1918-04-08

[Stage Direction]
On motion of the Hon. Mr. Carvell, Bill No. 40, To Amend the Public Works Act, was introduced and read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. F. B. Carvell (Minister of Public Works) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 41, to amend Navigable Waters Protection Act.
Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: Explain.


Mr. CARVELL:: It was found in the operation of the Navigable Waters Protection Act that sometimes questions arose as to the rights of people to erect wharves, etc., in navigable streams. The object of this Bill is to prevent this happening, except with the consent of the Public Works Department. The Bill defines the public works more generally than they are defined at present, and also provides that, except in certain very small matters, if people persist in obstructing navigable streams, the Public Works Department, with the consent of the Governor in Council, may take whatever steps may be necessary to remove the obstruction.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Minister of the Interior) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 39, to amend the Yukon Act.
Wilfrid Laurier: Explain,
please.


Mr. MEIGHEN:: This Bill provides for ratification of the steps already taken to reduce the organization of the Yukon Government, in so far as the administration under the Interior Department is concerned. It also provides for relieving the Auditor General of the necessity of sending one of his staff to the Yukon annually. It provides that he shall be sent only as the Auditor General deems it in the public interest. It further. provides the Governor in Council shall have power to abolish the Yukon Council, and substitute in its place another council appointed by the Governor in Council.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and Bill read the first time.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 33, respecting Brazeau Collieries, Limited.-Mr. Buchanan.
Bill No. 34, respecting The Canadian Northern Ontario Railway Company.-Mr. Morphy.
Bill No. 35, respecting The Ottawa Gas Company.-Mr. Fripp.
Bill No. 36, respecting Ottawa and Montreal Transmission Company, Limited.-Mr. Fripp.
Bill No. 37, respecting The Toronto, Niagara and Western Railway Company.-Mr. Morphy.

[Stage Direction]
Questions answered orally are indicated by asterisks.

*Mr. TRAHAN:: 1.	How many conscripted men were enlisted under and toy virtue of the Military Service Act of 1917: (a) during- the month of December, 1917 ; (to) during the month of January, 1918 ; and (c) during the month of February, 1918?
2.	What was the cost of the said enlistments for each of these months?
3.	How many volunteers enlisted during (a) the month of December, 1916?; and (to) during the months of January and February respectively, in 1917?
4.	What was the cost of the said enlistments for each of these months?


Major General MEWBURN:: 1. (a) The total enlistments during the month of December, 11917, were 3,909. No men were ordered to report under the Military Service Act until January 3, 1918; (b) the total enlistments during the month of January,

1918, were 14,971, of which 11,539 were conscripted men enlisted under the Military Service Act; (c) the total enlistments during the month of February, 1918, were 10,030, of which 5,889 were conscripted men, enlisted under the Military Service Act.
2.	As the accounts for voluntary recruiting, as well as for men recruited under the Military Service Act have never been separated, it will entail numerous researches and will take some time to obtain this information.
3.	(a) 5,796; (b) January, 1917, 9,194; (c) February, 1917, 6,809.
4.	Answered by No. 2.


QUEBEC PROPERTIES LEASED.
Mr. POWER:: 1.	Has the Militia Department or the Military Hospital Commission leased any properties in the City of Quebec since the first of January, 1917?
2.	If so, from whom were these properties leased, at what rental, and on whose recommendation?
Major-General MEWBURN: 1. (a) Recruiting office in Quebec Railway Building, owned by Quebec Railway, Light and Power Company, (b) Upper floor, J. B. O'Brien, auto garage; (c) Cummings Building.
2.	(a) Owned by Quebec Railway, Light and Power Company at $20 per month; (b) J. B. O'Brien Auto Company, $50 per month; (c) Mrs. Margaret M. Cummings, at $115 per month. All recommended by the General Officer Commanding Military District No. 5.


FARM MACHINERY REPAIR PARTS.
Mr. J. F. REID:: What were the total receipts from the customs tariff during the fiscal period ending March, 1917, on threshing separators, threshing outfits, traction engines, self-binding reapers, ploughs, other farm machinery and repair parts, respectively?


Hon. Mr. SIFTON:: Threshing machine separators, $353,432.22; threshing machine separators, parts of, including wind stackers, 'baggers, weighers, and self feeders therefor, and finished parts thereof, for repairs, when imported separ-. ately, $124,463.62; portable engines with boilers in combination, and traction engines, for farm purposes, $896,356.05; harvesters, self-binding, $89,257.28; ploughs, and parts thereof, $373,504.03. Other farm machinery and parts thereof, viz:-Binding attachments, cultivators, weeders, drills, rollers, harrows, 'hay loaders, tedders, horse rakes, manure spreaders, mowers, potato diggers, reapers, fanning mills,
grain crashers, hay presses, fodder or feed cutters, horse powers for farm purposes, and parts of agricultural implements, n.o.p. $280,255.03.


AMMUNITION INSPECTION.
Mr. ARCHAMBAULT:: 1.	Who is In oharge of inspection, for the Government, of ammunition manufacture?
2.	Who has charge of the inspection of the Canadian Explosives Company at Beloeil?
3.	How many times since the 1st January, 1917, has the said company's establishment been inspected, and what are the dates of said inspections?
4.	Is the Government aware that fires recently broke out in the said establishment and were extinguished only a few feet from storage containing T.N.T.?
Major-General MEWBURN :[DOT]
1.	The Chief Inspector of Arms and Ammunition at Quebec.
2.	No official of the Department of Militia and Defence is charged with the inspection of the Canadian Explosives' *premises at Beloeil.
An examiner (under the jurisdiction of the Chief Inspector of Arms and Ammunition) is stationed at Beloeil for the purpose of inspecting such supplies of ammunition and explosives as may foe ordered by this department from time to time.
3.	The Government has no information.
4.	No.
It may he added that the inspection of ammunition and explosives for the Imperial Government is carried out by representatives of the Imperial Ministry of Munitions of England, who are not under the jurisdiction of the Department of Militia and Defence.


LAPRAIRIE-ST. LAMBERT DYKE.
Mr.   D@: Is it the intention of the Government to complete this season, the work already commenced of a dike along the St. Lawrence, Laprairle to St. Lambert?


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: Yes.


EXCHANGE BETWEEN CANADA AND UNITED STATES.
*Mr. Du TREMBLAY:: 1.	Can the Prime Minister give the House and the country any reassuring information regarding the question of improving the rate of exchange on money as between the United States and Canada?
2.	Was his recent mission to Washington in
connection with this matter, and was it successful ?	-
3.	Have any steps been taken to obtain from the British Government, concessions to Canada which will help the Canadian Government to improve the exchange situation as between Canada and the United States?


Right Hon.   S@: The subject is, and lias been, under the consideration of 'the Government. There is no special announcement to be made at the [DOT]moment. Any necessary announcement will ibe made in due course.


STAFF OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL.
Mr. DEVLIN:: 1.	What are the number of officials and employees on the staff of the Privy Council who have been appointed since December, 1917?
2.	What salary is paid to each, and what are their respective duties?
3.	Have they passed the Civil Service Examination?	.
4.	Are any of military age?
5.	What are the travelling, and living expenses of each one since coming to Ottawa?


Hon. Mr. ROWELL:: 1 and 2. Assistant private secretary, $1,750; stenographer and typist, $800; typist, $700; messenger, $600.
3.	Yes, or have complied with the law.
4.	One, assistant private secretary. Was lieutenant in the C.E.F.; wounded at the battle of Zillefbeke and discharged from the army as unfit for further military service.
5.	None.


LEGAL ADVISER TO FOOD BOARD.
Mr. E. LAPOINTE:: 1.	Is there a legal adviser to the Canada Food Board ?
2.	If so, what is his name, address and salary?
3.	What is the total amount paid him to date?
4.	Has he any assistants? If so, who are they, and what are their salaries?
\Hon. Mr. ORERAR:
1.	Yes.
2.	Francis Henry Keefer', K.C.; at present _[DOT] Ottawa, formerly, Port Arthur; no salary.
3.	Nothing.
4.	No.


SOLDIERS CONVALESCENT HOME, PORT ARTHUR.
Mr. PROULX:: 1.	Has the Government or any department thereof leased a residence or other building in Port Arthur, Ontario, for a Returned Soldiers' Convalescent Home, or for some like purpose?
2.	If so, what is the name and occupation of the lessor, and what rental is paid for the building In question?
3.	Is there a matron employed, or in charge of the said building so leased? If so, what is her name and salary?
4.	How much has been paid to date to the lessor and to the matron?


Mr. MCCURDY:: 1.	The Military Hospitals Commission was granted the free use of a private house

iat Port Arthur, Ontario, as a convalescent home for returned' soldiers.
2.	The name of the donor is Frank H. Keefer, Esq., K.C., of Thorold, Ontario, no rental is paid for the building in question nor for the furniture which has also been loaned by the lessor.
3.	The matron employed is Mrs. Hugh Keefer. Her services were rendered gratuitously for some two years until 1st May, 1917. She is now drawing a salary of $75 per month.
4.	Nothing has been paid to the lessor. The 'amount paid to the matron to the 3let March, 1918, is $825.


STEAMERS MONTCALM AND LADY GREY.
Mr. GERVAIS:: 1.	Are the Government steamers Montcalm and Lady Grey at present engaged in breaking ice on the River St. Lawrence?
2.	If so, at what point, according to latest information, are said steamers so engaged?


Hon. Mr. BALLANTYNE:: 1.	Yes.
2.	3 p.m., Thursday, April 4th, 1918. Steamers Montcalm and Lady Grey reported working 500 feet below "Red Gas Buoy 66 Q" Batture Simon-approximately one mile below Grondines (North Shore) or 32 miles below Three Rivers, and 46 miles above Quebec.
April 6th, 1918, 6 p.m. Steamers Montcalm and Lady Grey reported working above Black Can buoy 73-Q, approximately half a mile below Cap Charles (South Shore) about 29 miles beiow Three Rivers. Ice conditions better.


POST OFFICE BERTHJIERVILLE.
Mr. GERVAIS:: What was the total cost of repairs to the post office building at Berthierville, since 1912?


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: 

249 th BATTALION.


Mr. POWER:: 1.	Has an investigation been made into the financial affairs of the 2'49th Battalion?
2.	If so, what has been the result?
3.	Has there been any misappropriation of the funds?
,	4. If so, what officers are implicated?
Major-General MEWBURN:
1.	Yes.
2.	Audit inspection not yet completed.
3.	No.	.
4.	Answered by No. 3.


APPEAL REPRESENTATIVE AT ST.
*Mr. MARCILE:: Who has been the representative of the Department of Militia, before the Court of

Appeal, under the Military Service Act, presided over by Honourable Judge Martineau at St. Hyacinthe since December, 1917, up to the present date?
Major-General MEWBURN:	The appeal
representative acting before Judge Martineau at 8t. Hyacinthe up to the 4th February, was A. O. Rondeau. This department has no knowledge of who has acted since that date, as the conducting of appeals was taken over on that date by the registrars.
FARM TRACTORS; REPAIR PARTS.


Mr. EULER:: In view of the fact that the Government has removed the duty on farm tractors and has retained the duties on certain necessary imported component parts which enter into the manufacture of tractors in Canada, is it the purpose of the Government to remove at an early date, the discrimination thus existing against the Canadian manufacturer by removing the duties upon the raw materials which enter into the Canadian product?


Arthur Lewis W. Sifton: There is no discrimination against the Canadian manufacturer in this case. Provision was made by Order in Council of March 26, 1918, for drawback of duty on materials entering into the manufacture of traotors costing not more than $1,400.
BERTH!HR PUBLIC WORKS.


Joseph-Charles-Théodore Gervais: What is the cost of the wharves and icebreakers constructed by the Government on the Chicot River at St. Cuthbert, in the County of Berthier?


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: 


Mr. GERVAIS:: 1.	What is the total cost of the wharf the Government constructed at Berthierville?
2.	What has been the cost of repairs of said wharf since its construction?


Hon. Mr. CARVELL:: 1.	$20,736.16.
2.	$707.25.


MR. W. V. WEBSTER.
Mr. DESAULNIERS:: 1.	Is there an employee, named W. V. Webster in the Department of the Interior?
2.	Is there an employee, in the Department of Militia and Defence, named Gertrude Webster?
3.	If so, are they husband and wife, and is this not a violation of the spirit and letter of the Civil Service Act?
4.	If the Government is not aware as to the above, will it make inquiries to ascertain the facts?


Hon. Mr. BURRELL:: 1.	Yea.
2.	Yes.
30}
3.	No information.
4.	Yes.


REWARD FOR ARREST OF DESERTERS.
Mr. LESAGE:: 1.	Does the Government pay a bonus in the case of a person of military age who is apprehended for not having complied with the provisions of the Military Service Act?
2.	If so, to which local officer or agency is said bonus paid?
3.	Is it the intention of the Government to continue the said bonus system?
4.	Is the Government aware that said bonus system is detrimental to the successful carrying out of those provisions of the Military Service Act relating to the drafting of recruits, and that it hinders the effectiveness of the work which is expected from the Federal officers?
Major-General MEWBURN:
1 and 2. Under Order in Council of the 24th December, 1917, (P.C. 3452), a reward of ten dollars may be paid to any civil, police or peace officer for the apprehension and delivery into military custody of a deserter or absentee without leave from the Canadian Expeditionary Force, or from the active militia of Canada on active service, or of a man who is absent without leave from the military forces of Canada, on account of his failure to comply with the terms of a Proclamation or Order under the Military Service Act, 1917.
3.	So far as the Department of Militia and Defence is aware, there is no intention to discontinue the payment of this reward.
4.	The Department of Militia and Defence is not aware that the payment of such rewards is detrimental to the successful operation of the Military Service Act.


INCOME TAX.
Mr. LESAGE:: 1.	Is it the intention of the Government to amend the Act relating to Income Tax?
2.	If so, does the Government propose to fix a scale of rates in the proposed amendments, having regard to the number of persons and dependents who may compose one's family?
3.	Is it the intention of the Government to amend said Act with a view to establishing a system, now existing in very many countries, whereby a proportional deduction of income taxation is made, according to the number of persons and dependents composing one family?


Newton Wesley Rowell: Amendments of this character are not usually announced in advance.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. BOYER;
1.	What sum of money has been spent for repairs to the wharf at Graham, since 1911?
2.	Who has superintended the works, and what are the names of the parties who have been employed thereat?
[Stage Direction]
3.	What amount has been paid to each of them, and at what rate per diem?
4.	What are the names of the parties supplying materials, and what amount has been paid to each of them?
['I would draw the attention of honourable members to the fact that it is provided by the rules that honourable members may not leave their seats until the Speaker has left the Chair. It is hardly in conformity with the dignity of the House that the Speaker and the mace should rustle with honourable members for possession of the means of egress from this chamber.']
Mr. DEVLIN:: For a return showing the amount of land purchased 'by the Government at Camp Borden, the price paid, with a list of the names of those from whom the land was purchased?


Emmanuel Berchmans Devlin: For a return showing the number of Agricultural Representatives appointed to represent the Minister of Agriculture at the Military Tribunals, by whom they were appointed, at what cost to the country, the expenses of each representative, the number of telegrams each representative sent out between December 1 and December 17, 1917, and the name of the representative appointed for Glengarry-Stor-mont.


Emmanuel Berchmans Devlin: For a copy of ail correspondence respecting Orders in Council creating a paper commission, and subsequent Orders in Council respecting the same, which have passed between newspaper publishers in Canada, more particularly those publishers in Toronto, and the Government.


Emmanuel Berchmans Devlin: For a copy of the Order in Council creating a paper commission, and also a copy of the subsequent Orders in Council in regard to the work of this commission.


Mr. COPP:: For a copy of all correspondence, certificates, recommendations and other documents in reference to the granting of a total disability pension to Colonel R. H. Labatt.


Arthur Bliss Copp: For a copy of Orders in Council in reference to the appointment of Colonel Langton as Paymaster General in the Militia Department.



Mr. W. F. NICKLE (Kingston) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, an Address should be presented to His Most Excellent Majesty the King in the following words:-
To the King's Most Excellent Majesty,
Most Gracious Sovereign,-
We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, humbly approach Your Majesty praying that Your Majesty hereafter may be graciously pleased to refrain from conferring any hereditary titles upon Your subjects domiciled or living in Canada, or any title or honour that will be held or can be used by, or which will confer any title or honour upon any person other than the person in recognition of whose services the honour or title has been conferred.
All of which we humbly pray Your Majesty to take into Your favourable and gracious consideration.

He said: Mr. Speaker, in rising, to support the resolution which stands in my name, it is only fit and proper that I should advise the House that I am making this motion instead of the hon. member from Peterborough (Mr. Burnham), whose privilege it was to introduce the subject to the House in 1914, because of his having informed me that he did not care this year to give the matter consideration. In speaking to me in reference to' the matter, he told me that he thought war conditions at the present time were so pressing, and that the responsibilities of the Government were so great, that it would not be right, fit, or proper that they should be worried with other anxieties at this time. While il appreciate the sincerity of the hon. gentleman's motives, I must say that I do not see eye to eye with him. It occurs to me that if there ever was a time when a subject such as this should be brought before the House, it is a time when the nation is at war, because if war teaches us anything it teaches us this: that when the country is at war and when the war is over, you are likely to have the greatest crop, if I might use that term, of decorations and recognitions that are from time to time seen.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Folger Nickle: And, Sir, I think there is another reason why this matter should be brought before the House at this particular time, and it is that we have in Canada a Union Government, a Government that is supposed to have within its ranks representatives of the two great political parties in Canada, as well as representatives of Labour. And, I know from the address that was delivered to this House in 1914, that the Right hon. leader of the Opposition is not unsympathetic with the resolution that I' present to the House to-day fcr consideration, and I hope favourable decision. For these reasons I think the House should bear with me in presenting to it reasons why I think, first, that hereditary titles should not continue to exist in Canada, and secondly, why women should not bask, if II might use the expression, in the reflected glory of their husband's distinctions.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Folger Nickle: I might say, Sir, if I were to go as far as my inclination takes me, my resolution would strike at the very root of the iniquity, because I have no sympathy at all with titular distinctions given to men in civil life. I am quite prepared
to admit the correctness of men in military life being given rank and distinction, because if the system is to prevail there must be distinctions by which those with higher rank have recognition and priority over those of lower rank; but when it comes to granting distinctions to men in civil life for the services they have rendered their state, for great munificence, or for outstanding ability in their profession or business, it is a procedure with which I have no sympathy. But, Sir, while in theory I might go farther than my resolution goes, yet I trust I. am not altogether blind to practical considerations. They say that when a man begins to remember the days of long ago, it is an evidence that age is creeping on him, and when I was endeavouring to secure some comparison as to how I might bring to the House my reason for not going as far in this matter as my desire would take me,
I cast my mind back to my student days at Queen's University, when Sir George Kirkpatrick, at one time Speaker' of this House, in addressing the students of my day, said: " If you want to roost high you have got to fly high, but ibe careful you do not fly over the roost." And that is what influenced me in restricting my resolution: I wanted to fly high, I wanted to roost high, but I did not want to frame my resolution so that a dozen or so men in this House would escape from their sense of obligation, and vote against it because the resolution was broader than their sympathies. For that reason I have restricted the resolution to hereditary titles and what I may call the reflected titles of women.	.
Now, Sir, it has been said that in Canada we should have titles because they have titles in England; that England has developed an official aristocracy which is a very essential part of the Government, and if it is good for England it is equally good for Canada. I think we should examine the analogy, I think we should examine the source from which titles in England come, and I feel satisfied that from an examination of the source and of the development of the institution it will be apparent that conditions in England and conditions in Canada are totally different. Titles to-day in England are really only the picturesque effect of the days of feudalism. They are distinctions without the responsibilities of service. In the old feudal days in England and on the continent the granting of a title was a recognition, but it carried a duty. It was the giving of a privilege, but it carried an [DOT]obligation, and, as a rule, titles were granted in respect of territorial possessions.

