I beg to move, to reduce Sub-head A (Salary of the Secretary of State for the Home Department) by £100.

On a point of Order. This special day for the discussion of this Vote was secured through the action of the Labour party, and the party have an official Amendment down in the name of the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), whose name is first on the Paper. In these circumstances, ought not the official Amendment to have precedence over that of a private Member?

I have been in some difficulty on the matter. I tried to find out at whose request the special opportunity was given, but my information differed so much that I called on the Noble Lord, because he has precedence on the Paper over the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. Keir Hardie). If the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley had risen I should have given him precedence. But I think hon. Members are working for the same object in this case.

I have no desire to forestall the hon. Member—

I understood that under the circumstances our Amendment could be taken, and that was why I rose.

I asked the hon. Gentleman a question, and I then asked the other side of the House, and there was no agreement. That is what made the difficulty.

I desire at the very outset to explain in the most clear and emphatic terms that I can command that I am not an advocate, and never have been an advocate, of what are known as the militant methods of the suffrage agitation. I have, on the contrary, taken every opportunity, both in public and in private, to express my strong disapproval of those methods, and my regret that they should nave been adopted. I do not even take the view which I am afraid the Under-Secretary at the Home Office took when he was in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility. I see that on 23rd March, 1911, he said:

"For my own part, I have only reverence and admiration for those women who have undergone humiliation, degradation, and illusage in support of a great cause and a great ideal, and I believe that this struggle will not have been in vain, because it will not only be he means of obtaining legislation, but it will qualify hem by what they have gone through to exercise the suffrage when it comes. When the vote is given, I think a great deal of it will be due to those women who lave set aside all personal considerations and all personal comforts in order to sacrifice their lives on the altar of what they believe, and what I believe to be a great, a just, and a winning cause."

I do not know whether office has modified the hon. Member's opinion. Those were his opinions rather more than a year ago. Honestly, I did not agree with those opinions, nor do I agree with them now. I regret the actions of the women. I think they were unjustifiable. I think they were foolish. I would do very much to convince the women engaged in them that they are making a mistake, both morally and politically. But may I add this one word: that I do not think the Conservative suffragists can be under any suspicion in the matter. We all know that the Conciliation Bill was defeated because of the window wrecking—

No.

No.

Nonsense!

Well, that is an opinion held very widely, Hon. Members opposite do not take my view of the matter. I do not quarrel with their difference of opinion. I merely state what I think is the universal opinion on this side of the House, and also held very largely on the opposite side, too, by suffragist supporters of the Government. Having made that statement, I want to say that I am moving this Amendment not because I have any sympathy with law-breaking, but because I myself am convinced that the action the Home Secretary has taken in this matter is not one that is likely to promote respect for the law or for justice in this country.

Will the Committee bear with me if I make a few general observations on the subject of punishment? It is a subject of enormous difficulty. I have had some little experience as a magistrate, and I think there is nothing in the world more difficult than to apportion the punishment to the crime. I believe that any man who has had even a comparatively small acquaintance with this matter will agree with what I am saying on this point. There is no reason intrinsically why you should give three months' or three years' imprisonment for a particular offence. There is only one principle on which criminal justice can be administered, and that is that each crime should be so far as possible equally punished by whomsoever it is committed. That is the only sure standing ground in this matter.

Where the difficulty does, however, come, is in endeavouring to carry that principle of equality out. When you do make up your minds to secure equality nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of your pursuit of that object. I believe that so far I shall have carried with me practically the universal opinion of the House. I would remind the House what has led up to the imprisonment of the suffragists, and of events which seem to me germane to that matter. In November last there was a certain amount of what perhaps I may be allowed to call sporadic window breaking, which was undoubtedly a serious offence, but not like the offences which took place later. In connection with that a large number of women were sentenced to imprisonment. I think they were all given the benefit of Rule 243A. Then followed the second outbreak of window breaking in March. That was undoubtedly a very serious attempt—in this respect: that it was obviously a concerted movement directed from the head quarters of a particular women's organisation. It was a serious matter undoubtedly, and it was treated much more seriously by the Court. Some women were tried before the police magistrate. A certain number of them received two months' imprisonment simply; a certain number received two months' with hard labour; a large number—I think the larger number—were sent for trial to the Quarter Sessions. Here they were sentenced, some to four months', and some to six months' imprisonment, without hard labour. So far no proceedings had been taken—at all events, they had not developed—against the leaders, and organisers; they were prosecuted later—but I will come to that in a moment. There were therefore imprisoned after 4th March certain women who were receiving the benefits of Rule 243A, which provides, as probably the House knows, a certain mitigation of the ordinary prison discipline in respect of prisoners who, to use the words of the First Lord of the Admiralty, "were not guilty of moral turpitude" in the offence with which they were charged. In addition to those who were so sentenced, there were some who were undergoing hard labour and some who had been sentenced by Quarter Sessions to longer terms. Several hon. Members asked, and the demand was impressed upon the Home Secretary on more than one occasion, what was being done with the women. On 21st March the Home Secretary replied to a question:— prisoners sentenced at the Old Bailey were very much more guilty than any of the others, and the judge marked his sense of that by sentencing them to nine months' imprisonment, instead of four or six months as others had been sentenced to. Immediately after they were sentenced a demand was made that these prisoners should in the circumstances be removed from the second and placed in the first division.

I do not wish to-day to express any opinion as to whether that was justifiable or unjustifiable. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not."] I do not think it affects my argument. I am quite ready to express it. I think the particular circumstances of these particular prisoners made it right that they should be sent to the first division. I think so. That is my opinion, and let me interpolate this, not based upon any distinction between political and non-political offences; but it seems to me when you have people guilty of offences of that particular kind in circumstances which do not seem to me to bring them within the category of ordinary cases, that I think is the kind of case intended to be treated by our law as a first division case, just as the late Mr. Stead was given first division treatment. No one in that case could describe Mr. Stead's case as an ordinary criminal offence. Whether it is right or wrong I do not care: they were, in fact, given first division treatment, and that immediately and overwhelmingly justifies those less guilty, still in prison, in pressing to have the same kind of treatment as those more guilty and sentenced to longer terms of punishment. It does seem to me, I confess, on the same principle of equality, impossible to justifiy the retaining in the second division prisoners who acted under the orders of their three leaders, while you send these three leaders to the first division. I do not see how you are going to do it. I will come to the defence put forward by the right hon. Gentleman in a moment. What has been the result? Those prisoners have in fact, as we know, refused their food and have been forcibly fed. I am not going to say that in no circumstances is it right to forcibly feed prisoners. I quite admit the immense difficulty of the position in which the authorities are placed under the circumstances, but I do say this—that this Sovereign House of Commons ought to know and to understand and realise what forcible feeding really does mean when done against the will of the person forcibly fed. I have been furnished with a statement by one of the prisoners recently released, and I propose to read part of it to the Committee, not vouching for the accuracy of every word of it—I cannot possibly do that. [HON. MEMBERS: "Then why read it?"] Because I think it gives in language which the Committee ought to hear the kind of thing that forcible feeding amounts to. It is by a lady called Miss Hudson, and she says:— That is a probability which I do not deny, but I do not think the Committee can doubt that, in point of fact, this operation is one causing extreme discomfort, even when carried out with the good will of the prisoner who has to submit to it, and when there is any resistance it is one which may easily degenerate into something which may be described as torture. I only need to mention the case of William Ball. I read very carefully the report of Dr. Savage in this case, and all the interviews he had. It is perfectly true that William Ball never resisted forcible feeding, but at the end of it the doctor said:— she was consequently immediately discharged. She was subsequently arrested for another offence in another part of the country, and this time she gave not her name, but a false name—that of Jane Walker, a working woman. She was not examined at all, or at any rate so perfunctorily that no heart disease was discovered, and Jane Walker had to submit to ordinary prison discipline and forcible feeding, with the result of a very serious injury to the health of the lady herself. I have never been able to understand how that happened, but it has always appeared to be a very serious blot on the administration of justice in this country, and I trust we shall hear some explanation of it later. Taking this particular case, how can you justify the treatment of Mrs. Pankhurst being given first division treatment, and then not being forcibly fed, but after an unsuccessful attempt to feed her, not with the tube but with a feeding spoon, you released her because her health was bad? Compare that with the case, one of many, of a certain Miss Vera Wentworth. I do not know the lady; I only know the broad facts. She is a girl really of twenty-two years of age. She was unquestionably acting on the instructions or at the instigation of the leaders of the movement. Yet she, I am told by no means a strong woman, is still in prison and is still being forcibly fed, unless she has been released this morning. That seems to me a very serious state of things. After all, we know that the leaders of this movement do command greater sympathy and support in this House than their unknown followers. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] I am glad to hear it, but I think I am justified in saying they do as a matter of fact. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] I think it would have made a much greater row in Parliament to have forcibly fed Miss Pankhurst than Miss Vera Wentworth.

Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence were forcibly fed.

Once. I am mainly dealing, not with the forcible feeding, but with the first divisional treatment. That is the main thing I am trying to impress upon the Committee. It is said, "Oh, this is justified because of the judge's opinion." I do not take the view that is a sufficient justification. The judge has said these women ought to be given first divisional treatment, or I understand he expressed his willingness that they should be given it. No inquiry, so far as I know, has been addressed to the Chairman of Quarter Sessions as to what he thinks under, the circumstances ought to be done with the prisoners now in gaol. Nor has that always been the practice of the right hon. Gentleman. The House will remember there were some prisoners tried by police magistrates who were receiving hard labour, and who were yet given treatment under Rule 243A. Later on, though the right hon. Gentleman said that strictly he had no power to do it, he stretched a point because, and only because, he had given that treatment to the prisoners who were later convicted before the Court of Quarter Sessions. This is exactly the principle for which I contend. When you find yourself compelled, or when you find it your duty, as Home Secretary, to give a lighter form of treatment to prisoners who are convicted of a more serious offence but of exactly the same character, then you are bound to extend that treatment to all the prisoners who are in prison for the same offence, and to do anything else is unjust, unfair, and unequal. That is the charge I make. I am not at all surprised that under these circumstances the women who are in prison should have formed the opinion that they are not being treated fairly, and that there is some other motive at work beyond those which have been brought before them. I have been furnished with an account of one particular lady whose case certainly appears to call for a very full explanation from the Government. Among the prisoners sentenced on 4th March last was a certain Miss Aileen Connor Smith, and she was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. She joined the others in the hunger strike in April, so I understand, and received treatment under Rule 243A. Last Monday she and others announced their intention of entering upon the second hunger strike in order to secure the same treatment as their leaders had been given. She was thereupon released. She was, I am informed, in perfectly good health and had not seen a doctor for weeks. She is the prisoner who is said to have been released without a medical certificate by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. She came to see me—I wish to be quite frank with the House—and I had an interview with her in St. Stephen's Hall. She gave me an account of what had occurred. I was very much impressed by it; but I told her that before bringing such a matter before the House of Commons I should desire to be given some ground for believing and for stating that as far as I could tell the statement was true, and I asked her to make a statutory declaration of the facts of which she then informed me. I have here the statutory declaration. It is very short, and I propose to read it to the Committee. She says:—

"I, Aileen Connor Smith, of 43. Kempsford Gardens, South Kensington, in the County of London, spinster, do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows:—

The right hon. Gentleman laughs, but I must warn him that unless he can give a very satisfactory explanation, this is a very serious matter indeed. Here is a lady who I have seen, and who, I can testify so far as appearance was concerned, was in perfectly good health on Thursday afternoon, and she informs us in this statutory declaration she gave no undertaking, and that she was released without any medical certificate. I leave the matter there. I do not wish to press it further until I have heard what the right hon. Gentleman has to say. That is the case which I desire to bring before the Committee. I must remind the Committee—and it is fair I should do so—that the right hon. Gentleman has been very unfortunate in his official career. He was at the Education Office, the first Cabinet office he held, and it was during the term of his educational administration that the great scandals occurred in connection with the Swansea schools.

On a point of Order. Is the Noble Lord in order on this Motion for the reduction of the Home Secretary's Salary in going back on the matter of the Swansea case?

The right hon. Gentleman need not be afraid. I am not going to say another word about that matter.

I do not think I can say the Noble Lord is out of order, but this day has been given to discuss a particular grievance, and I do think it is desirable, especially it being a short day, that we should confine ourselves to the point of the grievance.

I was merely reminding the House of what appears to be a germane fact. I think the right hon. Gentleman will admit that it was during his administration that the policy instituted by the present Chief Secretary for Ireland in regard to the Swansea schools was pursued until it eventuated in proceedings being instituted in the Courts.

The policy was not instituted by my right hon. Friend. In regard to the Swansea case, if that is what the Noble Lord is referring to, there was no new policy. I found that at the Board of Education a certain policy which was instituted not by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary when Minister for Education, but by a right hon. Gentleman who is now absent, but who ordinarily sits on the Front Opposition Bench.

It would be improper for me to go into details, but I am perfectly certain of this fact, that you will find official letters written by the Chief Secretary when he was at the Board of Education, emphatically taking up a wholly different attitude to that taken by the right hon. Gentleman and I will make it my business—

That is exactly the difficulty in allowing even a single sentence that is not strictly in order. I ask the Noble Lord to see it is not desirable to pursue this topic.

Is not this a Motion for the reduction of the salary of the Home Secretary on the ground, among other things, that he is not a capable person to occupy the position; and, in order to prove that, is it not justifiable to quote his action in connection with other Departments?

I think what has occurred only shows that I ought to have interfered earlier, as if I allow even a single sentence on an entirely extraneous subject there is bound to be a reply.

I do not wish to pursue the matter further. I will only say there is this feeling in the Education Department—whether it is justified or not I will not stay to inquire—and when the right hon. Gentleman went to the Admiralty unfortunately there there was the same feeling. Now we have this case. Possibly it may be a coincidence, and there may be no justification for it, but I must say I think the right hon. Gentleman has been very unfortunate in his career. Without going back into these cases, however, I wish to say that in my judgment a failure of justice has occurred in this case. I say again, as I said at the outset, equality of punishment is the very corner-stone of our penal system in respect of justice. It is impossible to justify the treatment of the leaders of the movement if you still keep their followers in the second division, and in consequence subject them to all the pain, degradation and humiliation which they feel at any rate in connection with the operation of forcible feeding. For that reason, I desire to move the reduction of the right hon. Gentleman's salary by £100.

