rose to ask His Majesty's Government why the women imprisoned in connection with the recent woman suffrage demonstrations are not being treated as first class misdemeanants. His Lordship said: Your Lordships will probably be aware that in connection with some recent disturbances at the private residences of Cabinet Ministers, several of the agitating ladies known as "suffragettes" are at present imprisoned. I am not concerned on this occasion to defend, and it is not the least necessary for the purposes of the Question that I am going to ask that I should defend, the particular actions taken in this particular case. The actions, as your Lordships will recollect, consisted in attending somewhat early in the morning at the private residences of Cabinet Ministers and ringing the bell with a view to interviewing those Ministers; but I think I am right in saying that one and all declined to be interviwed. Apart from the fact that even a Cabinet Minister may be allowed to have a private life and a private house, it was perhaps a little unkind of these ladies to disclose to the world the exact hour at which Ministers rose from their slumbers and began their day. But the actual disturbances which were created were of a very slight character. There was no doubt technical disorder. There were scenes in the street, speeches delivered, the ringing of bells and matters of that sort which no doubt amounted to technical disorder, but which, I think your Lordships will agree, did not amount in any sense to any real crime or to anything deserving of criminal punishment. When these ladies were brought in due course before the magistrates—I think there are over a dozen at this moment in Holloway—they were in most cases invited to find sureties to keep the peace for a certain length of time, and it was on their declining to find such sureties that they were, in default, committed to prison for various terms—as a rule, I think, six weeks. It may be, and probably will be, said said that these ladies had it entirely within their own power to stay out of prison by finding sureties, and that if they had fulfilled the condition imposed by the magistrate they would not have been imprisoned at all. That is literally true, but I think your Lordships should consider what the pledge demanded from them was. The finding of sureties to keep the peace amounted to a pledge that they would not continue agitating for a political cause which they had very much at heart—that they would not continue agitating in the way which they think is successful, whatever your Lordships may think about it. Therefore it amounted to inviting them to give up their rights of agitation, as they regarded them. I think your Lordships will agree that, under these circumstances, it was hardly reasonable to expect them to comply with the condition, and that it would have been better and fairer to have sentenced them to prison in the first instance. Your Lordships may recollect that in another place, when the rules of procedure were being considered, there was at one time a suggestion that a Member who had been disorderly or contumacious should be suspended, not merely for a definite term but until he had expressed regret for his disorder. It was felt, I think universally, that that was asking a man to do more than he ought to be required to do. I think the cases are somewhat parallel, and that it was not a reasonable or fair demand to make upon these ladies, that they should be asked to give up for a certain length of time the particular course of agitation upon which they were engaged, and in which they believed as a righteous cause, and a proper way of asserting their rights. In previous cases, ladies who have been committed in these circumstances have been treated—not always in the first instance, but I think I am right in saying always ultimately—as first class misdemeanants in prison. Your Lordships probably know that these ladies are now imprisoned as misdemeanants of the second division; but perhaps it is not realised what a very wide difference exists between the two divisions. In the second division they have to wear ordinary prison clothes—that is to say, these ladies, many of whom are persons of culture and refinement, have to wear a lot of old clothes brought out of the jumble store of the prison, ill-fitting clogs of some sort, not necessarily a pair; and they are served with the gruel, or whatever the fare is, in the ordinary wooden vessels, and it has to be eaten with the ordinary wooden spoons. As far as costume, food, confinement, and exercise go, I think I am right in saying that they are subject, in their imprisonment, to all the hardships and to all the degradations to which any ordinary prisoner is exposed. In the first division a prisoner is enabled to wear his or her own clothes, to have his or her food and to be supplied with books and newspapers from the outside world. What you, in fact, do is to confine prisoners of the first division within the prison, and deprive them of their liberty without inflicting upon them any particular hardship or any particular degradation. A similar Question to that of which I have given notice was put in another place, and the answer given on behalf of the Home Secretary was that he saw no reason to interfere with the decision of the magistrate. I should like that to be considered a little more fully. Is it desired that the agitation, however much your Lordships may dislike it, which these ladies have carried on for the purpose of obtaining the vote, should be stamped out by repressive measures, and by measures of hardship? If that is the view which obtains I see no reason why these ladies should be placed in the second division at all, or why they should not be sentenced in the ordinary way to terms of hard labour. But the experience of history shows that these measures of hardship when applied to people who believe fervently in a cause, have the effect, not of stamping out agitation, but of increasing the earnestness of the agitation, and of making martyrs of those who suffer them. It is as true, as in the case of the history of the early Christian Church, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, that from this hardship there grows an increasing feeling and a stronger movement among the very people whom you are seeking to repress. So that if the object is to treat these ladies with hardship in order to put down the agitation, I submit that it is foolish, is likely to fail, and is indeed pre-destined to fail in its object. Then, my Lords, if I am told that they are not political offenders, I venture to say that an examination of similar cases in which men have been imprisoned in the first division and treated as political offenders will not support that view. They are political offenders in this sense, that although they may have been quite properly and legally dealt with by the magistrate, the whole object of their offence was a political object. What they sought to gain was not any criminal end, even if the methods which they pursued brought them within the criminal law. What they have tried to gain was a political object, and it is that, I submit, which constitutes a person a political offender. I venture to suggest to the Home Secretary and his advisers, and to your Lordships' House, that it will reflect no credit upon the Government, or upon the system of law and order in this country, if these earnest, delicately nurtured ladies, who are prepared to sacrifice themselves for a cause which they have very much at heart, are to be treated with methods of degradation which are only fittingly applied to criminals. It is quite as much for the honour and reputation of the Government as for the comfort of the ladies themselves that I ask the Home Secretary whether it is not proper and fitting that these ladies should be put in the first division, and treated in a way which political offenders generally are treated, and frequently have been treated, when they have been male offenders. I will ask the noble Lord who represents the Home Office the Question which stands in my name on the Paper, and I trust that his reply may be more favourable than the reply given the other day in another place.

