I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, having regard to the publication of the evidence adduced at the court martial of Commander Scheepers who was convicted, the War Office will publish the evidence adduced at the court-martial of Commander Kritzinger who was acquitted.

No, Sir; I see no necessity for publishing this evidence.

Was he now convicted on the very same evidence as that on which Kritzinger was acquitted?

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state what explanation, if any, the War Office has to offer for the publication of the evidence adduced in the court martial on Commander Scheepers, and the withholding from the public of the evidence adduced in the court - martial on Morant, Handcock, Witton, and Picton, British officers, who were convicted of the murder of Boer prisoners.

The trial of Commander Scheepers was by a military court held under martial law, but it was not a court-martial.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is now able to state the circumstances attending the execution of Commander Scheepers at Graft Reinet on the 18th of January last.

I have made inquiries, and find that the execution of Commander Scheepers was carried out in the usual manner. Lord Kitchener telegraphed to me on 5th April—

"The prisoner was most composed; he walked absolutely unaided to the chair, where he was fastened, as is always done. From the time he stepped from the ambulance till he was dead barely one minute elapsed. There were no piteous scenes, and no hitch of any sort."

Did he ask to be allowed to face death, and was he after that bandaged and tied in a chair?

You know it was so.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, having regard to the statements that have been made respecting Sir Redvers Buller with reference to the heliogram sent by him to Sir George White during the siege of Ladysmith, the War Office will now publish in full that heliogram or permit its publication in full by Sir Redvers Buller.

Sir Redvers Buller has addressed me a communication on this matter, and I am not prepared at present to make any statement.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, previous to the late war between the United States and Spain, any assurances were given by the British Government to the Government of the United States as to the conduct or policy of Great Britain in reference to that war; if so, whether such assurances were conveyed by word of mouth or by correspondence; and whether, in view of the time that has elapsed since the termination of that war, the terms of any such assurance and the text of all correspondence relating thereto that may have passed will now be laid upon the Table of this House.

I can find no trace of any such assurances.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether ho is aware that the Roman Catholic sailors, whose deaths were caused by the explosion of a gun aboard the warship "Mars," while manœuvring off Berehaven, were denied religious consolation while the Protestant sailors had the ministrations of the Church of England chaplain; whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed at the inquest held as to the cause of death of these sailors; and, seeing that the jury urged on the Government the advisability of having at least one Roman Catholic chaplain attached to each squadron, whether he proposes to advise that effect shall be given to this recommendation of the jury.

Only one of the men who died subsequently to the recent gun accident on the "Mars" was a Roman Catholic. His death took place in the hospital on shore, where the ministrations of a priest were available. My attention has been called to the remarks made by the jury. As the hon. Member is doubtless aware, I stated the policy of the Admiralty with regard to embarking Roman Catholic chaplains in seagoing ships in February last, to the following effect: That,

"In the future, when large squadrons of ships are detached from their stations for any length of time in circumstances which would preclude Roman Catholic sailors from receiving the ministrations of their religion, a Roman Catholic chaplain shall accompany those ships."

Will the recommendation of the jury be carried out so far as the Mediterranean fleet is concerned?

Yes, a Roman Catholic chaplain has been despatched there.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will consider if it is possible to give additional details of cases of disablement among coal miners, such as those obtainable from the Miners' Permanent Relief Funds and from the Central Association, which deals with nine English societies composing the Association and representing some 300,000 members; whether he has any official information to the effect that the accidents so shown are more numerous than those included in the Reports of the Inspectors of Mines; and whether he will arrange to give to the Inspectors of Mines power to report all cases of smart money and compensation paid by the collieries in their districts, and to distinguish between accidents occurring to coal miners under sixteen and under twenty or twenty-one years of age.

While the figures of fatal accidents in coal mines are, I believe, complete and accurate, it has long been recognised that the returns of non-fatal accidents, however useful for administrative purposes, are of little or no statistical value. The Act requires serious accidents to be reported, but leaves it to each mine owner to decide for himself what constitutes a serious accident. The whole subject of the reporting of accidents in mines is under the consideration of a small Departmental Committee, which I appointed some months ago, and I understand that the Committee hope to make some recommendations which will put the matter on a more satisfactory footing.

And as to the last paragraph of the Question?

No doubt the Committee will consider the last point raised in the right hon. Gentleman's Question.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has any official information explaining the increasing number and proportion of persons injured in metalliferous mines, and whether ho expects to be able to introduce a Metalliferous Mines Bill.

The Returns of nonfatal accidents reported in metalliferous mines do not show an increase in the number of persons injured—on the contrary, there appears to be a decrease. No doubt these figures are open to the same objection as the figures of nonfatal accidents in coal mines, but the figures of fatal accidents, which are, I believe, thoroughly trustworthy, show similar results. The death-rate in metalliferous mines was lower last year than in any previous year since the statistics began in 1873. As to legislation, I have a Bill in draft, and should be glad of a favourable opportunity of introducing it, but the right hon. Baronet will recognise that the question is full of difficulties, and it has to be remembered that the number of persons employed in metalliferous mines is not in itself large, and is not increasing.

Has the right hon. Gentleman had his attention called to the figures on which my Question is based—those in Dr. Oliver's book?

I cannot say that I have read the book, but I am aware of the figures, of course.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state how many persons were committed to prison for contempt of court in England between 1st October, 1899, and 31st December, 1901, and for what period each was detained in custody.

This information is not at present in my possession, but I am having it collected.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the recent fatal accident to a lady parachutish at Sheffield; and whether it is his intention to issue a prohibition against performances by parachutists.

I have seen accounts of this accident and view with regret public performances involving such risks to human life: but there is no law against them provided that the person is, if a female, over the age of 18, or 16 if a male. I have no power to issue the suggested prohibition.

Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of giving to the local authority discretion in such matter.

There has been comparatively recent legislation, and I think if we were to increase the age to meet cases of this kind strong objections might be raised. I understand that the lady parachutist who met with this accident was 23, and I question whether Parliament would be willing to consent to legislation which would prevent persons of that mature age taking part in such performances.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he can state the broad principle on which certain questions relating to the housing of the working classes in the Metropolis are placed under the jurisdiction of the Home Office, while similar questions in the rest of England and Wales are under that of the Local Government Board; and to what extent, if any, the division of jurisdiction is the result of the distinction drawn by the Treasury in the qualifications required of officials in their respective Departments.

I do not think that the division of jurisdiction under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts rests on any broad principle. It is a survival of the arrangement made under the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Acts which were consolidated by the Act of 1890. I am not aware that this division of jurisdiction is in any sense the result of the distinction referred to in the concluding part of the Question.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that it is contemplated to change the sub-post office from Old Court to Creagh; and seeing that the Baltimore and Skibbereen Harbour Commissioners passed a resolution against the proposed change, and pointed out that it would cause inconvenience to the masters and sailors of ships who frequent the river Illen, and who have no landing-place but Old Court in that part of the river, whether he will see that no such change is made in connection with this sub-post office.

It is proposed to improve the postal service to the Creagh district by sending the mails by train to Creagh railway station instead of by road to Old Court, and in connection with this alteration a question has arisen as to the expediency of removing the sub-post office from Old Court to Creagh. The Postmaster General has received a resolution from the Baltimore and Skibbereen Harbour Commissioners against the removal of the office, and before coming to a decision he will consider the matter further.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether representations have been made to the Board of Trade regarding the treatment whiskey merchants in Belfast are subjected to in the matter of rates; is he aware that all articles of commerce classified alike to whiskey are not being charged by carrying companies at similar rates; and will he state what steps, if any, he intends to take, by legislation or otherwise, to secure for whiskey merchants equality of treatment for the conveyance of their goods with the traders in other commodities.

Yes, Sir, the Board of Trade have received a representation on this subject and entered into correspondence with two of the Irish Companies, and also with the Railway Association with reference to the matter. I shall be happy to show the hon. and learned Member the replies received from the companies. These replies are somewhat lengthy, but they give a reasonable explanation of the position. There does not appear to be any substance in the present complaint, inasmuch as whiskey does not compete with such articles as hardware and linen, although they are included in the same class with it.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the proposed increase in the Belfast police force will be made before July, and when it takes place will men who have previously served in Belfast be selected where possible.

It has not yet been definitely decided to what extent the Belfast police force is to be increased, nor has a date been fixed for the appointment of additional constables. The most suitable men will be selected. Familiarity with the conditions of a large city like Belfast is an element to be considered in making such a selection.

Have not the local authorities strongly recommended an immediate increase of the force?

The increase is contemplated, but the extent and date I am not prepared to announce.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if his attention has been called to the protest of the Dundalk Board of Guardians and other public bodies to the refusal of the Local Government Board to select a Roman Catholic for the post of lady inspector of boarded-out children, although 90 per cent. of such children are Roman Catholics; will he explain why preference was given to a Protestant for such an office; and what qualifications, experience, or credentials did the lady appointed possess, and on what basis was the selection made.

The qualifications of the lady appointed to this position were set out in my reply to the Question put on the 15th instant by the hon. Member for the Leix Division of Queen's County.† There appears to be some misunderstanding as to the duties of the inspector. She will have nothing whatever to say to the education of the children, nor will she have the selection of nurses. The authority of the Guardians and of the Ladies' Committees will in no way be lessened or impaired by her appointment. She is not empowered to make any order with respect to the children; she can only make recommendations concerning them to the Guardians and the Committees. The inspector appointed was not selected on account of her religion, which was not even inquired into, but because of her previous experience and fitness for the post.

On what Vote will the salary appear?

The Vote for the Local Government Board.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state how many Justices of the Peace in the Petty Sessions District of Clonmacate, County Armagh, are Roman Catholics; what resident magistrate will attend the trial of the Annaghmore rioters; whether any rioters have been identified other than those already summoned, and, if so, whether they will be prosecuted.

This is the seventh Question addressed to me by the hon. Member in respect of proceedings for riot which are now pending. All the information that can properly be given has already been given, and I must decline to discuss a matter which is subjudice.

What is the right hon. Gentleman's objection to answering the first part of the Question?

I object to discussing the personnel of the Bench before which the case is to come.

Have the Government any objection to the return on Education which stands in my name on the paper? †

I cannot give the Departmental correspondence, but I agree to give all asked for under heads A, and B, 3 and 4.

I have to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what will be the business on Friday.

