THE CHAIRMAN: I must call upon the hon. and learned Gentleman to deal with the Amendment before the Committee. if they did that, was not a candidate per- | fectly safe-["No!"]-as safe as it was possible to make him? He could not conceive the slightest danger or risk to any person who honestly meant to carry out this clause. It was said whatever maximum they fixed would be an improper maximum if the candidature was an exceptionally long one. A person might make himself known to a constituency for a very limited amount; he might address meetings and otherwise make known his views at very small cost, and when he knew that the total amount he had to spend was only so much, whether his candidature was short or long he could "cut his coat according to his cloth." If he honestly endeavoured to do that the promoters of the Bill had taken care that any accidental miscalculation or mistake could not hurt him. He (the Solicitor General) submitted to the Committee that in doing that they had done all they could practically do. If any hon. Gentleman could im-vember. He asked if it was fair to have prove upon that they were quite ready to listen to him with the utmost satisfaction. MR. WARTON said, the further they proceeded with the Bill the more clearly they saw how absurd and ridiculous its provisions were. Early in the discussion he proposed that an election should be supposed to commence 28 days before the polling day. There was a definition at once, and he put it to the common sense of the Committee-a faculty to which Ministers were always appealing, but which they never used-he put it to the common sense of the Committee whether 28 days before an election would not be a better time than the 17 months' candidature of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke), or the four or five months' election which was inevitable in 1868? It was all very well for the Attorney General (Sir Henry James) to say-"Oh, I don't approve of the length of time given in 1868;" but it was possible this Parliament might expire under somewhat similar circumstances. It was possible that at the end of next Session, or the Session after, some Bill might pass for altering the electorate-perhaps the extravagant ideas of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) might be adopted. "Question!"] MR. WARTON said, he was trying to do so, and he did not think it would have been suggested to the Chairman's mind that he was not addressing himself to the Question if it had not been for the howl on the other side of the House. He maintained he was sticking closely to the Question when he said that the Attorney General was wrong in saying that they could not have again what happened in 1868. He was saying that an alteration might take place in the constituencies of the country, some Reform Bill might be carried, and it might be the avowed policy of the Government to dissolve Parliament a short time after. Parliament might expire in August-it might be in the interest of the Government, probably for some reason of their own, not to have the election until No a period of three months during which election expenses might go on, and compel men to narrow their expenses within the paltry limits of this Bill? Twentyeight days would be a good time to fix, because when a vacancy occurred an election was generally held within that time. He did not want to make imputations, but the only class of men this clause would help would be the candidates who held cheap meetings all over the country, lecturing to Radical constituencies, making at a cheap rate political promises that could never be kept, and promising things that could never be given, acts to which decent men, who desired the expenses of the election contest to be. honestly carried out, could not and would not resort to. That, he contended, was the worst sort of political corruption, of which there was a monopoly on the other side of the House. There were such terms in the Bill that he was sure it would operate unjustly if carried into law. MR. BRYCE desired to make a few observations of a strictly practical nature. It had been said that the longer an election lasted the greater, necessarily, was the expense. His own experience was rather the other way. No one who knew anything of electioneering could suppose that if an election lasted for 12 months they must, necessarily, spend even twice as much money as if it [Eleventh Night.] 3 Q2 only lasted one month. Long elections, as a matter of fact, were often cheaper than those hastily conducted, because the greatest expense was generally incurred in the hurry and confusion of the last few days of an election taken suddenly. At the last General Election he came before the constituency of the Tower Hamlets, which numbered 44,000 electors, 16 months before the election actually occurred, and during those 16 months he did not spend more than £50 or £60. The consequence was that when the election came on, such was their state of preparation that his Party were able to conduct the election at a much smaller expense than would be allowed under the Maximum Schedule of the Bill. It was during the last few days of hasty and excited elections that great expense was usually incurred; and he, therefore, hoped the Attorney General would adhere to the clause in its present shape. MR. STUART-WORTLEY said, it seemed to him that if the Government were in earnest in desiring to put down corrupt practices, it would be logical for them to omit entirely the words "whether during, before, or after an election," because