in the view that there is nothing to be lamented in the condition of some of the Board schools. I think he committed a fundamental error in treating this question as a question between Church and Nonconformity. The whole difference between the speech of the Vice President and the speech of the mover of this Resolution was that while the one treated it from the standpoint of national education the other viewed it from the standpoint of sectarian differences. It is true that my right hon. Friend, whenever he addresses the House, does give surprises right and left, for the simple reason that he does not treat if from the standpoint of the average political partisan. He takes a high ground, and considers it as affecting the welfare of the child and the good of the school. One knows what to expect from the point of view of the political partisan in dealing with the educational question; generally it is the question of the grievances of Nonconformists on the one side or of the grievances of the High Church Party on the other. It is true that many of the Voluntary schools are sadly deficient. The staff is inadequate, the buildings are not in a satisfactory condition, and the management is in many cases inadequate. And what is the cause of it all? Not the fact that they are Church schools, not the fact that certain religious teaching is given in them—the source of their inefficiency is undoubtedly the inadequate supply of public funds. It is not fair for those who have secured for their own favourite schools support from the rates and taxes that they should treat the Voluntary schools as being inferior, when they have been interested in withholding that money. I could never understand why, in this matter of financial support, the Church of England, or the Wesleyan, or the Roman Catholic school, should be on a less satisfactory footing than the ordinary Board school. What really is the difference between the two? I am perfectly prepared to admit that the religious teaching which is given in some of the Board schools of the country is better than the religious teaching which is given in some if the Voluntary schools. Why? Because the Board schools have succeeded in getting a more efficient staff, better trained teachers, adult teachers, for the pupil teacher system does not so largely hamper the Board schools as it does the Voluntary schools. They have a better staff of teachers, many of whom have been trained in Church of England training colleges. Men and women who have taken charge of many of the Board schools are imbued to the full with the Christian spirit, which is necessary in every school, in my opinion, for the welfare of the child, and religious teaching of a very satisfactory and very excellent character indeed is given in many of the Board schools of the country. If anyone doubts it will they turn to the Report which was presented to the House of Lords in 1894, and turn over the various syllabuses contained in the Report of religious instruction given in the Board schools of the country? It is worth noticing that on the vary first page of the Report there is a note to this effect—that in compiling the Report there is not room in the ordinary pages to include the religious syllabuses of some of the Board schools of the country; it was of such an extensive character that special pages had to be added to the Report to incorporate it. You have also the testimony, in many instances, of diocesan inspectors who have been employed by School Boards to inspect the religious teaching in some of the Board schools, and they have been loud in their praise of the religious teaching which is given there. But as a general rule the Voluntary schools are doing much more. They are adding to the secular instruction a religious teaching required and welcomed by the great majority of the parents. It is not, in my opinion, a true representation of the case to imagine that such an absurd catechism as that read by the hon. Member for Carnarvon prevails in one in a hundred Voluntary schools in this country. It is possible, no doubt, that there are fanatical members of the Church of England just as there are fanatical Nonconformist ministers, and a few fanatics one side or the other will do an enormous amount of mischief to the cause with which they are connected. But to pretend for a single instant that it is typical of the religious teaching which is going on in Church schools is to betray an absolute and complete ignorance of the religious teaching given in the schools. I venture to say that if a careful inquiry were conducted into the religious teaching in Voluntary schools the unprejudiced inquirer would come to the conclusion that managers and teachers alike in the great majority of our Church of England, Nonconformist, and, I think, in many of our Catholic schools, are endeavouring to inculcate those principles of Christianity on which the whole of us can agree, and they are leaving for more mature years of life those points of difference between the various, sects. My own belief is that in the ordinary Voluntary school the children themselves hardly realise the difference between church and chapel, and I am very glad to say that, as a rule, they are not taught to appreciate that difference. It is left—and wisely left—until they have left school. The religious difficulty, as my right hon. Friend said, has been manufactured for Party purposes. Well, let those who deny that statement produce a dozen, bonâ-fide, parents, who, of their own free will, complained that there had not been given in the schools the religious teaching which they desired. I know something of school teaching, and have known something of it for a good many years, and I know that the Nonconformist parent who raises an objection to the teaching given in an ordinary Church of England Voluntary school is quite an exception; and if the child is withdrawn from the lessons in the Church catechism the child is allowed the whole of the other religious teaching given in the school, and very little complaint indeed is made by the parents. The greatest religious difficulty in the schools is to keep the child away from the religious lessons which are