Many of 'the members of this House have, .like myself, -been in England. I do not know whether I am a deeper dyed democrat than they are, but there was one thing that always grated upon me, and that was when a man rose to address an assemblage of Englishmen, an assemblage of Britishers, he began his address by, " My lords and gentlemen."
Some ho'n. (MEMBERS : Hear, hear.
Mr. NI'OKLE: My lords and gentlemen may be all right for England, or Britain, but from my point of view it is not all right for Canada. Britain has an aristocracy which is deeply rooted in her constitution, but no man can have talked with the common people in England, no man can have considered the conditions of the common people there without standing aghast and being shocked at the classy almost the caste, distinctions that there prevail.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: 
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Folger Nickle: have not done for Britain what their founders expected they would do.
Now, let me for a moment or two draw the attention of the House to conditions in Canada. Some Canadians may glory in their ancestry, but I think the majority of us look facts fairly in the face, and realize that the majority of the men who came to this country, the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation, came to 'this country because it offered to them better opportunity for making their way in the world. To try to claim anything else is to try to set up snobbishness instead of the true standard. I want to say that, in speaking from my place in this House this afternoon, I speak as the son of a man who came here because he realized that the Old Country did not offer him the opportunity for him to advance that he thought this country would, and anything I have in this world I owe to bis industry and thrift and courage in facing Canada when it was a wilderness. Now, Sir, as I said at the beginning, I am a democrat.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


William Folger Nickle: I have always been deeply impressed by the beginning of the second paragraph of the American Constitution, in which Jefferson, influenced by the philosophy of Locke, laid this down as a principle: "We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Now, Sir, I want the House to remember that, in preparing that Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was preparing a political document. It was a political, not a moral, declaration. And when Jefferson said that all men were created equal, he did not mean that all men were created equal intellectually or morally. What he meant was this: that all men before the law had equal rights and equal privileges, and that no one was entitled to priority. I subscribe to that as the sound declaration for a democratic country, and I sincerely trust that before I am through this afternoon the Prime Minister will say that he realizes that the democracy of Canada is equal to that of the country which lies to the south of the line.
I think that the simplicity of our forefathers is something of which we may all be proud. You may ' say that Canadian statesmen were the makers of Canada, but the men also who made Canada were those who came to this country and amid the trials of the wilderness laid the foundation

of the rights and privileges we enjoy to-day. They were the true makers of Canada. But, Sir, no man who has lived in this country within the last ten years can think of Canada's development prior to the war without being shocked by realizing how far we were getting away from the simplicity of our ancestors. We have had in Canada tremendous national and industrial expansion. People grew rich; if a man wanted to make money it was almost impossible for him not to 'grow rich, if he made money his ideal. A new standard was developing prior to 1914 in the matter of how a man was to Ibe measured. We were beginning to value a man toy what he was worth-the size of his house, the number of his motor-cars, and the elegance of their equipment, and the extent of his wife's dinner parties, and the number of gowns she had was beginning to determine what a man's family station was. This war has brought tremendous agonies; it has brought sorrow and anguish into Canadian life, but, thank God, it has brought one other thing; it has changed the standard of value of the citizens of Canada. We no longer value men by what they have; we value them by what they are. Some people call me a Socialist. I should like to define my Socialism. Socialism is a very general term; you may regard it as synonymous with anarchy, or you may define it as the recognition of 'the right that every man is entitled to a fair chance. I am a Socialist, if toy that term you mean that there should be a reasonable equality of opportunity; if you lay down as a fundamental principle that every man should get a due amount of this world's goods for the services that he renders; that no group, no class, no individual should be crippled just because of lack of money to get a fair start in life. I have run, not one, but five or six elections, parliamentary and municipal, in the city from which I come, and if there is one thing that has wrung my heart it has been to find, among the households of people whom I call my constituents, especially bright boys or girls who were obliged to leave school because the factory age had come and the family could not afford to keep the child .at school because of the necessity of their earning to assist the other members of the family.
I am a Socialist, to the extent of my belief that that child is entitled to a chance. It has been strongly bonne in upon me that "slow rises worth by poverty oppressed." My views are to this extent socialistic: that unbearable burdens of this kind should be lifted from the masses of the people.

As I say, the war came. Men went to the w&t from a sense of duty. We learned that in the humblest clay a hero might he hidden; that there was no monoply in virtue. Occasion showed who were brave and who were cowards; who were eaints and who were sinners. Numerous examples might be given to the House of wonderful nobleness of spirit, but two that come from the people have deeply impressed me. One is of that of a hoy John-I do not remember his surname; I remember him only as John. He stood on a certain battleship until he was killed, when every member of the gun crew was gone, because it was hie duty to stay there. He did his duty, and did it unto the end. The other magnificent example .of nobleness of spirit was that of a simple seaman who stood on hoard a man-of-war as she was sinking, having previously drawn the lot entitling him to go into tfhe lifeboat. He turned to a good friend whom he knew had parents to support, and said: you take my slip; you get into the boat-and- then he calmly faced the future knowing that death was inevitable. You cannot get finer examples of nobility of spirit than 'this, and if we are going to have titles, this is the class of people which should have recognition, not those who by vast munificence, have to a certain extent, brought themselves public recognition.
As I said in the beginning, the reason rwhy I am speaking this afternooij is that I fear that out of this war is going to come a great shower of titles. Why . do I think that? Because on the 18th dav of March of this year, the following despatch cf.me from England:
Canada Asks Title Delay.
London, -March 17.-The list of honours of the new Order of the British Empire appears to-night for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Crown colonies, accompanied by the intimation that "at the desire of the Canadian Government submission to His Majesty of the list for the Dominion of Canada has been postponed."
That means, if the despatch is correct, that a list had been prepared and that the Canadian Government had asked that the list be held up. I think that we as members of this Parliament, representing the people, have the right to know who prepared the list, and if it was not prepared on the word of the Prime Minister, or of this Government, we have the rights


Sir ROBERT BORDEN:: My hon. friend has gathered an entirely erroneous impression from the despatch. It merely meant
that the Canadian Government had up to that time prepared no list.


William Folger Nickle: Then, as I always gladly do, I accept the word of the Prime Minister. But in rising it seems to me that the Prime Minister lays down this as a principle; and as the Government of this country has not prepared a list, no list should be submitted to His Majesty for approval without the consent of the Prime Minister.
I say that that is sound and proper. What I intended to ask the Prime Minister was this: was that list prepared by him, or was it prepared with his approval, or was it prepared by somebody else? He tells me that no list was prepared; therefore the despatch was incorrect and I shall not follow the matter further.


Robert Laird Borden: I may tell my hon. friend that the Prime Minister was asked to prepare a list, but that he found other urgent engagements which made it impossible for him to give consideration to the subject.


William Folger Nickle: I am very glad indeed that the Prime Minister found other considerations requiring his attention. If we read into the lines of his remarks the meaning that is obvious, it is apparent that if other considerations had not had his attention, before this fresh hereditary titles might have been bestowed upon Canadians.


Robert Laird Borden: The British Empire Order is not hereditary.


William Folger Nickle: Well, others are. The reason why I speak of the matter from this angle is this: I have a great regard for the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir George Foster). I think he is one of the finest examples of the fine Tory politician, mellowed by ripe experience into an Imperial statesman. But in the debate of 1914, page 480 of Hansard, he said this in reply to the resolution of the member for West Peterborough (Mr. Burnham):
I have not very much to say upon this question except that I think the besitowment of honours comes from the source of all honours, that is, the King; and that we must allow the King to have unrestricted scope as to the selection of persons upon whom to bestow tliest* titles of honour.
I do not know that this Parliament, not having the power of originating or controlling; not being the supreme source of power so far as the bestowment of honours is concerned, has anything particular to say about it, or should pass legislation with reference to it. That is my first objection to the passage of a Bill of this kind in this Parliament.
Now, Sir, there I want to differ from the Minister of Trade and Cbmmeroe. I have

got a long way beyond the divine right of kings. I think the prerogative of the Crown must be exercised constitutionally, and I am not prepared for one moment to admit the doctrine that an overseas dominion hae no voice in the recognition by His Majesty of the citizens of that overseas Dominion. I want to show you. Sir, that il am not the only one who thinks this. Last year, we had in England a conference at which the Premiers of the overseas dominions were present. I am now reading from a little volume called " War-time Speeches of Lieutenant General, the Right Hon. J. C. Smuts." It is published by Hodder and Stoughton, of London, Toronto and New York. Among those speeches, I find the following resolution moved by the Prime Minister of this Government:
The Imperial War Conference are of opinion that the readjustment of the constitutional relations of the component parts of the Empire is too important and intricate a subject to be dealt with during the war, and that it should form the subject of a special Imperial Conference to be summoned as soon as possible after the cessation of hostilities.
They deem It their duty, however, to place on record their view that any such readjustment, while thoroughly preserving all existing powers of self-government and complete control of domestic affairs, should be based upon a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, and of India as an important portion of the same, should recognize the right of the Dominions and India to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern, and' for such necessary concerted action, founded on consultation, as the several governments may determine.
Surely that lays down the principle that *an overseas dominion within the sphere of the Imperial authority in so far as it affects an overseas dominion, has a right to be heard and to be recognized. General Smuts took also the same view, and I am reading these remarks, to illustrate the sense in which I think the Minister of . Trade and Commerce w.as wrong in the principle which he enunciated in thi6 House in 1914. General Smuts, in speaking to the resolution of the Prime Minister of this Government, said:
The subject matter of this resolution, as Sir Robert Borden has stated, has been carefully considered, and although quite properly, a definite decision on the main problem is to be postponed for future action by a more important conference than this, yet certain principles are affirmed here in this resolution which are very important and far reaching. The resolution refers, in the first place, to the question of the status of the self-governing Dominions. That matter has already been referred to both by Sir Robert Borden and by Mr. Massey, and I wish to say a few words in reference to the

point. The resolution says that any future settlement that is come to must "toe based: upon a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth." The whole question of the future status of the Dominions is therefore raised in this resolution. So far the British Empire has developed along natural lines. The Dominions started as colonies and settlements of the mother country and of the British Isles. They started as Crown colonies; they developed into self-governing colonies, and now they have become the present Dominions. Other parts of the world have been added to the Empire, until to-day we have really a congress of nations. These old colonies and the present Dominions have in course of time increased in importance, increased in population and in economic influence, and are to-day already playing a part in the world which seems to my mind to make it very necessary that their status should be very seriously considered, and should be improved. Too much, if I may say so, of the old ideas still cling to the new organism which is growing. I think that although in practice there is great freedom, yet in theory the status of the dominions is of a subject character. Whatever we may say, and whatever we may think, we are subject provinces of Great Britain. That is the legal theory of the constitution, and in many ways which I need not specify to-day, that theory still permeates practice.
In the light of those speeches and in the light of the resolution, I think the principle as enunciated by the Prime Minister and by General Smuts is the correct principle and one that should govern in Canada, and the position taken by the Minister of Trade and Commerce is not such as a self-respecting overseas domipion can acquiesce in.
Going a step further and coming to the philosophy of titles, if I may so term it, why do people want titles at all? As far as I can find out, and as far as I can think it out, I suppose we must admit that there is vanity in most people. Human beings desire recognition, and the people at large are pleased when such recognition is justly given. Besides, there is in the world a certain class of people who will do more if they are going to get something for it; in other words, if you recognize them. They like it to be known by the world in general and by people with whom they mix that other people recognize their -abilities, and that they have a handle to their name as evidence of their virtue and of their character. If, in every day practice, you could reward where reward should he given, and if it were possible for the Prime Minister -because I still stick to my position that the Prime Minister in England, in 'the main, recommends to His Majesty those to whom titles ehall be given, and it is a constitutional privilege that the Prime Ministers of the overseas dominions must exercise if this thing is to Ibe kept in reasonable check- exactly and accurately to determine all

those to whom recognition should be given .-there might hr some merit in the continuance of the system. But those of us who have thought over the matter, know that this is altogether impossible. We know that, as a rule, titles go to those who have the big places and who catch the public eye, and that the men who, in restricted areas and within their own circles, do just a? efficient, just as thorough, and just as praiseworthy work, get nothing but the goby, with the result that a spirit of jealousy is engendered, and instead of your stimulating a nation to united effort as the result of the recognition of only those who are outstanding, the majority of the people are indifferent, and there is a tendency to think that nothing need be done because nothing will be heard of what has been done. You get away altogether from what I think is the right principle, namely, that virtue is its own reward. If Pitt and Gladstone were big enough to be Prime Ministers of England and to carry to their dying day their own surnames, I do not think we should be going too far if we should ask that men less great should do the same.
I have heard a good deal as to the position I have taken in regard to a woman not being given a title owing to the fact that her husband has been granted a title. To catch my point of view, you have to go back a little and consider the legal and constitutional position of women in relation to the community. In the old civilization woman was really, so to speak, a chattel, the chattel, first of her father, and 'then of her husband. A relic of the old days exists in the fact that on her marriage day a woman is given away by her father. In the old days, the woman belonged to the parent until the father transferred the title, so to speak, to her husband. But the position that woman occupies in society to-day is quite different. First, we had the right gradually recognized that her property could not be taken from her without her consent. There was no longer unity of property. Then we had a further recognition, at least in the province from which I come, by which she was given absolute control of her property, and only a few day ago the leader of the 4 p.m. Government introduced into this House a Bill by which woman is given equal status with man in this country so far as the franchise goes. It is inevitable-it has not reached here yet; it may take a few years-it follows, as night does the day, that you must give her in the near future the right to sit in these halls and in the legislatures of the provincial parliament. If she has brains enough to vote-and we all admit that she has-with a little training she will have the ability to sit and debate in these legislative halls. The whole status of a woman has been changed. She is now an independent entity. She has her own position in the community, and, having that position in the community, I think the time has come when she should' have her recognition by virtue of her individual accomplishments, and not shine, as I said in the early part of my remarks, in the reflected glory of her husband. I want to go further-and in this I may offend certain women in this country -I believe it is the social aspirations of the women that lead them to desire titles in this country. A cynic in this country once said that a man measured his worth by his intellectual capacity and the money he could make, and a woman by her social status, and I have been shocked at the social superiority that some women at-teftipted to assume, simply because their husbands had been singularly successful in making money, and had shown great tact in the method they had adopted in giving donations to certain objects. I think a woman's status entitles her to recognition as of her own right, and I believe if there were no reflective titles, you would have less seeking after them, and you would have greater equality in society, and for these reasons, briefly put, I think there should be no such thing as a woman being given the title of a "lady," by virtue of the fact that her husband is called "Sir."
I want to go a step further. I am speaking again of hereditary titles. I have no sympathy with other titles, but my resolution is directed against hereditary titles. When I ask myself the question, why should a title be hereditary? I cannot .answer it, and one of the greatest difficulties I had in preparing an argument on such a question as this, is that I could not consistently put up a mental man of straw that I could later on knock down. I could not conceive why there should be such a thing .as hereditary titles. Lloyd George once used what I might call a brutal simile. I do not know that I would like to adopt it, but he was the great democrat twenty years ago, and is yet. In talking of the hereditary titles in England, he said: "I never could see"- these are not his words but the gist of. his argument-"how we get to the position that all the quality is in the oldest pup in the litter." It is- a rough simile, but I cannot see why the oldest son has all the qualities,

Courts of Descent limited in such Letters Patent, it shall and may be lawful for His Majesty, His Heirs or Successors, to annex thereto, by the said Letters Patent, if His Majesty, His Heirs or Successors, shall so think fit, an hereditary right of being summoned to the Legislative Council of such Province, descendable according to the Courts of Descent" so limited with respect to such Title, Rank or Dignity; and that every person on whom such right shall severally so descend, shall thereupon be entitled to demand from the Governor, Lieutenant Governor or Person adminstering the Government of such Province, His Writ of Summons to such Legislative Council, at any time after he shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, subject ne,ertheless to the Provisions hereinafter contained.
Therefore, we see that this sixth section of the Constitutional Act made provision for establishing in Canada a hereditary legislative council. One of the reasons why that was not carried out in practice probably was that Lord Simcoe and Lord Dorchester, both firm old Tories, Lord Dorchester the greatest Tory of them all, advised against the creation of hereditary titles. Lord Dorchester said:
The fluctuating state of property in these provinces would expose all hereditary honors to fall into disregard and disrespect.
He saw that if you were going to have a hereditary aristocracy for the support of the monarchy, you had to make provision for money for the decent support of those who enjoyed the titles.	.
I now want to read to you another extract, because I am afraid that perhaps some one will say: This man is setting up a new doctrine; but what does he know about it after all? He is expressing his own ideas, and they are not entitled to much weight. They are only the expression of one man's idea. You know how you can laugh a case out of Court, and I have known many good cases to be laughed out of Parliament. I want to read a quotation from Professor Shortt's life of Lord Sydenham, which is as follows:
The legislative council was supposed to be the counterpart of the House of Lords. A great part of the Constitutional Act was taken up with provisions for securing in the colony a body of landed aristocracy which, when furnished with suitable titles of honour, would provide the requisite nobility from which to recruit the legislative council, or Canadian House of Lords. The proximity of the exalted rank and dignity of those Canadian nobles would incidentally sharpen the tooth of remorse which was assumed to be gnawing the consciences of those fallen republicans in the lower regions to the south.
The provision for an aristocracy contributed the Family Compact, with the necessary accompaniments of land-grabbing intrigues, for an impecunious aristocracy would inspire little awe and less envy.

As the members of the legislative council held their offices for life, they were free from the corrupting influences which press upon those who have to keep in touch with the vulgar multitude. They could, therefore, if so inclined, freely devote to public questions an enlightened mind and unbiased judgment; or, if differently minded, they could devote themselves with equal effect to the pursuit of private interests and class privileges, with a calm disregard of public opinion.
If you have no respect for the opinion of Professor Shortt who wrote the life of Lord Sydenham, let me refer you to what Fox said when the Constitutional Act was under debate in the House of Lords. He said this:
As to the points of hereditary powers and hereditary honours, to say that they were good or that they were not good, as a general proposition, was not easily maintained; but he saw nothing so good in hereditary powers and honour, as to incline us to introduce them into a country where they were unknown, and by such means distinguish Canada from all the colonies in the West Indies. In countries where they made a part of the constitution, he did not think it wise to destroy them; but to give birth and life to such principles In countries where they did not exist, appeared to him to be exceedingly unwise. He could not account for it, unless it was that Canada having been formerly a French colony, there might be an opportunity of reviving those titles of honour, the extinction of which some gentlemen so much deplored, and to revive in the West that spirit of chivalry which had fallen into disgrace in a neighbouring country. He asked, if those red and blue ribbands, which had lost their lustre in the old world, were to shine forth again in the new? It seemed to him peculiarly absurd to introduce hereditary honours in America, where those artificial distinctions stunk in the nostrils of the natives. He thought these powers and honours wholly unnecessary, and tending rather to make a new constitution worse than better.
He goes on to say:
The legislative councils ought to be totally free, and repeatedly chosen, in a manner as much independent of the governor as the nature of a colony would admit. Those, he conceived, would be the best; but if not, they should have their seats for life, be appointed by the King, consist of a limited number, and possess no hereditary honours. Those honours might be very proper, and of great utility, in countries where they had existed by long custom; but, in his opinion, they were not fit to be introduced where they had no original existence; where there was no particular reason for introducing them, arising from the nature of the country, its extent, its state of improvement, or its peculiar customs; where, instead of attracting respect, they might excite envy; and as but few could enjoy them, those who did not, might be induced to form an unfavourable comparison between their own situation and that of their neighbours, among whom no such distinctions were known.
Now, Sir, I said at the beginning the reason I brought this motion up to-day was that I thought the war would he used as a

[DOT]479
reason for the creation of honours. I want to direct your attention to the fact that in 1791 the war was used as a reason for the attempted creation of a hereditary class that should intervene between the democracy and the Sovereign. The war may toe the reason to-day why hereditary titles may be introduced into this country.
I would like to read another instance before I leave the subject. Lord Bryce is a man for whom we have much respect, and I would like to read to this House, and through Hansard send out to the country what Lord Bryce thinks of hereditary titles. I will now read extracts from his American Commonwealth:
It may seem a paradox to observe that a millionaire has a better and easier social career open to him in England than in America. Nevertheless there is a sense in which this is true. In America, if his private character be bad, if he be mean, or openly immoral, or personally vulgar, or dishonest, the best society may keep its doors closed against him. In England great wealth, skillfully employed, will more readily force these doors to open. For in England great wealth can, by using the appropriate methods, practically buy rank from those who bestow it; or by obliging persons whose position enables them to command fashionable society, can induce them to stand sponsors for the upstart, and force him into society, a thing which no person in America has the power of doing. To effect such a stroke in England the rich man must of course have stopped short of positive frauds, that is, of such frauds as could be proved in court. But he may be still distrusted and disliked by the elite of the commercial world, he may be vulgar and ill-educated, and indeed have nothing to recommend him except his wealth and his willingness to spend it in providing amusement for fashionable people. All this will not prevent him from becoming a baronet, or possibly a peer, and thereby acquiring a position of assured dignity which he .can transmit to his offspring. The existence of a system of artificial rank enables a stamp to be given to base metal in Europe which cannot be given in a thoroughly republican country.
Europeans have been known to ask whether the United States do not suffer from the absence of a hereditary nobility. As may be supposed, such a question excites mirth in America; it is as if you were to offer a Court and an Established Church. They remark, with truth, that since Pitt in England and the Napoleons in France prostituted hereditary titles, these have ceased to be either respectable or useful. "They do not," say the Americans, "suggest antiquity, for the English families that enjoy them are mostly new; they are not associated, like the ancient titles, with the history of your nation; they are merely a prize offered to wealth, the expression of a desire for gilding that plutocracy which has replaced the ancient aristocracy of your country. Seeing how little service hereditary nobility renders in maintaining the standard either of manner, or morals, or honour, or public duty, few sensible men would create it in any European country where It did not exist; much less then should we dream of creating it in America, which possesses none of the materials or conditions
which could make it tolerable. If a peerage is purchasable even in England, where the dignity of the older nobility might have suggested some care in bestowal, purchasable not so openly in Portugal, or a German principality, but practically purchasable by party services and by large subscriptions to public purposes, much more would it be purchasable here, where there are no traditions to break down, where wealth accumulates rapidly, and the wealthy seek every avenue for display. Titles in this country would be simply an additional prize, offered to wealth and ambition. They could not be respected. They would make us as snobbish as you are." A European observer will not quarrel with this judgment. There is a growing disposition In America, as everywhere else, to relish and make the most of such professional or official titles as can be had, it is a harmless way of trying to relieve the monotony of the world. If there be, as no doubt there is, less disposition than in England to run after and pay court to the great or the fashionable, this is perhaps due not to any superior virtue, but to the absence of those opportunities and temptations which their hereditary titles and other social institutions set before the English.
Lord Bryce declares, further, and I want the House to pay attention to what he says;
It would be the very wantonness of folly to create in the new country what most thinking people would gladly be rid of in the old one.
I fear I am wearying the .House tout I would like to direct attention to another side of the question.-and it is a most serious side -the corruption that is toeing brought to view in the granting of titles in England.


