Perhaps I might explain that this is not a road transport Bill.

Object!

Second Reading deferred till Tuesday next.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

I am afraid this Bill, which I had the honour to introduce, although it is entirely non-Party, can hardly be regarded as non-controversial. I even see some of my hon. friends appear to regard me as some form of unhallowed Joshua, who, if he does not wish to stay the sun, at least wishes to curtail the duration of the Paschal moon, and suspect me of employing nefarious means to achieve this end. I can assure them that my ambitions are far more modest. This question of the stabilisation of Easter, or the calculation of the date on which Easter falls, has been a subject of controversy for many centuries. I believe it played no small part in the division of our Christian Church into the Churches of the East and West. At a later date, in this country, at the Synod of Whitby, it led to a regrettable fight between certain Celtic and English bishops, and, I believe, to the slaughter of some of those eminent prelates. I trust the introduction of this Bill may not be followed by similar results, as, however much we may disagree about our Episcopal Bench, we do not wish to see the bishops come to that untimely end.

I hope I shall not weary the House by occupying their attention for a few minutes with the history of this question. The present calculations on which the date of Easter is based were fixed originally at the Council of Nicæa, which was held under Constantine the Great in A.D. 325. The Council decided three things: first, that Easter should fall on a Sunday; second, that, if possible, that Sunday should be the same Sunday throughout Christendom; and, third, that the Sunday should be the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. This has been and still is the basis of our calculations. But in those days the world worked under the Julian Calendar, and Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, who did the calculations, did not get the length of the year quite accurately. Therefore it was found, as time went on, that there became a discrepancy between the calendar dates and the actual movements of the heavenly bodies. To remedy this Pope Gregory XIII, in 1682, employed one Luigo Lilio Gheradi of Naples to make a new calendar, and that is the one which is in use to-day. It was adopted in this country in 1752.

Among other things Gheradi and his assistant, Clavius, had to work out a new set of calculations for the fixing of Easter, and it was discovered that, with certain astronomical phenomena such as the equinoxes the calendar dates did not correspond exactly with the astronomical dates, it was impossible to fulfil the conditions laid down by the Council of Nicæa if the actual movements of the moon were to be taken into account. To get over this they invented the imaginary Paschal moon, which has no particular relation to the moon of heaven, and it is on this imaginary Paschal moon that we are basing our Easter. Therefore I think that even if we do agree, after discussion in this House, to take the lead in altering the dates, we shall not be interfering in any way with the movement of the heavenly bodies. In this country the Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1751, and to those who are opposing the Bill on the grounds that Parliament has no real business to interfere in ecclesiastical matters I would merely wish to point out that Section 3 of that Act abolished the then method of calculating Easter, which appeared in the Prayer Book, and that annexed to that Act as a Schedule was a list setting forth the lessons to be read in Church during the whole year. I believe that in those days Convocation, although summoned, had never received a Letter of Authority to transact business, and I think we may conclude that, in that case, Parliament enforced its wishes on the Church without consultation. I would only plead that as a precedent, though I see the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) shakes his head.

Coming to the Bill itself, it has two operative Clauses, and two only. The first is Clause 1, which fixes the date of Easter. Under the proposals of this Bill Easter is to be the Sunday following the second Saturday in April, or, to put it in terms of dates, Easter will fall between the 9th and the 16th April. The reason why this day has been chosen rather than, let us say, the second Sunday in April is because it may happen, as occurs this year, that the Feast of the Annunciation and Passion Sunday will occasionally coincide, and I am informed that the Ecclesiastical authorities would prefer this to be avoided, if possible, by taking the dates I have suggested. Also, when this question was referred by the Council of the League of Nations to the various Governments in Europe and to various Societies which might be interested, there was an almost unanimous opinion that if Easter were to be fixed, the date chosen should be towards the end of the first half of April. I do not know why they chose that period, but it is remarkable that they all selected a period not earlier than the second Sunday and not later than the third Sunday in April, and the date proposed in this Bill is an attempt to compromise between those views. If objections be taken to that, it is, after all, a matter which can be fully discussed in Committee after the House has given the Bill a Second Reading.

Clause 2 merely insures that any movable Church feasts which depend upon the date of Easter shall, if this Bill ever comes into force, be calculated from the Easter as established in this Bill, and not from the old Easter as it at present exists. Clause 3 deals in the same way with civil fixtures, markets, etc., which are fixed by long custom or by Statute or Order in accordance with the date of Easter. Clause 4 is a great deal more important. In the first place, it provides that this Bill shall only come into force if an Order in Council is made by His Majesty. Until that Order is made the Bill is non-operative. The object of that provision is, I think, quite obvious. It is quite clear that we in this country cannot stabilise Easter with a total disregard of what the rest of the world is doing. At present there is a divergence in the date of Easter between the Eastern and the Western Church, and anybody who happens to be in Eastern Europe at that time of the year will in most years find it possible to celebrate two Easters. We do not want to have a civil and ecclesiastical Easter in this country, and we do not want to have Easter in this country on a different date from the Easter in France, because that would cause absolutely intolerable inconvenience and great difficulties to certain people in regard to their religious views. The object of this Bill is to enable the Government to take up the question and to ask the League of Nations again to proceed, and to see if we cannot come to some common agreement, at any rate amongst the Western Powers of Europe, that Easter should be stabilised on certain dates. The Bill does not profess to go further than that.

The other point of importance in Clause 4 is that it deals with the Dominions. We specially except from the operations of this Bill all those portions of His Majesty's Dominions which are self-governing, because although it is obvious that we in this House could impose our will, it would be contrary to all the practice of recent years and constitutional history if we were to attempt to legislate for our Dominions on matters-of which they are competent to legislate for themselves. For that reason, we have excluded them from the operation of this Bill. I do not wish to deal with the international aspect of this question or with the negotiations which led up to the League of Nations appointing a Committee to consider this question, because I understand that my hon. Friend who is about to second this Motion will deal with that question. I would, however, like briefly to put one or two of the advantages which in my opinion would accrue if Easter were fixed.

In the first place, we have three great festivals in the Church, Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, with which through long tradition our popular holidays are associated. I think it is desirable that popular holidays should be associated with the festivals of the Church, and I should deplore anything which tends to bring about a separation between them. In the old days when each community was self-contained, the fact that the holidays were celebrated at different periods probably did not cause very great inconvenience, because then the people were thrown back upon their own resources and had not facilities for travel. Moreover in those days very few people were educated, and those who were educated had obtained their education locally. The situation to-day is that people are no longer isolated. We are all part of a great machine, and certain of our activities are international in their character. Therefore, I think we can hardly view the situation from the same point of view as people did nearly 200 years ago.

A citizen who had been alive at the time of the Council of Nicæa and who came back in 1751 would find conditions less changed than a citizen of 1751 who might be translated here to-day. The citizen of A.D. 325 would find transport very little altered. Of course, he would find society differently constituted, but still living under rather isolated conditions with poor means of getting about and much the same means to which he was accustomed. The citizen of 1751 would not know where he was with our modern civilisation and movement, and he would be far more lost in our world than the citizen of A.D. 325 in the world of 1751. In dealing with holidays, we must take some account of the convenience of the public. I believe it would be a great advantage if our public holidays—especially the one which depends on Easter and Whitsuntide respectively—were to have some connection with the break between the Winter and Spring, and again between the Spring and Summer season. I also think that certain trades would find great benefit from that change. When this question was considered by the League of Nations and by the railway administrations of Europe, they were all in favour of a fixed Easter about the middle of April, which they agreed would be a great advantage.

Then there is the question as to how the proposed change would affect education. Up to recent years it was the custom for some of the schools to fix their holidays about Easter, but recently that has been changed. If you fix your holidays by Easter that does not divide the school year into three correspondingly equal portions. Of course, your Easter term might be very long or short; it might even be in the middle of March or near the end of April. When this question was considered by the educational authorities all over the world, they were unanimous that a fixed Easter from the point of view of education would be an unmixed advantage. Furthermore, a great many people used to depend upon the Ecclesiastical Easter for their holidays, because that was the only time when certain members of a family could take their holidays. Although this may seem quite a small point, yet I submit that if is a matter of great importance that one member of a family should be able to take his Holiday at one time, and another member at a different time.

The third advantage, from a practical point of view, is the question of the financial year. At present, the financial year ends between the 5th and 6th of April. In this Bill the Easter holiday will come early in the financial year and each financial year will contain one-Easter and one only. At the present time it is possible for the year to; contain two Easters or no Easter at all, and that does seem to some extent to invalidate the statistical comparison of one year with another. Again, Easter is likely to fall at the end of the financial year, and then you have a dislocation of the Easter holidays at a time when it is desirable that you should have all the books of Europe balanced at the same time. I think anything which gets rid of that difficulty would be a great advantage.

Lastly, I believe that this change would be a distinct advantage to the Church itself. At present, the main festivals of the Church fall between Advent and Trinity, and then there is what seems to me to be the dreary run of Sundays after Trinity. When you get Easter coming as early in the year as the 23rd March, then you find your Church services for that period compressed into a very short space, and consequently an undue prominence is given to those long dreary Sundays after Trinity. I feel that the Church services would be more impressive if there were a more equal division in this respect. For these reasons, I feel that the Church would gain to some extent if this alteration were made. It is obvious that some objections will be raised to this alteration. No doubt we shall be told that it is undesirable that the civil authority should interfere in what is solely an ecclesiastical matter. In the first place, it is not solely an ecclesiastical matter. In this connection, I would also like to point out to those who hold that view that we have no desire to force a compulsory Easter down the throats of unwilling people. All we are asking for is that the Government should have power to take up this question, and, after consultation and agreement with the other countries of Western Europe, as well as the Churches, be empowered to fix Easter. I do not think that argument is a very strong one against the Bill.

The other argument which I know will be used against the Bill is that it will involve a big disturbance of old customs. I do not like disturbing old customs, but there are times when old customs have outgrown their utility, and when there is a danger that, unless they are adapted to meet the changed conditions, a time will arrive when the whole of those old customs will be swept unceremoniously aside. I quite agree that, if we accept this stabilisation, one of its effects will be to deprive some people of the pleasure of whiling away a dull sermon by attempting to find the Golden Number and the Dominical Letter; but I do feel that, while we may bring about a small change of custom, and deprive ourselves of this innocent pleasure I have just mentioned, we shall be giving a great deal of happiness to those whose very scanty holidays depend on the date of Easter. I beg to move.

I beg to second the Motion.

I do not wish to cover the same ground as has been covered by my hon. and gallant Friend, and I will, therefore, deal particularly with matters with which he has not dealt. In the first place, I should like to draw attention to the time at which this question came within the sphere, I will not say of practical politics, but of practical discussion. Under the present arrangement, Easter may fall as early as the 22nd March, or as late as the 25th April, there being, therefore, a total possible variation of 35 days. In the early days this caused very little trouble, but, now that the world has become industrialised, it causes a great deal of inconvenience. Before the year 1923, a large number of societies and bodies had been discussing the possibility of stabilising Easter, and in that year the League of Nations, in Geneva, formed a Committee to consider the question of the stabilisation of the Calendar generally, and of Easter in particular. I should like to draw the attention of the House to the composition of this Committee, as I think it is of the greatest importance. In the first place, there were three eminent laymen, and then there were three ecclesiastical representa- tives, namely, a representative appointed by the Holy See, a representative appointed by the Eastern Church, and a representative appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I think, therefore, we may say that the Churches were really efficiently represented on this Committee.

The Committee proceeded to make inquiries on the question of the Calendar generally and the stabilisation of Easter in particular, and they issued a Report embodying their conclusions. They say that they put themselves in communication with all Churches and all civil bodies with which they could get into touch, and that the results of their deliberations were as follow: Firstly, they could find no great support for a reform of the Calendar generally, but, with regard to Easter, they came to certain definite conclusions. In drawing those conclusions, they took into consideration, in the first place, the attitude of the Churches, and, if the House will allow me, I should like to read what the Churches actually said. In the first place, the views of the Holy See were as follow:

The date generally suggested was the second Sunday in April, but, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Oxford (Captain Bourne) has explained, the Committee pointed out that in some years—curiously enough it happens this year—the Feast of the Annunciation falls on Passion Sunday, which the Catholic Church does not think advisable, and, therefore, the date now suggested is the Sunday after the second Saturday in April. According to this suggestion, the variation would run from the 9th to the 15th April, both days inclusive, or, to put it popularly, Easter would be fixed on the 9th April if that day were a Sunday, or, if not, on the first Sunday afterwards.

The advantages of this stabilisation have been dealt with by my hon. and gallant Friend. We must all be impressed by its importance from the point of view of education. It is a very great nuisance now, for parents who have children at school, when some schools go by Easter and some by the Calendar, with the consequence that some of the children are at home at one time and some at another. That is very tiresome indeed. Again, law terms would be stabilised, and we should know exactly where we were in that regard. We should also have a great deal of advantage in the matter of commerce. In the case, for instance, of a railway company whose year ends on the 31st March—if there be any such—that railway company, as matters now stand, may have in one year no Easter traffics, in another year it may have one Easter traffic, and in a third year it may have two Easter traffics. It is quite conceivable that that may happen under the present arrangement, and, therefore, I suggest that the proposal is a desirable one from this point of view.

Of course, everyone must admit that this matter is primarily one for the Churches, in the sense that they will have to carry it into effect; but they have put upon the civil authorities the onus of showing that it will be for the benefit of mankind. This Bill is designed for the purpose of proving that it is for the benefit of mankind. As my hon. and gallant Friend has pointed out, it is proposed that the Measure should not come into operation until after an Order in Council has been made, so that the Government may foe able to make arrangements with other nations. The Churches cannot logically object to our moving in the matter, because they have said, quite rightly, that they are not prepared to do anything until it is proved to them that the proposed stabilisation would be for the benefit of mankind, and they cannot object to our proving that that is the case. It is sincerely to be hoped that they will take some step in the matter if this Bill passes into law. The alternative suggested is that, the public finding the variation of the Easter holidays was inconvenient, the Government should make the spring holidays a week-end in April, say the second week-end. That could be done and leave Easter variable. That would mean, of course, that the Good Friday, the most solemn day in the Church's year, would be an ordinary working day in the week, which I do not think would be at all desirable from the point of view of the Church, and Easter itself deprived of the prominence now given to it. I therefore think that there is no case for being driven to that sort of expedient. I most heartily support the Bill and hope that the Second Reading will be granted.

I beg to move, to leave out the word "now" and at the end of the Question to add the words: "upon this day six months."

I do not think either the mover or the seconder of the Measure has shown to the satisfaction of the House that there is any adequate reason to depart suddenly from the system of fixing what is after all the most sacred religious festival of the year and upon a principle which has existed for 1600 years. The Bill contains machinery that it shall not actually come into operation until it is authorised by Order-in-Council. In my opinion, that makes it so much the worse. I have often objected to the whole system of legislation by Order-in-Council. If we must have our Easter altered, let it be altered by the House in an Act of Parliament, because this simply means that if the Bill were to pass we should be in peril at any time of some of the industrious persons who move in these matters suddenly, without any further authority or control from the House, altering the date of Easter, and for that there can be no possible justification.

But of course the objections to the Bill would not be met by the elimination of the bureaucratic device of an Order-in-Council. As has been stated by the mover the Council of Nicæa in 325, if I remember rightly, agreed to one common date for the fixing of Easter throughout Christendom. Before that time the more Jewish Christians had tried to make Easter follow the Passover, and by that decision of the Council of Nicæa it was definitely fixed to take place as the hon. Member mentioned. That was the position and is still the position, because whatever divergence of the actual Easter day may exist at present between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Churches of the West only arises from the alteration of the secular calendar. The principle on which Easter is fixed has never been disturbed since the Council of Nicæa in the fourth century. I do not touch on the point that we have two Members calling themselves Conservatives moving in this matter to-day. We are used to seeing many of our institutions not safe in the hands of some hon. Members opposite, though I am glad to say that there are others perhaps of a different way of thinking.

