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educating the people on Imperial questions. I should personally be very glad if the Conference would lay down a general principle on the matter of publicity, retaining the right at the request of any member of going into Committee, as we have done to-day, which means report, unless thought fit afterwards. In the ordinary course, and on ordinary subjects, either the Press should be admitted, or the course pursued to-day of giving the Press a verbatim report afterwards should be followed. Whenever it is thought that a discussion is likely to evoke feeling here or elsewhere which would be prejudicial to the conduct of our debates, that of course would be omitted from the current report, and retained until the full report were published later. Sir WILFRID LAURIER : At the last Conference we did not publish anything except the bare resolutions, and for my part I have come to the conclusion that these were very meagre .reports, and that it is better that the discussions should be published, but I am not prepared to say whether they should be published from day to day. If everything is recorded here, and if at the end of the Conference it is published with the resolutions, I think the object would be satisfactorily served in that way. lam afraid if published from day to day there might perhaps arise a premature discussion upon certain matters, but I quite agree with Mr. Deakin that we should have a daily report of what is taking place and that it should be published with the resolutions of the Conference at the end of it. CHAIRMAN : I might read what the Secretary of State said at the beginning of the last Conference: "I have made arrangements to have " a full shorthand report of the whole of our proceedings and I shall "endeavour as far as possible to arrange that each day's report shall be " sent to each of you before the next meeting These report will, of "course, be treated by all of us as absolutely confidential; at all events " for the present. What we desire is a perfectly free discussion which "we could hardly expect if that understanding were not arrived at; " but at the close of your proceedings we will then consider whether " anything, and, if so, what, should be given to the public No doubt " some of our conclusions will be made public, and it may possibly "be found, on looking through the reports, that it may be desirable that " more should be published. At all events, what I wish to explain is that " that will be a matter for subsequent decision, and nothing will be published " without the consent of the persons concerned." That was the arrangement, and that is what we intended to continue. At the end of the last Conference, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier explains, a very small part of the proceedings was published. It may be that at the end of this Conference we shall wish to publish more, but I agree with Sir Wilfrid Laurier that it would be inexpedient to publish day by day. After all, this must partake largely of the character of a confidential discussion across the table, unless we are having set opportunities like the way in which these proceedings began to-day. That, of course, stands on a different footing; but the ordinary course of the procedure will be surely confidential and conversational discussion across this table, and therefore I think it is essential that each member of the Conference should have, not only an opportunity of seeing, but of revising, the report of what he has said. That can always be done, and we have seen it constantly done in the proceedings of commissions and otherwise, if you combine it, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier proposes, with the report as a whole, but it cannot be done day by day, as that is almost impracticable. Mr. DEAKIN : I do not wish to conduct this wmole argument myself, but cannot admit the analogy between this Conference and any Royal Comm-

First Day. 15 April 1907.

Arrangement 0» Hisiness. (Mr. Deakin.)