laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, Standing Order No. 62 has been complied with, namely:—

laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:—

reported from the Committee on Group F of Private Bills, that the parties opposing the Devonport Corporation Bill had stated that the evidence of Robert Vigers, of 4, Fredericks Place, Old Jewry, E.C., was essential to their case; and, it having been proved that his attendance could not be procured without the intervention of the House, he had been instructed to move that the said Robert Vigers do attend the said Committee To-morrow, at Twelve of the clock.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty if he can state when the Return (Transports, South Africa) will be ready.

The Return will not be ready for some little time.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether the date when Mark IV. ammunition was withdrawn, so far as Colonel Plumer's force is concerned, was early in January; and whether at Mafeking Colonel Baden-Powell has any other sort of ammunition left except Mark IV.

In reply to the hon. Member, I can only give the dates and character of the orders which have been sent to South Africa. The general officer commanding was told on the 15th July to use only Mark II. ammunition for mobilisation, and on 17th October he was told to send home all Mark IV. and Mark V. ammunition in the command. We have no information of the date on which this order took effect in each part of South Africa.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the statement as to this ammunition was made by an officer at the front?

The hon. Gentleman has not answered the second paragraph.

Yes; I think the answer to the first paragraph indicates the inability to answer the second.

Are we to understand that the statement with regard to Colonel Baden-Powell is wrong?

The hon. Member knows that we cannot communicate with that gallant officer.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if he will state the number of qualified female nurses engaged in the war in South Africa and their pay per day; whether any qualified nurses offered their services gratuitously; and, if so, how many; and whether they were accepted.

The total number of nurses employed in South Africa is 514, at rates of pay varying from £30 a year, with allowances, in the case of the Army Nursing Service, to two guineas a week in the case of those employed locally or accompanying invalids home. About 2,000 applications for such employment were received, but no record has been kept to show how many offered their services free of charge.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that in the case of the steamship "Goth," of the then Union Line, which started for South Africa on or about the 21st January last, with about 240 horses on board, one of the horses developed pink-eye shortly before the ship started, when it was discovered by the veterinary officer in charge that there was no veterinary medicine of any kind on the vessel; whether there was time to procure the necessary medicine before the ship started, and if so, whether it was procured, and, whether any, and how many, of the horses died during the voyage; and will he state whose office it is to see that vessels carrying horses from this country to South Africa, in such cases, are properly supplied with veterinary medicines and appliances.

The hon. Member has been misinformed. The Inspecting Veterinary Officer landed the horse, which was suffering from influenza. The vessel was amply provided with veterinary medicines and appliances by the Army Veterinary Department. This has been done in the case of every transport. No information has yet reached the War Office to show whether any horses died during the voyage.

Who was the veterinary surgeon in charge?

I have not the officer's name. I believe there were two, one being selected by the Imperial Yeomanry Committee.

I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether boots or shoes supplied for the troops have been condemned; and, if so, whether they were goods sup- plied by others than the usual contractors to the War Office.

There are always a few rejections of boots and shoes; but not more than usual have been rejected since the war pressure began, and there has been no general condemnation of any supplies on account of bad quality. I must add that the boots for Yeomanry and Volunteers have not been ordered through the Army Clothing Department.

Can the hon. Gentleman state what proportion of these Army boots are obtained from middlemen like Messrs. Samuel, mentioned the other day?

No, Sir; I cannot tell. The Volunteer commanders give their own orders. The person who contracts for Army orders must be the person who actually supplies the boots.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General whether the Lord Chancellor has taken any steps with regard to the case of Edwin Underwood, a justice of the peace for the county of Middlesex, who has recently been involved in the improper execution of War Office contracts.

The answer to the hon. Member's question is in the affirmative. I am not in a position to say more on the subject.

I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether the War Office has issued a notice stating that articles of warm clothing are specially required for the troops in South Africa, and asking that contributions should be made for this purpose; whether, inasmuch as under the conditions of the present campaign the wear and tear of the soldiers' clothing has been very exceptional, it is the intention of the War Department to require the men to replace the worn out and deficient articles at their own expense; and whether, as the exposure to cold will be exceptional, owing to the troops being actively employed in the field at a great altitude in the winter season, and the House of Commons has refused no request for funds to properly supply the troops with all requirements, he will cause the men to be supplied with such warm clothing as the climate requires at the public expense instead of appealing to their friends for contributions.

I must refer my hon. and gallant friend to my reply to a question put by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire on the 26th of March.^* All necessary articles are supplied by the War Office and replaced as required.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can inform the House whether the offers of 110 commissions in the Army to the Australian Colonies and 44 to the Dominion of Canada are intended as a recognition of the services rendered to the Empire in South Africa by the Australasian and Canadian troops; and whether it is intended to increase the number of commissions to be offered to Canada so that the people of the Dominion may be afforded, in proportion to population, the same opportunity of rendering military service to the Empire as is to be afforded to their fellow subjects in Australasia.

The numbers of commissions are approximately as stated in the question. If all the commissions offered to Canada are filled, the Secretary of State will be quite ready to consider a further offer.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War, with regard to the case of the Rifle Company Mounted Infantry 4th Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot, who received an order on 1st February last to be prepared for embarkation at the shortest notice, and on 15th February were ordered to proceed by special train from Aldershot to Royal Albert Docks

^* See page 312 of this Volume.

and embark on the transport "Sicilian" for South Africa, and shortly afterwards received orders not to proceed to South Africa on account of sickness amongst their horses, whether the officers of the rifle company had to provide themselves with outfits at a cost of £90 each; whether this company has now been broken up and the outfits have therefore become useless; and whether, under these circumstances, the War Office will reimburse the officers for the money expended on their outfits.

This company had to be broken up on account of infectious disease. But the officers have been selected for employment in South Africa, and their outfit will not therefore be wasted.

Have all the officers been so selected?

I understand that that is the case.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the fact that many of the depôts of the territorial regiments are denuded of officers, he will encourage the officers of the Volunteer battalions to offer their services at these depôts.

It has been decided to employ Volunteer officers temporarily at regimental depôts.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that in Yeomanry regiments heavy charges fall upon the officers for the expense of things necessary for the efficient training of their men, and for the necessary management of the squadrons and troops, amounting in some cases to £120 or £150 a year upon each commander of the two or three troops that compose a squadron, with additional charges upon the one who acts as squadron leader; and whether he can see his way to some of these charges being borne by the public, as, for instance, the rent of rifle ranges, the cost of the increase of practice ammunition, and of prizes necessary to encourage good shooting, the rent of places in which to keep troop stores, and the carriage of those stores from regimental headquarters to the troop centres.

As my hon. and gallant friend is aware, special allowances are being given this year to meet the expense of the special training. But I must ask to reserve all questions of permanent reform.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the importance of encouraging the re-enlistment of time-expired Militiamen, he would reconsider the arrangement under which the bounty of £5 now offered is paid on the assembling of the battalion, and would give authority for it to be paid at the time when the enlistment takes place.

Experience has proved the advantage of delaying the payment until the man appears at the training; the hon. and gallant Member's suggestion cannot, therefore, be adopted.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War when the Small Arms Committee last sat to consider the respective merits of the loading arrangements of the service rifles adopted by America and the leading European Powers.

Specimens of the rifles adopted by foreign Powers are obtained whenever possible and at once tried.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the Committee sat at all on the American rifle?

This Committee is a branch of the War Office; it is a Standing Committee. I have not the information as to the American rifle.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can explain why the result of the examination, held in September, 1899, of officers of the Army Veterinary Department has not been published.

No candidate succeeded in passing the required test. The usual list of successful candidates could not, therefore, be published.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the formation of a company, called the British Armaments Corporation, for the manufacture of guns and projectiles, and whether any officials of the War Office have any connection with the company or have officially expressed any opinion as to the undertaking; and whether, in view of statements made in connection with the flotation of the company, he can state whether the Government is in any way interested in the matter.

Nothing is known of the existence of such a company or of the issue of any prospectus with the view to the formation of such a company. The hon. Member appears not to be aware that any member of the War Office, whether civil or military, who purchases shares in such a company disqualifies himself from retaining his appointment under the War Office.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the attention of the Admiralty and War Office has been directed to the desirability of establishing the manufacture of picric acid within the United Kingdom.

The desirability of encouraging the production of picric acid of British make has been kept constantly in view ever since it was adopted as a warlike store. With the exception of a small quantity recently ordered to meet present urgent demands, all the supplies obtained for both land and sea service have been manufactured throughout in this country.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Ad- miralty whether, with regard to the new Admiralty Order for the enrolment of seamen and stokers leaving the Royal Navy on the expiration of their first period of service, the pension will be the same as that of the men who enrol for a second engagement, or only in accordance with the age now applicable to the Naval Reserve; can he see his way in conjunction with the new Order to make the age for pensions the same for both branches of the serviee; can he state the number of seamen, and also of stokers, who have declined engaging for a second period during the past five years; and whether, seeing that men who serve for a second period leave when only about forty years of age and under, he will endeavour to enrol these also in the Reserve.

The Order referred to by the hon. Member is merely a circular to the Fleet to draw attention to the conditions of service in the Royal Naval Reserve, for which men who leave the Navy at the end of their first period of engagement, or who purchase their discharge, are eligible. The conditions as to pensions in the Royal Naval Reserve were not affected by the circular. The answer to the second question is in the negative. In regard to the third question, I will refer the hon. Member to my answer to the hon. and gallant Member for Yarmouth on the 2nd March last.^* The Admiralty have a lien upon all pensioners under the age of fifty-five years, who are liable to be recalled for service in case of emergency, and provision is already made for enrolling in the Seamen Pensioner Reserve pensioners who volunteer and are physically fit. I may add that I am now engaged in considering a further scheme for enrolling in a Reserve seamen and marines who leave the service before the expiration of their time for pension.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, as stated by the chairman at a recent meeting of the Vickers Company, the Admiralty have bought a new gun, to be called Mark IX.; and, if so, whether any such guns are yet in use; or, if not, from what date it is expected that they will be mounted in the ships of the Navy.

The statement of Mr. Vickers, as quoted in The Times refers to the new pattern 12-in. gun. This pattern has been approved for some time. A considerable number are under order and several have been delivered. None are yet in use. The first ship which will carry this gun is the "Formidable," which should be ready for her guns during the present year.

On behalf of the hon. Member for Bedford, I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether it is intended to fill up the post, which will shortly become vacant, of Storekeeper General of Naval Ordnance by the appointment of one of the officers who were transferred to the Naval Ordnance Department from the War Department in 1891, or from any other source.

It is premature to put such a question, as the period of service of the present Storekeeper General of Naval Ordnance will not expire for some time.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether any sums have been spent or incurred by Her Majesty's Government in respect of the Delagoa Bay arbitration.

No, Sir. No sum has been expended and no liability incurred.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the Bank of Nova Scotia is issuing notes in Jamaica; whether these notes are legal tender, and, if so, by what authority; and whether he can give the terms as to limitation of amount and security which have been imposed on the Bank of Nova Scotia; and whether it is open to anyone on payment of a licence fee to issue notes in Jamaica or any other Crown colony, or whether legislation is required before they can do so; whether the Jamaica Legislature has passed any such legislation; and, if so, whether it has had the sanction of the Colonial Office.

I am informed that the Bank of Nova Scotia is issuing notes in Jamaica. Such notes are not legal tender. So far as I am aware no special limitation as to amount or security has been imposed on the bank in Jamaica, Such limitation is, however, prescribed by the law of Canada by which the bank is bound. I am advised that in Jamaica bankers may issue notes on payment of the licence fee prescribed by law, and that no legislation is required to empower them to do so. As to other colonies the law of each colony must be considered, and no general answer can be given. I may add that this matter, which is a very technical one, is engaging further consideration.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it is intended to distribute Papers relating to undertakings given by Great Britain and other Powers to the United States with reference to the open door policy in China.

The proposals of the United States and the reply of Her Majesty's Government to them are included in the Blue-book just laid before Parliament, pages 303 and 381. We have received from the United States Government the answers made to them by the other Powers. They have been published at Washington, and they will be laid before Parliament at once.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the gunboat "Sandpiper" is ashore near Samshui, on the West River, and badly damaged; and, if so, what steps are being taken to ensure the effectual patrol of the river for the protection of British steamers against piratical attacks; and whether he can now give the House any information as to the Chinese reformer reported to have been abducted from Hong Kong and taken to Canton.

We have not heard of any such accident to the "Sandpiper." Kwong Yu-pui left Hong Kong for Canton on the 26th ultimo, but returned to the colony on Friday last.

I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will lay on the Table an amended financial statement of revenue and expenditure, actual and estimated, for the year 1899–1900 and 1900–01 in the place of the provisional figures in paper No. 8 presented on 5th March, so that the particulars may be in the hands of Members before the Third Reading of the Finance Bill; and whether in such statement will be indicated the estimated excess of receipts from the anticipation of the revenue in the year just concluded, and the diminished estimate of revenue consequent thereupon in the present financial year; and whether the war expenditure will be distinguished from the normal peace expenditure.

I promised to place before Parliament as soon as possible after 31st March the actual figures of the revenue and expenditure of the year 1899–1900, in substitution for the provisional figures in the Paper presented on 5th March. This will be done to-morrow, if possible, and the expenditure due to the war will be distinguished from the ordinary peace expenditure. Hon. Members will be able to judge, by comparing the actual receipts from Customs and Excise with the amount at which these receipts were estimated on 5th March, how much the revenue of 1900–01 has been anticipated. In moving the Third Reading of the Finance Bill, I will give to the House the details of the receipts which are usually given in a Budget speech, and explain in each case how my estimates of revenue for 1900–01 have been affected by this anticipation. I will also explain any variation in the estimates of expenditure.

What I ask for is not merely the actual figures for the year just concluded, but the estimated revenue and expenditure for the current year. I want the statement to be exactly on the lines of the provisional statement, but that it shall apply to the present condition of things.

The statement will be identical with that placed in the hands of hon. Members before every Budget is introduced. As to the figures for the coming year, I cannot give them before Friday, for the simple reason that the financial year has only just ended, and there has been no time to calculate what effect the anticipations will have on the revenue of this year in connection with the new taxation. I will, however, give the House all the information I can on Friday.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to a recent incident in the Vale of Clwyd, in reference to the burial of David Vaughan, who died at the Ruthin Workhouse, on 12th February last, at the age of 72; whether he is aware that the action taken by the rectors of Bodfary and Llandyrnog in regard to this burial has formed the subject of discussion at meetings of the Ruthin Board of Guardians, and that Vaughan was a member of a highly respected family residing in the parish of Aberwheeler (which is attached to the parish of Bodfary for burial purposes), that he had himself resided in this parish for sixty years of his life, and that his father and mother and sister were buried in the Bodfary churchyard, but that the rector of Bodfary refused to allow him to be buried there; whether he is aware that several non-parishioners have been buried in this churchyard for whom burial fees were paid, and that, upon a decision being arrived at to bury the man in the churchyard of Llandyrnog parish, the rector refused to allow the hearse to go outside the boundary of the parish for the corpse, that this hearse was provided by public subscriptions of the parishioners in 1895, and has on other occasions been sent outside the parish for burial purposes; and whether, in view of the feeling aroused by such incidents, he will consider the desirability of so amending the law relating to parish churchyards as to give parishioners more effective control over the burial of the dead.

The Secretary of State had not previously heard of this case; but from inquiries which have been made it appears that the whole difficulty arose from a doubt as to whether the deceased could properly be regarded as a parishioner of either of the parishes in question. In the particular circumstances of the case there seems to have been reasonable excuse for the doubt; and in consequence the rector of Llandyrnog did not fool himself justified in sending out of the parish the hearse which had been provided for the use of parishioners only. The incident does not appear to call for an alteration of the law.

I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the Board of Education would grant a Return of the number of women serving on the respective Technical Instruction Committees of County and County Borough Councils and on Committees under Clause 7 of the Directory.

If the hon. Gentleman will move for such a Return it will be granted.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that certain higher grade and other schools are seriously affected by the proposed changes in the Education Code for 1900; and whether Her Majesty's Government are prepared, either by a Minute of the Education Department or by legislation, so to grade and define the position of such schools as to secure them in regard to the receipt of grant and their general status the same advantages they at present possess.

I am aware that certain higher grade and other schools will be affected by the proposed change in the Code—not, perhaps, so seriously as my right hon. friend's question would imply. There is no doubt it is desirable to organise the education given in the higher grade elementary schools, and a Minute of the Department embodying a scheme for attaining that object will shortly be laid on the Table of the House. I hope the change will be satisfactory to the schools to which my right hon. friend refers, but I cannot, of course, give any undertaking that their present position as regards grants will be wholly unaltered. The scheme to be embodied in the proposed Minute has no necessary connection with the great reform contained in the new Code. We think it would be well that both should be laid before the House when the latter is discussed at what I hope will be an early date after the Easter holidays.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that municipalities and corporations are now promoting Bills to construct and work tramways beyond the limits of their districts; and whether, seeing that under Standing Order 170A no powers are to be given to any local authority for construction, acquisition, or taking on lease of any tramway beyond the limits of their district except under special local circumstances, the Government propose to ask the House to alter or abrogate the above Order.

