reported from the Committee on Group 2 of Railway and Canal Bills; That Mr. Robert Duncan, one of the Members of the said Committee, was not present during the sitting of the Committee this day.

Ordered, That Mr. Robert Duncan do attend the Committee on Group 2 of Railway Bills on Friday, at eleven of the clock.

Gas Companies (Removal of Sulphur Restrictions) Bill. Ordered, That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the South Shields Gas Bill in Session 1904 be referred to the Select Committee on the Gas Companies (Removal of Sulphur Restrictions) Bill.— (The Deputy Chairman.)

^* : I am sorry to inform the House that my hon. and learned friend the Attorney-General is not able to be in his place to move the Second Reading of this Bill. He has been for some time suffering from a malady which has now seriously affected his voice, and although he is, I am happy to say, in process of recovery, it is still quite impossible for him to take any part in this debate. The duty, therefore, devolves upon me, and I wish I could discharge it with anything like the lucidity and power which marked my hon. and learned friend's introduction of the Bill. In one sense the task before me is fairly simple. The great majorities by which Bills on this subject passed their Second Reading in the last House of Commons, and the very striking majority by which the Second Reading of the hon. Member for Newcastle's Bill was passed a few days ago, show that there is almost universal agreement as to the existence of a grievance, and very considerable agreement as to the remedy for it. There are four branches of this subject, each of which is dealt with in a separate clause of the Bill now before the House. They are the law relating respectively to conspiracy, picketing, the law of trade interference, apart altogether from the law of conspiracy—a very important point which happens to be omitted altogether from the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle—and, fourthly, the question as to whether trade unions should be treated as corporate bodies to the extent, at least, of being liable to have actions brought against thorn. So far as the first three of these points are concerned, the debate on the introduction of the Bill disclosed very little difference between the two sides of the House. Indeed, it would be strange if there were any very substantial difference upon these first three points, because the Bill goes not a step further than the recommendations contained in the Report of the Royal Commission appointed by the late Government, a Commission upon which no working man sat, and which had not the advantage of hearing any working-men witnesses. We are sometimes accused in the Press and in circulars of employers' associations of desiring to confer upon trade unions some exceptional privilege or immunity not shared by the community at large. Those who put forward that charge one need only refer to the Report of the Commission appointed by the late Government. On three out of the four points dealt with in this Bill the Commission recommend alterations of the law that we now propose, certainly not on the ground that they confer any exceptional immunity on trade unions, far from it; it was in order, as they told us, to remove exceptional disabilities imposed on these trade unions, disabilities which are contrary to the general spirit of our law, and which a very little reflection will show are completely destructive of that elementary right of combination upon which the freedom and prosperity of the industrial classes of this country so largely depend. And on the fourth point, that relating to the results of the Taff Vale decision, although the Commission did not recommend the course we have adopted, yet by their recommendation on that head they recognised clearly enough that there was a grievance; that the law as it now stands operates unjustly and hardly upon trade unions in this respect. They presented a most admirable Report, from which it is clear that their recommendations are only intended to give to labour the safeguards which the law now confers upon capital and property.

What, then, is the ground of difference between the Government and the Opposition, and in some minor degree for the moment—I hope not for long—between the Government and a considerable section of its supporters? It turns upon the question as to whether or not trade unions are to be treated as corporate bodies to the extent, as I have said, of having actions brought against them. The mere form of the actions which may be brought against trade unions is not of any importance for the purpose of this discussion. We know that trade unions are not now corporate bodies, and the mode of suing them which has been devised or discovered, by which they can nevertheless be treated as though they were corporate bodies, is by means of what is called a representative action. This is a legal formality with which I do not propose to trouble the House. The substance of the thing is perfectly clear. The question is whether trade unions are to be treated in the same way as other corporate organisations are treated—namely, by being made liable to rights of action for what are alleged to be their corporate acts. The question is put clearly enough in a circular which I received yesterday morning, and which probably most hon. Members have received, from an association of employers, in which they ask this question. They begin by saying— should they not be incorporated at law? That seems a very simple question, and the employers in this circular put it with great force. They believe that what they are demanding is simple equality as between trade unions and other corporate organisations; and an opinion on equality, especially when it comes from persons with a Conservative tendency, is apt to seem very plausible. When it is put forward by gentlemen on this side of the House it is, I daresay, accompanied by the taint of suspicion, but it must be innocuous when it comes from employers or the Conservative Party. Let us apply this test fairly to trade unions as compared with other corporate organisations. It will be obvious to all that, if trade unions are to be made subject to action, if they are to be put under the liabilities attaching to incorporation, they must also have the privileges of incorporation. They must be entitled to bring actions to enforce contracts upon which their very legal existence is founded, they must be entitled to bring actions to enforce contracts between a union and each of its members. I do not know whether hon. Members opposite are quite willing to embrace that doctrine in all its consequences. It would, of course, be a novel and monstrous doctrine to say that there should exist under our law an organisation which is to be liable to suits against it as if it were an incorporated body and yet not be allowed to enforce its legal contracts against its own members. What would be said if these gentlemen who sent out this circular from the employers' associations were told that there must be a sort of limited liability company devised which should be subject to all rights of action on the part of third persons or anybody else, but which should not be allowed to sue its own members for calls? It might have its own exchequer depleted by the actions which might be brought against it and yet not be entitled to turn round and sue its members on their contracts in order to replenish its depleted, exchequer. Why, everybody would say that that was not only an injustice, but a monstrous absurdity. But let hon. Gentlemen who demand equality take note of the fact that the position, which I have described as hypothetical in regard to limited companies, is precisely the position that trade unions occupy under recent decisions. If you want equality there are only two ways by which it can be achieved. You must either, as some people desire, incorporate trade unions, putting them under all liabilities of action and endowing them with right of action, or you must give them neither the rights nor the liabilities of action. For my own part, I find it difficult to defend any intermediate proposition. If we, following the love of compromise so dear to us all—or which, whether we love it or not, becomes a habit by force of circumstances—seek for some middle course we shall probably find ourselves adopting a course which is not logically defensible, which will give rise to complaints either of privilege or oppression, according to the point of view.

Let us take the first of the two logical alternatives in regard to this matter which I have ventured to put before the House—that of incorporation. That must be based on equality both of liability and of privilege. What is the general form of contract between a trade union and its members? Although there is some legal doubt about the proposition—I do not pretend to be able to make a single legal proposition with regard to the law which is not assailed by some legal doubt—I think we may say that a trade union is entitled to make a contract with its members that those members shall not return to work in a strike except with the consent of the majority of the union, expressed, it may be, through their legal and executive body. At present that contract, although legal, is not enforceable by law. Under Section 4 of the Trade Union Act of 1871 that contract is expressly made non-enforceable, because it was the intention of the statesmen of those days that trade unions should not be treated as incorporate bodies. And therefore they made these contracts non-enforceable. But, following out our supposition that trade unions are to be treated with absolute equality and that they are to be incorporate bodies, that contract will become enforceable in courts of law not merely by actions for damages for its breach, but also by way of injunction in restraint of breach. A trade union would be able would be entitled, then to go, and to go with a very good case, to the Court of Chancery and ask that injunctions should issue against certain of its workmen who, in breach of that contract with the union, proposed to go back to work. [OPPOSITION cries of "Hear, hear."] I am glad to hear some hon. Members opposite say "Hear, hear" to that. I hope they will follow me with similar agreement throughout certain other results which I propose to put before the House. The trade union having got these injunctions, what follows? Imagine the case of some great strike with, it may be, hundreds or thousands of workmen, under pressure of starvation, desiring to return to work. They have been forbidden by law. We hear a great deal about watching and besetting and picketing. That would become an obsolete controversy then, because the trade union would be entitled to go before the court and demand to receive the aid of the law, and their pickets would be the police, and, if need be, perhaps the military. I wonder what we should hear then about peaceful persuasion. The peaceful persuasion would be batons, and bayonets possibly. And yet a number of hon. Members who are denouncing our proposed clause with regard to picketing, because they think it hard on workmen who wish to break their contracts with their union, say "Hear, hear," to the proposition that trade unions should be incorporated and receive the right to have the work which they had hitherto done by pickets done by the forces of the Crown. That is not the only consequence. It is worth while pausing to imagine what the Cotton Employers' Parliamentary Association would say when their wishes had become law and trade unions had become incorporated, with the consequences I have just indicated. Should we not have fresh circulars denouncing the incorporation of trade unions? Should we not have impassioned appeals and protests against treating these bodies—bodies, as we would be told, and rightly told, are formed for, among other purposes, industrial war—as if they were peaceful commercial associations? There would be the greatest scorn and contempt poured on those persons who said that trade unions should be treated in precisely the same way as railway companies, municipal corporations, and limited companies.

That is not the only consequence. A striking feature of the recent decisions that have brought about this Bill is the development of the law with regard to procuring breaches of contract. Workmen have been severely punished wherever it can be proved—I was going to say alleged—that they have procured a breach of any contract between an employer and his workmen. That is an illegal act, which at once brings all combination within the meshes of the existing law of conspiracy. But when trade unions are incorporated and their contracts with their members are placed under the sanctity of the law relating to contracts, it will, of course, be a wrongful act on the part of an employer to bring about any breach of contract between the union and its members, and the employer will be the subject of injunction if, in such a case, he tries to lure the men away from the solemn and sacred contract they have made with their fellows. [OPPOSITION cries of "Hear, hear!"] Again, I am glad to find agreement. I remember one case in which I was engaged where an employer had offered the men a sum of money in order to return to work, giving them, I think, £1 apiece. Somebody was punished for libel for saying that he ought to have given 30s., thirty being the number of certain pieces of silver. However, he had given them 20s. apiece, and they returned to work. That would be, under any state of equal incorporation, an illegal act, and he would be punishable for that precisely as a union has recently been mulct in very heavy damages to the extent of something like £27,000. It would be punishable in damages because he had helped to bring about the defeat of a strike, which is a lawful object, and had helped to bring it about by seeking to procure breaches of contracts which are not only lawful but can be enforced by law. These are consequences that hon. Gentlemen opposite have got to consider if they desire to give us, or to give trade unions, equality of treatment with railway companies, municipal corporations, and limited companies. The statesmen of 1871 considered all these points. In giving the trade unions a modified legal status, to the modest extent of declaring that those who joined them should not be treated as criminals and that those who robbed them should not be allowed to go scot free as public benefactors, they deliberately and carefully refused to put them under either the liabilities or the privileges of incorporation. The matter was very well put by Lord Morley, who, speaking in the House of Lords on the Trade Unions Act of 1871, said— in Europe, or in America, is such an experience as that possible. I therefore do not share the fears that are so generally expressed as to what will happen if the immunity from action which trade unions have so long enjoyed should be continued. I do not think that the policy which has produced such admirable results ought to be thrown aside simply because the Law Courts have broken down the safeguards with which Parliament vainly thought it had protected trade unions. No one has a more profound and sincere respect for the Law Courts than I have; it would ill become me, and would be impossible for any one in my position, who has derived so much benefit from the working of those organisations, to look on them with anything but affectionate respect. But they are, after all, human—I do not think there is any contempt of Court in saying that—and they naturally and properly give effect to their own sincere convictions as to the char-actor and purposes of organisations like trade unions in a certain class of cases. I suppose hon. Members opposite will say it is not unreasonable that there should be persons who think trade unions are cruel and evil organisations; but when such persons are called upon j to sit upon a jury, it would be very remarkable if that view of the character and objects of trade unionism did not affect their minds when they came to apply vague doctrines like that of legal malice, or vague theories of law like that relating to conspiracy. It is almost inevitable that it should.

I might perhaps be permitted, for its bearings on the clause relating to the Taff Yale decision, to say something about the law of conspiracy, and to illustrate why it is that those who are interested in trade unions are naturally and properly desirous that industrial conflict should not be made the subject of litigation; because, remember, that is the real meaning of the recent decision—that industrial conflict shall be made the subject-matter of litigation before tribunals on which no working man can sit, because, of course, special juries do not contain working men. I wonder whether the House thoroughly appreciates the present position of the law of conspiracy. It was thought that its effect had been remedied or removed by the Act of 1875, by which it was enacted that conspiracy in relation to trade disputes should no longer be a criminal offence. I have no doubt whatever, and it was quite clear to the contemporaneous generation, that the statesmen who framed that enactment thought that in taking away the punishment for conspiracy in these matters they were depriving such conspiracies of their character as offences. I do not suppose it ever occured to them that they were leaving offences under the law to which no punishment would attach. That was not the habit in 1871 any more than it is now. However, it has been held that that was the effect of their Act, little as they thought it. It has been decided that all that the Act of 1875 did was to take away the criminal character of the offence of conspiracy, but to leave it in all respects subject to civil actions as an offence. Therefore the law of conspiracy still prevails, though it is no longer to be enforced in criminal, but only in civil Courts. What, then, is the law of conspiracy? I will quote, first of all, what Lord Cairns said as to the object of the Legislature in trying to remove this law of conspiracy from the pathway of trade unions. He said—and I beg the House's attention to this statement of one of the greatest lawyers that over lived, a Conservative lawyer— to the persons present at the meeting, and was not allowed to extend beyond that; it did not entitle them peacefully to persuade any other person to leave the employer's service during a strike. That was the law after 1825. In 1851 a workman was indicted because he had been peacefully persuading some of his fellows to leave their work, and he was acquitted on the facts; but the law was laid down clearly enough, and it was shown by the ruling then laid down that that was an offence not justified by the common law, not permitted under the statute of George. Therefore an Act was passed in 1859 which permitted peaceful picketing and peaceful persuasion. Oddly enough, it is the very words of that Act which we are seeking to-day to re-enact. It may be said that that is not a very good precedent, that the words do not seem to have been very efficient. But what happened was this: the Act itself was repealed in 1871, it being then thought that the same thing was being re-enacted in another form; but unfortunately, the form of words chosen by the draftsmen of the Act of 1871 was not good enough for the Law Courts, and therefore it was decided that peaceful picketing, which had prevailed without complaint for twenty years, was not permitted under the law. In fact the law as to peaceful picketing was abrogated by the Law Courts. Did the Act of 1871 alter the substantive law of conspiracy? The best way of answering that question is to give a case which happened in 1872, the famous case of the gas-workers, which has been doubted as law by some Judges. I rather incline to the belief that the opinion of the Judges who doubted the authority of that case has itself become doubtful law owing to the more recent decisions. That was the case where the workmen had asked their employers to re-instate one of their fellows who had been dismissed. This man had been given work which was in some way contrary to the rules of his union, and, desirous to enforce the rules of his union, he preferred not to do the work. The men were punished because they had broken their contract. Among the various counts of the indictment there was one, wholly independent of breach of contract, for what is called conspiracy to injure, and the learned Judge's ruling on that count of the indictment has had very serious results for workmen ever since. The learned Judge, Justice Brett, who would not consciously have done an unjust thing to any human being, said that there was evidence here of conspiracy to injure. In order to find such conspiracy he had to show that there was some evil intent on the part of the persons who had combined, and so he did, for he defined as evil intent the intent of workmen to force their masters to carry on their business in a way contrary to the will of their masters. The man who had been dismissed had been trying to enforce the provisions and rules of his union, and the other men said, "If you dismiss him we will go," but the fact that they said it altogether showed conspiracy, and the fact that they were making a threat to induce the master to do something he did not want to do showed evil intent, and therefore that was a punishable offence. Now, that law, which it was thought had been modified by one case, is, I am afraid it is only too clear, revived. Of course the decisions have not gone that far yet—decisions take a little time to develop just as other things do—but they are on the road. In the most recent and most important of the cases, the case which really gave rise to the present dispute, "Quinn v. Leathern," the principle was laid down by a most able and high-minded Judge, Lord Lindley, which practically cuts at the very root of all right of combination. Lord Lindley said— and when these principles thus laid down by eminent legal authorities are pushed to their inevitable and logical extreme, you have no right of combination left. I regard that as a most serious condition of things, not merely from the point of view of trade unions, but from the far wider point of view of the community. One of the most essential things to the well-being of this country is the condition of the industrial classes. Trade unions are an essential safeguard against this country's being turned into the paradise of the sweater. It is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that a matter affecting the vital interests of the industrial classes is not an intensely national question. We cannot injure them without injuring ourselves, for we are all members one of another. The Government, therefore, are determined to end the state of things which has arisen in spite of the Act of 1871. They are determined to restore to trade unions the security that the statesmen of 1871 intended them to have. The final form of the clause in which that intention is to be carried into effect is undoubtedly best discussed on another stage of the Bill. But without anticipating any discussion on the Committee stage, I think I may fairly say that the declaration of the Prime Minister and the vote of my right hon. friend the Attorney-General, on the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle leave no doubt as to the substantial aim of the Government. Even the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle leaves some serious loopholes to the ingenuity of my profession which also, I think, had bettor be left to the consideration of the Committee. For instance, the third clause dealing with the results of the Taff Vale decision is not quite as water-tight as it might be.

It is not water-tight at all.

^* : The right hon. Gentleman is right. I myself could find a way through it, and I have no doubt it would be child's play to my right hon. friend.

I think we ought to say what we mean, one way or the other.

^* : I am very glad to hear such a novel principle laid down by the other side. Now that right hon. Gentlemen opposite are in a position in which they are able to say what they mean, I hope they will not find their powers of expression unequal to so unusual a task. The Government have been reproached for leaving this clause to the House. That is a course which the Opposition are fond of denouncing when it is adopted, and of demanding when it is not adopted. But I venture to think that there never was a time when the reasons connected with the public good for taking such a course were stronger than they are on the present occasion. Just consider the nature of the fourth clause. It invites trade unions to modify and adapt their own constitutions in a particular way. It calls upon them to constitute a specially appointed committee which is to have complete and exclusive jurisdiction in the management of the whole of a strike. That committee is not necessarily to be the governing body of the union, nor is it necessarily to be entitled to deal with all strikes. It is to be appointed to deal with strikes in a particular area, or, perhaps, with only a single strike. But in regard to any strike put under its authority it is to have sole and complete control, a freedom which may have consequences serious to the union itself. Surely a matter of that kind, affecting the internal economy of trade unions, is one which no Government would ever seek to impose on trade unions without first considering or consulting their opinions. I think any Government would be eminently unreasonable if they laid such a clause before the House without inviting an expression of opinion from those who, from their experiences, are the best judges of the practicability and utility of such a clause. Considering the great areas over which trade unions have jurisdiction and the vast distances that separate their branches, large and small, the control by the leaders of a trade union of a strike is not quite so easy and effective as it appears to the Parliamentary draftsman to be. Therefore, the Government intended from the first to invite the opinion of the House and of those particularly concerned with trade unions upon this clause. Having invited that opinion they are bound not to ignore it. Nobody can look at this clause with a friendly eye without seeing at all events that it is an attempt, whether successful or unsuccessful, to achieve the same end as that which is sought to be achieved by the clause proposed from another point of view in the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle. The Government, as I have said, do not desire to ignore the wishes of those who are most concerned in this matter, and they will not ignore them. The question of how those wishes may be best given effect to is one for consideration in Committee, and I ask the House to proceed to that stage with the least possible delay.

