Has the Leader of the House any further statement to make with regard to business?

A detailed statement of the business after Easter beyond the first few days will not be expected, but at the rising of the House I will give the right hon. Gentleman all the information it is in my power to give.

In view of the great interest felt, cannot the right hon. Gentleman name approximately a day for introducing the Budget?

The Budget will be introduced in the week after the House reassembles. I cannot give the exact date.

In introducing this Bill to make regulations with respect to the immigration of aliens, I should like first to say that we have no intention whatever of unnecessarily interfering with the admission into this country of foreigners, or of throwing any unnecessary difficulty in the way of their general entry into this country. We readily recognise that a large portion of the alien residents in this country are among the most loyal, industrious, and law-abiding citizens of the kingdom. But there is a certain class of undesirable aliens who are not so welcome, and whose repatriation is very desirable. The number of aliens in this country, as shown by the census returns, has enormously increased in the last twenty years. In 1881 there were more than 135,000; in 1891, upwards of 219,000; and in 1901, nearly 287,000, or an increase in that period of something less than 152,000. I will remind the House that these figures do not really represent the number of the foreign element in this country, because all those who have been born to these aliens in this country are, of course, not included in these figures. Unfortunately, these aliens have a tendency to occupy very few centres in this country, and therefore their presence creates great difficulty in certain districts. Between a, fourth and a fifth of the whole of the foreign population in this country are residing in four or five centres. The last return shows that, excluding the large families which many of them have, something like 54,000 are residents in the borough of Stepney. There are other boroughs in London where large numbers have also taken up their habitation; and by their residence in these districts they have not only displaced a large amount of labour, but have also occupied a very large number of dwellings from which they have driven the bonâ fide inhabitants. There is also a large settlement of aliens in Scotland, to which my attention has been called quite recently by hon. Members opposite who are connected with trades unions and the working classes. Not only have these aliens living in these districts caused a great deal of overcrowding, with all its evils, and a displacement of British labour, but I am sorry to say, from the information which has reached me at the Home Office, that the feeling which exists between these settlements of foreigners in London and the native population is becoming very strained, and is really a very serious menace to the maintenance of law and order in these districts. This evil, I am sorry to say, is not likely to diminish; and, indeed, it is increasing. The immigration has increased very largely in recent years. The figures show that in 1902 200,011 immigrants landed in this country, and that in the following year there was an increase on that figure of over 7,000. A very large proportion of these come to this country en route to America; but it is fair to say that not less than 81,000 came to this country to stay in 1902, and 82,000 in 1902. Another point which I would ask the House very seriously to consider is that the class of aliens which we get here is not the class of aliens which at all makes the best citizens. It is the class excluded by the United States, and therefore it is fair to say that we only get the refuse, if I may use that expression, of those aliens who would otherwise be going to the United States. Another point which deserves very serious consideration is the increase of crime committed in this country by these aliens. The number of aliens charged and convicted has very seriously increased in the last three or four years. In the last five years the number increased by no less than 55 per cent.; and we have had representations not only from the London police magistrates, and the chairmen of quarter sessions, but from the Recorder, and even from the Judges, as to the very serious charges which are placed on the country by the maintenance of this large alien prison population. It is on these grounds, and on these grounds only, that I think some interference on the part of the State is urgently required at the present time. I need not take up time by labouring the point. It seems to be generally admitted, at all events by the great bulk of the Members of the House, that it is a matter which should receive the attention of the House, and that the Government are fully justified in attempting some remedial measure. The House will remember that last year a Royal Commission which had carefully considered the whole of this question reported; and the Bill which I am now asking leave to introduce is based on the recommendations of that Commission. The Bill first of all repeals the Registration of Aliens Act, 1838. That is the only Act now in force, but the provisions of it are quite obsolete and quite unequal to deal with the present difficulty. In its place the Government propose that the Secretary of State, in some matters in consultation with the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board, shall have power to make regulations requiring the master of any ship landing these passengers to make the returns which were formerly made, but with very much greater precision and care, and to give the officers appointed for the purpose facilities to inspect such aliens as may be in those ships. Information may also be required from any alien as to his character and antecedents, as to his identification, and as to his proposed place of residence. He may also be required to give particulars of any change of residence within two years of his last entry into this country. The passengers may be inspected before landing, and aliens, under certain conditions, may be detained or altogether prevented from landing, and, where necessary, will be taken back to their own country. These regulations may apply generally, or to special ports, classes of voyages, or passengers, as the Secretary of State may prescribe. Another provision of the Bill will enable the Secretary of State to appoint officers, of course with the sanction of the Treasury, in order to carry out the regulations, or, if so prescribed, the Customs Officers or coastguards may be called upon for this purpose. Coming to the question of inspection in the United Kingdom, the Bill provides that the inspecting officer may detain or prohibit the landing of the following classes: Persons who within five years have been convicted in any foreign country of an "extradition" crime, prostitutes or persons living on the proceeds of prostitution, persons likely to become a charge upon public funds, persons having no visible or probable means of support, persons of notoriously bad character, persons suffering from any infectious or loath-some disease, and persons refusing to give the prescribed information with regard to themselves. All these cases will be carefully considered by the Secretary of State, and he will, where necessary, make an order confirming the prohibition to land, or requiring the alien to leave the United Kingdom within a fixed time or giving him permission to land conditionally or unconditionally. And now with regard to the convicted alien. With that class of alien, at all events, I think there can be no sympathy whatever. Aliens convicted on indictment of felony or misdemeanour and sentenced to penal servitude or imprisonment without the option of a fine, or aliens convicted by a Court of summary jurisdiction of an offence punishable by imprisonment for three months or more without the option of a fine and sentenced accordingly, may, as part of the sentence, be ordered by the Court to leave the United Kingdom on their release from prison. They will have to obey that order, or, if they do not, they will be proceeded against under the provisions of the Vagrancy Act, 1824, which, I am advised, will be amply sufficient for the purpose. I would point out that we have carefully guarded that the regulations under this Act shall be subject to any treaty obligations which we may have with foreign countries. As to the question of the areas in which these aliens live, the Local Government Board will take powers for full inspection and for fully dealing not only with the areas themselves, but also with the tenements and the houses in which they live. I have endeavoured to explain as shortly, but as clearly, as I could tire proposals of the Government, and I trust the House will see no difficulty in allowing the Bill to be introduced and read a first time.

said it was a great pity that the principal Government Bill of the session—one involving: matters of great delicacy and novelty so far as this country was concerned—should have been introduced under a rule which allowed only two brief statements to be made to the House. The Bill was accorded the distinction of first mention in the King's Speech, and it had a paragraph to itself. It was entirely beyond precedent, therefore, that such a measure should have been introduced in that manner. The first impression of a good many Members would be that the Government could hardly be serious in making this proposal at this moment, and some Members were likely to consult Mr. Speaker as to the possibility of moving an Instruction, on going into Committee, to make the Bill applicable to the Transvaal. It was an extraordinary fact that they should be called upon to consider a measure of this description which, for the first time, was going to prevent European white men from coming, at their own cost, as free men to a free country, at the very moment when the very same Government were engaged in sanctioning the importation of yellow men by Government intervention and under servile conditions into the Transvaal. And it was a curious fact that the Colonial Secretary, who, with Lord Milner, was the author of the one proposal, was also deeply concerned in the other. The right hon. Gentleman, whose name stood second among the signatories not making Minority Reports of the whole Report of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, was no doubt familiar with the legal maxim winch said that a man might not take advantage of his own wrong; but he thought that that was what the right hon. Gentleman was doing on this occasion. If ever this Bill, or a Bill substantially like this, passed, and he believed it would pass for he knew he was speaking for a hopeless minority, it would be owing to the very excitement which had been raised over this question by the proposals of the Colonial Secretary. The ground upon which he based his opposition to the Bill—on which he had in the past and always would oppose measures of that kind—was that the majority of the aliens who came to this country and who would bo struck at by the Bill were the helpless victims of political and religious persecution. With regard to the Russian Jews at Stepney they largely came to this country because of the persecution they were subjected to at home, and the Roumanian Jews wholly came here from that cause. What he was afraid of was the vague and dangerous form of the regulations, which were left absolutely at the discretion of the Home Secretary. They might have, and he was afraid they would have, the effect of excluding from this country persons who came under conditions which had been their pride in the past, and many of whom had asked, received, and blessed our hospitality in the past. One point was referred to by the Home Secretary on which there was the keenest difference of opinion. It was the fact that in recent years the Trades Congress, representing the organised workers of this country, had ceased to be asked to pass that resolution which years ago they used to pass unanimously. The Trades Congress now believe that they are able to absorb the small number which we receive as compared with the numbers which other countries receive, and that these men are capable of, and are being made into, good trades unionists in this country. The speech of the Home Secretary, as regards numbers, is not, I think, fully borne out by the census and the Report. We have in this country under 250,000 foreigners, i.e.,the resident population of all kinds of foreigners in this country, rich and poor; and it is a mere drop in the ocean, infinitely smaller than the number of foreigners who inhabit almost every other country in the civilised world. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the rapidity with which they are coming. That rapidity has been alleged by the hon. Member for Sheffield for the last fifteen years, and alleged on figues which have always broken down when tested by the census. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] The census itself shows that there are under 250,000 of these people, the vast majority of whom, the Home Secretary admits, are excellent subjects. It is asserted that the children of these destitute aliens are destitute aliens in fact, although British subjects in name; but no one who has read the Report can doubt that the overwhelming majority of the children of these people go to our Board schools and speedily mix with the population. We are not a destitute-alien -importing people so much as we are a destitute-exporting people. There are far more Britons who go destitute into foreign countries, to earn their livelihood than destitute aliens who come here.

Is the right hon. Baronet quite correct in saying "destitute"?—surely the emigration from this country is carefully selected.

I think anyone who has watched the emigration from Ireland can see that alien emigration is of that description.

To the United States?