1.0 P.M.

I hope the Committee will forget the introduction of extraneous matter into the otherwise able statement of the case by the Noble Lord, and I hope, too, that hon. Members on this side will not indulge in uncharitable observations and will not allow their judgment on the merits of the case to be warped by any unthinking expressions that may be used. I rose to a point of Order earlier in the Debate because the Labour party has taken up this question, but I wish to say I trust we shall at least be free from all suspicion of party bias in bringing it forward. Let me recall to the Committee what the real issue is. A certain number of women, over 200 of the rank and file and three of the leaders, were arrested for a given offence and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Subsequently the three leaders were conceded first-class treatment but none of the rank and file. That is the point at issue—this differentiation of treatment between prisoners equally guilty in the eyes of the law, although the leaders were, if anything, to be held more responsible for what took place than the rank and file. It is on that issue I hope the Division will be taken. It will be remembered that the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor in office—the present First Lord of the Admiralty—introduced a new rule for the treatment of prisoners of this class. That I am sure will not be denied. I want to ask the Home Secretary, first, whether he is aware that the benefits of Rule 243A were made conditional in the present case upon the performance of a certain task of work? I remember that, in reply to a question put by myself, the right hon. Gentleman said that prisoners sentenced to hard labour were ipso facto outside the benefit of Rule 243A. If that be so, why has the grant of those benefits been made conditional on the performance of a task? The Home Secretary says it is not hard labour. I do not think it is a hard task—indeed, the women like it: it gives them an opportunity of sitting round a table sewing and conversing. But that is not the point. The issue is why are the benefits of the rule made conditional on the performance of the task. Was that done with the right hon. Gentleman's authority and sanction, and, if so, for what reason?

That labour task condition led to a great deal of trouble inside the prison. The present hunger strike is exclusively due to the fact that the rank and file demanded that they should have the same treatment as their leaders. The Home Secretary cited, as one reason for transferring the leaders to the first division, the authority of Lord Coleridge. I was present in Court and heard Lord Coleridge pronounce sentence, and I have since refreshed my memory by looking up the verbatim report of what the learned judge said on that occasion. These are the words he used:— It will be seen that what Lord Coleridge asked as a condition of making them first-class misdemeanants was contrition for the past and a promise not to indulge in such action in the future, not during the term of their imprisonment. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] That is what he said.

It was conspiracy.

Use what words you like; I am using the phrase of everyday life. They were convicted of conspiracy to advise others to break the law. The others broke the law by breaking windows. Whether the law was broken by the hammer or by the word is a matter of no consequence, the point is that the rank and file are prepared to give the same undertaking, and should have received the same treatment. There is a further case of which the Home Secretary cannot be ignorant, but which, perhaps, the Committee is not aware of. The other day the hon. Gentleman the Member for Westmeath (Mr. Ginnell) put a question to the Chief Secretary for Ireland regarding the case of three suffragist women who had smashed windows in Dublin. They were tried, convicted, and sentenced to a month's imprisonment. It now transpires that in Ireland there are special rules for dealing with this class of offence. I will read the question and answer to make the point clear:—

"Mr. Ginnell asked the Chief Secretary, having regard to the nature of the offences for which certain ladies are now imprisoned in Dublin, committed from no personal motive, but for a public purpose, not denied in Court, and having regard to the danger to those ladies' health of subjecting them to the treatment devised for criminals, whether he will order the prison treatment of them to be limited to restraint as political offenders and their friends to be allowed to visit and provide for them?

"Mr. Birrell: The Irish Prison Rules provide that, in the case of any prisoner sentenced to imprisonment without hard labour, whose previous character is good, and who has been committed to prison for an offence not involving dishonesty, cruelty, indecency, or serious violence, such privileges may be allowed as the Lord-Lieutenant may approve, not exceeding those granted to first-class misdemeanants. Under these rules, these prisoners have been granted all the privileges of first-class misdemeanants. The magistrate who tried the case expressed the opinion that these prisoners ought to be treated as first-class misdemeanants."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th June, 1912, col. 456–7.]

If suffragists who smash windows in Ireland are entitled to be treated as first-class misdemeanants, as a matter of justice to English women the House of Commons, irrespective of party, will insist upon equality of treatment. If it can be done in Ireland there is no reason why it should not be done here. The privileges given to the Irish prisoners entitle them to have their own food and furniture, and a supply of books and newspapers. These terms were won for political prisoners in Ireland not by means of hunger strikes, but by strikes against prison rules by hon. Gentlemen opposite. Surely what has been won for Irish women guilty of exactly the same kind of offence ought to be applied to women here. The Noble Lord has dwelt on some of the more horrible aspects of forcible feeding. The Home Secretary has alleged on more than one occasion, as did his predecessor, that forcible feeding in itself is not necessarily injurious to health and that it is performed in hospitals and lunatic asylums. He has, however, admitted that where there is resistance it may involve danger to health. In every one of the cases of these women it is known that there will be resistance.

Oh, no. The hon. Member is quite wrong on that point. In a very large number of cases there is no resistance at all.

I hold in my hand a copy of a document sent by Sir Victor Horsley to the Home Secretary, which I will read so that hon. Members may see that on very high medical authority the opinion held by the Home Secretary, and it may be by the prison medical authorities, is not substantiated. Here is what he says:—

"Sir,—I beg to enclose a copy of a letter to the Home Secretary, signed by 117 medical practitioners, in which they call attention to the dangers of forcible feeding. The conditions under which the operation is (forcibly) performed in the case of resisting prisoners are totally different from those existing in asylums and hospital cases (the medical conditions) which necessitate artificial feeding. The signatories include Sir Victor Horsley, Mr. Arbuthnot Lane, Morton Smale, Professor Halliburton, Mr. Mansell Moullin, Dr. Percy Mitchell, Professor Brodie, Dr. Helen Webb, Professor Augustus Waller, Dr. E. Davies Colley, Dr. Cuthbert Lockyer, Mr. Percy Flemming, Mr. Wilmott Evans, Dr. Jane Walker, and others.

"The memorandum has been prepared in the course of a few hours, as the signatories considered the matter to be of the utmost possible urgency."

Here is the memorial:

"We, as members of the medical profession, strongly protest against the forcible feeding to which certain prisoners are at present being subjected. We consider that tube feeding in cases where the operation is resisted by the patient, is accompanied by immediate risk to life, in addition to the danger of permanent damage to the health, both of body and of mind. We urge that this practice be discontinued."

It is no reply to that to say that these women do not require to go on strike and do not require to resist when food is being supplied to them. That is begging the whole question. It is a mere evasion of the point at issue. [An HON. MEMBER: "They would die if they had no food."] I agree, but what is the alternative to allowing them to die? The alternative to forcible feeding is to make them first-class misdemeanants.

They will do it still.

It is no use saying that. When that case arises deal with it. They adopted it before and they succeeded. It was the hunger strike that won Rule 243A, and very naturally, having had part of their demands conceded, they are fighting for the whole and will go on fighting till they succeed. The Home Secretary has this week liberated some thirty of these women whose condition of health is such that their lives would be endangered if this forcible feeding was long persisted in. The alternative to all this cruelty, hardship, suffering, and risk to life is to treat these women as the three leaders have been treated. Surely the House of Commons should have no difficulty in coming to a judgment on the point. It is all very well for those who read about these things, dished up perhaps by a cynical Press, but it is a different matter when you come in personal contact with the women themselves. When you see them weak, thin and emaciated, when you realise the struggle they have undergone, when you feel, as they put it, that this outrage is equal to the worst form of outrage that can be perpetrated upon a woman—every feeling is violated; the women themselves feel these things, and the country is beginning to realise the issue at stake and what forcible feeding really means to the women. Surely the Home Office will put itself abreast of the Irish Office, will give equality of treatment to all prisoners guilty of the same offence, and will transfer the remaining women still subject to an inferior treatment to the first division without any delay!

I desire to call attention to one or two cases which have been brought to my knowledge this morning. Just before coming to the House I received a deputation of ladies from my Constituency, educated women, including Mrs. Saul Solomon, the widow of a distinguished Colonial official, and they desired me to call the attention of the House to what was going on, and I do not think the House is yet fully informed of the impolicy of the forcible feeding that is going on in some of our prisons. I desire to call attention specially to two cases. There is a Miss Davidson, who was very properly convicted of putting a piece of lighted paper in a pillar box—a most foolish thing, a thing which some schoolboys might have been guilty of, but in an educated woman as she is it is remarkable that she should think of furthering her cause by such an action. I want to say what a pity it is that these offences are not treated by fine, and heavy fine if necessary, instead of putting them in prison at all. I should suppose the law allows that to be done. If not, it ought to be altered, especially in cases of this kind, where the motives of the women are not criminal. It would be desirable to make them pay in their pockets, and indeed to sell their goods; and in cases of conspiracy, where there are large sums of money in the hands of an organisation, the funds should be taken to pay these heavy fines. In that way we shall get rid of the difficulty. I am informed by people in whose word I can place confidence that Miss Davidson seriously intended to commit suicide in order that by sacrificing her life she might bring success to the cause which she has at heart. I do not for a moment commend her for that. It may be said that a woman who forms that resolve is hardly in her right mind. I was sorry to hear the Home Secretary the other day making an unworthy imputation with respect to Miss Davidson's action on that occasion. He said that when she threw herself over the stairway she was well aware that there was an iron grating which would prevent her from receiving any serious harm. The Home Secretary did not add what he ought to have added, if he knew the fact, that she not only fell on the iron grating, but threw herself from it on to hard stones and injured herself severely. She is in consequence now in a serious state of health. I think the Home Secretary should not have made the unworthy imputation that she merely wished to get credit for taking this action, knowing that she could do herself no harm.

I wish to refer to the case of Mrs. Brown. In that case the woman had an injured nose, and had undergone two operations on it. The result of forcible feeding in her case was to put her to great agony and pain, because it was impossible to pass the pipe through the nose. The attempt to do so had a serious effect upon her. The point I wish to call attention to is this: Her husband wrote to the Home Secretary, and a copy of the correspondence has been sent to me. I was impressed by two things. In the first place it contains the evidence of the woman. I have had communications from the doctor who attended her, and from her personal friends, and I believe the woman's statement is to be relied upon that her nose was in an abnormal state. She asserts that the doctor never examined her case, that he treated her statement as ridiculous, and that he immediately proceeded to feed her forcibly and with great violence. On reading the correspondence I was struck very much with the fact—I naturally felt deeply about it—that the Home Secretary did not express one word of regret in that correspondence at what had happened. It may be that he thought it his duty to support the prison doctor, but I think it would have been a matter of policy to have expressed to the husband, who had done no harm, a feeling of regret that his wife had been put to this very severe torture from which she is still suffering.

I would only add one word, and that is as to the mischief of the constant interference on the part of the Home Secretary with the decisions of the judges. That is a very serious matter. Our judges ought to be experts in the punishments they inflict. I have no doubt whatever that they make the amount and duration of the punishments they inflict a matter of very serious thought, and I say it is a very serious thing that a member of the Government, who is not supposed to be an expert in punishments, should continually interfere with the sentences so passed. I think it greatly interferes with the dignity of the position of the judges. I would call the attention of the Committee to what happened in the case of Tom Mann who was very properly sentenced for a very serious offence some weeks ago. I think the sentence was one of nine months' imprisonment. In a short time it was reduced to two months, but he was not kept in prison even for that period. He was let out in six weeks. This is not a party matter. Tom Mann is not connected with the party I act with, and my own feeling in the matter is that a grave injustice was caused when the Home Secretary let Tom Mann off after six weeks' imprisonment, having in view the serious offence of which he was convicted. I am strongly opposed to the action of these women whose case has been referred to, but I would point out that to keep them in prison and put them through the degrading form of punishment which forcible feeding has become is really to punish them for seeking the vote. It is not necessary. According to the evidence of eminent medical men, if they do not eat, they should be kept in the infirmary under supervision, and if their health is seriously affected they should be let go. That would be an act of common justice. It is not good policy for the Government themselves to act as they are doing. I assure them that this is making them very unpopular in the country. I am sure the feeling in regard to forcible feeding is increasing. I know some Colonials now in this country feel disgust that the British Government should continue a form of punishment which is not needed in keeping these women from having a share in the voting power of this country. For these reasons, I have the greatest pleasure in supporting the Amendment of my Noble Friend the Member for Hitchin (Lord Robert Cecil). I wish the Amendment had been to entirely deprive of his salary a man who, in my opinion, is not suited to his position.

I am sure every Member of this House, no matter to what party he belongs, sincerely regrets the position into which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been forced. It is not often that a right hon. Gentleman who has occupied distinguished positions in the administration in this country, as the Home Secretary has done for the last six years, has had to face two votes of want of confidence in one week. It was only the other day that a vote of want of confidence was proposed against the right hon. Gentleman, and I regret very much to say that a considerable number of Members on this side of the House, together with the Noble Lord and his colleagues opposite, supported it. Now we have another proposed to-day, and the whole argument of the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil), who opened the Debate, amounts to this: His whole speech was nothing but a tirade consisting of offensive extracts from papers. The attack consists of, "He said, you said, and the other said," and the Noble Lord's speech might very well lead one to urge the necessity of shorter speeches in the House, so that one Member should not have the opportunity of wasting time by reading extracts from former Debates. The whole speech of the Noble Lord was simply an undeserved and grossly unjustified attack upon the Home Secretary. What is the offence of my right hon. Friend? His offence is only that instead of exercising the duty which, I believe, from time immemorial has always been placed upon the Home Secretary, he has tempered justice with mercy. Hon. Members on both sides of the House, and especially Members below the Gangway, would take away from the Home Secretary this power. It occasionally comes to our notice that the Home Secretary in the exercise of his discretion remits a sentence here or a sentence there, and if we are going to take away from him that power, and if we are going to vest it in what somebody has called the Sovereign House of Commons, are we going to have a Debate here every time the sentence on some criminal is under review? If so, then I say this House of Commons will have more to do than it can undertake in this generation or the next. It is absolutely impossible. The position assumed by the Noble Lord and others opposite is that we should be a court of appeal and pass judgment upon the action of the Home Secretary in reviewing or lessening sentences. He never attempts to increase punishment, but he does, in the exercise of his proper functions, remit the severity of punishments from time to time. The Noble Lord tried to harrow our feelings by going into nauseous details as to forcible feeding. Will he say what is he going to substitute for it?

Put them in the first division.

The hon. Gentleman is a Scotchman. May I remind him that in Scotland forcible feeding is never resorted to.

