from T. H. Watermeyer, resident engineer, for leave to contribute arrears to Pension Funds.

from L. J. Wepener, formerly sergeant of police, for relief.

from H. J. le Riche, formerly Assistant Chief Inspector of Sheep, for relief.

from Jessie K. Stevenson, formerly music teacher in Government schools, for relief.

Rules of Supreme Court relative to summoning of witnesses in Criminal Cases.

said that before the Orders of the Day were proceeded with, he desired to call Mr. Speaker’s attention to a small matter of a personal nature. On Saturday a note appeared in the “Cape Times” from Johannesburg, to the effect that he had made a charge in this House against the manager of the Carlton Hotel, Johannesburg, whilst speaking on the subject of the Indemnity Bill. He wished to say that he had made no charge against the manager of the Carlton Hotel. What he did say was that the letter to which he referred was written on the Carlton Hotel official paper. On Saturday morning, as soon as he saw the notice in the paper, he wired to the manager of the Carlton Hotel, and he had in his hand a telegram from the manager of the Carlton Hotel accepting his (Mr. Haggar’s) explanation. In conclusion, Mr. Haggar remarked: I will not say in this House anything I am prepared to say outside. (Laughter.) Hon. members have misunderstood me; I am not prepared to use in this House a statement I am not prepared to say outside.

To add at the end of sub-section (1): “Provided that no such sentence shall be deemed to involve any person so sentenced in any disability or incapacity under any law or lawful regulation in force in the Union.” He said that the object of the proviso was that such sentences under Martial Law should not have any ulterior consequences. He hoped the Minister would accept the amendment.

said he thought there was a lot of force in what the hon. member had said, and that special disability should not attach to any sentences of this kind which had been given under Martial Law. He would accept the amendment.

asked why in Jacobsdal the whole Defence Force had been called up.

said the hon. member should have put his question when they were on clause 2.

The amendment was agreed to.

It was agreed that sub-section (1), as amended, should stand part of the clause.

moved in sub-section (2), line 51, after “Martial Law” to omit all the words down to “have been,” in line 35, and in line 36, after “lock-up” to omit all the words down to “law or” in line 37. He said that by this amendment it was proposed to omit from the clause the period prior to the passing of Martial Law. The ordinary courts and the sentences given under ordinary jurisdiction were quite sufficient, and they should not take into consideration any excesses in sentences passed before Martial Law was proclaimed. There was much vindictiveness on the part of those who passed sentences, and sometimes the penalties provided for by law were overstepped.

said that the hon. member did not recognise that the provision made here in regard to the period between the 8th and 14th January was really consequential upon clause 2. In clause 2 the Committee had already laid down that any act done in good faith prior to Martial Law between the 8th and 14th January should be protected by the provisions of this Act. Now they were simply following that up quite logically by assuming that during that period any arrest that had been made should be considered lawful. The Bill had really been swallowed already, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of hon. members on the cross benches. Very little now remained to be done, and that followed logically from what had already been done.

said that the Minister, owing to his excessive zeal when clause 2 was under consideration, denied many hon. members who did not care to sit up late at night the opportunity of hearing many of the arguments on this matter. He claimed that the two points were quite different.

drew attention to the case of a Mr. Thompson, who was charged with attempting to prevent a miner from working, and fined £25 or six months, on January 23. He was subsequently required to show cause why he should not be proceeded against under Act 12 of 1913 for failing to turn out with his regiment for service. On the 26th he was fined £10 for this offence. He was in gaol at the time, and it was consequently impossible for him to turn out with his regiment, and he had thus been subjected to a double penalty.

said he would like again to call the attention of the committee to the case of Richardson and another at Durban, referred to the other day by the hon. member for Berea. These men were arrested by a military officer before Martial Law was declared. One of them was tried and sentenced to six months’ hard labour on January 13. Martial Law was not declared till the 14th. The officer who tried the case, therefore, had no authority to do so. On the following day he sentenced Richardson to 12 months’ hard labour, although the maximum penalty provided under the regulations was one month’s hard labour and a fine of £30.

said he did not quite understand why the Minister required this clause at all. (Hear, hear.) Under clause 2 which had been passed the Government and all its officers were fully indemnified in regard to any acts they had done in good faith during the period covered by this particular section. All that this section did was to provide that people who had been arrested during this time should be deemed to have been lawfully arrested, committed, or detained in prison. It did not seem to him to matter to the Government whether they had been lawfully arrested or not. They were indemnified in clause 2, and the sentences, if any, which had been passed, were confirmed by subsection 1. It seemed to him that the Minister would save a good deal of discussion if he dropped this clause altogether. In regard to these sentences, some of which had been referred to, there was no doubt that during this period of Martial Law a number of sentences were passed upon people which probably would not have been passed upon those people, or, anyhow, nothing like so severe a punishment would have been imposed in ordinary times, but the magistrate or the military officers concerned, got excited and passed sentences which probably they would not have passed if the offences had been committed and judged in what they might call cold blood. He thought that the Minister might appoint somebody to go through the sentences which had been passed during Martial Law in order to see whether remissions might not be granted in certain of these cases.

said he could only say that this clause followed the well-known South African precedents, and he found that this clause was put in the Ordinance which was carried by his hon. friend the hon. member for Fords burg, in the Transvaal. It was also to be found in the Cape Acts of 1900 and 1902. Beyond the cases which had been mentioned by the hon. member for Greyville, he did not think that any exceedingly heavy sentences had been passed, and in those two instances the men had since been released. However, if there were any other cases in which unusually long sentences were passed he would be glad to inquire into the circumstances and see what could be done.

The amendments of the hon. member for Commissioner-street were negatived.

moved in sub-section 2, line 38, that after ‘regulations,” all the words down to “officer aforesaid in lines 39 and 40 be omitted. He said the object of his amendment was not to indemnify officers for contravention of rules that were issued. The Committee was aware that many of these officers, possibly with the best intentions, issued some remarkable orders, to put it mildly, which, perhaps, no self-respecting citizen could be expected to obey. They had had that classic example of the proclamation issued at Bloemfontein by Lieut. Col. Du Toit, and this was in force for five days (Hear, hear.) The committee had heard what had taken place at Benoni and Germiston and how citizens were ill-treated. A similar state of terrorism was brought about on the Premier Mine. Then very little had been heard of the enormous power which seemed to have been conferred on the staffs of the mines during the trouble. The mine men were not allowed the usual liberties of free citizens. He did not think they could indemnify the officers until they were acquainted with the whole of the facts.

said they were asked to go further than merely indemnifying officers for acts committed under Martial Law. He pointed out that some of these orders or rules might have been issued prior to the proclamation of Martial Law. How were people expected to know what they were?

said that with regard to the outrage which he reported as having taken place at Johannesburg, he had received a wire re Mr. Gunter, saying that an inspector was now making inquiries into the conduct of P.C. A311. He pointed out that last week the Minister said that an investigation had taken place and that there was a denial that the things reported had actually occurred.

Continuing, Mr. Haggar said there had been a great deal of indignation in Johannesburg as the result of a reply received from the authorities, because no inquiries had been made by the police in connection with the case of Mr. Gunter. Mr. Gunter was marched to the police station, thrown into a cell, and abused, but he was discharged by the magistrate. A discharge under certain circumstances was hardly good enough. Sometimes people were carried off their heads and did not know what they did, but when a Government servant acted like a wild beast it was different. Possibly such a man might have had too much to drink. He was speaking from statements that well-known men were prepared to verify, and it was not right that they should be asked to justify actions of that nature. They had been told that they could not tolerate two governments in principle—then why should they tolerate two governments tor a day. He did not believe in anarchy, but if they passed that section of the Bill they were going to adopt Government anarchy from beginning to end.

asked whether the Minister would not take that opportunity of replying to his hon. friend.

said that an inquiry was being held now. Mr. Gunter had made no complaint about any ill treatment. He had been discharged because as a special constable he was not liable—had he not been a special constable he might not have been discharged. The section under discussion did not prevent the dismissal of that constable, if proved guilty.

said he thought the Committee ought to be obliged to the Minister, who had told them that the man in question had been released because he was a special constable. That was exactly what the Labour members complained about. It was the crux of their complaint. Had that man not been a special constable he might have been fined, and he asked on what sort of principle the Government had been preserving law and order. The special constable could evidently do any of those things that other men were not allowed to do, and the Labour members were not going to sanction the acts of every Tom, Dick and Harry. The Minister’s excuse in regard to that particular constable was very thin—it really amounted to this, write out your acquittal first and then look for your evidence afterwards. Might he also congratulate the Minister of Defence on having proved what he had described himself as—an oriental despot.

said it was not true that the reason the man had been acquitted was merely that he was a special constable. The first regulation under Martial Law laid it down that the regulations did not apply to members of the Defence Force and special constables. The mere fact of his having been a special constable showed that the regulations could not apply to him yet the member for Jeppe had said that the law had been strained because the man was a special constable. He (the Minister) refused to go out from the standpoint that every member of the police force was a rogue and a rascal.

said that was exactly what members of the Labour Party complained about. They asked for information about an act of a subordinate officer of the Executive, and instead of the Minister taking any action, he said that the Government had done quite right, therefore there had been no inquiry. In connection with that business at the Old Arcade, the police had acted in a thoroughly officious manner, and had said that because there were more than six persons there they would take them all in charge. Surely in such a case the Minister should have insisted that every investigation should be made. The members of the Labour Party wanted those words in the Bill deleted. They were not satisfied that the Minister had been thoroughly candid in regard to the period antecedent to Martial Law. He was informed that there was a good deal of planning about Martial Law, and that arrangements were made for night passes for employees of the mines before Martial Law was declared.

said that they knew the Minister of Justice was an amateur in political life. Last week the Minister had told him that the Commissioner of Police had thoroughly investigated that matter and had reported that the charges were devoid of basis. Now the Minister said in an “ex parte’ statement that he was prepared to take the word of the officers—he took a one-sided view of the matter. They had it on evidence that no inquiries were made from those people who were most affected and most likely to speak the truth.

said it was not necessary for them to blackguard the Government, and hon. members on the cross-benches had really no objection at all to July matters being brought up. They, were quite prepared to meet any charges brought against them so far as the happenings on that occasion were concerned. All they wanted was the law, but the Government wanted the abrogation of the law, in fact it wanted anarchy, gross anarchy, and nothing else. Having remarked that the inquiry into the Arcade incident was by no means thorough, Mr. Madeley wished to know whether the Committee was prepared to pass the clause without making the slightest inquiry into the actions of those they were indemnifying. Besides the police, burghers were concerned. If the clause were passed as it stood the man who was in command at the Van Ryn last January would be indemnified for rounding up 13 men who were playing cricket. Surely there was no high treason about playing cricket. These men were not even allowed to put on their coats, but were marched off to Boksburg gaol. He wished again to refer to the dastardly act on the Benoni Market-square when the police told a cabman to drive through an aggregation of women.

said the discussion promised to be a long one, and he could plainly see a clause like this would have to be passed. Martial Law was administered by a large number of men who were not disciplined, and no doubt a great many regrettable incidents happened, and we must be thankful there were no grave ones. An Indemnity Act was passed in the Cape in 1902, disabilities having been put upon the people in the Cape to which anything the hon. members on the cross-benches could mention would be a flea-bite. That had gone on for years. The people he was associated with then felt this very strongly indeed, and acted with dignity when the Indemnity Bill was before the House. They made up their minds to accept it, and there was nothing like the violent language used now. He would ask hon. members on the cross benches whether they could not take an example from these people. The Minister, however, might have stopped all the discussion if he had simply said he intended to have an inquiry made. Such an inquiry would be useful to the Minister, for he would then be able to lay down some lines for the future and to see just where these regrettable incidents had arisen and to see that in future they should not be repeated. Continuing, Mr. Merriman said he had received a full account of the arrest of Mr. Chester, and really one would not believe that such a thing was possible. Mr. Chester—and he (Mr. Merriman) believed he had a remedy—was arrested without a warrant, and the officials refused to inform him on what charge he had been arrested. He was outside the Martial Law area. He said that he would not resist arrest, but submitted under protest. He was then removed to Christiana. Next day he was informed that being Sunday, the magistrate could not be seen. That must gladden the heart of the hon. member for Vrededorp. It was the magistrate’s duty to do a certain thing on Sunday, and he would not do it. He should be noted down for promotion. Next morning Chester came before the magistrate, when he was told that the papers in the case had been sent to the Attorney-General. On Tuesday a formal complaint was made to the magistrate as to the presence of certain insects in the wards, and as sleep was well nigh impossible, Mr. Chester demanded immediate release or transfer to some more suitable place of detention. Next day he was taken to Klerksdorp, and the following morning the acting magistrate paid the prisoner a visit and asked him if he had any complaint. Mr. Chester asked that a charge might be laid which he might defend in open court. The magistrate was understood to say that the matter was out of his jurisdiction. On Saturday, about noon, a telephone message was received that Mr. Chester was to be released, and he was given a voucher for a first-class ticket to Bloemhof. Mr. Merriman went on to say that he thought a case like that demanded a most thorough investigation. No doubt there were others. If the Minister would only state that he would give an investigation, he thought it would shorten and sweeten the discussion on this Bill.

said that all along they on those benches had been asking for an inquiry. It seemed to him that an inquiry after passing this Bill would not be of much use. What were the cases they were called upon to indemnify in the two or three lines which he was seeking to omit from the Bill? They were entitled to know. In regard to the case of Mr. Thompson, which he had mentioned a little while before, he had omitted to state that, when this man was convicted on the 23rd January of attempting to compel or induce a miner to leave his work, he was in full uniform as a member of the Imperial Light Horse, and was wearing three medals on one breast that he had gained in active service, and four on the other, which had belonged to his father. Yet the Minister had quoted the Martial Law Regulations to show they did not apply to the Defence Force.

said it had been stated that it would stop discussion if an inquiry were held. He did not quite agree with that. What they were discussing the other day was whether compensation should be paid or not. There seemed to be two opinions on the present question before the House. Hon. members on the cross-benches might be still trying to arrive by some devious path at a position where compensation would be paid. He thought some other members were of opinion that it would be advisable that an inquiry should be held on the lines of the Judicial Inquiry held in regard to the occurrences of July last. They had had the statement, for instance, of the hon. member for Roodepoort that the police were drunk.

