reply, first announced, amid Opposition groans and Ministerial cheers and laughter, that the autumn session would begin on October 12; and then defended the Grand Committee system as the only means of dealing with lengthy measures like the Children Bill, and declared the guillotine a necessary evil in the absence of an arrangement-which it was too much to expectthat discussion should be confined to the most important provisions of Bills. With regard to Supply the regular Opposition had the first claim to consideration, but the convenience of the Irish, Scottish and Labour members had to be consulted likewise.

In view of this statement, the Marquess of Lansdowne on July 14 asked what opportunities the House of Lords would have for revising legislation, since of ten first-class measures mentioned in the King's Speech only one had yet reached that House. He hoped that provision might be made for carrying over Bills from one session to another. The Earl of Crewe, in reply, gave the dates at which various Bills might be expected, but said that carrying over Bills should be exceptional. The Government regretted the necessity of an autumn session which was partly due to the illness of the late Prime Minister.

Outside Parliament, meanwhile, there was active political agitation, which, however, added little to the material of political controversy. The Licensing Bill continued to be the subject of acute agitation. One objection to it-that the suppression of public-houses would merely stimulate the growth of low-class clubs-had been put very forcibly by Sir Robert Anderson, ex-Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, in The Times of June 29. Some controversy (conducted on the part of the trade by advertisement) also arose as to the amount of public-house drunkenness revealed by a "midnight march conducted by the Bishop of London in the interests of Temperance; the dispute, however, resolved itself into a question of degrees of intoxication. The Bill was endorsed by a great temperance demonstration at Leeds (July 18) and by a Labour demonstration at Clitheroe (July 11). At the latter, as at other Labour demonstrations elsewhere, the Old Age Pensions Bill was accepted as a first step on a new path. Two days later, the Parents' League met at Queen's Hall and was addressed by Mr. Balfour, who declared that practically the choice was between secular education and parental control of religious teaching, and that the latter course would break down Cowper-Templeism, and involve ascertaining the fitness of the teacher to teach religion. He advocated some kind of parental veto on the choice of teachers; but Mr. Runciman, speaking at Dewsbury a few days later, indicated that the Government held fast to the principles of their Bill. The Coal Mines (Eight Hours) Bill was accepted by the former opponents of the change among the miners of Northumberland early in July, and, a little later, at a demonstration in the Rhondda Valley

attended by Mr. Winston Churchill on July 20, Mr. Henderson said that even if they landed in the Clock Tower the Labour party meant the Bill to be passed within the session.

While the Government were thus supported in the country, there was continued discontent among many Liberals at their renewal of the Sugar Convention (p. 126). It was reported that, at a dinner given to Mr. Lough, late Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education, by the Political Committee of the New Reform Club on July 15, Mr. A. H. Scott (Ashton-underLyne) had stated that he had been induced in 1906 not to press his resolution demanding the withdrawal of Great Britain from it (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1906, p. 40) by a promise privately given him by the late Prime Minister that the Government would withdraw as soon as practicable; and on the previous day a deputation of 200 Liberal members had waited on the Prime Minister to repeat the protest against the renewal. Mr. Villiers (Brighton) charged the Government with betraying Free Trade, infringing the rights of the House of Commons, and violating the Constitution; but other members dissociated themselves from this attack. Mr. Asquith replied substantially that the intention of the Government to negotiate for renewal if the Powers would drop the so-called penal clauses had been announced by Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons on June 6, 1907; that none of the obligations entailed by the renewed Convention conflicted with Free-Trade principles or required statutory authority, and that treaties did not need. the assent of Parliament. They had not in any way restricted the sources of supply of sugar to Great Britain.

