HC Deb 21 March 1865 vol 178 cc8-23
MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

, in moving for a Select Committee to inquire into the Office of Works and the Office of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, said, that in the second Session of the present Parliament Mr. Wise, then Member for Stafford, but now no longer a Member of the House, moved for an inquiry into the whole Civil Service expenditure of the country, specially animadverting upon these two Departments. The inquiry which took place in consequence was directed to the Office of Works, but not to the Office of Woods; and owing to the failure of Mr. Wise's health and other causes it was not so satisfactory as could be wished, though many useful suggestions were made by the Committee. Last Session he endeavoured to bring the subject before the House, but it was too late for the appointment of a Committee, and he then gave notice of his intention to submit certain Resolutions. These were to the effect that the uncertain, intermixed, and undefined authority and rights of the First Commissioner of Works and the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, in reference to portions of the lands, premises, and buildings constituting what were known as the Crown lands, were anomalous and unsatisfactory; that the Commissioner of Works was not justified in ordering or inviting plans for any public building until the destination, site, and cost of the same should have been sanctioned by Parliament; that the receipts of every kind of the Office of Woods and Forests ought to be paid direct into the Exchequer in accordance with the recommendation of the Committee on Public Moneys, and that no payment should be made until it had been first sanctioned by this House; and lastly, that the Crown lands and buildings ought to be available for the use of public Departments without the payment of rent to the Crown. Works had frequently been undertaken by the Department in anticipation of and even in direct contradiction to the opinion of the House, and the House had been called upon merely to register the pleasure of the Office of Works. Again, the Woods and Forests were the only Department of the State which was allowed to spend public money without the authority of Parliament; while large sums had been charged in the Estimates as rents payable to the Crown, and large sums of money had been voted for the purchase of sites for public offices in Downing Street and elsewhere, when, in point of fact, the land belonged to the public. It was only since 1851, when the offices of Works and Woods were divided, that this principle had been acted upon. This division was effected with the view, it was stated, to more economical management, and to their being rendered more efficient for the purposes for which they existed. But, in the event, it was found far from being an economical arrangement, for the expenses of the two Offices were just double what they had been previously. In 862 a Report was drawn up, in which a comparison was made between the state of the Departments previous to and subsequent to the change. From this it appeared that for the ten years previous to 1852 the cost of the united offices was only £260,000, and, including some other expenses, the annual cost did not amount to more than £36,000. During the ten years which followed 1852, however, the expense of each of the Offices was nearly as great almost as the expense of the united Offices had been for the previous ten years, and the cost for both was £68,000 a year, as against £36,000 previous to 1852. The accounts for both the Offices had been regularly increasing from year to year. In 1863 the Office of Woods cost £27,000, and in the next year it cost £28,000. In like manner the cost of the Office of Works rose in those two years from £31,000 to £32,000. It must be borne in mind that, besides the expenditure which appeared in the Reports of the Commissioners, a large amount, which appeared in the Estimates voted by that House, was to be taken into account, and that amount must be added to the expense paid by the Commissioners out of the funds before they were paid over to the Exchequer. An unfair inference might be drawn from the Reports of the Commissioners, because the large additions of property acquired by the Department was carefully kept out of view, and therefore it was desirable to notice that the increase of revenue was not owing to any better management, but arose from the acquisition of various properties. Thus rent had been charged to a large amount for public buildings—a practice only introduced recently, and he thought it perfectly absurd that the public should be receiving with one hand money which they paid away with the other. Then again large Votes were passed by that House for the sites of public buildings. Thus, for instance, when the State Paper Office, which had some years before been built at the expense of £40,000, was pulled down to make room for the new Foreign Office, £7,000 were actually demanded and paid by money voted by that House, to the Woods and Forests for the site. He hoped to hear some explanation of the grounds on which such a transaction could be justified. Valuable rights in different parts of the kingdom had been neglected, whereas they ought to have been well looked after, and the revenues received from them rendered available for public purposes. A sort of roving Commission had gone through the country to see what property could be taken possession of by the Department, and there had been contentions in Wales and elsewhere with respect to the foreshores. An immense addition