I did not say that.

said it would be well to have a statement of that sort gone into. The other day they threw out the idea of compensation being paid to people, who suffered through the operations of Martial Law in cases other than those in which they could prove that the official was not acting bona fide. He did not think the case of Mr. Chester stood alone He thought it would be an advisable thing, quite apart from the question of compensation, for the Government to appoint a Commission, in which people could have confidence, to go into these questions, and, if possible, clear the air of the? wild statements which were made, some of which, when probed, were found to have no foundation whatever.

said he thought it showed the nature of the general allegations when they looked at the nature of the few specific cases brought before this House. He did not want to go further into the Old Arcade matter, but simply to say that he was always prepared to inquire into both sides of the question. He believed that up to the present no complaint had been lodged by people who had actually suffered. Then as to the case of Chester, he did not know what was the document from which the right hon. member for Victoria West had read, but he thought it as well that he should give the House some information in regard to the case. Steps were taken in this case under the Peace Preservation Ordinance of the Transvaal. Section 10 stated that a magistrate or a police officer had the right to commit a man to gaol without warrant, simply on having reasonable grounds for suspicion that he had committed an offence under this Ordinance. The offences under section 18 were very wide. The magistrate of Christiana said? that Chester was arrested by virtue of sections 10 and 18 of Ordinance No. 38 of 1902, owing to a scurrilous article published by him in his paper criticising and throwing ignominy on the commando of burghers at the time the latter were being mobilised at Christiana in connection with the recent railway strike. According to the affidavits the article was calculated to bring disaffection among the burghers. The Minister of Justice added that he had also got the papers from the file of the Attorney-General. So far from Mr. Chester having lodged a complaint, he had not even complained up to the present day. His last letter was one in which he desired a rival editor in Christiana to be arrested.

It appeared the Attorney-General wired to the magistrate asking whether, with a view to the state of health of Mrs. Chester it would be not advisable to release Mr. Chester. This was done. Affidavits were sworn in the case. At the present time, continued the Minister, the article seemed silly, but at the time there was no doubt that it might create disaffection among the burghers. The magistrate said that if Mr. Chester had not been put in gaol he might have been badly treated by the burghers. He knew that was no defence but there it was. The man was arrested under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, and he thought that the statement he had made did away with the whole grievance.

said the Minister seemed to forget the important point, which was that the magistrate at Bloemhof did not think there was anything in the case, and that it was then removed to Christiana at the instance of the commandant. He would also point put that the Attorney-General did not think there was anything in the case from the way that he treated the papers.

said he thought that the hon. member had misunderstood the position. There was only an assistant magistrate at Bloemhof, under the resident magistrate at Christiana. The tonner was in town the other day, and he (the Minister) got a statement from him. The assistant magistrate said that he was absent when Mr. Chester was arrested. His clerk, was there, but would not take the responsibility of dealing with the case, and so sent Mr. Chester on to Christiana. He did not blame the hon. member, but these were the facts.

said that the statement of the Minister showed how important it was that they should not pass this clause without getting everything that they could from the Government. The section read by the Minister showed that the person committing a person must have reasonable suspicion.

said that the hon. member could not discuss the provisions of the Peace Preservation Ordinance.

said that he was not doing more than the Minister had done. The point was that by giving indemnity to the Government they were preventing that man from going to the court to make the Government show that its servant acted on reasonable suspicion.

pointed out that Mr. Chester was arrested under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, and that they were now discussing the question of indemnity for things that were done under Martial Law.

said that he would be able to point out the connection. They were not only dealing with actions that were committed in places where Martial Law was proclaimed, but also districts where Martial Law had not been put in force. By passing this clause they would preclude Mr. Chester from going to the courts and calling upon the Government to show that it had reasonable grounds for suspicion according to the Ordinance when he was arrested. The arguments of the Minister were lamentably thin, and he thought that the Government was in an hysterical state when these things went on. The Minister talked about this article. What about the articles which appeared in the “Star” and the “Leader” and which created frightful anger among the workers on the Witwatersrand? Were the persons who wrote those articles put in gaol? Alluding to what had been said by the right hon. the member for Victoria West, he pointed out that things were different in connection with the war. The Government had made a most sordid use of its executive power for the men who had a perfect right to refrain from work when they wished to do so. He was not now alluding to the railwaymen; he was now dealing with the men on the mines.

The amendment of the hon. member for George Town was put, and declared negatived.

called for a division.

put the question: That the words proposed to be omitted, stand part of the clause.

As fewer than ten members (viz.: Messrs. Andrews, Boydell, Creswell, Haggar, Madeley, and H. W. Sampson) voted against the question,

declared the question affirmed, and the amendment proposed by Mr. Andrews negatived.

moved to have the following proviso at the end of sub-section 2, namely, “provided that no proceedings, arrests, or trial shall take place under Martial Law after this Act comes into force.”

said that the amendment was out of order, the matter having already been provided for under the Bill. Martial Law would cease to operate, and there would therefore be no necessity for the amendment.

said he understood the object of the hon. member was that a sentence passed under Martial Law should come to a stop with the passing of the Bill. That was disposed of by sub-section 1. It would be impossible for trials under Martial Law to be proceeded with after Martial Law was stopped.

said that supposing a man committed an offence under Martial Law and was put in gaol, would not that man be liable to be tried for that offence committed under Martial Law?

said it was clear that a trial started, before the repeal of Martial Law could not be continued after Martial Law had been repealed. The object the hon. member had in view was already achieved. They could not continue to try a man under a law which no longer existed.

asked whether proceedings against men who were merely arrested under Martial Law could be proceeded with?

said that the clause in question had nothing to do with proceedings under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, but they had had to deal with cases which had no legal basis in ordinary law. It was the cases under Martial Law that they were trying to legalise.

I asked what would happen in a case like that of Mr. Chester, who was put in gaol for 21 days, in the event of the Minister being unable to tell that there had been reasonable suspicion. He took it that the Minister would use the indemnity granted him by Parliament, and that that man would be without redress.

The amendment is out of order, and I cannot allow any further discussion on it.

asked what was the necessity for sub-section 3? Under section 25 the Governor-General had power to make regulations and if those regulations had been lawfully issued there was no reason why they should toe confirmed. The House was in the dark with regard to those regulations, which were not before them.

said there was an amendment in his name to delete sub-section 3, but he was in a difficulty, because he did not know what the regulations were. How anybody could read the regulations and approve of them he did not know. They had been told that these Bloemfontein regulations were practically cancelled by the preceding regulations and that a good deal of the framing of the former was done in panic. For instance, the possession of explosives of any nature was forbidden. Under that regulation it would have been possible to arrest a man who had a bottle of ginger-beer in his possession, because that was an explosive. (Laughter.) Again, peaceful picketing was prohibited, and no doubt Government would try to force that prohibition by-and-bye, but it would have a very difficult task to do it. Again, the use of opprobrious epithets was forbidden in opprobrious epithet must imply some reference to a man’s moral character, but once a term became a technical one they could not possibly make its use a criminal matter, and with Trade Unionists the words “scab” and “blackleg” were technical terms.

said the hon. member was arguing on different regulations altogether from those contemplated in the Bill. The regulations appeared in the “Government Gazette ” of January 10, 1914.

If the Bill is wrong what are we to do? Government Notice 43 of 1914, to which the Bill refers, deals with photographic material. (Laughter.)

said the hon. member had lost his way in his books of reference. The matter was a simple one and had nothing to do with the subject brought forward by the hon. member. The regulations framed by the Peace Preservation Ordinance were published on January 10 by Government Notice No. 43. On January 9 Mr. Poutsma and some of his friends were arrested, and on the following day these regulations were published. Mr. Poutsma was arrested under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, section 35 of which gave power for the making of regulations for the more effectual carrying out of the provisions of the Ordinance. The ordinary prison regulations made it possible for awaiting-trial prisoners to see as many visitors as they liked, and to have as many consultations with their legal advisers as they liked. Consequently, if the ordinary prison regulations were to be applied to a ease like that of Mr. Poutsma, it would have been quite possible for Mr. Poutsma and his friends to run a general strike from the gaol. (Hear, hear.) The whole object of these provisions was to put a dangerous character out of the way for a limited period. The police simply took these people without warning, and put them in gaol for a period not exceeding 21 days, to keep them out of harm’s way. In order to keep Mr. Poutsma and his mends out of harm’s way, these fresh regulations were made. One of these regulations laid it down that communication between any person so detained and his legal adviser should be allowed by letter, subject to scrutiny, and no matter which was not relevant to the subject matter of the charge should be allowed to be transmitted. There was just a doubt in the minds of the legal draftsmen whether these regulations were such as were necessary under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, and that was why an attempt was made, where an excess of zeal was shown, to legalise the act. It was thought in the very grave circumstances of the country which prevailed last January, that it would be unsafe to allow the deported men to have access to their friends and their legal advisers, because that would have enabled them to carry on their propaganda from the gaol. It was in order to keep them out of harm's way that these regulations were passed. The deported men were kept apart from the other prisoners to the day they disappeared from this country.

said under the principles of our law, every accused person was entitled to the benefit of legal advice without it being given in the presence of a Government official. He did not think that the House should agree to the importation of such a principle as this—a principle which is entirely foreign and contrary to the principles of our system of law. He did not think that this Committee should allow a thing of that kind to pass by default, as it were, so as to enable some future Government to say that the House of Assembly had agreed that the principle was right that an accused person should only be allowed to communicate with his legal advisers after placing his case in writing and submitting it to the Government.

said that now he thought they understood the Minister’s object in regard to this clause. He wondered what would have happened it on the 12th January the various Trade Unions had balloted against the strike, the Minister having promulgated this regulation? He would not even have had the excuse of Martial Law and an Indemnity Bill and the Government would have stood there to have the same actions brought against them as were successfully brought in the Whittaker case. Upon a message from the Director of Prisons Whittaker was deprived of the right to have access to a legal adviser and to see his friends, just as these men were. An application was made to the Transvaal Provincial Division to have Whittaker’s rights restored to him, and Mr. Justice Mason, he believed it was, expressed himself very strongly that the way Whittaker was being treated by the prison authorities was not found in any British Dominion, and was characteristic more of Russia. Whittaker got very substantial damages against the prison authorities and Mr. Poutsma, Mr. Wade, and others who had been treated, in this way, would appear to have a strong case against the Government of being deprived of their rights as awaiting-trial prisoners. He could quite understand why the Minister had put this in the clause. If in law those regulations were valid, what was the need for this provision in the clause? If in law they were not valid and these men had been binned out of their rights as awaiting-trial prisoners, why should they pass this. The Minister said because, if these men had been allowed to see their friends, they would have been able to run the strike. What rubbish, what sheer rubbish! The Ministry got into a state of blue funk; that was about the length of it; and they went from one illegality to another, until they simply let all tradition and law slip aside, and did not care who it was they hurt so long as they kept away this imaginary bogey that they had conjured up. He hoped this clause might galvanise even the Opposition into opposing this Bill.

said it seemed to him that to deprive awaiting trial prisoners of the right of seeing their legal advisers was not only arbitrary, but it was absolutely cruel. He could only conceive one thing worse than this, and that was the treatment meted out to the women and children sent down to the coast from the Transvaal in charge of a detective. He moved the deletion of the clause.

said he would like to know whether this regulation applied to Mr. Wade, who was not a Trade Unionist, and who had nothing to do with the Federation. He certainly was a member of the Labour Party, and he certainly addressed a meeting of railwaymen. The leader of the Opposition also addressed a meeting of railwaymen at Salt River and undoubtedly he was the cause of a lot of men coming out on strike-

Question.

