Commons Sitting of 15 May 1849

MINUTES.
Public Bills.—Reported.—Grand Jury Cess (Ireland).
3o Grants of Land (New South wales).
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Mr. Kershaw, from Stockport, for an Extension of the Suffrage.—By Mr. Sharman Crawford, from London and its Vicinity, for the Adoption of Universal Suffrage.—By Mr. G. Thompson, from Reading, for the Affirmation Bill; and from Biddings, Derbyshire, for the Clergy Relief Bill—By Sir John Duckworth, from Exeter, against the Ecclesiastical Commission Bill.—By Mr. Gladstone, from Brechin, against, and by Mr. Stuart Wortley, from Garveston, Norfolk, in favour of, the Marriages Bill—By Mr. Mon-sell, from the Guardians of the Limerick Union, for facilitating Emigration.—By Mr. Frewen, from Cuckfield, Sussex, for Repeal of the Duty on Malt and Hops.—By Mr. Collins, from Leamington and Warwick, for Repeal of the Duties on Paper,&c.—By Sir Robert Price, from Hereford, for Reduction of the Public Expenditure.—By Sir Henry Halford, from a great Number of Places in the County of Leicester, for Agricultural Relief.—By Mr. Alexander Matheson, from Nairn, against the Lunatics (Scotland) Bill.—By Mr. Smyth, from the Keighley Union, for a Superannuation Fund for Poor Law Officers.—By Mr. Alderman Humphery, from Southwark, for the Suppression of Promiscuous Intercourse.—By Mr. Alexander Hastie, from Taunton, for the Abolition of the Punishment of Death.—By Colonel Ferguson, from Kinglassie, against the Registering Births, &c. (Scotland) Bill, and Marriage (Scotland) Bill.—By Mr. Heyworth, from St. Ives, Huntingdonshire, for an Alteration of the Sale of Beer Aet.—By Mr. Pryse Pryse, from Cardigan, and by other hon. Members, for referring International Disputes to Arbitration.

EXPENSES OF THE NEW HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
SIR H. WILLOUGHBYwished to ask Mr. Greene what was the gross amount of the estimates sent in by Mr. Barry, the architect, for the completion of the Houses of Parliament, and all works relating thereto; and whether the commission (of which Mr. Greene is a member) has any legal authority to sanction or to alter the amount of such estimates?
MR. GREENEwas sure the hon. Member would acquit him of any want of courtesy to him, or any wish to withhold information, if he declined answering the question in the form in which it was now put; because, in the course of a few days, there would be laid on the table of the House a statement, not only of all the expenses that had been incurred, but of all the probable expenses that might be incurred in

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the completion of the Houses of Parliament. The form in which the paper would come before the House would be this: it would state in the first instance the amount of the estimate; it would state how much of the estimate had been expended, and how much remained to be expended. In the next place, it would state what additional expenses had been incurred in consequence of its having been found necessary to lay the foundations of the Houses deeper than was contemplated in the contract—in point of fact, they were nearly double the depth. It would next state what were the additional buildings, and the authorities by which the additional buildings were made which had added materially to the increased expense. There would be laid before the House a variety of other details of which it was absolutely necessary that the House should be informed. If he were to state the gross amount, it would give rise to a variety of misrepresentation. As to the question whether the commission had any legal authority to sanction or to alter the amount of the estimates, he could state that they were not able to enter upon them without the approval of the Treasury.
MR. MOWATTbegged to ask the hon. Gentleman whether any satisfactory arrangement had yet been made with Dr. Reid with respect to the ventilation of the new Houses? Most hon. Members would agree with him that the question was one of much importance: even the experience of last night must have convinced some that hon. Gentlemen attending their duty there were exposed to considerable inconvenience, if not danger.
MR. GREENEsaid, that the subject of ventilation was settled before he became a commissioner. It was arranged that Dr. Reid should have the ventilation of the House of Commons and the adjoining lobbies; he was not to have charge of the ventilation of the Committee rooms.
Subject dropped.