Mr. MURPHY:: Hear, hear.


William Folger Nickle: I will quote from the proceedings as found at page 274, Lord Eibblesdale was speaking to a resolution which was before the House. The Earl of Selborne had moved:
That a contribution to Party Funds should not be a consideration to a Minister when he recommends any name for an honour to His Majesty; that effectual measures should be taken in order to assure the nation that Governments, from whatever Political Party they are drawn, will act according to this rule; and that this House requests the concurrence of the House of Commons in the foregoing Resolution.
In other words Lord Selborne asked that an assurance be given that party funds were not to be got by the sale of titles. Practically no member of the House of Lords denied the existence of the practice. Men like Lord Eibblesdale, of a cynical temperament, admitted that it existed, but said it was not of much importance. Hear what he said as printed on page 274 of Hansard :
I am afraid I belong to the class of people which the noble Lord behind me (Lord Cham-wood) very pleasantly alluded to as people who seem to think that these things must be, that they do not very much matter, that they have always gone on and are likely to go on, and that if they do not go on in one form will go on in another. That is precisely my opinion.
He admits the existence of the fact, and says that, as far as his opinion goes, it must go: on. Let me read you what the mover of the resolution says:
There is a prevalent belief-I do not think that I should be guilty of exaggeration if I said a very widely prevalent belief-that persons are often recommended for these honours whom no one would have thought of so recommending if they had not contributed largely to Party funds. That prevalent belief takes three forms: as I know, not only from the Press, but from a voluminous correspondence on this subject. It is believed that persons who have social ambition, or whose wives have social ambition, and who have really no claim at all to receive an honour, can purchase it if they go to the right place. Again, the belief takes this form, that there have been cases where social ambition has never entered into the soul of the innocent rich man, but where he has been tempted and where an honour has been actually hawked to him on condition that he would make this contribution. The third case is rather of a different kind, but still, I maintain, a great evil. It is the case of men who have really done public service, whom public opinion would be very content to see honoured, and who have had pressure- I would almost say brutal pressure-put upon them to make a contribution to Party funds which they did not wish, and in some cases could not afford to make. If it were necessary, I could quote sheaves of cuttings from the public Press to prove the prevalence of this belief, and from newspapers covering the whole field of political opinion, from the Labour Leader to the Morning Post, and from the Nation to the Saturday Review, and last, but not least, we have the

new publication, the Candid Witness, in which Mr. Gibson Bowles has dealt very fully with this question. And further, every Playgoer knows that this matter of the sale of honours is now openly scoffed at in the theatre; and it has also even been thrown across the floor of the House of Commons as a taunt from one member to another.
And, then, 'Sir, it did not stop there. A resolution along similar lines to that moved in 1914 was again moved iby Lord Selborne. In the course of the debate Lord Be res ford, one of the outspoken, men who says what he thinks, is reported .at page 184 of Hansard to the following effect:
.My Lords, I should like to support the views of my noble friend Lord Selborne. There is no doubt that the feeling in the country is that most of the Party funds are raised in a man

ner which Is discreditable to public life; that enormous sums of money are paid for Peerages, Baronetcies, and Knighthoods, and they believe further that sums of money have been paid for Privy Councillorships.
Then he goes on and says:
This, war will be celebrated in history for the large numbers of honours, rewards, promotions, and even offices given to people who have disastrously failed. Nobody can deny that. Many of these people wbo have received honours have no earthly right to them except that they were lucky enough to be plutocrats. Why should not the Patent for a Peerage be made out on exactly the same lines as the Patent for the V. C.
He meant Iby that that the patent should set out the reason for granting it. Then I would refer to pages 204-5 of the Debates of the same year, in which Lord Salisbury waxes warm in regard to the matter. The Marquess of Salisbury says this:
Does anybody doubt, even after hearing my noble friend's speech, that there is corruption in the administration of honours in this country? Nobody doubts it. My noble friend said that he knew nothing about it, and1 had never heard of it. O sancta simplicitas: Does my noble friend1 really expect us to believe that the leading public men of this country do not know of the corruption which exists in the administration of honours.
Earl Curzon of Keddleston, replied:
I said that I was perfectly well aware of the rumour. I said-and' I repeat it-that I know of no established case; and I ask for one.
The reason I read this reference is this: When I come to the October, 1917, debate in the House of Lords, it was established beyond peradventure by oases given in that debate that titles aTe sold in Britain. Not in the same way that you may buy butter and cheese over the counter, but grants to party funds to secure men peerages, baronetcies and knighthoods. And the Marquess of Salisbury hopes nobody doubts the existence of this evil.

Now I come to the debate of 1917. That is the -debate par excellence. That is the debate in -which the facts of the whole issue came out. And I am going to read from it at considerable length. I fear I am going to weary the House, tout I w.ant the House and the people of this country to know that if the system of honour is going to be continued in Canada, it is going to result in the establishment of a system in the days to come which is going to have a very pernicious effect in this country, because if both parties in England will dispose of honours-, it is not going to toe long before the principles which I have been .speaking of this- afternoon-and I do not see how anything else can be admitted-must be adopted in Canada; that is, if the Prime Minister of this country lis responsible for the recognition given to Canadians, it will not be long before Prime Ministers in this country may find them.selv.es unwillingly, and perhaps unknowingly, being parties to just such a system, as exists in England. I want to be absolutely honest and frank, and my reading of the debate leads me to this conclusion, that the Prime Ministers are not actually aware that they are improperly giving recognition to certain men by granting titles, that it is done through the party whips, and as <we are often blind to what the sources of the party expenses, are, eo the party whip is blind in the matter of recommending titles. The resolution moved by Earl Lore-bum reads as follows:
That this House, convinced that Ministers have in recent times advised His Majesty to confer honours and dignities on persons who have given or .promised money to Party funds as a consideration therefor, considers that His Majesty's Government ought .forthwith to give effect to the following provisions: (1.) That when any honour or dignity is conferred upon a British subject, other than a member of the Royal Family or the members of the Naval, Military, or permanent Civil Service under the Crown, a definite public statement of the reasons for which it has been recommended to the Crown shall accompany the notification of the grant. (2.) That a declaration to the Sovereign be made by the Prime Minister in recommending any person to His Majesty's favour for any such honour or dignity, that he has satisfied himself that no payment or expectation of payment to any Party fund is directly or indirectly associated with the grant or promise of such honour or dignity.
Sir, as I said a moment ago, I want to be perfectly fair. That was the resolution proposed, but the resolution as passed was varied to this extent. The preamble of the resolution as proposed read as follows:
That this House, convinced that Ministers have in recent times advised His Majesty to
confer honours and dignities on persons who have given or promised money to Party Funds as a consideration therefor.
That was in the resolution. But during the debate it became manifest that, if this clause were left in, the country at large would read it as meaning that the Prime Ministers were aware of the fact that money had been paid, and that it would have involved the honor of the Prime Minister and might involve the good faith of ;he 'Sovereign, and when the resolution was finally passed, these words were deleted, rnd the second part of the motion was also varied by being made to read as follows:
That the Prime Minister, before recommending any person for any such honour or dignity, should satisfy himself that no payment or expectation of payment to any party or political fund is directly or indirectly associated with the grant or promise of such honour or dignity.
In other words, the House of Lords declared that the bestowal of. titles had reached such a stage in Britain that hereditary titles had lost the position that entitled them to respect, and that they were degenerating into a by-word, and a hissing. Let me read to you a few extracts from the speeches made at that time.
The noble and learned Earl said: My Lords, the subject that I am bringing before your lordships is no new one. In February, 1914, before the war, Lord Selborne moved:
"That in the opinion of this House a contribution to party funds should not be a consideration to a Minister when he recommends any name for an honour to His Majesty; that it is desirable that effectual measures should be taken in order to assure the nation that Governments, from whatever political party they are drawn, will act according to this rule; and that this House requests the concurrence of the House of Commons on the foregoing resolution."
That resolution was passed without a division, with unanimity, in this House; but unfortunately, as I think, the House of Commons has taken no notice of that communication. It has been stated here that during this year a number of Peers aud Privy Councillors, of Whom I was one, endeavoured by private ways to advance this same object. In August last Lord Selborne raised the same question in this House, but some of us, also including myself, did not think that the answer which was then given, or the way in which the question was met, was satisfactory. I should myself have much preferred if Lord Selborne, who, greatly to his honour, was the first to bring up this matter, had consented to bring forward this evening the motion which stands in my name. He has, however, thought otherwise; therefore I move it myself.
I have thought it right to state plainly on the Notice Paper the ground of this notion, so that there should he no question as to he attitude which is taken up. It is this-"that Ministers have in recent times advised His Majesty to confer honours and dignities on persons who have given or promised money to party funds as a consideration therefor." I believe that to be the truth; and it lies at the root of this


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.


Mr. LEMIEUX:: Take your time.


William Folger Nickle: And those of us who know anything of British history know how great were the evils that existed in Walpole's day. I might go on and read the remarks of other members of the House of Lords. Lord Sumner says:
Some noble Lords In speaking-, have minimized the evil. Some treated it with an almost paternal indulgence. Some have said that it is not so toad as it was. Some have, in terms, admitted its existence. Nobody has said he does not believe that it exists. I have the greatest difficulty in. believing that any noble Lord will speak on behalf of the Government to-night and say that he, for his part, disputes its existence. If he did, I am inclined to think that your Lordships will .be disposed to ask in what clostral solitude he has passed his meritorious life.
The Marquess of Lansdowne e-ays, in. regard .to the question of the granting of honours:
I believe there have been what it is perhaps not too much to call scandals in connection with it, scandals for which the Prime Minister of the day has been in no way responsible, hut which have been due to indiscretion or overzeal on the part of his subordinates. Therefore, when my noble friend Lord Seltoome suggests that some of us were sceptical about the extent of this evil, 'I say at once that although he probably considers that it exists on a larger and a more flagrant scale than I do,-
And this is what -an ex-Governor -General of this country says:
-I am entirely at one with him in believing that there is an evil and it requires to be ^redressed.
He says further,speaking of qualifications:
I venture to suggest that the real test is this .-that no amount which has been contributed in his way by a possible recipient of honours should be recognized as a qualification for him, unless he is abundantly qualified for wholly different reasons un-connected with contributions to party funds.
I would like to direct attention to the fact that Lord Curzon's reply for the Government does not deny that these things exist. He admitted they existed, but in stating the case for the Government insisted the Prime Minister was not aware of it, and the very fact of Lord Curzon speaking for the Government practically meant that they accepted the resolution of the noble Earl Loreburn as truly stating facts. It gees to show, that so far as the Lords were concerned, they were -satisfied that these evils did exist. If any gentleman is -interested in going further into this matter, it is for him to read. But before I sit down-and I am now reaching, what probably all hon. members will be glad to know, the end of my remarks,-I am going to read one or two extracts from the 
Canadian Press, because I -think the Canadian Press, to a very great extent, mirrors public opinion. While I do not believe that this House -should ever be stampeded by public opinion, merely, because it is public opinion,	yet when from the
5 p.m. Atlantic to the Pacific you hear but one	voice raised	by the[DOT] public press, and that is that hereditary titles	have	no place	in public life,	I thinkwe should	listen to	what is said.	Before,
however, I read those extracts, I should like to read a remark made in the legislature of the province of Ontario by the present President of the Privy Council when he was the leader of His Majesty's loyal Opposition in that House. T-he president of the Privy Council says:
I venture to think that in the free democracy of Canada we are not improving conditions by importing hereditary titles passing from father to son. I hope it may be the last. I think that when we are fighting the battle of democracy the world over the tendency will be in the old country to bring themselves into harmony with the spirit of democracy rather than for us transplanting part of the old feudal system into Canada.
If the hon. gentleman does not agree with the remarks I have read-I know he does- it is his privilege to -rise in his place and contradict me as quoting him incorrectly. The Ottawa Journal-Press says:
We may have had doubts as to the wisdom of introducing life titles into this new country, but we have no doubt at all as to the unwisdom of establishing hereditary titles here. This can toe said without any reflection upon recent recipients of such honours.
The idea that any man should be set apart, should be given a handle to his name, and any precedence or advantages attaching thereto, simply because of something done by his ancestors, is foreign to the make-up of the people of this country.
Our principle is and should be that every man must stand on his own feet, and that this .position among his fellows must he gained by merit. The acquisition of wealth sometimes upsets that principle, but hereditary titles violate it to an extent that calls for protest at the very outset.
The Hamilton Herald says:
Once more the Herald enters its protest against the -bestowal of a peerage or any other hereditary title upon a Canadian resident in Canada and intending to remain in this country. If encouragement is given to this new departure in the way of Imperial honours in Canada, it may not be long before we shall wake up to find ourselves with an aristocratic caste fastened upon our social system. In Britain these hereditary honours stand for something real.
I -do not think the writer knew of the debates of 1917.
They are links with Britain's historic part, survivals of the forms of feudalism though dissociated from the powers and privileges which accompanied them in the old feudal days. They

I
are, therefore, interesting historically, and, to a people who reverence their past, they have real symbolic value. In Canada they are exotics, and, to be frank, seem somewhat absurd. There is no historical background for them in this country. They are as in incongruous and out of place here as would be a Gobelin tapestry in a log cabin or a suit of medieval armour in the cottage of a day-labourer. And will mere baronies satisfy the craving of the new aristocracy? If barons, why not Canadian viscounts and earls and dukes? The reason for engrafting the lesser hereditary honour upon the Canadian social system may prove equally good when claims are made for the higher honours. No man who wants 'to be a baron, no woman who wants to be ''Lady", will be content with these distinctions when there is any prospect of the baron becoming an earl and the lady a countess. It is to be regretted that a beginning was ever made in this bad business but we hope there will be so general and pointed a protest against it that it will be discontinued.
This is an essentially democratic country, and we are sure that so far from there being any general desire here for the establishment of a hereditary titled aristocracy, such a movement if attempted would be regarded generally with resentment and disgust.
And the Journal of Edmonton, Alberta, says:
There are reasonable differences of opinion on the subject of titles in general but there is practical unanimity in this country with regard to those which pass from father to son. They are out of keeping entirely with Canadian life. It is no time to introduce them here when feeling against them grows stronger all the time even in the Old Land. There is much to confirm the view that those by no means young will live to see the day when the only hereditary honour in Britain will be the kingship. It stands on quite a different plane of usefulness from that of the various ranks of peers.
The Westminster Gazette of England contended that:
Honours do create and intensify class divisions ; they encourage snobbism, and stamp inequality, but we cannot do without them because without these things you could not finance political parties nor could you reward political service.
They do create snobbery .and flunkeyism. I am not going to use the name which appears on the head of this p-aper, but is there any decent, fair-minded man who does not resent this sort of thing? You cannot pick up the Sketch of Britain without seeing a picture on its pages underneath which may be primed.
The Hon. X. Y. Z. walked down Pall Mall with her dog Ponto yesterday. The Hon. X. Y. Z. takes a great interest in munition (workers.
Why should she not? Here is an item which reads:
Princess X. helps the workers and takes a great interest in the soldiers.
Why should1 not the Princess X take an interest in the workers of the munition factories and the soldiers? 'Some of us feel we are giving a great deal to try and help democracy in this country, to maintain constitutional monarchy, and to maintain the present dynasty on the throne of England. We are proud of our monarch. We sing "God Save the King" with reverence and feeling, but I say it is snobbery and flunkeyism where	that	'Sort	of thing is	presented in	the	country as a reason
why we should look up to the Princess or to others to whom I have referred.
I have tried to make a case without feeding. I have tried to show why women should not have a reflective title. I have tried	to	show	this House	thatreflective titles have no justification in history,	that	the	title should	carry
with it service as well as recognition.
I have tried to show you how it corrupted the Kings of England, and how it was used to' obtain money. I have tried to show you how the prerogative of the Crown became a constitutional prerogative, and how the responsibility to a very great extent of such a recognition is vested, in so far as Great Britain is concerned, in the Prime Minister of those three isles, and that, so far as Canada and the overseas Dominions are concerned, it is vested in the Prime Minister of the respective Dominion. ;I have shown, not from my own mouth, but from, speeches, delivered in the House of Lords that the rankest corruption exists in England and stinks in the nostrils of the people, and if something is. not done in Canada, it will stink in the nostrils of the Canadian people. I have tried to show there is no justification for hereditary titles in Canada. If there is some justification in the minds of some gentlemen, there is none in mine; but I say to this House and to this country that we have sacrificed much for the maintenance olf democratic principle, and1 if out of this war should arise a crop of titles which would make the people, of this country feel that their sacrifices have 'been in vain

and there is no greater sacrifice in this war than that of the iwife who has given her husband, and the mother ,wtho has given heT son, and the young man who has given his future-and if there 'should arise from this war a feeling that worth did not obtain recognition-and that feeling will grow if titles are without justification given-then the inevitable conclusion will be reached- that while princes and lords are but the breath of kings, an honest man is not the noblest work of God, and people will realize, to use the words of Mr. Asquith, that we are establishing a class in this country who

are sincere " in the tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority." I do not want that class in this country.
Speaking from this side of the House today I want to extend my thanlks to the hon. gentleman from Birome ('Mr. Mc-M-aster) who -allowed me to move this resolution because I said to hiim: "Let it come from the ranks of the Unionist party rather than from the ranks of yours. Let it not come from your -side, but from mine, so that the people will know there is no politics in it, that we approach it on a broad basis, because we think it is pregnant with possibilities of irretrievable injury to this country, and will militate against the establishment of a wholesome democracy for which we crave and pray.
Mr. A. R. Me MASTER (Brome): My first words must be those of thanks to the hon. gentleman from Kingston (Mr. Nickle) who has associated me with him in the resolution before the House this afternoon. It is true that eleven months ago, almost to a day, in accepting the nomination in the county which I have the honour to represent, I told the delegates that if I were fortunate enough to be elected to this House I would place upon the Order Paper a resolution saying that it is undesirable that hereditary titles should be bestowed upon Canadians living in Canada. Perhaps a word of explanation iq due to the House and to my constituents why I have associated myself with the motion of the hon. member for Kingston (Mr. Nickle) rather [DOT]than that I should promote my own motion. The reason is that his motion was a better one than mine. It goes further in the first place, and it is better planned from the point of procedure. He is an older parliamentarian than I, and his motion was couched in more practical terms, and called for action, which my motion did not. Then there is the advantage to which the hon. member for Kingston alluded, when he said that if the motion came from the Government side it would be presented in a non-party sense. Party feeling is an extraordinary thing and there are no doubt some Conservatives, if such exist now in the country, who, if as a Liberal I had moved it might have looked askance at the motion. There may be perhaps those on my side of the House whc might have thought that the motion had something bad in it, if it came from +he other side. So that we are both godparents to this interesting child. As Hercules in his cradle throttled the snake, I hope this child will throttle this snake of

