RAILWAY BILLS. (Hansard, 6 February 1846)

The EARL of DALHOUSIE

said, he rose to move an alteration in the Standing Order No. 224, of which he had given notice last night. In submitting to their Lordships, the other evening, a statement with regard to the amount of railway business likely to come before this and the other House of Parliament, he had endeavoured to set before them the difficulties of dealing with the subject during the present Session. These difficulties were of a twofold character. One difficulty was, the apparent impossibility of finding Committees sufficiently numerous to transact all the 510 railway business before the House, or, at all events, sufficiently numerous to transact it with satisfaction to the country; and the other difficulty arose from the gigantic amount of capital involved in the schemes to be brought forward. The Committee appointed by their Lordships met immediately after their appointment, and they had met almost daily since that time. They had considered the subject closely, upon such information as could be furnished to them in the present stage of the proceedings. It appeared to the Committee, in the first place, that it was in their power to suggest such alterations in the mode of transacting business between the two Houses of Parliament as would facilitate the despatch of business, be extremely convenient to those interested, and at the same time be conducive to the interests of the public. Their Lordships were aware that, according to invariable practice, all Railway Bills commenced in the other House, the disadvantage of which had been felt by the public, and certainly very much by their Lordships. The necessary effect had been that for the first two or three months of the Session their Lordships had been left without employment for their Committees; and, on the other hand, they had been overwhelmed by the number of Bills heaped upon them all at once towards the close of the Session. Their Lordships had, in consequence, been blamed for their apparent idleness at the commencement of the Session, in not transacting business which in fact was not then sent up to them; and at the end they were equally blamed for the apparent haste and slovenliness with which they had disposed of the business when they got it, and which must be discussed with speed, if it were to be transacted at all. The result of the consideration of their Lordships' Select Committee on Railways had therefore been to recommend to their Lordships such an alteration of the Standing Orders as had become necessary, in order to meet the arrangements made for the purpose of facilitating business with advantage to the public interests. Their Lordships would see by the Votes that the Committee of the other House, appointed for a similar purpose to their Lordships' Committee, had reported a recommendation, that during the present Session a certain portion of Railway Bills should have their commencement in their Lordships' House. It then became a matter of consideration what would be a convenient division to make; and it appeared that 511 Railway Bills connected with Ireland, should be considered by their Lordships' House in the first instance, inasmuch as it presented a broad line of demarcation, which did not admit of a doubt as to the Bills which should fall under that particular class. He was sure that there was no noble Lord who would not feel that at the present moment there were additional reasons for giving every facility for providing means of employment in Ireland, and that it was desirable, therefore, that all the Railway Bills which Parliament should think proper to pass for Ireland, during the present Session, should pass as speedily as possible. The Committee of the House of Commons had accordingly recommended that all Irish Railway Bills should have their origin in their Lordships' House during the present Session. At this point, however, a peculiar difficulty arose. Previous to last Session, and in last Session, the amount of the deposit required was 5 per cent. upon the subscribed capital. In the other House, however, previous to the close of last Session, an alteration in the Standing Orders was proposed, requiring a deposit of 10 per cent.; but with respect to all Railway Bills which were provisionally registered, or where certain other steps had been taken previous to the 29th of July an exception was made, and in such cases 5 per cent. deposit only was required. A similar alteration of the Standing Orders was proposed in their Lordships' House; but their Lordships, by a distinct manifestation of opinion, refused to accede, and the consequence was that their Lordships required with respect to every Railway Bill, without distinction, a deposit of 10 per cent. during this Session. Now, a very large portion of the Irish Railway Bills fell within the exception of the House of Commons, and were admissible there on the payment of 5 per cent. deposit. It would therefore be hard on the promoters of those Bills that they should be compelled to commence in that House, and then should be refused admission there on the same terms as they were admissible in the House of Commons. Their Lordships' Committee, therefore, recommended such an alteration of the Standing Orders as, while it virtually fulfilled the condition which their Lordships required, of the payment of a deposit of 10 per cent., would nevertheless, by a slight alteration, place the promoters of these Bills in the same position as they would now stand in were they introduced into the House of Commons. The Committee, therefore, recom- 512 mended that no Railway Bill whatever, should be read a first time, unless 5 per cent. deposit should have been paid on or before the 6th of February; and that no such Bill should be read a third time unless a