laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for additional Provision in the following Bill, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, viz:—London County Council (Tramways and Improvements) Bill.

Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

Merthyr Tydfil Gas Bill. As amended, considered; to be read the third time.

North and South Shields Electric Railway Bill. Read a second time, and committed.

Great North of Scotland Railway Order Confirmation Bill. Third Reading deferred till Tuesday next.

Carlisle Corporation Bill; North East Lincolnshire Water Bill; Cardiff Gas Bill; Great Eastern Railway Bill. Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

Metropolitan Police Provisional Order Bill. Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time upon Monday next.

reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, in respect of the Police (Superannuation) Bill:—Mr. William Bridgeman; and had appointed in substitution: Viscount Helmsley.

Report to lie upon the Table.

said, in rising to move the Second Reading of the Trade Unions and Trade Disputes Bill, that owing to the chances of the ballot this matter had fallen into his hands; and it seemed as if it were a strange coincidence that one of the most important questions as affecting the trade unions of the country should be brought forward by a representative of the union which was first involved in the series of legal questions with which the measure dealt. He did not profess to be able to enter upon the maze of legal difficulties involved in this question, but he did, in addressing the House, speak authoritatively, knowing what the representatives of trade unions wanted, as representatives of the organised workers and as representatives coming from the trade organisations of the country. It would be noticed that the sub-title of the Bill, included associations other than trade unions; the Bill itself, however, did not contain any clause dealing with other associations. Hon. Members, like his friends from Ireland who were specially interested in associations which they claimed, to all intents and purposes, fulfilled the functions of trade unions, would be able to draft Amendments to meet their case. And the promoters of the Bill, by enlarging the scope of the title had left the way open for them to do so. The first clause of this Bill proposed to legalise peaceful picketing. The position they were now placed in was this: it was lawful to obtain and communicate information, but unlawful to watch and beset a house or place where a person resided or worked or carried on business. This, as he understood from the statement made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General, on Wednesday, was to be put right, by giving in law the right peacefully to persuade; in other words to legalise peaceful picketing. Under the law as it now stood every trade union, acting in the defence of workmen, and for the purpose of raising their status, as they had done for the past thirty years, might be bled to death by litigation. Yet that law was the common law which applied generally to all associations; and they must insist upon their original position that trade unions should be exempted from the law. He thought also that they had the hon. and learned Gentleman with them on the further question, namely, that under the Property Defence Act, what would not be ground for an action if done by one person should not be ground for action if done by two or more persons. They understood that they had the hon. and learned Attorney-General with them entirely on that question, and consequently he did not intend at all to labour the point or to occupy the time of the House by discussing at any length the first two clauses of the Bill. He would mention, however, that the second clause ran— trade unions? If there was no desire to injure and cripple the usefulness of trade unions and to deprive their members of the power they exercised to raise the standard of comfort and of living, and to defend the status of working men on questions of working hours, wages, and many mutual benefits, why should they not be permitted to leave a region entirely composed of these subtleties and return to their original position?

Mr. Justice Wills, on December 19th, 1902, in addressing the jury, said— v. Ellis" the House of Lords overruled a decision of the Court of Appeal that the general order of 1883 did not apply to a trade union. And, under the presidency of one who had shaken down so many doctrines of accepted law, the Lords delivered the Taff Vale judgment, which had practically placed all trades unions at the mercy of their opponents in any trade dispute. The Taff Vale judgment was a creation of new law, inasmuch as it never previously existed in either statute law or decision of any Court. They were told that the decision of the Lords rested on principle, but that was as new as the new law it created. Consequently they arrived at this point, from all persons who had spoken in any sense authoritatively, with regard to the intention of those who desired to give, and did give to trade unions, a legal existence, also gave it, with a limited and restricted power; they could not sue or be sued. He ventured to say that if injury to trade unions was not desired, or desirable, on the part of employers, what was the good of having the power to sue? It was not only the clear intention of the framers of the Act, but the Act of 1871 actually did leave to trade unions the immunity which for thirty years they had enjoyed. They did not want any specially created privilege, but merely asked to be restored to the original position of immunity. They asked for an equality before the law. It was impossible for any useful purpose to give trade organisations power of corporation. If they had any use for such power of corporation it would be to become their own employers. The fallacy of the conclusion that collective responsibility on the part of unions was, or could be, an effective means and incentive to more cautious action was entirely without foundation. Who had suffered most during the past five years of abundance of trade union litigation? Not the officials and leaders as a rule, but the rank and file of the members, many of whom knew nothing of the actual merits of the action brought against whom in their collective capacity. In the decision given by Lord Davey in Allen v. Flood, Lord Davey said— a matter of privilege but a matter of right which he asked the House now to accede to. He moved that the Bill be now read a second time.

Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

^* said that although he had always held views on this immensely important industrial question which were not those held by gentlemen below the gangway, the latter must in justice recognise that he was returned to this House by a very large working-class constituency on no false pretence. He was not present to tell the House that there was some ambiguity about the pledges that were given at the time of the general election. He was asked in his constituency, and there was no ambiguity about the question, whether or not he would vote, not for a general Bill to introduce some sort of amendment into the trade union law, but for the Labour Bill, and he believed there was hardly an hon. Member who was not asked in the same unequivocal and explicit manner if he was in favour of the Bill. He replied, with a reluctance which the House would easily appreciate, for he too was so anxious to get into the House of Commons, that he was not able to support that Bill, and therefore would vote against it. Sincerely and honestly believing as the Labour Members did, and being aware of the explicit pledges given by hon. Gentlemen opposite, they might well have been excused if they had, during the speech of the Attorney-General, quoted that simple and beautiful expression, "Enough of this foolery." He did not represent merely the interests of organised labour, but also, in common with many other Members of the House, that large body of working men not members of a trade union, and he would point out that not merely was there no presumption that on this point that hon. Gentlemen below the gangway represented unorganised labour, but the very opposite presumption held. He had never heard that any petition was presented to the House asking that working men who belonged to no trade union might be subjected to "peaceful persuasion" or that their dwelling houses might be beset by a hundred men to "give them information." It was not until they took the conspiracy clause and the peaceful persuasion clause together that they were face to face with the full objectionableness of this Bill. They must take the two together. They were asked to permit a hundred men to go round to the house of a man who wished to exercise the common law right in this country to sell his labour where and when he chose, and to "advise" him or "peacefully persuade" him not to work. If "peaceful persuasion" was the real object, why did they want a hundred men to do it? He knew of no one who was more peaceful than the Member for Merthyr, and he was sure no man could be more persuasive. The Attorney-General would agree with that. If he (Mr. Smith) were a man who was wishful to dispose of his labour as he chose, although the Member for Merthyr might not persuade him to break a contract, still if the hon. Member came with fifty other peaceful persuaders to the house where he and his wife lived he thought he would be much more likely to yield to persuasion than if the hon. Gentleman came by himself. They were told that another object was in order that information should be given. Was it more convenient that information should be given by fifty men than by one man? Even in this House it was recognised that as a general principle it was more convenient that one Member should address the House at one time. The root principle was the question whether trade unions ever did in fact enjoy that exceptional provision which was now claimed for them with perfect sincerity by hon. Gentleman below the gangway. It was that unfounded belief which led the vast majority of hon. Gentlemen opposite to agree to support this Bill when it was brought before Parliament. The opinion of any man who was not a lawyer was not worth a brass farthing——

That is good trade unionism.