hereditary titles in the Dominion of Canada. II am proud to associate myself in this matter with the mover of this resolution.	.
There are three sorts of Liberal-Conservative. There is the Conservative who calls himself Liberal-Conservative because he likes a hyphenated name, and because the word " Liberal " looks good to him, but, apart from that there is no liberality or liberalism in his makeup. Then there is the Liberal-Conservative who has been defined by a great English statesman as one who sometimes talks Liberal but always votes Conservative, and then there is the Liberal-Conservative to which class my hon. friend belongs, the impression of whose words and thoughts and actions on the public is to make us realize how right the French political philosopher was when he said there was a great deal of artificiality in the political divisions into which mankind is divided.
The first point I wish to make is this: that hereditary titles are unpopular in Canada. If proof of that -were required, I would suggest that by a short Bill-I think we have had almost enough Orders- in Council this session-that genial authority which you, Mr. -Speaker, -so well exercise, and to which we all cordially and respectfully bow, should he extended -sufficiently to enable you to make a progress through this- -country-beginning with your old historic province, you might place yourself at the corner o-f some popular street in- the county metropolis- and ask every man who passed whether he was in favour of hereditary titles or not. I do n-ot believe that, if you questioned a hundred men, you would find one that was in favour of that principle. If you went to the metropolis of Canada, the city of -Montreal, and placed- yourself on St. James street, unless- -by chance you found-some financial magnate who had already received a hereditary title, I -feel satisfied the result would he the same. In Toronto I am inclined- to believe that not two people out of a hundred would he in favour of hereditary titles. As- you went westward,
I believe it would be well for you to he accompanied -by the -Serjeant-at-Arms and the Mace, because, if you -asked that question of the stalwart democrats of the West,
I am afraid you might be in- d-anger of personal -violence; they would1 not tolerate being even asked such a question.
Edmund- Burke has said that the strength, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons is -that it is the express image of the nation. If we are true to that concep-

tion of the House of Commons, we must see to it that the desire for the elimination of hereditary titles, or at least the feeling against the perpetuation of hereditary titles, has its necessary legislative action dn. this House.
Are the people right in their desire? I say they are. I say that hereditary titles are, first of all, undesirable socially; that they are undesirable politically, and that their perpetuation or increase in this country is a breach of faith with the men at the front. Why are they undesirable from the social standpoint? It is difficult for me to say anything new on this subject, because it has been treated in such an exhaustive and masterly way by the hon. member (Mr. Nidkle), 'but let me say that hereditary titles lead to the caste system.
I shall give an illustration. A friend of mine was once speaking about a very prominent banker in Montreal, the son of a baker who had gone into a bank in Scotland. He told me that if that boy had been born in England he never would have got into a bank, because the son of a baker in England, through the caste system, could not have been received in a bank. In Scotland, due very largely to the influence of the democratic Presbyterian Church, there is a more democratic feeling and the boy was admitted to a hank. He rose to the highest position in the Canadian banking world.
The caste system, leads to snobbishness, and snobbishness leads to the caste system. Snobbishnesis is not one of the lesser evils; it is one of the greater evils. A young lady takes a trip to another land and she comes hack after having acquired an accent that she forgets in a few years. This may be a matter of email moment, but it is more serious than that. Snobbishness often means extravagance. Snobbishness means contempt for and disrepect of parents. It means very often delay in marriage until the young folks can start where the old folks left off, and delay in marriage produces all sorts of social evils. But, I need not labour the point.
Is it not politically undesirable? I do not think we want to strengthen the House of Lords in England. I believe the people in England are not very fond of an hereditary House of Lords. They have been talking for years themselves of mending or ending the House of Lords. The members of that august body themselves have had plans under consideration for their own reform. We do not want to increase that power or to transfer power to the House of Lords and that is a sound idea on the part
of the Canadian people. Why? The members of the British aristocracy have done valiant service in this war. They have been as brave as the Scottish shepherds, as brave as the Dundee trawlers, as brave as the boys from the plains of Saskatchewan, as brave as our own lads from the counting houses and banks, but no braver, and we have the right to look at the question whether the House of Lords has been an influence making for progress in the Old Land or whether it has been against progress.	.
In 1906 the Liberal party in England, after having been in opposition for some years, came hack into power and started a great era of reform-old age pensions, the Licensing Act, the Education Act, and reforms of that sort? What was the history of those measures? When those Acts, to give better living conditions to the poor people of Great Britain, came into the House of Lords they were defeated. When it was desired that a better education should be given to the children of British workingmen, the Education Act was defeated in the House of Lords. When the people wished to control the liquor traffic in the Old Land, when they wished to have local option, did you not hear the honourable gentleman who addressed this House before me state that a man was to receive a title on condition that he withdrew his support from the Licensing Bill? The Licensing Bill was thrown out by the House of Lords.
In order to effect great social reforms and to provide ships of' war, Lloyd George brought in his great Budget of 1909, and that Budget came up in the House of Lords. It was thrown out by the House of Lords. They dared to oppose the constitution of Great Britain which had said for hundreds of years that the House of Lords must not reject a Bill dealing with money. They had a great election in January, 1910, at which time the British people reaffirmed their determination to deal with financial .matters through the House of Commons alone. What I wish to impress upon the House this afternoon is that the House of Lords, in thus dealing with the Budget in 1909, and in dealing with these other reforms that I have just mentioned, was running true to form.
In .spite of notable exceptions to the general rule, in spite of the individuals who have given great talents and great wealth to the furtherance of social progress, I make the declaration that every step in the direction of progress taken during the

nineteenth century by the British people was met with the stem, the -unrelenting and the bitter opposition of the House of Lords. Take Catholic emancipation. Before 1829 Roman Catholics did not have the right to vote for members of Parliament. The Duke of Wellington and the Tory party of his day refused to pass the Bill for Catholic emancipation until they had brought the country to the verge of revolution.
In 1832, three years afterwards, the great Reform Bill was brought forward by Lord Grey, which tried to effect some equality between those who did the electing and those who were elected. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, how before that time a few houses in one place, or a small village in another place would elect a member to Parliament, while great industrial cities with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants had no representation at all. You would have thought that a reform to do away with that inequality would not be resisted. But, it was resisted toy the House of Lords, and for several days Great Britain was on the -brink of a revolution.
I ask you to think of the repeal of the Corn Laws. I ask you to think of how Richard Cobden and John Bright went through the length and breadth of Great Britain preaching that the poor man's food should not he taxed. Where did the great opposition come from? The great opposition came from the landed interests of Great Britain, and that landed interest was entrenched most firmly in the House of Lords. Do you remember the condition of the working people at that time? Surely it iwas enough to wring the heart of any man with feelings of humanity in his bosom. Do you remember that famous Corn Law rhyme:
" Bread taxed weaver dost thou see,
" What this tax hath done for thee,
" See thy children vilely led,
"Singing hymns for shameful bread,
" While the stories of every street "Know their little naked feet."
That was the call of the British people *for bread, for untaxed food. And what was the reply from the aristocracy of Great Britain, the landed interest of that day? The Duke of Richmond suggested the advisability of the working class staying the pangs of hunger by mixing a little curry-powder in water and drinking that between meals.
I need not rehearse the story of the different steps taken towards democracy in Great Britain: how when the franchise under the influence of John Bright was extended to work peoiple in. 1868, the upper-classes, the House of Lords set their faces

against it, until John Bright had to protest against the Botany Bay view of their fellow-countrymen taken by these men, and Gladstone had to recall to the foes of the measure that the poor people were their own flesh and blood. By whom was the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland resisted? By all the highest aristocracy in the House of Lords. I could go on and rehearse the whole history of the 19th century in English reform but it would serve no purpose because I am talking to those who are -already converted.
I need not dwell, Mr. Speaker, upon the corrupting influence of hereditary titles. That has been most ably dealt with by the speaker who preceded me. We have tried -and I think it is just to us to admit we have succeeded-to conduct the discussion of this resolution upon the level of principle, and not upon the level of personality. There are those who have received hereditary titles in Canada, who perhaps deserve them as well as any one else, if hereditary titles are to be given. There are others whose meteoric careers have filled us, their fellow citizens, with astonishment and wonder, if not with admiration. We can think of one of them sitting down in Great Britain on some quiet Sabbath afternoon in the' old land, and thinking of the old Scottish paraphrase as he writes to another in Canada:
High is the rank we now possess,
But higher shall we rise,
But where we shall, at length attain
Is hid from mortal eyes.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


Mr. McMASTER:: That is the sort of thing that has been going on. That is the sort of thing we would like stopped.
This country has been warring for democracy, we have been fighting for liberty, for equality and for justice. Is it right that in the old land and in this land, when the boys .are fighting for democracy, that we should establish, or that we should allow to be established, a hereditary aristocracy in Canada? I do not believe, Mr. Speaker, that the voice of Canada will be unheard when this resolution goes before the Throne in Britain, .and I want it to go there. I want this resolution, either to he accepted by the Government of the day, or for them to allo w this matter to go to a vote, so that by an overwhelming majority the mind and heart of the Canadian people on this subject may be known to the people across the ocean. Why should we encourage and now compel men to fight for democracy and perpetuate an aristocracy, or,

rather, a plutocracy, among ourselves. I want to say, in conclusion, that I am at one with the mover of this resolution in his feeling that titles of all sorts should be done away with if possible, but seeing that our forebears came from Scotland, and that prudence is a Scottish virtue as well as economy, we have started in at the most vulnerable point in the armour of the so-called aristocrats. The weak joint in their armour is that these hereditary titles are opposed to common sense, and opposed to the spirit and the heart and the mind of the Canadian people. I trust that the Government of the day will accept cordially and emphatically this resolution, and that if they cannot see their way to endorse it that they will allow us to vote upon the resolution so that our views may he given expression to.


Right Hon.   S@: the meaning which, my ho-n. friend attributes to them. 'He was speaking of the prerogative of he Crown in its relation to the Government and to Parliament in all the Dominions of the Empire, and he was not dealing especially with Canada.
My hon. friend attacked the principle of primogeniture, and he seemed to be under some apprehension that it might be established in Canada. I have not the slightest apprehension that that principle will ever again be established in Canada. It was abolished in the very early history of every (province in this Dominion, and unquestionably it never will be re-established in this country. IHe referred also to the .baronets of Nova Scotia. I believe that Order was established, as he says, by King James 1. We have never really heard very much about them in Nova Scotia, and I can assure the hon. gentleman that, so far as the material, moral and constitutional development of that province is concerned, it has never suffered in the slightest degree from the institution of that Order.
Miy hon. friend from Kingston went at considerable length into the question of alleged corruption in connection with the bestowal of titles in the United Kingdom. I shall not follow him in that. If there is .presently prevailing in the United Kingdom any evil of that kind, I thank we may safely entrust its removal to the people and the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and no great advantage wffi accrue to the public interest either here or in Great Britain by having such matters made the subject of discussion in this Parliament. ,So far as Canada is concerned I have never heard it suggested from first to last that .under any Government in this country has .there ever been any evil of that kind, and I do not believe that there is the slightest probability that any such evil ever will .arise here.
, It will be necessary for me to go into an examination of the question in a somewhat .broader aspect than has hitherto been brought to the attention of this House this .afternoon, and it might be 'advisable to call it isix o'clock now so that I can take .up the subject this evening.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
After Recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock.


Robert Laird Borden: Before coming to the more general aspect of the resolution presented by the

hon. member for Kingston (Mr. Nickle), I should like to say a few words with regard to that portion of it which relates to the use of titles by any person other than the person in recognition of whose services the honour or title has been conferred. As I understood from the hon. member, this portion of his resolution is designed to prevent the wives of knights, baronets or peers from being addressed by the title of "Lady" in this country. I am not of the opinion that that proposal really adds very much strength to the motion. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the appellation of "Lady" is applied to 'the wife of .a knight only as a matter of courtesy; I think this is true also of the wife of a baronet, although I am not quite sure of that. The member for Kingston, to whom I spoke on the subject, is of the contrary opinion. I have had neither the time nor the desire to make elaborate study of that rather minor question, hut in looking at a couple of standard dictionaries I find that the version I have given is the correct one: That is to say, the appellation of "Lady" as applied to the wife of a knight or baronet is entirely by courtesy. Would it not he rather absurd for this House to ask His Majesty to make a formal pronouncement in respect of a matter which is purely one of usage.
Some hon. gentlemen on this side of the House exhorted the member for Kingston to make "a thorough job" of this question. Well, if we are to make "a thorough job" of it, we must go much farther than my hon. friend has proposed. For example, as a title of respect, archbishops are addressed by courtesy in this country as "Your Grace"; bishops as "Your Lordship." More than that, members of the legal profession, to which both the mover and the seconder of the resolution belong, when seated on the Bench, are addressed as " Your Lordship." I know that they are so addressed in nearly all provinces of Canada-perhaps not in the province of Quebec.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Oh, yes.


Robert Laird Borden: Formerly they
were not so addressed in New Brunswick, but I believe that recently they have followed the custom even there. The member of the legal profession who happens to rise to judicial office is not thereby rendered a Lord, and there is no particular reason, I suppose, in logic or in law why he should he addressed as " M*y Lord;" yet he is so addressed'. Tlhe member for Kingston must not go too far against the women

in this 'matter, or toy and by, when he has down high enough to " roost on the bench,
,-if 1 may use his own expression-some .eloquent lady member of this House may propose a resolution' asking His Majesty the King to debar my hon. friend from being 'addressed as " Your Lordship " or "My Lord."
As a matter of fact, these appellations .vary from time to time and from century to century. Three or four hundred years -ago every Master of Arts in Great Britain ,was addressed' as " Sir," and ibeeanse members of the clergy were usually of liberal education, the title " Sir " was applied to all clergymen in England. In the time of Shakespeare, as any one will recall who has read his plays, even a curate was addressed as "Sir" So-and-so. That practice has passed away.


Mr. BURNHAM:: Sirloin steak.


Robert Laird Borden: Yes, .that is so. Other similar usages prevail in this country. For example, certain, members of provincial legislatures, that 'is to say legislative councillors, the Speakers of legislative assemblies and members of executive councils of the provinces, are enitled .to t'he appellation' of " Honourable " as a matter of law, under the King's direction, so long as they retain the position to which .the title appertains. >When they cease to hbld these positions, then they cease to be entitled to' the appellation of " HonourAble;" but every one continues to term .them "Honourable." It does no particular harm' that I know of. We might as well ,ask His Mlajesty t'he King to fulminate against this usage as to ask him to make a pronouncement against the courtesy titles which certain ladies in this, country receive as a matter of usage and which they do not enjoy as a matter of right.
However, there is a much 'broader aspect of the whole question:	'The motion proposed by the member for Kingston and seconded by the member for Birome :(IMr. MoMaster) does touch very closdly the exercise of the prerogative of the Crown. The functions of the Crown as distinguished from those of the Cabinet, and Parliament are very clearly set forth, so far as the United Kingdom is concerned, in the monumental work of Mr. Todd, which was first published in 1866 and of which a second edition edited by his eon, appeared in 1887, Following that came his work-still more useful to us in the Dominions-on parliamentary government in the British colonies., the first edition of which appeared in 1880 and the
second, also edited by his son, in 1894. Todd himself died in 1884, all too early. Hon. gentlemen who are familiar with these matters know that both these works are regarded as of the highest authority, not only in the United Kingdom, but in every dominion of the Empire. The exercise of the prerogative of the Crown in self-governing dominions was defined by Todd in his work on Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies as follows:
Moreover, certain prerogatives of the Crown are suitably reserved in every colony to the direct and immediate expression of royal pleasure thereon. The powers so reserved differ according to the .position and circumstances of the particular colony; but they invariably include the abstract right of dealing with all colonial legislation, and of disallowing such acts as may be deemed' objectionable, or in direct opposition to Imperial policy. Sometimes, colonial laws which, for defect in form or substance, might otherwise need to be disallowed, are remitted to the colony wherein they were enacted, accompanied .by a despatch from the secretary of state for the colonies suggesting their modification or repeal. The judicial prerogative of the Crown, or the right of determining in the last resort all controversies .between subjects in every part of the Empire, has been universally reserved, as being one of the most stable safeguards, and most beneficial acts of sovereign power, The administration of the prerogatives of mercy and of honour is either reserved to the Crown or is made the subject of special and limited delegation. Finally, all questions which involve the relations of British dependencies, and consequently of the United' Kingdom itself, with foreign States-the formation of treaties and alliances; the naturalization of aliens; the declaration of war or peace, and, toy consequence, all regulations affecting the disposition or control of Imperial military forces-are, invariably and for obvious reasons, reserved for the direction and control of the parent state.
We have travelled far in constitutional development since these words were written by Mr. Todd. One of the most notable steps taken in Canada was that taken in 1876 by Edward Blake as Minister of Justice. The instructions to the Governor General authorized his independent exercise of the prerogative of mercy. Upon the very able report presented to the Privy Council by a subcommittee over which Mr. Blake presided, those instructions were changed in 1878, and the British Government, in their subsequent instructions, have fully recognised that the prerogative of mercy in all of the self-governing Dominions must be exercised upon the advice of ministers. In all these matters, the natural trend of constitutional development has been along the same line, that is, of ministerial responsibility for the exercise of the prerogative in any self-governing

Dominion. There are illustrations of this arising from time to time. I need not go over ail the changes brought about since Mr. Todd's book was first published. The absolute control of many matters there alluded to as being within the function of the Imperial Government, is now exercised without question by the Governments of the Dominions. Since this war broke out, a question arose as far back as November, 1916, as to whether or not the prerogative of the Crown to requisition in time of war ships registered in Canada and owned by people domiciled in this country should be exercised by the Government of the United Kingdom or by the Government of Canada, and we had no hesitation whatever in maintaining-and our view was accepted-that the exercise of the prerogative in such cases ought to be upon the advice of the ministers of the Crown in Canada and not upon the advice of the ministers of the Crown in the United Kingdom.
In this respect, I might express the doctrine of the present day in the words of a notable author, a man, evidently of varied gifts.


Sir SAM HUGHES:: 
Hon. Mr. FIELDING:: Does my right
hon. friend mean that, although the House should adopt this resolution, the Prime Minister of Canada would still toe free to exercise that power?


Robert Laird Borden: I think I shall make myself clearer to my hon. friend as I go on. I do not observe anything in the resolution which would conflict with the view I have just expressed!. It lis dealt with in that way in. the United Kingdom as a matter of ministerial responsibility, but as a matter in which the Prime. Minister speaks for his colleagues in the Government, and I do not think that it is there dealt with by Order in Council or in any formal way but as I have just now indicated. The question as to- the procedure in such matters was taken up by my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) as far back as 1902, and I have obtained permission to bring down., and communicate to the House, the Order in Council then passed, as well as the reply then made by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. I have obtained the like permission to communicate to the House an Order in Council which was under consideration of the Government some weeks before this session began, which was submitted to His Excellency the Governor General on 9th March, and which has since received his approval, after he had the necessary communication with the Government of the United Kingdom on the subject. The Order in Council approved on the 19th February, 1902, is as follows,
On a report dated 15th February, 1902, from the Right Honourable the Prime Minister submitting that the exercise of the Royal Prerogative conferring honours and titular distinctions upon His Majesty's subjects in Canada is one which has not hitherto -been brought into harmony with the .principles of Parliamentary Government, of which it is an important part.
The Prime Minister further submits that the great development of Canada, and the- high position which she has now obtained, render it advisable that upon this subject, as upon all others, the exercise of the Royal Prerogative shall conform to the well understood principles of Ministerial responsibility.
The Prime Minister observes that though Canada has had conceded to her the powers of self-government, and His Majesty the King, is here the fountain of honours and titular distinctions, yet, the exercise of this branch of the Royal Prerogative which may be as necessary to reward the servants of the Crown, within the sphere of Government in Canada, as it is in the United Kingdom, is, nevertheless, totally disassociated here from Parliamentary Government.
The Royal Prerogative of conferring honours and titular distinctions for Important public services, is within the sphere of Ministerial authority, as necessary to good government in Canada as it is in the United Kingdom; so that those who are responsible for administra-

tive government in the Dominion would be greatly aided by the stimulus which such powers would give to those engaged in the service of the Crown for the time being, not less than such 'Prerogative strengthens the hands of the Executive in the United Kingdom.
The Pfiime Minister states that in practice, since the establishment of Confederation, the granting of honours and titular distinctions upon the subjeots of the Crown in Canada, has been the result of correspondence between His Excellency the Governor General and the Colonial Office, and of recommendations made by the former, usually yet not invariably after consultation with the Prime Minister, but not in conformity with any settled principle and without constitutional responsibility.
The practice is not in harmony with the principles of our constitutional system. There are two classes of persons upon whom honours and titular distinctions may be conferred within the Empire, and outside the United Kingdom ; the one class, honoured by His Majesty for services of an Imperial character, and in respect to which His Majesty is rightfully advised by His Ministers at Westminster, and the other is for services done by the subjects of the Crown associated with His Majesty's Government in the Colony, and on whom honours and distinctions should be conferred upon the advice of those Ministers only, who are there responsible to His Majesty and to the Colonial Parliament, for that part of the administration of His affairs. In this way, the constitutional advisers of His Majesty, within the United Kingdom, would avoid Invading the sphere of His Majesty's advisers in the Colony, and would leave to those advisers both the advantage and the responsibility for everything which might contribute to the honour and efficiency of His Majesty's Government within the range of the constitutional duty assigned to them.
The Prime Minister submits that while His Majesty may take the initiative in respect to the bestowal of honours and titular distinctions, the Minister should be none the less responsible for what may be done. To the MKnisters of His Majesty at Westminster responsibility attaches for every reward conferred for public service within their sphere of action.
In Canada a Government similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom has been established, and the advisers of His Majesty in Canada are the proper advisers of His Majesty for every kind of reward bestowed upon His Majesty's subjects for services performed within the legal and constitutional sphere of Canadian jurisdiction. His Majesty's Ministers in Canada are acquainted with the standing in the community of the persons upon whom it may be proposed to confer honours, and of the character of the services for which these honours are the reward, and to have those rewards bestowed by His Majesty on the advice of those who are but imperfectly informed as to the estimation in which the recipients are held, or of the character of the services for which the honours are bestowed, is practically an Invasion of the right of local self-government.
The Committee of the Privy Council concurring in the report of the Prime Minister, recommend that the same be presented to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, and respectfully ask that the Royal Instructions be modified to the effect that the same rules which apply for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative in granting honours and titular distinctions to subjects of the King in

