HC Deb 19 May 1865 vol 179 cc594-611

(In the Committee.)

(1.) £76,000, Harbours of Refuge.

MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

said, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Peel) would be able to give the Committee some information with regard to the damage done to the Works at Alderney.

MR. PEEL

said, he had already stated that evening that the engineers of the works in question had reported two breeches in the wall during a great storm. They stated, however, that the base of the wall, which was the most important part of the structure, had received no injury, whatever. The expense of repairing the damage would amount to about £15,000, half of which, as it was the result of a storm, would fall upon the contractors under the terms of their contract.

Vote agreed to.

(2.) £49,930, for Holyhead and Port-patrick Harbours, &c.

In reply to Mr. O'REILLY,

MR. MILNER GIBSON

said, that Holyhead Harbour was completed for the reception of passengers and mail packets.

SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLEN

said, that the Irish mails were very irregular, and the letters were not delivered until ten or eleven o'clock in the day. He asked when the Returns moved for by the hon. Member for Cork would be laid before the House?

MR. PEEL

said, the elaborate nature of the Returns had caused a delay in their production.

Vote agreed to.

(3.) £70,677, to complete the sum for Public Buildings in Ireland.

(4.) £3,000, to complete the sum for New Record Buildings, Dublin.

SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLEN

said, that he understood it was not intended to complete the whole of these buildings internally at present, but he believed that the cheapest plan would be to complete them at once.

MR. PEEL

stated that the buildings were completed externally, but it was not thought necessary to go to the expense of fitting up more than four-tenths of the interior until it should be all required for use.

Vote agreed to.

(5.) £813, National Gallery of Ireland.

(6.) £19,474, Lighthouses Abroad.

In reply to Mr. FINLAY,

MR. MILNER GIBSON

said, that the lighthouses at the Bahamas were entirely supported by Parliamentary Votes. The other side of the Florida channel was extremely well lighted by the American Go- vernment and at the service of our shipping free of expense. With respect to the Little Basses Lightship, it was intended to make her self-supporting. Her only value was to ships passing to the Bay of Bengal, and it was thought desirable to levy a small due on all ships benefiting from that light.

MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

said, he was glad to hear that some tolls were to be levied for these lights, for it was monstrous that the people of this country should be taxed for them. In the Bahamas there were no less than eight lighthouses, and he should like to have some explanation with respect to the new lighthouse which had been erected there at a cost of £7,500.

MR. DANBY SEYMOUR

said, he wished to know whether any portion of the charge for the lighthouse at Ceylon was borne by that Island or by the Indian Government? He was in favour of doing away, as far as was practicable, with passing tolls, but then he did not think it right that the expense of maintaining a lighthouse at Ceylon should be defrayed altogether by this country. It was only fair that the Indian Government should pay half.

MR. MILNER GIBSON

said, that the prrticular portion of the Vote to which the hon. Gentleman referred was for the maintenance, not of a lighthouse, but of a lightship at Ceylon, and that it was intended to make her as far as possible self-supporting. Ceylon had no special local interest in the keeping up of the vessel, which was chiefly of service to the shipping passing up the Bay of Bengal. The Indian Government had, he believed, declined to contribute towards the cost of the lightship, and it appeared to him but fair that the power should be exercised of levying dues on all ships which were benefited by her light. It would, he might add, be necessary to incur some further expense in that quarter in providing a spare ship to be made use of in case of accident. In answer to the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Augustus Smith), he might state that it had been found expedient to have a new lighthouse at the Bahamas owing to the dangerous nature of the channel navigation.

MR. DANBY SEYMOUR

said, that being of opinion that some portion of the expense of the lightship at Ceylon should be borne by the Indian Government, he should move that the Vote should be reduced by half its amount.

Vote agreed to.

(7.) £4,000, Lunatic Asylum, Isle of Man.

MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

said, he wished to ask how it was that, the Vote having been rejected by the House last year, it was again brought forward by the Government in the present Session?