I repeat that my view of this measure is that it will be used to exclude from this country people whom we shall afterwards be ashamed we have excluded. Under this measure, had it been in force at the time of the Paris Commune, it is certain that many of the most distinguished exiles who arrived in a state of starvation, and whose return to their own country was afterwards welcomed by their country as a whole, with every expression of gratitude to this country, because we maintained and supported them in their work, would have been excluded men like Dalou, one of the greatest sculptors of modern times, who came starving to this country, and to whom a commission was given by the late Queen Victoria to save him from starvation; a man who, after refusing private and personal pardon when a general amnesty was granted, years afterwards, returned with dignity to his country. Many of the finest and noblest men—for there were many fine and great and noble men in that movement—were destitute exiles who might have been stopped under this Bill. From Russia there came men like Prince Peter Kropotkin, who was stripped of every particle of his property by the Russian Government when he arrived here, and was afterwards welcomed by the people of this country; at other times there had come as destitute exiles, men like the M.M. Reclus brothers, the great geographers to whom we were now proud to have given hospitality. With regard to the Russian Jews, against whom the heaviest allegations are made, they are the people who inhabit Stepney and other portions of the East End, and of whom there are some in Manchester and Leeds. Some 20,000 of these people are engaged in tailoring in this country; some 3,500 in cabinet-making, and some 3,000 in the boot and shoe trade. These are, in fact, the whole people against whom this, agitation is directed; and it is because of the feeling directed and excited against these men that we are asked to pass this Bill. The hon. and gallant Member for Tower Hamlets has visited the country of "the pale." I do not know whether he has seen, as I have seen, broken-down prisoners from within the pale—men who, for political reasons, were sent across Siberia because they were the ringleaders in revolutionary movements. Those men are not the dangerous persons, and not the miserable persons, they are represented to be in this country. Miserable as may be their condition when they come here, they are not of a stock inferior to our own. They are of a stock which, when it mixes with our own in course of years, goes rather to improve than to deteriorate the British race. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh!"] Well, I will not detain the House any more. I will not read to the House—because hon. Members ought to read for themselves—the statements which were made on this very subject in the Report which we hold in our hands. But I would ask the House to listen to the words of a man who has gone from us—I mean Mr. Lecky—who wrote of the persecution which sends these people to this country—

"The Russian persecution stands in some degree apart from other forms of the Anti-Semitic movement on account of its unparalleled magnitude and ferocity."

That I believe to be the case. It is because of the dangerous powers which are given to the Home Secretary to make regulations which, I believe, cannot but have the effect of excluding these persons that I have grave hesitation in doing anything but oppose this Bill. I have known many strange scares in this House, but I never knew so strange a scare, even under the odd circumstances of the present Government, at the present time as that which caused the tremendous whip to-day, and the appeal even in their newspapers to Members to come down and save them in the division. I make the frankest admission to hon. Members opposite. I am not going to divide the House—[Ironical MINISTERIAL cheers]—because I am certain that having regard to the fact that some of my friends who sit here were pledged to legislation of this kind, even before the Member for Sheffield, they would at least vote for the introduction of this Bill. But that is no reason for not stating to the House as I have done, and, I hope, frankly, why I cannot support the Bill.

When is the Bill likely to be in the hands of Members?

I will hand it in to-night.

This Motion is an indication that we have reached the close of the first Act of the Annual Parliamentary piece. We are now invited to fix the duration of the entr'acte. Eight weeks have passed over our heads since the curtain rose on this play on 2nd February, and this is the usual time, and the most convenient time, for reviewing the progress of events during that interval, and of seeing how far we have advanced. Has the piece—has the play advanced as far as we might have expected? Has the plot become intelligible and clear? Is it likely to develop into a tragedy or a comedy? Is the dénouement likely to be that which the author of the piece desires? These are the questions which naturally occur to us at this moment. Now, the first of the three portions into which this part of the session is divided by the customary holidays is, as we all know, devoted to the discussion of the general policy of the Government, either on the Address or on Motion made by private Members; secondly, to the submission of the Estimates for the year and their primary consideration; and thirdly, to the introduction of the principal and important legislative measures which the Ministers have elaborated during the recess. Let us see how we stand in each of these particulars, taking them in an inverse order. Bills, Sir: There were twelve Bills named in the King's Speech of which only one of the first order has been introduced. It was introduced yesterday. It is a Bill which I regard, and which many Members of the House regard, as of the very highest importance; but it does not occupy that place, no doubt, in the estimation of about nine-tenths of the Members of the House—because it relates to Scotland, That measure has been introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland amid general good feeling and goodwill of the Scottish Members who are most interested in it, and we have shown that disposition towards it all the more because we recognise in it the hand not only of the Secretary for Scotland but his predecessor in office, in whom, in this matter, we had much confidence. If I might venture to tender advice to the Government I would say that they would do well to carry that principle of delegation a little further and to leave chiefly the final determination of the measure to the Scotch Members. In that case I am certain a thoroughly good Bill will be the result. But another Bill has just been introduced under our eves, not of the first order, but still evidently exciting on the other side of the House a most unusual degree of interest. When we return fresh from our holidays we are to be invited to tackle another question—the question of licences—and by that time Ministers, no doubt, will have made up their minds how far it will be safe for them to go in the task which they have deliberately undertaken of giving fresh relief, protection, and endowment to the liquor traffic. The twelve Bills promised in the King's Speech was a meagre allowance for the session; but two of the twelve introduced is a still more meagre performance for the first of the three parts of the session. Now I come to the Estimates, and what do they show? In the King's Speech we were told—

"Although the Estimates have been framed with the utmost desire for economy, the burden imposed on the resources of the country by the necessities of naval and military defence is undoubtedly serious, and the possibility of diminishing this burden is being carefully considered in connection with the general problem of Army and War Office reform."

But what sign do the Estimates give of this burning desire for economy? There is a decrease in Army expenditure, naturally, because, excepting with Somaliland—and for that war nothing is taken—we are not at war. But there is a general steady increase in the Navy of £2,500,000, and an increase in the Civil Service Estimates of £12,500,000. The Government are proposing this increase to an already bloated expenditure, with full knowledge, no doubt, of the condition of the revenue, and of the disposition and capability of the taxpayer. We shall sec after Easter with what success they will accommodate the one to the other. But in the last sentence of the paragraph from the King's Speech which I quoted we are directed to look for relief to two things, quite distinct, but often confused— namely, Army reform and War Office reform. Of changes in the organisation of the Army the Estimates show no sign whatever, for they are based on the system already in force. But we have heard a great deal of War Office reform. Only three days ago the third part of the new scheme of the Committee was promulgated; and it is a relief to note that this time the impropriety of introducing the King's name has been avoided. But the publication is sufficiently curious owing to the very remarkable covering letter in which the Committee out-do all their previous performances. Their inspiration, if I may use the phrase, has become more plenary than ever. Every part of their proposals must be accepted, at the risk of vitiating the whole; and the Prime Minister, their creator, is called upon to stand and deliver. What in the world will become of him and us all if lie does not? At the same time, ex abundanti munificentia, they speak nicely of him. They pat their creator on the back, which is a thing that requires some courage, and they go on in a crescendo scale. In the first Report they said tha tuseful work had been done under the right hon. Gentleman's auspices; but now they become more ecstatic, in fact, rhapsodical, for they say—

"We have before indicated our views of the incalculable value of the work of the Defence Committee, due to the initiative and resource of the Prime Minister."

They suggest that—

"With few exceptions, none of your predecessors since 1815 were qualified by aptitude or inclination to undertake this special duty."

This is an odd way, let me observe, of enforcing their irrefragable theory, that at the head of this Cabinet Committee must always be the Prime Minister, to proclaim in this public way the total insufficiency for the purpose of all the Prime Ministers until the right hon. Gentleman came on the scene. My right hon. friend here says, "including the Duke of Wellington." The Committee speak of an exception. It is a graceful thing to imagine that the Duke of Wellington is the exception. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman has been wasting upon Parliament, Ireland, education, and other matters talents of the first order in strategy. I do not grudge him his laurels for achievements which I car well believe were most remarkable, although they are shrouded in obscurity, for as the world knows nothing of its greatest men, so the House knows nothing of the Committee of Defence. Even the Cabinet, does not know much about it. At least, I suspect it does not. But this Committee, this triumvirate, know all about it; and they are not only satisfied with the Prime Minister, but they are excessively pleased with him. They evidently think little of Parliament and possibly less of the Cabinet, except, indeed, the Secretary of War, whom they much admire because of his declaration that in all probability the Government would accept their recommendation en bloc, a declaration which is precisely that which he did not make. We are not used to this mixture of the pontifical and the hysterical in State documents. Their scheme, like most sublunary things, has its merits and demerits; decided merits, as I think, but also deckled faults. Let it he judged soberly, and not on compulsion, and the first thing for us to know is what the Government themselves think of it, and what they are going to do with it. Then when we know that we can come to our humble conclusions. One interesting thing which the Committee say is that a remedy for the condition of things disclosed by the War Commission was suggested in the Minority Report, and that to them "was entrusted the specific-duty of advising on the means of applying the remedy in question." That then is the genesis of the Committee. If there is this virtue in a Minority Report, why may we not go further? Here is this licensing question, which puzzles everyone. We have had a Minority Report on that question also which these nimble-minded gentlemen might put into shape and have ready a measure for the Government before the conclusion of the Easter recess. Then there is the question of rating, which the Government have undertaken. Again we have a Minority Report signed by some of the highest authorities on the subject in the country. What an admirable basis for legislation would be turned out in that case also by these competent and confident hands. I give the Government the benefit of this suggestion. Do I dare to go a little further still? We are not yet at the end of the embarrassments of the Prime Minister. He has trouble enough with licences, national defence, rating, and other things. But there is also the Church question. The right hon. Gentleman proposes to appoint a small and absolutely impartial Commission to settle the doctrines of the Church of England. Why ransack the country for impartiality when you have at hand this triumvirate, which in a few weeks will be quite idle, who think so well of him, and who, being entirely without experience in ecclesiastical as they were in military matters, will be admirably suited to settle the convictions of everybody? But I have been led to discuss the extraordinary action of this Committee under the shadow of the Estimates. I now pass on to the question of policy. And here I am afraid I may get into trouble, because certain Gentlemen are so interested in some great question of public policy, that although they are unable to fix a day for it they are all very anxious to call the attention of the House to one subject or another, and I believe in that way they have placed some impediment in the way of the House employing themselves in discussing this question and this policy. But it is not my intention to go into the merits of any policy. I am circumscribed in the way in which I can walk to-day. There is the question of Somaliland, about which we should have liked to hear a little more; and there is the question of Tibet, which has been brought inadequately before the House. As I am practically debarred from entering upon these subjects, I shall naturally not attempt to say anything about them. But I come to South Africa. South Africa has been incidentally a good deal under discussion in connection with the question of indentured labour, but an event has happened in the last two or three days which is of so startling a kind that I think an opportunity such as this cannot be allowed to pass without referring to it—I mean the extraordinary language used by the High Commissioner reported yesterday. The High Commissioner is said to have declared that "he did not care two pence for the opinion of people 6,000 or 7,000 miles away"—in other words, for the opinion of the people of this country. This explains a good deal; but is this what is called "thinking Imperially?" Why, it is the rankest separatism. Why, this public servant was sent to the post he occupies and appointed to it on purpose to represent the opinions of the people of this country for which he expresses so much contempt. I ask this point-blank Question of the Colonial Secretary: Has Lord Milner been already rebuked and reprimanded for so gross a breach of propriety and so complete a misconception of his own position, and if he has not, what will be done to bring him to his senses? But the greatest of all present questions of policy is the fiscal policy, and it becomes more vague as we go on. Two things have been declared of it by the Prime Minister in that memorable letter in which he said, writing to the Duke of Devonshire—

"I see no difficulty in successfully carrying out the policy which for a fortnight you were ready to accept by the help of the Administration which for a fortnight you aided me to construct. On this point I feel no disquiet."

