This Bill is introduced by the Corporation of Huntingdon, and its object is to enclose the whole of the common land surrounding the town, amounting to 356 acres. They also seek to take powers to utilise the land for building purposes, either by sale or by lease, and to dispose of it in any way they may think proper. Now, the population of Huntingdon is a very small one, something under 4,500, and, although the promoters of the Bill claim that the town, being completely surrounded by these lands, is practically strangled, I think that it is a very large order on their part to ask for powers to enclose the whole of these common lands. But the object of my motion is, in the first place, to raise a very important question of principle which this Bill violates. I shall also have a word or two to say upon the merits of the Bill itself. The principles laid down by the Enclosure Acts are being violated by this Bill, which proposes to enclose without enquiry commons, to extinguish all common rights, and to vest the soil of the common lands in the corporation. They claim that they own the soil, but other people deny their title. The persons entitled to the right to use the commons are freemen of the borough and widows of freemen. They number at present thirty-three, and it is proposed by this Bill that their interest shall be extinguished, and that, in compensation, they shall receive an annuity amounting to £748 a year, to be equally divided among them. The principle of that proposal is a bad one. The corporation also propose to appropriate a sum which is at present invested in Consols, amounting to £9,000, representing the proceeds of the sales of certain portions of the lands, made from time to time to railway companies and other public bodies, and to utilise it in paying the annuities. On the merits of the Bill, my objection in the first place is that this small corporation seeks to embark on what is really nothing more or less than a land-jobbing scheme, and in order to do this they propose to extinguish the freemen's rights by a most pernicious system of doles. I fancy that this House holds rather strong opinions upon doles generally, and I do not think it is likely to approve a proposal to establish permanently an annuity fund to be distributed in all future years to a class which will certainly increase in numbers when it is discovered that there is some pecuniary advantage attaching to the freedom of the borough. No doubt at the present moment many people who are entitled to claim their freemanship have not done so because they have not thought it worth while, but the moment it is discovered that this annuity is to be distributed they will certainly take up their right of freedom, with the result that their numbers will be largely increased, the doles will be sub-divided again and again, and a system pauperising in character will be set up. The corporation urge that it will be to the benefit of the neighbourhood to pass this scheme, because they will then be able to provide public recreation grounds and parks for the benefit of the people. They also allege that, at the present moment, the public have no right over these commons for recreation. I should like to see them test that point. If I went down there to play a game of cricket on these lands, I should like to see the corporation test their allegation by bringing an action against me. I think they would find that they had a very bad case. What is the quid pro quo they offer for the 356 acres they propose to enclose? They are only going to give the public 10½acres of land, and I say that is a very serious defect in this Bill. Only within the last two or three days, the promoters have revealed another weakness in their scheme. I read in yesterday's Times a letter, signed by the mayor and two councillors of the borough, in which they stated there was an erroneous impression that it was intended to build on the whole of this land, and they added that it was impossible to do that, as such an undertaking would occupy two centuries. Why then have they asked permission to enclose these 356 acres for building purposes, when they know and admit that they have not the slightest intention of covering the whole of the land for two centuries? Surely there must be some more moderate course open to them. Now, the rights of freemen differ in many respects from the ordinary rights enjoyed by commoners. Generally speaking, common rights are attached to freehold or copyhold property, and people who have a property in those rights can sell them, and so they may be gradually extinguished. But the freemen's rights are vested in the whole body of freemen, and it is therefore impossible to extinguish them in the same way as ordinary common rights. The result is that these freemen will go on increasing in number, and this annuity will be split up into many sub-divisions. But the main objection I have to this Bill is that it expressly violates the provisions of the Enclosure Acts, which have been passed by this House, and which represent some of the very best work Parliament has ever done. What are the principles of those Acts? They are to be found in the Act of 1845, supplemented by the more important Act of 1876, and the whole of these Acts recognise most emphatically that the public have an interest in these common lands, apart from the interest of the owner of the soil and from the interest of the freeman. It is this public interest which the Enclosure Acts are intended to protect, and it is surely as important as, if not more important, than the interests of the owners of the soil and of the commoners. If this Bill is allowed to proceed the protection afforded by the Enclosure Acts will disappear, Parliament will be stultifying itself, and it will establish a dangerous precedent, of which other corporations will in future years seek to take advantage. What are the safeguards provided by the Enclosure Acts? In the first place there must be a local inquiry at which all individuals and all local bodies concerned have a right to be heard. The corporation tell us that they have the unanimous consent of the borough to their Bill, but that is not sufficient. They ought to have the assent of the whole neighbourhood as represented by the rural district councils, parish councils, and other local bodies. If this Bill is passed, the protection afforded by the local inquiry will be swept on one side. Then again, under the Enclosure Acts, the Board of Agriculture has to satisfy itself that the public interests are duly protected, and that the enclosure will not prejudicially affect the inhabitants of populous places near. The Board has to make a report to Parliament on the subject, and that report has to be considered by the Standing Committee of Commons, which has been appointed for the very purpose of protecting the public interest. That safeguard will also disappear under this Bill. I hope that the House will stand by its own legislation, and will not allow again to crop up that dangerous system which prevailed prior to the passing of the Enclosure Acts, a system which led to grave scandals in the loss of public rights. I think it is fair to say that the corporation assert that had they proceeded by way of Provisional Order they could not have got all they want. They certainly would not, for I do not believe the Enclosure Commissioners would have agreed to give them power to utilise the whole of the 356acres for building purposes. Had they applied for a Provisional Order there would have been a local inquiry, and the House would not have been legislating as it were in the dark as to the wishes of the local community. Why do the promoters fear the test of a local inquiry? I think it is pretty evident they know that their proposals would not survive such an inquiry. I have endeavoured to make it clear that the House is being asked to set a dangerous precedent in allowing the principle of the Enclosure Acts to be violated, and I hope we may be able to have a disinterested vote upon this matter, and to decide the question on its merits.

I think everybody will sympathise with the inhabitants of a landlocked town. It matters not whether the land around the town belongs to a large proprietor who wants to preserve the amenities of his estate, or whether it is common land; the effect is the same in each case—it cannot be built upon. As our sympathies, therefore, naturally go with the town of Huntingdon, the question resolves itself into one of degree. We of the Commons Preservation Society have approached the corporation in a very friendly way, and have asked them, not unreasonably, as I think, to limit their demand, and not to take the whole of these 356 acres, with the idea that their population will so increase as to necessitate the use of the land for the extension of the borough. Of course, I know how boroughs do increase when the opportunity arises, and I remember watching with great interest, some years ago, the amazing growth and expansion of a town in the north of Spain when its walls and fortifications were removed. The change was immensely for the benefit of the people there, and undoubtedly, if a certain limited amount of freedom were granted to Huntingdon, equally beneficial results would follow. The letter in The Times which my hon. friend has quoted is a repetition of what members of the corporation told the Commons Preservation Society a fortnight or three weeks ago. They then said that the whole of the land could not be utilised for 200 years. In view of that, I do not think the House will listen to a demand from the representatives of 4,000 people to extinguish the public rights of recreation over this enormous area simply to provide for a possible expansion of the town 200 years hence. If the corporation can show to a Committee of the House to what extent they can, by any guess or by the wildest estimate, grow in fifty years, then the House ought to allow them to acquire so much to that extent. To my mind this Bill is very little short of flouting the decisions of this House, and I trust that if the House does give the Bill a Second Reading to-day, it will insist upon its being carefully studied in a Committee of the House, which is the recognised machinery for the protection of public rights. I beg to second the Amendment.

One of the chief objections raised by the opponents of the Bill is that the Corporation of Huntingdon have not proceeded in what they say is the usual and regular manner. They say that the corporation should have proceeded by Provisional Order, which would have been preceded by a local inquiry, instead of coming here to-day with a Private Bill to carry out their object When the corporation decided that they would make this proposal, and that they would get rid, if possible, of those rights—for I may say here at once that there has been constant and perpetual litigation as regards the respective rights—the corporation felt it was important once for all that the question should be set at rest. The corporation doubted whether they should proceed by Bill or Provisional Order. They took counsel's opinion, and were advised that it would be impossible for them to proceed by Provisional Order, and that the only course was to proceed by Private Bill. They were advised, and so far as I have been able to make out they were well advised, that the only course open to them to take was that they have taken; but even if they had proceeded by Provisional Order they would, for the purpose of obtaining building powers over those lands, have been compelled to proceed by Bill afterwards, so that if the Second Reading of this Bill is passed now, it goes to a Committee upstairs, and the report of the Board of Agriculture will have to be laid before that Committee. So far as we can understand, this is only the proper and legal way in which we could have proceeded, and it is the simplest and best way in the public interest. If it had been possible to proceed by Provisional Order it would have been a very much cheaper and simpler form, and the Huntingdon Corporation would have been only too glad to adopt that form of procedure; but as it was there was nothing left open for them, as they were advised by competent legal advisers, except to proceed in the manner they are proceeding now. The opposition to this Bill is that of the Commons Preservation Society. I wish to speak with every respect of the Commons Preservation Society. They are an excellent body, and they have done a great deal of valuable work in the public interest. They are the watchful guardians of the public interest in regard to public enclosures, but they are apt, like a great many other good people, to go a little further than they are entitled to do, and they are inclined to think that instead of the commons being made for the public, the public are made for the commons. The public in this case are the people of Huntingdon, and I think they are practically unanimous in wishing that the object of this Bill should be carried out. Conservatives and Radicals alike are of one mind, and only last week the Radical local paper had the strongest possible article hoping that this House would consider carefully the merits of this Bill and give it a Second Reading when it came before it. The people who are interested in it are thirty-three. They have in their handwriting agreed to the proposals made in the Bill. The incomes derived out of the rights over those commons are calculated at £17 each. Under the provisions of the Bill they will get something like £22 each, and I really cannot see that that is too much compensation to give them for the rights which are being taken away. The corporation represents the public at large, and the corporation twice unanimously approved of the principle of the Bill. A public meeting of the inhabitants was held, and they also unanimously agreed to it. Hon. Members opposite say that the neighbourhood ought to give the sum. I scarcely know how the neighbourhood is to give the sum. What are the objects of the Bill? The objects of the Bill are that these common lands shall become the absolute property of the corporation, and that they should be empowered to let out small grants not exceeding three acres at a time for building purposes. The ground, as the hon. Member opposite has said, is small, and in a town of 4,316 inhabitants. It is surrounded by open country, with pleasant roads and footpaths going in every direction, and there is a large tract of 250 acres in extent which can never be built over. Therefore there is no question of the light or air of the people. On the contrary, the medical officer of the town itself says that the town is so congested that some of the houses are getting absolutely unhealthy, and that the town cannot increase on account of those commons, but must decrease because of the in sanitary condition of houses which must be pulled down. Other houses holding a smaller number of people will have to be erected in their stead, so that unless some power is given to the corporation to build upon these open spaces it is absolutely impossible that the town can extend, and on the contrary, it will contract. Something has been said about the common lands being places of re creation. Now as regards certain portions of the lands no one has a right to go on them at all. Under the Bill which is before the House the corporation will make a recreation ground of ten and a half acres of the land, but the size of it is a matter of detail. If the corporation acquire the rights they seek, the grounds will really become recreation grounds for the public, and it cannot be said they are that at present. I have been authorised by the corporation to say that whereas, of course, they must purchase the rights of the freemen over the whole of the land, as regards the commons, which extend to 146 acres, they are willing to have it provided in the Bill that no buildings should be put upon 82 of those acres. Of the remaining 64 acres they will make a recreation ground of 10½ acres, leaving only 53½ acres for building purposes. Any details as to allotments and so on could be considered by the Committee. After this large concession it would be a monstrous shame that the town should remain cribbed, cabined, and confined, and be strangled for want of building room. I earnestly hope that the House will allow the Bill to be read a second time, in order that it may be considered by a Committee upstairs.