I am aware that corporations are promoting Bills of this kind, and I believe that some have been passed before now, and the Standing Orders provide that in exceptional circumstances they may be passed. I do not think that any alteration of the Standing Order is possible, at all events until the Municipal Trading Committee has reported.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can inform the House as to the date on which the Government pro- pose to take the Second Reading of the Dogs Regulation Bill, brought in by the President of the Board of Agriculture.

I am unable to name a day. The Bill will not, however, be taken before Easter.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether Her Majesty's Government will take into consideration expressions of opinion from Chambers of Agriculture and others interested to the effect that the attempt to amend both the Agricultural Holdings Acts for England and for Scotland in the same amending Bill is likely to make the resulting legislation a source of litigation; and that the proposed legislation by reference, retaining portions of the old Acts and interpreting those retained portions by the terms of the new Bill, will also led to confusion and litigation; and whether Her Majesty's Government, instead of proceeding with the present Bill, will bring in immediately after the Easter Recess separate Bills amending and consolidating the English and Scottish Acts respectively.

So far as the Government have been able to form an opinion there is a general desire, subject to consideration of points of detail, that the Bill is question should be passed into law at the earliest possible date. Consolidation is doubtless desirable, and the Bill has been framed with that object in view.

Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the course adopted in the case of an equally controversial Bill—the Housing Act of 1890, and, if he is unable to follow the example then set, will he give an assurance that the policy of consolidation will be ultimately adopted by the Government?

One object of this Bill, as I have said, is to consolidate.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether, in view of the fact that during the year 1899 the Fishery Board cruisers observed twenty-two German, ten Belgian, eight Danish, five French, four Dutch, and three Norwegian trawlers in the Moray Firth, he will state the number of days on which trawlers of each nationality were observed.

I am informed by the Fishery Board for Scotland that the details asked for by the hon. Member could not be given without going over the logs of the cruisers for the whole of the year, and the Secretary for Scotland does not consider that there is sufficient ground for requesting them to do so.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether, having regard to the provisions of Sub-section 3 of Section 15 of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, he can now state approximately a date on which the general orders and scale of fees under Section 15 will be issued.

It is not yet possible to name a date, but the hon. Member may rest assured that the orders referred to will be laid on the Table as soon as possible, and with due regard to the provisions of the section specified.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that the Provost of Cowdenbeath, Fifeshire, who is also manager of the Fife Coal Company at Cowdenbeath, and represents the local authority, has failed during the past year to take any steps to require the company to provide protection for the public at the railway level crossing which crosses the main street of the town; and whether, seeing that the traffic over this crossing has greatly increased during the year, and that neither the Secretary for Scotland nor the President of the Board of Trade possess powers to compel this company or the local authority to make suitable provision for the public safety, and having regard to the increased danger to the public, he will consider the desirability of introducing legislation this session to deal with rail-way level crossings which are not under the control of the Board of Trade.

I believe that this question has already been answered four times—on three of the occasions by the Lord Advocate. I cannot inquire further, neither can I promise legislation on the subject.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether it is proposed to transfer the Inland Revenue Offices from the Custom House, Cork, to some more convenient locality in that city; will he state what premises have been acquired for the purpose; and if so, where; what the cause of the delay in effecting the transfer is; and when it will be completed.

Yes, Sir. It has recently been decided to transfer the offices, but as negotiations are not yet finally concluded, I am unable to furnish the details asked for by the hon. Member.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether the 25-inch scale map, survey of the county of Kerry, is yet complete; and if so, whether he can state if the maps have been issued for sale, and at what price, and where can they be bought.

The 25-inch survey of Kerry is complete. The maps have been issued for sale, and can be bought for 3s. each from any of the agents for the sale of Ordnance Survey maps in Ireland. Mr. J. Norton is the agent at Tralee.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say when they were offered for sale?

I cannot.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that much annoyance has been occasioned at Bournea, County Tipperary by the incursion of a body of itinerant preachers, and the insulting character of their utterances to the Roman Catholic residents who constitute the vast majority of the population; whether he will cause inquiry to be made into the allegation that one of the intruders holds the office of clerk of petty sessions in the town of Roscrea; whether the district inspector has had to draft a special body of police to the scene; and whether such police protection will entail an extra tax on the district.

Religious services have been conducted nightly by a body of Methodists for the past month in a covered building, situate in a field adjoining the public road near the place mentioned. Crowds have assembled on several occasions on the road, and by groaning, shouting, and other indecent and disorderly conduct, have endeavoured to disturb these services. It has been found necessary, in order to protect this body of worshippers, who were acting entirely within their rights, from insult and possibly assault, to have in attendance a body of police. So far as the police have been able to ascertain, the preachers have not made use of any language of an insulting character to Roman Catholics, unless the expression of religious opinions with which Roman Catholics disagree be considered an insult to them. The petty sessions clerk at Roscrea attended their services, as he had a perfect right to do, and is not in any way blameable in that respect. No additional expense to the district has been involved, as the police were drawn from another district of the same county.

Is there any meeting-house in Bournea large enough to hold these worshippers, instead of their assembling in a public place?

I am not aware. But they have a perfect right to express their opinions, and to expect the protection of the police.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether he is aware that ex-sergeant Thomas English recently applied for compensation for an alleged injury received during the arrest of an Orangeman at Camp, County Kerry, in January, 1898, and that this application was made two years after the alleged injury; whether he is aware that the county court judge awarded a sum of £700 and costs and expenses, and that on appeal by the Kerry County Council Chief Baron Palles reduced the amount to £470; and whether, seeing that Chief Baron Palles, in delivering his decision on this appeal, expressed an opinion that it was a misfortune that the legislature has placed such a burden on the ratepayers, seeing there was no such law in England, the Government will consider the advisability of remedying the present state of the law as between Ireland and England, thereby relieving the Irish ratepayers of a burden of taxation.

The facts are as stated in the first and second paragraphs, save that the tramp arrested not only described himself as an Orangeman, but as a Fenian as well. The only report I have seen of the Lord Chief Baron's remarks is rather confused. I am not aware whether it accurately represents his views, and it is obvious that certain facts were not brought to his knowledge; but whatever his opinion may be upon the merits of existing legislation, there can be no doubt as to the views of the House, inasmuch as the right of constables to receive compensation under such circumstances was not only expressly preserved by the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, but at the suggestion of some of the Irish Nationalist Members, extended to cover the case of police in Belfast and Dublin to whom the Grand Jury Acts did not apply. It is not proposed to deprive the Irish police of this right.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he is aware that this case was tried under the Local Government Act which requires that a notice or application for the alleged injury must be served within seven days of the occurrence, and whether it is not a fact that in this case a notice was not served for twenty-three months after the alleged injury occurred?

Is there any authority for calling an unnamed individual an Orangeman?

I must ask for notice of these supplementary questions.

Is it not optional with the Treasury to compensate a constable when injured on duty; and, if so, why should Irish ratepayers be saddled with the burden?

Order, order!

Can the right hon. Gentleman explain how it is that such a difference exists in the value placed on policemen in England and Ireland?

As a matter of fact, was there any malice in this case?

Order, order! It is obviously impossible for the Attorney General to answer that question.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether he is aware that representations were made to the Land Commission by a number of tenants on the Trinity College property situate at Cahirciveen, County Kerry, to have their rents fixed out of court by Land Commission valuers, and that the land agent for Trinity College refused to accede to this request of the tenants; whether he can state the number of tenants whose applications are now awaiting trial at Cahirciveen; and when will the next sitting of the Land Commission be held at Cahirciveen for the fixing of fair rents.

I believe the fact is as stated in the first paragraph. The agent acted entirely within his rights, and the matter is not one in which the Land Commission can interfere. There are seven fair rent applications from tenants on this estate which have not yet been listed for hearing by a Sub-Commission. The date of the next sitting has not at present been fixed.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say why these tenants have not got a reduction of 40 per cent. on their judicial rents, the same as Ulster tenants?

I certainly cannot.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, as representing the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether his attention has been drawn to the refusal of the Board of National Education to pay the arrears of salary of the assistant teacher of the national school at Ardstraw, in the county of Tyrone, which accrued from the 1st August, 1898, to the 1st January, 1899, though the subsequently accruing salary has been paid; and whether, there being no charge against such teacher of inefficiency or misconduct, or any regulation prohibiting such payment, he can state upon what grounds the arrears in question have not been paid.

I am informed by the Commissioners of National Education that the manager of the school in question claimed payment of salary to the assistant teacher from 1st August, 1898, on an average attendance of sixty pupils. Payment of salary on an average attendance of sixty pupils was sanctioned by the Treasury as from 1st October, 1898, only,, and cannot be extended to any period preceding that date.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in the case of a holding purchased under the Land Purchase Acts (the lands of Egmont) situate in the County Cork, the Land Commission have recently permitted the tenant purchaser (Mr. G. S. Bolster) to permanently sublet the whole holding at a substantial rent as an ordinary agricultural holding, thereby recreating the relation of landlord and tenancy in the holding; whether the Land Commission intend as a general practice to waive the prohibition of subletting in the case of holdings purchased under the Land Purchase Acts, and to permit the purchasers at their pleasure to become landlord; what the reasons for allowing subletting in this particular case were; and whether the person to whom this holding was sublet will himself be entitled to purchase the holding under the Land Purchase Acts.

In the case to which this question refers, the tenant-purchaser in September, 1899, applied to the Commissioners, under the 30th Section of the Land Act of 1881, for their consent to receive proposals for the subletting of the holding, to commence from the following November. The Commissioner refused the consent applied for. The tenant-purchaser thereupon in October last paid off the advance and then became entitled to sublet the holding without the consent of the Land Commission. The answer to the second paragraph is in the negative. The tenant-purchaser in this case is an Assistant Land Commissioner. He based his application for liberty to sublet on the necessity of giving his whole time to the performance of his official duties. The reply to the last paragraph is, having regard to the provisions of Section 9, Sub-section (4) of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, in the affirmative.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether any steps have yet been taken with a view to empower the various councils in Ireland to employ direct labour for the repair and maintenance of roads.

The answer to this question is in the negative.

Did not the right hon. Gentleman say on the 1st February last^* that this matter was receiving consideration?

Yes; and the answer now is that no steps have been taken.

How much attention is to be bestowed on this matter before steps are taken?

That is an immeasurable quantity.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether his attention has been called to the case of a man named James Carroll, who was killed on the 15th July last year by an accident in the discharge of his duties as employee of Messrs. Watkins and Company, brewers, of Dublin; whether he is aware that this man left a widow and three children unprovided for, and that the Court of Appeal held that this case did not come within the operation of the Workmen's Compensation Act

^* See The Parliamentary Debates [Fourth Series], Vol. lxxviii., page 291.

of 1897, because the accident did not actually occur on the premises of the brewery; and whether the Government intend to take any steps to extend the Act so as to cover accidents of this kind.

This question should be addressed to my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Treasury.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say anything as to the facts?

I believe they are accurately stated.

I hope the First Lord will give this matter his attention. I will put the question on Thursday.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, with respect to the working of the Inebriates Act (Ireland), whether he is aware that the prison intended for their use in Ennis is empty; and whether it is the intention of the Government to take such measures as will enable the Act to be put into practical operation.

The reply to the first paragraph is in the affirmative. Every step that the Government have been authorised to take under the Act has been taken, and it rests with the Courts to exercise the powers conferred upon them by the statute.

When will the new scheme for national primary education be produced by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, and when will the Government Bill dealing with intermediate education be brought in.

The Government Bill relating to intermediate education in Ireland will be introduced very soon after Easter. The scheme dealing with primary education will be ready, I hope, at an early date after Easter.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether it is the intention of the Government to restore to the Commission of the Peace the chairmen of the county and district councils in Ireland who have been removed from the same by the Lord Chancellor.

This is a matter entirely within the discretion of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Can the First Lord say why Irish Members are not removed from the House of Commons, seeing that they have also expressed their opinions on the Transvaal war, as well as the magistrates in question?

reported from the Committee of Selection, That they had discharged the following Members from the Standing Committee on Trade (including Agriculture and Fishing), Shipping, and Manufactures:—Lord Dalkeith, Colonel Kenyon-Slaney, Mr. Giles, Captain Pretyman, and Mr. J. W. Wilson; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Baird, Sir Reginald Hanson, Sir Elliott Lees, Sir John Colomb, and Sir William Houldsworth.

In bringing forward a motion on so grave and so grievous a subject as the Indian Famine, I should like to say a few words on the present situation. In the first place I may be permitted to express my respectful appreciation of the efforts which are being put forth by high and low in India to meet this stupendous calamity. A mass of people larger than the whole population of Ireland are now looking to the Government for their daily bread, and the number is steadily increasing, and will continue to increase for the next three months, while no substantial harvest can be reaped before the month of September. To succour effectively such a helpless mass of men, women, and children, scattered over a vast area, is a task almost beyond human powers; and we at home look with cordial admiration upon those who in India are labouring to save life with such untiring energy and devotion. But I will go further, and I will submit that the people of this country and the Members of this House have a duty to perform beyond that of passive spectators, however sympathetic. We should not fail to realise our responsibility towards the people of India. We hold these poor people in the hollow of our hand. The 250 millions all put together have not as much control over Indian affairs as a single elector of the United Kingdom. All the power rests with us, and we should remember that as we retain all the power, so we incur all the responsibility, and are answerable for their lives and welfare. What, then, is our duty to these starving millions? Surely in the first place this great and wealthy country should give without stint from its abundance for charitable relief. Let us consider for a moment the present situation as compared with that in the famine of 1897. I am sorry to say the result is not satisfactory. At the beginning of April, 1897, there were 2,800,000 persons on the relief works in India, and the Mansion House Fund then amounted to about £470,000. To-day the number on relief works is nearly five millions, but the Mansion House Fund has not yet reached £160,000. In other words, the need seems to be twice as great, but the charitable contributions are only about one-third of what they were in 1897. Why is it that when the need is so much greater the help given has been so small? I do not believe that the British people are less willing to relieve suffering than they were in 1897. But what seems to be wanted is a vigorous organised effort to arouse public sympathy throughout the country. There are many now in England—Government officers, missionaries, and others—who have personal experience of the horrors of an Indian famine; others realise the present situation by means of letters from friends in India, and I am convinced that if the Lord Mayor, who is ever ready for all good works, were asked to call a great public meeting, and bring before the British public the awful sufferings of our fellow-subjects in India, money would pour in to supplement the relief efforts of Government, which can do little more than merely keep body and soul together. And what we are all willing to do singly, why should we not do collectively as a nation? The Town Council of Hartlepool has earned the gratitude of India by proposing that an Imperial Grant be made; and I doubt not that such a grant would be generally approved throughout the country. In reply to questions on this subject the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India has stated that the Indian Exchequer is not in immediate need of help. That may be so, but my present suggestion is that an Imperial Grant should be given not in aid of the Indian Exchequer, but for the same purposes as the Mansion House Fund—to help the classes who are not able to avail themselves of the relief works; to find comforts for the sick, the aged, and the children; and to aid the cultivators in recovering themselves after the famine, and replacing the plough cattle, which in many parts are almost extinct. I feel sure that in appealing to public and private charity I have the sympathy of this House, and I therefore do it with confidence. Much may thus be done to mitigate the calamity. But we must remember that, do what we will in the way of relief, death and suffering will be widespread; and the same sad experience will be repeated each time that a famine recurs. So I come to the immediate purpose of my present motion, and ask, can nothing be done by way of prevention to ward off such disasters in the future? This is the point to which I would earnestly ask the attention of this House. Speaking broadly, the Government are doing all that can be done to mitigate the calamity by famine relief. But my point is that mitigation alone is not enough. There is a good saying that "prevention is better than cure"; but if prevention is better than cure, it is much better than mere mitigation. I would ask, then, cannot something be done beforehand to strengthen the weak knees of the ryot, and put him in a better position to resist when the bad time comes? I firmly believe that much may be done. I have closely studied the case of the ryot for the last forty years, and I am no pessimist regarding him. On the contrary, I maintain that with a rich soil, a fine climate, and a peasantry skilful, industrious and frugal, India ought to be the garden of the world, and to enjoy, under the Pax Britannica, a very large share of human happiness. No doubt the ryots are in some respects a feeble folk, but, on the other hand, they are strong in their skill and industry, and in their power to combine for mutual help in their ancient village communities. Holding these views, I have from time to time pressed for a special inquiry into the ryot's economic condition and needs. And I have asked that this inquiry should be made in selected villages, because the self-contained rural village is the unit and microcosm of all India; and if means could be discovered to make one village prosperous, a clue would be obtained to make prosperous the half-million or more of villages in which 80 per cent, of the Indian population is now collected. This view of the case suggests hope for the future. But I do not wish just now to talk about possible prosperity. The problem now before us is a much humbler one. It is to discover how the ryot, without leaving his village, can be kept from danger of starvation. With regard to this point I will put forward three propositions which will, I hope, commend themselves to all. The first is that the mortality in an Indian famine is due to the fact that the ryots do not possess a store of food, money, or credit sufficient to tide over one failure of harvest. This proposition stands to reason, for it is evident that the people would not die of hunger if they had food in their houses, or if they could buy or borrow it. The second proposition is that mortality from famine would practically be prevented if they had such a store of food, money, or credit. And my third proposition is that it is our duty to inquire why the ryots have not got this store, and if possible provide a remedy for so dangerous an economic condition. As regards the storage of food, we have the authority of the last Famine Commission (paragraph 592 of their Report) that the custom of storing grain, as a protection against failure of harvest, used to be general among the agricultural classes. This fact came under my own personal observation. In the earlier days of my service in the Bombay Dekhans every ryot had an underground store of millet put away, enough to keep his family for a year or two. This was easy, because in a bumper year far more of this coarse grain is produced than the people can consume. Roads and railways in those days were few, so that there was no temptation to send away the surplus produce; and the grains of the millet being enclosed in a hard shell could be buried in the dry soil for considerable periods without deterioration. The ryot, therefore acted as Joseph did in Egypt. In the fat years he filled his storehouses, so that in the lean years there was bread for the people. For various reasons this excellent custom no longer prevails. But it seems well worth inquiring whether so simple and inexpensive a safeguard against famine might not be re-established. I have long held that very strongly. I therefore last Thursday^* put to the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India a question on the subject. I asked him whether he would suggest to the Government of India to institute, at a convenient time, a detailed inquiry into the condition and food supply of a few typical villages in the provinces liable to famine, with a view to ascertain whether, by local storage of grain in times of plenty, and other precautionary measures, the economic condition of such villages might be so far strengthened that the failure of a year's harvest would not bring the cultivators into danger of starvation. The answer of the noble Lord

