POST-OFFICE BILL. (Hansard, 17 July 1838)

§ Colonel Sibthorp

expressed his surprise that such a bill as this should have emanated from a ministry professing economy. The bill proposed to create three commissioners, one with a salary of 2,000l. per annum and a seat in this House, and the other two commissioners with salaries of 1,200l. each, making a charge upon the country which he could not but designate as a legal fraud of 4,400l. per annum. The House, at this late period of the Session, was completely taken by surprise with this hasty attempt at increase of patronage. If the noble Earl at the head of the Post-office department had misconducted himself, let the Government dismiss him, but at all events he protested against the proposition for this increased expense. He protested against the bill altogether, and would take the sense of the House against it at every stage.

§ The Chancellor of the Exchequer

would not weary the House by replying to the general argument of the hon. and gallant Officer, because they were those which he used on every occasion he spoke, always taking care to vituperate her Majesty's Ministers. He would come at once to the bill itself. It would, no doubt, be in the recollection of the House, that this bill was the result of the reports of no less than three separate commissions of inquiry. The principle it proposed to adopt was recommended by the commission of which Lord Wallace was at the head. The commission on which the noble Lord the Member for Westmorland (Lord Lowther) presided, had also recommended the adoption of the principle contained in this very measure. Now, he presumed he might say, that the noble Lord (Lord Lowther), in consequence of the political opinions he entertained, was a person who would not be very desirous or anxious to place patronage unnecessarily in the hands of the present Government. His best supporter, on the present occasion, was the noble 292 Lord, for the bill was as much the noble Lord's as his. He did not say this either in disparagement of the bill or of the noble Lord, but in order to do the noble Lord a common act of justice for the great pains, attention, and consideration which he had bestowed upon this subject; and yet the hon. and gallant Officer had said, with respect to a bill so brought forward and so recommended, that it was a measure introduced by surprise, and for the purpose of effecting some fraud, by passing it through the House at this period of the Session. The House would also recollect that this was only the renewing of a bill which had been rejected by the House of Lords in the last Session. But he was not to be deterred by that circumstance from bringing it forward again, and he would do his utmost to pass it through that House, whether it was rejected in another place or not, and it was not his fault that the bill had been so long before the House. With regard to the objection of the hon. and gallant Officer to the chief commissioner of the post office being a Member of that House, he begged to say that the Postmaster-general, under the present system, was a Member of Parliament, not of that House certainly, but of the House of Peers. He, however, thought, that, looking to the circumstance that the post-office was a revenue department, that it would be far better that the head of the board to preside over that office should be a Member of that House, rather than of the House of Lords, and should be a person cognisant of the principles and management of a revenue department, which was particularly within the province of that House, and conversant with the exigencies of the present time, when by the extension of railroads, alterations and changes were required to be effected, not only weekly, but daily—nay almost every hour.

List of the AYES.
Adam, Admiral	Elliot, hon. J. E.
Aglionby, H. A.	Ferguson, Sir R.
Archbold, R.	Filmer, Sir E.
Baines, E.	Gillon, W. D.
Bernal, R.	Hall, Sir B.
Blake, M. J.	Hayter, W. G.
Brotherton, M. J.	Hobhouse, Sir J. C.
Bruges, W. H.	Hobhouse, T. B.
Campbell, Sir J.	Hodges, T. L.
Chalmers, P.	Hodgson, R.
Curry, W.	Hogg, J. W.

Howard, P. H.	Rice, T. S.
Hume, J.	Rolfe, Sir R. M.
Hurt, F.	Salwey, Col.
James, W.	Stewart, J.
Knight, H. B.	Thomson, C. P.
Langdale, hon. C.	Thornely, T.
Lynch, A. H.	Troubridge, Sir E.
Melgund, Viscount	Vigors, N. A.
Milnes, R. M.	Wallace, R.
Morpeth, Viscount	Warburton, H.
Murray, rt. hon. J.	Worsley, Lord
Palmerston, Viscount
Parker, J.	TELLERS.
Philips, M.	O'Ferrall, M.
Ramsbottom, J.	Stewart, R.
List of the NOES.
Bagge, William	Perceval, hon. G. J.
Broadley, Henry	Rushbrooke, Col.
Darby, G.	Vere, Sir C. B.
Dick, Q.	Wood, T.
Farnham, E. B.
Grimsditch, T.	TELLERS.
Hope, hon. C.	Sibthorp, Col.
Perceval, Col.	Buller, Sir J. Y.