said that Mr. Wade was now out of prison, but he was still under a cloud. He had been spirited away one night from the gaol at Germiston in a motor-car, and when his wife went to the gaol next morning to take his food she was unable to obtain any information as to his whereabouts. It was only after considerable difficulty that she was able to ascertain that he was in Johannesburg. These three little clauses that the Minister had read out had simply taken their breath away, when they thought they were living in a country governed in such a manner as that. Hon. members on the Opposition side were supporting worse atrocities then ever happened in the Transvaal before the war, and he said they were a disgrace to the nation they came from. (Hear, hear.)

said that these regulations were rather different from the ordinary regulations under Martial Law, because the latter, as they had been told and could see, fell to the ground as soon as this Bill was passed, but the former regulations, he presumed, might still be enforced. They were issued under the Peace Preservation Ordinance of the Transvaal, and, for all they knew, might still be enforced. He would like to know whether it was intended to maintain these regulations.

said he understood that the point of the hon. member was that the ordinary Martial Law regulations would cease as soon as this Act was passed and Martial Law was deproclaimed, and he wanted to know whether these other regulations would remain in force for ever afterwards until repealed. He thought they should limit the operation of those regulations to the cases to which they had been applied, and not keep them in force after the Act had come into force. It needed only the addition of a few words at the end of the sub-section to make it clear. He would move that the words “until the promulgation of this Act” be added.

said he was sure the hon. member for Fordsburg would be exhilarated by the concession which the Minister had given, but as a matter of fact it meant nothing at all. The effect of it was that it limited the operation of those particular regulations to that particular Bill in those particular cases. That was the whole and sole effect. It only further impressed the hon. members on the cross-benches with the hon. Minister’s cleverness. What was to prevent the hon. Minister or any of his confreres from putting on those regulations on any other occasion? Just to suit themselves at any time for any specific purpose the hon. Minister might make any regulations he liked and whenever he thought fit. If the hon. member for Fordsburg was satisfied with that he had gone down 150 per cent. in his (Mr. Madeley’s) estimation. With regard to the case of Mr. Wade, in answer to the position put forward by the Minister that if he had not introduced these regulations it would have been possible—probable from his view—that a general strike would have been carried on, presumably to a successful issue, by Mr. Poutsma and Co. from behind the prison gates; his hon. friend cited the case of Mr. Colin Wade, but he had nothing to do with this strike. Mr. Madeley wanted to know why the regulations had been applied to Mr. Cooper, a solicitor by the way, not a member of the Federation, and not a Syndicalist? He was taken to gaol together with 300 others from Benoni, and they were not allowed to communicate with any soul except the magistrate at Boksburg, together with a solicitor who had been brought to represent the Chamber of Mines, and, according to the magistrate himself, had power to engage any man present who desired to go back to work. Why was not Mr. Cooper allowed to communicate with his friends or his legal adviser? The hon. Minister must be playing with the ignorance of fact of the House when he suggested the impossible position that men could conduct anything at all from behind prison walls, especially from places like Boksburg Gaol and the Fort at Johannesburg. The hon. Minister had not established the case. He had not proved to the House why they should allow him to have the extraordinary remedy of making regulations to suit any particular case he liked at any particular moment.

appealed to the hon. member for Fordsburg to screw up his power of opposition, and asked him to take his imagination back to two years ago.

The hon. member must adhere to the question under debate.

said that he was trying to point out as to whether or not those regulations should be made valid by that sub-clause, and he was reminding the hon. member for Fordsburg that that was the very subject, the treatment of awaiting trial prisoners and the denial of their right to see their legal advisers, which two years ago fired the hon. member with enthusiasm and paused him to move the adjournment of the House. He (Mr. Creswell) was doing his best to get a proselyte, even if only for one division. Those cases were on all fours. With regard to the gentleman of whom the hon. gentleman was the undoubted champion two years ago, he also was connected with a strike, like Mr. Poutsma, but he was more dangerous, for it was alleged, as the reason for his being treated in that way by the police authorities, that he intended placing explosives on the line during the strike. The hon. Minister did not suggest that Mr. Poutsma intended doing that. That was a pretext they used at that time. This man was also alleged to have been found in possession of gelatine and detonators. Mr. Poutsma was not nearly so dangerous. It is not alleged even that Mr. Poutsma attempted to convey information about explosives. Those allegations may have been very bona fide, but that was not sufficient to prevent strictures by the Chief Justice regarding the rights of awaiting-trial prisoners. But the judgment of a court of law was what the Minister of Defence was trying to avoid at every stage. He did not Avant his doings, and the doings of the authorities, to be put under the microscope of the courts of law; he wanted them to go through committee, preferably with a sleeping Opposition and a slumbering whip. The Minister has shown no sufficient reason for denying those men the aid of their legal advisers. It was simply another piece of oppression on a par with the rest. The Minister had got further and further into the mire. Why did he not bring in a tiny little Bill of one clause to condone everything that the Government had done since the beginning of January until the Act should be deemed law? But he had given them (the Labour Party) an opportunity of contesting, that point, and they were going to vote against it.

said that the hon. Minister had dealt with one point which had been raised but not with others. He (Mr. Duncan) was sorry to hear that he had gone down 150 per cent in the estimation of the hon. member for Springs. That would be something below zero.

Continuing, the hon. member said that these regulations were brought into force before Martial Law was proclaimed, and when the ordinary law was in force, and if these were good regulations under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, which he thought ought to have been repealed long ago, let them be justified under that Act; if they were not good under that Act, then it was a purely illegal action, and he thought that the House should think seriously about the matter before passing this particular sub-section. When such a state of affairs existed in a country that Martial Law was proclaimed, they knew, of course, that people had to bear what some hon. members in that House had described as excesses, but here was a case when no Martial Law was in force. He thought that the House ought to signify its disapproval of such actions on the part of the Government by refusing to pass this sub-section. Of course, hon. members having condoned other things, might think they might as well condone this action; but he would point out that such a state of affairs might happen again. He did not see his way clear to approving of this clause.

said that he would say a word to calm the mind of the hon. member for Fordsburg. That hon. gentleman had said that the Government had committed a very arbitrary act prior to the Proclamation of Martial Law. But that was what the Committee had been condoning all along. The fact was that the hon. member had been swallowing the camel, and now strained at the gnat. The Government was asking for indemnity from the 8th of January, and on the 9th of January Mr. Poutsma was arrested, and on the 10th these regulations were promulgated. If he had felt safe about these regulations, he would not have taken the trouble to legalise them; but he felt that it might be held on a technical point of law’ that these regulations might not be construed as having been for the more effectual carrying out of the provisions of the Peace Preservation Ordinance.

Under that Ordinance the Government had the power of arresting a man without warrant, and placing him in gaol for twenty-one days, but the law did not state what should be done after that. Perhaps they had gone too far. He did not say that the Government had gone too far, but there might be a doubt, and he thought that that doubt should be set at rest if it was possible to do so. He pointed out that the Committee had already granted indemnity for acts which did not bear any semblance of law, but now it took exception to an action which did bear some semblance of law. It might be a point of law whether the Government should have prevented Mr. Poutsma from seeing his friends or his legal advisers, but the Government, came to the Committee in all innocence, and asked the House to indemnify it in respect of an action which they considered no worse than any of the acts for which indemnity had already been granted. The hon. member said that this had been done before Martial Law, but he (the Minister) said that that did not make any difference. He thought that the hon. member for Fordsburg was taking up the stand of the legal purist, having been stung by irrelevant remarks of hon. members on the cross benches.

said that that was not the case. He did not regard this matter as a legal technicality. He thought, personally, the Minister did a very grave wrong, and that he did not do the cause he had at heart any good by indiscriminately putting these men in gaol. When he first heard of these arrests, he thought that the Minister was only making the danger worse. He did not take up the position of the legal purist, but the standpoint of the ordinary man who did not like to see things of this sort done. When Martial Law was proclaimed it announced to people that the country, according to the Government, was in an extraordinary state and people regulated their acts accordingly, but this was done before the proclamation of Martial Law, and he submitted that this action was different and more serious than the other actions which the Minister had mentioned. He thought it should be clearly brought home to the Government that they must not do things of this sort, because it was an infringement of the rights of ordinary citizens of the country.

said that he thought the Minister’s true vocation in life should have been a doctor or a hospital nurse who wanted the patient to swallow an extra drop. He did hope that hon. members would not lightly pass over this action on the part of the Government. In matters of this sort there should be some limitation. There was no reason why these men should have been treated in this way, and it was pathetic to hear the Minister say that this was the only action on the part of the Government during these troubles which bore some semblance of law.

The amendment proposed by the Minister of Defence was agreed to.

then put the question: That sub-section (5), as amended, stand part of the clause, upon which the Committee divided:

Ayes—78.

Alberts, Johannes Joachim

Becker, Heinrich Christian

Bekker, Stephanus

Bezuidenhout, Willem Wouter Jacobus J.

Bosman, Hendrik Johannes

Botha, Louis

Burton, Henry

Chaplin, Francis Drummond Percy

Clayton, Walter Frederick

Crewe, Charles Preston

Cronje, Frederik Reinhardt

Currey, Henry Latham

De Beer, Michiel Johannes

De Jager, Andries Lourens

De Waal, Hendrik

De Wet, Nicolaas Jacobus

Du Toit, Gert Johan Wilhelm

Fawcus, Alfred

Geldenhuys, Lourens

Graaff, David Pieter de Villiers

Griffin, William Henry

Grobler, Evert Nicolaas

Grobler, Pieter Gert Wessel

Harris, David

Heatlie, Charles Beeton

Joubert, Christiaan Johannes Jacobus-

Juta, Henry Hubert

Keyter, Jan Gerhard

King, John Gavin

Krige, Christman Joel

Kuhn, Pieter Gysbert

Lemmer, Lodewyk Arnoldus Slabbert

Leuchars, George

Louw, George Albertyn

Maasdorp, Gysbert Henry

Macaulay, Donald

MacNeillie, James Campbell

Malan, Francois Stephanus

Marais, Johannes Henoch

Marais, Pieter Gerhardus

Meyer, Izaak Johannes

Myburgh, Marthinus Wilhelmus

Neethling, Andrew Murray

Nicholson, Richard Granville

Orr, Thomas

Quinn, John William

Rademeyer, Jacobus Michael

Robinson. Charles Phineas

Rockey, Willie

Runciman, William

Schoeman, Johannes Hendrik

Serfontein, Nicolaas Wilhelmus

Smartt, Thomas William

Smuts, Jan Christiaan

Smuts, Tobias

Steyl, Johannes Petrus Gerhardus

Steytler, George Louis

Theron, Hendrik Schalk

Theron, Petrus Jacobus George

Van der Merwe, Johannes Adolph P.

Van der Riet, Frederick John Werndly

Van der Walt, Jacobus

Van Eeden, Jacobus Willem

Van Heerden, Hercules Christian

Van Niekerk, Christian Andries

Venter, Jan Abraham

Vermaas, Hendrik Cornelius Wilhelmus

Vintcent, Alwyn Ignatius

Walton, Edgar Harris

Watermeyer, Egidius Benedictus

Watkins, Arnold Hirst

Wessels, Daniel Hendrik Willem

Whitaker, George

Wiltshire, Henry

Woolls-Sampson. Aubrey

Wyndham, Hugh Archibald

H. Mentz and J. Hewat, tellers.

Noes—18.

Andrews. William Henry

Berry, William Bisset

Boydell, Thomas

Brown, Daniel Maclaren

Creswell, Frederic Hugh Page

Duncan, Patrick

Fichardt. Charles Gustav

Fremantle, Henry Eardley Stephen

Haggar, Charles Henry

Hull, Henry Charles

Jagger, John William

Madeley, Walter Bayley

Merriman, John Xavier

Sampson, Henry William

Serfontein. Hendrik Philippus

Wessels, Johannes Hendricus Brand

Morris Alexander and H. M. Meyler, tellers.

The question was accordingly affirmed, and the amendment proposed by Mr. Haggar negatived.

The clause, as amended, was agreed to.

On clause 4, Scheduled persons deemed to have been lawfully arrested, detained, and removed,

said: I rise to move a small amendment, and I do not disguise from myself the fact that there is a great deal of difficulty attending anyone who moves in this direction. There is, of course, always the great difficulty that be sets one who is attempting to speak to a question of principle. One always has the danger of knowing that hon. members who sit on the cross-benches will sooner or later overlay the question of principle and drag the discussion down by their speeches to a low level which will obscure the real facts before the House, and render it extremely difficult for hon. members to vote on the same side with them. But that difficulty must be faced. I feel also more deeply than I can say that in dealing with this matter—one which is very similar to the facts of a few years ago — one has been practically deserted by all those who were then loud in their professions against arbitrary rule overcoming the reign of law I am not going to make their lot any harder by giving the names of individuals who were concerned, but what I feel so acutely is that, having done my best at that time and having been backed up by those members, now I find that all their beautiful sentiments on that occasion were only the squeals of the under-dog. And now, when they are in the position of top-dog and have the opportunity of inflicting disabilities on the under dogs, I find they are doing exactly what in the past they condemned. The amendment which I propose is to delete all the words after “Union to the end of the clause. There is a great principle involved in this. Hitherto we have gone through the Act of Indemnity and we have reached this stage, we have condoned what the Government has done, but although we may not approve of all the Government did, still we have felt that they thought they were justified by what had gone before, and had acted in good faith—and although panic-stricken they may have taken steps which we do not approve of, still they did it in the best interests of public safety. But now we come to the dividing line. Now we are asked not to condone the acts the Government did, but we are asked to become participes criminis and to join with them in doing an illegal act and doing something which is utterly destructive of the very first principles upon which our liberties in this country are founded.