^* See page 697 of this Volume.

was not unsympathetic, and he was good enough to promise investigation into any specific question concerning which there is insufficiency of information, with a view to the adoption of precautionary or economic measures. That was the substance of his reply. The objection to such an inquiry, as stated by the noble Lord, is that during the past twenty years two Famine Commissions have already inquired and reported, but I would point out that the object of the inquiries by the Famine Commissions was a different one. The inquiries referred to mitigation and not prevention. Their object was to perfect the system of giving relief which is now embodied in the Indian Famine Code. That will be seen from the instructions issued to the Commissioners in the Secretary of State's despatch of 23rd December, 1897. The Commissioners were there instructed to investigate the famine relief measures taken in 1897 in the several provinces, to review the lessons learnt from these operations, and to record recommendations that might prove useful in future famines. There is nothing here about measures of prevention as contemplated in my present motion. As already stated, I am making no complaint with regard to the Famine Code, which is a monument of care and skill, but I press for the modest village inquiry asked for on Thursday last, as I believe it would result in a clearer understanding of the ryot's difficulties, and lead to practical measures for strengthening his economic position. I beg to move the resolution standing on the Paper in my name.

I rise with much pleasure to second this motion. I do not pretend to the intimate knowledge of India that my hon. friend possesses, but I am not second to him in my deep interest in the welfare of its population. It is plain that this is the most awful famine of the century, and I am told by persons who know the facts well that, in spite of the utmost efforts made by the Government, and the indefatigable, self-sacrificing efforts of our Indian administrators, some millions of people will perish, and that it will cost the Government of India eight and a half millions sterling. One who knows India well stated in my hearing that he believed as many lives would be lost as in the great Madras famine—namely, five millions. People hardly realise what these gigantic figures mean. Perhaps the House will allow me to read two short extracts from letters describing what the writers saw with their own eyes. The first letter is dated, "Agra Medical Missionary Institution, 27th February, 1900," and is written by Colin S. Valentine—

"On Sabbath morning we had upwards of 3,500 poor creatures, to whom as usual we preached and distributed alms. There were many cases that pained me to the heart, and which when once seen can never be forgotten. Hundreds of poor houseless, homeless creatures are flocking in from the native States, where even the drinking water has left the wells. The accounts of the suffering from those parts of the country are truly heartrending, parents actually eating their own children. While all parts of the community are suffering, the young widows and children are the greatest sufferers. It is most pitiable to see the tiny little creatures lying in their mothers' arms, far more skeletons than living creatures. Of course, those are dying by thousands. In some respects the condition of the young Hindu widows is even more sad …."

The second letter is by Mr. L. E. Marks, written from Ajmere, in Rajputana, on the 26th February, 1900—

"The suffering is fearful. In many places dead bodies may be seen lying here and there. Mr. Inglis has just returned from the very worst district, and tells me that it was a common sight to see bodies being devoured by dogs, and that he and Dr. Huntly took a walk one evening and counted forty bodies, and on other evenings twenty, thirty-three, and so on. He could not go through a field without seeing several skeletons by the wayside, the bones bleaching in the sun. The Famine Commissioner saw thirty bodies in a ravine in different stages of decomposition. We hear many other such stories, and we have seen sufficient to believe it all."

I need not harrow the House with more details of the same kind. This state of things prevails over a great district inhabited by forty millions of people, and a lesser degree of famine prevails among twenty millions more. I think the country hardly realises it, and I am sure a larger response would be made to the Mansion House Fund if the citizens of London knew the real state of things. There is much that the Government cannot do. It gives a bare subsistence to those who come to the relief works, but it cannot search out the high-caste women and children who would rather die than defile themselves by labouring with the lower castes. The cattle also have perished to a fearful extent. In one district of Rajputana 90 per cent. have died, and I am told half of all the splendid breed of cattle in Gujerat, the Garden of Western India, have perished. But our object in this debate is to search for remedies, or preventive measures to alleviate the effects of famines which have now become more and more frequent. The House could not consider a more important question, for the war in South Africa must not blind us to the paramount importance of other questions. I believe there is one remedy, and only one, which can to a large extent mitigate famines: I refer to water storage and irrigation. No doubt some splendid works have been carried out on the basins of the great rivers, like that of Sir Arthur Cotton in the delta of the Godavery, where two millions of people now live in comfort in place of half a million of indigent, half-starved peasants. But we have done little beyond the river bottoms, and the great mass of the Indian population does not live in the river deltas. The famine is mainly in districts like Gujerat, the Central Provinces, and Rajputana, where rivers are scarce, and canal irrigation fed by rivers is often impossible; but in these districts the configuration of the country often lends itself to forming reservoirs during the rainy season. There are low hills with valleys or nullahs down which torrents of water rush during the monsoon, and where by damming up the watercourses there could often be obtained at small expense an artificial lake which would irrigate by small canals all the surrounding country. It is morally certain that if we had spent as much on irrigation as on railways in the past fifty years a great part of India would by this time have been beyond the reach of famine. We have spent some 300 millions on railways and only some thirty millions on irrigation. We are spending about one million a year on irrigation and eight or ten millions on railways. Has not the time come to make irrigation our principal task? We have made Egypt what it is by irrigation works; let us now try India. The crux of all those tropical countries is to get water. As John Bright truly stated—

"What you hear of as the calamity of India is that there is famine, and that the famine arises from drought; that there is a lack of water, or at least a lack of water in the right place and at the right time. Now, what is the remedy? Our Government knows very well what the remedy is; because what do they do? Whenever there is a famine they begin to think about some manner of irrigating that particular district. They generally wait until the horse is stolen before they lock the stable door. Colonel Chesney says, 'The Ganges Canal was the outcome of the great famine of 1833, the new project in the Doab of the famine of 1861; the Orissa works of that of 1866. Oudh has escaped famine so far, and in the Oudh no irrigation works have been constructed.' He goes on to say that the Indian Government is very like a father who spends a great deal on the doctor or the nurse if his child is ill and ready to die, but in ordinary times does not take the smallest care of him whatever, or teach him anything with regard to the preservation of his own health."

Our true policy is to place an engineer of great eminence at the head of this Department, with as much power as Scott Moncrieff had in Egypt; give him a competent staff and a free hand for twenty years. I believe such a policy would revolutionise India. Unhappily there is no section, of the British public sufficiently interested to press the Government on this subject; but there is a powerful interest always pressing them on the subject of railways. The great iron trade and the engineering profession bring pressure, which it is hard to resist, on every Indian Secretary, and practically his whole borrowing power is used up in this direction. Then, the Viceroys and the Provincial Governors do not remain long enough to gauge the situation so as to carry out a great policy. Above all things, continuity of policy is what is needed; and I would venture the suggestion that where a Viceroy like Lord Curzon shows exceptional capacity, and masters a huge problem like that of irrigation, he should get a second term of office. His value would be double to India in his second term of office. There is nothing India needs so much as a strong continuous policy. A benevolent despotism suits Asiatics best, and therefore when native States happen to have a good ruler he is almost worshipped by the natives. What India wants is a modern Akbar. But irrigation is not a panacea; it is not applicable to all or nearly all the surface of India; and even if it were it would not give an assured position to the Indian cultivators without moderate and fixed assessments of the land. India is a country of rural villages. It has few industries; 80 per cent. of the people live on the soil. The manual industries it used to have, such as hand-loom weaving, embroidery and brass work, have almost been extinguished by our cheaper manufactures, and millions of small artificers are now thrown on the soil for maintenance. The countless millions of small cultivators in India are excessively poor. Most of them are hopelessly in debt to the money-lenders; and when a famine year occurs they have no resources to fall back upon. When in India I met with the greatest complaints about the land assessments. The natives insisted that they were heavily over-assessed, and when the settlement arrived they were in a state of terror, and had to bribe the corrupt under-officials to get a fair return made to the revenue officer. I notice that large additions have recently been made to the land assessments. The Central Provinces are the poorest part of India; they are suffering terribly from this famine, as they did from the last one three years ago, and I ask the House to listen to what a very able civil servant, Mr. Romesh Dutt, says about them—

"In many districts in the Central Provinces the Government demands and obtains 60 per cent., plus 12½ per cent. as rates, of the landlords' supposed assets. And as the landlords never get the high rents which the Government has fixed, it comes to pass that the Government demand amounts sometimes to 80 or even 100 per cent. of the landlords' real income. I have instances before me in which landlords have offered to surrender their property, because the Government revenue demanded from them was really more than all they collected from cultivators."

That is a very bad condition of things.

I have an explanation to give.

I have frequently discussed the matter with Mr. Dutt, and I know of nobody who has a more thorough grasp of the question than he appeared to have. The case of Madras is also very bad. The Government there demands one-half the net produce of the soil, which is not to exceed one-third of the gross produce, with the result that great numbers of harsh evictions take place for non-payment of rent.

May I ask the hon. Member what authority he is now quoting from?

I am quoting from Mr. Romesh Dutt and Mr. Rogers, who have both carefully studied the case of Madras.

I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Member, and all I desired was to get at the source of his information.

Mr. Rogers is an old civil servant.

Is the hon. Member now quoting Mr. Rogers's own words?

No; I am not giving his exact words, but I will now give Mr. Rogers's figures. I find that in the last eleven years 151,000 cultivators were sold up by the Government; and I am informed that in the eleven years previously, when the cultivators were extremely impoverished by the awful famine in 1876, there were no fewer than 840,000 defaulters. Mr. Rogers obtained those figures for me, and they were taken from Government sources. Such a state of things stands self-condemned. It is quite impossible that the Indian peasantry can be prosperous under such a state of things. Need we wonder that the great bulk of them are hopelessly in debt to the money-lender, who often charges them 3 per cent. per month interest? The number of evictions every year in India is appalling, and the question is how we are to improve the condition of the peasantry of India. We shall have to devote our attention to that problem, or else we shall have troubles in that dependency. If the House thinks I am overstating the case, I will make a quotation from a source which the House generally will admit is absolutely reliable. I will quote from Sir James Caird. When he came home from Madras, about the year 1878, he put the whole case in a nutshell. Sir James Caird says—

"The right of the cultivator to mortgage the public land has made him the slave of the moneylender. Government rent must be paid on the day it becomes due. It is rigorously exacted by the officials, and as the moneylender is the only capitalist within reach, the cultivator gives a charge on the land, and hands over all his crop as a security for cash advances."

That is the condition of the great majority of the Indian peasants who are hopelessly in the hands of the moneylenders, and they have neither money nor credit to fall back upon. The people of this rich country do not realise the excessive poverty of India, where in the best of times the average income is £2 per head per annum, against £36 in Great Britain. Lord Lawrence himself states—

"The mass of people in India are so miserably poor that they have hardly the means of subsistence. It is as much as a man can do to feed his family, or half feed them, let alone spending money on what you would call luxuries or conveniences."

I am convinced that the two great means of raising the material condition of the Indian people are, an extended system of irrigation and a moderate land settlement, as far as possible fixed and permanent. The most prosperous part of India is Bengal, where Lord Cornwallis gave a permanent settlement at the close of last century. It was a mistake to confine it to the zemindars or large landlords, and it has been necessary to pass various Acts to secure fixity of tenure and fair rents for the cultivators as well. But the broad fact remains that Bengal is more prosperous and less troubled with famines than any part of India. Lord Canning recommended a permanent settlement of the land all over India. This was not adopted; but of late years the settlements have in many parts been made for shorter periods than thirty years in order to squeeze more revenue. The expense of governing India is too great for so poor a population, and it prevents the Government dealing with the land of India as the true interests of the people require. I do urge the importance of consulting more fully native opinion on this subject. The rulers of India, with the best intentions, are too much up in a balloon. Why do they not call to their aid some of the ablest of their native administrators, such as Romesh Dutt, who retired from the Indian Civil Service after a most honourable career, and whose work on India is full of wisdom? There is a vacancy on the Indian Council at present; why not fill it with such a man as Mr. Dutt, so that the Secretary for India may have the power of consulting a native of India on points which natives alone can perfectly understand? I much fear we may go on as we are doing till some catastrophe wakens us up like that in South Africa. The government of India is a gigantic problem. It is full of difficulties and dangers little dreamt of here, and the time has come when Parliament must face those difficulties or plunge into a sea of troubles. I beg to thank the House for listening to me so patiently.

I have listened with much attention to the two speeches which have just been addressed to the House, and I have endeavoured—with only very moderate success—to associate them with the motion which they profess to support. The motion runs—

"That, in view of the grievous sufferings which are again afflicting the people of India, and the extreme impoverishment of large masses of the population, a searching inquiry should be instituted in order to ascertain the causes which impair the cultivators' power to resist the attacks of famine and plague; and to suggest the best preventive measures against future famines."

