OBSERVATIONS.

HC Deb 14 March 1878 vol 238 cc1370-81

MR. O'DONNELL

protested against the manner in which the only question in the preliminary discussion on going into the Navy Estimates that the Irish Members took an interest in was interrupted by a discussion utterly irrelevant to the question of the Navy Estimates. The hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had brought forward the case of John Clare and stated it very clearly, and was replied to in the most cursory manner by one of the junior Members of the Government, who simply told them that the matter had been looked into at the Admiralty, and that the Admiralty did not wish to be troubled any further about it. When an endeavour was about to be made to support the case brought forward by the hon. Member for Oavan, up rose the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel) and proceeded to unburden his great soul. As a Committee was now sitting on the question of Public Business, he hoped some arrangement might be devised to prevent delays by such a far-fetched and fanciful discussion as that raised by the right hon. Baronet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had appealed to the House to cut short all further discussion, and he had denounced the language of the noble Lord the Member for Westmeath (Lord Robert Montagu), while quite as hard expressions were used on the other side of the House and passed over in silence. He wanted to speak of the case of the unfortunate Mr. Clare, and asked the House to listen to him while he read a few lines of no ancient date to remind them that there was something serious in this question. In reply to a Memorial signed by some hundreds of persons, including the leading members of the Mercantile Marine at Liverpool, no less an authority than the present Home Secretary returned this answer to the unfortunate petitioner, Mr. Clare, who now asked for the protection and justice of the House— Broughton-in-Furness, 6th November, 1872. Dear Sir,—The Memorial you sent states many facts which are not within my knowledge; hut I do think that, as stated at paragraph 19, you have contributed materially to the present system of construction of vessels of war, and I wish that some compensation could be granted to you, whatever may have been your strict legal rights.—Yours truly, (Signed) RICHARD ASSHETON CROSS. Paragraph 19, to which reference was made, was to the following effect:— Whatever may have been the strict legal right of the said John Clare to the said papers, your memorialists conceive he has contributed most materially to the present system of construction of vessels of war, and that he is entitled to some compensation or remuneration in respect thereof. He did not think it had ever occurred to anyone to accuse that House of niggardli- ness in cases in which plain justice and right could be settled at the cost of the public purse. It had been rightly suggested by an hon. and gallant Member opposite—he thought the Member for Southwark (Colonel Beresford)—that the real merits and demerits of this case could be sufficiently determined by its reference to any ordinary Member or group of Members of that House; and if such a reference were made, he (Mr. O'Donnell) had little doubt that justice would be done, and fair compensation given to Mr. Clare. It might be urged that the improvements introduced by Mr. Clare had no longer that importance in the naval defences of this country that they had at the time of their introduction. He readily granted that. But if it were true—as he maintained that it was—that the vast improvements on preceding systems of naval construction, as represented in the Warrior type, were due to a fraudulently-appropriated patent of Mr. John Clare, then he thought hon. Members would admit that, even after so many years, justice should be done to the unfortunate inventor. No doubt when Mr. Clare's patent was shown to the Admiralty they wondered why they should not have thought of that themselves, and no doubt they came to persuade themselves that they had thought of it themselves. In the year 1853 Mr. Clare applied for a patent for a new system for the construction of iron ships. Instead of building iron ships by building the hull simply upon vertical ribs independent of each other and of the general design, and only bound together into the framework of a ship by the various plates rivetted to those ribs, Mr. Clare proposed that they should first build up the skeleton of the ship complete and entire, and that the ribs should be bound together by longitudinal girders, and all its framework completed before a single plate was put on. By