My Lords, I trust the noble Earl will excuse me if I reply somewhat shortly. He has already told your Lordships that a similar Question to this was put in another place, and the answer which I have to give is exactly the same as that which was then given by the Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs. The question of what division a prisoner should be placed in is one which by law must be determined by the magistrate, in his discretion. The ladies referred to in the noble Earl's Question have committed an offence against the ordinary law, and the Secretary of State sees no reason to interfere with the magistrates' decision that they should be placed in the second division. The second division was established for the purpose of separating from the worst classes of criminals those prisoners whose previous character is good, and I think therefore it will be agreed that the magistrates have, in the exercise of their discretion, probably taken a step which will meet with the approbation of your Lordships' House.

Before your Lordships adjourn I should like to ask a question of the noble Earl, the President of the Board of Agriculture, and that is whether there is any truth in the rumour that there has been an outbreak of foot and mouth disease among cattle north of the Tweed.

I am sorry to have to say that there is truth in the report, for a telegram was received late last night from Professor Dewar, F.R.C.V.S., Edinburgh, reporting suspected foot and mouth disease in a large herd of dairy cows at Gorgie, Midlothian. Veterinary Inspector Smith, Glasgow, was instructed to visit, and he reports by telegram—

"Eighty-one cows out of 111, property of John Robertson, Elvan Bank, Gorgie, are affected with foot and mouth disease. Lesions well marked in mouth, feet and udder."

The Chief Veterinary Officer considers that the existence of the disease must be regarded as established, but in view of the importance of the matter he is proceeding himself to Edinburgh to-night, and will advise as to further procedure. In the meantime Orders are being prepared, and will be issued this afternoon confirming the existence of disease, I and prohibiting absolutely the movement of animals in the district surrounding I Edinburgh to the South of the Firth of Forth pending full inquiry. A staff of veterinary inspectors has been dispatched to Edinburgh to search out any other possible centres of disease, and assistance has been dispatched to Mr. Douglas, our General Inspector in Scotland who will conduct the further inquiries, and report at once. I hope the House will believe that every possible step has been taken to prevent the spread of this terrible disease.