Now the mover did not expound to us any cases where the cultivators' power to resist the attacks of famine and plague had been reduced, but devoted himself to an appeal, with which I am glad to associate myself, to the benevolence of the people of this country, to assist the famine-stricken people of India in their present grievous sufferings. This is a most admirable object; but while I identify myself with the hon. Member's general sentiments, they are not very strictly relevant to the proposition upon the Paper. The hon. Member for Flint, who followed him, certainly suggested some grounds for such an inquiry, and one has less difficulty in following his various proposals. The motion proposes an inquiry into the causes which impair the power of the cultivators to resist the attacks of famine and plague. That means an inquiry into the causes of famine and the condition of the people, and practically an inquiry into the enduring widespread poverty of the people of India. That would open up a very wide vista of inquiry into nearly every branch of science, speculative and applied, from bacteriology to sociology and so forth. No doubt such an inquiry would be most interesting in its result, but it has already been done; in fact there is hardly any form of economic question in India which has not been most thoroughly threshed out by competent investigators and reported upon during the last twenty years. To do that all over again would not be helping the inhabitants of India to resist famine. We have on record three famous Reports made by very competent bodies, and I do not believe that anything can be added to what they have placed before us. We have the Famine Commission Report of 1879, presided over by Sir Richard Strachey; we have the Inquiry into the Condition of the Poorer Classes of India instituted by Lord Dufferin in 1888; and we have, the latest of all, the Report of the Famine Commission of 1897, presided over by Sir J. B. Lyall. There are shelves of Blue-books at the disposal of the hon. Baronet which will explain to him, so far as they can be explained, the causes of the famine. Judging by the way in which the hon. Baronet spoke of his own motion, it is not so much an inquiry he wants, as a subscription, and although I cannot support him so far as an inquiry is concerned, I will be delighted, according to my means, to assist him with the subscription. The great object of the hon. Member for Flint's speech was to denounce the present system of settlement in India. I have always liked that speech; I almost know that speech by heart, although I must say I admired it more in its original form when it was delivered by Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt in the North-West Provinces of India last year. But even in its latest edition the speech contains evidence of the eloquence, ingenuity and experience of its original author. It consists, as the hon. Member indicated, of an indictment against the present system of settlement in India, and the purport of what the hon. Member conveyed to us was that there should be a permanent settlement for all the ryot-wari and corresponding tenures throughout India. The hon. Member has, apparently, a passion for permanency. He wants a permanent settlement and a permanent Viceroy, com- bined with irrigation works where experts say they are impossible and would be useless. I hope he will not be offended if I describe that as a somewhat crude proposal at its best, and one not likely to be of any practical benefit to the people of India as a whole. Any such inquiry into existing settlements in India would be a superfluity, because there is a permanent inquiry going on every year, and all the year, conducted by a most skilled and, I believe, just Department, who have absolutely no other motive than to seek a just settlement in accordance with well-defined principles. The primary fact which this House must consider in connection with the settlement between the Government and the ryots is that there is absent from the picture that important figure, the landlord. Over the greater part of India the landlord does not exist except in so far as the whole of the people of India are the landlords of the soil. Therefore the only persons that can be interested in the enhancement of land assessment in any one locality in India are the inhabitants of all the other localities, and with the Settlement Department—consisting of experienced, skilled and just officials, into whoso operations inquiries are specially ordered, and who are supervised by Boards of Revenue and Local Governments, as well as by the Government of India and the Home Government—there can be no motive to enhance assessment and no object either in over-assessing or under-assessing. I do not for a moment suggest that the Settlement Department is perfect; no Department is perfect; and when we realise that the Settlement Department is engaged over an area of 225,000,000 of acres, including 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 of holdings, to assume that there would not be instances of over-assessment and under-assessment would be to assume what would be superhuman. With regard to the special cases mentioned by the hon. Baronet, I can only say that, in my opinion, to use a familiar expression, his informants were "pulling his leg," seeing that settlements are made generally for thirty years, and only in certain parts of India for twenty years. Then with regard to the Central Provinces, to which he specifically referred, he stated, on the authority of Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt, that the money taken from the landowners amounted to 60 per cent 80 per cent., and even 100 per cent of the gross produce, and that most of the cultivators were anxious to surrender their holdings. The average assessment of land in the Central Provinces is 6¾ annas per acre, and the estimated annual value of produce per acre is 8 rupees, so that so far from taking 60 per cent., or 80 per cent., or 100 per cent., less than one-eighteenth is taken on the estimate I have just given. Looking at it from another point of view, how can it be contended that the Government take from the cultivators in the Central Provinces more than one-sixth, when, as a matter of fact, the export returns show that in an ordinary year more than six times the value of the total Government assessment is actually exported in agricultural produce, without taking into account the food for eleven millions of people and their cattle? Sir Anthony Macdonell—perhaps the greatest authority on the subject—stated that at a moderate estimate the assessment of the Central Provinces does not exceed 4 per cent. The hon. Member referred to Madras. I have no word of disrespect for the Mr. Rogers whom he mentioned. I was associated with the collection of revenue in Madras thirty years ago, and I have maintained my association with it since, but I have never heard the gentleman's name. He must be slightly pre-historic, and therefore not a good authority on current affairs.

He is a retired Bombay official.

Quite so, and I therefore hesitate to accept as authoritative his opinion on Madras, because, as the hon. Member knows, no self-respecting Madras official is going to take the time of day from Bombay. The grievance of Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt and Mr. Rogers is apparently the alleged enhancement of the assessment of Tanjore. The people of Tanjore may believe they have a grievance. A few weeks ago, when the income tax was increased in this country, people were inclined to complain, from the exclusively selfish and personal point of view, but from the broader point of view, the country recognised that in a crisis like the present the income taxpayers were better able to bear the burden than any other part of the community. That is precisely the case in Tanjore. Tanjore is perhaps the most smiling garden in all British India. It has a most superb system of irrigation, and in times of famine it remains as green as Colombo. Its area is about 2,700 square miles, with a population of about two and a quarter millions, which it bears lightly: that is, about 600 to the square mile, or one-fifth more than the density of the population in England. A famine in the neighbourhood is a distinct blessing to Tanjore, because it means a higher price for grain. It was found by the Settlement Department that it was underassessed, and in order to redress the balance, and in order that the inhabitants might not be let off too cheaply at the expense of their less highly favoured neighbours, the assessment was raised. The hon. Member would appear to advocate a reversion to the old inequitable method by which the rich would escape paying their due share to the general revenue of the country, and so throw an undue burden on the poor. I am myself satisfied that even if the case of the impaired power of the cultivator to resist the attacks of famine and plague were proved up to the hilt, it could not be laid at the door of the Settlement Department. I do not claim that that Department is infallible, but beyond all question it is perpetually endeavouring to amend the settlement, and to bring it as near perfection as possible. But, Sir, is the allegation in the motion, that the cultivators' power to exist has recently been impaired, proved at all? Is it true? I maintain that it is not true. I would be the last to attempt to minimise the poverty and the sufferings of the people of India. Poverty with them is a permanent factor, and that it is an irremediable factor is only too probable. No one who knows the country would ever attempt to understate the amount of poverty existing there. With a teeming and growing population on ungrateful soil, under no conceivable circumstances can the lives of the people be anything but hard. An existence which is but "a long-drawn question betwixt a crop and a crop" is hardly the ideal of comfort. When to that situation you add an uncertain rainfall, a treacherous climate which is a perpetual vehicle of epidemic disease, and when it is remembered also that many of the smaller economies and savings in good years, which are possible to the corresponding classes in this country, are devoured by the draconic effects of the customary law with reference to marriages and other ceremonies, it will be evident that life in such a country cannot possibly be anything else but hard. In all their sufferings from plague and pestilence the people of India have an irresistible claim upon our sympathy, our consideration, and our assistance. And I am proud to think that the history of the last few years has shown that the people of this country do not shirk that responsibility of those claims on their generosity. Nor do I believe that the appeal which is now being made for assisting the famine-stricken districts of India can possibly fail. At the same time a great mistake would be made and no good be done to the people of India by exaggerating the evils from which they suffer. The proposition is that, from one cause or another, and probably in great measure by the action of the Government of India, the Indian cultivator's power to resist famine has been impaired, compared with what it formerly was. Well, I am bound to say I do not believe that that is the case. All the available evidence we have of a thoroughly trustworthy nature makes in the opposite direction. The mass of evidence to the contrary is not mere hearsay or gossip, but is given on the authority of those whose business it is to give us the facts. In the first place, there is no doubt that the great majority of the people of India are much better off than they were thirty, or even ten years ago. Judged by any standard you choose, the health of the people and capacity to resist famine, so far from having been impaired, have been increased. Tested by the progress of population, by the price of land, by the increased extent of land under cultivation, by the rate of wages, by the growth of revenue, by the habits and conditions of the people, by their increasing comforts and even luxuries, their capacity has not suffered during the last few years; and so far from being in a worse position to meet famine they are year by year getting into a better position. You find that "the average villager eats more food and has a better house than his fathers. To a considerable extent brass or other metal vessels have taken the place of coarse earthenware vessels"; and the family possess more clothes. The land-owning and land-holding classes are "undoubtedly better off." The market price of land has advanced in every province, and it "is from three times to ten times greater per acre than it was thirty years ago." The wages of skilled labour have increased considerably, and in many places—for example, where railways have been built—the wages of unskilled labour have also increased.^* Then it is said by the Government, after close inquiry, that "it is quite certain that an Indian province and the Indian administration are now better prepared to meet a famine than they were thirty years ago."… It is also pointed out that the famines of 1770, 1803, 1833, 1837, 1841, were "far more disastrous to the general prosperity of the country "than that of 1876–8. In 1877–8 "the facts testify to a remarkable development of the power of the agricultural classes to resist and recover from the effects of unfavourable seasons."^‡ The Report upon the famine of 1897–8 states expressly that—

"Of late years, owing to the high prices, there has been a considerable increase in the incomes of the land-holding and cultivating classes, and their standard of comfort and of expenditure has also risen. With a rise in the transfer value of their tenures their credit has also expanded. During the recent famine these classes, as a rule, have therefore shown greater power of resisting famine, either by drawing on savings, or by borrowing, or by reduction of expenditure, than in any previous period of scarcity of like severity."^§

In connection with all that, the House will remember that the population test—that is, the effect or absence of effect of famine on thepopulation—affords evidence in the same direction. In the last thirty years the population has increased by 70,000,000—and it continues to increase at a rate in excess of any European country, except Great Britain and Prussia. Notwithstanding the losses from famine and the consequent loss of fecundity, the rebound of population immediately after a famine is most extraordinary. The most striking instances of this, which I remember, are furnished by Bombay, Madras, and Mysore. In Bombay in the decade 1871–81 the population increased only at the rate of 1 per

^* See Memorandum on Results of Indian Administration, page 27.

† Ib., page 28.

‡ See Secretary of State's Despatch, 26th February, 1880, quoted in Report of Famine Commission, 1880, page 30.

§ Quoted in Moral and Material Progress of India, 1897–8, page 28.

cent., but in the following decade it increased by 14½ per cent. In Madras, in the first period, the population decreased by 1·35 per cent., and in the second period it increased by 15·58 per cent. In Mysore the population decreased in the first period 17·19 per cent., and increased in the second period by 18·09 per cent. This shows that the effect of a famine upon population is practically non-existent after an interval of ten years. Another indication of the want of effect of famine upon the wealth of India is to be found in the revenue. In 1894–5 the revenue was Rx94,814,000; in 1895–6 it had risen to Rx97,977,000. Then came the famine year, when it fell to Rx93,586,000; but in the very next year, without any increase of taxation, and with a good deal of remission, the revenue rose to Rx96,139,000. In addition to increased personal prosperity, the capacity of the people of India to resist famine is further assisted by the elaborate system of Government relief in the famine-stricken districts, and by the enormously improved means of communication. I was very much amazed to hear so irrational a view from the hon. Member for Flint, as when he advocated increased expenditure on canals rather than railways. Why, the railways have been the salvation of the country. Formerly the rate of communication in India was ten miles a day, but it is now at the rate of four hundred a day, and at one-sixth of the old cost. In 1877 four railway lines carried 4,000 tons of food per day into the famine tracts—a day's meal for seven million people. I do not think hon. Members will suggest that the conveyance of food to save an immense population from famine would be at all adequate but for the railways in India. To-day in the North-West Provinces and in Oudh, except in the Himalayas and the hill tracts south of Mirzapore, there is no village more than forty miles from a railway station.^* I would call the attention of the House particularly to another important result in the extension of railways. In the famine of 1896 there was a uniform level of prices of food throughout India, in the famine districts as well as in other parts. That fact alone would suggest the proposition that nowadays a famine in India is not a local food famine, but a local wage famine. We are told by the hon. Baronet who proposed

^* See Memorandum on Results of Indian Administration, page 22.

this resolution that one of the causes of the sufferings of the people in India is the abandonment of the old fashion of private storage. But that is a phenomenon that is occurring in most countries of the world, and is only an indication of advanced civilisation. The hon. Baronet will remember that in his youth in Scotland people used to lay in a store of meal, and hung up their mutton hams from the rafters in the kitchen, against the isolation of winter, when there was no railway or any other assured form of communication. In many parts, both in England and Ireland, similar precautions had to be taken. Elsewhere people stored food when there was a danger of prolonged isolation by war, famine, or snow. But the whole tendency in this matter, with improved means of communication, is the abandonment of private storage. Take the average London household. Not many years ago the thrifty housewife laid in an eighteen months supply of composite candles; but she no longer does so, because she knows that round the corner she can get, at any moment, all the seasoned candles she wants. Formerly the average middle-class Londoner laid in a store of wine, but he finds no necessity for that nowadays, because he knows he can get it in any quantity at the stores. It is the same with private storage of perishable goods all over the world. The one exception I have heard of to the universal law is in those tracts of this country recently endowed with Sunday closing, where, I understand, the practice has grown up of storing a week's supply of ardent spirits for one day's—Sunday's—consumption. The point is that railways have rendered private storage unnecessary. In India the railway which takes away the grain of last year's crop brings it back as easily; and why should the cultivator keep his crop at the risk of destruction by fire or rats when he can take advantage of the market and hold his crop in money, which he can use either in paying his debts or in lending at usury to his friends? The hon. Baronet speaks of the ryot of to-day as if he were still down-trodden by Mussulman armies and obliged to store against war and famine. British peace and British locomotives have changed all that. The ryot is an extremely shrewd person. He reads the latest market quotations, printed in the vernacular, with quite as much, or even greater, interest than the hon. Member for Flint read the racing tapes at the Reform Club. The truth is that storage is an archaic and wasteful practice in these days of rapid turnover. In absolute peace the ryot finds it far more profitable to sell his crop and buy the grain for food as he wants it. I regret to have occupied the time of the House so long. [HON. MEMBERS: No, no!] But I am bound to say that, taking the motion as it stands on the Paper, and the speeches which have been addressed to the House in support of it, I cannot see what useful purpose a motion of this kind can serve, unless it be to bring Indian debates in this House into even further discredit. Here we have been having a futile discussion on a state of things which is non-existent, with a view to obtaining an inquiry which has already been made over and over again. I contend that the Government of India has always in the past sympathised, and does now sympathise deeply, with our Indian fellow-subjects in the sufferings which plague and famine have inflicted upon them, and, in the words of my Amendment, it "may be safely left to that Government to carry out any modification of the land tenure and iudustrial system which experience may have shown to be likely to mitigate the effects of famine and epidemic disease." I am satisfied that they are giving the most anxious care to the matter, and I am also satisfied that the people of India know this, and gratefully appreciate it. I am not one of those who hold that the people of India love us, but I know that they believe we are doing our best to serve them, and that the government under which they now live is a better, purer, and juster government than they have ever known. I am perfectly satisfied, also, that there is no desire in India for any such inquiry as is suggested by the hon. Baronet. If any proof of that is wanted I should like to refer this House to the recent extraordinary and practically unanimous outburst of loyalty which has come from every class and every caste of India—from Rajput prince to Madras ryot, and from every district from Peshawar to Cape Comorin. In private and in public, by spoken and written word, this astonishing and practically unsuspected sentiment has found the most unrestrained expression, and this from a population which, in the last few years, has been submitted to repeated and combined invasion of plague, pestilence, and famine in forms and of a severity hitherto unknown. Under these circumstances no one need have wondered if the population of that afflicted dependency had stood gloomily aloof; but instead there has been a demonstration such as the most experienced of Anglo-Indians would never have ventured to predict. And that fact alone is a better reply to the charges of extortionate assessment and neglected duty which we have heard of to-day than any amount of statistics and counter arguments. I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name.