reminded the House that the Commons Act of 1876 provided that whenever an enclosure was proposed to be made the matter should be referred to a body now represented by the Board of Agriculture; that that body should hold a local inquiry; that the report of that inquiry should be embodied in the Provisional Order, and that that Provisional Order should go before the Standing Committee of the House. The inquiries of the Committee were always conducted with the greatest possible care; witnesses representing the neighbourhood were summoned, and every opportunity was given for local opinion to be expressed; and the decisions of that Committee were always acquiesced in with satisfaction. His great objection to the present Bill was that it proposed to set aside that procedure. The Bill was prima facie an Enclosure Bill, and as such should have gone before the Board of Agriculture, and followed the procedure laid down in the Act of 1876. The questions raised could not be properly dealt with by the House as a body; they should be dealt with by a selected body, and the House had provided that selected body in its Standing Committee. It was now asked that that body should be thrown aside, and the Bill referred to an ordinary Private Bill Committee, which had not the wide power possessed by the Standing Committee, and was not nearly as competent to deal with the matter. The only excuse urged was that the Corporation of Huntingdon desired to get by this Bill something they could not have effected by Provisional Order. That might be a reason for taking some further steps, but it was not a reason for asking the House to do something which the Act of 1876 expressly declared should be done in another way. The hon. Member for Devonport was therefore justified in asking the House to sanction the resolution he had moved as an Amendment, and to adhere to the procedure laid down in the Act of 1876. The men who happened to be members of the corporation or freemen at any particular date were not necessarily the best judges of what would be for the permanent interest of the community. The House had to guard the interests of those yet unborn, and a special procedure had been laid down with the view of protecting the interests of those who were not necessarily properly represented by the corporation or any local authority. He hoped the House would not strike a great blow at a system which had worked well for twenty-four years, but would accede to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Devonport.

asked how far the House was to proceed with the new system of opposing Private Bills on Second Reading. The practice, which was largely increasing, was a very dangerous one. It was perfectly true that some other procedure might have been adopted by the promoters of this Bill, but the best legal advice was taken and followed as to the course to be adopted. So far as the difficulties which had been raised with regard to commons, enclosures, and so on were concerned, it was enough for the House to understand that a report from the Board of Agriculture dealing with the whole of those technicalities and difficulties must be laid before the Committee upstairs. Surely that was sufficient guarantee that all legal obligations would be observed. There were no private interests concerned; and there was a unanimous population, supported by its local authority, making the demand that the Bill should be considered by a Private Bill Committee. Considering the liberal manner in which the promoters had met the objectors to the Bill, it would be a cruel injustice to refuse to allow the Bill to be considered by a Committee, and he therefore hoped the Second Reading would be carried.

The right hon. Gentleman began his speech by saying that the habit had been growing in this House of imposing difficulties in the way of Private Bill legislation, and he went on to say that the Corporation of Huntington had a very great grievance in this matter which required our sympathy and attention. It may be that the case we have before us is one which the House ought to hear; but there is Private Bill legislation and Private Bill legislation. We are dealing here with a case not of an Imperial character, but one coming into a category with which the House is well accustomed to deal under a particular code. It is now nearly a century since the House laid down the principle that it would not sanction an Enclosure Act without good reason, and it laid down a code to which every Bill of this character should conform; and for the last twenty years no promoter has had the audacity to present a Bill to this House without making it conform to the code laid down in 1876. The right hon. Member for Huntingdon said there were legal difficulties in the way of adopting the usual code in this case. He did not say what they were, and I for one should like to know how far they prevented the usual course being taken. I can conceive that there might be some difficulty with respect to Lammas lands, but there can be none at all with regard to common lands, and I can conceive that it was possible in this case to have proceeded by way of Provisional Order. We feel that when these Bills come up we are not perfectly informed of the circumstances, and we are not in a position to judge the merits. Our only safety lies in conforming to procedure under which we know the Government Department is looking after the House and seeing that no injustice is being done. I desire to draw attention to the peculiar way in which this matter stands. The promoters have not approached the Minister of Agriculture and asked him either to allow their Bill to be dealt with under the code of procedure laid down and send it to his Department, or, if they are to proceed by Private Bill procedure, to rise in his place and state the reason for that departure from our established rules. We have had no explanation as to why it is that the promoters of this Bill are allowed to proceed in this altogether exceptional form. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman, who I see is in his place, is going to give any explanation, but it would be very satisfactory if he would tell us why it is that this Bill is not going through the usual steps and stages, and I think it would be convenient if I now move the adjournment of this debate in order that we may hear the views of the Government upon the matter. I therefore beg to move that the debate on this Bill be now adjourned.

I beg to second the motion of my hon. and learned friend. I think this matter requires a little more investigation. The case is a very peculiar one. The Bill takes a very unusual course, and I think the House ought to postpone the question, and on future consideration it may throw out the Bill, as it makes a very large encroachment on the common rights of England.

My hon. and learned friend opposite asks me to say what is the opinion of the Government upon this Bill, and I can state that in a very few words. I am asked why this Bill is to proceed in this manner instead of following the statute. That question can only be answered by the division now shortly to take place. Whether the promoters of the Bill have been right or wrong in the course of procedure which they have adopted is a matter with which my Department has nothing to do. My Department has the power to proceed on certain lines laid down by Parliament, and they are prepared to exercise those powers when applied to by a local authority. But there may be cases, and I am not prepared to say this is not one, where it may be desirable to proceed in the manner adopted by the Corporation of Huntingdon, and it appears to me that it is for Parliament alone to say whether the circumstances are such as to justify a departure from the procedure which Parliament has laid down.

Do you approve of it?

It is not for me to say whether I approve of it or not. The right hon. Gentleman opposite did not quite accurately describe the procedure. It is clear that the local authority would have to obtain a Provisional Order for the purposes of an enclosure first of all, and to follow that by a Private Bill for acquiring powers. But the Private Bill might be proceeded with pari passu with the Provisional Order. I am very reluctant, from the examination I have been able to make, to throw any opposition in the way of this Bill. I have investigated the facts, and I have reason to believe that there is great necessity for the extension of the borough of Huntingdon. The land in the south is not suitable because it is water-logged, and in the west there is land which ought not to be used for this purpose. The only other land which is suitable is this common land, which runs in the shape of a wedge from the north. On the other hand, I am bound to say that my hon. friend who supports this Bill and the Corporation of Huntingdon would have done better in their own interests if they had adopted the usual procedure, because, assuming that their case is so strong, the result would have been that the Board of Agriculture would have held a local inquiry, heard all the parties, and ascertained the facts of the case, and would have presented their report and shown their approval of the scheme by the issue of a Provisional Order giving the necessary powers, a course which would have strengthened the hands of the promoters of the Bill. The promoters having thought fit to take the course they have, it is entirely a matter for Parliament to say whether this is a case which has justified them in departing from the established rule.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huntingdon if there is a petitioner against the Bill. If so, there will, of course, be an inquiry; if not there cannot by any possibility be one.

I understand that there is a petitioner.

But if the petitioner for any reason whatever withdraws, the House will be absolutely helpless. There will be no machinery whatever for amending the Bill. Under these circumstances I am very sorry not to have obtained some pledge from the Government. I sincerely hope that if not to-day, at any rate in the future, they will be prepared to maintain the procedure laid down by the House and the Government in such cases.

Would it not be possible for the promoters of the Bill to adopt this session the procedure of applying to the Board of Agriculture, and thus obtain a Provisional Order?

They could not now get a Provisional Order this session.

Is it not the fact that under the

Under the Enclosure Acts the Corporation of Huntingdon would apply to the Board of Agriculture for powers to enclose lands. The Provisional Orders giving such power could not apply to building powers, which would have to be obtained by Private Bills.

As the right hon. Gentleman has made it perfectly clear that he does not approve of this departure from the usual course, and that it has not his sanction, I beg leave to withdraw my motion for the adjournment of the debate.

I do not rise to make any motion on this Bill, but I should like to put two questions to the President of the Local Government Board on points affecting this and the Lambeth Water Bill. The Royal Commission which has recently sat reported in favour of the purchase of water undertakings by some public authority. There is a clear and unanimous decision on that point. It has also reported in connection with the East London District that a public authority could deal with the future supply for that district better and more cheaply than the East London Water Company itself. I am quite prepared to leave these questions for the decision of the Committee, for I think it reasonable they should have these matters placed before them. But I observe that in the Act passed by the Government inter-connecting the water supply of the companies, a clause has been introduced which bars the companies from bringing forward that Act as a "valuable asset" in case of purchase. I should like to hear the opinion of the President of the Local Government Board with reference to this clause in connection with the present Bill. The other question more particularly affects the Lambeth Bill. In proposing purchase the Royal Commission has taken into account the existence of the sinking fund as part of their financial estimate. The importance of this question may be gauged by the fact that ultimately this sinking fund will amount to £150,000 a year. It is therefore necessary to safeguard the existence of this fund, but nothing is done in that direction in this Bill. I think, however, we may safely leave that to the Committee. I should like to know whether the Government intended to support intact the principle of the sinking fund in this Bill as well as in the case of the Lambeth Water Bill.