However that may be, the fact is that we have here what has been described by the Roman Church in their answer to the League of Nations as a deep-rooted tradition. Has any case really been made out for an alteration of this deep-rooted religious tradition? After all, religious traditions are not things lightly to be set aside, and the arguments which have been used for stabilisation seem to me singularly incompetent to justify us in altering our present procedure. It is said that the schools may be affected and that the finance of the year may find it more convenient. Interests of a wholly secular character, and those not very important, have been urged upon the House as a reason for the alteration of Easter. Although legally Parliament has the authority to do what it will, this is really a matter for the religious authorities. As a matter of fact, Easter was originally fixed in this country by the Church without any consultation with the State at all. When the Archbishop Theodore agreed to adopt the canons of Dionysius Exiguus—we must not confuse him with the greater Dionysius—carrying out the decisions of the Council of Nicæa, the Church met and decided that for England the method of fixing Easter should be the present method, and what is interesting to observe is that no representative of the King was present at all. Seeing that Parliament has now inherited the regal power in these matters, it is interesting to note that Easter has always been regarded as a purely religious feast originally fixed by the Church and never questioned in any way. It is true that in the Prayer Book at present the table for fixing Easter is to be found and has Parliamentary sanction, but it is merely there carrying out the old tradition. There is no alteration in the Prayer Book in the method of fixing Easter, as those of us who sometimes have beguiled dull sermons in youth by fixing Easter for hypothetical dates well remember. The whole system is there worked out on the old tables and canons of Dionysius.

But there is a more serious matter to consider. It has been pointed out, with great frankness by the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Withers), that the Churches have not consented to this alteration. It is true that the League of Nations appointed a Committee to consult them, and they sent representatives, very properly, to meet and discuss the matter with the Committee, but what were their answers? The Roman Church said that they could not come to a decision that the matter should be altered until another Œcumenical Council. That Œcumenical Council will not meet till next year. So at the moment the Roman Church is not prepared to alter the date of Easter. The Anglican Church said that they were not prepared to alter it unless the other Churches agreed, and as the Roman Church has not agreed we may assume that the Anglican Church has not agreed either. In the case of the Greek Church, also, we are told that they are not prepared to act except with the consent of the other two. Therefore, we are in this position, that at present not one of these three Churches is prepared to alter the date of Easter. [ Interruption. ] We are dealing with people who disagree, not with people who agree. The Free Churches have agreed, but the mere fact that people have agreed is not the point. The hon. Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown) is making a false point. It is not a question whether some denominations agree, but whether they all agree. I have pointed out that three important denominations, including what the right hon. Gentleman opposite would call the national Church of this country, have not agreed to this proposal, and that has no relevance to what the Free Churches do in the matter one way or the other. Getting back from that irrelevancy—

Inconvenient irrelevancy.

Getting back from that inconvenient irrelevancy—all irrelevancy is inconvenient because it breaks the thread of one's argument—I say that one must assume that this Bill is going to become law. If this Bill becomes law, we must assume that we are putting it into the power of the Government by Order-in-Council to fix a new date for Easter. We may assume that we may not have a Government who may or may not be as wise or as foolish as the present Administration. We may assume that at any time a new Easter may fall like a bolt from the blue. We must also assume—because we must assume all things at the moment that we have a Bill before us—that when this Bill becomes law, as it would this Session, the Œcumenical Council not having met it would be at a time when the Churches had not agreed to alter the date for Easter. What would be the result? We should have two Easters—a secular Easter and a religious Easter.

I may remind the House that this divergence of opinion as to the date of Easter has in the past led to very acrimonious contests, even, I believe, to bloody wars. There was one occasion, if the House will bear with me, when so strongly did a certain English King, King Oswy, disagree with his wife on this matter of favouring the Catholic Easter and not a Celtic Easter that the domestic disturbance inside the Royal Court in Northumbria became so acute that it became necessary to employ a special Synod, the Synod of Whitby, to discuss the matter. At this Synod, it was agreed that the present system of Easter should continue. So that one can say quite seriously, apart from the early domestic difficulties of this unhappy King and Queen that even to-day any persons who still wish to honour the religious feast of Easter will find themselves in great difficulties if a new Easter is placed upon the Statute Book.

What are we to do? The hon. Member said rightly that it is desirable that our holidays should also be our holy days. I think that nowadays they are rather more holidays than holy days, and that we deplore. However that may be, we shall get into a sad state of confusion if we have a secular Easter, with the shops closed and the schools closed and trade concluded, and then a religious Easter brought in at a time when all the trade will be going on, the schools will be open, and finance will be in full swing.

Therefore, I say, if we are serious about this Bill—I do not know whether we are, but I assume that we are and that we ought to be so—we must have regard to this real danger, a duplication of Easter and a clashing of the secular and of the religious Easter. For all these reasons, I say that no case has been made out to depart from a system under which the world has worked perfectly happily for the last 1,600 years. I call on hon. Members opposite, on this occasion at least, to show that they are true to their beliefs, and I call upon hon. Members on this side of the House also to show that, while we differ from hon. Members opposite in certain forms of conservation, as the conservation of such plutocracy, we can all stand as one here, and, I hope, unanimously, reject the Measure now before the House.

I beg to second the Amendment.

In the first place, I do not think there is any real demand for this Bill. If I may judge by my post-bag, I have not had a single letter or postcard in support of it. The Mover and the Seconder of the Bill are both apparently agreed that this reform, if it be a reform, cannot take place until there is complete agreement between the great religious bodies and until, of course, there is agreement among the various States of Western Europe. But that is not stated in the Bill. The Bill does not state that Easter should not be changed until agreement is forthcoming. The Bill says that an Order-in-Council may be made altering the date of Easter. I quite agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser), who has just spoken, that this system of legislation by Order-in-Council is extraordinarily dangerous. The hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill said that it was their intention to get agreement, and he read certain statements which had been made by the Churches to the effect that if they were persuaded that this change was for the good of mankind they would be prepared to consider it. He said, "I want this Bill passed by this House, because if this Bill is passed by this House it must be for the good of mankind." I have a very great opinion of the House of Commons—no one has a greater opinion—but I think that it is going rather far to say that every Measure which is passed by this House or that may be passed by this House is necessarily for the good of mankind. If the Mover and the Seconder cannot bring any better proof than that, I think their case is certainly not proven.

There are practical difficulties with which I want to deal rather than with the religious question, though I entirely agree with what my hon. and learned Friend said on that point, and I share his objection to Easter being changed by this House without the full consent of the religious bodies, Easter being a religious festival. But there are certain practical difficulties, and they are these. It must be remembered that if there were a different date for Easter there would also be a different date for Whitsuntide. Easter is a long holiday. It begins on the Thursday night and goes on until the Tuesday morning, and if we had different dates for those two festivals from those observed on the Continent it would be a very great inconvenience to business. You would have continental bourses closed on what might be called a proper Easter and our bourses and other businesses open. Anybody who understands business knows that not to have holidays universal throughout the world has been a great drawback and a great interference with the business of the world. It is for that reason that I ask the House not to pass this Bill, which would give an absolutely free hand, possibly, as the result of agitation which might be got up on the part of a small minority to bring pressure to bear upon us, for the passing of an Order-in-Council without the necessary agreement that both the Mover and the Seconder of the Bill say they want. But there is no guarantee in the Bill. If something can be inserted in the Bill showing that this House does not part altogether with its powers, that is to say that before an Order-in-Council is made a Resolution of both Houses must be obtained, I should not have the same objection. It would give us another opportunity of considering the matter. But I do urge that to pass the Bill in its present form is undesirable on the grounds of religion and equally undesirable on the grounds of general public convenience, and a real danger.

I have always felt the Easter holidays rather a grievance. I remember that in my young days at school in Scotland I had to work on Good Friday and Easter Monday, while my friends in England had the time off. I know that is a frivolous excuse to give for a change, but I simply mention it as one of the difficulties. The reason why I intervene in this Debate is that I have taken part in the discussions of the various Chambers of Commerce on this subject for a good many years past, and it is well to emphasise the fact that there is a very real and a very serious feeling, in spite of what the hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin (Major Kindersley) has said, among business men in this country and throughout the Empire and Europe in regard to the matter, that it is the most desirable thing possible to make an alteration. As far as this country is concerned, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce have had the subject under discussion on many occasions, and on every occasion there has been a full Debate, and while they have realised the difficulties in regard to a change of the Easter date, which have been brought prominently forward, they have favoured a change. For instance, it disturbs the position of the woollen trade and the clothing trade at Bradford and Leicester owing to the fact that Easter comes at one time in one year and another time another year. Moreover, it disturbs the arrangements of the railways and upsets entirely a number of questions in regard to statistics for traffic returns, as well as financial statistics.

I do not need to labour the point. I only wish to bring before the House the fact that business men in this country have seriously discussed the question and realised the serious difficulties connected with it. It is an important point to bear in mind that when the matter has been raised at the various Congresses of Chambers of Commerce they have unanimously adopted resolutions in favour of a change. At the International Chamber of Commerce, representing 40 nations, the matter has been seriously considered on frequent occasions, and it was as a result of the feeling in many nations on the subject that the League of Nations took it up and appointed the Committee referred to. I was at the meeting of the League of Nations when the discussion took place. The question cannot be treated lightly. I listened with interest to the remarks of the Proposer and Seconder of the Amendment, and the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Sleeser), who moved the rejection of the Bill, certainly made some clever debating points.

I can well understand that there are objections to Parliament legislating in this manner, and I think it is definitely understood in the minds of most people that the question of Church Festivals is primarily one which must be settled by the Church. At every congress of business men which I attended, we felt that the Churches had a right to a leading voice in this matter. It is not for us to interfere with a Feast of the Church, and I am sure that Parliament has no desire to interfere in matters which wholly affect the Church, because that would be properly resented, but this question is approached, so far as we are concerned, outside the Church question. Our attitude towards the whole matter rather resembles the provisional ratification of a convention by various nations. We ratify a convention subject to other nations ratifying it. When you have done that, you have gone a long way on the road towards complete ratification, and that is the line which we suggest now, that we should initiate agreement on this question, subject to that agreement being ratified by other nations.

12 n.

The Church of Rome has taken the strictly historical line of guarding old tradition and takes the view that, unless good reasons can be shown for the welfare of mankind that the change should take place, they cannot see their way to alter a long-established tradition. I submit that good reasons have been shown in many directions and I do not think they should be so lightly brushed aside as they were by the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds. They ought to be taken very seriously into consideration. The Greek Church goes further and the English Church has done the same. But we should remember that a large number of other bodies are outside these Churches—the German and American Protestant, Churches. The Free Churches of this country and many others have taken the same view in supporting the change. In regard to the purely Church interests, it would be improper for us to interfere, but there are the secular interests which are affected by the present position of instability very seriously.

We do not wish to see the Holy Days of the Church ignored. Many of us prefer particularly that Good Friday should be fully recognised, and we are glad that it gives an opportunity to everybody to recognise a most sacred and solemn day. But we do feel that as there is not any question of dogma involved in regard to Easter and that it is merely a question of tradition, and realising that the state of affairs in the world to-day is entirely different from the position in the year 600, and that the needs of the community are so different and the observations of Church Festivals are much altered owing to the changed position everywhere, the proposed change of Easter might be accepted. We must bear these changed conditions in mind when we are discussing the suggested alteration, and surely a matter of this kind, where the convenience and comfort of the people, not only in this country, but throughout the world, are concerned, is not to be brushed aside.

While I am not capable of discussing the technical issues raised in regard to the Bill, I strongly support the Bill, because I do feel that the business community has made it quite clear that it is a very serious matter in their interests. The education authorities have also given the same reasons. If we accept this Bill in this House, it will be necessary to make it quite clear in some way or another that there is no desire or attempt on the part of Parliament and the State to dictate to the Church as to Church Festivals. Subject to that point being reserved, I support the Bill. As regards other countries, it is equally essential that we should make it clear that we approve this suggested change subject to other countries adopting the same line. It would be utterly absurd, and it is not in our own interests or in the interests of the world at large, to have a change of this kind put into effect here if the rest of the world did not follow. It is broad principles of which we are speaking, and I desire to say these few words in favour of the broad principles of the Bill.

I wish to support the rejection of the Bill. I am prepared to admit the argument about the conveniences of a fixed Easter. I must admit that the fact that we may be overruling the Council of Nicæa, if I may use the phrase, leaves my withers entirely un-wrung. But I am most intensely concerned with the popular holiday of Easter, and I am sorry to throw the shower bath of cold water, of the English weather, upon this proposal. Prompted by the recollection of many fine and beautiful Easter holidays, and by the recollection of the weather which prevailed last year at the week-end which the promoters of this Measure would have sought to force upon us for Easter, I have made some inquiries from the Meteorological Office. I asked them to give me the figures of the rainfall in this country in London, at Brighton and at Blackpool, to take three typical places, for the actual Easter week-end as it has been for every year since the War, and for the week-end which the promoters of this Bill suggest. In the nine years in question, as it happens, the real date and the proposed date coincided only once. That was in 1925, and that happened to be a comparatively fine week-end and there was very little rain. I asked for the figures for Good Friday, Saturday, Easter Day and the Bank Holiday inclusive, for the nine years.

Leaving the common year 1925 out of account, the fact is that there were only two week-ends in which the proposed date would have provided better weather than the old date. An hon. Member laughs, but if he will pay me the compliment of listening to the actual figures, he will be a little astonished. During one of these week-ends the weather was very slightly better, and during the other it was appreciably better, but taking the eight week-ends and excluding the common week-end, the fact is that in the whole eight years at Kew during the real Easter week-ends there has been only 5 of an inch rainfall. In four out of the eight years there was no rain at all during the whole of the Easter week-ends, whereas in the week-ends proposed by the Bill the rainfall would have been 2.75 inches, or more than five times as much. The figures for Brighton are even more extraordinary. During the actual Easter week-ends of the last nine years the rainfall at Brighton for the four critical days was just over .57 of an inch. For the week-ends proposed under the Bill the rainfall was 4.05 inches, or over seven times as much.

I do not pretend to know why it is that the second week-end in April is so rainy. There is a letter, as we probably all have seen, in the "Times" to-day, offering an explanation and suggesting, as I suggest, that there should be a much fore searching inquiry on the lines indicated by the figures I have given—I have not given the figures for Blackpool, but they are not quite so striking, although to the same effect—over a long period of years, not merely of rainfall but of sunshine, temperature, and so on. I am going to suggest, as one who is accustomed to sailing small boats and watching tides and moons accordingly, that the coincidence that the Easter week-end is so habitually finer than the second week-end in April may have something to do with the fact that the Easter week-end follows a full moon. I do not pretend to be an authority on weather, but those are the facts as obtained from the Meteorological Office. It is an amazing thing that if my hon. Friends had had their way, after the War we should have had seven perfectly appalling Easter week-ends instead of seven very good ones and two that have teen indifferent.

The last speaker has taken the example of the last nine years. I am surprised that he has taken so short a period, and that he should not have read the principal daily newspapers during the last six or eight months, for there he could have seen statistics for weather covering a century. He would have found that the weather does not depend on eight-year periods but in fact is very evenly distributed. The point as to whether we should have had fine or wet Easters during the last few years is rather an immaterial one. The hon. Member for West Derby (Mr. S. Allen) did not refer to the increasing tourist traffic. That is something which did not exist before. People are travelling all over the world, and there is a traffic which is of enormous importance not only to the tourists themselves but to the organisations that conduct the traffic and to those who are concerned in it—parents who have to go with their children on tours. This affects many thousands of people at the present time.

The hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin (Major Kndersley) referred to business, and the inconvenience of having different dates for Easter. I do not know the hon. and gallant Member's occupation, but from his remarks I assume that he has not been accustomed to deal extensively with other countries, because throughout the world Easter does not determine business relations. For a very long time the calendar that existed in Russia and in Turkey differed from ours by 13 days, and those who are accustomed to do business with the East are accustomed to Easter falling on one day here and on another date in countries which contain many millions of inhabitants and do an important trade with this country. I do not think that so far there have been any points made in this discussion other than debating points. We know that the general demand of the civil population is for this stabilisation of Easter. It is also agreed that the change should take place only when the churches are agreed. But, after all, someone must take the lead, and it is for us to take the lead.

It is no argument to say that the present system has been going on for 1600 years and should go on for 1600 more years. We have taken the lead in many things. In fact the first Clause of the Bill points out that the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750, dealt with alterations to the calendar. We are in a position in which everybody seems to be waiting upon everybody else, and it would be a great move forward if this Parliament definitely expressed the opinion that it is for the benefit of humanity that this change should take place, whenever it is approved by the churches. The points raised by previous speakers in opposition to the Bill carry very little weight. Nothing has been advanced to show that benefits will not arise to humanity through the change, while both the Mover and Seconder of the Motion have given weighty reasons for the change. I, for one, have the greatest pleasure in supporting the Bill.