I rise, Sir, to second the Amendment just proposed by my hon. friend the Member for West Edinburgh. I am gratified that the appalling calamity which has once again overtaken the poor ryots of India is made the subject of a debate in this House, although it is not likely that the motion in the form in which it is submitted for consideration, or the speeches made in support of it, will furnish much light and leading to those engaged in the administration of the country, and whose duty it is to devise methods for the prevention of future famines. Owing to the absence of a meeting at the Mansion House, and to the comparatively slender response made to the Famine Relief Fund opened by the Lord Mayor, the impression was gaining ground both here and in India that the British public was at present too much engrossed in the operations in South Africa to take sufficient note of the gigantic misfortune from which our Indian fellow-subjects were suffering. The expressions of genuine sympathy used in the course of this debate will go far to reassure the poor sufferers that the British nation was neither indifferent to their woes, nor oblivious to their wants, and I trust the discussion will serve to place before the public here such full information on those points as will arouse one of those generous responses which Englishmen are always ready to make to the piteous cry for relief from a calamity of such vast magnitude. The Amendment proposed by my hon. friend is well calculated to serve this purpose, and I have therefore no hesitation in seconding it. Every attempt made to protect India against the visitations of famine, by any means whatsoever, is entitled to the sympathetic and serious attention of this House; and for me, especially, it is a bounden duty to carefully study and support every endeavour to find out any as yet undiscovered causes which are calculated to suggest preventive measures against their recurrence. In doing so, however, one has to recollect that numerous inquiries by Committees and Commissions have already been made, embracing the whole scope of the causes of the famines as well as of measures for their prevention. Still, any new suggestions that might be offered would be worth considering, and therefore I have attentively listened to the eloquent speeches made in support of the motion. The only ground which the hon. Baronet who moved it could urge for a fresh inquiry was that the former practice of storing millet or other grain had been given up by the ryot, and that a thorough analysis of the causes of the abandonment of this practice on data supplied by inhabitants of villages would furnish information as to why the cultivator is powerless to resist the attacks of famine. I deny, Mr. Speaker, that that is a sufficient argument for a fresh inquiry. A journal which is in the habit of reproducing faithfully the hon. Baronet's views expounds his argument in these words—"Famine is universally deplored, but the possibility of a remedy depends on our knowledge of Indian poverty and its causes." If this is what is intended by the fresh inquiry, then I maintain there is no adequate case made out for the House to accept the motion. Inquiries of a most searching and comprehensive nature, including this point, have been made over and over again, and the Library of this House is full of Reports dealing exhaustively with the whole subject of famines, their causes and their remedies, which it would take half a lifetime to read and to digest. It is often urged as a reason for a "village" inquiry, such as is suggested by the hon. Baronet, that the British administrator is not in touch with the masses of India, that he does not know their wants and wishes and habits, and that an inquiry by natives from natives is the only means of arriving at the elementary truth on these points. A reference to the Reports in the Library, comprising numerous statements and memoranda on these subjects both by Englishmen and Indians, official and non-official, would prove that this is not the case. What could be more full, more descriptive of the economic condition and habits and necessities of the ryot, than the results embodied in the minutes and memoranda of men like, say, Sir James Peile, who, in the course of their long careers extending over thirty and forty years, had become intimately acquainted with the mode of life and circumstances of the ryots? Again, Mr. Speaker, the contributions to this vast subject by intelligent native gentlemen are not few. I hold in my hand a book entitled "Progress of the Madras Presidency in the last forty years," by Dewan Bahdur Srinivasa, which is a very mine of information on the very subjects on which a fresh inquiry is sought. The author is a highly-educated native gentleman, who, having served for many years with distinction in our service, and again as Minister of a large native State, brings to his task the combined experience of British and native rule, and is capable of expressing opinions on almost every subject connected with such an inquiry. The present, like many previous famines, unfortunately spreads over extensive areas in native States. Their enlightened rulers, such as the Chiefs of Baroda and Junagadh and Bhavnagar and other territories, are, with the help of their own intelligent officers, doing their very best to cope with the sufferings of the famine-stricken poor. In these States, at all events, if not within the British territory, any new inquiry on the lines now suggested by the hon. Baronet would very soon be instituted if it was felt that there was any new cause to discover or a new remedy to apply in order to prevent and combat the evil. But no such attempt is made, or even suggested. Nor is there any call made from any quarter or community in India, British or native, for a fresh inquiry. What is wanted is immediate action, not inquiry. It is admitted generally, and on both sides of the House it is often suggested, that an easy means to postpone action on ascertained or evident facts is to order a fresh inquiry. While the dilatory inquiry lasts, those whose duty it is to act find it convenient, in fact are called upon, to slacken their active and responsible functions in that connection. We have before us already all the large discussions relating to the causes and remedies of famines in their various bearings. There is the much-debated question of land assessments, the scarcely less controversial one of irrigation, and, more important than any, the question of the elementary, agricultural, and industrial education of the masses. All these await solution in actual practice in a greater or lesser degree. Especially with regard to the last-named, the educational question, there is a consensus of opinion which makes immediate activity possible. In looking over a good deal of the famine literature to which I have referred, I find numerous competent authorities, both English and Indian, advocating the spread of agricultural instruction and of the elementary education of the masses. They all strongly advocate the extension of industrial training. It has been urged against me, since I first mooted in this House the question of industrial and technical education, that it had grown into a "hobby" with me. Be that as it may, the position, to my mind, is plain with regard to its bearing on the famine. In a country where 90 per cent. of its vast population is engaged in agricultural occupations and others subsidiary thereto, no wonder that the first touch of famine or even scarcity makes them helpless. When the land denies its sustenance, vast numbers of the people succumb. Is it not time same means were adopted to lighten this burden upon the soil? If we could withdraw even a small percentage of this population from entire dependence on agricultural occupation, and divert it to other pursuits, we should, on the one hand, lessen the pressure on the soil, and, on the other, enhance the power of the proportion so withdrawn to increase the wealth of the country by working at more profitable and less uncertain industries, and thus augmenting the purchasing capacity of the poorer classes. These are remedies which require not any further inquiry, but immediate action on the part of the administrators in India. In the face of these facts, to order some vague research to ascertain new causes of the famine would not only be a fruitless task, but imply a reflection, if not a reproach or censure, on our Viceroys and Governors and responsible officers, both European and native. It would be tantamount to telling them that they had, during the long period of our rule in India, failed to find out even those elementary causes, of famines, and neglected to adopt the equally easy means of preventing them which, to the advocates of the motion, seem to lie on the surface. Surely the House will express no such opinion or accept the grave responsibility of pronouncing such a censure. What it has to do is to express approval of the manner in which the supreme and provincial Governments in India have tried to grapple with the calamity, and particularly to show its appreciation of the efforts of Lord Curzon to deal with the larger questions I have enumerated, especially that relating to industrial education. For these reasons, Mr. Speaker, I have consented to second the Amendment in preference to giving my support to the motion. As I stated at the commencement of my speech, I am glad that this discussion has taken place, as it will not only convey to the distressed people of India a message of hearty and ample sympathy from the English nation in their sore trial, but will impress on the latter the great extent of the suffering which awaits succour. I trust the Lord Mayor may yet see his way to convening a public meeting; and, further, that Her Majesty's Government will, on reconsideration, feel justified in appealing to this House to make an Imperial grant. There may be considerations against granting such a Vote. There might be the fear of creating a precedent. But the circumstances under which the House would be called upon to vote such a grant are exceptional, and this is not the time to minutely weigh such considerations in the face of so grave a disaster. All possible objections can be well guarded against by allowing it to be explicitly understood that the grant was an offer to India of British sympathy in a time of exceptional trouble, and any such Vote need not form a precedent in future. If such a grant is proposed, I, for one, would heartily support it. I beg, Sir, to second the Amendment.

The mover and seconder of the Amendment have treated the motion of the hon. Member for Banffshire as if it were equivalent to a vote of censure on the Indian administration. I have listened carefully to the conciliatory speech of the hon. Member for Banffshire, and I heard nothing that was not moderate and reasonable. He certainly did not attempt in any way to find fault with the Indian administration. We all acknowledge that the Indian Government is doing an exceedingly good work in coping with the famine. We all say that the labours of the Indian Government are devoted, with the most self-denying efforts, to saving millions of people from a cruel death by starvation. What we do complain of is that it has become too much the habit of the Indian Government and of the India Office to treat any famine as an act of God for which nobody was responsible, and as if there were no deep causes which bring about famines of this kind, and that those causes ought not to be inquired into with the view to providing a permanent remedy for this deplorable state of things. My hon. friend the Member for Bethnal Green said there was no need for further inquiry.

I said it had been made over and over again.

And that there are volumes and volumes in this House of the experience gained by these Commissions. But is there not an inquiry now going on by means of a Royal Commission? We know that a Commission has been sitting for many years. It has lasted nearly as long as the walls of Troy or the trial of Warren Hastings, and if we may believe the rumours that reach us, it is going to present some feeble and futile report, showing that it is inadequate to deal with the great problems committed to its charge. The India Office is an admirable institution, but it seems to me to take a far too optimistic view of its own administration of India. During the past few years we have had all sorts of calamities in India—plague, famine, pestilence and war have all claimed their victims in thousands and tens of thousands—but all that does not disturb the serenity of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India. He comes down here and takes a rosy view of the state of affairs there. He surveys the whole area of his administration, and pronounces it to be very good. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton has often given this House proofs of the very sincere and earnest sympathy he feels with the people of India, and has gained himself great honour on that account, but I am not inclined to go all the way with him when he comes down here and pronounces the Government of India to be the discreetest, wisest, and virtuousest and best Government that over existed. We do not expect to get much enlightenment from the Indian Government on this question. Do we ever guess, is there ever any means of guessing, what is the state of public opinion out there? My hon. friend the Member for West Edinburgh spoke of the recent display of loyalty in India, but everybody knows that the offers of help were made by the Indian princes, who owed to us the security of their immense dominions, and by wealthy citizens in the great towns who had grown prosperous under our rule. The great bulk of the population held entirely aloof from any movement of that kind. Public opinion no longer exists in India. There is no freedom of speech out there. After a frontier war, a couple of years ago, when all India was ringing with censure of that inglorious campaign, one public servant had the temerity to come forward and re-echo those criticisms at a public meeting, and immediately the Government of India issued a ukase, saying that any public servant who presumed to criticise his superiors in that way would be publicly censured by the Government.

Hear, hear!

That is the kind of régime the noble Lord is prepared to defend; and how can we hear free criticism when that goes on? Why, the public servants of India used to be proud of their freedom and independence, and now we have an absolute prohibition of anything like freedom of speech. Instead of that we get copious telegrams of great tours by the Viceroy of India. These come to us every day in the newspapers, and we have speeches which are distinguished by too frequent and too self-complacent references, I think to the perfect wisdom and virtue of the Government of India. That is the sort of expression of public opinion that comes to us from that country. The other day the Viceroy made a speech—a very eloquent speech, as usual—in which he said that the first and greatest duty of the Government of India was to make the people committed to their charge more contented, more prosperous, and happier people than they were before, and this sentiment came at the end of a speech in which he announced that five millions of that happy people were dependent on the Government for relief, and were hovering on the verge between life and death, and that it was a great problem how the population could be maintained in that way. Well, I think all these statements do not represent public opinion in India in the very least. We have to go further to feel what is the condition of that people, and what are the true causes of what my hon. friend the Member for Banffshire calls the extreme impoverishment of the people of that country—of the great agricultural population who form the bulk of the people of India. Many specious arguments have been used by the hon. Member for West Edinburgh to show that the people of India are very much better now than they used to be. I returned to India after an absence of twenty years, and I must say that one thing that struck me most forcibly was the listless, apathetic and really despairing attitude of the people in the face of the many calamities which have overtaken them. The element of hope which consoles us in so many misfortunes was absent, they had ceased to believe in the power of the British Government. Their state of misery was intense, and they had nothing to look forward to. What are the causes that lead to this lamentable state of affairs? What is the true economic state of India? I wish to say a few words first of what I think are the real causes of that impoverishment. First of all, I think it lies in the heavy taxation of the people. The salt tax is oppressive, and the land tax is even a greater burden on the people. One often hears the objection raised by official optimists with regard to the land revenue that it is not a land tax at all, and that it is only rent. But this distinction is merely a play upon words. The money is taken from the people whether you call it rent or tax. You take £30,000,000 a year from them in the name of land revenue. On looking at the statistical abstract I found that the land revenue has increased by £3,000,000 a year, and except in times of famine it is never lower, and then only temporarily. That is a very bad thing for any Government to do. The State is the worst absentee landlord you could possibly find anywhere. A great landlord takes a large rent from his farmers, but he spends a great deal of money on the land. It comes back to the land in one shape or another, but the State that collects the rent takes the money away from the land and spends it in warlike preparations or in maintaining the India Office on an extravagant scale, and it does not come back to the land. The farmers are cruelly impoverished by the abstraction of this enormous amount of money every year. It is also the case that all the resources of India may be said to be mortgaged to this country. I know it is urged that India must be prosperous because there is a very active trade being carried on with that country. You way, "Look at the enormous imports and exports and the quantity of treasure that pours into India. All that means that the people must be much better off than formerly." That is all beside the actual position of the cultivator of the country. The truth is that all the great businesses in India are carried on by Englishmen. All the shipping trade is in the hands of Englishmen, and all the railways are managed by Englishmen. All the banks are in the hands of Englishmen, and nearly all the great industrial institutions of one kind or another are in the hands of Englishmen. We have perfect armies of men, either in the Government service or in individual enterprise, all flourishing out there, drawing high salaries, all saving large portions of their salaries, and transmitting portions of their savings regularly to England. Look at what India pays to this country for home charges—that is, for extravagant interest on railways, which this country would never have stood for a moment—in comparison with the enormous rates paid to the shareholders in Indian railways. They have to pay these home charges for railways, for the Army, for the India Office and one thing or another, to the amount of £19,000,000 sterling a year. If you add all that to the savings of private individuals coming to this country you make up a sum of something like £30,000,000 a year which comes to England, and for which India gets no return whatever. The export trade is £100,000,000 sterling. Nearly one-third of that trade is transported to England for the quittance of the duties of India, and no return is made to India at all. That is a great drain on the country, and produces necessarily the serious impoverishment of the people. One famine comes upon another and finds the people still more and more unable to deal with them. They live from generation to generation the mere slaves of the usurer. That is the condition of India as it now presents itself to us. During my own recollection we have had five famines in India, and this is the worst of all. How is it that we have no other famines in the Queen's dominions? I do not forget the terrible famine in Ireland sixty years ago. That famine caused a great political and commercial revolution in this country. It broke up old political parties. It converted Sir Robert Peel to free trade; and not only that, but it opened the eyes of Englishmen to the actual condition of Ireland, and we have had legislation passed during the last fifty years which has transferred an immense amount of property from the landlord class to the tenants, and also a great deal of the social and political influence they formerly wielded in Ireland. I do not say that the position in India is analogous to what took place in Ireland, but it is in some respects even worse. The people of Ireland could go over the seas, but the poor people of India do not like to go abroad. They shudder at going over the sea, and they are shut in on the land side by the barbarous legislation of the Ameer at Cabul. They have nothing to look forward to and nothing to hope for. I know it may be said that I am talking vainly, and that the whole mind of the country is now entirely absorbed in the South African war, for which we voted £60,000,000 without a moment's hesitation. Is it not time that we aroused ourselves to what we owe to other parts of Her Majesty's dominions? Would it not be a terrible thing if we were to run the risk of losing what is a far more precious possession to us, I mean the mastery of Asia, while we are struggling for the mastery in South Africa? I hope the people of this country will awake now to a sense of their duty in this matter, and will fulfil the obligations they owe to the oldest and noblest of our possessions—a possession which has brought into the lap of England during the last hundred years countless millions of treasure, and is far more valuable to us than all the self-governing colonies put together.

I am not going to be tempted into a discussion of the merits or demerits of the Government of India. That is hardly the question before the House; but I should be prepared at any other time my hon. friend may select to argue that question, and I should be interested to hear him prove from history that there ever was in India (I might say in Asia) at any time a Government so humane, so just, and so impartial—any Government which did so much to promote the moral and physical condition of the people as the Government of Great Britain in India. The motion introduced to the notice of the House in two temperate speeches by the mover and seconder of this motion has reference to the existing state of affairs in India in connection with this appalling famine. I am sure that those who have in times past convoyed to the people of India the impression that there is in the House of Commons a feeling of indifference to the best interests of India, and that whenever any Indian question is raised the House immediately empties, will now be able to report that in the presence of this great calamity and sorrow an interest is shown on both sides and by all sections of the House in discovering the wisest and best and most generous course to be a lopted in the emergency. The motion which has been submitted to the House asks that "a searching inquiry should be instituted in order to ascertain the causes which impair the cultivators' power to resist the attacks of famine and plague, and to suggest the best preventive measures against future famines." As I have already said, so far as sympathy is concerned, we are all at one with the mover and seconder of this motion, but what we have to ask ourselves is, what is to be the nature of the inquiry which is proposed, and also what is the tribunal by whom that inquiry is to be conducted? I take the last clause of the motion first. I have read a great deal about the responsibility of the Government of India with respect to the causes of this famine. I can conceive some arguable points in the first part of the motion, but I cannot for the life of me see where the Government can be brought in as responsible for the famine. I understand—perhaps I may be corrected if I am wrong—that the cause of the famine is the failure of the rain. It is the failure of the monsoon. If the same copious rains had fallen during the last three years as India enjoyed during the preceding fifteen years there would have been no famine, and if the Government of India is not to be praised when there is a good monsoon it cannot be blamed when there is a bad monsoon. Is anybody prepared to say that if the rainfall had been the same during the last three or four years in the famine-stricken districts of India there would have been anything like the famine which now exists? The hon. Member for Flintshire has dwelt on three causes which he held that the Government were responsible for, and which he thinks contributed to this deplorable state of things. His principal point was with reference to irrigation. I think that the House will be agreed as to two points. First, that certainly up to Lord Lytton's Government there was some neglect in India with reference to irrigation works; and, secondly, there has been a very great extension of irrigation works during the last twenty or twenty-five years; and it is not fair in dealing with what is going on to-day to apply either the facts, the reasoning, or the arguments which might have been powerfully applied a few years ago. I am heartily at one with my hon. friend in reference to irrigation works. I should like to correct an error into which my hon. friend has fallen. It is said that pressure has been put upon Secretaries of State by the railway interest in this country. Personally I have never been conscious of any pressure. I can tell my hon. friend that the chief guilty person with reference to the pressure on the Indian Government for the construction of railways when I was in office was myself. I have been a great believer, and I am still a great believer, in railway works and railway extension throughout India; and there is no part of the noble Lord's administration with which I have a deeper sympathy, and to which I give a stronger approval, than the way in which he has carried out that policy, which was not an easy policy to initiate, but which I think he has carried out, with the assistance of Lord Elgin and Lord Curzon, to a great and successful extent. But there is a limit to irrigation works. You have to consider the lie of the land, the facilities for obtaining water and getting rid of it so as not to create a swamp. I do not wish to weaken the force of my hon. friend's argument on that point. If there is a possibility in any part of India of extending irrigation works it is the duty as well as the interest of the Indian Government to extend those works, and I believe they are keenly alive to the importance of this policy. One of the grievances which have been mentioned is with reference to the settlement of the land and what is called the heavy taxation which India has to pay in the shape of land revenue. The last speaker has referred to official optimism, and he implied that there was a great deal of nonsense talked with respect to the land tax being really nothing more than revenue. I do not know whether my hon. friend will charge the late Mr. Fawcett with being an official optimist. I think if any Member of this House was more distinguished for his independent interest in the affairs of India, and his undying hostility to the Government of India, it was the late Mr. Fawcett. But that statesman declared that the Government of India exercises over a great portion of the soil the same rights of property as those which the English landlord exercises over his own estate. He also stated that the Government in India takes the place of individual landlords, and the cultivators of the soil rent their land from the Government instead of from private landowners. That, clearly, is not taxation, but it is rent. Mr. Fawcett goes on to say—

"Those, therefore, are completely in error who quote the aggregate amount of taxation which is raised in India in order to prove how heavily the people of the country are taxed. At least twenty millions per annum is raised in India by the land tax. … It would be as unreasonable to consider the amount raised as a burden laid on the people of India as it would be to consider the whole of the rent paid to English landlords in this country as an impost levied on the cultivators of the soil."