The hon. Mem- ber has addressed to me one or two questions in connection with the Bill before the House, but my reply to them cannot be altogether confined to that measure, and if, therefore, I appear somewhat out of order in any of the observations I may make, I hope the House will grant me its indulgence. The Bill we are now discussing is one for increasing the storage of water to meet the wants of the water consumers of London, and upon that ground alone, if upon no other, I should feel it my duty, as representing the Local Government Board, to support the Second Reading of the Bill. With regard to the first of the other matters raised by the hon. Member—the inter-connection between the water companies of London—I may say that the Government Act applies both to this Bill and to the Bill promoted by Lambeth, which we are to consider later on. Then the hon. Member referred to the question of the sinking fund. That does not apply to the East London Bill, because there is a clause in that Bill at the present moment providing for a sinking fund. But it does apply to the Bill of the Lambeth Company. That is my answer to the two questions of the hon. Member. I can only add that personally I think there is a great deal to be said for both of the propositions dealt with in the hon. Member's questions, and I am also of opinion that they are matters which ought to be referred to and dealt with by a Select Committee. I do not think I need say anything more. Indeed, the hon. Member must be aware that if the Committee does not deal with these matters in the way he desires there will be another opportunity upon which he can take the opinion of the House in regard to them.

reported from the Select Committee on Standing Orders, That they had agreed to the following Resolution:— "That, in the case of the Special Report of the Examiner on the Great Grimsby Street Tramways Bill [Lords], referred to them by Order of the House of the 26th February, 1900, they are of opinion that the Standing Orders have been complied with."

reported from the Committee of Selection, That they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure:—Sir Charles Dilke; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Lloyd-George.

further reported from the Committee, That they had added to the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, the following Fifteen Members in respect of the Midwives Bill:—Dr. Ambrose, Mr. Bonsor, Mr. Flower, Mr. Vicary Gibbs, Mr. Hazell, Mr. Howard, Mr. Humphreys-Owen, Mr. Heywood Johnstone, Sir Powlett Milbank, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Sir George Pilkington, Mr. Schwann, Mr. Tennant, Mr. Thornton, and Mr. Tritton.

further reported from the Committee of Selection, That they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee on Trade (including Agriculture and Fishing), Shipping, and Manufactures:—Mr. Lloyd-George; and had appointed in substitution: Sir Charles Dilke.

reported from the Chairmen's Panel, That they had appointed Mr. Laurence Hardy to act as Chairman of the Standing Committee for the consideration of Bills relating to Law and Courts of Justice and Legal Procedure.

In putting to the First Lord of the Treasury the question on the paper, namely, on what day the House may expect to receive the Papers promised in relation to the proposals of Presidents Kruger and Steyn asking for conditions of peace; and whether the Papers will be restricted to those communications and the replies of Her Majesty's Government, or will include other correspondence and documents of later date than the last South African Blue-book, I should like to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is able to make to the House the communication which I understand has been made in another place.

I understand that the correspondence, which will be immediately laid, has been read publicly to the House of Lords this afternoon by the Prime Minister. If the House desires it I will read it here.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he can lay the despatches on the action at Magersfontein upon the Table.

I beg at the same time to ask the Secretary of State for War when he will communicate to the public the despatches of Sir W. Gatacre dealing with the reverse of Stormberg, and those of Lord Methuen dealing with Magersfontein, fought 10th and 11th December, three months since.

In reply to these two ques- tions, the despatches referred to are now being printed, and will shortly be gazetted.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he has any information to the effect that a commando of 3,000 Boers offered to surrender on terms to Lord Roberts, but that their offer was rejected because the conditions were impossible; and whether he can inform the House what those conditions were.

Nothing is known at the War Office of this matter.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if he is in a position to make any further statement as to how many additional wire-cutters have been sent to the army in South Africa since 1st February.

One thousand six hundred and eighty wire-cutters have been sent out since 1st February, in addition to those which have gone out with units.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether it is the practice of Volunteer corps to make out a statement of accounts annually and to issue a balance sheet to members; and, if so, will he explain why the London Scottish Volunteer corps has failed to issue a balance sheet for many years.

A Volunteer corps is required to render to the War Office an annual account of its public funds and to exhibit a copy in the orderly room. The communication to the members of any statement of accounts of the private funds of the corps is not a matter within the jurisdiction of the War Office.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if he will state the result of the inquiries which have been instituted into the inaccurate sighting of the Lee-Enfield rifles which were issued to the troops in the early part of the year; and will he say what steps have been taken to ensure satisfactory tests and prevent faulty rifles being again issued, and what officers are now responsible for the testing.

The question has been referred to an expert committee. The officers of the inspection branch of the Army Ordnance Department carry out the testing.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War when the War Office will be able to announce the amount of the capitation grant to be given to Volunteer mounted infantry companies; whether permission will be given for companies of, say, fifty strong going into camp and receiving free transport and daily ration allowances; and whether such permission would preclude the mounted infantry attending their brigade or regimental camps in the same year.

This matter was dealt with in the statement of my hon. friend the Under Secretary of State last night. I am not yet able to announce the amount of the capitation grant which will be given in the few cases in which Volunteer corps will be allowed to form mounted companies.

Will the hon. Gentleman answer the last part of the question?

That is one of the conditions not at present settled. I cannot answer the question more fully.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War when the report of the Inspector General for Recruiting will be issued.

The report will be issued very shortly.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the death of Joseph Donovan, a private in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, who, according to the findings of a coroner's inquest at Derby on 3rd March, died on 11th February from pneumonia, secondary to pemphigus following vaccination; whether, in view of the fact that another soldier at Pontefract suffered during the same month from this rare disease supervening on vaccination, he will cause a strict investigation to be made into the source of the lymph used, in accordance with the recommendation of the jury; and whether he will advise that compensation be paid to the deceased's widowed mother on account of the loss of her son.

Yes, Sir. There were three cases in all, two of which proved fatal. A careful inquiry is being made into these cases. The lymph used was from three different calves, and from these same calves lymph was used in the vaccination of over 16,000 cases without any other unfavourable reports. No award from Army funds can be granted as compensation; but if the man's mother was dependent on him for support, the Patriotic Fund will be able to help her.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what is now the estimate of expenditure in the present financial year, and what the estimate for the next financial year, of the expenditure on capital account by the Admiralty and the War Office under the Naval Works Acts, the Military Works Acts, or otherwise, in addition to any sums repaid by annuities charged on Estimates.

The estimate of expenditure, exclusive of annuities charged on Estimates, is as follows:—

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can state how many political pensions of £2,000 a year, £1,200 a year, and £800 a year, respectively, have been granted for life under the 32 and 33 Vic, c. 60, and the 4 and 5 Will. IV., c. 24, to persons still living; whether he will give the names of the present pensioners, and the date of the grant of their pensions; and whether, having regard to the terms of the statute under which these pensions are granted, it is the practice of the Treasury to require a pensioner to renounce his pension when his income from private or official sources ceases to be inadequate to maintain his station in life.

The hon. Member will find all the particulars he desires in the Return presented to the House on June 13, 1898, No. 235 of 1898, and in the last Finance Accounts, Paper No. 258 of last session. It has been the practice for the last fifteen years to require the recipient of a political pension to give an undertaking that if subsequent to the grant of the pension he receives an accession of fortune he should resign his pension.

May I ask why the name of Lord Cross appears as the recipient of a pension, seeing that he continues to hold office?

For the obvious reason that it is an office without pay.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it is the intention of the Board of Inland Revenue to exclude from the exemption from estate duty, conferred under Section 8 (1) of the Finance Act, 1894, estates of non-commissioned officers above the rank of corporal, dying in Her Majesty's service during the present war; and, it so, is such exclusion in accordance with any legal decision; and what is the ground for making a distinction between one kind of non-commissioned officer and another.

Section 8 (1) of the Finance Act, 1894, makes applicable to estate duty the 'existing law and practice" with respect to "the exemption of the property of common seamen, marines, or soldiers who are slain or die in the service of Her Majesty." The practice in the past, dating from the beginning of the century, has been to exclude from such exemption the property of non-commissioned officers in the Army above the rank of corporal, and the Act of 1894 confers no power to alter the practice.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether firms tendering for the construction of battleships and cruisers have had their tenders accepted by the Admiralty on condition that they extended the required period for construction.

I need scarcely say that the whole policy of the Board of Admiralty is in exactly the opposite direction to the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman's question. We have, of course, been anxious for the quickest possible construction of ships. I have puzzled over the possible genesis of the delusion that we accepted tenders on condition that firms extended the period required for construction, and the only thing that I have been able to hunt up which could be twisted into supporting it has been the circumstance that one firm offered on one occasion earlier delivery of a cruiser than the contract date in the form of tender, if we could guarantee the earlier delivery of armour than stated in the invitation to tender. This guarantee we were unable to give. At the same time we informed the firm that any earlier delivery of the vessel they might find it possible to realise would be fully appreciated by the Board.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty when the whole of the men entitled to back payment in Portsmouth Dockyard will be paid, consequent upon an order of the Admiralty, dated 10th August, 1899, which directed that the new scheme for payment of skilled labourers was to date as from 1st July, and not deferred till 1st November, and, if payment is deferred beyond the present financial year, will the men be deprived of their, back pay.

The men will in no case be deprived of the back pay to which they may be found to be entitled under the order in question.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether it is proposed to horse the 5·4 howitzer siege batteries now in India; and whether these siege guns are taken on manœuvres and to camps of exercises, and in what way they differ essentially from the 5-inch howitzer, which is not a siege gun.

It is proposed to substitute horses for elephants and bullocks in the equipment of 5·4-inch howitzer batteries in India. These howitzers are taken to manœuvres and camps of exercise. They differ from the 5-inch howitzer in throwing a 60lb. instead of a 50lb. shell, while their total weight behind team is about 6 cwt. greater.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Indian War Department continue to insist upon the manufacture of a 5·4 howitzer, carrying a 60lb. projectile, in view of the fact that there is no other gun of this calibre in Her Majesty's service by sea or land; and that the guns adopted by the War Office for service out of India are a 5-inch gun with a 50lb. projectile, and a 6-inch gun with 100lb. projectile; and will he explain what public advantage attaches to the retention of this weapon.

I cannot say whether the manufacture of the 5·4 inch howitzer will be continued. It is not intended that more than two heavy batteries in India shall be armed with this weapon, and there are already in India a sufficient number of these howitzers for that purpose. I fully recognise the importance of seeming uniformity of pattern between the Indian and home services; but as has been stated more than once in this House, there were special grounds for the introduction of this particular howitzer. It has, according to the latest official report from India, proved itself a simple and powerful weapon, calculated to form a valuable addition to a field army; and its withdrawal from service would involve a serious sacrifice of public money.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether, when the post of Chief Presidency Magistrate of Madras recently became vacant, it was given to an officer of the Madras police who had no judicial experience; whether similar posts in Bombay and Calcutta are always filled by lawyers of experience; and whether Mr. W. E. Clarke had invariably acted as Chief Presidency Magistrate of Madras whenever a temporary vacancy occurred within the last few years; whether he was so acting within a short time of the last vacancy occurring; and whether, in the event of any such vacancy occurring in future in Madras, he will adopt the same course as that followed in filling the similar posts in Bombay and Calcutta.

I have no knowledge of the appointment referred to in the hon. Member's question. The power to make it rests entirely with the Government of Madras, and I am not aware of any sufficient reason for interfering with their discretion and responsibility in the matter. I believe that in Madras there are recent precedents for appointing to this post officers whose experience has been confined to police business, and that the results have been quite satisfactory.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the rights now on the point of being ceded to the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company by the Australian Governments materially alter and affect the conditions upon which the Pacific Cable scheme, to which these Governments are signatories, has been based; and that the Canadian Government regard these concessions as likely to defeat and probably to lead to the abandonment of the enterprise; and whether Her Majesty's Government have intimated their acquiescence to the grant of these concessions; and, if not, whether they have addressed any remonstrances to the Australian Governments with the object of inducing them to renounce their intention of infringing the terms of the Pacific Cable scheme.