Objection has been expressed to taking on that day the Motion to make the orders already passed Standing Orders, and there is a certain inconvenience in that course, as any further progress we may make with the new Procedure Rules would have to be brought forward at a later period of the session. I therefore propose on Friday to take Supply—the Home Office Vote first, and

In moving the Second Reading of this Bill, I have to explain that its object is to remedy a patent detect in the present law. Under the statute of 1859 the Admiralty were given powers to raise Naval Volunteers, now known as the Royal Naval Reserve. These Volunteers were compelled by the terms of the statute to be men resident in the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. In 1896 it was desired to employ in the Royal Naval Reserve men serving in the Canadian Pacific Line of steamers, and an Act was passed permitting the enlistment of these men. But it contained the limitation that such men must be serving in a vessel registered in the British Isles, which, as a matter of fact, the vessels of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company were. Since that time Volunteers have been enlisted into the Royal Naval Reserve in the colony of Newfoundland, and there is no statutory warrant for their enlistment. The object of the Bill, therefore, is to remedy that state of things, and permit British subjects serving in ships registered elsewhere than in the United Kingdom, and residing outside it, to enter the Royal Naval Reserve. The Bill is merely intended to legitimate the entry of the men who have already entered, and permit the entry of other men in similar circumstances in the future.

said he thought that any discussion on the Bill might be deferred till the Committee stage, and he did not propose to offer any opposition to the Second Reading, but he would point out that the Bill was retrospective, and amounted really to an act of indemnity. He would like to ask for an explanation as to the effect of the proposal in the Bill to omit the words "serving on a vessel registered in the British Islands." That would make it possible to include vessels which were not registered in any part of the British dominions at all, and would enable men to be retained in the Royal Naval Reserve who were serving on board ships under a foreign flag. Was that really intended to be its effect? He did not know that anything was to be gained by retaining these words, even if their omission entailed the consequence to which he had referred, because the registration of ships in this country appeared to him no longer to afford any guarantee whatever that the ships so registered were in any proper sense of the word British ships. There was no reason whatever why the majority of shares in a British company should not be held by foreigners. He thought that at this stage of the Bill they might have an explanation from the Government whether it was really intended to retain in the Royal Naval Reserve men who were serving in foreign ships.

said the hon. Gentleman had declared that the Bill was to remedy a patent defect in the law, but in his opinion it was not a remedial Bill at all. It was a measure to give indemnity to the Admiralty for having committed acts the illegality of which had been pointed out by the Public Accounts Committee, of which he had the honour to be a member. The Government chose, without a proper examination of the law on the subject, to do a tiling which they had no legal power to do, and, although the enlistment of Newfoundlanders was most proper and desirable, the Government certainly ought not to have sanctioned it without first making themselves acquainted with the legal position. Their powers were really limited to enrolling British subjects serving on board ships registered in the British Islands, and the Newfoundland men, as a fact, were not so serving. The Comptroller and Auditor General found out the mistake which had been made, and had it not been for him the illegality might still be continued. The hon. Gentleman opposite had said that it was possible, as the law stood, for a ship to be practically owned by a foreign corporation and yet to be registered as a British ship. He disagreed with the hon. Member on that point. He believed that when a ship had fallen wholly under the dominion of a foreign corporation it ceased to be, in the words of the Merchant Shipping Act, "a ship owned by British subjects or corporation." In view of the large transfer of British shipping to take place on 31st December next, the question arose whether His Majesty's Government were prepared to go on enrolling in the Naval Reserve British subjects sailing under a foreign flag. He thought it would be an entirely improper thing to do. He objected further to the method by which it was proposed to amend what the hon. Gentleman called a patent defect in the law. In his opinion, it was most improper. It was proposed to omit certain words from the Act of 1896; he would rather leave the words in, and add at the end the words "or in British possessions." That would be a desirable amplification of existing powers, and in Committee he hoped the Government would see their way to adopting his suggestion. He did not think there were any grounds for opposing the Second Reading of the Bill.

said that if the Bill gave power to register in the Royal Naval Reserve sailors who were serving under a foreign flag, it would do away with the only safeguard we had that the Reserve should consist of British sailors serving in British ships.

The Bill provides that only British subjects shall be enrolled.

But can they be enrolled if they are serving under a foreign flag? That is the point.

It is not our intention to employ men of any other nationality who may be serving in British ships. As to whether British subjects serving in foreign ships shall be enrolled, I understand it is intended to move an Amendment on that point in Committee, and I will reserve till then any remarks I may have to make.

said he should like to draw attention to the case of the Chinese in Australia. They were considered British subjects. Could they be enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve?

thought the Member for King's Lynn was under a misapprehension. It was true the Bill was partly designed to indemnify the Admiralty in regard to certain acts, but it was mainly designed to remedy a defect in the law. In justice to the Admiralty, he must say that they themselves and not the Comptroller and Auditor General, who, indeed, had not the opportunity, discovered the irregularity which had been committed in the enrolment of the Newfoundland fishermen. This Bill would simply make the law what it ought to be, subject to amendment as to service under the flag, which he rather favoured.

Will the Admiralty be willing to accept the services of the watermen and lightermen of London if they volunteer for the Naval Reserve?

thought the hon. Member was misled by the title of the Bill. It had nothing to do with what were commonly called the naval volunteers, it dealt solely with reserve men, and therefore the question raised by the hon. Member did not come in. He thought they ought to have some indication as to the principles which would guide the Government in the debates in Committee. He should like to point out that since 1870 a double allegiance was possible, and British subjects could also be American citizens without losing the allegiance to the Crown. There were many offices in the United States which could only be held by citizens of the United States, and which had been filled by gentlemen who had continued to be British subjects. Accordingly, the Government would not guard entirely against the danger which his hon. friend had pointed out by merely using the phrase British subjects, for many American citizens were British subjects.

said he thought the question whether a British subject who was not a native of these islands could join the Naval Reserve scarcely arose under this Bill, as the power existed already.

The power at present is limited by registration in the British Isles.

said his point was that the limitation of the kind of British subject who should be enabled to join the Naval Reserve did not exist now. There were two separate questions—as to the ship, and as to the man. The Government wanted to remove the limitation as to ships, but they were not asking for any change with regard to the men. Under this Bill the Admiralty took the power to enlist a British subject in any ship, even if flying a foreign flag. It was distinctly a question for Committee whether it was wise that the Government should take this power. The mere possession of the power did not, of course, necessarily entail its exercise. Referring to an interruption by the hon. Member for Dundee, he said it was a fact that a limited power already existed by which the Admiralty could allow Naval Reserve men to serve in ships flying foreign flags. If it was not thought wise to extend that power, the Committee could deal with the point. The Bill embraced within its scope all ships registered in any British possession, and even went beyond that, so as to include any ship.

said there were two or three matters which he desired to refer to in connection with this Bill. One part of Dublin was the same to him as another, for he held no property in any part of the city, but he thought the House of Commons in the past had cast a good deal of taxation on the north side of Dublin as against the south side. At the present time the rates on the north side were 4d. or 5d. in the £ more than on the south side, and the result of this Bill would be to still further aggravate this evil. Instead of bringing this college of science near to the homes of the poor and the working classes who desired to use it, it was to be erected near the homes of the aristocracy who required it the least. He wished to know who was responsible for the selection of the site of this great institution. He also wished to know whether it would be possible to leave the whole question of the site of this important college to the Select Committee which it was proposed to refer the Bill to. This would be a mere matter of form. Unless this were done the question of the site would be absolutely excluded from the purview of the Committee because it was pre-determined by the positive plans which had been lodged. He thought they were entitled to ask who were the gentlemen who had taken upon themselves the selection of this site in the aristocratic and improving part of the city, which was necessarily the dearest part. The property on the southern side was double the value of that on the northern side, and by taking this site they were lessening to that extent the amount that would be available for the college itself. He did not wish to offer any undue opposition, but he thought there would be a saving of thousands of pounds upon this question of the site alone if the claims of the north side were considered and the aristocracy allowed to emigrate to the other side.

said that they were entitled to know what offices it was proposed to find accommodation for in the new building, and some explanation of the necessity for moving the offices from one site to another. He fully sympathised with the view expressed by the hon. Member for North Louth as to the selection of the site. No doubt it would be said by the Minister in charge of the Bill that the site had been chosen because of its proximity to the National Library and Museum, but after all Dublin was a small place, and one could walk across it in a quarter of an hour. After their experiences of the Government architect it was too much, he feared, to hope that a handsome building would be put up, but why on earth had they selected a site for it in the most expensive residential part of the city? and why were they removing some of the noblest old houses still remaining in Dublin for the purpose of putting up this new structure? The hon. Member for North Louth had spoken of the district as the home of the aristocracy but there was no aristocracy in Ireland.

I withdraw the word.

added that whatever beggared remnant rejoiced in the name of the aristocracy had already migrated to the other side of the Channel. But these houses, of which any city in Europe might well be proud, were falling into ruin and were deserted, and now it was proposed to spend on the site a sum of £90,000, which could be much more advantageously used for the improvement of the city. He could not understand why such a site had been chosen when one could have been obtained equally good at a quarter of the price.

reminded the Secretary to the Treasury that, in reply to a question, he had promised, before the Bill left the House, to state definitely what architect would be employed. He rose now to ask who the architect would be who was to be entrusted with the drawing up of the plans for this new college.

said that in the case of public buildings he had always protested against the selection of expensive sites, because he could not see why the taxpayers should be mulcted in heavy charges for rates. He thought the discussion which had taken place justified the House in refusing to allow this Bill to pass.

said that hon. Members from Ireland were naturally anxious to know what offices were referred to in this Bill. In the first place, as they were probably aware, the houses which they were proposing to use in connection with the scheme under this Bill, were already in part the property of the Government. The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, which was the Department immediately concerned, had its offices in the block of houses referred to. That Department did a very important work, and its work had grown very largely since its inception. The available accommodation for this Department was quite insufficient, and this was the first Department for which proper accommodation had to be found. In the second place, he had found the very strongest objection from authorities which he could not question or disregard. At the present time there was overcrowding in the Local Government Board offices.

