§ MR. FREWEN, after presenting a petition from hop-planters in the county of Sussex and Weald of Kent, and others interested in the cultivation of hops, praying for a total repeal of the Excise duty on hops, said he should move, in pursuance of the notice he had given, the following Resolution:—"That the Excise duty on hops is impolitic and unjust, and ought to be repealed." He wished briefly to explain the circumstances which had induced him to submit his Motion to the House at this period of the Session. It would be in the recollection of some hon. Members that early last Session he gave notice of a Motion on this subject; but before he had returned from Ireland a large deputation interested in the question waited upon the Earl of Derby and the right hon. Gentle- 183 man the Member for Buckinghamshire, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, to urge this subject upon their consideration; and they communicated to him that the answer they had received from the Government was, that the question should be taken into consideration early next Session, which answer they considered to be so exceedingly satisfactory that they requested him not to press his Motion to a division on that occasion. He had, about ten days ago, gone with a large number of his constituents of different shades of politics to the noble Earl now at the head of the Government, and the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, upon the same subject; but they received no assurance that the matter would be taken into consideration, and they called upon him therefore, as their representative, to take the earliest opportunity to bring this subject before the House, and it was in compliance with their request that he now brought forward this Motion. One most important fact to which he would call the attention of the House was this, that the amount of revenue received from the Excise duty on hops was exceedingly small. The amount of duty received for the year 1849, and paid in 1850, was 145,693l.; for the year 1850, and paid in 1851, 424,702l.; and for the year 1851, and paid in 1852, 236,623l.; making a total of 807,018l.; being an average of something less than 270,000l. a year. But, although the amount received from this source was but small, it pressed with great severity on one or two counties, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer could never tell what amount he might receive in any one year, for so uncertain was the amount of duty in different years, that sometimes it might happen that the Government received only 40,000l., and at other times as much as 400,000l. It was, however, a most oppressive and unjust tax, operating to the extent of a charge of not less than 10l, or 12l. an acre upon every acre planted with hops. A very large amount of capital was necessarily expended in this mode of cultivation, and it also required a great expenditure in manual labour. It had been proved before Sir Charles Wood that this amount varied from 12l. 10s. to 15l, the acre (when they grew 14 cwt. to the acre the expense of labour was exactly 14l.), and the amount therefore spent in labour on 10,000 acres of hops, the usual quantity planted in the county which he represented, would be from 125,000l. to 184 150,000l. a year. This was, he contended, a very strong reason why they ought not to be taxed. The Excise duty was originally imposed in the year 1711, to assist the Government of this country in carrying on the war against the French monarchy during that time. The duty was doubled in 1802 to assist in carrying on the late great war. There was another important fact connected with this subject—namely, the amount of manual labour employed in the cultivation of hops. It was, indeed, excessive, and by the peculiar operation of the duty in its relation to the price of hops, had a tendency most seriously to increase the poor-rates in the hop districts. The year 1846 was a very productive season, and the price of hops was consequently very low; and with an enormous duty of 444,000l. that year, hops became quite an unremunerating article; the amount of the duty was equal to 20 per cent upon the value. In the year 1847 the price was exceedingly low, and the duty amounted to 395,000l., making the trade again wholly unremunerative. The year 1848 was another productive season, so that the price was again exceedingly low. What he wished to do was to impress upon hon. Members who were not acquainted with hop cultivation, the important fact that a large crop, by the operation of this law, was a curse, instead of a blessing, to the hop-planter, because, while it had the effect of diminishing the price, the fixed duty of 2d. a pound became so excessive that it produced the greatest distress. In 1849, the duty of 1848 being so exceedingly heavy on the planters, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in compliance with their urgent solicitation, had consented to postpone the payment of the duty, and since that time various applications had been made to the same effect. He would now show how great distress was caused to many individuals in consequence of their inability to pay this excessive tax. Distress