RE-APPOINTMENT OF SELECT COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 1 June 1880)

§ MR. RITCHIE,

in moving for the reappointment of a Select Committee on this subject, said, that the original Committee was appointed last year, and, having sat the whole of the Session, and not having been able to complete the 930 evidence, it was re-appointed in the short Session at the beginning of this year. Its deliberations were brought to a premature conclusion, and the Committee recommended that it should be reappointed in the new Parliament. It was for that re-appointment he was now moving. The last Committee consisted of 17 Members, two of whom had lost their seats at the General Election. He proposed to complete the inquiry with the 15 Gentlemen who remained. The two Gentlemen who had lost their seats held opposite views upon the subject which the Committee were appointed to investigate, and, consequently, they might fairly be paired. The Members of the Committee would agree with him in deploring that the investigation should have to be carried on without the assistance of Mr. Sampson Lloyd and Mr. Lowthian Bell. The hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) had a Notice upon the Paper proposing to alter the Instructions to the Committee; but he thought the hon. Member could hardly be serious in trying to obtain an alteration in the Instructions of a Committee which, practically, had to meet only for the purpose of drawing up its Report. The hon. Member for Wenlock (Mr. A. H. Brown) had also given Notice of opposition to the Committee, but did not state upon what grounds his opposition was based. Under these circumstances, he should content himself with moving, without further preface, the re-appointment of the Committee.

MR. GLADSTONE

Her Majesty's Government have no intention of opposing the Motion. The question for us is not that of the original appointment of the Committee for the purpose of inquiry into this difficult matter, nor is it the question of the propriety of the terms of Reference to the Committee. It is rather this. The Committee was appointed by the last Parliament, and the terms of Reference were fixed by the last Parliament. A considerable number of our fellow-subjects—artizans and labourers, practically engaged in the sugar industries as their manual industry—are greatly interested in the inquiry. The Committee in the last Parliament very nearly reached the close of its investigation, and little remains to be done excepting to register certain matters of fact that still have to be supplied to the Committee in their most recent 931 and authentic form. Therefore, the question with us is not of instituting an inquiry de novo by the present Parliament, but whether it would be politic or satisfactory for us to intercept the course of inquiry ordered in the last Parliament, and nearly completed by it. We think it better to allow this to stand virtually as an inquiry of the last Parliament, and we shall consider the Report of the Committee as if it had been made in that Parliament; for it would be invidious and a disappointment to the hopes and expectations, fairly raised by the measures taken, if we were to attempt to intercept the hon. Member in the completion of the work he has undertaken. We shall not, however, consider ourselves bound to the policy of the appointment of the Committee, or any Report it may make. We regard the question as entirely open, and not prejudiced by the part we now take in assenting to the Motion.