MR. PEEL

said, he attributed the rejection of the Vote last year partly to his not having explained the circumstances under which it was introduced with sufficient clearness, and partly to the fact that the correspondence, which would have furnished a full explanation, had not been laid on the table of the House, That correspondence, however, had since been produced, and it would be seen by it that in 1858 the condition of the criminal pauper lunatics in the Isle of Man having been brought under the notice of Mr. Walpole, at the time, Secretary for the Home Department, he bad called the attention of the local authorities to the subject, and that the result was an application to the Treasury, who had undertaken to pay half the expense of erecting a lunatic asylum in the island, provided the authorities there would undertake the payment of the other half. The House of Keys, availing themselves of that offer, had passed a Bill for the purpose of making the necessary valuation of property with the view to raise their share of the money, and the Government, under the circumstances, deemed it to be their duty to carry into effect their part of the arrangement by proposing the present Vote. The Vote, in fact, was only the appropriation of a portion of the surplus revenue of the Isle of Man, which amounted to £10,000 or £12,000 a year, which was paid into the Imperial Exchequer. It was also thought that the island was entitled to this Vote because the Crown had bought the sovereign rights of the island.

MR. FINLAY

said, he did not see on what ground the Isle of Man should be placed on a footing different from that of Scotland and all other parts of the Kingdom, which were obliged to pay for lunatic asylums out of their own local taxes. If Scotch accounts were balanced in the same way as the Secretary to the Treasury proposed in the case of the Isle of Man, it would be found that Scotland also had a large surplus revenue.

LORD JOHN BROWNE

said, he wished to ask, whether the county Mayo, which was at present spending £30,000 for purposes exactly similar to those covered by this Vote, would receive any assistance out of the public funds, if an application to that effect were made. In what did the difference between this portion of the Kingdom and the Isle of Man consist? He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury if he thought the House was bound to pass this Vote because the Government had promised to recommend its adoption. He did not see why the House should this year reverse the Vote of last year.

MR. PEEL

said, the Isle of Man had a Legislature of its own. There was a great distinction between the Isle of Man and the county of Mayo. When the sovereign rights of the Duke of Atholl were bought, it was thought equitable that the surplus revenues should be paid into the Exchequer. In his opinion this was a special case for the grant of public money. Before, the revenues of the island belonged to it, and were expended there, and it appeared no more than justice to expend now a portion of those revenues upon the local wants of the place.

MR. DANBY SEYMOUR

said, the proceeds of the Customs duties in this country were applied towards sustaining the general burdens, and unless the Isle of Man were prepared to maintain an army, navy, and police of its own, it ought to contribute towards the maintenance of these national forces before it could claim any surplus revenues. The fact of there being a surplus of £12,000 a year showed that the Isle of Man was wealthy, and had I a good trade, and it surely could afford to pay for its own local expenses, as well as any other part of the Kingdom.

MR. FINLAY

said, the Customs duties in the Isle of Man were not of the same amount as those in the rest of the United Kingdom. £300,000 were spent some years ago as a gross job in acquiring the sovereignty of the island, and now the Committee were asked to perpetuate a system thus inaugurated.

MR. POLLARD-URQUHART

said, he must protest against the doctrine that because sovereign rights had been acquired by the State over any portion of its proper dominions it was bound to spend in that portion of its territory whatever surplus revenues might arise therein. Such an agreement had once existed in Hanover, but at that time Hanover contributed largely to our military strength in time of war.

SIR GEORGE GREY

said, he did not know whether hon. Members had read the letter from the Governor, in which it was pointed out that the measures proposed to he carried out had been approved by three Governments. On the faith of that the local Government had raised a considerable sum. The asylum would contain accommodation for criminal as well as pauper lunatics. Even in England and Ireland the State defrayed its share of the maintenance of criminal lunatics.

LORD JOHN BROWNE

said, nothing would be easier than to overcome the difficulty last suggested by removing the criminal lunatics from the Isle of Man to Dartmoor, or the nearest establishment of a suitable kind in the United Kingdom.

MR. ALDERMAN SALOMONS

said, that some compromise should he adopted in this matter. The House, he thought, would not haggle with so small an island for a few thousand pounds if, as suggested, the national faith was pledged to the expenditure.