warrants were taken out against those who were unable to comply with the demands of the Excise, and they were committed to prison. He knew of one case, that of a poor widow, near Rye, of a most respectable family, who had been thrown into prison for three months for a debt of 41l., in consequence of the low price of hops, and without having committed any offence. He was acquainted with another instance of a man who had undergone imprisonment for nonpayment of 10l. This state of things 185 necessarily caused a great deal of distress in hopgrowing districts, and as matters stood, if they were obliged to give up the hop cultivation they would be swamped by poor-rates. It was surely, therefore, the duty of the Government and of the House to take the matter into their serious consideration, with a view to ascertain whether justice did not demand that the hop-planter should be released from this tax. There was another source of grievance which he would just refer to, and that was the unequal manner in which the tax operated in different districts, owing to the difference in the price of the production. The average total of the collection of duty for the years 1847, 1848, 1849, and 1850, in the three districts of Canterbury, Rochester, and Sussex, was as follows:—Canterbury, 19 per cent on the price; Rochester, 24½ per cent; and Sussex, 31 per cent; thus showing the great severity with which this tax pressed upon his constituents. Another important point was, that the amount of the tax actually exceeded the amount of the rent in many instances, although the number of acres planted with hops might not exceed five or six out of a farm of 100 acres. He could mention the case of a farmer who rented 503 acres, for which he paid 280l. rent in 1847, and reduced to230l in 1850; average 249l. Of those 503 acres he cultivated only twenty-six acres for the growth of hops, and yet the amount of duty he paid for those twenty-six acres was not less than 256l., being more than the rent of the whole farm, so that the duty on twenty-six acres exceeded the rent of 503 acres. He also mentioned another case where the hop duty for the last five years had been 72 per cent on the rent. He had been told that a large majority of his (Mr. Frewen's) constituents were not in favour of a reduction or the repeal of the hop duty. All he could say was, that he was prepared to show, that within the last fortnight four-fifths of the planters of Sussex had signed a petition for a total repeal of the tax. He was aware that there were persons who had got up a meeting at Maidstone for the purpose of opposing any movement for the repeal of the hop duty; and he knew perfectly well that certain persons who obtained a very high price for their hops wore in favour of this duty. They were precisely in the same position as those great maltsters who wore not in favour of a reduction of the malt tax; or of the great teadealers, who were not 186 in favour of repealing the duty on tea. By maintaining the duty these persons were enabled to command a monopoly; hut it was a sufficient argument to show the impolicy of the tax that it did give to certain persons a monopoly, and proved that it was one of those taxes which ought to be repealed. One of the gentlemen who attended the Maidstone meeting to oppose the repeal of the hop duty was the Rev. Mr. Marriott, the rector of Horsmonden. He held a paper in his hand, signed by all the hopgrowers in the parish of Horsmonden, in the Weald of Kent, except two, in favour of the total repeal of the duty on hops. These persons occupied 393 acres upon which hops were grown, there being only 450 acres in that parish. He had heard that a large deputation from Mid-Kent went up that very day to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to beg the tax might not be reduced; but the Sussex and Weald of Kent hopgrowers might easily have collected large deputations, had they been so advised, instead of which they had purposely pressed their claims with small ones. No one could deny the injustice of placing such a heavy tax on the shoulders of a small and suffering class. He did not ask the House for an immediate repeal of this tax, but merely to pass a Resolution that it was impolitic and unjust, and that it was the first which ought to be repealed whenever they could do so. The state of things in his part of Sussex could not continue much longer. Thousands of acres had been thrown up and could not be let. He knew of one nobleman who had nine farms on his hands; and, as one more instance of the effect of the tax, he might mention that a gentleman near Hastings, who owned 700 acres of land, had been obliged, from low prices and excessive taxation, to take it all on his hands, and he had actually offered his house to a person on condition that he would pay the rates and taxes. Was such a state of things to last? He hoped the House would give some relief to those who were so much oppressed, and that they would affirm the principle of the Resolution he submitted to them.
§ MR. FULLERseconded the Motion.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Excise Duty on Hops is impolitic and unjust, and ought to he repealed."
