Gordon, MajEvans-(T'rH'mlets Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow) Lee, ArthurH(Hants., Fareham Lockwood, Lt. Col. A. R. NOES. Ridley, Hon M. W. (Stalybridge Macartney, RtHn. W. G. Ellison | Redmond, John E. (Waterford) Murray, Rt. HnAGraham (Bute Pilkington, Lieut. -Col. Richard Sheehan, Daniel Daniel Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) TELLERS FOR THE NOES- SIR JAMES FERGUSSON moved that it. Few of them were aware when the this House do agree with the Lords Amendment as amended. He was interrupted in his remarks some hours ago by an hon. Member who had an Amendment to move in the early part of the debate. As he had had several opportunities of speaking on this subject in the course of the Committee Stage of this Bill, he should be very sorry at this hour of the night to trouble the House at any length, but the matter was of such importance that he thought it was incumbent upon him to make out a case to show why the House should be asked to agree with the Lords Amendment. Since this matter had been discussed in Parliament, a great deal of new light had been thrown upon Bill was introduced how greatly the position of the voluntary schools would be damaged by the restrictions and burdens thrown upon them by this Bill. The Bishop of Manchester was reported to have moved the Amendment which was now before them, and he was sure that if the hon. Member for the Barnstaple Division had known the right rev. Prelate as he was privileged to do, he would have acknowledged him to be one of the most liberal and broad-minded men, who was devoted earnestly to his duty, and who had at heart the preservation of the schools. He had no doubt that the Bishop of Manchester placed his case before the other House in terms which was not school. For deeply impressed the minds of the Peers, in a struggling manner. He could not and induced a considerable majority of see that because religious instruction them to vote against the Government. was given in them they should be placed It was quite true that voluntary schools in an inferior position to schools where were doing their share in advancing the the religion was colourless or of a general education of this country, and they were character. He did not care what trouble not, as some Members opposite appeared or odium he incurred, even if for a to think, of an inferior character, but moment he was unfaithful to his Party many of them were of a very efficient if it was necessary in the discharge of kind. In Manchester the amount per what he believed to be his duty. He head earned by the children in examina- did not believe this House would stand tion was actually greater in voluntary on its privileges in such a matter as this. schools than in board schools. It showed He made an earnest appeal to the Prime that the managers of those schools had Minister, who, he was sure, wished to do worked them up to a high state of effi- what was right. He believed this Amendciency. Hitherto those schools had been ment brought home to the right hon. provided for by the managers out of the Gentleman in a manner which had not funds placed at their disposal, and they before been done how grievous would be had been kept up notwithstanding the the effect of the Bill as it formerly stood competition of the board schools. Those with respect to the prospects of voluntary schools had been kept up at a great schools in populous and poor places. It sacrifice. [An HON. MEMBER: Speak up!] He was not going to trouble the districts where there might be a wealthy a question of the country House with figures and quotations, but there were many cases where the voluntary squire, and where it would be easy subscriptions were not equal to the annual to keep up the local cost of repairs. No doubt in the future the sake of the poor people in populous the repairs of these schools would be places who desired that their children more than they had been in the should receive this kind of education he past. Taking an average of the cost asked the House to accept the Amendof repairs per child in many large ment. He moved that this House do towns such as Birmingham, Hull, Brad- agree with the Lords Amendment. ford, Liverpool, and other places, the cost per child would be about 2s. 6d. for repairs, whilst the voluntary subscriptions would not amount to so much. In that case the result would be that many of those schools would have to be CAMPBELL-BANNERgiven up. Of course he knew that MAN: I have great hopes that the many hon. Members opposite maintained House will disagree with the Lords that the schools attached to religious Amendment as amended. I hung back denominations (and giving definite a little in the expectation and the hope religious education should be discon- that the Leader of the House might have tinued. But that was not the scheme at once risen to say what course the of the Bill of 1870, and it was not the Government intend to take in this scheme of the present Bill. On the contrary, the country had given proofs of its attachment to the voluntary system, because after all these years the fact remained that a majority of the children were educated in them. It was too late to go back upon that, and it was not worthy of the opponents of the voluntary system that they should wish to ensure the more rapid extension of one system at the expense of another. He could not see the justice of so handicapping these schools that they would be starved out of existence or be kept up Motion made and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment as amended."