Let the House observe that there are two things stated here. First of all, the Prime Minister sees no difficulty in carrying out the policy; secondly, he will do it with the present Administration. Why, then, did he not march, drums beating and colours flying, to the achievement of this great policy? Why put it off indefinitely? Does it turn out, after all, to be merely for electoral use? Then the inference is that the Government are satisfied with the state and immediate prospects of British trade—the drink trade alone excepted—that the protectionists, by whose favour the Government exists, assent to the Government being satisfied, and that the Member for West Birmingham and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who are at the head of the dominant faction, are acquiescent. Not a voice is raised by all the convinced and converted protectionists in favour of putting the policy into operation. In quietness, if not in confidence, they possess their souls. Silence also reigns in the country. The Press occasionally—yes, but then the demands of the daily circulation are inexorable and cannot be denied. But neither the organs of the late Colonial Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor the organs, if there are any, whose business it is to expound and promote the esoteric doctrines of the pamphlet—neither of these are clamouring for immediate action. The fire-eaters of the autumn have reduced themselves to the thin gruel of gentle criticism of imports and of the statistics of the Board of Trade. When a by-election occurs the Tariff Reform League is promptly bundled out of the constituency by the agent of the fiscal reform candidate. A country suffering under intolerable wrongs and smarting from wounds inflicted by foreign nations could hardly comport itself with greater fortitude if its injuries were incurable and there was nothing left for it but to die in the ditch. What a hollow business it all is! Let us think what the case is. A sovereign remedy exists for our industrial evils and is ready to be promulgated at the general election, and yet the Prime Minister, the man who can promulgate it, the man who is in possession of the nostrum, declares that whatever happens he will not resign, which of course is the only way—

I never said that.

—of bringing about a general election.

When did I say I should never resign?

Not literally whatever happens, but the right hon. Gentleman said that so long as he enjoys the confidence of the King and of this House he should not resign.

Hear, hear!

The right hon. Gentleman picks his House. The calm with which this is taken shows how little weight the country really attaches to the frantic and frenzied campaign of the autumn, and to all the contortions, equivocations, and sophistications which have sustained His Majesty's Ministers under the weight of their professions. One thing, indeed, has come out by the avowals of the Prime Minister, that there is no contra diction between retaliation and the supposed other policy of preference and protection. They are complementary parts of a beautiful fiscal whole. And this statement has been translated—

Would the right hon. Gentleman mind reading the extract?

The right hon. Gentleman said that of the two—may I say documents?—which were placed before the Cabinet, the one was not contradictory to the other. If it was not contradictory, and generally en the same subject, it must be helpful, ancillary, and complementary to the other.

The right hon. Gentleman accuses me, as I understand, of having stated at some place and on some occasion unknown, that the policy I have advocated in speeches and documents well known was part of a whole in which protection is included. That is inaccurate.

We know there was a document which recommended or expounded the policy of preference and protection.

Where did you get that from? The right hon. Gentleman, perhaps, will quote Lord George Hamilton for that statement. He never made any statement so absurd.

The right hon. Gentleman objects to the word protection. Well, if the right hon. Gentleman likes it better, and is more comfortable with it, I will substitute preferences and taxation of food. But this statement is translated into action by what will go down to history as the episode of the Wharton Amendment. That was indeed a momentous episode. It disclosed this state of things—that while the official policy, or phase, or formula held the field as the test of orthodoxy, the policy of the document was the real Party policy, the governing policy. There is lip service to the pamphlet and whole homage to the document. It is the document and not the pamphlet that keeps the Government in power. This interesting episode which, as I say, will be classical and historical, was admirably described by a sorrowing and embarrassed follower of the right hon. Gentleman. He was a staunch and loyal supporter of the Government until this new departure, but writing to his constituents afterwards he says—

"On Wednesday,9th March, an Amendment to Mr. Pirie's Motion was put down by Mr. Wharton with the sanction if not by the direction of the Government. This Amendment I was prepared to support, as it embodied the views I always held on the subject. It was not until five o'clock on the day the Motion was to be moved that I was informed that the Government had been instructed by its Chamberlainite supporters that this Amendment must be withdrawn. In obedience to this threat or command the Government at once withdrew their Amendment. I am further told by one of Mr. Chamberlain's supporters in the House, that they pledged themselves not to offend similarly in the future. Whether this be so or not, it is sufficient for me to know that the Chamber-lainite section of the Unionist Party can and does direct the Government policy as it chooses. Under these circumstances I frankly confess that I have no confidence in His Majesty's Government."

That is the hon. and gallant Member for the Heywood Division. How long, I ask, is this to go on? Every-where—except in the matter of Chinese labour—indecision, confusion, vacillation, a tortuous course, and a misty atmosphere. So long, the right hon. Gentleman says, as the confidence of the Crown is given to him he will remain in office.

I never said that.

He will not resign as long as he enjoys the confidence of the Crown and of this House. When the right hon. Gentleman talks of the confidence of the Crown, I think he makes rather too free with the name and authority of the Crown. It is much better that he should adhere to the old fashion and take it for granted, as we know he can, that the Crown will act according to the Constitution. Is it really in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution that the Government—and the right hon. Gentleman is the Government—should retain power when the country demonstrates, on every opportunity afforded to it, that he no longer enjoys its favour? Technically, of course, he has still the support, but evidently the reluctant support, of the House of Commons [Cries of "No"]; but what is the authority of the present Parliament? We have always refused to acknowledge the full claim of the present Parliament to the continued sanction of the electorsafter the war and its settlement were concluded. [A laugh.] I could adduce a bushel of cases in which many of those who now laugh declared in 1900 that the war was the only subject before the consideration of the country; and at the head of the list I could quote the right hon. Gentleman himself. But now I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to put himself these questions; does the present state of things—of which he is as well aware as I—does the present state of things redound—I would say first of all to his own credit, but I know that is the last thing he considers. ["Oh, oh!"] I know that is the last thing he seeks; the right hon. Gentleman is not a self-seeking man. Does the present state of things redound to the strength of his Party and the prevalence in the country of such principles as may remain to it? Does if redound to the dignity of this House, of which dignity he is the constituted defender? Does it redound to the fame and stability of our tried, trusted, time-worn system of Parliamentary government? These are questions I now ask; these are questions that are asked in the country. ["By whom?"] By every body. By the answer which his actions give to these questions the right hon. Gentleman, his courage, and his statesmanship, will be judged.

The right hon. Gentleman is apparently very anxious that I should resign; but I am quite unable, after listening with most respectful attention to his speech—though it was no hasty utterance but the point of much careful reflection—to understand why it is he thinks it would be—I will not say to his or our benefit, but to the benefit of the country at large, that we should take so unusual a course, such an unprecedented course as far as I am aware, of resigning office while we retain the confidence of the House. ["Oh, oh!"] The right hon. Gentleman may think we do not retain the confidence of the House; but there is a perfectly well-known method of discovering whether that is so or not, and that is by formal discussion, and division on the subject. It is a familiar practice of the Constitution, the clear and only recognised method of determining whether His Majesty's Ministers for the time being do or do not retain the confidence of the House, which is the arbiter of their destiny. The right hon. Gentleman in working up to his appeal to us to resign office while we retain the confidence of the House travelled over a large number of facts and arguments which seem to me to have had very remote relation to the conclusion at which he eventually arrived. He began by discussing the condition of business. Here we are, he said, at the beginning of the Easter holidays with only two or three Government Bills introduced and the great burden of legislative work still before us. That is true, but who is to blame for it? If there is blame—and I do not say there is—on whom does the blame rest? We have not gratuitously occupied the time of the House with other matters. We have been sedulous, as every Government will be sedulous, I hope, under the new Rules to preserve the rights conferred on private Members by those Rules. ["Oh, oh!"] Can any hon. Gentleman say that those rights were better preserved before those Rules were passed? We have been sedulous to preserve those rights, and the Rules have worked as I expected they would work. But, apart from this, time has been taken up because the House wished to discuss the Estimates at consideraole—I will not say inordinate—length, and because partly on the Address and partly on other occasions there was a desire to devote time to the discussion of what in reality was a succession of votes of censure upon the Ministry. I do not deny that hon. Gentlemen opposite had a perfect right to do this, but it is rather hard to turn round upon us and say, Look at the result of all this, The fact may be deplorable; nobody regrets it more than I do, who am primarily responsible for the arrangement of business; but it cannot be said that we are to blame because business has not proceeded more rapidly. The right hon. Gentleman divagated into an attack upon the Committee for the Reconstitution of the War Office. He made at great length—I will not say a violent—but a spirited attack upon the gentlemen who formed the Commission, and turned them and their labours into ridicule, and implied that they, with very little personal knowledge of the work entrusted to them, had rashly set their hands to a scheme of reform that would not bear examination.

I did not say so.

What the right hon. Gentleman did say was that we should be well advised in turning them on to such questions as discipline in the Church and other matters, because they had no personal knowledge or experience on the subject. If that sarcasm had any meaning, I suppose it was that their qualifications to deal with Army reform were of the same shadowy description. I observe that one of the right hon. Gentleman's faithful supporters agrees in, that.

The Secretary for War has told us that two of the Commissioners have had no military experience.