the United Kingdom be made likewise to apply to all recommendations by the Governor General for the exercise of the Prerogative to the King's subjects in the Colonies, and that all such recommendations by the Governor General to the Sovereign in such matters be made upon the advice of his responsible Ministers.
To that Order in Council, which went forward in the form of a despatch, a reply was sent, dated the 23rd of April, 1902. It is as follows:
Downing Street,
23rd April, 1902.
Canada.
Confidential.
My Lord,-[DOT]
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of Your Lordship's Confidential despatch of the 4 th March forwarding for consideration a Report of your Privy Council relative to the procedure they advise in respect to future recommendation for Honours to be submitted to His Majesty.
2.	The Report in question has received my most careful consideration, and I have now to acquaint you with my views upon the subject.
3.	I am of opinion that it is of primary importance not to lose sight of the fact that the Crown is the source of all honours, which may even be granted without the interposition of a responsible minister, although as a rule they are only given on his advice. As Your Lordship "is aware, the usual method of rewarding conspicuous services rendered, by those resident in the Colonies is by appointment to the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, an Imperial Order, for appointment to which, in all but very exceptional cases, the responsibility ultimately rests with His Majesty's Government. Service to Canada is recognized by conferring membership of this Order, because service to the Crown in any part of the Empire, is service to the Empire.
4.	As regards the question of procedure in making recommendations, I consider that if the service is of a political or administrative character, rendered solely in the sphere for which the Ministers of the Crown in Canada are responsible, they are constitutionally the proper authorities for making recommendations, and that in transmitting the same, they should be accompanied by Your Lordship's observations thereon.
5.	In regard, however, to persons whose purely Imperial, Provincial, or Municipal services, or public services of a charitable, literary or scientific character, are held to merit recognition, I consider that the proper course would be for you to transmit a list of such persons to your Prime Minister, inviting his observations on the same, and such list, with the remarks of the Prime Minister, should be submitted to me.
6.	In dealing with this subject I have been desirous of meeting the views of your Ministers as far as possible, but as the responsibility for making recommendations to the Sovereign in regard to appointments to an Imperial Order, such as that of Saint Michael' and Saint George, rests with the Secretary of State and not with your Ministers, it is his duty to obtain the best advice he can, and he must be the sole judge of what is the best advice.

7.	I should toe glad If Your Lordship would make known to Your Prime Minister the purport of this despatch, and I trust that the arrangement herein described will prove acceptable tooth to yourself and to your Ministers.
I have the honour to toe,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient, humble servant, (Sgd.)	J. CHAMBERLAIN.
It will foe -observed that the reply of the then Secretary of State for the Colonies does not at all conform to the views which were put forward in the Order in Council I read a moment ago. For example, in the fifth clause of this despatch, Mr. Chamberlain says that where purely Imperial, provincial, or municipal .services, or public services of a charitable, literary, or scientific character are held to merit recognition, he is to be the judge and not the responsible ministers of the Dominion in which the persons alluded to are domiciled at the time .and in which they have rendered such services. The matter does not seem to have been followed up. I can find no trace of any further correspondence on the subject. The Order in Council which I have just read and the reply of Mr. Chamberlain thereto have been carefully considered toy myself and by my colleagues as well, -and after giving a very great deal of thought and consideration to the subject, in the month of February last, I brought into Council, on the ninth day of March, a recommendation which was approved and submitted to His Excellency, who gave his approval thereto on the 25th of March last, after communication with the Imperial authorities. That Order in Council, which I shall now read, is as follows: P.C. 668.
Certified Copy of a Report of the Committee of
the Privy Council approved toy His Excellency the Governor General on the 25th day of March, 1918.
The Committee of the Privy Council have had under consideration a report dated the 9th day of March, 1918, from the Right Honourable the Prime Minister, touching the procedure for conferring titles of honour upon subjects of His Majesty ordinarily resident in Canada.
Submitting that the subject demands consideration and attention, the Prime Minister observes that the Royal Prerogative of conferring honours and titular distinctions for important public services is unquestioned, but that it is necessary to consider the conditions under which and the advice upon which it should be exercised within this Dominion. He submits that the bestowal of honours is a matter of concern to the whole community and has a direct relation to the orderly government of the State. Its purpose is to signify -public recognition and approval of the recipient's conduct and services in cases where these have been commendable and notable.
Having regard to1 the firmly established principles of self government in Canada, the
Prime Minister is of opinion that no title of honour or titular distinction should hereafter toe conferred upon any subject of His Majesty ordinarily resident in Canada except upon the direct advice and responsibility of His Majesty's Canadian Government. Such an assumption of control toy the Government of Canada follows the natural course of constitutional development in this country as the tendency has invariably been in the direction of complete control Of every function of government.
The constitutional aspect of this question suggests consideration of the analogy to other exercises of the prerogative. It has -been said by a careful student of government in the Dominions that:-
"It is now clear law that the Governor has a delegation of so much of the Royal Prerogative as is required for the conduct of the executive government of the Dominion or State of which he is _ Governor, and time and good-sense have uniled to make it clear that this necessary delegation includes practically all the prerogatives of the Crown in the United Kingdom." (Keith, Imperial Unity and the Dominions, p. 52.)
The Prime Minister is not aware of any other prerogative of the Crown which in its relation to Canada is not exercised on the advice of His Majesty's Canadian Ministers; and he is unaible to agree that a different principle should toe maintained- in the exercise of the prerogative of conferring honours. He entirely assents to the view that in Canada the functions of the Sovereign in such exercise should toe subject only to the same limitations as in the United Kingdom, except with regard to hereditary honours as hereinafter set forth.
The Prime Minister calls attention to a Minute of Council approved on the 19th day of February, 1902, copy of which is hereto appended, and he desires to associate himself with the views therein set forth insofar as they are ini accord with th-e recommendations herein contained. Attention is also called to the confidential Despatch of 23rd- April, 1902, from the then -Secretary of State for the Colonies to His Excellency the then Governor General, copy of which is also appended-. Without pausing to examine the development of constitutional relations at that time, the Prime Minister finds himself unable to accept as appropriate to present conditions the view set forth in that despatch as to the responsibility for recommendations to the Crown in respect of honours to be conferred upon persons ordinarily resident in Canada.
In expressing this view the Prime Minister realizes that the character and- number of the honours to toe conferred in any Dominion must necessarily toe considered toy the Government-of the United Kingdom. This view seems entirely consistent with the principles which are herein affirmed.
With respect to the -bestowal of hereditary titles of honour upon persons ordinarily resident in Canada, special considerations must he taken into account. In submitting these considerations the Prime Minister desires it clearly to be understood that they have no relation whatever to the status or functions of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom in its legislative or judicial capacity. He thoroughly realizes that any representations which might toe construed to bear such a meaning would be uncalled for if not presumptuous ; and the observations which follow apply only to conditions of national -development in this country. The Prime Minister

equally disclaims any intention of casting the slightest reflection upon the status or service of any resident of Canada who has heen honoured toy the .bestowal of hereditary distinction. The purpose of this recommendation is concerned with the question of general policy and with that alone.
The Prime Minister is firmly of opinion that the creation or continuance of hereditary titles in Canada is entirely incompatible with the ideals of democracy as they have developed in this country and that the time has arrived when their heritable quality or effect should toe abolished in this Dominion. The hereditary peerage as an institution can find rieither historic justification nor scope for usefulness in a state structure and social tradition such as that which now exists in Canada. Consequently the effect of such an institution in this country is merely, on the one hand, to confer and to perpetuate arbitrarily for some members of the community a titular distinction or status of honour, and on the other hand to imply a position of special though ill-defined privilege to which there is not and cannot be assigned any obligation or function in the activities of Canadian national life. Honours conferred directly upon deserving recipients, under appropriate conditions and by proper authority, will be respected by the community; but a decoration or titular distinction which is attached to the holder, not in recognition of his own services, hut merely from the incidence of birth, and which is invested with no special or public duties or responsibilities, will inevitably arouse in this country a sense of utter incongruity and a feeling of keen impatience.
Such an attitude toward a state institution cannot but have unfortunate effects upon the respect and regard in which the ' authority of the State is held; and since the question concerns so intimately the honour, dignity and security of the Crown it becomes the duty of His :Majesty's Canadian Ministers to take immediate and serious notice of it and to advise an appropriate course to be followed.
The Prime Minister further observes that the procedure necessary to provide that titles of honour already held by Canadian residents shall no longer have hereditary effect in Canada will doubtless require careful consideration, and that the question involved is one which may appropriately he submitted for the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown advising His Majesty's Government. In this connection it is desirable that a course should be followed under which any Canadian citizens who now hold hereditary titles would not be subjected to undue inconvenience or disadvantage. For that purpose appropriate provision for a reasonable time limit may be desirable within which the operation of the proposed enactment or other necessary proceeding would be postponed.
The Prime Minister therefore recommends that this Report, if approved, be forwarded to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies with the respectful request that the necessary formal action may be taken to render effective the proposals herein set forth, which are recapitulated as follows:-
1.	No honour or titular distinction (saving those granted in recognition of military service during the present war or ordinarily bestowed by the Sovereign proprio motu) shall be conferred upon a subject of His Majesty ordinarily resident in Canada except with the approval or upon the advice of the Prime Minister of Canada.

2.	The Government of the United Kingdom shall exercise the same authority as heretofore in determining the character and number of titles or honours to he allocated to Canada from time to time.
3.	No hereditary title of honour shall hereafter be conferred upon a subject of His Majesty ordinarily resident in Canada.
4.	Appropriate action shall be taken, whether by legislation or otherwise, to provide that after a prescribed period no title of honour held by a subject of His Majesty now or hereafter ordinarily resident in Canada shall be recognized as having hereditary effect.
The Order in Council goes somewhat further than the resolution which my hon. friend from Kingston has proposed in respect of the continuance of hereditary titles in this country. That question deserves some serious consideration for this reason: although we may provide, and the -Crown may assent to our proposal, that hereditary honours shall no longer be granted to any person ordinarily resident in Canada, it is quite possible that persons holding hereditary honours may come to reside in this country and may become domiciled therein, and titles may be perpetuated- in that way. According to the judgment of the advisers of the Crown in this country, this would not be a desirable consummation


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Robert Laird Borden: -and therefore we reached the conclusion that some method should be devised by which, after a certain period, no title of honour held by any person resident in Canada, should continue to have the heritable quality. I must admit, at the same time,- that the difficulties which present themselves in biinging about such a result are somewhat serious. With respect to the Order in Council I have just read, I have had communication with the Secretary of State for the -Colonies, and I am authorized to state this: First, the British Government offer no objection to its publication, provided it is made clear that, it is published before they have had time to consider it, and that the whole matter is reserved for personal discussion after miy arrival in England some time this summer. Second, that in the meantime no honours will be conferred except in accordance with the proposals recapitulated at the end of the Order in Council. They give their assent in that way for the time being, and as a matter of fact, I do not apprehend that there will be any serious difficulty in obtaining the concurrence of the -Crown to the first three proposals. The only difficulty that is likely to occur is with regard to the last of the four proposals. And third-they have not asked me to say -this specifically, but I

think it is a fair deduction from what has been said-there are grave difficulties as to the fourth proposal and it raises serious questions affecting the United Kingdom. It does certainly raise a serious question, because after an honour has once been conferred carrying with it the heritable quality, it would require legislation, I should think legislation of the Parliament of the United Kingdom itself, to deprive that honour of its heritable quality. Without special legislation it is impossible that any person shall sit as a peer of the United Kingdom in the House of Lords, holding simply a life tenure. Members of my own profession will recall that, in 1856, Sir James Parke was appointed a life peer with the title of Baron Wensleydale. The House of Lords appointed 'a committee, and decided eventually that life peers could not be created. It was alleged that there had been a prerogative exercisable and exercised in former days by which life peers could be appointed; but it also appeared that the exercise of that prerogative had been discontinued for at least four hundred years, and there was grave doubt as to whether any such prerogative had ever existed at all. Accordingly Sir James Parke was appointed a peer in the ordinary way, took his seat in the House of Lords, and afterwards Acts were passed by which, first four, and then six, Lords of Appeal in ordinary were appointed as barons, and for life only, as members of the House of Lords. There is an interesting note in an English constitutional writer which sums up the whole matter very well, and which I might as well give to the House. Sir William Anson says:
The rule of law seems clear. The Crown can confer such dignities and with such limitations as it may please, but a Lord of Parliament must be an hereditary peer, except in the special cases of the Bishops and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary; when once an hereditary peer is summoned the right to a summons descends to his heirs, except in the special case pf the representative peers of Ireland.
Then, of course, there are the special provisions with regard, to the representatives of the Irish and Scottish peers in the House of Lords, as to which I need not trouble the House.


Samuel Hughes: Might I draw the attention of the Prime Minister to the fact that if hereditary peers of Britain are debarred from living in Canada, because I understand they have to give up their hereditary title here, how would French, Italian and peers of other nations be affected?
32	*


Robert Laird Borden: Their titles
would have effect in this country only as a matter of courtesy.


Samuel Hughes: The others would only have effect by courtesy, too.


Robert Laird Borden: No; the others are quite different. Any person who comes from another country, enjoying a title of honour from that country, has a different status here from that of a peer of the United Kingdom, whose right extends over the Empire so far as the heritable quality to which I have alluded is concerned.
Now, it is only proper for me to say that no reflection is intended by the Order in Council which I have just read upon those domiciled in this country who have been honoured by the bestowal of the peerage or other hereditary honour, or upon the character or extent of their service in any case. We are simply laying down a general line of policy -which we think ought to he followed, and which, I believe, will be followed in this country in the future.
My hon. friend from Kingston made a very forcible and eloquent speech, pointing out the incongruity of hereditary honours in this country.	It is
well to bear in mind that the most important privilege of a peer is to sit and vote in Parliament as a hereditary legislator. That is a duty which cannot ordinarily be discharged by persons domiciled in this country, and no duty or responsibility in relation to this country is attached to any such position. The Order in Council which I have cited sets forth in concise form the considerations which influenced the Government in reaching its conclusion. I might add, as a summary by the constitutional writer whom I have already quoted, a citation which is to be -found on page 62 of Mr. Keith's work on " Imperial Unity and the Dominions." He says:
If as early as the end of the 18th century, it was felt that the proposal to create hereditary aristocracy, which was contemplated'' as possible toy the Quebec Act of 1791, -was out of the question, the creation of a mere social arstocracy must be deemed still less in harmony with the ideals of the Dominions in the twentieth century. The grant of membership of the various Orders, of knighthoods, of the highest distinction of Privy Counciliorships terminate with life, and are earned by service: there is no essential objection on democratic grounds to such distinctions which meet a need of human nature, but there is the gravest .objection to the grant of honours which descend to those who have no claim to them except by the accident of birth.


Mr. EDWARDS:: Might I ask the right hon. gentleman a question? If an English peer should take up his permanent resi-



dence in 'Canada, would he have the right t) run for a constituency in this country, and have the right to sit in this House?
Sir ROBERT BORDEN. I remember looking into that question as a matter of interest many years ago, and I came to the conclusion then that there was no reason why he could not be elected.


William Cameron Edwards: He could not sit in the House of Commons in Great Britain?


Robert Laird Borden: Not there, but here he could. I do not think that has ever been a subject of a judicial decision. Apart from all this, the hon. member for Kingston has raised the question as to how far the bestowal of honours not of a hereditary character should proceed in this country. I entirely agree that that is a question which may well concern Parliament and the country. On the other hand, I am bound to say that there have been a great many cases in which I think such recognition has been very highly regarded from one end of the country to the other. Leaving out of the question those actively concerned in public life, let us take the case of Sir Frederick Fraser in the province of Nova Scotia, a man who, through an accident, lost his sight when he was eighteen or twenty years of age, and whose life has been devoted to the upbuilding of the finest institution for the blind which exists in the Dominion of Canada. A recognition of that character, granted to a man of that type, is, in my opinion, very happily bestowed. The same might be said of Sir William Gage of Toronto; of men who are at the head of great universities; of men whose duty and pleasure has been found in service to their country and doing good to their fellow beings.
Reference has been made to the British Empire Order, which was instituted last year. We heard something of it when we were in London, but we were too much engaged with other matters to give very much consideration to what wa.s proposed. I think that the constitution .and the Iby-laws and all that is necessary in these matters were being prepared a,t that time. I was asked at the end of last summer and again in the autumn, .as well as at the beginning of the year and later in January, to take into consideration the preparation of a list. The Order itself embraces, I think, no less than six classes. The number of persons who might be honoured under it in Canada was very large indeed; I think it ran into some hundreds, including all the minor classes of the Order. I should like hon. gentlemen to realize that the institution of this Order
[iMr. Edwards. ]
was prompted toy the very best of motives. The idea end desire was to give some suitable recognition in the various dominions of the Empire to those who by service, by devotion, by self-sacrifice, had sought to do their full duty to their country in. time of war. When the matter was presented for my consideration, I felt that it was one which gave rase to the greatest difficulties. In the first place, I was not at all clear as to the wisdom of the proposal. But, assuming that it was wise, I should like hon, gentlemen to consider the very great responsibility and the burden that would be placed on a Prime Minister who undertook a task like that. Even if it were possible for him to have a perfect knowledge of the service that had been rendered by every one of the eight million inhabitants of Canada, it would be a difficult task for him to determine which service was most worthy of recognition. Of course, it is not humanly possible for a Prime Minister or for any one else to have that perfect and absolute knowledge; therefore it seemed to. me that if the task had to be fulfilled at some time or other, it should at least receive more eonsidartion than I bad been able to 'give it since my return to this country on May 15 last.
Another order has recently been instituted, known as "Companions of Honour." We were not consulted with regard to its institution; nor were we with regard to the institution of the Order of the British Empire, otherwise than as I have indicated. It is true that honours under the British Empire Order have been awarded in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, but I thought that I might very well, under the circumstances, defer the consideration of any list for Canada, and action has been postponed for the present. It is a subject that may (be taken into consideration and discussed when the Canadian ministers visit Great Britain next year.
I have placed the whole matter with the greatest possible frankness before the House and the country exactly as it rests at the moment. The proposals which are set forth in this Order in Council represent absolutely the opinion of the Government. I desire, however, that the House and the country should understand that the fourth proposal, although it does embody our absolute conviction, cannot toe worked out without great difficulty; indeed to work it out in the way we have suggested may prove to toe altogether impracticable. I am not at all confident how the House of Lords, for example, might receive a legislative proposal which would cut down an hereditary honour to merely a life honour;

nor am I confident that the Government of the United Kingdom would he prepared to propose such legislation to the Imperial Parliament. However, we have recorded our opinion, and I leave it at that. Under the circumstances, and as the British Government has as yet had no opportunity of considering fully the proposals which we have put forward to them, possibly the mover and the seconder of the resolution may consider it desirable to let the motion stand, upon the assurance of the Government that no action inconsistent with its purport will be taken 'before we meet in another Parliament.