I have never heard of that. But we are not here to try to tackle the pure technicalities of the law. The hon. Member for Hampstead said very properly that the only alternative to this forcible feeding is to let the prisoners go scot-free; do not punish them; let them go to the Prime Minister and tear the epaulettes off his shoulder; let them go, either men or women, because I take it that the Noble Lord or his Friends would not draw any distinction whatever between men and women in this case, and that he would serve them all with equal justice—

I would let them remain without food for a week or so.

It might suit the hon. Gentleman to go without food for a week, but it certainly would not suit me. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. That is the only alternative—to let them go. Where is that going to lead us? If a person deliberately goes out to damage property, what are we to do? There is a great deal of truth in what the hon. Gentleman said, that we might fine them. But we cannot do it; we cannot get at them. When the First Lord of the Admiralty is struck with a dog-whip, what punishment is to be inflicted? Is the person who does this to go scot-free, and if that is to be done you must carry the same argument through the whole stream of offences against the property and person. Poor tradesmen in various parts of London have had their property damaged to a very serious extent, and some have been almost driven into bankruptcy because of the action of these misguided persons Yet the hon. Gentleman says, and the Noble Lord I presume backs him up in saying, "Let them go."

I said nothing except that all persons guilty of the same offence should be equally treated.

The Noble Lord said so, but I do not think that anybody in this House or outside it believes that it is done for one moment. Everybody knows that there is one law for one class in this country and another law for another, and there always has been.

For the same offence?

Yes; it is as old as the hills. One man can steal a horse and another man practically cannot look over the hedge. The Noble Lord might commit heaps of crimes for which I should probably have to suffer very severely. The point I wish to emphasise is this: The House of Commons cannot be a court of appeal against the action of the Home Secretary. We cannot revise sentences, and we cannot let people who break the laws and damage property and persons go scot-free. If the Noble Lord would move for a special Committee to see whether we can have some reform in the prison law, I think we might all agree with him. Personally, I think that the great bulk of the sentences inflicted are far too heavy. That is not the question to consider here. The question to consider here is whether the Home Secretary in using his discretion may temper justice with mercy in a fair and equitable manner. If the contention of the Noble Lord and his Friends is carried out in this respect, where is it going to lead? Does anybody believe that the Noble Lord cares two pence for this question of woman's suffrage compared with the question of Welsh Disestablishment?

That is going outside the subject under discussion.

I am sorry. I did not wish to do so, but after the speeches we have had on this question, is it not fair to show that if the action of the Noble Lord and his Friends is approved of by the House, and that it is decided by the House that persons who commit offences on property or persons are to go scot-free with merely a little trifling inconvenience, that will lead us a very great deal further; and is it not fair to show that it is impossible to carry any measure of reform which we on this side desire, or they on the other side desire, if a large number of persons are prepared to submit to this physical inconvenience rather than see the law carried out?

I think that the hon. Member was going into Welsh Disestablishment. That is what I had in my mind.

Not by way of argument, but by way of illustration. It is simply impossible for any measure to be carried out if we lay down as the law that no matter what may be the offence the person is to go scot-free provided he is willing to submit to a certain amount of physical inconvenience. It was an abuse of language for the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil to say that this carrying out of the law preventing poor creatures committing suicide was the worst form of outrage that a woman could be subjected to. I am sure that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil does not in his heart of hearts believe that statement to be true for one single moment. It is intolerable that in these days, when everyone is so anxious to see justice done for every class of the community and everyone is so anxious to accord to women everything that they can reasonably desire, and to give them every reform that they see fit to ask for, that we should be met with this sort of Debate such as we were faced with the other day when a Vote of want of confidence in the Home Secretary was moved, and such as we have to meet again this afternoon. I do not desire to make a long speech; I am very much in favour of hon. Members compressing their remarks, and I hope that the day is not distant when it will not be in order to read long extracts from the official reports of other hon. Member's speeches; but I wish to say that if this Vote of want of confidence is adopted, it will do much to break up the foundations of law and order in this country.

I wish to support the Amendment to reduce the Home Secretary's salary, and I do so because I think that the case has been made out. The only speaker on this side who attempted to de fend the Home Secretary has not met the argument at all except by saying that we have had differential treatment for the same offence in this country, and there fore it must always be—

No.

It is not quite true to say that the Home Secretary of the day has ever varied sentences for the same offence in a differential manner. I should like the hon. Member to give us an instance where the Home Secretary of the day has had a hundred prisoners imprisoned for an offence of this kind, all of them for an offence against common law, ninety-seven of them for actual damage to property, and three of them for having conspired to incite others to commit that damage to property. You cannot bring a record of putting the three people who incited the others to do wrong into the first division and leaving the remaining ninety-seven in the second division. That is really the crux of the whole matter. We may argue about it until to-morrow morning, and make long speeches, but that is what the Home Secretary has to answer this afternoon. It is of no use telling us what the judge said in this matter, because in the letter of the judge to the Home Secretary he said something entirely different from what he said to the prisoners when sentencing them. I was in court and heard the whole of his statement. He wanted them to promise not to break the law again, and to say that they were sorry for what they had done. They have done neither of those things. All they have promised to do is not to abuse the privilege of being in the first division. I wish to ask those who believe in the United Kingdom, whether Ireland in this matter is to have preferential treatment, or Scotland either, when a woman who commits the same offence in Ireland is to be put into the first division, furnish her own cell, provide her own food, with three visits a day and one letter, while a woman in the capital of the United Kingdom is to be treated as these women are being treated just now? These are the things we want the Home Secretary to answer, and these are the things we want the House to vote against.

A sneer has gone round pretty thoroughly this morning in regard to whether this is "cheap martyrdom." [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] I am speaking within the recollection of those who are present, and I will leave it to their consciences whether what I am saying is not true. But what has happened in regard to this question of cheap martyrdom? I suppose every tyrant has said the same thing in the history of the world. I have heard it said in this House over and over again that the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) only went without clothes to get notoriety and cheap martyrdom. I am surprised to hear Liberals, men who believe in the traditional Liberalism of our country, make that sort of statement. They fail to realise that these women are fighting for a real and definite principle, for something which to them is dearer than life. Hon. Members may laugh about forcible feeding. [HON. MEMBERS: "We do not laugh."] Hon. Members may not have the same view about forcible feeding that I have, but at any rate they will be defending forcible feeding if they vote against us this afternoon, because they will be voting that forcible feeding is a right and proper method of dealing with these people. The hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Kellaway) should have a little patience, and I will try and meet the argument. The question that we are up against is whether forcible feeding of a prisoner under these circumstances is justifiable. It has been said that in lunatic asylums and other places people are forcibly fed, but one of my dearest friends was driven out of life by forcible feeding. I have always felt that it was positive murder. The young girl whom the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord Robert Cecil) mentioned just now, happened to be a personal friend of my own daughter. I visited her by the goodwill of the Home Secretary in Holloway, and I did my best to persuade her not to persist in the hunger strike and to avoid being forcibly fed.

The statement is made that these are all society women. I notice that the Liberal Press, true to their lying traditions, were libelling me yesterday and today, stating that I am taking tea with society women on the Terrace because of my attitude on this question. The society women with whom I took tea were my own daughter, the wife of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood), and Prince Kropotkin. I am very proud to have been in that society. It shows the depths to which Liberalism has sunk when this sort of statement can be made. These women refuse altogether to be classed as criminals. They say what the hon. Members from Ireland say, "We are fighting as every rebel has fought for certain definite things; you have no right to put us in gaol, and treat us as if we were thieves, felons, and common criminals."

was understood to say: The prisoners had the benefit of a special rule.

There is a rule between the first and second division.

The hon. Member said that they were treated like criminals, but they have this rule under which they are treated differently, and, therefore, obviously they are not regarded as common criminals.

By the very fact of your putting Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence in the first division you materially differentiate between the leaders and the rank and file. It is said that these women must be forcibly fed, otherwise they would starve to death. What is your position in regard to that? It is this: that the women so violently obstruct the treating of them in this sort of way that the Home Secretary in the end is obliged to do the very thing which he says he must not do, namely, discharge them. Those who happen to be weak physically are in a much better position than the stronger ones for determining their own sentence. Is not that a perfectly illogical position to be in?

It has always been so.

I am a little younger than the hon. Member, but to defend a thing which is wrong by saying that it has always been so, to me is no argument at all. It does not appeal to me a scrap. The very thing that the Home Secretary said must not be permitted, namely, that people should determine their own sentence, has happened. Either they have to be allowed to die in gaol after forcible feeding, or they have to be let out. I hope you will continue to put them in the first division, but, if you do not, the proper thing to do is to adopt the proposition of the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Fletcher), and that is to send the women, when they get into such a weak state, to their friends. It seems to me that is the logical thing to do. With regard to the actual forcible feeding, I want to read the opinion of a medical authority on this subject, because apparently hon. Members think that this is something which really does not hurt, and leaves the patients very much as they were before. That is not so. I deny altogether the right of society in the name of punishment to physically injure any human being in this kind of way. We have in England always boasted that we do not know that kind of punish- ment. This is the opinion of Mr. Forbes Ross:— the matter never thought it worth his while to interview his father or his mother or to get any particulars of his family history. Then we are told it was not forcible feeding that drove this man mad, but something else. All I can say is that the man was not mad and displayed no sign of madness until he was forcibly fed. Therefore by all the laws of evidence the deduction is that forcible feeding at least had something to do with driving him out of his mind.

2.0 P.M.

In regard to this subject I would like to appeal to the Members of the Committee whether it is not time we really faced what is at the bottom of this agitation, and whether forcible feeding is quite the sort of thing to dole out to these women. I know it is said and thought of them that they are an hysterical set of women who do not know quite what they want, who are discontented, and who are therefore indulging in this agitation. I have been in agitations since I was a small child, and so far as I have known any agitation I have never met men or women so full of good, sound spirit, fighting for what they are ready to die for and what they believe in as these women have proved themselves to be. I really cannot understand this Assembly, an Assembly mainly of men, having the callous sort of feeling with regard to them which it has. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] Here we are, a nation that refuses to give up to another country a man who assassinates another if he carries out that assassination in regard to a political agitation. We refuse on the score that he is a political prisoner to give him up to the nation that demands him. The Home Secretary told us one night that these women were not imprisoned because of political agitation, but because they broke windows. What of the man who helped to manufacture the Orsini bombs and escaped over here? The British Government, under Lord Palmerston, refused to give him up. What was the charge against him? The charge against him was not merely that he was a rebel against Louis Napoleon, but that he wanted to help the flight of Louis Napoleon to heaven—or to the other place. These women have broken windows on account of political agitation, and no amount of twisting can get rid of that fact. I appeal to the men here who believe in traditional Liberalism whether you ought not to take the same attitude in regard to these prisoners as was taken in regard to some of the Chartist prisoners, and which was taken because of the demand of the Liberal party in regard to hon. Members from Ireland. In those circumstances, we are told, the Home Secretary told us and the Prime Minister told us that all these women could go free. Every tyrant says that. Every man who used the thumbscrews has said that to those who protested against some doctrine or other, and those men have been told they could go free, and to think that in the British Parliament a Liberal Minister should stand up at that box and insult those women and say, "Forsake your principles—[Mr. MCKENNA was understood to indicate dissent]—do not do it again, do not break the law, do not rebel." [An HON. MEMBER: "Do not break windows."] I can quite imagine the hon. Member would not break windows for anything. You say to these women, "You must not break windows, and you must not come down to this House and pester and annoy people." That is what the tyrant says in Russia: "Do not be rebels, and you can live here; do not be against the Government, and you can have freedom," and we have British Ministers representing Liberalism who get round this case by saying that these women are not in gaol because of their agitation, but because they have broken windows. Certainly they are, and you know perfectly well why they have broken the windows. I have never advised any woman to do anything, break windows or anything else, because I will never advise them to do anything I am not prepared to do myself. If I advised them to break windows I would go out with them and break windows and smash people's heads, and perhaps get mine smashed. You are saying to those women, "Promise not to do something" which it is impossible for them to do, and which, I contend, no Minister representing Liberalism ever ought to demand of them. An hon. Gentleman said something about reviewing decisions. After all, this place in the last resort, is where the grievances of the people have to be heard. These women are outside the law. You pass laws for them, and you do not allow them to make those laws. When our fathers were in that condition they broke the laws; they rioted in Birmingham and in Bristol; they pulled down the railings at Hyde Park, and all up and down the country they did all kinds of acts they ought not to have done. They do not do so to-day because they have the power of the vote. Those women are in exactly the same position. I am proud some people who belong to me are in the movement. In the long run even this House, strong as you are to-day, will be bound to bring these women into the Constitution, and until you do you will never have peace. Until you do so the least you can dole out to them for committing offences against the law is the same kind of treatment that the Liberal party under Mr. Gladstone demanded for the Irish Members who broke the law, and worse than any woman has broken it to-day.

The remarks I wish to make are entirely in support of the Noble Lord who moved the reduction and of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. Keir Hardie), except that I do not make any personal attack on the Home Secretary, nor do I wish to say anything in the least disparaging in regard to him. I believe that he is as capable as any of his predecessors of dealing with this or any other question that may come before him. Therefore I am encouraged in the hope that the arguments adduced this afternoon may have some effect in inducing him to alleviate the sufferings of these unfortunate women. The complaint appears to me to be divided into two parts. The first has been fully dealt with, namely, the differential treatment of prisoners. It has been defended by sophistry and legal technicalities, but to the simple mind it does not seem logical or reasonable that those who are mainly culpable should be treated in a more lenient manner than their followers. The main indictment against the Home Office, however, and the one on which I principally rely, relates to the process of forcible feeding, which appears to have been invented more or less for these unfortunate women. [Several HON. MEMBERS: "No."] We never heard of it before, except in the case of persons who were ill and unable to take food otherwise. We never heard of its being adopted extensively in our prisons or anywhere else. To feed forcibly people who are strong enough to resist must be dangerous to any but the most robust constitution. I do not think the public realise what this process is. I would commend to their attention a pamphlet entitled "The Prisoner," and also a picture which appeared in the "Illustrated London News" some time ago of a woman being forcibly fed. The public ought really to recognise what this process is before they form an opinion on the matter. I suggest that a female prisoner being forcibly fed in the year 1912 would form a very useful subject for an addition to the exhibition of contemporary history in waxworks at Madame Tussaud's, and until such an addition is made there and elsewhere the. representation of the history of our times will not be complete.