this means ships of great size, combined, with great strength and buoyancy became possible; while previously iron ship constructors saw no way of strengthening their hulls except by thickening the iron plating, to the immense loss of power of flotation, and to the increased risk of becoming "broken-backed" from the enormous weight depending on mere vertical ribs bound together by no independent connection. In a word, Mr. Clare revo- lutionized the art of iron shipbuilding by substituting compactness and cohesion of frame for dead weight of envelope, and a closely-knit and powerful skeleton allowing of a light skin and great buoyancy, for a ponderous skin, restricted flotation, and a weak and disconnected skeleton. It was in 1853 that Mr. Clare obtained his patent, and it was at once made known to the Admiralty. For year after year correspondence went on between the Admiralty and Mr. Clare. In 1856 Mr. Clare made a model and sent it to the Lords of the Admiralty, with further improvements upon his skeleton ship. Besides this improvement, he submitted a model of a ship on the "latticework" girder system on which the Warrior was subsequently built, but on which the naval authorities did not admit that the Warrior was subsequently built. Now, when it was found that the combination of longitudinal and vertical ribs was laid before the Admiralty in 1853, and when it was found that the model was presented to the Admiralty in 1856, and when it was found that the Warrior was only designed in the year 1859, they must be irresistibly impelled to the conclusion that the design for the Warrior was taken from the design of Mr. Clare. Of course, this was only what the Admiralty ought to have done; but they took the design of the Warrior from Mr. Clare, without the authority of Mr. Clare, without compensation to Mr. Clare, while forming a resolution, so far as he was able to judge, to deny to Mr. Clare the entire merit for Mr. Clare's own patent. There resulted Petitions and the usual answers from the Admiralty, which had been continued until the present day. On the last occasion when this question was brought up, Her Majesty's Government had the powerful assistance of the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed); but that assistance would have lost its weight with the House if hon. Members had remembered that the hon. Gentleman, though not Chief Constructor of the Navy, had been so during the period when Her Majesty's Government were making this unacknowledged use of the patent of Mr. Clare. It was open to doubt whether the reputation of the Admiralty for originality would not have seriously suffered if an inquiry had been granted; and he was not surprised that the aid of the ex-Constructor should have been lent to prevent such inquiry. Mr. Clare tried his fortune in the Courts of Law; and, in spite of the fearful odds against a private complainant, his failure was not a foregone conclusion. In the course of that trial the counsel for the Petitioner and all the witnesses for the Petitioner, and all his friends were surprised and astonished by the remarkable evidence forthcoming on the part of Her Majesty's Government. Her Majesty's Government were so fortunate as to find scientific witnesses whose recollection was so remarkably convenient that they actually came forward to swear that the model of the Warrior, that the type on which the Warrior was built instead of showing progress in naval architecture was, in reality, a return to the earliest days of iron shipbuilding. Witnesses were found to come forward on the part of Her Majesty's Government and swear that they perfectly recollected that the skeleton and framework of H.M.S. Warrior was anticipated by the construction of a petty iron steamboat intended for the South African Trade somewhere about 1830 or 1832. It must strike every Member of that House—it must have struck all average common sense—that this was a remarkable piece of evidence, and that it was strange that no ship of the same kind had been constructed since, and that no model hadbeen preserved-—that it should have escaped the knowledge of the most able architects, and that its utility should only be discovered when Mr. Clare made a claim for a patent. The singularity of the coincidence must strike every Member. The evidence of members of the Constructive Department of Her Majesty's Admiralty completely astonished and confounded, he would freely admit, the friends of Mr. Clare. His lawyers asked for witnesses who could rebut the extraordinary memory of Sir Charles' Pox and Mr. Scott Russell. They turned to Mr. Clare, and asked—"Can you find two or three