There is plenty of room in the Customs Offices.

said that was not so. The clerks under that Board were working under circumstances which, whatever might be the desire of the Treasury to save money, they would not be justified in ignoring after attention had been called to them. It was proposed now to find increased accommodation, and the accommodation set free in the Customs House would be available in part for the Irish branch of the Stationery Office, and partly for the Irish Works Department. Reference had been made by the hon. Member for East Mayo to the architectural beauty of the houses to be dealt with under the scheme. He himself went over to Dublin last autumn for the purpose of seeing this site and of viewing the college site, in order to satisfy himself as to the suitability of the site selected, and as to the necessity of taking over the houses. He saw those houses, and he agreed with the hon. Member for East Mayo that they were very beautiful houses. It was not, however, their intention to pull. those houses down; all they proposed was to adapt them to office use. Of course he could not forecast the future, and anything he now said would not prevent a future Government from dealing with the block of houses as a whole, or pulling them down or altering them more than it was at present proposed to do. It was not their intention to interfere with the structure of the buildings, but simply to adjust their internal arrangements for the purpose of using the houses as offices. Hon. Members would see that what they had provided for in this Bill, so far as those offices were concerned, was only the cost of the site and the buildings upon it. They did not think it was right to put the cost of the adaptation of the houses for the new offices in this Bill, and this expenditure would be provided for in the Works Vote for the current year. The site they proposed to utilise for the building of the new college was part of the gardens at the back of those houses. He did not think that this was a case in which they ought to build an extravagant building, although they ought to have a building of a suitable character for the work. That was the first and the greatest necessity. He thought the work of a science college might be made of the highest importance to the development of Ireland. He had had an opportunity of conversing with some of the professors in Ireland, and the Professor of Engineering told him that for every pupil who took a certificate there, there was almost an immediate opening in Ireland. This Professor said that the accommodation in the present College of Science was so bad and inefficient that they were unable to train up those who would have been willing to come to Dublin in order to train for positions as civil engineers under Irish local authorities. The consequence was that they had to apply to this country, because Ireland did not offer them efficient training. He thought they ought to provide Ireland with the means of giving that training to Irishmen, and after having received this training they could take their chance of getting appointments in other parts of the United Kingdom. It was very important that they should have a building suitable for those technical purposes. The hon. Member for South Dublin suggested upon a previous occasion that they should have competition in regard to the architect. He doubted whether in such matters competition was ever wise. The English Office of Works had come to the conclusion that none of their most successful buildings had been the result of competition. But, however that might be as a general rule, he was certain that this was not a case to which competition could be applied. The success or non-success of this building depended upon the adaptation of numberless details of internal construction. Therefore he believed they would have to make their selection of an architect without competition. He only mentioned this matter now because he thought that the most important thing with regard to it was that the building should be suitable for the very important work which it would have to perform. He hoped the building would be a credit to Dublin, and be no dishonour to the surroundings in which it found itself. He did not see why they should not get a fine and beautiful building, such as Irishmen might feel proud of, without going to any needless or extravagant expense. He now came to the reasons for choosing this particular site. He was not altogether a free agent on this question. When he came to the Treasury the matter had to a certain extent been decided. Proposals had been before the House, a Vote of money had been granted by the House, and some of the houses referred to had actually been purchased out of the money so provided in order to make way for this scheme. The whole of the scheme would require thirteen houses in Upper Merrion Street. Of those houses four or five were in possession of the Government. Those houses, or a portion of them, were bought by moneys provided by Parliament for the express purpose of obtaining a site for the College of Science. Therefore, he took it that a portion of the site had already been bought out of moneys provided by Parliament for this purpose, and to that extent the case was prejudiced. He did not in any way doubt the wisdom of the choice. He quite appreciated the desire of hon. Members opposite that all the fine buildings in Dublin should not be concentrated in one spot. Some of those most interested in the work of this college attached enormous importance to the consideration referred to by the hon. Member for East Mayo that the new college should be close to the museum and library. Complaint had been made that the present college, which was separated by something less than five minutes walk from those places, was inconveniently distant. The scheme proposed would bring all these buildings together, and tend to the advantage of the work which was to be carried on. The amount of money the scheme was expected to cost was stated in the Bill, but it would be contrary to his duty to say what portion of the sum it would be necessary to pay to the various interests connected with the property proposed to be acquired. To do so would be to give himself away before going into court, and to prejudge the case, for the benefit not of the Government, but of the private individuals concerned. He thought he had reason to believe that the cost of the site would not be extravagant, and hon. Gentlemen opposite who took an interest in economy, which he admired and shared, need not be afraid that the taxpayers' money was being wasted in this respect. He had hoped to be able to make the announcement at the present time of the name of the architect selected, and the only reason why he was not able to de so was because no choice had yet been made. He had been in communication with the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the representative of the Board of Agriculture, who were entitled to be approached in the matter, as also with his own advisers at the Office of Works, and they had considered the claims of several architects, both Irish and British. He personally had been most anxious that for a building of this kind, to be erected in the principal city of Ireland, they should receive the assistance and advice of an Irish architect. He thought it might be desirable, for the reasons adverted to by the hon. Member for South Dublin, to associate an Irish architect with an English architect, but he would not like to be held as giving a definite pledge at this stage. He thought hon. Members from Ireland might take it that an Irish architect would be connected with the work, even if it was felt to be necessary to have associated with him an English architect also. He would undertake not to take the Third Reading of the Bill until he was able to give the name of the architect to the House.

said the speech of the hon. Gentleman would afford a great deal of dissatisfaction to the Irish Members of the House. He thought one of the recommendations of the scheme was that some imposing and magnificent building would be erected on the site.

That is what the hon. Member for East Mayo protested against.

The hon. Member for East Mayo has his view and I have mine, and it is not a vital matter that divides us. It now appeared that what was to be done was to erect this building on the site of the stables at the back of the street. The hon. Gentleman said it would be an imposing building, but who would see it? Nobody would see it from Kildare Street. [An HON. MEMBER: Yes.] He did not believe it. It was to be hidden away on the site of the existing stables attached to the houses. That made the Bill more unsatisfactory to him than he formerly thought it was. They had not been told the amount of money that was to be spent on the purchase of the site. As far as he could see, the Government were going to spend most of the money in renovating the houses for the accommodation of existing public offices.

said he should be sorry that the hon. Member I should base his argument on a misunderstanding of what he said. The money was for the purchase of the site of the houses, and the gardens, and the erection of the College of Science.

said this was rather a vital point. He wanted to know how much of the money was to be spent on the renovation of existing Government houses, and how much upon the College of Science. The hon. Gentleman had not told the House who selected the site. It was a humiliating thing to think that in this purely Irish matter the last persons to be consulted were Irishmen. [Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN shook his head.] Had a single Irish representative been consulted Had the Corporation ever been asked a word about it? Had any Irish public body been asked to give its opinion as to the selection of the site? He ventured to I say that they had not, and he would almost go so far as to say that no Irishman occupying any representative position, or any one, except persons connected in some way with the Government, had ever been allowed to have a say or to make a recommendation on the subject. A circumstance like that was to him a source of the utmost humiliation. He supposed the Financial Secretary of the Treasury went over to Ireland with a return ticket in his pocket, and that, with the assistance of another Englishman, he selected the site, without even making known to the Irish public the decision at which he had arrived. He did not then make any Parliamentary proposition which the Irish Members could debate. He supposed that even upon this Bill they should not have had an opportunity for discussion, but that the Government did not know what to do with their time and that I they put it down for the consideration of the House. The hon. Gentleman having selected the site without regard to Irish opinion, and having received the opinion of nobody except a few snobs living in Merrion Square, proceeded to determine in his own mind that the college should be erected on the spot mentioned. The reason he gave was that the building would then be connected with the Department of Agriculture. There was not the slightest reason why the building should he placed in such a position. As had been said, Dublin was a small city—not like Belfast. They might go across the whole city in a tramcar in five minutes, and there was no actual necessity, nor was it highly desirable, that the college should be in the place now proposed, in order that it might be near the Agricultural Department, especially when the Agricultural Department could be removed to the site of the new college. But even if the Agricultural Department and the college were divided from each other, what great harm would there be? One of the hon. Gentleman's plans consequential on the present arrangements was to split up the Local Government Board, whose offices were now in the Custom House. It appeared that it was intended to transport some of them over to Merrion Street, but if the offices of any Department ought to be in close communication and physical proximity to each other, it was those of the Local Government Board.

said that the whole of the Local Government Board offices were to be taken over to the new site.

said that that was an entirely new thing to him. The Irish people assumed that the character of this Bill was to provide money for an educational establishment, and that was the only object mentioned in any utterance, written or spoken, by any member of the Government. Now, it was not a college that was to be provided at all, but Government offices. No wonder the college of science was to take not a front but a back place on the site. It was only on a par with all this that no Irish architect was to have anything to do with that building. Was it not a most humiliating thing to think that the hon. Gentleman himself, an Englishman, in a matter concerning Ireland, should be able to get up at the Table in this foreign Assembly——

I rise to a point of order. I wish to know whether the hon. Gentleman is in order in speaking of this House as a foreign Assembly.

It is a foreign Assembly and nothing else.

It is a foreign Assembly, and a hateful foreign Assembly at that.

Order, order! It is not a respectful way of speaking of the House of Commons to say that it is a hateful Assembly; but to state that it is a foreign Assembly I cannot say is out of order.

said it was a most humiliating thing to think that the hon. Gentleman should get up at that Table, and addressing Irishmen, say that it would not be expedient to associate the English architect who designed the new buildings with an Irish architect. He would not ask that an Irish architect should be employed if he were distinctly inferior, and utterly without any architectural ability; but it so happened that some of the finest buildings in Ireland were designed by Irishmen, including the existing buildings in Kildare Street, and possibly an Irishman could be got to design the new College of Science. He could only say that he, for one, had had no idea that the Bill was for anything else than the erection of a College of Science in Dublin; but it now turned out that it was practically a Bill for the housing of the existing Government establishments in Dublin. He had no admiration for Government pretentions, and he thought that the speech of the hon. Gentleman had thrown new light on the matter, and that there should be further discussion upon it. He was not inclined to allow the matter to end with any remarks of his, and he begged therefore to move.

seconded the Amendment. The propositions contained in the Bill had come upon the Irish Members very much as a surprise. The Local Government Board had already very fine offices in Dublin, and to remove them, he thought, would be a mistake. Irish Members were not all of them very much enamoured with the Local Government Board, and he thought they had a right to ask how much of the new building was to be given over to that Board, and what was to happen to their present premises. He was not quite clear as to the position of the Government in regard to the architect of the new building; but he understood that an Irish architect was not to be employed. Now, there could not be any difficulty in finding a capable Irish architect in Dublin, Belfast, or other parts of Ireland, and he hoped that the Government would take steps to secure the best local available talent for designing the new buildings, which he trusted would be entirely devoted to the purposes of the College of Science.

said it would be fatal to the Bill if the Amendment were accepted, for it would involve the postponement of all progress with the scheme for at least another year. He felt bound to say that he did not feel encouraged to persevere in this apparently very contentious task. He had hoped to have the full support of the Irish Members, in whatever corner of the House they sat.