He did not say they were not specially qualified for their task, which is the whole point of the matter. The right hon. Gentleman has commented upon a letter with which the Report of the Committee was accompanied, and which they regarded as part of their Report, and in which letter they lapsed into phrases complimentary to myself. Well, it is no breach of confidence to say that I expressed my own personal desire to the Commissioners that the letter should be omitted, not merely on account of those phrases, but because I did not think it added any weight to the Report; that was, and is, my own personal view. But the Commissioners were absolutely within their right in differing from me. They had an absolute right to present their views in the shape they thought they ought to take; and it was impossible for me, it would have been illegal and contrary to all precedent, to have published what to them would have appeared to be a truncated version of their Report. If I had been asked if the whole of the Report was there I should have been obliged to say it was not, and the right hon. Gentleman and his friends would have been the first to insist that the Report in its integrity should be presented to the House. Having expressed my regret that these gentlemen thought it necessary to publish that letter, let me express, in the most emphatic language I can command, my sense of the great service they have done to the cause of War Office reform and the interests of the country at large. The right hon. Gentleman appears to rate that service very low. I can only say that one of those gentlemen gave up a position as Colonial Governor solely to give his services on the Committee, and he with his colleagues has given gratuitously labours compared to which the ordinary work of Commissioners sinks into insignificance. They have not been content with meeting two or three times a week; they have sat de die in diem; they have spent health and strength upon their work, and, in my opinion, have performed services which are valued now by all reformers, and the value of which will not diminish as time goes on. Of course, I am not going to say now, any more than my right hon. friend said when the Army Estimates were on, the precise extent, or in what form, the Government will adopt the recommendations of the Committee; but the reforms we shall adopt, in their general principles, will be due to their efforts. This has been made perfectly clear by what has fallen from my right hon. friend in previous debates. But, Sir, I think the tone in which the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the gratuitous labours which these gentlemen have lavishly put at the service of the country is very little suited to encourage such services in the future from other public servants, and I desire most emphatically to dissociate myself and all those for whom I have the right to speak from the sneering tone he has adopted towards men whose services he, as an ex-Secretary for War, should, I imagine, have been the first to pay a tribute. Having disposed of the three gentlemen who had done great service to the community, the right hon. Gentleman was still unsatiated, and he turned his benevolent attention from the Commission upon War Office reform to Lord Milner. He put a categorical Question to my right hon. friend which, if I understood the right hon. Gentleman rightly, amounted to this—whether my right hon. friend had or had not administered a prompt rebuke to Lord Milner because a Reuter telegram had quoted, or misquoted, three lines out of a speech which Lord Milner has delivered in South Africa. That is the right hon. Gentleman's idea of the way in which a great officer of the State, carrying out a task of unexampled difficulty in a distant colony of His Majesty's dominions, should be treated by; the Leader of the Opposition. I have not the least idea, nor can anybody have the least idea, what it was precisely that Lord Milner said, or in what context he said it. But if Lord Milner intended to imply a certain amount of benevolent contempt for certain opinions that have recently been expressed in this House upon subjects nearly connected with the prosperity of the country of which he is the Governor, then, Sir, I should be the last to complain. Then the right hon. Gentleman came back to home politics and to our old friend the fiscal question, and he put, if I understood him rightly, this dilemma to the Government.

I had not much more to say to the House when the flow of my oratory was somewhat checked by the constitutional episode which has taken place, and that little refers entirely to what the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has said on the fiscal question and on the constitutional position of the Government at the present moment. If I understood the right hon. Gentleman rightly, he endeavoured to put this dilemma to the Government. He said either you believe in your fiscal doctrines or you do not. If you do not believe in them, you ought not to profess them; if you do believe in them, you ought at once to dissolve Parliament in order that you may have at once an opportunity of putting them into operation. His argument is this—if you believe in retaliation—as it is called, but we will not quarrel about language—and if it is going to have all the good effects which you claim for it—why is the country to be longer deprived of the blessings which this particular medicament is going to bring to its commercial distresses and diseases? I think the right ton. Gentleman seems to mistake the situation. The fiscal controversy, no doubt, has raged very acutely since my right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham started it by his famous speech delivered in the middle of May last year. But never from the first moment that that bone of contention was thrown down among us, has he or any member of the present Government stated that in his opinion there was any ground for shortening the natural duration of the present Parliament on account of the topic which had suddenly taken so much hold on the public imagination. In my opinion, an appeal which Lord Rosebery made to the Government was a well-founded appeal. I remember that in one of his speeches he begged that the country might not be rushed in this matter. I do not ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he agrees with Lord Rosebery, because I do not wish to touch on matters personal to leaders on the other side. All I quote Lord Rosebery for is for the purpose of agreeing with him; and I stated, I think at Bristol, almost immediately after he made that speech, that it would not be proper to hurry the country, and that the appeal he made for delay was a proper appeal, because, in my judgment—a judgment frequently expressed—the change that we recommend in the fiscal policy of the country is an important change. I have never minimised its importance. On the contrary, I have always contended that this view of ours, which I may call progressive free trade, was a real change from the stationary and petrified free trade which passes for orthodox on the other side of the House. And, thinking as I do that that change is an important one, and that it will undoubtedly open for good or for evil a new era in British finance, I think it quite right that the public, on a subject on which they are very little informed— [An HON. MEMBER: No]—the well-informed Gentleman who interrupts me does not represent the whole people—and naturally, because the subject did not come up for controversy for nearly sixty years—that they should have full time to consider the various aspects in which this complicated and difficult question presents itself, and if they were to form that decision with any undue haste—

Will the right hon. Gentleman say what is the change?

It is the change from the old fiscal policy to that which I have embodied to the best of my ability in the Sheffield speech and in the pamphlet with which the House is familiar, and which, as far as hon. Gentlemen opposite are concerned, appears to be more laughed at than read. Whether that reflects more credit on them or discredit on me, I do not pretend to say. That is for others and not for us to judge.

What is the change?

It, at all events, was a change sufficient to make the Duke of Devonshire resign, because, if I remember, it was simply on that point that he did resign, though perhaps I ought not to have dragged in his name. But if the right hon. Gentleman really wishes me to repeat all I have said on public platforms and in printed documents I think he is making an excessive demand. But I would put these two Questions. Does he or does he not think that the policy which contemplates as one of its weapons for obtaining greater free trade between this country and others full power of negotiation—does he or does he not think that that is a great change in our fiscal policy? [An HON. MEMBER: We have the power now.] Of course, we have the legal power to do it now. We have the legal power in the Three Estates of the Realm to abolish the House of Lords.

May I ask whether this freedom of negotiation is the whole of the change?

I think the right hon. Gentleman will feel that on a subject, on which he himself occupied the House for an hour and a quarter, which has been debated for six days on the Address, and on which I myself, to say nothing of other members of the Government, have made speech after speech, it is rather difficult to compress into an answer to a Question across the Table our whole point of view. There is no ambiguity about it. I venture to say that even persons of the smallest intelligence, not to speak of the people of great intelligence whom I am now addressing, if they were to spend a quarter of an hour in reading what I said at Sheffield and Bristol, would not have the smallest difficulty in understanding what the view of the Government is. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman was here when the speech to which I am replying was delivered, or he would see that his interruption really is irrelevant. The effect of that speech was to ask why we do not dissolve if we think that this remedy of ours is really good for the country, and I was pointing out that, in my opinion, this change is a great change, and one which the country might with great advantage have, as Lord Rosebery said, time to consider and to see exactly where it is. The right hon. Gentleman went on from that point to say that there was a special reason, in addition to the one connected with the fiscal problem, why we should resign, and that it was based on the fact that we are a majority having no authority. In saying that he only repeated a charge which has been made over and over again by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and still more by their irresponsible supporters in the country. I have seen it stated hundreds of times. The charge is that inasmuch as the present majority were returned in 1900, when the question absorbing the attention of the country was the war, they had no right to continue their existence a moment after the war was con- cluded. [An HON. MEMBER: You said it was concluded.] I believe that is the doctrine the right hon. Gentleman propounds. I say that a more unconstitutional and more absurd doctrine was never propounded.

As the right hon. Gentleman uses the word "constitutional," I will explain what I said. What I said was that a Parliament elected as this was, almost entirely on the question of the war, was not entitled—though I have never stretched, let me say, the doctrine of mandate too far—to enter upon large and fundamental changes of the law without a further appeal to the country.

The right hon. Gentleman varies his constitutional doctrines at different parts of his speech. His friend behind him has just reminded me that we have the powers and ought to exercise them at once, if we believe in fiscal reform. Now the right hon. Gentleman takes the other view, that before carrying out the new policy of fiscal reform we ought to appeal to the country. I agree to that.

You exercised the powers in connection with the Sugar Convention.

What I do not agree to is the right hon. Gentleman's doctrine that, when a Parliament has I been elected when one subject is before the constituencies, it is incapable of dealing with other subjects, especially if they be large subjects. I believe that doctrine to be utterly wrong and utterly unconstitutional, and I must do the House the justice to say I that, often as I have seen it stated outside; the House, I do not remember it being said inside the House by anyone but the right hon. Gentleman himself. Let the House cast its mind back for a moment. What has happened within our own recollection? Mr. Gladstone stumped the whole country from end to end in 1880 upon the wrongs of the Christians in what is now called the Near East. He raised a great storm of passion and emotion on that subject, and almost entirely on that subject, and owing to that subject he swept the country in 1880. Although he had with him an enormous Liberal majority, as far as I know not a single thing was done for the Christians: in the Near East. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh!"] So far as I remember nothing was done, or perhaps nothing could be done—I am not blaming Mr. Gladstone— for the Christians in the Near East. The problem of Ireland suddenly burst on the astonished gaze of the new Ministry as a Hew phenomenon to which they had resolutely shut their eyes whilst the election was going on, and which they suddenly found themselves compelled to confront. Did they hesitate to revolutionise the whole theory of personal liberty in Ireland and the whole tenure of land in Ireland? Not at all. They set themselves at once to that gigantic task, and open as their policy was, in my judgment, to severe criticism on its merits, nobody, I think, then had the hardihood to say that because that Parliament had been elected to deal with the Christians in Macedonia it was incapable of dealing with this Irish question. I believe I am stating not only what is the constitutional doctrine, but what must be the constitutional doctrine, if we are in this House to have anything in the nature of a stable Government, be the side from which that stable Government is drawn what it may. There are plenty of elements of instability in a House constituted like the present House. Are they going to diminish or are they going to increase as time goes on? The right hon. Gentleman's view is apparently that if a certain number of by-elections go against the Government of the day the Government ought to say—This is the voice of the people calling upon us to resign; we must dissolve and again test the sentiments of the electors. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman or his friends will be found to preach that doctrine in its full extent, let us say, between now and the end of the next five years. I do not in the least know what the next election, or the next election but one, or the next election but I two is going to bring forth. [A Member of the OPPOSITION Benches: Five years.] Notice, five years! Never mind how the by-elections go; five years! Happy is the hon. Gentleman who can look forward not merely to the immediate triumphs of his Party when the next election comes, but to a continuous course of undimmed popularity which is to give them every by-election during the first five years of Parliament. I believe that we are following the exact precedent set us by our predecessors and the true constitutional doctrine. I do not for one instant admit that the by-elections are a test, or ought to be regarded as a test of public feeling. They are, of course, a test of the feelings of a particular constituency at the time the by-election takes place. They are not, and they cannot be made, the index and the test of what the feeling of the people of the country is as a whole. Any doctrine that is inconsistent with that is, in my judgment, not only wholly unconstitutional in theory, but wholly unworkable in practice. The right hon. Gentleman talks really as if we were hanging on in office with a doubtful and wavering majority. [OPPOSITION ironical cheers and MINISTERIAL laughter.] I wish our majorities were larger, but they are larger than the majorities which the right hon. Gentleman had who took office in order to carry the Home Rule Bill in 1892. I do not see why our courage should be loss than that of hon. Gentlemen opposite, or why we, who also think we have a great task to perform, should resign that task out of mere faint-heartedness and want of spirit, or should even suggest the idea of handing over the Government to others whom, whatever our respect for them, we do not think so capable as ourselves of carrying on the policy in which we believe. I do not see why we should abandon a task which the country has set us until the constitutional practise of the country requires us to resign our powers. For these reasons I think the right hon. Gentleman, in the conclusion of his varied speech, did little to prove the proposition which I understand he set out to prove—namely, that we on this side of the House are still cumberers of the earth, hangers on, incapable of doing the work which the country set us to do. This work I, on the contrary, believe we shall be able successfully to carry out; and times to come will be able to reckon, in addition to the great reforms which, as I believe, the Unionist Administration may congratulate itself on having carried since it came into office in 1895, at least one other great reform which may compare with any of them—the reform of our Army system.