Anxious as I am to strengthen the hands of the Government, I cannot be false to all those principles I have professed during my lifetime, I cannot vote for a clause like this, to condemn men illegally seized—kidnapped, as someone has expressed it—and put on board ship in secrecy. Why? Because the Government were afraid that their deeds should face the light of day. With an absurd theatrical display they were hurried down—as though you were moving the Man in the Iron. Mask from one fortress to another—and then they were carried off on, a ship without an installation of wireless telegraphy. And then to show you the depths to which the feeling must have gone, there were people in the Government’s employ so base that although the-greatest care was taken to secure secrecy the names of these people were cabled to England—(cheers)—the same sort of mistake was made as on another occasion. The wretched spy, or thief, or traitor who cabled these names over got hold of the wrong story, and he cabled the name of a man who was not deported at all. The Government will fail in its duty if it does not pursue to the very utmost this campaign of espionage, if they don't find out that thief or spy who cabled those names and bring him to justice, because we had some very fine talk about that only the other day. One feels in dealing with this question that you have to come up against a mass of prejudice. The whole thing is based upon prejudice, but that is not the way we should deal with a question of this sort. Surely there is a great principle involved here, and to raise prejudice and then to judge them on the lowest form of prejudice where the men have not a chance of answering for themselves—they are not tried, they are not heard in the open, and no charge has been made against them except a sort of vague prejudice which exists. That is the atmosphere in which we are asked to deal with this matter.

I can honestly say with the best possible intentions I have vainly tried to follow the speeches made in favour of this action of the Government and to get some reasons which would justify me in supporting the Government in this extreme. But I defy anyone who sat through the whole second reading debate to find one single reason beyond prejudice, beyond the general opinion, that would in the smallest degree account for the action that has been taken. It would be wrong of me to go through all the speeches, but I cannot help alluding to one or two of the reasons given by Ministers themselves.

said that having listened to the right hon. gentleman’s remarks, he imagined that he was going to carry those remarks to their logical conclusion and impeach the Government for the action they had taken. Great was his surprise when he found that he did nothing of the sort, but was prepared to condone the action of the Government in deporting these men. (Hear, hear.) Surely that was not a constitutional attitude to take up by anybody who considered that he was the father of constitutional procedure in that House. He was one of those who, as he said on the second reading, regretted exceedingly the attitude that the Government had adopted, because he believed that this question could have been dealt with in a different manner, but when they were asked in that House whether there were any reasons to have warranted Government in a period of great unrest in acting as they did, then he said that the majority of those reasons were found in the report from which the right hon. gentleman had so eloquently quoted the other afternoon. (Hear, hear.) He remembered a time when the right hon. gentleman, like himself, was very much disturbed in regard to the condition of this country, and when they were not prepared to weigh actions as perhaps they might be able to weigh them to-day when the danger had disappeared—(hear, hear)—and when this country was faced, as his right hon. friend acknowledged on the same platform at Stellenbosch, with one of the greatest dangers with which this country had ever been faced, and when if a general railway strike had been carried out through out the country untold misery would have been inflicted upon the people of South Africa.

Is there no misery now?

The hon. member asks me if there is no misery now. I recognised that there is a certain amount of misery, and I will ask the hon. member who was the cause of that? (Ministerial cheers.)

You.

I did all I could to stop the strike. (Hear, hear.)

No.

I said the great crime was the deportation of these people, according to the right hon. the member for Victoria West. What does this show? It shows us at least that we have got to deal in many cases with people of a very desperate character, whose line of thought is of such a character that, given free play in the future, they will try to land this country in a condition they were not able to land it in last January, owing to the action of the Government, which was supported, not as the Government, but as trustees of the people, by all sections, irrespective of party considerations. (Hear, hear.) Proceeding, he said his right hon. friend had been rather unfair to other portions of the British Empire. What had East Africa ever done to his right hon. friend that he should talk about anybody quoting East Africa in the House as a degradation to this country, by comparing it to East Africa? East Africa had not got responsible institutions, but it was an integral part of the British Empire for which his right hon. friend had been so strongly pleading that afternoon. When his right hon. friend spoke of the British Empire, he remembered the time when the question of the sacred obligations of this country towards the British Empire in regard to the upkeep of the Navy was under discussion, and the right hon. gentleman did not then speak so eloquently in favour of the obligations that rested upon South Africa as he had done that afternoon. Proceeding, the Leader of the Opposition said he resented that the right hon. gentleman the hon. member for Victoria West should use his eloquence to bring two questions into the discussion which should have been left out. One was that anybody should try to raise in that House the regrettable memories of the war. The right hon. gentleman appealed to the memories of those who sat behind him to adopt a certain course, and his appeal to another section of the House regarding the feeling of Throgmorton-street. The exalted position of the hon. member for Victoria West, his eloquence and gift of language resulted in his arguments sinking deeply into the minds of the people. With regard to hon. members degrading their positions as members of Parliament, would not the right hon. member himself be degrading his position, holding such views as he did, by voting for these people being allowed to come back ?

I cannot help it.

answered that neither could he help refusing to accept the responsibility of what the consequences might be of bringing those people back to South Africa. Did he think that those people if brought back would not be made heroes of in this country? Would that help the good government of this country, or as the hon. member for Port Elizabeth had said, was it in the interests of the working classes themselves. He (Sir T. W. Smartt) had never hesitated for a moment from the first day he heard of the deportations, to say that he thought it was a grave mistake to deport those men, but the position of responsibility resting on hon. members of that House was to consider the position last July, and the finishing position last January, and decide whether they were going to take upon their shoulders the responsibility of bringing those people back with the prospects of more regrettable consequences afterwards. It was not a question of the technicality of the law; it was not a question of whether those people, when they come back, should be brought up for trial. It might be very difficult to deal with cases of that sort, but he hoped that in the future laws would be made which would allow such offenders to be dealt with in a fair manner, but after the fullest consideration. While recognising that the deportations were the one great blunder which the Government made—although they could not administer Martial Law without a large number of irregularities—he did not feel himself conscientiously justified in being a party to refusing the last portion of that clause, because he realised that if they were to allow those people to come back under existing circumstances they might establish in this country a most serious condition.

referred to the high level to which the hon. member for Victoria West had taken the debate, but that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort had dragged it down to a very low level. The guarantee of liberty in this country was that every man was entitled to a fair trial, but that principle was swept away by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort—the leader of that party which some years ago appealed to them to vote British —the leader of that party was prepared to sweep aside all the resolutions of generations upon generations.

rose to a point of order and denied that he ever invited anybody to vote British. He was one of those who recognised that they were all British. (Cheers.)

answered that he did not say that the hon. member appealed in that way. He (Mr. Creswell) had never thought the hon. member’s utterances so worthy of careful study as to be able to say whether he used those words or not, but his party made that their battle cry. (Labour cheers.) The hon. member was prepared for One moment of expediency to sweep away the guarantees of their forefathers, of those who were of British descent and made so much sacrifice for guarantees that were equally dear to those hon. members who sitting principally on the Government side of the House, represented the other great nation in this country. That was the great principle he laid stress on; he had referred to that principle on the very first day that Parliament opened. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort wished them to disagree on that great principle because of the peculiar conditions that existed in this country at the present time. He told the House that he was not prepared to have these men come back to this country because their line of thought was of such a character, and that they said this and that. Was the hon. gentleman to be a sort of modern grand inquisitor who was to say that this or that line of thought made a man a dangerous inhabitant of this country? Were hon. members of that House prepared to accept that? If they were not to refuse the Government indemnity and the members of the Government were in a similar predicament in future, they would say the worst that can happen is that these men can come back, but if they refused to grant them indemnity their deliberations would be longer than they had over that subject on this occasion. If they knew that Parliament was not going to indemnify them they would have to take responsibility not as a Government but as citizens who had done an irretrievable wrong. Nevertheless, the hon. members of the cross-benches would gladly take the half loaf offered by the right hon. member for Victoria West, although he was not prepared to go the whole way. It was a confession of weakness to say that they were going to deport men because they were advocates of a particular line of thought. The report had nothing to do with sending men out of the country without trial. He hoped that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort represented but a small section of the Opposition, and he would appeal to hon. members on that side of the House not to go so far adrift as to ignore the great traditions of the past for motives of expediency, and make the mistake of voting with the Government in that matter.

Business was suspended at 6 p.m.

asked how had the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir T. W. Smartt) justified the answer he had given about those men who had been deported? He would remind the hon. member of his own strictures on the Government for its conduct at that time. Was it not the case that they were going to punish a man because he held certain views? He always thought that in a free country a man might hold what views he liked, so long as he conformed to the law. The right hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. Merriman) had been accused of reviving bitter memories of the war! In those days the right hon. gentleman had stood up for those he considered ill-used. He reminded hon. members that they might act on the principles which had then been so precious to them. All that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort had to say about the deportation was that it was a blunder! In the hon. member’s opinion, deportation without trial was only a blunder! Suppose, however, the hon. member for Germiston (Mr. Chaplin), the hon. member for Yeoville (Sir L. Phillips), Sir George Farrar and a few others had been deported, on the plea that their particular line of thought had led to frightful discontent, to many hundreds of men being thrown on the scrap heap to die, to hundreds of men being blacklisted, and being denied earning their means of livelihood, and to most frightful bitterness being engendered, would that be considered a “blunder?” No, the welkin would ring with denunciations of the action of the Government. They would be quoting every precedent in the history of England and Holland, showing that it was exactly the arbitrary action of the Executive that the history of their race depended upon. That remark of the hon. member stamped the attitude of the Opposition towards that action, and it was thoroughly unworthy of the race to which they belonged. Simply from craven fear, the hon. member was against the deportees returning He was afraid of the victims. The Government and the hon. member for Fort Beaufort knew that the gravest and most bitter wrong had been done, and knew perfectly well that as the fires burned down—and they were burning down pretty rapidly now—the public of that country would be bitterly and heartily ashamed of the Government, and the men who supported the Government, for the violation of a tradition that before a man was condemned he must be tried. It was a noble reason to give by the party that told them to vote British that they must be afraid of the consequences! One wondered, when one heard speeches of that kind, to what depths the Opposition was prepared to go in support of the Government.

They were condemned because they had the courage to denounce the evils which were the result of this capitalist system. Were they really honest and justified in condemning the nine men? Were they prepared to put their hands on their hearts and say that in this capitalistic system there was not a great deal of suffering, and were they prepared to say that these men must be sent out of the country because they tried to wake people up and show the people of the country that this system was wrong? Hon. members knew in their hearts that this system was wrong. They were turning these men out simply and solely because hon. members recognised that their political views made them uncomfortable, and if probed to the bottom, would attack the predominance of members on both sides of the House. This decision on the part of the Government was not a sudden decision. It was not a decision that was come to after the January disturbances. He remembered it being suggested to him during a train journey from Pretoria, by one not altogether different from the Prime Minister, who expressed the view that those people who made trouble in this country should be sent away. It was an old spirit— a spirit they had thought they had got rid of. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence, and the Minister of Railways had said that they had thought long over this matter. What he (Mr. Creswell) would like to know was: who were the other people on that list? The right hon. gentleman wag perfectly right when he said that, if the Government turned out these nine men, why didn’t they turn out the rest? They held strong views that this capitalistic system had to be done away with, and the sooner the better, and holding those views, they were just as dangerous to the Government of the country as any of the nine men who had been sent away. The list was a long one. They knew that. He did not think that any spy or thief had stolen it, but they had been told that the list had really included at least one more, and that ten was the minimum. Mr. Advocate Lucas came back from Pretoria and told them of what was going on, and he had said that men who held the same political views as the Prime Minister were talking about men who made trouble being sent out of the country. He was sorry the hon. member for Fort Beaufort was not in his place. He wanted to ask the hon. member for Fort Beaufort in that House whether, in the course of his visit to Pretoria during a critical time, he had heard of these deportations, and whether he was not actually an accessory before the fact in this matter? They would like to know that. Didn’t hon. members on the Government benches, who were going to justify the Government’s arbitrary action, know that actions of this sort stiffened the back of ten men to every one who was sent out?