--(Sir James Fergusson.) SIR H. matter. For reasons, however, which I shall by and by state I do not see how they can take any but one course in regard to this Amendment consistently with what has happened in the past. There are two separate reasons why, in my opinion, the House should reject this Amendment-two separate reasons based on two separate orders of things. There is first of all the constitutional point affecting the dignity and rights of this House, and there are the questions which arise on the merits of the subject matter of the Amendment. We heard a great deal to-night about this extraordinary proceeding to which the. House of Commons has been subjected on this occasion, but something more, surely, must be said about it. I have already spoken of it as having been farcical and absurd and grotesque. But this is something more than that. It has a grotesque exterior appearance, but in its heart, au fond, it is a heavy blow dealt at the rights of this House, which are, after all, nothing more nor less than the rights of the general community of the taxpayers of this country. The reason we stand up for the rights of the House of Commons is not because of our pride in the body with which we ourselves are connected. It is not from any feeling of vanity or self-satisfaction that we may entertain as members of this House; it is because our privileges represent the privileges of the people of this country, and what we have seen on this occasion I suppose the story must be recited again, although it is not a creditable one-is that an Amendment was introduced in the House of Lords and opposed by the Government of the day, and that it was carried against all the efforts of the Government of the dayan Amendment imposing a charge upon public funds. There is no question that the action of the Lords was an infringement of the privileges of this House. There is no one on either side of the House who will say that it was not an infringement of the privileges of the House. I can conceive it possible-in fact there have been many cases of it that when this House was informed that a certain Amendment proposed in another place was an infringement of its privileges the House in its wisdom might waive its privileges and consider the Amendment. I do not say that might not be done in this case. That was a course which could have been pursued. It is a straightforward course, perfectly intelligible, and in accordance with precedent. Instead of that it has been thought right to smuggle this into the House and to induce the House by its own action to remove the absurd words which had been added to the Clause, and thus, by its own action, not only to make this House responsible for what has been done in another place, but to take away from the Amendment its character of a Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman. breach of privilege. That is the course which the right hon. Gontleman recommends the House to take now, Surely, on the ground alone of the way the House has been dealt with in this matter, I think it is only due to its dignity and to the maintenance of its rights that the House should decline to pass the Amendment, even if it were as good as in its nature it is bad. I will say no more on that question, for no multiplication of words will make the case any stronger. Now I come to the merits of the Amendment itself. The right hon. Gentleman has gone over the whole story. He has discerned in the people of this country a desire for voluntary schools. We have nothing to do with that just now. We do not require to open the whole question on this occasion. What we have to do with is what has happened with regard to this particular Amendment. This particular proposal is that the public should undertake the cost of the wear and tear and the repair of these schools. There is no question about it. When the Bill was introduced we were told what was the foundation of the arrangement between the friends of the voluntary schools and the friends of what I would say are the democratic schools-the undenominational schools if you like to call them so. I speak especially of the Church of England schools, which have been maintained with great difficulty by friends who subscribed to support them, and who found that it was no longer possible to bear the burden put upon them. They agreed that the country should have the use of the schools, in which they claim some sort of property, on condition that the maintenance of the schools was to be put upon the public rates. On the ground of that arrangement they were to have a preponderating proportion of authority on the managing body that was established. In July last the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Tewkesbury Division moved an Amendment substantially to the same effect as this-namely, that it should be the structural repairs only for only for which the managers were to be responsible. That was opposed by the Government. The Attorney General said that good repair included all the repairs necessary to adapt the buildings for the purposes 3 per cent. of £500,000 a year would come for which they were required, and that to £16,500,000. I think that is enough the Government would adhere to the to show the absolute unfairness of those words of the Bill, throwing the responsi- interested in the Amendment. bility on the managers to do all that was necessary to keep the buildings in a suitable condition. He stated that you could not dissect the repairs and separate one kind of repair from another. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Stretford Division supported the Attorney General in this matter. When the House went to a division, only thirty-five Members Members supported the Amendment, while three hundred and thirty-seven, or nearly ten to one, voted against it. Have the Church and the Church schools become poorer since that time? Has it been discovered that there is some dreadful escape from which their money runs away and which requires to be filled up ? Not at all. Since then they have received, in their share fees, in endowments, and in rents of school houses, large subsidies, the exact value of which it is very difficult to calculate, but which I have been told by experts may be put down at the moderate figure of at least £150,000 a year. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is more."] It may be more, but I put it at a low figure. I have taken some trouble to find out, and I believe that no expert puts it at less than that. I take the lowest. The Church therefore is so much the richer, and what would the Church gain if this Amendment were to become law? The Amendment were to become law? The right hon. Gentleman deprecated anything being said which would be derogatory to the character or disposition in this matter of the Bishop of Manchester. No one, I am sure, would wish to say a single word of disrespect of a man who is so universally regarded both by Members of his own communion and of others; but he is the author of this Amendment, and he has himself estimated the gain at £350,000 a year. Add to that amount £150,000, and you get £500,000 a year which is given to the Church schools in relief of the obligation they were taking on their own part when this Bill was introduced. I have been at some trouble to look up what has been paid on account of these schools, and I find from the report of the National Society of 1901 that the expenditure on voluntary school buildings since 1811 