said that the Prime Minister, with his usual inexhaustible ingenuity, had managed to avoid and ignore all the salient facts of the situation. He was very pleased with everything; he was pleased with his majority; he was pleased with his policy; and, above all, he was pleased with himself. His peroration was a most warm and passionate declaration that he had greater confidence in his own capacity than in the capacity of anybody else in this House. That was a very-satisfactory state of mind for any man to be in, and he congratulated the Prime Minister on being able to Secure that feeling amidst so many difficulties; but on the face of it, there was nothing in the circumstances to justify anything of the kind. The right hon. Gentleman said something about War Office reform. He would say nothing about it, because he knew nothing about it; but what struck him was that the eulogy which the right hon. Gentleman had passed on these doughty three was not nearly so warm or so passionate as the great panegyric which the right hon. Gentleman had delivered on the Army Corps scheme. His present enthusiasm was feeble and halting compared with that with which he talked about the author of that Army Corps scheme. And the confidence of the right hen. Gentleman now displayed about fiscal policy was nothing compared to the confidence which the Prime Minister formerly felt in the Army Corps scheme, and yet only eighteen months had passed away, and the right hon. Gentleman was preparing for its obsequies. He must say one word in regard to Lord Milner before he passed to the question of fiscal reform. The Prime Minister and his colleagues were constantly complaining of the attacks they, on that side of the House, were making on Lord Milner. Now Lord Milner was the last man in the world who had a right to complain of these attacks, because his Lordship was constantly entering into controversy himself, and the Prime Minister had just defended him for his contempt, benevolent or otherwise, of criticism. A Minister who poured contempt on his adversaries could not complain if they in return criticised him. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman would approve of Lord Milner's utterances, because the chief complaint of the right hon. Gentleman was that these were Party utterances. Very well, he was very likely on those conditions not to approve of Lord Milner's utterances in South Africa. He did not know that the House was any better informed on the subject of fiscal reform than it was before the right hon. Gentleman got up. What they wanted to know was, not whether the right hon. Gentleman was a progressive free-trader, but whether, in the words of one of his own supporters, who contested Lewisham, he was a "Progressive Balfourite." That was the very happy description given of a gentleman who called himself a tariff reformer last September. Last December the Prime Minister did not know what his policy was. He, a few months before, submitted two different itineraries to the Cabinet.

I did not.

said the Prime Minister had very skilfully avoided that question, but it went to the root of the whole controversy, for they had got a statement from a right hon. Gentleman who was a member of his Cabinet—and that statement had not been challenged—that the Prime Minister submitted to the Cabinet two policies, which were not alternatives. One was the policy embodied in the pamphlet, a policy of retaliation; and the other was a policy which involved the taxation of food and preferential tariffs. Were these two alternative policies? If they were not, then there was no difference at all between the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. It was perfectly clear that the right hon. Gentleman did not know where he was travelling. He submitted the question of his future destination to his colleagues in the Cabinet and at present neither he nor they knew what was the policy of the Government. The House was entitled to know something more. It was all very well to say that this was a question to be hung up; but it was affecting trade, and trade was after all a very delicate machine, and anything of this kind paralysed the energy of the people and in itself interfered with the trade of the country. The right hon. Gentleman had also very skilfully avoided the general position with regard to the session. He did not say that the session had nor up to the present been a very useful one, for it had cleared up one or two things which needed clearing up. They now knew that the war was entered into not so much to secure emancipated white labour as to introduce slave yellow labour. It had also cleared up the fact that our trade was in no immediate danger and that there was nothing in the situation which made it necessary for the Government to produce immediate remedies, although they were told in the recess that we were rushing into bankruptcy. Thirdly, it had cleared up the fact that the Welsh county councillors were not prosecuted because they were lawbreakers but because they were not Scotsmen other, with all these things, he thought the session had attained the limits of its usefulness. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that they could go on and that the country was taking no note of these things. On many occasions in the constituencies at the last general election the right hon. Gentleman explicitly declared that the one and sole issue was not social reform, but the war, and the moment this Parliament attempted to deal with social reform the country took the Prime Minister at his word, and at the by-elections started to go against him. Thirty seats had been contested since the termination of the war. At the last election they were represented by seven Liberals and twenty-three Unionists; now they were held by seventeen Liberals and thirteen Unionists. Could the right hon. Gentleman have a more explicit declaration from the country that he had ceased to enjoy its confidence? Never had a Parliament before buried so many of its children. There was the Army reform scheme. Three cruel men had sat upon it and it was now no more, and the Government was engaged in embalming its remains. The corn tax lasted a year, and now it was gone. The Irish University was stillborn. Land settlement in Africa was dead. Even the Irish Land Act was very pale and sickly; and as for the Education Act, from the very moment of its birth it had suffered from the most violent convulsions, and he believed that its fond parent was preparing for the worst. The right hon. Gentleman boasted of his majority, but by what means was he keeping it together? In the Daily Press they could hear the crack of the sjambok playing around the shoulders of the stragglers. It was with the greatest difficulty they were brought there. Only one common sentiment bound them together, and that was the fear of death at the polls. The chief Whip said that three-line whips were not enough, but he would suggest that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman should write across them in red ink "beware of a dissolution." But, in spite of all these circumstances, still they lagged behind. There was no energy or enthusiasm in them. With that great capacity for vicarious sacrifice which was always displayed by the ultra-patriotic journals, the Government Press urged Members to abandon their coffee and cigars. They were to eat their meals in future like the Israelites, with their loins girded, staff in hand, and sandals on their feet. However, the constituencies would pretty soon liberate them from that land of bondage. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman, was this a state of things in which Parliament could do any good work? He had before him most important discussions. He had promised a Licensing Bill at last, but how long had he been in bringing it about? It was all very well to say that he had no time, but what about the Dogs Bill? The right hon. Gentleman looked after what might be called the us and bottle department of the Government, and to the publican outside with his can waiting for the long pull which had been promised to him, the right hon. Gentleman curtly turned round and said "Dogs first." It was pre-eminently a Bill which the country ought to have time to t I consider, and yet it was not to be produced till after Easter. He would wait with interest the arrival of the dramatic moment when the Prime Minister flung his Party into the brewer's vat. Independence was as much discouraged on the other side just now as if the Party were a Rand mine. Not even the Government were independent. They hid their master too. The other day the Prime Minister tried to escape from the Birmingham compound, but the overseer left in charge discovered him before he had gone very far, and he and his colleagues were brought back by their pigtails. And what had happened to the right hon. Member for Ripon, who helped them to escape? He had not been seen or heard of since. He had broken the ordinance and he was a fugitive from justice. The fact was the Prime Minister was working with forced labour, but there was one part of the ordinance he and his Government had faithfully kept, and that was the provision that they should do no skilled labour. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had the confidence of the Crown and of the House. He had no right to put it in that way. It was unfair to the Crown, which could expressno separate judgment. As to the House of Commons, that gave him its confidence because it had not the confidence of the country. If it had the confidence of the country, it would not give its confidence to the right hon. Gentleman for a single evening. The right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well why hon. Members voted for him. There were thirteen of them who voted for him expecting to get something for the Bann drainage. The price of their confidence was a sluice gate in the Bann. What about other hon. Members? There were 112 whose confidence was not in the right hon. Gentleman and his Ministry, but in a statesman who was outside his Ministry, who did not believe in its policy, and who was working for other ends. These Members were keeping the right hon. Gentlemen in, not because of their confidence in him, but because they proposed to demonstrate by some Tariff Reform Commission that the right hon. Gentleman's policy was wrong. What manner of authority was that to support a Government in a great task? They had a right to ask that the country, which had got important work to perform. should have an opportunity of electing the men whom it thought capable of performing that work. It was perfectly clear that the country had no confidence in the right hon. Gentleman or in his Ministry. That had been shown on every occasion that the country had had an opportunity of expressing its opinion. If the right hon. Gentleman went on clutching at power, in spite of the opinion of the people, he would lose something more important than the confidence of the country, something more difficult to regain, and that was the respect of the country.

