Treasury Precedents Defied (1913)

Chapter XXXIX

Treasury Precedents Defied (1913)

The Cabinet dissensions over Imperial politics reacted on Ireland. I wrote Maurice:

House of Commons,

10th February, 1913.

“I went to the Speaker to-night about my point on the Estimates as to the Insurance Bill. I am certain I am right and he was very grave over it. I gave the Whips notice I would raise it on Report, and they postponed Report until to-morrow. Lloyd George will be sorry for including Ireland in the Bill.”

The Irish bishops condemned the application of the Insurance Bill to Ireland, but Devlin saw in it a means of extending the power of his “Ancient Order of Hibernians” - a body which excludes Protestants from membership. Lloyd George chaffingly said to me, “I hear you are saying that I am engaged in disendowing a legitimate church in Wales, while endowing a bastard church in Ireland.” “That,” I answered, “is a True Bill.”

His Insurance Act of 1911 (Section 3) limited the State contribution to two-ninths, but the doctors revolted against the scale of remuneration proposed for them (4s.), and coerced him to agree to giving them more than double.

To provide additional pay for doctors he moved a Supplementary Estimate on the 7th February, 1913, for £1,825,000 as a “Grant-in-Aid.” Thus the “two-ninths” which the State guaranteed in 1911 was increased and the proportion upset, without either the repeal or amendment of Section 3. A Money Bill should, of course, be confined to grants authorized by previous legislation, and I challenged this hardy inroad on the Common Law of Parliament:

“(Hansard, Vol.48, p.330): This Vote, so far as I understand, seems to be wholly illegal. This is the first time that it has appeared upon the Paper, and it is described as a “Supplementary Estimate.” A thing must be supplementary” to something else…

Section 3 is of enormous importance when you are dealing with a tax which is paid partly by the employer, partly by the employé, and partly by the Crown, because if you have a right to put down £1,800,000 for this purpose it entirely deranges the “two-ninths” and the “seven-ninths” upon which the scheme was based.

The Estimate uses the extraordinary phrase, “in addition to the Sums payable under Section 3.” That Section is most precise and it cannot he done under it… .

Last year, to provide salaries for Members of Parliament, the Chancellor said in effect, “we do not want any Act, and can ram the £400 each for Members’ salaries into the’ Appropriation Bill.’” … In this case, however, Parliament has said that for Ireland medical benefit was not to exist. Yet you are providing £50,000 for it by this Vote.""

Mr. Lloyd George treated this argument with derision. The humiliation he suffered a few days later by the confession of the Prime Minister makes his reply worth reproducing as a classic of Ministerial audacity:

“(Hansard, p.335). The Treasury has had varied experiences in dealing with Ireland, but I think this is the first time it has had the experience of having an Irish Member raising a technical objection to a Grant of £50,000. This sum is for the purpose of enabling sanatorium treatment to be given to poor consumptives. While he was less than usually entertaining the hon. Member was more than usually inaccurate. Owing to great distances which had to be travelled by doctors in order to attend poor consumptives in some of the wilder districts of Ireland, the sum provided was not adequate. There is sickness benefit in Ireland. The doctors have to examine the patient beforehand, and they want to be paid for it. Money was put down for the purpose and the learned Gentleman has used the whole resources of his remarkable ingenuity for the purpose of preventing the House of Commons voting a sum of money to enable the poor consumptives of his own country to be examined for sanatorium treatment.

I come to the objection that, not for the first time, has been put forward that this has never been done before-that it is an outrage on constitutional precedent due entirely to the wicked people here, who want to extend those benefits to Ireland. It had never been done before! Well, on the very occasion to which he refers he said exactly the same thing! What happened? He challenged precedents. He got one. He got many more precedents than he cared for. My right hon. Friend has a list as long as my arm, and he pelted and buffeted the learned Gentleman with them, and I think, for the first time, reduced him to a state in which he was left dizzy and speechless. I will do him the credit to say that he is never dismayed by the badness of his case. But this time it was so hopelessly bad that he had not a word to say for himself. It has taken him 12 months to get over it. He has recovered and here he is at it again. With tremendous truculence he puts forward his case. He has forgotten what took place, and he has relied upon the memory of every one else being as bad as his own. Luckily it is not! I remember his questions there was a very long string of them. It is not by any means the first time that this has been done. I hope it is not the last time-when the occasion is used for so excellent a purpose as now.

I am amazed, with the very long experience of the learned Gentleman, that he should raise so entirely absurd a point. The Statute is the Appropriation Act. Does my learned Friend suggest that the House of Commons cannot possibly vote money except in accordance with Statute?