then the clause would be confined to election expenses of all kinds incidental to the election. He wished also to offer this suggestion as a practical way of meeting the need for a definition-namely, that the election should be taken to commence at the time when the candidate issued his election address, because that was the moment at which his decision was irrevocably taken to become a candidate. The Attorney General had said that a man might never issue an address; but, unless the candidate wished to advertise his desire to evade the provisions of the Bill, it stood to reason that he must issue an address at some time or other, when he resolved to become a candidate, and, in his (Mr. Stuart-Wortley's) opinion, it would be monstrous to hold a candidate responsible under this Act for the expense incurred in making his views known to the electors, perhaps, two or three years before an election. MR. GORST said, he desired to remind the Committee that they were now debating a point which was debated and decided by the Committee some three weeks ago. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) had reminded the Com Mr. Bryce mittee of that fact by making over again the speech he (Mr. Gorst) well remembered the hon. and learned Gentleman made on that occasion. Upon the clause relating to treating the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Raikes) proposed that corrupt practices could only be committed three months before, or during, or after an election. The Committee thoroughly considered the Amendment, and it was ultimately decided, by the Gentlemen who sat on the Front Benches, that it was impossible to define the commencement of an election; as a matter of fact, if they defined the commencement of an election by any means whatever, corrupt expenditure would be incurred before the day fixed arrived. They were now only repeating what they had already done; they were now trying to determine the precise date on which an election was to commence. They could not do it; no one could propose such a definition, no one had done it, and no one was able to do it. Certainly, the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Stuart-Wortley) had ventured to do it; but it was simply wasting the time of the Committee to go on endeavouring to find that which it would be a very good thing if it could be found, but which the collective wisdom of the whole Committee had, as yet, been unable to find. MR. CALLAN said, he was much amazed at the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, who put himself before the Committee as a practical man having a practical suggestion to offer. That suggestion was that an election should be held to commence when a candidate issued his address. He (Mr. Callan) issued no address; he never addressed the electors, but they elected him on trust, and he hoped he was fulfilling that trust. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce) had also spoken about electioneering expenses as a practical man; he had said that the longer the period of preparation the cheaper was the election. He (Mr. Callan) did not know whether there was any Member of the Committee who would agree with the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets in this; but he (Mr. Callan) was certainly of opinion that if, during 16 months, the hon. Gentleman only spent £50 or £60, his position was a most enviable one. He trusted the hon. and learned | ways, and the result of making it an Gentleman (the Attorney General) would resist all limitations whatever; certainly if he attempted to fix any limit of time, outside which an expenditure in a constituency would be illegal, the hon. and learned Gentleman might as well abandon the Bill altogether. illegal practice to submit to be fleeced would have a very salutary effect. There were subscriptions for cricket clubs, yacht clubs, race meetings, and the like. All these things came within the rule of illegal practices, if the subscriptions were given to any large extent. He very strongly objected to subscribe to anything of the kind, and a few years ago he positively refused to subscribe to a race meeting at Cavan. In January last he was in Cavan, and he got some posting done. The proprietor of the hotel was not an elector, or, strictly speaking, if he had been, what he (Mr. Biggar) did would have brought him within the province of an illegal pay MR. RAIKES said, he should not have taken part in this discussion but for the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) just now referred to an Amendment which he (Mr. Raikes) proposed upon the very first day the Bill was in Committee. The question raised by that Amendment was not similar to the question now under consideration. The proposal he submitted to the Com-ment. He was charged much beyond mittee on that occasion related to treating, and was to the effect that treating, to be considered a corrupt practice, should have taken place three months before, during, or after an election. If the Attorney General had accepted that Amendment he might have saved himself a good deal of subsequent discussion. Now they were called upon to consider a question which was not identical to the one he formerly raised; the question now under consideration was as to illegal practices. It might be difficult for the Attorney General (Sir Henry James) to find a date at which an election was to commence, having regard to the cost of the elections as defined by the Schedule; but he (Mr. Raikes) thought it would be pretty clear to most Members of