That is Mr. Fawcett's opinion. I have proof in reply to the hon. Member for Cardiff and the hon. Member for Flintshire that so far from taking 60, 80, and in some cases 100 per cent. of the gross produce, the Government never take more than from 4 to 8 per cent. Sir John Strachey says—

"The British Government never takes more than a fixed share, varying in different parts of India from 4 to 8 per cent."

—8 per cent. was the maximum, and I believe that the amount has been reduced—

"of the gross value of the produce, and for many years the tendency has been to diminish the share of the State and to leave a large proportion to the private ryot."

I quoted from a letter which appeared in The Times as to the proportion of the rent taken from the landlords, the amount being 12½ per cent.

The original tenant may sublet the property; he is the tenant of the State; and his rent is all that the State receives from him. The hon. Gentleman held up for our admiration the settlement in Bengal, and he wishes that all the land in India was settled as in Bengal. But surely my hon. friends know the history of the Bengal settlement. Lord Cornwallis was then the Viceroy, and he held the opinion that the greatest benefit which he could introduce in the land system of India was the land system of England, and his object was to create great territorial landlords, the zemindars, who would pay a fixed rent to the State, and become the intermediate owners of the land, levying their own rents. Nearly ninety years ago Lord Cornwallis carried out the settlement of Bengal. "This settlement," said Sir John Strachey,

"had been described as one of the most unfortunate but best intentioned plans that ever ruined the country. Millions of revenue are lost every year with no compensating advantage, and the time will come when the intelligent portion of the community in India will appreciate the fact that, in consequence of an arrangement ignorantly made a century ago, the richest class in the richest province of the Empire bears far less than its just share of public burdens."

As far as my memory serves me, and I went into the question once with great care, and after considering the subject, I came to the conclusion that the sums put into the pockets of the zemindars of Bengal, money paid by the people and not going to the Government of India, was about ten millions sterling. I believe that the rental of Bengal when I was in office was about fourteen millions, whereas the land revenue paid to the State was a little over three millions. I am not prepared to recognise as one of the causes of famine in India the absence of the Bengal settlement throughout the rest of India; it has, like the Irish land question, been the occasion of perpetual conflict between the ryots and the wealthy zemindars who are the owners. It is said that this settlement is being screwed up. It is very easy to say so; but the increased payment has come from increased land brought into cultivation every year. This is a grievance which has always been complained of, and the hon. Member who moved the Amendment explained it with reference to the Punjab. Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and other large towns are much like the towns in this country. Land is constantly coming into use for building purposes, and naturally the State claims an addition to its rental once in thirty years upon this land, which was originally arable land in the neighbourhood of large towns. When such land is brought into the market and is let for building purposes, when its value increases 40, 50, and 100 per cent., I think the settlement officers would not be doing their duty if they did not claim increased revenue in respect to that land. All these circumstances must be taken into account before any contrast can fairly be drawn. I am of opinion that the measures to prevent famine have been the subject of exhaustive inquiry. If anyone has taken the trouble to read the report of that great Indian civilian, Sir Anthony Macdonell, with respect to the famine of 1897, he would see that the greatest experience, ability, and administrative power have been brought to bear on the solution of the question. The Government would be ill-advised if they commenced another inquiry which must necessarily be entrusted to men of equal standing and experience as those who have already described what they thought best to be done. This famine is indeed an awful famine; but what would it have been if the recommendations of the great Famine Commissions had not been carried out, and if the Famine Fund had not been in existence? I admit that the burden on India is enormous. I think the figures which the Viceroy gave in his last speech are some of the gravest figures I have ever read in connection with India, for he points out the ultimate loss to India totally irrespective of the loss for the year. But admitting that to the full, is India suffering the heavy taxation of which my hon. friend complains? My hon. friend complains of the salt duty; so do I. It is, indeed, one of the saddest features of the finances of this year that but for the famine, with a surplus of seven crores, it would have been in the power of the Government of India to make a considerable reduction in the salt duty. But I must demur to the complaint regarding the charge of interest upon capital advanced to India. Why, it is English capital mainly that has made India, and at the time the great railways were made 5 per cent. was not an extravagant rate of interest. But it is many a long day since anything like that rate has been guaranteed by the Secretary of State on Indian loans. Whether the rate is low or high, it is English capital that enabled India to construct those works, and they are bound to pay for that as for any other article that came into the market. I doubt whether in recent years more than three per cent. interest on loans has been paid by the Government. When there is not sufficient capital to construct these railways the money is drawn from England, Europe, and the United States of America. I should like to touch upon one other question and make an appeal to the Government. My hon. friend has urged the necessity of increasing public subscriptions. I hope the Famine Fund initiated by the Lord Mayor will meet with a more generous response than it has hitherto received, but that does not seem to me to meet the whole state of the case. A subscription is charity. The burden of this heavy famine is falling on the taxation of India. That taxation would in the absence of the famine have been materially reduced, and, I hope, the expenditure also. But I want to put it to the House that as a nation we owe a duty to India as a great branch of our Empire. A subscription is not a national act. A Vote of the House of Commons is a national act. A Vote of the House of Commons is a contribution of every taxpayer in the country, and, as India has so promptly and generously responded to the appeals made to her at this crisis on behalf of the Empire, I think the Empire should do something, not in return, but in acknowledgement and in reciprocation of the feeling of sympathy which India has so marvellously displayed. The official answer of the Treasury would be, "We are in the midst of a war; we want all our taxation." Yes; but nevertleless we are at the high tide of a national prosperity which has never been reached before. Some fourteen or fifteen days ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that he expected an enormous increase in the revenue this year, which he estimated at £116,000,000 sterling. On the 31st of March we find that the amount has approached upwards of £120,000,000. A nation which can pour into the national exchequer, unexpected by its guardian, and without any increase of taxation, as the natural result of its legitimate commercial prosperity, so large an increase upon its income as the difference between 116 millions and 120 millions sterling, is a nation that can afford to be generous. I know that a private Member has no right of initiation on this question, and it is wisely so, because proposing a grant of money rests exclusively upon the Executive Government. I am sure I am speaking the feeling of a large majority of the taxpayers in desiring an opportunity of expressing their sympathy with India in her present trouble. The moral advantage of such an act would far out weigh the mere amount of the sum voted. There are fortifications and defences much stronger than either arms or artillery, and I believe we should strengthen our hold on India, and strengthen our Empire in India, which I believe to be an unspeakable boon to India as well as a great advantage to this country, if in this hour of her suffering we held out our hand in generous sympathy, and made an outward, visible, enduring manifestation of that sympathy which India would never forget.

I am sure both sides will agree that the time of the House could not have been better occupied than in discussing a motion which gives general expression to the sympathy which we all feel for India in her hour of distress. The only jarring note in the discussion, I regret to say, came from the hon. Member for Cardiff, who indulged in a wholesale diatribe against the Indian Government and its methods of administration, but did not make one single useful suggestion for a remedy, except that the Secretary of State ought to encourage insubordination amongst his officials. This visitation is the most serious which, I believe, has occurred during the present century. It embraces a territory of something like 450 square miles, with a population of perhaps 61 millions of people. There are at the present moment five millions of people engaged on relief works, and this is likely to increase until the middle of June. But, sad as the situation is, there are redeeming features associated with it. In the first place, thanks to the admirable provisions made by the Government, I am glad to say that the mortality is much less than occurred in the corresponding season of the famine of 1897. In some districts the rate of mortality is little above the normal rate of the average year; and I am also glad to say that, owing to the increase of railway communication, which the hon. Member for Flintshire seems to question, food in most districts is cheaper than it was three years ago, when there was a less serious famine. Moreover, the attitude of the people leaves practically nothing to be desired. They are struggling with a courage and resignation which they have never shown before, and I believe this is because they have the knowledge that behind them they have the support of the financial resources of the Government. Now the first motion seems to imply that there has been some deterioration in the material condition of the community at large in India, and that they have lost some of their old power of resisting these visitations. Year after year, in the discussion which takes place upon the financial statement connected with India, I hear a number of statements made by certain hon. Members all of which tend to prove that the material condition of India is deteriorating. Now is that true? There are certain tests which admittedly prove the progress of a community or nation in prosperity. If these tests are generally applicable, India cannot be excluded from their operation. If you find a population increasing and simultaneously therewith an increase of consumption and of productive power, if there is a general improvement in dress and in the household equipment of the great mass of the people, if year by year they make more and more use of the implements which a civilised Government gives them—post office, telegraphs, railways, and post office savings bank—if in every one of these directions there is a continuous increase, it shows that the country is in the main advancing in prosperity. If these tests are applied to India I do not think anybody could doubt that, although she may be thrown back by these grievous afflictions from time to time, still, in spite of them, she does advance in material prosperity. The beginning and the end of this and other famines in India is drought. If any hon. Gentleman who is interested in India will take the trouble to look at a map showing the density of the population throughout that continent, and then to look at a map which showed the varying rainfall in that continent, he will find that those two maps are almost identical. It is rain alone which enables the cultivator to live. From time immemorial India has been subject to famines owing to drought. In the first few years after the Government of India was transferred to the Crown a number of famines occurred. There was a famine in Orissa in 1866, when a million people died from actual starvation, and not from disease or other consequences of scarcity of food. There was a serious famine in 1868 in the North-West Provinces. There was a famine in 1874 in Bengal, and a famine which lasted nearly eighteen months a few years afterwards, in 1877 over a considerable portion of Bombay and Madras. The result of the experience of these famines was that it has brought home to the Government that the duty of mitigating these visitations must be undertaken by the Government, because they alone can perform it. In consequence a Famine Commission was appointed which laid down certain principles which experience had proved to be sound. The first principle they laid down was that there was no one year in which there was not sufficient food for the whole continent of India. The necessary thing, therefore, was to improve communications. It has been suggested by the hon. Baronet the Member for Banffshire that the storage of grain, as carried on in the days of old, should be encouraged. There are two reasons why that practice has been departed from. The first reason is that in the old days the population knew that if a scarcity occurred in their locality they would have to depend upon themselves for their food, and therefore they stored it. Now they know that the Government, with the agencies behind it, will take care that food is imported into that district. The second reason why they stored food was that there was then a lack of means of transport and locomotion. All that is now changed, and I quite agree that it would be advisable, if possible, to get the cultivators of certain districts to store food more than they do at present. I think, however, they have an effective reply. They might say that if they could get a good price for their produce in a good year it is as well that they should have the advantage of that price, and that when a famine came they would be able to supply themselves with the proceeds of what they had sold before. The agriculture of India occupies 80 per cent. of the whole population. Let hon. Members think what that means. Supposing that in any part of England 80 per cent. of the population were suddenly deprived of all means of occupation, what distress would it not create! As my hon. friend pointed out, the great difficulty which the Indian Government have to contend with is not a famine of food, but a famine of wages. Over a considerable part of the west of India no rain falls and then there is a cessation of the employment of 80 per cent. of the population in that enormous area. If those who take an interest in the matter were to analyse the classes who came upon the relief works they would find that in the majority of instances they consist not of cultivators, but that they are largely made up of labourers. One difficulty is of a religious character. In innumerable cases men possessed of very considerable herds of cattle have lost them altogether by refusing to sacrifice any portion of them in order to save the remainder. Not only is that the case, but men who have gone into the districts in question and tried to purchase cattle have been compelled, on account of the animosity which such a proceeding aroused, to vacate those districts and give up the idea. The problem with which the Indian Government has to deal is one which it is difficult to bring home to the minds of gentlemen, such as those who compose the British House of Commons, accustomed to move among communities with diversified occupations. The relief works which have been started, their classification, and the employment which they have given have been enormously appreciated by those who have gone to them. It is worthy of note that in those parts of India which were visited by famine in 1807 and in the present year the people came rather more readily than in those districts which have now been visited by distress for the first time. It has been suggested that the Government might largely increase their expenditure upon irrigation. The hon. Member for Flintshire has quoted a speech of Mr. John Bright on this subject. He is not, perhaps, aware what is the sequel to that speech. Mr. Bright, influenced by Sir Arthur Cotton, made a violent attack on the Indian Government when I was Under Secretary for India on the ground that they deliberately preferred the construction of railways to irrigation, because they were urged by military considerations. Adopting Sir Arthur Cotton's view, Mr. Bright maintained that by the expenditure of a much less sum we could render India absolutely free from famine by the extension of irrigation works. At that time the India Office was in some little trouble as to the principle which should regulate further expenditure on public works. I myself moved the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into that question, which sat for two years. Sir Arthur Cotton came up, and gave expression to his views, but there was not a single man on the Committee who supported his contention. It was self-evident to everybody that if irrigation was to succeed, the supply of water, on which the irrigation works depended, must be independent of the local rainfall. Wherever we had great rivers, as we had in the Punjab, or in the south-east watershed, spreading over an enormous area, we might safely rely on a supply of a water, and irrigation works might there have paid enormously, but in other parts of India irrigation works have not paid at all. There is not a single irrigation work of any size which proved profitable in the province of Bombay. Therefore it has been ascertained that there are only a limited number of areas in India in which irrigation carried out in accordance with any large scheme could have any prospect of real success. Lord Curzon has increased the annual sum to be devoted to irrigation. The Government wish in every way to encourage the villagers and the local authorities to construct small irrigation works and tanks. In an ordinary drought such reservoirs of water are useful, but in the present drought many of them are dry. In one case a large tank which has been full almost from time immemorial could only be put to some use by ploughing it up and sowing it. Whilst, therefore, it was considered desirable to give effect to the wish for irrigation, as far as possible, it must be remembered that it was not a panacea against a drought of the kind with which the Government have to contend. On the other hand, railways are useful in time of plenty as well as in time of scarcity. If it had not been for the railway extension which has taken place during the last twenty years the people would have died by tens of millions on the present occasion. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff has complained of the great dividends which shareholders in these railways obtain. I think that if the hon. Member ever looks at prices in the stock list in this country, he will find that shareholders are getting considerably better dividends on the railways constructed here than on those which have been made in India. A good deal of the speeches that have been made have been devoted to the question of land assessment, and the hon. Member for Flint has reproduced several of the arguments and figures which a well-known Bengal gentleman, Mr. Romesh Dutt, recently used in a speech delivered by him as president of the National Congress. Mr. Dutt is a gentleman who has served with distinction in the Indian Civil Service. I have the pleasure of his acquaintance. I have communicated with him on various matters, and when, therefore, I saw that Mr. Dutt had made definite statements of fact in order to show that the land assessments in certain parts of India were too high, I at once paid the most careful attention and gave the most careful investigation to these figures and statements. I do not know where he got his figures from, but I regret to saw that they are erroneous so far as Bengal is concerned. His contention was in favour of the permanent settlement, which, he said, in Bengal had preserved the cultivators and the occupiers from famine. That is not the case. In my own recollection there have been two most serious famines in Bengal, and on both occasions the condition of those under the permanent settlement was in no degree better than that of those who were in the neighbouring districts which were only temporarily settled. Then Mr. Dutt asserted that rents were low in Bengal and never exceeded one-sixth of the gross produce, or about 16 per cent. I cannot understand what induced Mr. Dutt to make that statement. I have myself laid Blue-books on the Table of this House in reference to the permanent settlement of Bengal. The condition of the ryots under the permanent settlement in Bengal is not necessarily satisfactory. They pay the highest rents of any land occupiers in the whole of India, and the State gets the smallest amount of land revenue from them. I have made inquiries, and have been informed that so far from the rents representing only 16 per cent. of the gross produce, the grain produce rents in Bengal in most cases were over 51 per cent., and even went up to 66 per cent. of the gross produce. Mr. Dutt seemed to think that in the Central Provinces the Government of India were exacting an exorbitantly high land revenue. I am very reluctant to dogmatise as to what is and what is not a reasonable land revenue, and I should be very sorry to say that in the past we might not here and there have placed the land assessment too high. But the rules and principles which have been laid down, and which regulate the revenue officers, are framed in a spirit of justice and equity, and, so far as I have been able to make inquiry and investigation, in comparing the land revenue of British India with the land revenue of the native States, in the great majority of instances the land revenue of the adjoining native States is assessed higher than that of British India. What occurred in the Central Provinces was not that the assessment was put too high, but that it was put up rather too suddenly. The railroads in the Central Provinces brought immense prosperity to those countries. Prices rose enormously, and there was a corresponding increase in cultivation; and, therefore, when a fresh settlement was made a short time back, a very considerable increase was made upon the previous assessment. I do not think it was too high, but I do think its introduction should be gradual, so that the cultivators and the owners might adapt themselves to the altered conditions. The hon. Member for Banffshire has drawn attention to the indebtedness of the ryots. That is a most puzzling question. The assumption of the hon. Member is that this indebtedness largely arises from their heavy assessment, which they cannot pay without borrowing, and, consequently, they get into the hands of the money-lenders. That is not my view. In the first place, if the land assessment were so heavy as to afford the occupier little chance of a livelihood, the money-lender would not advance him money, as there would be no proper security. As a matter of fact, in those parts where the land assessment is exceptionally light in proportion to the gross produce, the occupiers and the owners are more heavily indebted than in those places where the land assessment is heavier. Mr. Nicholson, a Madras civilian, has given great attention to the subject of land banks. His proposals have been under the consideration of the Madras Government, and have been forwarded to the Supreme Government for criticism. When the papers are complete, I will gladly lay them on the Table of the House, because if we could at all contrive to establish a good system of land banks we should confer an enormous benefit on the occupiers. Mr. Nicholson observes that the Indian agricultural community borrowed because they could borrow without giving any thought as to how they would repay or reduce the loan. I think it will be found that, in the various parts of India where the land assessment is very light and, therefore, where the security is good, the occupiers and the owners are more in the hands of the money-lenders than where less security exists. In the Punjab the increase in the value of land is absolutely phenomenal. Forty years ago the number of years' purchase of land revenue was nine, and it has actually gone on rising and rising until now it is seventy years' purchase of the land revenue. During the same period the area of cultivated land in the Punjab has very greatly increased, and yet the increase of indebtedness has become such a social and political danger that we are now considering the desirability of legislation to prevent its further growth. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton made an appeal to the Government that a large grant should be made from the Treasury for the assistance of the Indian Government. The position of affairs between the two Treasuries since I have been responsible for the India Office is this. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has always been ready, if the credit of India was impaired, or if they had any difficulty in raising the funds necessary for meeting the famine, to come to our assistance. But what is the financial position of India at the present moment? If we had had a normal year last year, India would have had a realised surplus of over five millions sterling, and notwithstanding the very heavy expenditure, which I cannot now estimate, I think there is every reasonable prospect that we shall have a surplus this year. If a grant were given by the Treasury as proposed, how is it to be dealt with? The funds collected by the Lord Mayor are only supplemental to the Government expenditure. They do not relieve the Government from one farthing of liability or responsibility. The object of these private subscriptions is that they should be put in the hands of committees dissociated from the Government and be applied to purposes outside the sphere of Government operations—that is to say, they are purely charitable contributions. Can the Treasury advance to the Indian Government a very large sum of money to be applied to charitable purposes? Is not that rather a startling precedent to establish? If we find that we cannot fulfil the obligations we have taken upon ourselves—that is, to find food for all who wanted it and work for all who came for it—then I think we ought to apply to the Treasury for a grant. But I think I ought to go some way towards meeting the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman. One great difficulty, when this drought is over, will be to set the farmers of the west of India on their feet again, because so many of them have lost a considerable part, if not all, of their cattle. I have been in communication with the Viceroy, and I think it would be advisable if we were to consider whether we could not somewhat extend the principle of advances which are made to cultivators. If any considerable sum is thus required by way of advances, and if, owing to the stringency of the Indian market, there should be difficulty in obtaining it, I have no doubt we will consider whether we cannot obtain in that shape some help here.