respectable shipbuilders who can find how that little ship Alburka was built in 1830; you see how lucky Her Majesty's Government were to find this ship at this precise moment; they have got witnesses who have sworn your patent was known to the whole world in 1830, and it is quite clear that your case is lost unless you can produce witnesses as far back as Sir Charles Fox goes to rebut his extraordinary evidence." This evidence came suddenly upon Mr. Clare, and rendered it utterly impossible for him to produce the necessary rebutting evidence within a few hours or a few days; and when a Petitioner had nothing better to say than that he believed if he had time he could get rebutting evidence, when he was a private man fighting against the strong power of the Government, what chance had such a Petitioner to have his claim listened to? Sir Alexander Cockburn was naturally struck by the evidence presented by Her Majesty's Government. Sir Charles Pox and Mr. Scott Russell were men of the highest experience. Everyone knew what the Judge did when there was apparently conclusive evidence of this character, and when the unfortunate plaintiff had not the means of procuring rebutting evidence. Of course, the case went against Mr. Clare; and having failed, as the best of men had failed before, owing to the chances of the law, what could poor Mr. Clare do? He raised up a subscription among his old neighbours—those who knew his genius and respected his integrity—until he was able to produce unmistakeable evidence which utterly upset the remarkable and marvellous evidence so suspiciously produced by Her Majesty's Government at the trial which ended so unfortunately for Mr. Clare. He did not think Her Majesty's Government could refuse to submit this case to the arbitrament of two independent Members of that House, on whichever side of the House they might sit. Sir Charles Pox had sworn that he remembered exactly having seen the ship Alburka constructed for the African Trade in 1830 or 1831. He had watched over it with paternal feelings; which made it all the more remarkable that, having studied the Allurka in 1830, he forgot all about it until it was necessary to think of it in order to disprove the statement of Mr. Clare. He remembered superintending the construction of the Alburka. Such was Sir Charles Fox's story; but Mr. Andrew Morrison, the actual designer and constructor of the vessel in question, was fortunately discovered by Mr. Clare, and clearly stated the whole of the facts, to the utter discomfiture of Sir Charles Fox's marvellously opportune memory. Mr. Morrison stated, that in 1830 he designed, laid down, constructed, and assisted in building an iron steamer in Liverpool called the Alburka, 60 feet long, constructed on vertical rib bars, held in their place by plates held by rivets. The Alburka being one of the earliest steamboats that was constructed, was built in the old fashion, and not upon the later plan, which was not known until Mr. Clare placed his patent in the hands of the Government. That was how the Alburka was constructed, and not in any degree on the same plan as the Warrior, as stated by Sir Charles Pox. Then Mr. Morrison went on to say that, so far as having anything to do with the construction of the Alburka was concerned, the statement of Sir Charles Fox was untrue, as no one but himself had anything to do with the construction. The Alburka was the first vessel of that kind constructed in Great Britain for sea-going use, and not on longitudinal and vertical bars, but on the old system of which it was, in fact, the earliest example. Every point, every tittle, and every iota of Mr. Morrison's statement could be examined and verified on reference to evidence, and it could only tend to show that Sir Charles Fox had no knowledge whatever by which he could judge of the Alburka, and that the Alburka was not what Sir Charles Fox declared her to be. Mr. Scott Russell, the other Admiralty witness, had professed himself to be able to depose that a vessel called Her Majesty, plying between Ryde and Portsmouth in 1851, was on the same plan as the Warrior. He said he had recently inspected a vessel called Her Majesty, and that this vessel in all essentials anticipated the plan of the Warrior, and therefore there was no necessity for the Warrior being filched from Mr. Clare's patent. That was another piece of evidence sprung on Mr. Clare; but, fortunately, he was able to produce evidence to show that the case of Her Majesty also utterly failed to prop up the Government case about the Warrior. A vessel called Her Majesty was sworn to by Mr. Scott Russell as having been built by him