By deporting these men the Government was not defeating the Labour movement; on the contrary, it had been considerably strengthened. Hundreds and hundreds of men who formerly had little sympathy with the Labour movement—who had never inquired into the principles, of the Labour movement—when they saw what the Government had done and that their liberties were insecure had turned their attentions seriously to Labour principles and were giving their sympathy to this movement. They were bound to say that they were very much obliged to the Government. The Government by taking such a step had shown the nakedness of its position. They had shown that a movement of a contrary nature to their own views was so dangerous in their eyes that they were prepared to go to any length, prepared to tear up traditional liberties they enjoyed in order to suppress it. The people of this country were not ignorant, and they knew that when such action had to be taken against a growing movement it was bound to ascend. The Government had done them, had done this country of South Africa a disservice by violating traditions which they thought could never have been tampered with. He hoped hon. members on the Opposition benches would not let their political prejudices blind them to the extent of supporting the Government in this matter. Far more was at stake. The question was really not as to whether these men should be banished, but the time might come when this might be looked upon as a precedent to deport men because they held strong opposition views to the party in power. They held that the Government had done a grave wrong to South Africa in making themselves the inciters to violence. They had ample liberties, ample political liberties, liberties which enabled them to bring to the attention of their fellow-citizens that the principles they advocated were the principles upon which the Government of this country should be founded. This was the confident hope of many honest men in this country. They relied on these liberties to enable them to carry on the propaganda on right lines. The Government by taking this arbitrary action had encouraged those who wanted to take a short cut and had set a bad example themselves. They held that so long as their political liberties were not nullified and rendered a sham by the actions of the Government, the rightness of their own principles would commend themselves to their fellow subjects. But if the Government was going to disregard liberty and the law, then Ministers themselves were inciting to violence and making it most difficult for those who wished to advance on constitutional lines to exercise a restraining influence over the wilder heads who wanted to take a short cut. He hoped that his speech had not lowered the level of the debate. The speech of the right hon. the member for Victoria West should have been delivered in support of an amendment to vote against the whole clause. He wished to put a question to the right hon. gentleman. Supposing a burglar broke into his house and stole his goods, would he say, “Well, the stuff has gone now, I’ll leave the burglar alone?” He had pointed out the frightful wrong that Ministers had done, but had refused to follow his argument to a logical conclusion. By condoning what had been done he was making himself an accessory after the fact and was sharing the responsibility of Ministers. They were going to vote against the whole of this iniquitous clause.

said that he denied the arguments used by the member for Jeppe (Mr. Creswell) that he (Mr. Merriman) was going to condone every act of the Government. He was not going to vote for doing anything fresh. The thing was done, and could not be undone. The Government had done it in good faith, that he firmly believed, but at the same time he was not in that matter going to judge lest he himself some day should be judged. He was not going to put the Government in the position of having nine actions for damages brought against them, because he did not think that would be fair or right, but he was not going to vote for banishing these men for life, that was an entirely different thing to condoning the acts of the Government already beyond recall. He felt it right to act as he was acting now, but it would not be right for him to embarrass the Government by opposing this Bill of Indemnity for what so far had been done in good faith.

said it would be as well if they dropped from the high level which the course of the debate had just been taking. He took it that the position was this: The Government were the people to whom they had handed over the duty of keeping the peace, and in endeavouring to do so the Government had to be supported. They had been deputed to maintain the peace of the country, and it was possible that many would not approve of some of their actions. Just as one might not approve of a policeman who hits a man at the back of the head harder than one thinks may be necessary, but it was the policeman who had to judge of what was the best thing to do. So with the Government. They had to leave it to their judgment as to what was required under certain circumstances. To keep a mob in order was a rough-and-tumble business, and in his opinion brute force was the only way to deal with that sort of thing. (Cries of dissent from the cross-benches.) When it came to the arrest of criminals and the putting down of brute force, the employment of the same sort of methods was the only plan to be adopted. He did not suppose that any hon. members’ ideals had been so ruthlessly dispelled as had been his by some of the actions of the Government. He had been greatly surprised to find that they had transgressed the law. He did not think it was a sound principle at all. Just as homicide was not a proper thing to do although it saved the position sometimes. So the doing of an illegal act by the Government, although it was not the proper thing to do, had saved the situation. Continuing, he said there were some who thought the list of deportees was not long enough. He did not agree with those people, but was quite content with the number already sent away. Neither did he look upon these deportations as a sort of trial shipment, or that the country was likely to build up a big export trade in this line. (Laughter.) One thing that he had noticed during the course of the debate was that the party machinery seemed to be out of order. A little oil was wanted amongst some of the wheels. It seemed to him that most of these wore the malcontents of the South African Party. Referring to the deported men, Mr. Fawcus said they were a type of hero that was much appreciated on the other side of the water. There was no doubt that notoriety was the breath of life of these men. He could not claim acquaintanceship with any of them. He had certainly seen Mr. Bain in the lobby of that house, and although he could not refer to him as “my old friend Bain” he nevertheless hoped he might be successful in some of the eleven libel actions which he (Mr. Bain) had on hand. (Laughter.) It was not, however, difficult to realise why the deported men were made such heroes of in the Old Country, because it was not at all surprising when it was remembered what cranks there were there. The Old Country was full of addle pated hero worshippers. But these men were not heroes in this country. Of course, they were not discredited in the eyes of the gentlemen who wore red ties. (Laughter.) If ever the Prime Minister thinks of preparing another list for deportation, he (Mr. Fawcus) would ask him to keep his eye on the Young Unionists. The member for the Cape Town, Castle, Division (Mr. Alexander), and the member for Weenen (Mr. Meyler) were strong opponents of the Government’s policy of deportation. No doubt they were prompted by ideas of self preservation. (Laughter.) There was the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. P. Duncan), who seemed a little doubtful of the safety of his position. (Laughter.) He thought the country should take warning by what had occurred on some of the English railways. They had the case of a railway driver who was dismissed for being drunk, but the Home Government were compelled to send a Home Office official up to inquire into the matter, and they had to find that the man was not drunk, and reinstate him. They had the case of the man Caudle, who ran his engine into another train and was sent to prison for three months as a punishment. But after a week the Government had to let him out. Then there was the case of Jim Larkin, who after he had been in prison for about a week for an offence Very similar to that which men had committed in this country, was released. He hoped the Government was not going to pursue a policy like that. These deported men were not so badly off They had got out of the country scot free. They had left South Africa, where nothing pleased them, and they had gone to a country which was well pleased to have them. There was a good deal of sentimental talk about the deportations of these men, very much more than there ever had been when that wanton destruction of life took place in Johannesburg. That he considered was infinitely more serious than the deportations of these men. He was sorry to see that the deportees had been sent out of the country first class, while their wives and children had to travel second. He thought the men should have been sent third class; still, he was not too much inclined to stand on the order of their going so long as they had gone, and he did not want to see them back again.

They will come back.

Well, we shall know how to deal with them if ever they do return.

Who stood to gain more out of this than the hon. gentlemen on the cross-benches? He was quite certain not the Government. The only people who had gained anything at all were what they might call the Constitutional Labour Party in South Africa. He could well imagine how relieved the Constitutional Labour Party in England would have been last December if the British Government had only had enough courage to deport Mr. Jim Larkin. He thought they ought not to forget the position of the older population in South Africa in relation to this matter. He considered that the deportation of these men had been an excellent example to the natives and Indians in South Africa. It had been shown, that violence and lawlessness were not going to be tolerated in black or in white. During the native rebellion in Natal in 1906 a large number of natives were shot down. Were they going to allow it to go forth that lawlessness in a white would be allowed and that in the black it was to be put down by shooting ? He could not and would not accept the responsibility of bringing back these deportees to South Africa, and saying that these things were to be condoned in a white man, whereas they were to be strongly dealt with in the native.

said that, although this Bill had been debated for nearly a month, they had only heard the voices of four members for Natal. He was going to vote against the whole clause, because nothing was going to induce him to vote in favour of the first part of the clause which had been left out of the amendment of the right hon. member for Victoria West, and that was that the action of the Government in causing to be removed or in removing the persons specified in the schedule should be deemed to have been lawful. He did not see how any man could come into Parliament with honest intentions and agree with the first part of that clause.

So far they had only got the statement of the Minister of Defence to show why these men were deported and why they should be asked to look upon it as lawful. He failed to see that the Minister had made out a case at all. The Minister forgot a little matter that he (Mr. Meyler) mentioned about putting on Martial Law in Natal to enable him to get a road to the sea. He was still of opinion that they bad made up their minds about these deportations weeks, if not months, before they took place. Opinion had been fairly evenly divided in the matter, but the balance of opinion, as recent elections had shown, was beginning to change. The Minister had stated that he had taken the police records of these men. Would he tell them what police records he had got against any of these men? He had also told them that a longer list was submitted. Would he lay that list on the Table of the House? Continuing, he said that the idea of deporting these men was probably to prevent others from committing this sort of act for which they had been deported. If the hon. Minister thought he was going to muzzle hon. members by the deportations, he was making a very grave mistake; it would have exactly the opposite effect. Could the hon. Minister prove a single conviction against Mr. Poutsma, except that one which was purely political? There were hon. members in that House who had been convicted of crimes of a political character, and they did not think any worse of them for that. Did they think any worse of the Minister of Mines, who had been convicted for a political offence, and there were many others, some of whom had been, but were not at present members of that House ? It was grossly unfair to insinuate that these men were guilty of criminal offences just because they had insidious tongues. The strongest point which had been made had been made by the hon. member for Turffontein, when he said that one form of punishment had been laid down for the South African-born man, and a different one for the man who was born oversea. They should try to encourage good-fellowship between the two classes of people in this country, but that was not the way to do it. He was entirely against the clause, and would vote against it. He did not agree with the hon. Minister that if people opposed him in politics, he had a right to deport them.

referred to the speech of the hon. member tor Umlazi, and said that anybody casually entering the House would have thought that it was some humorous matter that was under discussion. It was, however, not a laughing matter. There had been another curious feature in that debate. The Government had appointed, or at any rate it had been left to the Leader of the Opposition to answer for them. He hoped that those things would sink into the minds of the people of the country. They were drifting into the direction of the Best Man Government, founded upon the principle of hostility to freedom. He hoped the country would see that friendships were being formed in the politics of this country now on a new line. On the one hand, those who cared for freedom; and, on the other hand those on both sides of the House who did not care for freedom, or at any rate, regarded it as a secondary consideration.

Proceeding he said that members of that Committee had largely made up their minds and as the result it was idle to attempt to persuade them to alter their actions At the same time, it might be possible to induce them so far as to respect others’ opinions more than had been the case in the past though personally he himself had nothing to complain of on that score. He did not impute discreditable motives to anybody in the House. They were coming to a position where the diversity of men’s natural characters led them in different ways It had been sought to maintain that there was something different. It had seen sought to maintain that everyone who stood out against the autocratic and law-despising action of the Government was in some way connected with Socialism. The right hon. the member for Victoria West was, however, in his opinion, perhaps more opposed to the hon. members on the cross benches than anyone else in the House. The question before the House had nothing whatever to do with Socialism; on the contrary, the old individualist school was totally opposed to the action of the Government.

He was bound to say, however, that he felt to the full the extreme gravity of the position which he feared was about to be taken by the House, and he must point out the ridiculous position they were in at the present time. Let not the hon. Ministers look upon themselves as heroes. They had become the butt of “-Punch” and other comic papers in various parts of the world. The world was not admiring, but ridiculing them. It was laughing at the claim of the Minister of Defence that he was acting the part of a strong man in this matter. He was, after all, acting the part of the weakest of weak men. He was surrendering to the passion of the moment. A course that was likely to lead to evil in the future. Would it not have been a strong man’s action to stand up against the prejudices of the people rather than surrender in that way. The claim of strength seemed to him to be the most ridiculous and unfounded claim that could have been put forward. He was astonished at the way in which Ministers totally failed to see the importance of that matter that was under discussion, the matter of the deportations. The Minister of Railways said that was a matter of degrees that everything was illegal; Martial Law was illegal, and that this illegality was only a matter of degree. The Minister of Justice said the same. He (Mr. Fremantle) was astounded that there should be such an astounding failure to realise the issues before the House. It was not a matter of a mere trifling breach of the law. It was whether or not they were going to strike at the very roots of freedom. Were the hon. Ministers entirely blind to that? They had inflicted the heaviest punishment but one on these men that it was possible to inflict; they had deprived them of then-means of livelihood. There was only one heavier punishment known to the law of any country, and that was death. They were inflicting this gross punishment without trial, and they were applying it only to one class of the people, to Englishmen, for instance, but not to Kafirs. They were tearing up by the roots people who had lived their lives in this country. Were they prepared to inflict that punishment on men under circumstances in which it was now proposed should be inflicted on them ? It was a new problem that was being introduced into this country.

It was not what he (Mr. Fremantle) had done, but what the Prime Minister had done. He wished to bring home this declaration of war against one section of the community that the Prime Minister had made. He was not prepared to say these men were enemies of society. They appeared to hold opinions which he (Mr. Fremantle) regarded with abhorrence, but he did not think they held particularly dangerous opinions. Any Sunday in Hyde Park one could hear doctrines being enunciated which were much more dangerous. If left alone these doctrines did no harm, for no one listened to them. When they had men advocating violence, and left freedom to effect its work, and abolished the grievances complained of, these men were doing no harm. He believed the Ministers with the highest motives were doing more harm than any one of these nine deported men. (Hear, hear.) A commission of inquiry into the alleged conspiracy had been suggested, but instead of that they had a House blown up into a state of fury by party passion—surely no more improper course could be conceived. Apparently he was not considered in order to discuss the question of conspiracy, a conspiracy which had been blown to the four winds of heaven. Referring to the railway situation, Mr. Fremantle remarked that the railway men had been goaded into dissatisfaction. The Minister of Railways spent £5,000 on building a platform at Newlands for the convenience of footballers and made up by dismissing the men

Order, order—that has nothing to do with the question under discussion.