DISTURBANCES IN CANADA.
MR. HERRIESwished to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether he had received any authentic information respecting the very grave events reported by the publie papers to have occurred in Canada—whether he was prepared to lay that information on the table—and also whether the Government were now in possession of extracts from the votes and proceedings of the Legislative
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Assembly in Canada relating to the Bill of Indemnity for losses sustained by the rebellion? On a former occasion the noble Lord, when asked this latter question, informed the House that Ministers were not in possession of those votes and proceedings; and the answer was made in a manner conveying an intimation that it was not usual for them to receive such extracts. Her Majesty's Ministers, however, by Her Majesty's command, had, he believed, in more instances than one, laid such extracts upon the table; but, certainly, in one recent instance, upon the subject of the navigation laws.
MR. ROEBUCKbegged to add another question to these. The Bill of Indemnity was necessarily a Money Bill, and, therefore, the Earl of Elgin must, he supposed, have had instructions from the Home Government before any step was taken by the Parliament of Canada with respect to it. A message must have gone down from the Governor General to the Parliament, giving them authority to enter upon the consideration of the matter. Now, was the noble Lord cognisant of any instructions given to the Earl of Elgin to give that previous sanction to the Motion being made in the Parliament, thus showing that the Government at home and the Superior Government in Canada sanctioned this indemnity being given to the parties, before the Parliament of Canada could proceed upon the Bill?
LORD J. RUSSELL: With respect to the very serious events that have occurred at Montreal, I have to state in answer to the first question of the right hon. Gentleman, that a despatch has been received from the Governor General of Canada, directed to the Secretary of State for the Colonial Department; that despatch, however, was only received at four o'clock this day. I have not myself seen the despatch, but it is a public document containing an account of the disturbances at Montreal, and there will be no objection to laying it immediately upon the table of this House. With respect to the next question of the right hon. Gentleman, and with regard, likewise, to the question of the hon. Member who has spoken after him, I will only say that the Earl of Elgin has stated that it his intention to write by the next mail a despatch stating all the occurrences that have relation to the Bill for an. indemnity for losses; and that despatch, of course, may be expected by the next mail. I do not think—I would not be

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positive upon that point, but I do not think—he has sent home the extract from the votes and proceedings of the House of Assembly; but I conclude those votes will be received when the despatch is sent, and in that case there will be no objection to laying the despatch and those proceedings before this House. In these circumstances, having that assurance from the Earl of Elgin, that he is about to state all that has occurred, and the reasons which in his opinion have justified him in assuming the responsibility which he has assumed in the exercise of his functions, I must decline entering further into the particulars of this matter, or answering the question put to me by the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield. I think it is far better that we should wait until the Earl of Elgin has had an opportunity of stating the case, and that I should have an opportunity of laying before the House the whole account of what has occurred in Canada with respect to these very serious matters.
MR. ROEBUCKhad not asked the question from an idea that there had been any deviation either from the ordinary practice or from the orders that had been sent out. He merely wanted to ask the noble Lord whether he was cognisant of any such necessarily preceding recommendation as he had referred to, namely, that the Canadian Parliament could not, without a preceding suggestion or permission on the part of the Government, have taken any steps regarding this Bill; and that the Earl of Elgin must have previously received his instructions from the Colonial Office in a specific and distinct form. The noble Lord did not know, and therefore he (Mr. Roebuck) could not expect from him an answer; but such must have been the case, and all he had asked was whether the noble Lord was cognisant of the circumstance.
LORD J. RUSSELLcould only repeat that he thought it would be much better to have the whole case, with the papers, before them before they entered into these questions.
MR. DISRAELIsaid, the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield had made an inquiry which he thought he would scarcely have done had he been in that House on the 22nd of March last. On that day the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for the Colonies, in reply to two questions put to him by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford spoke as follows:—
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"In answer to the first question of the right hon. Gentleman he had to state that no instructions whatsoever were given to the noble Lord at the head of the Canadian Government with reference to the introduction of this Bill, or in contemplation of any such measures. His noble Friend (Earl Grey) had entire confidence in the noble Lord the Governor General's judgment and discretion, and was not in the habit of giving him instructions of that kind. With regard to the second question of the right hon. Gentleman, who had himself filled the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies, he had to state that all colonial laws—he believed universally—having passed through their formal stages, and received the assent of the Crown through Her Majesty's representative in the colony, came into immediate operation, unless they contained a suspending clause. This would apply, of course, to all Acts, whether they were for the appropriation of money or not."*
That was a distinct answer to the inquiry now made by the hon. Member for Sheffield; and, at a moment of great public interest like the present, it would be satisfactory to them to understand that they had authentic information to so late a date as the 22nd of March.
MR. ROEBUCKhad not put this question to the Under Secretary for the Colonies, because he was not in his place, and he concluded that hon. Gentleman had not received a letter which he had sent him in the course of the day. As the hon. Gentleman had now taken his seat, however—[Mr. Hawes had entered just before]—he would take the liberty of repeating the question. They had all been made acquainted with the painful circumstances that had occurred at Montreal. These circumstances originated in the consent given by the Governor General to a Bill passed through the Legislature of Canada for giving remuneration to certain parties who had suffered loss during the last rebellion. This he understood from the nature of the case, was a Money Bill, and must have come immediately and directly from the Canadian Ministry; it must have been preceded by an instruction and recommendation from the Governor General to give their assent to the measure. He would not enter further into the circumstances; he did not impute blame to any one, for he would rather defend than impute blame; but he wanted to know from the hon. Gentleman whether there had been sent from the Colonial Office—as was ordinarily the case—a power to the Governor General to recommend to the Ministry there acting in Her Majesty's name to go down to the Canadian Assembly, and state that She sanctioned
*Hansard (Third Series), Vol. ciii., p. 1125.