in 1850 or 1851, and that the plan of using vertical and longitudinal bars was adopted in such vessel, and that the mode of constructing the Warrior and the mode of constructing Her Majesty was identical. George Frederick Goble, consulting engineer, gave a quantity of independent evidence. He said he went down and examined the ship Her Majesty, and found she was not built upon the system of combined vertical and longitudinal bars, that she was not a strongly built iron skeleton ship, according to Mr. Clare's patent; but simply built by ribs kept in their places by plates rivetted on So that the case of Her Majesty proved to be as rotten as the case of the Alburka. So extraordinary was the evidence of Mr. Scott Russell, so extraordinary did it seem to Mr. Clare and Mr. Clare's friends, that an application for committal for perjury was made against Mr. Scott Russell. He did not want to do more than refer the House to the judgment of Mr. Arnold, the magistrate, who expressly said—and the text of his judgment was open to the inspection of the House—that in the case of an ordinary person he should not have hesitated to grant a committal for perjury, and the only thing that made him hesitate was the distinguished position of Mr. Scott Russell. It was plainly proved before him that there was not the smallest similarity between the construction of the ship Her Majesty and the Warrior; but he put it to the applicant whether, considering the high standing of Mr. Scott Russell, it was not difficult to believe that the statement was the result of deliberate perjury rather than of an untrustworthy memory. Therefore, Mr. Arnold recommended that permission should not be further sought to prosecute Mr. Scott Russell for perjury, merely because he was a respectable man. Mr. Clare, being also advised by his lawyers that probably a jury would give Mr. Scott Russell's high standing "the benefit of the doubt," did not go on with the prosecution for perjury. It was in this manner that he declined to make a charge of wilful and corrupt perjury against the Admiralty swearers, though the evidence on which Mr. Clare was upset in his appeal to a court of justice was thus proved utterly fallacious. It was proved that no one was the designer of the Warrior, except the designer of the model of Mr. Clare, which had been in the hands of the Admiralty for years before the Warrior was designed, or was built. Under these circumstances, was it not right and just, was it not necessary for the reputation of Her Majesty's Admiralty, that this grievance should be settled? Was it not at least worthy of some inquiry by somebody less prejudiced than the officials of the Admiralty? In what case was that House ready to accept the dictum of officials in maintaining abuses, supposing that abuses existed, as alleged? He asked the House to see that an impartial tribunal was established to try this matter. Former investigations had been made by members of the Admiralty, or by distinguished members of the bureaucracy of this country. Was it not the duty of that House, in the interests of justice, to see that these officials should submit to something like inquiry? The questions would be—Was it true that the Alburka was constructed, as Sir Charles Fox swore, on the same model as the Warrior? Was it true that the ship Her Majesty was or was not the forerunner of the Warrior, and that the Warrior was or was not built upon the model of Mr. Clare? That model was placed before the Lords of the Admiralty in 1856; and when the Warrior was only laid down in 1858–9, was it not plain that some compensation was due to this unfortunate man? He was perfectly ready to accept the judgment of any fair and honourable Member of that House. At the trial, Mr. Watts, of the Admiralty, admitted that previous to building the Warrior they saw all the plans and models of Mr. Clare, "but they adopted nothing." The Lord Chief Justice said—"Are you sure of that?" The Admiralty witness said they had adopted nothing; but if hon. Members would go to the Admiralty and ask for the frame work of the Warrior, and ask for the framework of the model, they would see that the framework of the Warrior was drawn almost, as it were, in every detail, from the framework of the model sent in years before by Mr. Clare. Such was. the case he had to lay before the House; and he never would consent to bring forward the case of any inventor again if a Committee of that House did not say that in all essential details Mr. Clare was the inventor of the plan on which the Warrior was built. If they did find that, they would say that some compensation was due to this ruined man.