Not a shilling for the Local Government Board.

said that so far as the Government were concerned, this scheme stood or fell as a whole. They proposed to acquire the block of houses which were in close proximity to the National Gallery and the Museum, and to adapt them for the purposes of public offices. On the other portion of the site they proposed to erect the new Royal College of Science. The money for adapting the existing houses to public offices was not included in the £225,000 which they asked power to raise under the Bill for the Royal College of Science. Hon. Members would find in the Vote for Public Works in Ireland the sum of £9,500; that was the cost of adapting the existing buildings for the purposes of offices. The hon. Baronet opposite had spoken as if the whole or a large portion of this £225,000 was going to be expended in the provision of new offices, but no portion of that sum would be spent in connection with the new offices, except in respect of the sites and buildings. It was only right that the block should be taken as a whole. By far the largest portion of this £225,000 would be spent directly on the new Royal College of Science, but as additional accommodation was clearly wanted for offices in Ireland they proposed to combine the building of the new college with the acquisition of the existing buildings for new offices for the Department of Agriculture and the Local Government Board. He asked only for reasonable treatment in this matter. Hon. Members opposite would surely not contend that, because they disapproved of the policy which the Irish Government or the Irish Local Board had pursued, they should punish, the clerks by compelling them to work under conditions inimical to health, and conditions which would be condemned by any sanitary officer if he had power to enter into these offices. The policy of the Local Government Board might be right or it might be wrong, but whatever the views of hon. Members opposite might be in that regard, surely they would admit that it was imperative to find proper accommodation for the clerks employed in that office. These clerks were at present housed in the Customs, where their rooms were very much overcrowded; other Departments were housed in leasehold premises. It was proposed to make a rearrangement by adapting existing buildings to the wants of growing Departments, and to take the Local Government Board staff out of the Customs and place them in a new building. With regard to the selection of the site hon. Members did him great injustice if they thought he had not consulted Irish opinion upon this matter. With regard to the new College of Science, the matter had been the subject of a large correspondence, and so far as he knew every authority consulted agreed that this was the best site. The only Irish opinion which had been disregarded in the matter was the opinion expressed in Belfast that Belfast was the proper site for this building. Therefore it would be seen that Irish opinion had received the anxious attention of the Irish Government, and the different authorities had concurred that this was the best site that could be selected.

said the hon. Gentleman had no doubt made a conciliatory speech, but for his part he did not think the hon. Gentleman had removed a single one of the objections that had developed during the course of the Second Beading of the Bill. If anyone read the Bill they would suppose that this was a measure to establish a Royal College of Science. That was the conclusion they would come to from the title of the Bill, but incidentally—not in any statement by the Government, but by accident—it had come out that this Bill was to be used for giving efficient offices to the Local Government Board of Ireland. The hon. Gentleman said that new offices were needed. At the present moment the Irish Local Government Board occupied one of the most glorious buildings in Dublin, a building erected in the time of the Irish Parliament for Irish Customs; but, unfortunately, Irish Customs had long since become a thing of the past, so the Government had turned this glorious building into a Local Government Board office. The hon. Gentleman said the clerks lived there under unsanitary conditions. That he denied, but even if it were true he would invite the Government to remove the Local Government Board Offices to the Four Courts, from which the Government had evicted and expelled the Dublin County Council. He had been asked whether he would be a party to condemning the clerks of the Local Government Board Office to work under insanitary conditions. He denied that they did. And how little had the Government considered how it had condemned the labourers of Ireland to live under insanitary conditions. All over the country Boards of Guardians had pressed for cottages for these unfortunate people, but a single objection taken to the site by the bailiff of a landowner was sufficient to prevent the cottages being built. It really seemed that under the pretence of giving Ireland a College of Science the Government was really going to erect a new arsenal of ascendancy in the capital. So far as he was concerned, he cared not whether this Bill was delayed for another year or another ten years, but he would be no party to paying one sixpence for putting one stick or one stone upon another for the purpose of building new offices for the Local Government Board. He admitted that there was a necessity for more accommodation for the Board of Agriculture, but that accommodation could be given on very easy terms, only a few thousand pounds being necessary for that purpose. There was no necessity for the enormous expenditure contemplated by this Bill. It appeared to him that the bulk of the money was to be spent, not on education, but on Departmental accommodation, for the College of Science was to be put in the background and the Government offices in the front. He saw no evil whatever in the question of the postponement of the site, and nothing unreasonable in their request that the question should be considered by a Select Committee.

said he rose to take part in the debate with great regret. It had often been a matter of complaint that the Imperial Parliament had done nothing to promote the temporal welfare of Ireland, but here was a very generous attempt to erect a much-needed College of Science in Dublin, and, instead of its being received by a chorus of approval by Gentlemen opposite, there had been a unanimous outcry against this action by a "foreign Assembly." He hoped the Secretary to the Treasury would consider the expediency of withdrawing the Bill this session. If the gratitude of Ireland was to be shown as it had been shown in this House, there was very little encouragement for the British Parliament doing anything further in this direction. He could tell his hon. friend the Secretary to the Treasury that there was one city in Ireland where a College of Science would be welcomed; and he asked the Government, remembering the reception that this proposition had met with on the other side of the House, to transfer the college from Dublin to Belfast.

said the hon. Member opposite had quite mistaken the attitude of the Irish Members. Their protest was not against the very long-delayed redemption of the old promise to erect a College of Science in Dublin, but against the introduction into the Bill of a totally irrelevant and incongruous proposal. According to the explanation of the Secretary to the Treasury, the College of Science was only an addendum to the Bill, the main purpose of which was to accommodate the Local Government Board with new lodgings. He knew the proposed site of the college perfectly well, and such an extraordinary proposition had never been laid before the House of Commons as to erect an important building such as the College of Science on the site of the stables of a row of houses and in such a position that it could not be seen from any point of the city. Apparently, the college, which ought to be the main, if not the sole, purpose of this Bill, had been sacrificed to the Local Government Board, and from beginning to end the Irish representatives had had no voice in the selection of the site or the arrangement of the plans. Because the proposal to found a College of Science was acceptable to a large section of the Irish people, the opportunity was taken to tack on to it an unpopular proposal, and then the House were told that they must either take it as a whole or not at all. That was not a proper way in which to deal with the House of Commons, and it was not fair treatment of the Irish Members. The same class of considerations as applied to the question of the locality and lodgings of the Local Government Board did not apply to the question of the locality and arrangements of the College of Science He had no desire to see the clerks of the Local Government Board obliged to work in over-crowded and insanitary rooms, but that was no reason why the Board should be moved bodily from its present premises to the centre of the most fashionable and expensive part of Dublin. A more preposterous proposal was never made. Why could not suitable accommodation have been secured in the neighbourhood of the Customs House? The whole of the trouble in connection with the present stage of the Bill arose from the indefensible action of the Government in tying these two schemes together. He appealed to the Secretary to the Treasury to reconsider this question of site, and give them a College of Science which would be open to the street, and would add to the architectural beauty, as well as the educational resources, of Dublin.

said he had been under the impression that the houses in question were to be razed. According to the scheme as he now understood it, the college would be invisible except from the back windows of the surrounding houses, and would have merely a narrow and ignominious approach. Under these circumstances an expenditure of anything like £180,000, as mentioned by the hon. Member for East Mayo, would be altogether excessive. He warned the Financial Secretary against the policy he had enunciated of associating one architect with another. That was the policy which ruined the Law Courts and the Foreign Office, and, though there would be uncommonly little to ruin in the present building, the policy of choosing one competent man, whether he was English, Scotch, or Irish, and allowing him to do the work, should be followed. A point which had not been noticed in the discussion was that of the allocation of the buildings on the site. The College of Science would occupy not much more than a quarter of the site, but, according to the plan, it was to be placed in such a manner as effectively to prevent the future extension of either the Dublin Museum or the college itself. The Museum already required extension, not only in the library but in other departments as well, and the college also would require extension in the future. He urged the Financial Secretary, if he proceeded with the present site, so to rearrange the buildings that due extensions would be possible to meet future needs. At the same time he hoped hon. Members from Ireland would not press their opposition to the Bill to such an extent that the Order would be discharged, because the building was undoubtedly extremely necessary for the industrial development of the country, and if the present proposal was withdrawn they would probably hear nothing more about it.

objected to a portion of the best residential part of Dublin being used for offices for the Local Government Board. If fresh offices were necessary, suitable accommodation might certainly have been found on the north side of the city, and would have been much less expensive. He strongly objected to the Government taking up a scheme like this, and attempting to rush it through without giving the popular representatives of the people full information upon it. He hoped the House would agree with the representatives from Ireland, who knew what the city of Dublin required in this matter. The site chosen was not a suitable one, and far more suitable sites could be had at a much less cost, which would have met the requirements of the people of Dublin far better than the site which had been chosen. He was inclined to think that the statement about erecting this College of Science in Belfast instead of in Dublin was a little joke on the part of the hon. Member for South Belfast.

It was not a joke at all.

thought the hon. Gentleman would find public opinion would be too strong for him if he suggested that this college should be erected in Belfast. They had no desire to kill the scheme, but they objected to it being rushed through the House without full information being given. This was a Bill involving the expenditure of £250,000, and the representatives of all Ireland had not been consulted upon it. Many residents in Dublin who were opposed to him politically had urged him to protest against this scheme, which dispossessed them of their grand residences in order to make room for clerks for whom proper accommodation could easily be provided on the north side. He strongly objected to the pulling down of those grand buildings, because there were plenty of suitable sites on the other side of the city for the erection of such a building. He hoped his hon. friend would press his Motion to a division.

said he could not understand why the Government should have selected the city of Dublin in which to erect a College of Science. It was an institution which would be utterly unappreciated by the people of that city. It would be only appreciated on account of the show it would make as a building, but as a teaching centre of science that idea would be utterly absent from the minds of the people of Dublin. What they wanted was a building to look at; and the complaint of the hon. Member for East Mayo was that the building was to be in a place where nobody would see it. What did it matter from a scientific point of view, if the building were only properly equipped, whether it could be seen by people passing through the locality? The inhabitants of Dublin had never gone into the College of Science. He would recommend the Government to build a skating rink, or some establishment of that sort, at a small cost, rather than put a College of Science in that part of Ireland, where it would not be properly taken advantage of. The college ought to have been established in the city of the largest population in Ireland—the city of Belfast, where science teaching would have been appreciated, for there the industrial population was largely engaged in technical and scientific industries. It was just as easy to get from all parts of Ireland to Belfast as to Dublin, and the students, if the college were placed at Belfast, would mix with a population in which technical knowledge would be general, and thus derive great advantages. Not only would they mingle with a people engaged in scientific pursuits, but have the advantage of acquiring a good sound education, to say nothing of the experience to be gained in the dockyards and other places in Belfast. It was almost heart-rending to hear hon. Gentlemen opposite use the arguments they had adduced that I evening, for they were simply disputing whether the college should be built on the north or the south side of the city of Dublin.