said he was very sorry the Prime Minister had left the House, as he had desired to ask him one or two Questions. They were still without information in regard to several phases of the fiscal question, and it was very unsatisfactory that on the eve of the adjournment they should still be left without that information. He had read the right hon. Gentleman's pamphlet, he had listened to the speeches he had made, and he confessed that he still found himself quite unable to understand what the right hon. Gentleman really thought about the issue which was before the country. It was quite true that the right hon. Gentleman had dropped hints here and there, and that carefully guarded sentences had fallen from him as to what was in and what was out of the Government policy. But they did not want to know what was in and what was out of the Government policy. What they wanted to know was what the Prime Minister really thought about the subject that was vexing the country, and he did not think it was unreasonable that they should ask this because, after all, there was a difference in a policy when it was put forward on the faith and honour of a public man and when it was put forward avowedly as a matter of convenient political, tactics. There was another reason why they had a right to know. A great many people were being placed in great difficulty with their constituents. He was going to say that great pressure was being put upon them by their Party and by all the officials of the Party who were hostile to them. It was perfectly legitimate to do that if they believed in what they were doing, but it was contemptible to do these, things when there was behind them no faith and no conviction. They had a right to ask, even of those who were among them but not of them, for plain dealing and fair audience. He had made more than one attempt privately to find out the Prime Minister's opinion on several phases of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. It was not until some months had passed, and many attempts had been made to get these private assurances from the right hon. Gentleman, that he, for one, passed formally from the position of an independent support or to the position of a declared opponent of the present Government. He quite recognised that that change was one on which his constituents, if they wished, had a right to be, consulted. He had certainly no intention of interposing the smallest obstacle to any representation which might be made to him by the Party in his, constituency. If they desired him to resign and to submit himself to re-election, they had only to call upon him to do so and the usual course would be followed without the least delay. He had hitherto refrained from taking this course, which a few months ago he intended to take whether they wished it or not, because he had no desire to go through the painful process of breaking up a local organisation, with which he was a short lime ago on the most friendly terms, so shortly before a general election, and while they, for their part, seemed perfectly content that matters should remain as they were. But they had only to express their opinion and he would do his best to give effect to it. He had hoped to get information from the Prime Minister as to his personal views on the fiscal question. The Prime Minister alone knew what meaning was to be attached to the mysterious words "retaliation" and "anti-dumping." They might mean much, they might mean very little. The right hon. Gentleman was very careful to leave them indefinite. He said his policy consisted in an assertion of freedom. But what was the good of an abstract assertion of freedom unless there was an understanding of the use that was to be made of it? His policy was described as "anti-dumping." But what dumping was, what comprised anti-dumping; whether all the various causes that contributed to the sale of goods below cost price were to be considered as dumping; under what circumstances these regulations were to be applied—as to all this they were told nothing; and until they were told, definitely and substantially, the House was quite, right not to be, led into this tiresome dance, step by step and measure by measure, at the dictates of a nimble and ingenious brain. But if the Prime Minister's policy I was unreal, the policy of the Member for Birmingham was real. Everybody knew what that was, and before the House adjourned they ought to know what the Prime Minister's relation to that policy was. They knew that as to Imperial preference the right hon. Gentleman was opposed to it, not because he thought it was not good for the country, but because he thought it would not win many votes at the general election. It was not a noble reason, but it was a practical one, and it was a reason of some sort. But what of the other part of the Member for Birmingham's policy, the 10 per cent. duty on manufactured articles? He saw the Chief Secretary for Ireland present. The right hon. Gentleman was a close personal friend and intimate Cabinet associate of the Prime Minister. Was the right hon. Gentleman able to give the House any information on behalf of the Prime Minister? Had he ever heard of the Tariff Commission? The Prime Minister was supposed not to read the papers; he depended upon social gossip for information as to the intentions of his colleagues in the Cabinet but perhaps the Chief Secretary knew something of the views of the right hon. Gentleman on this question, and could state whether or not he believed a 10 per cent, ad valorem duty would be to the advantage of this country. That was I the out feature of the Protectionist policy which appealed to the democratic electorate, and yet they were left in absolute ignorance of the Prime Minister's opinion on the matter. Was the Wharton Amendment a true expression of the right hon. Gentleman's mind, or was it a miserable dodge to place a few unfortunate politicians on that side of the House in a difficult situation? The tariff reformers, who to the number of 112 met, followed an odd procedure, for they decided to inform the Government that unless the Wharton Amendment was withdrawn they would turn them out, and then proceeded to pass a resolution of unabated confidence! Their confidence was not misplaced; they knew their men. When the division was taken, the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for Sleaford and the Member for West Bristol both voted in support of the Government. The difference between the views of those two right hon. Gentlemen was vital; nothing could bridge it; and he desired to know which of the two was being befooled by the Prime Minister. The time had come when the country ought to be relieved from this shifty policy of equivocal evasion; they had a right to know what public men thought on public questions, and what political chiefs believed on great political principles. He deeply regretted that the Prime Minister had absented himself from the debate, but though hon. Members could not be informed of the opinion of the right, hon. Gentleman on these questions, the mere formulation of their complaints ought to demonstrate to the country the unsatisfactory, unprecedented, and unconstitutional situation in which Parliament and the people were placed.

congratulated the hon. Member for Oldham on the fact that the organised attempt to deprive him of an audience had in no way affected the excellence of his speech, but bethought the Opposition, and the House generally, ought to notice the somewhat novel departure in Parliamentary tactics. Hitherto it had been considered one of the unique distinctions and glories of this House that Members were willing to give an appreciative and sometimes admiring hearing to those who were even diametrically opposed to them. But one could well understand that there came a condition in the state of a Party in which they became somewhat apprehensive of hearing opposite views; Members could become so sensitive, with their opinions in such a condition of unstable equilibrium, that they were afraid to hear a reasoned and plain expression of views which they did not desire to adopt, and that would seem to be the condition of the Party opposite. He hoped the country would take note of that condition, and of the tactics which had been adopted. Whatever the Unionist Party might think of the hon. Member for Oldham, the country would gladly recognise that he was always ready to show the courage of his race and to maintain the high traditions of his name. The Prime Minister was of opinion that there was no occasion for hurry with regard to a dissolution. Nobody supposed that the Government desired an early dissolution, but even more than that they dreaded being forced to adopt a clear and candid attitude in the controversy on which the next election would turn. Hitherto, the Prime Minister had endeavoured to keep the two sections of the Party together, his intention being, in the next Parliament, with the security of a somewhat heterogeneous majority, to choose which section he would befriend. That course, of strategy had been rendered difficult by recent events, as the right hon. Gentleman had been all but compelled to disclose his true opinions before the election. But though that course of procedure was discredited as far as this House was concerned, it was by no means abandoned in the country; it was kept alive for electoral reasons, because the right hon. Gentleman supposed that the country did not follow the proceedings of Parliament with as much understanding a id precision as was sometimes necessary, and that it could still be deceived by these free-trade arguments in support of a protectionist policy. During the whole of last session an inquiry was supposed to be proceeding into the fiscal question. How did the Prime Minister regard the results of that inquiry, which was constituted for the purpose of showing whether protection or free trade was the policy best fitted for this country? Apparently the right hon. Gentleman was determined to give the House no in formation on that point. He did go so far at Sheffield, however, as to say that the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was outside the range of practical politics. That was a remarkable declaration, which, if true, would absolve the right hon. Gentleman from the necessity of dealing with that policy on its merits. But within a few weeks of that declaration the right hon. Gentleman had himself laid before his colleagues proposals embodying in some measure—the precise extent was not known to the House generally—the very proposals which he had declared to be outside the range of practical politics. The Prime Minister would not have it suggested that he had laid two inconsistent policies before the Cabinet; he considered that such action was not compatible with political honour; but what could be thought from the point of view of political honour of the conduct which, for the purpose of pacifying a section of the Party, declared a policy to be outside the range of practical politics, and then in the Cabinet did all it could to bring that policy within the range of practical politics? He did not know what the right hon. Gentleman's standard of political propriety might be, but it would not be that of the country at large. The Wharton Amendment declared, first, that the policy of the Government excluded protective or preferential tariffs, and, secondly, that the Unionist Party approved of that exclusion. In neither of those declarations did the bulk of the Tory Party believe, and they were rejected. What courses were then open to the Prime Minister? He was at liberty either to resign office or to resist the policy of the bulk of his followers, and insist on the acceptance by them of his own policy. He did not attempt to follow the latter course, knowing it would be impossible of achievement He took another course, and made a long speech to show that his policy must be treated as consistent with free trade, and then quoted his ollowers against free trade. They did not mind the right hon. Gentleman saying that his policy excluded protection provided he did not call upon them to believe it. When they were called upon to do that they rejected it. That, perhaps, was less important than the incident in which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford played the leading part, for they had the phenomenal absurdity of that right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol being in the same division lobby. To get at the significance of this they had to go back to the Sheffield Conference, where the policy of the Party was decided for the purposes of the next election. The hon. Member for Sleaford had charge of an Amendment in favour of food taxation and he could have defeated the Prime Minister, but he did not do it. He withdrew the Amendment, and why? He knew perfectly well that the policy of the Government, if it were an honest policy, would be destructive of the agricultural industry and would lay a burden upon every article the agriculturist used, and leave corn unprotected against foreign competition. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford withdrew his Amendment and supported the Prime Minister, because he knew that policy was a sham, and so far from excluding protection was deliberately designed to bring it about. This policy obtained support on the express ground that the Prime Minister's assurances were not to be believed. He did not know whether the Prime Minister regarded that as consistent with a fair standard of political honour in this country. Protectionists now got not merely guarantees but they were appointed to offices and also got unrestricted authority to preach what propaganda they pleased in favour of protection—an authority which had never been extended to free-trade members of the Cabinet. The right hon. Gentleman was thus maintaining the unity of his Party. Party unity was a fine thing, but they might pay too great a price for it, and the price the Prime Minister was paying showed that he would soon make it a curse to the public life of England.

said that after the extraordinary and novel Parliamentary tactics which had been adopted towards the hon. Member for Oldham he claimed the indulgence of the House to allow him to say a few words. He had been an active member of the Conservative Party for forty years and his experience had been that there had always been a certain number of protectionists in the Party and they were always treated by the Leaders and the majority of the Party with courtesy and consideration. He remembered Sir Stafford Northcote, who was a strong freetrader, always exhorted his followers to show the greatest possible consideration to those who had expressed what he called a pious opinion in favour of protection. The Party supported them on the platform and at elections, and in everything except protectionist Motions, and they never had to complain of any discourtesy on the part of their leaders. Now, things had changed, for some of their leaders were avowed protectionists, and a great number of the followers held protectionist opinions. He made no complaint of that, but what he did contend was that those who did adhere to the old doctrines of the Party had a claim to be treated with the same courtesy and consideration as was shown to protectionists when free-traders were in the ascendency. The Prime Minister had declared that the fiscal policy ought not to be made a test of Party loyalty. They had a right to claim that those who had held in the past the old orthodox opinions, and who still adhered to them, oughtnot to be treated with discourtesy and want of consideration, and should not be described as persons "who are with us but not of us," and not regarded as unworthy to receive that support and consideration which every member of a Party ought to showtowards those who continued loyal to the Party. He apologised to the House for intervening in the debate, but as he was present when the hon. Member for Oldham was treated with the most m irked discourtesy, he thought it was only right to say what he had said. The hon. Member for Oldham was the son of an old colleague of his, and an old Leader of the House of Commons, who, of all men in the world, deserved well of his Party, and if every other consideration had failed, the Member for Oldham's hereditary right to respect and consideration ought to have preserved him from such treatment as he had received at the hands of his Party.