MR. T. M. HEALY: Not in the teeth of a Statute, certainly!

MR. LLOYD GEORGE: What are the teeth of a Statute?

MR. T. M. HEALY: The Statute has provided that there shall not be medical benefit in Ireland.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE: I know exactly. My learned Friend says it is toothless! We are here providing it with a set of teeth. The only thing the learned Gentleman said was that the Act did not provide a negative. It does not say that Parliament shall not vote money for the doctors of Ireland; that Ireland shall not have a single penny for consumption in Ireland. A Statute of that sort would have been perfectly preposterous - a Statute which does not as a matter of fact provide it. Does the learned Gentleman mean to say that because an Act of Parliament passed for Ireland does not provide for something not in it, that nothing else shall ever be provided for Ireland?

MR. T. M. HEALY: Not in an “Estimate.”

MR. LLOYD GEORGE: There is no part of the country that stands to lose more than Ireland does by that peculiar and eccentric interpretation of the British Constitution which the learned Member has presented to the House of Commons. It simply means Parliament is not entitled to say that she will vote £50,000 if she likes towards Ireland. You have got to get the money out of the Consolidated Fund, and, of course, until the Appropriation Act there is no legal sanction for the payment.

My learned Friend said this is a Supplementary Estimate. If he only looks at it he will see it is not a Supplementary Estimate merely, but is the amount required to the end of the 31st March for the Grant-in-Aid to the National Health Insurance. On the outside of the document, it is true, there are the words “Supplementary Estimate,” and it is supplementary in the sense that it is supplementary to the Estimates, but so far as Parliament is concerned this is a new Estimate and that is the form in which it is presented. I am very sorry we should have this unsavoury red-herring drawn across the track.”

To render reply impossible the Chancellor then moved the “Closure.”

On the 11th February, 1913 (Hansard, p.864) I again attacked the illegality of the “Grant,” saying:

“When, Mr. Speaker, eighteen months ago we gave you authority of a judicial kind under the Parliament Act, even those of us who supported the measure must have felt that a very extraordinary and unusual step was being taken in the development of the Constitution. For the first time we made Mr. Speaker a judicial officer. We appointed him to construe what were ‘Money Bills,” and upon Mr. Speaker will depend whether the King’s Majesty can place the Royal signature to a measure to seal the action of the House of Commons (despite a vote of the House of Lords). Therefore, when in the future we are dealing with anything in the nature of a “Money Bill,” I think it is incumbent on us to see that these measures fulfil the older functions of “Money Bills,” and that they do not go outside. If, for instance, they should become legislative Bills, or Bills to enable a Minister hard pressed by any political or social difficulty to use the money in his own control for the advancement of his own policy without any regard to statute; then if such Bills are promoted a very onerous, unpleasant, and delicate duty is cast upon the Speaker.

Accordingly, let me first call attention to the language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he is filling the dignified role of introducer of the Budget and then let me contrast that with his language when he degenerates, as I think I will show he has done, to malignity. I will first quote the right hon. Gentleman in his robes. He spoke on the 16th May, 1911 and asked:

“Can we finance insurance without fresh taxation? I will be perfectly frank with the Committee. The answer to that depends entirely upon the Departments and on the House of Commons. Can they keep down the expenditure? The Departments cannot keep down expenditure without the House of Commons, with which rests the primary - the first and the last - responsibility. The Exchequer is pressed from two quarters - it is pressed to spend more and to charge less. You cannot do both. If you raise more money for any purpose you must find it somewhere. More expenditure means more taxation, and if every man when he proposed an increase of expenditure had in his mind the necessity for finding the cash for the purpose, I am perfectly certain there are many proposals which would never be advanced. The Committee will forgive me for speaking very frankly.

Whenever there is a demand for increased expenditure it is the duty of the House of Commons to review the whole financial position and not merely each separate item for which special taxation is asked. I appeal to Members, therefore, to assist the Government in resisting every inducement to place fresh burdens for this purpose upon the taxpayer in addition to the generous provision made for it.” (Hansard, Vol.25.)

Such is the right hon. Gentleman in his best form, which one very much likes to see him always retain. I now wish to show him in another form.