The Bill does not raise that question, as to which side of the city the college should be built.

I think the Government should abandon that part of the Bill dealing with the College of Science, and proceed only with that portion relating to the offices for the Local Government Board. The clerks in those offices are working under conductions that no other clerks would be allowed to work under.

They are better housed than the Irish tenant farmers.

said he desired to protest against the language used on this subject by hon. Members opposite, and he regretted that the Government were proposing to prepetuate a mistake in erecting a College of Science at Dublin, where it would not be used to the advantage of the people of Ireland.

said that if the right hon. Member for South Antrim had looked at the plan for this new building he would have been very slow to make the speech he had done. He had been examining the plan and the absurdity of the proposed construction immediately struck him, for it was proposed to place the building as far back as they possibly could, with the result that it would be impossible to add to the size of the building after it had once been constructed. Such a scheme would not be tolerated either in England, Scotland, or Wales. Such a building ought to indicate the character and nature of the work which it was intended to perform, and a more absurd proposition could not be made by any Government. If the Government proposed to put such a plan into force in any other part of the kingdom it would be scouted out of the House and they would not dare to attempt to perpetrate such a monstrosity. He was not so much interested in this particular site in Dublin, but this college was not for Dublin alone, but for the whole of Ireland. Dublin was the centre of Ireland, and not Belfast, and it was absurd to think that the people from the South of Ireland would have to go to Belfast to attend the college. He did not know that the Government would have introduced such a Bill as this had not their prime object been to provide accommodation for officials who were under worked and overpaid. It was proposed to provide new officers for the Department of Agriculture, which so far as he could understand, was manned by officials with good salaries who were doing no particular good to the country. If they wanted to house the officials the proper thing would be to weed out those whose services could be very well done without, and thereby add to the accommodation of the really effective workers, if there were any, in the Department. He hoped that the hon. Member who had charge of the Bill would see the advisability of postponing it, at least for the present. He would be very sorry if the question were put to a vote, for he would have no alternative but to vote against a scheme for the accommodation of Government clerks.

appealed to the House to come to a decision now. He submitted that the discussion had gone far enough. [Nationalist cries of "No."]

asked whether the site would be actually occupied by the projected College of Science. If it was clearly understood that the college would face Kildare Street, and occupy a good position from an architectural point of view, he thought a decision could be very quickly come to. Anyone who had read the evidence with regard to technical instruction given before the present University Commission would recognise that a properly equipped College of Science in Dublin was a matter of the very greatest importance. The Irish representatives would be extremely sorry if, on account of some mistake or misunderstanding about the site, this very necessary work should be delayed.

said they were all agreed that a College of Science ought to be built in Dublin. He believed also that Belfast had claims for consideration in the matter and he would support anything that could be done to promote scientific instruction there. He had a sincere desire to have this matter brought to a happy issue. It was said that the north side of the city was the place to select for the College of Science. He thought that of all places in Dublin that could have been selected the site proposed was the very best. It was close to the Museum and the National Library, both of which were institutions which were most necessary for furthering the interests of the College of Science. It was not quite correct to speak of the place being approached by a narrow lane. On the other hand, he did not think it was right that the front of the building should be excluded from view by retaining the old houses. He agreed with the Member for South Antrim that it would not be satisfactory to have science taught in back premises. The College of Science ought to be a handsome structure in a place where it would command attention. He should be very glad if the Financial Secretary could see his way to state that the buildings facing Upper Merrion Street would be removed in order that the college would be visible to everyone. If the college was put in a proper position, the site selected would afford ample space for the extension of the institution to meet future requirements. Whether the people approved of the Local Government Board or not, it was there as a fact, and the staff who had to do the work ought to have proper accommodation. He did not know what proportion of the money that would take. There was at present a College of Science in Dublin, and he had not heard how that building was to be utilised when the new college was built. If there was no good reason to the contrary, it might be given to the Local Government Board. That would solve the difficulty if it was practicable to carry out the suggestion. He did not think it was reasonable or sensible for hon. Members opposite to say that they ought to have the new College of Science which had long been promised, but that they would not have it if a few thousands were added to the cost of it for the purpose of housing the Local Government Board. The very fact of a very large building being put in Dublin would give much needed employment to large numbers of men in Dublin, and operate in favour, not only of the people of that city, but of every part of Ireland. Therefore he asked hon. Members opposite to withdraw their opposition to the Motion before the House. On the other hand he urged the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to give an assurance that the old buildings on the site would be removed, so that the college, when erected, should have a fine open space in front of it.

said that there were two questions involved in the discussion: first, the amount of money that was to be spent, and, second, the site of the College of Science. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury said that a certain sum was to be spent in the purchase of houses at Mention Street to turn them into offices for the Local Government Board, but he would not tell the House what the amount would be. The owners of these houses were professional men, and they would go before the arbitrators under the Lands Clauses Act and get the highest possible price for them, including compensation for compulsory purchase. If it was necessary to get new offices for the Local Government Board why did not the Government go to Lower Gardiner Street, where they could purchase houses for offices at a fourth of the price they would have to pay in Merrion Street? The rentals of the houses in Merrion Street were £95, £120, £92 10s., £76, £65, £65, £55, £50, £60, while the rentals of the houses in Lower Gardiner Street near the Customs House which might be acquired, and which would afford as much accommodation as those in Merrion Street, were £18, £20, £43, £27, £27 and £38. As to the question of site, he must say that personally he liked it. The noble Lord opposite who had spoken in such a friendly way had made out a strong case for it, as it would provide for the future extension, not only of the college but of the museum buildings. If the present project was carried out, there would not be room for the extension of the buildings in the future, which would be a grievous mistake. There were many handsome buildings in Dublin already, but he would like to see another with a fine facade and a clear, open space in front.

said that with almost all that had been said on the opposite side of the House he entirely agreed. If a new Science College was to be built in Dublin it would be a pity that it should not be put in a position to be seen, and in which it might be an ornament to the city. What he objected to was that the College of Science was to be in Dublin at all; and he wished to enter his protest against expending £225,000 on a College of Science in a situation where it would be of little or no benefit. Of course, he regretted as much as hon. Gentlemen opposite that there were no shipyards or great manufactories in Dublin, or Cork, or Waterford, and other parts of Ireland, but they knew that there were none, and the college should be erected in Belfast, where there was a demand for it. It would be a mistake to place it in Dublin simply because that city was the capital of Ireland.

thought that the House was greatly indebted to the hon. Gentleman who had raised the discussion on this Bill, and especially to the hon. Member for the College Green Division. The title of the Bill seemed to him to be a misnomer, for it appeared to be designed to provide offices for the Local Government Board rather than buildings for the college of science. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Antrim was most extraordinary, for he laid down the doctrine that it was not in the interests of the capital of Ireland that public money should be wasted on the erection of what he called architectural mostrosities. This was essentially an Irish debate, and it was strange that those who were responsible for the Government of Ireland were conspicuous by their absence. The point raised by the noble Lord opposite as to the necessity for making provision for the future extension of the college buildings was important. They all hoped that the classes in the college would be largely availed of, and he was certain that soon additional space would be required for expansion. This Bill represented to a great extent the mode in which they were governed in Ireland. It took back with one hand what was given with the other. That was not the opportunity for discussing the merits or demerits of the Local Government Board, but he did not think that the Irish Members would be justified in encouraging a body which was so anti-Irish in all its sentiments and transactions. There was another feature in connection with the proposed buildings which seemed extraordinary. There was not a town in England where, if a post office was to be erected, the local authority would not be consulted directly or indirectly; and certainly the local representative would be consulted. But in connection with the structure of this new College of Science, which they all hoped would do something to improve the appearance of Dublin, neither the municipality nor any other local authority had been consulted. Not a single one of the representatives of Dublin or any other part of Ireland had been consulted directly or indirectly in the matter. That was the usual policy of giving with one hand and taking away with the other, and of embodying objecttionable provisions in an otherwise acceptable measure. It would be better to postpone the matter for some years than to dump down a building which would

said he thought it was most unsuitable that a Bill of this kind, affecting so deeply Dublin and Ireland, should be referred to a hybrid Committee, of which the House was only to have the selection of three members. He did not know either why the Committee of Selection should appoint two. All that such a Committee would do would be to inquire into the compensation to be given for the sites, and such an idea was entirely foreign to the understanding upon which the Second Reading of the Bill had been given. The Bill had been read a second time on the understanding that the Committee should decide on the whole principle of the scheme. The Committee now formally proposed by the Secretary to the Treasury would be the ordinary Select Committee such as was adopted in the case of railway, electric lighting, and other matters of that kind, which had no power to deal with general principles. This question ought not to be settled simply from the point of view of the compensation to be given for these sites, but from the point of view of the general scheme. It was also, he thought, very unfair that Irish Members in this House should have no representation upon a matter in which they were so greatly interested. He also complained of the form in which the Motion was moved. He thought the House ought to be told what was the view of the Government as to who the three members of the Committee were to be, and that the names ought to be given, and that a matter so much affecting Ireland ought not to be settled behind the backs of the Irish Members. He therefore moved that the Committee should be composed of fifteen Members, so that it might be possible for it to consider the whole question. He reminded the hon. Gentleman that he had only at present obtained a Vote for the sites, and that he had not obtained his Money Vote, and that unless some concessions were made which would enable the Irish Members to close their eyes to the more objectionable parts of this scheme they would be compelled to persist in their opposition, which would not facilitate matters so far as the hon. Gentleman was concerned.