This deputation was a prelude to the Committee stage of the Finance Bill (July 14), in which unsuccessful attempts were made to abolish the tea and sugar duties in Ireland, on the ground that that country had been shown by the Financial Relations Committee to be overtaxed as compared with England; to reduce the tea duty to 3d. (a Labour proposal), to exempt tea coming from the British Empire, and to compel the reconsideration of the sugar duty in 1909. Objection was taken next day to the transfer of the collection of assessed taxes from the excise authorities to the county and borough councils in England and Wales, a change explained as leaving the former free for Old Age Pension work; but after explanations from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Government was sustained by 299 to 86. A proposal to reduce the income tax by 1d. was also unsuccessful, as was an effort to have the incomes of husband and wife treated as separate, and also another, made by Mr. Chiozza Money (Paddington, N.), to require declarations of income in all cases, whether taxed at source or not. These declarations would have served as a basis for a graduation of income tax. The attitude of the official Opposition was represented by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who declined to divide against details in the Budget, but condemned it as a

whole, and cited the description of the situation given in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech at the Mansion House (p. 156). A feature of the debate was the controversy between the partisans of direct and indirect taxation, Mr. Keir Hardie declaring that the Labour party would prefer the application of the former to the working classes, but that the underpaid workers should not be taxed at all. Opposition speakers, however, preferred to extend indirect taxation so as to fall more effectively on the rich.

Such arguments, however, at any rate when used outside the House, were generally associated with a demand for Protection; but one form of that demand had found no countenance from the Report of the Hop Commission (July 10), which stated that though the consumption of hops was decreasing with the decline of beer-drinking and the use of hop substitutes, the quantity of English hops produced, and their proportion to the imported hops used, were remaining the same. The acreage under hops was less, the yield per acre greater than formerly. Cold storage was mentioned as a potent factor in the depression; but the Commission did not think that foreign competition was so, or that a duty on foreign hops was called for.

This discouragement to the advocates of Protection in its crudest form was followed by another disappointment for the mass of the Opposition. The Liberals kept the seat in Pembrokeshire vacant by the elevation of Mr. Wynford Philipps to the peerage as Lord St. Davids, though the figures showed a Liberal decline and a Unionist increase (July 16); but the opposition at the general election had been tardy and ineffective, the outgoing member was personally very popular, and the Liberal majority was the largest on record except in 1906. The Unionists had fully expected to win.

For one thing, at any rate, the Government had earned and received gratitude on both sides of the Atlantic. On June 3 the Postmaster-General had announced in the House of Commons that the United States Post Office had accepted a proposal for the reduction of postage between that country and Great Britain to ld. per oz., to take effect on October 1. The arrangement was welcomed in the United States; and some well-deserved credit for it was given to Mr. Henniker Heaton (Canterbury) who had agitated for it and for other postal reforms for many years. An effort was made to induce the postal authorities to make a similar arrangement with France; but an influential deputation which waited on Mr. Asquith on July 13 was told by him that the cost (82,000l. annually) was prohibitive, and that an extension to other European countries, which it would be invidious to refuse, would cost 320,000l. a year. The new arrangement, however, gave additional interest to the annual review by the Postmaster-General (Mr. Buxton) of the work of his department on the occasion of the Post Office Vote (July 16). The revenue for the past year had been