§ The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he would venture to express a hope that the House would not be disposed, at the present time, to enter upon a 187 full discussion of the important subject of the hop duties; but he trusted that the hon. Member who had stated the case, and the hon. Member who had followed him, would not think that it indicated any disrespect towards them on his part, or any want of a sense of the importance of the question, if he declined to pursue it into all the details into which undoubtedly it ought to he carried, with a view to its full and thorough comprehension. One admission he would freely make to the hon. Gentlemen, and it was the only one which the occasion called for from him, because he should ask the House to reject the Motion on grounds more connected with the time and manner of its being brought forward, than from any objection to it on its abstract merits. The admission he would make was this—that the case of the county of Sussex, which the hon. Members represented, was undoubtedly a hard one in comparison with some other districts, as the operation of the duty, levied, as it was, upon the weight and produce of the crops, imposed an undue and disproportionate amount on the growers of that district, compared with the growers of other more favoured districts, where the article was of a higher quality and commanded higher prices in the market, while it was produced in less quantity in respect to the breadth of land under cultivation. Having made that admission generally, and whilst freely allowing that mainly on that ground the question of the hop duty was one which' might fairly occupy the time of that House when the fitting opportunity occurred, he regretted to say that he could not go any farther with the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Frewen). For, in the first place, it appeared to him that the inequality which the hon. Gentleman had shown to exist between the district which he represented and other districts, ought to have led him rather to suggest some mode of varying the nature and arrangement of the tax, in order to establish greater fairness in the principle on which it was paid, than to have led him at once to the conclusion that such a branch of revenue ought to be entirely abolished. The hon. Gentleman said that on account of the amount of its fluctuations the tax was of no value at all to the Exchequer; and this he founded on the average proceeds of the three years which he had given, and which certainly had not been unfortunately or unskilfully selected, as they represented a lower average than he would have been able to find in any other three years for a 188 considerable time back. But, on the part of the Exchequer, with which he might be supposed to sympathise, he could assure the hon. Gentleman that considerable value was attached to the sum of 300,000l. and upwards, which was about the average amount yearly realised by the duty on hops. But the House would commit a very grave error, and an error of which the con-sequences would not terminate with the hop duty, if it consented at the present moment to give any definitive decision upon this or any other proposed reduction of taxation. As he understood the duty of the House of Commons with reference to taxation, it was almost impossible for it to pronounce upon the merits of any tax in the abstract. He hardly comprehended what the hon. Gentleman meant by this Resolution. He condemned the tax, and yet they did not know exactly what the hon. Member meant by the Motion he had introduced. If he meant to repeal the tax, then he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would meet him with the conclusive objection that that House ought never to repeal a tax until it had considered what was the expenditure of the year for which it was necessary to provide. If, on the other hand, the hon. Gentleman said he did not propose to repeal the tax, hut only to condemn it, then that was a practice still more dangerous to the honour and character of the House, and to the interests of the country. He was quite certain of the purity of the hon. Gentleman's motives, but he could conceive of nothing which could lead to more trickery, intrigue, or to more of demagoguism in the very worst sense, than that that House should indulge itself in ventilating abstract opinions on the subject of particular taxes, and in pronouncing condemnation of them, without being prepared to give the country the benefit of those condemnations by the repeal of those taxes which it had so condemned. Whenever the House undertook to say that a particular tax was "impolitic and unjust, and ought to be repealed," it ought not to stop at a Motion of this kind, but should be followed up by leave being asked to introduce a Bill to repeal the duty, or by some other Motion being made that was more consonant with its rules and practice. On either of those grounds, whichever construction the hon. Gentleman chose to put upon his Resolution, he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) was confident that the House would refuse him its assent. To-morrow they would 189 proceed to the consideration of the Navy Estimates, and in the course of two or three weeks he presumed that the House would dispose of them, and then proceed to the estimates for the other great services of the country. They would then see, when they came to the Miscellaneous Estimates, what was the amount of charges on the Exchequer for which it was the duty of the House to provide. If, after they had reckoned up the amount of those charges, and the House had given its judgment upon them, they found that the revenue of the year was likely to yield a surplus over the expenditure, then surely would he the time for the hon. Gentleman to urge his claim for the repeal of the hop duty in competition with any other which it was proposed to remit. Even then he would be met by rivals on all sides, and