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

^* said that whatever their personal opinions, he was sure all Members present had listened to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman, not only with great interest, but with a considerable amount of sympathy. It was quite certain that the hon. Gentleman was very intimately concerned with the drafting, consideration, and preparation generally of the Government Bill of which he had now proposed the Second Reading, and the position in which the hon. Gentleman found himself that afternoon was one which ought to ensure the sympathy of everybody in the House. He had had to announce, in mild phrases no doubt, and in guarded language, a statement which amounted practically to this: That the opinions of His Majesty's Government on the matter were set forth in the Bill, but that they were ready to alter or vary them at the bidding of hon. Members sitting below the gangway on the Opposition side. ["No, No."] He had heard almost every speech which had been made in the House upon this extremely important question, and he thought it would be admitted that there was a tendency on all sides to argue the question from a narrow standpoint. The measure should not be taken from the standpoint of the benefit of any particular section of the community, for it involved nothing less than the immediate future of the whole industrial fabric of this country. He was very glad to hear from the Solicitor-General the suggestion that the Bill was presented in the interests of the working classes as a whole. He was of opinion that if hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House could believe that the Bill was really conceived in the genuine and true interests of the working classes of the country they would give it their heartiest support. But the question was, was the measure going to be a benefit and genuine advantage to working men? The working class of this country could be divided into two parts. There was that proportion of working men who were members of trade unions, and that proportion who were not, but who, no doubt, in the opinion of certain hon. Members, ought to be. The Government seemed to him to suppose, and the Solicitor-General in his speech appeared to suggest, that trade unionism represented the whole working class of this country. ["No, no."] That was enormously removed from anything like the real fact. The truth was that the members of trade unions in this country represented about one-tenth of the whole working men population. He believed he was within the mark when he made that statement. [An HON. MEMBER: It is one-seventh."] He was quite ready to accept the hon. Member's correction, but he would point out that that one-seventh was diminishing and not increasing. ["No."] Surely when one was considering the interests of the working classes he ought not merely not to forget but specially to remember the interests of the six-sevenths rather than of the one-seventh. He proposed to inquire whether or not as a matter of fact there was any reasonable probability of the provisions of this Bill—if it became law—advantaging in any single particular the six-sevenths majority of the working classes of the country. The Bill was going to alter the law as it now stood. What was going to be the effect of that upon the six-sevenths to whom he referred? By Clause 1 it would legalise the kind of procedure which was the subject of notoriety and of universal execration in the case of "Quinn v. Leatham" not long since when two employers and two sets of workmen between whom no quarrel existed were each coerced in order to carry out what could only be characterised as the rancour of a single trade union. He did not understand how hon. Members professing to belong to the Party which had always stood for the freedom of the many against the privileges and the tyranny of the few could go to their constituents and explain that they meant absolutely and in express terms to permit and legalise monstrous procedure of that kind.

Clause 3 particularly would legalise the system of black lists by which non-unionist workmen might be coerced and deprived of employment through no fault of their own. Under this clause strikes would be possible to enforce these black lists in order to prevent non-union men from earning their living, and it would be possible to foment strikes in places where no quarrel existed in order to bring pressure to bear upon other men where quarrels did exist. Were any of these things in the interests of the working classes as a whole? He could not conceive how anyone could suggest that they were. Although there might be a certain proportion of the working classes who would benefit under the Bill, the point the House would have to consider was whether the working classes as a whole would benefit. If it was shown, as he submitted it must be, that the effect of this provision would be to advantage perhaps a small proportion of the working classes to the immediate, instant, and terrible disadvantage of the majority, he found it difficult to understand how any hon. Member of the House could continue to support it. What was going to be the effect of Clause 2, "peaceful picketing," on the working classes as a whole? Under that clause it was apparent that it would be impossible to prevent any number of persons, whether it were 5,000 or 10,000 [An HON. MEMBER: "2,000,000."]—or 2,000,000 if hon. Members below the gangway could get them together—attending in front of a man's house so long as they said they had only come to obtain information or to persuade him to work or to abstain from working. There was of course the provision that they were to attend before a man's house in a reasonable manner, but 10,000 workmen could not attend before a house in a reasonable manner. Furthermore, that provision would be no defence to the man, because it would often be impossible to show that they had done anything unreasonable. He submitted that for any number of persons to be allowed to come to a man's house to persuade him to do something peacefully was a most grotesque proposal. Hon. Members below the gangway must admit that the real object was not peaceful persuasion at all, but to bring pressure to bear upon a man who stood out against them to do something which, if he had his liberty, he would refuse to do. If that were not so, hon. Members below the gangway and the Government would be content to have the number of persons who were to attend limited to three. If the only object was peacefully to persuade or to obtain information, it must be obvious to anyone that two or three people were more likely to attain that object than an unlimited number, for which hon. Members below the gangway had always stood out.

The effect of Clause 4, which was the main clause of the Bill, would be to upset the Taff Vale decision, and the House were entitled to ask whether that would be a good or a bad thing, in fact, for the working classes of the country. That decision was given in June, 1901, and there had been five years in which to observe its effect upon the trade unions. The effect had been very great and very marked. If hon. Members examined the figures of the trade unions returns they would see that a considerable change had taken place since that decision was given. Trade unions were richer; their funds had grown, in respect to both income and invested funds, and there was at this moment more money in the hands of the unions, per member, than ever before. What happened was that immediately following on the Taff Vale decision, the object for which that money had been expended was sharply changed. About 63 per cent. of the whole expenditure of the 100 trade unions, with regard to which figures were available, was taken up by what might be called standing charges. As to the remaining 37 per cent., a remarkable change had taken place since 1901. During the six years from 1895 to 1900 the unemployed benefit paid by these trade unions amounted to 20 per cent., and no loss than 17 per cent. was spent in connection with disputes of one kind and another. Since the Taff Vale decision in 1901, the amount expended on the unemployed benefit had increased to 27 per cent., and the expenditure in connection with trade disputes had fallen from 17 per cent. to under 10 per cent. The effect of the Taff Vale decision had been that a great deal less had been spent in connection with trade disputes, and a great deal more had been spent in benefits of various kinds. Strikes had not been nearly so numerous, and had been infinitely less violent, and had involved less mischief. Could it be hold that any of those were bad things for the working classes as a whole? He could not see that they were. A strike was a most miserable and lamentable business. One hon. Member had told the House on a previous occasion that no trade union leader who knew his business would advise his men to go on strike if he could avoid it. The effect of the Taff Vale decision had been to put into the hands of hon. Gentlemen below the gangway a tremendous weapon to use in the way they desired, namely, to avoid strikes, because they could now say," If you strike your funds will be made amenable." The effect of the Taff Vale decision was extremely instructive as showing that, although the unions had grown richer, and although disputes had become less frequent, and the members of the trade unions got more of their contributions back in real benefits of various kinds, nevertheless, since that decision, there had been an extraordinary and continuons decline in the number of men who belonged to trade unions. It seemed to him to show clearly, what many of them had always supposed, that unless a trade union could manage to keep going a certain number of trade disputes, the mere fact that they could offer benefits, the mere fact of all their other activities, would fail to keep together the numbers of their members. It was not, therefore, because they desired really to benefit the working classes as a whole that they were pressing for this clause. It was because they desired more power to conduct those very disputes which they agreed were very mischievous, but without which their organisations could not live. Of course, as the Solicitor-General said, compromise was a useful thing, but he himself failed to see how there could possibly be any compromise between those who looked to the interests of the working classes as a whole, and those who looked with a single eye to the interests of what was really a most insignificant proportion of them. If the House desired to legislate in the interests of one-seventh of the working classes alone, then no doubt the Bill would commend itself to them. But anybody who desired only the benefit of the working classes as a whole would find it very difficult, he thought, to agree with this measure, which would fasten upon six-sevenths of the working men of this country a kind of tyranny which it was difficult to characterise in moderate language, and which could not but result in very serious injury indeed to the industrial system of the country as a whole. Hon. Members who, like himself, could not bring themselves to agree with this kind of legislation, took up that position because they saw in it class legislation of the most wanton description, because they believed it was a measure of the most unblushing privilege and monopoly, and because they saw in it nothing whatever which was likely in the end, or which could possibly in the end, increase that prosperity and that general content, peace, and well-being, which in the case of the working-classes was only another term for the content and prosperity of the whole of the inhabitants of those islands.

desired to say, in the first place, that he joined with the hon. and learned Gentleman in expressing sincere regret at the absence of the Attorney-General and the reason for it. Before proceeding to deal with some of the clauses of the Bill he would like to say a word with reference to the speech of the hon. Member for Norwood. He did not know where the hon. Gentleman got his figures from.

^* said the figures were those of the Board of Trade Report of this year on Trade Unions.

did not think the Board of Trade had ever asserted yet that the trade unionists were only one-seventh of the workpeople of this country.

^* said the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil had said so.

said he was not responsible for what the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil said on that particular Question, but he did not think his hon. friend meant anything like that. Of course they had to consider the millions of people not old enough to be trade unionists amongst the working-classes. They could almost put the figure at live for every one, and if there were 2,000,000 organised adult members of trade unions in the country, it worked out at a much higher proportion than one-seventh of the working population. When the hon. Gentleman said that the Government were acceding to the wishes of a microscopic portion of the country, he was rather overstating his case. That microscopic portion at any rate had had the effect, if nothing else, of returning the Labour Members, who made this a test question at the last election, and the action of His Majesty's late Government in this matter had something to do with the minority in which they presented themselves in the House. He would give the hon. Gentleman credit for not knowing exactly what the proportion of trade unionists was, but he would ask the hon. Gentleman if he spoke for non-unionists in this country. His hon. friend the Member for Bolton was one who helped to get five per cent. advance to the operative spinners of Lancashire without a strike. Would the non-unionists refuse that? The Government were dealing with the Workmen's Compensation Act that had been brought about by the action of the trade unionists for years. Had the non-unionists refused to accept any of the benefits which that Act of Parliament conferred upon them? It was too late in the day for any hon. Member to champion in this House the cause of the non-unionists, who were willing to receive anything trade unionists obtained for them, but would not bear their fair share of the cost. The hon. Gentleman had tried to prove that as a result of the Taff Vale decision trade unions had spent less money in strikes. He admitted that during the last five years trade unionists had accepted conditions of labour which they would not have accepted had it not boon for this judge - made law. Trade unionists thought they had a right to ask for fair play and that they should be allowed to assert their rights without being hampered by decisions of this kind. He would like to the fullest extent to appreciate the remarks of the Solicitor-General with reference to the difference that existed in this country, and had existed for years back, as to law and order during trade strikes as compared with other countries. The trade union leaders, knowing what strikes meant to the workmen, would go a long way round before they entered into them. No strike pay could fill up the necessary meal tub and pay the rent and find the necessaries of life. By their past record they had proved that they had not led the people astray or encouraged unlawfulness or disorder, and therefore they should be trusted with the powers for which they asked. All they asked for was that they should obtain that standing in law which they obtained thirty years ago, and which they considered they were entitled to have returned to them.

He would say a word or two with regard to the Bill. As to the first clause, the wording was somewhat similar to that in the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Newcastle, though changed in its terms, and they were anxious to know, because they believed the intention of the Government was the same as theirs, whether the last few words of the clause would carry out that intention. He referred to the words, "would be actionable as a tort." They were simply laymen looking at things in an ordinary way. This, he understood, was a lawyer's phrase, meaning that it would only be actionable in a civil sense and that they would not be liable to a criminal action in any sense.

was understood to assent.

said with that explanation he thought they might be able to agree when they came to the Committee stage. But with regard to the second clause he could not go so far as to say he agreed with the hon. and learned Gentleman. The words "to attend peaceably, and in a reasonable manner" were contested last year, and the present Chancellor of the Exchequer then made a statement which ought to be remembered now, namely, that those words would give rise to such an amount of litigation as would astound those who did not take a lawyer's view of things. The words the right hon. Gentleman used were— He hoped His Majesty's Government would re-consider whether it was absolutely necessary to introduce these words in this clause. He wanted the House to remember that they were still within the common law. They were not asking for any privilege in regard to the common law, and if anything was done which was an offence against the common law then they would continue to be responsible. To introduce those words would give the judges a rather extraordinary power. Was there any reason why the words should be put in as affecting trade unionists only? Why should the House be asked to put in something different to apply to trade unionists than applied to ordinary people? The Labour Party felt that the words were entirely unnecessary and would lead to a large amount of litigation.

With regard to numbers, if the Solicitor-General only knew the difficulty of conducting strikes he would never have argued in the way he he had done. Trade unionists had more sense than to send twenty men to visit one, and they had something else to do with their men and their money. One or two men were generally sent to see the person who was working, and they waited for that person. If they provided that the number was to be limited to six, what was to prevent the employer arranging for another four or five and making it seven? He could prove by sworn affidavits that men had been engaged to go into trade disputes for the purpose of creating a broach of the law. If five men were sent to make the number more than six, in order to make them liable, the law would be nonsense. The 10,000 men argument which had been used, was equally absurd. No trade unionist organisation had ever sent out bands of men in order to annoy peaceful citizens. They were anxious to be fair and reasonable, and their past conduct had proved that they had been both fair and reasonable, and he trusted their future conduct would justify the claims they were now making.

With regard to the third clause, which was an entirely new one, he wished to say on behalf of the Labour Party that he appreciated it very highly and believed it was a very good one. Its effect would be to make the law apply to trade unionists as it had applied in the past to the employers in the Mogul case. Was that a privilege? It was nothing of the kind, for it was simply putting trade unionists upon an equality with employers. He wished to say a few words with regard to the circular which had been alluded to, because he happened to know very well the gentlemen who had issued it, and they were a body of men he greatly admired. He had met them upon many occasions to settle trade disputes during the past thirty years, and they had settled many of them amicably. Although he admired them as a class he was afraid they had allowed the gentleman whose name appeared at the bottom of the list to lead them too much. He was inclined to think that a solicitor had drawn up this circular for them, and he did not think the individual employers concerned would be ready to swear by every line of it. Some one had had a job to do and had done it. The Solicitor-General had dealt with the circular very admirably and effectively. He noticed that one paragraph expressed great alarm at the huge fighting funds which would be at the disposal of trade unionists, and stated that the consequences would be very grave. One would think upon reading that circular that none of those things were being done to-day. It was remarkable how innocent those employers must think other people were. There was not a single dispute took place in any large centre but those very things were resorted to. There was not a single trade unionist official in the House who could not relate any number of cases where men had been refused work because they had been out on strike. The arrangements between employers were not by letter, but by telephone, and a system was adopted by which no operative could ever find out exactly how it was done. They were only able to discover it in cases, perhaps where some under-manager had given the show away. He happened to know of a case of that kind which occurred on March 30th this year during a strike in Ayrshire. One of the men on strike went after work and got it, and the following Monday morning the under-manager told him that he dared not employ him as he would be under a penalty of £20 if he did so. His object was to give the House an instance of the kind of conspiracy that went on during the strike. That was a case for which they had chapter and verse, but the same thing occurred in every trade dispute, and every effort was made to prevent the men on strike finding work, in order to compel them to go back on the terms offered. To say that this Bill would confer such powers as those which the employers would have to use in self-defence was all nonsense, because the same thing was being done to-day. All they wanted was, that if they adopted like tactics to those which were adopted by the employers, they should be just as free from financial responsibility as the employers were to-day. They had argued this case time after time and it was the old position. The effect of what was proposed was to limit the result of a dispute which might mean a loss of 5 or 10 per cent. to the operatives. It might be argued that they ought to stop the strike and save the union funds, but how would they be able to prove damages if the strike had boon caused through the illegal action of the employer? It might be easy for the employer to prove damage, but it was scarcely possible for the employee to do so. The employer might urge that he had lost orders and that the strike had prevented him getting business, and he might total up his damages to a fabulous sum for which the funds of the union were to be held liable. The position they were taking up was that of absolute immunity from financial responsibility in those cases. Let the employer recognise when he entered a fight of this kind that be stood to lose something just the same as the workmen. They did not want to enter into such fights, but if they were compelled to do so they wished to fight upon an equality, and then if either side did anything which was criminal they should be made responsible; but to argue that the funds of the union were to be drained in order to cripple the employees in the struggle was a great injustice. It was easy for an employer to draw a cheque for £500 any time to carry on the fight, but the trade unions had to collect their funds by twopences and threepences for years. He asked the Government to consider whether the wisest course would not be, when this Bill got into Committee, to accept practically what the Labour Members had suggested. He agreed that certain Amendments were needed, but he wished the Government to go at this question direct, for they did not want any roundabout process with regard to getting this immunity. Let them have the direct thing. They believed that their case was just, and they would vote for the Second Reading relying upon the promise of the Prime Minister and the Solicitor-General that the Government would give an ear to their plea He hoped that the way they would meet this difficulty would he on the lines of the Bill which received so much support only a few Fridays ago upon its Second Reading.

