Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/34

 26] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [pbb.

sweeping but more practically applicable reform was rejected by only 223 to 105 votes — the minority in both cases being almost identical.

The grievances of the Scottish crofters and cottars were dismissed (Feb. 14) with scarcely less ceremony than those of the Welsh tithe objectors. Mr. Weir (Boss and Cromarty) was of opinion that 1,782,785 acres of land devoted to deer forests, grouse moors, etc., might be advantageously devoted to agri- culture and to the bettering of the condition of the labouring classes of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The Lord Advocate, Mr. Graham Murray (Buteshire), finding that Mr. Weir was generally supported by the Scotch members, pleaded for time in order that the Congested District Board might deal with the problems, which it had already attacked in a tentative way. A beginning had been made in the creation of new holdings, and the crofters had been provided with plant and seed. Under these circumstances the House consented by 197 to 142 votes to give the Government further time to carry out its experiments.

There was the keener relish of something personal in Mr. MacNeill's (Donegal, S.) amendment, declaring that twenty-five out of the forty-four actual ministers of the Crown held among them forty-one directorships in public companies, and that the union of such offices was calculated to lower the dignity of public life. The question was warmly debated for the best part of two days (Feb. 14 and 15), although in the end the amendment to the address, which if carried would have amounted to a vote of want of confidence, was negatived by 247 to 103 votes. Notwithstanding this result, there was little doubt that Mr. MacNeill expressed a very widely spread feeling that on acceptance of office a minister should completely sever his connection with commercial life, in order that under no circumstances could corrupt motives be imputed to him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir M. Hicks-Beach (Bristol W.), put forward the conventional plea that ministers, like other people, were free to devote their leisure time to such occupa- tions as they chose ; and he protested with unnecessary warmth against the idea that all joint-stock enterprise was dishonest, and all directors corrupt. Mr. Balfour followed upon much the same lines, holding that the security and integrity of public life was to be sought in parliamentary tradition and public opinion rather than in definite and inapplicable rules. Mr. Asquith (Fifeshire, E.), however, bluntly pointed out that the existing system, defended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, contained two elements inconsistent with the principles which should govern the State, viz., first, that a man should devote his whole time to its service ; and secondly, that no man should place himself in a position where his public and private interests might come into collision. In Mr. Gladstone's last Ministry the rule had been strictly enforced and acted on, and its relaxa-