Yes, good trade unionism, and my profession are trade unionists, but we do not ask hon. Gentlemen below the gangway to enable us to "peacefully persuade" in large numbers in the chambers of competitors. What he meant to say was that only a lawyer's opinion possessed value, not upon the general question of social policy underlying this difficult subject, but on the question whether before 1871 trade unions enjoyed immunity. He did not ask the House to take his opinion on that matter—though at another time and elsewhere he would be very pleased to give it—but to take the words of as great a lawyer as the present Attorney-General, who quite recently had assented to the view that historically there was no foundation for that argument. A very distinguished Liberal lawyer, Mr. Cohen, had pronounced an opinion upon the point coinciding in every detail with that of the Attorney-General. The hon. Member below the gangway had said that before the year 1871 there was a complete immunity for the funds of trade unions. His answer was that before the year 1871 the theory of the English law knew no such immunity. Before that year a trade union was merely an aggregation of individuals, and if all those individuals were made parties in an action of tort and cast in damages all such property as they possessed could I be taken in satisfaction, including the trade union property. It was difficult, perhaps, to get at their property, but the difficulty was a physical, not a legal one. Since the Judicature Act and the order of 1883 a representative; action had become possible on the j common law side. The law was therefore clear that a trade union could be properly sued in representative action, and their funds made liable for any damages in which they might be cast. No body of men in this country to-day was able to establish a claim of I immunity such as was put forward by hon. Gentlemen below the gangway. They had been told repeatedly in the course of the debate that employers could get their damages from the actual wrongdoers, but he would remind the House that in 99 cases out of 100 the men from whom they were told they could get damages were men of straw. He ventured to address to the Labour Members a clear and definite question raising an issue which at least was an issue of principle: were they prepared to extend to associations of employers the same immunity which they asked the House to grant to the trade unions? [LABOUR cries of "Yes."] Were they prepared to say that if an association of employers caused damage to their union to the amount of £10,000 the remedy of members of the union should be limited to an agent with £100 a year— a man of straw from whom they could not get a farthing? He did not gather that there was an entire unanimity in the answer from the Labour benches. [Cries of "Yes."] The words of the Bill just admitted of that construction, but it was by no means clear that under the eiusdem generis rule the expression "similar associations" might not be construed to mean associations closely analogous to trade unions, that was to say, of employees only. A suggestion had been made from below the gangway on the Ministerial side of the House that the reason why trade unions ought to have this privilege was that they were to-day unable to sue. He would ask a question which brought the matter back to a very narrow compass. If trade unionists were given the right to sue would they abandon the claim they were now making? [Cries of "We don't want it."] That was at least an honest answer. They did not want the right to sue, but that being the case they should not allow without protest the argument to be advanced that they desired this measure because they did not possess the right to sue. He wished to say a word in conclusion on the position of the Government. The Attorney-General was one of the few men in the House with whom he had the good fortune to be in thorough agreement on the great moral questions underlying this proposal. In introducing the Government measure the Attorney-General said—

"You may in your wish to prevent injustice being inflicted on trade unions create injustice against individuals who are members of the community,"

But if the Government were going to leave the question to the House no one was under the slightest misapprehension as to what the House would do. Therefore, if the Government were going to leave it to the House they were going, on their own admission, to "create injustice against individuals who are members of the community." The-Attorney-General admitted that "you are proposing class privileges." That was what the Government was going to do if it left the question to the House. They were going to create a privilege for the proletariat. They were going to remove from the unions and particularly from the agents, the sense of responsibility. He would much rather give the vote which the Labour Members were going to give, because they honestly believed in the principle that underlay the Bill, than the vote which would be given by the members of the Treasury Bench, for a measure which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said was wrong. They were going to vote for a measure of which the Attorney-General had spoken in language which hon. Gentlemen below the gangway would not soon forget, whatever the fate of this measure might be. Let them not hear from benches opposite, or at least from the Treasury Bench, any more talk of opportunism or political cowardice. The Opposition would be voting for what they believed to be right, although it would not do them political harm in the country. They were incurring this risk because they thought it was right, but the front Ministerial Bench were doing what the believed to be wrong because they thought it would do them political good. At last they had got the most powerful Government of modern times in the open, and after all the colossus had feet of clay. The House, the Party, and the country asked the Government for a lead, and the Government put up the Attorney to say that they were better at following. Their policy was:

"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a sneer, and hesitate dislike."

He congratulated the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil upon the captures he had made on the Front Bench. He might say, "The Treasury Bench is my washpot and over the Attorney-General have I cast my shoe." He complimented the hon. Member upon his victory. He was entitled to say as he looked at each individual victim on that bench: "A poor thing, but mine own." The Opposition, whether the result was a political advantage or a political misfortune, at least at a time of unexampled stress to every man who was anxious to win his way into the House of Commons, said that they would vote against this measure. But the occupants of the Government Benches were voting for this Bill against their deliberately formed and twice repeated convictions because they dared not face a mutiny which they could not quell—an example which, whether it proved more favourable to their advancement at the polls, would not tend to raise the standard of public morality either in the country or in this House.

^* said that whatever doubt there might be in the minds of other hon. Members as to the mandate which this House received there could be no doubt as to the mandate he received from his constituency upon this question. The question was put to him, "Will you or will you not support the Bill which passed the Second Reading last year?" He knew what he was doing when he said he would support the Bill. He supported this Bill to-day not only because he gave that pledge, but because he believed it to be a right, a true, and a politic Bill to support. He was not ashamed to use the word "politic," because he thought that what this House had got to do as a body and not as a Party was to see that their legislation was politic in the sense of dealing with the great problems with which they were faced. He could not help noticing with some curiosity the way in which the applause which greeted the brilliant utterances of the hon, and learned Gentleman who had just sat down to some extent ceased when he said that the microscopic band of stalwarts with whom he sat had told their constituents that they would vote against the Bill, and he was curious to see how many even of that small body would have the courage to go into the lobby against this measure. The hon. and learned Member had had the boldness to ask the House to reject this Bill, but the extraordinary thing about it was that he had not studied it. Had he done so he would have found that the Bill extended the same privileges to the masters' associations as to the men's unions. When they listened to brilliant utterances of the kind delivered by the hon. and learned Gentleman they must sometimes say to themselves, would that there was a little more Christian charity and less brilliancy, and that there was a little more care on the part of Members in dealing with a Bill to which they were opposed. As he read the clause which had been most debated in the Bill, it applied equally to associations of men and of masters. Labour Members asked for no privileges. What they asked for was that when there were exceptional circumstances, whether those exceptional circumstances were on the masters' side or on the men's side, this House should deal with the question from a practical and sensible point of view.

said he did not, of course, suggest for a moment that the words used in the section were words incapable of including an association of employers. The only privileges given in the Bill to an association of employers, however, were to do things which under no conceivable circumstances did they desire to do.

said he merely wished to point out that the third clause applied equally to associations of masters and associations of men, and as the hon. and learned Gentleman had asked the Labour Members whether they were prepared to extend the same privileges to the masters as to the men he said it was already in the Bill. The hon. and learned Gentleman should at least have had the courtesy to read the Bill before attacking it. His hon. and learned friend seemed to think that there was some magic force in the fact that this particular Clause 3 was not in the previous Act of Parliament. Of course, if it had been, it would not be required in this Bill. They had a clause about picketing in the Act of 1859, and it was considered to be the law until the Trade Union Act was passed by a Tory Government in 1875. What was the argument on the other side?