have considerable obstacles to encounter; for he would not only be met possibly by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but certainly by those whom, perhaps, the hon. Gentleman thought to be his natural allies, namely, the representatives of the greater part of the hop districts. He would find himself assailed by the hon. Members for Kent from the east, and he would have the Members for Worcestershire and Hereford leading up an army against him from the west to oppose and overcome him. He would not ask the House to prejudge this question, but to give it a fair consideration according to its merits, when the proper time for considering it arrived, and when the reasons for repealing it might be weighed in conjunction and comparison with the reasons for repealing other taxes. But he entreated the House, at this period of the year, not to take any step so unsound in principle as to part with any portion of the permanent revenue and resources of the country, before it had measured the extent of the public wants to which that revenue was necessary to be applied. Upon these grounds, stated very shortly, he earnestly hoped—and not only hoped. but entertained not a single doubt—thai the House would decline to accede to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman. It was but that day he beard that in about a fortnight a similar Motion would be made with regard to the wine duties. Since he had been in the House an hon. Friend had given a notice relative to the total repeal of the advertisement duty; and there were not only these questions, involving 2,000,000l. or 3,000,000l. of the public revenue, but there were multitudes of in- 190 terests, of which the one would start up after the other. He was therefore sorry that the hon. Gentleman should have been found to set so very indifferent an example in making a call upon the House so indefensible in point of public policy. Perhaps he ought not to presume to express such an opinion, but certainly he did not think that the hon. Gentleman, however good his intentions, had really advanced the interests of those whom he represented, or given them a better chance in the competition they had to meet from other quarters. On the contrary, he rather feared that a Motion of this kind, proposed at a time when, he ventured to say, it was impossible for the House to entertain it favourably, might produce an adverse result to the interest which the hon. Gentleman injudiciously advocated, and might cast it into the shade and background as compared with others. Be that, however, as it might, it was his duty to call upon the House to negative the Motion of the hon. Gentleman.
§ MR. E. BALLsaid, he thought the very facts admitted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer were good reasons for the Motion. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted that it was more difficult for the farmers of Sussex to pay the tax than for growers in other places, and therefore he ought to remedy the injustice. He differed from the right hon. Gentleman when he said the House should wait till they saw the character of the Budget before they objected to a tax; because, if the House and the country objected to any tax, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would soon find means of making a Budget without it. They had adopted free trade, and it was surely now their duty to give the British grower such a measure of fair play as would enable him to meet the competition to which he had been exposed, As a Sussex man, he felt the peculiar grievance of this tax; but he would not be satisfied by its repeal, nor rest content till all taxes which pressed on the farmer were abolished.
§ MR. DEEDESsaid, this was not the first time he had felt himself bound to oppose the steps which the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Frewen) had taken upon this question, and, as he (Mr. Deedes) had successfully resisted his attempts before, so he was inclined to think he should again successfully resist them to-night. Adopting an expression borrowed from a; noble and manly sport common to this 191 country, this was an attempt on the part of. his hon. Friend to play off "Sussex against all England," and he believed that, as on previous occasions, the match would be an unequal one. The course which the hon. Member was taking in seeking to repeal the whole of this duty, was a most suicidal one for his constituents, if they intended to continue the cultivation of hops. The effect must certainly be to promote the introduction of foreign hops to a very considerable extent at much lower prices than they could be produced at in this country; and as the hopgrowers in Sussex were admitted to produce an article which was at present worth the least money in the market, their lands must necessarily be the first to fall out of cultivation. In consequence of the Excise duty levied, the revenue officers now placed a particular mark upon the produce of the various districts, and another result of the total repeal of the duty would therefore be that the purchaser would not have that security which he now enjoyed that the article bought by him was really worth the money. From a conviction of the injustice which the measure contemplated by his hon. Friend would inflict upon hopgrowers in other parts of the kingdom, he would join with the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in opposing the Motion.
COLONEL HARCOURTsaid, he believed that the repeal of the duty would be most injurious to the growers of hops, and, therefore, should oppose it. The plan of his hon. Friend (Mr. Frewen) might serve one county, but it would injure all the other hopgrowing counties in England. Besides, although he had not any great confidence in the present Government, seeing the discordant materials of which it was composed, he could not, until they had produced their Budget, ask them to disturb the fiscal arrangements of the country.