MR. O'REILLY

said, it was important to ascertain how the faith of the country stood pledged, if at all. If an undertaking by a Secretary of State that he would propose a particular Vote to the House amounted to a pledge on the part of the country to grant the money asked for, the Committee of Supply might as well abandon its functions at once. He wished to understand distinctly from the right hon. Gentleman whether the statement that the Isle of Man possessed a revenue and a Legislature of its own, was to be taken as a declaration that the Isle of Man undertook its own defence, and would not make any call on the national forces. The colonies paid towards the Imperial expense incurred in their military defence. The Isle of Man was a part of the Empire, with a local Legislature, hut it did not pay for its own defence. The House could not admit that it was bound by any engagements which might have been made by any Member of the Government as to the payment of this money.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, that no Member of the present Government would presume that he could bind the House beforehand to any Vote of money. The authorities of the Isle of Man, however, had reason to expect, from the assurances, first of the late Sir George Lewis, and afterwards in still stronger terms of the Government of Lord Derby, that the Vote now before the House would be recommended and supported by the Government. Did the Parliament of this country treat the Isle of Man with greater liberality than the colonies? The hon. and gallant Gentleman who spoke last was in error in supposing that the colonies contributed towards their own military defence. The rule had been that they did not so contribute, and the contrary principle was only of partial and recent adoption. He believed that the Isle of Man paid over to the Imperial Exchequer a larger proportion by far than any other dependency of the Empire. The dependencies which in many respects it most resembled were the Channel Islands. The latter had an independent Legislature, hut they did not contribute a farthing to their own defence, while the Isle of Man paid over one-third of the whole revenue to this country. The Channel Islands were so far favoured that they received grants from the Privy Council for their schools, without contributing a farthing to the fund from which those grants were taken.

MR. BLACKBURN

said, he saw no reason why the lunatic asylums of the Isle of Man should be paid for out of the Imperial Exchequer. The Vote was refused last year, and that, in the absence of any new arguments, was a very good reason for refusing it again.

LORD JOHN BROWNE

said, that if hon. Members would read the note appended to the Estimate they would find that the probable cost of this building was about £20,000, in addition to £2,016 for the purchase of the site. Half the amount was to be provided by Parliament, and the other half by the island. The House was now asked to vote £4,000, which was one-half the cost of the site, and of such portion of the work as would be paid for within the year. The correspondence was laid before Parliament in 1864, and he wished to know why the Government did not take the opinion of the House on this subject at an earlier period.

SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLEN

said, he agreed that the expenses of lunatic asylums were generally borne by local rates. An objection to this Vote, however, came with an ill grace from Members for Scotland, for the very next Vote was one of £20,000 for Courthouses in Scotland. In Ireland the latter expenses were defrayed out of county rates.

COLONEL DUNNE

said, he thought it quite right to restore to the Isle of Man £13,000 of the money taken from the island in taxes, but the Government forgot I that they drew £4,000,000 out of Ireland.

Motion made, and Question put, That a sum, not exceeding £4,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1866, towards the erection in the Isle of Man of an Asylum for the reception of Criminal and other Lunatics.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 49; Noes 33: Majority 16.

Vote agreed to.

(8.) £20,000, Sheriff Court Houses, Scotland.

MR. BLACKBURN

said, he wished to ask for some explanation of the large sum of £38,000 for the Sheriff's Court of Edinburgh, which was not larger than other Courts in various parts of Scotland.

THE LORD ADVOCATE

said, it had been very difficult to obtain a site, and though the sum was large, it was not larger than the necessities of the case required.

Vote agreed to.

(9.) £27,000, Rates for Government Property.

COLONEL DUNNE

said, there was no ground for assisting local rates in England out of the Consolidated Fund when nothing of the kind was done in Ireland.

MR. M'MAHON

said, it was only within the last few years this Vote had been proposed. It was an enormous advantage to the people of Greenwich to have Government establishments there. Would the hon. Members for Greenwich and Woolwich be content to-morrow that those establishments should be transferred to the Shannon or the Cove of Cork? If the establishments were removed to Ireland, and grants were asked in aid of local assessments, there would not be the least chance of getting them. Government establishments prevented pauperism. He should oppose the Vote, and if encouraged would go to a division upon it.

