The second reading of the Aliens Bill was formally moved
in the. Commons by the Home Secretary on Tuesday, when Sir Charles Dilke brought forward an amendment to the effect that legislation against sweating was the real remedy, and that the principle of asylum was imperilled by the pro- posed measure. The case for the Bill rested, he declared, on faulty statistics, transmigrants being taken for immi- grants ; the real increase of alien population was, therefore, comparatively small, and infinitely less than in the case of France and other countries. He also condemned the measure as founded on Anti-Semitic feeling. Mr. Asquith, on
behalf of the official Liberals, promised the Bill his cordial support, with certain reserves. The objectionable provisions setting up prohibited areas and dispensing with preliminary judicial inquiry had been dropped, but he strongly objected to the provision enabling the officer to exclude an immigrant who could not show possession of the means of decently sup- porting himself as objectionable in principle and unworkable in practice. The right and privilege of asylum needed to be guarded by a wider and more elastic formula than that adopted by the Government. With Mr. Chamberlain's speech, in which he welcomed the Bill for its Protectionist virtues, we deal elsewhere. The debate was closed by Mr. Balfour, who declared that the Bill had nothing whatever to do with the Jewish question. It deserved support because a country had the right to determine who should be added to its community from outside, and under what conditions they should come in. The amendment having been rejected by 211 to 59, the Bill was read a second time without a division.
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