in progress in the schools. The natural curiosity of the child over and over again tempts it into the class where the religious teaching is being given. But Nonconformist parents throughout the whole length, and breadth of the country trouble but little, unless the father and mother be stirred up by the Nonconformist minister to take action, and even then there may be a little spasmodic effort on the part of the parent to interfere, but it dies away in a few weeks, and nothing more is heard of it. But although that may be the case, yet I am prepared to say that if there be any difficulty in this matter of religious instruction, to my mind it is not the Nonconformist who has cause for complaint, it is the Church of England parent; because, although the Nonconformist sends his child in the rural district to a Church of England school, he can secure for him, practically, pretty well what he wants in the school, or if he objects to one particular lesson, he can withdraw the child from it. He is not called upon to contribute, out of the local rates to support the Church school; he can button up his breeches pocket as closely as he likes, and see that school where his own child has been educated starved to death and not move a hand to save it. But the Churchman, who believes that distinctive religious teaching is the basis of all education, has not only often to send his child to a Board school where he cannot get it, but he has to contribute out of the local rates to the support of that school. If there be a difficulty at all, that difficulty is as great to the Church of England and the Catholic parent as it is to the Nonconformist. But, Mr. Speaker, what has the hon. Member suggested as a substitute? That we should put in every district a school under popular control. What does he propose to do? To build another school in the 6,000 parishes of England and Wales where only one school exists? If so, he is undertaking a heavy task, and incurring totally unnecessary expense. Or is it suggested that the whole of the Church of England and Nonconformist schools shall be taken from their present management and placed under a locally-elected body from the village community. For my part, I would sooner see a benevolent clergyman the manager of a village school than have a typical small School Board of a few members. In fact, much as I deprecate the restricted management of any school. I am prepared to say this: that the best form of government which I know is a benevolent autocracy. Unfortunately the autocracy often outlives the benevolence. There are instances where restricted management is productive of the greatest evils, and I believe that, for the benefit not merely of a school, but for the benefit of each religious community of the country, those who are now charged with the management of the schools would be well advised to seek the co-operation of all sections of the community in the management of the schools. Some of the most efficient Church schools of the country are those where the Church of England clergyman has been broad-minded and liberal-minded enough to invite the co-operation of Nonconformists, and of those who, unhappily, have very little religious faith at all, to assist in the working of that school. What has been the result as a rule? That any little friction which had previously existed has immediately disappeared. Close contact with the work of the school removes from the minds of those people any false ideas they had previously entertained, just as I believe it would remove from the minds of many Members of this House some of the grotesque views they have of religious teaching if they would undertake to go into a public elementary school and carry it on for seven days. I quite agree that you want a wider form of management in every one of our public schools. I know it is difficult to obtain it. In many of the village communities it is difficult to find half a dozen men with the leisure and intelligence necessary to properly carry on the management of a school. I myself hope that the day is not far distant when the local management of every school will not be as onerous a responsibility as it is at the present time, but when we shall have established in every county throughout England and Wales one governing body for both primary and secondary education, that one governing body having control of both Voluntary and Boards schools alike; an authority the outline of which will be like that in the Bill of 1896; an authority which will carry the detailed work of the Education Department into the county, and relieve the Education Department of much of its present detailed work, leaving that Department free to develop wider schemes for the benefit of national education. Well, now, Mr. Speaker, with regard to training colleges, there is no doubt a real grievance. It is unfortunate that some of our brightest students are not able to enter training colleges. I do not know whether any Member of this House understands what takes place. Pupil teachers, at the close of their fourth year, have Queen's scholarship examinations. Before a pupil sits for the examination he has to apply for permission, to enter a training college. Say, for example, he applies to enter Cheltenham. There are 40 vacancies, and those 40 places may be filled up by the first 100 candidates. This man, who is farther down in the list, is too late to apply to any of the other training colleges, while it is possible that another man lower on the list may secure an opportunity of getting into a training college from which a more promising and successful student is excluded, and this clever student may drift into the teaching profession as an untrained and, very largely, an unqualified teacher. I quite agree that the number of our training colleges must be increased. I quite agree that it is desirable that many of them should be of a non-sectarian character. I admit that there is a certain amount of grievance felt by some candidates, who cannot find places in the Church of England or Nonconformist colleges. I know what the result of the present system sometimes is; it is a most lamentable one. The hypocrites can get into