MR. ALDERMAN SALOMONS

said, the Committee that sat upstairs had settled the question of Government rating. His hon. and learned Friend (Mr. M'Mahon) spoke of the advantage of Government establishments. But in the parish of St. Nicholas, Deptford, where the dockyard was, the rates were 12s. in the pound. Was there anything like that in Ireland? In Woolwich, also, where the Government occupied the best part of the river frontage the rates were exceedingly high. Of late years various improvements in drainage, lighting, and other matters had been introduced for the whole district, and would it not be monstrous that the Government occupying lands for the benefit of the nation should not contribute to the expenses incurred? Who wore the roads? Why the artillery, and the people paid for them. Were the Government of this country so poor that in places where they possessed these large establishments the inhabitants should light, watch, pave, and make sewers, and the Government pay no rates? The fact was that this Vote was miserably small and inadequate, and ought to be increased.

MR. WHALLEY

said, he thought that the Government establishments at Woolwich added more to the value of the property in their neighbourhood than that property was depreciated by the additional poor rate at which it was assessed.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, that this £27,000 could surely not be the whole sum to be contributed by the Government in aid of local rating.

COLONEL FRENCH

said, he wished to ask, whether it was intended that any portion of the money should be applied in payment of rates in Ireland or Scotland?

MR. PEEL

said, that no distinction was made between England and any part of the United Kingdom, There were two heads into which this Vote was divided. The first related to property newly acquired by the Government. With regard to this property, the Government indemnified the parish against any loss sustained by its transfer from private hands to those of the Government, and the same rates were paid as it would have been liable to if it had remained private property. But there was this condition—that the rateable value should continue the same as it was when the property was acquired by the Government. That course, he thought, satisfied every claim which could be preferred by the parishes concerned. It was true that the parishes lost the advantage of any increasing value, but this was a conjectural estimate, and you must take into account the benefit conferred upon the district by the large scale of Government expenditure. In such an arrangement the Government were fortified by the authority of Parliament, this being the rule laid down with regard to purchases made for fortification purposes. The other head referred to property long in the possession of the Government. That property had always been exempted from rating, and the Government thought this exemption ought to continue, and that the present body of ratepayers had no right to the benefit asked for by them, they having acquired their property in the parish knowing that the Government property there paid no rates. The only exception to the general rule thus laid down of maintaining the non-liability of this class of Government property was where the proportion of that property to the rateable property of the parish was very largo. This proportion as recommended by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, was fixed at one-sixth, and he thought that such an arrangement would meet the claims of the parishes on account of any burdens which might devolve on them owing to those Government establishments.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, be thought that the recommendation of the Committee, which was presided over by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should be carried out, and the rating of Government property be regulated by Act of Parliament. At present it was altogether an arbitrary matter.

MR. LOCKE

said, he must remind the Committee that, with ordinary persons, it was the quarter sessions which decided upon the rating, but the Government claimed to assess themselves. The Committee which had been referred to came to the conclusion that Government property ought to be rated upon the same principles as the property of individuals; but now the Government asked the Committee to vote this sum of £27,000, as representing the total amount it should contribute to the rates for all its property in the United Kingdom. Such a proposition was absurd, and he hoped that next Session the question would be dealt with in a more satisfactory manner.

SIR JERVOISE JERVOISE

said, his attention had been drawn to the inadequate contributions which the Government made to the rates of those districts in which their great establishments were situate. In the principle of exempting Government establishments from local rates on the ground that they benefited the district in which they were situated were carried out, every large private establishment ought to be exempt also. Whatever advantages resulted to certain districts from the presence of Government establishments, those advantages were counterbalanced by the consequent disadvantages.

ADMIRAL DUNCOMBE

said, that hardships did arise to individuals from the present system, but it must be recollected that the system was not one of to-day, but had existed for a long period of time, and to call upon the Government to contribute to the rates on account of all these establishments, in the same proportion as individuals, would impose a charge upon the public purse that would affright the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, in fact, would lead only to taking out of one pocket to put into another. It might, indeed, render it necessary to re-impose a part of the income tax which had been taken off. He hoped, however, the subject would be fully considered in a future Session.

SIR BROOK BRIDGES

said, he wished to ask for some explanation of the different modes of assessment adopted by the Government.

MR. PEEL

said, the difference consisted in the fact that the Government did not think they ought to pay upon the same principle in places where the property had been long in the possession of the Government as in places where property had been recently acquired and thus transferred from ratepaying occupiers to them.