Acting on that invitation I rose on Friday, and in language which anyone who reads will consider moderate, I asked questions for the information of the Committee as to what this £1,825,000 is required for, and I was met by the right hon. Gentleman with a series of statements as to one of which there is not an atom of foundation … What is of importance is that it shows that a Minister who at a crisis of his fate when this Insurance Act was in the balance, and when it was doubtful whether doctors could be found to work it, and when a month ago the question was in flux, did not hesitate, in order to advance the interests of his own personal policy, without Statute to dip into the finances of the country, and draw from it a huge sum of money. When brought to book, instead of stating upon what ground he had drawn the money, or under what Section he had drawn it, he ignores all these questions and attempts simply to drench those who question him with a flood of bilge-water.

So far from being reduced to silence last session by the Secretary to the Treasury who “buffeted me in this pitiless manner,” I made three speeches in reply. I should have supposed that the Chancellor would by this time have sown his wild-shall we say - leeks?

This Vote is not a genuine Vote, but one which covers the “deal” with the doctors. Let it not be supposed that I am complaining of the amount given them. Whenever any Minister unconnected with the Treasury goes to the Treasury for money, the Treasury acts as watchdog upon the other Departments, but when the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes to Mr. Lloyd George, is it not a case of putting the cat to watch the cream? The right hon. Gentleman has only to go to himself when he finds he has made a gross error in dealing with the doctors - whose provision he had estimated at 4s. That provision was to have been part of the “two-ninths,” and then he finds himself wrong. He has to go to the doctors either cap in hand or with a bludgeon, either to coax or coerce them, coo them, or kick them, and he says, “Oh, I cannot do this under my ‘two-ninths’ system. It will not work, but I can keep the House of Commons from understanding what I am at.”

Not one of the ” precedents” deals with this case. On the 1st of August last year every precedent cited was a loan. Is this a loan?

He cited 12 cases. I had challenged the position then taken up, that loans were a proper subject for the Appropriation Bill, seeing that in a previous Budget he had dealt with a particular railway loan by Statute.

When you tried to raise the salaries of the Irish resident magistrates at the beginning of 1882-3 from £800 to £1,000, and said the Appropriation Act was sufficient, the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee condemned it and you had to drop it.

The right hon. Gentleman assumed his homely pathetic style to draw a picture of my ruthless hands preventing benefit from being brought to the consumptive. He tried to suggest that anybody who asks him a question is endeavouring to tear away the cup of charity from the lips of the needy, or prevent those lips from tasting the “rare and refreshing fruit” which he presented. He in effect said, “You want to prevent the poor consumptive from getting relief; you want to have this white-scourge continued in your country. You of all Irish Members want a continuation of this appalling malady.” The House might like to know who were the “poor consumptives”! They were the “Molly Maguires.” The Member for Waterford (Mr. J. Redmond) one day last week asked him a question of which he had given private notice - it was so extraordinarily urgent I It was to ask the names of the Committee (a Committee that had never been heard of) to consider whether this system of “medical benefits,” which the whole Irish Party had unanimously decided should not be extended to Ireland, should in future be extended to our country. Accordingly, the Chancellor right off-the matter never having been debated in this House, never having been discussed in Ireland to any extent, never having been considered, so far as my information goes, at any meeting of the Party over which the Member for Waterford presides-appoints for this purpose the Member for West Belfast (Mr. J. Devlin) and the Member for North Monaghan (Mr. Lardner), one the head of the modern Order of Hibernians and the other the head of the Foresters, which are the bodies which need money.

If this thing was done openly and frankly I should have nothing to say against it but it is a system of obtaining money by false pretences. The pretence is that the “poor consumptives” want this money, but it is to the Foresters and the Ancient Order it is to be given. Another hole had been driven in this great Statute in regard to Benefit Societies, who found that they could not get 9d. for 4d., and that the Grant made by the State did not cover the medical certificates. So the poor pallid consumptives disappear from his hectic story. Having regard to your function, Mr. Speaker, under the Parliament Act if we tolerated this without scrutiny, allowed it without suspicion, and are to be derided when we ask for information, I submit that the greatest function belonging to this House, namely, that of raising and spending judiciously the money of the taxpayer, will have been taken away from us by the whim of an ambitious Minister.”

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Masterman) replied:

“I have listened to the hon. Gentleman’s statement and I must confess that at the end of it I am at a loss to understand what it is to which I have to reply. The hon. Gentleman made a series of wild and unsupported statements, and as one who often listens with great pleasure to him, I must say, whenever I hear him dealing with Treasury matters, he always seems to me to make wild and unsupported statements. Treasury officials and hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House who have had anything to do with Treasury matters are simply amazed at what has fallen from the lips of a man so able.”