said he had put the Motion in this form because he thought he was thereby following the universal practice of the House; but he was quite willing to consent to the adjournment of the debate, with a view to inquiring whether some other form of Committee was possible which would give the Irish Members further representation. At the same time the hon. and learned Member must understand that he could not alter the scheme in any way.

moved that the debate be now adjourned, and intimated that when the matter again came up for discussion he should move that the majority of the Committee should he composed of Irish Members.

drew attention to the absence from the Bill of any clauses affording protection to the County Councils in the matter of breaking up the streets. He said he had no doubt the Secretary to the Treasury would have had this matter under consideration, and he might be able to say whether he could see his way to put some clause into the Bill which would preserve the rights of the County Councils, which had always been preserved in previous Bills, with regard to the breaking up of streets. No doubt the Post Office and the County Councils would work harmoniously together, but at the same time the rights of the County Councils ought to be preserved. He contended that substantial reasons should be given if the ordinary practice was not to be adopted. Then with regard to the works at Dulwich and Oxford Street, the House was entitled to have some information as to the estimated cost of the buildings and so on. One of his reasons for bringing these matters before the House was that Departments were apt to think they could get their Bills through very easily, and, in consequence, to be less particular as to the nature of the transactions. It was, therefore, well to ask for information, to let the officials know that such matters would not be allowed to pass sub silentio.

said his experience had not been such as to make him think it an easy matter to get Bills through the House, or to encourage Departments unnecessarily to put Bills into his hands with a view to their passage into law. In his view, more harm was likely to be done by Bills being kept back because of the difficulty of getting them through the House, than by measures passing too easily. As to the points raised by the hon. Member for Mid Lanarkshire, he was quite willing to insert the clauses to which he had referred. The reason they were not inserted in the first instance was that the local authorities concerned had had the Bill communicated to them, and were perfectly satisfied with it as it stood. The only objection to the insertion of the clauses was that it was never desirable to cumber a Bill with unnecessary provisions. That, however, was no reason why they should not be inserted in this case if the hon. Member desired them to be, and, although not pledging himself to the exact wording, he would see that substantially they were inserted in Committee, unless in the meantime he was released from the undertaking. As to the property at Dulwich, that was a very small affair. It was a vacant site, belonging to the trustees of Alleyn's charity. The buildings would cost probably about £2,000, and the site was not likely to be costly. The site off Oxford Street was a much more expensive matter. The buildings at present occupied by the Post Office on lease were to be purchased, with other shops and houses, for the purpose of necessary extensions. The existing accommodation was small even for the present business, but, in addition to that, a telephone exchange was to be established at the office. It was impossible to give any reliable estimate as to the cost of the buildings to be erected, as the plans were not yet worked out in sufficient detail. The amount to be spent on alterations in the old buildings was £3,000 or £4,000, from which it might be gathered that the cost of the new buildings would come to a much larger sum.

pointed out that the measure was drawn in an unusual form. The Bill gave extensive powers to appropriate a part of the New Forest for certain purposes. If those powers were given in the form proposed the matter would never come before Parliament again. It was an extraordinary state of things, in a Bill dealing with public land, to empower a Department to give as much or as little as it pleased according to its own judgment. Parliament ought to have control in one of two ways. Either a scheme should be laid before the House, or the matter should be proceeded with by Provisional Order. The latter would be the usual statutory form, and would give an opportunity for the question to be discussed in the House if necessary.

said the Bill was urgently needed to meet the special requirements of a particular locality. They could not so easily get a proper system of sewage unless they could buy for that purpose a small portion of the forest land. He agreed that they ought to regard with extreme jealousy any proposal to sell, or any proposal to allow to pass out of public control, any portion of land like the New Forest, and this Bill had been strictly limited to purposes of urgent public necessity. At Lyndhurst the sewage system was in a very bad condition, and an outbreak last year I brought this matter under the attention of the Local Government Board, and this district was threatened with a worse state of things in the future if something was not done. It was said that, owing to the lie of the land, they could not have a proper system of sewage without using part of the forest land, and if that was proved to be true, he thought they were bound to allow some part of the forest to be taken. The hon. Gentleman had spoken of the Commons Preservation Society, and one or two other Members had spoken on behalf of that body. He had communicated with this society, and he thought he was stating no more than the fact when he said that the Commons Preservation Society, after investigating the matter, were perfectly willing that the Bill should go through in its present form provided it was not widened or extended. He should object himself to any moving of Amendments in the direction of extending the Bill. He thought this measure should be limited strictly to what was necessary to secure the health of the people living in the district. Therefore the only point was as to whether, in addition to the securities contained in the Bill, there should also be a Provisional Order. He hoped that suggestion would not be pressed. The Bill already provided that an inquiry was to be held by an inspector of the Local Government Board, and before him anybody might appear to give evidence on the one side or the other; the inspector had to be satisfied that the land was required, that it was suitable both in amount and situation, that the local authority could not acquire land for the purpose outside the forest, and that the land was to be devoted strictly to necessary purposes. Having provided for local inquiries whore all the local interests could be heard, he thought they had amply protected the forest against being filched away. As this course would involve some considerable expense, he deprecated putting upon them the further expense involved in obtaining a Provisional Order, and he did not think it was necessary to do this in order to protect the public interest. It had been his desire throughout to limit this Bill to what was strictly necessary for the health of the localities concerned, and to give up no part of the forest except upon proved necessity, and even then only to give up the smallest portion which would satisfy those needs. The hon. Member opposite had observed that there was no compulsion on the Commissioners to sell, but at the present time they were unable to sell; this Bill was intended to give them the power to sell, but it did not bind them to sell in any ease at all.

said that in the main no one could complain of the speech made by the Secretary to the Treasury or as to the way the Bill was drawn. There was one phrase in the Bill which provided that land was only to be taken when immediately required "in the interests of the public health of the locality." He agreed that Lyndhurst was in an unfortunate position right in the heart of the New Forest, and was entitled to reasonable consideration in regard to everything appertaining to public health. He could, however, give the hon. Gentleman cases in which local authorities had interpreted "the interests of public health" very widely indeed, and he would suggest that the Bill should make it clear that the narrowest interpretation was to be given to this phrase. If Lyndhurst wanted a new system of sewage, that was so eminently reasonable that the House of Commons ought not to object to it, but if it was going to link up its sewage system with four or five other districts to establish a combined sewage farm out of forest land because private land was dearer, that would be a totally different matter. He hoped "public health" would not be construed as meaning the provision of such things as watersheds and gasworks. He had known "public health" to be so construed as to include watersheds, joint sewage farms, gasworks, and recreation grounds.

It is not the local authority which will be the final judge in such a matter, but the Local Government Board has to be satisfied upon this point.

said he was convinced from the speech of the Secretary to the Treasury that he had within his mind some of the fears he had just mentioned. Some local authorities had interpreted public health to mean such things as he had alluded to. He would suggest that Lyndhurst should have every opportunity for getting out of its sanitary and other difficulties, and that no obstacles should be placed in the way of accomplishing this. He agreed that Lyndhurst should be charged a reasonable sum for the land taken from the forest, but Lyndhurst should not be allowed to link up with other districts for the purposes of establishing a joint sewage farm by appropriating land from the forest simply because it was public land and could be secured very cheaply.

said this Bill was rather of a technical character. If it did what the memorandum said it was intended to do, then he should say that it was a very proper Bill to pass. They had got the electric lighting Orders as they existed before the Act of 1899. If this Bill was to alter the old boundaries so as to make them co-equal with the new boundaries, that would be a proper proposal, and that object was given as the reason and purpose of this Bill. But this measure did nothing of the kind, and it would leave the boundaries in a worse condition after this Bill was passed than they were at the present time.

No, no.

said the President of the Board of Trade cried out "No, no," but this Bill would not make the boundaries co-extensive, and co-equal with the existing boundaries. If the district was situated outside a borough authorised to supply electricity within the borough, a particular course was to be taken, but if the Borough Council was not authorised to supply electricity in the borough, then the outside district had to apply for a supply of electricity to a company authorised to supply it within the borough. Then there was a third contingency that might arise in the case of London, whore an area of supply adjoined a transferred area. The hon. Member referred to the difficulties which were likely to result from the working of the measure on account of the provisions laid down with respect to the fixing of the areas of supply, and of settlement of questions with relation to the title of Borough Councils and private companies to supply outside areas with electricity. He pointed out the differences between the present Bill and the, Electric Lighting (London) Bill, 1901 (Bill No. 124). He ventured to say that the Bill of last year dealt in a more effective manner with the great question of areas than the Bill now before the House, because it recognised the fact that if they were going to make the boundaries co-extensive and co-equal with the new areas, they must buy out those who supplied the outside areas. There was a proper clause in last year's Bill which provided that where an area was transferred under the powers conferred, the council or company to whom it was transferred should take over the concern from the council or company from whom it was transferred and pay a price fixed by arbitration. He ventured to say that that was the only suitable way of making the boundaries co-extensive and co-equal with the new boundaries. He generally found that a second Bill was better than the first, but he did not think that was so in this case. There was a proviso in the present Bill which was not in that of last year, namely, that the provisions of the Act should not apply in the case of areas where the mains had been laid down before 1st January, 1902. He did not know the reason why that date had been fixed. He pointed out that it was proposed to give great powers to the Board of Trade under Section (b) of Clause 4 which was not in the Bill of last year. It provided—

"If any question arises under this Act with reference to any transfer under this Act for the supply of electricity in any area transferred under this Act, such question shall he referred to, and determined by, the Board of Trade."