further deposit of 5 per cent. should be paid; thus making the whole deposit 10 per cent., the amount required by the Standing Order of their Lordships' House. He had been informed that this recommendation of the Committee had appeared to some to be at variance with the course contemplated by the House when the Committee was appointed; and that it was, in point of fact, holding out additional encouragement to railway speculation. This was an entire mistake, as their Lordships would perceive on looking at the matter for a single moment. By admitting Irish Railway Bills for consideration in their Lordships' House on the payment of 5 per cent. deposit, their Lordships were not giving to them any additional advantage beyond that which they would have enjoyed had they gone to the other House of Parliament; for all these Railway Bills were admissible there on the payment of 5 per cent. deposit. No such Bill would be admissible in their Lordships' House until the deposit of 5 per cent. should be made. Neither would there be any extension of time for the payment of this deposit, by transferring the Bills to this House; because, according to the proposed alteration of the Standing Order, their Lordships would not admit such Bills as he had referred to unless the deposit of 5 per cent. should have been paid on or before the 6th of February, that being the same day on or before which the other House of Parliament required the deposit to be made. The alteration of the Standing Order, so far as not to require the whole 10 per cent. deposit until the third reading of the Bills, was not any actual relaxation of their Lordships' rule, but was, in point of fact, merely an alteration of time, and did not give any additional facility for railway speculation; as, in the ordinary course of things, had these Bills been introduced into the House of Commons, the payment of the 10 per cent. deposit would not have been required until about the middle of the Session, when the Bills would have reached their Lordships' House, while in most cases the payment of the 10 per cent. deposit would, under the proposed alteration, be required earlier. Under all these circumstances, looking at the very great amount of business before Parliament, the great benefit 513 which would be conferred upon the public by adjusting that amount of business between the two Houses; considering the importance of providing employment for the people of Ireland as early as possible; considering also that in thus proceeding they were not holding out any facilities whatever to additional speculation—that, in point of fact, all that the proposed alterations did, was to facilitate the progress of Bills through their Lordships' House, when they should have found their way there, after having complied with the conditions imposed upon their admission; but that it did not give encouragement to the creation of new railway projects, and removed no obstacle to undue speculation which that House had imposed—he did trust the House would make the proposed alteration. There was another class of Bills which the Select Committee of the other House recommended should commence in their Lordships' House. These were certain Bills with respect to which the understanding was, that as they were suspended in their progress during last Session, from want of time, they should be taken up in the present Session in the other House, and pass through there as a matter of course, and come up to their Lordships at an early time for consideration; but there were other Bills competing with these which had failed in the other House from non-compliance with the Standing Orders, or other reasons, but which had made their appearance again in the present Session. It would, therefore, be a manifest contradiction for their Lordships to be considering in their House one class of Bills, while the House of Commons and its Committee might be, at the same time, considering others immediately competing with them. The Select Committee of the House of Commons had got rid of the difficulty by recommending that all these competing Bills should be considered in the first instance in their Lordships' House; and the Standing Orders of their Lordships House which he now proposed would consequently apply to them. He had now stated the substance of the proceedings of their Lordships' Committee on these points; but with respect to another branch of the subject, he was not able to say that the Committee had yet come to any decision. They had considered the question as put before them generally, but until the period for the presentation of petitions had expired, they could not effectively or properly deal with this par- 514 ticular subject. If they had determined upon it now, when the period for the admission of Bills into their Lordships' House arrived, they would then have the whole work to do over again, inasmuch as many of the Bills would probably not make their appearance. When they were in a condition to know what they had to deal with, the Committee would come to that conclusion which they deemed right. In conclusion, he begged to move that their Lordships do agree to the following Resolutions of the Select Committee:— Resolved—That such portion of the Standing Order No. 224, as requires from the Promoters of Railway Bills a deposit of one-tenth of the amount subscribed, should be suspended with respect to all such Railway Bills as shall commence in the House of Lords during the present Session. That no such Railway Bill shall be read a first time in this House, unless a deposit of one-twentieth part of the amount subscribed shall have been made on or before the 6th February, and no such Railway Bill shall be read a third time until a further deposit of one-twentieth part of the amount subscribed shall in like manner be made.