to the capital account had been obtained, and the revenue ought to be much greater than it was. Then, again, great claims had been made in Scotland with regard to the salmon fisheries, and in Hull, property which had been in the possession of the War Office since the time of Charles I., had been added to the property of the Department he was now referring to. Similar claims had been made in other parts of Great Britain and also in Ireland; but there was no justification for appropriating these acquired possessions simply to what was called Crown property. Another source of income to the Department was the disafforestation of several forests; for that process was accompanied by the cutting down of the timber which had been planted at the public expense. He maintained that the money obtained for such timber ought to have gone at once into the Exchequer. The State forests had been despoiled of their timber during the last ten years to the extent in value of £166,000 more than in the previous ten years, evidently for the purpose of unfairly swelling the revenue derived from that Department. It appeared that the outlays for improvements on what was called Crown property in the course of the present reign amounted to very nearly a million and three quarters. If these improvements were effected at the expense of the public upon what was a mere life estate, he asked whether it was justifiable that the cost of them should come out of the public purse? Large sums had been acquired by the sale of foreshores, which in the judgment of the best legal authorities was not property belonging to the Crown personally, but was held by it in trust for the public. Therefore, when that property was parted with, its proceeds ought to be paid into the Exchequer, instead of going to swell the revenues of the Woods and Forests. With regard to foreshores, no less a sum than £230,000 had been realized by the sales of foreshores in the United Kingdom, which ought to have gone into the public Exchequer, instead of forming part of the capital account of the Woods and Forests. Up to the year 1862, the sale of foreshores realized £205,000, and since that time the sales had gone on at the rate of £10,000 per annum. By the Return it appeared that during the last two years the sale of foreshores in Wales amounted to £3,000; in England £15,000. In Scotland, where people were rather more careful, these aggressions had not been so extensive, the sales in three years only amounting to £1,500; while in Ireland again the amount received for fore- shores in two years was about £2,000. The total sum received, and added to capital account, in two years for that description of property, was £22,000, or at the rate of £ll,000 per annum. Again, let them glance at the expenditure of the Department compared with the amount of the revenue. The gross revenue according to the Report of the Commissioners was £425,766 for the year ending 31st of March, 1864. The total payments for that year into the Consolidated Fund were £305,000, leaving a residue of £120,700, or two-sevenths of the whole receipts, which the Commissioners had expended at their own discretion. That, however, did not cover the amount of their expenses, because the actual expenditure of their office to be deducted from the £425,000 was £123,000. Nor was that the entire cost, for to it must be added the charges for stationery, postages, coal, furniture, and various items of that kind, included in the Civil Service Estimates, and which amounted to about £50,000. Thus there was an expenditure of not less than £173,000, out of the £425,766 or two-fifths of the whole gross revenue. What private gentleman with £5,000 a year would like to have £2,000 of it deducted for expenses? Surely he would think the case one calling for an inquiry, and an inquiry was what he was now asking from the House. He next came to the subject of the forests, on which there had on former occasions been frequent animadversions made in that House. The accounts of the Department exhibited such an extraordinary state of things in this respect that so far from those forests being a source of profit to the country they actually caused it to go into debt. The accounts for 1863 showed the receipts from Windsor Forest to be £17,000, and the expenditure £18,000; but if they put Windsor and the other forests together the sum received was £56,400 against £50,700 expended. That showed an apparent gain of between £5,000 and £6,000—a very small sum to go to liquidate the charges borne upon the Estimates for the Office of Woods and Forests. In 1864 Windsor and the other forests produced to the country a revenue of £42,000 against an expenditure of £46,000; and taking the two last years together they had a revenue of £99,000 against an expenditure of £97,000. Instead of keeping up a property which was so unprofitable would it not be better to let it pass into private hands that could make some use of it, and obtain from its proceeds the means of acquiring other land that might be requisite for the public service? The Commissioners, when they wanted unduly to swell the amount of the revenue of the Department, felled a large quantity of timber. [Cries of "Divide!"] The House appeared anxious to divide, but he thought it was essential that the House should be in possession of certain facts before going to a division, and his object in bringing the subject before the House was to show that an inquiry ought to take place into the manner in which the two Departments in question were managed. The misfortune was that no one was responsible for the Woods and Forests Department. When