but where it can be brought about by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant, the State should give it every assistance compatible with reasonable security against loss. After angry debates the Government carried the extension of the Ashbourne Act, and long since all the money granted has been used up without loss to the State. As we shall see later on, other and much larger votes of public money have been made for the same purpose; but they were coupled with conditions which have greatly hampered their operation, and but little use has been made of them so far.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Session of 1889-Debate on Evening Continuation Schools-Payment of Members-Drink and Opium in India-Death of John Bright-The Bimetallic Movement-Welsh Intermediate Education ActThe Armenians

AFTER the various Christmas and New Year's engagements at Liverpool were finished-among which I may mention my annual breakfast to the members of the Y.M.C.A., one of the happiest functions I ever shared-I took Mrs. Smith to Cannes for a little change, as her health was not good. We had, as usual, bright sunny weather, but cold and frosty. We came home refreshed and I was ready for the Session of Parliament, which met towards the end of February. I was very successful this year in the ballot, and secured four important debates on questions of great interest. Private members had then much more time and opportunity than now. We usually had both Tuesdays and Fridays for Motions, besides Wednesdays up to Whitsuntide for Bills, and we had other chances on going into Committee of Supply. By the diligent use of the ballot I was able to bring before the House almost every social and moral question in which I was interested, and no Session was more fruitful than this one.

On the first night I spoke on the address upon the need of Evening Continuation Schools, and I was able on March 15 to bring forward a motion on that important subject, which occupied almost the whole sitting. I got support from all sides of the House. I described what I saw in Germany and how in that country, by continuous training of the young, they had practically extirpated the class of ragged and pauper children, whereas it swarmed in all our English towns. I said :—

We have a large class of parents in England who are little better than savages. They do nothing for their children; they prey upon them;

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they treat them as wage earners from the earliest years of their life, and under the degrading influences that surround them, these children sink into that state of heathenism in which a considerable part of our people live. There is no way of Christianizing, of civilizing them, except by the State putting them into schools and keeping them there as long as they can be kept. But we allow the children of the poorest class to leave our schools at 11 or 12 years of age, and then they pass through the education of the slums; they sink down into the same state of degradation as that in which their parents live, and in a few years become parents of another crop of the same destitute class, and create another generation of "the unemployed" in our large towns, for this class is always unemployed, and never will be anything else. How should they be anything else? They have never learned a trade; they have no means of living but by what they can pick up in the streets by odd jobs. By the time the children have grown up into youth they are hopelessly condemned to a life of poverty and degradation. We have let go the critical moment for changing their destiny; we have lost the period between 12 and 16, when the character is forming and when education can be turned to good account, and to our shame we have let these evils repeat themselves from generation to generation. Let me quote a few lines from a writer who has spent his life working among this class and knows exactly what he writes :—

:

Year by year (says the Rev. Benjamin Waugh) from 70,000 to 80,000 London children pass out of elementary schools; of these, possibly, the half obtain bona fide occupation. As for the rest-the poorer part, inhabiting, too, the more densely-populated quartersthere is nothing for them but the streets, and the almost certain life of a knave or a fool. It is probable that, every day, not less than 70,000 boys and girls are actually hob-jobbing' about, utterly helpless, until they hob-job into gaols, penitentiaries, and reformatories."

I was seconded by Mr. Hayes Fisher, and heartily supported by Mr. Mundella, George Dixon, of Birmingham, Sir Lyon Playfair, and to a considerable extent by the Vice-President of the Council, Sir Wm. Hart-Dyke. There was indeed practical unanimity, and I felt deeply gratified at this result of many years' labour in the cause of education. It is true that we have not even yet got all that I asked for; but the fact I have already mentioned— that by voluntary means we have now half a million of children in evening schools in place of 30,000-is an enormous gain, and the complete liberty to teach all kinds of practical knowledge instead of the mere verbalism that used to prevail is equally important. Nothing in our country is ever done per saltum; it is always piecemeal legislation. It suits the practical character of the nation, and on the whole works well. The Report of the Royal Commission on education wonderfully helped this movement. It practically

killed the barbarous system of "payment by results," and widened and liberalized the whole educational curriculum. I regard Mundella, George Dixon, and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) as among the greatest educational reformers in my time. Of course we all allow the first place to W. E. Forster, the author of the great Act of 1870, but he died soon after I entered Parliament: In the same month I opposed the proposal to pay Members of Parliament. I have always taken the line that where you can obtain the gratuitous services of intelligent and honourable men, as we do in Great Britain, it is a pity to encourage the class of professional politicians. I said :