The argument against picketing was that it meant the legalisation of 100 people instead of one. But the Bill did not deal with one man or with 100 men. All it did was to make the action lawful so long as it was done peacefully. It was not lawful if it was not done peacefully, and it was begging the question to say that, because a thing which was right in itself might be abused, the House should not sanction it. The opposition to the clause was past praying for, and, whether it was the Government Bill or the present Bill, he believed the House would accept by an overwhelming majority this alteration of the law. With regard to the clause which defined the law of conspiracy he was going to let the House into one of the secrets of the law. When they wanted to get any evidence in a case, and when they did not know how to get that evidence in any other way, they got up a conspiracy count. The result was that every-thing Mrs. Smith said to Mrs. Jones was admissible as evidence. He thought that if the Bill defined that law in a clear and simple manner a great service would be done to the law of the country. This very clause was in the Act of 1875, but it only applied to criminal proceedings. He failed to see any reason at all for that limitation, and this Bill proposed that the same law should apply to a civil action as well. Could they have a simpler or more useful reform in the law? He could not take the view which was put by the Attorney-General the other day. The question of whether there was any evidence of agency might be a question for the judge, but the question of whether those who were picketing were picketing as agents or not would on every occasion be submitted to a special jury of employers. As to the main clause in the present Bill, he preferred it to the corresponding clause in the Bill of the Government. He had had some experience of these cases on behalf of both the masters and the men, and he said without hesitation that the tribunal before which they came was never a fair tribunal. If any such provision as that mentioned in the speech of the Attorney-General the other day were to be put into a Bill of this kind it could only be put in side by side with a reform of the jury law of this country. He did not like the clause in the Government Bill: it was not workable. He liked the clause in the Bill now before the House because it was a clear, simple, and practical form of raising the issue. What was the issue in this matter? He did not care whether he could show that in law there was a light to do it before. From 1871 to 1892 it was universally regarded as the position of trade unions— and that position existed without any damage to the welfare of the country. They were, therefore, speaking from experience in advocating this amendment of the law. Moreover, they were not putting in the clause in the dark, because for twenty years, from 1871 to 1892 it was the law, and the trade unions of the country did not abuse the position. There were no bodies of men to whom the country owed more than to the trade unions. They had turned warfare, which was always a terrible thing, whether it were national, civil, or domestic, into as peaceful a groove as was possible, and every large employer of labour who had experience of those matters would say that he would rather deal with a trade union than with anybody also. It was idle as an argument to say that, because they could not get their damages out of people who happened to be poor, therefore they should get them from rich funds which were never intended for that purpose. It happened daily that people who had done wrong were proceeded against, and that damages could not be got from them because they were poor; but that was no reason why they should hit some body else. Under this Bill the liability of the individual would remain, and every member of the organisation would be liable for his actions if they were wrong. Then there was the argument that the funds could be divided as between the war fund and the benefit fund. He had a great objection to that. The trade unions all said that would not work, and he understood why. It was because they must either have it with the power to I transfer the funds backwards and for wards or without. If without, then the inducement to the union would be to use the money allotted to warlike purposes for a strike; if with, they could transfer the money from the war fund the minute before a strike, and transfer it back after wards. That was an impolitic thing to suggest and it was a thing which the trade union leaders themselves were not in favour of. This was a measure of justice and he objected to the term "privileged class."

The Attorney-General said so.

said he objected to the phrase all the same, and he objected to it all the more because the limitation of the law of agency to a special class as proposed in the Government Bill would have exactly the same effect. The Bill dealt with the necessities of a particular case in a proper, statesmanlike manner. He preferred this Hill to that of the Government, he had pledged himself to vote for it, he believed it to be a right, prudent, and practical measure; and he hoped that the House, which was elected on more democratic principles than any Parliament of the past, would register its vote in favour of what he believed to be a truly sound democratic measure.

said that the hon. Member for East Manchester had referred to the suggestion that there might be a division of the funds of a trade union between the fighting contributions and the benefit contributions. Speaking for a large society he wished to say that they had no fund except what was called a war fund. That intensified their anxiety to see this Bill passed. Their fund was not so much a war fund as a law fund, and a large part of their resources had been used to find out what the law was. He wished to associate himself with the views of his trade union friends. He thought the necessity for such a Bill would be emphasised by the speech of the hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool. Previous speakers on the Government Benches had made special reference to the fact that while this was a trade union disputes Bill there were thousands of men and women engaged in industries who were not members of the trade unions. He wanted to say on behalf of the great societies of workmen that, though this question had arisen acutely in those days, there appeared to be at present much more friendly and agreeable relations between large employers of labour and representative workmen than at any period during the last thirty years. He himself was associated with a great industry in which both employers and employed tried to obviate strikes. It would not be denied here or outside that no institutions had conferred greater benefits on the community than the trade unions of this country. The trade unions in carrying on their work were not unmindful of the benefits which those in the industrial community who were not trade unionists received as the re- sult of the action of the unions. The wages of workmen stood relatively 40 per cent. higher than in the year 1888, and the workmen who were not members of the unions shared in the advantages. When hon. Members spoke of the iniquities of the unions he would point out that so far in their operations the unions had done more to raise the status of non-union men in all classes of labour than any other societies in the kingdom. The hon. Member who opposed the Bill had said that there was no ambiguity about his position as he had stated to the electors what would be his line of action in regard to the Bill. He would remind the hon. Gentleman that there was no ambiguity about the position of the supporters of the Bill. They had endeavoured to make this question clear before the great industrial communities. If he rightly understood the feeling of this House there was a pretty general agreement on the question. There was a desire on the part of the majority that the question should be settled on fair and equitable lines. He observed that the hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool—he supposed it was a perfectly legitimate thing for the hon. Member to do—sought to place the position of the Government in a somewhat unenviable light. If he understood the position of the Government as reflected in the speech of the hon. and learned the Attorney-General, it was that on this main Question of Clause 3, the decision was to be left to the judgment of the House. He did not know that there was anything unfair in that. It might be, in the minds of some people like the hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool, a proper thing to take advantage of the moment to place the Government in an unenviable position in regard to their decision as to Clause 3. He was not in the position, as a lawyer, to defend a great constitutional question, but to his mind that position was a most honourable one. This new House had been returned to reflect the wishes of the constituencies at the recent election, and he could not conceive a more fitting subject for the Government to leave to the Members of this new House to express their uninfluenced opinion upon than the provisions contained in this clause. Nobody knew better than the Government themselves that this was one of the questions which must be settled on the lines of the Bill before the House. It was manifest that in a great constitutional country like this it was impossible that these great organisations should continue long without being put on an equitable basis in relation to the rest of the community. If a large conciliation board controlling the interests of a great industry came to a decision, and against that decision a section of the workmen rebelled, as the law stood now it was within the right of the employers to put the workmen into court for fourteen days wages for ceasing work without giving proper notice, and in addition to that they could take the great society which was dealing with the problem before the courts and get damages from it. But if the employers declined to agree to the decision of their board the workman could not sue them to get damages. This was manifestly unfair. Workmen and employers should be placed in exactly the same position. He wished especially to impress upon the House that trade unions should not be hampered in their work by any law which was so ambiguous, so difficult to understand, and so uncertain as the present law. To his mind one of the duties of the House was to make the law as between workmen and employers so easy and plain that the ordinary man could understand what it meant. His objection to Clause 3 of the Government's Bill was that it contained provisions of a character that would lead to constant friction and litigation between great societies and employers. For these reasons he hoped the House would unanimously endorse the Bill now before it.