the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests had a seat in that House there was some one to look to for explanation and information upon any given point. Now they were told that the Secretary to the Treasury would answer any inquiry; but when questions were put to him it often turned out that the hon. Gentleman's information was second-hand—that he was misinformed—and he had to make further inquiry. The Woods and Forests Department was the only Department of the State that was allowed to expend public money without a Vote of that House, and the sooner it was altered the better. In 1857 the Public Moneys Committee reported, with reference to this Department, that it was essential to the proper Parliamentary control of public moneys that the whole revenues, after providing for certain charges, should be paid into the Consolidated Fund, from which it could not be drawn without the sanction of Parliament. And with regard to the charges on the land revenue, the Committee reported, in 1857, that, unless some constitutional difficulty were involved, they should be brought under Parliamentary control. Well, was there any constitutional reason why the whole receipts of this Department should not, like every other branch of the revenue, be paid into the Exchequer? As far as he knew there was none. Mr. Huskisson in former times, Lord Monteagle, and others strongly recommended that all receipts should be paid first of all into the Exchequer, and that no expenditure should be incurred by any Department without the sanction of the House. He believed it was quite within the power of the Treasury to establish the alteration for which he contended. These Commissioners were, under the late change, no- thing more than the stewards or agents of the public, and they were bound to conduct all their business in such manner as the Treasury should direct. The Treasury, therefore, were perfectly able to enforce on the Commissioners those alterations in the management of the revenues of the Department for which he contended. He now came to the Office of Public Works. That Office had been described by a right hon. Gentleman who now sat on the Treasury Bench in these terms— Nothing," he said, "could be more lamentable and deplorable than the state of the whole arrangement with regard to the management of the Public Works. Vacillation, uncertainty, costliness, and all the conflicting vices that could be enumerated were united in our present system. He believed such were the evils of the present system that nothing short of a revolutionary reform would be sufficient to remedy it. Such was the language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman had been rather given of late to lay down revolutionary propositions; and he (Mr. Augustus Smith) trusted the right hon. Gentleman would come to his assistance to-night with some such scheme of revolutionary reform. There was a very complex arrangement with regard to the properties placed under the charge of the First Commissioner. Palaces, parks, public gardens, which formed originally part of the Crown lands, were placed under his charge. A variety of other parks and public building acquired and bought by the Consolidated Fund should be kept separate as public property. These were under the Office of Public Works; but then came in the Woods and Forests and claimed what might be called the fringe of these parks—the valuable building ground in connection with them; but then the public got no benefit from the valuable ground so acquired. Richmond Park, for instance, was part under the Woods and part under the Works. The Office of Works was subject to the caprice of the First Commissioner, and there was no person to keep a consecutive management in the different Departments. The separation of the Offices had produced this result and doubled the expenditure. One Department had been taken out of the cognizance of that House, inasmuch as there was no one there to answer for the expenditure. The points upon which he would urge the appointment of a Committee were—first, as to whether the separation of the Offices had really been advantageous or not; also whether the Office of Woods wag at all satisfactory, and whether the expenses incurred were not larger than they ought to have been; next, whether the revenue derived from the Woods ought not to be paid directly into the Exchequer? Then, as regarded the Office of Works, was the person who held that office justified in adopting any measures upon his own authority? The next point was, ought the Crown lands and buildings, such as were required for public purposes, to be available to the public without any payment or charge? If the public had no benefit or permanent interest in these properties, were they justified in laying out a large sum of money upon them? Whatever expenditure was incurred it ought to be spread over a long period. If there was to be such a distinction drawn between the public and the Crown property as he had referred to, he could only say that they ought to be put under a distinct and independent management; and, further, that property which had been called Crown property, but which had been really acquired by large payments out of the Consolidated Fund, ought to be separated and the public given the full benefit of it. There ought also to be something done with the forests, because to keep them as they were would be a great disgrace and a national loss.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a Select Committee be appointed, "to inquire into the Office of Works, and the Office of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues,"—(Mr. Augustus Smith.)