amounted to £14,500,000. But the capitalised value at Now I come to the attitude of His Majesty's Government. As I said when I began, I expected the right hon. Gentleman to state what the view of the Government was with regard to the Amendment, but I have not much doubt as to what their course should be, because not only did they, through the Attorney General oppose an Amendment to this same effect when it was originally proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Tewkesbury Division, but in the House of Lords the Duke of Devonshire took the same course with regard to this Amendment. He deprecated it, and he enumerated all those subsidies which had been given. He said that they must not disturb the balance further, and that it would never do to entertain such a proposal. Accordingly the Government Whips in the other place were put on, but although it was a Government division they contrived to get themselves beaten. MR. A. J. BALFOUR: How contrived? SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I do not mean when I say contrived" that the Government so managed, or to suggest any sinister plan. I mean perhaps I should say mismanaged, their affairs that they were beaten. These are the circumstances in which we are now invited, notwithstanding the curious manner in which the matter is brought before us, and the way in which our rights and privileges have been dealt with, to make this great concession which we refused before at a time when the concessions relating to fees and endowments had not been given. I do not see how the Government can do anything in consistency with their previous declarations except to oppose the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman. All the arguments he used today were used on that occasion and were rejected by the House. There might be occasions when the House would go back on a previous decision. If the situation. had been altered as against the Church schools that might have been done, but everything that has happened since then has been an alteration in favour of the Church schools. It is in these circumstances that we are asked to reverse the decision of July last. I think these are arguments enough to justify us by a large majority expressing our disagreement with this Amendment. were (10.43.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman seemed to pass some criticism, I will not say blame, upon me for not rising immediately to indicate the line the Government propose to take upon this Amendment. If I had thought the House required information on that point I should have risen to give it, but I have, in the clearest way and on more than one occasion during the debates we have had in the earlier stages of this Amendment, indicated to the House that so far as the Government are concerned we propose to leave this an open question. There have certainly been a great many statements made by the right hon. Gentleman from which I profoundly dissent. I dissent from his theory of privilege. He did not dwell upon it at great length, but he spoke with great emphasis, and almost indicated to this House that we doing a great injury to ourselves by permitting ourselves to discuss perfectly, freely, and unhampered by any exterior influence, a question which we are greatly interested in. To say that we are bound in our own interest not to do what some Members of the House very much want to do, is, I think, a preposterous and untenable theory. With regard to the question as to the method that has been pursued, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that all that has been done is in accordance with precedent, and perfectly constitutional. I have looked into this matter, and I find, no doubt, that there have been cases in which the House has dealt with far stronger cases of interference with the privileges we have got. They have been dealt with by a deliberate waiver of our privileges. My own belief is that it is not in the interest of this House to make it quite impossible for us to reconsider any question, whatever large lines of policy it may touch, whatever the interest it may affect, because the imposition of a rate or a tax is involved. To make it impossible for the House of Lords to Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman. make any alteration in a measure of this kind, and to preclude the House of Commons by that fact from ever dealing with the question again, is, in my opinion, not in the interest of the legislature as a whole, and certainly not in the interest of the House of Commons. I am quite satisfied that the course taken is not inconsistent with the practice which this House has followed. We had a discussion this afternoon, which I will not repeat, as to the precedent of 1898. That precedent was perfectly clear; that precedent points back to preceding precedents, and I do not see how you could have a clearer parallel to the course that is now being adopted than. the precedent of 1898. It is perfectly true, and it appears to have offended some hon. Gentlemen very much, that there is in this, as in all these other cases, something in the nature of a method in getting round the strict privileges of the House of Commons. Of course, that is not denied. The right hon. Gentleman talked of it as a trick. There is no trick in the matter. It is a perfectly plain and open method, often followed in the past, by which the House is enabled to reconsider questions if it desiresto do so. We are not compelled in any way to adopt the Amendment; we may kick the whole thing out with contempt; but this is a method by which the House regains a certain measure of liberty in regard to matters in which it is greatly interested; and I cannot understand how anyone acquainted with constitutional development and procedure can seriously object to the course we have adopted. I pass from that to the concrete merits of the proposal. I do not think I will be asked to say much on these, but this much I must say. The hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, and the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, talked as if there had been a bond, a bargain, a financial arrangement, if not put down in black and white, at all events, made in most specific terms, between those who framed the Bill and the ecclesiastical authorities to whom the Bill applies. That is not the fact. After all, nobody can authority than I can, and I say deliberspeak with ately that the whole thing is a dream, a delusion, and is all based on imagination. more |