; said he wished to present, in as few words as possible, the views which the Irish Party took in regard to the Bill before the House. This was the third time on which this Bill had been brought to a division, and on the two previous occasions every Irish Member present had voted for the Second Reading Indeed, on the very last occasion, fifty Irish Members who had crossed to Dublin to attend a National Convention, re-crossed the Channel the following night in order to take part in the division. Last year, when this Bill went before the Grand Committee on Law, every Irish Member who was on that Committee voted in every division against any Amendment to the Bill. That being so, the position of the Irish Members was perfectly clear. They would give this Bill, as on the two previous occasions, their united and unqualified support. Their reason for doing so was equally clear. They recognised that they had in the Labour Party in this House, and in the country, a body of men friendly towards the political aspirations and social needs of Ireland; and they were glad to co-operate with them in any measure for the benefit of the classes they represented whose desire was to obtain conditions for a higher and better state of existence than they could enjoy at present. As with the two previous Bills, so with this, they commanded the support of the Irish Party on its merits. He had listened to all the debates, and although it might be presumptious on his part, he did not hesitate to say that the arguments against this Bill, and all other measures of a like nature, were nothing but a mass of specious special pleading which was refuted by the notorious facts and circumstances of the case. One of the proposals of the Bill was to sweep away the doctrine of conspiracy in the matter of trade disputes. That doctrine of law had worked more practical evil than almost any other and had been more onesided in its application. However it might be regarded by the judges or however it might be looked upon as a legal theory, he believed that it had been constantly used as an engine of oppression in the hands of the rich against the poor, in the hands of the classes against the masses, in the hands of the employer against the employee. It had always confounded the innocent with the guilty, and had turned a laudable public movement into a series of Crimea against society and the State. Moreover, he thought it would be admitted, even by lawyers, that no greater charge could be brought against a law than that it was uncertain. Anyone who knew anything about the law of conspiracy would acknowledge that. He had heard the law of conspiracy defined in Ireland as a means of punishing anybody whom the Judge did not like. This uncertainty had become proverbial. A few years ago the House of Lords decided the famous case of Allen v. Flood; and two years afterwards the same tribunal had before it the case of Quinn v. Leatham in which the same considerations seemed, to most people outside the Courts, to be involved; but that same Court upset all that had been decided in the case of Allen v. Flood. A result like that seemed to him to be a snare and a nuisance, as dangerous to the individual as it was to public liberty; and the only thing to do was to sweep it away. In face of the undeniable facts, it was to him very strange that this discussion had taken place at all. He was one of those who took it for granted that everything proposed to be legalised by this Bill was actually the law until 1900—or for a period of a quarter of a century. Picketing was supposed to be legalised by the Act of 1875. The funds of trade unions were supposed to be protected by the Act of 1875. It was now too late for hon. Gentlemen to say that the case should not be reopened. He would suggest to hon. Gentlemen who were trying to oppose the Bill and who would move wrecking Amendments that they were doing a -dangerous thing. Because, when these concessions were made in 1875, it was after a time when acts of violence had been committed on a large scale; and the people might come to the conclusion that what was refused to be conceded to the masses in a time of peace was conceded to them in a time of war. When he said that the Irish Members intended to support every line of this Bill, he was bound, at the same time, to express his regret on their behalf that it did not contain provisions to cover other cases than trade disputes. The title of the Bill rendered it capable of being extended, and justified Irish Members in moving Amendments to cover cases with which they were familiar. During the last quarter of a century the Irish people had been engaged in what he might call, without exaggeration, a struggle for their lives and for a bare living. The unreformed Land Court of Ireland, and even the reformed Land Court, permitted them to be robbed of their property, driven out of the country or into the workhouses, and even exterminated by the Irish landlords. To protect themselves they formed combinations for the purpose of defeating these efforts of the landlord class. These associations were as much public associations as any trade union. Their objects were stated upon public platforms, and none of them had ever been assailed as in any way illegal, immoral, or unworthy. Generally speaking, the programmes of these associations embraced objects which had actually been translated into Acts of Parliament, especially into the last great Irish Laud Act of 1903, which made it certain that in a comparatively short period of time landlordism would be swept out of existence altogether. Accompanying this agitation some persons were alleged to have committed crimes. It was open to the Government to have punished those people, but instead of trying to punish them the Government, whether it was Liberal or Unionist, tried to get at people who had done no wrong at all, but who were associated together for the purpose of procuring the very reforms which Parliament had now sanctioned. He would content himself with one illustration. It was absolutely necessary that a large property in the west of Ireland—the De Freyne estate—should in the interests of the people be bought out under the Land Act of 1903. The association organised by the people sympathised with that view and determined to carry it out, and it had been carried out, but before Lord De Freyne consented to sell his estate to his tenants he brought civil actions against thirty people for conspiracy, only four or five of whom had said a single word or done a single act in connection with the sale of the estate. The action was settled, but if it had gone on and had succeeded, as it probably would have done if the law of conspiracy had been interpreted in the same way as it generally was, not only would the four or five people who had spoken or done something in reference to the transactions on that estate have been punished, but twenty-seven other people who never did anything at all, but who were merchants of Dublin, and who only learned of the transactions by seeing their names on a writ, would have been equally punished, under this law of conspiracy which the House was now seeking to get rid of in the case of trade unions. There was moreover a special grievance of which men in Ireland had to complain. If a man was sued in this country civilly in a trade dispute he had the protection of a special jury, but in Ireland in 1887 a perpetual act was passed under which it was possible for any Government, at any moment to appoint two men as magistrates, who would be removable at the pleasure of the Government, to decide upon any question of conspiracy. They might not even be lawyers. If the trade unions had a grievance the tenantry of Ireland had a larger grievance. The Irish Members would avail themselves of the title of the Bill which spoke of other than trade disputes to move Amendments, and he was sure they would have the hearty and unanimous support which they now extended towards the Bill reciprocated by the Labour Members and the other supporters of the measure.

^* said he recognised that a large measure of the support he obtained at the last election was due to the fact that he had pledged himself to support the Trade Disputes Bill on the lines introduced in 1903. In the division which he had the honour to represent the electorate was composed largely of workers representative of some of the leading industries of the country, and their views as regards this measure might be regarded as those generally prevailing. Objection seemed to be raised to the Bill now before the House chiefly on the ground that its provisions were opposed to existing legal doctrines. He ventured the opinion that the conditions of trade unions required distinct and separate legislation. Their object was distinct from that of other associations, and he felt sure that this measure would largely tend to place them on a firmer basis. Coming as he did in contact with many employers of labour not only in this country, but on the Continent and in the United States, he found it to be generally admitted that trade unions well conducted on equitable lines were a source of strength and the means of bringing about a greater degree of friendship between employers and employed, thereby facilitating, in no small measure, the industrial prosperity of this and other countries. With regard to the manner in which trade unions were conducted in this country—this House had a special opportunity of judging that the leaders were well selected, that they were well adapted for loading men in a just and moderate path, and that they desired equal justice to employer and employed. It had been suggested in the course of the debate that the funds of associations of employers under this Bill would be liable to attack, while those of the men's organisations would be immune, but his experience was that there would be little danger to the employers, as their funds were really not available; they were mostly small, raised in order to provide lunches at the monthly meetings when their policy was discus wd and arranged. This Parliament would have to consider the necessity of some measure for bringing men back to the land and relieving the congestion of the cities and urban districts, but he ventured to think that until the agricultural labourer recognised the importance of combination and mutual protection, and adopted a system of trade unionism, no scheme, however well founded, would lead to the desired result. He supported this measure because he was confident it would bring about a sense of satisfaction and security where disquietude and discontent now prevailed, and that it would tend to help and forward our industrial and commercial welfare.

congratulated the hon. Member for the Wellington Division on his maiden speech, and said he was very much in accord with him. Of course he was not a Labour Member, but he was an agricultural representative and had taken a great deal of interest in this Bill. He was bound to say that he preferred the Bill promoted by the hon. Gentleman below the gangway to the Bill introduced by the Government a few days ago. The Government Bill seemed to him to be, in a Parliamentary sense, a quibble. The Government were running with the hare and hunting with, the hounds. Their Bill was full of barbed wire entanglements, and no ordinary man could understand it. The Bill promoted by the hon. Gentleman below the gangway was perfectly plain, and the House knew what the hon. Gentleman wanted. The Government during the election had given a good many promises which were now maturing. That was their affair. They had laid down the wine and they must drink it. They had made their bed and must lie on it. He was glad he had not to do so.