I hope it will be ruled that the argument that there is a conspiracy has nothing to do with the debate, and if that is so I have entirely attained my object. Continuing, Mr. Fremantle said that some of the most extreme leaders of Labour in England were going to be sent out to South Africa to take the place of these deported men. What was going to be done to them?

Wait and see.

Are you going to deport them? Why don’t you bring in a Bill to say no Labour leaders are allowed here? If not, what is the possible use of this Bill? You are not even reducing the number of the Labour leaders, and you are putting into their hands the weapon of a feeling of injustice. Proceeding, Mr. Fremantle said it seemed to him they were asked to take this step simply in blind acquiescence under the leadership of the Minister of Defence, who was a man of great parts, but he had proved himself a very dangerous leader in the past, because in every crisis the country had faced he had led the people in the wrong direction. This was not the place to go into details, but the Minister had one great principle which he had invariably followed —he had always run along with the mass of the people instead of leading them. A man of great parts like the Minister of Defence, who was prepared to do that, was likely to lead the country into almost as great disasters as he had led it into in the past. This was the time when a leader should be able to utter a warning note, but the Minister instead of doing that used the words of Scripture, and twisting them in an outrageous way, said: “They that take to the sword shall perish by the sword. If that was not blasphemy, he (Mr. Fremantle) did not know what was. It meant that lawlessness on the part of rioters would be met by lawlessness on the part of the Government. If that were the doctrine of the Minister of Finance it was not the doctrine of the Scriptures. There should be equal justice for all—the most virtuous and the most criminal, and if we departed from that principle we should do so at our peril. He (Mr. Fremantle brought an indictment not against the mass of members on the Ministerial side of the House, but against a handful of leaders, for he did not believe that this business of deportation came iron the mass of the people or the mass of hon. members on the Ministerial side of the House. If the Government said that deportation was disastrous there would not be six men on this side of the House to press for deportation. (Labour cheers.) Hon. members, through a feeling of loyalty, were inclined to think that Government was right.

I thought we followed the mass.

I am talking about members of Parliament. I can understand the Minister, he is a neophyte. He has only just come over to the side of violence. The mass which is dragging him along is the mass of the people in the clubs who make the noise, not the mass of the people in the country.

Continuing, Mr. Fremantle said that he was one of those who held strong opinions of his own, whether they were in favour of the Government or against the Government. Do not let hon. members be under any illusion as to the effect of that policy, and do not let them think they had not taken a great step to make these men— previously discredited—secure the sympathy of the entire industrial population of the country. (Labour cheers.) Dealing with the case of Wilkes, the hon. member said that he would like to remind the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir T. W. Smartt) that Wilkes had been made a martyr when in gaol. These men were free men and they were reported far more freely and fully than Wilkes had been, and had far more opportunity of being made martyrs. The effect of making martyrs of men and giving them power could hardly be a secret from members of the Treasury Benches, and there was one Minister, the Minister of Education, who had been carrying on political business for ten years with no other stock in trade than that he had been made a martyr. (Laughter.) Many railwaymen had a special grievance against the leaders, and against Mr. Poutsma specially, that they had entered into society on the distinct understanding that that society was not to proclaim a strike, and within a few months of that a strike had been proclaimed. If the Government had left the position when the men who had now been deported were in gaol, and the strike had been put down with a strong hand, which was right, they would have won an enormous body of He most sensible and the most conservative working-men’s opinions. It was already there, and it had already been won. In one unhappy moment the whole sympathy had been spurred over to the other side. Whether they liked it or not, these deportations had had an effect on the industrial population. It had been a disastrous policy on the part of the Government, and hon. mem hers must be blind if they did not see that. There was another grave matter. Do not let the Prime Minister say that it was he (Mr. Fremantle) who was raising that question, and do not let the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir T. W. Smartt) say that he was raising that question. These questions had been raised by the Government—(Labour cheers)—and the drafting of that Bill, and it was his duty to warn hon. members on his side of the House of the grave danger they were running at the present time of raising all over again the most lamentable questions of the past, particularly by that clause of the Bill. What an advantage it had been for that country when some months ago the Prime Minister had gone to England and had been the darling of the English people! The mass of the people had stood up for him and had seen him rise, to the credit of himself and to the credit of his country. They had respected and loved the right hon! gentleman and showed it when he had gone to England. AH that had gone. The right hon. gentleman knew that if he went to London now he went no longer to be applauded, but to be hissed. (Dissent.) On yes, it was the case. He (Mr. Fremantle) knew that the people of some of the clubs might enjoy these things, but they had heard that morning of the meeting of 50,000 people, representative of all shades of Labour opinion in England, who regarded the Prime Minister as the representative of tyrannical power, and no longer as the representative of a downtrodden people. As far as he (Mr. Fremantle) was concerned, he felt that no efforts which could be made to bring home to the constituents of those people who had been returned to support the Government should be spared to show them that that clause, in the eyes of the working population of England, was a declaration of war. The whole welfare of the commonwealth in that country, and in every country, depended on the self-restraint of the Government and of the great body of its citizens.

Who found fault with it?

said that he found fault with the Prime Minister’s method of carrying out this policy of conciliation for which he had given up almost everything that he had had If the Prime Minister still thought that his policy of conciliation was compatible with this policy, then it would be proved to be a false policy. They had rising up again the dividing line between the masses of the people They had racial feeling raising up its head again, and they had these old evils which had been the curse of the country in the past coming up again, not with the club part of the population, but with the mass of the English-speaking people of the country who were represented by hon. members of the cross-benches. Whatever might be the decision of the House if they agreed to this clause, that evening would be looked upon as one of the blackest in the history of South Africa.

said he had been amused by the way in which hon. members round about him accommodated their political views on that question. They had considerable difficulty in making this accommodation. Some of them kept an eye in the first place on their constituents, in the second place they kept an eye on the hon. member for Smithfield, and lastly, but not the least, they kept an eye on the cross benches. (Laughter.) Their common cause was their hostility to the Government. Everyone agreed that Martial Law was justified and approved of the conduct of the Government generally, but they excepted this one clause. On this clause they made common cause in order to fight the Government. They knew this was the salient point of the Bill. In July the right hon. gentleman for Victoria West at Stellenbosch condemned the slackness of the Government. In the New Year at the same place he said he hoped there would be no treaties with the hooligans at Johannesburg and hoped the Government would be firm. Continuing, he was understood to say the Provincial Council member for Stellenbosch suggested deportation, but they heard not one word from the right hon. gentleman against that speech. He (the speaker) said, without fear of contradiction, that the conduct of these people of Johannesburg was against the feeling of the South African people.

Continuing, Mr. Krige said there was another point made by the hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. Merriman) when he drew an analogy between the late upheaval of the country and the war that took place 12 years ago. There was absolutely no analogy, because that was a war between two brave peoples and was on an entirely different issue. The movement for which the members on the cross-benches were largely responsible was an upheaval from within, and consisted of an attempt to upset the government of the country. No, the analogy was simply an attempt to draw a red rag across the floor of the House. The effect of the amendment proposed by the member for Victoria West would be that these men were merely being sent away for a holiday; that being so, deportation meant nothing. During war time he (Mr. Krige) was deported at a cost to himself of £2,000, without being tried, nor was he ever tried. In 1902 the hon. member for Victoria West voted for an Indemnity Bill, but when he (Mr. Krige) applied under that Bill he was told that his claim was too remote. The hon. member for Victoria West had also taunted the Government with being on the side of the stockbrokers and capitalists. He (Mr. Krige) said they supported law and order, irrespective of the interests of either stockbrokers or capitalists. (Cheers.) It was most ungenerous and unfair that these remarks should have come from the quarter which they did. The right hon. member for Victoria West had had his knife into the people of Johannesburg until last session, when he was on good terms with them, while this time he holds them up as a bogey that has frightened the country. He (Mr. Krige) never gave way to anyone in his loyalty to the Constitution and to the rights of British liberty. But he would say that in spite of all that, the point was the highest interest of the country, and that primary point was the feeling of the people of this country. There was no doubt that in this matter of deportation the Government had the sentiment of the people behind their backs. The hon. member for Uitenhage had said that the mass of the people were represented by the cross-benches.

I rise to a point of order. What I said was that the mass of the English working people were represented by members on the cross-benches.

said the effect of this amendment, if carried, would stultify the policy of the Government. If the Government were to waver from that policy they would not be worthy to occupy those benches. The Government would have to stand by the clause or they would not be worthy of office.

said he was surprised at the action of the hon. member for Caledon in his reference to the right hon. gentleman’s remarks about the people of Throgmorton-street. The right hon. gentleman had said that in this particular case they were associated with these people. Was that not a fact? The hon. member had also condemned the right hon. gentleman in regard to his speech at Stellenbosch. He (Mr. Jagger) proposed two resolutions approving of the action of the Government up to a certain point, until they themselves became lawless. His hon. friend had said further that the conduct of the people of Johannesburg was abhorred by the people of this country. But would they not also abhor the action of the Government in deporting these people without trial? Here the Government had done an act which was admittedly a grossly illegal act. He (Mr. Jagger) had been looking up the speeches when the last Indemnity Bill was under consideration, and he found that the Minister in August, 1902, made the following remarks: “.Don’t let them consolidate feeling in this country against the governing authorities. He warned them rather by judicious legislation and by kindly spirit to force a better feeling in the country, a better feeling on which they could build up the State.” Was not that the policy on which his hon. friend had exactly turned his back? Another argument brought forward by the hon. member for Caledon was that this action was in the interest of the country. He (Mr. Jagger) had said before, and repeated now, did they know any act of tyranny committed by any Government that was not said to be in the interest of the country ? They could justify any act of the Government On that ground. He had no doubt that when Benton was shot the other day in Mexico by Villa it was done on the ground that it was in the interest of the country. This action of the Government showed their absolute weakness; this endeavour to keep out these nine men was the act of a weak Government. A strong Government that knew it had the people at its back, what had it to be afraid of ? The second portion of the clause was really a confession of the Government that if they let these nine men come back to this country they could not keep order. The only real argument that had been brought up that afternoon in support of the action of the Government was that they would not take the responsibility for these men coming back. He maintained that that was a confession of a weak Government. Furthermore, that was the position they took up after having been able to mobilise at one time over 60,000 men, when they knew that they had the vast majority of the people of this country at their backs. The real truth was that the whole of these disturbances in July were owing to the weakness of the Government. If the Government would administer the law in a firm but not in an unjust fashion, there was not the slightest fear in allowing these men to come back to the country. He would go further than the hon. member for Victoria West, and would vote against the whole clause. (Labour cheers.)

referring to the speech of the hon. member who had just sat down, disagreed with his argument that the action in deporting these men was the action of a weak Government. That was where hon. members failed to keep in touch with the feeling of the country. It had been stated that they were face to face with the great problem as to what was their duty in regard to these deportations. Some hon. members had a slash at the Government in the course of their speeches with a view to making political capital out of the matter, and others had preferred to condone everything but the deportation. They jibbed at banishment. They wanted a saving clause for their conscience’ sake. The question they had to put to themselves was, let the deportations be illegal, they were not opposed to their great sense of liberty in this country. They felt in this country that these men who had been carrying on that campaign of revolution had been abusing the liberty which this country gave them, and they were damaging the liberties and poaching upon the liberties of their fellowmen in this country. Were they to allow those men to continue to abuse the liberties without safeguarding the people who were suffering from that abuse? He could understand the hon. member for Victoria West did not favour the deportation. There he was out of touch with the conditions of South Africa. He was trying to make the conditions that did apply to other communities apply to this country, and he was surprised that the right hon. gentleman was not able to see where the difference came in between theoretical ideas and practical ideas. He (Mr. Watermeyer) did not think the departments were going to kill the Labour movement, but in present conditions they wanted a little rest from the doctrines which those gentlemen had preached, so as to give South Africa time to think. Although they may take precedents from other countries and other circumstances, their duty at the present time was to consider the thing on its present bearing with regard to South Africa, and he had no hesitation in supporting the Government.

said the, most striking part of the hon. member’s speech was his statement that the action of the Government was not opposed to their sense of liberty. What a peculiar sense of liberty the hon. member must have. He said the deported men had been infringing the liberties of other people in this country, But in what way had they done so? The majority of hon. members in that House had expressed themselves in almost exactly the same way. They had assumed and presumed the guilt of those gentlemen who had been deported I hey looked upon them as a great danger to this country, but they could not say what they had done; if they had done anything, the Ministry would have been glad to have brought them before the Courts. They certainly did have a dig at the ribs of the Government.

You would pull down the Union Jack.

What does it mean ?