MR. M'MAHON

said, he thought that the same principle of contributing to rates should apply to every part of the United Kingdom.

Vote agreed to.

MR. HADFIELD moved that the Chairman report Progress.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Hadfield.)

SIR GEORGE GREY

said, he hoped the hon. Member would not persist in his Motion. It was early, twenty minutes to eleven, and if, as was supposed, Parliament was to rise in the second week of July, some progress must be made with the Estimates with which at present they were very backward.

MR. HADFIELD

said, he would withdraw his Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

(10.) £51,064, to complete the sum for the Houses of Parliament.

MR. AYRTON

said, he saw a charge in the Estimate for the attendant on the ventilation of the House. That individual was paid by the country for pumping cold and unwholesome air into the House to circulate about the feet of hon. Members to such an extent that it was impossible for hon. Members to remain in it in the early part of the Session, and it was the most cruel thing possible to ask the House to vote anything for his salary. The House was kept in such an uncomfortable state that some hon. Members were unable to remain for the night, and others were obliged tore-tire to warm themselves to enable them to return to their duties. The House was made so injurious to health that hon. Members suffered very considerably in consequence. When the east wind was blowing it was thought in this country to be a very comfortable thing to get inside a building; but in that House the east wind blew as disagreeably as it did outside. Some attributed the disagreeable state of the House to the gas in the roof, but that was a very curious idea, when in truth the whole evil was caused by the cold air that was blown into the House from below. The sooner the nuisance was got rid of the better.

MR. WHALLEY

said, be had made a personal application to the officer in question, and his reply had been very unsatisfactory, he (Mr. Whalley) could not do his duty, although he had tried his best, and the effect of the present arrangements was to drive away all the independent Members. He understood the law of nature to be that the upper stratum of air should be cooler than the lower, in order that the impurities of human breath and other impurities might be carried off. But in that House they had created an artificial beat above. The system of ventilation adopted in that House was the cruellest form of despotism ever invented. Instead of allowing the hot air to escape they sent it down on hon. Members. He had been up above and down below, and really—speaking for himself—he could not stand it. Whether it was by creating an artificial heat above or forcing in artificial east winds from below he could not say, but the system of ventilation was fundamentally wrong; and nothing could be more deliberately ruinous to the health of independent Members.

Vote agreed to.

(11). £39,488, to complete the sum for the Treasury.

MR. HUNT

said, he wished to call attention to the large expenditure for messengers, not only in this, but in all the public Departments. The sum asked for the expenses of messengers in all the public Departments in London was no less than £34,794. When he had occasion to make any communication to a public Department he usually intrusted it to the post, and he generally found that it arrived safely; but whenever he received an answer it was delivered by a messenger. Why could not the Departments make use of the Post Office in the same way instead of having such a multitude of messengers, many of whom were lounging about doing nothing. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer would turn his attention to the subject he would find that at least one-third of the staff would be quite sufficient.

MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

said, he wished to ask why it was necessary to come to that House for Votes on Account if the salaries were due at the end of the quarter?

MR. PEEL

said, the salaries were paid at the end of the quarter, but by the recent Appropriation Acts it was impossible to use any of the unappropriated balances, and consequently he was obliged to come to that House for a Vote.

Vote agreed to.

(12.) £20,188, to complete the sum for the Home Office.

MR. HUNT

said, he wished to ask how it was that in the Vote for the Treasury the number of messengers employed, and the salaries given, were stated in detail, and a lump sum taken for the Home Office?

MR. PEEL

said, that the latter sum was limited to the Home Office alone; whereas in the Treasury it included those employed in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Office also, and they required to be separated.

MR. HUNT

said, he did not see why the details could not be given in both cases.

MR. PEEL

said, they should be given next year.

Vote agreed to.

(13.) £48,885, to complete the sum for the Foreign Office.