the training colleges. The really straightforward, honest Christian is often excluded. A man or woman who is prepared to sacrifice all religious principles, and to declare himself or herself of a faith which he or she is not, can get in anywhere, and I would say to those who have a hand in the appointment of teachers the same thing applies to all religious tests. Ask your teacher whether he is a member of this flock or of that when an appointment is hanging in the scales. It is a huge temptation to him, and you cannot be surprised if some of them forswear their allegiance, in order to secure work. This difficulty, of course, would be obviated if there were greater opportunities for securing the college training of the pupil teacher. But, Mr. Speaker, while we move in the direction of increasing the number of our training colleges, I think we ought to move with no uncertain step in another direction—I think we ought to impose more rigid restrictions upon the employment of altogether unqualified persons for the office of teacher. Nobody knows the amount of harm that is being done at the present time by the employment of nearly 13,000 persons whose sole qualification in that they are 18 years of age and have been vaccinated. Mr. Speaker, are we ever likely to produce pupils who have learned to love school work, who have learned to look forward to the continuation of school work, so long as they are trained under these conditions? If you want to do the best educational work of all—namely, inculcate a love of learning—you must have properly trained teachers throughout the whole of your educational establishments. Is it not a disgrace to this nation that we who boast of cur riches, that we who are prepared to come down here night after night and vote any number of millions that may be demanded for the support of either the Army or the Navy, should grudge the few hundreds of thousands required annually to do that which would preserve peace more effectually than any Army or Navy—namely, secure a better educated people? I have no doubt that we turn out, year after year, from our public elementary schools any number of boys and girls who hate the very name of education and everything connected with it, owing to the very unsatisfactory conditions under which they pass their school life. Put your buildings into a state of complete repair, secure a better staff, do not try to cut down the schools to the very lowest level of starvation, but let all our efforts be directed to lifting them up. I have had to use strong words with regard to certain Voluntary schools in London, and I have not one word to detract from that statement—I could considerably add to it. I do not know why schools of that character exist. I am sure that members of the Church of England and hon. Gentlemen who sit on this side of the House, are not doing well to cover a patch, over the sore and let it rest there until the whole body rots. It is wiser, when there is a cancerous growth in any great body like our Voluntary school system to relentlessly cut it out and try and save the patient ere he is taken away by death. I submit that there is not a single clergyman who maintains that everything is well with our schools, but they are not the best friends of Education who say that the Church of England schools should be abolished and other schools substituted. The truth is with neither side. The truth is that there are defects in both systems, and until we have realised the extent of those deficiencies the amount of leeway that separates them from perfection will not be made up. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has quoted two or three times recently the Report presented to the Lord President of the Council by one or two Members of this House and others. I would commend to his notice another Report more startling than that, a Report presented by the Technical Committee of the Manchester Corporation. That Committee went abroad believing that Manchester could hold its own in certain branches of trade before the whole world, but they come buck disabused of that idea, and convinced that the trade which was once their own has been captured by foreigners. In Stratford, the district which I have the honour of representing, the aniline dyes were first exploited, and we held control of the trade. But what is the position now? Germany has three-fourths of the trade of the world in that commodity and when the London chemist wants to get some of the finer shades of these dyes he has to send to German houses to get them. The superior excellence of the German manufacturer, particularly in the dye and chemical industries is largely due to the superior equipment of the German, artisan and this, in turn, is due to the better training the children get in the public elementary schools. Not in Germany or in France do you get a million children absent every half-day. If a child is absent four days in a month, there is notice to the parent, and the parent is liable in a heavy fine. In those countries they do not tolerate the absence of children from school, as it is tolerated here: French and German teachers are simply at a loss to understand how the condition of things which prevails here can be tolerated. What is necessary is that the children should be required to attend school regularly, and that they should be kept till a later sure than they are now. What will my Lancashire Friends say to that. I recognise the difficulties of the situation, but I fully believe that if my Lancashire friends keep quiet for a year or two, they will find that the position will be materially altered. The Lancashire operatives will soon realise that the employment of children is prejudicial to adult labour to an extent considerably outweighing the disadvantages which may be felt in individual cases from the necessity of keeping children at school to the ape of 14. Let us have efficient teachers and an efficient system, and let us leave for ever these quarrels between Church and Nonconformist educational politics. Our system of national education should be founded, not on the claims or interests of sects, but on the interests and necessities of our children.