declared that nine-tenths of the hon. Members on his side of the House who represented large constituencies were steeped to the lips in pledges to vote for this Bill. He considered it fortunate that the fortunes of the ballot had enabled this Bill to be brought in at a time when it was extremely desirable that the Government should know the real extent of the feeling of the majority of Members of the House, and when they could redeem their promises. This Bill differed very materially in one respect from the Government measure in the clause which gave immunity to the executive officials of trade unions. That provision, in his opinion, was very just, because it would put them on a perfect equality with the employers' association. No doubt other hon. Members had received a pamphlet from the Mining Association of Great Britain in regard to this Bill. In it reference was made to the observations of Mr. Justice Farwell in the Taff Vale case against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. The learned Judge said— possess by reason of the difference in the nature of the two classes of organisation. With regard to the masters the situation was a simple one. They had no need to federate or to incorporate themselves in any shape or form. But trade unions were bound to do so, because their funds, although subscribed in sixpences or shillings, amounted in the aggregate to many millions of pounds, and it was absolutely necessary that they should be protected by the appointment of a proper board of management or executive. When the masters resolved to form themselves into an association they had no necessity to federate; they did not accumulate funds, because whenever cash was required cheques were at once forthcoming for £50, or £100 or even £1,000 at a time. And, not being federated, there was no one who could be shot at, or against whom an action would lie. In the course of the business with which he was connected he had had to deal with many so-called merchants' and manufacturers' associations, and when he wanted to purchase goods at a reduced price he had been told over and over again by members of such associations that slack as trade was, and desirous as they were of picking up orders, they could not possibly accept his terms, because it would expose them to a heavy monetary penalty—even up to £200. They went on to explain to him that in conjunction with a number of manufacturers they had entered into a bond by which they became liable to this penalty if they broke the rules of the association. No doubt they had a perfect right to enter into these agreements if they chose, but he gathered from speeches made in that House that while individual action was legal, it became a conspiracy when two or three men joined; and he wanted to know why merchants should be allowed thus to conspire to prevent him having the full benefit of an unprotected trade. These men conspired not only to keep up prices of goods, but also to keep down the prices of labour, to maintain long working hours, and to fight any provisions which the Government in its wisdom might make for the regulation of their trade. Yet the working me who might feel that they were injure by the action of these men had no opportunity of taking action against them.

He supported this Bill with great heartiness, because it would place workmen on an absolute equality with their employers. It did not make them absolutely immune from the law, and so far as he knew the Labour leaders never had claimed or even desired such immunity. They said that if a man broke the law he should be made responsible for it, but that the funds subscribed for totally different purposes, for sickness and old-age pensions, etc., should not be liable. Unless the Government accepted this Bill the agitation would continue until working men had secured what they wanted. He asked the Government not to make two bites at the cherry; not to place themselves in opposition to the justly expressed wishes of the representatives of the trade unions; they might with their majority throw out the Bill, but it would mean the commencement of a fresh era of agitation which must in the end prevail. How many hon. Members, especially on the Government side, had declared over and over again in their election speeches that "the principle of Liberalism is trust in the people." This measure merely embodied that principle. It gave no improper immunity to trade unions. The immunity which it embodied was enjoyed for a period of twenty-one years—up till quite recently. In that time strikes were continually diminishing; disputes decreased; trade boomed, and the prosperity of the country increased. While strikes had been fewer and feuds less bitter in this country the very reverse had been the case on the continent. Ought not these facts to encourage them to support this Bill, and to make certain the immunity which trade unionists believed they had so long enjoyed?

remarked upon the very significant fact that with the exception of the Attorney-General himself and the hon. Member for North-West Durham, not a single Member on the opposite side of the House had said a word in support of the Government measure. As the Attorney-General had rather cast doubt on the statement of the hon. Member for the Clitheroe Division that he had pledged himself in his election campaign to the support of this Bill, he would like to read the answer given by the hon. and learned Gentleman at a meeting held under the auspices of the Middleton branch of the Yorkshire Miners' Association on January 11th. The question put was—

"Are you in favour of the Trade Disputes Bill, the whole Bill, as introduced into Parliament last year and approved by the organised workers of the country?"

The answer of the Attorney-General was plain and specific. It was—

"Yes, I am. I have previously supported the Bill, and was only prevented last year by illness from doing so again."

What has been read by the hon. Member is substantially accurate. I have voted for a Bill on these lines before; but I have voted for a Bill on these lines before, as I am prepare to vote for it again, because it was the only mode of dealing with this question. But I may say that, so far from having pledged myself to the scheme which he favours in preference to the scheme which I suggest, I pointed out at a large meeting of trade unionist boilermakers on that very night my own scheme, and I invited them to say whether they thought it right to insist upon a position which would enable them to repudiate responsibility for the deliberately authorised act or policy of their union, and there was not one of them who did not prefer my scheme.

^* said that unfortunately there was no one to put the other side of the case. He could quite understand that the hon. and learned Gentleman would put the question to an unlearned and unlettered audience in such a way as to obtain a particular answer. But he had photographs of some of the posters which the hon. and learned Gentleman used in his election and they all were headed— Division of Liverpool had been the principal speaker in opposition to this measure The hon. Member had a pretty wit, which the House enjoyed, and a vivid imagination, which had led him into mistakes as to the meaning of this Bill and what it would accomplish if it became law. The hon. Member had pointed out that there were more workmen in this country outside trade unions than there were inside by some millions. That, unfortunately for those men, was true. But the Bill imposed no disability on working men outside trade unions. It sometimes happened that the men who were not trade unionists wanted to strike and in the course of the strike wanted to picket. The picketing clause of this Bill applied equally to them as to organised labour. The House was warned as to what would happen if 100 men turned out peacefully to persuade one man to abstain from work. A hundred men turning out for the purpose would be a nuisance and could be dealt with by the common law. It was not proposed to abrogate the common law but to remove the limitation imposed on picketing by the law courts. The promoters of the Bill asked that the pickets should be allowed not only to state the facts but to use arguments to persuade a man to abstain from working. If they exceeded the limits of peaceful persuasion they could be indicted for a broach of the peace, and prosecuted the same us any one else. The Bill applied equally to employers and to employed. If employers formed a combination, as they were entitled to do, this Bill protected their funds in the same way as it protected the funds of the workmen's organisations. The hon. Member had also said that the trade unions funds were never immune from liability for damage since the passing of the Act of 1871, and had asserted that those funds were always liable to be assessed in respect of damage resulting from the action of local agents or members of the union. By the strict interpretation of the law that might have been so, although that had been disputed by as great legal luminaries as those who had so interpreted the law. But whatever the theory was, under the law of 1871 and 1875 it was practically impossible to bring an action against a union. Previous to the amending law of 1881, action had to be brought against every individual man of the union, and the interest of each man in the funds of the union had to be specified, and it was physically impossible to sue 1,000 members of an organisation and specify the particular interest of each individual in the funds of the organisation. But for that fact a clause on the lines of this Bill would have been inserted in the Act of 1871. It was assumed at the time that the Act legalising trade unions made it impossible for a trade union to sue or be sued. That fact was assumed, and that being so, it was not thought necessary to discuss the question. The reason the House of Lords was able to give a decision against the trade union was because the law of judicature was amended in 1881—ten years after the passing of the Trade Unions Act. The House of Commons were now asked to put the trade unions upon the footing on which they were in 1871, and the footing upon which they would still have been but for the passing of the Act of 1881, and the rules made in respect to that Act. They were asking for no new principle to be introduced into the law of England. They asked the House to do what a former House of Commons did thirty-five years ago. It was said they were claiming special class legislation, but they were not. But even so, they were entitled to claim special legislation because of the circumstances of the case. What was the Workmen's Compensation Act but class legislation? That Act took the workman outside the operation of the common law of the land because the circumstances of the case justified that's being done. Therefore they would in a large measure be justified, even if they were now to demand this as a piece of class legislation, if the trade unions were shown to be, as they believed they were, in a position which was unfair as compared with that of the employers' organisations. The funds of a trade union were its war ammunition and commissariat. Without funds union labour disputes could not be carried on. All they asked was that since trade unions and strikes had been legalised, the means by which the unions were able to conduct strikes should not be at the mercy of their opponents.

