Monday and Tuesday were again taken up with the Com-
mittee stage of the Coal Bill. The Labour Party did not press for complete abolition of the compensation clause as some of their supporters may have wished, but moved the reduction of the amount paid to royalty owners by one-third, from £66,450,000 to L44,300,000, or to reduce the price from fifteen years' purchase to ten years' purchase. Con-. servative spokesmen challenged them with inconsistency and with running away from their own principle of " fair compensation," as stated in their pamphlet on Nationalisation. The Labour speakers were in good fettle. Mr. Batey launched an attack upon the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but got himself out of order and was pulled up. Mr. Grenfell was, as always, sincere. Sir Stafford Cripps gave full play to his acute legal mind and his familiarity with the problem in a series of amendments. The Liberals voted with the Government on the compensation clause. Sir Hugh Seely, himself a royalty-owner, agreed that the policy of unification of royalties was for the betterment of the industry, and Mr. Ernest Evans argued that the House should accept the award of the, arbitrators, as a precedent for other cases where nationalisation might be carried out. Royalty-owners on the Government side were rather sur- prisingly acquiescent. Perhaps they had not read the pamphlet on the Ownership of Coal Royalties, by Mr. Nelson Rooke, which had been circulated to all Members, and which concludes with the warning : " The cherished principle of Personal Ownership lies bound upon the altar of British Democracy, and the High Priest's knife has been raised to strike the death blow."
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