Mr. Speaker, I always listen to the hon. Member who has just sat down with special interest, because I feel that he has a very difficult part to play. He is a genuine educationalist—that I freely grant; but he is also a steady supporter of inefficient and sometimes mischievous Government educational Measures, and he appears to compensate himself for the suffering he must sometimes endure in voting for Measures to which he objects by lecturing us all round, because we also join in condemnation of those same Measures. To-night he has told us that the hon. Member for Carnarvon has introduced a Resolution simply dealing with the question from the Nonconformist point of view. I think he did great injustice to the hon. Member, for much of the speech of the hon. Member was devoted to matters in which those who differ from him on ecclesiastical questions might agree; and, further, I could justify some of the statements of the hon. Member for Carvarnon by quoting the hon. Member for West Ham. The hon. Member has repudiated certain statements of the mover of this Resolution, but he has not repudiated—indeed, I understood him to say that he adhered to the statement that he made at Cheltenham a few days ago, that in London a number of bankrupt Voluntary schools are maintained which ought to have been transferred to the London School Board. He said—

"Certain of the Church dignitaries, mistaking their functions and duties, had determined to retain the schools as Voluntary schools, utterly regardless of the pernicious effects to the children; not having been able to carry on the schools in an efficient manner or in healthy buildings."

Well, the Government has lately put them in possession of a further sum of money, and yet the hon. Member said at Cheltenham that part of that money went to pay Church debts, and not to increase the pay of the teachers.

I am not responsible for any statement of that sort. I did not say that a portion of the money had gone towards the payment of Church debts. What I did say was that I am aware that, in some instances, part of the Aid Grant has been paid to Nonconformist schools, who have straightway decreased their rates payable to the trustees of Nonconformist chapels.

The hon. Member has made a double complaint within the last few days. One complaint is that the teachers in the Church of England schools are underpaid, as well as teachers in other schools, and he also complained that the teachers have not been represented as they ought to have been in the new local associations which have been formed for the distribution of the Government grant. Now, I venture to tell the hon. Member that he, and those who make the same statement, are mistaken in supposing that the extension and the efficiency of education is simply a question of money. This is one of those matters in which it may be emphatically said that money does not answer all things. One of the things which is needed to promote the efficiency of our educational system is not merely national money, but national interest, and you never will get the people of this country to take the interest they ought to take in the educational machinery of the country unless you give them the control and the right of management to which they are entitled. Some years ago the Schools Inquiry Commission presented a Report, which contained a passage, that is most applicable at the present time. They said—

"The real force whereby the work is to be done must come from the people. And every arrangement which fosters the interest of the people in the schools, which teaches the people to look on the schools as their own, which encourages them to take a share in the management, will do at least as much service as the wisest advice and the most skilful administration."

And, I will add, any amount of public money, which you may place at the disposal of the management. There is another sentence from a public document which I should like to place before the House. One of the inspectors of schools, Mr. Alderson, some years ago made a Report in which there was this suggestive sentence—

"The Board school has the advantage of being entirely detached from the machinery of the parish. It can be conducted with a more single eye to learning. It is impossible not to notice, as an almost new experience, how sensitively the School Board vibrates, so to say, to the touch of official criticism."