The

22,500,000l., the expenditure 18,750,000l., the surplus 3,750,000l. For the current year the surplus was the same. The revenue, however, showed signs of falling off, and a general election, or a new craze, would give it a satisfactory stimulus. Limerick craze had raised the sale of postal orders during the past six months from the normal figure of 700,000 or 800,000 to 11,400,000. But expenditure was increasing, and the only profitable head of revenue in the postal system was the penny stamp. The telephone, however, was affecting the telegraph system, which was carried on at a loss, and the postal system also, but it was itself, and should continue to be, on a paying basis. One million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds had already been spent on underground telegraph wires, the Convention respecting wireless telegraphy had been ratified by Great Britain and all but two of her Colonies, and by all the Great Powers except the United States; and, as he did not intend to sanction any monopoly in wireless telegraphy the Department, while in improved relations with the Marconi Company, was working a commercial station, and could extend its operations without buying up companies. The traffic in foreign lottery tickets, which was often complained of, could not be stopped because the letters were mostly in sealed envelopes, but he had made suggestions to a Committee then sitting and hoped for further powers. The results of the reduction of postage to Canada on magazines had been very satisfactory. He alluded to other reforms, among them the reduction of the postage on literature to the blind, and referred to the reduction of postal rates to the United States. The Post Office ought to set an example as an employer of labour, and he was endeavouring to obtain uniformity of work in the factories, and to deal with sweating in contracts. He explained what had been done. towards carrying out the recommendations of the Hobhouse Committee, justified the system of classifying towns (in respect of the rate of wages paid to postal employees in them) according to units of work and cost of living, and disclaimed the intention of reducing wages with which he was credited. He had never regretted his recognition of the associations of postal employees. The subsequent debate was only of passing interest.

Next day (July 17) a new form of guillotine was set up for the Committee stage of the Licensing Bill. The amendments proposed now filled fifty-two pages of the orders and numbered 980; and Mr. Asquith, therefore, moved an elaborate and lengthy resolution allocating nineteen days, which were allowed for the Committee stage, among the various clauses and schedules, five to the Report stage and one to the third reading. The novelty lay in the proviso that after the Committee stage the apportionment of the days allowed for the Report stage should be considered. This, he explained, was to secure discussion of important points that might have been missed in Committee. Great pains had been taken in the allocation to ensure that all

the contentious clauses should be debated; and, in regard to the new proviso, he did not think it possible to go further in reconciling the crude and admittedly harsh requirements of a guillotine resolution with free discussion and fairness to all sections of the House. Mr. Balfour was rather favourably disposed to the proviso, but thought that the conclusion of the Committee stage was not a good time for a calm discussion. Historically, he said, closure by compartments, introduced in the Parliament of 1886, had been used seven times for Bills between 1886 and 1906, and ten times in the existing Parliament, that difference in amount was a difference in kind. But the Parliamentary management of the Government was a mystery; the autumn session was a case in point. He quoted, amid much amusement, Mr. Asquith's last utterance on the guillotine when in Opposition (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1904, p. 154). The Government had initiated the habit of dealing with every difficulty not by persuasion, but by the guillotine.

Lord Robert Cecil moved an amendment declining to continue to pass special procedure resolutions, and calling on the Government to produce proposals for permanently settling procedure. He urged that the decline of discussion would lower the character of Parliament. Devolution would be no remedy, and all-night sittings showed the House at its worst. He disapproved of the guillotine in all forms, and thought a Committee of Selection impracticable; and he outlined a scheme by which each party might be allowed to select, in proportion to its numbers, the amendments it really desired to see debated. He should like, also, to see considered carefully

proposal for increased power of closure. But the fundamental difficulty was that the House had lost its self-respect. Mr. Bottomley, seconding the amendment, laid stress on the lack of discussion of the Estimates. Mr. Asquith replied to Mr. Balfour by citing the latter's prediction of July 5, 1905, that his successors would find guillotine resolutions necessary, and saying that the necessity now was due to arrears of legislation. Lord Robert Cecil's remedies would be far worse than the guillotine. After a number of other speeches, the debate was closured, and Lord R. Cecil's amendment rejected by 221 to 101. The Government, however, accepted amendments moved by Mr. L. Hardy (Ashford, Kent) providing that the discussion on the allocation of time for the Report stage should not be taken on the same day at the conclusion of the Committee stage, and also that the clauses should be put from the chair singly and not in groups.

The Committee stage began on the following Monday, July 20. The Nationalists and many of the Labour members were absent; the Ministerialists and the Opposition were present in force. The whole sitting was occupied with amendments to the first line of clause 1; but it is hardly necessary to describe the proceedings minutely, in view of the eventual fate of the Bill.