MR. LEATHAM BRIGHT (Stoke-upon-Trent)asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Government will make such representations to the French Government as will ensure some compensation being given to the crew of the Nith, run down in the Tagus on April 7, 1884; whether the crew have, by this collision, lost all their effects; and, whether it would be possible to persuade the French Government to act in the same generous spirit that actuated the Government in making compensation for the damage done by H.M.S. Sultan, under similar circumstances?
§ THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JAMES FERGUSSON) (Manchester, N.E.)The facts of the case are well-known to the Secretary of State, and were brought to his notice by the owners of the Nith about six months ago. They are as stated in a Question to the First Lord of the Admiralty on Monday last. It was explained to the owners that there is no ground for diplomatic interference in the case, which we believe to have been decided in the Court of Appeal at Rouen according to law. It would not be proper to ask the French Government to make voluntary compensation to the owners of the Nith, as Her Majesty's Government made a compassionate grant to the sufferers by the accident in the Tagus referred to, seeing that in the present ease the ship which caused the damage was the property, not of the State, but of a private Company. The hon. Member will see that Her Majesty's Government could not ask Parliament to make 522 a grant on account of the loss of a French vessel through the act of a British Steamship Company which had successfully defended itself in an action at law.