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the appropriation of money to the express purposes of the Bill which had excited these disturbances? At the proper time he should be able to explain. [Cries of"Order!"] He would bow to the rule of the House; but he only wished to say, that if the hon. Gentleman answered the question, they would be satisfied as to the parties on whose back the responsibility should fall.
LORD J. RUSSELL: I shall certainly decline entering further into this matter. As to the question put by the hon. Gentlemen the Member for Buckinghamshire, the answer given upon a former occasion by my hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the Colonies is perfectly correct in point of fact.
MR. HAWES: I beg to say that I received the note of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sheffield, and I have to thank him for giving me notice of the question. I sent it to my noble Friend at the head of the Colonial Office, in order that my noble Friend at the head of the Government might be enabled to answer the question.
SIR J. PAKINGTONasked whether in the despatch which the noble Lord had mentioned, there was any reference to a petition from a large and respectable assemblage at Montreal, praying that the Earl of Elgin should be recalled, and that the Queen should withhold Her assent from the Indemnity Bill? Also whether any petitions to the same effect had been received from other parts of Canada?
LORD J. RUSSELLhad seen his noble Friend the Colonial Secretary that morning, but no such petition had then been received, and whether any had arrived since four o'clock he was not aware. He had, however, seen in the newspapers some account of such a meeting being held as had been referred to by the hon. Gentleman.
MR. BRIGHTasked whether the Government had received such information as might lead them to hope that the disturbances had been put down?
LORD J. RUSSELLhad to say, in reply, that the Governor General stated that on the 30th Montreal was tranquil. There had been some disturbances in the provinces, but he believed the provinces might also now be considered as tranquil.
MR. P. HOWARD: Is it the intention of Her Majesty's Government to increase the forces in Canada? For instance, to send out the Guards, or some of the other troops? Is it intended to strengthen the hands of the Executive, and to secure the
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person of the Viceroy from anything like personal insult or attack?
LORD J. RUSSELL: There certainly does not appear to me to be the least reason for sending additional forces to Canada at present. I believe there is quite sufficient force to protect the Governor General; though I am told that the civil force of Montreal consists of two constables only.
Subject dropped.