Right Hon.   S@: Mr. Speaker, the member for Kingston (Mr. Nickle) has certainly reason to congratulate himself upon the result which he has already obtained in the declaration of the Prime Minister. For my part, I should have been more pleased if the Prime Minister had not marred the effect of his remarks by suggesting that the member for Kingston and the member for Brome (Mr. McMaster) should not press their motion to a conclusion. I infer from the remarks of the Prime Minister that the Government are in sympathy with the motion, and if that is the case it is obvious that when the Prime Minister takes the subject up with the authorities in Great Britain his hand will be very much strengthened if he has in support of it the declaration of the Parliament of Canada. With all due respect, therefore, I suggest that the member for Kingston persevere in his present iiftention, inasmuch as the idea embodied in his resolution has been accepted by the 'Government.
If the member for Kingston will permit me, I think I can say that every member of the House has been impressed by the exhaustive manner in which he has presented his case.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Wilfrid Laurier: I agree with every syllable that he uttered-not only every syllable that he uttered, but also the hint he threw out, if I understood him correctly, that if he had followed his own inclination he would have gone further than he did and asked for the suppression of all titles in Canada.
The reasons for the conclusions which my hon. friend has embodied in his resolution and which, aside from the terms of the resolution, he has presented to the House, seem to me to be based upon the forward movement which is now developing in Europe 32*
and all over the world. We are engaged in a great war the object of which is the triumph of democracy, and it is inconsistent with the objects for which we are fighting that we should do anything the effect of which would be to promote or to perpetuate that which is not in perfect accordance with the principles of democracy.
Democracy and aristocracy are not compatible institutions, and as democracy advances aristocracy must recede. For my part, and I gay it with full sincerity, I bow with respect to the aristocracy of Great Britain to whom the world owes a great debt. If England has been preserved from the bane of autocratic Government, it is very largely owing to the efforts of the aristocracy of that country. It was the barons of the day who dragged from King John hie rte&uctant consent to Magna iCharta, which has been the charter oif freedom not only in Great Britain but throughout the world, and from that day on to the revolution of 1688, the Lords of Great Britain were in accord with every movement that went on to curb the powers of the Crown. In the revolution of 1688, it was the Lords who took the lead in the revolution which finally forced the withdrawal of James II and brought about the advent of a new dynasty, the Bill of Rights and other great charters of the liberty of the people have been the consequence. Whilst up to the 19th century, the aristocracy of Great Britain has always been in the van off freedom, it has not, in my judgment, in the 19th century-, been equal to its opportunities.	.
I am a Liberal of the old school of England. T would have been a Whig if I had been in England. I wish, for my pari;, that the British aristocracy had continued to do as they did in the past. But they do not understand the times Hn>
which we live. Whether the British aristocracy like it or not, or whether men generally like it or not, at the present time England is on the eve of a revolution. Such revolutions do not take place in England by force or violence; they go simply from step to step and from reform to reform. The days of aristocracy are over; a new force is now entering into the Government of Great Britanm, tfyat is to. say, the great masses o-f the nation. Whether it he for woe or for weal the future will show. For my part, I think it is for weal; but I am sure of this, that in the new order of things, which will be the order in England, England will not he as picturesque as we have known it hitherto, but I believe

that undoubtedly the great masses of the nation will be more happy than they have ever been 'before.
The resolution of my hon. friend from Kingston (Mr. Niekle) goes only to the suppression in this country off hereditary titles. Hereditary titles in Canada are of *little consequence, I believe, and I think they were property represented by the Prime Minister. The only benefit, if a benefit it be, at all events the only privilege, which is given to-day by the creation of a peer resident in Canada, iwill be the privilege of becoming a legislator in Great Britain.; he would1 be in Canada a 6imple *citizen of Canada. My right hon. friend says that he has at one time looked over the question whether or not a peer of Great Britain will be eligible to sit in this House, and he came to the conclusion, as I understood it, that he saw nothing to make him ineligible. I also studied the question, and I came to pre-. cisely the same conclusion, that a citizen of Canada who is a peer of Great Britain is eligible to sit in the House of Commons of Canada. This will not happen frequently, I am sure; it will be very infrequent that a man resident in Canada will he made a peer of Great Britain, but recent events have rather excited public opinion upon this point, and have contributed, I have no doubt, to induce my hon. friend from Kingston to introduce this resolution.
So far as I can see, I think we are unanimous in this House on this matter. I have not heard a word or seen a sign of dissent in any quarter against the resolution of my hon. friend. Everybody seems to agree that we should not have any peers created in this country. But we might go a step further. Is there any reason why there should be the bestowal of titles of any kind in Canada? Everybody will, I believe, agree that in Canada badges, titles, honours and trappings -will never take any root. We are a democratic country; we have been made so by circumstances. I listened with great pleasure and interest to what my hon. friend said. this afternoon. His ancestors left Scotland, and my ancestors left France, because they were not satisfied with the conditions of their native land. If there is anything that is dear to the heart of man it is the soil upon which he was bom, and if any man deserts the soil upon which he was born in order to take up his abode in another country, he does so for very serious causes. We are all in the same condition in this country. No one in Canada, I believe, claims blue blood. We

are all from the people, and, I believe, we shall ever be pleased to say that we are of the people, and we shall have no distinctions and no classes. I may be told: If you hold those views, how is it that you have accepted a title for yourself? Well, so it is. I have accepted a title. It was offered to me. Why I accepted it with the views I hold now, will be going into a matter of personal history which I do not care to bring forward. But at all events I may say this: I see here a little class of titled people, knights commanders of this order or that order. If they will make a bargain with me, I am quite prepared, if we can do it without any disrespect to the Crown of England, to bring our titles to the marketplace and make a bonfire of them. We are British subjects, and for my part I take very much pride in the fact that British institutions do not proceed by violence but grow up quietly and gradually to given ends. I have no doubt at all that, whether my suggestion is accepted or is not accepted, the time will come-and perhaps soon rather than late-when all titles will be held to be of no value in this country, and the only title which will be accepted will be that of a citizen of Canada and British subject.
Hon. N. W. ROWELL (President of the Council) Mr. Speaker, the question now before us is one in which I have taken, for some years, a very deep interest. I am sure we are all interested in the progress of democracy and in Canada as a free and democratic country. One who thoroughly believes in democracy and in the development of free and democratic institutions must, I think, realize that titles, and particularly hereditary titles, are not a normal growth of such institutions. They are rather the survival of a dying feudalism which continues to this day in some of its aspects, but which is rapidly passing away.
My hon. friend from Kingston was good enough to quote a brief extract from an address 'I delivered something over a year ago on this question, and he said if I was not accurately quoted I might have the privilege of so stating and1 repudiating the statement. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that I was accurately quoted. Those were my sentiments' at the time they were uttered, they are my sentiments now, and they are embodied in the Order in Council which the Prime Minister has presented to the House. My hon. friend from Brome (Mr. McMaster) quoted a French philosopher, who said, "How artificial are the lines that divide us," and he applied that to the

discussion in the House this, afternoon. I think we will all agree that it was an apt quotation as. applied to the subject matter under discussion, and it was also a very apt quotation as applied to the manner in which the Union Government has dealt with this question. I frankly thought I entertained somewhat radical views on hereditary titles, but when we put aside these artificial party lines that divide us and look at this question /from the standpoint of common Canadian citizenship, we find all the members of the Union Government, irrespective of party, holding exactly the same views on the question of hereditary titles. And perhaps one of the benefits which have come to us during the war is that, at times at least, we are prepared to forget these artificial party lines that divide us and to look squarely at the great issues from the standpoint of our common Canadian citizenship. The more frequently we do it the larger sense of unity we realize, because, we find there is a common consensus of opinion on the majority of the great issues which face the people of Canada at this time. My hon. friend from Kingston, I know, thought he was a radical, as I thought I was. He thought he was a radical in saying he was a Socialist on certain questions. I think that, having listened to the hon. member for Kingston we must regard him as a very moderate Socialist. The views he expressed with reference to the status of the average man in Canada in the days to come are views which might be accepted by every hon. member of this House. My hon. friend from Brome thought he was a great radical on this question, and we find that the Order in Council itself is more radical than the resolution submitted by my hon. friend from Kingston, and the hon. member for Brome. In view of the very full, admirable and convincing statement made by the Prime Minister on the constitutional aspect of this question, I shall not add anything except to observe that this Order in Council, when accepted by the Imperial authorities, as we confidently believe it will he, will mark a distinct advance in the constitutional status of Canada. It marks, perhaps, the relinquishment by the Crown of the last prerogative which it has claimed to exercise within the Dominion, apart from the advice of the responsible advisers of the Crown in the Dominion. I shall not take time to outline the development of self-government in Canada, and in the dominions of the Empire, but it is of interest to note the
fact that by successive steps the dominions have developed from dependent colonies of the Crown, to free self-governing nations, part of the British Commonwealth; and I think I am correct in saying that in every momentous departure Canada has taken the lead, and all the other dominions have shared the benefit of her advance. In the Order in Council which the Prime Minister has presented to the House you have another of these constitutional developments which indicates that Canada is now reaching the full status of a nation, and the Government of the nation is exercising the full prerogatives of advisers of His Majesty in all matters relating to the government of Canada. Just in passing-although it is not germane perhaps, tout yet as indicating the growth of Canada as a nation-the establishment of a Canadian mission at Washington where Canada is directly represented in dealing with the United States Government in important matters of trade and commerce, directly represented with full authority of His Majesty's Government, is another step in the development during the past few months of the policy of managing our own affairs in the Dominion of Canada. The net result of this growth is that Canada in a very real sense is to-day no longer a dependent colony of Great Britain, but is, as I have stated, one of the free nations that go to make up the British Commonwealth. The resolution passed at the Imperial Conference, which was read by the hon. memfbeT for Kingston, moved by the hon. Prime Minister of Canada, and seconded by General Smuts, I think, states the relation of the self-governing dominions to the Mother Country in a way that can be accepted by all those who believe in maintaining the full rights of self-government, and at the same time preserving the essential unity of the Empire. Passing away from the important constitutional aspect of this matter which is the assertion of thte right of the Government of Canada to pass upon all these questions and to say that no title or honour should be conferred except upon the recommendation of .the Prime Minister of Canada, speaking for the Government of Canada, I have one or two observations to make on the other question, that of conferring hereditary titles. The matter has been so well and so ably dealt with by the hon. member for Kingston, supplemented by the hon. member for Brome, and further discussed by the Prime Minister and by the leader of the Opposition, that I shall not dwell upon it, but I think a recent British

writer has expressed in very clear and admirable language the effect of such hereditary titles. He said: "The effect is to develop the twin evils of snobbery and flunkey-ism," both incompatible with' a free democracy. We do not wish to see those twin evils flourish in Canada by the enlargement or development of such a system. It has been suggested by my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition that we should go still further. This Order in Council goes further than any proposal made up to this time by any government in Canada. It is the most advanced declaration on the question of titles made by any government in Canada. My right hon. friend has said that the British Commonwealth has made progress not by revolution, but by orderly development, and it may be that what he has predicted, in this case will be true tin the future; but certainly up to this time we have gone even in advance of public opinion, as indicated by the resolution submitted to the House and now upon the Order Paper. Personally, I am a democrat, and I would not object to be present at the bonfire to which my right hon. friend the' leader of the Opposition referred, but it may be we will not have the opportunity of witnessing that for a short time to come. The whole question is larger than the simple question of conferring certain titles and dignities. It is the whole question of a class or caste system. We all realize in the time of a war like this, when we are fighting the battle of democracy against autocracy and for the triumph of our free democratic institutions, the spirit of democracy will have a larger expression in English-speaking communities after the war than prior to it. The whole tendency will toe towards a fuller expression of democracy in all the affairs of government.
When we recall the fact that more than sixty per cent of the men who have gone from Canada hr fight our battles come under the class of labouring men. we realize what a tremendous contribution the working men of Canada are making for the preservation of our homes, our liberties, our property, our free institutions. I venture to think that when these working men return to Canada, having defended our homes, preserved our lives and liberty, and saved for us our inheritance, they will expect and demand a larger share in that inheritance than they have received in the past. If that is true of Canada it is true also of Great Britain. The ferment of industrial and political revolution is at work. That man
LMr, Rowell.]
to-day is (blind who does not look into the future and see the great and the grave possibilities that face us. It behooves us at this time, facing conditions as they exist, to recognize that the democratic tide is setting in, that it will go on to the flood, and to set our houses in order and give full recognition to the honest service, the honest toil of the honest man, so that, not only will every toiler have the rights which my honourable friend from Kingston (Mr. Nickle) mentioned, but he will live under conditions where he is able not only to earn sufficient to maintain himself in decency and comfort, but to provide a suitable home for himself and family, to feed and clothe those dependent on him, and to give them .a suitable education so that every child born in Canada may be properly equipped for the service and the opportunities of life.
We are facing great industrial and social changes as well as changes in the political world. Because this whole system of hereditary titles is absolutely inconsistent with the spirit of democracy, and with the great cause for which our gallant men are fighting, we are opposed to its continuation in Canada. The Government has stated its position that no more shall be conferred, and if proper legal means can 'be found for putting an end to the hereditary character of titles already conferred these means will be found and the spirit of this Order in Council will be carried out to the full extent and power of the Government.


John Hampden Burnham: Mr. Speaker, I had hoped to
give way to some honourable gentleman on the other side who would continue this debate, following in the footsteps of the right honourable the leader of the Opposition -(Sir Wilfrid Laurier) who has done me, the humble member for West 'Peterborough, the very signal honour of having announced himself a convert to my views. I wish to express my gratitude to the leader of the Opposition for his gracious acknowledgement of the correctness of my statement. I must confess that, knowing how ibroad his sympathies were and what a splendid and highly illuminated idea he had of democracy, my feelings received a severe rebuff when, having brought a resolution before the House on a previous occasion, I found that he could rise and speak against it. The leader of the Government for the time being probably felt called upon for some reason beyond my penetration to object to it. 'The members of the House, I had found, were distinctly in

favour of my view that all titles of honour in -Canada should be dispensed with as being entirely inconsistent with the necessities of democracy. But, when the right bon. leader of the Opposition, without waiting for others to intervene in the debate, and without giving the humbler members, the back benchers, an opportunity to express their opinions, snuffed us all out in a genial, thoroughly polite and chivalrous manner, I felt there w.as nothing much more to be said. I went away considerably abashed. But, how proud am I to-night to feel that, having thought the matter over, his conscience having pricked him, he has come to the conclusion that it is necessary to retrace that step and speak *according to the promptings of his own heart, the teaching of his own knowledge and the aspirations of democracy and to vote for doing .away with all those artificial distinctions which mean nothing and which cannot make a man any better than he is.
I view, as I did on that occasion, the long procession of people who pass in the course of everyday life. The last shall be first and the first last. It was sometime before I grasped the true idea of that phrase. When a woman has been left, by the untimely death of her husband with .a large brood of small children to bring up, when she faces her task boldly, meeting all the trials that we know surround her and fighting the good fight; when she brings her children up and turns them out good citizens, working her way for herself and family as the hirelings perhaps of people who have done nothing but who have received the very titles to which we now object, if virtue, if greatness, is to be rewarded, in Heaven's name, why is it that such a woman should not be created a Lady of the Wash tub if others are to he created Ladies of the Bed Chamber?
We have had to-day a magnificent restatement of the case of democracy by the hon. member from Kingston (Mr. Nickle). He went into the whole case thoroughly and well realizing how difficult it is to read copious quotations and put them all down on Hansard so that those who come to read the matter up will have a thorough grasp of the whole question. I admired his perseverance just as much as I was charmed by his fluency of speech. Democracy, as the previous speaker has so well said, is a growth, the very flower of the people <i the world; and instead of being rebuked by having titles thrust upon people who, in many cases, do not deserve them at all, it should
be encouraged by an emphasis being placed upon the equality of all people who deserve recognition. How absurd it is to analyze the question of the bestowment of titles. Pray, who could give Plato a title? Who is there would venture to dub Aristotle or Socrates with a title. They did attempt to give a * title to Sir Isaac Newton, who. interpreted the heavens for us. He probably knew nothing about it, but they gave him a knighthood which one of our Kings of England gave to a roast of beef. We have also Shakespeare remaining without a title; Milton, Leibwitz and Laplace. When we come to investigate the history of learning, the history of greatness, we find that as a matter of fact titles are a blot, not an honour. We should therefore he much less scrupulous than we might otherwise be in addressing a request to His Majesty to discontinue bestowing titles of honour upon people when they are in themselves unnecessary, and historically incorrect.
The resolution is to be interpreted in two ways: One is, do the people of this country want titles? I do not suppose there is a member of this House who is not prepared to answer and to say: No.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


John Hampden Burnham: If that he the case, why not dispense with further discussion; it is not necessary to go into the merits of the case, at all, because the people rule. This is the age of democracy. When we speak of prerogatives, there is no prerogative but that of the people. When the people have said we do- not wish for titles, that is enough.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


John Hampden Burnham: Whether it is philosophically and intrinsically correct, or otherwise, it is not for us to say. The people, not le Roi, reign, and what the people will must he done. I am not, nor is anybody else, speaking in the slightest disrespect of the institution of monarchy. It has served its purpose in the past, and no doubt will serve its purpose in the future. That does not in the least derogate from the fact that the people do not want precedence and privilege which were once and for all swept away by the French Revolution. The people want more of that; and if this war does not suffice to convince men that the good and the peace of the world depend upon democracy, then in God's name, what will convince them?
I have been asked why I did not bring this matter up again. For two reasons: One was that I thought that titles were an

insignificant thing in comparison with the issues at stake at the present time, and in the face of the very fact that our soldiers one and -all deserve titles- which we have not the power to give them.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.
f


John Hampden Burnham: That is one reason and in response to the request of the member for Kingston (Mr. Nickle) I gave him that reason. There was another reason which I did not give him and that reason is this: Having the abolition of the titles of honour thoroughly at heart, I was looking for cooperation, and if I could find one, two, three or a dozen more who would take up the burden-I knew my own heart was true -I was glad to see them co-operate and undertake it. Therefore was I not delighted to see the member for Kingston -and the member for Brome (Mr, McMaster) put resolutions on the Order Paper? Far be it from .me to say that they have stolen my thunder. More power to them. Let us have more expression from -the people of this country. We had -an expression from the people through the newspapers. The newspapers- exercise a very great power in this country, -and I must freely and frankly say that it is a power for good. They are doing with a conscientiousness the work of expressing public opinion upon democratic principles in Canada that speaks well for the future of this country, and the men of this House must see to it that they keep abreast of the times, of the newspaper, of the aspirations of the people, and of the very right -and- justice of the case.
I cannot sit down without saying that I quite .heartily concur in the statement of the member for Kingston when he says, in appreciation of the very forward steps taken by the Government in the OrdeT in Council, that a vote of this House would very greatly strengthen the hands of the ministry. I trust therefore, that the resolution will go on record, and not only so but that the chief men of this House, the men who in future will historically represent public opinion in Canada, men like the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition -and others will be chronicled' with the men who represent Canada in this great new Parliament, throbbing with the new life of the country, where there are so many representatives of a high order commercially and otherwise, in this new Parliament fresh from the people and through thoroughly understanding wh-at the spirit of democracy in Canada is, in putting on record that they do not wish any further so-called titles of honour to he conferred


upon its citizens, but that every man should do his level best for his country and realize that the highest reward he possibly can have is a consciousness of having unselfishly, done his duty.


Mr. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Kamour-aska):: 
An hon. MEMBER:: He did not forget
the " beaver " either.


Ernest Lapointe: That gentleman has been given a new position recently. I -must say that if -a capacity for disseminating the opposite of truth is a qualification for the office, he possesses tihiis fitness to a remarkable degree. Buffon has said:
" La louange publique, signe ficlatant du mfi-rite est une monnaie plus prficieuse que l'or, rtiais qui perd son prix et meme devient vile, lorsqu'on la convertit en effet de commerce."
The translation of these word's is as follows:	" Public praise, shining sign of
deserving merit, is more precious than gold; but it loses its price, and even becomes valueless, when it is perverted into a negotiable article.",
A lavish distribution of titles has had the effect of depreciating the institution itself, and of making it no longer a valuable distinction for a citizen to he given & title. The institution itself is vicious and' productive of evil. It works as an inducement for gentlemen of proud dispositions, or whose ladies have social ambitions, not to do anything which might -injure their chances of obtaining honours and putting them on bad terms with those who are responsible -for 'their distribution-. I am not sure that this has not had -a certain effect with- certain gentlemen dbring the Hast general election, or previous to it. It has always been so. When old republicans protested to Naipoleon because he had instituted new orders in France, he said: " You call them toys; know that by these toys people are led." It is the same policy today, and has always been so. T'he ambition to acquire something which distinguishes one from- his fellows is as strong to-day as it was in the days when the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans were the great nations of the world. Now, Sir, I admit that great acts of heroism and of public devotion, great services to the State, outstanding talents and virtues, deserve special recognition, hut 1 deny that such recognition should take the form of empty titles. The public soul and spirit shall always discern true -merit. M. Thiers, the great French statesman, had been created a baron by King Louis Philippe, hut he never used the title. This did not prevent the French people, after 1870, -from giving him a more glorious title, and from- hailing him as "Li'berateur du Territoire."

I hope that a vote will be taken on this resolution, that it will carry, and that the practice of conferring hereditary titles will he entirely done away with in this country. To those who are eager to get titles and to those who are actually wearing them with distinction, I commend these words of the poet: .
Titles of honour add not to his worth
Who is himself an honour to his title.