MR. DARBY GRIFFITH

said, that as we had adopted a policy of non-intervention—of never assisting our friends, and of letting any injustice go on in any part of the world—the time had come when some of our Foreign Office machinery might be dispensed with. In the new path of peace on which we had entered we had neither to defend our territories nor raise a finger when treaties are broken. The only object of our diplomacy had hitherto been to prevent other nations from going to war. Nobody ever proposed seriously to attack us; the only way in which we ever got into wars was by de- fending our friends, and if we had made up our minds to let our friends take care of themselves, and let foreign nations go on cutting each other's throats within sight of us without interfering, we might as well get rid of some of the expense which our diplomacy caused us. ["Move, move!"] Certainly not; he was not going to do anything so invidious. His hon. Friend opposite the Member for Southwark (Mr. Layard) had now quite a sinecure in his post of Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In former times he had had occasion to trouble him very frequently; but latterly he had not had occasion to ask him a single question.

MR. WHALLEY

said, that in reply to the observations of the hon. Member for Devizes, he would say that the question of the maintenance of our Foreign Office did not depend upon the adoption or not of the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other nations. The voice of history warned us that so long as this country maintained its Protestant principles and remained the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty, it must always expect to have arrayed against it the animosity of States which had a different policy. This country was an asylum of persons who for their political or their religious principles had to leave the land of their birth, and as long as we desired to have England pre-eminent in upholding the principles of civil and religious liberty we must maintain our Foreign Office.

Vote agreed to, as was also,

(14.) £23,658, to complete the sum for the Colonial Department.

(15.) £13,824, Privy Council Office.

SIR JERVOISE JERVOISE

said, that he did not think the country got value for the £1,500 paid to the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. Considerable sums had been spent on experiments connected with vaccination. He thought that the experiments and Reports of the medical branch of the Department were superficial, and the conclusions come to empirical and not satisfactory.

COLONEL DUNNE

said, he wished to know was this medical officer the gentleman who had made the very elaborate Report which had been used by the Government in the recent debates on the Poor Laws, and who seemed to have a very slight acquaintance with truth. If so, the salary ought to be stopped. In referring to that Report his observation was founded on the statements made by hon. Members in the course of the debate.

MR. H. A. BRUCE

said, that the document referred to was not penned actually by an officer of the Government, but by a gentleman specially employed for the particular duty. He (Mr. Bruce) was not then prepared to accede to the criticizms passed by certain hon. Members upon it. He should on Monday have an opportunity of conferring with Dr. Hunter, when, he believed, he would be able to show the House that the charges directed against that gentleman were made under a misapprehension. He (Mr. Bruce) referred especially to those of the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire. He must say, that he know no more able nor hardworking officer than Dr. Simon, who had already conferred the greatest benefits upon the public by his inquiries, which had been attended with the best results to the public health. He believed that those inquiries ought to be continued by that gentleman.

SIR WILLIAM JOLLIFFE

said, he concurred in the opinion that the Privy Council should have the means of prosecuting these local medical inquiries. But the question for consideration was whether the expenses were not exorbitant for what they obtained. It was well that the Board of Health was done away with, inasmuch as it had made foolish Reports, which invited the severest criticizms year by year. The present system, which was established in its stead, was a much better one. This Department of the Government should, however, pay more attention to the way in which those Reports were made up if they wished to enlist the respect of the House for them.

MR. F. S. POWELL

said, he wished to know how the Special Report was to be paid for. How did it appear in the Estimates? He was not prepared to join in the remarks which had been made adverse to it, because the more clear and bold the colouring of pictures relating to the domiciliary arrangements of the poor the better. He felt sure that on a fair and candid report a state of things far blacker and more disgraceful to our civilization would be found in our manufacturing districts than that reported in the agricultural neighbourhoods. As an owner of property in the manufacturing districts he had found himself continually foiled in his efforts to provide for the manufacturing classes dwellings more favourable to decency and comfort by the ignorance of the very peo- ple for whose welfare he had expended his money. It was of no use to furnish their rooms with the means of ventilation if the people would never open the windows; when he had made arrangements for ample and separate sleeping accommodation, a large portion of the space so provided would be used for the purposes of lumber and storage, and the whole family would crowd into one room. Instead, therefore, of reporting adversely upon the condition of the agricultural districts only, he hoped that the medical officer would give an equally graphic and an impartial description of the existing state of things in both agricultural and manufacturing districts.

