I think, in view of that, the noble Lord has placed me in a wrong light in saying he did not possess any shares.

LORD ALWYNE COMPTON: I apologise for trespassing on the House, but as the hon. Member for Clare has challenged me, I think I have a right of reply. It now appears that the hon. Member has referred to shares which he says were held in my name nine years ago. The hon. Member really should investigate these things before he makes statements of this kind. Nine years ago I was a member of a firm which I do not belong to now, and I believe it is quite possible that 5,000 or 10,000 Chartered shares may have stood at that time in the name of my partner and myself. They were not my shares, I did not possess them, and neither I nor my partner had any power over them.

MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: With great respect I submit that the noble Lord does not accurately describe the situation. I made the statement that he possessed

shares, and his name for a number of shares is now on the register of the Chartered Company. I think, in the mind of every fair-minded man in the House, of every fair-minded man in the House, that would justify me in making the

statement.

MR. ATHERLEY-JONES (Durham, N.W.) said that it was not the duty of the Government to consider the interests of the mine-owners or the immediate economic problem, but the interests of what it was hoped would be a great English Colony. All the greatest authorities who had written on South Africa had agreed that it was to the mineral wealth of South Africa that they must look for the development of a colonial free-governed State, and that agriculture, despite the richness and fertility of the soil, could not operate as a magnetic influence in drawing an English population to that point of the world. In establishing Chinese labour, therefore, they would be striking a blow at colonial development by British people. Was it not possible

a

to work these mines with British labour? If there were no Chinese and no blacks would there not be reef prospecting with as much energy as that which characterised Australian mining? If that were so, the Colonial Secretary would be abrogating his responsibility as Colonial Minister if he allowed Chinese labour to intercept the natural flow of British labour, merely for the purpose of precipitating the development of the mines. Why not employ Indian labour? No doubt the real reason was to be found in the fact that the Indian Legislative Council would not for a moment tolerate further development of the coolie legislation which was enacted with great reluctance some years ago. Another reason, no doubt, was the objection of the Indian people to an Ordinance framed under such conditions. Looking at the nature of the contract the Chinese would have to sign, there was no doubt it amounted to a reinstitution of the system of slavery. He knew of no parallel to this Ordinance in any legislation. It was a singular fact that under the Ordinance it was competent for the mine-owner to inflict corporal punishment upon these unhappy Chinese. That was the opinion of the Chinese Minister. He himself did not wish to take up an attitude of bigoted hostility to the mine-owners of South

Africa.

Many of them were liberal minded men, but he recollected that before the war broke out, and while it was being waged, this country was told that the colony would be a magnificent field for Britsh labour. There was a large number of unemployed in this country, but this Ordinance would shut the door against them, and put in their place the most debased form of labour which could possibly be instituted in any country under the sun. He hoped, therefore, the Government would reconsider their position, and see whether they could not solve the problem with not so much regard for the immediate interests of the mineowners but in the permanent and lasting interests of both this country and South Africa.

MR. WILLIAM WATSON RUTHERFORD (Liverpool, West Derby) said he wished to say a few words on this subject from an entirely English point of view. At Liverpool they had 25,000 casual labourers, and there was only work for

13,000. The result was that each casual labourer got on the average two and a half to three days work every week. This was a cause of very great demoralisation. When a man left his house in the morning to seek work his wife and children did not know whether there would be a crust of bread to eat during the day. This caused such evils as overcrowding, intemperance, disease, and vice of all kinds. At least 2,500 of these casual labourers could be easily spared from Liverpool, and he believed they would go to South Africa if they had terms such as 4s. per day and regular work. He did not believe the work in the mines was any more difficult or objectionable than the work these men had to do in Liverpool. If they had facilities for getting to South Africa they would, he thought, be willing to go there. A scheme of this kind would be of incalculable advantage to every large city and town in this country. It would benefit the men and it would benefit their families, and they could look forward to improvement in years to come. He was very grieved to hear that there were suggestions that any man who went out to this employment would have to abandon any hope of social improvement, and entirely confine himself to work of this particular kind. Workmen going out from this country to take up this work would look forward to improving their social position. . He did not think the illustration of the 1,000 navvies sent out from this country was a fair one. They were sent out to emergency work on railways, and they expected emergency terms. He simply wanted to know whether any efforts had been made to recruit labour in this country for that portion of His Majesty's dominions which appeared to be crying out for labour. He would like to know what attempts in that direction had been made, if any; and, if no efforts had been made, why some attempt should not be made before importing Chinese labour. He believed that the great working centres of this country would want to know why something was not being done for them before we imported Chinese labour into the Transvaal, and that the general sense of this country would object to the importation of that labour, and would only assent to it in the last resort when they were sati fied that