Mr. R. L. RICHARDSON (Springfield):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know that I should have risen at this stage of the debate were it not that I have an amendment to offer. iT should have preferred first to listen to the remarks of other hon. gentlemen, because, being a hew member, I like to sit at the feet of modern Gamaliels and learn wisdom. However, there is one objection to waiting until all other members have spoken: one finds that arguments that he had carefully worked out are used, one after the other.
The member for Kingston (Mr. Nickle) in his elaborate speech, to which I listened with interest and admiration, covered the ground very thoroughly. I had,' however, one note that I thought nobody would tcuch, and that was the instance of the French revolution. According to my reading of history, the French revolution was brought about largely by the aristocracy. The aristocrats of old France, coupled with the kings, were paramount, and the people-


Samuel Hughes: Do not forget the church.


Robert Lorne Richardson: I will leave my hon. friend to deal with the church; he is probably better qualified to do that tl'.an I am. I assume that the church had something to do with it. However, those who have read the history of the French revolution know how the kings and the princes and the aristocrats were all-powerful; how the people were down-trodden until the clast; came and the common people rose and cut the king's head off, cut the queen's head off, cut the heads off half or most of the aristocracy. All honour to them for doing so; for when they did that they sounded the tocsin of liberty in that great nation of France. Moreover, I believe that it is not unlikely that the present war is largely due to the creation of titles, to the existence of the aristocrats. If the common people throughout the world were ruling as they should rule, as I believe God intended that they should rule and shall rule in the future, this bloody war would not now be going on.
I regret that the member for Kingston did
[IMr. E. Lapointe.]
not make his motion more sweeping, by including all titles. I spoke to him about the matter a day or two ago-he will not charge me with violating any confidence, because I asked him if I might make this statement-and he informed me that he was heartily in favour of the abolition of all titles, though he feared that if he introduced a resolution to that effect, it would not carry.
After listening to the right hon. leader of the Opposition in his splendid declaration of democracy, my mind is brought back to the old days when the right hon. gentleman used to tell! us that he was a democrat to the hilt.


Wilfrid Laurier: Hear, hear.


Robert Lorne Richardson: It was delightful to me, an old Liberal, to find my leader of twenty-five years ago coming back to the old line and declaring that he would be proud to stand by and see the title that the King had conferred on him burned in a bonfire. I wish that we could set that bonfire in the House of Commons to-night, and burn up all the titles.
The amendment that I propose, if I am in order-it is so long since I have been in Parliament that perhaps I am a little rusty on the rules; however, you will set me right, Mr. Speaker, if I am wrong-has for its object the abolition of all titles. Had I not secured a seconder, I should have asked the right hon. leader of the Opposition, in view of the statement just made by him, to second the motion; and I am sure that he would have been willing to do so, as would also the member for Kamouraska (Mr. E. Lapointe).


Ernest Lapointe: Anything in that
line.


Robert Lorne Richardson: So that I have a
number of seconders. The wording of my amendment, which is seconded toy Mr. Levi Thomson, is as follows:
That the word "hereditary" be struck out from the resolution and that the third paragraph thereof conclude with the word "Canada" in the ensuing line.
That means that the word "hereditary" be eliminated from the resolution, which would then read as follows:
We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, humbly approach Your Majesty praying that Your Majesty hereafter may be graciously pleased to refrain from conferring any titles upon Your subjects domiciled or living in Canada.

The test of the resolution, is deleted. I believe, with my leader of former days, that if "we are not going to. have a new heaven at the close of the war, we are at least going to have a new earth. A tide is rising against titles of any kind. I was interested in the Order in Council and the correspondence which the leader of the House read, and I could not help thinking that after all what a waste of time and money is involved in even discussing the subject of the conferring of these titles; let us be done with them altogether.
It is said that that great independent democrat, Robert Burns, was invited 'by a local laird to participate in some amusement which a number of distinguished guests had been invited from Edinburgh to enjoy. When Burns arrived at the house he was shown into the kitohen with the servants of the house, while the titled persons who were invited enjoyed their feast in the dining-room. It is said that while Burns sat in the kitchen he wrote that great declaration of independence, "A Man's a Man for a' That:"
A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Guid faith, he maunna fa' that.
Tradition says that he recited these lines before the company, and that when he came to the following passage he pointed his finger at the person who was being entertained, and spoke out in declamatory tones:
Te see yon birkie ca'd a Lord,
Wha struts and stares and a' that;
Though thousands tremble at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
We have had one Prime Minister in Canada who has refused a title. I refer to the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie-and I am sure when I speak the name of Alexander Mackenzie who was Prime Minister of this country from 1873 to 1878, the blood must flow fast through the veins of Liberals because Alexander Mackenzie was a real Liberal. Alexander Mackenzie was the type of Liberal who would (sooner go down fighting for what he believed to be right than stand for what he thought to be wrong. Then we had that great tribune of the people, Hon. Edward Blake, who led the Opposition in this House for years and years, and who was perhaps one of the noblest .sons that Canada ever produced. Hon. Edward Blake refused a title when it was offered to him. We have also a newspaperman in Canada-hon. members will pardon me for mentioning his name,
because I am a journalist from boyhood myself, and I like to think we had one stalwart newspaperman in Canada, John Ross Robertson, proprietor of the Toronto Telegram, who recently refused a title. He preferred to go down to posterity as plain John Ross Robertson. He preferred that his children should remember him as plain John Ross Robertson. The State, the Crown, can do nothing to dignify our manhood. After all, I agree with what the Prime Minister said, that whatever is inherent in man will come out and that titles cannot make him greater than he is. If that he so, let us accept the declaration of the Prime Minister this evening, and let us declare that in this young democracy, in this gem of the British Empire, we will set our faces steadfastly in the direction of democracy, and it shall not be said of us that we love titles, or that we shall receive any title from the Crown or from any other source, but let it be said that we Canadians will do our duty in a plain, simple manner and be content with such dignity as manhood can confer upon us.


Mr. LEVI THOMSON (Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, as my name has 'been associated with the amendment, I beg to offer a very few remarks. I think the Union Government of the day is to be congratulated on the stand it has taken on this question. Those of us who have supported Union Government, sometimes perhaps a little against the grain, and who have made Union Government possible, may congratulate ourselves on the work that has been done by that Government. I have noted what the Prime Minister has said in the beginning of his remarks, and which has been quoted partially by the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Richardson), that is, that we are to judge men on their merits and not on any titles that are conferred upon them. That was the idea, if I do not quote the words exactly. They were very much along the same lines as the words quoted by my hon. friend from the great poet Robert Burns. If we are to judge men in this way, what, after all, is the use of titles? Titles, of any kind, are absolutely useless, if we are to so judge men. And if titles are useless why have them? There are plenty of useful things in this world without bothering our heads or wasting our time about the useless things. I have, therefore, very much pleasure, in seconding the amendment moved by my hon. friend from Springfield.
There can be no question that every hon. member present must support the original

resolution if we come to that resolution. I am heartily in accord with that resolution, and the Government are heartily in accord with it, because they have agreed to that themselves, and' there can certainly be no objection to this House expressing its approval of the action of the Government of the day, which is all we should be doing by passing the resolution which is submitted to us. I believe we should go further, and I for one am prepared to go further; I am prepared to follow the matter to its legitimate conclusion, and in doing so, I believe we should do away with titles altogether, and in doing that, we should only be carrying out the principle laid down by the Prime Minister in his address.
Hon, RODOLPHE LEMIEUX (Maison-neuve): Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great pleasure and interest to the remark-aible speech delivered this afternoon by my hon. friend from Kingston (Mr. Nickle). After having listened to him and to my good friend from Brume (Mr. McMaster), I thought their resolution was not broad enough. I am glad my hon. friend from Springfield has implemented that resolution by the amendment which he has just moved in very eloquent language. I shall give my support to that amendment, and I hope the House will face squarely the issue. Public opinion will be very much disappointed, indeed, if, after the House has spent the day over this question, it should 'be dropped. My hon. friend from Kamourhska (Mr. E. Lapointe) has cited the words of Buffon about the inanity of titles, Might I be allowed to quote a few lines of a French-Canadian poet, which describe the situation in very noble language? The lines run thus:
"Sur cette terre sauvage "Ofl les titres sont inconnus,
"La noblesse est dans le courage "Dans les talents, dans les vertus.
On this barren land where titles are unknown, True nobility resides in courage, talents and virtue.
These are the true sentiments which are embodied in the masterly addresses which have been delivered this afternoon by the mover and by the seconder. Titles in the Old Country have been a source of corruption. They are a .source of corruption in Canada to-day. As my hon. friend from Springfield (Mr. Richardson), whom I was so pleased to welcome in this House, after so many years of absence, said a moment ago, titles in the pre-revolutionary days in France, as he will read in Carlyle's history, were the cause of malfeasance in office. Privileges and titles also precipitated 
a revolution in England, where, Sir, you must not forget that also a king was Le-headed. Let my hon. English-speaking friends, who are so proud of the glories of old England, not forget that if the French once beheaded their king, the English beheaded theirs also.


Robert Lorne Richardson: He deserved it just as much, if not more.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Some appointments of
late have created a commotion in England. I regret to say that such a commotion was created on the occasion of honours bestowed on a Canadian far more famous for his cement merger than for his accomplishments on behalf of the Empire. I am sorry the name of Canada is to-day being branded in England on account of the bestowal of titles on such an individual. Sir, I cannot forget that during many months before the last election that individual libelled and slandered the province to which I belong, the faith which I profess, and the race from which I come. Sir, aristocracy of that brand is not healthy; it is not congenial to our soil. ,


Samuel Hughes: May I ask a question?


Rodolphe Lemieux: Yes.


Samuel Hughes: Would the hon. member have any objection to stating how the gentleman to whom he refers libelled his people?


Rodolphe Lemieux: Yes. If my hon. friend will go to the library, and akk for Max Aitken's Epitome of the War, one edition published in English and one published in French, the one purporting to be a copy of the other, although it is not, he will see where Sir Max Aitken libelled the province of Quebec.	[DOT]


Samuel Hughes: I do not believe it.


Ernest Lapointe: Read the Daily Express, his newspaper.


Rodolphe Lemieux: At all events, thank Heaven, the French Canadians are not alone in gauging the nobility of Lord Beaverbrook. In England to-day, if yon read the Westminster Gazette, the Manchester Guardian, and some of the most influential organs of public opinion, his appointment is very seriously questioned. Aristocracy, I say, is not healthy for this country; it is not congenial to Canada. In the old days we had some nobility during the French domination, but if Canada is what it is to-day, we do not owe it to the French nobility. It is a matter of history that as soon as our ancestors were defeated

on the Plains of Abraham, the whole of the nobility returned to France, and the peasantry, the habitant of French Canada, with his cures, remained in the colony, and made it what it has become since. The nobility of the French regime, with a few honourable exceptions, which exceptions only prove the rule, did not take much interest in the colonization, the settlement and the industrial development of New France. That nobility was busy breaking the law enacted by His Majesty the King, *against trading with the Indian and exchanging liquor for furs. They were indeed most picturesque, those coureurs des bois. They were mostly all noblemen, but nevertheless they were breaking the King's laws.
I repeat it, the best ndbility that French Canada ever produced was the French Canadian habitant himself, the honest simple *peasant of old. It has been stated, and quite erroneously, that the province of Quebec had been a feudal country until 1854. That statement is an historical error. Tbere was never in French Canada any feudal system. 'The seigniorial tenure was only an undertaking tfor the colonization and the settlement of lands in Canada. There were , a few of the old seigniorial privileges enjoyed by the seigneurs, and for the time being all went well, but, Sir, after a while, it became evident that the seigniorial system created an impediment to not only colonization bnt to the industrial development of the country, and in 1854 the French Canadian censitaires demanded the abolition of the seigniorial tenure. I said a *moment ago that titles were a source of corruption. in Canada. Does it not strike you, Sir, that on the eve of an election the Government of the day bestows titles on journalists? IHon. gentlemen will have noticed that during the past five, six or seven years past many journalists have been made knights, baronets and lords. That is where the greatest source of .corruption is felt. The wells of public opinion are poisoned by those new aristocrats, who, in return for the titles that are being .bestowed on them, libel one good half of their fellow-countrymen-one good half of Canada. Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend the President of the Council spoke of the progress which self-government had made in the Empire, and he sard that Canada had been in the van in each off these progressive movements, lit is quite true that Canada has been in the van of progress in the many developments which have been accomplished by the various dominions composing the Empire. In my judgment, the greatest forward
movement that was ever accomplished was the granting of responsible government to Canada by the Mother Country, thanks to the efforts, the energy, the courage and the true Canadianisim of the men of 1840. Responsible government made a step further by the coming of Confederation, and, Sir,
I regret that my hon. friend forgot that it made one step further when the right hon. gentleman beside me (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) created the Canadian Navy, >and obtained from the Mother Country the right for Canada to control her own zone in the Pacific and in the Atlantic ocean, I am pleased, Mr. Speaker, to find that at least in the Canadian House of Commons we have had a Canadian field day. We heard expressions of opinion from the other side of the House which make me think that imany of the hon. gentlemen should sit on this side. I see no one on this side who. would want to cross and take a seat on the other side. I believe there has been a healthy injection of good sound Liberal doctrine into the present Government, hut I must warn my hon. friend, the President of Conn-oil, that if titles are abolished, as they will be if this amendment is voted upon, this evening, there is great danger that with blatant jingoism, acute Imperialism and haughty militarism, the curse of every land, titles might still revive in Canada.
Imperialism which invariably leads to jingoism, because it is a more acute form of imperialism, breeds aristocratic tendencies, it is the seed plot of titles. Sir, there are some gentlemen in this country who do not care much now to be called Canadians. In this city of Ottawa a society ot women gravely decided that in future they ishould not sing "0 Canada." It was too vulgar; it was too common! We have reached a point in our history when some people are ashamed to claim Canada as their native country. I think my honourable friend the president of the Council (Mr. Rowell), when he was a Liberal, claimed that he was proud to be a citizen o: the British Empire, but it is not our only citizenship as we are all proud to be Canadians. The one citizenship doesn't exclude the other. But, when a journalist has acquired a large fortune in this Canadian commonwealth, if he tastes the wine of imperialism and of jingoism, if perchance he goes across and meets lords and dukes, he suddenly asks himself: "Why should I not get a title?" That is the psychological moment when he forgets his Canadian citizenship and adopts flunkey-ism. He then is ready to sacrifice the independence of his paper, to sell his pen

and that of his editors in order to parade as Sir So-and-So, or Lord So-and-So.
I am proud, Mr. Speaker, that in the House of 'Commons, Conservatives and Liberals have united this evening in the sentiments which have been embalmed in both the resolution and the amendment. We have at last realized that the time has come to do away with all these trappings, with all this fuss and feathers, proclaiming that we are proud to be simply Canadians, simply British subjects, law-abiding citizens of a great democracy.


Samuel Hughes: Mr. Speaker, I would not have interjected any remarks into this debate but for the unfortunate reference made by the honourable member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Lemieux) to Lord Beaverbrook.


Rodolphe Lemieux: I can prove that, you know.


Samuel Hughes: The honourable gentleman has undertaken to prove things before and has signally failed. Lord Beaverbrook is a gentleman of whom every honest Canadian may be proud. The statement which my honourable friend made that Lord Beaverbrook had reflected on French Canadians in his book is absolutely untrue and without foundation in any way, sense or shape. His reflections on Lord Beaverbrook in connection with any business transactions in which he has engaged are utterly unfounded. The cement merger, or any other merger that has been spoken of, or any other transaction that the honourable member has mentioned, is clean in comparison with deals that my honourable friend has been associated with. He will not question me; I have the facts.


Rodolphe Lemieux: Sir Sanford Fleming had the facts.


Samuel Hughes: The hon. gentleman failed to get a knighthood when nearly every Liberal in the Cabinet of the right hon. gentleman who sits at his left (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) was plastered with titles, hereditary and others, obtained from the British Government. Lord Beaverbrook's name will go down in history while the names of some of the hon. gentlemen who have spoken here to-night will have been forgotten. Lord Beaverbrook will stand as having done more for the cause of democracy and humanity than all the Lemieuxs that ever wore mufti or uniform in any part or at any time in the history of the world. It is absolutely uncalled for to drag in the name of an honoured man who has done so much for the cause of democracy

in this war and who has derived no profit while engaged in upholding this great cause. The hon. gentleman has vituperated the leader of the Opposition to-night. Why did not the leader of the Opposition recommend for a knighthood the hon. member from Maisonneuve? Nearly every man in his Cabinet got one. Canada was dosed with them as never before, and if there is a revulsion of feeling against titles coming from Great Britain now it is partly due to the fact that the leader of the Opposition accepted a title himself after declaring on every platform that he was a democrat to the hilt, and then labeling his own followers for sixteen years until titles got to be common.


An hon. MEMBER:: What about honorary colonels?


Samuel Hughes: Honorary colonels
were conferred, as honours are conferred on men at the front, on citizens who had done this country some service. Take Jack Stewart and scores like him; their names will go down as men who have done something in this war. We are proud of what some of these honorary colonels have done. We are not ashamed of the honorary colonels. I would not have said one word if it had not been (for the reference made .to my friend, Max Aitken, who has done not only more than I can tell here to-night but has practically saved the situation on more than one occasion in connection with this great war. I have examined statements which have been made about Max Aitken over .and over again, and I tell the hon. member from Maisonneuve that the meanest transaction that Aitken was ever associated with is clean compared with the best that the hon. member from Maisonneuve and his friends were ever associated with.
I am in a position to back that up. I had the honour to be talking with a gentleman in Montreal and he said that he could not understand ho.w it was that I would associate with Max Aitken. He named Max Aitken and a couple more of my good friends.
I said to him: "My Christian friend, I have heard of all your palavering from one end *->t the country to the otheT, and I am in a position to tell you that the dirtiest transaction in which Lord Beaverbrook was ever concerned was clean in comparison with the best I have heard of you, and I know of your doings from British Columbia to the Atlantic." Now I make the statement to my hon. friend from Maisonneuve-let him take it up and I will meet him on his own ground: Lord Beaverbrook's dirtiest transaction, that I have heard of, is clean

compared with what my hon. friend has been associated with. Come along, now.
I stand here to-night to endorse the Order in Council as read by the Prime Minister. As far as the amended resolution is concerned, I am not just prepared to endorse it; I have never yet been troubled, either on account of my crown, stars, cross-swords or titles; I do not have to be. Let me supplement the remarks of my hon. friend from Springfield (Mr. Richardson), my good old opponent and colleague in days gone by in the House. He quoted from Robbie Burns about some character who was .a laird in the old days in Scotland. Let me point out to him that one swallow does not make the summer. There is a supplementary statement to the verse he quoted from, it runs like this:
And man for man the world o'er
The best is he, an' a' that
Who stands erect in self respect
And acts the man, an' a' that.
Whether labouring man or laird the individual who counts and whom we want in this part of the world is the "man" and not the "autocrat." I want to point out, Sir, that the spirit shown by the right hon. leader of the Opposition in his little braggadocio was amusing to me. Imagine for an instant, if you can, the right hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier sliding over the market square to deposit his insignia of office in a pile. Why, wjld horses would not drag him there. Talk about autocracy and democracy, there is not a democratic act I have known of that the right hon. the leader of the Opposition has ever practised. In the past he has taken the most autocratic position, and * as a (member of the old Liberal party he always did that. He ruled his following then and rules them now more' firmly than the Kaiser ever ruled Germany.	We have sitting on the
floor of this House to-night a gentleman (Mr. Fielding) who was Minister of Finance in the Cabinet of the right hon. the leader of the Opposition, .and when the great question of creating two new provinces in the Northwest, was consummated, the gentleman to whom I refer never was consulted hut was led into the House to vote like a whipped child.


William Stevens Fielding: If the hon. gentleman will allow me to interrupt. I was in Europe when the Bill respecting the organization of the new provinces in the Northwest was drawn and I could not be consulted. When I came back I took my stand on that matter, and my position was stated in the House. When
the hon. gentleman states that I was not consulted he is not putting the facts fairly before the House.