said that hon. Members who had spoken appeared to assume that there were only two classes in the community, namely, trade unionists and employers of trade unionists. He wished to urge that there were in this nation large masses of people who were neither trade unionists nor employers of trade unionists, and it was in their interests that he was disposed to look at the matter. In opposing the Bill, he contended that he did not do so from any sympathy with or desire to assist employers, but because he was convinced that if the Bill ever became law it would affect disastrously the daily life and labour of many of the people of this country who were remote and removed from industrial disputes, and were neither trade unionists nor employers. He opposed the Bill because it was designed to facilitate strikes, first by making lawful a great number of things which were, as the law stood, unlawful, and which, in his humble judgment, should remain unlawful; and next by providing that if, notwithstanding the revolutionary changes in the law which the first and third sections would bring about, a trade union should succeed in wronging a man and robbing him of his legal rights, the trade union should be immune, and not subject to the law which applied to every other wrongdoer. He opposed the Bill because it legalised boycotting, intimidation, and the wholesale procuring of breaches of contract. All these things were now unlawful, and he thought it would be a calamity, not only to employers, for whom, he protested, he cared nothing, but to the great mass of the honest, decent people of this country if these things were to become sanctioned and permissible. He wished to say a few words on the prac- tical matter of boycotting. They all desired to keep away from technicalities and subtleties in dealing with a matter which was apt to be somewhat concerned with technicalities. He would not take up time by attempting to deal separately with the first section of the Government Bill, which provided that in future what might rightly be done by an individual might rightly be done in concert and combination by a number of men. He differed from that proposition. He agreed with the great authorities who had pointed out that a thing might well be tolerable, at least, when done by one person, and an intolerable hardship and outrage when indefinitely repeated and done by a great number of people. The hon. Member for the Clitheroe Division had referred to the third section of the Government Bill. He always spoke of any matter of law with real doubt, but he thought the hon. Member was wrong in saying that Section 3 introduced the principle of the Mogul case on the side of the workmen. He understood that the law in the Mogul case had nothing to do with boycotting. He understood that boycotting had always been illegal under the existing law, whether by one man or a ring or combination of men. The Mogul case belonged to a class with which he was not in love, but it had nothing to do with boycotting. It was a case of trade rings and combinations for trade purposes. As he understood, the distinction in the existing law was this. It was lawful for men to combine, provided the object was to increase their own profits, and provided the object was not to injure any person, although injury might be inflicted on another person. He had often thought it was not much of a distinction which sanctioned a combination the main object of which was greed, and disallowed a combination the main object of which was hatred and a desire to injure. He did not think any lawyer or any hon. Member in the House would deny that if the third section of the Bill became law boycotting would be lawful in this country the moment it was associated with a trade dispute. No one could doubt that Sections 1, 2, and 3 read together legalised boycotting. The Bill legalised in express terms that which he considered to be an outrage and an interference with any man's right, be he great employer or little workman, for whom he should personally have more sympathy in this connection. It took, continually and wholesale, from the workman who wanted to be left alone one of the most sacred and inalienable rights which everyone had secured to him by law, and that was the right to an honest quiet life, and of earning his own living and employing his own labour when and where he pleased without let or hindrance. In objecting to this Bill because it legalised boycotting he was tempted to refer to the case of "Quinn v. Leathern," which was typical of the class which the first and third clauses struck at. That case was typical of the mischief which the law might now stop and which, if this Bill became law, it would be unable to stop. In that case the facts showed that a small butcher named Leathern employed a few non-unionist hands. He had a weekly contract with another butcher named Munce, who employed unionist workmen. Everything appeared to have gone well until a trade union of butchers' assistants was formed in the place. The trade union made a rule that not only should unionists not work where non-unionist men were employed, but that they would not cut up any meat from any shop where non-unionists were employed. They called for Leathern to discharge his foreman. Leathem did not adopt any outrageous attitude towards the trade union; he wont on his knees, so to speak, and begged them to let his men enter the union, offering to pay any fines due for for that purpose. The answer of the union was that they would not admit these men, but that they must be punished by being compelled to walk the streets for a year. Punished he did not know for what, unless it was for not being members of the union. Leathem had the decency to refuse to discharge the foreman in these circumstances. Therefore the union had recourse to Munce, and threatened him with a sympathetic strike in his shop unless he co-operated with them. They compelled him to discontinue his contract which had been going on for twenty years. That was the kind of proceeding which would become lawful if the two sections to which he had referred were passed. He called attention to the extreme width and generality of the language employed in the first three sections of the Bill. The Bill was not confined to things which men's unions might do, and it was not confined to things which masters' unions might do. It gave a general licence to every subject to persecute other subjects the moment there was a trade dispute. One need not be a trade unionist or an employer, or anything else; so long as one could show that there was a trade dispute which he was furthering, or that he was contemplating the possibility of a trade dispute, all the salutary restrictions against persecution and intimidation at once disappeared. The words in the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, limiting trade disputes to disputes between masters and employees, had been intentionally omitted, and a wrong might be inflicted by any combination of men upon any individual provided only they could show that there was a trade dispute or that they contemplated a trade dispute. He could not think of any trade difficulty which could not be justly described as a trade dispute. A similar observation applied to picketing and to a matter to which he would like to call attention. It appeared to him to be perfectly clear that the effect of the second section of the Bill as drawn was to make it lawful in future to incite to a broach of contract. The words were that—

"it should be lawful for one or more persons, acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a trade union in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, to attend peaceably and in a reasonable manner, at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be, if they so attend merely for the purpose of obtaining or communicating information, or of persuading any person to work or abstain from working."

Well, if a man went to a place where people were employed under contract and invited them to abstain from working, he could not understand how that man could do that unless he incited the worker to break his contract. Hon. Members knew that the Royal Commission inserted most pointedly in their recommendations that it should be expressly provided that there should be no soliciting or inciting to broach of contract; but those words were omitted in the Bill. He contended that there should not be words in the Bill which incited men to break their contracts.

was understood to dissent from the hon. Member's reading of the clause.

^* said he was very glad to understand that his reading of the clause was, in that respect, wrong; and he hoped that when the proper time came express words would be inserted by which it would be made abundantly clear that it was wrong to incite a man to break his contract. He wished to call attention to the extremely dangerous and, he thought, disastrous character of the working of the first three sections of the Bill, not in relation to disputes between employers and workmen, but in relation to the interests of the great body of the people who were neither the one nor the other. The moment there was a trade dispute the friends and associates of the workmen were to be allowed to terrorise, boycott, and annoy to their heart's content any one, whether connected with a trade union or not. As to the fourth clause of the Bill, he greatly preferred the clause on the same point in the Labour Party's Bill. Both had precisely the same practical result of making the members of trade unions a class who were licensed to do wrong with impunity. The Labour Party's Bill, however, said in plain terms what it meant; whereas, this Bill tried to avoid saying so in plain terms, and instead of saying that trade unions would not be responsible for the acts of their agents, it set up a wretched piece of machinery under which it became transparently impossible to prove agency on the part of the trade unions. By Section 4 of the Government Bill, in the event of a trade dispute every trade union was invited to appoint a small standing committee to take charge of the dispute. He should think the smaller that committee was, the better. It would be a committee composed of men who would never be personally engaged in the work of picketing. There would be no danger of these gentlemen being engaged in any unlawful acts. That committee was to enter in a book a resolution in general terms which would prohibit classes of acts being committed. But any lawyer could in a few minutes draw up a general resolution which would prohibit in classes any sort o unlawful act which might be committee in connection with a strike. And when that solemn formula had been gone through the trade union was protected. But even if that was not enough, and an agent of the union did succeed in committing some wrongful act—what then? The matter was reported to the committee, and the committee passed a resolution repudiating the act. The difference between this section and that in the Labour Party's Bill was that under the latter an immunity was given to the trade unions, and a man had only to prove that he was a trade unionist; whereas, under the Bill now before the House, the man had not only to prove he was a member of a trade union, but that it had also recited the incantation which was necessary to render him immune from the consequences of the law. He insisted that it was beyond argument that the effect of both these sections was this: It must be assumed that there was agency; that there was a wrongful act; and that damage was done. Yet, in future, a trade union would not be liable to make redress. It was said that the injured person could have his remedy against the agent; but the principle of the English law was that the injured party had his right of remedy against not only the agent, but against the principal. Under this Bill when a trade union agent injured a man he could sue the agent, but not the principal. The Attorney-General in moving the First Reading of the Bill made an appeal to the House not to do anything by which a privileged class might be created in this country. And the hon. and learned Gentleman instanced the case of the benefit of clergy. For his part, he was inclined to think that in the remote days when benefit of the clergy had its origin there was something to be said for it. But in the end it became a gross abuse, and the Attorney-General had, therefore, given the worst instance of class favouritism, injustice, and privilege But what the House was asked to do by this Bill was a much worse thing; because a man, whether cleric or lay, who claimed the benefit of clergy, was not immune from the operation of the law of the land in a particular Court to which he might be taken. That privilege was in no sense such a privilege as was proposed under this Bill to be given to trade unionists. He could not help thinking that, if this Bill became law by the agency of the Liberal party, they would have cause to repent in the future. There was no principle to which both sides had of late years more strenuously appealed than the principle of the equality of all men towards the law. If, in these circumstances, the Liberal Party were going to set up a privileged class in order that they might obtain the support of powerful parties which they would have otherwise had to go without, then he ventured to say they would lose in the country at large far more than they would gain. He was not sure that trade unionists themselves would rejoice in the end if this Bill became law. Nothing was more striking than the improvement manifested in the last few years in the feeling of the ordinary, average, non-political man, and in the masses of the people, towards organized labour. He thought himself that that remarkable change was largely due to those very decisions which were now made matter of complaint. He maintained that the attitude of the non-political, indifferent, moderate men who, at one time, were inclined to look with jealousy at the rapid rise of trade unions, was, now that they saw the same law was to be rigorously applied to them as to other people, to look with a better feeling on trade unions. He thought that the trade unionists might make a very bad exchange if, in order to get power and to put a more effectual screw on the employers here and there, they sacrificed the growing good opinion of moderate men throughout the country. He was satisfied that as soon as the ordinary man saw that trade unions were being made a class which were to have specially favourable legislation enacted for their benefit, the good feeling to which he had referred would give place to distrust and apprehension. He could only express the hope, the almost despairing hope, that the Liberal Party, vested as it was just now with such unexampled power and responsibilities, would not signalise the very outset of its legislative career by setting up a class apart, select, and privileged to do with impunity what others were punished for doing—a class privileged to ruin others without redress—a class apart, and shamelessly and absolutely immune from the ordinary laws which bound their fellow countrymen.

said he should like to say, in the first place, that many Members sitting below the gangway had listened to the speech of the Solicitor-General with great pleasure and with a feeling of con- siderable relief. In the second place, he should like to repudiate the kind of argument which had been used by the hon. Member for Basingstoke. It was that kind of atmosphere of suspicion with regard to trade unions which had done so much in the Law Courts of recent years to bring about the position they were now hoping would be put an end to. With his cleverness as a lawyer, to which he should like to bear testimony, the hon. Member had travelled a little outside the domain of his knowledge when he expressed the thought that the trade unions would carefully conspire and combine to place upon their minute books bogus resolutions for the purpose of misleading the Courts. Probably the hon. Member was not aware of this fact, which he stated without hesitation, as one who had been engaged professionally in most of those trade union cases, that in the Taff Vale and many other cases the employers would not have been able to get judgment against the unions if it had not been for the letters, minutes, and documents that the unions themselves disclosed. How could it therefore be suggested that the unions were going, for the sake of escaping a legal liability in any action which might lie against them, if the clause referred to passed dishonestly to put upon the books a bogus resolution? To assert such a thing was entirely to misapprehend and misunderstand that great healthy-mindedness, that great moral atmosphere among which the working classes of this country "live, move, and have their being." It was this kind of prejudice, this kind of half-knowledge, which had done so much mischief. During the past forty years it had been given to a Tory Government to appoint Labour Commissions on no less than four occasions. On three of those occasions the unions and workers had declined to give evidence on the ground that the Commissions were packed. On two occasions these Labour Commissions were appointed to curse the unions, and they remained to bless them, as was shown by the evidence they took and the reports they issued. A feeling of prejudice had been sought to be created by a series of grossly mendacious articles attacking the unions, which appeared in a London newspaper three or four years ago. In those articles, the same kind of thing was stated to which the hon. Member had now alluded. It was said that unions existed for the purpose of limiting output, and that unions were great tyrannical organisations. That was typical of the kind of pabulum which was set forth in the paper for the purpose of misleading public opinion in this country. He would cite one instance. It was solemnly stated in the paper to which he alluded that the Bricklayers' Society had a rule limiting die number of bricks that their members might lay per day, and the writer of that article solemnly produced what he alleged to be the very rule limiting output. Would it however be believed that this alleged rule was one which was trotted out by the secretary of the Master Builders' Federation before the Labour Commission of 1867, and was then proved to be the rule of a local bricklayers' association in Bradford in 1843? That was the kind of thing they had had to put up with. Then they had had the authority of a late lamented statesman that these unions were cruel organisations. Unfortunately, the tradition of that unfortunate phrase seemed to survive on the Opposition Benches. He had had fifteen years experience of those unions and an intimate experience during many years, and he said that they were as free from tyranny as any other organisation in the country. He held that they were infinitely more free from tyranny than political associations which had practised tyranny in some of the constituencies of the country at the last election. The trade unions were infinitely more free from tyranny than the Primrose League had shown itself to be in some rural constituencies that had recently and unexpectedly returned Liberal Members. It was perfectly true that there had been incidents in the lives of trade unions that they all regretted, but it was a very striking fact that should weigh with the House, that since the Trade Union Act of 1871 was passed into law, and since trade unions had had some semblance of legal recognition, by what they thought was their Magna Charta, there had not been any single instance of a recrudescence of those incidents which shamed and disgraced the unions in Sheffield in 1865, when they were simply secret organisations. He would warn the House of the danger of treating trade unions as Ishmaels before the law, and of the danger of treating organizations of this kind differently from others. It had been said by every speaker who had spoken from the Opposition Benches that, in asking for this legislation, the unions were asking to be placed in a position of a privileged class. Not only was that not so, but it was precisely the opposite of what was true. What the trade unions were asking for was that they should be taken out of the anomalous, exceptional, and unique position in which they now stood before the law, and that they should be treated before the law precisely as other bodies of an analagous character were treated. The unions were not asking to be treated in an exceptional way in regard to the law of conspiracy, but they were asking to be treated in the same way as other members of the community were treated, instead of having a special law as to conspiracy framed against them, as was the position at this moment. The hon. Member for Basingstoke had alluded to the Mogul case, and had taken it for granted that that case was rightly decided, because he had said there was no boycotting, whereas there was in the case of "Quinn v. Leathern." For himself, however, he could not differentiate the Mogul case from that of "Quinn v. Leathem," because in the Mogul case a great body of shipowners combined to compel shippers to accept their terms. The very essence of the whole case was boycotting. What the unions were asking was that the law as laid down for other members of the community should be the law to be applied to the trade unions in the conduct of trade disputes. In regard to picketing hon. Gentlemen opposite appeared to think it was a terrible thing that a deputation of two or three workmen should wait on a man either at his work or at his residence for the purpose of asking him to join them in a strike movement, or for the purpose of asking him not to go in and blackleg the workmen who were out on strike. He saw nothing more terrible in that than in a deputation of two or three Church visitors coming round to him and representing to him the grievous effect which the Government Education Bill would have if it passed into law. He could not see any great difference between three or four men standing outside a works where a strike was going on and the subsidised touts of the Tariff' Reform League attending at the Trade Union Congress and endeavouring to get the delegates there to join what they were pleased to call their organised labour branch of the Tariff Reform League. There was another side to this question. It was not sufficiently borne in mind that the tactics in industrial war, in the conduct of strikes, differed very little on the employers' side from those which prevailed on the side of the workmen, except that in the one case there were certain channels open to the employers which were not open to the workpeople. He had known cases in his own experience of strikes in Newcastle where advertisements had appeared in the London papers asking for workpeople to go down there at good wages owing to the great pressure of work, and of agents in London writing and asking whether there was a strike on, and of their being told there was not. He had known of a similar case in Liverpool where 700 men were engaged in the London docks on a tying statement that there was no strike at Liverpool. Those men were taken down to Liverpool, marched down to the docks through two lines of police, and put upon a tug and taken to a vessel in the middle of the Mersey without being allowed to speak to anybody on the land side. It was a monstrous thing that employers should be allowed to obtain labour by lying statements of that kind and that the right should be denied to the workmen of going about and speaking to these people. It was said that the workpeople were asking for special and exceptional treatment. In the first place they were not asking for the labour organisations anything different from that which should be given to the employers' associations. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were apparently not aware of the elementary fact that while there were 1,300 workmen's trade unions in this country there were between 900 and 1,000 employers' associations, and that this Bill, if it became law, would apply as much to the associations of the employers as to 1,300 trade unions of the workmen. The trade unions therefore were not asking to be placed in a position of privilege, of exclusion, and of advantage as distinct from the unions of the employers. In the second place, the trade unions were prepared to stand by what they asked. They only asked that the Bill of the Government should merely declare the common law. What was the common law at the present moment for organisations in positions analagous to that of trade unions? It was that they were immune from the law. The only bodies sueable at common law were corporations and individuals. It had been expressly laid down that a trade union was not a corporation, and it certainly was not an individual. A trade union was a collection of individuals. These trade unions were not asking for any different position from that enjoyed by the great social or athletic clubs or political associations. All they asked was to be treated in the same way. It had been held that a political association could not be guilty of corrupt practices in connection with parliamentary elections, and a club could not be sued as a club in tort. The people liable to be sued were the individuals responsible for causing the tort. The trade unions were asking that individuals should be amenable to the law for any individual wrong they caused, but that the funds of the society should not be touched any more than that the funds of a social club should be touched, any more than that the funds of the Conservative association should be touched for any libellous pamphlet it might issue, any more than that the Tariff Reform League funds should be touched for anything that it might do. The trade unions only asked that they should be left in the position in which the common law left them. It was perfectly true that Parliament could make other bodies than corporations and individuals sueable at law. It was said that by the Act of 1871 it made trade unions sueable at law, and the House of Lords had held that that was so in the Taff Vale case. There were many considerations upon which this House might arrive at a judgment, which were entirely shut out from the consideration of a court of law. The House of Lords when they came to the decision at which they arrived on the Taff Vale case were only able to look at the naked words of the Act of 1871. They were not free to go into the surrounding circumstance, and the considerations which led to this House passing that Act. There were certain considerations which it was important should be brought before the House, as showing conclusively that Parliament by the Act of 1871 did not intend that the trade unions should be sueable. It should be borne in mind that Clause 6 of the Act of 1871 up to a point closely followed the words of Clause 6 of the Joint Stock Company's Act of 1862. In that Act it was provided that—

"Any seven or more persons associated for any lawful purpose may, by subscribing their names to a memorandum of association, and otherwise complying with the requisitions of this Act in respect of registration, form an incorporated company, with or without limited liability."

Those words up to a point were closely followed in the Trades Union Act of 1871, which provided by Section 6 that—

"Any seven or more members of a trade union may by subscribing their names to the rules of the union, and otherwise complying with the provisions of this Act with respect to registry,"

register such trade union under this Act. That was to say, the words with regard to registration in the Act of 1871 stopped short when it came to the question of incorporation. A section of the Act of 1871 clearly provided that a trade union could not be registered under the Joint Stock Company's Act, and could not be registered under the Industrial Provident Society Act. Why? Because registration under those Acts would convert it into a sueable entity as a corporate body. But there was evidence of a still more definite kind than that. When Mr. Bruce, the late Lord Aberdare, was Home Secretary and introduced the Bill of 1871, he quoted from the minority report of the Trade Union Commission of 1867. He quoted the following:—

"Trade unions are essentially clubs, and not trading companies, and we think that the degree of regulation possible in the case of the latter is not possible in the case of the former. All questions of crime apart from the objects at which they aim, the rights which they claim, and the liabilities which they incur, are for the most part, it seems to us, such us Courts of Law should neither enforce, nor modify, nor annul; they should rest entirely on consent."

And then said—

"It is in accordance with that opinion that the measure of the Government has been framed."