MR. H. A. BRUCE

said, that the scheme alluded to by his hon. Friend was included in the contingent expenses under the Public Health Act, 21 & 22 Vict. c. 97, which amounted to £7,000, including £2,000 for the National Vaccine Establishment, and £2,000 for vaccination inspection. The Report alluded to contained a great many particulars with reference to an outbreak of fever at Liverpool, and the seven volumes of Reports which had hitherto appeared had treated the subject of our large towns at considerable length. He believed that the charge against Dr. Hunter of presenting a report in which his adverse criticizm was the result of animus was most unjust. It was the first time it had been made, though he had frequently before used strong terms of censure.

MR. HUNT

said, be believed that Dr. Hunter's inquiries would lead to more accurate reports if some notification of his intended visit to the part of the country were made by that gentleman, so that persons in the neighbourhood might have an opportunity of furnishing him with correct information and of rebutting charges made by interested parties.

COLONEL DUNNE

said, he was unable to judge himself of the accuracy of Dr. Hunter's report, but a distinguished Member of the House (Mr. Henley) had said that it was incorrect, and that statement was echoed on both sides of the House.

Vote agreed to.

(16.) £50,523, to complete the sum for the Board of Trade.

SIR WILLIAM JOLLIFFE

said, he must complain of the cost incurred through the registration of joint-stock companies, and thought that some fees for registration ought to be charged.

MR. THOMSON HANKEY

said, he must call the attention of the hon. Baronet to the fact that fees to the amount of £21,000 were received in the year 1864.

MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

said, that the expenses in connection with this Vote bad increased from £65,000 last year and £62,000 the previous year to £68.000 in the present Estimate. The increase of expenditure on account of superannuation was especially objectionable. Two gentlemen, Lord Hobart, and Mr. Edgar Bowring, had been superannuated, one at the age of thirty-eight and the other at the age of forty. One of these Gentlemen, Mr. Edgar Bowring held two offices, and though only one of those offices had been abolished, his superannuation was calculated on the salaries of both offices. He should like to know from the right hon. Gentleman at the head of this Department, who was not only known as an advanced Reformer, but was an advocate of peace, and above all retrenchment, whether these gentlemen had been employed in any other Department of the public service after the alteration or abolition of the offices they previously held.

MR. M'MAHON

said, he thought that now the restrictions had been so much removed from trade, one-tenth or even one-half of this Vote might be devoted to the protection and encouragement of agriculture, and that the name of the office itself might be changed to "the Board of Trade and Agriculture."

MR. WHALLEY

said, he wished to know how much the Vote had been increased by the Railway Bills passed last year. Great hopes had been entertained that the Board of Trade would have been able to relieve hon. Members of a large portion of the duties which devolved upon them with respect to railroads.

MR. F. S. POWELL

said, he hoped that in future the Vote for the Designs Office would appear either in the Patent Vote, orin the Vote for Education, Science, and Art.

MR. MILNER GIBSON

said, there was an inquiry into the office of the Board of Trade, with a view to its re-organization, and the office of registrar was abolished. The office of registrar had been abolished, and Mr. Edgar Bowring took the superannuation allowance to which he was entitled under the Act for an abolished office. With regard to Lord Hobart, his duties had become very slight, and he retired upon a superannuation allowance on the understanding that if duties could be found for him in the service of the Government, he would be required to perform them. With regard to the general staff of the Office it was not greater than was necessary for the work to be done. Parliament, by passing year after year new Acts, had been imposing upon the Board of Trade duties which required a considerable staff to perform them. He (Mr. Milner Gibson) would be glad if he could see his way to a reduction of the number of officials; but he did not think that object could be attained without impairing the efficiency of the Department.

MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH

said, he wished to ask, how it was that the salary of the chief of the Statistical Department had been increased from £800 to £1,000.

MR. MILNER GIBSON

said, that the reason was that there had been an addition to his duties by the abolition of other offices.

SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLEN moved, that Progress be reported.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Sir Colman O'Loghlen.)

MR. PEEL

said, he hoped that the Vote for Exchequer Bonds would first be taken.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

(17.) £1,000,000, Exchequer Bonds.

Vote agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit 'again."—(Sir Colman O'Loghlen.)

The Committee divided:—Ayes 121; Noes 44: Majority 77.

House resumed.

Resolutions to be reported on Monday next.

Committee to sit again on Monday next.