I rise to support the Second Reading of the Bill mainly for one reason. An impression has been given to the House by several speakers that the Church of England has, in some way, expressed an opinion hostile to the principle of the stabilisation of Easter. I assure the House that such is not the case. The matter has been before the Convocation of the Church of England which passed a sympathetic resolution, but that resolution was limited by words to the effect that nothing should be done until the other great religious bodies came into line. The matter was further discussed on a motion which I moved in the Church Assembly a few months ago. Unfortunately it came on at the end of a week's meetings and after a very short discussion, a delaying Amendment was carried. Though it was not actually carried, considerable sympathy was expressed for my motion in support of the proposition, and I am convinced that if means could be found to bring the other religious bodies into line, the great majority of members of the Church of England would support stabilisation. I would remind the House that this view is not confined to the Anglican community. The great Church of the East, the Orthodox Church, has expressed the same view. They see no objection to the proposal in principle and they would be prepared to support it if the other religious bodies did likewise. The Roman Church has not gone quite so far but it has been definitely stated that they see no objection to the proposal from a dogmatic point of view and that if the other bodies supported it, they would submit it to the Œcumenical Council. The position therefore is that the religious bodies of the world, as far as we can find out, are generally in favour of the proposal. That applies still more strongly to the churches in America. The League of Nations published a report giving the opinion of the churches in America and their opinion is strongly in favour of the change.

What is the course most likely to bring the Churches actually into operation in the matter? I submit that the passage of some such Bill as this, at any rate the passage of this Second Reading Motion, is the way in which to induce the churches to take common action. If we pass this Bill, the attention of the religious authorities will be drawn to the opinion of Parliament and that will stir them up to do something. We are in the same difficulty in connection with this question as in connection with disarmament and ratification and other matters, namely, that no one will take the first step. I support the Second Reading of the Bill because I think it will enable the Anglican Church to take, perhaps, the first step towards this great reform. To my mind the evidence in its favour is very strong from the point of view of public convenience. It is amazing that the public have had the patience for over 1,600 years to put up with the inconvenience of a movable Easter. A point has been made against the proposal on meteorological grounds. That can easily be met. If we find on examination that the Sunday suggested in the Bill is usually wet, let us take the next Sunday. We are not bound to the particular Sunday named in the Bill. It can be amended in Committee in that respect. In any case, that does not seem to be a strong point against the proposal, considering the great convenience which there is on the other side.

The arguments in favour of the proposal are not, however, confined to arguments of convenience. The proposal has the almost unanimous support of scholastic authorities from the National Union of Teachers to the head masters of the schools. Surely the religious bodies should be the last in the world to stand in the way of what the scholastic bodies demand in the interests of educational efficiency. Then, perhaps on a lower plane but still on an important plane, I would point out that among those who have appealed to me very strongly in regard to this matter are those interested in the textile trade. They make a strong point of the loss of trade and the difficulty occasioned by the movable Easter. I am convinced that the Anglican Church, at any rate, does not wish to stand in the way of a Measure which will be for the convenience of the people, for the greater efficiency of education and in the interests of some of our great national trades. I hope the Measure will receive a Second Reading, that as a result, perhaps, the Anglican Church will be moved to take a lead in the matter and that before many years have passed, we shall have a stabilised Easter.

It is quite unnecessary after the admirable speeches we have heard from the Mover and Seconder of the Motion to add very much, but I think I should be doing wrong if I did not add a word of testimony from the educational side with regard to the convenience of this proposal. I speak with some experience of the administration of the largest of our new universities. This matter may not affect Oxford and Cambridge quite so much, because the vacations there are much longer, but, in the case of our new universities, it is a serious, practical inconvenience to have this uncertainty with regard to vacations. I wish also to add my testimony, as one who has had a great deal of experience in the matter, as to the great inconvenience caused in regard to schools. More than that, coming as I do from the North of England, I wish to say that even more important than the stabilisation of Easter to the people there is the stabilisation of those feasts which depend upon Easter, such as Whitsuntide. That is a great festival in the North of England, and those who belong to the North of England know the great inconvenience that is caused both from the business point of view and from the point of view of the education of young people, under the existing arrangement and the advantage that would arise if Whitsuntide were fixed, as it would automatically be fixed by the stabilisation of Easter.

With regard to the general question, is not the attitude of the Churches on this matter, "We want to know what is for the good of the community, and we will act accordingly"? I do not say that this is a new attitude, but it is an attitude which we ought to welcome, and I think in this matter it represents the position of all three—I will say all four—of the great Churches. As to the Free Churches, the point is as clear as daylight. Their attitude is "We will do what is for the good of the community; we are not bound by any traditions." The attitude of the Church of England is as distinct as may be. That Church says, "We want to act along with the others, but we would like to know that we are acting in accordance with the interests and for the good of the community." In regard to the Eastern Church, it is worth while, those of us who have travelled in the East, remembering what a great inconvenience it is to have a difference in Easter, an inconvenience that has sometimes painful practical results; and is it not a grand thing to find that the Church of Rome says she has no dogmatic objection to this change, but merely wants to know, on an important matter of this sort, what an Œcumenical Council will say when it meets next year? What is the best thing to bring before that council? Why, the vote of a body like this House, saying, "We think it is for the good of humanity, and we trust you, whatever the traditions may be, to carry out, as a great Church, what is for the good of mankind."

One or two points were raised in what I am not sure was the ingenious or the ironic speech of the hon. and learned Member for South East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser). He began by calling the Bill bureaucratic, but where is there any bureaucracy in the Bill? I absolutely fail to find it. It is suggested that we should have a Government Department thrusting Easter on us, but that is not within the four corners of the Bill. The Bill names a suggested date, and all that that Clause does is to say that that date is not to come into force until certain events have happened.

My point was that there is no date mentioned. Whatever hon. Members may say here, the Bill gives to the Council the right to make an Order for whatever reasons it thinks fit and whenever it thinks fit.

The Bill suggests that it should be a fixed date which is for the good of the country, and for other countries, as the action of the League of Nations has shown, and all that it says is that that is to be held up until certain events have happened. It is not a bureaucratic thrusting on the nation of the decree of a Government Department, but merely saying, "Hold up until the requisite conditions have been fulfilled." I regard that as a quite admirable Clause and as an excellent method of carrying out what we all desire, namely, the good of the community, and that it should be carried out with the goodwill of the Church.

I want to oppose this Bill, which strikes me as being a perfectly futile and fantastic Measure, and I can only regret that the early hour prevents me from treating it with that levity with which it really deserves to be met. I was surprised that the name of the hon. and gallant Member for North-East Leeds (Major Birchall) was not on the back of the Bill. In fact, none of those mouthpieces of archiepiscopal views, if I may respect- fully call them so, are supporting the Measure in that way. The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) is here, and we are glad to see him, but where is the Noble Lord the Assistant Postmaster-General? He is perhaps seeking his years of discretion elsewhere. Where is the First Lord of the Admiralty, who calls himself "the man in the pew"? He is not here either, and those who are here have not made out a case for the Bill. I should have thought that Members would be disappointed, as I am, that the first Friday open to private Members in the new Session should be spent in discussing what I may respectfully call, with all deference to the Mover and Seconder, an absolute cranks' Bill.

There is no public demand for anything suggested in this Measure, and its only merit is that there is not a single vote to be gained in any direction, whether one supports it or not. The hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Withers) never has to consider these matters, and he is on perfectly safe ground; in fact, I think he is a little innocent perhaps in his knowledge of electoral contests, because we have received so many communications from him asking us to pledge ourselves to support his Bill. Some of us do not give such pledges so easily. It seems to me that this House ought to be very suspicious of an unholy alliance between the hon. and gallant Member for the City of Oxford (Captain Bourne) and the hon. Member for the University of Cambridge. What are they doing together, in this or any other connection? It seems to me, as a loyal graduate of the University of Oxford, that the answer to the question "What good could come out of Cambridge?" would be made by the hon. Member for Cambridge University saying, "But this is only a little one." It is a little Bill, but it lacks that very quality which we in our—and the better—University life have always held to be the one characteristic of that University in the Eastern Counties. We have always been told that precision of argument and logic of thought is the one quality which they stress, and here we have a Measure which sets out to stabilise Easter but which does nothing of the sort.

Hitherto we have had fluctuations of Easter, but this grand stabilisation scheme is going to give fluctuations still. In the early days of the Church there were those who held that Easter could come on other days than Sunday, and that was afterwards decided against, but it was held, not by the Christian gentiles to whom St. Paul preached, but by the converts from Judaism. That was the earliest tradition of all, and it is not conclusive one way or the other, but when you come to this attempt to stabilise Easter and allow as much as a week of difference in its possible date it seems to me you are not achieving your object, because there is no doubt that the representatives of Oxford City and Cambridge University have really muddled two things. They are trying to mix up the question of the fixing of public holidays in the Spring and early summer, with the question of fixing a date for a religious festival. Easter is a name derived from that of the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring, and there is no doubt that in all early civilisation there was a festival in Spring in honour of someone, whether of the Spring Goddess or some other deity.

It seems to me that you have only to look at this extraordinary document which has been circulated, I have no doubt, to every other Member of the House as well as myself, to see the kind of arguments which are used in support of the Measure. The hon. Members do not want to change the calendar on these rather fantastic lines, but this League which advocates it has only one supporter in this country, and that is Lord Desborough, who, I am sure, we all regard with the greatest respect and admiration, but as a forecaster of weather and tide I am afraid we cannot give him a prize. The Thames overflowed its banks recently, and we had a picture which he himself gave us in the press of how every morning he went to the barometer and hoped the waters would not overflow, and yet it is a League supported by him that apparently hopes to guarantee fine weather for Easter and public holidays. I do not know that we can look for success in this to the scheme which he here endorses.

This document goes on to talk of the inconvenience of lengthening and shortening the Winter and Spring terms of Parliament. At the end of the Session, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Punch sometimes make light of you as a schoolmaster sending us off on our holidays, but I do not think this is technically known as the Spring term. It also apparently affects "schools, colleges and law courts and the fashion periods." There are also "Easter production periods." I do not know whether that is biological or biographical in the sense of production. Anyhow, it increases "the savings for holidays," and also "reduces the Easter church collections." It seems to me the most extraordinary argument ever produced by anyone, and I cannot imagine that the actual date of a particular Sunday in March or April on which Easter day should come has anything more to do with the incumbent's church collection than it has with who is going to be the winner of the Calcutta Sweep. It is a perfectly irrelevant observation.

The hon. and learned Member agrees that we cannot stabilise Easter unless we get the concurrence of the Churches of Christendom, and, without the consent of the other two, one cannot possibly agree on its own. That is apparently admitted. It is also admitted that the Church of Rome is not going to begin to consider the matter, at any rate, for another year. It is also admitted that the London County Council endorses the Measure, and, therefore, apparently, on that recommendation we are to anticipate the considered opinion of the Churches of Christendom with regard to the most important and holy festival which every Christian man or woman keeps. Germany is agreed, as the hon. and learned Gentleman told us, and the London County Council. It is a most extraordinary position for anyone who is sitting for the University of Cambridge to bring forward even on the first Friday of the Session.

I said that the whole of the civil authorities selected by the League of Nations have agreed.

I should be sorry to think that this is going to be the first big and only Measure the League of Nations has been able to achieve. I wish we could see it devote its attention to some more vital question, such as disarmament, than to the question of Easter Sunday. The hon. Member who site for the English Universities (Sir A. Hopkin-son) took up the point with, my hon. and learned Friend opposite that this Measure, amongst other things of which we complain, is to come into force by Order-in-Council if passed. That is to say that the Council at any time may suddenly say, "The Measure is on the Statute Book; let us put it into force." My hon. Friend said that there are "certain conditions which require to be satisfied before that is done," but there is not a word about it in the Measure. It may be that it will not be put into force until the Churches are all agreed, but it does not say so. After all, we are dealing with a Measure. As the hon. Member opposite said, this is not a pious resolution; it is a definite Measure—a Stabilisation of Easter Bill. It does not stabilise Easter, and, incidentally, what it does want to do might clearly be stated. As my hon. Friend opposite has pointed out, on behalf of the Chambers of Commerce and everybody else in the business world, what they want is to get some fixed period in the spring, and another fixed period in the early summer when everyone would be taking holidays; but they mix it up with Easter, with which it has no concern at all. Somebody said it was very awkward for the railway companies which end their financial year on the 31st March, as they do not know whether they are going to have one or two, or no, Easters in the year. For that kind of reason, we are asked to pass this Measure, as if railway companies could not make up their accounts to the 30th June, or some other date, which would bring Easter into every calendar year.

We have a difference of opinion with regard to this one question of holidays. The hon. Member for Oxford University said it is very desirable that the holy days of the Church should coincide with public holidays, and I am not sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman who moved the rejection of the Measure does not think so, too. I am not so sure. I put it to him. It may have been so 100 years ago or earlier, when the nation officially held church festivals more in the observance than they do to-day. I am not so sure that a day like Good Friday, with all its solemnity, should, as year follows year, become a more and more popular holiday with cinemas open, tennis tournaments and race meetings, and all the entertainments associated with a public holiday, as opposed to a solemn holy day, and I am not sure it would not be more in keeping with the solemnity of the day that it should be kept as an ordinary working day, and that people should take their holiday entertainments at some other time. I feel that rather. What is more, anyone who remains in London, at any rate, during the Easter holiday, will know that there are a great many people working very hard that day. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge University said something about it being a terrible thing that the most solemn Church day should become, a working day. Things are very different in the wilds of Cambridge. Here in London, if you stop for the Easter holiday, you find almost every house being painted and decorated. I do not know what the arrangements are in the building trade [AN HON. MEMBER: "It is a holiday, and you get overtime"]. Whatever it is in the painting and building trades, every hon. Member probably knows that within a radius of two miles from where we are speaking, house decoration is going on at Easter, and I do not know that they spend that day any worse than the rest of us.

I hope that the Mover and Seconder of this Bill will withdraw it. Let them divorce the question of Easter from the question of spring holidays. I quite agree that there is a lot to be said for making a fixed day on which you have your holidays, and a Select Committee of this House would probably be a very good body to take evidence as to the most suitable day for doing it. You can take the middle of April as your pivotal point, and take a date early in June—the King's birthday, or Derby day, or some other day. The late Lord Avebury gave his name to the August Bank Holiday, which is called "Lubbock's Day" in the Press. I am quite sure the hon. and Gallant Member for Oxford City would be prepared to give his own name to a suitable day if necessary, but let the fixed period be arrived at by general consent with regard to holidays, and let this House not give a lead which this Bill pretends to do but does not do, to stabilise a religious festival. Let us not lay ourselves open to the idea that we are by this stabilisation scheme making some arrangement by which people are going to be guaranteed good weather for the holiday. It would be fantastic to put forward a scheme of this kind, and I do ask hon. Members to withdraw the Bill and allow the question of holidays to be discussed by a Select Committee or any other body fitted to deal with it.

I am somewhat surprised at some of the remarks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank), especially as he is a colleague of mine in the representation of the great County of Lincoln. He says that this is a. very trivial matter and that there has been no great demand for it. I can assure him that those people who represent one of the staple industries of the country—the fishing industry—whether those who represent the growing of potatoes feel the same I do not know—have expressed themselves from time to time on this matter, while the great body of retail traders represented by the National Chamber of Trade have expressed themselves in favour of this Measure.

Has the hon. Member ever been asked a question about it during a General Election by anybody?

I admit quite frankly that I have not; much more important questions, I agree, are usually the topics for questions at General Elections. I would remind my hon. and gallant Friend that a few weeks ago he attended a meeting of the Chamber of Trade, and, if he will ask them, he will find that they are in favour of the stabilisation of Easter. Representing the largest fishing port in the world, I want to point out the effect that this would have upon that great industry. When all is said and done, we have to regard these matters sometimes from the point of view of the various industries of the country. It would affect the fishing industry more than any other that I know, and, as it is the sixth largest industry in the country, the matter requires some close consideration. For many years, the biggest week for the sale of fish has been Holy Week. Indeed, if we could persuade the Government to pass a Measure so that we had a Good Friday every week in the year, we should have no need to come to the Government for any assistance to make our industry prosperous. If this Bill meant that the one day's festival and the ordinary holiday would not coincide, I should not support it, because if we divorce the two, it will affect the fishing industry considerably.

There was a Queen of England many years ago who enacted that fish should be eaten at least once a week instead of meat. That was done to make the fishing industry, which was languishing at that time, prosperous, and it had that effect. It has been a custom for many years for Good Friday to be regarded as a Fast Day of the Churches, and therefore fish is eaten instead of meat. From that it has grown to be the general custom throughout the country to have a fish meal on Good Friday, quite apart from whether the people believe in the religious aspect of it or not. If we divorce the Fast Day and the holiday it will immediately have a detrimental effect upon the fishing industry. I have made inquiries from the promoters of the Bill, and they assure me that their intention is that it should not come into force until such time as the Churches agree with the civil authorities; they have also promised that they are prepared to insert, during the passage of the Bill through Committee, provisions to make that absolutely certain. Having received that assurance, I can give support to the Measure.