To introduce the system of paid Members of Parliament will be to supplant the voluntary by the professional politician. I cannot but remember what I have seen in other countries—the United States in particular—and I believe the introduction of paid Members would sooner or later lower the character of this House. You may depend upon it, that if we have payment of Members of Parliament we shall soon have payment of Members in Town Councils and County Councils, School Boards and Boards of Guardians, the Magistracy, and all those public bodies with which the country is covered. This is, so to speak, the thin end of the wedge. We are discussing now, not merely the payment of a few hunderds of Members of Parliament, but we are discussing the ultimate payment of 10,000 or 20,000, or 30,000 persons holding public offices throughout the country and doing their work both honestly and gratuitously. What have been the consequences in other countries of the adoption of this course? We could not expect this country to escape from the degradation of politics which has taken place in France. And we all know what exists in the United States of America. It is urged that the adoption of payment of Members will bring a large number of working men's representatives into Parliament. I do not believe it. Where the system does exist we do not find that working men are elected. So far as I am aware, not a single working man sits at Washington at the present moment—at least, I have never heard of any; nor have I ever heard of any in France. ["Oh!"] It may be that there are, but I have never heard of any.1

I then quoted Mr. Bryce's standard work on the American Commonwealth :

"Politics has now become a gainful profession, like advocacy, stockbroking, the dry goods trade, or the getting up of companies. People go into it to live by it, primarily for the sake of the salaries attached to the places they count on getting. Secondarily, in view of the opportunities it affords of making incidental and sometimes illegitimate gains. Every person in a high administrative post, whether Federal, 1 I believe since then a few ouvriers have been returned to the French Chamber.

State, or Municipal, and, above all, every member of Congress, has opportunities of rendering services to wealthy individuals and companies for which they are willing to pay secretly in money or in money's worth. The better officials and legislators-they are the great majority, except in large cities-resist the temptation. The worst succumb to it, and the prospect of these illicit profits renders a political career distinctly more attractive to an unscrupulous man.”

I went on to say :—

Now, as we are aware that in America the system of paid professional politicians has led to these abuses, I say that, in the course of time, when full opportunity has been given to work out the system in this country, we shall see similar effects here. Parliament is now free from corruption; but, with paid Members, we should, 20, or 30, or 50 years hence, when the present Leaders of Party had been taken away, see a very different state of things. In Washington's time the American Republic began on virgin soil, and it had statesmen of the highest character at the head of affairs. It took 50 years of the professional politician system entirely to change all that. I say that after we have had a generation of paid Members, under the same conditions as in America, there is too much reason to believe the same fruits will be produced in this country. Just conceive what it will be to put into the hands of a body of professional politicians, largely living by politics, the control of £120,000,000 (now nearly £200,000,000) of local and imperial taxation! Consider what would be the consequences of entrusting to Committees drawn from this class Private Bill legislation involving enormous sums. Take as an illustration the Manchester Ship Canal. There was an enterprise dealing with £8,000,000 of money; it was promoted as determinedly on the one side as it was opposed on the other, and each side spent some £100,000 or more in Parliamentary expenses. The decision was left to a small Committee of five Members; and we have never had a suggestion or a whisper as to the honesty or uprightness of those members. But go to the United States, and you will find in respect of such undertakings that each side provides a large amount for "blackmailing," and if it wishes to carry a Bill it will have to disburse heavily from this Secret Service fund. This Secret Service fund is disbursed to a large extent among members of the Committees. It is a notorious fact that it is almost impossible for any great corporation in America to carry through its work without putting aside a large amount of money for "lobbying," and for secret and unavowed purposes. There is a class called " lobbyists " in America, whose profession it is to get through bills. They receive large sums of money of which they give no public account, for it is perfectly well understood that they could not be publicly vouched for. I see from the accounts of one railway quoted in this book (Mr. Bryce's) that it had put aside no less than 4,800,000 dollars for this Secret Service fund, or nearly a million sterling, in the last few years. Will the House permit me to read a short extract from my hon. friend's book on this system of lobbying? It is well that we should know something about this system, which may