There, in a single sentence, I think this inspector has put his finger on one of the evils of the existing system, and has pointed the way to a satisfactory remedy. Sir, I venture to think that the Debate we have had to-night cannot be regarded by anyone as being unpractical and merely academic. The facts submitted to the House by the mover of the Resolution, and by the hon. Member for West Ham, have been of the deepest interest and importance. I must confess that I have listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council with deep disappointment. He wound up his speech with the declaration that this Parliament, cannot be expected to pass a comprehensive Measure of national education. So that not only is the educational policy of the Government, exhausted, but the educational zeal and efficiency of this House is supposed to be exhausted also. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was not even like Pandora's box, for there was no hope lying at the bottom. I wish the right hon. Gentle-of the sentiments which he enunciates else-of the sentiments which he enunciates elsewhere with regard to national education; and I wish that, not content with merely uttering those sentiments, he would, in his official position, give them practical effect, I join in the hope expressed by the right hon. Member for West Monmouthshire, that the facts placed before the House in the course of this Debate to-night will sink into the minds and hearts of the people of this country; so that, if this Parliament is incapable of passing a comprehensive Measure of national education, we may witness the existence of another Parliament, and another Government, which will apply itself to the by no means hopeless task of creating a truly national system of education.

I shall not detain the House with any long speech, but I do think that there are one or two points which have escaped attention in the course of the discussion to-night. I agree with a great deal that has been said by hon. Members opposite as well as by the hon. Gentlemen on this side as to the absence of any real religious difficulty. But I would remind the House that in recent years, at any rate, the introduction of the so-called religious difficulty has been due, in the main, to Clause 27 of the Bill of 1896. There is no religious difficulty in the schools, so far as the scholars are concerned, because of the tact of the teachers. If the parson is pragmatical, the teacher in the country school is tactful, and no real difficulty arises. I have investigated myself a number of cases in which it has been alleged that in a, denominational school the children of Nonconformist parents have been coerced or proselytised, and I have found that the Conscience Clause is a sufficient protection for the children in the schools. But when you come to the pupil teachers there is no Conscience Clause, and a very serious religious difficulty undoubtedly arises. I stand here to-night as the son of a Nonconformist, and I can relate my own personal experience. I was compelled to leave my own native town and go to a city in the north in order to become a teacher in a public elementary school. When the pupil teacher ceases to be a pupil teacher and goes to a training college, what is the test that is applied? I venture to say that the test applied is a disgrace and a blot upon our education system. Years ago you abolished the Test Acts, and only four year a Government grant proposed to be given to a college in London, was refused because a theological test was imposed on the tutors. But in our training colleges to-day, not only every tutor, but every student must subscribe to the religious tenets of the sect to which the college belongs. If he wishes to go to a Roman Catholic training college he must subscribe to all the tenets of that faith. It he wishes to go to a Church training college he is asked: "Are you confirmed? Have you been baptised? Are you a communicant? Do you subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles?" and so on. If he wishes to go to a Wesleyan training college, he is asked: "Are you converted? Are you a member of Society?" and so on. Now, I say it is a disgrace to the time in which we live that that should be possible, and particularly so while these institutions are maintained as to three-fourths of the cost from public sources. I wish, to show the House briefly how these tests are not only unjust in themselves, but how tiny go to prevent the best teachers from getting proper training. Take the case of a Nonconformist teacher going to a training college like the one called the Borough Road. Suppose he is No. 400 on the list of applicants. The competition to enter the college is so great that the first 200 applicants exhaust all the places, and this voting man, being No. 400 on the list, cannot obtain admission to the college, although he may be even better fitted to be a teacher than inferior students who in fact obtain admission at Diocesan Colleges. The result of this system is that the best students are excluded from the training colleges, because they are Dissenters, while inferior students are readily admitted because they happen to be members of the faith to which the majority of the colleges belong. It will be seen by the House that that is a most unfair stale of things. I am aware that a Royal Commission, ten years ago, recommended that there should be no interference whatever with training colleges. But that Commission, which was appointed by a Conservative Government, and which did not include a majority of people who would think in the same way as the mover and seconder of this Resolution, distinctly recommended that no future training colleges should be recognised which admitted students without the safeguard of a Conscience Clause, or were not strictly undenominational. I hope the Government will bear that, recommendation in mind in considering any proposals for new training colleges, and that all training colleges to be established hereafter may be cither undenominational or may have the protection of a Conscience Clause. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that a Conscience Clause might very well be introduced into the existing training colleges. What does the Conscience Clause say? It does not say that the institution or school may not teach the tenets held by any particular theological body, but it says that every student or scholar may contract himself out. If you give such a Conscience Clause as that you would protect the faith of many of the students, and you would not interfere in the slightest degree with the distinctive character of these institutions. Sir, I hope I have said nothing which will tend to irritate feeling upon this matter, because I cordially recognise the fairness which has characterised most of the speeches we have heard. On each side of the House there has been a disposition to meet, as far as possible, the views held by Members on the opposite side. If we can only secure that there should be on the Governing Committee of every Voluntary school at least one representative of the public, I think it would be a sufficient safeguard to enable many of us to Vote large additional sums of money to the Voluntary schools. No doubt these schools require more money, and if they cannot get that money from the rates, of course it must come from the taxes. I am certain that unless we shortly come to some arrangement whereby more funds can be provided for these schools this country will rue it at a not very distant date. Holding that view, I cordially support the Resolution.