Questions have been raised about weather conditions. The general population of the country regard Easter as the great spring holiday and festival, and the people concerned with the clothing trade, both ladies' and gentlemen's wear, have always regarded an Easter that comes late in the year the best from their point of view. The reason for this is that the further you get into the spring, the better weather you are likely to have. I can remember several Easters that have come early in the spring, when we have had snow, and people have not been able to spend Easter out of doors; it is, of course, the great outdoor festival of the year.

I want to ask the House to consider the position from the point of view of the worker. He does indeed want a holiday, and looks upon this holiday in the early Spring as the real first holiday of the year. It has been stated that there are many people who are working on that particular day; mention has been made of decorators and painters. The later it comes in the Spring, the least likelihood there is for men to have to work on Good Friday, because then spring cleaning is coming to an end. At present, in many parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire, Good Friday is not observed at all as a holiday. If we get a stabilised date, as far as stabilisation is possible, we shall find that it will be much better for all concerned. As far as holiday resorts are concerned, and I represent a very important holiday resort on the East Coast—Cleethorpes. [ Laughter ] Yes, it is undoubtedly, and we do boast that it is one of the best holiday resorts.

What about Mablethorpe?

Those who represent holiday resorts are anxious that this Bill should be passed, for it will make it much better for all concerned. In the winter-time, everything has to be closed down, and it is well that they should have their first spring holiday as- late in the spring as possible. If they had an early date, and the weather were cold, there would not be the number of people visiting the resorts, and it would possibly mean that the resorts would be involved in a great deal of expense in opening up places, and there would not be the people to take advantage of them. The later Easter comes in the spring-time, the better it is for people visiting holiday resorts, and they are in favour of this Bill. Having had the assurance from the promoters that they are prepared to deal with the question of agreement between the Ecclesiastical and civil authorities, I am prepared to support it.

I should like to add my appreciation of the attitude of the great Christian Churches on this matter. They are prepared to look at the matter from the point of view of the benefit of mankind, and that allows us to approach the matter from the point of view of trade, holidays and other matters. I look at it from the point of view of the holiday-maker. Easter is the time when dwellers of the great cities seek a little fresh air and relaxation after the winter, but I cannot altogether agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley) about holiday resorts. I am prepared to admit that the seaside resort which he has mentioned is an interesting one, but there is a more important one a little farther south.

It is an advertising competition this morning.

Someone has mentioned Skegness, and I am glad that hon. Members agree that it is one of the most salubrious places in which a holiday can be taken. That brings me to the important question of the date. The date indicated in this Bill is the second week in April. From the point of view of the large bodies of men in workshop, factory, and office, that date is rather early. The hon. and gallant Member for North East Leeds (Major Birchall) indicated that if that date were not found suitable, it might be altered to a later one. But I do not see in this Bill that it is possible, because if we pass this Bill with the date given as the one indicated, namely, the 9th to 15th April, then we have given ourselves away when it comes to be fixed by Order-in-Council. There will be no possibility then of change. The date will be agreed upon and the date will be fixed. Therefore, I think that, from the point of view of getting a date suitable to the people in this country, the Bill as it stands is not altogether what is really desirable. Also, we should be putting ourselves in a very weak position at Geneva, because we should have already agreed upon a date which is rather an early one.

There must necessarily be a certain amount of divergence of interest in the fixing of the date. In the countries farther south on the Continent of Europe, that early part of April is often very warm and balmy, but in this more northern climate that early date in April is often associated with a very considerable downfall of rain or snow. Statistics support that view. Once the date is fixed, once there is international agreement, it will be practically impossible to alter it. We should be in the position of having to go on, not for 16 centuries, but for an illimitable number of centuries without any possibility of changing it. From the point of view of making a bargain, I think it would be inadvisable for us to pass the Bill in its present form.

Several hon. Members have pointed out the advantage to education of a fixed Easter. I am a little doubtful about that. So far as the scholastic world is concerned, I do not know that an Easter at school is worse from a religious point of view or from any other point of view than an Easter at home. Indeed, I think it not impossible that attendance at religious services may even be a little more regular at school than at home. I would also like to express my agreement with those hon. Members who have questioned as to whether it is really in the interests of religion that a festival such as Good Friday should be a public holiday. Mention has been made of those who work on Good Friday. Of course, the vast majority of those engaged in agriculture do work on 'Good Friday. In Continental countries Good Friday is not a holiday. In many Roman Catholic countries Good Friday is a working day, and I do not think that the people who work on Good Friday should be considered as being in the least less religious or less mindful of its observance and meaning than those who make a holiday of it.

1.0 p.m.

Finally, I would like to point out that very little has been said with regard to the attitude of the United States on this matter. We have heard that Churches in the United States are in favour of it. I do not know that we have heard very much about the United States itself, or about the business community of the United States, or what view the legislative bodies in the United States, and more particularly the Senate, are taking. I think those legislative bodies in the United States should be regarded with very considerable respect. I believe their Senate has on very many occasions taken very independent views. I do not suppose that the Senate of the United States would feel in any way inconvenienced, or that it was outside their duty, if they held up the whole world on this matter, supposing they so desired. However that may be, in view of the difficulty about the date—it being proposed that Easter shall fall on such an early date—I feel very doubtful whether this House ought to give a Second Reading to this Measure and whether by doing so it might not be setting back the cause of a better holiday on a fixed date.

I do not want to detain the House for more than a few minutes, but I think this is a Bill, which has behind it a great deal of reasonable argument, has been very infelicitously presented to the House. It does not really deserve to receive a Second Reading until it has been presented in a form which more really and adequately expresses the intention of those who brought it in. To begin with, the name of it, the short title, is the worst possible type of English. There never was a more infelicitous word than the word "stabilisation". Easter is not an aeroplane that needs to be stabilised. With that very vicious type of diction which people who do not write in the newspapers call journalese, a word with a very indefinite meaning has been chosen instead of a simple word with a definite meaning. The natural and reasonable thing would have been to speak of the "fixing" of Easter, because the Bill supposes that Easter shall be fixed. It is not to go to and fro, but it is to be fixed. It does not require to be stabilised. I also think that a wrong word is used when it is said that the Bill is to "regulate the date of Easter Day". The Bill is not to regulate the date; it is to fix the date. "Regulate" sounds as though you have made a new rule by which the date still moves and as if it were to go on a different footing. But you are going to fix it definitely. You are going to fix it as a calendar date, and it is to be no longer on the moon.

Nothing has been said about Whitsuntide in the Bill, but there is a provision in Clause 2 which might have all sorts of unexpected results. Clause 2 states that a reference in any document to Easter-day shall be deemed— still remain the religious festival of Whitsuntide, and be dependent on the Easter new moon. A very ingenious suggestion was made, I think by the hon. Member for Rusholme (Mr. Merriman), that the weather was really dependent on the moon, and, if you could always connect your Easter festival with the new moon, you would be more likely to have fine weather than if you did not so connect it. I wonder what the Meteorological Department would say about that. One cannot help feeling that the stabilisers of Easter are like the people in the fairy story, who have a series of difficulties to overcome, each one more tremendous than the last. First, they have to bring into-agreement all the foreign nations of the world. That is difficult enough. Then they have to bring into agreement all the religious people of the world, and that is notoriously much more difficult. Last of all, they have to anticipate what the probable weather will be when they are fixing their date, and the weather is even more uncertain than the temperaments and beliefs of religious people. Accordingly, great obstacles stand in the way.

It is even doubted by some people whether it is or is not desirable to have the concurrence of a holiday and a holy day, a day of secular amusement and a day of religious observance. We have examples of both. Christmas Day is conspicuously a day on which religious observance and popular amusement go together. Ascension Day, on the other hand, a festival scarcely less important from the religious point of view, is entirely without any secular recognition, for all practical purposes, and is therefore only observed religiously, if observed at all. If we departed altogether from the present practice of making Easter and Whitsuntide the centre of holidays, I am afraid it is probable that they would, like Ascension Day, pass unobserved, or unobserved by a large number of people, which perhaps would be a matter of regret, should have thought the great majority of the House would agree that we ought if possible to avoid causing any great secular inconvenience, great inconvenience to trade and commerce, or to-schoolmasters taking their holidays. However, I am always sorry to give up any opportunity of giving discipline to schoolmasters. They are so much inclined, by the habit of inflicting discipline on other people, to be extremely self-willed and undisciplined themselves, and I am always glad when they are compelled to submit to a regulation which they find inconvenient. It is a very curious thing that people who are in charge of discipline for other people almost always are undisciplined themselves. No one is so thoroughly undisciplined, for example, as a colonel in the Army. Apart, however, from that object of making schoolmasters do what they rather dislike doing, I quite agree that it would be desirable to make the Easter and Whitsuntide holidays more convenient than they are at present.

What we want is some inquiry to find out what people really do want, and whether, if we are to fix Easter, the second Sunday in April is really the most convenient day. I know there are very ingenious and interesting attempts to show that the second Sunday in April most nearly corresponds with what was the actual date of Christ's Resurrection, but those calculations depend on some very, very doubful investigations, to which we should really attach no importance, and I think it will be much more sensible, if we fix it at all, to fix it at the latest possible date, because probably that would be most acceptable to those who wish for a holiday. First of all we want an authority who can inquire and then an authority who can negotiate. They should inquire, first, whether it really is the general wish, because I observe in connection with such changes as this that the people who want the change are the active minded and vocal ones, and say a great deal, and the people who do not want the change think it is never going to happen and say nothing about it until it is almost enacted, when they make a great disturbance and ingeminate a great deal of opposition.

We ought to have a body to find out what people want, and then to negotiate with foreign countries and, simultaneously, with the religious bodies of the world. That will be a very great undertaking. I can imagine the authority, whoever it was, writing to the Pope, and the Patriarchs of the Eastern Church, and the heads of the Methodist bodies both in this country and in America—where they are numerous enough, the heads of the German religious bodies, the head of the Scandinavian Churches, and the heads of all the various religious bodies in America—some of them very numerous in membership and some of them less numerous—to ascertain what was the general wish of all the religious bodies of the world as to the date upon which Easter ought to be fixed. Then, when all that has been done, we should have to get the consent of this House to ratify the agreement which had been come to. This Bill provides for nothing of that—[ Interruption ]—all we have heard is that some of the Churches say that if all the other Churches agree, and no inconvenience is caused, they might, perhaps, consent, but we want a definite agreement. In the case of the Church of England alone any alteration would require them to modify considerably some of their liturgical practices, because there are certain lessons assigned to particular Sundays which would have to be altered—at least, the alteration would have to be considered—to the fact of Christmas Day being fixed according to the calendar and Easter Day according to the moon, gives rise to what are called the "wandering Sundays," which sometimes appear as Sundays after Epiphany and sometimes at the end of the calendar after Trinity. All that would have to be considered, and I think that could only be done if we sent the Bill to a Select Committee.

At present it seems to me we ought to reject this Bill and bring in a better Bill framed in a proper manner. I see the Home Secretary has returned to his place. I do not know whether he will indicate what he thinks about the matter. Personally, I would like to see him, as a Secretary of State, undertake the organisation of this inquiry from foreign nations and foreign religious bodies as well as from the trade and industry and scholastic authorities of this country, so that the case could be presented to Parliament with the necessary knowledge and agreement. As to whether that should be done before or after we pass the Bill I have not a very strong opinion, but I should think it would be better before we pass the Bill; at any rate it ought to be before Parliament gives a final and decisive consent. It should not be left to the Council of the League of Nations to carry out a change of this kind. After the inquiry and the negotiations there ought to be an opportunity, either by the presentation of a Bill or by an address to the Crown, for Parliament to decide whether the change should take place. Therefore, I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to give some guidance to the House as to what is his own judgment, and to tell us, particularly, whether, speaking with the responsibility of a Secretary of State, he feels that he or any other Department of the Government could undertake such an organisation of the matter and such negotiations as would really put the whole question of the fixing of Easter upon a basis upon which rational and concurrent action can be taken by both the nations and the Churches and the world.

The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) has appealed to me to state the views of the Government on the matter and what I can do to meet the wishes which he has expressed. I am just as much concerned as he is that there should be no divorce between the ecclesiastical Easter and the secular Easter, and I think the supporters of the Bill also take that view. As far as I can gather, there is no idea in any part of the House that we ought to have a new secular festival which is in any sense hostile to the old ecclesiastical festival. I, for one, would have no part or lot whatever in attempting to "fix"—I use my Noble Friend's expression—the date of Easter if it were not absolutely certain that it would be entirely approved by the ecclesiastical authorities in this country and in the other countries concerned, and, indeed, unless the change were made with the full assent of the ecclesiastical authorities.

In this matter, the desire for change undoubtedly comes from the secular world. I cannot see that there is any further need for investigation as to whether the change is desirable from a secular point of view or even from a commercial or scholastic point of view. I quite agree with what the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University said about the schoolmaster, but I do not think that we can decide this question merely from the point of view of disciplining a few unfortunate schoolmasters. I think it is entirely the view of the business world and their employés that Easter should be stabilised in order that everybody should know from year to year when Easter is likely to be, and all the inquiries which have been suggested would really delay that for which the business and the commercial world have asked.

The League of Nations has dealt with the matter fully. The International Chamber of Commerce, an important body in Europe, has definitely consented to this change, and has passed resolutions as long ago as 1923 strongly supporting the view of the London Chambers of Commerce that it is desirable that Easter should be definitely fixed. There was a further congress in Brussels, in 1925, which endorsed the same view and passed a resolution in favour of some arrangement being arrived at to stabilise Easter. The League of Nations has made inquiries, and they give a great deal of information in the report issued by the League of Nations Committee on the Reform of the Calendar, which also dealt with this question of stabilising Easter. In that Report, they say that all the railway authorities in England, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland have already decided in favour of this change. It is very important that we should have a united opinion to guide us, and all the railway authorities are practically agreed in regard to the need for this change.

The railway companies play a very important part in regard to this question. Hon. Members know very well that, in regard to the question of Summer Time, we could not get that Measure passed until it had received the approval of the railway companies, and of all those countries that impinge on Great Britain. The railway companies of Europe are in favour of fixing Easter. In Great Britain, the commercial interests are unanimous about it. The Association of British Chambers of Commerce, in 1920, called upon the Imperial Government to take such steps as may be necessary, in conjunction with the Dominions and foreign Governments, to bring about the adoption of a fixed date for Easter. The Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire met in 1920 at a conference at which our Dominions and Colonies were represented. There were present repre- sentatives from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, and that conference passed a similar resolution to the one I have alluded to urging the Government to fix a date for Easter.

In February last further memorials were received at the Home Office from the Committee of the International Chambers of Commerce urging the Government to take the same course, and their views were supported by the British Chambers of Commerce, the National Association of Building Societies, the Federation of British Industries, the British Bankers' Association, the Chamber of Shipping, the Corporation of Lloyd's, and a large number of, other commercial bodies. Therefore, I do not think it is necessary for the Government to make any further inquiries from that point of view, because we have already got a complete consensus of opinion which for some time has been drifting into the Home Office, and all this opinion is steadily pressing upon the Government Department charged with responsibility in this matter to get something done. In March last, the Drapers' Chamber of Trade passed a resolution pressing upon the Government to make this change. I cannot see any better way of finding out the opinion of the commercial community than that of seeking the opinion of these great representative associations, who all appear to be unanimous in regard to this proposal. That being so, the Government have to consider what other difficulties stand in the way.

I agree with the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) that we have to consider the views of the Church in this matter. I do not think it is necessary to go back as far as the Council of Nicæa which has been mentioned by the hon. and learned Member, Who always excels in his recondite researches into ecclesiastical history. I do not agree that the Council of Nicæa or the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds should be supreme as compared with the views of the commercial communities of this country. I quite agree that, while I am not bound to pay such respect to Dionysius, I am bound to consider the views of the ecclesiastical authorities of the world. Of course, I am quite sure that my Noble Friend the Member for Oxford University and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South-East Leeds would be ready to accept the view of the Archbishop of Canterbury in regard to the Church which they both serve and love so well. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been in communication with me this week in regard to this matter, and in order that I might know his views he has referred me to two speeches which he made a few years ago in another place upon this-question in which he says:

I do not think that the Council of Nicæa said it was fixed dogmatically.

But the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds always speaks dogmatically.

The right hon. Gentleman is confusing what is a question of dogma with what is a question of expediency. This is not a question of dogma.