MR. NEATE

thought it was very desirable this Committee should be appointed, as with in the last thirty years the Government, on behalf of the Crown, had been taking upon themselves an entirely new character—that of landed proprietors, and it was well worth consideration how far the Government had acted wisely in that. They had been building houses, and in fact doing everything that enterprising landed proprietors would do. The Government had also put themselves into the hands of London valuers, and exacted extravagant rates. Another very important public question might soon arise, perhaps in the next reign, whether a civil list would be wanted, or whether the revenue of the Crown estates would be sufficient. Was it desirable that the Sovereign should be placed in the position of a great landed proprietor, and made entirely independent of all grants from the State? These were questions which a Committee might well inquire into.

MR. PEEL

said, the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. A. Smith) had pressed for an inquiry into the Office of Woods and Works, and in his speech had referred to some Resolutions of which he had given notice last Session. The hon. Member also stated that there was much in the business of each of the two Offices which was common to both, and any difference between them was not clearly defined. That was wholly unfounded. The properties managed by these two Offices were perfectly distinct and separate from each other. The property under the management of the Office of Woods was the hereditary possession of the Crown, and administered, subject to the necessary outlay for the maintenance and improvement of the inheritance, for the purpose of the revenue; and the property administered by the Office of Works consisted of buildings and of the parks in London which were held and had been acquired for Government Offices, for national collections, and for the recreation and enjoyment of the public. The hon. Member stated that the Office of Works had certain rights over portions of the Crown property, and had referred to certain buildings which were occupied as Government Offices, such as the Admiralty and Treasury Offices; but he (Mr. Peel) had never heard that any inconvenience had arisen either to the public or the Office of Works in consequence of these buildings being the property of the Crown. The hon. Member had also drawn attention to the fact that while the parks in London which had been set out for the enjoyment of the public were under the management of the Office of Works, the property which was reserved had been placed under the Office of Woods, being the only part which yielded any profit. He (Mr. Peel) would take the two parks—Regent's Park and Victoria Park. These were acquired at the expense of the Crown revenues, and the Crown, having reserved a certain portion of them, planted and laid out the greater part for the use of the public, and entirely at the expense of the Crown revenue. When the partition of the Offices took place in 1851, an Act of Parliament, by which the two Offices were separated, transferred the management of that portion of the parks which had been laid out at the expense of the Crown revenue to the Office of Works, and also directed that all those portions, whether of houses or lands, which had been reserved should remain under the management of the Office of Woods. He conceived that any income that might be derived from the building leases was not more than a fair compensation to the Crown for the expense incurred to the revenue in laying out the parks for the benefit of the public. The hon. Member expressed his regret that these two Offices were ever separated, and stated that that separation had not resulted in that economy which was expected, but on the contrary caused great extravagance, and that it was to be regretted the Chief Commissioner of Woods had no longer a seat in that House, as he had at the time when the two Offices were combined. The two Offices were united in 1832. Up to that time there had been a separate Department for the accounts of public buildings. The experiment of a union was tried for nearly twenty years; but in 1851 the two Departments were again separated, because it was found that the experiment was unattended with success. The experiment partly failed because it was found that many public works were being carried out at the charge of the Land revenue instead of the general revenue, and, no doubt, the latter course would have been adopted but for the necessity of placing the services upon the Estimates, and thus insuring a discussion to which, though inconvenient, they ought to have been submitted. Another cause of failure was the adoption of the very course of which the hon. Gentleman was so enamoured that he desired it to be re-established—namely, the availability of Crown lands for the public service without the demand of any rent. Personally, he was very much averse to the renewal of such a course, because while it was