The Committee must recognise that these women, who are recruited from every class of society, have been sorely tried. Promises have been made to them which have not been kept; they have been hustled and insulted in the public streets; they have spent their energies and their money in the advancement of a cause which they believed to be right. I submit incidentally that the qualities such as endurance, fortitude, and courage, shown by these women, illustrate that they are qualified to have conferred upon them the elementary right of citizenship—the Parliamentary franchise. Hon. Members can hardly admire courage and determination in one section of the community and refuse their admiration of the same qualities in another section. We Unionists are willing to give sympathy and support to the Unionists of Ulster when they tell us that under certain circumstances Ulster will fight. While we admire the spirit and courage which prevail amongst the people of Ulster we cannot refuse to admire the same qualities in the women of our own country. It is not a question of the rights or wrongs of female suffrage. What I am mainly speaking against is the system of forcible feeding. It is a dangerous innovation, and one that might be used as part of the punishment inflicted. It is easy to see that it might be extended and become a dangerous weapon in the hands of officials. It does not require a very long flight of imagination, if Home Rule be granted to Ireland, and Ulster be beaten, to picture Lord Londonderry and the right hon. Member for Dublin University being forcibly fed in an Irish prison.

It will have to be done by Englishmen then, for we will not do it.

I hope the arguments which have been used this afternoon will induce the Home Secretary to relax the rules, and that forcible feeding will be altogether abandoned in respect of the unfortunate women who are now serving the remainder of their sentences in the gaols of the country.

I intend to make only a few observations in regard to what I frankly confess is a question of considerable perplexity. I hope at the outset it will be clearly understood that I do not attempt in the smallest degree to condone the offences of which these ladies have been convicted, nor do I at all question the absolute responsibility of the Home Secretary for securing the enforcement of the law. I think that is the attitude which all who criticise the action of the Home Secretary should adopt. For my part I take a very high standpoint in relation to this matter. These women are in the ordinary conventional use of the term, "political offenders," and a political offence—whether it be so or not—is not tested by the means largely employed to secure a particular end, but is tested by the end which is in view. When people aim at a change in the Constitution, be it beneficent or otherwise, and pursue any unlawful means, whether they consist of assassination as in the illustration given by the hon. Gentleman who spoke a few minutes ago, or some trivial and ludicrous offence of breaking windows; it is equally a political offence, and you cannot at all evade that issue by saying that they are not punished for a political offence, but for breaking windows. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary must accede to that point. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I think so. I repeat that whether the offence is a political offence or not—and I speak as a lawyer, and with a sense of responsibility, when I say so—it is tested by the end in view and not by the means that are adopted. That is a position which I think anyone who has even an elementary knowledge of constitutional law will agree to.

Our treatment of political offenders in this country has not been uniform, and behind that my right hon. Friend's predecessors sheltered themselves. Throughout the political history of this country, and down to modern and present times, we have sporadically treated political offenders as first-class misdemeanants—which is a term comparatively modern. When O'Connell was in prison he was treated as a first-class misdemeanant. Henry Vincent, a Chartist leader, who resorted to extreme violence, who in fact levied and maintained civil war in this country, was treated as a first-class misdemeanant. Dr. Jameson, to come down to quite modern times, was sentenced by the judge not to punishment as a first-class misdemeanant; but he was, without consultation with the judge, moto proprio on the part of the Home Office, in a day or two, I think within a few hours of his sentence, sent into the first class. I might multiply his case.

dissented.

Could I not? I could multiply them by numerous cases connected with the movement with which I have personal, or at least family, associations—the Chartist movement. I could multiply them by referring to individual cases in which persons who were guilty of actual physical violence were treated as first-class misdemeanants. One of the noblest apologias which was ever delivered in this House for treating political prisoners as first-class misdemeanants was that uttered by the late Lord Beacons field. He said in the treatment of political offenders that the method to be pursued was not punishment, but detention. I do not want to enter into controversy with my right hon. Friend as to his justification for his conduct in not treating these prisoners as first-class misdemeanants, or to go into the question as to whether or not he is bound by the traditions of the office to which he belongs, by traditions which come down to the time of his predecessor, the present First Lord of the Admiralty. I want to be absolutely fair to the Home Secretary. Let me very shortly trace the history of this matter: In the first instance these Suffragist prisoners were treated, I do not say uniformly in many cases when the crimes of violence first broke out, but they were treated as first-class misdemeanants. That continued for some little time.

Then the police magistrates, I understand, arrived at a common agreement amongst themselves that they would no longer treat these prisoners as first-class misdemeanants, but that they would treat them as prisoners of the second class. Am attempt was made by some of my hon. Friends on the Labour Benches to get the then Home Secretary to review the sentences, and the predecessor of my right hon. Friend excused himself from it by sheltering himself behind the decisions of the magistrates. He said: "All punishment rests with the magistrates and the magistrates alone. They have chosen to treat these ladies as prisoners of the second class—and it would be an improper thing for me to interfere." I entirely dissent from that view of the late Home Secretary. The truth is this: that the prerogative, of the Crown is absolutely unlimited, and it is a wholly un-Constitutional doctrine for the Home Secretary to say that he felt bound by the action of the Judicial Tribunal. Of course, it is the duty of the right hon. Gentleman to treat with respect the decisions of the bench. It is also his duty, a merely conventional duty, but undoubtedly a duty, to consult the learned judge or police magistrate that convicts a prisoner as to whether he can see any good reason why the sentence should not be mitigated. But there is no question that the Crown has the most absolute prerogative; a prerogative indeed in which this House cannot interfere, except by bringing pressure to bear to obtain the dismissal of the Minister. The Crown, I say, has an absolute prerogative, and the Home Secretary can discharge a prisoner from prison or reduce his sentence or regulate the length and conditions under which that prisoner is kept.

I remember in this House of Commons the eloquent appeal of Mr. Gladstone in a speech which he made on the treatment of Irish political offenders, men who had broken the law as absolutely, as violently, and as conclusively as any law of the realm could be violated. It was one of the most eloquent appeals which he ever made in this House. He asserted that persons who were guilty and sentenced for offences of a political nature should be treated on an absolute standard of differentiation from that which obtains in the treatment of ordinary prisoners. That view appeals to the conscience and good feeling of men and women who act upon what they conceive to be a high standard of morality in the pursuit of a policy which brings them into conflict with the positive laws of their country; they should be treated on a totally different plane of punishment to that which is meted out to those who are convicted of sordid and selfish offences against the law. That principle has been admirably recognised in Rule 243A. This rule says that where persons are convicted of offences not involving dishonesty, or cruelty, or indecency, those persons shall be treated in a different method and by a different standard; and my right hon. Friend agrees up to the standard of treatment which is made use of in the case of first-class misdemeanants. I want to come to the particular case with which we are dealing now. I do think, I say it with real sincerity, there has been a want of consideration displayed—I am not using a word in censure of my right hon. Friend, if I may use the word "censure"—towards those people who have broken the law. The action of the police was criticised in a detailed manner by my Noble Friend who moved the reduction of this Vote and by the hon. Gentleman whose absence I regret, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. Both these Gentlemen agreed there was a very strong primâ facie case made out against the police of misconduct and they requested an investigation by the predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman. On the authority of the Noble Lord and the hon. Member a sufficient primâ facie case was made out, but the then Home Secretary peremptorily refused to afford any investigation. A single Member of the Labour party made a single allegation of misconduct on the part of the police in this House and asked for investigation, unaided by memorial or report, and the right hon. Gentleman at once said "Yes, I shall give you an inquiry," and if I may say so I think that is perfectly creditable to the right hon. Gentleman to give that inquiry; and the course of the evidence, whatever may be the result, tends to show the absolute justification to me that there was an allegation of misconduct on the part of the police. May I pay a tribute en passant to my hon. Friend the present Chairman of the Middlesex Sessions, Mr. Wallace. The testimony of those ladies was that they were treated with insult by the prosecuting Attorney and Magistrate in every case in which they appeared in the Police Court. The only Court, they said, in which they received courteous treatment was the Court over which my late colleague, Mr. Wallace, so ably presided.

He is still alive and well.

I am stating what those ladies represented to be the case, but at any rate this is far too serious a matter to be the subject of a gibe by my hon. Friend.

The hon. Gentleman has no right whatever to accuse me of anything of the kind. All I said was that Mr. Wallace is alive and well.

I accept that. With regard to what is urged against my right hon. Friend, let me say this. Lord Coleridge, who tried the case with the utmost fairness, at the conclusion of the trial, when the jury found their verdict, was asked, or it was suggested to him, to treat these three prisoners as first-class misdemeanants, and he said that inasmuch as they intended to follow their tactics when released from prison, he would not treat them as first-class misdemeanants, as it would be an encouragement and affording them facilities while in prison. Everyone knows who has taken the trouble to study the rules of the prison that a first-class misdemeanant has no more facility for carrying on propagandist work than an ordinary prisoner. All their letters are read; they are not allowed newspapers, and therefore it is perfectly impossible, except with the connivance of the Prison Commissioners, for any first-class misdemeanant to carry on a propaganda for unlawful motives. Lord Coleridge's reservation was clearly devoted to conduct that they might pursue afterwards. I think my right hon. Friend did what was right. He consulted the learned judge, and it would be very difficult indeed for any officer of the Crown like the Secretary of State to refuse to follow a certain course of conduct in regard to particular prisoners if the learned judge expressed the opinion that a certain course should be pursued, and I understand from what my right hon. Friend has stated that the learned judge in fact advised the treatment of these three people as first-class misdemeanants.

What is the position of the other prisoners, and I am sure this House wishes to arrive, whatever may be the results of this discussion, at a fair decision. My right hon. Friend told me privately he extended the indulgence of Rule 243A, not quite up to the point of first-class misdemeanants, but very nearly up to the point of first-class misdemeanants. He could have extended it right up to the full. Rule 243A relieves ladies from doing a certain kind of sordid office, such as cleaning their cells, solitary confinement, wearing prison dress, and I understand my right hon. Friend applied Rule 243A to these prisoners, and the distinction is that they did not get quite the same facilities or advantages as was conceded to first-class misdemeanants. Now, then, came the crux of the question, and one upon which I do hope we may have an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman. These ladies take the view that if Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence were treated as first-class misdemeanants, they ought to have been treated as first class, and that Rule 243A was not enough. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst, throwing in their lot with these ladies, said, "They must be treated as first-class misdemeanants, or otherwise we will go on the hunger strike." My right hon. Friend said, "I have given you the indulgence of Rule 243A; I will not give you the indulgence of first-class misdemeanants." I think his position, if he will forgive me for saying so, in these circumstances cannot be defended. I think the distinction is very small between Rule 243A and first-class misdemeanants, and that the right hon. Gentleman might have said, "I will make you all first-class misdemeanants." But for some reason—I do not know whether to meet the views of the prison commissioners or the Home Office officials—he made that distinction. That is regarded as unequal treatment, and it is this inequality of treatment that led to this trouble in His Majesty's Prisons. I am going to make an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope and expect we shall get a reply from him which will meet what I feel very deeply, namely, that this dreadful state of things should end. I have been told by persons who have recently come out of prison, whose credibility I have not the slightest reason to doubt, that the shrieks and the cries of the women in those prisons are awful. The process of forcible feeding is a disgusting process, and although I have no expert knowledge upon this matter, I am told that it may result in danger to health. The right hon. Gentleman knows that these women are of high resolve and generous nature, possessing noble ideals, and who really believe that they are serving a great cause. You and I may regard them with sublime indifference, but we know that whatever may be their faults or lack of wisdom in their policy, their great idea is the same ideal of political liberty which inspired the heroic conduct of many hon. Members opposite. We know that they believe that these means, mistaken though they may be in the judgment of many of us, are the means calculated most effectively to attain the end they have in view, and however much we may support my right hon. Friend in that which is his primary duty, the maintenance of law and order—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—I admit it is his duty to do that, and it is the duty of all responsible governing bodies of the civilised State to maintain law and order. We have no right to question or censure harshly the action of my right hon. Friend in endeavouring to maintain order.

I make no apologia for my right hon. Friend, and I think I am only doing him justice when I say that I believe he has not been actuated by any upstart spirit of officialism in the action which he has taken. The offence which these women committed is one which should be punished, because they broke the windows of private citizens and public bodies. May I point out, however, that you have already inflicted upon them by the magistrates—judging by my own experience of sentencing people—a heavy punishment, because many of the sentences imposed have been of considerable severity. Many of them have endured some months of imprisonment, and, in some cases, a few weeks of that severe punishment. To women of high tastes, accustomed in many cases to luxuries, this punishment is indeed severe. I know you cannot afford to differentiate between class and class. May I say that in addition to that punishment which has been administered through the ministers of justice the women have punished themselves with far more severity than ordinary prison discipline inflicts. I think my right hon. Friend ought to say, as I have heard many judges say, "You have suffered through your own conduct terrible consequences and more severe punishment than that which I inflict, and I take that into consideration in inflicting punishment by the sentence I pass upon you now." I hope the Home Secretary, who perhaps may follow me in this Debate, will say that, having regard to the punishment which by course of law these ladies have suffered, and having regard in a higher degree to the punishment they have inflicted upon themselves, he may with the general good will of the House, quite irrespective of our sympathy with the cause, say that these ladies may now be released, and that their release should in no wise constitute in the smallest degree any limitation upon the action of the Executive in enforcing the law or of the judicature in administering it.

There is not an hon. Member of this House, whatever be his views on the question of woman's suffrage, who does not feel that this is an exceedingly painful subject, and one which has for years given him the very greatest searchings of heart. I have dear friends with whom I have had many years' co-operation of work, who are now undergoing prison treatment and undergoing the treatment which has been described here to-day. There have been times during the past year on which I have actually regretted that I have been elected a Member of this House, and that the necessity has been imposed upon me of making up my mind, "Yea" or "Nay," on some of the questions regarding the treatment of these women. One cannot read the sordid and painful details of the operation known as "forcible feeding" without one's heart revolting, and I think everyone can say, with all the instincts of humanity, of friendship, prompting one to intervene in some way to stop this practice, to save one's friends, and to save women for whom one has the utmost respect, from this treatment. But with the best will in the world to do so, I regret that I cannot, as a responsible Member of this House, who has some small share in the responsibility for making laws and insisting that law and order should be maintained, bring myself to support the reduction which has been moved to-day. I cannot bring myself to see any reason why any special differential treatment should be accorded to those who have been guilty of this offence. Why should there be special consideration for people who have smashed the windows of innocent tradesmen, and who have done thousands of pounds' worth of damage, simply to achieve a political end? Why should there be special treatment in the case of people who have committed what is ordinary crime? Where are you going to draw the line? Supposing a noble and high-minded woman, for some political motive, forges a cheque for £100 in order to devote the money to advancing this cause and to achieve this political end, are you to claim special privileges and special treatment for these women? Supposing one of them breaks into a shop and steals £100 out of the till or safe—and you might as well forge a tradesman's name for £100 or steal £100 out of his safe as smash his windows—where are you going to stop if you attempt to draw this distinction? We are told they are political offenders, and that it has always been the tradition of our country to draw a distinction in the case of political offenders. Yes, but what is a political offence? I have not yet heard any one to-day who has raised this question of political offences and claimed special treatment and consideration for these people as political offenders take the responsibility of giving a definition of political offences.