Lend the money, not give it.

Yes, we will lend it, and not give it. That possibly will get over one of the main difficulties which faces us. Beyond that I do not think that, at the present moment, it will be reasonable to expect me to go. Therefore the main objects upon which the Government of India will concentrate their attention for the future will be, in the first place, to continue to develop the railway system. I will try to see if it is possible to dissociate railway finance from Government finance, and I hope, in developing the railway system, to give a great impetus to small light railways, which can be constructed at comparatively small cost, and are most useful feeders to the trunk lines. In the next place we will continue to push irrigation and to pay particular attention to those smaller works which can be constructed over a great part of the famine-stricken districts, We will, in addition, do everything we can to try to vary and diversify the occupations of the Indian people. So long as eighty per cent. of the population are dependent on agriculture, whenever these visitations come there must always be great distress. With that object I will keep in mind what my hon. friend the Member for North-east Bethnal Green is always pressing upon us—the development of technical and industrial education in place of the purely literary education which now so largely prevails in the higher standards of education. These are objects for which we can all combine, no matter how much we differ from one another upon other remedies, and, if we will so co-operate, I think we ought to be able to push them gradually through the various stages of progress and realisation. There is one most gratifying feature in connection with the exertions of our officials in India. From everywhere I hear that the contact of the officials of the Government who have been called upon to fight against plague and famine with the people on whose behalf they are working is producing the most satisfactory results, because it is bringing home to the great mass of the community in a way that is unmistakable the benevolent intentions and policy of the rule which is over them. And when the famine is over the experience so gained will be utilised for the purpose not only of improving our machinery for dealing with these exceptional emergencies, but also for improving the industrial and agricultural systems of India in such a way as to make each recurring period of prosperity a fresh contributing force in the mitigation of distress. My hon. friend who moved the Amendment spoke, I think justly, of the extraordinary enthusiasm which the Indian people, in spite of their troubles, have shown in our success in South Africa. India in the hour of her trial has put her own distress for the time being on one side in order to show her sympathy and interest with Great Britain in the struggle imposed on us in South Africa, and, therefore, I think that we have not only a duty, but a debt to discharge in pushing on as rapidly as we can the restoration of prosperity to India.

I would not have ventured to intervene in this debate were it not that I had the opportunity of learning from officials in India in January last the steps which were being taken to cope with the terrible famine which is afflicting that country. I travelled from Calcutta to Bombay, and the route which I took was through some of the most famine stricken districts, and I found that the distress from which the people were suffering was of the most pitiable character. But I am bound to testify to the zeal and devotion with which the officials in India are endeavouring to cope with this terrible affliction which is devastating the country. From the Viceroy down to the lowest official all are endeavouring in every possible way to relieve the distress and to save the multitudes inhabiting the famine stricken areas from death and starvation. I question whether there is one other Member in the House at present who has been to India and has seen with his own eyes the terrible distress which is now afflicting that great dependency of the British Crown. Therefore I venture to think that it is not inappropriate, having seen with my own eyes the terrible sufferings of our fellow subjects in India, that I should make an appeal to the Government in support of the contention of my right hon. friend the Member

I do not feel it necessary to make any apology for introducing a motion which, in my opinion, is worthy of the consideration of this House. But I cannot help feeling that the issues involved in that motion are of a gravity which might entitle hon. Members to expect that it should come from some quarter of the House which would give it greater weight than I can expect any words of mine to carry. But that defect which is personal to myself may, I hope, be cured during the course of this debate. I doubt if there is anything in modern history more amazing than the phenomenal growth of our Empire. I am not going into the story of that growth at length, but there are one or two facts connected with it which I wish to state, because I think they ought to be borne in mind in the consideration of the motion which is before the House. The area of the United Kingdom is, broadly speaking, about 121,000 square miles; the area of the British Empire, including feudatory States, Protectorates, and spheres of influence, approaches, if it does not actually reach, 12,000,000 square miles. The total area of our colonies, including Nigeria, is something like 7,674,175 square miles, or considerably more than half of the whole British Empire, and the total area of our self-governing colonies is about 6,686,960 square miles, and I think there can be no doubt in consequence of events which are now transpiring that a considerable addition will soon be made to that. It is very difficult to realise even in imagination the magnitude of these colonial possessions. If we take the single colony of Western Australia we find it covers 975,920 square miles. In that one colony the whole of France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands might be spread out, and we might clip from the superfluous margin another kingdom,, equal in extent to Italy. If we pass from the Pacific to the Atlantic and take Canada, in that colony the whole of the vast Empire of Russia in Europe, of Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan would disappear and leave enough of spare land to form another kingdom ten times the size of Greece. Roughly speaking, if Canada and Newfoundland be excepted, it may be said that all these great self-governing colonies have been either acquired or settled within the present century, and of all of them it may be truly said that the powers which they now exercise as self-governing communities have been conferred upon them within the last fifty years. Within the periods which I have just mentioned many changes, both Parliamentary and constitutional, have taken place in the State. We have entirely remodelled our electorate, enlarging it again and again until it may be said, without exaggeration, that the real sceptre of political power has finally passed into the hands of the people. But all through these changes is it not remarkable that no consideration whatever has been bestowed upon that Greater Britain which has been growing up beyond the seas, and that no effort whatever has been made to consolidate the Empire by widening the political basis upon which it rests sufficiently at least to give to these great self-governing colonies a voice in the Imperial Councils of the State? It is to raise that question and to give this House an opportunity for the first time, so far as I am aware, of considering, and I hope of affirming, the desirability of admitting these colonies to a share in the Imperial Councils of the State, that I have placed upon the Paper the motion that appears under my name. I would, at the very outset, express an earnest hope that whatever view on this motion may be held by individual Members, no one will let fall a word in the course of this debate which either directly or by remote suggestion is calculated to injure the pride or wound the susceptibilities of those kinsmen of ours across the seas, who have shown to the world so moving a spectacle of ardent loyalty and unmeasured devotion to the Crown. I desire hon. Members to observe that this motion merely raises a question of principle; it proposes no scheme. I have no scheme of a practical nature to propose myself, and even if I had such a scheme I should not be in order on this motion were I to attempt to depict it. I deprecate at the present moment even the suggestion of a scheme, for in my opinion no scheme which any person could possibly suggest would have the faintest chance of success which was not hammered out in collaboration with our colonies. But there is another reason moves me to deprecate any attempt to sketch a scheme at the present moment. I feel that this is not a time in which we ought to attempt to hustle the colonies. We have been the happy witnesses of a remarkable growth of sentiment towards us on the part of our colonies, a sentiment which has grown up, which has brought forth blossom, and which has borne fruit like the magic tree of India before our wondering eyes. To attempt to force that growth or to prune it into some possibly unnatural and fantastic shape would surely be the greatest mistake in the world. But whilst I am debarred on this motion from entering into any details of a scheme, hon. Members who differ from me in the views which I hold will be at liberty to suggest any difficulties which might possibly operate against any scheme which could be proposed. Therefore, with the indulgence of the House, I will deal very briefly with some of the more obvious of these objections. Probably the first objection that would occur to anyone might be thus expressed: "It is not for us to take the initiative; it will be time enough to consider the question when the colonies prefer a request." I confess that is an objection to which very little weight, in my opinion, is to be attached. Do not let us under-estimate the value of a gracious act; even in politics it may sometimes prove happy in its effect. We may, perhaps with just cause, think little of ourselves and value lightly the privileges we enjoy, but we ought never to forget that this House is the "august Mother of Parliaments," that in the eyes of our race, wherever they may be, it is still the most sacred and venerated shrine of political freedom; and that we could do nothing better calculated to stimulate everything that is of good report in the public life of the colonies, nor confer any higher honour on our colonial kins- men than by opening these portals to their chosen representatives. It is true that no formal demand for representation in this House has yet come from any of our colonies, but it is not less true that from several of them there has been a more or less strong pronouncement in favour of the proposition which I now submit. Canada, the greatest of them all, has certainly favoured the proposal. With the indulgence of the House, I will refer to a recent report of the Imperial Unionists of Ottawa. The members of that body form a patriotic organisation, and in their last report they advocate the framing of a Bill, to be submitted to the Imperial Parliament, for the political incorporation of outer Empire with an United Kingdom—the very object aimed at in the motion. The report goes on to say—

"Public opinion is being awakened to the necessity of a better system of providing such aid to Imperial defence, and our statesmen are being forced to face the problem of Imperial consolidation. Even those who have disapproved of Canada's active participation in the war against the South African Republics have done so because they believed that no assistance should have been tendered without first obtaining Imperial representation; whilst the Premier of Canada has expressed his belief in the possibility of Canada being represented at Westminster, and even the Hon. Mr. Tarté has declared that Canada should have a voice in the Empire."

Mr. Speaker, you have there a fact of which cognisance should be taken. The only discordant note in the general chorus of approval with which the proposal to aid this country with arms has been greeted by our colonies has come, it appears, from a small section in Canada, and proceeds from the feeling that without representation in the Imperial Parliament, and without a voice in deciding the issues of peace and war, there should be no military contribution. And I find in to-day's news a telegram from Sydney, in which Mr. Seddon, the Premier of New Zealand, is reported to have cabled to Mr. Lyne, the Prime Minister of New South Wales, with reference to Australian support of England—

"There must be no halting place. We must remain ever an indissoluble whole."

And then he goes on to express the earnest hope that—

"as Australia and New Zealand have proved sources of help and strength to the Empire, it will be found practicable to take them into the confidence of the Imperial Councils."

And if we may judge from the published opinions expressed at interviews of the distinguished Australian gentlemen who are now in this country in connection with the Commonwealth Bill, it would appear as if the feeling in our Australasian colonies were scarcely less strongly favourable to the proposal than it is in Canada. Another objection that may possibly be taken might be put thus:—If you admit the Colonies, why not India with its vast area and enormous population? I quite feel the force of that argument, and for myself I am not opposed to the representation of India at the proper time. I think it might be a very good thing, it might help to convince our fellow-countrymen in India that a larger share of the government of India might with safety be entrusted to the natives. Within recent years we have had here two Indian native gentlemen who have been elected to represent English constituencies, and who are therefore entitled to vote upon every social, foreign, and constitutional question which can come before this House. I do not think that any hon. Member would be prepared to say that either of these two hon. Gentlemen were more distinguished by eccentricities than the ordinary English Member. But I feel that it is contrary to the political genius of the British people, even in great reforms, to take more than one step at a time; and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the difference of institutions, of the habits of life, and of the whole social fabric of India, and of our great self-governing colonies is so great as to make is impossible to deal with them on the same footing and at the same time; and therefore I have confined my motion to the admission of the latter. Another objection I have heard taken is based on the theory of representation and taxation. That seems to be a very serious stumbling block to many hon. Members. I cannot help thinking that to some extent that difficulty arises from a confusion of thought, springing out of the common phrase that "taxation goes with representation." If I may be permitted to say so, the true formula is, "No taxation without representation"; not "No representation without taxation." The whole thing is a mere general political axiom, and as a matter of fact we have now both taxation without representation, and representation without taxation. The formula is intended for home consumption, and is in no way applicable to the colonies. There is no analogy between the position of a colonist who contributes to the taxes of his colony, although not to the taxes of this country, and that of a citizen of this country. But, as a matter of fact, the colonies do contribute indirectly to Imperial taxation. They maintain certain defensive forces and works, and pro tanto, they may be said to lighten the Imperial burdens we have to bear. I find that prior to the war in the Transvaal, Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony, Natal, and Canada supported forces amounting to 80,000 men. In addition, these colonies have expended large sums upon fortifications and armaments for the defence of their capital cities and important harbours; and further the southern colonies have contributed annually £126,000 to our Imperial Naval Defence, while Cape Colony has recently voted the cost of a battleship, and Canada has offered a supply of seamen. If these contributions appear small, as compared with the vast total of our disbursements for naval and military purposes, it must be remembered that our colonies are relatively poor, and that their contributions are voluntary gifts. To all these things we must add that there are now 30,000 colonial troops fighting as Volunteers under the British banner in South Africa. The magnitude of the aid, moral and material, which has been given to us by our great colonies at the present juncture cannot be measured by the mere number of the troops they have sent to the front. But if it were thought desirable to turn what is a mere voluntary contribution into a certain and fixed quota, how could that be accomplished without admitting the colonies to our councils, and giving them a voice in the determination of Imperial policy? There are many other difficulties on which I do not wish to dwell, such as the apportionment of representation, if such a scheme were carried out. No doubt it would be difficult to apportion the representation, but that is an objection which would more aptly apply to a scheme than to a mere resolution affirming a general principle. After all these difficulties are not insuperable. If we take the case of the Commonwealth Bill, which the Australian colonies are about to submit to this House, we shall find that difficulties very similar in kind, and almost equally great, have been settled by Australian statesmen in the course of three years. If that has been done by the statesmen of our Australian colonies, surely we may expect of our statesmen with their Imperial experience that they should, in collaboration with our colonies, discover a solution of such difficulties as have been mentioned. I pass to the consideration of the advantages which might accrue from the proposal. In the first place, I do not think that we should suffer in respect of social legislation. Our colonies have been free from the ancient growths of custom and tradition which have hampered our legislation from generation to generation. They have had a tabula rasa, on which to write what they pleased, and they have tried many experiments in social legislation which we are now only considering. Take for instance the question of State pensions. That question has been settled in New Zealand, but in the absence of colonial representatives in this House there was no one who could give the Committee on pensions for the aged deserving poor, appointed last year, any information as to the nature of that scheme and how it has worked out in New Zealand. Then again in the important matter of our fiscal arrangements, it might reasonably be expected that these might be improved from the experience of our colonies, had we colonial representation in this House. The closer we draw to one another the greater is the chance of mutual understanding and agreement. We must remember that Canada has already rearranged her tariff system preferentially in our favour, and I understand that the Ottawa Board of Trade is considering the terms of a resolution to be submitted to the Congress of Chambers of Commerce in London, in which a tariff for the whole Empire is suggested, with preferential arrangements between Great Britain and her colonies, the duties collected to be allocated to an Imperial Defence Fund. These things may be mere straws, but they show how the wind blows, and there can be little doubt that had we a really Imperial Parliament the fiscal arrangements of the Empire might speedily be revised, to the great benefit of our commerce in every branch. Then there is a much more important point than any of those mentioned. There is the question of Imperial defence. I think no hon. Member can have followed the events of the last few months without having become convinced of the supreme importance to the Empire of unity of purpose and solidarity of action in Imperial defence. But how are these things to be achieved if every colony is to go as it pleases, to contribute or not to contribute, to control or not to control, as it chooses? The Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who will be ever gratefully remembered by this country, has made some important observations on this point. He said—

"If the result of the action were that Canada would be constrained to take a part in any war of Great Britain he should strongly resent it. He claimed that in the future Canada should be in a position to act or not to act, to interfere or not to interfere, to adjust as she liked, and to exercise the right to judge as to whether the cause was just. Accordingly it had been expressly stated in the Order in Council sanctioning the dispatch of the Canadian contingent that this should not be a precedent for future action, should not be a precedent for a constitutional, or even for a colonial point of view."