The question how the proposed concession to the Eastern Extension Company of the right to open its own offices in the Australian capitals when the Pacific Cable has been laid will affect that scheme has been referred to the Pacific Cable Committee for consideration and report. The hon. Member will see from the correspondence recently laid before the House that Her Majesty's Government have stated that the question of these concessions is one for the Colonial Governments concerned, but they have asked the Governments of New South Wales and Victoria, to defer concluding any agreement with the company until the Cable Committee has reported on the question.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the draft agreement and specification for the construction of the British Honduras Railway which was being drawn up in January is ready, or whether there is likely to be further delay.

The draft is in print, and will be ready very shortly.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware of the difference which exists between the stocks of corporations and those of district councils—the former where the population is over 50,000 being trust securities; whereas the latter, whatever the population or the rateable value, are not; and whether he will consider the advisability of bringing in a Bill to remove this difference.

I am in communication with the Lord Chancellor on the subject of amending the law re- lating to trust investments, and will bear in mind the stocks of district councils, the position of which has already been brought to my attention.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the remuneration to the jurists on the Delagoa Bay Arbitration amounts to £5,000 a year; whether they have been sitting for about nine years; and whether, in answer to questions put to Ministers in 1894, 1896, and 1898^* by the hon. Member for Canterbury, it was stated that there was good reason for believing that the award would not be much longer delayed, or that the final award was expected in the autumn of 1898; and whether the information to this effect given in the House of Commons on the 28th March, 1898, to the hon. Member for Canterbury, was supplied to Her Majesty's Government by the President of the Berne Tribunal.

No sum has been named for the remuneration of the arbitrators. The answer to the second paragraph is in the affirmative. Her Majesty's Minister has not been in communication with the President of the Berne Tribunal. The information given to the House was obtained from other sources.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can now state when the Papers relative to university education abroad will be laid upon the Table; and if he will endeavour to produce them before the debate on the Irish University question.

These Papers will be distributed at the end of the present week.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture

^*See The Parliamentary Debates (Fourth Series], 5th April, 1894, Vol. xxii., page 1451; 21st February, 1896, Vol. xxxvii., page 824; 28th March, 1898, Vol. lv., page 1066.

The last outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Norfolk was discovered by one of our inspectors on the 20th February. By an order issued yesterday, which is to come into operation to-morrow, the restrictions have been withdrawn from the petty sessional divisions of Diss and Earsham, and they have been somewhat modified in Swainsthorpe and Loddon and Clavering, with a view to meet the more urgent necessities of the stock owners concerned.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware that the outbreak of foot and mouth disease took place at Fritton, in a place locally called the Island, naturally isolated by the sea, Lake Lothing, the River Waveney, and Breydon Water, with a tract of marshes following the course of the river with a width of from one to four miles, and at this time of the year entirely bare of stock; whether he can see his way to open for the sale of all stock, under a declaration and licence, all Suffolk south of the Waveney; and, in any case, whether he is now able to considerably reduce the scheduled area, having regard to the consequences to the farmers of any continued prolongation of the present restrictions. I beg also to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware of the loss which is being inflicted upon farmers, graziers, and other agriculturists by the restrictions imposed by his Department in Norfolk and Suffolk in connection with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in North Suffolk some time ago, and particularly by the wide area over which these restrictions prevail, extending for thirty miles and upwards from the infected area; whether the time has now arrived for largely modifying these restrictions; and, in particular, whether he will consider the advisability of limiting the infected area to five miles from the point where the outbreak occurred, and of authorising holders of stock in the scheduled area but outside the infected area to send their cattle to markets such as Ipswich, Colchester, or London, the cattle being marked with the broad arrow and slaughtered within four days.

In reply to my hon. friend, I would say that it is the case that an outbreak of foot and mouth disease occurred at Fritton, the geographical features of which are doubtless correctly described in the question; but my hon. friend will remember that five other outbreaks have since occurred in other parts of the scheduled district, and one in Bedfordshire. By an Order to come into operation to-morrow, the petty sessional divisions of Beccles and Bungay, with the borough of Bungay, have been withdrawn from the scheduled district, and the restrictions have been somewhat modified in that portion of Suffolk still included therein. At the moment no further relief can be afforded with safety.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if his attention has been called to the case of a child, aged three years, who was scalded to death in the Eton Union Workhouse, on 18th February, through being placed in a bath of boiling water by a girl, aged fifteen years, who herself had been a pauper inmate of the union for five weeks, and was the only attendant in charge; and what steps it is proposed to take to prevent a recurrence of such a fatality.

My attention has been called to the unfortunate case referred to, and at my request the medical officer has made a report on the subject. I am in communication with the guardians with regard to the matter, and especially as to the steps to be taken to prevent any similar occurrence in future.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in the case of the Light Railway Order for the Fraserburgh and St. Combs Railway, the Great North of Scotland Company has made application for the Treasury grant for the scheme; and whether he will be able to take steps to urge on the commencement of the undertaking, which has been long delayed.

I understand that the answer to the first paragraph is in the negative. The Board of Trade will communicate with the company and endeavour to ascertain their intentions.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether any scheme is yet in progress for the purpose of providing small holdings on the mainland of Ross-shire suitable for occupation by cottars and others who may be prepared to migrate from congested districts; and, if not, will he say whether any efforts have been made to acquire land, and the cause of the delay in the preparation of a suitable scheme.

No scheme is yet in progress on the mainland of Ross, and it is impossible within the scope of an answer to a question to deal adequately with all the considerations involved; but they will be referred to in the second report of the Congested Districts Board which the Secretary for Scotland hopes will be in the hands of Members next month.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, in view of a statement contained in the Appropriation Accounts, 1898–9, under Class 7, Vote 3, to the effect that the account of the Congested Districts (Scotland) Fund includes a charge of £403 13s. 2d. for the erection of minor lighthouses erected on the coasts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, will he state the names of these lighthouses, and where they are respectively situated.

If the hon. Member will refer again to the Appropriation Accounts 1898–9 from which he quotes, he will find that the sum he mentions was not expended for the erection, but for the maintenance of minor lighthouses, as explained in paragraph 4 of the Controller and Auditor General's Report attached thereto. The names of the lighthouses so maintained are given at page 10 of the Appendix to the first Report of the Congested Districts Board.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that the sum of £2,114 12s. 4d. was spent by the Congested Districts Board for Scotland during the year ended 31st March, 1899, in administering an expenditure of £8,973 17s. 8d., will he state what steps the Secretary for Scotland proposes to take in order to prevent one year's administrative charges of the Board amounting to as much as 25 per cent. of the total amount expended.

It is obvious that the figures for the first full year of the administration of the Board in which the working staff had to be organised and in which the various schemes of expenditure had necessarily not advanced to maturity, cannot form a normal standard of comparison; and the percentages given in the hon. Member's question are in the circumstances meaningless figures. I may add that the Secretary for Scotland considers that the Board has, up to the present time, been very economically administered, and that a curtailment of its expenses would interfere with the proper execution of its important duties.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, having regard to the fact that free postage has now been granted to the head office of the Fishery Board, will he consider the expediency of communicating with the Postmaster General with a view to a similar concession being secured for the Congested Districts Board for Scotland.

I am informed by the Congested Districts Board that the question of free postage was considered by them; but, as Section 8 (2) of the Act of 1897 makes the administrative expenses of the Board payable from the sums voted by Parliament, it was decided by the Treasury that postage must be paid and charged against the Vote.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether any licences to form public telephone exchanges under the Act of last session have been applied for to the Post Office; if so, how many; and how many such licences have been granted; how many of them have been granted to public corporations, and how many to incorporated companies; how many licences are in force in opposition to the existing licences held by the National Telephone Company; and in what districts are such competing licences operating.

Three actual applications for licences for telephone business have been made by local authorities. In one case a licence has been granted—namely, to the Corporation of Glasgow, for an area co-extensive with the Glasgow area of the National Telephone Company. The Postmaster General has also been in correspondence with twenty-two other local authorities, who are considering whether they shall apply for licences. Two applications for licences have been made by companies. A licence has been granted to the Mutual Telephone Company of Manchester for the borough of Salford and certain adjacent urban districts. The other application has been referred for approval to the corporation concerned, in accordance with Section 3 of the Telegraph Act, 1899. There is, of course, a telephone system worked by the local authority in the island of Guernsey.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he will inquire into the case of R. Priddle, postman, S.E.D.O., who applied for a pension on 9th November, 1899, having met with an accident when on duty in April of the same year, after over twenty-eight years service, and who has been left without pay, half-pay, or pension since the above-mentioned date; and whether he can state the cause of the delay in this and similar cases, which presses upon those in the postal service who become incapacitated.

A statement of Priddle's service was submitted to the Treasury with the view to the award of a pension on the 7th inst., and the award when made would, in the ordinary course, take effect from the date of the cessation of his pay—that is to say, from the 9th November last. The unusual delay which took place in this case is regretted, and was due to the numerous inquiries which it was found necessary to make before the statement of the man's service could be put forward. An advance has been made to him pending an award of pension.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether there are any cases within the last five years where prisoners have been sentenced to be flogged, and where the Home Secretary has either remitted the flogging or ordered a reduction of the number of lashes; and, if so, whether he will state the number of such cases.

There was no interference with any of the sentences of flogging in the years 1895, 1896, and 1898, except that in the latter year there was one remission on medical grounds. In 1897 one such sentence was remitted. In 1899 two sentences were remitted altogether; in two other cases where the sentence ordered a second flogging the second flogging was remitted, and in another case where it ordered a third flogging the third flogging was remitted.

Were all the remissions of punishment on the ground of ill-health?

No, Sir.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the conviction of certain undergraduates of the University of Cambridge by the local magistrates for the offence of burning some pro- perty on the night of the national celebration of the relief of Ladysmith; and whether, as the effect of this conviction is to incapacitate these undergraduates from entering any of the learned professions, he will consider whether a free pardon might be granted to these young offenders.

My attention has been called to this case, and I am at present making inquiry into it. I cannot answer the question to-day, but I may remind my hon. and gallant friend that the offence of which these undergraduates were convicted was not wilful damage, but larceny.

I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether, in view of the value of the works of art which will be stored in the national museums shortly to be built, every effort will be made to reduce the danger of fire; and whether all the casings and wood fittings will be made of the non-inflammable wood now specified for all the wood fittings in ships of war.

Every effort will be made to reduce the danger of fire in the new buildings about to be erected at South Kensington. The wood fittings and casings in those buildings will be reduced to a minimum; and the architects have been instructed to consider the desirability of applying the non-inflammable process to those fittings.

I beg to ask the hon. Member for Hammersmith whether the Kitchen Committee are still carrying on the sale of drink in the House and its precincts, in the same way as it was carried on when the Attorney General gave his opinion in the House of Commons that such sale was illegal.

The Kitchen Committee sell drink in the precincts of the House of Commons. As regards the second part of the question, I do not know.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether four teachers were recently rusticated from the Marlborough Street Training College, Dublin; what were the grounds of complaint against them; were these complaints investigated by the Board or by the college authorities, and were the teachers in question given any opportunity of meeting the charges made against them or being heard in their own defence; and if he has any objection to lay upon the Table of the House the report on which the Commissioners acted.