I am satisfied that the hon. and learned Gentleman has now been driven out of his first trench, into his reserve trench of what is expedient. After all, while he takes a high standard of ecclesiastical views, I do not pay so much regard to his views on the question of expediency; if he had taken his stand upon dogma, my respect for his views would have been much greater. The Archbishop said that the matter must be accepted by the other great nations, and with that I cordially agree, but I should like to refer to the speech made by His Grace on the 23rd July, 1920, in which he laid down certain conditions—and I may explain that those were not merely the Archbishop's own views, but the views of the Bishops of the Church of England. He said:

"I may say at once, so far as the ecclesiastics with whom I have been in conference are concerned, that there is no objection at all on their part to the change suggested, provided certain conditions are fulfilled."

The first of those conditions was this:

"We all feel strongly that the holidays should not be divorced from the period of ecclesiastical celebrations."

I cordially agree with that, as I am sure all those Members of the House who are supporting this proposal do. The Archbishop went on:

"In the next place, we think it necessary that the Anglican Church throughout the world, in England, America, and the Colonies and Dominions of the King, should not be divorced from the other ecclesiastics of Western Christendom—at any rate, that is to say, we should expect concurrence on the part of the Roman Catholic authorities in any settlement that may be made."

I quite agree that it would be necessary for someone—I have not yet decided as to who it should be—if the House passes this Bill, to communicate in proper phraseology with the governing body of the See of Rome. The third condition laid down by the Archbishop was this:

"It is essential, or very desirable, that Easter should be fixed on a Sunday "—

that goes without saying, and that is the proposal of this Bill—

"and that it should fall within the range of the 35 days during which Easter at present falls."

Those are the three conditions which were laid down by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the House of Lords in 1920, and all of those conditions, I am sure, my hon. Friends will gladly accept. His Grace went on to say:—

"Given these conditions, so far as the Anglican Church is concerned, I have every reason to believe that it would be entirely acceptable to us that Easter Sunday should be a fixed Sunday and not a variable one."

Then he made a further speech in the following year, namely, 1921, in which he went even a little further. Speaking in reply to Lord Desborough, who was speaking on behalf of the Home Office, the Archbishop said:

"I am as keen as he is to bring about the change which he desires to see effected."

The hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds, who is in close touch with ecclesiastical opinion, did not tell us that. The Archbishop is really as keen as Lord Deshorough was to bring about the proposed change, and he went on:

"And I believe that the establishment of a fixed Easter would be a gain in the civil life and in the ecclesiastical and educational life.… of the community as a whole."

Can you go further than that? I am merely, as the responsible Minister, examining this Bill and pointing out to the House that from a secular point of view opinion is unanimous in its favour, and now I find that the greatest ecclesiastical authority in this country is not only prepared to accept the Bill on certain conditions, but that, in a formal speech in another place, he says he is as keen that Easter should be fixed as the Noble Lord who spoke on the matter. He also said that he had been in communication with a Conference of Bishops from all over the Anglican Communion, sitting at Lambeth, and that he had discussed the matter with his co-bishops at that Conference; and he said:

"I have had some communications. They were all favourable. Not one single Bishop wrote to me that there were objections to the matter, although many said that it would require very careful consideration as regards technical details of variations of the Prayer Book."

I suppose that that is the point to which my Noble Friend was referring—that if this change took place there would be fewer wanderings of the lessons than there are now.

I did not say that that is so, but some of the lessons are so framed that they are appropriate to the end of the Calendar, and, if they were put on the Sundays after Epiphany, it would cause wandering, and it might be necessary to shift those lessons to other places.

I think there will be small necessities of that kind which will require consideration, but I am quite sure, having stated to the House the view of the Archbishop as to the desirability of the change if it can be made, that it will be possible to make those alterations without very much difficulty. What, then, is the view of the Government on the matter? The Government desire to leave it entirely to the decision of the House. It is not in any sense a party question. It is not a question that concerns the Government, but it is one on which the House of Commons, as the main secular body in the country, is peculiarly adapted to express an opinion. If the House passes this Bill—and I may say at once that that is a course which the Government think it would be right to take—then I think the Government will regard it as in effect an intimation to them to proceed with the various inquiries. My Noble Friend suggested that the inquiries should take place first, but, with great respect, I think it would be better, if it be the view of the House that the change should take place, that the Government should be fortified by a Bill of this kind, because then they could go definitely to the other countries of Europe and put the matter before them on the authority of His Grace of Canterbury, the other ecclesiastical authorities, and of Parliament—because the Bill, of course, would have to be passed, also, by the other House, in which the Bishops are fully represented. It would be no use asking the -different countries of the world what their views were unless we could say that we were prepared to do this if they were agreed.

We should then summon a conference of the nations concerned. Whether it would be necessary—I hardly think it would—to invite countries like Cuba and Guatemala to take part in it, I am not sure, but to call a conference of the main great commercial nations of the world would, I think, be the best procedure in the first instance. At the same time, of course, the decision of Parliament would be communicated to His Grace of Canterbury, and the Government would be guided by him as to the way in which it would be desirable to approach and deal with the other religious bodies. There would be no difficulty in approaching the heads of the Nonconformist Churches, because I understand that they are fully prepared to accept this alteration. The Archbishop of Canterbury would then be consulted as to the best method of dealing with the ecclesiastical side of the matter. Frankly, I am in favour of the change, because I think it would be a great advantage to the life of the country if Easter were more nearly fixed than it is at present, but I have no intention whatever of rushing the matter through by an Order in Council. The hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds seemed to feel that, if the House were to pass this Bill, they would put it in the power of some irresponsible Secretary of State—I suppose he had in contemplation a change of Government, because I am sure he would not include myself in that category—to rush through an Order-in-Council without any communication with the ecclesiastical authorities, and get Easter established, so creating a very serious divergence of opinion in the secular and in the ecclesiastical world. Nothing could be further from my thoughts, and I am quite prepared to ask my hon. Friends—in fact, I have asked them, and I am authorised by them to say that they would be perfectly willing, as I should, to insert a Clause in the Bill providing that the Order in Council shall not be made until after a Resolution has been passed by this House. That, I think, would give everyone a complete assurance. Then the Government would be given the formal right to go to the ecclesiastical authorities, backed up by the decision of Parliament. I cannot, however, go to them unless Parliament makes the decision first.

This method safeguards the control of Parliament over the matter after the negotiations have taken place, and, of course, I must point out to the House that those negotiations will take some considerable time. One cannot collect a conference from all over Europe and from other parts of the civilised world, and get the views of the various religious bodies, in 10 minutes. I believe Parliament really desires the Bill to be carried through, and I think that is the opinion of the nation. I am not without hope that, with conciliation on all hands, we may find no real difficulty, and I shall be only too glad to do my utmost to meet any difficulties that may be raised by the ecclesiastical authorities. Under these circumstances, I think possibly my Noble Friend will feel that the course I have suggested will meet his views. In that case, I shall, personally, vote for the Bill, but I do not want to press my views or the views of the Government. It is entirely left to the opinion of the House of Commons, and, if the House of Commons passes the Bill, I shall regard it as a direction on their part to get to work with the negotiations, and I shall do it with the feeling that I have the House of Commons behind me.

After what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I would ask leave of the House to withdraw my Amendment. I think the insertion of a provision that nothing can be done with- out the subsequent approval of Parliament makes a great deal of difference. Personally, I still dislike these unnecessary changes; nevertheless, in the circumstances, I think the feeling of the House would be that I should withdraw my Amendment.

rose

The Amendment cannot be withdrawn if the hon. Member continues the Debate.

I only wish to ask a question. I want to ask if I understand the Home Secretary aright when he says that an Act passed by this House cannot become effective without the consent of the Archbishop of Canterbury?

I am sure when the hon. Member looks at the OFFICIAL REPORT he will see that I did not say anything of the kind. I said that in this matter, which affects so largely the ecclesiastical and religious views of the country, it would be my duty to communicate not only with the Archbishop of Canterbury but with all the Nonconformist Churches throughout the land and see what their views are, and then, if I am able to get their concurrence, report to the House, and the House would itself maintain and retain under the proposal I make the full authority of Parliament over the future by the provision I propose to put in before the Act becomes effective.

If the Amendment be withdrawn, the Debate can continue on the Main Question. Is it your pleasure that the Amendment be withdrawn?

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question again proposed.

I am sorry that the Leader of the Conservative opposition on the Labour Benches proposes to run away. I should like to congratulate the Home Secretary and the Government on having a party so satisfied with the legislation already passed that a Member who is lucky enough to win a place in the Ballot has chosen to bring in this unembarrassing Bill. No wonder the Home Secretary gives it his blessing in full measure. I am sure the House noticed with interest that the Home Secretary who opposes the Bishops on other matters is ready to follow the Episcopal Bench on the matter of the calendar. But I think supporters of the Bill have not faced the question of the weather. It is all very well for the supporters of the Bill to laugh, but this is a very vital point indeed. I should like to ask the House to look through the records of the weather for about the last 100 years and they will find that it is nearly always very cold and very wet between 7th and 15th April.

In what part of the country?

I would ask Members from North of the Tweed if they are going to vote for a Bill like this which may mean that we are going to get Easter at about the worst week during the year. Workpeople do not get a lot of holidays, and it is very important to see that when they get a holiday it should be at a time of year when there is a chance of decent weather. It is a very curious thing that no one can quite explain that the days between 7th and 15th April are on the whole bad weather. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) pointed out that at a conference many years ago the arrangement for fixing Easter was passed, and the right hon. Gentleman said he preferred a live Archbishop to a dead Council. but it is very curious at the same time that very often many hundred of years ago these conferences hit on some scheme that works, and I suggest that the fixing of Easter was more scientific in regard to the weather than what would be fixed by the hon. and gallant Member for Oxford (Captain Bourne) or the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Withers).

I hope those Scottish members who have not travelled North will stay to oppose the Bill. If you take the weather records during the last 60 years, you will find that the date at which Easter is Proposed to be established is a date on which it is nearly always bad weather. Easter is fixed in accordance with the full moon, and, on the whole, during a long period it has been on the average fairly good weather. It is our duty to try to protect working people from stabilising Easter at a date which is the worst period in regard to weather in the whole of our calendar. I quite agree that it is impossible for the introducers of the Bill to choose a period when we are likely to have very fine weather. I have been through the records, and I find the only certain period of decent weather is on the second Sunday in July, which I admit is a little late for Easter, but hon. Members bringing in the Bill have chosen a period which is almost certain, judging by past records, to be bad weather. I appeal to hon. Members who have not gone to Scotland to rise up in their places and oppose a Bill which is going to impose on the nation a fixed period which, judging by the laws of average weather, mean that we shall have to spend our Easter holidays in a downpour of rain.

It is certainly news to me, and I think it will be news to many hon. Members, as well as persons outside the House, that our climate is so certain as the last speaker says. I had always thought the glory of the English climate was that it was uncertain, and therefore always afforded an opportunity for compensation, but apparently he has discovered that this date at which Easter is to be fixed or stabilised, whichever word may be used, is always a period of inclement weather. If he can make that point good, the Committee stage will foe an appropriate time for an Amendment suggesting that it should be fixed on some Sunday which, as an examination of the record of the past 100 years will show, is invariably fine. I am not quite competent to discuss this question of the weather any further because it is entirely a new view to me that its certainty was predicated. That certainty can be predicated with regard to the weather seems to me an excellent reason for stabilising Easter, but let us stabilise it on a fine day. Do not leave it to the uncertainty which at present prevails. Nobody can suggest that our present system brings us fine Easters invariably.

I am sorry that the chief opponents of the proposal have had to retire for necessary refreshment at this hour of the day, because there was one observation that was made by my Noble Friend, the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) which struck me as particularly pertinent and one deserving of very great consideration. My Noble Friend said that in a matter of this sort, and, indeed, in many matters, it often happened that you had a body of enthusiasts who were anxious to put forward some scheme or proposal of their own, and they professed that it would do a great deal of good and had a great deal of support, whereas in truth the proposal which they put forward was one which was regarded either with active dislike or at any rate with silent disapproval by the great mass of the people. Instances will probably occur in the minds of hon. Members where that has occurred, where persons who were anxious for some change, some revision or some alteration, put forward their proposal which really was opposed by a great mass of people, though they were silent and did not express their views. It certainly would be unfortunate if this House, representing as it does the opinion of the people of the country, were to pass a Bill of this character which obviously will affect the lives and habits of our people and if when it had been passed it was found to be profoundly unpopular and that it did not work satisfactorily.

There have been occasions such as that. My own mind goes back to the question of proportional representation, the advocates of which were always certain that it would relieve us of many of the political difficulties of this country. They advocated it with great warmth, and they even got so far in persuading this House to try it, not, indeed, on the people of this country, but on people in a neighbouring island, and, I think, on Dominions overseas. This is a scheme which wherever it has been tried has always proved to be a failure. Therefore, I quite agree with the warning that the Noble Lord gives to us that we ought not to pass this Bill unless we are reasonably assured that it is popular and will be acceptable to the people. The warning he gave is a warning to which we ought to pay the most careful attention. I venture to think that this is a Measure which really has the support of the ordinary common people of this country.

How do you know?

I am obliged to the hon. Member for his interruption, for I will now proceed to explain how it is that I know that this is a proposal which does meet with popular support. I can only say that, in going about and using such powers of observation as one has and of conversing with people in all sorts and conditions of life, one finds that they constantly revile the existing system under which Easter changes with the changing moon and they constantly endorse the proposal that Easter should be stabilised.

Is the hon. and learned Gentleman referring now to the persons that he meets in his daily working life outside this House or is he referring to his constituents in Londonderry? Is he talking about English people or about his own constituents in Londonderry?

I was speaking, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, not only of the people of Londonderry but also of the people of London, and even of the people of the Clyde.

Has the hon. and learned Gentleman ever received any resolutions in favour of this Bill, and, if so, how many? I have received one and that arrived 20 minutes ago. That is all I have received.

I have received three, and they arrived a week ago. Those are all with which I can charge my memory at the present time, but I think that probably last year I received others. I have spoken to so many people on the subject that if there was any widespread opposition to the proposal I should have been sure to have met with it. However, I do not press the point.

As the hon. and learned Gentleman is a shining light among the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, can he say if they have ever passed resolutions either for or against this Bill?

I do not think that my own ecclesiastical views are of any importance in this Debate. I am not in fact a Member of the Presbyterian Church but a Member of the Church of Ireland, which is episcopalian. I rather deprecate these interruptions. I only want to put the point that, as far as it is possible for any individual to gather a general opinion of ordinary people throughout the country, there is a widespread consensus of opinion in favour of this Bill in the country. The nearest parallel to this Bill is the case of daylight saving. There, we had a proposal which certainly met with a great deal of acceptance throughout the country but owing, if I may use the word, to the unreasoning Toryism of persons like the hon. Member for Leeds South-East (Sir H. Slesser) it was extremely difficult to carry that proposal forward. In spite of the opposition to that proposal, nobody to-day will deny that daylight saving has conferred an immense boon upon the people of this country. The view which I take is that when this Bill has been passed and when the consent of all the ecclesiastical authorities to which the Home Secretary referred has been obtained and, at last, the Order in Council is made and Easter fixed or stabilised, the community's thanks will be due to this House for having passed this Bill to-day.

We had from the hon. and gallant Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill a very interesting speech with regard to the calendar and various changes that had taken place, but I did think that to-day we should have had something more definite than has been given. In listening to the Debate, I find that there are two sections in this House, so far as this Bill is concerned, who claim to be just as devout as each other but who take very different views. We have those who are putting arguments in favour of the Bill not on the grounds of ecclesiasticism but as to whether a change will be good or bad from the point of view of holidays. I want to know whether the basis of this Bill is purely a question of getting the best kind of weather for the Easter holiday or whether it is an attempt to get some day that will be the best day for those interested from the ecclesiastical standpoint. I should not have thought that an intelligent place like the House of Commons would have discussed an ecclesiastical holiday, because you cannot alter the dates of certain events.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being present —

2.0 p.m.

Before the count was taken, I was seeking to get some defi- nition, which I have failed to get from the Debate, as to what is really at the bottom of this Bill. I know that in Scotland when we talk about the religious observance of the day we know what we mean. You cannot change that date unless all the people wish to do so, but to-day we are dealing in rather a loose way with this matter and we seem to presume that we can change certain dates which cannot be changed, in order to give people the right sort of weather for a holiday. If you mix the question of holiday enjoyment with the observance of a holy day it shows that you have lost logic from the point of those who study the matter from the ecclesiastical point of view. In Scotland, our early training in these matters enables us to look logically on a, question like this, and that is why some of us have been trying to find out what is the real position of English or Welsh Members. I have listened for it in the Debate, and I cannot find it. In these matters you have to depend upon Scotsmen, who depend upon their early training, to give a guiding line which English and Welsh can follow.