They did not desire strikes. No person who had been engaged m one strike even desired to engage in another. He would add only one final word. As had been said by the previous speaker, if by any mischance the Bill now before the House was rejected and that of the Government put in its place, they would refuse to accept such a Bill as a settlement of the question. Such a thing would lead to a long conflict in the House itself and outside the House, and hon. Gentlemen on both sides who had had some experience of what organised labour could do when in earnest would not desire a repetition of the experience of the last election. Hon. Gentlemen on all sides of the House would not desire this question to remain as a disturbing element in politics. He hoped therefore that as the Government had decided and was fledged to the country to deal with this question they would deal with it in such a way as to remove it for ever from the field of politics. What they suggested was that the funds of the unions—not the individual members or officers of the unions, but the funds should be absolutely immune from attack. That was the demand of the trade union Members, and he hoped that whoever spoke on behalf of the Government to-day would take up a more sympathetic attitude towards the main principle than that which the Attorney-General had taken up two days previously. They were in earnest in this matter. If it were said that the passing of this Bill would lead to a conflict in another House, his reply was, leave that to the Labour Members. Whoever came into conflict with the movement of organised labour upon this question would live to rue the day that they ever entered the lists.

I wish to say comparatively few words on this matter. I am old enough as a Parliamentarian to have been in the House at the time when the legislation with which we are dealing was commenced, and I remember following with great interest what took place at the time. But I never have been, and I do not profess to be now very intimately acquainted with the technicalities of the question, or with, the legal points involved in it. The great object then was, and still is, to place the two rival powers of capital and labour on an equality, so that the fight between them, so far as fight was necessary, should be at least a fair one. At that time workmen were prohibited from combining for the purpose of protecting their interests, and in many other ways were under restrictions. The Bills which were passed between 1870 and 1880 had a most beneficent effect. They gave life and strength to the trade unions, very much to the alarm of a great body of opinion in the country, which had contracted a habit of looking upon those associations with dread and suspicion. That prejudice still lurks in some quarters; but the great mass of opinion in the country recognise fully now the beneficent nature of the trade union organisations, and recognise also the great services that those organisations have done in the prevention of conflict and the promotion of harmony between labour and capital. I believe myself that all the best employers —I almost hope, I might say, all the good employers—in the country welcome anything which gives freedom and power to associations of so useful and beneficent a character as these. That is a great revolution in the attitude of public feeling, and that is a revolution which we are bound to take into account to-day. Well, notwithstanding all that was done, the trade unions were subject, as my hon. and learned friend the Attorney-General said the other day, to the rigorous application of the law of agency, which was inapplicable to those organisations. And judicial decisions, which may have been right or may have been wrong—with that I have no concern—have undoubtedly defeated the intention of Parliament. I do not think that this can be denied, and there is one piece of evidence which I think is very strong, which may have been quoted already. It is the evidence of a distinguished servant of the State who took a leading part in the promotion of this legislation at the time I refer to. He was by no means a revolutionary; I mean Sir Godfrey Lushington. In an article three or four years ago he repudiates altogether the modern judicial practice that the law of agency was by implication incorporated in the Act of 1875. He says—

"I may be permitted to say that the intention thus attributed by judicial inference to Parliament was, in my belief, contrary to what was intention in fact Few, I think, can doubt this who read Lord Aberdare's speech, in introducing the measure, and as a matter of history, the question of the liability of trade unions funds was not publicly mooted either before or during the proceedings of Parliament, and indeed not afterwards for thirty years. At the time it was not dreamt of—"

this is the statement of a man who was up to the elbows in the preparation and carrying out of that legislation—

"if any proposition of the sort had been started it would have been stoutly opposed."

Now here we have, as I say, and authoritative opinion, from almost the highest authority, and the corollary of this is that the state of things which we seek to amend to-day has been produced by Judge-made law, directly counter to the intended law of Parliament. Meritorious though the Judge-made law-may be, or the reverse, it has never; been sanctioned; on the contrary, it has been expressly disavowed by Parliament. That makes it all the more unfair to taunt the unions who have been deprived of their legal rights by this action of the Judges with seeking a privilege when they come to this House in search of a remedy. We seek to redress that injury in several particulars. The Bill before the House is not an unfamiliar Bill. I myself voted for it two or three times, and I do not remember that I made any reservations. Probably I had not know, ledge enough to invent reservations I always vote on the Second Reading of a Bill with the understood reservation of details, which are to be considered afterwards. That is the universal practice. Shall I repeat that vote to-day? [Cries of "Yes."] I do not see any reason under the sun why I should not. There are three points in these, if I may so call them, rival Bills. On two there is harmony. On the third point there is a difference—not a difference of object, but of method. Therefore the difference narrows itself down greatly. We are going to the same point, but we take different roads to reach it. That is really the state of the case. The principal argument that I have heard used—I do not profess myself to have an adequate acquaintance with the technicalities of the case—in favour of the simpler method which I think is a forcible one, is that the method of restricting; agency leaves pitfalls and loopholes from which there is great danger of producing and multiplying litigation. I do not say that this argument is so conclusive, but so far as it goes it is in favour of that other method. My advice to the House is to pass the Second Reading of this Bill, and the point on which difference exists being a point of detail for Committee, I cannot but hope, nay, I confidently expect, that it may have been found possible before further progress is made in the matter to adjust the differences that exist—differences which are not differences in spirit or tone or in ultimate effect, but in method, and even to some extent in phrase—so that we may attain that which is our common end, namely, the freeing from impediments and risks of those beneficent institutions to which we owe so much in improving not only the condition of the working classes, but the relations between masters and men.

said he had listened to the speech of the Prime Minister during its opening sentences, which dealt with his historical revision in doubt. He had heard the conclusion of the speech with blank amazement. It was incredible that the right hon. Gentleman should on Friday ask the House to vote for this Bill when his Attorney-General had on Wednesday put forward, in solemn argument, reasons for adopting another course.

He said he hoped it would be left to the judgment of the House.

We did not so understand the Attorney-General.

I said it twice.

asked why, if the Attorney-General meant that this was an open question, he used three or four cogent arguments against taking the very course which the Prime Minister now advised the House to take. He was astonished, and his astonishment was shared by the great majority of his right hon. and hon. friends. He knew his hon. friend the Member for the Walton Division hinted that the Prime Minister would advise the House to vote for this measure instead of following tactics with which they were more familiar and leaving it to the decision of the House, but he thought that was a bit of forensic acumen. Except for the hon. Member he did not suppose that anyone else believed that the fight hon. Gentleman would do anything except follow the course taken by the Attorney-General forty-eight hours previously. If it was right for the Prime Minister to advise the House to vote to-day for the third clause—

I did not say so.

said that if the Prime Minister thought it right to advise the House to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill and to leave the adjustment of the third clause over as a matter of detail, then the action of the Government last Wednesday was towards the Labour Party and the large numbers of people whom the Labour Party represented an act of stupid provocation. If the Government were right on Wednesday in warn- ing the House of the great dangers which we should incur if this very course were adopted, their action now was a cowardly surrender. The Prime Minister had said that he could not think of any reason under the sun why he should not advise the House to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill. The reason was sitting on his right in the shape of his own Law Officer. The Prime Minister had indeed refrained from the refined cruelty of asking his Law Officer to say on Friday the reverse, of what he had said on Wednesday, but that was all the consideration which the Attorney -General had received from his colleague. Let the House recall what had been said only two days previously. The Attorney-General not once or twice but on three separate occasions in the course of his speech implored the House to deal very seriously with this matter. The main argument used to-day had been based on the proposition that the funds of trade unions were to have complete immunity. It was juggling with words to say that judge-made law had altered the intention of Parliament. Up to a certain point many of them had admitted that the law of agency pressed hardly on trade unions in this matter, and that it was a question to be carefully considered, but no hon. Members had said, to his knowledge, that they were in favour of granting this complete immunity. It was against such a provision that the hon. and learned Member on Wednesday had warned the House in such solemn tones. The hon. and learned Gentleman had drawn a picture of some of the risks that would be run if they accepted the advice now tendered by the Prime Minister and had invited them, before they put a proposition of tint kind into legislative shape, seriously to consider that it would be impossible to confine it to these combinations. If the Prime Minister had been present during the whole of this debate he would have discovered that it was not the intention of some Members to confine that proposition to trade unions.