§ MR. BRIGHTsaid, if those persons upon whom the hop duties fell agreed in thinking that nothing could be so injurious to them as the repeal of those duties, it was tolerably clear that the tax must be a very unjust one as regarded the public generally. He protested against the theory of the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject of this Motion. He understood him to say that the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Frewen) had set but an indifferent example to the House in bringing forward a Resolution for 192 the consideration of a tax which his constituents believed pressed very unjustly upon them. Now, the right hon. Gentleman said in this just what all his predecessors had said. They told hon. Members they should not bring a tax before the House until the Government had had an opportunity of considering all these questions, and of submitting their determination to the House; but if hon. Members waited until the Government proposition had been submitted, then the response was, you are very unreasonable in offering to disturb that which the Government had fully considered, and upon which they had come to a final conclusion. Now, it seemed to him that the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being possessed a great advantage in framing his Budget, if he could ascertain pretty conclusively what was the opinion of the House with regard to any particular tax. Suppose the late Chancellor of the Exchequer had had opportunities of knowing beforehand that the doubling of the house tax and the repeal of half the malt tax would be distasteful to the House, why in all probability, he would not have brought forward those propositions, and have made shipwreck of the Government with which he was connected. In like manner the present Chancellor of the Exchequer might be preparing extraordinary propositions of his own, which he might think looked very well upon paper, but of which the House would disapprove, and which he might not be able to carry. Well, what was the friendly proposition now made by the hon. Member for East Sussex? It simply called upon the House to affirm that the Excise tax upon hops was impolitic and unjust, and ought to be repealed. The Motion was very much like that which his hon. Colleague (Mr. M. Gibson) had submitted to the House last year with regard to the paper duties; and if it were carried, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in going over the list of taxes to be remitted out of his surplus of 2,000,000l. or 2,500,000l., would only consider whether the hop duties might not be repealed with great advantage to the growers, great advantage to the agriculturist, and with some advantage, probably, to the country at large. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that the sum of 300,000l., which would be sacrificed by the remission of this tax, was not a sum to be disregarded as a loss to the revenue. Well, if he (Mr. Bright) found great economy being exercised in all departments of the State—if he saw a dili- 193 gent revision of the expenditure going on; if he perceived that the example of the late Government was followed in the revision of certain great items in the department of the expenditure, then there might he some grounds for asking the House not to hastily condemn a tax which brought this amount into the national Exchequer. This, however, was not the case; for, on the other hand, he did not find that an expenditure of 900,000l. in one particular department of the State was considered of any very great importance. The tax must he a disgraceful one which set one county against another, as this did. If the representatives of Kent were returned for Sussex, and vice versâ, we should find them, he suspected, unsaying the speeches they had made in the House, and making just the contrary declarations. What could be more humiliating than that? The tax upon hops was a most unequal tax, and the most uncertain in its amount, while it involved the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a mode of collection which was certainly not an expensive one, but which was as rude and barbarous in its operation as you could expect to find in Turkey or the most uncivilised portion of the world. In his opinion, the hon. Member for East Sussex was justified in bringing the tax under the notice of the House; and, if it pessessed the ugly features to which he had alluded, the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer might be fairly called to it when he went into an examination of the fiscal arrangements of the country. Free-trade and competition were now conceded principles on both sides of the House, and for these reasons he should give his vote in favour of the Motion.
MR. HUMEsaid, he hoped the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Frewen) would pay no heed to the rebuke which the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer had administered to him; for neither the hon. Member nor anybody else would ever do any good if they followed the advice of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. He (Mr. Hume) candidly confessed that he had expected very different things from the right hon. Gentleman—a disciple of the late Sir Robert Peel—than the enunciation of such a principle as he had laid down that night. The hop duty was a bad tax in every one of its aspects; and when one county was found fighting one way, and another another way with respect to it, the right hon. Gentleman ought to perceive that there was a combination against the consumer. 194 He thought it would be a great point gained to have the tax condemned by a Resolution of the House, because it ensured its repeal or revision, as the case might be, as early as the finances of the country would allow of it.