The Home Secretary says that nothing can be done without the consent of this House, even under an Order in Council, but it follows that if we pass this Bill and you leave the matter to be decided by Order in Council the Home Secretary will consult the heads of the Church and of the various churches, and by the time that the Order in Council comes back to this House it will be supposed to be in tangible form. We know the difficulties of trying to make changes of this character. I am concerned about the question of what is a holy day and a holiday, in regard to which two sections of this House both claiming to be civilised and Christian take opposite views. Some people seem to think that you are much more a holy man by observing a holy day as a holiday, while another section seems to think that if you observe a holy day as a holiday you are not holy. Are we quite sincere about this matter, if we are just keeping, as it were, a "weather" eye on the question of holidays? What I am surprised about in connection with the Bill is that, so far as correspondence is concerned, there have been only three Chambers of Commerce which have sent a letter to Members, and they have not, as they usually do, threatened the Member with a loss of his seat, but have kindly said that they would be very glad if the Member could see his way to support the Measure because they thought—if the Member wrote back and asked them why they thought they probably could not say. In the same way those who have spoken here to-day, apart from the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, have not given the House the information to which it is entitled. I, therefore, hope that before we read the Bill a Second time there will be some explanation of the point I have raised.

Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second Time," put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second Time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

This Bill was introduced last year and was discussed in Standing Committee but then suffered the process which is indicated in its name—it was painlessly slaughtered for lack of Parliamentary time. The present Bill differs in some respect from the Bill of last year. The alterations made, to a certain extent, have restricted its use, but they are the results of very careful consideration by the Scottish Standing Committee, and so far as I am aware almost all, if not all the objections raised to that Bill have been met by the Amendments which have been introduced in this Bill. The first-Clause deals with the operative part of the Bill. It lays down that in slaughter yards and as regards all animals except swine, animals shall be slaughtered only by men who are duly trained and licensed, and that they shall use a mechanical instrument instead of the ordinary pole-axe which has hitherto been used. The penalty imposed by the Clause for an infringement of its provisions is £10 for the first offence and £25 for subsequent offences, with the addition or substitution of three months' imprisonment.

The second Clause, which is not controversial, lays down the arrangements for licensing. Licences are granted by the local authorities and are valid only in the area of the local authority which grants them. They are to be obtainable at a fee of five shillings and renewable at a fee of one shilling, and any person who feels that he has unjustly been refused a licence can appeal to the Sheriff, whose decision is final. Clause 3 grants power of inspection to constables or persons duly authorised in writing by the local authorities to visit and inspect slaughter houses and see that the provisions of the Bill are being carried out. Clauses 4 and 5 are relatively unimportant. Clause 6 is important. It deals with special arrangements which have been made for those of the Jewish religion. The Jewish religion is exempted from the general operations of the Bill, and there is inserted in the Bill a Clause which is based on a model by-law prepared by the English authorities in conjunction with the chief authorities of the Jewish religion in this country. It is a great pity that it is necessary to make this exception in the Bill, but during the discussion in Committee last year, and from all that Members of the House have been able to learn, there is no doubt that under the Jews religion there are reasonable and careful precautions taken against unnecessary cruelty in the slaughter of animals.

As to the general principles of the Bill, it is, of course, within the knowledge of Members, certainly of Scottish Members, that in Scotland the great majority of slaughter houses are already under the control of the local authorities. But there are still slaughter houses which are run apart from that control. It is also worthy of note that the two great cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow desire some such arrangements as are provided for in the Bill. As far as I know there is no local authority in Scotland opposed to the principle of the Bill. The Bill has received the unanimous support of the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, which is an important body and may be said to represent in some measure the general agricultural feeling of Scotland. As to the exemption of swine from the provisions for humane slaughter, it should be stated that an Amendment was made in Committee when the Bill was considered last year. It was, I think, quite arguable that in the slaughter of swine there was for more inhumanity than in the slaughter of any other animals, but at the same time, for reasons into which it is not necessary to go now, the Amendment was made in the Bill, and that Amendment is retained in the new Bill.

On the general principle of the avoidance of unnecessary cruelty to animals, the House, I know, is unanimous. Anyone who has studied the statistics available can have no reasonable doubt as to the necessity for the Bill. I will give only a few salient figures of importance. The Metropolitan authority of London observed the course of experiments in the slaughter of animals. The medical officer, in conjunction with the veterinary officer, reported that in the case of 400 animals—bulls, oxen, cows and pigs—slaughter with the pole-axe required 655 blows, or an average of roughly 1.6 per animal; but in a similar experiment with the mechanical humane slaughterer 190 animals required only 194 shots, or less than 1.02 per animal. In 1925 even more important figures were obtained. Comparative experiments were then made and 1,250 animals were killed by the two alternative methods. Those which were killed with the pole-axe required 2,750 blows, which is well over two per animal, and those killed with the humane weapon required only 1,254 shots. That is a very remarkable figure and disposes finally of any claim that the humane killer is an imperfect instrument or permits of any large measure of error in its operation. If in 1,250 animals dealt with there were only four cases in which a second shot was required, I think that shows—

What animals were used? Were the animals of the same kind in both cases?

I think the animals were the same. I understand the animals included bulls, oxen, sheep, lambs and calves.

Surely they did not use the pole-axe on sheep and calves.

I do not think I mentioned sheep. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] If I did, I am wrong. I have here the information which has been given on this subject, and I shall be glad to give the hon. Member the report on the experiment if he cares to see it. I do not think that the figure of 1,250 included sheep. I think that only applied to cattle and oxen, but in the smaller experiment concerning some 400 animals, sheep were included according to the information which I have. The broad fact remains that in the case of the pole-axe many extra blows were required—whatever the kind of animal—whereas in the case of the humane instrument an infinitesimal percentage of shots above one per animal was required. The Bill is desired by the whole of Scotland, and opposition to it has practicaly disappeared. There was a certain amount of opposition to the Bill when it was first introduced, but as far as my information goes, such opposition as remains—and there is always a certain amount of opposition to everything that one does—is negligible.

The correspondence which I have received since I was fortunate enough to secure a place in the Ballot has shown me that a great number of important organisations in Scotland are strongly in favour of the Bill. I ask the House also to remember that the Bill, as now presented, is the result of very careful consideration by the Scottish Committee last year. On that Committee there were, not only Scottish Members, but also Members representing interests in England. Many arguments against the Bill which were voiced during the discussions in Committee have been met in the Measure as it now stands, and I think this Bill may be said to have received the almost unanimous support of the Committee. I would make a special appeal to Scottish Members if any of them are still thinking of opposing the Bill. The Bill is entirely non-party, and I think we Scottish Members ought to feel a certain pride that a Measure of this nature should be introduced first in Scotland, as far as the British Isles are concerned. It is a Bill seeking to attain a purpose which must be dear to the hearts and minds of every one in this House and outside it, namely, to minimise cruelty to animals when they are being slaughtered for the necessary purposes of life.

I understand an objection which may be raided is that men at present employed in the slaughtering trade who for some reason are not able to take out licences or are not desirous of taking out licences, will be put out of work under the new conditions. I do not think that is a serious objection. The humane slaughterer is not a weapon which requires great skill, and its use can be learned by almost anybody in a short time. The charge for the licence is so small that financial difficulties need not prevent these men from taking up the work under the altered conditions. There is also an objection which I have heard referred to, namely, that a certain number of accidents to human life have occurred in the use of the humane killer. Because there may have been a number of accidents—and indeed in certain cases crimes have been committed with the humane killer—I do not think it fair to say that accidents or crimes will increase if the use of the instrument is made compulsory. In fact, I think the contrary might well be the result. It does not seem a sound argument that we should continue inhumane methods of slaughter, because in the use of humane killers a few accidents have occurred to the men operating them. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading on two main grounds. First, that the Bill was carefully considered last year by the Committee, and when it left the Committee almost all the opposition to it had disappeared; and secondly, on the big general ground that it is a Measure intended to achieve an object which everyone must desire; that opposition to it at the present stage should only be based on some very cogent and valid reason, and that such reason has not yet appeared either in the Committee proceedings or in representations in the Press.

I beg to second the Motion.

I feel a certain embarrassment because, although there was no collusion between my hon. and gallant Friend who moved this Motion and myself, in regard to the pleas which we would advance for this Measure, I find he has largely taken possession of those arguments with which I had hoped to convince any opponents we might find in the House. As he has explained, this Measure got a Second Reading last Session, and was sent to Committee. During its passage through Committee its various Clauses were carried by majorities averaging about 25, and, finally, it was reported to the House without a Division. The meticulous examination which was given to the Bill by the Scottish Grand Committee amply justified, in the minds of those present, the reporting of the Bill to the House. The Bill was originally brought in and is now brought in for two reasons—first to remove the stigma of inhumanity from Scotland and, secondly, to enable Scotland to give a lead—as is our custom—to England. The purposes of the Bill are to secure that animals shall be slaughtered without pain, and I cannot imagine that any one will deny that these are laudable and justifiable reasons. The Bill has been awaited both in this House and outside for many years, and I do not think there is a single Member in the House or a single citizen outside who will not welcome a decision to-day in favour of its Second Reading.

Hon. Members are aware that the slaughter of animals at present is carried out by two instruments—the pole-axe and the knife—and in the case of certain small animals, they are bludgeoned into a partial state of coma prior to the use of the knife. There is nothing which we as a nation can justify in the forms now adopted. There are people who believe that this country leads the world in humanity. That supposition is a lie as long as we permit the present barbarous methods to be used in the slaughter of animals. It has been suggested in Committee, and will no doubt be suggested again to-day by any remaining opponents of the Bill, that the Measure has not received full and proper consideration, but that is an argument most easily disposed of. It has been considered not alone by this country for the last year, but for the last 50 years throughout Europe the necessity for some such Measure has been considered, and in every case the general consensus of opinion has been that a Bill has been long overdue and that its passage into law is a matter that can brook no further delay.

When the City of London Corporation held a full investigation into this matter in 1925 it was an unbiased investigation devoted entirely to ascertaining the pros and cons in connection with the use of the humane killer as against the methods at present in force, and the result of that unbiased investigation was a recommendation that a by-law should be introduced by the City Corporation to enforce the use of the humane killer for all cattle, including calves, all horses, and all pigs whose flesh was not required for export—in other words, pigs for home consumption. That was an investigation the credibility of which cannot be denied, an investigation merely to ascertain the truth, and, in view of the decision arrived at, no one, not even those expert authorities who may be briefed to oppose the Bill, can stand up to such an investigation and say that this question does not demand the immediate consideration of this House. My hon. and gallant Friend referred to some of the figures which the committee of inquiry ascertained, and he pointed out that whereas it required something like 2,750 blows of a pole-axe to kill 1,250 animals, only four extra discharges of the humane killer were required for a practically similar number of animals.

The hon. and gallant Member for Dumfries (Brigadier-General Charteris) gave certain figures and stated that bullocks, calves, and sheep were killed by means of the pole-axe and a similar number by means of the humane killer. Will the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Lt.-Colonel Moore) give us the details of the numbers of the various kinds of animals that were killed? Because my experience, gathered from information, has been that they do not pole-axe sheep and that there could not be a comparable trial therefore.

There is, a considerable amount of ignorance existing—

I should say lack of knowledge.

I bow to that alternative, but perhaps I had better explain what actually happened in that investigation. A large number of animals, large and small, were selected by the committee, and though the large animals were pole-axed, the small animals suffered the usual method of partial stunning by bludgeon, because there is no actual means known of inducing complete unconsciousness, and then having the knife used on them. In the matter of using the humane killer, that was a definite experiment carried out with the killer, which I will describe in a few minutes, on a practically similar number of animals and inducing complete stunning, with the exception of four cases, where there were four extra discharges required.

I think, in view of the lack of knowledge on the part of many hon. Members of this House, I had better describe what actually happens when an animal is taken to be slaughtered with the pole-axe. The animal is brought in and, of course, is conscious of the smell of blood and hears the roars and sounds of agony from other animals, and then an expert comes forward with the pole-axe, which is a weapon shaped something like a pickaxe, but with a prong at the end. The animal is dragged forward, and, if the expert wielder of this pole-axe is sufficiently expert, he downs the animal with one blow, but, if he is not sufficiently expert, as I have seen myself very often, it might take four, five, or even nine or ten blows before the animal is killed. In other words, he scrambles to his feet time after time, perhaps blinded, is hit all over the head, and is finally knocked down, dying in agony. That takes place practically every day, and that is when an expert is using the weapon. But what of the learners and apprentices who have to gain their knowledge through this most barbarous cruelty? I do not think any hon. Member of this House, once he could go to a public slaughter-house and see the present conditions in force, would dare to rise in his place and oppose this Bill.

Then we come to the humane killer. Last Session I took along to the Committee room samples of humane killers, so that every Member would be fully acquainted with what he was debating and asked to vote for. The most successful humane killer is that which consists of a weapon rather like a pistol, having in the barrel a captive bolt, of a length varying according to the size of the animal to which it is to be applied. That bolt is discharged by a discharge in the pistol, and as soon as the discharge takes place, the bolt enters the brain of the animal and produces immediate unconsciousness. The point about this humane killer is that it cannot, by the nature of its construction, do any damage to any person wielding it. It has been suggested that there have been mistakes and misadventures in the use of the killer. I do not deny that at all. All modern developments, such as aero-planes and so on, have been attended with accidents until those using them have sufficient knowledge and skill in their use. But I say that these figures of the City of London Corporation show most definitely that the danger from the humane killer, both to the wielder and the animal, from the point of view of pain, is far less than the danger of agony and barbarous cruelty to the animal in the case of the pole-axe. If I were to use no other argument than that, I think I should have sufficiently established my case for this Bill

My opponents will no doubt endeavour to show that we, in Scotland, have not fully considered the matter, but I can easily disprove that. The Scottish Chamber of Agriculture was approached in 1925 to learn its views on behalf of farmers, and I have seen a letter from the Secretary of the Chamber pointing out that they were willing to give their whole-hearted support to the Bill. Furthermore, a deputation representing 2,000 farmers and butchers too approached the Secretary of State for Scotland two years ago with the request that he would introduce such a Bill himself and thus sponsor it for the Government. Unfortunately, there was no time available, and the Bill had to be left over for introduction by a private Member.

I referred at the beginning of my remarks to the fact that we were lagging behind, that we in this country were not in the van of progress, as we should be. Here is a proof in practice. In Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium there are by-laws enforcing the use of the humane killer. It is a sad commentary on the present position of this great country of ours as regards progress and humanity, that we should have to look to small countries like Belgium and Holland to give us a lead to such a milestone on the road to humanity. If it be said, as it has been said, that we in Scotland are not behind the Measure, I say that we have at present 150 burghs in Scotland which have voluntarily adopted this humane killer. Furthermore, as we know, the two great cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow have also got by-laws giving them powers to bring in this humane killer.

I can say hardly anything more to justify my attitude with regard to this Bill. We do not want to have one burgh using the humane killer voluntarily and another not using it. We want to remove this invidious distinction. We want to have this Bill put on the Statute Book so that all butchers and farmers will be in the same position, and working under the same conditions. As my hon. Friend pointed out, there are in the Bill three notable exceptions in which the Bill does not operate. The first is the farmers, the crofters, and those who are forced to kill for their own consumption. We do not apply the Measure to those people. We recognise that it would be quite unfair and impossible for a little crofter in the Highlands to be forced to provide himself with a humane killer or await the loan of one from a neighbouring farm. Furthermore, we have exempted those animals, whether horses or cattle, which, because of being maimed or diseased, require immediate slaughter so as to remove them from their pain. Such cases arise when a humane killer is not handy, and humanity must be first observed and an animal put out of its pain.

My hon. Friend has referred to the question of exempting swine from the scope of this Bill. I am not one of those who agree with that. If I had my way, swine would be put in the forefront of the animals to be included in the Bill; but the question has been raised as to whether slaughter by the humane killer does not actually affect the flesh of the swine, and, lest there should be any misunderstanding, my friends and I are willing that swine should be excluded until a more meticulous inquiry can be conducted to prove our case. If it be contended that the flesh gets spotted or splashed if a bullet be used, I would say that all our investigations disprove that statement. There are well-known Scottish butchers whom, no doubt, opposers of the Bill know personally, in Edinburgh and Glasgow, who have used a humane killer suited to pigs by the length of discharge and the bullet. They have used it for years past. There is one in Edinburgh, Baillie Brechin—[HON. MEMBERS: "Glasgow"]—in Edinburgh and Glasgow—who has used a humane killer for years past on every type of animal, and he is one of the most ardent advocates of this type of human killer. I hope at a future date it will be possible to include swine. I have the greatest sense of regret that swine are not included, but as we want to get the Bill through, and do the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of animals, we are prepared to suffer this misfortune.

Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell us where in this Bill it is stated that a crofter is exempt?

If the hon. Member will study the Bill, he will see that it only applies to animals in slaughter-houses and knackers' yards. Obviously, that exempts crofters. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] Obviously, if it applies only to animals slaughtered in abattoirs and knackers' yards, and the definition of abattoir is a place where animals are accustomed to be slaughtered, the backyard of a crofter's cottage is not such a place. I think the general feeling of the House will be in my favour on that point. It is only a quibbling point at best. There is only one more exemption in the Bill, and that is with regard to the Jews and the meat slaughtered for their use. For many years the Jews have had their own methods of slaughter. We may not approve of them; nevertheless, it is a fundamental part of their religion, and as such we must respect it. Moreover, if the argument be developed logically, there are over 2,000,000 animals slaughtered in Scotland a year, and for the Jews less than 1 per cent. Therefore, my argument as to the greatest good of the greatest number also holds good here. We have been assured—I certainly have personally—by representatives of Jewish opinion that every effort is made and every experiment is being conducted whereby slaughter for their consumption is carried on under the most humane and progressive methods. I have seen one or two of their newly-developed inventions, which certainly carry out their promise, and I think we can safely leave it there. I hope I have convinced those who are unbelievers, and that we shall pass this Bill without a Division, so that we may show the country and the world that we do not merely perform lip-service to humanity, but that we are genuine believers in making things easier for those who cannot make them easier for themselves, and let us once for all remove the stigma attaching to our people, and clear our national character from any charge of cruelty.

I want to disabuse the mind of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken and the Mover of the Bill of any idea that I am opposed to anything which will introduce a little less pain and suffering to dumb animals. I think that it is one trait of our race, at all events, that we desire, when doing things which need doing, to be as little cruel, shall we say, as possible; but I am also of opinion that there is a great deal of what one might term nonsense talked about the great cruelty practised in a trade by men who pride themselves upon their qualifications and workmanship. Right through the speech of the hon. and gallant Member who seconded this Bill there was a suggestion that the average slaughterman was cruel.

No, I never suggested that for a moment. I suggested that the average slaughterman had unfortunately to learn his profession, and during that time he obviously cannot help committing cruelty, whether he likes it or not.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman stated definitely that on many occasions—I do not know whether he is speaking from ocular demonstration—he had seen animals brought to their knees, five, six, seven and eight times.

By inexpert hands.

But there is the suggestion that the men who perpetrated these things are cruel. That is not so. After all, men have to do their work and they have to do it as well as they can. I want to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman who moved the Second Reading whether all opinion in Scotland was considered? Was the opinion of the men most concerned, who have to earn their livelihood, sought, because I am asked by the men who handle these cattle to oppose this Bill? I am asked for several reasons. One is that they consider it extremely unfair to compel them by law to use a weapon which is not safe. It has been definitely established that the captive bolt is not safe and that it has caused death. I am stating what is a fact and it can be proved.

Has the hon. Member any instances?

I am not going to give statistics. I give the general statement that it has caused accidents.

Will the hon. Gentleman accept the figure of three as the correct number of accidents?

The hon. and gallant Gentleman is confirming my statement that it has caused accidents. This, however, is the worst feature. The best way of getting a Bill through Parliament is to obviate opposition by negotiation before a Bill is introduced. The large number of men for whom I am speaking in Scotland are contractors, that is, they contract to kill and dress an animal for a certain price. As contractors they are outside the law of compensation, and here is a Bill which proposes that they shall be compelled to use an instrument which admittedly is dangerous.

indicated dissent.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman shakes his head, but he has proved my point by saying that there has been a number of accidents. If hon. Members will agree that using a pistol is not dangerous, and is not likely to cause accidents, I will give in.

There have been three accidents in 12 years.

Where the use of the instrument is very limited.

Not at all. There have been hundreds of thousands of animals slaughtered by the humane killer without any accident whatever.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman says that, although the use of the humane killer is very great, it is very limited.

If a man happens to be killed by a good method, would you propose that it should be abolished? People have died from anthrax; would the hon. Member abolish tooth brushes?

I might reply that people have died in bed before to-day. I am going to suggest to hon. Members again that, before they introduce a Bill of this kind, they ought to try to remove all opposition to it, and I am suggesting that they have not even tried.

I have taken the trouble personally to find out the views of those engaged in the industry, and I have not found one single man who handles the pole-axe who would not rather use the humane killer instead. They are the type of men—humane, decent, honest Scotsmen—who do not want to cause more suffering than they can help.

I will introduce the hon. and gallant Member to these men some time. It is proposed that these men shall use a system which may be dangerous to them.

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, but who is making the representation in Scotland? I served for many years on the Market Committee of the Glasgow Corporation. It is true that the men did not make representations in the original stage of the Glasgow Corporation Inquiry, but since the Corporation got their powers, have the men made any further representations?

Yes, there was a Scottish Slaughtermen's Society which has been incorporated in the Union of Distributive and Allied Workers. These men will be compelled by law to use a lethal weapon which has caused accidents, and which certainly may cause accidents, for the perfect captive bolt has not been found. If these men are injured or killed while performing their work with an instrument which Parliament says they must use, they will not be entitled to compensation. Hon. Members want to be fair to the animals; I want to be fair to the men. Would the supporters of the Bill suggest that men should be compelled to use a weapon which may injure them or even kill them, and yet deprive them of the right to compensation? That is hardly a fair proposition, and as one who has done various dangerous jobs in my life, I say that we have no right to ask a man to do a dangerous job unless we are prepared to accept the responsibility of giving him compensation if he is injured.

I could argue that point, but I do not want to make another speech.

I have no intention of voting against this Bill, but I do want to emphasise that the House has no right to compel a man to do something by law which is a danger to him and make no provision for the compensation of his dependants if he has an accident. Either these men must be paid compensation or they must not be compelled to use an instrument which may cause an accident. I would ask the promoters of the Bill to do what they can to bring the men under the Workmen's Compensation Act. Figures have been quoted showing that many thousands of cattle were killed by means of the pole-axe and so many by means of the captive bolt. The figures included bullocks, oxen, sheep, pigs and calves, but sheep or calves are never pole-axed, so that there cannot be any comparative trial unless the same weapon is used on the same animals. It is impossible to have a comparative trial. I think when figures are quoted that they ought not to be so loosely used, and they ought to be used with the idea of giving the House the most information. If you use the same method in each case, you may have a comparison; but how can it be a comparative trial if you do not use the same instrument in both cases?

Then Clause 1 exempts swine. Is it only a matter of degree as to how much cruelty shall be allowed? If it is cruel to use the pole-axe on cattle, it is cruel to use it on pigs. Clause 1 exempts swine and then—my understanding may be rather bad—Clause 5, Sub-section ( b ) appears to include swine. It defines animals and swine seem to come under its definition. The hon. Member said that in the City of London this instrument is used; but it is not used all over London. If he takes a walk through Islington, he will find that it is not used there. It would be far better if the hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill were to find some method of including the men who are most concerned. I think they should give the men at least the same opportunities that they have given to the pigs. I understand that an agreement with regard to swine was arrived at because of the opposition of the agricultural industry, and I was informed this morning; by one hon. Member who opposed the Bill that swine were withdrawn from the Bill simply because the agricultural industry objected. The promoters of the Bill ought to devote their energy between now and the Committee stage to seeing that these men will be protected.

I intervene only for one moment, because I desire to express, very shortly, the view which the Government take with regard to this Measure. I think it is agreed on all sides of the House that, if an advance can be made in the method of slaughtering animals for human use which will entail less suffering than is admittedly the case at the present time, that is a thing which hon. Members on all sides of the House would be prepared to support. All that remains to be considered—and I submit that they are in essence Committee points—are the questions which might affect the employment of those in the industry, the trade which carries out the work, the farmers who raise the stock, and those who consume the commodities. This Bill was introduced last year, and was submitted to the Scottish Grand Committee. It was very fully investigated and certain alterations and changes were made. It is regrettable that, having reached that stage, owing to the lack of Parliamentary time it did not get to further stages. I think the time is ripe for us to make progress in this matter, and I believe the Bill is in accordance with the general opinion of the public in Scotland.

3.0 p.m.

It is supported by a very large number of the corporations and those who are responsible for actually carrying out the work, and it is supported by those who are interested in the trade. There are, of course, critics of this as of every proposed change. I am not without personal experience in this matter. Many years ago I had charge of a slaughter house owned by a hunt, where horses were slaughtered for the use of hounds. There the humane killer was used, not by expert people but by the hunt servants, and we never had an accident of any sort. There are many people carrying out the slaughter of animals with the humane killer with certainty and skill and without any damage. I have had sheep slaughtered on my own farm for a considerable period by means of the humane killer. It is used by a shepherd with the skill and knowledge of a shepherd. He is satisfied, and I am satisfied, that this method can be used, and where it is possible it ought to be used. Under the circumstances, I would ask the House to give their support to this Measure and send it to the Scottish Grand Committee in order that it may be considered in detail.

I think I can say that I agree, in common with the overwhelming majority of hon. Members, with every point which has been mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland. We do not want to prevent the passage of the Bill into law, and we shall do all we can to facilitate its passage; but that will not prevent us, in Committee, from making certain, so far as we possibly can, that the legitimate interests of slaughter-men and small farmers are properly safeguarded. Despite what the hon. Member for Ayr Burghs (Lieut.-Colonel Moore) said, there is a considerable amount of apprehension among the small farming class in Scotland that they are not safeguarded by the Bill as it is now drawn, and that, before any small farmer or crofter may kill a sheep or any of the other animals specified in Clause 5 he may require to pay a licence fee not exceeding 5s. There is also the further difficulty that, in Subsection (5) of Clause 1 as now drawn, the door may be opened for people, instead of taking their animals to a public slaughter house, to kill them in a park and thus escape the provisions of the Bill. So far as we can we will take every possible step to ensure that no unnecessary burden shall be placed upon the crofter or the small farmer in Scotland.

With reference to what an hon Friend behind me said about the humane killer, I ought to say that after the proceedings in the Scottish Grand Committee last year my hon. Friend who sits with me as representative of Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) and I were asked to meet a large deputation of slaughtermen and the superintendent of the public slaughter house in Dundee. They produced to us what was called the latest humane killer—it was either a Belgian or a Dutch one. It was the unanimous opinion not only of the slaughtermen, but of the public officials, who are in favour of the principle of the Bill that that particular weapon—I am afraid I cannot describe it technically—was so light that when it was fired there was a divergence of a fraction of an inch in the direction of the bullet. It was represented that there was not only danger to the man who fired the bullet, but that the bullet itself might not go through the brain of the animal, and that another shot might be required. However, that is a matter on which the right hon. Gentleman's technical advisers can probably inform him. We on this side welcome the principle of the Bill and will do all we can to facilitate its speedy passage into law, but at the same time I would ask both the Mover and the Seconder of the Bill not to regard any criticism of a Clause which may be advanced as coming from people briefed by vested interests in opposition to the Measure. [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member who seconded the Bill used those very words this afternoon. I ask him to receive with an open mind any considered criticisms which may be offered, because I am perfectly certain that by so doing he will facilitate and not hamper the passing of the Bill.

I am sure we are all agreed that it desirable to make the slaughter of animals as humane as possible. I should say that we are all equally humane, and I agree with the last speaker that it does not lie with any one of us to impute motives of inhumanity to those who may show some caution in accepting certain points of the Bill. This Measure passed through all its stages except one last Session. I was a little on the cautious side respecting certain matters, and I received a promise that they were going to be put right. Being called away to sit upon the Commission on Private Bills in Edinburgh, I was not present at the last sitting of the Scottish Grand Committee when they were considering this Bill, and I am still not quite satisfied that the point which I raised has been met. This is the same point as that which was raised by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston). I allude to the case of the crofter and the farmer, whether large or small. It is not quite clear to me that under the phraseology of this Bill those interests are being properly safeguarded. Take the case of an animal which meets with an accident in a field by breaking its leg and has to be killed. The meat of that animal is quite good for human comsumption, and as it might be desirable to put an end to the animal's suffering as speedily as possible you have it killed without sending for a particular instrument or a specially instructed person to use it.

Then there is the case of the calves of dairy stocks. When a bull calf is born it is regarded as a misfortune, because a heifer calf might be worth a good deal of money while a bull-calf is probably worth only about 14s. In the case of bull-calves, the custom is to slaughter them on the spot and send them to the dead meat market, where they are sold for human food. It would be very inconvenient to inflict the regulations provided for under this Bill in a case of that kind. I know that the action of the Bill is limited to what takes place in the slaughter-house, but what I want to guard against is any prohibition against the sale of animals which are slaughtered in consequence of accidents or in the other case which I have mentioned. I think there ought to be an addition to the Bill to the effect that no by-law is to be passed by any corporation forbidding the sale for human consumption of the flesh of an animal which has been treated in the way I have described. I know that this is a Committee point, but I am not satisfied that the present Bill meets my points, and I shall take care to introduce an Amendment to meet the cases which I have raised. In regard to the other matters dealt with in the Bill, I am quite prepared to support the Second Reading.

I rise to support the Second Reading of this Bill and to make one or two criticisms. When the proposal to adopt the humane killer was first promulgated in Glasgow, those people who had been referred to by my hon. Friend were constantly opposed to it being put in force. An inquiry was subsequently held in Glasgow, and evidence was laid before that inquiry both for and against its adoption. The men concerned were represented by their trade unions. That inquiry came to the conclusion that the use of the humane killer in the City of Glasgow was highly desirable, and that permission to use it ought to be granted as soon as possible.

It is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) has said that the men did oppose those proposals in the early days, but I rather think it will be found, if further inquiries are made, that both the men and employers have changed their attitude considerably in Glasgow. This practice has been operating in Glasgow off and on for about 12 months. The Glasgow Corporation is the second or the third largest market in the Kingdom, and I know that for the last 12 months the new practice of killing has been adopted by them. It is perfectly true that the employers did oppose this method at first, but if those employers in Glasgow were consulted to-day, or if a plebiscite were taken to ascertain their views, I think it would be found that their attitude has altered considerably, and far from giving a hostile vote, I should not be surprised if they passed a vote in favour of the proposal.

So far as the men are concerned, my hon. Friend raised one point which I want to answer. He said, quite rightly, that, whichever system of humane killing be adopted, the men do not come under the Workmen's Compensation Act; but that is not the fault of this Bill; that is not the problem dealt with in this Bill. It is not because the humane killer is used; the fact is that they were never under the Workmen's Compensation Act under the old system, and we have raised the question, not once but many times, of these men's position, not only in regard to compensation, but in regard to National Health Insurance and in regard to widows' pensions. These matters, however, ought not to be dealt with by delaying this Bill. In my view the time has come when all existing private slaughter-houses—I think the Mover of the Bill said there were none, and, indeed, there are very few—should be placed under the control of the local authorities, who ought to license them and to employ the men. That is how that matter should be dealt with, and not by delaying this Bill.

Speaking from memory, I think that the Glasgow Corporation are now beginning to employ these men themselves, and, so far from that being a bad thing for the men, it has actually improved their status, since some of them now come under the Workmen's Compensation Act who were formerly left out, and they also get the benefits of the other Acts. The solution lies in getting public control over these private slaughterhouses, of which, as I have said, there are now only a few—I think, if my memory serves me, the number is less than six—thus bringing the men under a system of licensing by the local authorities, in order that they may be eligible for the benefits of insurance, widows' pensions, and compensation. It is true that there were, I think, two accidents in the City of Glasgow when this system was first introduced, but during the past 12 months, since under the Provisional Order it has been compulsory, I do not think there has been a single accident of any kind at all. I remember that when the Glasgow Corporation first introduced electric trams there were more accidents than with the horse trams, and almost everything new involves a greater percentage of accidents at first; but recently, when I visited the markets, in the working of which I take a fair amount of interest, I found that the corporation have an ample staff for this purpose, and I can say without hesitation that the method of killing animals is now far more humane than it has been at any other time.