If there were any value, as he thought there was in the point made by the hon. Member for East Manchester in reply to his hon. and learned friend the Member land, for the Walton Division of Liverpool, then the Bill of the Labour Party as already drawn would give similar and equal immunity to the funds of any corporation of trade or commerce.

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman does not wish to misrepresent the Bill, but the funds invested in trade and commerce are under statutory regulation now, but of a different kind to that applied to trade unions, and therefore this Bill would not apply to them at all.

I understood the Leader of the Labour Party to accept the point made by the hon. and learned Member for East Manchester that any combination of employers would enjoy under this Bill the same privileges.

A combination of employers to protect their interests as against a combination of workmen to protect theirs.

said that, therefore, if there were any combination of employers such as the Standard Oil Trust in America he presumed they could claim equal immunity. He was not a lawyer, and it might be that the opinion of those who were not lawyers was not worth a brass farthing, but if he had erred in the construction of the Bill, did it not show how right the Attorney-General was to warn the House against adopting a course, which, though it looked so simple, was full of pitfalls? There was another proposal for extending this exemption. The hon. Member for North Dublin, in the absence of the Prime Minister, had informed the Government that if they voted for the Second Reading it would be on the explicit understanding that in Committee they would extend its provisions to agrarian combinations in Ireland.

said he stated that they would give an unqualified and unconditional support to the Second Reading of this Bill, but he pointed out that its title would enable them to extend its scope, and that they intended to get it extended if they could. He did not, however, make the carrying of that Amendment a condition of support to the Bill.

apologised to the hon. Gentleman if he overstated his personal attitude or the attitude of the Nationalist Party.

said he stated at the commencement of his speech that he was speaking for the Party to which he belonged.

said the hon. Gentleman would see that though he had made his position clear he had not in the least touched the argument he was putting before the House, because hon. Members from Ireland would desire an extension of the provisions of the Bill. There fore the Attorney-General was wise in warning the House that they could not pass the Bill as if it were a matter restricted wholly to trade unions, but that if they passed a law based on this proposition of complete immunity for one body in the State, it was obvious that other bodies would come, if not in this Session, in succeeding sessions, to ask for immunity. That was a grave danger. Three times the Attorney-General asked the House seriously to consider that danger. Was the Prime Minister serious in the action he had taken? Because, if he was, his action amounted almost to a breach of faith with the House of Commons. Not only did the Attorney-General ask the House to hesitate before they adopted this proposal but three times he told the House that they were to have ample opportunity to consider his Bill, and he held out the hope that, after mature consideration, they would find his solution—which was the solution of the Government—efficient and satisfactory. Those were ample pledges to the House of Commons that they were not to be committed to any other solution until they had the solution of the Government before them. He did not know whether the Attorney-General thought it sufficient to say in reply that his Bill was circulated with the votes this evening. The House ought to have the opportunity of examining the Government measure in print before they were called on to decide on another measure. They had not had sufficient opportunity to take all the precautions enjoined upon them by the Attorney-General. Having read the proposals of the Government in print the House ought to have the advantage of hearing an explanation of the proposals, and a repetition of the warnings of the Attorney-General, or the reason given why they had evaporated in so short a time. The House was not being fairly used by the Government in this matter. It was not as if the Bill brought in by the Government on Wednesday was a measure that had been hastily put together. It was the result of the legal advice, not only of the Attorney-General, but also of the great legal authorities who sat in the Cabinet, whose views in this matter they knew to be opposed to the Bill the Government had asked the House to support. It was within the knowledge of all who had studied the question that the Chancellor of the Exchequer less than three years ago depre- cated the royal road of complete immunity as forcibly as the Attorney-General deprecated it two days ago. They had the advantage of the advice of these legal luminaries and of those who voted for the Bill of the Labour Party with reservation and of those who voted for it without reservation; they had the advice of these three bodies on mixing the ingredients, and then, as Lord Rosebery said, three men made the salad when a fourth man came in and threw it out of the window. [An HON. MEMBER: You won't throw this out.] The Government would gain nothing by their pusillanimous surrender of to-day. Did the Prime Minister mean that the clause of the Attorney-General was the same thing in effect as Clause 3 of the Bill of the Labour Party? Did the Government allow the Attorney-General to make that speech of solemn warning to the House knowing all the time that, there was another road to the same goal? They behaved like gipsies who stole the children of others, and, having disfigured them, passed them oft as their own. Was this putting up of the Attorney-General with his wire entanglements but another example of the elaborate transparent subterfuges to which the House was growing accustomed? When the Government tried to hoodwink one section of the House, they openly winked with a leer at another. If Clause 3 of the Labour Party's Bill was the same as Clause 4 of the Government Bill, what was the meaning of the speech of the Attorney-General? Was the Prime Minister going to send this Bill to a Grand Committee?

I do not know. I think those in charge of the Bill should be asked that question.

I do not think that, after the experience of the handling of the Bill of last year by the right hon. Gentleman and his friends, they are likely to hanker after a Grand Committee.

said he ought to have known. They on the Opposition side had not yet learnt their lesson, He did not know that when the Labour Party were in charge of a Bill they were also in charge of the Government. He therefore dismissed the hypothesis that this Bill was going to a Grand Committee. Was the Government Bill going to a Grand Committee? The Prime Minister had told the House that a judicious blend of the two Bills was ultimately to be reached, but was he going to send both to a Select Committee? They did not know. They were invited to vote on this measure based on a principle against which they had been warned by the Attorney-General forty-eight hours ago, and they did not know whether the two Bills were to be taken together or whether this Bill was to have precedence of the Government Bill. The Prime Minister was trifling with the House and had broken faith with it. The opportunity for the mature consideration of the Government Bill promised by the Attorney-General had been withheld, and in order that the minority in this House, who had as good right as any men in the House to stand up for fair and open dealing, might protest against Parliament being degraded to the level of the complaisance and surrender of the Government, and, in order that the Prime Minister might tell them how he meant to run these two horses and on which he meant to declare to win, he moved the adjournment of the debate.

Motion made and Question put, "That the debate be now adjourned." —( Mr. Wyndham. )

The House divided:—Ayes, 66; Noes, 370. (Division List No. 35.)

said he voted for the Second Heading of the Trade Disputes Bill last year, mid he wished to give a few reasons why he should take a different course this afternoon. Last year he voted for the Bill on the same grounds that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer did. He was one of those who thought that the late Government ought to have brought forward a measure dealing with this question. That was the main reason which induced him to vote for the Bill last year. He did not, however, bind himself to all the details, and particularly in reference to Clause 3. The Chancellor of the Exchequer on that occasion said there was no reason whatever, although he disagreed with the mode proposed, why he should refuse his assent to the Second Reading of this clause, as well as to the rest of the Bill, but that he proposed to limit the law of agency. He voted in the same way as the right hon. Gentleman because he wished to see a measure brought in with a limitation to the law of agency. In his constituency he had many trade unionists, the greater portion of whom were miners and in representing those miners in the House he took the view which he believed was the view upheld by them. Last year the hon. Member for Mid Durham, in seconding the Bill, used these words, to which he entirely agreed—

"All he said was, 'give us fair play.' He would concede this: that if a Committee or an organisation deputed any man whatever to do that, which might be wrong, he had no objection to it being made liable, because it was the union itself which was doing it. But if he went to a place where there was a strike without the sanction of the Committee, and urged the men to do that which was wrong, he ought to be punished, and the funds ought not to be mulcted."