reasonable and practical solutions had been fairly tried and failed.

MR. MUNRO FERGUSON (Leith Burghs) said the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had pointed to the weak point in connection with the labour inquiry. The reference to the Commission which inquired into the subject was exceedingly restricted. It restricted the inquiry to the point-of how many blacks could be obtained in a certain region in Africa? But there were three colours that could be employed in the mineswhite, black, and yellow. The white and yellow were both excluded from the inquiry, and many hon. Members who sympathised with the difficulties which the Government were confronted with in South Africa at the conclusion of the war, were determined that they would do nothing to hamper, as they believed, the employment of white labour until the question of the employment of that labour had been thoroughly gone into. The right hon. Gentleman made an appeal to some of them on this side of the House in the earlier portion of the debate on the King's Speech to give support to the Government. But the Imperial thinking of the Government led it in very various. directions. We had been invited to reverse our fiscal policy in order that certain advantages might be conferred on South Africa and our other Colonies. We were now asked to reverse the labour policy of this country in order to make South Africa properous. What he could not understand was why, at the very time we were asked to exorcise the demon of cheapness in this country, we should be at the same time invited to introduce it into the Transvaal in the shape of Chinese

labour.

The House had heard about the

opinion of the Tranvaal, and the right hon. Gentleman in his speech, in which he endeavoured to make a great many obscure doubt being cast upon the independence parts of the question plain, objected to any of the votes of the officials of the Transvaal upon the Legislative Council. the right hon. Gentleman's contention held good they might as well abolish the House of Commons, because that assumed that a civil servant being placed on a legislative body was able to do the whole work not. merely of administration but of legislation.

If

Admirable as might be the character of the great Civil Service in the Transvaal, he would never accept the view that they could give as independent and as free a vote as the representatives of the people. He could not accept the view, therefore, that there was not great need for the real opinion of the Transvaal being taken upon the question. If they could not get that by representative institutions the only other way of getting it was by a plebiscite. He could not accept the view that there would not have been plenty of time to have taken a plebiscite if it were still impossible to provide representative institutions in South Africa.

He believed it was impossible without adequate inquiry—and that they had not yet had to support any scheme for pouring unlimited Chinese, married or otherwise, into the mines of the Rand. It was urged that Chinese cheap labour was to encourage the growth of the white population in South Africa, but that was not the view of those parts of the Empire which had tried it. The whole Empire had been united against the proposal to employ Chinese labour. As the right hon. Gentleman had appealed to them to vote Imperially, he would appeal to him in turn to think well before he went against the whole sense of the Empire in importing this cheap labour into South Africa. It was said by a distinguished Member of this House who sat on the other side, and who was no longer with them, that the trail of finance was over the Raid. At any rate, let them make sure that the trail of finance was not over the settlement after the war. It was inevitable, if they took no means of satisfying themselves of what the real opinion of the Transvaal was, that, without representative institutions, and without a plebiscite, the opinion of the mine-owners would bear undue weight with the Government of the country. It was inevitable that the mine-owners and their dependents must exercise undue weight and influence in the consideration of Transvaal policy. He, at any rate, had not sought to shirk any responsibility in supporting what he believed to be British rights in South Africa, and he for one deplored this policy, which he did not think could be justified, and which he thought they were asked to approve on very insufficient data.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL said he had listened to the debate with very great interest, and the first thing he would remark was that it was sometimes hard to say where private interests ended and the public interest began. He would, to the best of his ability, protest against this Ordinance, because he believed it to be the slave policy of a slavish and mammonised Government. Would the Colonial Secretary state whether he was the official inferior of Lord Milner, or whether Lord Milner was the official inferior of him? Who was the master and who was the man? Was the master away in the Transvaal and was the that when the late Colonial Secretary man here? It was a very curious thing was in office no slave policy was instituted although Lord Milner was anxious to institute it then as now. The present Colonial Secretary was carrying out Lord Milner's policy.

as

approval of the colonists has been formally ascertained'"-(Mr. Herbert Samuel.)