In 1875 there was an agitation over an amendment of the Trade Union Act of 1871, and this he thought was particularly important. At the Trades Union Congress of 1875 a Scotch delegate proposed that the unions should have the right to sue and be sued. That proposal was opposed by Mr. George Howell and others, and was defeated by an overwhelming majority. They had it on the authority of Mr. George Howell, who was the greatest authority on the modern history of trade unionism, that this very proposal was discussed with the then Home Secretary of a Conservative Government, Viscount Cross, and it was decided that in the amending Bill, which afterwards became the amending Act of 1876, this provision for making trade unions suable and giving them power to sue should not be introduced. He suggested to hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition side that if it were good enough for the great Conservative Administration from 1874 to 1880 that trade unions should not be given the power to sue or to be made sueable, it ought to be good enough for the present Conservative Party, which was by no means so great or representative in this House. Trade unionists were asking that there should be that immunity from action for their collective funds which they enjoyed in effect from 1871 to 1901. With regard to the suggestion that there was a process known to the law by which they could have been attacked, namely, representative action, he ventured to say that representative action would never have done what had been done by the Taff Vale decision, for it could only have affected the individual member's property, and their property in a union could not be ascertained and determined, because it depended upon mere contingencies which might never arise, and because others than members—widows and orphans—had interests in the union funds. With regard to the clause under discussion, he understood from the remarks of the Solicitor-General that there would be an opportunity of amending it. As it stood he did not think it touched the law as at present defined. Nor did he think the clause in the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle in the least degree touched the Taff Vale decision or any of the subsequent decisions. The clause of the hon. Member for Newcastle provided that no action should be maintainable against a union by reason of the wrongful act of a member. No decision had yet made a union liable for a wrongful act of a member as such. What the decisions had done was to make unions liable for the wrongful act of an officer or committee-man; and to say that they should I not in future be liable for the wrongful act of a member would no more exempt them from liability than to say that a railway company should not be liable for the wrongful act of its shareholders would exempt thorn from liability if a stationmaster who committed a wrongful act, merely because at the same time he might be a shareholder. Obviously these two clauses could be dealt with in Committee, and he would conclude by expressing a profound hope that a satisfactory Act might be got through. He asked hon. Members on the Opposition side to remember that these unions were not only doing a great and useful work for their membership, but also on behalf of the community. The trade unions, and often they alone, by means of their out-of-work pay, had stood between hundreds of thousands of artisans in this country and the demoralising effect of pauperism. They had done something to raise and maintain the physique of the industrial people of the country by the fight which they had waged against insanitary conditions in so many factories. Trade unions, above all, had done more than any other single agency in this country to make for industrial peace, and he hoped that such an Act would be passed as would relieve them from the harassing distraction of continuous litigation, so that they might devote their energies to the great work of industrial peace.

said that although personally he preferred the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle, he should be prepared to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill, believing as he did that trade unions, whether for good or ill, had come into this country to stay, that the welfare of the working classes was bound up with their success and development, and that it was the duty of Parliament to help the unions in every way so as to make them as effective and successful as possible for the welfare of the country. He was very much struck when listening to the Solicitor-General to hear what appeared to him from a legal point of view to be an entirely erroneous argument with regard to the subject of incorporation. The Solicitor-General, if he understood him rightly, had pointed out that the alternative to passing the 4th Clause of this Bill would be to incorporate a trade union, the consequence of which would be that if an individual member of the union made a contract with the union not to return to work during a strike the contract would be capable of legal enforcement, and that a union could even get an injunction against an employer if he took the man back. As one who had been associated for a quarter of a century with the practice of the law, the dictum laid down by the Solicitor-General was most surprising and astonishing to him, because he had always been brought up to believe that all contracts which prevented persons from working and earning money were absolutely void as being contrary to public policy. That was clearly laid down in all the text-books dealing with the subject. A contract, therefore, which any member of a trade union might make with his union that he would net during a strike resume work would be absolutely void.

said that the doctrine of the restraint of trade as applicable to these contracts was abrogated by the Trade Unions Act.

said he had anticipated that answer, but he thought if the hon. and learned Gentleman examined the Act to which he referred he would find that it bore no such interpretation. He could give references to seven or eight decisions proving the contrary of the hon. and learned Gentleman's statement. For instance, a contract not to employ any man who had loft the service of another had been declared to be absolutely void.

Section 4 of the Act to which the hon. and learned Gentleman had referred, and upon which he understood him to rely, provided that nothing in the Act of 34 and 35 Victoria should make those contracts enforceable. The reasons why Clause 4 was put in was the fear lest the other sections of the Acts should make those contracts enforceable, which had been declared to be void in common law. This proposal went to the whole root of the contracts to which the hon. and learned Gentlemen referred. He was not in favour of the Second Reading of this Bill for any such erroneous and ill-founded reasons as the hon. and learned Gentleman had put before the House. The four matters of principle referred to were the right things. If trade unionists demanded the right to peaceful picketing they ought to have it, but he would caution them that if taking advantage of a clause in this Bill they proceeded by surrounding works with 100 or 150 men, and telling every man who wished to work there that he would have his head broken—[Cries of "Oh! oh!"]—if the men were going to have various inducements made to them in a peaceful way as was the case at the present time in the United States, the result would be that they would have the masters combining and maintaining an army of men, and when 100 men proceeded to picket they would probably find 200 or 300 hired ruffians to take care that those 100 men behaved themselves. He could see very serious consequences to public order likely to arise from the Bill. If those who represented labour in this House asked for this clause, personally he should be prepared to vote for it. With regard to funds, he agreed that if the whole of the unions' funds were to be liable for the act of any official, the funds would become divided, partly into benevolent funds, and partly into strike funds. He could see great evils arising to the community from that division, and the effect would be that the union would be able to get a certain fund together which would be available for strike purposes only, and it seemed to him that there must inevitably come a time when a union having got together £30,000 or £40,000 which it could not use for benevolent purposes, would use it for strike purposes in order to get another sixpence or a shilling or one and sixpence a week in wages for its members. The result would be that there would probably be a strike which would not have occurred if the funds had not been divided. There were several important reasons why it was desirable that they should do nothing to make the unions divide their funds, and why they should help them to keep those funds together, without making them liable for the acts of individuals. As a reasonable man, he was at a loss to understand why the funds of a union should under any circumstances be made liable for the acts of an official. It would be absurd, for instance, to suggest that any of the funds of hon. Members of this House should be liable for anything which the Serjeant-at-Arms might do. Where there were corporate funds belonging to a limited liability company it was quite right that those funds should be liable for the actions of the officials. But he could not see why the funds of a trade union should be liable for the act of some official who might make a mistake. He believed that the interests of labour in this country were inseparably bound up in the ultimate development and success of trade unions and they must look to the unions to improve their methods. For those reasons he intended to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill.

I waited to see if the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean or any hon. Member desired to follow my hon. and learned friend; and now perhaps the House will allow me to say what I have to say upon a Bill which I consider scarcely second in importance to any the Government have adumbrated or are likely to bring forward in the course of their tenure of office. One of the difficulties in which the House is placed is that we are asked to vote upon the Second Reading of a Bill, though it is not quite clear what the Bill is, or which of two alternative Bills it is to which we are asked to give approval. For my own part, I shall act in strict accordance with the rules of the House, and assume that the Bill upon which we have to express an opinion is the Bill before us—the Government Bill as read a first time, printed, and circulated. So far as that Bill is concerned, I say at once that I do not propose myself to oppose the Second Reading. I have always been of opinion that the question of trade disputes is a question we must take into consideration, that the difficulties and anomalies that have arisen in the course of the last thirty years could not be left untouched. It was because I held this view, and it was shared by my late colleagues, that the late Government appointed a Commission to investigate this difficult and complicated question, complicated in its historical and legal aspects; and I think myself that the course we then pursued not only showed our own desire to deal with the subject, but has directly contributed to providing material which should guide the House in the course that should he followed. Here I may express my regret at hearing a phrase fall from the hon. Member for Clitheroe—I think it was the hon. Member for Clitheroe—who said he refused to recognise the Commission over which Lord Dunedin presided, the Report of which Commission is in the hands of Members. I am not quite sure that I understand what "refuse to recognise" means. It may mean that the findings of the Commission are not binding upon any section of the House, and if that is the meaning of the hon. Member I entirely agree with him, and his dictum would apply not only to Lord Dunedin's Commission, but to every Commission that over sat. Royal Commissions have done notable work, but they would lose all utility if their decisions, however carefully and impartially arrived at, were to be considered to be binding upon a Party or upon the House as a whole. From every other point of view I think the labours of Lord Dunedin's Commission invaluable. It is true that the unions refused to assist the Commissioners' deliberation.

It has been explained on three or four occasions that that was because the appointment of a Labour representative to the Commission was refused.

I cannot quite admit the historical accuracy of that statement. What happened was this. It was resolved with general assent that there should be a Commission of inquiry into these matters. The question then arose whether the Commission should be framed on the principle of the representation of every section and every nationality, which is a very good way of appointing some Commisssions but does not conduce to rapidity of decision, or whether a smaller Commission, which might be described as more judicial in its character, would not be the best machinery for arriving at a satisfactory solution. My colleagues and I had reason to suppose that the latter course was one which would be satisfactory to both the then Opposition and the then majority of the House. It turned out to be a mistake. I only received information showing that I was mistaken after the Commission had been practically appointed, and after the decision was taken that it should be a small Commission and not a large and representative Commission. I have always regretted that there should have been a difference of opinion between us; but I never will admit that the fact that the Commission was not constituted exactly as the hon. Gentleman and his friends desired deprives the work of that Commission of the great value which I am convinced it will always have for those who wish to make themselves acquainted with the complicated legal aspect of this question.

said there were two reasons why trade unionists refused to give evidence. First, they nominated thirty men representing various trades in the country, and not one was put on the Commission. Secondly, a gentleman representing the employers was put on; and they thought that if the employers were entitled to one representative on this small Commission the trade unions were also entitled to one.

It may have boon an error on the part of those who were responsible; I am afraid that means myself. It may have been an error on my part that there was not an actual member of a trade union on that Commission. There was, however on that Commission a gentleman, not himself a member of a trade union, whose knowledge of and sympathy with trade unions are notorious and have been proved by the most elaborate work in favour of trade unions, and who, if sympathy with the trade unions and knowledge of the history of trade unions be qualifications for representing trade unions on that Commission, has those qualifications in the very highest degree—I mean Mr. Sidney Webb. I do not wish to go into past history; I only wish to say that any man who really wishes to find a guide through the almost inextricable legal labyrinth which this House and the Law Courts between them have made of the whole history of this matter cannot find a better guide than the Report of Lord Dunedin and his most able colleagues. Another gentleman who served on the Commission was quoted by the Prime Minister, on the day the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle was discussed, as perhaps the highest living authority upon this subject. A Majority Report signed by the highest living authority on trade union matters, in the opinion of the Prime Minister, signed also by Mr. Sidney Webb, signed by a great Liberal lawyer, and by a great Conservative lawyer, is, I venture to say, a document worthy of the closest attention of any man who wishes to make himself acquainted with the subject. I know I do not differ from the Front Bench opposite, but I do differ from hon. Gentlemen below the gangway, and it was to them I was addressing myself. I said that the House was in some doubt as to what really was the measure before the House. I listened with attention to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General, and I listened with very great admiration, for he had a rather difficult task to perform. The unfortunate and most regrettable illness of the hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of the Bill has prevented his giving us his assistance to-day, and the not less regrettable illness of the Prime Minister has prevented his giving us his assistance to-day. The result has been that the only two members of the Government who represent apparently the different sides of the controversy in the Cabinet were both precluded from assisting us in this afternoon's debate. Neither the Attorney-General, who spoke in favour of the Government measure, nor the Prime Minister, who apparently spoke in favour of a measure wholly inconsistent with it, could speak this afternoon, and the unfortunate Solicitor-General was left with the rather ungrateful task of making a speech which would throw over neither his learned colleague nor his right hon. chief. Before he began I tried to imagine how he would acquit himself of this delicate mission, and I am glad to think I foresaw the general line he would pursue. He gave us a very learned and interesting disquisition upon the law of conspiracy, he gave us a great eulogy of the work of trade unions, and almost casually in some interstice in an obscure paragraph of the speech, if any paragraph in such a speech could be regarded as obscure, he intimated in language which even now remains a little obscure—[cries of "Oh!"]—well, I will put a question directly to clear up the obscurity—he intimated in language which has still a tinge of obscurity over it that the Government were going to recede from their own Bill if sufficient pressure was put upon them by hon. Members below the gangway. Have I rightly interpreted the phrase to which I refer? I think I have, partly because I receive no contradiction either from the hon. and learned Gentleman or from anybody else in the House, and partly because I can hardly put any other interpretation upon the phrase in which he said that after all it was members of trade unions who knew most about trade unions, and it was therefore the members of trade unions in this House who ought to guide the House as to the policy they should pursue in trade union legislation. I understand that the Government Bill, which we are going to read the second time this afternoon, is abandoned in its most important provision. This seemed to the hon. and learned Gentleman to be the most ordinary and natural proceeding in the world. So far as I know it is unexampled in Parliamentary procedure I know, of course, of many cases in which a Bill having been carried to a Second Reading has then been profoundly modified in Committee in the face of overwhelming argument, and in consequence of the impossibility of the Government's carrying their measure in its original shape. You will find in Parliamentary history many cases of that kind, but I never knew a Government run away before a shot was fired. [Cries of "Free trade."]

Your Redistribution Bill.

I cannot conceive that there can be any dispute about the facts. I never hoard of a Government which introduced a Bill and before the Second Reading intimated, and on the Second Reading announced, that they meant to modify it profoundly in its most important provision. If I am right, then I was justified in saying it is an unexampled procedure, and I think it is also a very inexpedient procedure. The hon. and learned Gentleman seems to think that this is not a subject in which the House ought to expect guidance from the Government; they ought to look for guidance elsewhere. The members of the late Government were abused for not giving to the then Opposition sufficient guidance on a particular doctrine which has been referred to in an interruption. I am not going to quarrel as to whether we gave guidance or not, but I will remind the House that the subject was not one before Parliament at all, it was not one on which the Government had introduced a Bill, and it was not one on which the Government were going to introduce a Bill. What is the present case? The Government come forward with a Bill. They profess, therefore, to have a plan which they recommend to the House. The mere suggestion that this does not meet with the full approval of hon. Gentlemen below the gangway induces them to modify their whole attitude; and before they have an opportunity of hearing the arguments or of seeing what trend of opinion in this House those arguments may produce, they announce their readiness to sacrifice their own Bill and accept the Bill of somebody else. That is not really the most serious part of it. The most serious part of it is that this question, by their own admission, is one of the very first importance. There are questions not involving principles on which any Government would be justified in saying, "Let the House decide this matter if it so pleases, we will not use the ordinary Party organisation, we will, in the technical phrase, allow the House to run loose in this matter." Is this question on which the Government have suddenly altered their strategy one of these unimportant questions? I have only to remind the House of the statement of the representative of the Government when he introduced the Bill that the plan which the Government are now going to adopt is class legislation. I have yet to learn that anything in the nature of class legislation, anything which goes to the root of equality and cuts down equality as between class and class, is a matter of unimportance in regard to which the Government has a right to say, "It is no concern of ours, we leave it to others to determine; we will follow their lead whithersoever it shall take us." They renounce the responsibility of giving to the House that guidance on matters of such importance which every Government of which I have ever heard has, at all events, tried to give in the direction it thought right. And it is not, after all, simply on the chance phrase of the learned Attorney-General that they based this view. I have been given, since I came into the House, an extract from a speech made by the Secretary of State for War in the very heat of the general election. The Secretary of State for War observed that—

We have heard a great deal to-day from Members on both sides of the House in favour of trade unions, and, indeed, I think this debate has too much oscillated between the common-places with which I think, we all agree, as to the great work which trade unions have done for the classes which they specially represent, and minute legal points. I shall avoid minute legal points; but, as regards the position of trade unions generally, in my opinion there is no Party, I should hardly think there is an individual now who has been brought face to face with the actual facts of our present social life who does not recognise to the full all that trade unions have done, the gap which they filled in the social organisation, and the impossibility of carrying on organised labour except by an institution framed upon their model. I go further, and I associate myself entirely with what fell from the Solicitor-General. I say that undoubtedly trade disputes in this country have been carried on with a wisdom and a moderation on both sides which cannot be paralleled in any other industrial community. Of course I do not attribute the whole of the credit for that to the trade unions. I think the organisations of the masters are entitled to their share of the credit, and I am quite sire that the hon. Gentlemen below the gangway would be ready to give them their fair share of the credit. But while that must be admitted, surely it must also be admitted that these admirable results are in no small degree due to the statesmanship, the moderation, and the wisdom which have, on the whole, guided the leaders of the trade unions in dealing with the difficult problems which must from time to time arise in an industrial society like ours. But, if every one is ready to admit that, what is its precise bearing upon the problem, I will not say which the Bill we are now reading raises, but the Bill which we shall be asked to discuss in Committee raises? The hon. Member for Clitheroe, in his very interesting speech this afternoon, pointed to the past history of trade unions, and said, "With this record behind us, why cannot you trust us with these further privileges that we ask" [LABOUR cries of "No."]

With the same.

I see "Why must you needs alter what for many years was believed to be the law? We have done nothing to show that the law, as it was supposed to be, is abused by us. You have experience behind you; cannot you now perpetuate the system which has accidentally, as it were, been experimentally tested, and which has stood the test to the credit of the trade unions and everybody else concerned?" I think that is by far the most powerful argument which can be adduced in favour of a scheme which, I am convinced, but for that argument, would never receive the general assent of this House. But I am not convinced by that argument, and for the following reasons. I think we are obliged, now that the question has been raised, to consider not merely the history of this question, not merely the series of legal accidents which led to the misconception, if that is an accurate statement of the case, that trade unions could not be sued in damages, but also to consider what is to be the legislation for all time, or at all events for a very long time, under which these great organisations are to exist. The Solicitor-General started a new argument—at least, I think it is new—upon this branch of the subject. He said, "A trade union is not a corporation. It has not the advantage of a corporation. Why then do you insist that it should suffer the disadvantages of a corporation? If you gave it the advantages of a corporation, it could insist on all sorts of contracts with its members, it could make the police picket, it could make the police prevent trade unionists returning to work, contracts between a trade union and its members would be enforceable by law, and where would the employers be then?"

I am not at all moved by that argument. I do not know whether the learned Gentleman's law is quite correct. My legal friends near me throw doubt upon it. But I am wholly unmoved by that argument, because my view is that what we have got to do is to put trade unions on an equality, and nothing more than equality, with other similar institutions in the country. Equality, and only equality—no privilege, no disability, but equality; and, in my opinion, if you carry the Bill as the Government propose their Bill should be amended, if you carry the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle—that is what it comes to—you are putting the trade unions in a position of privilege. [Cries of "No" from the LABOUR Benches.] It has been denied by, I think, the hon. Member for Denbigh, who said that only an individual or a corporation could be sued in damages. The hon. Gentleman is not, I think, right.

At common law.

Trade unions and all similar bodies, though they do not rise to the level of corporations, can be sued now for damages at common law; and what we have got to ask is why, when every other body, even though it be not a corporation, can be sued in damages——

asked the right hon. Gentleman what other similar body could be sued for damages at common law.

Does the hon. Gentleman deny the proposition?

Certainly.

I am sorry to fall into the clutches of the lawyers again. I am quite clearly advised that it is not necessary that a body should be an incorporated body in order to be sued in damages. Trade unions are not incorporated, but they ought, as it seems to me, unless strong reasons can be shown to the contrary, to suffer the law which other bodies not incorporated suffer, and, if they do a wrong, they should be civilly liable for the consequences of that wrong.