Liberty for all men.

said that this was one of the occasions on which the majority was wrong in violating not only the liberty of the subject, but of the nation. The individualist gentleman, the hon. member for Umlazi (Mr. Fawcus), talked about the possible effect of throwing out this clause upon the native mind. But what had been the effect on the native mind of the deportations? Hon. members talked about the necessity of doing absolute justice to the natives, who, they stated, must be law-abiding. The natives would come to the conclusion that no man, especially no native, was safe in the hands of the Government which was prepared to tear up all laws. He challenged hon. members to test the feeling of the country, and fight a general election, or have a referendum. Let them fight a general election on that one point, and leave everything else out—that one point being the action of the Government during January. They were afraid to see what the country thought of them, and had had one or two indications recently at Durban, Bloemfontein, and even Kroonstad. And what about Maritzburg? The most conclusive answer that any Government or any set of individuals could receive from an election. That House, when it had been elected, had not been elected on such a point as that—the question of the imposition or non-imposition of Martial Law—and that had never entered the minds of the electorate, and if it had, that House would have been constituted very differently. Let the Government get the direct feeling of the people on that point, and then they would know where they were. He could not understand any House of Assembly, elected by a people who were part of the British Empire, contemplating the possibility of passing a clause like that, which meant the abrogation of law and the tearing up of the Constitution of the British Empire. He appealed to that House not to perpetuate that injustice—it was nothing less than a crime—of perpetually banishing men who thought they had done right in the interest of the class which they represented.

said that he had an amendment on the paper. Should he move it now or later? He was afraid that if the amendment of the right hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. Merriman) was negatived, he could not move his amendment.

said that if the amendment of the right hon. member for Victoria West was negatived, the hon. member (Mr. Robinson) would not be able to move his amendment.

thereupon moved as an amendment, in line 64, after the word “Union,” to insert the words, “except in the manner provided in section 5 hereof.”

said that now they were asked to do something which would be regarded as a precedent for the future, and some of them at any rate felt a very great difficulty. He personally was in no way anxious to embarrass the Government, but he had to look forward to the future, and he knew that in a few years the exact majority would be quoted by which this Bill was passed, and that fact would be used possibly not by this Government, but by some other Government as establishing a very dangerous precedent. He could plead no sympathy for these gentlemen who had been deported, but there was no need to abuse them, and he could not help thinking that throughout this debate an unnecessary amount of abuse had been poured on these men. They might not be very desirable men, but they might also be men who in their personal lives were most excellent, and he thought it unnecessary to blacken their characters anyway. It had been admitted, that they were not criminals in the ordinary sense of the word, and it was quite conceivable, and it might be generous, to allow that these men might have been actuated by higher motives than the base ones which had been attributed to them. But one thing was clear, that even if they held the very highest ideals and were striving after something great and noble they adopted means to accomplish those ends which rendered them, dangerous to society. They took not only unconstitutional methods, but they took into their hands to set aside the laws of the country and to establish practically a reign of lawlessness.

They became a distinct menace to the liberties of this country, and when they did that the Government were perfectly right in interfering with a strong hand and preventing a repetition of that condition of anarchy of which they had had experience before. It was not through any sympathy he had for these men that he felt any difficulty in voting on the clause. There was a sort of poetic justice in their having fallen victims to a system which they themselves accepted. They disregarded the laws of the country, and it was only just that they should suffer by a complete disregard of the laws of the country on the part of those who had to maintain them. He was entirely with the Government up to that time, but the House was now asked, not only to give its indemnity for what was done under Martial Law, but also for these deportations. In giving indemnity for the deportations, it was argued they would not be establishing a precedent any more than they would be if they passed an indemnity for anything done under Martial Law. He did not believe in that argument. The Government might have made a mistake, but if on the whole they did the right thing and not the wrong one, the House must overlook these mistakes and give them an indemnity. But now they were asked to go a step further and pass a Bill of banishment against these people without any trial whatever. That was a point on which he felt a very great difficulty. He would like to support the Government, but he felt that he could not do so.

On the other hand, he was in this difficult position, that he did not want, by his vote, to identify himself in any way as supporting the line taken by the gentlemen who claimed to lead the working-people of the country. They had committed a grievous mistake in the interests of those people. They had put back progress in this country, and had alienated from themselves and from their party to a very large extent the sympathy and support of those who were the best friends of the workers, who would have done anything in their power and would do it still to secure for those working-people what was just and fair and right. In a measure the aims of those so-called leaders might be right, but they went on wrong lines altogether. They aimed at impossibilities. He was on the horns of a dilemma, because he could not vote either for or against the Bill. That might be a very feeble position to take up, but it was one that he felt himself forced into. The Government could carry their Bill through with their majority, and they would not be in danger in any way by his voting either for or against the Bill. But he had to define his own position. He had supported the Government up to this point, but he could not give a vote in favour of what he knew would be a precedent for legislation in the future. He was not a lawyer. They had had plenty of lawyers speaking in the House, but he was a reader of history, and he knew that any measure such as this once adopted by the Parliament of any country inevitably cropped up again as a trouble to be disposed of later. Therefore he left the Government to have the whole credit with regard to the deportation of these men. He would take no share in that, although he would not actively oppose it.

said he could not agree with everything that had been said by the right hon. member for Victoria West. Mr. Merriman had said that the Government did not seem to know what they were doing, but he (Mr. Steytler) would like to refer the right hon. gentlemen to the speeches of the deportees themselves in England. One of these men had himself stated that had he been in the Government’s position he would have acted exactly as they had done. Hon. members who attacked the Government should give a little more thought to the widows and orphans who had lost their husbands or fathers in Johannesburg as the result of the actions of these deportees, and they should have thought a little more of the burghers who had to leave their homes to go to protect Johannesburg. In the circumstances, much though he might dislike the principle of deportation without trial, he would give his support to the clause as it stood, and would vote for it. (Hear, hear.) If they allowed the men who had been deported to return to this country to stand their trial before a special tribunal, it might result in a recurrence of the dangers which had previously arisen. It was not an easy matter to vote in favour of deportation, but in this case it touched the well-being and even the existence of the State, Even if he had to vote against his own father or brother in such a case as this, he would have to consider the interest of the country as coming first.

moved as an amendment that in line 62, after “Union,” to insert “Any such person shall be entitled to return to the Union upon such terms and conditions as shall be prescribed in an Act of Parliament to be passed hereafter”; and in line 64, after “Union,” to insert “before the passing of such Act of Parliament.”

said he did not intend to keep the House very long, as he wanted to go to a vote on the question. The subject had caused him a considerable amount of thought, because he had been in opposition to the Government in one form or another for a number of years. He had also had to consider the question of indemnifying them for an illegal act, and he had asked himself the question why he should vote for the Government? Various views had been put before that House with regard to the events which had occurred in Johannesburg, but he was convinced that unless the Government had taken the strong action which they did there would have been a greater outbreak of lawlessness and crime than that which took place in July last.

He would only mention one instance, that of the hon. member for Jeppe, because he posed there as the apostle of freedom and liberty. He had denounced the Government for the actions they thought fit to take for the maintenance of law and order in this country. What was his whole history in regard to these events? He, for some reason which no doubt he was well able to explain, was not present in Johannesburg in July. He had been looking through the papers to see if there was one word of denunciation from the hon. member of the events that, took place on the Rand in July last. It was true that he issued a pamphlet, but that pamphlet seemed to have been issued with two objects. One was undoubtedly to try and rehabilitate himself with his party for the part he took in connection with the July troubles. The other was to try to gratify that passion for notoriety which was characteristic of the members of the so-called Labour Party. The hon. members on the cross-benches had tried to accuse the Government of acting ultra vires, and had tried to gloss over the events that occurred during these two periods. They had tried to fool this House into the belief that there was no attempt made to incite the natives to revolt against the regime under which they were living and working. These gentlemen or their followers attempted to cause disaffection among the natives and to revolt against their conditions of work, against their employers, as had been as clearly proved as any other charge against these men.

Where?

You will find it in the report of the Disturbances Commission and also in a great deal of other evidence. There is a good deal of evidence that it took days and days to get the New Kleinfontein natives quiet. There was actual revolt in two of the compounds in the centre of Johannesburg—at the Village Main Reef and the City and Suburban— suppressed by a strong force of police. I take the evidence of my own eyes.

What did you see?

I saw enough to assure me that I did not want to see it again.

What did you see?

I saw enough, without going into the details of what I did see, to convince me that to allow the gentlemen who sit on the cross-benches to conduct the affairs in Johannesburg was simply courting disaster.

What did you see?

said they had heard a lot about precedents in that House. It was not necessary to go to Peru for a precedent for this action of the Government. A precedent was established in analogous circumstances in India as recently as 1909. They would find that a somewhat similar state of affairs existed in India, that gangs of agitators were going about living on the gullibility of the poor people of India, creating trouble and creating rebellion, and the Government of India, dominated by Downing-street, acted exactly as the Government of South Africa had fortunately been able to act for our peace and comfort in the future. They deported nine Bengalese. The Secretary of State for India said: “It is essential, and they had no desire to disguise the fact, that it should be brought home to the agitators that it is the deliberate intention in this country to maintain order, and if necessary they will be removed from their sphere of mischievous activity until such time as the Government considers it necessary to revise its decision.” The hon. member went on to quote other extracts from the, same source to show that the cases were analogous, and proceeding, said that the Government deserved the thanks of the country for saving it from the consequences of a terrible disaster. Despite the aspersions cast upon the police and the burgher forces, he felt that if they had not come forward the Rand would have been a scene of such disorder as would have shocked the whole of the British Empire. He thought he voiced the opinion of 90 per Cent. of the people of the Rand when he said they were grateful for the action of the Government in maintaining law and order in January, and also in getting rid of a common and perfect nuisance. As an expression of gratitude he would vote for the clause as it stood.

in supporting the clause, said the hon. members for Uitenhage and Victoria West had given the Committee many warnings, the first telling them to note the fact that the members of the Labour Party represented the great mass of the people. Well, he (the speaker) was prepared to face his constituents on the attitude he was taking up on the Bill, and he would be glad to know whether the hon. member for Uitenhage would do the same. Every working-man had the right to sell his labour to the best advantage, but, on the other hand, if he did not think fit to work, he must not resort to violence. The measures taken by the Government were drastic and extraordinary, but so was the disease which had to be dealt with and the Government had got the support of 90 per cent. of the population. If circumstances of a similar kind arose again, he was sure, if the Government took up a similar attitude, they would receive the support not only of this House, but of the whole country. The Government must not give away anything in the Bill, but force it through and pay no attention to the warnings of hon. members. (Ministerial cheers.)

The first part of the amendment of the hon. member for Three Rivers (Mr. D. M. Brown) was negatived, and the second part dropped.

referred to the amendment which he had moved, in line 44, after “Union,” to insert “Except in the manner provided in section. 5 hereof.” The mover said he was hoping that the House might come to a division on the amendment proposed by the right hon. member for Victoria West before it was necessary for him (Mr. Robinson) to address the House on the amendment he suggested. His object was to allow the inclusion of a new clause 5 as follows: “At any time after the commencement of this Act it shall be lawful for the Governor-General-in-Council, upon a petition from any one or more of the persons specified in the schedule to this Act praying to be allowed to return to the Union, to grant permission, after due enquiry into the circumstances set forth in such petition, to any one or more of such petitioners to return to the Union either temporarily or permanently and upon such terms and conditions as to the Governor-General-in-Council shall seem fit, and any person so permitted to return who fails to comply with such terms and conditions shall be liable to be again deported.” Continuing, Mr. Robinson said he had experienced difficulty in voting for the absolute banishment of the nine deportees. Although most hon. members were prepared to support the deportations, nobody who read the Blue-books and the newspapers could come to the conclusion while it was doubtful whether any of these men should absolutely be banished for all time, certainly there was a distinction to be drawn between some of the deportees. If the House did not do as he suggested, Parliament would constantly be moved to reconsider its decision and to readmit these men. All that he asked was that the men should have an opportunity of stating such facts as they had in their possession which might place a different complexion on their actions. The amendment did not compel the Government to admit any of these men, but it gave the latter an opportunity of stating their case. The Government could fix such terms for the men’s re-admission as would provide proper safeguards, and if the men broke these conditions they could be re-deported. Government should show a disposition even at this late hour, to be merciful. It might be that when the deported men realised that a repetition of their conduct would not be tolerated they might be anxious to return on the conditions laid down by the Government. “We should do everything in our power to remove any suspicion of a desire to crush these men.” Personally, he could not go so far as to vote for permanent banishment.

said he would like to ask the Chairman a question. He was given to understand that if that clause was passed subsequent amendments on the paper with regard to the schedule might not be in order. By the second reading of the Bill they had affirmed the principle, but it would be necessary for that Committee to have evidence for each of the nine persons whose names were mentioned in the schedule. It seemed to be only just when they had a general discussion like that, that each of the nine persons’ cases should be separately considered.

said that the matter had been brought to his attention at an earlier stage that evening, and he had considered it. He was of opinion that if that clause passed it would be impossible for him at that stage of the proceedings to allow any amendments to the schedule, whatever might be allowed at a later stage because that would be going back upon what the Committee had affirmed—that the persons mentioned in the schedule had been lawfully deported.

pointed out that it was a Bill, and it was open for them to alter the schedule. If there were only one name in the schedule it would still be “every person in the schedule.”

said that was the ruling he would give, and he had made up his mind on that point.

