§ Viscount Morpeth moved, that the amendments of the Lords to the Constabulary (Ireland) Bill be printed.
§ Sir George Sinclairconsidered the amendments which had been made in this Bill by the House of Lords of the very highest importance. This was one of the many occasions when it became the House well to consider, and the country duly to estimate, the many advantages they derived from the independent legislative character and constitutional working of the House of Lords. They all knew in what state this measure had been sent up to the other House, and the enormous additional expenses it proposed to entail on the country for the maintenance of the constabulary of Ireland; but, under the searching investigation to which the Bill had been subjected, those expenses had greatly been diminished without at all impairing the efficiency of that force. Those amendments had at once been acceded to by Ministers, and he hoped no objection would now be offered to the printing of the schedules in their original shape, showing the different offices proposed to be created, with the salaries as 905 they then stood, in contrasted columns, with the respective offices and salaries as adopted by the House of Lords. The House of Lords had on this occasion done what the hon. Member for Middlesex, if he had not slept at his post, should have proposed. He wondered why that hon. Member had suffered those offices, and the amount of salaries attached to them, so entirely to escape his notice; and he trusted the line of conduct they had adopted on the present occasion would, at length, tend to make him more favourable to that assembly by whom such economical measures had been carried into effect.
§ Viscount Morpethdid not see how the House could attend to the recommendation of the hon. Baronet. He had moved that the amendments be printed, in order that the House might he more competent than at present to form an opinion as to their precise bearing and character. He did not despair of showing on a future occasion that the alterations which had been made in the Bill did not afford such grounds for commendation as the hon. Baronet had bestowed on them.