drew attention to the insufficient staff which was kept at the Natural History Museum in Dublin. About twenty-five years ago the staff numbered five whilst the staff of the British Museum numbered nineteen. The staff of the latter had since been increased to twenty-five whilst the Dublin Museum staff had only been increased by one, and that was an illusory increase, because three out of the six attendants at the Natural History Museum at Dublin had to give a great deal of time to the College of Science, and in consequence the work of the Museum had fallen fearfully into arrear. Time after time the deficiencies in the present system had been brought to the notice of the Government, and it was time that something was done. The Natural History Department had greatly increased in value, and a great many valuable specimens had been acquired. The staff gave lectures dealing with the work of their departments, and they had helped the History Society, and yet they had to do all this work with the same staff as they had twenty-five years ago, with the result that catalogues were not available, specimens had been accumulating, and the whole business had become clogged for want of proper attendants. Since the Department of Agriculture was established a great deal of extra work had been thrown on the staff of the Natural History Museum. The investigation of the diseases affecting plants and crops had been thrown upon them, and it was utterly impossible to expect the men who, in years gone by, had toiled in looking after and cataloguing specimens should overtake that work. In foreign countries this was a special branch of science which had a department of its own. He sincerely hoped that the Chief Secretary, having had his attention called to the matter year after year, would take it in hand and do something. He asked the right hon. Gentleman whether the time had not come for having a regular inquiry into the art institutions of Dublin. Last year, when the College of Science Bill was brought before the House, an opportunity was given on the Committee stage of raising the question of the position of the Royal Hibernian Academy. The Financial Secretary of the Treasury expressed a favourable opinion then with respect to the claim put forward by himself in regard to that institution. His reason for mentioning it now was that there was great danger that the Metropolitan School of Art, unless proper men were appointed, would not fulfil its proper function, and that it might become merely a school for industrial arts and crafts. These were no doubt extremely necessary for the industrial benefit of the country, but the higher functions of art should also be looked after. The Royal Hibernian Academy was miserably placed on the north side of the city, and was not provided with assistants to enable it to fulfill its function. The result was that young men and women who desired to study art were unable to do so in their own country, and had to go to England, France, or Germany. He wished to impress on the right hon. Gentleman that a school of art should not become merely a school of arts and crafts, and that consideration should be given to the proper artistic side of it. He asked the right hon. Gentleman to consider if the time had not come to have an inquiry into the art institutions of Dublin, to see whether they were properly co-ordinated, and whether the work of the different departments was properly carried out. The inquiry, whether departmental or otherwise, should include the Royal Hibernian Academy. If a fair opportunity were given to talented young people to pursue their studies there would be in Ireland in future a school of art distinctly Irish, which would enable the country to take its position in that matter among the nations of the earth.

said he wished to draw attention to the question of the surcharges made by the Local Government Board auditor in connection with the Tipperary Urban Council. There were two sums amounting to £90. The engineer had stopped certain work owing to bad weather, and the auditor surcharged these amounts simply because the council had not reduced to writing the order in connection with that matter. There was another item of £70, which was surcharged in respect of irrecoverable arrears extending over several years; the reason assigned by the auditor for this proceeding being that the council did not take action for the recovery of the rates. He himself had been surcharged £400 by the same gentleman, but when the matter was investigated the decision of the auditor was quashed and every penny of the sum was remitted. This, I therefore, was not the first time that that I gentleman had been playing "high jinks" in Ireland. The urban council appealed to the Court of King's Bench against the auditor's surcharge, amounting to £160, and the Court decided that he had overstepped his jurisdiction. The result was the auditor's decision was reversed and the £160 allowed: but the urban council had incurred costs in connection with the legal proceedings to the amount of £200, which would fall on the ratepayers unless some tiling could be done to save them from being mulcted in that sum. He should like the Chief Secretary to state who conducted the case. Was it the auditor or the Local Government Board? He understood it was laid down that costs could not be given against the auditor, but the right hon. Gentleman had stated that the Court could have awarded costs against him. Was the right hon. Gentleman going to allow the representative of one of the Government departments in Dublin to act in a perfectly illegal manner, causing serious loss to the ratepayers? This was a question of importance to the ratepayers of Tipperary, but of concern to every public body in Ireland. Was the right hon. Gentlemen going to lay down that any auditor whom the Local Government Board should appoint, might go about the country with perfect impunity, displaying an erratic or vindictive disposition, or even the stupidity which many officials were capable of, and that he was to be safeguarded from any responsibility for his action? It was a monstrous case. He thought that in resenting such treatment the ratepayers would be even more justified in having recourse to passive resistance than those who in this country were resisting by that means the education policy of the Government.

said he admitted that it would be exceedingly difficult to deal with the case of the Tipperary Urban Council after the decision of the King's Bench. The auditor had been for a long time in the service and might be presumed to be a competent auditor. He made two surcharges of expenditure which were supposed to be legal, but were not, and the result of the whole thing was that the Tipperary Urban Council had to pay in law costs more than the surcharges themselves. That seemed to be an absurd state of affairs. He wished to ask what was the distinction the Chief Secretary drew between a petition to the Local Government Board from an urban council in regard to a surcharge, aid an appeal? He had had something to do with surcharges, and he knew pretty well the principles which governed the English Local Government Board in deciding these cases; and he would like the right hon. Gentleman to tell him wherein a petition of an urban council to the Local Government Board of Ireland differed from an appeal? As he understood, the Irish Local Government Board did not treat the petition of the Tipperary Urban Council as an appeal. This was a serious question. Again, he would like to know on what principle the auditors in Ireland were appointed? In England—he now spoke from personal experience—no auditor was appointed (he quite admitted that no examination or qualification was required) to Serve under the Local Government Board who had not been a competent official and had gained experience in his business for twelve or fifteen months. He knew that that was not the case in Ireland. He believed that there was a qualifying examination; but if anyone who knew Ireland would go over the names of the auditors on the list, they would find that these gentlemen had been pitch-forked into their positions by political influence without any qualification. Would the right hon. Gentleman take some action to see that the auditors appointed knew what the law was and what it was not?

said he desired to ask the right hon. Gentleman one or two Questions in regard to the action of the police in Dublin; but before doing so, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would give some explanation in regard to Dublin Museum. The right hon. Gentleman, he knew, took a good deal of interest in, and had sympathy with, all matters connected with the Royal Irish Academy and Museum, and there should be no difficulty whatever, therefore, in granting additional assistance to the Museum as was asked for by the Royal Irish Academy. The Irish people had not been treated in regard to the Museum with that fairness and generosity which was accorded to similar institutions in this country. As to the surcharges made by the Local Government Board, he really thought that when members of district councils paid money in a bonâ fide way to carry out necessary public works, they should not themselves be compelled to refund that money, and that the Local Government Board should remit the surcharge, fie quite admitted that where urban or district councils made improper payments they should be surcharged; but m a case where there was no precedent to go by, and where the money had been spent in the public interest, and with no bad intention, he submitted that the Local Government Board ought to have the power to remit the surcharge and not to penalise men who thought they were doing a public duty. It was not always easy to get business men to devote time to public service, and it would be still more difficult if they were made to sacrifice money as well as time when they made a mistake, although acting in a bonâ fide manner. As to the action of the Dublin police, had the right hon. Gentleman any information which he could not give the House the previous day? The right hon. Gentleman said then that the chairman of the meeting on Thursday last had called in the assistance of the police when he believed that the furniture of the hall was in danger and feared that a disturbance would take place. There was nothing in any of the published accounts of the meeting which would justify any such fear. He wanted to know whether any person had a right to command the presence of a large force of police at a public meeting in order to expel people from that meeting who had not been guilty of any breach of the law or of any act of violence? He was advised by letters received that day that after a resolution had been put at that meeting on Thursday last by the chairman, that gentleman and his friends left the hall and that a new chairman was appointed, whereupon a large force of police entered, objected to the new chairman, and ejected a great number of people from the hall. Nothing had been done which warranted that violent action on the part of the police. He was sure that the right hon. Gentleman had been long enough in Ireland to know that the unnecessary introduction of the police at a meeting was a very dangerous thing; and such action on Thursday night last might easily have led to very serious consequences but for the influence and good judgment of the gentlemen on the platform. He wanted to know from the right hon. Gentleman whether he considered the action of the police on that occasion was within the law. Suppose a free trade meeting was held in England and that a number of protectionists objected to the objects of the promoters, would anyone contend that any individual would dream of sending for the police to expel the protectionists? Such a thing could not happen in England, and it ought not to be allowed to happen in Ireland. That it did happen had aroused a great deal of angry feeling in Dublin. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give the House the law on the matter and say whether the police were acting within their legal right in what they did. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman in his reply to bear in mind that no violence whatever: had been used at the meeting before the arrival of the police, and by what right, therefore, did the police act in the manner they did. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give an assurance that such action, which police in England would not dare to take, would not be repeated in Ireland.

said that since yesterday he had had an opportunity of studying the legal questions involved in this matter, and he thought he was now in a position to answer the Question of law put by the hon. Member. It was without a shadow of doubt that the owner of such a place as the Ancient Concert Rooms, and equally without doubt that the person who became the owner—that was, the person who hired the rooms and paid for them for an afternoon or evening—was absolutely entitled by the law to call in the police if he apprehended such a disturbance was likely to endanger his property. It was equally certain that the police having been sent for by the chairman of this meeting, who felt that the property for which he was temporarily responsible was in danger, were bound to obey that summons and to come and protect the property. That alone would justify them in taking the steps which they did take, for when the police came in they found a scene somewhat more than heated, though why it should have been heated he could not conceive. But they did find the scene somewhat more heated than anybody would have expected who had studied either the resolutions originally proposed or the amendment which some other person wished to substitute. They found the persons there practically divided into two hostile parties, shouting and menacing each other, and in some cases sticks were raised in the air, and the atmosphere was charged with electricity. A reasonable man might very well have formed an anticipation that, if matters had gone much further, some of the furniture might not only have been damaged, but might also have been used as weapons and missiles. In his opinion the police was not only right in going there, but were well advised in bringing the proceedings to an abrupt close. He understood, having made a careful inquiry, that no unnecessary force was used, that a number of persons were so interested in the view that they wished to express that they would not leave, but that in almost every case they realised the situation and there was no righting outside. He thought the hon. Member would agree that the Dublin Metropolitan Police had for many years enjoyed and deserved the confidence of all sections of the public in the City of Dublin.

said he was not making an attack on the police, as such, who were bound to carry out their orders; but the point was, who ordered them?