In my opinion, the Bill is unfortunate in two particulars. In the first place, I think there is a danger that the penalties may fall on the slaughterman, and not on the person who asks him to carry out his task, and I hope that in Committee provision will be made so that there will be no dubiety on the point that the slaghterman is really only the servant, and that he will not have to suffer the penalties, but that they will be placed on the person who employs him. The other point is that I hope that some attempt will be made in Committee to get swine included again. I think it is a pity that the inclusion of swine was ever dropped, because the cruelty in their case is far greater than in that of other classes of animals. With these general comments I support the Bill. Everyone accepts the principle of the humane slaughter of animals, and we hope that this Bill will become law, and that, if possible, its scope will be widened. Although the men themselves opposed this proposal originally, I am sure that, with their experience, no one will now welcome it more than they in the long run.

I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."

I came into this discussion with the intention of not opposing the Bill, but what I have heard has had the effect of making me oppose it. The hon. Member who talked about his love of animals reminded me of the story in "Punch" of a clergyman asking a lady what she was going to do with her little boy. She said, "I am going to make him a butcher; he is so fond of animals." I always think the way mankind uses the dumb creation is very like the way the dumb creation use one another, because all animals seem to prey on all others. I believe the real promoter of the Bill is a titled lady who is a vegetarian, and she is the only person with a logical position. If you want to see the finest race physically in the world you can go to a certain part of Africa and see the most magnificent race reared entirely on cattle meal. [ Interruption. ] They make very good cattle meal I can assure you. If you go to China, you will find that a large part of the race there manage to thrive entirely on beans, which supply all the necessary vitamins. Therefore, the slaughter of animals is wholly unnecessary. One would have thought there was something in the nature of a bargain, that pigs were to be omitted. The only person in connection with the trade from whom I have had representations was a farmer who met a number of Members in the Committee Room upstairs and explained that they could not cure York ham with pigs killed in the fashion proposed in this Bill. It was bound to deteriorate. There was a certain amount of blood which would remain.

Those who promote a Bill of this kind have won half the battle when they get a nice title for their Bill. Home Rule won half the battle for the Home Rule Bill, but self-determination upset the whole Bill. It is the same with humane killing. Suppose they had made the title of the Bill, "a Bill to provide for the murder of animals by pistols instead of by hand," they would have lost their case. Nobody would have bothered their heads about it. But they take up the question and call it "humane killing." You have no evidence that their proposal is more humane. I do not think, if we are going to slaughter animals, that there can be much difference in the methods.

There is a Bill coming on after this Bill, the Capital Punishment Bill, which is to provide that certain people are to be at liberty to kill other people without getting killed themselves. That will help, as it does in the United States, to promote a new industry. It seems to me the choice is very much the same. They have the electric chair in America, and we have the noose, and it is very doubtful which of the two is the most humane or the most inhumane way of persuading the evildoer, if he is not rescued by the sentimentality of folk, from shuffling off this mortal coil. I have been surprised that no one has suggested that the most humane way would be to put his head into a gas oven, which I am told is the most economical way of committing suicide in this country. [ Interruption. ] If my hon. Friend cared to do it, he would find that he was so much at home that it would do him no harm.

Lobsters!

The hon. Member represents and knows about the fishing industry, and I expect him to propose an Amendment in Committee, if this Bill reaches Committee, that will, doubtless, be in the interests of fish. There is no more inhuman thing than the way the lobster is prepared for a meal. My hon. Friend knows that the lobster is either boiled alive slowly or thrown into boiling water. It is one of the most cruel things imaginable. I contend that the promoters of this Bill, long before it was introduced, ought to have taken up and fought the battle of the lobster which undergoes a terrible and a slow death. We have also the question of fowls. It is very inconvenient that the average cock and hen should be submitted to that process to which the Bill subsequent to this to be presented by the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) is going to put an end. When you come to deal with ducks and geese, they have to be beheaded, and I have done it myself. As a small youth, I used to be shocked to see them running round the yard without their heads.

There is endless cruelty in dealing with the dumb creation, and it is a very shocking business that it should be so. If I were absolutely satisfied that this Bill was really not to a large extent a hoax, I would support it. When you get people who in the name of humanity bring forward a Bill like this and put themselves up to be more humane than their fellows, it often happens that the rest of mankind do not stop to think but are apt to support such proposals, without any very definite grounds for doing so. We need far more evidence in support of the Bill than anything that has been submitted to-day by the promoters. We want something more reliable than the speech in which the real author of the Bill defended it, and something better than the innuendoes with which he attacked those who opposed this Bill by suggesting that they are not as humane as those who support it. All this goes to show that he himself, subconsciously, at the back of his mind is a little doubtful of his own case. You always get that when people are led away by sentimentality.

One gets rather suspicious of the bona fides of such people in these matters. I wish I could remember the name of the author of some words which were to the effect that "whenever you see people urging things on the ground of humanity or ideals you may depend upon it that something corrupt is round the corner pulling the strings." I have not yet got to what is at the back of this thing. There can be so far as animals are concerned no very great difference in the particular way in which they are killed. We have seen a departure from the principle of the Bill over which the Seconder wept, metaphorically, namely, that he had to exempt the Jewish method of slaughter. I obtained, for the first time, in the Scottish Grand Committee, a description of the Jewish method of slaughter, and I am perfectly prepared to say that in my opinion and if proper medical investigation was made I believe the Jewish method of slaughter is probably far more humane than that of the pole-axe and the pistol, because the poor animal is killed with one single sweep of the knife, which cuts all the main arteries and veins. The result is that the blood must at once leave the system in a rush. Of course, it deprives the animal of the blood which makes the healthiest and best flesh for human consumption. I would treat with a certain amount of suspicion the representations of certain people, agriculturists or butchers, who are engaged in this particular trade, because it is perfectly possible that some of them if they can get the animal slaughtered in a way which is less effective and which leaves a little more blood in the system, would approve of that, because they might be able to get more money out of the public. It is difficult to get really reliable meat in London. I send for my meat to far away Aberdeenshire. I have not yet been able to find a butcher in London to suit me.

Do you not send to Argyll?

Yes, to Argyll; I send for my fish to Argyll.

Lobsters?

Yes, and always alive, and I boil them in the method which I think is best without being cruel. I have not yet been able to find a butcher in London from whom I buy the best fresh meat who did not from time to time supply me with frozen or chilled meat. They all do it; it is almost a universal custom of the trade. Needless to say, there is no difference in the price. I think the Minister of Health might devote his attention to providing that the butcher should make his choice between one class of meat and another.[ Interruption. ] I do not expect an hon. Member representing a constituency which contains a large number of people who dye their kippers—

Let me say straightaway that they we do not dye the kippers. It is done in other ports of the kingdom and not in Grimsby. We know exactly how they do it, particularly in Scotland.

I am very pleased to hear that statement, and I hope that I shall have the assistance of the hon. Member in getting the Minister of Health to make it an offence against the Public Health Acts, and then Grimsby and Argyllshire will walk hand in hand in securing the purity of the food supply of the people. It is all very well for Englishmen here to sit and laugh and say, "This is a thing which will affect only Scotland." It is the old story. If this proposal is once passed for Scotland it will be imposed upon England for certain. Therefore every Englishman has an interest in the Bill. The promoters of the Bill use words like "humane," and beg the question by the use of epithets. If they get this Bill passed, they will never rest until they have its provisions imposed on the English too. A much more careful investigation should be made, and if the Bill is to be passed it should apply to the whole country—that is if it is a good Bill. I am not stating that it may not be a good Bill, but I am not fully advised, and I do not accept the statements so intemperately put forward by the promoters. If it were put forward as a minor Measure, designed to bring about a slight improvement of methods in the taking of life, which must always be a monstrous thing, I might have been prepared to accept the statement, but the naming, intemperate way in which the proposal is brought forward makes me feel that every statement that the promoters make is subject to grave doubt and suspicion. Therefore we must get the matter investigated by someone with a much more temperate outlook upon life.

As I have said, the Jewish method seems to me to be the most humane. I I have been assured by medical friends that once you get through the epidermis, that is the outer skin—in the case of some Members of this House it is extraordinarily thick—there is really no suffering in the operation of a knife. It is the outer skin that protects. The Jewish method is the quickest and it has the least suffering in it. That was curiously confirmed in a statement made to me by a very experienced police constable after a riot on one occasion. I said, "I think some of these men have been hurt more than was necessary," and he replied: "These young constables do not know how to use their batons. A young man when he hits with a baton grips it tightly with the result that he cuts the head of the man whom he strikes." The hon. Member for Edge Hill (Mr. Hayes) will probably confirm that view. My informant told me that a man who grips the baton cuts the skull and there is no pain to the person struck, at the time, but only an effusion of blood. The man has no serious suffering until some hours afterwards and unless he is absolutely stunned he is just as much a rioter a3 ever. On the other hand, the policeman who hits gently, who lets the baton fall on the head of the rioter, raises a large lump on that head. The man cannot put his hat on for about a week and the pain is so acute that that man has no further interest in public affairs. These are direct instances, one from a surgeon in regard to the Jewish process and one from a gentleman who was in the habit of using not the pole-axe but the truncheon. To those on whom the latter was used in the way I have described, I do not suppose there appeared to be much difference except that in the case of the truncheon the man recovered.

I am not quite sure as to the effect of these proposals in regard to the crofter and the small farmer—those who rear an animal and kill it for home consumption. We saw the thin end of the wedge in the speech of the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), who said something about all animals being brought into the slaughter-house. That would mean that you would kill the work of these small people who rear animals for their own use. Hon. Members ought to be exceedingly careful about interfering in these matters. I remember for a long time it used to be a common thing for every miner to keep pigs, but down came the sanitary authorities—and the moment you appoint a sanitary inspector you do a great deal to interfere with the food of the people. In some cases the medical officer of health was an angel of death in a district. The inspectors came down and told the man, "You must have your pigs so many yards away from the house." The man had no room to make the necessary arrangements and so, instead of having a few pigs about the house to give it a homely atmosphere and plenty of bacon upon the breakfast table, he had to get rid of the pigs and buy stuff from America or China or somewhere else because he could not afford the best English home-cured. If this Bill goes through we shall only have this blood-stained stuff which the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Lieut.-Colonel Moore) would like to present the community with—all in the interests of humanity. Those who take an exclusive interest in dumb animals often have no great consideration for human needs, and, if they have their way, the miners and others of the poorer classes will be unable to get the class of food which they ought to get.

There is not enough in this Bill to content the promoters. There will be an attempt within months by the same people to include pigs. There will be a further attempt to include the small farmer and the crofter and everyone else. It is all very well to say, "We are leaving them out." That is only a breathing space. Once they get a start these people will go on and will use the same words about humanity, so as to brand all those who oppose them as being guilty of some form of inhumanity. I am as humane a man as any in this House, and I would support this Bill if I believed that there was going to be any serious mitigation of the dumb animals' lot. In fact, if this were a Bill for the prevention of the use of animal flesh altogether, that would be so logical and my sympathy with the dumb creation is so great, that it would have my hearty and enthusiastic support even though I had to live on greens.

It is not that; it is a Bill that ought to have the title "A Bill to provide for the murder of animals with shot instead of with the knife," and I do not think any of us know yet, in spite of all the resolutions of representative bodies, what the country desires in the matter. You know what representative bodies are. When it comes to a matter like humaneness, everybody tumbles over each other to vote for it, because they all think there is only an odd man here and there who has the penetration to go through the obscurities of a matter of that kind and say, "Is it humane or is it not?" These representative bodies are all afraid, and that is how they make these representations; they are afraid to stand out. That is one of the vices of the representative system, that those who want to carry any particular Measure have only to attach to it some sanction such as is contained in the Title of this Bill, and they know they will get the support of the representative bodies, though these very men will sometimes come privately afterwards and say, "We could not help it." I say to the English Members that this is a Bill which affects both England and Scotland. After it passed the Scottish Committee last year, I got a representation signed by a very influential body in Edinburgh, of butchers and others, saying they thought the Bill was not going forward and that it came on them as a surprise. I think this Bill has come as a surprise on the Scottish community, but I think they are getting further information about it.

I beg to second the Amendment.

Representations have been made by a butchers' association in Dundee concerning this Bill, to the effect that the slaughtering instrument is so incompletely fixed that danger arises if it is not properly handled, and that there have been several cases in which men have been injured through its operation. I think, however, from the fact that further evidence on that score has not been forthcoming, and from the statement made by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), that perhaps these accidents are few and far between, and I think that on the whole, notwithstanding the views of the hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten), the ladies and gentlemen who are behind this movement are particularly free from being crooked. If all other movements of representative bodies were on as high a plane as this, I think this country would make progress. We desire to seek in the best possible way to improve the conditions under which the slaughter of animals takes place. For myself, I am more and more imbued with the impression that we shall be doing better individually when we get off this beaten track of destroying animal life in order to preserve our own, and I am very strongly supported in that view by medical advice that is not identified with vegetarianism, that undoubtedly the outlook for our country will be all the brighter when we get away from this method of the carnal sustenance of our own lives.

If we get on that plane, I am satisfied there is going to be a betterment for our physical constitution, and that any movement of the sort in view of the experiments, and more than experiments, now being made by the medical fraternity in this direction, the vegetarian movement, which formerly was looked upon rather from a jocular point of view, finds its best credentials in quarters of the very highest authority. The picture which the hon. and learned Member for Argyllshire gave of Chicago is one I had in my own mind many years ago, and I should say that the hon. Member who was Undersecretary to the Home Office in the Labour Government has been writing of his experience in that connection. While there is, perhaps, a good deal to be said for the argument of the more swift and sudden application of the killing process without involving any pain, it is true that this gross and appalling spectacle is not one which is consistent with exalted ideals and conceptions of life, and the more we study this question, the further we shall be from capital punishment as regards human life, and the further we shall be from the prosecution of war for the destruction of mankind.

May I venture to put a question to the Lord Advocate with regard to this Bill? It is entitled: "A Bill to provide for the humane slaughter of animals in Scotland." When we come to the Clauses of the Bill, I see no limitation to Scotland. May I ask whether or not this Bill is strictly confined to Scotland, and does not apply to other parts of Great Britain?

When the Lord Advocate replies, perhaps he will also answer another question. I think it would be unfortunate if the impression were widespread throughout the agricultural districts of Scotland that small farmers and crofters are not excluded.

On the first point, no doubt it would be put beyond all possible suggestion of doubt if the usual Clause were inserted at the end of the Bill saying that the Bill shall only apply to Scotland. I submit that on its terms, it could only apply to Scotland, because of its Title, and because the substantive provisions of the Bill rest on the basis of the Public Health (Scotland) Act, and the only references are to Scottish Acts. The only Clause as to which it could possibly be suggested otherwise is Clause 7 which is confined in its reference to other provisions of the Act.

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman also include in that, Subsections (1) and (2) of Clause 1?

Yes, Sir. With regard to the other point, this was dealt with in Committee last year, and the hon. Member who spoke earlier in the Debate put a question to me, and it was, in fact, met by an Amendment introduced in the Bill. The point is that the compulsory provision for mechanical slaughtering being operated relates only to slaughter-houses and knackers' yards, and the definition of slaughter-houses and knackers' yards under Subsection (1) of Clause 5 gives them the meaning which they have in the Public Health (Scotland) Act, 1897. In that Act, it is provided that slaughterers and knackers are people who carry on the business of slaughterers, and slaughter-houses are premises in which such business of slaughtering is carried on. It is obvious that the crofter or farmer who kills an animal that meets with an accident in a field, or a bull calf that turns up in a dairy herd, does not carry on the business of a slaughterer. The exact words are:

"The expression 'slaughterer of cattle or horses' means a person whose business it is to kill any description of cattle or horses, asses or mules, for the purpose of the flesh being used as butcher's meat; and the expression 'slaughter house' means any building or place used for the purpose of such business."

That seems to me to make it quite clear that the provision as regards the compulsory use of a mechanical instrument only applies to people who carry on the business of slaughtering in the premises in which they carry on such business.

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put," but MR. SPEAKER withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

I agree with a great many remarks that have fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten), but I see the thin end of the wedge when I hear the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) speaking of Vegetarianism. I agree that before a Bill of this sort is introduced, and before it is carried, there ought to be a great deal more evidence produced. The argument of the lobster was perhaps rather far-fetched, but it was a fairly weighty one, and I have grave doubts, although the Bill is intended only to apply to Scotland, as to how long Scotland will be the limiting boundary. One must have the deepest sympathy with the crofters and remember that they have great difficulty sometimes in understanding the terms of a Bill of this sort; and I should be sorry to think that they would be living on tenterhooks for a certain number of hours, perhaps for a certain number of months—

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

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

Question put accordingly, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 119; Noes, 21.

The House divided: Ayes, 118; Noes, 11.

Bill read a Second time.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House," put, and negatived.—( Mr. Remer. )

Bill committed to a Standing Committee.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

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

Adjourned at Seventeen Minutes after Four o'Clock until Monday next, 20th February.