^* : I expressly said that a trade union was made suable under the Taff Vale decision by the interpretation put by the Court upon the Trade Union Act of 1871. There is no body, which is not either an individual or a corporation, which is suable at common law.

I am advised that that is not a full statement of the case, and that, as a matter of fact, any body, though not an incorporated body, which does an injury may be sued and damages recovered from them. Then, if that be so, is it enough to say that trade unions are an invaluable element in our social system? ["Yes."] I grant it. But how does that answer the argument that they ought not to be exceptionally privileged? Is it said that trade unions, by the wisdom with which they have conducted their side of our trade disputes, have made those trade disputes a model for the rest of the world, and that, therefore, you ought to put them in a position of privilege? I see no reason either in the promises, with which I agree, or in the conclusion, from which I dissent, for such a course. I do not believe you can safely or rightly say to any society of men:—"You have the power to do wrong, you have the organisation to enable you to be mischievous, if you are ill-advised enough to be mischievous. You are armed with funds which may make you a most formidable power for evil if in some moment of madness you should elect to take an evil course; but, nevertheless, you have shown yourselves so virtuous up to the present time that Parliament is going to put you in a position in which Parliament has put no other similar association." We are going to say, "Do what wrong you please, no penalty shall you suffer; your funds shall be immune; you will not be required to recompense any man to whom you have done wrong, or to redress any injury that you may have inflicted." I am ready to grant that such wrongs have not occurred in the past, and are improbable in the future. I am ready to grant that the history of trade unionism is an honourable history. I am ready to admit that, if we argue simply upon the experience of this country between 1870 and 1905, we need look forward with no deep anxiety to the conduct of trade unions in the immediate future so long as the traditions which have been developed are carried out by the Gentlemen whom I see below the gangway—so long as they are the overmastering factors in trade unions, so long as wisdom, moderation, humanity, and the love of freedom preside at their councils, then, indeed, we have no reason to fear, and we need not fence round the community against any possibility of injury from these powerful organisations. But we have got to think of something beyond the immediate experience that we have had. We cannot look forward confidently for an indefinite period to similar wisdom guiding the councils of these trade unions. And by what canon of policy, by what principle that has over regulated the conduct of this House, are we now to say that, while every other corporation and every other organised body of men are to be answerable for the wrong they do, one quasi -corporation—not the least powerful, but a great organisation of our social system—and one only, is to be put in a position to which no other body would dare to aspire, and is to be told that it may with absolute impunity, so far as its funds are concerned, inflict what wrong and what injury it likes upon whatsoever individuals it pleases, and shall be put above the reach of the law which touches every other association and corporation in the land? I agree with those members of the Government who have said so clearly and distinctly that they do not believe that this is a sound policy for this House to adopt. I agree with the learned Attorney-General that it is class legislation; I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for War that it is not in that direction the House of Commons should attempt to solve this most difficult question. But I do not agree with the Government; for they have surrendered to the Gentlemen below the gangway. I appeal to the Gentlemen below the gangway themselves, for on them has been thrown upon this occasion the responsibility of giving guidance to this House in not the least difficult position in which the House has found itself. I would ask them whether it is for their interests and for the interests of the class which they so powerfully represent, whether it is for the interest of the community of which they are distinguished citizens, that the principles of equality, the principles of equal treatment under similar circumstances, should not be applied in matters in which they are interested just as much as to questions with which other classes and other individuals are more nearly connected? They are perfectly capable of seeing that you ought to deal in these matters on general principles applicable to the whole community, and not applicable only to a particular class. No men can see an argument more clearly than they; and I am convinced that if they dissent from the general proposition which I have laid down, it is for reasons which I am unable to fathom, and on grounds which have not been laid before me. They do not think with me that their Bill gives unequal privileges. They do not agree with that. They think it only gives them a position which will enable them on equal terms, and with no special immunities, to deal with the class of problems which will come before them. I think they ought to devote themselves to proving that. It is clearly not the opinion of so high an authority as the Attorney-General; it is clearly not the opinion of two or three of the most important Cabinet Ministers in this House; and, so far as I am capable of forming an opinion, it is not my own opinion. If they can show in Committee that their Bill is an equal Bill, I shall have no objection. I am not frightened by the saying that, if you add to the power of these bodies, you will make these gentlemen too powerful. But what I am afraid of is that, partly from great sympathy with the interests committed to their charge and partly because of their great electoral strength, we should abandon the only safe guide which should govern our legislation—the guide that we ought not to treat unequally persons whose circumstances are really and fundamentally identical. Let it not be said that in obedience to pressure, from whatever quarter, we have now deliberately laid it down for the first time [MINISTERIAL cries of "First time?"]—well, for the first time within recent date—but I am obliged by the interruption and I will amend the sentence, and say it would not be safe that we should think it consistent with the principles of legislation which are in harmony with modern thought, with modern ideas of freedom, with modern ideas of individual liberty, and with modern ideas of social security—it would, in fact, be inconsistent with those principles to say that there is any class or association throughout the kingdom which is by statute empowered to do wrong and to have no remedy exacted from them.

^* congratulated the right hon. Gentleman, and also the House, upon his return restored to health. In listening to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman he had been struck by the great importance which the right hon. Gentleman attached to what he called the change of front of the Government upon what was Clause 3 in the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle, and Clause 4 in the Government Bill. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to twit the Government with not knowing their own minds upon this question. He thought as the right hon. Gentleman was speaking that he was going to accuse them of having unsettled convictions. There was no one in that House who had a right to speak with greater authority upon that subject. It almost seemed as if they were in the last Parliament, when it was said more than once that it did not matter what the methods were by which they chose to arrive at a policy so long as they were agreed upon the general lines of the policy; that the methods might be different indicated no real difference of opinion at all.

If the hon. and learned Gentleman is quoting me I cannot honestly say that I recognise the quotation. I should not have complained if the arguments of the Government diverged from one another if their conclusions were the same, but their conclusions are vitally different.

^* said that the words he had quoted were the words of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham at a very critical period in the discussion on free trade, in which that right hon. Gentleman was explaining that the present Leader of the Opposition and himself were really pursuing the same policy by different methods, and that they had the same object. He did not say that the right hon. Gentleman agreed it was the same policy, but he must say that it had taken a very long time for the right hon. Gentleman to dissent from the quotation. There were many Members who were very desirous of hearing from the right hon. Gentleman opposite [OPPOSITION cries of "Question."]

^* : What has this to do with the Trade Disputes Bill?

^* said he was not sure whether he was in order in explaining in reference to the Trade Disputes Bill the point of the observation which he wished to make. He thought he should be in order; if not he should deal with it in another way. He did not mean to be disrespectful to the Chair; the only way in which he was seeking to make the observation relevant was in dealing with the remarks which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite to-day that there was a divergence of opinion among the different members of the Government upon this subject. The policy was the same though the methods might be different. What had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman opposite must go very far to remove many of the scruples of hon. Members and of many people outside the House, as to the policy of giving complete immunity to trade union funds of which so much had been said. Until he heard the speech of the right hon. Gentleman he had always thought that the reason of the strong objection to Clause 3 of the hon. Member for Newcastle's Bill was that it was said that advantage would be taken of this immunity by the executive of trade unions to commit unlawful acts under the protection of the immunity which would be given to their funds. That was the powerful argument that was used inside and outside this House, and he was glad to have received from the right hon. Gentleman the eloquent and high testimonial which enabled them once and for all time to banish altogether from their minds, and the minds of those outside the House who were interested in this question, the fear or danger of the leaders of the trade unions, of the executive officials of the trade unions, taking advantage of this immunity to commit unlawful acts. ["Oh! oh!"] Some hon. Members opposite appeared to differ from him, but he was only quoting their own loader. He did not pretend to say that he had used the exact words of the right hon. Gentleman, but he believed he had given the substance of them. He would repeat what he had said, and if the right hon. Gentleman dissented from him he would no doubt contradict him.

I contradict you now.

^* said that the right hon. Gentleman had paid a very eloquent tribute to the trade union leaders and the trade union officials, and had said, as he (Mr. Isaacs) understood him, that he had no fear that there would be any illegal acts committed by them under the immunity given by this clause if passed. It was not because he feared that that he objected to the clause. It was the danger of what might happen in the future when they might not have such able men, men who were such a credit to trade unions and to labour at the head of affairs. He was glad he had not misrepresented the right hon. Gentleman. That being so, he asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he expected the trade union leaders of the future to pursue a retrograde path; that they would become, as time progressed, not a greater but a lesser credit to the community? The right hon. Gentleman had rightly told the House that from the time the trade unions had been recognised by law, certainly during the last thirty years, there had been many testimonials to the leaders of the trade unions. Many statements had been made both by employers and hon. Members of the opposite Party showing how reasonably and moderately they had conducted the affairs of the trade unions. Again he almost found himself quoting the words of the right hon. Gentleman when he wanted a strong argument in favour of trade unions. He had been connected with trade union litigation during the last few years and he was glad to be able to say, and knew that he would not be misunderstood when he did say, that there was nothing more satisfactory in the history of trade unionism and trade disputes between the unions and employers than that, in the majority of cases, the employers and the union leaders were able to settle disputes easily and amicably, which otherwise might have resulted in serious strikes. He had in mind the words of one great Judge dealing with this very question, when he said it would be a sad thing indeed for this country if the time ever arrived when it was found that trade union representatives were no longer able to meet employers, to negotiate with them, to conciliate them, and to assist them to conciliate the workpeople, so that strikes with all their concurrent evils might be averted. Hon. Members opposite seemed to think the effect of this Bill upon the trade unions would be to multiply strikes; he would ask those who believed that to take the rules of the trade unions in their hands. He could refer them to the rules of two or three trade unions if they wished. Hon. Members would find that those rules were framed and designed with the object not of making strikes, but of redressing grievances from which the workers suffered, by means not of strikes but of conciliation, by means of concessions and by all such acts on the part of the trade union officials that could be devised to prevent the occurrence of a strike. Those rules were most carefully hedged round with provisions to prevent strikes. He would now call attention to one or two observations made by the right hon. Gentleman with reference to the law. Even on the law he could found much of his argument on the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. What was the difference between trade unions and other associations and corporations in this country? Under the Trade Union Act of 1871—when the trade unions were for the first time recognised as lawful associations; when they were no longer to be deemed illegal associations because they were in restraint of trade—under that Act they were not created corporations, they did not acquire the rights usually given to corporations. The Legislature carefully provided that they should not have those rights. Why did the Legislature do that if it meant to treat trade unions as corporations? Hon. Members opposite had asked why the Government desired to make this exception? Might he not go a little farther back and ask why trade unions were put into a different category from other associations in 1871. "But," said the right hon. Gentleman, opposite, "we have progressed since then," but the right hon. Gentleman held power for many years and had a great majority behind him, and why did he not with that majority at his back introduce some measure to alter the law if he disapproved of it? So far from its being a case of putting trade unions into a specially favourable position, as was described to-day, it was the other way about. When the Trades Disputes Bill with the same third clause as in the Bill of the hon. Member for Newcastle was before the House in 1901 and 1905, with the Party led by the right hon. Gentleman opposite in a great majority, the Second Reading was carried by majorities of 39 and 122 respectively. On those occasions the supporters of the right hon. Gentleman voted in favour of the Bill with that very clause. He did not say, and never had said, that either the right hon. Gentleman himself or the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover had voted for the Bill. What he had said was that a number of those who were led by the right hon. Gentleman voted in favour of the Second Reading of a Bill which contained that very clause. If that clause was so injurious as the right hon. Gentleman now thought, why was it that so many Members of the Conservative Party voted in favour of it? He did not desire at this stage, as the Second Reading was not to be opposed, to take up the time of the House in discussing the law on the subject. It was so thorny that he entirely agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that it was very difficult to tread one's way through the labyrinth. For that very reason it was essential that trade unionists should know, and employers should know, what was lawful and what was not lawful, and that there should not be the necessity for costly litigation involving appeals to the highest tribunals in order to determine whether an act came within the law or was outside the law, and therefore made the trade unions liable. Certainly he was within the mark when he said that the vast majority of lawyers dealing with cases to which trade union law was applicable did think, until the Taff Vale decision was given, that trade unions could not be sued nor their funds made responsible. Not only did lawyers who were not on the Bench think so, but the Court of Appeal were unanimously of the same view, and if the decision of the House of Lords were referred to, it would be seen that some of the judgments were based not upon the view that trade unions were corporations, but that for convenience the procedure might be adopted of suing the trade union as being nothing more than a collective name for all the members, in order to avoid making all the members of the union defendants in the action. That made an enormous change, because the effect was that from that time it had been said that trade union funds could be attached whenever a trade union was successfully sued for damages. He was not prepared to say that though a judgment might be given against a trade union they could always attach the funds, but he admitted that would be very difficult when a decision had been given to prevent the seizure of the funds. The judgment having been given, he asserted it produced a change which ought not to rest upon the shoulders of the Judges. If this was the law to be applied to trade unions in the future, Parliament should make it after the country had had an opportunity of expressing its opinion upon a change which affected the whole constitution of a trade union, operating as it did upon funds contributed by the working classes week by week and month by month. They knew what the opinion of the people of the country was upon this question, and he thought they were entitled to say that they knew what the opinion of the House would be upon it. He submitted to the House with all possible respect to the Judges—who, he would not say, had altered the law, but who had pronounced opinions contrary to the views of the vast majority of lawyers practising in the courts—that the change which had been effected was of so far-reaching and sweeping a character that even if the Judges had the power to make it, it ought to be reviewed by this House; and if the House did not agree with it, it must exercise its privilege and power of rising above the Judges of the land, and declare the law henceforth to be applicable to trade unions in such language as would prevent misapprehension and make manifest the legal position which the representatives of the people had deter mined should be occupied by trade unions. Once that was done there would be no danger of the law being interpreted otherwise than in accordance with the views of Parliament, and the law affecting trade unions would be administered pursuant to the wishes and intentions of those who had the right to make it.

pointed out that although trade unions were not corporate bodies they were different from ordinary private societies. They were statutory bodies which were to some extent corporate, and Lord Halsbury, in giving his judgment as Lord Chancellor in the Taff Vale case, said that—

"If the Legislature has created a thing which can own property, width can employ servants, and which can inflict injury, it must be taken, I think, to have impliedly given a power to make it suable in a Court of law for injury purposely done by its authority and procurement."

The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer speaking on the Trade Disputes Bill in the House of Commons in 1903 said—

"I do not think it would be expedient, from the point of view of combinations either of employers or of the workmen, that those who are in favour of their effective existence should attempt to ask Parliament to lay down a policy of this kind, that trade organisations possessing large funds, and directed by a controlling authority, should not be responsible for the unlawful acts, if they be unlawful, shown to be committed by their agents, if they be really their agents, within the scope of their authority. I do not think it would be in the interests of the trade unions or the employers' combinations that that principle should be affirmed."

He had the very greatest respect for trade unions and for the officials who guided their proceedings, and he quite agreed with everything that had been said as to the large amount of valuable work which they had done in times past, but he could not see that that constituted any reason why they should be put upon an exceptional footing, and why they should have an immunity which was not enjoyed by other classes of the community. As he understood the law at present, they were only liable for the unlawful acts of their officials, which they had expressly or impliedly authorised, and he thought it would be in their interest that, as the Leader of the Opposition had said, they should remain on an equal footing with other classes of the community in that respect.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday next.

in the Chair.]

(In the Committee.)

Clause 1:—

^* moved an Amendment transferring from lords-lieutenant to municipal and county councils the power of recommending to the Lord Chancellor the names of persons for appointment to the magistracy. He said that if no Amendment of this character were carried as the number of persons who would be eligible for the magistracy would be greatly increased, there would be political wire-pulling by bringing pressure to bear upon Members of Parliament to recommend names to the Lord Chancellor. He thought that the power to make recommendations to the Lord Chancellor should not be vested in the lords-lieutenant, and the effect of this Amendment would be to abolish that power or customary right. If that were not done Members of Parliament would be appealed to by people, who had supported them in their elections for recommendation to the Lord Chancellor. They knew that now Members of Parliament were being largely appealed to for the purpose of obtaining these appointments from the Lord Chancellor, and the effect of the Bill as it stood would be greatly to increase that number. For if there were no property qualifications, and he entirely agreed there should be none, then almost every man would be eligible. Some years ago he had been the means of obtaining the abolition of Party patronage so far as Members of the House had the right of nominating to the Postmaster-General persons for the positions of postmasters and postmistresses, for he moved the Resolution in the House which brought this about. The abolition of that right freed them from the evil effects of such patronage, but the effect of the Bill, if carried without such an Amendment as he proposed, would be to carry them back to the system of Party patronage in its worst form; a system from which the country had suffered in the past.