Four Queen's Scholars were sent home from the training college in February last, owing to frequent absences from duty through ill-health. This was the only ground of complaint against them. The absences were reported by the principals of the college, and the cause of the absence was certified in each case by the medical officer. The duration of the absence was considered to preclude their proper completion of the current training course, but they may be admitted to a succeeding one. The matter is not of sufficient importance to justify the laying of the report in question on the Table of the House, as suggested.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether any particulars are to hand as to the murder last week in Fermanagh of a man named Hugh Thompson; and whether Gilmartin, the man whose hay had been burned and on whose behalf Thompson was to give evidence, had been denounced at meetings in Belcoo of the United Irish League for taking an evicted farm.

Is the United Irish League to be made responsible for every crime committed in Ireland?

A man named Gilmartin, in May last, took a farm from which the previous tenant had been evicted. A meeting was held in June, under the auspices of the United Irish League, close to the evicted farm, at which Gilmartin was denounced by reference, though not by name, and it was suggested by several of the speakers that he should be boycotted. He was subsequently rigorously boycotted. His hay having been burnt in October, he claimed compensation for malicious injury. This claim was to have been heard at the assizes at Enniskillen. Thompson, the murdered man, was a friend of Gilmartin, and, although of a different religion, supported him, and aided him in resisting the boycott, and was about to be examined as a witness to sustain Gilmartin's claim. Three men have been arrested charged with the crime, the motive and cause of which will be investigated at the trial. At this stage I do not think it proper to express any opinion on the subject.

Can the Attorney General say why Irish transgressions are so eagerly advertised by Ulster Members?

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland if he could see his way to add to his Loan Fund Bill a clause to provide a compassionate grant to save debenture holders from losing money which in good faith they invested in loan fund banks.

The suggestion of the hon. Member cannot be adopted, for reasons that I hope to state on the Second Reading of the Bill.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury a question of which I have given him private notice. It is whether, in view of the numerous recent instances of violent disturbances connected with peaceable meetings called for the discussion of South African affairs, or directed against the personal property of individuals, owing to their supposed opinions upon the present war, Her Majesty's Government will cause inquiry to be made, how far and by whom those disturbances were organised, and will consider what steps are necessary to prevent a repetition of these discreditable occurrences, and to punish the offenders.

I received the light hon. Gentleman's notice not very long ago. I shall consult with my right hon. friend the Home Secretary upon the subject, and if the right hon. Gentleman will put the question on Thursday, either to me or to the Home Secretary, we will endeavour to reply to it.

I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time this day six months. One of my objections to this Bill is that I do not think it is a proper way to raise money for carrying on the present war. At the time of the Crimean War a great deal of the necessary cost was raised by direct taxation, whereas only something like £12,000,000 is now to be raised by taxation on articles of consumption. The balance is to be raised by way of loan repayable in ten years. I think that is not a candid way of meeting the expense of the war. Sooner or later this loan will have to be repaid, and the burden will then fall on the taxpayers. By means of it you are deceiving and deluding the people as to what the war is actually costing. I think it would be more candid and fairer to impose additional taxation to a greater extent, especially as we are told that the war fever is so strong in England that there would be no objection to fresh taxation. So much from that point of view. But I object to participating in the slightest degree in the passage of this loan from an Irish point of view. I consider, quite sincerely and honestly, that it would be little short of a crime if Irish Members in the present financial condition of their country sat silent while this additional burden is put upon it, and if they failed to protest by their votes against this fresh imposition. I calculate that, at the very least, three millions if not four millions of this loan will fall upon the shoulders of the Irish taxpayers. At any time that would be a serious cause of complaint in Ireland, but at the present time, when the whole country is agitated from end to end on the question as to the capability of the Irish people to bear the taxation now upon them, to impose a fresh burden is in my opinion little short of monstrous. The incapacity of the Irish people to bear the burden of taxation already upon them is not a matter of complaint by Irish Nationalists alone. The Chancellor of the Exchequer knows perfectly well that the agitation in Ireland during the last few years on the question of Imperial taxation has been maintained not merely by Nationalist Members, but by a large number of Unionist Members as well. The Royal Commission which inquired into the condition of Irish finance and into the question of the ability of the people to pay the Imperial burden already upon them reported practically unanimously that considering all the circumstances of the case the Irish people were called upon to pay something between two and a half and three millions more every year than they ought to pay, having regard to the different conditions of Ireland and England, and above all having regard to the Act of Union at the commencement of the century, which specifically stated that the Irish people should only be taxed in proportion to their relative taxable capacity, and that abatements and exemptions should be made in their case. That Report was not drawn up by mere partisan Nationalists, but it was a Report presented by a Royal Commission composed of the principal experts of the day on financial matters, and they laid down the conclusion that Ireland was paying at least 2½ millions more towards Imperial taxation than she ought to pay. That is beyond dispute and cannot be denied. No attempt has, however, been made to enforce the conclusion of that Royal Commission. Under ordinary circumstances a Report of that kind would have been followed by legislation, and the defects which the Royal Commission had pointed out would have been remedied if an English question were concerned. But no action was taken with regard to Ireland.

The hon. Member is now discussing the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland.

I do not intend to go at length into the question, because it would not be strictly à proposof the matter under discussion, but I wish to point out that the Irish Members object to this Bill not only on its merits but because it has been shown that, independent of this fresh war taxation, Ireland is already paying several millions a year more than she should. No attempt has been made to remedy that injustice. On the contrary the Chancellor of the Exchequer, instead of endeavouring to equalise Irish taxation and to remove the grievances of which many of his supporters in Ireland complain, asks the representatives of the Irish people, overtaxed and overburdened as Ireland is, to sanction this loan for the purpose of carrying on the war. I have no doubt English Members sometimes feel irritated at the constancy with which Irish Members refer to these financial proposals, but I say deliberately that not during the whole of this century has there been a more monstrous and more infamous proposition than that the Irish people should be called upon, in the present condition of their country, to pledge themselves to millions of fresh taxation for the purposes of the war. The stock of this loan is to be known as "war stock," and the bonds as "war bonds;" therefore, I assume I am entitled to go into the policy of the war. I have no desire to do so except very briefly; but this I will say, that whatever objection I had to the policy of this war, which has entailed this enormous cost, before this evening, within the last hour my objection has been doubled and trebled, and never since the commencement of these war discussions have I been so opposed to it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer calculated that the war would cost £60,000,000, but it will really cost between £65,000,000 and £66,000,000, because the right hon. Gentleman has not taken into account the surplus which would have been to the good had there been no war. We were told first of all—and a very plausible statement it was—that this war should be continued at all cost because certain dominions of Her Majesty had been invaded by the forces of the two Republics. That is quite true, though I hold my own opinion as to what led to that invasion. I was not at all surprised that Natal was invaded under the circumstances. At the same time, I was not surprised at the attitude of the English Members, who maintained that this money should be spent, and more if necessary, in order to clear Natal and every inch of Her Majesty's territory in South Africa from the invading Boers. I can understand that; but what I cannot understand, and what I protest against, is that when by an overwhelming force you have cleared the invaders out of Her Majesty's territory, you are not satisfied with that, and you refuse to consider terms of honourable peace with a brave and gallant people. Now we are told for the first time what we all along suspected, that this war is not a war to right the wrongs of British subjects in South Africa, not a war merely to clear Her Majesty's territory of invading forces, but a war waged against the independence of the two Republics. The Prime Minister stated in a speech not long ago that the war was forced upon them to right the wrongs of British subjects in the Transvaal, and that they sought neither territory nor goldfields. The Duke of Devonshire said something of the same kind, and denied that there was any intention on the part of the Government to annex either the Transvaal or the Orange Free State. Now we are told by the First Lord of the Treasury that this war—this horrible carnival of bloodshed and misery and wretchedness—is to be carried on until the independence of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State is overthrown and swept away. After that declaration I object to this loan all the more strongly, and I shall vote more readily than I have ever yet voted against a single penny being granted. I venture to say that there was no Member in this House who listened altogether unmoved to the communication from the Presidents of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. You may disagree with them; you think, no doubt, they commenced this war without provocation; you think they were wrong from start to finish; but is there any Member in this House who, in his own breast, can withhold from these two States some tribute of admiration for the extraordinary valour and almost superhuman courage with which they have endeavoured to preserve what they consider to be their rights? And now these two men, having won some victories; when it seems that they are about to be overwhelmed; when they are about to be cleared out of the Queen's dominions; when they are considering any terms of peace which they could possibly, with an atom of self-respect, accept—when they make this offer, the answer of the Prime Minister to that offer will fill liberty-loving people throughout the world with despair, if not with disgust at the policy of Her Majesty's Government. No; no terms are to be considered. This war is to go on to its bloody end. Nothing is to satisfy the Government or the Colonial Secretary until Pretoria has been reached, and until the list of 15,000 killed, wounded and maimed British troops has been increased a thousand fold. This war is to go on with all its misery, all its bloodshed, all its terrible torture to those who fight, and those who are left behind, because, having got the power of enforcing every right that you could possibly claim for your British subjects in the Transvaal, having got the power of dictating the terms on which your people should live in the future in the Transvaal, no terms will satisfy you except those which strike at the existence and self-respect of those Dutch farmers—terms which you know perfectly well make it absolutely certain that these men, after to-day, will continue to fight to the last ditch, and that they will not surrender as long as a shot is left in the locker. Where is the wise statesmanship which we are told governs the policy of this Government at the present time? I wish to goodness that Mr. Gladstone were alive. I wish to goodness that Mr. Gladstone were directing the affairs of this country, and I believe the necessity for this money we are asked for to-night would not have arisen. Mr. Gladstone would have offered the same fair and honourable terms which commanded the respect and the admiration of the world when the Boers inflicted a small defeat on the British forces at Majuba. If he were alive, directing the affairs of this country, what terms would he not have made when appealed to by the Presidents of these two Republics in the hour of British victory? He would have behaved with humanity, and would have said to these people, "Now we have demonstrated our strength; now that we have got 205,000 British troops in South Africa—more than one for each of your population; now that you see our power, and that it is only a question of money when we can subdue you, admit you cannot withstand our overwhelming forces and ask for peace." Mr. Gladstone would have given them peace on terms which would have secured for every British subject the fullest fair play for the future, and would have given them peace upon the only terms on which you can have any abiding peace in South Africa, and on terms also of consideration for the self-respect and the bravery of the Dutch population throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. It is all very well to ask for this thirty millions to carry on the war, and enable you to march to Pretoria and hoist your flag there, and to destroy the independence of these two countries. That is easy enough to do. You may destroy their independence; you may raze Pretoria to the ground; you may kill every soldier in the armies of the two Republics; but will that guarantee the permanent peace of South Africa? Will that guarantee for the future to bring contentment or satisfaction to the minds of the vast concourse of Dutchmen in Cape Colony and Natal, and the majority of the whole population in South Africa, who are Dutch at the present time? I say, now is your time to make terms of peace regarding which the Dutch in the Cape and Natal will be able to say, "Well, after all, these English people have shown us their enormous power and strength, and when we acknowledged that and asked for peace they were magnanimous and generous enough to give us terms of peace which we could accept with self-respect." I say that is the policy which ought to actuate Her Majesty's Government, and which would win for England the respect of Europe and of the whole world. It is the only policy which will prevent the necessity for fresh military operations in South Africa. But if you go on with the policy that the blood of the British lion is up, and that you will be satisfied with nothing but to destroy the independence of these two small countries, you will earn the contempt of every liberty-loving people in every part of the world. That policy will perpetuate disaffection throughout every part of South Africa, and will make the Dutch in Cape Colony and Natal dissatisfied with your rule and wait for a chance of striking a blow for that independence which they so dearly prize. There is one point which always appeals to me in this matter, and which is always overlooked not only in this House but in the country, and that is that no matter what settlement you make you cannot help the whole of South Africa from Cape Town to the Zambesi being populated by Dutch people and English. These people will have to live for the future in South Africa. Are they to live together in peace, respecting each other; or are they to be obliged to live, as we have been forced to do in Ireland, not loving your rule? I say that, Dutch and English having to live together, you should pursue a policy which should commend itself to them in the hour of defeat—a policy of generosity and wisdom, and unless you do that you will only be breeding fresh trouble for this country. As for us in Ireland, we object to this war as being unjust; and, therefore, what is more natural than that we should come here and object to pay any portion of the money asked for these military opera- tions? Why, it is hard to understand the feeling which is afloat in England at the present time. It is hard to understand that this is what is called free England at all. The only place, so far as I can see where any man in this free country can say a word against this war and this enormous taxation is the House of Commons. [Hon. Members: Hear, hear!] Hon. Gentlemen opposite rapturously cheer that statement of mine, that the House of Commons is the only place where a word can be said against this iniquitous war and this enormous war expenditure, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin, the late Member for Plymouth, and many others. If they attempt to exercise the right of public meeting or free speech in free England to-day, what is the result?