Do you want one? I have here an extract from a judgment in the King's Bench Division (then Queen's Bench) in 1891—

"A fugitive criminal should not be surrendered if the offence in respect of which his surrender is demanded is one of a political character."

And it was held that to bring an offence within the meaning of the words "of a political character" it must be "incidental to and form part of political disturbances."

If the hon. Member is prepared to strain that definition to include the smashing of windows—

It covers assassination, which is very much worse than smashing windows.

Not the assassination of tradespeople. If the hon. Member strains that definition—I am not saying I accept it—to cover the smashing of the windows of innocent tradespeople, it might also be strained to cover the forging of cheques and the stealing of money. In that particular case the judge was dealing with the question of a foreign prisoner, and we have no means in this country of trying an offence in foreign countries of that kind. I am prepared to give some kind of definition of a political prisoner as far as offences in this country are concerned. It seems to me the view which we have taken, and which has always been assumed in this country, of a political offender, is not a person who has been arrested for breaking the ordinary criminal law, but one who has been arrested because of the suspension of the ordinary criminal law by the fact that the authorities have disregarded the ordinary law and have arrested him in order to prevent some political end being achieved.

What is the ordinary law?

When you pass a Coercion Act for Ireland you suspend the ordinary law for political reasons, and we have always been accustomed to regard people who have been arrested, not in virtue of any infringement of the ordinary law, but in virtue of the extraordinary powers assumed by the authorities in times of great political crisis, as political offenders, and to claim special consideration and treatment for them.

Is the White Slave Traffic Bill now before Parliament a Bill dealing with ordinary law or extraordinary law?

The ordinary criminal law.

The hon. Gentleman really is not aware the promoters of the White Slave Traffic Bill merely claim it as an Amendment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885.

I am very much obliged to the hon. Baronet. That is exactly the point I would have made had it occurred to me. I want to say one word with reference to my hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) whose earnestness and sincerity I absolutely respect. He has taken up the cause of these women with great earnestness, and he has made some sacrifices, but why has he not taken up the cause of those strikers who are now in prison for assaults upon blacklegs? Why is he not claiming for them the same considerate "treatment? Why is he not asking for first-class treatment for them? Why is he not breaking the Rules of the House and marching up to the Table to secure special treatment for these strikers who are in prison for having assaulted people in order to achieve a result which he regards as noble, and which I also regard as noble. I think there is an inconsistency there. I say no more than that.

If you would like me to do it, I will do it now.

I am merely protesting against the inconsistency of the hon. Member. If the hon. Member adopted as a general principle that which he has adopted in this particular case he would be forced to many consequences which he has not foreseen. That is all the comment which I wish to make. Undoubtedly, the details of this operation are sordid, disgusting, humiliating, and revolting, but most medical operations are horrible, disgusting, and revolting. Who would like to read the reports of most of the operations that are conducted in hospitals? Supposing some person swallows poison and has to have the stomach pump applied to save his life, is not that a horrible and disgusting operation, and yet it must be carried through. My hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley is very indignant that it should be suggested these women in prison can be released at once if they will give a pledge not to repeat the offence. He thinks that an insult to them. He thinks it is asking these women to give up their principles. But that is not so. Not one of them is asked to surrender any principle, agitation, or propaganda. What they are asked to do is not to break the windows of innocent tradesmen, and it seems to me it is a strange kind of political principle which necessitates the breaking of windows of innocent people. It cannot be regarded as an insult to say that these criminals will be released if they give a promise not to again commit a particular individual offence. I want to say a word about the case made out by the Noble Lord. I accuse the Noble Lord of exploiting the sufferings and humiliations of these women for political and party purposes. Even the man who has made greater sacrifices for these women, and who took up their case long before the Noble Lord, felt himself compelled to protest against the bitter party attack which the Noble Lord developed out of the sufferings of these women, of whose methods of campaign he disapproves. Let us see what case has been made out by the Noble Lord. He does not suggest that these women should not have been arrested. He does not approve of their methods; he thinks that they were immoral methods—that they were wrong morally and politically—and that they do not come within the scope and definition of offences which are not concerned with moral turpitude. He does not even think that they should not be forcibly fed. In fact, he approves of forcible feeding; he said he was not going to say that prisoners who refused their food should not be forcibly fed.

I said I was not going to lay it down that, under no circumstances, should any prisoner be forcibly fed.

Does the Noble Lord propose to lay it down that under no circumstances should any of "these women be forcibly fed?

I think it would be very much better not to feed these women forcibly, and that any solution of the problem would be better than that.

There is a lack of that clearness which usually characterises the Noble Lord's statement in the one he has made just now. Does he or does he not say that forcible feeding should be resorted to in the case of prisoners who refuse their food?

I am not going to lay it down that, under no conceivable circumstances, should that be done, because somebody will immediately quote some extreme case in order to show I am wrong. I am dealing with present circumstances, and I say that, in my judgment, it was wrong to resort to forcible feeding. I carefully avoided saying that in my speech. I think it would have been better to adopt the course which is adopted, I believe, in the hon. Gentleman's own country, of releasing prisoners who will not take their food.

3.0 P.M.

What are the present circumstances? That a Liberal Government is in power. I attended very carefully to the Noble Lord's statement, and I admit it was a very ingenious one. I will put it in this way: the charge which the Noble Lord brought against the Home Secretary was that he had not treated all these prisoners alike, and that there was not the same absolute treatment for every individual convicted of the same offence. I will leave the Home Secretary to deal with the particular circumstances which induced him to relax the law in particular cases. I think he will be able to show there were particular circumstances to justify his action in every case. It is not that the Noble Lord objected to forcible feeding in itself. He has objected to the Home Secretary for being too lenient and too mild; he objected because the right hon. Gentleman released some prisoners and gave first class treatment to others. He says he ought not to have done that, but that he should have treated all alike.

The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well he asked whether I approved of first class treatment being given to these people. I said that I did not approve, and the hon. Member has no right to now try and misrepresent my words. What I said was that, having granted it to these people, the right hon. Gentleman was bound to grant it to others who were convicted of a similar offence but who perhaps were less guilty.

I understood the Noble Lord to say he would not undertake to assert that, from the beginning, every one of the prisoners arrested for these criminal acts of violence ought to have been made first-class offenders.

I never said a, word about that one way or the other.

That was the impression conveyed to my mind.

Because the hon. Member has convinced himself that I am a partisan in this matter.

The Noble Lord denies that that was the meaning he intended to convey. I accept his word at once, and will not build any further argument upon the impression which I received. But I wish to point out to the Noble Lord that his case is altogether different from the one which has been presented by some of my hon. Friends around me, because their case at least was based upon some general view with regard to political offences, whereas the case of the Noble Lord was not based upon any general principle at all, but entirely upon what he thought to be the particular circumstances of the case.

In the reply which I shall offer to the observations that have fallen from various hon. Members I shall endeavour, as far as I can, to avoid anything which is likely to embitter the discussion that has already taken place. I can assure hon. Members that it is not a pleasant task for anyone to be responsible for carrying out of the law at the present time, when a number of prisoners are declining to take their food in the ordinary way, with the result that the prison authorities are forced to the alternative of either feeding them forcibly or of ejecting them from the prison. They are bound to take one of those two alternatives; no other course is open to them, and if, like my predecessors in office, I have had to come to the conclusion that the proper course for the Home Office to adopt in the public interest is to administer food forcibly to some of these ladies, I can assure hon. Members that it is a conclusion to which I have come with the very greatest reluctance. The main point of attack has not been concerned with the question whether these prisoners should or should not be forcibly fed; the main point of attack has been that, in the exercise of my office, having advised His Majesty to substitute imprisonment in the first division for imprisonment in another division in the cases of Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, I at the same time ought to have advised His Majesty to make the same substitution in the case of a whole class of offenders. That, I under- stand, is the subject of the attack, and; that is really the point which I have to meet. I shall, of course, deal seriatim with, the other matters raised by the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil). The questions concerning Lady Constance Lytton, Miss Aileen Connor Smith, the case of William. Ball, and all the other matters he raised, although important in themselves, are but of secondary importance compared with, this charge he has made against me, a charge he endeavoured to enforce by references to an earlier past which I will also endeavour to answer. But the charge he has made against me is of discrimination in the exercise of my duty of treating all prisoners on the same footing.

It is impossible for me to explain to the Committee the grounds of my action without going in detail into the history of this case. It must be common ground that in advising the Sovereign to exercise the prerogative of mercy I ought not to act upon any merely arbitrary opinion of my own, but that I ought to be guided by constitutional considerations, founded upon long established practice, and, where they exist, upon the intentions and the actual words of an Act of Parliament. I think that must be common ground. If I can show in this case, in spite of the apparently illogical proceedings, that I have acted strictly in accordance with constitutional practice and, I might almost say, the directions of Parliament, and certainly in the public interest, I believe that hon. Members of this Committee will exonerate me from the charge made against me. There is a great misunderstanding with regard to the practice of substituting one division for another in the treatment of prisoners. I have had the past records investigated for the last thirty years, and so far as we can trace, only in three cases in thirty years has the prerogative ever been exercised in the way of substituting imprisonment in the first division for imprisonment in any other division. The first case was that of Mr. Stead in 1885. The second was that of the Jameson raiders in 1896. In neither of those two cases have I any, record of the grounds upon which the decision was made; they were obviously long before my time, and therefore I am not in a position to argue the case with the Committee. There is only one other case in which the prerogative has been exercised, and that is the case in which it was recently exercised by me, the case of Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence.

Why does the right hon. Gentleman not go back more than thirty years?

If the hon. and learned Gentleman asks me that question, I say it is because I have not had time to go back further. In any event, I do not think there have been any more cases since the year 1865.

The case of Colonel Baker.

Was he not placed in the first division by the Court?

Was it not done by his predecessor, Lord Gladstone, in some cases?

No, that is a misunderstanding. It was done by the Court in each case. The Home Secretary has never except in these three cases for the last thirty years, and I think for a great deal longer, advised the Sovereign to exercise the prerogative in this way. It is not an ordinary case of remission. I am justified in saying, from the calculations made this morning, that during the same thirty years in no less than 7,000 cases has the prerogative been exercised in the ordinary way by the remission of sentences, but only in these three cases has it been exercised by way of transferring the prisoner to the first division. It is really an exercise which can only be entertained, as I think, under the most exceptional circumstances; and, as I still further think, only where it really arises from a failure on the part of the judge, owing to want of knowledge at the time or want of appreciation of the circumstances, to carry out his own intentions. The fact is the placing of prisoners in the first division is a matter absolutely within the discretion of the judge or magistrate. With these exceptions, no interference has ever been made by the Home Office. What are the grounds for my action in the present case, the case of Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence? Holding the views I do, I must have had the very strongest grounds. I will read the correspondence with the Judge to the Committee, and hon. Members shall judge for themselves whether there was any alternative open to me, in the facts of this case, but to place the prisoners in the first division. The case was heard in May last, and on 22nd May the prisoners were sentenced by Mr. Justice Coleridge. On the same evening, not at my request, nor as the result of my inquiries, the judge spontaneously wrote to me as follows:—

"In this case I sentenced the prisoners to nine months' imprisonment in the second division, after a strong recommendation for leniency from the jury, owing to the purity of their motives.

"I was not at all unsympathetic to this appeal. But my difficulty was that all the accused continued to the last their attitude of defiance of the law and their determination to continue at the first available opportunity a repetition of their offence.

"If they, or any of them, could be induced to undertake not to repeat their incitements to illegality, I should be the first to advocate their being treated as first-class misdemeanants, or to approve of any judicious revision of sentence. But I could not do so in the face of the attitude of defiance which they thought fit to adopt. You have my authority for saying this, and that I expressed these views at the first available moment, should any occasion arise in which you think, in your discretion, that you might make it public."

I now make that letter public for the first time. That was the spontaneous invitation of the judge to me, that if an undertaking were given by the prisoners, they should be placed in the first division. It may be said that the judge having once passed sentence and placed them in the second division, he had no more authority over the case. There are contradictory legal opinions as to what, the true constitutional practice ought to be in cases of this sort, but I am certainly fortified with very good legal opinion in saying that the judge has not necessarily exhausted his whole influence over a case when he has passed sentence. There may be instances when, through circumstances not being known to him at the time, he may revive it with a view to having it altered by the exercise of the prerogative. I took that view, and I conceive that the judge was really still speaking as the judge in the case when he wrote me that letter, and that if, through any misunderstanding by the prisoners, they really were willing to give this undertaking they were as much entitled to be placed in the first division as if they had been ordered to be so placed by the judge at the hearing of the case. What is the next thing that occurred? I had a call from the solicitor representing Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst, and I wrote to the judge on 3rd June as follows:—

"Mr. Marshall, who is acting as solicitor for the three defendants, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst, has offered an undertaking on their behalf that if they are treated as first-class misdemeanants they will not make use of the facilities thereby accorded to them for any purpose which would lead to a breach of the law. They would undertake not to advise or control the Women's Social and Political Union or any other part of the "Women's Suffrage movement, while in prison. On the other hand, they have declined to discuss the question of giving any undertaking not to incite to illegality until the expiration of their sentence."

I called the attention of the House particularly to the words that follow:—

"Your remarks, on passing sentence, are taken by the prisoners as implying that had the limited promise been made to you at the trial you would have sentenced them to imprisonment in the first division. Your letter to me, however, conveys the impression that you would not have been satisfied with less than the full undertaking. I should esteem it a kindness if you would advise me as to your opinion on this point."