the Committee that the expenses in question were certainly calculated to be merely the actual expenses of an immediate election. He was still of opinion that some date should be fixed at which the expenses should not be considered election expenses. If that course were not adopted they would certainly have to make some alterations in the Schedule dealing with the amount a candidate might legally expend. MR. BIGGAR said, he hoped the Government would adhere to the clause, and for a variety of reasons. One great source of corruption with regard to electioneering affairs was not the work of the candidate at all. There were always a few people who were exceedingly anxious to be bribed, directly or indirectly. The consequence was that a candidate was fleeced in all manner of the ordinary trade price. Had he paid such a bill, and this Act had been in operation, he supposed he would have been guilty of committing an illegal practice. That sort of thing was exceedingly common. He might give the Committee the benefit of another illustration. Some time ago he and a few friends took dinner in an hotel in the county of Cavan. The person who kept the hotel was an elector, and he charged them at least three times the ordinary trade price. He believed that such a thing as that would have been held to be an illegal practice under this Act; and he considered, in the interest of Members who were fleeced by their constituents, the learned Attorney General ought to resist any alteration of this clause. He was of opinion that one of the good things of this Bill was the discouragement to the levying of black mail on Members of Parliament, or those who wished to become Members of Parliament. MR. R. N. FOWLER said, that they in the City of London had to go to considerable expense in the way of advertisements-to far greater expense, in fact, than candidates in other constituencies. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General probably only put his address in a weekly paper in Taunton, and, therefore, his expenses in advertising must be very trifling. The candidates in the City of London, however, had to advertise in The Times, The Standard, The Daily News, The Daily Telegraph, The Morning Post, The Morning Advertiser, and several evening papers. [An hon. MEMBER: No; not The Times.] An hon. Gentleman said [Eleventh Night.] he did not put his advertisement in The Times; he (Mr. R. N. Fowler) supposed that if this Bill passed they would be practically prohibited from doing so. If a candidature was to last for 16 months, as in the case of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke), the candidate must advertise; and he (Mr. R. N. Fowler) did not see how, in the matter of advertisements alone, they could conduct elections as they had hitherto done. MR. LEWIS said, he had not yet heard any practical illustration given of the differences between General Elections-between, for instance, the General Elections of 1868, 1874, and 1880. They all knew that the Election of 1868 was, from force of circumstances, inevitable at the end of the autumn of 1868; there was practically a four months' contest. In 1874, however, they had a totally different state of circumstances. It would be in the recollection of most Members that the Dissolution took place all in a moment, and that the contest in many constituencies only lasted a week-one week as against three months in 1868. Now, what was the case in 1880? There was an intermediate period somewhere between three and four weeks. They therefore saw in the case of the three General Elections he had referred to a totally different state of things as regarded the basis of expenditure; and he had no doubt many hon. Members of the Committee were as much astonished as he was to hear of the extraordinary experience of one of the Members for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce), that the longer the election the cheaper it was. He could only say that it would be a very beneficial thing if the hon. Gentleman could give them all a lesson as to the mode of conducting a cheap election. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Baron Henry de Worms) conducted their elections upon very different principles. The one-namely, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board-returned his expenses from the very first moment he appeared before the constituency of Chelsea, whereas the hon. Member for Greenwich only returned his expenses from the time the election proper com Mr. R, N, Fowler menced; in fact, his hon. Friend (Baron Henry de Worms) took a very commonsense course. They saw what a different result might have befallen those hon. Gentlemen had Petitions been brought upon the state of facts disclosed. The 60th clause of the Bill defined the meaning of the word "candidate." He entreated the attention of the Committee to this point. The 60th section of the Bill said— "In the Corrupt Practices Prevention Acts, as amended by this Act, the expression 'candidate at an election' means, unless the context otherwise requires, any person elected to serve in Parliament at such election, and any person who has been nominated as a candidate at such election, or has been declared by himself or by others to be a candidate." One was to infer from that that a candidature at an election did not commence until a man was declared to be a candidate. But that was not the obvious meaning of the words "before, during, or after an election." They, therefore, again came face to face with the diffioulty which the Attorney General