The hon. Member cannot discuss the right of public meeting on the motion before the House.

I have no desire, Mr. Speaker, to do anything, but obey your ruling in this matter. I have stated that these meetings were interfered with, for the purpose of showing that the only place where our protests can be made without having our persons injured, our property destroyed, and the houses of our families invaded by a war-like mob, is the House of Commons. Therefore we take this and every opportunity of entering our protest against this war. I say the time will come, and it is not very far distant, when there maybe scenes of excitement outside this House amongst the taxpayers and the working people of this country. These scenes of excitement will not be created by pouring out the millions of the taxes wrung from the people for warlike preparations; but they will be caused in years to come, when this policy of crushing the independence of the South African Republics bears its fruit in continual disturbances in the Continent of Africa, and when the people find that the only return they get for this enormous expenditure of money, is to create in South Africa a larger and a more stubborn Ireland than you have here. I conclude by saying that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer—impatient as he may be, and impatient as his friends may be to vote this money—cannot complain if we pro- test, as Irishmen, against having anything to do with this Vote—in the first place because we object to the war, and in the second place because Ireland is not entitled in any way to be asked to bear a share of its cost. They can hardly complain of us doing that, for over since the session commenced we have opposed this war. As the representative of one of the Irish Nationalist constituencies I enter my protest, and I care very little whether the supporters of the Government complain of my doing so or not. I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time this day six months.

I rise to second the motion of my hon. friend. We were told when this war was entered into that it was only going to be a short war, costing something like £20,000,000. Those of us who knew something about the Dutch knew that it was not going to be such a short war, and I thought that the Dutch would not give up their independence without making a struggle to fight for it. We all know with what a light heart this war was entered upon, and we were told that our troops would be in Pretoria by Christmas. But what has been the result? My hon. friend has shown how this system of loan bamboozles the British public, and they are not made aware by it of what this iniquitous war is costing. It becomes our duty—objecting as we do to this war, to its origin, its continuance, and the spirit in which it is waged—as Nationalists to enter our protest at every stage and upon every occasion against this war. We have little or no interest in the expansion of your Empire, for it can bring to us nothing but taxation. As my hon. friend has proved, the very least that this Bill will put upon Ireland will be a burden of £3,000,000. When we consider that the people of Ireland have been starving for ten years in the west of Ireland, and we cannot get a wretched pittance to keep the life in our people, then it is our stern duty to say that Ireland is hostile to this country, and that we object to any taxation which includes any payment which falls upon the already overtaxed people of Ireland. I think we should be false to ourselves and to those who sent us here if we did not enter our protest. Although our numbers may be small owing to some of our supporters having to go elsewhere, it will be the duty of those who are here to protest against this proposal, and show that we have no hand or part in continuing a war which will bring nothing but misery in South Africa, and which will cost our own people an enormous sum of money.

I should like to say a word or two upon the Bill itself, and to invite the Chancellor of the Exchequer's attention to one or two points in connection with it. I must, in the first instance, congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon the success of this financial operation; but I am bound to qualify that congratulation with the expression of a doubt, that a loan which is so popular, not only with the public of this kingdom but with the public of other countries, must be a remarkably favourable loan to those who may be fortunate enough to obtain a share, and that suggests whether the Treasury in settling the terms of the loan have done in the matter the best they could for the public Exchequer. I congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon the mode in which he has issued this loan. I approve, and I think the House and the country approve, of the mode in which he has issued the loan, for he has appealed to the mass of the people and they have responded, and the loan is not weighted by any heavy intermediate commission. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will, I am sure, contrast his experience on this occasion with the not very satisfactory mode in which the last money obtained on Government credit was raised—I mean the Local Loans Loan which was raised in the month of January. Within a very few days of that loan being issued at £99 12s. 6d., I think, it was sold in the public market at something like £2 or £3 premium, and it stands pretty much at that figure now.

It was issued by tender.

Yes, by tender, I know; but there is no doubt a limited number of persons formed, to use a common expression, the ring by which that loan was manipulated. At all events, this is a great improvement upon that mode of procedure. But I should like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give us his reasons why he has not adopted on this occasion, in any shape or form, the principle of the terminable annuity. In the second clause of the Bill he has provided, as far as Parliament can enact, that at the expiration of ten years from the present time, this loan shall be redeemed on the payment of £100 sterling and the payment of all arrears of interest. He has also provided that the cost, both the principal and interest, of this loan should not be a charge on the sum of £23,000,000 which is the permanent annual charge for the National Debt, but that the interest and the principal will have to be met outside the debt charge. I should like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say if I am right in that, namely, that the £23,000,000 will be raised and applied outside this debt which will have to be provided for outside that sum. I think that is a satisfactory provision. At the same time, I think it would have been better if the principle of annuity could have been introduced into this loan. I know the Treasury has a very strong objection to terminable annuities, but I should like the Treasury to appeal to the public. I have always held the opinion that if the general public had a chance of tendering for those annuities there is a class of persons who would come to the aid of the Treasury and avail themselves of securing a fixed sum annually for a limited period. That I know is not a popular view in the Treasury, and I should like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say whether anything outside the sentiment and prejudice of the Treasury has induced him to abandon the principle of annuity on this occasion, because the principle of annuity would secure the annual liquidation of a portion of the debt. Now, I should like to say a word upon our position with reference to this loan. I do not think that until the war expenditure has come to an end we are able to say exactly what proportion will have to be met by loan and what proportion will have to be met by taxation. I think that the general opinion of the House and of the country is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has, at all events, so far as this operation is concerned, very fairly combined the two principles of taxing the taxpayer of to-day and also of charging the general finance of the country with a portion of this expenditure by way of loan. I think my right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth said that this was the largest borrowing that has been made, certainly for purposes of this description, for something like forty years.

Since 1815.

I think we are entitled, in passing such a measure, to look at what really is the financial position of the country. Of course we are cautioned against optimism or pessimism with respect to our military operations. The feeling of the country to-day is that the moment that anything very successful happens the people are in a very optimistic frame of mind, and the moment that anything not very successful takes place they are plunged in the depths of despair. [Cries of "No, no!"] Well, perhaps that is too strong a word; I will say the depths of gloom. But so far as finance is concerned we must look at the matter from another point of view altogether. We must deal with the matter really from the point of view of the position of the country; and I desire to quote a figure or two to the House upon that point. My right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth contrasted the present proposals with those which were made in 1857 when Sir George Cornewall Lewis wound up the expenditure on the Crimean War. But in contrasting that position with the position to-day we ought also to look at the financial position of the country to-day and its financial position then, and we must remember that the expenditure of this country and the amount raised in taxation has enormously increased in the last thirty, forty, or fifty years. Going back only twenty-five years—to 1874 or 1875—the gross revenue of the country was something like £75,000,000. The other night the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of the receipts of last year, receipts which had nothing to do with the war, as £125,000,000. Therefore, we have an increased revenue and an increased expenditure of something like £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 in that period, coming out of the taxation of the country. But there is another item in the account. Since the Crimean War, and since a much later period, there is a class of taxation and a class of expenditure which has arisen in this country, and year by year until it has approached a gigantic amount. I refer to local rates. It has already a national debt of its own, and contrasts not most favourably with the National Debt of the country. It must be remembered that the ratepayers and the taxpayers are the same people, and this year the ratepayers of England and Wales are called upon to pay in rates upwards of 40 millions sterling. That is in addition to the subventions from the Treasury, to the share in Imperial taxation, which are given to local bodies. I find no fault with that expenditure. In fact, I am a strong advocate of it. I think it is an expenditure that will increase, and ought to increase. But, when you are regarding the burdens of the present taxpayers and ratepayers, you must look all round, and you must remember that the 125 millions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is between forty and fifty millions short of the real amount to be paid by the taxpayers of this country. Now I take the figures so far as the National Debt is concerned, and that perhaps is more germane to the present Bill. In 1837, the year the Queen came to the Throne, the National Debt was £843,000,000, and if the local loans then outstanding for a small amount and the balances at the Exchequer are deducted from that amount the real net National Debt at that date was £843,000,000. I take another date. At the close of the Crimean War the National Debt was £842,000,000. Against that there were assets amounting to £23,000,000, and, therefore, the real National Debt was under £820,000,000. What was the National Debt last year? On the 5th of April, 1899, the gross liabilities of the State amounted to £635,000,000. The generation that has been taxpaying between 1857 and now has borne the burden of that large reduction of taxation; taxpayers have discharged their share of the debt, so far as paying it off is concerned, within that period. We have now assets amounting in round figures to £27,000,000, and, therefore, our financial position at the present time is that the real net liability of the State is something over £600,000,000. When we are asked by Her Majesty's Government to sanction for the purpose of this war an addition to that debt of £30,000,000, the financial authorities of the country are entitled to take up the position that, having regard to the financial position of the country as a whole, and to the fact that the burden of taxation is now so fairly adjusted between all classes of taxpayers and so wisely levied in the manner in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Member for West Monmouthshire explained to the House the pressure of that taxation is very slightly felt; and as this debt of £30,000,000 is to be paid off in ten years—a promise which I hope will be faithfully redeemed, and it will be redeemed if Chancellors of the Exchequer only stand firm and do not give way to the criticisms of either friends or opponents—I think the House is assenting to a financial arrangement to which there is no just ground of complaint, and work will meet with the general approval of the people.