Would you mind having Mr. Speaker’s ruling on that point? He moved that the Chairman report progress in order to obtain Mr. Speaker’s ruling on the point raised, and ask leave to sit again.

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker in the chair.

stated the point which had arisen in Committee, and that the Committee desired to obtain Mr. Speaker’s ruling thereon, and that he had accordingly been ordered to report progress, and ask leave to sit again.

said that the reason that they raised that question was because they had a number of amendments on the paper—amendments to the schedule—and although the schedule was referred to in that clause, they presumed it would be the schedule as it might finally leave the Committee.

said that the question raised was one of the greatest importance. He thought that every opportunity should be given the Committee to bring any individual case forward, and seeing that the House appeared to be agreed upon the deportations, he thought that after clause 4 had been disposed of they should be at liberty to go into the schedule.

said he felt it was the desire of the House that in the event of clause 4 being passed hon. members should be at liberty to go into the details of the schedule. (Hear, hear.) Could they not agree to the position that they should be at liberty to go into the details of the schedule after clause 4 had been passed ?

It has been the practice in the past in cases where clauses in Bills seek to fix schedules, such as in the case of Railway Bills and Customs Tariff Bills, for the Committee to agree to let such clauses stand, over until after the schedules concerned had been disposed of. In view, however, of what seems to be the general wish of the Committee, to first dispose of the clause now under consideration, and thereafter to exercise full liberty in dealing with the schedule, I will not now give a definite ruling on the point put to me, but will leave it to the discretion of the chairman to deal with the schedule when it is reached in accordance with the wishes of the Committee.

left the chair, and the Chairman reported Mr. Speaker’s ruling to the Committee.

said that on the second reading debate he said he was prepared to, vote for the second reading provided he thought that in the committee stage the Government would come forward with some sort of recommendation on this question of deportation. No amendment, however, had been suggested by the Government.

thought the member for Umbilo (Mr. Robinson) might have been satisfied with voting for the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Victoria West, instead of proposing another amendment allowing the men to come back on certain terms that might be imposed by the Governor-General. He (Mr. Boydell) wished to point out to the House that there were no definite or specific charges against these men which justified the Government in deporting them from the country for life. The Prime Minister had laid down the principle that these men who were deported were not born in South Africa, but that if they had been South African-born it would have been necessary to have tried them by the laws of this country. He (Mr. Boydell) thought no such differentiation should be made in regard to those who were true-born South Africans and those who were not

He would remind the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that the anxiety which had been caused them by the deportation of these men in the past was nothing to the anxiety and consideration they would have to give to this question in the future. In South Africa, unless justice were done to these men on a proper basis, the Prime Minister and his Government would have this question of deportation to face wherever they went. He could quite imagine the howls of indignation which would have gone up from the Opposition benches if the mine managers whom the Judicial Commission found guilty of causing the disturbances in July last had been deported.

called the hon. member to order, and pointed out that that argument had been used several times that evening.

said that they had got in this country a combination of despotism on the Government benches and of plutocracy on the Opposition benches. They were both participators in the crime of not only deporting men without a trial because they were working-men, but of creating conditions which were driving many hundreds now, and many thousands before long, from the shores of South Africa. All over the world South Africa would become known by white workers as the paradise of blacklegs and scabs. Later, he would try and find out the specific act of violence which had justified the Government in deporting Mr. Bain, and other hon. members on the cross benches would ask about other deportees. The question of a precedent which might afterwards be acted upon by a future Government was a most dangerous one. He hoped the hon. members would vote against the deportation clause in toto.

said that while he agreed with what the Government had done in the proclamation of Martial Law, he could not agree with the deportation of these nine men without trial. It shocked him that the Government should have acted so. He intended to vote for the amendment of the hon. member for Victoria West.

said that he had a mandate from his constituents to condemn the Government in that matter. They were very much against the latter clause, especially that part which meant perpetual banishment. The Government had committed a blunder in regard to the deportations, and in respect to other matters. They were playing into the hands of the Syndicalists. The hon. members on the cross-benches were not Syndicalists. This matter of the deportation of Trade Unionists was one which affected not only the people of South Africa but all over the world. They had provided Syndicalists with a very good argument in favour of Syndicalism. The hon. member for Umlazi (Mr. Fawcus) complained of the speeches made by the men who had been deported. He himself had done a great deal of harm by one of his speeches, which he (Mr. Sampson) thought was that of a madman. But when did Mr. Poutsma advocate violence? (Labour cheers.) It was the old story—judge a man by prejudice. As to revolutions, there had been an armed revolution in this country, but the leaders were given a fair trial at Pretoria. They were charged with high treason.

I am looking back to July.

I am looking back to ’96, when men walked through the streets of Johannesburg, armed with rifles, at the bidding of the friends of the hon. member. Continuing, Mr. Sampson said it had been urged that the deportations had been carried out with the wishes of the people, but the people knew nothing about the deportations until after they had been effected. The Imperial Government was looking to the Union Parliament to redeem itself, but if the Bill went through in its present form the Imperial Government would lose all confidence in us. (Labour cheers.)

Mr. Robinson’s amendment was negatived.

then put the question: That all the words after “Union,” in line 62, proposed to be omitted, stand part of the clause, and declared that the “Ayes” had it.

called for a division, which was taken at half-past twelve, with the following result:

Ayes—72.

Alberts, Johannes Joachim

Bekker, Stephanus

Bezuidenhout, Willem Wouter Jacobus J.

Bosman, Hendrik Johannes

Botha, Louis

Burton, Henry

Chaplin, Francis Drummond Percy

Clayton, Walter Frederick

Crewe. Charles Preston

Cronje, Frederik Reinhardt

Do Beer, Michiel Johannes

De Jager, Andries Lourens

De Waal, Hendrik

De Wet, Nicolaas Jacobus

Du Toit, Gert Johan Wilhelm

Geldenhuys, Lourens

Graaff, David Pieter de Villiers

Griffin, William Henry

Grobler, Evert Nicolaas

Harris, David

Joubert, Christiaan Johannes Jacobus

Keyter, Jan Gerhard

King, John Gavin Krige, Christman Joel

Kuhn, Pieter Gysbert

Langerman, Jan Willem Stuckeris

Lemmer, Lodewyk Arnoldus Slabbert

Leuchars, George

Louw, George Albertyn

Macaulay, Donald

Malan, Francois Stephanus

Marais, Johannes Henoch

Marais, Pieter Gerhardus

Mentz, Hendrik

Meyer, Izaak Johannes

Myburgh, Marthinus Wilhelmus

Nathan, Emile

Neethling, Andrew Murray

Nicholson, Richard Granville

Oosthuisen, Ockert Almero

Orr, Thomas

Rademeyer, Jacobus Michael

Robinson, Charles Phineas

Rockey, Willie

Runciman, William

Schoeman, Johannes Hendrik

Silburn, Percy Arthur

Smartt, Thomas William

Smuts, Jan Christiaan

Smuts, Tobias

Steyl, Johannes Petrus Gerhardus

Steytler, George Louis

Struben, Charles Frederick William

Theron, Hendrik Schalk

Theron, Petrus Jacobus George

Van der Merwe, Johannes Adolph P.

Van der Riet, Frederick John Werndly

Van der Walt, Jacobus

Van Eeden, Jacobus Willem

Van Heerden, Hercules Christian

Venter, Jan Abraham

Vermaas, Hendrik Cornelius Wilhelmus

Vintcent, Alwyn Ignatius

Walton, Edgar Harris

Watermeyer, Egidius Benedictus

Watt, Thomas

Wessels, Daniel Hendrik Willem

Whitaker, George

Wiltshire, Henry

Woolls-Sampson, Aubrey

H. C. Becker and. J. Hewat, tellers.

Noes—27.

Alexander, Morris

Andrews, William Henry

Baxter, William Duncan

Boydell, Thomas

Brown, Daniel Maclaren

Creswell, Frederic Hugh Page

Currey, Henry Latham

Duncan, Patrick

Fawcus, Alfred

Fremantle, Henry Eardley Stephen

Haggar, Charles Henry

Henderson, James

Jagger, John William

MacNeillie, James Campbell

Madeley, Walter Bayley

Merriman, John Xavier

Meyler, Hugh Mowbray

Oliver, Henry Alfred

Sampson, Henry William

Serfontein, Hendrik Philippus

Serfontein, Nicolaas Wilhelmus

Van Niekerk, Christian Andries

Wessels, Johannes Hendricus Brand

Wilcocks, Carl Theodorus Muller

Wyndham, Hugh Archibald

Charles G. Fichardt and P. G. W. Grobler, tellers.

The question was accordingly affirmed, and the amendment proposed by Mr. Merriman negatived.

claimed the right to speak to the amendment standing in his name. They had been considering an important clause, and during the debate on that clause the Government had not advanced one argument, for the reason that they had none. The Minister of Finance knew that he could not advance any excuse for the clause, and he had left that duty to his faithful henchman, the member for Fort Beaufort (Sir T. Smartt). The first Government of the Union was about to pass a clause which would make it a byword to the whole civilised world. They were banishing men who had made their homes in this country and were doing their best to improve the conditions of the people.

asked the Minister of Finance if he would accept a motion to report progress?

declined.

at 12.45 a.m., put the question that the clause, as printed, stand as clause 4 to the Bill, and declared that the “Ayes” had it.

called for a division, which was taken, with the following result:

Ayes—73.

Alberts, Johannes Joachim

Bekker, Stephanus

Bezuidenhout, Willem Wouter Jacobus J.

Bosman, Hendrik Johannes

Botha, Louis

Burton, Henry

Chaplin, Francis Drummond Percy

Clayton, Walter Frederick

Crewe, Charles Preston

Cronje, Frederik Reinhardt

De Beer, Michiel Johannes

De Jager, Andries Lourens

De Waal, Hendrik

De Wet, Nicolaas Jacobus

Du Toit, Gert Johan Wilhelm

Fawcus, Alfred

Geldenhuys, Lourens

Graaff, David Peter de Villiers

Griffin, William Henry

Grobler, Evert Nicolaas

Harris, David

Joubert, Christiaan Johannes Jacobus

Keyter, Jan Gerhard

King, John Gavin

Krige, Christman Joel

Kuhn, Pieter Gysbert

Langerman, Jan Willem Stuckeris

Lemmer, Lodewyk Arnoldus Slabbert

Leuchars, George

Louw, George Albertyn

Macaulay, Donald

Malan, Francois Stephanus

Marais, Johannes Henoch

Marais, Pieter Gerhardus

Mentz, Hendrik

Meyer, Izaak Johannes

Myburgh. Marthinus Wilhelmus

Nathan, Emile

Neethling, Andrew Murray

Nicholson, Richard Granville

Oosthuizen, Ockert Almero

Orr, Thomas

Rademeyer, Jacobus Michael Robinson, Charles Phineas

Rockey, Willie

Runciman, William

Schoeman, Johannes Hendrik

Silburn, Percy Arthur

Smartt, Thomas William

Smuts, Jan Christiaan

Smuts, Tobias

Steyl. Johannes Petrus Gerhardus

Steytler, George Louis

Struben. Charles Frederick William

Theron, Hendrik Schalk

Theron, Petrus Jacobus George

Van der Merwe, Johannes Adolph P.

Van der Riet, Frederick John Werndly

Van der Walt, Jacobus

Van Eeden, Jacobus Willem

Van Hoerden, Hercules Christian

Venter, Jan Abraham

Vermaas, Hendrik Cornelius Wilhelmus

Vintcent, Alwyn Ignatius

Walton, Edgar Harris

Watermeyer, Egidius Benedictus

Watt, Thomas

Wessels, Daniel Hendrik Willem

Whitaker, George

Wiltshire, Henry

Wools-Sampson, Aubrey

H. C. Becker and J. Hewat, tellers.

Noes—15.

Andrews, William Henry

Baxter, William Duncan

Boydell, Thomas

Creswell, Frederic Hugh Page

Duncan, Patrick

Fichardt, Charles Gustav

Haggar, Charles Henry

Henderson, James

Jagger, John William

Madeley, Walter Bayley

Meyler, Hugh Mowbray

Oliver, Henry Alfred

Sampson, Henry William

Morris Alexander and H. A. Wyndham, tellers.

The clause as printed was formally agreed to.

On clause 5, Short title,

moved, in line 6, to insert “Political” after “and.” He said he thought that the Bill should be given its correct title; it was a “Political Undesirables Special Deportation Bill.”

appealed to the Prime Minister to report progress.

said he had understood that progress would be reported when clause 4 had been passed and as a consequence they had curtailed the discussion.

moved to report progress

said that he would raise no objection to reporting progress, though he denied that any understanding existing between him and the leader of the Labour Party on the subject.

The motion was agreed to.

Progress was reported and leave obtained to sit again on Wednesday.