MR. PARNELL

submitted that the discussion of this question at that late hour was not due to any fault of their own, but to the discussion on the Navy Estimates of questions like those raised' by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel). This question had reference to the Navy; the question raised by the right hon. Member for Tamworth had no relation whatever to the subject before the House. It was now 20 minutes to 2, and it was impossible that the case of Mr. Clare could meet with necessary and satisfactory discussion. He must point to it as a case of hardship, and he must say the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. W. H. Smith) might have signalized his accession to office by taking this case in hand, instead of paying no attention whatever to it. They had had an animated debate on the subject of the East; but if they had not had their iron-clad Fleet, they could not have stood long in the East, and could not have had that iron-clad Fleet in the Dardanelles. Now, he maintained that if it had not been for the painstaking exertions of Mr. John Clare this question of iron shipbuilding would not have been so much advanced for another 10 years. He believed that the longitudinal and vertical bars were his invention. He sent his models and plans to the Admiralty, and these were, or ought to be, now in the possession of the Admiralty. Mr. Clare maintained that those were the plans on which the Warrior was originally built; and, having failed to obtain recompense for his plans, he commenced proceedings against the Admiralty for infringement of patent. What was the defence of the Admiralty? That they had not used the plans of Mr. John Clare, but plans which had been previously used. They went back to the year 1833, and got some of the witnesses to attempt to prove—though they were subsequently alleged to be perjured witnesses—that the Warrior was built on plans in force in that year; whereas it was shown that this system of framing was by no means in existence in 1833. The Warrior was the first vessel built with her framing on this principle, even if there had been more than one vessel built on that principle at that time. It was subsequently proved that the framing of Her Majesty was not on the same principle as that of the Warrior. The facts of this case, although difficult to put before the House of Commons, could be easily told to a Select Committee; and although John Clare might be a poor old man now broken down in health and fortune, yet a man who had spent fortune and life in concerns which were an honour to the Admiralty, should not now be neglected. It concerned the honour of the Government and of the House of Commons that they should hold an investigation into the matter by means of a Committee of that House. The facts of the case were in a nutshell. Either Clare's claim was valid or not valid. If the Government could show that there was anything of this kind in existence before John Clare's invention in 1850, then their case was proved; but if they could not show that such a system was in existence, then John Clare had a claim for a small amount from the Government, which might be a comfort to this unfortunate man's declining years, and might smooth his path to the grave. He certainly thought that the First Lord of the Admiralty might inaugurate his entry to office by directing his attention to the case of John Clare; and he hoped a Select Committee of that House would be appointed to see justice done between man and man.

MR. ASSHETON CROSS

said, he rose to make a remark, simply because his name had been mentioned in relation to this matter. So far as he was concerned, all that he knew was that it appeared that in 1861 Mr. Clare sent in a Petition, and that, of course, was referred to the Admiralty. The case, after that, went for trial, and was heard in 1863 before Justice Cockburn and a special jury, and Mr. Clare's application was disallowed. A new trial was applied for, but that new trial was unanimously refused. In 1863 Mr. Clare called at the Home Office with a Petition for presentation to the Queen, which was referred to the Admiralty. In June of the same year, he instituted legal proceedings against Sir Charles Fox. He failed, and a new trial was refused. If he had any further statement to make, the same course was open to him as to anybody else. In 1864 the matter was brought before the House of Commons. A Motion was made for a Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the circumstances of the case; but the Motion was negatived. In 1866 certain proceedings were taken before Mr. Arnold against some of the witnesses for perjury. Nothing came eventually of that prosecution; and he (Mr. Cross) was not aware that any correspondence took place with the Home Office after that with Sir George Grey until 1874, when he (Mr. Cross) came into office. Some years before that, Mr. Clare had presented his case before the magistrate. He did not know whether the matter had been fully inquired into or not; and, without any reference to the legality of the claim of Mr. Clare, he had no objection to its being brought before him. When he came into office he took an unusual course, thinking he should like to see what there was in the case. Therefore he took the unusual course of sending Mr. Clare's request for a Petition of Eight to the Law Officers of the Crown. They informed him that the claim was without foundation, and they could not advise it to be entertained. He quite agreed with what Sir George Grey did in the matter; and it was on that account that he had wished to explain the circumstances under which he wrote the letter which had been referred to. The Law Officers of the Crown were of opinion that Mr. Clare had no claim whatever.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Committee deferred till To-morrow.