I do not think the raising of a loan of £30,000,000 will be a very difficult operation to art Empire with such resources as our own. I think my right hon. friend is to be congratulated on the success which has attended the issue of the loan. I only hope he will be able so to influence those who probably now have the direction of the operation that as far as possible the loan may be placed in the hands of small investors, and I was going to say the British public as distinguished from the more powerful and wealthy financiers, but I believe I ought to say the British and Irish public. We have been told that from every part of Her Majesty's dominions applications have poured in, and notwithstanding what the hon. Member for East Clare says, if we were allowed to inquire into the sources of the applications I believe a great many of the applications would be found to have emanated from Ireland. In congratulating my right hon. friend on the success and skill of this operation, I would only say, with regard to the extremely interesting figures which have been read out by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, that I think there is one moral and one lesson which ought to be deeply taken to heart by Chancellors of the Exchequer, from whatever quarter of the House hey happen to come. I mean the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman referred when he pointed out that, although now we were more wealthy, we had less debt to bear. It is true that we are more wealthy, but if we had the same debt to bear our greater expenditure would cause a great deal more pressure on the taxpayers of this country. Therefore, while I am the first to recognise that when the nation is at war the greater part, if not the whole, cost of the war may legitimately be raised by borrowing, and by suspending the Sinking Fund, still, I earnestly pray that, except on these occasions, the policy of reducing the Debt of the country will go on in the future, and be religiously and diligently carried out.

I see from the newspapers that the loan which was issued at 98½ is already at 2½ per cent. premium. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman is in the position of being able to distribute to those who get the loan the comfortable little sum of £750,000. Well, I am not complaining of the Chancellor of the Exchequer bringing it out at the issue price. I am perfectly aware that it is always necessary to bring out what is intended for a popular loan below what the actual price would be, because, naturally, financiers are not anxious at any particular moment to buy Consols. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he was making a speech on this loan, said he would have special consideration for the smaller applicants. Well, I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will thoroughly carry out that view, for certainly if this £750,000 is to distributed among the public of this country, it is more desirable that it should go into a great many pockets than into a very few. Therefore I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will tell us that he will proceed on this system: that he will first allot in full to all who have applied for, say, £100 worth of the stock; that he will then take those who have applied for £200, and that he will distribute it in this way among the greatest number of people he possibly can. I think that would only be fair and in accordance with the expression the Chancellor of the Exchequer used. One of the troubles of these loans has been that some great plutocrats in the City who are able to take up a large amount of stock get allotments. If the money is to be distributed let it be among the poor instead of among wealthy gentlemen in the City. I am not going into the policy of this war at the present moment—I have done so before; but we have had a document presented to us today—the despatch which has been sent by Her Majesty's Government to the Presidents of the two Republics—which may certainly alter the views of a great many persons in regard to this war. It must clearly be understood that, while a great many of us on this side of the House do not assent for one moment either to the grounds which the Government have given for going into this war or to the scope which they intend at present to give to the war, at the present moment these two Republics are fighting, rightly or wrongly, for their independence, and we are carrying on the war in order to destroy the independence of those two Republics. I have never heard in modern times of such an intention avowed in regard to a war. The last time an independent country was blotted out of existence was the case of Poland, and surely we ought not to take the case of Poland as an example. There have been many wars since then, and I do not remember one single instance in which a foreign and independent country was destroyed by the victorious belligerent. We had a case a little while ago with respect to Greece. I am not one of those who have so high an opinion of the Sultan of Turkey that I would have objected if you had sent an ultimatum, and if you had caused us to spend money and blood to prevent Turkey from absorbing Greece if it had been the intention of the Sultan to do so; but that was not proposed. We have to take the opinion not only of Europe but of a large majority of Americans—we have to take the opinion of the whole civilised world, and you will find that they will protest against this attack on the rights of independent countries. I have been against this war all along, but I perfectly understood the position of Gentlemen opposite—it was a most difficult position—when, whether the war was just or unjust, whether it was our fault or the fault of the Boers, they were in our territory, and it was absolutely necessary to drive them out. I also understood those—though I cannot say I quite shared in it—who thought that our arms had suffered in prestige. I did not think so myself. I had a higher opinion of the valour of Englishmen than perhaps hon. Gentlemen opposite. Still, my respect and my belief in the prestige of English arms was not in any way destroyed. I can understand that military gentlemen in some sort of way wished to have an opportunity before the war was over of re-establishing that prestige. The Boers have been driven out of our territory. [Cries of "No!"] Well, perhaps there may be half a dozen Boers hanging about, but for all practical purposes they have been driven out, and the British Army is now invading their territories. If you will take the trouble to read the despatch of the Presidents of the two Republics you will seethe terms on which they are willing to see peace restored. It will be admitted that we have practically driven them out of our territory. Under these circumstances I cannot, for myself, understand what ground you have for continuing this war. Can you tell me of any war in which the vanquished side asked for terms, and were told that the victors would only grant terms in the capital of the defeated country, and on condition of their surrendering their independence? I call this thing an iniquity. I call this a positive iniquity. [Cries of "Oh!"] Well, hon. Gentlemen may say "Oh!" if they like, but I regard it as an iniquity and a disgrace to this country to propose such terms. Perhaps the question of iniquity does not appeal to hon. Gentlemen opposite. It is not only a crime, it is also a blunder. I do not believe this is the way to establish peace and harmony and good feeling in South Africa. I cannot forget that the majority in our own colonies are of Dutch extraction. Although they have been loyal for nearly a century to this country, and are prepared to remain loyal, their sympathies are entirely with their kith and kin, and if you wipe out the independence of these two Republics, you will create a state of things in South Africa under which you will have to maintain your rule by the sword not for a short time, but for a long time. In these circumstances I cannot help rising to register my protest at the earliest opportunity against the despatch sent by Lord Salisbury to the Presidents of the two Republics. There are many who share with you the belief that this is a just and necessary war, there are many who were with you in driving these people out of our territories, and who wished to establish our prestige; but I very much doubt whether the country, who are called upon to pay this enormous taxation and to sacrifice the blood of the soldiers, will be with you in the further prosecution of this war. I do wish a better spirit existed among hon. Gentlemen opposite and the Government of the country. You are at present appealing to the lowest passions outside of this House. I do not believe you will succeed in the long run. It may be that the people will be carried away by the feeling which at present exists among Englishmen, but in the long run they will see that they have been fooled into this war by the vilest body of financiers that ever existed in this world, and that the opportunity had been taken to lay hold of the territory and gold, which Lord Salisbury himself boasted we did not wish for.

On this side of the House we are not prepared to accept the hon. Member for Northampton either as a moralist or a prophet. I quite agreed with the concluding part of his speech, and it was the only part I did agree with, that this is not the proper time for such a speech. The purpose for which I rose was to answer the criticisms of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton. In complimenting the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the success of the loan, he said that its very success pointed to the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not altogether safeguarded the interests entrusted to him, and that he might have issued the loan a little higher. It is very easy for my right hon. friend or anyone else to be wise after the event. I wish to point out that in loans of this kind it is quite impossible to hit the happy mean, the exact point which will make a successful issue, and yet not waste a penny which might have been saved, No one who comes from that part of the City I come from will say that what I say is not true. The hon. Gentleman himself objects to the tender system, but I know perfectly well if he had been where the Chancellor of the Exchequer is he would have done exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has done. There was only one part of the speech of the hon. Member for Northampton germane to the subject. That was in regard to the giving of full allotments to the small investors. I quite recognise the propriety and the desirability of the small investors having this loan if they can take it, but anyone who has studied financial matters knows perfectly well that neither this nor any other Government can rely for their success on the small investors alone. If they were to take the step of giving £100, £200, £300, and so on to everyone who applied for these sums, and then issuing letters of regret to everybody else they would give the impression that those who applied for a large amount would not get an allotment. They would thus discourage those capitalists and plutocrats—"bloated," I think, is the term generally applied to them—who, though they may be a most unpleasant feature of modern civilisation, are a painful and disagreeable necessity to any Chancellor of the Exchequer if you are to carry on the financial business of the country. It would not be fair to them, it would be monstrous, not to give them allotments. I have heard pro rata allotments advocated. It would be equally unfair to shut out big men altogether—those who cover the loan over and over again. When people see an enormous amount of applications they must remember that these applicants know they will receive only part of what they apply for, I hope the House will excuse me if I have taken up their time, for I have some means of knowing something about these matters.

The Member for Northampton owes a debt of gratitude to his constituents, because they have enabled him to make speeches in this House which they would not listen to themselves. How long they will enable him to make such speeches is a question which will shortly be decided between him and them. In referring to the position of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the hon. Member used misleading analogies, which demand a short word in reply Poland was divided by Austria, Russia, and Prussia, but did Poland invade Austria, Russia, and Prussia? There was a conspiracy against Poland by which they secretly partitioned that country. The case was very different here. It is the Boers who have invaded our territory. It is we who, up to the present moment, have been repelling invasion. The last message from the Presidents seems to be not less insulting than the ultimatum by which they began this war, and certainly it is a deal more hypo-critical. Nobody can say that that message is a reason for taking a more favourable view of the Republics than we previously entertained. With regard to this loan, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton understated his case when he added only £40,000,000 to the local expenditure. I obtained the figures last year for not only England, Scotland, and Wales, but also Ireland, and after deducting a contribution of £12,000,000 for the central Government, I made the total local expenditure £85,000,000. Some part of that is what is called reproductive expenditure, but it does not always reproduce. The total gross expenditure I reckoned to be—

I did not say expenditure; I said rates.

There are other kinds, we know, raised by toll and so on. I wish to make only one remark about the local debt. For years past, as the National Debt has been increasing, the local debt has been increasing in a larger proportion. Undoubtedly that must be taken into account, although possibly the National Debt may soon outstrip in rapidity of movements even the local debt. It is important that the House should remember that this £30,000,000 is not the whole of the indebtedness which will be added by this war. In addition to the £30,000,000 War Loan, there are £5,000,000 which the right hon. Gentleman has diverted from the repayment of the National Debt in the shape of the saving realised last year.

There were £8,000,000 more last year.

£5,000,000 saving. There were £10,000,000 voted last year; but I am dealing with the present year. It is true the right hon. Gentleman does not intend these £30,000,000 to be a permanent addition to the Debt, though, I take it, the interest will act that way. The interest will be something like £825,000 a year, and he must get that £825,000 out of taxation, I presumes. As to this £30,000,000, the the right, hon. Gentleman proposes to repay it within ten years. How is he going to do it? First of all he trusts in the goldmines of the Transvaal. If they will not find the money he trusts in Providence and the taxpayers. But finally it comes to this—he will have to add it to the National Debt, What he will finally fall back upon will be terminable annuities, the renewal of which will mean practically an addition to the National Debt. We hope it will not come to that, and possibly it may not. There is another point. The House must not run away with the idea that we are getting this money at 2¾ per cent. The loan is for £30,000,000, but we are getting only £29,500,000, because the loan is issued at 98½ That would return £29,550,000, but the broker's percentage and the advertising and other expenses, which would certainly amount to £50,000, are to be paid by the State. Ten years hence for that £29,500,000 we shall have to repay £30,000,000. Consequently the interest is really more than 2¾ per cent. No doubt this loan might have been offered at a premium, but that would have been a mistake. No doubt also the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have issued Consols instead of a separate loan, but that, too, would have been a mistake. My belief is that, on the whole, although it does appear as if we were paying a little more than the public actually would demand, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken the right course, and he and the country are to be congratulated upon the readiness with which the loan has been subscribed.