The case put forward for this Resolution is the case of a religious grievance—the grievance of those Nonconformist parents who, under our system of compulsory education, have to send their children to schools, and have no schools to send them to except Church of England schools. Now, if there is one thing proved by the history of the last 20 years it is that the large majority of the people of this country do require some kind of Bible-instruction for their children; and I believe that in many cases parents accept Church of England instruction for their children because that is the only alternative to their taking advantage of the Conscience Clause. The right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President of the Council has told us in so many words that there is no religious difficulty in schools. In spite of that denial, I say that there is a religious difficulty and a real grievance in the fact that you compel parents to send their children to school while you do not provide anything but Church of England schools to send them to. The right hon. Gentleman asked us if we proposed to close the Church of England schools. This Resolution says nothing about closing Church of England schools or Roman Catholic schools. What we object to is the granting of public money when the only result is to place under the control of Church schools the education of children of parents who do not want that kind of education, and who would prefer education under a Board school system. That is the grievance set out in this Resolution, and I venture to say that if that is denied on the other side of the House, this House has not heard the last of it, but it will be heard of repeatedly until the grievance is removed. It seems to me an abominable thing that not only should the children of Nonconformist parents be driven into one school, which is a Church school, but that when we come here we should be told that the grievance does not exist except on the Political platform. To show how far that it is from the truth, I may tell the House that, living hi a great town, I have myself suffered from the step taken to force the children of Nonconformists into Church schools; I have had to send my own children two miles away, when they were too young to go that distance, simply because I could not obtain for them the education I desired at a school nearer to their home. This Resolution declares that the freedom of training colleges from sectarian control is essential not only to a just system, but to an efficient system of national education. I think it has been proved by this discussion, and by other discussions that have taken place here in the last few years, that efficiency in education has been sacrificed by the steps taken to manipulate the educational system of this country and put it under the finger and thumb of the Church of England clergy. If the Nonconformist feeling were sacrificed, and we were getting a better education, there might be, perhaps, some excuse to be made; but when it has been proved, its ii has been to-night, by the speeches, not only on this side, but on the other side of the House, that this grievance is imposed upon us at the price of inflicting an inferior education on the children our claim for redress becomes a double one; and I venture to say that we shall go on claiming that redress until we get it. I support most emphatically the claim stated by this Resolution, and whether it is any use supporting it or not, I shall vote for it if my hon. Friend goes to a Division.

I feel unable to support this Resolution. The Resolution demands—

"That there should be within reach of every child in England and Wales a public elementary school under local representative management."