said it was quite true, as the hon. Member had said, that this Bill was in a manner consequential on the London Government Bill of 1899. The hon. Member complained that the Bill did not go far enough. If the memorandum implied that every single adjustment that was required to make the boundaries of electrical areas conterminous with the boundaries of municipalities was carried out in the Bill, he admitted that the memorandum conveyed an inacurate impression. It was not his intention that the Bill should go as far as that. The real object of the Bill was to make adjustments where they were practically of a non-contentious character. When this matter was examined two years ago, there were 216 alterations of area which had been made by the Commissioners under the Act of 1899 which would possibly come under the operation of this Bill. Of that number about 179 related to small areas where no electrical works had been executed, and inquiry satisfied him that in almost all of these cases no controversy would arise. There were other cases in which undoubtedly controversy would arise, and he had altered the Bill of this year, as compared with the Bill of last year, in such a way as not to render compulsory in certain cases the alterations which would have been compulsory under the Bill of last year. He did that deliberately, in order to avoid matters which might be so controversial as to imperil the passage of the Bill. All the non-controversial cases were still included, and he imagined that these would be 170 out of, perhaps, 216, unless in the interval works had been begun in any of these places. It was clearly advantageous that this Bill should pass this year, because in each succeeding year there was an additional possibility that electrical works would be laid down in areas at present non-controversial, which might then become contentious. With regard to changes of a controversial character, the Bill left the parties concerned to make such arrangements as they thought proper, and gave the Board of Trade power to give those agreements beween the parties the force of law. The Bill did not give the Board of Trade extravagant powers such as the hon. Gentleman imagined. The Board of Trade would have no power in controversial cases to force arrangements on the parties. The Board merely had power to confirm any arrangements to which the parties might come. In regard to non-controversial areas, at all events, the Bill would have a useful and valuable effect, and he hoped it would be allowed to pass.

said there was a danger of want of elasticity in the Bill. There were cases in which it was desirable that an authority supplying electricity in one area should be allowed to supply electricity in part of an adjoining area. He trusted it would be considered in Committee as to whether that was not desirable; and whether authorities should not have power to enter into agreements for that purpose. He knew of at least two instances where it would be most, inconvenient for electric light to be supplied to a district from the station in its own area, and it could be most conveniently supplied by the station in an adjoining area.

complained that the Post Office had not taken advantage of the new railway to Mallaig to accelerate the mail service to the western islands. He reminded the hon. Gentleman that in 1896 the Government granted£260,000 for a railway which was to open up the western islands and develop the fisheries, and other purposes; and the people of the islands had been very disappointed that the Post Office had failed to take advantage of the new route, for the purpose of accelerating the transit of the mails. He asked the hon. Gentleman to bring pressure to bear upon the North British Railway Company, which, he thought, had treated the Post Office and the public in a most unsatisfactory manner.

said he had some time ago presented an extensively-signed petition from the people of Mullinavat asking for increased postal and telegraphic facilities. With regard to telegraphic facilities, something had been done; but with regard to postal facilities, the Post Office had decided that they could not afford to give what was asked for. Mullinavat was a large and important district, and deserved better treatment than it received. Two days were required to convey letters to and from the county town, which was only ten miles away. In spite of the reply he had received to his petition, he felt compelled, under all the circumstances, to bring this matter before the House, in the hope that the hon. Gentleman would endeavour to remedy what undoubtedly was an admitted grievance.

drew attention to the fact that, although within forty miles of London, the large agricultural community in his constituency complained that they could not obtain copies of the daily Press and keep themselves in touch with the current prices in London, owing to the fact that the mails left London just before the London papers were published, and the Post Office authorities did not consider the district of sufficient importance to justify a second delivery. This was a real grievance, because it was necessary for the farmers in this district to keep in touch with the London prices, as well as those of the immediate district. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would see his way to put an end to this state of things and give them better postal facilties.

said he wished for a few moments to invite the attention of the Secretary to the Treasury to the cause of postmen on fixed wages. As the hon. Gentleman was no doubt aware, there were some thousands of these men in the employment of the Post Office receiving a weekly salary in Ireland of 15s. and in the rest of the United Kingdom of 16s. Now, surely that was a wage which the Post Office ought not to offer to any man who held the position of a postman. Even for unskilled labour it was too low a rate of remuneration, and it must be evident that in the case of a man with a family such a wretched pittance must often involve pangs of hunger. That was not the only grievance which rural postmen laboured under. Should one of them unfortunately become ill, and should he be attached to a Post Office where no Government medical officer was employed, he had to find out of his wretchedly low wage not only the cost of medical attendance, but he was called upon to send in weekly a medical certificate as to the state of his health. How on earth could he afford to pay for such a certificate out of his 15s. or 16s. a week? He did hope that the Secretary to the Treasury would investigate these matters, and see if he could not possibly hold out some prospect of an increase of wages. Let him remember and try to realise what was the lot of the rural postman. It was a hard life. He had to trudge the roads in all seasons, he was exposed to all kinds of weather, however inclement, and often he was occupied for from twelve to fourteen hours daily. Was it not a monstrous thing that the Post Office should expect men to do such work for such a miserable wage, and was the hon. Gentleman aware that this system of making appointments at a fixed wage had been recently re-introduced on an extended scale, notwithstanding the fact that the Tweedmouth Committee had condemned it? There was one other point to which he wished to call the attention of the Secretary to the Treasury, and, through him, of the Postmaster General. Very recently a new regulation had been issued on the subject of special leave. Now, postmen and other classes of officials employed by the Department had secured the right to federate and organise, and their right to do so had been recognised by the authorities. The postmen had a federation, with a membership of 25,000, and, of course, there was a great deal of work to do in connection with that organisation. Its affairs were administered by an executive of sixteen men, drawn from all parts of the United Kingdom. In the early days of its existence, and, indeed, until very recently, men were allowed special leave to the extent of from twenty-five to thirty days per year in order to enable them to do work of their Federation. The meetings of their executive were held at different places, and often entailed very long journeys, while a large amount of business had to be transacted. Under the new regulations which had been promulgated, the amount of special leave allowed to any one man had now been limited to ten days, and he could assure the hon. Gentleman that that amount of time was absolutely inadequate for the proper working of the organisation. A suggestion had been made that at least twenty days leave should be granted, and he did not think there was anything unreasonable in that. It should be remembered that the Post Office were not put to any expense in the matter. If a man obtained special leave in order to attend the Federation business, he had to provide a substitute, to be approved by his superior officials, to do his duty during his absence, and he himself had to pay that substitute. The Department was not put to the expense of a single penny, and under the circumstances he could not understand why there had been a curtailment of the privilege to ten days. Was there any reason whatever why the limit should not be extended to twenty days? He failed to see any. He would again urge the Secretary to the Treasury to give his earnest attention to the questions he had brought under his notice, and especially to the subject of fixed wage appointments. Many of the men who were appointed under this system were old soldiers, and had families to support, and he did think it was monstrous that they should receive such a wretchedly low wage. The Department ought literally to be ashamed of itself, and it certainly need not accentuate the grievance by insisting that when a man was unfortunately ill he should be put to the expense of sending in a medical certificate signed by a private practitioner as to the state of his health. He was sure the hon. Gentleman must sympathise with the hard lot of these men, and he trusted that he would see his way to hold out to them some prospect of amelioration, so that they might be encouraged to become more attentive and more zealous in the discharge of their duties. They often had charge of letters of great value. As a body they were faithful and honest men, and they ought not to be subjected to the temptation which undoubtedly a man on 16s. a week had to contend against.

wanted to know the reason why not a stone of the new Post Office building at Mullinavat bad been laid, although its erection had been promised two years ago.

Most of the points raised by the hon. Members are matters for personal communication rather than for debate in this House. I desire to give the fullest information possible, and to satisfy hon. Members that the Post Office is doing its best. I do not think, however, that it is expected of me that I should give, without previous notice, details of the postal arrangements in the most remote parishes in the country. I do not know what the standard of the hon. Member for West Mayo may be, but I imagine, judging by population and the amount of correspondence, that Mullinavat is not the most important town in Ireland. If the hon. Member will put his complaint in writing, I will inquire into it. I will communicate with the hon. Member for the Saffron Walden Division on the point he raised. A question was put to me by the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty with which I am able to deal, because I have had so many complaints from him as to the deficiencies in the mail facilities to the Western Highlands and Islands, I have never pretended that the present mail arrangements are in all respects satisfactory, but unfortunately the Postmaster General has not the powers which the hon. Gentleman seems to conceive he has. The North British Railway Company's light railway to Mallaig was not constructed on postal grounds, and it is impossible for me, at the present time, to impose conditions on the Railway Company after the money voted by Parliament for that railway has been paid over. The whole question of postal communication with the Western Highlands and Islands is extremely difficult, and I do not think we should gain anything if we forced the carriage of the mails on to a new line instead of the present one. The Postmaster General will, however, lose no opportunity that may come in his way to improve the service, if that can be done without unduly burdening the Post Office. The hon. Member for West Wicklow has complained of the remuneration given to rural postmen both in Ireland and in this country. He spoke of them having to work very long hours at a wage of 15s. in Ireland, and 16s. in the rest of the United Kingdom. I think he is under some misapprehension as to the number of hours these men work. At any rate, a good deal of the time they are off duty. It sometimes happens that a man has a walk to reach the limit of which only takes up a short time, and yet he has to remain at the end of it the greater part of the day, returning only in the evening with the letters which have been posted during the day. Many of these men have occupations of their own, and utilise their spare time in pursuit of them, and it cannot therefore be said that they spend the day in the service of the Post Office. In any case, we have, in fixing the wages, to look at the nature of the employment, and to have regard to the rate of remuneration for nearly similar employment outside the Post Office. The hon. Gentleman speaks of a wage of 15s. or 16s. a week as not being a living wage. I at once grant that we ought to treat rural postmen, as all other servants of the State, fairly, having regard to the nature of their employment. But any desire I might have to be generous at the expense of the general taxpayer of the country is necessarily checked by my feeling of responsibility toward the taxpayer. I have no right to unnecessarily burden him in order to confer exceptional favours upon Government servants.

You tax him in order to give doles to the landlords.

I do not think we need enter into that subject now. I come next to the question raised by the hon. Member with regard to the requirement of weekly medical certificates when a postal servant is sick. I would like to point out that sick leave on a very generous scale is given in the Post Office, and in no service in the world is it possible to accept the mere ipse dixit of an official that he is ill and unable to discharge his duty. We must guard the public service against malingering, and the only way in which we can do that is by insisting on having a medical certificate. It is not possible for the Post Office to have medical officers of its own in all parts of the country. Where we have one, our employees get free medical attendance. But in other cases they have to call in their own medical officer.

Are not all the higher officials in the Post Office supplied with free medical service?