The hon. Gentleman opposite said that the Boers had been fooled into this war. There is a great deal of truth in that statement. They have been fooled into the war largely by the speeches of Gentlemen sitting on the other side of the House, and they are fooled at present to continue the war by the same means. It is the old case over again of the telegram to the King of Greece. If those Gentle men, instead of speaking as they have done, were plainly to tell their friends the Boers that the sooner they submit and throw themselves upon the mercy of this country the better, they would be doing something practical towards bringing this war to a close. If such a course were taken this nation would be generous as well as just; but it does seem to me, as representing a businesslike constituency, that it is the duty of this country to be just before one speaks of generosity. I do not altogether like the financial proposals of the Government in so far as they relate to increased taxation, but as regards this particular measure I heartily and cordially concur, and would add my congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman for the admirable way in which he has managed to make the loan a success. Whatever difference of view there may be on the question of taxation, there can be no question that the Government have done the best that was possible in the circumstances. But there are many people in this country who sympathise with the motion I ventured a little while ago to put on the Paper, which stated that it was not desirable that any portion of the expenditure upon the war should be cast upon the British taxpayer, and suggested that sooner or later the whole of the war expenditure should be met by a loan, of which the interest and sinking fund should be paid from the resources of those territories which have hitherto been known as the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State. That is my view today, and I do not see anything in this Bill which is inconsistent with such a view. This is not the moment, however, to urge that question by dividing the House upon it, as such a course would be misconstrued. But I think the Government will make a mistake if they do not take into account the large body of public opinion which is really at the back of the suggestion I made. I have received from many parts of the country, quite unsolicited and unexpected, expressions of accord with the views I have ventured to express, and I simply leave the matter with the Government as one which should be considered at the proper time.

I do not intend at all to outer into the question of the war or the question of taxation. I simply rise for the purpose of thanking hon. Members for the approval which they have been good enough to accord to my efforts in this matter, and of referring to one or two points raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolver- hampton. He asked me why I did not endeavour to deal with this question by means of terminable annuities. He seemed to think that there was a rooted objection at the Treasury to terminable annuities, and that, therefore, that was the reason why I did not endeavour to raise this loan in that way. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there is no such objection, either at the Treasury or in my own mind. If I could have raised this loan by terminable annuities, if I could have converted a large portion of the existing funded debt into terminable—annuities, I should have been delighted to do so, provided those terminable annuities were taken up by the public at large; but that is precisely what the public will never do. It is absolutely impossible to induce the public to any large extent to take terminable annuities, and it would have been a terrible mistake to attempt to obtain 30 millions in that way. The right hon. Gentleman has suggested in a very good-natured way that we have paid too much for this loan. Well, that is perfectly true. I was informed to-day by the Government broker that the loan as it stands is at a premium of 1¾ on the results of the applications, and of course everyone knows that the amount asked for has been subscribed ten times over. But I am not at all ashamed—and after what has been said this evening I think I have no cause to be ashamed—of the price at which the loan was issued. What was the position with which I had to deal? I had to provide £30,000,000. That is a very large sum—the largest loan which has ever been contracted by this country in one sum since 1815. With universal consent, I decided that it was better that that sum should be raised by stock or bonds for a shorter term than by an issue of Consols. I think I may also claim to have obtained universal consent to the principle that, having to raise so large a sum, it was better to issue the loan at a fixed price than attempt to raise it by tender. I cordially desired that it should be taken up by the public at large; and that it should be widespread throughout the country. We have taken every possible step to secure that result, and up to last night there had been 18,000 separate applications of individuals for participating in the loan—applications coming from all parts of the country. I hope that before the list is closed everyone throughout the United Kingdom and even in our colonies will have had an opportunity of considering whether they will assist in it or not. But, it having been decided to issue the loan at a fixed price, it was clearly essential that such a price should be fixed as would ensure that the money should be raised. It would have been the gravest mistake on my part, for the sake of saving a comparatively small sum—a sum large in itself, but small in comparison with the £30,000,000 of the loan—to incur a real risk of not having the loan subscribed. Any such result would have been a national misfortune. Further, if the loan had been only just covered, or only a little more than covered, I should have been quite justly blamed for parsimony in trying to abstract from the public more than they cared to give, and for having thus secured what everyone would have called a failure. I knew that I should be blamed whatever happened; but I have not been very much blamed to-night, because the loan is at a premium. No doubt, events have shown that it might have been possible to issue the loan at a slightly higher price. I admit it. But in fixing the price I undertook a great responsibility. I took the best advice I could get; and I may venture to say that, acting on my own responsibility, I fixed the price a little higher than that at which many of those whom I consulted would have fixed it. I am sure that none of my advisers would for a moment have suggested that I should fix it as high as 99. What is the result? Those persons who are fortunate enough to obtain allotments will have a very good investment, and will be able, if they choose, to make a profit by it; but not by any means the profit which some people may suppose from the nominal premium, for any attempt to sell in large amounts after the allotment would inevitably bring down the price, and the result would be very different from that which some people have been led to expect. In considering the price, I hope the House will remember that I had also to consider the possibilities. I had to fix the price last Thursday, and I had to consider what might happen in the course of the week following; because, in order to ensure a large public subscription, it was necessary to give a considerable time for application. Suppose that, instead of the successes of which we have happily heard, we had had some serious reverse in South Africa. Suppose some wholly unexpected complication had arisen in foreign affairs. Prices might have gone down on the Stock Exchange to a degree which would materially affect the issue, and it might never have been taken at all. I ask the pardon of the House for alluding to these things; but they are not known to everyone out of doors, and when people see the loan at a premium they naturally begin to think that perhaps we could have got more money for it. It is very easy in these things to be wise after the event. I believe sincerely that I acted for the best, and that the country will not grudge anything I have done, seeing that the large subscription for the loan and its great success are due quite as much to the strong patriotic feeling throughout the country as to a desire to find a good investment. It is my desire, and has been from the first, that this loan should be subscribed for by, and should come into the hands of the public at large. There has been no underwriting, no guarantee, none of those high commissions or opportunities for making large profits on the part of great wealthy houses which generally accompany the issue of a large loan. We have thrown ourselves upon the public; the public have responded to the appeal; and it will be my endeavour, in concert with the authorities of the Bank of England, to secure that there shall be no favouritism whatever in the allotment, that bona fide applicants, whether for large or small sums, shall all be fairly considered, and that if anyone has an advantage it shall be those who have made application for small amounts.

I do not rise for the purpose of criticising the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman in reference to the issue of this loan. Nobody who has been in the position I have occupied would ever attempt to criticise the prescription of the family physician, who is necessarily more acquainted with the constitution of the patient than anybody else. I am perfectly well aware there were many circumstances which had to betaken into account. But I cannot quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that everybody has formed the opinion that the price fixed was the highest price it was possible to obtain. I have certainly heard opinions of high authority that it might have been issued at a higher figure. There is no doubt that this loan has some advantages over Consols, and it has also its disadvantages. It has the advantage that it continues its interest of 2¾ per cent. for a longer period than it could be obtained from Consols. On the other hand, there is the disadvantage that it may be or will be paid off within ten years. These are circumstances the effects of which are difficult to calculate. I quite agree that the right hon. Gentleman in his position was bound to avoid any risk of the failure of the loan. But he had at his back not merely the great resources of this country but also the strong feeling in favour of the loan which predominates at this time throughout the country. I do not desire to complain of what has been done. The loan has been a great success, and the right hon. Gentleman may be congratulated upon it. I quite agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he could not have raised this loan on terminable annuities. There is no public demand, except of a most limited character, for terminable annuities. I confess I have myself a prejudice in favour of issuing loans at par, and giving whatever price is necessary for the purpose. It looks better that the country should issue its loans at par. The system in old days of raising loans at a very low sum in order to have apparently a low rate of interest was a very bad system, and we have suffered from it ever since. If Pitt had raised his loans at par, and given the interest demanded at the time, the interest would long ago have diminished, and we should not have been saddled with the enormous sum of the present debt. These are really questions to be considered in camera by the Treasury rather than discussed in the House of Commons. I rose really to express my anxiety that we should contemplate the future redemption of this debt. I understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that he would keep alive the established provision for the redemption of the old debt, which has been naturally and reasonably suspended this year, and that he would make a separate provision for the redemption of this debt. I only wish that that should be on record. There is one other point to which I would allude. My right hon. friend the Member for East Wolverhampton must have not quite clearly expressed himself or I misunderstood him. As I understand him he gave as a reason for raising this loan that though we were a richer country yet the taxation of the country was heavier than at the time of the Crimean War, and the reason he gave for that statement was that we were raising a much greater revenue now than we were at that time. But taxation may yield a great deal more money and yet be considerably lighter in its incidence. When Sir Robert Peel introduced the income tax it produced about £700,000 for a penny; now it produces more than, £2,100,000, or three times as much. But the taxation is no heavier than it was. The argument that, because three times as much is produced, the taxation is therefore three times as heavy, would not be a sound argument at all. At the time of the Crimean War the tea duty was raised to 1s. 9d. in the lb. The taxation at that time was very much heavier than at present. Therefore, when I ventured the other night to say that taxation was borne with greater patience in those days than at the present time I was well founded in my statement, because the weight of taxation per square inch of the population, if I may use the term, was far greater then than now. We are much more able to bear taxation now, although the lump sum raised from the revenue is far greater than it was at that period. I am very glad to hear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer does recognise fully the duty of making provision for the redemption of this debt. I understood from the right hon. Gentleman the other night that, as soon as peace was concluded, he would inform the House of Commons of the measures he contemplated for that purpose.

I said that when peace was concluded we should have

Those are both circumstances of which I desire to be informed, especially the latter. It is of very great importance that we should know what the total amount of the debt is, and I only hope that it may not be greater than the amount for which we are now providing. I hope the right hon. Gentleman is now considering and maturing his plans for making it the first charge upon the Transvaal, because I understand, that we are only to come in as liable in a secondary degree. If that is so I think that will be a very satisfactory arrangement.

I only wish to say one word. This night will be a memorable one in the history of the country, because to-night we have commenced a new policy. We have heard this war called a defensive war. Now, from the statement which the First Lord of the Treasury made to-night we know exactly, what the war is about. All sorts of theories were put about before, but now the right hon. Gentleman has declared distinctly that the war is to be carried on to destroy the independence of two free Republics. I wish to emphasise that. I only wish to say that, if that is to be the object of this war, and if it is to be carried on without any attempt to stop it, it is, in my opinion, a cowardly and infamous war.