Samuel Hughes: I made the statement that the hon. gentleman was not consulted, and I repeat it. I do not know where he was, but I make the statement that he sat in the House and went back on the principles which he had enunciated year after year, to my certain knowledge. The then Minister of the Interior, Mr. Clifford Sifton, now Sir Clifford' Sifton, was not consulted either. He told me that he had not been consulted in relation to these matter^. But the Apostolic Delegate from Rome was consulted by the right hon. leader of the Opposition in regard to the formation of the provinces in question when responsible ministers of the Crown and responsible members of the House of Commons were not consulted. Talk about your democracy, why that is the very height of autocracy.
I might point out to this Government that a great many persons consider that many of the Orders in -Council passed from time to time by the present Administration do not savour of democratic ideas as interpreted 'by the people. I might point out further that we talk of democracy, -but where in the world can you find-and I am no defender of the nobility, I have taken just as strong .a stand against the aristocracy of Great Britain as any man living, I believe now and have always believed in democracy and try^to prove myself a consistent democrat-where in the civilized world can you find a race of men who have So solidly stood for the cause of democracy and have again and again intervened between the tyranny of the Crown on the one hand and the tyranny of the mob on the other, to such -an extent and to such a degree as the so-called aristocracy of England -have done whether you take the laws made on the field of Runnymede, which has been referred to by the Prime Minister, the time of King Charles referred to by my hon. friend from Springfield (Mr. Richardson), or the time of King William. Alwayis the British aristocracy have been on the side of true democracy, and I say here that the aristocracy of England have ever been the greatest democrats. That is, taken as a body. Of course now and then you will find autocrats among them, but taken as a body they have stood more for the liberty of the people than the people themselves have ever done, and always to a greater degree than the Sovereign himself has in that regard excepting William Prince of Orange. Moreover, in the


William Folger Nickle: Possibly the hon. gentleman did not quite catch my meaning this afternoon. I said nothing about sowing - grain, I talked about raising sheep.


Samuel Hughes: My hon. friend does hot know what he is talking about. Let me inform him that the ground formerly devoted to raising oats is now used for raising sheep. On the island of Mull the very ground that for the last thirty years has been raising sheep was once raising oats. There were once 37,000 people in the Island of Mull. There are now only 2,500. They raised oats then, and they raise sheep to-day, and it is not due to the

fact that there is a landlord, but that their fields could not compete with the prairies of the United States, and accordingly the settlers have gone hither and thither, and the inhabitants are now raising sheep, because it does not pay to raise oats. The honourable member for Kingston should be more careful, and know whereof he speaks.
They are truly democratic in England. I remember the first time I was over there many years ago. The toast to the King was honoured by every one standing. The next toast was to the Prince of Wales, and in this country, this land of autocrats and nabobs, everybody bobs, up when the toast to the Prince of Wales is drunk. I stood up, but a gentleman pulled me down, saying: "We never stand for the toast to the Prince of Wales in England." They toast the King, not because he is King, but because of the sovereign position which he occupies. They never stand for dukes, lords and princes; they remain in their seats and drink in silence. England is where you find the truest democracy.
Now, speaking of labour unions-and I had no intention of bringing this up-the great danger to this country to-day is the autocracy of labour unions. I use that statement advisedly. We have had in recent times the example of Bolshevikism, and the greatest autocracy that has ever disgraced the world, to my mind, has been in Russia, where the attempt to raise a nation from labour unions is being tried by those who pose as democrats and who are looked up to as democrats. The greatest tyranny we have to face now is the autocracy and tyranny of the men who pose as democrats, though they have not a democratic principle in their whole constitution. Until these labour unions are put in their place, until the country sees that these organizations have no right to limit the production of commodities in our factories, until labour unions abrogate the right to hold themselves as a separate and distinct body in the nation-a nation within a nation,-we will never have democratic government, we will have government by the most irresponsible and autocratic element in any land. I back labour unions so far as they benefit their members and help production; but when they say: You shall limit production, and no man shall act on hiis own behalf-even the Order in Council introduced last Friday which ties up every naan for labour-limits a man that goes out on strike; that is the only thing that I objected to in that Order-until that time arrives we are going to have

trouble, and we will be ruled by tbe most irresponsible autocracy.
I have no intention of saying a word in this debate, but the unfortunate rejoinder of the bon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Lemieux), wbo probably feels hurt that he was ignored by the right hon. leader of the Opposition in the days when he w.as securing titles for everybody, and who was smarting under that disappointment, evidently caused him to speak as he did.


Mr. BUREAU:: Would the hon. gentleman be willing to throw 'his title on the bonfire in the market-place?


Samuel Hughes: I do not have to
depend on titles. The people know I am one of the boys, and that I am .always ready to deliver the goods


Jacques Bureau: If they do not, then you tell them.


Samuel Hughes: Well, never mind.
Let me repeat: Lord Beaverbrook has been attacked most maliciously in this country. I tell the hon. gentlemen, and those 'who have been attacking him here, and the ir-responsibles in England, who are not fit to black his shoes, that I know the man himself as I know the hon. member for Maison-neuve, and I am speaking of what I know.
An hon. MiEMBER: What about Flavelle?


Samuel Hughes: I know the hon.
member for Maisonneuve, and I say to him here to-night that the meanest transaction which Max Aitken has ever been connected with is clean, compared with some of the deals that the hon. member has been associated with. Some one asks me:	What about Flavelle? He is a gentleman who has caused all this turmoil. Talk of the water in stocks

what about the water in pork?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, o.h.


Samuel Hughes: My good friend, the President of the Privy Council is supposed to be his right hand man, and he is a "democrat to the hilt"; and the other runs the pork end of it. I shall not here enter into a discussion of anything in that connection -to-night, but 1 am taking the liberty of informing the House, that possibly at no distant date, should opportunity arise in the House, I am prepace-i for a very interesting and lengthy discussion in connection with many institutions with which that gentleman is connected. There are old things to be uncovered, and a true statement of affairs on. many matters of interest to the public in the past two or three years may yet come out fairly and squarely, ami
will prove very interesting. Let me tell the hon. member for Maisonneuve that I shall not tolerate the making of wrong charges or the slandering of a gentleman as he has slandered Max Aitken here to-night.


Mr. JOSEPH READ (Prince):: Mr. Speaker, the hon.. gentleman (Sir Sam. Hughes! who has just sat down is a splendid illustration of the desirability of doing away with titles. We are too close to judge of men's honour here, we have to see them in perspective, and coming down from our province by the sea, with the straits of Northumberland between us and the mainland, we can view this gentleman's virtues better than those in other parts of the Dominion. I want to say of my hon. friend who has just sat down, with .all his idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, with all his humour, that, in my judgment, notwithstanding all these, and all the mistakes he has made, he will occupy a niche in the hall of fame in future history because of his great performance in connection with this war. But simply for that probably, and nothing more. With regard to another titled gentleman here, whom I see beside me, his title is a rag compared with the glorious position that he will occupy in the history of his time and of his country-I refer to the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), that grand, lone figure, who during the last five or six months has stood out and led his people out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage alone, with tne men who ought to be supporting him heaping vituperation and abuse upon him! In the future, when the history of these times is written, his name will stand out as the greatest star of these times. The greatest Imperial statesman of our great Empire. Imperial in the best sense of that word.
There are two kinds of imperialism. There is the kind that stands for the integrity of the great British Empire, not as a solidified nation, but as a great federal body, in each part of which autonomy, home rule, obtains. The only way that this great Empire can be united is, as the poet Willie said, by the " chains of liberty." That is Laurier imperialism !
Some hon. gentlemen have referred to Robbie Burns. They do not seem to realize that Robbie Burns was a prophet. The following are the concluding words of that famous poem of his to which hon. gentlemen opposite have referred:
"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that;
That sense and worth o'er all the earth May bear the gree -and a' that.



For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show and a' that;	,
The man of independent mind Is king- of men for a' that."
What would it matter to our titled friends if they should hum their titles to-morrow? The position given to them toy their miserable titles does not amount to a scrap of paper compared' with the position they must occupy in the future ,when each man will be judged on his merits'.
Like other members who have spoken on this subject, I am against the degradation of Canadian public life 'by the conferring of titles, and I desire to put myself on record as supporting the amendment.


Mr. HUME ORONYN (London):: Mr. Speaker, it will doubtless seem presumptuous to you that at this late hour of the night and after so lengthy a debate I should rise to address the House, particularly when I am deeply conscious of how far I fall short of the eloquence and research which has had my admiration and envy this afternoon. But, like the member for Brome (Mr. Mc-Master), I had given hostages on this question, as it had come up among others during the election, and I should not be redeeming one of the few promises I was called upon to make if I did not put myself on record.
It was a pleasure to have the resolution introduced into this House, and it was a still greater satisfaction to have the Order in Council which had been prepared toy the Government laid before the House. The amendment just proposed receives, it is evident, the support of practically every member present, if one may judge from the unanimous expression of opinion; and so far as I am concerned it receives my heartiest support. I do, however, wish to dissociate myself from some remarks which may be fairly 'construed into an attack on the House of Lords. While the Parliament of Cromwell might well pass a resolution commencing as follows:
The Commons of England assembled in Parliament, finding by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous

"
I do not think it becomes the Parliament of any overseas dominion to reflect upon or criticize an institution which pertains almost altogether to the legislation of Great Britain, particularly at a time like this, when, as a former speaker said, that institution, its members and their descendants have done much to redeem themselves from the disdain with which they had been treated.

In view of the fact that 150 heirs to hereditary titles have already fallen in the war, and that some 2,000 recipients of honours have gone to their last home, I should be sorry to foe a party to anything in the nature of criticism. But it is clear that neither the Order in Council-I think that the Prime Minister referred particularly to that point-nor the resolution or amendment do reflect in any way upon that House, so that one can. support them without hesitation.
I agree with what the mover of the resolution said, that even in the mndst of war this question should receive our immediate and urgent attention. Debrett states that during the past three years, since the war began, honours have been conferred in 7,900 cases; that, of course, includes the various companionships. During the last twelve months, 3,870 such Orders have been granted; 18 peers have been created; 32 baronets, 277 knights and 3,472 companions. These, with some additional honours granted to existing peers make up the total of 3,870, so that, if that flood is to continue-and in comparison with past years, it is a flood-we in Canada could not fail to be inundated by it.
As the member for Springfield (Mr. Richardson) has said, the objection to speaking late in the course of a discussion is that one's arguments have all been advanced, one's quotation used, and little remains to be said. I should like, however, to emphasize the difficulty which the Prime Minister pointed out regarding the fourth section of the Order in Council. I agree with him that great difficulties exist, and although they may be removed by the action of the Imperial Parliament, that, as he pointed out, involves the consent of the House of Lords. As late as 1907 a case came before the House of Lords which illustrates the tenacity with which the Lords guard their privileges. It appears that in 1302 a picturesque individual who went by the name of Roger le Bygod surrendered his earldom of Norfolk to Edward I. Ten years later Edward II. granted to Thomas de Biotherton this earldom, ajnd for many years that new family enjoyed the honour. In 1907 a direct descendant of Thomas de Brotherton asked to be confirmed in	the title. But	the Lords heldthat the original earl could not surrender	his	title,	that	the	chartergranted	ten	years	later	was	invalid,
* and that the only persons entitled to the Norfolk title were the original descendants of our friend Bygod. As Lord Halsbury puts

it. "No peer of this realm can drown or extinguish his honour." As one knows, the doctrine of ennobled blood, based perhaps upon the same foundation as the divine right of kings, appears to endow the nobility with that ichor or ethereal fluid which supplies the veins of the gods instead of the blood of mortals, so that do what one may, it is 'a difficult matter to get rid of hereditary titles once they are granted. This, then, is the time to take action to prevent their entry into Canada, and for that reason the resolution should have the support not only of this House but of the country at large.
The mover of the resolution and others have pointed out very strikingly the evils which spring from the granting of titles. The harm is not so~ much to the recipient as to the rest of the community. Man is prone to worship, and too often, as we all know, he is ready to worship false gods. I remember Henry 'George prefacing one of his chapters with the translation of a proverb of India: *
White parasols and elephants mad with pride are the flowers of a grant of land.
It seems to me that might be paraphrased under these circumstances:
White stockinged serving men and a populace mad for worship are the flowers of a patent of nobility.


Mr. F. B. STAGEY (Westminster District) :: Mr. Speaker, I have only a few
words to say at this hour, but I venture to think that perhaps the House will permit a new voice from the far West to express his very hearty endorsation of the principles that have been so ably and fully set forth this afternoon and evening. I labour under a disadvantage and a handicap. Being a new member, I have been careful to read the rules of the House, and I find there is a prohibition against repetition. It is, therefore, almost impossible to avoid the consequences of an injunction at this hour. I think I voice to some extent the opinion of the far West when I say that the expressions that have been made here today will give to the people of the West intense satisfaction and delight. We were inclined to think that perhaps radicalism would find, or had found its fullest expression in the West. But I do not think there has been heard from any platform in the West any more radical or thoroughgoing democratic expressions and statements than have been made here this afternoon from the old provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
I would not presume to pass any criticism whatever upon any English habits or customs
33*
at the present time. We know that the Premier of Great Britain has stated openly and publicly his great debt and gratitude to the labour unions of Britain. He has gone out of his way, if I may say so, to express his intense satisfaction with the attitude of the labour element of England their contribution towards the victory that is before us as a people. It becomes us, I take it, to confine our criticisms at least to our own country, and our own business, and the question that is before the House. If there is one reason more than another why J believe the people of Canada are in sympathy with the attitude and action that is proposed this afternoon, it is this, that certain people receive titles which, in the judgment of those who know them best, their fellow citizens, their own friends, they do not deserve. I may be wrong in some cases, but I know in many cases this is the deliberate conviction of the people of Canada. The question may be asked: Why are the Canadian people opposed to this? Answers have been given in great numbers this afternoon, and I shall sum them all up in one sentence which, I think, covers the entire ground-the Canadian people do not want titles. They have many reasons for taking that stand, but the result is the same in every case. They believe that true merit is, "when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most."
I have been impressed with this thought that after all the voice of history is truly democratic. Reference was made by my hon. friend from Springfield to certain names which .are known in history without any appendage. The fact is that in the whole realm of history, whether we take the field of letters, the field of science, the field of art, the realm even of religion, the realm of philosophy or the realm of statesmanship, the outstanding names in each one of those departments is without a title of any type, shape or character. To quote the language of one of my hon. friends this afternoon, who would dream of adding any title to some of the great names of English history, particularly of English letters? From Homer down to Lloyd George they are all alike; they stand unadorned because they are adorned with the force of their own merit, their own manhood and their own superb character. If I remember my Canadian history aright, I think that during the last few years when the people of Canada have been appealed to to decide some great national question, two or three words would have summarized that appeal. In 1873 the issue before the Canadian people could have been summarized in two words.


William Stevens Fielding: I regret I had to be absent during part of the evening, having had to attend a committee meeting, and had not the pleasure of hearing my hon. friend, the President of Council (Mr. Rowell), nor the addresses of the hon. gentlemen who moved and seconded the amendment. I am informed, however, that an amendment has been moved, condemning all titles, and that is the issue upon which we are about to vote. Let me say that while, as most of my friends are aware, I have less appreciation, perhaps, than some others, less enthusiasm as to the value of these titles, I have never gone to the point of saying that all titles in Canada should be put an end to. I think the argument 
against hereditary titles is absolutely complete and unanswerable. I am glad that that argument was presented, not only by the hon. member for Kingston and the hon. .member for Brome, but Also in the very important Order in Council which the right hon. the Prime Minister brought down. But with Tespeet to titles generally, leaving aside those of an hereditary character, though, as I say I am not as enthusiastic as some others in my admiration of them, I am free to admit that there may be circumstances-it has seemed so in the past-that might justify them. I do not think we should discuss it from a personal point of view. If one cared to do that, we could go over the list of gentlemen honoured with titles, and many of them would be recognized as men who have won eminence in the particular lines in which they are engaged. Some titles have been granted which are open to criticism. In some cases gentlemen who have been a short time in the public service, who might modestly have w-aited a little longer, have heen ready to seize the title when the opportunity came. Prom one viewpoint if you take the whole list of titles you could -find very little ground to take exception to any one of them. One may say that all the recipients are decent, honourable respectable people. But if you tak-e up the list and gp over them one by one and say, wherein does this man- differ from a hundred men around him, what service has he rendered, what distinction has he in the community, -what reason was there for giving him a title any -more than giving it to a hundred men around him?-you may fail to get -an -answer. It is a case in which you might quote the old lines:
The thing itself is neither rich nor rare,
The only wonder is how it got there.
But 1 am not prepared to go so far as the hon. gentleman who would condemn the titles g-enerally. I think, properly awarded, there is something to be said in favour of the system, and an abuse oi a system is never a good reason for -abolishing it. While I am not a,s warm in my -admiration for titles as some others, I would be -content to-day to adopt the moderate p-osdtion taken by the hon. member for Kingston and I should be content to vote against hereditary titles, because I think, in that respect, the argument is complete -and unanswerable.
A word -more-not of any importance. My hon. friend from Victo-ria-Haliburton (Sir Sam Hughes), who is not in his -seat now, made some allusion to the conferring of

titles at the time *when the right hon. leader of the Opposition was Prime Minister, and he rather intimated that all the gentlemen in that Government got titles. They did not all get titles. Quite a number did not. While my hon. friend was speaking, I made a little calculation. I may he wrong, I am giving this thing in all good faith, subject to correction-"errors and omissions excepted." If I am correct in my memorandum-I am confining myself to the. Cabinet ministers who q-uietly drew titles to themselves, and I am not finding fault with any of them-I find that in the Cabinet of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the following gentlemen, drew titles: Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Louis Davie6, Sir Allen Aylesworth, Sir Richard Scott, Sir Frederick Borden and Sir William Mulock. They all received titles when they were Cabinet ministers. These coutrt six in number. I find that in the Cabinet which succeeded them, and of which my hon. friend the hon. gentleman from Halliburton was an ornament, the following gentlemen drew titles:	Right hon.
Premier, the Hon. Messrs. Kemp, Perley, Foster, White and Hughes. They count six. That means that in six years of the Government of which my hon. friend was a member they drew to themselves as many knighthooas as the Government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier drew in fifteen years.


Robert Laird Borden: While I was
absent from the Chamber a little while ago my hon. friend from Springfield (Mr. Richardson) moved an amendment to the resolution which is now under consideration, and to the exact meaning of which I think the attention of hon. gentlemen of this House ought to be directed before any vote is passed upon it. As I understand the amendment of the hon. gentleman, it would convert the resolution as originally proposed into a resolution which read's as follows :
To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, Most Gracious Sovereign,
We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, humbly approach Your Majesty, praying that Your Majesty hereafter may be graciously pleased to refrain from conferring any titles upon your subjects domiciled or living in Canada.
Now, if we are to proceed along the lines evidently intended by this resolution, I think all hon. members of the House will agree that the language should be carefully selected, and we should not adopt any form of words which might go beyond the meaning and intent of those who are proposing to vote in favour of it. During the
past three years we have had a very large number of men fighting overseas for this Dominion, for the British Commonwealth of which it forms a part, and for the cause which the allied nations are supporting in this war. In the course of their military service, a great many men from our own Dominion, from the other dominions of the Empire, and from the United Kingdom have from time to time been honoured by their Sovereign, in recognition of theiir heroic services, with certain classes of distinction which might be regarded as coming within the terms of the resolution as now presented. The word " title " might probably embrace a great many of the honours which have been conferred upon men during the past three years for actual service in the field. It certainly would cover distinctions that have been conferred upon several of them at least. There are two classes of the Order of the Bath. One is a civil class conferred upon people for services of a civil character. There is also a military class of the Order of the Bath, conferred in its various distinctions, upon men for actual service in the field. There are also other orders by which actual service in the field is recognized. There is the Victoria Cross, the highest of -all. There is a D.S.O is there not?


Samuel Hughes: Yes, the Distinguished Service Order.


Robert Laird Borden: There is the
Military Cross and there are other distinctions for actual service in the field. I should think that the 'House might well pause before it should exercise upon our men, who have fought as gallantly and as well as any men from any other part of the Empire, or any allied nations, a discrimination which they would regard as absolutely unjust, and which might be brought about by the terms of the amendment as proposed. If we are ito embark upon this proposal, we should carefully select the language in which it is to be couched. Further than, that, I would respectively suggest that if we are to embark upon the policy of affording no recognition for any kind of service by any such means in future, we might very well consider whether those distinctions already granted in this country ought not to be abolished. In view of the fact that we have had no notice until to-night of the proposal which has been put forward by the hon. member from Springfield, I think the House should consider the question more maturely and, a.t all events select some form of words which would not discriminate against

the soldiers from this Dominion and place them in a different position to those from the United Kingdom and from other parts of the Empire. Having in mind these considerations, I move, Mr. Speaker, that the debate upon this motion, and upon the amendment, be now adjourned.


Wilfrid Laurier: If the debate is to be adjourned, will my right honourable friend give us a day to take it up again?


Robert Laird Borden: Yes.


Robert Lorne Richardson: Probably the right honourable, the leader of the Government, would prepare a resolution worded in such a form as might be acceptable to the House, and if so, would be perfectly willing to accept it in place of my amendment.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to,and debate adjourned.

[Stage Direction]
On the motion of Sir Robert Borden for the adjournment of the House:
Mr. SPEAKER:: I would draw the attention of honourable members to the fact that it is provided by the rules that honourable members may not leave their seats until the Speaker has left the Chair. It is hardly in conformity with the dignity of the House that the Speaker and the mace should rustle with honourable members for possession of the means of egress from this chamber.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and House adjourned at 11:45 p.m.
Tuesday, April 9, 1918,