I cannot say that there is anything in those words themselves with which I quarrel, but what they mean is that there should be, in every parish throughout this country, a Board school to which all would have to contribute in the form of rates, whether or not they were satisfied with the religious teaching given in that school. Therefore, although the words of the Resolution may sound specious, in practice it means that Catholics and Anglicans are to be compelled in every parish, as they now are, unfortunately, in many, to contribute to the support of schools which they cannot conscientiously use for the education of their own children. That I consider to be persecution. It is perfectly true that there is a grievance in the fact that there are small and scattered bodies who are not rich enough to support schools of their own, and that consequently members of those bodies have to send their children to schools in which the only religious education is Church education. A proposal was made two years ago by which those Nonconformists would have had the advantage of Nonconformist education in those schools if they desired it. That proposal was, secreted by the same people who now propose this Resolution. What they want is that they should not merely have the opportunity of teaching their own form of religion to their own children, but of enforcing their own form of religion upon other people's children. Of course, they say that it is not their own form or religion they say it is a sort of religion which is everybody's religion. I will put that to one simple test. There are in this country Voluntary schools, British schools, which are to all intents and purchases Nonconformist schools. The religious teaching, therefore, which is given in those schools is that which Nonconformists would desire to give, if they had their full way, to their own children, because it is absolutely beyond reproach. Now, the teaching given in those schools is exactly the same as that given in Board schools. Therefore, I say, tried by that test the Board school education is Nonconformist religious education. It is the same, at any rate, as the education which the Nonconformist Voluntary schools give to their children at their own expense. They want to be able to set up British, schools in every parish, and to levy the cost of those schools upon Anglicans and Catholics to whom that religious education is of no advantage according to their religious belief. That seems to me to be an unreasonable demand. It is said that in these parishes there is a grievance, and I admit that a grievance must sometimes exist. My hon. Friend beside me has said that, in his opinion, the grievance would be met if we had on, every Governing Committee a representative of the parents, who, are really the people concerned. If that would meet the grievance, I confess I see no reason why that demand should not be conceded. The heads of the Catholic Church some years ago, when this was a matter of controversy, expressed their willingness to allow a representative of the public on their Governing Committees; but when my hon. Friend made that very reasonable proposal he was met with cries of "No, no," from gentlemen sitting above the Gangway on this side of the House. That is not what is meant by this Resolution. This Resolution means a, Board school in every parish, nothing more or less. Let us knew what we are voting for. We are not voting for any vague form of popular control of the management of Voluntary schools; the question is, whether we are to have in even parish throughout this country a Board school where the only form of education which is not permitted is that dogmatic form of religious education, based on catechisms, which, in the opinion, as I believe, of the majority of the people of this country is that which ought to be given to the young. There may be some question as to whether I am right in saying a majority of the people of this country; but, supposing they are a minority, supposing even that they are a small minority, nevertheless I say it is a cruel thing to suggest that they should be compelled in every parish, as they are to-day, unfortunately, in the towns, to support a form of religious education which they cannot themselves use. This, in fact, is a proposal to balance the state of things which exists in the case of the church on Sundays by setting up an everyday church. It means that, in parishes where sufficient funds are given from old endowments to support a certain religion sufficient funds ought to be given out of the rates, directly paid to support what is to all intents and purposes another religion. That is a proposal which I cannot support. I believe that, while there is a grievance, and one which ought to be met—a grievance which the Government proposed to meet two years ago, but they found no support for their proposals on this side of the House—while there is a grievance which ought to be met, this proposal, which is now before the House, instead of meeting that grievance, would set up a still greater grievance, and for that reason I cannot support it. Sir, the second part of the Resolution refers to the training colleges. My hon. Friend has spoken with, feeling, in which I am sure he had the sympathy of the House, on that part of the question. So far as I understand it—I am, not sure that I am, absolutely correct—there is nothing to prevent Nonconformists from setting up any number of training colleges, if they would only do what the much poorer body of Catholics have done—put their hands into their pockets to support them. They do not believe, I understand, in sectarian colleges, they believe in unsectarian colleges. Well, their pockets are just as available for the purposes of sectarian colleges as for the purposes of unsectarian colleges. The remedy is the same, if they want to have any number of sectarian colleges. Compared with the Catholics they are rich. The Catholics represent in the main the Irishmen of Great Britain, who are the poorest of the people. They have managed to set up training colleges which are professedly sectarian. Among the people who support the unsectarian principle are a vast body of well-to-do men. If they believe as much in their theories as the Catholics believe in theirs, why should not they set up training colleges at their own cost? There is no legal obstacle in their way. So far as I understand, the object desired by the hon. Member beside me is that while the Catholics and the Anglicans bear at least one-fourth of the cost of setting up training colleges, those who believe in unsectarian education should be able to set up training colleges, towards which they should contribute themselves no part of the cost, but that they should look to the body of taxpayers or ratepayers of the country to bear the whole cost. That, I submit, is not justifiable. It is true that at

May I ask right hon. Gentleman the Lord Advocate what are the immediate prospects of the Bill; whether it is to be referred to a Select Committee of this House or to a Joint Select Committee, and when the Committee will be nominated?

The Bill will be referred to a Select Committee of 17 Members. As to the prospects of the Measure, we certainly hope that the Committee will get through its work in sufficient time to enable us to make progress with the Bill this Session.