I therefore asked the judge to interpret his own language. The following is the reply which I received:—

"There is no doubt that had the defendants in the late suffragist trial offered an undertaking to abstain from all incitement to illegality while in gaol, I should have yielded to their plea to be treated as first-class misdemeanants and my words in sentencing them, I think, conveyed as much. It may be that on reflection this was a leniency undesirable in the circumstances of the case, and that I ought to have required something further. But I think that, now that an undertaking such as you describe has been given, it would be well to grant their request. You would only be giving effect to what I stated, and was understood to have stated in public, and there would be no question of your overruling or altering my decision."

Then I had further communication with Mr. Marshall, and my private secretary wrote to him as follows:—

"With reference to your letter of 25th May, I am desired by the Home Secretary to inquire whether he is correct in assuming that if Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst are transferred to the first division, they will undertake to abstain from all incitement to illegality while in prison. Mr. McKenna understands from your letter that they have no intention during this period to advise or control the Women's Social and Political Union, or any other part of the Women's Suffrage movement."

I had a further interview with Mr. Marshall and asked him to write down on a piece of paper the following words which I desired to receive as an undertaking from the prisoners, "to give an assurance that whilst they are in prison they will not take advantage of any facilities afforded them as offenders in the first division to incite persons to commit illegal acts." Then I received the following letter from Mr. Marshall:—

"Dear Sir,—I have seen Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs Pethick Lawrence this morning, and now enclose a written statement which has been read through and approved by them and which I have their authority to deliver to you."

The following is the statement:—

"We have been asked whether we are prepared to give an assurance that we will not take advantage of any facilities afforded to us as offenders in the first division to incite persons to commit illegal acts. We repeat what we have said throughout, that we consider it too great a responsibility under the circumstances of imprisonment to continue to control the movement, and that while in prison we shall not direct or control the commission of any acts whatever, whether legal or illegal."

That was the assurance given me by Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. It satisfied the judge and carried out what he believed to be and what was understood to have been the offer which he made to the defendants, and I submit to the Committee that if upon that assurance being given, and upon that original request made by the judge, I had refused to place them in the first division, I should have been showing bias against them and I should rightly have been charged with refusing to do for these prisoners what I should have done for any other prisoners committed for any other charge. This was merely carrying out the sentence of the judge. So much for the reasons why these prisoners were placed in the first division. Of course, it is obvious, that when I took this course it was present to my mind, that immediately I should be pressed to advise the Sovereign to place all the other prisoners in the first division. It was quite obvious that that argument would be used. I knew that in doing this I should be creating fresh difficulties for myself. I knew also that if I refused to place these other offenders in the first division I should be creating still greater difficulties for myself. No one could be blind to the prospect of such obvious troubles as must ensue from placing Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst in the first division and refusing to place the others. Now I submit to the Committee that if I had taken the whole class of offenders and had placed them in the first division I should not have been acting in accordance with constitutional principle. That was the principle on which I had to proceed. I should, moreover, have been acting very much contrary to the public interest. Parliament considered the question of first division treatment very carefully in the year 1898. The Prison Act of that year divided imprisonment into three divisions, and made it the express duty of every judge or magistrate in particular cases to define in which division a prisoner should be placed. I have taken the average of the cases in the last three years in which under the discretion given by that Act the judges and magistrates have acted, and I find that on the average fifty-four prisoners a year have been placed in the first division. I have, already explained to the House that since the Act of 1898 in no case has the prerogative of the Crown been exercised to transfer a prisoner to the first division until this particular case. Where a particular kind of offence has to be treated with punishment in the first division only, Parliament itself has so declared by Statute. There are several cases which must be punished in the first division. Sedition and seditious libel are punished only by imprisonment in the first division. Offences against the Vaccination Acts are punished only by imprisonment in the first division. Parliament, therefore, has assumed to itself control of those cases in which offences, or a class of offenders, shall be treated by punishment in the first division. I am asked now to assume for the Office of Home Secretary the right or duty of distinguishing classes of offences, and classes of offenders, for whom in every case imprisonment in the first division shall be given. The Committee must not overlook the fact that we are really dealing now with a claim of right put forward by the prisoners. The question is not whether these prisoners should be treated in the first division instead of the second division, but whether they should be treated as offenders in the first division as a matter of right. The hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Keir Hardie) says that, in his opinion, it is a matter of right. I put this to the Committee: They may be right or wrong in their claim, but I certainly have no right to assume to myself the power of advising the Crown to treat in advance a class of offences, or a class of offenders, in the first division only. That is a right which Parliament alone can exercise. I should be exercising an Arbitrary discretion and acting contrary to the express provisions of various Acts of Parliament if I were to say, "I by my authority in every case may advise the Sovereign where I am satisfied that a political motive exists for a crime that a prisoner should be placed in the first division." Any Home Secretary who did that, I submit, would be exceeding his constitutional rights, and I should be very glad to know whether the Noble Lord would carry his argument so far as to say that any Home Secretary would be justified in declaring in advance the class of offences or the class of offenders to whom he would always give, no matter what the magistrate decided, punishment in the first division.

I shall be very glad to reply to the right hon. Gentleman. I never said anything the least like that, or anything which, in my judgment, could be twisted into such a statement. All I said was that if you give first division treatment to leaders it seemed to me a matter of justice to give it also to the less guilty.

That is assuming that I have the right to transfer a class of prisoners from one division to another. [An HON. MEMBER: "You did it."] I have spent half an hour in explaining that I have not the power to do so. I may be wrong, but I honestly believe that in the execution of my duty, in construing the established practice of the Home Office, I have not that power. In the case of the suffragist leaders I felt bound to treat it as a case in which the judge had exercised his discretion, and in which I was not really exercising my own discretion in the matter. I assure hon. Members that if it had been my own discretion I should not have placed any of them in the first division; I should certainly have avoided all these evil consequences and all the arguments which can obviously be drawn as to a discrepancy of treatment between the leaders and others. The Noble Lord makes the statement that because the leaders have been so treated it is clear that the rank and file ought not to be worse treated. That might be an argument for reducing the sentences on the rank and file, and it might be a reason for saying that six months is too serious a punishment for them, but it is not a good reason for saying that the rank and file should have six months or four months in the first division. No one can balance first and second division sentences in that way.

I said that all should have been treated in the same way.

It would have been in my power, and it would have been my duty, if the sentences had been too long, to advise the Sovereign to reduce the sentences in point of time. That would be the method by which the prerogative of mercy would be exercised, but not by transferring a class of prisoners from one division to another. That can only be done by Statute.

Why not? It was done in the case of Mr. Stead without any consultation with the judge.

It was done in the case of Mr. Stead, but that was before the Act of 1898. If that precedent is quoted against me I can only say at once that I am not sure it is a very good precedent to follow. I certainly have not proceeded upon these lines. I have endeavoured to give the Committee the reasons for the course I took. Take the case put by my hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. Atherley-Jones). He says he considers these sentences too severe, and that a mitigation of them ought to be allowed. But that is an argument which it is, of course, open to the hon. Member to address to me, and it is fully within my duty, if I agree with him, to advise the Sovereign to remit part of the sentences, but that should be a revision in time and not a revision of class.

What pedantry!

The Noble Lord has not a single precedent since the Act of 1898 of a Home Secretary exercising such a prerogative as the transferring of a prisoner from one division to another. With fourteen years' practice behind me, and certainly with the advice of competent officials, and in the light of such conclusions as I have been able to draw from the Act of Parliament, I can make that statement. The Noble Lord says "What pedantry," because I have refused to establish a new precedent, and to authorise the removal of a whole class of offenders from the second division to the first.

I ask whether Regulation 243A does not do the very thing which the right hon. Gentleman has said he could not do?

Not altogether. Here, again, I am very glad that my hon. Friend has raised the point: 243A was a rule instituted by my predecessor and laid upon the Table of this House, and although it did not receive the sanction of Parliament by vote it received the sanction of Parliament by acquiescence, and undoubtedly at the time it had the general approval of Parliament. Therefore, in giving the advantage of 243A, I should be acting with the approval of this House and not merely on my own discretion. My point is that, in the exercise of my duty to advise the Sovereign, I endeavour so far as I can to follow established practice, and such directions as I can get from Parliament. The Noble Lord used various phrases with every one of which we should all agree. He said that each, crime should be equally punished. Unless the Noble Lord means to say that it is my duty, that it is an obligation upon the Home Office, to see that each crime is equally punished, his observation was a mere platitude. We must all admit that each crime ought to be equally punished, but is it the duty of the Home Office, does he suggest, to see that each crime is equally punished?

I said that in this particular case it was the duty of the right hon. Gentleman as the opportunity arose to see that principle carried out. I do not say that it is possible to carry it out always, because normally you have a variety of criminals with a variety of crimes, and it is impossible to say that they are exactly the same crime. But where you have a number of people joined together to commit the same crime and the sentences of some of them are reviewed by the Home Office, then it is my contention that it is the duty of the Home Office to review them all.

I merely carried out the sentence of the judge. Rightly or wrongly, that is the view I took. The point really is this: Certain persons have been sentenced to nine months in the first division and certain other persons who have been associated with them have been sentenced to imprisonment in the second division for two, four and six months. They were charged with an offence similar in character but not the same. They did not receive punishment as to which you can set one against the other and balance one against the other. Who shall say that a week's more imprisonment is worth the difference between the first division and Rule 243A? Who shall say that it is worth, a week, a fortnight, or a month? I could show the House that it is worth very little; so the Noble Lord cannot establishing own case that these prisoners were not treated alike. They were not sentenced alike. They did not commit a like crime, and whether the sentence is more or less really cannot be judged unless we give them the same length of sentence as well as the same division. The Noble Lord knows as well as I do that the claim by the prisoners is not a claim for the first division as giving greater privileges in prison, but is a claim to the first division as a matter of right, and my placing them in the first division, though it would make little difference in the treatment of the prisoners, would be what they desire, rightly or wrongly, an admission of a right that every prisoner who claims to have committed an offence of any kind for a political motive, if that claim is established and is accepted as true, shall be placed in the first division. That claim may be a proper claim or an improper claim, but I submit to the Committee that if it is to be accepted it must be accepted by Parliament as a whole. It must be established by Statute. I, for one, should vote against it. I do not think that the claim is a good claim. I think it is very difficult to draw a line and to favour the person who is fighting for the suffrage and breaks windows or breaks heads by putting that person in the first division, while a person who is fighting for what he conceives to be the rights of labour and breaks windows or breaks heads is to be treated with hard labour. Those are distinctions which I find myself great difficulty in drawing. On the moral ground also I find great difficulty in drawing a distinction, if purity of motive is to be regarded, between a parent who robs or forges for the benefit of his children and somebody else who robs or forges for a political motive. These distinctions are very difficult to draw. For my part, as far as I can, I should do my best not to see such a law carried as that which would for the first time recognise purity of motive as a ground for special treatment when in prison, but I do say that if this is to be done it must be done by Parliament, and the Noble Lord ought not to ask me to do it.

I never asked anything of the kind. I have never asked for any special treatment for political offences, never, never; and I have always said, and I have said so quite frankly in my speech, that I did not put it on that ground, that I merely put it on the ground of equality of treatment.

We will see what the equality of treatment amounts to. I understand that it is not the name of first division which the Noble Lord is contending for and it is not the question of principle he is contending for.

The right hon. Gentleman, I am sure, desires to represent me quite fairly, and does not wish to misconstrue anything I have said. What I have said over and over again, and I say to the Committee, is that if you give certain treatment to the leaders you are bound to extend it to the followers. I do not care whether they are political or ordinary offenders—that is immaterial.

Now let us see, as to differential treatment, how far they suffer under 243A as compared with the first division, and what calculation you ought to make in the matter of time on account of a prisoner getting into the first division instead of being under 243A. These are the distinctions which exist under Division 2, under Rule 243A, and Division 1. In all three cases the prisoners are kept apart from the others. Under Rule 243A, and Division 1, no bath is required. With regard to search, they are searched by a special officer in the case of 243A and Division 1. With regard to special cells, under 243A they must occupy a cell assigned to them under Division 1, they must be placed in a room or cell appropriated to that division. That is the first advantage which they get. They get a cell which they may furnish themselves instead of the ordinary cell. With regard to food, in both cases they may get food from outside.

Not under your interpretation of Rule 243A.

Once a week in one case and daily in the other.

It was not under my interpretation of the Rule. It is quite true I made an Amendment in the Rule. We had a vast number of prisoners to deal with. At one time we had nearly 200 persons in the prison, and there were about 150 hampers of food blocking all the passages and waiting-rooms of the prison. It was absolutely impossible to carry out Rule 243A as it stood, under which prisoners could have food sent in when they liked, and it became necessary to limit the sending of food to once a week.

Was that Amendment laid before Parliament?

It was announced publicly by me.

That is not a ratification by Parliament.

In no case was ratification given by Parliament, and nothing more than notice to Parliament was required; but it was announced publicly. As regards clothing, in both cases ladies wore their own clothes. As regards the disinfection of clothes, which, of course, is done under the general rules, there was no provision in either case. As regards hair-cutting, in neither case were they obliged to have their hair cut. As regards cleaning of room, in both cases they may be relieved. As regards books and newspapers, the same rule applied to both, with the exception that prisoners in the first division might have newspapers and the others only have books. In regard to employment under Rule 243A, they are to be employed on the lighter forms of labour, and thus they are afforded facilities to earn remission of sentence. My hon. Friend seemed to think that if they are employed on the lighter forms of labour it is something in the nature of hard labour. That is not so. It is labour to which the prisoners do not ordinarily object. Prisoners in the first division are allowed to follow their own particular trade.

Was Rule 243A originally dependant upon the performance of a certain class of labour, and, if so, why has that change been introduced?