EMIGRATION FROM IRELAND.
MR. MONSELLthen proceeded to call the attention of the House to the importance of encouraging emigration from Ireland. He rose, certainly not without considerable embarrassment, to address the House on this subject, as connected with Irish interests, and as a means essential to the relief of Irish distress. On the one hand, he was well aware of the difficulties which he should have to encounter in dealing with so large a question; on the other, he felt that protracted and, he was afraid he must add, fruitless debates had indisposed the House to the consideration of Irish questions. He threw himself, however, confidently on the indulgence of the House, and would endeavour to merit that indulgence by compressing all that he thought it necessary to say into the smallest possible compass; and, first, he declared his cordial agreement with the opinion expressed by the Solicitor General on the preceding evening, that what was wanted for Ireland was a series of beneficial measures. He quite admitted that the suggestions he was about to make, if carried out, would not avail towards relieving the miseries of some of the worst districts of Ireland, where, on account of the omission of such measures, the population was already reduced by death, and those that remained were enfeebled by disease. He knew also that in almost every place the remedy of emigration would require the assistance of other concurrent remedies. He took, for instance, the Incumbered Estates Bill. He believed that that measure attacked the malady in its source and ultimate cause. He should utterly fail in recommending his views to the House, if he did not prove that they would assist the objects and promote the changes which his hon. and learned Friend desired to effect by that Bill; but his hon. and learned Friend's Bill would not work without purchasers. He must take care, lest haply the estates submitted for sale under his commission, should meet with the fate of those put up

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for auction the other day by the Earl of Courtown. Let the House recollect that these estates were situated not in the distressed unions—not under the Court of Chancery—but in a district comparatively well circumstanced—with an undisputed title, and in lots of different sizes, some small and some large, and so calculated to draw forth purchasers, if any persons of any class had any confidence in the existing social state of Ireland. It would be in the recollection of those Gentlemen who had seats in the last Parliament, that the necessity for assisting emigration was urged upon Parliament in February, 1847, by his hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead; and in the month of June by his noble Friend the Member for Falkirk. Those two remarkable speeches showed how utterly impossible it was to surmount the difficulties of the position in which Ireland was then placed, without largely assisting emigration. His noble Friend, he recollected, pointed out the certain operation of the poor-law, if unaided by such means, in diminishing the means of employment—that, consequently, the amount of destitution would be greatly increased—and that the country must go on from bad to worse. These conclusions he proved by â priori arguments which it was impossible to answer. He (Mr. Monsell) now pointed out the verification of those conclusions by facts. Nay, he did more, for those words of warning, dimly shadowed out by his noble Friend, were now visibly and legibly written in characters of blood. He might pass lightly over this portion of the subject. Night after night it had been before the House. Ruin had reached every class in many districts. Take the peasantry—you found reports not written by persons who are not responsible for their assertions, but by Government officers. They tell of frequent deaths. In one district only a few days ago an assistant barrister informed the Committee on the poor-law, that in two years one-third of its population had perished. It was thought that they had left the district. He was asked the question; he said that they had died—died of sheer want. What was the account he gave of the prisoners who were tried before him within the last fortnight? He said that numbers had prayed him to transport them. One instance specially he mentioned, in which, having warned the prisoner that he would have to work for seven years at penal labour, and work in
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chains; what was the reply? "But at all events I shall have a bellyfull, instead of starving here." How was the clothing of the people described? "They were frequently observed," says Mr. Hamilton, "with no other covering except the remnant of some tattered bed-clothing merely hung on their shoulders; two or three persons being covered with what was once a blanket." The returns of the pawnbrokers, which had been laid on the table of the House, proved that the means of the lowest class were exhausted, and that once respectable farmers were now sinking rapidly into pauperism. Let them take the case, not of the union of Clifden, with eleven-nineteenths of its land waste—not of Kilrush, with their 13,000 human beings, described by Captain Kennedy as ejected from their holdings—but of Ballina, to the prospects of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had alluded with so much satisfaction. What was the account of the county in which that union was situated, given in evidence by Mr. Brett, the county surveyor? "Great numbers," he said, "had died; the diminution of wealth, and of any available resources had gone on in a greater ratio than the diminution of the population—the physical condition of those who remained had deteriorated—the children looked like animals of a lower class." He would not weary the House with further details, but would conclude this portion of his subject by reading a single passage from the evidence of Count Strelecki, that apostle of charity, whose name was never mentioned in Ireland without a blessing, and whose labours in the cause of a suffering people had rendered him intimately acquainted with their condition. Let the House recollect that this gentleman was a great traveller, and had visited almost every part of the globe. Count Strelecki thus spoke of the state of the country:—
"I am sorry to say that having in my perambulations around the world had occasion to see humanity in most of the latitudes and longitudes, including the aboriginal races in North and South America and the South Sea Islands, and in New Zealand and Australia, I have not found anywhere else men subject to misery of such an aggravated character as the Irish peasantry of the western unions were. The famine described by Sismondi, in Tuscany, in 1846, 1847, 1848, is nothing to be compared with what came under my own observation in Ireland."
They had now abundant information as to the parts of the country to which this remedy of emigration ought to be applied.