Amendment proposed—

"In page 1, line 6, at the end, to add the words 'and in lieu thereof shall be substituted nomination by every town council within the meaning of The Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, of any borough or city having a separate commission of the peace, and any county councils established under The Local Government Act, 1888, within whose jurisdiction any municipal borough not having a separate commission of the peace or any petty sessional division of a county is situate who shall, subject to the conditions hereinafter mentioned, respectively have the right to nominate a person or persons for appointment to the office of a justice or justices of the peace within such borough, city, or county respectively in the manner hereinafter described.'"— (Mr. Luttrell.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there added."

said the Amendment which his hon. friend had proposed was in reality seeking to introduce a new mode of appointment. He had introduced a Bill upon this subject which ran to the extent of about a dozen clauses, which provided for the manner in which names were to be submitted, the number of persons entitled to nominate, and the particulars of the persons to be sent to the Lord Chancellor. In other words, his hon. friend by this Amendment sought to introduce his Bill into the measure now before the House. Without discussing the merits of the Bill, he thought the House would agree with him that it was by no means a convenient method of Parliamentary procedure. He thought it would be fatal to the present Bill if he accepted the Amendment, because the subject dealt with was a very wide and important one. The Amendment might be good or bad so far as its objects were concerned, but it, at any rate, raised a very large question of elected magistracy which could not be established in the way in which the hon. Member had suggested.

reminded the Solicitor-General that he had seen propositions of this kind accepted notwithstanding the fact that they involved the adoption of consequential clauses and provisions. He congratulated the hon. and learned Gentleman upon having omitted all mention of experience of that kind, and upon having evaded expressing the opinion of the Government upon the supremely important proposal that the magistracy should be fundamentally revolutionised in its composition by being placed upon an elective basis. He hoped the House would observe that the present Government entirely omitted to seize the opportunity presented to it of condemning the principle contained in the Amendment.

said he did not think this question ought to be disposed of without more consideration. The proposal which had been put forward was to take from the Lord-Lieutenant the power of recommending persons for appointment as magistrates, and to transfer that power to the town and county councils throughout the country. They had in the past seen something of the working of the system of recommendation by the Lords-Lieutenant, and he did not think every one would say that it was a satisfactory system. Not long ago there was a Lord Chancellor in office of the opposite party to that to which he belonged, and he indulged in a correspondence with the Lords Lieutenant and impressed upon them the desirability of recommending gentlemen for appointment as magistrates who were of the same political party as hon. Members opposite. He remembered that upon that occasion the Lords-Lieutenant were put to enormous exertions in endeavouring to find suitable gentlemen to occupy the positions of magistrates [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh, oh!"] They were indeed put to the most enormous trouble to discover gentlemen whom they thought were qualified to discharge the duties of magistrates, and they occupied a large portion of their time seeking out those gentlemen, and they did not succeed in finding them to any great extent. The Solicitor-General had declined to express an opinion on behalf of the Government with reference to this proposal, and it was possible that he had the fate of the Attorney-General before his eyes, because if he expressed that opinion he know that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil would probably tell him that he was wrong. Personally, he was in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility than the hon. and learned Gentleman, and he was not absolutely at the command of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil and his colleagues. He thought the proposal contained in the Amendment was an exceedingly bad one, because it suggested not only that there should be an elective system, but that the appointments should be recommended by the town council and the county council. That would mean that at every election for a town council the question whether the magistrates appointed by the outgoing council had discharged their duties in a way which commended itself to the particular localities concerned would be considered by the electors. He could not conceive a more infamous principle, and he hoped the House would express in the most contemptuous way possible its opinion of the proposal contained in this Amendment.

said he understood that the proposals contained in this Amendment sought to introduce into the Government Bill, by means of a very lengthy Amendment, which it was very difficult to understand, practically the whole contents of another Bill. He agreed that the present system of appointing magistrates was open to some considerable objection. In Liverpool the City Council elected the Lord Mayor, who was chairman of the bench of magistrates for one year by virtue of office, and during the following year he continued still to be a magistrate. He ceased to be a justice altogether at the end of two years, if some high official did not in the meantime see his way to appoint a few magistrates and to include him. It would be agreed that a man who had passed through such a great office as that of Lord Provost in Scotland or Lord Mayer in England should not cease to be a justice when his term of office was over. This subject was different altogether from that dealt with in the Bill before the House, and he agreed with the Solicitor-General that it was highly inconvenient that one subject should be dealt with in the Bill, and that by an ingenious Amendment it should be proposed to introduce an altogether different subject in order, by a side issue, to get something with which the Bill had nothing to do. He could not see his way to vote for the Amendment, which, if adopted, would only make confusion worse confounded.

Question put and negatived.

Motion made and Question proposed, "That Clause 1 stand part of the Bill."

said it appeared to him that the principle involved in the clause was a bad one. He did not maintain that only those who had a certain qualification should be entitled to be county magistrates. At the same time he did think that a qualification of some kind was required, and this Bill merely proposed to strike out the qualification without putting anything in its place. He should be compelled to vote against the clause if it was pressed to a division.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 273; Noes, 39. (Division List No. 51.)

Clause 2:—

said he wished to propose an Amendment on the first line of Clause 2, to leave out the words "if otherwise qualified." Clause 2 seemed to be intended to provide that a person might be appointed a justice of the peace in any county although he did not reside in that county, provided he lived within seven miles of it. If that were the idea, it seemed to him that complication would ensue from the words "if otherwise qualified." Those words implied that the old qualification which now obtained was still to be retained, although the qualification was abolished by Clause 1 which had just been passed by an overwhelming majority. Of course, he was aware that it was conceivable that the qualification of real estate must be possessed by a person of the male sex and that a lady could not be appointed to the bench. But the position created by the second clause as it stood, and the first clause as passed, seemed to him altogether illogical. Hon. Members must be desirous, if this Bill became law, that there should not be an obvious and absurd inconsistency between the first and second clauses He therefore proposed that the words "if otherwise qualified" should be left out of the clause.

Amendment proposed—

" In page 1, line 7, to leave out the words 'if otherwise qualified.'"—( Mr. Watson Rutherford. )

Question proposed, "That the words 'if otherwise qualified' stand part of the Clause."

said that the second clause had no reference to estate qualifications. It referred to residential qualification.

^* said he entirely agreed with what had fallen from the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool. If they were to have the abolition of the property qualification as provided for in the first clause, the second clause would create endless trouble. Moreover, the Bill as indicated by the marginal notes would be rendered unintelligible. If, as the learned Solicitor-General had just stated, the second clause referred to residential qualification, it seemed absurd to make that the basis of a non-residential appointment, viz., of a person to be a justice of the peace in a county in which he did not reside.

said he could not follow the Solicitor-General. What they were dealing with in this clause was a person who lived in a county outside the county for which it was proposed he should be made a justice of the peace. He could not see how the second clause as it stood could be reconciled to the first clause. They were told that the Bill did not deal with the estate qualification but with the residential qualification. What was the use if it did not deal with the estate qualification of the words "if otherwise qualified?" To that question they had no answer whatever, and that confirmed the doubt in their minds. The Solicitor-General owed it to the Committee to give them the explanation for which they respectfully asked.

And, it being a quarter past Eight of the clock, further proceeding was postponed without Question put pursuant to Standing Order No. 4.

^* rose to call attention to the question of vaccination; and to move "That, in the opinion of this House, vaccination ought no longer to be obligatory on those who regard it as useless or dangerous." He submitted that his resolution was one which was moderate in its terms, was adapted to the feelings of the House and was unobjectionable. The opinion it expressed had been adopted by the House many times before. The original Act of 1867 was found very unsatisfactory for many reasons, and amending Acts had to be introduced. But the Act of 1867 did not itself introduce an absolutely compulsory vaccination system, because according to Clause 29 a parent or guardian might give a reasonable excuse for non-vaccination, but in practice the magistrates did not regard any excuse, or hardly any excuse, as reasonable. Not only that, they inflicted the maximum penalty in all cases. He took it that when Parliament in its wisdom said that the maximum penalty should be 20s. they also meant that there should be a minimum penalty for poorer people, leaving the maximum to be inflicted upon the rich. A shilling fine imposed upon a labourer would mean as much as a fine of 20s. imposed upon a gentleman with £5,000 a year. Indeed, there could be no doubt that a fine of 20s. to a poor man would be equal to a fine of £1,000 to a great many Members of the House. A labouring man could not pay such a fine except by starving himself and his family for months. The result was that many a man had gone to gaol not because he would not pay, but because he could not. He remembered the case of a labourer in Lincolnshire, who applied for an exemption under the new Act several times, but was unsuccessful. Then he was prosecuted, an order was made against him for heavy costs and he was sent to gaol again and again. That seemed to him a most cruel thing. Owing to the difficulties of the enforcement of the Acts, a Royal Commission was appointed, and in 1898 a fresh Act of Parliament was passed. In that year Parliament entirely gave up the idea of insisting upon a compulsory law. The right hon. Gentleman who was then the President of the Local Government Board, and who was his predecessor in the representation of the Sleaford Division of Lincolnshire, said, referring to the remarks he had made at the beginning of the debate on that Act, that he found that his former statements were altogether out of date and that he quite recognised that the administration of a compulsory vaccination law was neither necessary nor desirable. That was the opinion of a President of the Local Government Board under a Tory Ministry, he himself being a Tory among Tories. Parliament then agreed to a law which it was thought at the time would prevent the vaccination law from being compulsory. Unfortunately the administration of that law had not been what it was intended to be, and the principle of compulsion had been applied in a worse manner than ever. The Act of 1898 said that a parent or guardian might obtain exemption upon the ground of conscientious objection. But some magistrates made a rule which there was nothing in the Act of Parliament to justify, that the father himself must attend, and they made other very onerous conditions with regard to the granting of these exemptions. One of them was that they would not allow the age of the child to be proved with a copy of the certificate of birth, which cost 3d., but insisted upon the certificate itself, which cost 3s. 6d. They endeavoured to make it as expensive to the poor man as possible. When he did, sacrificing a day's pay, get before them at great expense to himself, they cross-examined him and got him to say something which in their opinion was not an excuse, and then refused the exemption. The applicant was sometimes told to wait till the other business was over, and when that had been concluded, all the magistrates except one left the bench, and he was told that there was no bench and he must come again. That was the way in which the poor fellow was bullied, and if he failed to make another application he was prosecuted and sent to gaol. In this way some of the best citizens of the country were made criminals and degraded. There was a very strong opinion upon this subject in the division he represented, and there were hundreds of thousands of people not only there, but throughout the country, waiting for the glad tidings of great joy that this House, that this Government with all the eclat of success behind it, had resolved that anti-vaccinators should not be subjected to these cruelties, and that that liberty upon the possession of which we prided ourselves so much should come at last to be respected. The Royal Commission which sat for seven years came at any rate to one conclusion which he believed was unanimous. They thought that a scheme should be devised by which parents and guardians should be relieved from obligation to vaccinate children, by making before some specified officials a statutory declaration to the effect that the parent or guardian had a conscientious objection to vaccination. The minority, while agreeing with that, went further, and why should not the House accept their suggestion? The Minority Report was to the effect that the Members who signed it thought that a simple declaration by the parent or guardian to the vaccination officer, when he came to vaccinate, that he did not want his child vaccinated should be sufficient to exempt. In a village consisting to a great extent of simple un-educated people, it was not everybody who was able to make a statutory declaration, and it meant expense, and the expenditure of time in finding a magistrate before whom to make it. Why should not a declaration to the medical man when he came to vaccinate, or to the village registrar, be sufficient to obtain exemption? He had known the effort to obtain exemption cost a man who was earning cash wages of 15s. a week, 11s., and then, after being flouted and insulted, he was refused the exemption he asked for. This was an enormous sum to ask a labouring man to lay out to secure exemption. He knew that hon. Members would say that these people were ignorant, but a parent had a right to say whether the blood of his child should be mixed with anything else. He did not intend to argue the question of vaccination and whether it would prevent smallpox, although he strongly held that it was both useless and dangerous. Surely a parent or guardian should have a chance of saying whether his child should be vaccinated or not. There were people of the highest eminence on both sides. There were medical men who said vaccination was a good and harmless operation, and others who said it was a dangerous and useless one. There was no agreement on the subject. There were some questions upon which all scientists were agreed, as in astronomy, but in regard to vaccination they were dealing with something upon which there was no scientific law, and upon which there was an infinite difference of opinion. There were many sources from which vaccine was to be obtained. Horse-grease pox, cow-pox, sheep-pox, corpse-pox, monkey-pox, and smallpox; all these had been used, and according to the pro-vaccinating authorities each was as good as another. Jenner said a very slight puncture was sufficient, other medical authorities said there should be two or three punctures. The King of Prussia said there should be ten punctures, but he was a determined man. The Local Government Board said there should be four punctures, which should leave four sears of large size. Since the Local Government Board had published that order, one of the greatest authorities on vaccination had said that now they had got so skilful in applying the vaccine that a person might be vaccinated and hardly any mark be left at all. There was an enormous difference of opinion upon this subject. Then with regard to the immunity from smallpox, how long did the immunity last? He had heard some doctors say, in the face of an epidemic of smallpox they vaccinated themselves every few weeks, others said every few months. Some said that immunity should last for a year or two, whilst others again said five years, and others ton years. So long as there was all this difference of opinion, why in the name of wonder could not the people decide for themselves whether or not they should have their children vaccinated? Everybody admitted that the vast majority of smallpox cases occurred among vaccinated people. Vaccination was made compulsory in 1853, and eighteen years afterwards the heaviest epidemic of smallpox in this country took place—in 1871–2. The major portion of the people who died then were vaccinated. When we knew all those things, surely there was some little ground for allowing liberty of action to those parents and guardians who would rather not have their children vaccinated until there was some more definite knowledge as to the way in which it should be done, and the good that would result from it. Some three years ago, a deputation waited upon the then President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Walter Long), who, after hearing the speech of the deputation, said he was inclined to agree with Dr. M'Vail, one of the authorities on the pro-vaccination side, that primary vaccination of itself was really almost a farce. Those were the words of a President of the Local Government Board, who administered a compulsory Vaccination Act. That in itself condemned anything in the nature of compulsion. That Gentleman also said that he thought it would be advisable if it was made a little clearer what was efficient vaccination. There was not a Member of the House who would differ from that statement. It certainly was desirable that it should be made a little clearer what was efficient vaccination before vaccination was made compulsory by Act of Parliament. He thought in deciding upon this question it was also desirable to take into consideration the opinion and the feeling of the country. Members of the House were not bigoted advocates of anything in particular. They had their views, but they were not bigoted men, and they found an enormous amount of support for the freedom of the people in this matter. Many Members supported him in this matter; in fact, it would take him a quarter of an hour to read out the names of all those who had pledged themselves to vote against compulsory vaccination. The Act of 1898 was an admission on the part of the Government of the day that the vaccination of previous years was condemned, because they had entirely altered the method. Up to 1898 it had been arm-to arm vaccination. Great authorities upon vaccination had said that that was absolutely necessary, but in 1898 all that was altered, and everyone had to be vaccinated with calf lymph, which had not been found satisfactory. Until there was some recognised system of efficient and safe vaccination; he thought we should not continue along the sad and melancholy road we had traversed so long. He held in his hand a certificate of the death of a child born in a village in the Sleaford Division. The child was vaccinated last autumn at the ago of seven months, and within a short time it died of the effect of that vaccination. The side of the head and the arm rotted away as the result of the child's being vaccinated with glycinerated lymph. He knew of another case, that of a soldier, one of four who were vaccinated together with glycinerated lymph. They all became ill, and this man rotted to death, Was it to be wondered at that healthy people did not wish to have their children vaccinated? He and his wife in Sleaford saw some very sad sights. They saw one child in awful torture with matter running from both eyes as the result of vaccination, and when they saw the child again the nerves of the eyes were destroyed. That vaccination was not performed by a medical man who took the responsibility for what he did; it was done by the supreme will of the Imperial Parliament. It was terrible that people should have to submit to a law which in operation inflicted disease and disfigurement. Parliament had an awful responsibility, and he was quite sure that this Government, which called itself Liberal, would not enforce this law for very long. In one case a woman showed her face all disfigured, and did not want her child to suffer in the same way. "We cannot help that," said the magistrate. "Fined £1 and costs." And, according to the reporter, the woman went from the Court weeping bitterly. He did not want to argue against vaccination that night, but he did plead for a little liberty for suffering fellow-subjects. He begged to move.

^* said that in rising to second the Resolution of his hon. friend he desired to express his regret that such a Resolution should have been rendered necessary by the absence of some promise from the Government. The approximate case for this Resolution lay in the fact that the intention of the law of exemption had been in all directions frustrated and in many cases grossly over-ridden. He had read of cases in which conscientious objectors who had gone to magistrates for relief had been met by the most arrogant refusal, because the magistrates had said they were not satisfied that the objector properly understood the subject. Such cases inclined some of them to think that the administration of the law would be considerably improved by sending a few magistrates to prison. But that was not possible, and in the absence of such a line of action this Resolution asked that the already declared intention of Parliament should be given effect to in the fullest manner. He ventured to say that the grounds upon which the great majority of magistrates acted were not scientific at all. Not one magistrate in ten knew as much of the subject as was known by numbers of anti-vaccinators. He had in his hand an article sent from the British Medical Journal which he said deliberately was written in a vulgar and foolish style, in an utter unscientific temper, and was totally unworthy of a journal which professed to represent a scientific profession. As a matter of fact the merits of vaccination could only be established by statistics, and he humbly claimed that he was as able to judge the value of statistics as any doctor or magistrate. He had had sent to him a document by the Jenner Society, which existed in order to do justice to the memory of Jenner. Such a society, he ventured to say, was a scientific imposture. Jenner's vaccination had been abandoned by all students of the pathology of the subject. Its utter unsoundness had been exposed by the pathologists who had gone into the matter. Jenner obtained a grant from this House acting in a panic, and a penal law was established upon a medical theory which had been thrice over repudiated, and was no longer held by any student or the subject at all. Vaccination of to-day was Pasteurian, and had nothing whatever to do with the practice of Jenner. The medical profession in this matter was simply seeking to gloze over and hide the fact that three times it had changed its ground. Jenner's system absolutely broke down in the first few years after its institution; Seely and Badcock's system practically broke down in the great epidemic of 1870 and 1871. The nation was hood winked by the medical profession of that time, and when the epidemic occurred, instead of admitting that they were wrong, they proceeded to bring forward a series of new theories. To-day they had a theory on the part of provaccinationists that vaccination was useless without re-vaccination, which was an absolute negation of the ground on which vaccination stood for sixty years. The whole history of vaccination was a history of error, tardily acknowledged and glozed over wherever possible. The medical profession was always finding out that it had been in error, and it was a very singular fact that the only medical proposition in regard to which there was serious and angry dispute in this country was the one medical dogma which was financially endowed by the State. They would never have the medical truth on this matter until vaccination was no longer endowed by the State. In this Motion, however, they were not asking for that. They were putting forward a claim so moderate and just that he could not con- ceive that His Majesty's Government could set their faces against it. Were it not for the activities of anti-vaccinationists, there would be nothing known scientifically to-day of the history of vaccination. He had a number of valued medical friends—he valued their profession above all other professions—but he believed that not one in ten knew anything about the history of vaccination. They were not taught anything scientifically about it in the college, and as a general rule they abstained from making themselves acquainted with the facts in later life. He ventured to say that not one doctor in ten had read Crookshank's great work of research on the subject. The ignorance of the subject was not on the side of the anti-vaccinationists, but on the side of the pro-vaccinationists, who had never inquired into the grounds on which alone the doctrine could be justified. As for the anti-vaccinationists, they consisted to a very large extent of poor, honest people who had the strongest reason for believing that their children, or their neighbours' children, had been injured by vaccination. Hundreds of children had been killed and thousands more had been seriously injured by vaccination. If that were so, no Legislature was justified in maintaining compulsion in the matter at all. He was an anti-compulsionist long before he had ceased to believe in vaccination. It seemed to him that this House would never have established the penal law if it had foreseen that children would be slain by the very thing that was to be a prophylactic. Therefore the case for exemption could only be over-ridden by men who would not apply to this matter the ordinary principles of morality between man and man. Either vaccination was a prophylactic or it was not. If it was, every man could protect himself and his own family as far as he pleased. If it was a prophylactic, there was on that very ground no reason to insist that other men should use that prophylactic. If it was not a true prophylactic it was an iniquity. The medical profession could no longer deny that hundreds had been killed by it, while many had been seriously injured by it, and in face of those facts there was no excuse for the maintenance of coercion. Coercion was monstrous, and he asked the House to pass the Resolution, trusting that it would elicit from the Government the kind of legislation that was needed.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, in the opinion of this House, vaccination ought no longer to be obligatory on those who regard it as useless or dangerous."—( Mr. Lupton.)