Question again proposed, "That those

words be there added."

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL said this was one of those occasions which only occurred once or twice in a Parliamentary lifetime when a Member considered it one of his greatest privileges to address the House of Commons. He now lifted up his voice to protest against the violation, contained in this Ordinance, of all the Parliamentary traditions which made this country great, and which made it a refuge for the weak and the oppressed. When the House automatically adjourned he was asking the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary who in this case was the master; he, the right hon. Gentleman, or his official subordinate, Lord Milner. He had come to the conclusion that, with regard to this slave policy, Lord Milner was the prime mover. It was unfortunate that the Colonial Secretary should have leapt at one bound to his present position and more unfortunate still, that he should have as his official subordinate a person of the somewhat unscrupulous character of Lord Milner, who was controlled and dominated in this slave policy by the millionaires of South Africa. The right hon. Gentleman was appointed to the Colonial Office when Lord Milner had declined that position which the Prime Minister had begged him to accept in a manner hardly worthy of himself. Lord Milner then went to South Africa, and a gentleman very well known at the Bar, but not very well known in this House, was set up here as his mouthpiece. He did not wish to say anything unamiable in the absence of the right hon. Gentleman, but if he said that, in this case, he was a creature of Lord Milner's he was not very far wrong; if he said that Lord Milner himself was the creature of the millionaire capitalists of South Africa he was very much in the right. The hon. Member for the Stowmarket Division who spoke first in the debate that afternoon, had made use of an observation which had started him on a train of thought. The hon. Member for Stowmarket drew attention to the fact that when the House assembled, and before public business commenced, and before Mr. Speaker took the chair, we had prayers and thanksgiving to Almighty

God, and a prayer that we might arrive at our conclusions without fear, favour, or misgiving. Those words were spoken by a dignitary of the Church, whose voice they loved to hear, and whose grandfather was the great slave emancipator. When William Wilberforce stood up in this House at the time of the Union and demanded the emancipation of the slaves he did not get a voice to support him, but when seven years later, after the Union was effected, he carried the Emancipation Act he carried it with the help of an Irish majority, and he (Mr. MacNeill) was proud to belong to a nation which had always been found ready to fight on the side of freedom and humanity. The Transvaal was a new colony and new colonies he always noticed were given mottoes. In 1858 when our Indian Dependency became a British Dependency they took for their motto "Heaven be our guide" and that motto was fulfilled when the right hon. Gentleman opposite became Secretary of State for India. He now thought of presenting to the Colonial Secretary a motto for the Transvaal. The right hon. Gentleman was a scholar and came from a family of scholars and he would have given him the motto in Latin, but for the benefit of the House he would give it in the vulgar tongue. The motto for this colony, in view of this slave Ordinance, should be "The smell of gain from any source is sweet."

He had endeavoured, unsuccessfully no doubt because he was not acute Parliamentarian enough, to get a disorderly Question past the Clerk at the Table, to elucidate this matter for the benefit of the House. He would now say this, that Lord Milner, not personally, but officially, was and must necessarily be, very much influenced in his capacity as administrator of South Africa by capitalist considerations. The late Mr. Rhodes made a will. In this will there was a disposition of £14,000,000, £7,000,000 were invested in Transvaal mines. Lord Milner was one of the executors and trustees under that will. If Lord Milner did not regard the welfare of the mines he would be disregarding the trusts of Mr. Rhodes' will. First of all he was a great administrator in which capacity he had to lower rents and see that there was a living wage for the white man. Then as executor of