said he thought he had cleared up that point. The person who for the time being was the owner of the hall and responsible for it, was entitled to call them in and they were bound to give assistance. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for South Kerry, pressing for some addition to the staff of the natural history section of the National Museum, the hon. Member reminded them that in consequence of efforts made, also at his instance, a considerable addition had been made recently to the staff in the National Library. He fully admitted the excellence of that building and the other buildings, which formed one of the most interesting features of Dublin, but additional staff could not be sanctioned without very careful inquiry, and it was not from any remissness on his part that no conclusion had yet been arrived at. The new Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction were the proper Department to make a preliminary examination and say if additions could be made in one place and proper economies effected in another, and when they had concluded their preliminary examination, of course the Treasury sanction must be obtained. A correspondence on that subject was proceeding; it had not been concluded, and until a conclusion had been reached it was clear he could not make any further statement. He thought these institutions m Dublin should be adequately supported, but he differed from the hon. Member and thought that Dublin was already very fortunately endowed in that respect. He knew of no city of that size in Europe which had such a collocation of buildings showing such interesting exhibits. The archaeological and the natural history sections of the Museum did the greatest credit to those who attended to those departments and the National Gallery on an adjoining site was also a great centre of public interest in Dublin. That being so, the hon. Member might rest assured that those who were responsible for the maintenance of those buildings would do what in them lay to see that as much as could properly be expended should be expended on those matters. He would bear in mind his observation upon the Metropolitan School of Art, though he should not pledge himself wholly that a separate school of instruction in art was always the best way to foster artistic talent. A collection of the best examples of the greatest in art was in one sense a better method of instruction, and in the National Gallery they had a collection of great masters which ho hoped and believed would exercise a great influence. As for the inquiry of the hon. Member for South Tipperary, he used soma phrases which might lead the House to believe that any auditor was, as it were, the servant and agent of the Local Government Board. That was not so. The auditor must be independent if he was to be of any value at all, and he was bound to look through accounts and with the knowledge of the law at his command to say this or that item was not a legal item of expenditure. It would never do for a public Department to direct an auditor what items he was to pass. It was less necessary in respect to the Local Government Board in Ireland, because there was an appeal from the auditor to the Local Government Board, not only on questions of law but also on what were called questions of equity. So that if an auditor quite legally said that an expenditure ought not to have been incurred, the parties who held themselves aggrieved could feel that the Local Government Board were able to say that, however that might be from the point of view of the law equitably they were not to blame. And in such a case the Local Government Board could, in fact, grant relief. But there could not be an indefinite number of appeals and, as a matter of fact under the Statute there were alternative appeals. The parties surcharged might cither appeal to the Court of King's Bench Division and say they were right and the auditor wrong in law, they might pursue the other course of appealing to the Local Government Board, and they might make that appeal both on the law and also on the merits and the language of the statute was so wide as to justify the Local Government Hoard in giving relief whenever a public body had acted in complete good faith, without carelessness and ignorance, and that dispensing power of the Local Government Board had often been used, and more than once when the question had been brought before him he had expressed personal consent and approval. And he believed that public bodies would, as a rule—though perhaps not always—be well advised in appealing to the Local Government Board rather than in going to law. The surcharge was made in September, and no objection was taken in any way until proceedings were begun in December. Then, it was true, the parties aggrieved wrote to the Local Government Board, and it was said that from the tone of the reply they gathered that they would not get relief. When the matter went to the King's Bench the Local Government Board were off the scene of action altogether. The King's Bench found for the local body, but, having the right to give or not to give costs, did not give them, and the Local Government Board had no funds out of which to pay costs when they were not awarded against them. He would take such steps as might be feasible, in order to see that local bodies in Ireland should be fully advised that there was an alternative appeal.

referring to the outbreak of plague at Johannesburg, said that, when speaking on the subject the other day, he urged on the Colonial Secretary the necessity of insisting strenuously on having full information from Johannesburg, for he had reason to suppose that the authorities in that city had been keeping the matter dark for a long period. He said this because of the unprecedented severity of the outbreak. It was so sudden and appalling that it must have had some antecedent condition which led up to it, and there might Le some doubt as to whether the high death rate among the natives last year was really pneumonia, as was stated. He now desired to warn the Colonial Secretary and to ask him to insist on more thorough information in the future. He had seen the report of the medical officer of health for the year ending last June, and he thought it should be studied most carefully in tire Colonial Office. It appeared from that report that throughout last year there were most suspicious cases in Johannesburg—so suspicious that the ordinary observer almost must have been forced to the conclusion that they were cases of plague. In addition it appeared that at the same time a large number of rats were dying ail over the city, and, with these two signs occurring at the same time, he thought that the responsible Minister at home ought to have been supplied with full information so that he might have taken steps to save human life. On 2nd May, after these events, the Lieutenant-Governor telegraphed to say that there was no foundation for the rumours of the existence of plague in the city, and that showed how the matter had been kept dark. The sole ground on which that statement was made was that though the bodies of some persons who had died in a suspicious way had been examined, the bacillus of plague had not been discovered. The nemesis of that telegram came the other day; and he would ask the right hon. Gentlemen to take care to prevent any further attempts to conceal the gravity of the outbreak, and also to give to the public the fullest information he could during the ensuing week, and to telegraph to the authorities at Johannesburg insisting on the fullest information being given to him as to the progress of this epidemic.

said that in consequence of what the hon. Member said the other day he had sent a telegram to Lord Milner asking him for information. Lord Milner, in reply, telegraphed on 26th March that it did not seem to be realised that extensive Government laboratories existed and that a bacteriological laboratory under first-rate specialists, with skilled assistants, had been on the lookout for the plague for months. Great numbers of dead rats had been examined. During six months thirteen rats had been found to have died of plague. Each of these cases was specially investigated, and no possible connection could be traced between any two of them. The conclusion was that the rats were transported individually from the coast. The Government laboratories had also devoted the greatest attention to pneumonia, which was a very common disease there among mine workers. Many scores of cases had been bacteriologically examined, but no trace of plague was found in any one of them. It was impossible that the same specialists who were on the look out for plague, studying all these cases of pneumonia, should have failed to detect the plague bacillus in a single case, if what had been thought to be pneumonia had really been plague. This was all the more certain because it was only bacteriological examination which revealed the plague when it arrived. The present epidemic had so far only appeared at Johannesburg, at Pretoria, where there was one case in the hospital, and in one other place. Machinery was ready for taking measures immediately on the notification of cases of plague. The place in which the epidemic had occurred was surrounded by a cordon, and natives wore being removed as quickly as possible. During the eight days since the outbreak of the epidemic only three fresh cases had occurred among the inhabitants of the cordon area. A committee was giving its attention to the matter, and strongly recommended that the old Indian location, which formed part of the insanitary area, should be burned to the ground. The disinfection of all compounds was being thoroughly carried out. All rats were being killed as quickly as possible, and stray dogs and cats were being exterminated. Lord Milner was perfectly satisfied that the precautions which were being taken were as comprehensive as possible. The gentleman who was acting as medical officer had a number of excellent medical assistants, the majority of whom had had experience of the plague. This telegram, he thought, made any additional statement unnecessary.

drew attention to the report that the mission to Tibet was now to advance, and asked for information regarding the intentions of the Government. The advance would probably take place during the holidays and he would like to know whether it was proposed to advance as far as Lhasa or how far it was intended to advance. He further desired to know when the mission contemplated returning and what the Government intended to do. Their chief object was to help Indian trade.

called the hon. Member's attention to the fact that there was a notice on the Paper dealing with the question of Tibet which precluded the merits of the expedition being now discussed.

said the object of the expedition was clearly set forth in the Papers laid before Parliament, and the limitations of the mission were also clearly laid down. The position was this. The Government had causes of complaint which were enumerated in the Blue-book, and the suzerain Power, China, was anxious that we should have a meeting with her representative in order to settle disputed points. The Chinese Government had successively named two places for a meeting in Tibet, but their representative had not appeared. There was every reason to believe that the delays had been due to his being prevented from obtaining the necessary transport. In the circumstances it was thought necessary to make the advance to Gyangtse, with a view to reaching a place where there was a prospect of a satisfactory arrangement being concluded. The patience of the British representatives and the pacific character of the mission had been amply demonstrated. The mission halted for a long period on entering Tibet, and the further advance was not determined upon until it was made perfectly clear that the Tibetans intended to boycott the mission at the point which it had then reached. The advance had been carried out so far with apparently the greatest friendliness from the Tibetan people. Such hindrance as had been met with had apparently proceeded from the central authority at Lhasa. It was necessary to provide the mission with a suitable guard. Precisely the same precaution had been found necessary by the Chinese envoy. The time had come when the mission must go forward, and nothing had reached the Government to show that there was any such apprehension as would necessitate reinforcements. The Government were determined to keep the operation, or whatever it might be called, within bounds. They had no desire to molest the Tibetans or force upon them anything savouring of military occupation, and they had no design on Tibetan territory. He hoped the steps which were now being taken would lead to a pacific arrangement, and to an agreement which might be observed by all parties.

said he very much regretted that the House was prevented from discussing the subject of the Tibetan expedition by reason of the fact that a Motion dealing with the question had been set down by a private Member on the other side. The result of the Rule was that the House might be prevented from discussing questions of the most vital importance by the uncontrolled caprice or design of an individual Member. He did not know what the source of the Motion was in this case; but they might fairly assume that the Government could have some little influence in preventing its being retained on the Paper if they desired to exercise it. He would ask them whether they would use their influence in the matter if some responsible member of the Opposition, not necessarily on the Front Bench, desired to raise a discussion.

said that three vears ago he asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he could extend the provisions of the Allotments Act to Ireland. Those Acts had done much good in England; and he suggested that a provision extending them to Ireland might be included in the Labourers Bill which was to be introduced after Easter. The right hon. Gentleman might very easily extend the Allotment Acts that prevailed in this country to Ireland. Anyone who had been in the Midlands would recognise that those Acts had done immense good to the working class community and a good many persons were now supplementing their wages very considerably by the cultivation of these plots of land, and this would be a great benefit to those living in Irish towns.

I must remind the hon. Member that the Motion for adjournment is not an occasion for advocting legislation.

said he would not pursue his remarks any further, but would simply ask the right hon. Gentleman to convey to the Chief Secretary for Ireland what he thought was the universal desire of those sitting on the Irish Benches upon this question.

said that he was quite prepared to use his influence if the hon. and learned Gentleman would put his Motion on the Paper. Of course, he would see what he could do, but the hon. Member knew that many members in the Ministerial Party were extremely obstinate.