Now, I do not wish to criticise these statements of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, but they are sufficiently grave to attract the attention of this House. For what is it that Sir Wilfrid Laurier claims? It is the right, as the Premier of a colony, to sit in judgment upon the Imperial Parliament, and to approve or disapprove, to assist or not assist in our decisions. I cannot help thinking that on this occasion of the Transvaal war it was fortunate that the judgment of Sir Wilfrid Laurier was in our favour. We are not loved too well abroad. I question whether in the history of the country, since the Seven Years War, there has been such universal hostility manifested against us as to day; and therefore I say it is a very fortunate thing that Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Canada, and our colonies generally, have pronounced in our favour. Had they not rallied round us, how much greater our difficulties would have been! But on 15th March, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, speaking at Ottawa, went further; he then said—

"What we did we did of our own free will; and as to future wars, I have only this to say, that if it should be the will of the people of Canada, at a future stage, to take part in any war of England, the people of Canada will have their way Of course, if our future military contribution were to be considered compulsory—a condition which does not exist—I would say to Great Britain, 'If you want us to help you, call us to your councils.'"

It seems to me that the position assumed by Sir Wilfrid Laurier is absolutely unanswerable. Are we not already approaching such a situation as he presupposes? We shall always in future expect the colonies to help us. We are actually making arrangements to give hundreds of commissions in the British Army to our colonies; and if we do that, how can we say to Sir Wilfrid Laurier that he is not entitled to share our responsibilities for peace or war?

In connection with this particular subject of Imperial defence, we have also to recollect the extraordinary dimensions to which the cost of Imperial defence has grown. I do not think it is too much to say that though it is not actually beyond the capacity of the ordinary taxpayer, it already constitutes a serious burden. The British colonist, if not so rich as his relative at home, has yet shown himself capable of bearing a fair share of the burthen of Empire. But to insist upon this, or to accept it, involves a correlative right. You cannot share your burthen without sharing the right to say how the burthen is to be borne. There is the most important point of all, a point which is closely bound up with the question of Imperial defence, namely, the greater consolidation of the Empire. If we could speak to the world not only with the voice of the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but with the united voice of the whole Empire, we should not only exercise a much greater influence abroad, but in my opinion the greatest possible guarantee we would provide for the preservation of the peace of the world. What are the ties that unite us now? These are the Crown, a golden thread with a breaking strain, and sentiment, the greatest force in human affairs, but a fluctuating clement. Colonial sentiment is now at white heat in our favour. We may do anything with it now. But how long will it remain in this malleable state? Great exaltation of feeling cannot in nature be long sustained. There will come a moment when the eloquent words of Sir W. Laurier will be forgotten, and only the memory of the wounds of war will survive. Then the question will be asked, "What are all our sacrifices for? What have we gained?" There must be something tangible to point to. We ought to learn a lesson from the history of our American colonies. We saved these colonies from destruction by the arms of France, and immediately afterwards they broke away from us on a trumpery detail of a tea tax. That illustrates the double danger of legislating at a distance and of relying upon so fluctuating an element as sentiment. The Australian Commonwealth Bill will shortly be laid upon the Table of this House. Suppose, for a moment, that we were to be so foolish as to mangle that measure on which the colonies have been labouring for three years, and on which they have set their hearts, is there any hon. Member who would undertake to say how long the fervid enthusiasm, for which we can never be too deeply grateful, would remain? What escape is there from such a calamity but co-operation in council with our colonial kinsmen? Again, it must be remembered that the immense development of our colonies is a new factor in the foreign policy of the State. It adds enormously to the problem of Imperial defence. Hitherto the foreign policy of the State, so far as I understand it, has been governed mainly by two ideas—the balance of power in Europe and the protection of the shores of the Channel. But to these must now be added the greater problem of the protection of the vast littorals of continents in remote seas. It might be expected if we had representatives of the colonies in this House that Imperial affairs would get more adequate consideration than now. Parliament, under the pressure of domestic affairs, tends to become more and more parochial. An outbreak of swine fever attracts more attention than a massacre in a protectorate; an order for the muzzling of dogs than the loss of Madagascar. The democracy must be saved from Shoreditch if it is to govern an Empire. Is it unreasonable to hope that with the presence of colonial representatives in Parliament the political horizon would be somewhat enlarged, and the tone of the public mind correspondingly elevated? I think we should also avoid great recurrent risks—risks which arise from European obligations such as the guaranteeing of the Asiatic frontier of Turkey, risks which might expose us to war at any moment, and involve our colonies in disastrous losses. Finally, I should say, whatever one may think of the proposal which I have made, and however we may be disposed towards the admission of the colonies to representation in this House, the thing itself is inevitable sooner or later. Our colonies have ceased to be mere colonies. With our consent they have stepped into the Imperial circle. They have fought for us and bled with us. Henceforth they can never be relegated to their old position again. We have entered into a path from which there is no return, and from which, were it still possible, return, in my opinion, is not to be desired. Already some of our colonies claim to have a voice in the settlement of the South African question, and we shall have to consider their wishes. We have taken them into partnership, and the bond which has been sealed by their blood cannot be broken. In my opinion the addition of their voice in the Imperial Councils of the State would be a gain to the Empire and to the Imperial Parliament. I beg to move the motion standing in my name.

I do not wish to add anything to the general argument brought forward by my hon. friend who proposed this motion. I think there can be very little doubt that the majority, indeed perhaps the whole of the House agrees in the theory of Imperial federation, or some sort of representation of the colonies, and that it will become in the near or distant future an absolute necessity. But what bars the way is time and the necessity for more practical suggestions than have hitherto been brought forward, and I do not in supporting this motion wish to discuss in the very least the forms which Imperial federation ought to take, nor do I suggest that there is any immediate possibility that it should be brought into practical political existence. It will be a matter of large statesmanship and long years before we can hope to have anything of the nature of imperial federation. We are going to discuss in a few weeks the Australian Commonwealth Bill, the idea of which has only been before the Australian public for, perhaps, twenty years, and it is only in the last ten years that any practical suggestions have been taking shape. What I want to suggest in reference to this motion is not so much that the Government should promise at this juncture to bring forward any sort of scheme of Imperial federation, but rather that there might be some sort of inter- mediate policy this country might adopt before Imperial federation was brought before it for serious discussion. All I wish to do to-night is to plead for the beginning of something being done to recognise the right of the colonies to some sort of representation in our councils, and the last few months have been showing that there is serious need for it. Of course the loyalty of the colonies and their action at the present time shows their intense affection for the mother country, but that loyalty has not been entirely unquestioning, although it has been given as graciously as it could be given. In Canada statesmen like Sir Wilfrid Laurier and others have, with that caution which has always characterised constitutional statesmen belonging to our race, refused, even at this juncture, to commit themselves absolutely to following Great Britain in every war in which Great Britain possibly may be engaged. It is true that they follow us in the present war, but many of the Canadian statesmen have said that, in spite of their approval of this particular conflict, they will not commit themselves to join in every war which England may undertake. This was said very directly by Sir Richard Cartwright—

"I say that we are not, by any manner of means called upon to take part in every war in which England may engage. I say more, that it cannot be demanded of Canada, as a right, that she should contribute to every war in which the Empire is engaged under the present circumstances. What Canada has done has been a free gift, and therein lay its value and its importance to the Empire."

It is clear from that that even at this moment, when Canadians are so anxious to assist us, they will not commit themselves, in the same way as every part of the United Kingdom admits it must be committed, to accept the doctrine that under all circumstances will they be ready to assist England, and never can they accept that doctrine until they have some sort of representation in some common Parliament. I do not expect, and I think nobody expects, that the Government should make any sort of promise or engagement, or hold out any sort of hope that Imperial federation can be a matter of the immediate future. What I wish to ask is whether the Government could not do something as a sort of stopgap policy, to enable the colonies to feel that in this country, as well as through the different parts of the Empire, there was an idea that we ought to be working at some scheme by which they might have representation. The suggestion I am going to make is not my own, or I should not venture to make it. It comes from a colonial source. It is that the Agents General or some other people in thoroughly responsible or representative positions should be allowed, not to have voting power, for it would be ridiculous to suggest voting power—it would mean so little—but that they or some others in a representative capacity should be allowed to have a voice in our discussions. They, in a sense, are representative politicians, and they would be more so if this privilege were in any way accorded to them. This suggestion, of course, is open to many very obvious objections. In the first place, it is open to the objection that we have not had in our Parliament in any age, I believe, representatives who have not had voting power. But the conditions are peculiar; the conditions are new. The colonies are beginning to demand representation. Nobody suggests at the present time that there is any hope that they should have any real, complete and effective representation, but this is only a suggestion for a period during which the Empire is considering the possibilities of Imperial federation. It is only a suggestion which would meet some of the requirements of the situation. There has been recently in Australia a demand for some sort of representation from a very important source. The most influential newspaper in Australia, the Melbourne Age—which is the first paper in Australia, has the largest circulation, and has the highest influence of any newspaper in the Australasian colonies—has declared that the colonies ought to begin to demand some sort of representation, and there is no doubt that the feeling, although it has not taken any very definite shape, is growing with extraordinary rapidity. We, at this moment, however, or very soon, are going to have an Australian Commonwealth Bill before us. That Bill is the product of the enthusiasm for Australian nationality; but, quite apart from this war, quite apart from the loyalty which has been called forth by this emergency in the last few months, side by side with Australian nationalism, there has been a strong growth of Imperial feeling, and I think, when public feeling is beginning to show itself through newspapers and other sources in favour of some sort of representation, we ought in England to try to meet it. It is for that reason that I second the resolution.

I thoroughly appreciate the intention of the hon. Member who has just sat down and the mover in bringing this resolution before the House; and if their object is, as I am sure it is, to induce a closer union between the colonies and the mother country, I am sure they have no more strenuous supporter than myself. But, at the same time, I must say I doubt very much whether that object will be promoted by the introduction into this House of an abstract resolution on a question of the greatest complexity and importance, and by an academic discussion on such a resolution. The matter is one which, if it is to have a practical issue, must come, as all our great constitutional changes have come, gradually and with the full assent of all the parties concerned; and to attempt to stimulate it into a kind of hot-house growth by anything like a premature discussion appears to me to be distinctly a mistake. I agree entirely with what was said by the hon. Member for Wick as to the prodigious growth of our colonial Empire—a growth which is much more remarkable and admirable when we consider its effect upon the intelligence, power, and wealth of the great colonies than when it is looked at as a question of the extension of physical areas. I agree with him also, as we all do, in his recognition of the magnificent rally of the colonies to the cause of the Empire. They have shown—and I think the hon. Member did them some injustice when he said that they had answered to our call, because we made no call; they voluntarily offered, tendered the assistance which we have so gladly accepted and, great as that has been and valuable as it is, large as are the sacrifices it has entailed upon the colonies concerned. I believe that if in any stress, of difficulty, or crisis of our fate we did make a call on the colonies, their efforts would be immensely greater even than those they have already made. Of course, there is a counter claim upon us, a claim which every man in this House would most gladly recognise, and if there be any demand or any request which the colonies have to make to the mother country, nothing can be more certain than that such a request, such a demand, would be most favourably considered by the British Parliament. But have they made that demand? Have they made any demand or any request for such a proposal, such an alteration of our system, as is suggested by the resolution which is now before the House? It is an abstract resolution. It is a curious thing how shortly after Mr. Gladstone has left the House his great principles are forgotten by his party. If there was one thing which Mr. Gladstone more consistently urged than another, it was that upon the Parliamentary point it was a great mistake, mischievous, and even immoral, in a Parliamentary sense, to propose abstract resolutions unless the promoters of those resolutions were prepared to give something like a sketch of the general lines upon which they wish to proceed. The hon. Gentleman who introduced this resolution said that he had no practical scheme to suggest. I am bound to say I can imagine Mr. Gladstone under such circumstances pointing out to the hon. Gentleman the extreme impropriety of saying nothing as to the practical issue of the proposal in what is merely an abstract resolution. The hon. Member is both too vague and too definite. He is too vague because he has omitted to consider any of the difficulties which lie in the way of anyone who attempts to bring about or even to hasten the advent of Imperial federation. Then he is too definite because in his resolution he does indicate and practically does commit us to a particular form in which, not imperial federation, but Imperial representation is to be brought about. If the House were now to vote for this Resolution they would commit themselves to this proposition—that the only way to secure closer relations with the colonies, which we all desire, is by introducing some sort of representation of the colonies in the Imerial Parliament, and thereby he would exclude altogether the consideration of those proposals for a federal system which at one time or another have been under review by statesmen or others who have given their attention to the subject. Up to the present time, although, of course, there have been expressions by individuals, both by societies and individual statesmen and politicians in the colonics, there has been absolutely no definite suggestion, proposal, demand, or request on the part of any of the representative authorities of the colonies for any such change as is suggested in the resolution. I do not mean to say that such a change would therefore necessarily be unpopular in the colonies. Quite the contrary; I believe that they are at the present moment constantly considering the question, as we are here in this country, but up to the present time, at any rate, they have not propounded any particular method of dealing with the subject; and, much as I myself desire the object which the Member who has brought this resolution forward has in view, I am convinced that nothing would be more dangerous or more fatal to the success of that object than any premature discussion of details. It is a matter on which we have rather to follow our colonies than to appear to dictate or even to suggest to them. One thing our colonies may be assured of—that, however far they may be willing to go in the direction of Imperial unity, we shall be willing to follow. But, having regard to the extraordinary complexity of the situation, I do not think that the time has come when we are to suggest to them the form which I hope and even venture to believe before many years have passed that Imperial unity will take. I have said that the hon. Member who raised this question was not only too definite, but also too vague. At all events, he excluded a great number of suggestions which have been made. He is also too vague as to the resolution itself. Not by way of depreciating the value of the idea, but by way of pointing out to the House the extraordinary difficulty of discussing the subject at the present time, let me suggest to the hon. Member some of the points on which he has offered no answer whatever. This resolution is to the effect that "in the opinion of this House it is desirable that the colonies"—well, what colonies? In the first place the hon. Member has so far dealt with the matter that he has declined to include India, but he has said nothing about the Crown colonies.

It is perfectly true that I said nothing specifically of the Crown colonics, but I think I indicated that I dealt exclusively with the self-governing colonies.

But I must point out the difficulty in which the House would be placed if they committed themselves to the terms of this resolution without thoroughly understanding what they included or omitted. I quite understand now that he proposes to deal with the self-governing colonies. Very good. The next question that arises is this: He says that they should be admitted to some direct representation in the Imperial Parliament. Well, the Imperial Parliament consists of two Houses. In which House does he propose they should be represented, or does he propose that they should be represented in both?

There are two in the other House already.

I beg pardon. Surely the hon. Gentleman, who calls himself a Liberal, does not call that representation.

I quite admit the force of that; but I should regard Lord Strathcona and Lord Mount Stephen as the thin end of the wedge.