^* said he had a very vivid recollection of the debates which accompanied the progress of the Bill of 1898, and he felt sure that if the pledges given by Members of the then Government had been kept there would have been no need for the present discussion. They were assured that an application for a certificate of exemption would be a mere formality. So far from that having been the case, they had seen the appearance of humble applicants before a Bench of magistrates made the occasion for bullying, insulting, and humiliating them. Only humble men were treated in that way. The other day the Duke of Hamilton applied to the Wimborne Bench and was treated with the greatest courtesy and consideration. He contended that in this matter the humblest of His Majesty's subjects was entitled to the same consideration as was shown to the premier Duke of Scotland. It seemed to him that the usefulness of vaccination had never been really proved, and that compulsion at every successive stage had been put upon the community, and authority obtained from Parliament, under cover of promises which invariably had been broken. The House was induced to establish compulsion in the matter of vaccination by the most explicit declaration on the part of the medical faculty that vaccination had given absolute immunity from small-pox. The medical faculty did not say that to-day. In these circumstances the ground of compulsion was absolutely cut away, vaccination was reduced to the footing of any ordinary medical prescription, and was no more entitled to have the adventitious aid of a policeman than any other medical proscription. There was in that day's Times a very remarkable illustration of the change of front which pro-vaccinationists constantly executed. He referred to the letter by the Dean of Gloucester, which was also signed by Dr. Bond who represented the Jenner Society. They suggested that vaccination might be postponed until the child was five or six years of age. This proposition proceeded from men who only a little while ago were clamouring for the adoption of the present law, under which a parent who omitted to have his child vaccinated within six months of its birth committed a crime. What was the reason which those pro-vaccinationists alleged for the proposition that it was safe to defer the operation of vaccination until the fifth or sixth year of a child's life? They said it was in consequence of the altered social conditions and improved sanitation. That was going a very long wav towards giving up the whole case for vaccination. Anti-vaccinationists had always said that the true prophylactic against small-pox was not vaccination but sanitation. In these circumstances he trusted the House would have no hesitation in passing the Resolution.

hoped that upon an important question like this, which was being left to the House, they would have some statement from the President of the Board of Trade.

The Motion which has been moved by the hon. Member for Sleaford raises a question which, of course, has engaged my attention as President of the Local Government Board, and in rising to speak upon this Motion, I have briefly to say that, so far as I am concerned, I have not had a great deal of time whilst in my present office to consider and to decide the many points raised by the hon. Member for Sleaford and other hon. Members. The points raised, however, require to be considered now, and in some form or other mot or answered by those responsible for the administration of the Department concerned. The hon. Member for Sleaford told the House frankly that he would not argue the merits or otherwise of vaccination, and he said that his chief reason for moving this Motion was to call attention to the harshness of the Act, its cost to poor parents, the cost to the community, the time lost by people in securing certificates and the cost thereof, and the differential treatment meted out by various magistrates in different districts to the applicants for certificates of exemption. It has been pointed out by other speakers that there was differential treatment not only between class and class in regard to those who wished to be exempted, but also that there was a differentiation between the rich and the poor, between the educated and the uneducated, and between those with a smattering of medical knowledge and those who were innocent of the terminology of the medical profession which they had not time properly to understand. There is a good deal of justification for some of the statements made as to the harshness with which the Act in this respect has been administered, and as to the differentiation that is made between various classes of applicants for certificates of exemption. Perhaps I may remind the House, as one who himself has not been vaccinated, that the Act of 1898 is not compulsory. Under conditions that are sometimes objectionable, and even humiliating, any conscientious objector can obtain exemption from vaccination for his children. The difficulty is mainly administrative. The injustice is due to lack of uniformity in administration and to the capricious action of magistrates, who occasionally behave in a manner that is creditable neither to themselves nor to the dignity of their office. It will be the duty of the Local Government Board to prevent the possibility of any differentiation in the treatment of different classes of applicants. According to recent newspaper reports, the Duke of Hamilton applied for an exemption certificate on the ground that he did not think vaccination would be good for his child; and the certificate was immediately granted. A wealthy gentleman of Tunbridge Wells was also granted a certificate, the magistrate overlooking the fact that the birth certificate of the child was not produced, and that no reason for the application was given, although previously applicants had been closely cross-examined by the Bench. The poor workman, whose conscientious objection may be as well grounded as that of the Duke of Hamilton, or of the wealthy gentleman from Tunbridge Wells, is often very nervous in presenting himself at a police-court—I, know I was—and unable to express his objection as well as the man in more comfortable circumstances. It has been proved that in the administration of the Act there is such differentiation as ought not to prevail, and that certain magis- trates do little credit to the Bench by the manner in which they hector and browbeat poor applicants. In 1905 the Home Secretary was compelled to issue a Circular to magistrates, in which he quoted from a speech of the Lord Chief Justice, delivered at Birmingham, which in many respects is a stronger criticism on the way the Act has been administered than any that has fallen from Members during this debate. This is what the present Lord Chief Justice said—

"Some magistrates appear to think that they ought to be satisfied that vaccination would be harmful to the child; others seem to think that they were entitled to have medical evidence before them that such vaccination would be prejudicial. He desired to point out that this was not the question which magistrates had to decide, and it was from this point of view that he was desirous of assisting the authorities to secure uniform administration of the law. The section, as he read it, laid down two conditions—one, that the person who applied 'conscientiously believed,' and the other, that he 'believed that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child.' The only question which the magistrates had to entertain, was: Did the applicant conscientiously believe that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child."

Now it is obvious that the magistrates do not carry out the injunction of the Lord Chief Justice, or the representations of the Home Secretary, or the spirit of the Act. I am pleased to say that the present Home Secretary has followed up that Circular by one that is on the eve of being issued and which I am allowed to quote. In it substantially the views of the Lord Chief Justice on the law are expressed, and in one or two paragraphs it goes even further. The Circular says—

"It is not necessary to the proof of a conscientious objection that a certificate should be produced, or even that evidence should be given of any particular state of health of the child. In order to satisfy themselves that the applicant's belief is conscientious, the justices may think it desirable to ask him the origin and grounds of his opinion, but if that belief is generally entertained, any ignorance on medical, or sanitary, or statistical questions which he may display is no ground for the refusal of a certificate. Applicants frequently slate to the Home Office that they have made long journeys to the Court and have lost a day's wage by doing so, but yet have not succeeded in satisfying the Bench, and they urge that the trouble they have taken, and the loss they have undergone, ought to be regarded as a practical testimony to the conscientious nature of their objection. Mr. Gladstone would not attempt to define the grounds on which he thinks magistrates ought to be satisfied that an applicant's belief is sincere, though it seems to him that such considerations as the above might properly be taken into account"—

and so forth. These two Circulars—one issued by the previous Home Secretary, and the other and stronger one issued by the present Home Secretary—indicate that there is ground for many of the statements made tonight, and I will briefly deal with one or two points before I sit down. I want to bring before the House another objection which I think is a strong one from the administrative point of view and which has not been raised. Everyone will admit, even the Departmental Committee in their Report admit, that the cost of vaccination is becoming serious as the years go on. For instance, in 1899 the cost was £72,000. It grew to £237,000 in 1900, and at this moment it is £270,000. It has therefore increased threefold since 1899. The cost of vaccination in itself, the lack of uniformity in the administration of the Act, the differential treatment accorded to the varying classes of applicants, and the relative disproportion in the fines and penalties imposed upon poor people as compared with rich people who object to the law, all these things have necessarily been brought within the purview of the Department and of myself, and I agree with the hon. Member for the Tyneside division that some of the actions of the magistrates were, as he described them, of an arbitrary and indiscreet character. They were not only humiliating to the applicants, but I believe they have provoked opposition to the Act itself. It is derogatory to the medical profession. I believe that the Act as administered provokes a spirit of resistance to the Act which would not otherwise exist or prevail. In view of all these circumstances I wish to submit to my hon. friend that we cannot get legislation this year. Everyone will admit that, in the light of the fact that we had very little time to go into this very serious question to the extent which I think is necessary in order to do justice to its merits. This is what I would venture to put to my hon. friend. At the present moment I am considering this question in the light of certain reforms which I think are desirable and necessary, and which are, I believe, inevitable. In the first place reductions in the cost of ad- ministration are in themselves sufficient to warrant Departmental attention at once. That I can promise the House I shall give. Not only do I give that promise by word of mouth, but I ask the House to believe that I will do this earnestly and seriously. That is point one. The second is that we are bending our minds to the amendment of the existing procedure in the securing of certificates of exemption. In my judgment that can be done in several ways, and I need not go into them to-night. The third point is that we are considering some reform in the direction of a statutory declaration to be made by either parent at a less cost than now. That will be necessary if this Act is to secure the harmonious co-operation of all sections of the community. We also attach a great deal of importance to the suggestion which the hon. Member for Bethnal Green quoted from a letter in to-day's Times. It is worthy of consideration—the suggestion, namely, of a temporary suspension of vaccination from early infancy to some sensibly later period when the consequences if disastrous to the individual would be seriously minimised as compared with what they are if vaccination is done in the early life of a child. What is more we will institute an inquiry—not a lengthy inquiry; I do not think it is necessary to have a Committee of this House to do it—into the general working of the Act, and how to meet the points which I have indicated and how the Act could be further amended. Of course opinions differ on the point I am now going to mention, namely, as to the authority that should have the administration of vaccination. The opinion is growing in certain quarters, both among anti-vaccinators, and vaccinators, and among publicists generally, that it would perhaps be better if possible to have a transfer of vaccination from the boards of guardians to the health authorities throughout the country. That is variously viewed by different people, but there is a great deal to be said for considering the matter. That is a question to which I will give my immediate attention. We also think that uniformity of practice is urgently desirable, and that some regard ought to be paid by magistrates, in imposing fines upon people, to the capacity of the people to pay. If the hon. Member for Sleaford and his supporters will accept my assurances on the points I have submitted as now engaging my attention, I can also assure them of all the sympathy I can command and all the practical application at my disposal, and I believe that I shall see my way clear to carry out these five or six points and others that will evolve and emerge in the process of some prompt and short inquiry which we hope to be able to make into the administration of the Act as a whole. I cannot see my way to accept the ipsissima verba of this Resolution. It would as moved by the hon. Member practically go further than Ms speech indicated he desired to go. I would sincerely appeal to the hon. Member for Sleaford to be satisfied with the assurances I have given him and to allow the House to come to the consideration of another matter for which there is a great and general demand. I would appeal to him to withdraw his Motion, because legislation this year is impossible. Even if we were to accept his Motion, legislation next year, or the year following, would be absolutely essential to secure the object he has in view. Having made what I consider to be a practical and useful series of sympathetic proposals I appeal to the hon. Member to withdraw his Motion.

^* said the people of Scotland were at a serious disadvantage in this matter, because they did not enjoy, even to the limited extent of the people of England, the rights of the conscientious objector. Personally he had been vaccinated, his children had been vaccinated, and he believed in vaccination. Although he believed in it, he did not think it was right that he should impose his belief on those who conscientiously differed from him. He asked the President of the Local Government Board to consider the case of Scotland, and to press upon the Government that similar privileges to those proposed to be conferred on England should also be conferred on Scotland.

said he believed he enjoyed the rather melancholy distinction of being the only one of the original members of the Vaccination Commission who now sat in this House. He thanked the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board for his very candid and sympathetic speech. He did not know what effect that speech would have on the mover of the Motion as to the object which the hon. Member had in view. He might say, on his responsibility as a member of the Royal Commission, that, whatever differences of opinion there were on that body as to the amount of protection, if my, which vaccination gave against smallpox, and as to the injury caused by vaccination, and whatever difference of view there was as to the value of sanitary organisation, the whole Commission was unanimous on the point that the honest objector to vaccination should not be subject to any penalty whatever, and a fortiori not to repeated penalties. Seven members of the Royal Commission—Lord Herschell, Sir J. Paget, Sir C. Dalrymple, Sir E. Galsworthy, Mr. Dugdale, Sir M. Foster, and Mr. Meadows White—favoured a statutory declaration being made or an appearance before the board of guardians. Two others—Sir Guyer Hunter and Mr. Hutchinson—favoured appearance before a magistrate who should accept a sworn deposition as exempting from any penalty. Four others, including Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Picton, Mr. Bright and himself, recommended in a separate Report as follows—

"We think that the modified form of compulsion recommended by our colleagues is unnecessary, and that in practice it could not be carried out. The hostility which compulsion has evoked in the past towards the practice of vaccination is fully acknowledged in the Report. In our opinion the retention of compulsion in any form will in the future cause irritation and hostility of the same kind. The right of the parent on grounds of conscience to refuse vaccination for his child being conceded, and the offer of vaccination under improved conditions being made at the home of the child, it would in our opinion be best to leave the parent free to accept or reject this offer."

Now he understood that the Act of 1898 was intended by its authors to give effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission; and if that Act had carried out that intention they would not now have been discussing the Motion of the hon. Member for Sleaford. The Act of 1898, however, carried out neither the recommendations of the Royal Commission nor the intentions of its authors. Mr. Chaplin, who was then President of the Local Government Board, said when the Bill was under discussion on July 20th, 1898—

"The question at issue is perfectly clear, whether vaccination should be voluntary or compulsory in future. … I am compelled to recognise that the administration of a law for compulsory vaccination would be impracticable in the future."

And in a subsequent debate the right hon. Gentleman said that he recognised that it would not be possible—

"For any local authority or any Government in the world to send people to prison for refusing compliance with the law and to be vaccinated under existing conditions."

And yet they heard from Derby that men were committed to prison under the Vaccination Acts and that compulsion was being exercised. When the Bill got to the House of Lords, the late Lord Salisbury said on August 4th, 1898—

"There is the knowledge that children, and a considerable number of children, have succumbed to the operation of this beneficent law, and the feelings which are worked upon are the deepest, the tenderest, the most tenacious, and the most difficult to overcome in the whole range of human sentiment. That is the state of the facts with which you have to deal. It is idle to tell me that the people are wrong, it is idle to tell me that they are deceived; as long as they have these feelings they will respect them—they are Knglishmen—and it is no use to quote to me the precedents of India and Ceylon to show the way that these objections are to be overcome."

He was bound to say that the history of legislation on the subject of vaccination had been far from satisfactory. He could not accept all that had been said by the hon. Member for Sleaford. But no medical man with a reputation to lose would be prepared to maintain the position as regards the preventative power of vaccination or its innocence as to injurious results which were originally claimed by Dr. Jenner; nor could anyone take up the position of Lord Lyttelton when in 1853 he maintained that the medical profession were unanimous as to the certainty of vaccination as a preventative and that the operation was perfectly safe. Then again, the Select Committee of 1871 stated that there need be no apprehension that vaccination would injure health or communicate disease; and that the almost universal opinion of medical science and authority was that vaccination was as protective against smallpox as smallpox itself. No witness examined before the Royal Commission maintained either of these propositions. There were two points brought up before the Commission which particularly impressed him—first, that calf lymph was not necessarily a guarantee against injurious results, and that they were assured repeatedly of the fleeting character of the immunity given by vaccination or revaccination; secondly, they were deeply impressed with the influence of sanitation and isolation in dealing successfully with smallpox. The evidence of that was overwhelming in such diverse cases as those of Leicester, London, and New South Wales. In these circumstances he was heartily in favour of the entire abolition of compulsion, and it would redound to the credit of the medical profession, to which he was proud to belong, to be free from association with the policeman and the bailiff. He believed that the enforcement of this one prescription which had been singled out by the State had rather tended to hinder the progress of medical science.

^* said that in view of the sympathetic speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board he did not wish to press his Motion. He understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that in the Bill to be introduced next year Scotland would be included in the immunity. He begged leave to withdraw his Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

^* in submitting a Motion for the enfranchisement of women said that this question was one which had so often been discussed in the House that no new argument could be brought forward for or against it. He and those who agreed with him were not called upon to prove the right of women to be enfranchised. Those who opposed the Motion were called upon to justify their action. He knew of no argument in support of the grant of the franchise to men which did not equally apply to giving the franchise to women. It would be observed that the Motion had been so framed as to declare that sex should cease to be a bar to the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise. He left out of account all such questions as the right of women to be elected Members of this House, to serve on juries, or whether married women should, or should not, exercise the franchise. What was the history of this Question? By the Reform Act of 1832 it was decided that only male persons should be possessed of the vote. In 1852 Lord Brougham's Act became law, which declared that in every Act of Parliament where the word "man" occurred it should be held to include women. In 1867, when the franchise was extended to the counties, the words "male person" were dropped out of the Act, and the word "man" was inserted. It was then thought that women under Lord Brougham's Act would be entitled to be registered as voters, and as a matter of fact many of the registrars took that view and thousands of women were put on the Parliamentary register. A test case, however, was taken before the Courts, and Lord Esher decided that in the case of a statute which dealt with the exercise of a public function, unless that statute gave express power to women to exercise that public function, the true construction was that the power given was to be confined to men, and not extended to women. The position in which women stood to-day was that they might be property owners; they might be taxpayers; they might be members of the medical profesion; they might even be occupants of the Throne, but because they were women, no matter what qualification they possessed, they were disfranchised. He asked this now House of Commons to express the opinion that sex was no longer to be a barrier to the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise. He begged to move the Resolution standing in his name.

in seconding, said that in view of the late hour of the evening he did not think it necessary to speak at any great length. He supported the Resolution as one who had persistently and consistently advocated the rights of women in this matter. No doubt there were many present who would like to express their opinion, and there fore he would content himself with seconding the Resolution.

Motion made, and Question proposed "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that sex should cease to be a bar to the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise."— (Mr. Keir Hardie.)