Mr. Austen Chamberlain (an ex-Chancellor) replied:

“Mr. Masterman has made a speech of sufficient length to enable him to answer the really serious case which has been brought forward by Mr. Healy if he had an answer to it, but knowing that he had no answer he succeeded in addressing the House for eighteen minutes without referring to the matter at all.”

The Conservative “Shadow” Cabinet thought my point so serious that I was asked by Bonar Law to meet its members. When I came to his room I found Bonar himself, Worthington Evans, Austen Chamberlain, Cave, Finlay, Long, and others. All agreed that my objection was unanswerable. Worthington Evans had won a great reputation by his criticism of the Insurance Act in 1911, while the weighty opinions of Finlay, Cave and Chamberlain clinched my determination to pursue the matter. I, therefore, again raised it on the 12th February, 1913, when as a further point I asked Mr. Speaker not to give his “certificate”(under the Parliament Act) to the Appropriation Bill as it was no longer a mere “Money Bill,” but had become an enactment to alter the pre-existing law.

Passages of my speech ran:

“I arraign the Minister and the Cabinet of being guilty of one of the greatest acts of illegality ever practised by a responsible Government. The right hon. Gentleman has taken the most desperate gambler’s course that has ever been tried by a Chancellor of the Exchequer.

What was the excuse made last night by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury? He said that this had often been done before, and that he had armfuls of precedents, but he did not quote one. No precedent exists for the repeal of Statute by means of an Appropriation Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman stated that I had no knowledge of Treasury technicalities. I do not profess to possess such knowledge, because it is not my business or duty, and I am paid no salary for understanding them. I come here as an ordinary individual to take up such Papers as the Government afford me. I am not supplied with information from the place behind Mr. Speaker’s Chair - “a prompter’s box” - in connection with which one may remark that in previous Parliaments you would sometimes see an official sitting “under the gallery” where occasionally a furtive visit was paid by Ministers to consult him. That was done perhaps once in a night or once a week, but under the “prompter’s box” system, this Government has established a plan of associating themselves directly with the officials whom they bring down in a group. This Government has changed the whole methods of the House of Commons, and the ordinary Member who has not such assistance need have no shame if he is charged with being without that knowledge which the receipt of £5,000 a year and the assistance of half a dozen secretaries is supposed to confer.

If the Secretary to the Navy in a time of peace, without war-like necessity, increased the Vote of Dreadnoughts from two “capital” ships to ten, and then said, “I did it because I wanted to increase and enhance my popularity in the country,” what would this House say? His object would be good; everybody would approve his action as regards defence, but would anyone say he could subtract himself from the authority of this House and order ships according to his whim when Parliament had not sanctioned them?

If you, sir, grant your certificate, you will have associated the Chair with the conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He will be able to boast not merely that he has had the sanction of this House, but that you had “certified” that this was a “Money Bill.” It is a Money Bill with a hump to it; it is a Money Bill which repeals the provisions of the 1911 Act, and it has been introduced by the Minister who alone controls this Department. No other Minister, no matter who he may be, would be allowed to bring in a measure without having the rampart of the Treasury to cross.”

Mr. Speaker gravely replied:

“If in my judgment this Bill contains only the appropriation of public money, I shall be compelled to certify it is a Money Bill. The hon. and learned Gentleman will not expect me now to make an answer, and I can only say I will carefully consider everything he has said this evening before I give my certificate on the Bill.”

Thereupon Mr. Austen Chamberlain observed:

“I am sure the House will await with great interest the decision which you will have to take at a later stage of this Bill as to whether you should endorse it as a “Money Bill” or not. I do not rise to submit any further considerations to you on that subject, but to renew an appeal, this time to the Prime Minister, which I made last night (in the unfortunate absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer) to the Financial Secretary, and to which he did not think it necessary to respond in the course of that debate.

THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY: I had no opportunity.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I suggest that the House would have been willing to hear the right hon. Gentleman if he had been willing to make use of the opportunity. I take the opportunity of the Prime Minister being here to address to him a question which I should more naturally have addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but which is really one of sufficient consequence to justify me in putting it personally to one of the Treasury Ministers.

Parliament, in the Insurance Act, specifically laid down in respect of certain expenses that they should be borne as to “seven-ninths” by the employer or employed, and as to ” two-ninths” by the Treasury. This Estimate is an additional Grant from the Treasury towards those expenses, and by making this additional Grant you destroy the proportions laid down by Statute. This Grant being paid, Section 3 of the Insurance Act is of no effect as regards the proportions of the payments. The amount to be raised from the employer and from the employed still remains fixed by that Statute, but the amount contributed by the State, instead of being “two-ninths,” becomes a considerably larger proportion of the total or enhanced sum.”

