GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



353 



revising contracts. These features, although the 

 serious and widespread evils they were intended 

 to remedy were recognized by all and the money 

 lenders themselves had no champions in Parlia- 

 ment, were so opposed to the accepted economic 

 theories that the Government yielded to the crit- 

 icisms made on both sides of the house and with- 

 drew the bill. 



The Irish agricultural and technical-education 

 bill creates a department of the Irish adminis- 

 tration for carrying out its provisions, having 

 a vice-president under the Chief Secretary and 

 -an annual fund, apart from parliamentary grants, 

 of nearly 170,000, derived from the Irish Church 

 surplus and savings coming from the reduction 

 of the judiciary. The Irish Nationalists were at 

 first inclined to criticise the measure, but when 

 they saw that it was popular in Ireland they gave 

 it a qualified approval. The Scotch private legis- 

 lation bill authorizes commissions, appointed by 

 the chairmen of committees of both houses of 

 Parliament, to conduct local inquiries into the 

 nature and value of proposed private bills. Mr. 

 Balfour gave a pledge to strengthen the control 

 of Parliament over Scotch private business, and 

 consequently changes were made in the bill, pro- 

 viding that orders made by the Scotch Secretary 

 shall not be valid until they have been confirmed 

 by Parliament, and that the commissioners ap- 

 pointed to conduct inquiries shall be members 

 of Parliament whenever they can be found in 

 either house willing and available. The tele- 

 phones bill was a much-debated measure. The 

 telephone system of Great Britain has had a be- 

 lated development, and as far as it has gone it 

 is in the hands of the National Telephone Com- 

 pany. A large majority of the public wanted the 

 business taken away from this unpopular and 

 unaccommodating monopoly. The precedent es- 

 tablished when the telegraphs were nationalized 

 of paying for the franchise at the market rate 

 of the shares was a bar to the expropriation of 

 the company and the assumption of the tele- 

 phone business of the country by the postal and 

 telegraph department of the Government except 

 at the cost of an annual deficit. The company 

 was willing to sell out to the Government only 

 as a going concern, and the ministry would not 

 sanction forcible expropriation on any other 

 terms. The post office would have to begin, 

 therefore, by paying an enormous sum and in- 

 curring a great debt, only to receive in return 

 a vast quantity of inferior or useless apparatus. 

 As a compromise the Government decided to 

 grant to municipalities the right which they were 

 demanding from all parts of the country to set 

 up telephone exchanges of their own. Many of 

 the municipalities refused to give the company 

 the right to string new wires, and thus brought 

 pressure on the Government to obtain its sanc- 

 tion for municipal telephones. As the ministers 

 were unwilling to confer on the company the 

 rights of eminent domain, they finally gave in 

 to the popular demand and brought in the bill 

 permitting this extension of the rights of mu- 

 nicipal trading and ownership. The municipali- 

 ties may conduct the business themselves or may 

 transfer it to a local company, and the different 

 municipal systems may establish communication 

 with each other, and thus compete with the 

 monopoly in long-distance as well as local traffic. 

 The shareholders of the company, however, dis- 

 played no alarm on account of the threatened 

 competition. The factory acts amendment bill 

 was postponed till another year at the sugges- 

 tion of Sir Charles Dilke, who desired a full in- 

 vestigation of the working of existing acts with 

 VOL. xxxix. 23 A 



a view to amending and consolidating them in 

 a comprehensive measure. Mr. Chamberlain was 

 challenged by the Opposition to introduce the 

 promised legislation to give pensions to super- 

 annuated workingmen. Some of the Radicals 

 were eager to advance such a scheme themselves, 

 and every year as the parliamentary period drew 

 nearer to a close their demand grew louder that 

 the Unionist leader should redeem the pledge 

 that was given to the people by his immediate 

 followers and in his name before the last elec- 

 tions. The House of Commons referred the ques- 

 tion to a select committee, appointed to consider 

 and report upon the best means of improving the 

 condition of the aged deserving poor. The ad- 

 verse report of a royal commission strengthened 

 the opinion of several of his ministerial col- 

 leagues against such legislation. It was impos- 

 sible, therefore, for him to redeem that promise; 

 but another of the projects included in his pro- 

 gramme of social legislation he did give effect 

 to by introducing and passing a small-houses 

 bill, to give to British workingmen facilities for 

 becoming the owners of their houses, analogous 

 to the facilities granted to Irish cottiers under 

 the land-purchase act. Powers under Mr. Cham- 

 berlain's act were conferred upon municipalities, 

 but these were limited and hedged in with safe- 

 guards to prevent waste or loss of public funds 

 and unfair competition with the building socie- 

 ties, of which there are 2,300, and 100,000,000 

 at least have been advanced by them for the 

 construction of dwellings. Where the rate 

 reaches a penny a municipality must cease mak- 

 ing advances for five years. The metropolitan 

 water companies bill, intended to give to the com- 

 panies that supply London with water power to 

 make further provision against a water famine, 

 became law early in the session. The limited 

 liability companies bill, which has been before 

 Parliament before, was once more allowed to 

 lapse, although the House of Lords had expended 

 much time and trouble upon it. A -metropolitan 

 street-traffic bill and a Scotch parish churches 

 bill were sacrificed also. The abandonment of 

 the Irish tithe-rent-charge bill was resented by 

 the Irish landlords, because the Government had 

 promised the relief afforded by that measure. 



Private bills had little chance when Mr. Bal- 

 four a little earlier than in other years bespoke 

 for Government business the time allotted to 

 them by the rules of Parliament. A service-fran- 

 chise bill was intended to restore the right of 

 suffrage to a considerable class of people who, 

 after being allowed to register and vote for ten 

 years from the passing of the representation of 

 the people act in 1884, were excluded by a judicial 

 decision given in the case of a policeman. He 

 was declared to be not entitled to vote under 

 the service franchise because his dwelling house 

 returned under the act was a cubicle, and the 

 same ruling applies to attendants in hospitals 

 and asylums, warders of workhouses, firemen, 

 many shop assistants, stablemen, grooms, garden- 

 ers, and caretakers. A Scotch local veto bill 

 proposed to give the inhabitants of any electoral 

 district the power by a majority vote to shut 

 up all or any part of the public houses in the 

 district without appeal and without compensa- 

 tion. A bill received the approval of the Com- 

 mons, but was not accepted by the Government, 

 the purpose of which was to raise the earliest 

 age at which children can be taken from school 

 from eleven to twelve years. The Lord Chief 

 Justice, Lord Russell, of Killowen, raised a sub- 

 ject that awakened wide interest by bringing 

 forward in the upper house a bill for the pre- 