would not meet-namely, the inequality of the circumstances of one General Election as compared with another. He conant that this matter should be dealt with sidered that it was exceedingly importpractically by the Government before this part of the Bill was disposed of. LORD GEORGE HAMILTON said, which existed in reference to his Amendthat after the wide difference of opinion ment he would not put the Committee to learned Gentleman the Member for Chatthe trouble of a Division. The hon. and ham (Mr. Gorst) had said that this Amendment had been previously discussed. That was not exactly the fact, because in the one case they were dealing with corrupt practices, and in the other case with illegal practices. A corrupt practice was always a corrupt practice, but was under this Bill illegal, because it was committed during an not from its being inherently bad, but election. He, therefore, wished to define the limits of the period during which an act otherwise innocent would be illegal. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. It being ten minutes before Seven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to report Progress; Committee to sit again upon Monday next. The House suspended its Sitting at Seven of the clock. "The great duty of superintending the various branches connected with the Department of Education should be entrusted to some one responsible Minister-some Minister who The House resumed its Sitting at should be regarded as a State officer of high Nine of the clock. ORDERS OF THE DAY. 1901 SUPPLY.-COMMITTEE. Order for Committee read. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair." MINISTER OF EDUCATION. RESOLUTION. SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, in rising to call attention to the fact that the Minister whose duty it is to bring forward the Educational Estimates in this House has never any power of appointing the officers to whom the administration of the Votes is entrusted; and to move"That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that there should be a separate Department of Education," said, the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) had a very similar Motion on the Paper, and he would have been glad to surrender his place to the noble Lord; but it would be an advantage that he should speak a little later, and to a larger House. This was no new question. As long ago as 1856 the late Lord Derby said "It appeared to him well worthy of consideration, whether it would not be well to supersede the Privy Council altogether in this matter, and to have a Minister as the Head of a Department, who should have no other duties to perform, and who should be, in fact, responsible for the education of the people. He had a strong feeling that the institution of a Minister of Instruction was desirable, and that the subject should be altogether separated from the Privy Council."—(3 Hansard, [140] 815-6.) In 1862 the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox) brought forward a Resolution calling on the House to affirm that for the Education Estimates and for the expenditure of all monies voted for the promotion of Education, Science, and Art, a Minister of the Crown should be responsible to the House. Sir John Pakington, in 1865, moved for a Select Committee to inquire into the constitution of the Committee of Council on Education, and urged, in the course of his speech, that— authority, who should have the sole conduct of that Department, and be solely responsible."(3 Hansard, [177] 849.) The Committee was appointed in 1865, and re-nominated in 1866. They examined numerous witnesses, and among them the then Vice President of the Counand Lord Sherbrooke; and it was remarkcil and his Predecessor, Lord Aberdare able that those two right hon. Gentlemen gave totally opposite versions of the position of Vice President-one considering that he was practically an Under Secretary of State, the other being of opinion that his position was materially different; one considering that he was responsible to the House of Commons, the other that the Vice President was responsible to his Chief only. Lord Russell, also, who was questioned with reference to this particular point, said that he found it very difficult to make up his mind on the subject, but would say generally that the Vice President was more responsible in certain cases than in others; while, in some instances, when "The question depends on the discretion of the Lord President, it can hardly be said that he is responsible at all." Lord Russell expressed the opinion that at the time he spoke a Minister of Education was not necessary; but he added that the time might come when we should have a national system of education founded on rates. He said "Before this could be done there are great difficulties which would have to be got over; but if ever they should be got over, then I say that a Minister of Education would be desirable." The result of the evidence given before the Committee was that the Chairman, in his draft Report, proposed "That there should be a Minister of Public Instruction with a seat in the Cabinet, who should be intrusted with the care and superintendence of all matters relating to the national encouragement of science and art and popular education in every part of the country.' At the moment, however, when the Committee were about to discuss the Report, Ministerial changes took place; and the Committee consequently decided, though with great regret, that they could not enter with advantage on the discussion |