That was the view of the hon. Member for Mid Durham, and he gathered last year that it was also the view of the right hon. Member for Morpeth. Again, in answer to Sir Robert Finlay, the then Attorney - General, the hon. Member for Mid Durham said that when an unlawful act had been committed, and the trade organisation or general council had given instructions, there was no reason why they should not be held responsible. He gathered that these were the views of men like the right hon. Member for Morpeth and the miners' representatives for the North, and the threats of the Labour Party would make no difference to the course he should pursue. He took his view on this question from the Members for Mor- peth and Mid Durham, and the words last year of the hon. Member for Mid Durham justified him in preferring the Government Bill to the present measure. The mover of the Bill said that what they claimed was complete immunity from the law for their funds. Were all other bodies and individuals to have complete immunity from the law for their funds or not? The Prime Minister had stated that he was going to vote for the Bill. He did not know whether that announcement was meant as a lead to the House or not. He should vote against the Bill not on political grounds—it was not their duty to prevent this egg being laid in the nest of the Government, as it might produce very uncomfortable consequences—but because he had an honest conviction that the Bill introduced by the Government was a far better one, and ought to receive their support. He looked on the conduct of the Government with astonishment. They had imitated the tactics of the late Government in running away from their own measures. That was an example which he should have thought they would avoid when they saw the result those tactics had produced in the Unionist Party. Did Members opposite think they would escape the same consequences? He was sorry to say that Liberal ideas of statesmanship now seemed to be contained in one phrase—devolution of responsibility and concession to clamour.

^* said the House always accorded generous treatment to its new Members and not the less readily when the topic under discussion was difficult in principle and complex in its details. He laboured under the disadvantage of following the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover. But although he followed that gentleman in point of tune he would not follow him in his spirit of Party recrimination. The right hon. Gentleman repudiated any connection with law. He could not help feeling as he listened to the rhetorical vehemence of his speech what a great loss it wits to the Old Bailey that the right hon. Gentleman had not adopted the profession of the law, for the right hon. Gentleman had at least mastered one maxim of the legal profession—"when you have a bad case drag in your opponent's attorney, and indulge in strong language and abuse at the expense of your opponent." He thought it was more important now that they should deal with the principles involved in this Bill. There was no obligation on them to follow any of those legal by-paths which were sometimes introduced into the discussion. They did not lead to practical results, and he felt that much of the leaning and research often applied to this question really meant waste of time. What they were concerned with to-day was not a question of law, but a question of statesmanship, and it did not concern them to follow the intricate legislation and litigation of the past thirty or forty years. The obligation upon them was to define clearly and beyond all possible dispute what should be the relations of those contending parties in future. He had followed with great care the Report of the Royal Commission, and he felt that for the Commissioners it was a difficult task to steer their course past the obstacles on the one hand and the other with regard to the legal position. They had done so with remarkable skill. It appeared to him that in all the bewildering confusion which had marked the law of the past twenty years, there was only one clear lesson to-day, and that was the absolute and imperative need of simplicity. He thought that Parliament should lay down principles which were unmistakable. Those principles should be laid down m language which was clear and transparent, and which it would be impossible for the ingenuity of lawyers to confuse.

He had referred to this need of simplicity because he wished to deal with what was really the one controversial issue in this dispute, namely, the freedom of trade union funds from liability. He held very strongly the view that the wise course was to adopt the principle of this Bill, and to have a wide, clear, and comprehensive enactment. If Parliament wished to settle the issue itself, and not leave it to the legislative action of the law courts, it could only effect that purpose by adopting some such principle as that contained in the Bill. In the first place there were, as they all knew, practical difficulties in connection with trade union funds. There was the difficulty of distinguishing such parts as were of a charitable or benevolent nature. He did not wish to dwell on that aspect, but it was an important practical point. There was also the principle laid down by the Labour Members that workmen's unions should in practice and in fact be on an equality with employers' associations. Those points had already been dealt with very fully. He would therefore deal only with one or two broad considerations. It was objected, he understood, that if a Bill of this character were passed into law it would place very great, power in the hands of trade unionists. For himself he did not regard power as an evil. The curse of to-day was not the existence of power in organised communities which were capable of exercising if, but the absence of such power, and the impossibility of getting useful things do e because power was refused. Then it was urged that great bodies of working men were not competent to use, or were not worthy to receive, this great power. On that point he should like to say that the reposing of power, or the giving of great responsibility, to large communities of men had in itself a kind of steadying influence upon their actions, It might be that, here and there, individuals whose natures were distorted abused the power which they were permitted to wield, but history had shown that in cases where great numbers of men acted together, power invariably brought with it responsibility and sobriety of judgment, and that the very numbers themselves provided the antidote for the evils which were feared. Then it was said that such a power would be unique and exceptional. It was quite true that the effect of such an enactment would be that these collective funds would not stand on exactly the same footing in the eye of the law as the private property of individuals. But they were not the property of individuals; and he had no hesitation in saying that there was no constitutional ground or grounds of political principle, why the property of communities and the property of individuals should necessarily be bound by the same law. Rules of law properly applicable between individuals did not necessarily apply to aggregations of men. That this was so was conceded by hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House in the fact that they continued to support the old doctrine of conspiracy. What was the law of conspiracy? It was that when they got a quantity of men acting together they got necessarily a difference in the quality of their action. The same principle was recognised in the sphere of international politics where over and over again the local and personal law applicable between individuals yielded to broader considerations of policy in dealing with great masses of mankind. It seemed to him, that here, too, they were dealing with a question of policy which transcended the limited confines of the laws applicable between individual men. He thought there would be no danger in granting a unique position to trade unions, because they could rely on the inherent wisdom and justice of the working classes. If there was one quality which permeated the whole British race more than another it was the quality of practical judgment and a great sense of moderation and justice, and in this question they were entitled to rely on that great quality of the race. When in this House they saw the Labour representatives presenting their views so calmly, so considerately, and with such a spirit of moderation, they were entitled to draw the inference that they would use this power with similar discretion. They had the evidence before their own eyes. Then, too, the experience, of the past thirty years had given clear evidence that the power which was asked would be used in such a spirit. It was of the greatest national importance that trade unions should be strong. They had been valuable in preventing great trade disputes. That was much. But they were also needed for national work. One of the greatest problems before the nation was that of distribution. This problem the Trade Unions were helping to solve step by step and without revolution or disastrous social strife. In that way they were taking their part n a great national movement. The should receive a full measure of confidence and be drawn more and more into responsibility and be made strong. They should receive such immunity in respect of their funds as would enable them not only to deal with trade disputes but to help in solving the important social problems before the country.

He supported the broad principle of the Bill.

^* said they were under some difficulty in discussing this question on account of the course taken by the Government. He had not had an opportunity of reading the Bill which was introduced by the Attorney-General, and had been circulated only that morning. He voted last year against the Trade Disputes Bill mainly because of what was proposed by the third clause, and he objected now to the idea of any class being given special privileges. He was quite willing to admit that the law required some change, but what were they to think of the spectacle of the Government running away from their own Bill? The Attorney-General had brought forward excellent arguments for not placing trade union funds above the law, and now, two days afterwards, when another Bill was brought forward on the same subject, the Prime Minister had told them that he was going to leave the matter open, and that he himself would vote

for the Bill. It was amazing that the strongest Government of modern times should run away from their own Bill. The sooner Ministers showed some backbone in dealing with the difficult question before the House, the easier it would be for all Parties to know where they stood and to carry on the business of the country. He protested against being compelled to vote on a Bill of this kind without having a chance of considering the Bill of the Government. If the Government believed in its own Bill, and if its provisions were in accordance with the judgment of Ministers, it was an insult to the House that the Government should say they were going to support a Bill which was an entire contradiction in its main points of the Bill the hon. and learned Attorney-General had outlined. He protested emphatically against the setting up of class privileges in the way proposed by the Bill now before the House, which was to receive the support of the Government against their own arguments and their own good judgment. After many years had been spent in attempts to abolish class privileges, this Bill proposed to re-enact them.

rose in his place and claimed to move "That the Question be now put."

Question put, "That the Question be now put."

The House divided:—Ayes, 404; Noes, 68. (Division List No. 36.)

Question put accordingly.

The House divided: —Ayes, 416; Noes 66 (Division List No. 37.)

Bill read a second time, and committed for Tuesday, April 24th.