Under Rule 243A there was no provision for employment at all; but this anomaly arose: the prisoner not being bound to work under Rule 243A, often did not work and could not earn remission of sentence. I received any number of complaints from prisoners under Rule 243A that they earned no remission of sentence. Consequently we made a change, so that they might be employed on the lighter forms of labour only, and thereby earn some remission of sentence. If you make a concession on one point, you get into difficulty on another point, but I have endeavoured by this means to secure uniformity of treatment throughout. With regard to letters, in the one case they are allowed once a month, and in the other once a fortnight. With regard to religious service and exercise the same rule applies in each case, and as regards the application of general rules the same apply in each case. There are not very material differences in prison treatment between the first division and the application of Rule 243A. There is no such difference that it can be said that the prisoner in the first division is less hardly treated with nine months' imprisonment than the prisoner under Rule 243A with four months' or six months' imprisonment. It is undoubted, I think, that the leaders were more severely treated in receiving nine months' imprisonment, although their sentence was carried out in the first division. I really regret that I have detained the House so long. Let me turn now to the particular cases mentioned by the Noble Lord. Here is the case as to what happened with regard to Lady Constance Lytton. It was not in my time, but I will read the report upon it which has been handed to me:—

"When Lady Constance Lytton was in Holloway, in March, 1909, she was reported by the medical officer to be suffering from well-marked valvular disease of the heart. She spent all her sentence, one month, in hospital. The suffragists had not then begun the hunger strike. In October, 1909, she was imprisoned at Newcastle. She was received on the Monday, and discharged on the Wednesday owing to the condition of her heart. The suffragists at Newcastle at that time were hunger striking, and resisting violently. In a letter to the ''Times," of the 25th November, 1909, Lady Constance said: "It is true I have valvular heart disease.' Then in January, 1910, she was received into the Liverpool prison under the name of Jane Wharton She refused to allow herself to be examined on reception, and after a few days starvation, she was artificially fed, eight times altogether. The suffragists in Liverpool prison were not resisting, and the medical officer satisfied himself that in the absence of any resistance, there was no reason why she should not be artificially fed. She did not resist, but she retched, and after a few days the medical officer was obliged, owing to a loss of weight and strength, to recommend her discharge. Her discharge was ordered without anyone at the Home Office knowing who she was."

The whole of that case disappears. Jane Wharton refused to allow herself to be medically examined, but she did not resist being forcibly fed. Where there is no resistance there is really little or no danger, but the moment she did not keep her food down she was discharged by the medical officer, going still by the name of Jane Wharton, and still believed to be Jane Wharton.

Lady Constance herself, I am bound to say, denies all those statements.

I know she denies; them, but I stand by them, and I can give documentary evidence and proof of every one of those statements. That is the famous case which excited so much comment. The next case is that of Miss; Connor Smith. The Noble Lord objects to my having advised the discharge of Miss Smith from prison, because he believes that I did so under the pressure of my hon. Friends who sit on the opposite benches below the Gangway. I should be wrong if I concealed from the Committee for one second the fact that several of the-Nationalist Members have written to me on behalf of Miss Connor Smith, as they have written to me on behalf of other prisoners, and as hon. Members have, both on that side and on this side of the House, written to me with regard to the discharge of prisoners. There is nothing exceptional in the case of Miss Connor Smith, and it certainly was not in consequence of representations of my hon. Friends opposite that I agreed to her discharge. If the Noble Lord presses me, though I would advise him not, I will read the precise facts. He can raise the case again as my Vote will be down again, but I hope he will take it from me that it is better not to do so now. Perhaps he will consult Miss Connor Smith's brother and sister. The brother I saw; the sister came to the Home Office; I was not able to see her myself, but I know what she said. I would ask the Noble Lord to ask her responsible guardians whether they wish, for the sake of their sister and for the sake of the family, to have the case raised.

Of course, I accept any assurance the right hon. Gentleman makes across the floor of the House; I think it is a wrong thing not to do so.

What the right hon. Gentleman has just said has put me in a very awkward position. I have been asked by two persons to press for the reasons in Miss Smith's case. I am not going to do so after the right hon. Gentleman's statement, but may I ask the question, and I will not press the matter further: Did the doctor see Miss Connor Smith in the last month previous to her discharge?

Miss Connor Smith was not discharged on medical grounds, and it was immaterial whether the doctor saw her or not. Many of the other prisoners have not been discharged on medical grounds. Many of them gave a personal undertaking that they would not repeat their offence. In spite of what the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley said, many of them have, in fact, given that assurance. Others have been discharged on the representations of friends that they were about to leave the country, and would have no opportunity of repeating their offence. They were released for those and various other reasons where I have had assurance which satisfied me that we ran no danger of the repetition of the offences. I would remind the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Newton) that he himself introduced to me upstairs a deputation from tradesmen of London asking me to protect them against the repetition of these offences. The hon. Member himself used very strong language in describing, and was a party to the indignation, the very natural indignation felt by those whom he introduced at the time at the wanton destruction of their property. I have remembered that, but the hon. Gentleman forgets it. I have dealt with that case, and I can assure the Noble Lord I do-not in the least shrink from stating the circumstances, provided Miss Connor Smith's brother and sister wish me to do so. I have no reason to conceal anything.

I have only seen; the lady herself.

4.0 P.M.

I think it would be advisable to see the brother. You cannot have it both ways; you cannot charge me with cruelly ill-treating young girls of nineteen and twenty when I have endeavoured to deal with them without either cruelty or special hardship, and then charge me with being swayed by political influence. I deplore the introduction by the Noble Lord of extraneous matter, and his reference to myself as a Minister who has been unfortunate in the matter of the administration of justice. The Noble Lord said I had the same record at the Board of Education. I need not go into that case now as I have already dealt with it. He then said my record as to the administration of justice was unfortunate at the Admiralty. In saying that he could only have referred to a particular case, the Archer-Shee case. I see I am right in: thinking that the Noble Lord did refer to-that case. The Noble Lord cannot have forgotten that that case was raised in this House by hon. Gentlemen opposite and discussed for a whole day, and at the conclusion of the proceedings, although a reduction had been moved, it was never voted upon.

You promised compensation.

If I acted unjustly no. promise of compensation would exonerate me. Now I say the Noble Lord is poisoning the wells when he brings a charge of maladministration of justice against me, and endeavours to support it by a case at the Admiralty when it is within his knowledge that I have been completely exonerated by this House after full investigation. I appeal to the House on both sides to support the Administration in their serious endeavour to maintain the law under circumstances of the greatest difficulty. It is the declared, unfortunately, intention of some of these ladies, if they can, to render government impossible. Whether we agree with their desire to obtain the franchise or not, we have to face the fact that they have declared that to be their determination, and to resist the administration of the law by every means in their power so long as the franchise is withheld from them. That is the state of facts which we have got to face. I would beg of this House not to do anything to weaken the administration in those difficult circumstances, but to support the Government in their efforts to administer the law fairly and without weakness under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty.

The right hon. Gentleman has treated this Amendment as being in the nature of a party attack. I wish, as far as I am concerned, to disclaim participation in any party attack on the right hon. Gentleman. I shall make none, nor do I believe that the speech of the Noble Lord was designed for party purposes. That can be judged better perhaps by the Vote, if a Vote is taken, by seeing whether he is followed into the Lobby by many Members of the Opposition. I venture to think that, as the Conservative party is divided upon this question, if the Noble Lord wished to make a party attack he would have selected some ground on which he would have led a united party into the Opposition Lobby. However, be that as it may, I desire to say a few words upon this question wholly from a non-party point of view, and certainly if I am able to vote I will not in any sense vote in hostility to the Government nor in any sense in hostility to the right hon. Gentleman. I shall only cast the vote I am able to give as a protest against what I think is the folly of the procedure which is being adopted in regard to these women. In the first place what is the business of Parliament! What is the business of Ministers? The business of Parliament is to try and keep the nation comfortable, to try and keep the people satisfied. When the right hon. Gentleman or somebody for him speaks of attacks on innocent tradesmen, nobody deprecates more than I do the fact that these misfortunes have occurred. But I respectfully say that that is not the question which should now engage the attention of the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman has stated in very definite terms what he considers to be the limitation of his jurisdiction. No doubt he may take what I think is a very narrow view, but it would be a legitimate view if he had pursued it logically. Nobody can deny for a moment that the three prisoners of station, at the head of a great organisation, at the head of a great newspaper, would be regarded by the man in the street as more guilty than those whom you generally style their dupes. The right hon. Gentleman says, "I cannot treat the dupes as well as I have treated the inciters, because of the limitations of my position." Was that his course on all occasions? If he could show that logically he had taken that stand, I would think his answer complete. But that is not the stand the right hon. Gentleman has taken. Take the case of the prisoners who were sentenced by the magistrates to hard labour. I do not discuss whether the sentence was wise or unwise. The moment the sentence was inflicted, when it was found that other prisoners under like conditions had not been sentenced to hard labour, the right hon. Gentleman gave them the benefit of Rule 243A. I honour him for it. The extraordinary thing is that, so far as I can judge the temper of this House, instead of any Member being opposed, or making charges of partiality or anything of the kind, if the right hon. Gentleman could see his way to temper the sentences on these prisoners by reduction or otherwise, I believe he would have the practically unanimous assent of the House of Commons. Therefore when the right hon. Gentleman says, "I cannot give the other prisoners the same treatment in the first division as Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst received, because that would not be within my jurisdiction," he is not logical, seeing that he has, to his credit, remitted the hard labour treatment in the case of a number of prisoners and given them the benefit of Rule 243A. When I establish that, is it not a complete logical sweeping away of the entire fabric of the case which the right hon. Gentleman has erected? He has abolished hard labour, and given the benefit of this rule to a great number of prisoners, why should he not do it in regard to the forty or fifty prisoners who are sentenced because they have obeyed the policy of their leaders, when the leaders themselves have been placed in the first division?

But I have not risen to split straws with the right hon. Gentleman. I have risen, I hope, in the interests of the House, of the administration of justice, and of the temper of the people generally. What are you doing? In this matter you cannot conceive that your logic or your "poisoned law" will satisfy the public. It does nothing of the kind. The greatest ornament of the Ministry, the President of the Local Government Board, is, I suppose, proudest of the fact that he has spent a sentence in gaol in the interests of people whom he conceived to have been wronged. Is anyone, is the right hon. Gentleman, ashamed of meeting the old prisoner of Holloway Gaol at a Cabinet meeting? Does he throw taunts at him? No, he meets him on terms of perfect equality! I venture to think that there is not a man in this House who is more respected than is the President of the Local Government Board. Very well, if a man can go from the plank bed to the Cabinet—[Laughter]—that is what it is—why should not the case of these women be like that in which fourteen or fifteen years have elapsed? Why, in the case of women who are also fighting for a political principle, should they not get the same amount of consideration which you yourselves are willing to give to-day to a supposed offence committed by the President of the Local Government Board? This question of the franchise will undoubtedly come up for discussion in some concrete form in a few months' time, and the women will have the opportunity of having their case stated from both points of view. I would like to make a suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman. An hon. Member has declared that in the interval of the question coming up the women have said it is their intention to make government impossible. I do not believe they have said anything of the kind. Certainly I am sure that any influence that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Merthyr or the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil), or others that champion their cause may possess will be turned in the direction of a truce pending the decision of this House on the franchise question.

I believe that every friend of the women's movement is in favour of a truce on this question pending the decision of the House. I would like to say to the right hon. Gentleman that this should not be made a matter of contract, a matter of bargain, but the powerful and the strong should take the first step towards peace. You are a great power, you are the Government, you are the strong! Release these women! Turn them out! Let us have peace as between them [Laughter.] It is all very fine for hon. Members to laugh. They should remember that the Insurance Act is coming into force next month. When they find that they have a law to administer with which many hundreds of women are concerned, a law which has excited a great deal of public feeling, perhaps they may then consider that their sneers on this occasion were not very seasonable. I do not think that irresponsible Members on the back benches behind the Government exactly on this occasion reproduce the general Ministerial sentiment. At all events I am making a suggestion for what it is worth, and my suggestion is that these women should be immediately released. You incur no loss of dignity so far as I can see. You incur no responsibility. It is absurd to suggest, as someone suggested, that these women on being released will immediately recommence these actions for which they have been punished. So far as I know you will never get a guarantee from them if you kept them in gaol for ever. I do not know what the position might be if you showed some little spirit of mercy and magnanimity. It might wholly alter the conditions. At all events that is one medicine you have not tried.

What is the position of the Government to-day? If anybody was inclined to attack the right hon. Gentleman it is not upon party grounds that he would be attacked. But from the very fact that the women will do that shows that this movement will not be broken. Why! it is the women who are broken. Why have you not kept Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Mrs. Pankhurst in gaol? Because you knew that the women would rather die than yield. There are hundreds of others animated by the same feeling, surcharged with the same strong conviction. You know there are; and therefore for this House to try and deal with this question from a small and petty point of view, is in my opinion to mistake the meaning and the significance of the entire position the prisoners have taken up.

I do not attempt to throw any blame upon the right hon Gentleman. I have not done so. I believe he conceives he is carrying out his duty, and I know he feels the heavy responsibility for law and order, not merely in connection with women's movement, but in other manifestations in connection with strikes and labour movements and things of that kind. His position is that he does not desire to make a precedent that would render the just carrying out of law difficult or impossible. Therefore so far as I am concerned, instead of having a feeling of hostility, my feeling is one of sympathy. But I also desire that the right hon. Gentleman would take into consideration the opinion of the rank and file of the Members of this House; and the Members of this House I say are as much entitled to be considered as the official advisers in the Home Office or Downing Street. I believe if this House is wise it will make to-day a new starting point for dealing with this women's movement, and then if the right hon. Gentleman finds he is mistaken, and after he releases all these prisoners further offences are committed, he can well say the promises and suggestions made by those friendly to the women's movement have been falsified. They may be falsified. I have no authority to speak for anybody but myself, but I deliberately express these opinions because I believe they are the best for the country. My suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman is not to chop logic as to rule this or that or the other. Do not deal with this matter from what is called a pedantic point of view, but take a broad, common-sense look at it, because this House will have to decide before long one way or the other on this great question of female suffrage. Let us, then, call a truce, and turn the women out of the prisons. The right hon. Gentleman would then occupy a very strong position. The right hon. Gentleman the other day used a phrase to which I think just exception may be taken. He said on the 20th June:—

My hon. Friend (Mr. Keir Hardie) said he got the certificate, and I spoke upon what he stated.

I did not want to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but there was no foundation in fact for the statement he made. What happened was this. Some months ago Dr. Katherine Chapple, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's medical adviser, examined her heart and other organs, and found they were in a bad condition. After Mrs. Pethick Lawrence was sentenced, Dr. Chapple sent forward a copy of the report which I read, calling attention to the danger of forcible feeding in her case. Dr. Chapple, without consulting Mrs. Lawrence, and without her knowledge, sent myself and other Members of the House a copy of the letter sent to the Superintendent of Holloway Gaol.

The suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman, and undoubtedly accepted by the House, and by persons outside was that this lady started a hunger strike, having first provided herself with a doctor's certificate to show that she was not fit herself to undergo the treatment.

I quite accept the hon. Member for Merthyr's assurance that what he has stated was what he intended to say. I was only replying to what he did say, and the language he actually used was:—

"The leaders of the movement themselves who are receiving forcible feeding are joining with the rank and file in the hunger strike. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, when committed to prison, had this letter sent on her behalf from her medical attendant to the prison doctor."