The Prime Minister then gave up the ghost on the proposal of Mr. Lloyd George, saying:

“I very much regret the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a reason of which the House is aware. He could deal with it much more fully than I could possibly do now, but I gladly respond to the appeal the right hon. Gentleman has made. I listened with a good deal of regret to some parts of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman below the Gangway (Mr. Healy). I do not think it was quite necessary to impart so much heat into the matter as he did.

MR. HEALY: The right hon. Gentleman was not here on Friday.

THE PRIME MINISTER: I am rather sorry that he adopted so remarkably controversial a tone in the discussion of what, after all, is a serious point of constitutional practice. He arraigned the whole of us on this bench in somewhat strong language. I do not think language of that kind is altogether warranted by the circumstances. I do not go into the question, which is entirely one for the Chair, whether or not under the provisions of the Parliament Act, this Bill falls within the category of a “Money Bill.” We are at present discussing the Second Reading. I may state my own view as an old Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I believe one of the strictest purists in the House of Commons. I take, and have always taken, a very serious view of the importance of following custom and rules in our procedure. I do not think it is desirable - on the contrary I think it is very undesirable, that the Appropriation Act should be resorted to in a manner which was suggested by the hon. and learned Member so as to override the provisions of an Act of Parliament.

… . If it is a matter which is not merely temporary but permanent, it should be regularized by Statute. When I say by Statute, I mean by Statute-otherwise, and in addition to, the Appropriation Bill. I think that fairly represents the facts. I accept these propositions, and I make that reply to the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman. I think that even the hon. and learned Gentleman might agree that it would not be right to oppose this Grant-in-Aid on this occasion. On my part, I agree that it ought to be, and that in this case it shall be, by legislation expressly authorized in future. I take that view as strongly as anybody on either side of the House.

The Government are now prepared to regularize by permanent legislation in future the course they propose.”

After this jettisoning of Lloyd George, Bonar Law “rubbed in” the facts, saying:

“The right hon. Gentleman has admitted everything for which we have been contending. We have felt from the first that this was not a case where we should oppose the Vote, because we admit that the arrangement, having been made with the doctors, it is necessary for the House of Commons to implement it. Our point was that if the system which has been adopted now was going to become a regular system, the practical result would be that whenever money was required, the Government of the day could alter Acts as they pleased by coming to the House of Commons and getting it legalized by an Appropriation Act. That seemed to us to be the end of all financial control.

If, when the question was first raised, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made the speech the Prime Minister has just made, the difficulty would never have arisen, because we should have recognized the necessity, under existing conditions, of the position taken up. But what happened? When the point was raised the Chancellor of the Exchequer, instead of recognizing that it was an irregularity and saying that the Government meant to redress it at the earliest possible moment, said there were hundreds of precedents, and that this was a quite proper proceeding. That was his answer to Mr. Healy.

MR. MASTERMAN: It was only last night that Mr. Austen Chamberlain made a definite challenge to me on the point. Until then no one had the least idea that this point was going to be raised.

MR. BONAR LAW: I really cannot understand the interruption. I did not hear, but I have read the Friday’s statement of the hon. and learned Member for North-East Cork. The meaning of his statement was perfectly plain to me, as was the speech of my right hon. Friend, and I heard the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman last night and it is impossible for the right hon. Gentleman to say that that speech did not raise it.

MR. MASTERMAN: That was a perfectly clear and categorical challenge to me, asking whether I could promise legislation. I was not in a position to promise legislation.

MR. BONAR LAW: The right hon. Gentleman will not understand what I said. He said he did not understand that the speech of the hon. and learned Member for North-East Cork had raised this point. I listened to it. My right hon. Friend pointed out that the real point in the speech of the hon. and learned Member had not been touched upon by the right hon. Gentleman in his reply.

I do not think there is anyone who had read Friday’s debate, or who was present last night, who doubts that the Government did not intend to take the course which the Prime Minister now says they intend to take. If they did intend to take it, apart altogether from the speeches of the learned Member for North-East Cork or my right hon. Friend, why should they not have made it plain to the House? The importance of the matter has been recognized, but not exaggerated by the right hon. Gentleman, and I do say that no one in this House can doubt that this is another instance of a method of procedure to which we have become accustomed, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, having satisfied himself that his motives are good, and that what he means to do is for the benefit of the community, does not care twopence what method he takes, so long as he can carry it into effect.