At certain offices every servant is entitled to free medical attendance; but at other offices, where we have no Departmental medical officer, they have to find their own medical attendants. There only remains the question of special leave for me to deal with. The hon. Member asked if I could see my way to recommending that officials of the Post Office who desire to attend meetings of the Executives of the various postal trade unions should be given twenty days special leave for that purpose, in the course of a year, instead of the ten days now allowed. No, Sir, I do not think I can hold out any hope that the Postmaster General will modify the regulation which he has recently issued. Let the House bear in mind that these servants of the Post Office have a fortnight's leave on full pay in the course of twelve months. And, in addition to that fortnight, which they may employ in any manner they like, they are allowed to take not more than ten days special leave, for which they get no pay, and during which they have to provide a substitute. Although the Post Office may not lose pecuniarily by their absence from duty, it does lose in efficiency if some of its servants are constantly away from their regular employment, doing work outside the Post Office. I think it is not too much to ask, when we give fourteen days leave on full pay and ten days special leave without pay, that the councils of these various unions should, on their part, so arrange their meetings as to enable the members to attend them without further interference with the discharge of their duty to the Post Office. It is a not ungenerous arrangement which we have made, and I can assure the House that the Postmaster General feels bound, in the interests of the efficiency of the service, to maintain in force this special leave regulation.

said the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken had referred to many postal grievances to which attention had often been drawn in that House, but he could not find in any of his remarks any fresh argument in support of the present arrangements, which, as far as the postal service was concerned, were felt in many respects to be the source of much injustice. The first argument he put forward was that he could not be expected to be generous as regards the pay of postal servants at the expense of the general taxpayer. The answer to that was clear. The State ought to be a model employer. They did not ask for excessive wages, but they did demand that Post Office servants should receive remuneration on a par with that paid for similar work by outside bodies or persons. They felt very strongly on this question. They were of opinion that an increase of pay would not necessarily involve any addition to the burden of the taxpayers. It could be covered by the better administration of the Department. Those who took an interest in the great army of postal employees were well aware there were numerous cases in which, by a change of regulations and the introduction of small reforms, most irritating and most unreasonable conditions imposed upon the men might be got rid of. They thought that the best means—the most expeditious and the most equitable manner of ascertaining the true facts—would be the appointment of a Committee to investigate the whole of the circumstances. They were always told, when they asked for such a Committee, that they had already had one, and that the findings of the Tweedmouth Committee had established finality. But he would remind his hon. friend that there could be no real defence of that statement, because a very few months after that Committee had reported, the Postmaster General, the representatives of the men, and a number of the Members of this House, were closeted together in a Committee room in order to revise the findings of the Committee. Surely circumstances had arisen during the four or five years which had since elapsed to justify reconsideration of the whole position. There was very substantial proof that the conditions under which a great number of men in the postal service now lived had materially altered in that time. Rents had risen considerably, as was shown by figures relating to parts of the metropolis which were largely populated by postal employees which he had recently quoted to the House. Yet the Department had taken no account of that fact, and whenever an appeal was made to it they received nothing but vague assurances that all was well. Those who desired to secure the efficiency of the public service, and that the State should employ willing and satisfied servants, would cont nue to press for the appointment of a Select Committee, and he believed that in the long run they would get the satisfaction to which they were entitled. There were a great number of other matters connected with postal administration with which he would like to deal, and he would not have ventured to trespass on the time of the House in regard to them had it been possible to get anything like direct information on the subject from the hon. Gentleman who represented the Postmaster General in that House. He felt bound to take that opportunity of again drawing attention to the very great public inconvenience which occurred, and the large inroads made upon the time of the House, by the absence from it of the Postmaster General, who was the Minister in charge of the third largest spending Department of the State. So long as his hon. friend was in the unpleasant position of having to represent the Postmaster General, so long would there be a feeling that they could not criticise sufficiently the administration of the Department or get satisfactory replies to the cases they advanced. He spoke of the position of the hon. Gentleman as being unpleasant, for he could imagine nothing could be more unpleasant than to have to deal with answers to questions in respect of matters with which he had no discretion. If he were to exercise any discretion, or to give a distinct pledge or assurance, he would at once be trenching upon the Ministerial responsibility of the Postmaster General. There had been many protests made in that House as to the absence from it of the Minister responsible for the administration of the Post Office, and he would remind hon. Members that when they had the Postmaster General in the House of Commons, as in the case of Mr. Raikes, postal questions were promptly and efficiently dealt with, not only to the satisfaction of Members interested in the subject, but, above all, to the satisfaction of Post Office servants themselves. The arrangement was conducive in the fullest sense to the efficiency of the service, and advantageous to the trade of the country and the empire. He had on one or two occasions brought under the notice of the hon. Gentleman the question of the regulations imposed upon those postal employees who belonged to the Volunteer force. He had never as yet been able to get a satisfactory answer, and he was tempted to ask if the time was not coming when it would be necessary for the Postmaster General to lay down a rule that postal servants should not be Volunteers. Under the new regulations a postal servant had to find a substitute when he desired to do his duty as a Volunteer, and to attend the annual trainings of his regiment. Many of these men were in receipt of a wage of 18s. a week, but very often it cost as much as 30s. to provide a substitute, because in that case they had to pay on the basis of time and a quarter for the performance of such duties by a substitute. The result was that, while giving their time and energy to the service of their country as Volunteers, they had to pay money out of their own pockets, and it must be well known that men getting but 18s. a week had scarcely any chance of saving, and were not likely to have any funds to draw upon to provide substitutes whilst they were undergoing their military training. The Postmaster General ought to set an example to all other employers, and to give facilities to the men in his Department to serve in the ranks of the auxiliary forces. He had a still stronger ground of complaint. A certain number of postal servants had served in the Army and passed into the reserve, and had been called upon to rejoin the colours during the present war. Notices were issued by the Postmaster General, and posted in numerous offices throughout the kingdom, asking other men not Army Reservists to volunteer for active service, and describing the terms of remuneration as well as the condition under which at the close of the war they would be allowed to return to their situations in the Post Office. A number of men, on the faith of those promises, proceeded to the seat of war. And what did they find? Some of them were only paid at the rate of 1s. a day, whereas and again others ordinary line pay plus engineers' pay others received 5s. daily; the consequence was that many of them felt that they were unfairly treated, and rightly looked to the Postmaster General to exercise his influence with the Secretary for War to secure for them fair all - round treatment. The Postmaster General simply shrugged his shoulders, and said it had nothing to do with him, as it was a matter which solely concerned the War Office. But he would tell him that private employers had successfully intervened in such cases, and he held in his hand——

Order, order! The question of the Army pay given to postmen at the war does not arise on this Vote.

said he, of course, accepted the ruling of the Speaker and would pass on to another branch of the postal difficulty. He had already alluded to the fact that they were unable in that House to get satisfactory replies to inquiries addressed to the Postmaster General. The practice was, when they put a general question, to ask for a detailed statement, and when they gave detailed a statement they simply received a general reply. At that he thought they had just cause to complain. Whenever he put a question he had always taken great pains to substantiate his facts, and it had been his unfortunate experience that he had never been able to get any acknowledgment from the Postmaster General that a grievance existed without first forwarding a series of long, argumentative letters, but he had succeeded in obtaining an acknowledgement from the Postmaster General that a reply given to him in the House was in correct. It being half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned.

said this was a Motion to re-appoint a Select Committee to inquire into the subsidies to steamship companies and sailing vessels under foreign Governments, and the effect thereby produced on British trade. The Committee was first appointed on 23rd April last; it held eighteen sittings and examined twenty-two witnesses, and it had published the evidence it had taken. It was said recently that they were nearly at the end of their inquiry, and only proposed to examine two or three witnesses. He wished to draw the attention of the House to the terms of reference. The Committee was to report on the effect on British trade of subsidies to steamship companies and sailing vessels under foreign Governments. But it had been taking evidence as to the effect of these subsidies on British shipping, and he ventured to assert that had the House known the Committee would do that, it would never have appointed it. British trade was a thing quite distinct from British shipping. The country was, of course, peculiarly interested in the question of the prosperity of its trade; its wealth largely depended on its exports. But this Committee, instead of inquiring as to the effect of these subsidies on that trade, had held an inquiry, in the interests of British shipowners, as to whether British ships should not be subsidised in order to enable them to compete with foreign vessels. That was the tenour of the whole of the questions put by the Chairman and other members of the Committee. He would like to illustrate his point. The British shipowner naturally wished to get as high freights as he could, and to have his vessels well filled. He was not so much interested in the volume of trade as in the rate of freight, whereas, on the other hand, the British trader was more interested in the volume of the trade of the country than in the question of high freights: the interests were, in fact, antagonistic. The evidence showed that subsidies to foreign vessels did not tend to keep down freights, yet the whole tendency of this inquiry had been in the interest of the British shipowner, and not in that of the trader. Hence he was opposing the re-appointment of this Committee by way of protest against the conduct of its members. Of the witnesses examined, six were Government officials, seven were British consuls, and seven were shipowners: only two were connected with British trade; one was connected with the trade of Zanzibar, and his evidence echoed the views of the shipowners as regarded Zanzibar; and the only witness representing British trade came from Manchester, and gave evidence as to freights for cotton goods which showed the difference between the interests of the shipowner and the trader. He pointed out that cotton goods were sent from America to Shanghai at 27s. 6d. per ton, whereas it cost 50s. a ton to send them from this country. It was only true that British trade was best promoted in British ships where freights were equal. The Committee had gone outside their reference. They had entered into an inquiry into the subsidies of British ships as armed cruisers. This had nothing to do with the question the Committee had to consider. The Committee's object was to make out and bolster up a case for an extension of the system of subsidies. The Committee had also taken up the subject of mail contracts with the same object.

I wish to ask whether the hon. Member is in order in saying the Committee is bolstering up a case for shipping subsidies when they have made no Report.

They have not made a final Report, but they have made a Report—they have reported the evidence.

repeated his charge, and, in support of it, declared that a combination of British shipowners had succeeded in almost doubling the rates from Hamburg and other continental ports. [AN HON. MEMBER: That is not so.] Well, they had it in the evidence of Mr. Hill that the Norwegian Government fixed the rates, and a Norwegian Company had to carry goods at those frieghts. At first the Wilson Company tried to compete and keep up their rates, but eventually they had to come down to the level of the Norwegian Company, although they said it did not pay them.

Order, order! The hon. Member is going too far in discussing particular cases. I understand he is objecting to the re-appointment of the Committee on the ground that it has, in taking evidence, gone beyond the scope of its reference. He is entitled to do that, but he is not entitled to deal with the facts proved in the evidence with a view to testing their accuracy.

said he had been led into doing that by the interruptions to which he had been subjected. It was endeavoured to show at the inquiry that a combination of British shipowners had endeavoured to raise rates, and it was that which was causing Germany, Russia, and the United States to build ships of their own. [An HON. MEMBER: Nonsense.]