^* , who rose amidst cries of "Agreed," said that some hon. Members might be agreed, but there were others who entertained views different from those which had been expressed. This was not the first time that he had found himself in conflict on this subject with hon. Members with whom he generally acted, and with whom he found himself generally associated in the Division Lobby. Only a few weeks ago a Bill had been introduced by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, which was really, in his opinion, the only honest measure which had been brought forward on this subject. There had been many Bills and Resolutions with a view of eliciting the opinion of the House on this subject, but none of thorn had made clear what the advocates of female suffrage really aimed at, but the right hon. Baronet's Bill frankly sot it out, and admitted that which some of them in the past had asserted in the face of a good deal of opposition, to be the real object aimed at. The nature, character, and proposals of that Bill, however, threw a light upon the real subject before the House, and he hoped hon. Members in going into the Division Lobby would bear in mind that they were voting for what he and others had in the past said they were voting for. He had always contended that if they once opened the door and enfranchised ever so small a number of females, they could not possibly close it, and that it ultimately meant adult suffrage. [Hear, hear.] He was glad to hear that cheer, because he wanted to point out what adult suffrage really meant. He was afraid that hon. Members had not really thought out what adult suffrage must lead to. If they consulted the last census and ascertained the proportion of male and female adults in the country, they would find that there were upwards of 750,000 more female than male adults in the kingdom. There were also some hundreds of thousands of men engaged in the naval and military forces of the country, and in travelling. The government of the country would therefore be handed over to a majority who would not be men, but women. In his own constituency there were at least 800 or 900 men who were unable to record their votes in consequence of the nature of their occupations, and there were also very many others in similar position in other constituencies. He asked hon. Members seriously to consider what this would lead to. Were they prepared to hand over the government of the country to women, the majority of whom were not breadwinners, who had not to bear the burdens, and who did not understand the responsibilities of life? ["Oh!"] Well, that was his opinion, and he was entitled to state it. He was sometimes described in regard to this question as a woman-hater, but he had had two wives, and he thought that was the best answer he could give to those who called him a woman-hater. He was too fond of them to drag them into the political arena and to ask them to undertake responsibilities, duties, and obligations which they did not understand and which they did not care for. He was certain that if the women of the country were polled, the majority of them would either take no notice of the application or record their votes against this proposal. What did one find when one got into the company of women and talked politics? They were soon asked to stop talking silly politics, and yet that was the type of people to whom hon. Members were invited to hand over the destinies of the country. The mover of the Resolution did not now propose that every woman in the kingdom should be accorded the Parliamentary suffrage; he only proposed that the right should be assimilated as between men and women, and asked what the barrier was against such a proposal. There seemed to him to be a very important barrier, and that barrier had been set up by Nature. The hon. Member's quarrel was, in fact, with Nature and not with those who opposed him. ["Oh!"] Hon. Members might sneer and jeer at the views which he advanced, but at least he was sincere. If he were not, he should not stand up and be prepared to enter the Lobby in opposition to the Motion of the hon. Member. It was a very serious matter; it was a revolution when one came to consider the mighty changes which would be involved in the transference of the balance of political power from the men to the women of this country. They would have at least a million more female than male electors in the kingdom, and therefore he was justified in saying that it was a political revolution which it was proposed to adopt after one or two hours' discussion. There were other arguments which might be used, but he did not want by prolonging his speech to resort to anything in the nature of a mean trick, and to delay the division if the House desired to take one. If they did, and the Motion succeeded, the responsibility would lie upon those who voted for it and not upon him. He should have done his duty in pointing out the dangers involved in taking such a step after an hour or two's discussion. There was another aspect of this question which it was, however, very difficult to deal with in a public assembly. He had heard it said that the introduction of women into public life would have a humanitarian influence upon it, and he wished to say a few words as to that aspect of the question. In the past they had contended that if women were given a right to vote they must also be given a right to sit in this House, but those assertions were then regarded as blasphemous doctrines. The mask was however, now torn aside, and the Bill of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean made it quite clear that if they gave women a right to vote they must give them a right to sit in this House. Let hon. Members ask themselves whether there were not infirmities from which women suffered and from which men were exempt. There were times and periods in women's lives when they required rest not only for mind but for body, and to drag them into the political arena under those conditions would be cruel indeed. There were also periods, especially in a married woman's life, when it would be absolutely impossible for her properly to discharge her duties as a Member of this House. Hon. Members bad to face that difficulty when they decided this matter in the Division Lobbies. Then there was mother aspect of the question which should present itself to hon. Members. Supposing women were Members of this House and a division was imminent, what influences would be used by women on men and men on women in order to secure votes? Every Member knew that a man dealt far more tenderly with a woman with whom he was arguing a point than he did with a man. Women were creatures of impulse and emotion and did not decide questions on grounds of reason as men did. It might be a crude kind of logic that men resorted to in order to arrive at a conclusion, but some kind of reason was employed by men. It was also said that if women had the right to exercise the Parliamentary franchise and sit in this House it would infuse a spirit of humanitarianism into legislation. That could hardly be expected when one came to reflect upon the number of appeals which had been made to women in all classes of society to abstain from wearing feathers in their hats in order to prevent the most beautiful birds in creation, which were fast disappearing, from being altogether destroyed. If they would not listen to such appeals as that, it was not likely that the presence of women in this House would impart to legislation more humane considerations. The way in which women rushed to hear cases in our Law Courts and listen to evidence which no woman of refinement or decency should listen to, went very far to prove that women would not introduce any higher order of morality or humanitarianism into the legislature of this country. It was not only because he thought that women were unfitted by their physical nature to exercise political power, but because he believed that the majority of them did not want it and would vote against it, that he asked the House to pause before they took the step suggested by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil. He believed that if women were enfranchised the end would be disastrous to all political Parties. He therefore asked the House to pause before it took a step from which it never could retreat.

said that in a House so overwhelmingly in favour of the Motion there was hardly any need of a speech in order to support it, but he would like to say a few words, more especially as it was something in the nature of history repeating itself. The hon. Member for Haggerston some few years ago made a speech upon this question of very much the same nature as the speech he had just delivered, and then he had the opportunity of replying to him, as he intended to do to-night. The hon. Member for Haggerston was not, he thought, quite consistent throughout his speech. The hon. Member commenced by stating that so far from being a woman-hater he was highly pleased with the sex. That was, of course, a very gratifying remark, and it cheered the House very much; but, unfortunately, the hon. Member did not maintain that attitude all through his speech, because he went on to level what was undoubtedly an attack against women. In the concluding portion of his speech he told the House that so far from introducing humanitarian influences into public life, women would have probably quite the contrary influence, and he told the House that women were cruel, inasmuch as they wore sometimes the feathers of beautiful birds in their hats, and, further, that they were so abandoned that whenever any disgraceful cases came into the law courts women almost entirely filled the galleries. As an Irishman he said that was a monstrous insult to put upon women. He did not know whether English gentlemen were prepared silently to acquiesce in an insult of that kind, but certainly no statement of the kind would be tolerated in the country he came from. He looked at this question from the point of view of one who had all his life opposed slavery in any shape or form. He held that any of God's creatures who were denied the right of a voice in the affairs of the country in which they lived were more or less slaves. Men had no right whatever to assume that they were so infinitely superior to the other sex created by God, that they alone should have the guiding of the destinies of the country. Lunatics, criminals, drunkards—the very dregs of the population might vote so long as they were men. But women of the most exalted intelligence, women of the highest virtue, women who had performed the most signal service to the State, whose intellect was admitted, who were ornaments in literature, in art, and in every walk of life, were to be debarred from the right which the lowest men in the country were freely allowed to exercise. There was no consistency in that. It was illogical, and they had no right to assume that the sex which had given queens to this country, and some of the greatest workers to the world, should be placed under a disadvantage and a disability which put them almost upon the same level as the dumb beasts of the field. After all, there was something to be gained from experience in other places with regard to this matter. The hon. Member for Haggerston said that progressists would be making a great mistake if the franchise were extended to women. He (Mr. W. Redmond) did not pause to think whether it would be to the disadvantage of any one side. He contended that women were as entitled to their opinions and to give effect to them as men. They might judge from what had taken place in other countries, where the democracy was quite as much alive as, if not more alive than, it was in this country. Let them take the Commonwealth of Australia. With the exception, he believed, of one state in the whole continent of Australia, women were enfranchised. Every woman and every man of good character and of age was entitled to vote for the Federal Parliament. The result had been, not a preponderating vote in favour of one particular class or Party in the State, but the return to Parliament in many cases of the very best men obtainable. When he was in Australia the whole of last year he ascertained this fact beyond all others from the exercise of the female franchise, that no man was supported for Parliamentary honours by the women of the country unless he could show an absolutely clean record, and was a perfectly consistent man from a public point of view. He ventured to think that the public life of the country was purer, stronger, and better for the influence which had been introduced by the female franchise. Was it not absurd to say that a woman in this country who might be loft a widow, who might have the training of her children, the regulating of their education, the forming of their character, was to have no voice whatever in the laws to govern the state of the future citizens of which she had the training? He felt that it would be altogether unbecoming to pursue this topic further, beyond stating that in other parts of the world the influence of women in political life had been for the betterment of the community at large, and he appealed to all parties not to be influenced by the sickly—not to say disgusting—considerations which had been put forward from time to time, but to remember what they owed throughout their lives, from their very childhood, to the influence, care, affection, and tenderness of womanhood. If they remembered that, they would vote for what he called freedom, and place those who were their best friends—who had been their mothers and their guides throughout life—upon terms of equality with themselves.

said the hon. Member for Haggerston had stated that when they mentioned politics to the average woman she resented the idea of discussing such silly things. He thought that was a lamentable state of things if it were true, and it was a condition of things which could be remedied only by giving women a more intelligent and natural interest in the political questions of the day. It was a lamentable thing that more than one half of the population of the country should be indifferent to the political interests of the nation. Men used to talk like that a few years ago, and it was only the extension of the franchise that cured them of the habit. It had been said that this Resolution might be regarded as the thin end of the wedge to admitting women to seats in Parliament. He noticed that the hon. Member for Morthyr Tydvil had carefully limited his Resolution, and he did not think any one who voted for it would be affirming the principle of women sitting in the House of Commons. He hoped the House of Commons would always be at least the married man's sanctuary, and he, at any rate, should always strongly resist any such invasion of the privileges of the predominant partner. He did not know what the view of the Government was upon this question, and he would like to know whether this Motion had the sympathy of the Government. He understood that the intention of the mover was to adopt Lord Brougham's proposal, that wherever the word "man" occurred in any Act of Parliament it should include women. He begged to support that suggestion.

said that nobody could deny that to make such a change as this in our electoral system would be to take a very big step indeed. The Motion was said to be a simple one. The hon. Member for East Clare had appealed to Members to vote for the Resolution because women were their best friends, and to do this in memory of what they owed to their mothers. It was rather a curious fact that the great majority of women were opposed to being enfranchised. [Cries of "No, no."] It was in the name of women that this vote was being asked for. The majority of women believed that their duties lay in their own homes, and they did not want to take part in elections. The House had not yet heard a word from the Government upon the question. They were now being asked to affirm a principle which involved the greatest change in our constitutional system. The hon. Member for Haggerston had pointed out that there were more women than men, and therefore if they carried out this principle they would be placing the balance of the political power in the hands of women. The proposition was that sex should be no bar. He assumed that what the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil desired to see carried out was universal suffrage. That meant that every married woman would have a vote, and then there would be a double vote in every household. That showed how little this subject had been considered. The House were being asked to affirm that a woman was to be the same as a man for all electoral purposes, and surely before they registered a solemn decision of that kind they were entitled to know the view of the Government. He was opposed to the extension of the franchise to women, and he did not think that women wanted it. He did not think it was desirable to bring women into electoral contests. It was no discredit to women to say that they were opposed to having the franchise. On the contrary, he believed it involved a denial by them in favour of the part which they were more qualified to play in our lives. If they were enfranchised they would be brought into the rough and tumble of political life. The hon. Member below the gangway said it must not be assumed that if they were to enfranchise women they would justify their admission as Members of this House. He heard the same statement made nearly twenty years ago, when they were discussing whether women should have votes in the election of Members of county councils and other local authorities. Those who were opposed to their inclusion used the argument which had been used to-night that the time would come when they would expect also to be Members of these governing bodies. From the time that women became entitled to vote at these elections Parliament had not had one session in which suggestions had not been made that they should also be entitled to sit as Members of these bodies. It was impossible to argue this question fully in an hour and a half. He thought it was a matter in which they should have the advice and counsel of the Government in order to know whether they were voting upon a live issue upon which the Government were prepared to make themselves responsible if they had the opportunity, or whether the House was only to vote on an academic question which merely involved an expression of opinion by individuals without any liability to Parliament hereafter. In order to give adequate discussion to a question of this gravity they should have a much longer period for debate than had been occupied to-night.

^* said that if this had been the first session in which this question had been mooted he might have been impressed by the objections of the right hon. Gentleman. But as one who had served in the House for nearly twenty-five years, he had certainly heard this subject discussed during the last ten years when the right hon. Gentleman and his friends were in office. The right hon. Gentleman had blamed the Government for not intervening earlier in the debate, in order to show whether this was a live issue or not. He would have attached more importance to that expression of opinion from the right hon. Gentleman if he had not had some recollection of earlier debates on this subject when the late Government left it an open question to be decided by the House. The present Government proposed to follow the example of the late Government. He regretted that the leader of the House was unable to be present to express his opinions on the question; but he might tell the House on the Prime Minister's behalf that the subjects of franchise and registration were now under consideration, and that the Government had no wish to interfere with the discretion of the House in deciding on the question that evening. The subject had always been left to the House to express a free opinion upon; and though he was the last to deny the vast importance of the question, when it came to be dealt with as a practical matter, yet in the first session of a new Parliament it was thought desirable that the House should have the freest possible opportunity of expressing its views upon it. That was the course which the Government proposed to take, and as far as he was concerned he would vote for the Motion.

^* said that a most important principle was involved in the Motion before the House. But the Motion of which the hon. Member originally gave notice, and which he had altered, was in terms vastly wider. The present Motion was in narrower terms, but he thought the hon. Member would be candid enough to say that he proposed it intending to use it as the thin end of the wedge. The House should not decide upon this important question after only just an hour's discussion. This was a question of far-reaching importance, but nobody who was not in the confidence of the hon. Member opposite thought that the Motion dealing with it would be reached that night at all. By his proposal the hon. Member was endeavouring to more than double the number of voters in this country at one stroke. Very few of the people who were proposed to be enfranchised desired to be so enfranchised. [Cries of 'No, no."] On every occasion hitherto when the franchise was extended to males, such as in 1832, in 1867, and in 1885, not only had various inquiries and commissions been held and instituted, but there had boon violent agitations throughout the country in favour of such extension; but there had been no signs of any real and genuine agitation in favour of women's suffrage. [Cries of dissent from the Ladies' Gallery.] He know that there were some who had asked for it in quite an irregular way, but there was no evidence on the part of women as a body that they desired that the franchise should be extended to them.

Oh yes, they do. [Loud cries of "Hear, hear" from the Ladies' Gallery.]

^* : My hon. friend says they do. [Cheers from the Ladies' Gallery.] No doubt the hon. Member believed that there were some who asked for it. If the hon. Member succeeded in his Motion, what logical reason was there why women should not come into this House? It was perfectly true that a few women who might be reckoned wise by one Party and misguided by others went to a recent meeting in the Albert Hall and waved flags, chiefly upside down, he heard; and, as he gathered from the recognised organs of public opinion, they besieged in a most disorderly manner the doors of the Prime Minister in Downing Street. But could anybody seriously say that such an agitation on the part of a few women was sufficient justification for doubling the electorate of this country? His right hon. friend the Member for Forest of Dean introduced a Bill the other day, the meaning of which was that in every class of life women were qualified to take the same position as men. He then joined issue with his right hon friend. Was his hon. friend who moved the Motion desirous that women should be members of this House. The hon. Member was silent.

I do not want to waste time.

^* : The hon. Gentleman does not answer. Did he mean that women should be members of the Ministry, and that a woman might become a Chancellor of the Exchequer? [Cries of "Divide" from the Ladies' Gallery.] What was embodied in the proposition of the hon. Member opposite was that women were to be entitled to come into the House of Commons; to sit as Speaker; to fill all public offices; to become jurors and judges, and that in every walk in life women were entitled to the full rights and privileges of citizenship, just as if they were men.

Why not?

^* said that his view, and he thought the view of all really sensible men who had considered the subject, was that they did not desire or require the assistance of women in the House of Commons, and that they did not deem it fitting that women should come down into the arena of politics and engage generally in public affairs. They thought that women had their own honourable position in life, that that position had been accorded to them by nature, and that their proper sphere was the home, where they might exercise their good and noble influence in the sacred circle of the family and the home. Women would be neglecting their homes if they came into the House of Commons, and when they would be compelled to attend public meetings and to read all the newspapers and Blue-books and other dry documents, so as to fit themselves for the franchise. In no country in the world except in some of our Colonies had women enjoyed such rights and privileges of citizenship. [Loud cries of "New Zealand, Australia" from the Ladies' Gallery, and "Order, order" from the floor of the House.] His view was that all the public duties of citizenship ought to be imposed upon man and man alone. If women were to be entitled to the privileges of citizenship, they ought to share its responsibilities, and to perform its duties. Would it be desirable that women should have to go out to battle? although he dared say that there were some women who would like to do so. Was it suggested by the Motion that every woman over twenty-one years of age, whether single or married, and whether possessed of property or not, should be entitled to the franchise?

[At this point cries were heard from the Ladies' Gallery which completely interrupted the proceedings on the floor of the House. Some voices were heard to shriek out "We will not have this talk any longer," "Divide, divide," "Divide, divide"; "Vote, vote, vote;" "Vote for Justice for women," "We refuse to have our Bill talked out," "You are true liberty loving Liberals! You do not believe in equality and justice."]

I think it is desirable that the Ladies' Gallery should be cleared.

[Renewed cries of "Divide," "Vote, vote," "Vote for Justice for Women," from the Ladies' Gallery.]

I desire to ask, as a point of order, whether it is in accordance with decency that a policeman should be called into the Ladies' Gallery to turn the ladies out.

^* : I am unfortunately the only person who cannot see what is going on. When the first interruption took place I gave instructions to the attendants that the Ladies' Gallery should be cleared.

^* continuing, asked whether there could be any argument in his favour stronger than what had just occurred.

Are men always orderly? Do men never interrupt?

^* : The hon. Member often does; and often greatly to our amusement.

It is not only I.

^* : We have never had interruptions from men in the Strangers' Gallery such as we have had to-night from the Ladies' Gallery.

We never make references to them.

^* said he always tried to be in order and he thought it perfectly legitimate that he should say that the strongest possible argument against the Motion was what had just occurred. Did hon. Members desire that what had taken place in the gallery should be repeated on the floor of the House? Did they suppose that such exhibitions were approved of by the mass of the women in this country? There had never boon a vote of any considerable body of women in favour of the Motion of his hon. friend, though it was true that the proposal had been supported at men's meetings at which some women were present; but was it to be supposed that when a mere handful of women assisted by some men adopted a resolution they voiced the feeling of the women of these kingdoms? If all women were enfranchised, as it was proposed by this Resolution, they would at once swamp the votes of the men. An abstract Resolution of the House of Commons meant, or ought to mean, that those who voted for it were prepared to put it into speedy effect, and to take legislative steps to do so without delay. Were hon. Members prepared the next day to vote for a Bill to give effect to the Resolution if it were passed? He did not know what the theoretical view was, but the practical view was the one he took, and that was that a Member should not vote for a Resolution in the House of Commons unless he was prepared to see the proposal embodied in legislative enactment. Why did the hon. Member not bring forward something more practical? If the hon. Gentleman would give his attention to the reform of the registration law he would support him, because there were very many men who were entitled to vote who had no vote and could not get one. If the hon. Member proposed a Motion for manhood suffrage he would have his support, because he had always held that the mere fact that a man had a house did not give him more brains than a man who had not one, and that mere occupation or ownership of property alone was not the proper qualification for the franchise. When they had still some hundreds of thousands of men without a vote who took an interest in and who studied politics, surely it was a very strong order to ask the House of Commons to agree to give a vote to every woman at one fell swoop, and so make the number of women electors far exceed that of the men voters of the country.

And, it being Eleven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed to-morrow.

moved to report progress.

appealed to his hon. friend to withdraw his Motion.

declined, and said he had not had much consideration from the hon. Member.

also appealed to the hon. Member.

said he believed the hon. Gentleman had himself voted for this very Bill and this very clause.

Committee report progress; to sit again to-morrow.