MR. PRINGLE (Liberal): We are entitled to claim that the Opposition all along have not appreciated this point, and that it is only due to the acuteness and ingenuity of the hon. and learned Member for North-East Cork that we have secured this point. I frankly admit that I am glad he has succeeded in making this point because I think every one who wishes to see these matters regularized must be glad that one who is possessed of the erudition of the hon. and learned Gentleman should put that erudition at the service of the House, and so maintain its traditions for financial regularity.”

The Prime Minister’s undertaking was made good by the passing in that session of the Act 3 and 4 Geo. V, cap. 37.

It was a sore business for the Treasury. To Mr. Asquith’s repudiation of Lloyd George I ascribe the first break between them.

The Conservative leaders’ backing of my arguments and the fear that the Speaker would refuse his “certificate” under the Parliament Act to the Bill as a “Money Bill” influenced the Prime Minister. Had this clumsy financial sleight-of-hand succeeded, the taxpayer would never have been safe from the smugglings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to alter the law via Money Bills. Such Bills the House passes automatically as relating only to the annual estimates already voted. During the Great War, no doubt, the parliamentary eye winked at things affecting Money Bills deserving of criticism, but the humiliating surrender to the “panel” doctors afforded no excuse of emergency. It was pure party politics, designed to throw non-legal members off their guard and prejudice the taxpayer.

The Irish Party had been muzzled by the promise of £50,000 out of £1,850,000 - less than 21 per cent. - to be paid to doctors in Ireland already salaried under the Medical Charities Acts. The phrase “muzzled,” perhaps, credits the Party with insight as to what was going on. They seldom understood anything needing pains or brains to investigate.

Putting the price of their acquiescence on the most sordid basis, Redmond should have demanded for Irish health benefits at least £300,000. The dead-weight value of his mere neutrality to Lloyd George in this case can never be appreciated by outsiders.

The Daily Mail wrote (13th February, 1913):

“Yesterday Mr. Asquith stood before the House of Commons in the white sheet of penitence for the financial misdeeds of Mr. Lloyd George.

The methods by which the Chancellor of the Exchequer sought to prop up the Insurance Act with additional funds after the doctors’ campaign had nearly wrecked it were indicted, and Mr. Asquith had to confess that he regarded them as undesirable, and has promised that legislation shall be introduced to regularize the proceedings.

It was Mr. T. M. Healy, with the Opposition at his back, who brought Mr. Lloyd George to book. For an hour last night he attacked the Chancellor with his bitterest invectives, but Mr. Masterman, in the absence of his Chief, explained it all away to the complete satisfaction of himself and the Liberals. At four o’clock this afternoon, Mr. Healy formulated his charges all over again, though decorating them with a completely new assortment of sarcastic gibes, and Mr. Asquith, with no thought of sparing the feelings of Mr. Masterman, promptly rose and acknowledged the righteousness of Mr. Healy’s contentions, and promised amendment.”

William O’Brien and I regarded the Insurance Act, 1911, as unsuited to conditions in Ireland. There the Medical Charities Act of 1851 provided (after the Famine) for free attendance on the poor.

On all occasions we voted against Lloyd George’s measure. Redmond’s Party saw in it an endowment of the “Ancient Order of Hibernians” (dubbed Molly Maguires), a Catholic Secret Society modelled on the lines of Orangeism. In the Orange Lodges no Catholic, or person married to a Catholic, is accepted, so no Protestant can be a member of the Hibernians. Robert Emmett, John Mitchel, Butt or Parnell could not have been admitted to its ranks. Its organization (theretofore underground) came into public notice after the introduction of the Home Rule Bill of 1912. It must not be confounded with the American A.O.H., which is a purely philanthropic body, not allied to the “Board of Erin.”

I wrote my brother:

House of Commons,

12th February, 1913.

“I have triumphed over Lloyd George. No Minister was so humiliated. He has funked coming to the House since, but Masterman’s reply last night was as insolent as his own… .

Seldom has there been such a vindication.

I think the Treasury in future will be more careful in their Estimates, and I am sure Asquith gave Lloyd George, or will give him, a wigging.

All the Ministers gathered to listen to me, and I could see they took a grave view of my speech, and of the support it received from the Opposition.

I have just got a copy of Stolen Waters, roughly bound, and am giving it to Dr. Mannix, the new Archbishop of Melbourne, who is sailing on Friday. He and Father Madden were here to-day.”

Healy Index. Home.