in operation the House was never made fully acquainted with the expense of particular works, inasmuch as the site was supposed to be obtained from the Crown property without any cost. In many cases, too, an actual loss resulted to the public, because sites were selected simply because they could be obtained without any sum being voted by the House. It should also be remembered that this state of things existed when a very liberal view was taken of what constituted public purposes, and in many cases grants of land were made to persons from whom payment might fairly have been expected. He wished, therefore, to ask the House whether there were any grounds for the inquiry demanded by the hon. Gentleman, either jointly with the Office of Works or separately, into the Department of Woods. He would remind the House that there had already been several inquiries into the administration of those Offices. A Committee sat for two Sessions in 1832, and another for a similar period in 1848; and though the latter body made no Report, it was generally understood that the opinion of the Members was in favour of the separation of the two Offices, and Government afterwards brought in a Bill for the purpose of carrying this understanding into effect. In 1855 there was another Committee, which inquired into the management of the Woods and Forests; in addition to which inquiries into the organization of the Department had been instituted by the Treasury, and the general result of those inquiries had been favourable to the Department. The object of the inquiry which the hon. Gentleman had asked for was to ascertain whether the Department of Woods performed its duties in a satisfactory manner. He (Mr. Peel) said that it did; and in proof of that assertion, he would show that a great increase had taken place in the gross revenue of the Crown lands, and in the amount which it annually passed into the Exchequer to the credit of the Consolidated Fund, In the year 1850, before the separation, the annual revenue from lands was £296,000, and from forests nearly £45,000, making a total of £341,000. In the year ended the 31st of March last the gross revenue from lands had increased to £383,000, and the revenue from the forests was £42,000; giving a total revenue of £425,766, being an increase of about £84,000 during the thirteen years since the separation. The lands apart from the forests produced in the year 1850 £296,000, while in the present year the sum had reached £383,000, showing an increase of about 35 per cent. He would admit that, independent of good management, the property must have been an improvable one to allow of its increasing 35 per cent in value in the course of thirteen years. It ought however, in justice to the Department of Woods, to be borne in mind that a large proportion of the income derived from the land was of a fixed and immovable character—at all events, for the present. The Crown had a very large property in London, and the Crown rental in the metropolis alone amounted to £100,000. Those Crown rents were derived from building leases, at present not more than half expired. Of course at the expiration of the leases that property would largely increase in value; but until that time had arrived no improvement could of course be made in the rental. The amount annually received from quit rents in Ire land and fen duties and surplus tithes in Scotland was £80,000 and that again was not an improvable property. So that of the £296,000, which was the income derived from land in the year 1850, £180,000 at least was of a kind in which no immediate improvement had taken place. The hon. Gentleman had pretty correctly stated in what manner the in crease of £85,000 had accrued to the Crown from the Crown lands; but far from agreeing with the opinion entertained by the hon. Member, that the careful husbanding of the resources confided to their charge was a matter of reproach to the Office of Woods, he thought that the course which they had adopted entitled them to much credit. It had been the policy of the Department of Woods to give much encouragement of late years to persons desirous of searching for mines. This course had been attended by a profitable result, for in 1850 the Crown mines produced £10,000 a year, while at the present time they yielded a revenue of £25,000 per annum. The hon. Gentleman had blamed the Department for cutting down a large quantity of timber which was standing upon the forests, but it must be recollected that the process of disafforestation was sanctioned by Act of Parliament. Three forests had been cleared in this way. Two had been converted into farms, and the other sold, the proceeds being lodged in the funds. £60,000 had been expended in the conversion of these two forests into farms, and with a very small exception the whole of the outlay for improvements had been covered by the felling of timber upon the forests. The result was that while those three forests previous to their disafforestation produced only £5,000 a year, they were now yielding, partly from the farms and partly from the interest on the proceeds which were invested in the funds, an annual revenue of £15,000. The Com missioners annually expended large sums on the improvement of the property; but the public lost nothing by this course, because in every case the tenant was charged with interest, or an addition was made to his rent. Another great source of profit had been the result of the sales and purchases which had been made of late years, and from the enfranchisement of copyholds. The Commissioners had wisely determined to sell all the outlying and detached lands, buying with the proceeds lands which were nearer their more valuable property. Up to the end of last year the total sums for sales of property amounted to £1,150,000, nearly the whole of which sum had been expended in the purchase of other property. The property thus sold was valued at the time of its being sold or let at £15,000 per annum, and the income derived from the invested proceeds of such sales reached £35,000 a year. In that way, and partly owing to the increased rents obtained for Crown property, the annual income had increased to the extent he had stated. The hon. Gentleman had referred to the subject of forests, and had expressed an opinion that the forests should be sold, and the money turned to better account. But he had forgotten over how small a portion of the forests the Crown had absolute rights. Of the 100,000 acres which were comprised in the whole of the Crown forests, only 20,000 acres belonged absolutely to the Crown. The whole of these 20,000 acres which were in any way fit for cultivation were either planted or were let for farming purposes to the best advantage. As to the remaining 80,000 acres, they were subject to rights of common, and the Crown had no power to turn them to profit except in one particular manner sanctioned by an Act of Parliament passed during the first French Revolution, which gave the Crown power, notwithstanding rights of common, to enclose about 30,000 acres of common land, and to plant them with oak trees. The hon. Gentleman complained that the rental derived from the forests was small, and that was no doubt true; but it must be borne in mind that a great part of the annual return of the forests was not represented by money, but by the additional value of the growing crop of timber, which increased every year. These forests were principally of oak, and oak did hot arrive at maturity in less than a hundred years. The oak was planted about fifty years ago, and it was consequently only an accruing crop; but the value was increasing every year, and would ultimately be realized. Another point mentioned by the hon. Gentleman was in relation to foreshores; but that subject had been so frequently and so fully discussed in that House, that it was unnecessary now to dwell at any length upon it. He would only remark that the law was clear that the shore was the property of the Crown, subject to the rights of navigation, and although he did not desire to see the Crown rights enforced with any degree of severity, yet he could not understand why Crown property below high-water mark should be differently treated from Crown property situated above high-water mark. There was no reason why Crown rent should be remitted to persons who wished to use the foreshore for their own purposes, and if such remission were made it would really be a grant of public money for the benefit of individuals. With respect to the payments into the Exchequer as compared with the increase in the gross revenue of the Crown property, he admitted that it would not be fair to institute a comparison between the payments made now and those which were made before 1850; because before the separation of the Departments there were various charges upon the gross revenue—such as expenses for the management of parks and the expenses of the establishments in London—which were now met by Parliamentary grants; but including only such expenditure before 1850 as was now paid out of the gross revenue the surplus then did not exceed £250,000. The net sums paid into the Exchequer down to recent periods did not exceed £150,000 a year; but in 1858 the payment into the Exchequer was £280,000, in 1860 £290,000, in 1862 £300,000, and in 1864–5 it would be £310,000. The difference between the gross revenue and the sum paid into the Exchequer represented the expenditure under the Office of Works, and it was right also to add the £28,000 voted by Parliament for the Office of Woods. The hon. Member complained that the expenses of the establishment of the Office of Woods had increased since 1850, but he had left out of consideration certain circumstances which had a material bearing upon that point. In 1851 the Estimate for the Office of Woods was about £20,000, and now it was £28,000. The increase was partly due to an increase of salaries and partly to the larger amount voted for legal disbursements. The increase in