§ MR. ALCOCKsaid, he should support the Motion; but he thought there was one point in regard to hops which might be well followed in reference to all other articles of agricultural produce—that was, that there was an annual statistical return of the quantity produced.
§ MR. FREWEN, in reply, said, that if the House decided in favour of the Motion, he had no doubt the Chancellor of the Exchequer would find the Ways and Means to meet the deficiency it would occasion in the revenue, as had been done in the case of the window duty.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 91; Noes 175: Majority 84.
| List of the AYES. | |
| Adderley, C. B. | Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H. |
| Alcock, T. | Jones, D. |
| Bailey, C. | Kendall, N. |
| Ball, E. | Kennedy, T. |
| Barnes, T. | Kershaw, J. |
| Barrington, Visct. | Knightley, R. |
| Barrow, W. H. | Knox, Col. |
| Bateson, T. | Laslett, W. |
| Bell, J. | Lovaine, Lord |
| Bentinck, G. P. | Lowther, hon. Col. |
| Brady, J. | Lucas, F. |
| Bright, J. | Macartney, G. |
| Brisco, M. | Mackinnon, W. A. |
| Brown, H. | MacGregor, J. |
| Bruce, C. L. C. | M'Mahon, P. |
| Butt, I. | Martin, J. |
| Carter, S. | Miall, E. |
| Cholmondeley, Lord H. | Michell, W. |
| Clinton, Lord C. P. | Miller, T. J. |
| Clive, R. | Mullings, J. R. |
| Cobbett, J. M. | Muntz, G. F. |
| Cobbold, J. C. | Oakes, J. H. P. |
| Cobden, R. | Oliveira, B. |
| Compton, H. C. | Parker, R. T. |
| Crauford, E. H. J. | Pellatt, A. |
| Crook, J. | Percy, hon. J. W. |
| Disraeli, rt. hon. B. | Potter, R. |
| Drummond, H. | Pugh, D. |
| Duffy, C. G. | Robertson, P. F. |
| Fox, W. J. | Rolt, P. |
| Fraser, Sir W. A. | Sandars, G. |
| French, F. | Shee, W. |
| Freshfield, J. W. | Shelley, Sir J. V. |
| Fuller, A. E. | Smith, J. B. |
| Gibson, rt. hon. T. M. | Stafford, A. |
| Greene, J. | Stanhope, J. B. |
| Greville, Col. F. | Stanley, Lord |
| Gwyn, H. | Sullivan, M. |
| Hadfield, G. | Thompson, Ald. |
| Halford, Sir H. | Turner, C. |
| Henchey, D. O. | Tyler, Sir G. |
| Hume, J. | Vance, J. |
| Hutching, E. J. | Vansittart, G. H. |
| Walmsley, Sir J. | Williams, W. |
| Walter, J. | TELLERS. |
| Whitmore, H. | Frewen, C. H. |
| Wilkinson, W. A. | Bass, M. T. |
| List of the NOES. | |
| Acland, Sir T. D. | Grogson, S. |
| A'Court, C. H. W. | Grenfell, C. W. |
| Anderson, Sir J. | Grey, rt. hon. Sir G. |
| Armstrong, R. B. | Grosrenor, Lord R. |
| Baines, rt. hon. M. T. | Hanbury, hon. C. S. B. |
| Baring, rt. hn. Sir T. F. | Hanmer, Sir J. |
| Baring, T. | Harcourt, Col. |
| Beaumont, W. B. | Hardinge, hon. C. S. |
| Bellew, Capt. | Hastie, A. |
| Berkeley, Adm. | Headlam, T. E. |
| Blackett, J. F. B. | Heathcoat, J. |
| Booker, T. W. | Heathcote, Sir G. J. |
| Bowyer, G. | Heathcote, G. H. |