§ LORD MONTEAGLE

said, he had by no means any intention of objecting to the Motion of his noble Friend; it was, indeed, impossible that he should do so, as the proposition had been made by himself in the last Session; but he wished, before the Question was put, to offer a few remarks on the subject of the alterations proposed to be made. There was so much of liability to misapprehension with respect to the proceedings of the Legislature, more especially as far as Ireland was concerned, that he would, with their Lordships' permission, claim one or two minutes of their attention in explaining the motives by which the Committee had been influenced. He was not about to discuss the policy involved in the question, as arising from the necessity of increasing inland communication in Ireland by means of railways; but he would solely confine himself to the effect which the execution of these great works would have on the labour market in the present contingency of affairs in that country. If the alterations now proposed in the Standing Orders were not made, no one of the Irish Railway Bills would, in all probability, receive the Royal Assent until late in June or July next, at the very earliest. Now, however important it might be that these Bills should pass at any period of the Session, it was clear that if they did not pass through parliament before that time, they would be utterly useless, so far as the employment of the 515 people was involved in the present period of scarcity. The object of the Committee was, not only to give the promoters of these Railway Bills a pre-audience, as far as that House was concerned, but also to enable them to proceed with the works at as early a period as possible. Therefore, the Resolutions proposed by his noble Friend were deserving of the approval, not only of their Lordships, but of all who were desirous of giving employment and consequently money wages to the labouring population of Ireland. He trusted that those who were concerned in Irish Railway Bills would feel that, as far as the alterations in the Standing Orders were concerned, they not only had no reason to complain, but that their position would, in point of fact, be greatly improved in coming before the Legislature. There was one effect of these Standing Orders to which his noble Friend had not alluded—namely, the advantage of allowing the promoters of Railway Bills to prove simultaneously their compliance with the Standing Orders of both Houses of Parliament. That, he thought, was a great advantage. Hitherto, the promoters of Railway Bills were obliged to bring witnesses, perhaps from the farthest parts of Ireland or Scotland—from every place between the Land's End and John o'Groat's House, to prove compliance with a set of formal Orders before the House of Commons; and at a future period of the Session they were obliged to bring up the same witnesses again to prove a similar matter in the House of Lords. It would, he thought, be a question for their Lordships' consideration, whether, in respect of the future, this arrangement might not be made permanent; and whether the Standing Orders of both Houses of the Legislature might not be fixed on the authority of an Act of Parliament. The question of compliance or non-compliance might then be considered before the Session commenced, before some proper tribunal; and the Bills would thus be brought under the notice of Parliament without two successive tedious preliminary inquiries. It might be objected that the course which he proposed would tend to the giving of undue encouragement to railway speculation; but their Lordships ought to endeavour to discourage such speculation, not by augmenting expenses, or by throwing technical difficulties in the way of the passing of Bills through the House, but rather by examining with discrimination what Bills they allowed to pass. They 516 might as well expect to prevent improper litigation by augmenting the expenses incurred in the courts of law, as to prevent speculation by increasing the difficulties of passing Bills. Before sitting down, he could not avoid again expressing his belief that there could scarcely have been committed any greater mistake than the course adopted with regard to railway deposits in the present year; he could imagine nothing more indefensible than, after permitting all parties to invest the money paid as deposits on railway shares in Government securities, to refuse permitting them to make their deposits, in the first instance, with the Accountant General in those very public funds which were accepted as their ultimate security. He knew it had been thought that any relaxation of this rule would give a benefit to railway proprietors, and that its enforcement was therefore a sort of punishment for over-speculation. But that argument was founded on an entire misapprehension of all the facts. The punishment—if it were to be called such—did not fall on railway proprietors, but on bankers and on parties connected with the mercantile interests of the country, by whom it had been felt as a very great grievance. He was informed by the conductors of one great banking establishment, that owing to the system prescribed in respect to these railway deposits, at a time when they were in possession of no less a sum than 2,000,000l. in Exchequer Bills, they were required to make a lodgment of 1,100,000l. to the credit of the Accountant General for railroad deposits, which sum was afterwards to be invested in Government securities; but instead of being allowed to hand over that amount in Exchequer bills, they were obliged to pay the amount in money, though that very money had immediately afterwards to be re-invested in the same security. He was convinced that if the attention of Parliament had been called to this subject in the course of last Session, the proposition to receive stock or Exchequer bills in lieu of money could not have failed to meet its immediate and unqualified approval. But the law as it now stood had produced a most severe pressure, not upon those parties whom Parliament might seek to restrain from speculation, but upon third parties, many of whom were wholly unconnected with railway projects. The result was, that mercantile accommodation had necessarily been considerably limited, and that 517 the operations of the Bank had been thrown into great doubt and uncertainty. This confusion had arisen from their unfortunate legislation. He did not make any complaint against the Government with reference to this subject. It was the fault of legislation, and he hoped that mistaken legislation would speedily be amended, for he could not conceive anything more mischievous to the mercantile classes than the existing system.