Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/69

 1899.] The Money-Lending Bill. [61

terms of the bill, which provided, however, that two-thirds of the members should be representatives of the universities or of other teaching bodies. Parliament would retain control over proceedings taken under the provisions of the bill, as there was a clause providing that all orders should be laid upon the table of both Houses before they were submitted to the Queen in Council. It was necessary that the organisation of the Science and Art Department should be thoroughly revised, and the task would be undertaken by a departmental committee, which would be appointed as soon as the principle of the amalgamation of the two departments had been approved by Parliament. The inquiry would occupy a considerable amount of time, and it was therefore proposed that the present bill should not come into force until April 1, 1900.

The reference to the Science and Art Department could not fail to revive out of doors the recollection of the report of the select committee of the House of Commons which had reported so unfavourably on the administration of that department. There was no reason to suppose that the committee had been animated by any special feeling to the authorities at South Kensington, or that they had done otherwise than made a report in accordance with the evidence brought before them. That report was condemnatory in nearly every particular, and in one point at least — the termination of the engagement of the keeper of the Art Library, who had given evidence against the heads of the department — the committee showed that if the exact letter of the Treasury rule had been observed, the animus displayed was open to suspicion. ' The duke's apology for the act (March 16) was scarcely regarded as a vindication of the Science and Art Department.

The Money-Lending Bill, which also engrossed the atten- tion of the Upper House, was framed upon the recommendations of a select committee appointed for the purpose, before which much important evidence has been given, and the evils of the practice fully exposed. Lord James of Hereford, who had undertaken to apply to practical use the findings of the select committee, had succeeded in framing a bill with which the keenest legal intellects of the House of Lords had but little fault to find. The bill in fact having been framed on ordinary business lines, and not in compliance with popular outcry, commended itself to all who wished to see an end put to the abuses of usury. The bill provided that every person carrying on the business of a money-lender should be registered under one name only, and that he should not carry on his trade under false and deceptive names. One clause laid it down that the term "professional money-lender " should include every person who carried on the business of money-lending, or who advertised, or announced himself, or held himself out in any way as carrying on the business ; but that it should not include any pawnbroker, or banker, or other person carrying on a com-