| Boyle, hon. Col. | Herbert, rt. hon. S. |
| Brand, hon. H. B. W. | Hervey, Lord A. |
| Brotherton, J. | Hindley, C. |
| Browne, V. | Horsfail, T. B. |
| Bruce, Lord E. | Howard, hon. C. W. G. |
| Bruce, H. A. | Hutt, W. |
| Burke, Sir T. J. | Ingham, R. |
| Butler, C. S. | Inglis, Sir R. H. |
| Byng, hon. G. H. C. | Jermyn, Earl |
| Cardwell, rt. hon. E. | Keating, R. |
| Chambers, T. | King, hon. P. J. L. |
| Charteris, hon. F. | Kinnaird, hon. A. F. |
| Chelsea, Visct. | Kirk, W. |
| Christy, S. | Knight, F. W. |
| Clay, J. | Labouehere, rt. hon. H. |
| Clay, Sir W. | Langton, H. G. |
| Clifford, H. M. | Lawley, hon. F. C. |
| Clinton, Lord R. | Bayard, A. H. |
| Coffin, W. | Legh, G. C. |
| Collier, R. P. | Locke, J. |
| Cowper, hon. W. F. | Lowe, R. |
| Crossley, F. | Luce, T. |
| Cubitt, Ald. | M'Taggart, Sir J. |
| Deedes, W. | Maddock, Sir T. H. |
| Denison, J. E. | Malins, R. |
| Dering, Sir E. C. | Mangles, R. D. |
| Divett, E. | Marshall, W. |
| Drumlanrig, Visct. | Massey, W. N. |
| Duncan, G. | Masterman, J. |
| Dundas, G. | Matheson, Sir J. |
| Dundas, F. | Meagher, T. |
| Eccles, W. | Mills, A. |
| Elliot, hon. J. E. | Mills, T. |
| Evelyn, W. J. | Milner, W. M. E. |
| Ewart, W. | Milnes, R. M. |
| Fagan, W. | Molesworth, rt. hn. Sir W. |
| Fergus, J. | Moncreiff, J. |
| Ferguson, Sir R. | Monsell, W. |
| Filmer, Sir E. | Montgomery, Sir G. |
| Fitzgerald, J. D. | Morris, D. |
| Fitzgerald, W. R. S. | Mulgrave, Earl of |
| Fitzroy, hon. H. | Mure, Col. |
| Fitzwilliam, hon. G. W. | Norreys, Lord |
| Forster, M. | Osborne, R. |
| Franklyn, G. W. | Otway, A. J. |
| Freestun, Col. | Paget, Lord G. |
| Geach, C. | Palmerston, Visct. |
| George, J. | Patten, J. W. |
| Gladstone, rt. hon. W. | Peacocke, G. M. W. |
| Glyn, G. C. | Peel, F. |
| Goderich, Visct. | Phillipps, J. H. |
| Goodman, Sir G. | Phinn, T. |
| Gower, hon. F. L. | Pilkington, J. |
| Graham, rt. hon. Sir J. | Finney, W. |
| Powlett, Lord W. | Taylor, H. |
| Price, Sir R. | Thornely, T. |
| Price, W. P. | Towneley, C. |
| Ricardo, O. | Townshend, Capt. |
| Rice, E. R. | Tufnell, rt. hon. H. |
| Robartes, T. J. A. | Vernon, G. E. H. |
| Russell, Lord J. | Villiers, rt. hon. C. P. |
| Russell, F. C. H. | Vivian, H. H. |
| Russell, F. W. | Wall, C. B. |
| Sawle, B. C. G. | Wells, W. |
| Scobell, Capt. | Whalley, G. H. |
| Scrope, G. P. | Whatman, J. |
| Seymour, Lord | Whitbread, S. |
| Shelburne, Earl of | Wickham, H. W. |
| Smith, J. A. | Wilson, J. |
| Smith, M. T. | Wise, J. A. |
| Smith, rt. hon. R. V. | Wortley, rt. hon. J. S. |
| Smith, W. M. | Wyvill, M. |
| Stanley, hon. W. O. | Young, rt. hon. Sir J. |
| Stansfield, W. R. C. | |
| Stapleton, J. | TELLERS. |
| Strutt, rt. hon. E. | Hayter, W. G. |
| Swift, R. | Berkeley, C. L. G. |