the charge for salaries arose from the fact that certain officers, who before 1850 were paid by fees, were now paid by salary. The increased charge for legal disbursements was owing, no doubt, to the activity of the Office of Woods in looking after the rights of the Crown; but it must also be remembered that at least one-half of the amount annually voted by Parliament for legal disbursements was recovered from the parties with whom the litigation took place, and was repaid to the Consolidated Fund as part of the revenue of Crown lands. The real increase on the expense of the Office for Woods had only been about £2,000, which was not more than might have been expected from the increased amount of business which was performed. The difference between the gross revenue of the Crown lands, £425,000, and the net amount paid into the Exchequer, £310,000, this year was £115,000, and that sum represented the outlay of the Department of Woods, not only in the management of the property, but also in the dealing with the forests and parks, including Windsor. It was not quite fair, however, to include Windsor Forest with the other forest lands, because it should be borne in mind that Windsor Park and Forest were devoted to the accommodation of the Sovereign in the same way as the parks of London were devoted to the accommodation of the public. The animal expenditure on Windsor Park and Forest was about £20,000, and the receipts had increased to £8,000; while the annual expenditure on Delamere Forest was £26,000. Those two sums deducted from the total expenditure left a sum of £75,000 to represent the expenditure of that Department of Woods. The amount of fixed charges, for creating which the Office was not responsible, was very considerable. The income tax alone came to £11,000; and there were besides many petty charges attached to the property in former times, and which had come down with it when it came to the Crown. The whole amount of these fixed charges was not less than £25,000 a year. The annual outlay for improvements was considerable—last year it amounted to £31,000. It happened, however, that at the present time very expensive works were in progress. The Committee of 1855 condemned a portion of Delamere Forest as unfit for the growth of timber, and recommended that a certain portion should be converted into farms, the expense to be paid out of the income of Crown lands. In compliance with the recommendation improvements had been going on, and the total amount expended upon the conversion of 15,000 acres was £45,000. This was a considerable sum, but the outlay would ultimately yield a return of from 8 to 10 per cent. Then a considerable amount had been spent on the Hull citadel and the reclamation of land about it. This was in the possession of the War Department up to a recent period, when it reverted lo the Office of Woods, who had taken steps to embank the foreshores, but the result would be that the public would receive about £10,000 from those improvements. All that remained was £16,000 annually expended in the management of the property, paid to the Receiver of Crown Rents, who received 4 per cent, and surveyors who surveyed the lands; but about three-quarters of that would be repaid by the persons who took the lands which were the subject of those surveys. The hon. Gentleman suggested that this expenditure should be transferred from the Consolidated Fund to the annual Votes, and it was true that the Committee on Public Moneys had recommended that course to be taken, provided there were no constitutional objections to it. The whole subject was discussed in that House in 1851, when the Bill passed which separated the two Departments; and after a division the arrangement adopted was to place upon the Estimates merely the expenses of the establishment of Woods, leaving the outlay for improvements and other expenses to be paid out of the revenues of the Crown lands. He doubted very much whether the expenses of the year could be so far anticipated as to allow the property to be administered in the manner suggested by the hon. Gentleman. While the settlement of the Civil List continued as now it was part of the compact that the income arising from the Crown revenues should be paid to the public account, subject to all necessary expenses of improvement and management. The Office of Woods were trustees to this property. The income was payable to the public during the life of the Sovereign, and after his death it went to his successor. The rules under which the property was administered by the Office of Woods were clearly and expressly defined by Act of Parliament. They had been frequently the subject of inquiry in the House; they had passed successfully through the scrutiny of several Commissioners, and he hoped the House would not think it necessary to order the inquiry which the hon. Gentleman had asked for.

After a few words from Mr. AUGUSTUS SMITH in reply,

Question, That a Select Committee be appointed, put, and negatived.