I, of course, accept the hon. Member's statement that he did not mean to convey that impression, although I understood him at the time to mean that it was sent on her behalf and with her knowledge.

I do not think the grammatical construction is so good as it might be. I want it clearly understood that it was sent by her doctor without her knowledge and without her consent.

I do not wish to press that point, but I think it is due to the lady in question to say that there was no foundation whatever for the imputation which the right hon. Gentleman's words, would have conveyed. I think some hon. Members of the House are quite unconscious of the depth of feeling which is at the back of this movement. I did not realise it myself for very many years, and therefore in some speeches and in some attitudes there is a tone of levity and jeering taken up which I verily believe no man should indulge in when dealing with this subject. The scene I most regret during the many years I have been in the House was the clapping and waving of handker- chiefs upon the night when the women's cause was defeated on the last occasion. I believe that was a most unfortunate demonstration, calculated to have the very worst effects, and I can assure the Committee—and I have arrived at this conclusion largely as an outsider, and with very little desire to interfere in what is more or less an English movement—I have come to the conclusion that you are up against as big a revolt against the system of legislation which prevails as any of those which have brought about practically a revolution in this land.

I wish further to impress upon hon. Members the seriousness of this question. Notwithstanding the loud cheering with which the conclusion of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was received on this side of the House, I cannot conceive that there can be any hon. Member who is not prejudiced by party feeling who would regard the right hon. Gentleman's statement as at all satisfactory or as having met in any degree the charges which have been made in the course of this Debate. He stated at the opening of his speech that the narrow issue raised was the differentiation in the treatment of these women as between the leaders and the rank and file, and he defended his action with regard to this differentiation of treatment upon the recommendation of the judge. I am quite sure anyone who heard the words of the judge will agree that the construction which was put upon them later in the correspondence which took place between the judge and the Home Secretary—that an undertaking should be given—was not the construction which could reasonably have been put upon them at the trial, and was not the construction the judge himself intended to be put upon them. We all know the thrill of indignation which went through the country when the judge in sentencing these women ignored altogether the strong recommendation of the jury, and, I believe, it was in consequence of the indignation that was expressed—

In fairness to the judge, I ought to tell the hon. Member the judge's letter was written immediately after the sentence was delivered.

It will be in the recollection of the House that in the letter the judge first wrote to the Home Secretary he did not put that construction upon his words, but on a hint in the Home Secretary's letter to the judge, he in reply, in order to give the Home Secretary an excuse, said that construction might be placed upon his words. The Home Secretary said he was not prepared, and, indeed, it would not be constitutional, for him to act in an arbitrary manner in regard to the treatment of these women. My charge against the Home Office, and by the use of that phrase I mean the right hon. Gentleman himself and his predecessors, might almost be summed up in these words: Their action in the treatment of these women ever since the outbreaks first occurred has been arbitrary. There has been no consistent method of treating these women. Some of them have been placed in the first class, some of them have been given the benefit of this new regulation, and some others apparently guilty of the same offence have been treated differently. There has been no systematic or consistent method of dealing with these women. For instance, some of the women who were condemned for windowbreaking were given the benefit of the new rule, others were given only a partial benefit of it, and some were denied the benefit of it altogether. The Home Secretary himself in this House appeared to justify this discrimination of treatment on the peculiar ground that it was owing to the idiosyncrasy of the judge that for a similar offence one judge had given a sentence of three months' hard labour and another judge another sentence of two months' imprisonment. Therefore, the Home Secretary himself drew this distinction between the sentences. They were clearly due to the opinion the judge might have taken at the time. The Home Secretary said he had no right to interfere with the decision of the judges. It is only a few days since he, in this House, admitted that it was his duty to interfere where the idiosyncrasies of judges made it desirable. He was asked if his attention had been called to the fact that his predecessors had on many occasions overruled the decisions of judges, and he said, in reply, he recognised it was the duty of the Home Office to correct the idiosyncrasies of the judges. He said just now there was no precedent in recent times for taking the course suggested in this case. His predecessor (Mr. Herbert—now Lord—Gladstone) did it on two occasions. I may mention the case of Mrs. Cobden Sanderson.

That was on the advice of the judge who sentenced her.

At any rate, the Home Office has on many occasions exercised this power of discrimination and has altered the effect of the sentences of judges. The right hon. Gentleman says it is not in his power. But he could, if he chose, let these women out of prison tomorrow, and he would do so if they would give the undertaking which he seeks to impose on them. That being so, has he no right to say that their treatment in prison should be considerably modified? What is the condition the right hon. Gentleman seeks to impose? The hon. Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Mr. MacCallum Scott) denies that it involves any sacrifice of principle. I say it does. You cannot in a matter like this distinguish between the principle and the policy that gives effect to it. The right hon. Gentleman might as well say to the men out on strike in the East End of London—the only reason he does not do it is that they have votes, while these "women have not—"Why do you not go back to work? Why starve? "Their reply, of course, would be that by going back to work they would sacrifice the principle which they hold dear. But apparently he would tell them that to go back to work did not involve a sacrifice of principle. The principles of trade unionism are not to be sacrificed in that way, and these women whom the Home Secretary is asking to be false to their principles hold their principles as dear as life itself.

To abstain from work is one thing: to break windows is another.

The right hon. Gentleman said no one in this Debate had dealt with what he might call the general principle of the right of political prisoners to exceptional treatment. I think, apart altogether from the actual offences committed, if the motive be a political motive, then that fact ought to entitle the person who commits the offence to treatment of a special kind. The Home Secretary has stated that there is nothing in our criminal law which lays down what a political offence means. The Extradition Act lays upon the Home Secretary the duty of saying whether an offence is a political offence or not, but, very wisely, Parliament in passing that Act did not insert in the Bill a definition of political offender. I suppose the reason was that, while laying upon the Home Secretary for the time being the obligation of saying whether or not a particular offence was a political offence, Parliament thought that the office of Home Secretary would always be filled by men who had sufficient intelligence to know whether a particular offence fell within the category of a political offence. The Act says:—

"If the Secretary of State is of opinion that the offence is one of a political character, he may, if he thinks fit, refuse to sign any such order"

that is an order of extradition—

"and may also at any time order a fugitive criminal accused or convicted of such offence to be discharged from custody."

We know it is very difficult and almost impossible to lay down in general terms a definition which will cover a great variety of cases, but there is no difficulty in deciding at any particular time whether a particular offence falls within the category of a political offence or not. Mr. Bryce himself once gave a general definition of a political offence, which suits my purpose very well. Speaking of the methods of treating Irish political prisoners, he said:— have suffered much more than they are entitled to suffer from a very long and extended term of imprisonment. They are not afraid of punishment. What they are insisting on is that where the motive is a pure and noble one, where the action has been committed, mistakenly if you will, not for the particular good of the individual, but for the service of a great cause, then to the punishment which they have to bear shall not be added the ignominy which is associated with ordinary prison treatment.

It has been urged by one or two hon. Members in this Debate that supposing these women were given first class treatment, is there any guarantee that they would not begin a hunger strike in order to get release altogether. We are engaged just now on a Bill to confer local government on Ireland. Suppose someone says, "But if you give Ireland Home Rule she will demand separation, "would you regard that as a valid argument against the concession of self-government to Ireland? Each case must be judged on its own merits. Women are now demanding that they should be treated as first-class political offenders. Concede that demand if you think it is right, and then, if they make a further demand, consider the further demand upon its merits, and if it cannot be justified on its merits, refuse it. If it can you have no right to refuse it. The right hon. Gentleman said it is his business to maintain law and order. Government has a higher function and a higher duty than the maintenance of law and order, and that is to do justice, and these women are suffering because they believe that justice is denied to them. The Home Secretary says to them, "You can walk out of prison to-morrow if you will comply with certain conditions." There is another concession which would put an end to all this trouble. Give them what they are asking for. They have just as much right to ask the Home Secretary, who is an anti-Suffragist, to sacrifice his principles upon this question as he has to ask them to sacrifice their principles.

In regard to militant tactics generally I have never approved them, but these women are in an altogether different position in demanding legal enactments from men. Men have the vote, and can use constitutional means. They can, in a constitutional way, bring pressure to bear upon the House. Women cannot do that, and therefore methods can be justified in the case of women which are altogether indefensible in the case of men. That is why hon. Members on this side of the House justify revolutionary methods in a country like Russia, where the people are denied constitutional methods of redressing their grievances. But I dissent altogether from the opinion of the Noble Lord that militant tactics had anything to do with the defeat of the Conciliation Bill. I have the utmost contempt for any man, whether he be a Member of the House or not, who will make the conduct of a few women an excuse for breaking a pledge into which he has solemnly entered. I do not believe the militant tactics and the breaking of windows had anything to do with the defeat of the Conciliation Bill, except to this extent, that they provide an excuse for a good many men to break pledges they were only too anxious to get out of. I have only one word of warning to say, and it is this: I think I see, and I am told there are a great many women outside who think they see clearly in this policy of the Government a determination on the part of the Government to irritate them into further acts of violence in view of the fact that woman suffrage is going to be debated in this House again before very long. What do we see in the first column of the first page of a leading organ in the Press to-day? There is an attack made on certain people, and I submit there is not a single word in what follows to justify the headlines. There is only one construction which can be put upon it. There is a way in which this House can put a stop to this, but it is not the offensive way suggested by the Home Secretary. It is that the Government should realise their duty and obligation in this matter and do an act of justice to these women.

The right hon. Gentleman in the course of his speech attacked my Noble Friend for inconsistency. I do not propose to follow him in that matter, but I would like to make it plain to him and the Committee what my line of conduct has been, and what I believe is the course of action which has a good deal of support in the country, and which, I believe hon. Members will approve of. I was in favour of and voted for the measure for extending the franchise to women, but when they began to break windows I asked the Prime Minister whether proceedings could not be taken. Proceedings were taken, and the offenders were locked up. My point is that when they were locked up they should have been fairly treated; that there should be equal treatment and no differentiation between them. There seem to be two points that we have to consider: the first is the question of differentiation, arising out of certain women being placed in the first division and others in the second. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman impressed me on that point. It seemed to me that the difference was very subtle. The right hon. Gentleman relied upon constitutional precedent. Upon the whole I will accept his explanation on that point, and therefore I will support it. I agree with him that it was because of certain circumstances he put in force part of the judge's delayed judgment by putting these three women in the first division. But that is no reason why he should not put all the others in the first class. I think he will agree that there should be no differentiation between them. It is because I have been asked by some ladies in my own Constituency to try to clear up this question of differentiation of the rank and file that I am taking part in this discussion. I can show the right hon. Gentleman a letter I have received from the daughter of a member of the Radical Association in my Division. The letter calls upon me to ask for some explanation as to the differential treatment accorded to Miss Connor Smith. It winds up with this statement:—

"How dare this Government call itself a democratic one!"

That is not a charge which I make. It is a charge which is made against the Government by some of their own supporters. The right hon. Gentleman is putting us in a difficult position in the case of Miss Connor Smith. The responsibility must rest with the right hon. Gentleman. Clearly there is some mystery which prevents him from giving an explanation to the House. Why did he differentiate in the case of Miss Connor Smith? After what the right hon. Gentleman has said I cannot press him to disclose the causes that moved him to treat her differently from the others, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that he would get rid of much of the feeling of antagonism that his action provoked in the country if he made a clean breast of the motives which moved him in this case. If the right hon. Gentleman is acting from a sense of chivalry, then I admire that sense of chivalry, and I have nothing more to say on that point. On the general question of forcible feeding, which to some extent comes into this Debate, like every other Member of the House, when I read the papers circulated this morning I was shocked and horrified at the sufferings and anguish which these women are compelled to undergo, but on the whole I am inclined to agree with the right hon. Gentleman and with what the Prime Minister said the other day, that no class of prisoners can be allowed to dictate to the Government the term which they in fact will serve after they have been sentenced by a judge. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman was attacked on the ground that he has not treated all the prisoners alike. I have accepted his explanation as to why he put some in the first division and did not put others. There remains therefore only the question of treating differently the rank and file, who are not in the first division. I was moved to speak in this Debate by representations made to me on her behalf by friends of Miss Smith. In view of the right hon. Gentleman's statement my position is logical and clear. I cannot condemn him. I cannot therefore vote against him, because he tells me that he has got reasons for his refusal to disclose the course of the action which he took. I will accept that so far as not to go into the Lobby against him, but I have been influenced also by the earnestness of those who have pleaded with me on behalf of Miss Smith, and therefore the most obvious course for me is not to vote at all.

I understand that the right hon. Gentleman's office is not merely concerned with his treatment of the prisoners known as the "Hunger Strikers," but also has reference to prison treatment generally, and that therefore that subject can be brought under review during the discussion to-day.

I think it would be convenient if we had our Division now in reference to the matter raised by the Noble Lord, and I should then be able to reply to any other charge that may be made.

It would be utterly impossible for me to make my point if we go to a Division now.

If the hon. Member's point is merely in reference to the Regulations, the matter will arise on the Prisons Vote and not on this Vote. We are dealing now with some alleged action on the part of the Home Secretary.

I understand that the I discussion is largely concerned with his treatment of some persons who are alleged to be incarcerated because of some public question which they advocate. I want to say a word about another special class of prisoners who are suffering severe punishment during the London strike and who suffered during other strikes. Some hundreds of trade unionists who were only fighting for their rights and the bare necessities of life for themselves and their families have been put in prison, and I should imagine that on an afternoon such as this we could at least have discussed prison discipline, especially where they have these industrial prisoners, who are there, not because they are criminals in any: sense of the word, not because they wish to interfere with any public rights, but because they believed that others were doing things which might prevent them from being able to secure sufficient to maintain those dependent upon them in decency and comfort. I am extremely sorry that the whole of the afternoon has been devoted to the wrongs and rights of wealthy and influential people well able to look after themselves, instead of our having given some attention to those poor workers who have fallen into the hands of the law, not because they are criminals, but because they honestly believed that they were performing a service to the public as well as to those dependent upon them.

Question put, "That Item A be reduced by £100."—[ Lord Robert Cecil ]

The Committee divided: Ayes, 69; Noes, 213.

Original Question again proposed.

Objection taken to further proceeding, and it being after Five of the clock, the Chairman left the chair to make his report to the House.

Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next, 1st July.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.

Adjourned at Eight minutes after Five o'clock until Monday next. 1st July.