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There were only forty-three unions in Ireland in which the rates were above 3s. in the pound, and there were only about thirty of those unions where it was essential that assistance should be afforded for the purposes of emigration. By applying emigration as a remedy to these unions, they would save them from falling into that state of utter ruin in which so many unions had fallen, and to which all were now hastening. If they did not assist those unions, be believed that the shrieks of misery which have been heard in the west. would now be caught up in districts for which no assistance has yet been required. For instance, the county of Limerick had not yet suffered the extreme distress which prevailed in the worst part of Ireland; but unless a portion of the population there were enabled to emigrate, he had no doubt but that the anticipations contained in the petition which he had presented that evening from the board of guardians of the Limerick union, and which had been unanimously agreed to by them in favour of the emigration, would be verified, and that that county would soon present the same scenes of utter destitution which prevailed throughout seven or eight of the unions in the west of Ireland. Day by day the condition of the people of Limerick was approaching still nearer to that of the most impoverished part of the country; it was losing that which had distinguished it from Mayo or Galway, namely, its capital; and as timely assistance to emigration would have saved those counties, so now it would save Limerick from their fate. Would emigration have saved Mayo? He would ask the House to compare the present state of Ballina, to which he had already alluded, with that of the adjoining districts of Sligo, from which systematic emigration had taken place. At the commencement of the famine, Cliffony, in the Sligo union, was in a much worse state than any part of Ballina, Yet in Ballina many had sunk into a miserable grave; and of those that were left, multitudes were suffering the most acute misery—capital had almost vanished—while those who had emigrated from Cliffony were most prosperous. Through the post-office of that small place, 2,000 l had been sent home this year. Its inhabitants were employed, and the poor-rates of the division were comparatively small. How was this happy change effected? Mr. Kincaid, the agent, had told the Poor Law Committee—by emigration; and employment without emigration could not
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have been made productive. Nothing could exceed the misery through which the Ballina union had passed, while in those districts of Sligo, where emigration had been tried, comparative comfort now prevailed, while large sums of money had been sent home by those who had gone out to enable their friends to join them. Not only in Sligo, but in Tipperary, and every other part of Ireland, from which emigration had been properly conducted, the same beneficial results had followed. The census returns showed that while in ten years the agricultural population of England had decreased 3 per cent, the same in Connaught had increased 21 per cent, and in Munster 15 per cent. In Lincolnshire, one of the great agricultural counties of England, there were only nine labourers to every 100 arable acres; while in Mayo there was a population of 78 on every 100 arable acres. Taking the two countries generally he found that in England an agricultural population of three millions cultivated 30,000,000 of acres; while in Ireland five and a half millions of people cultivated 13,000,000 of acres. There were 60 agricultural labourers to every 100 cultivated acres in Ireland; while in France, notwithstanding all that was said about the great subdivision of land, there was only a population of 39 to every 100 cultivated acres; and in France there was a large non-agricultural population, while in Ireland there is hardly any. Could any one then deny that there was in Ireland a disproportion between the means of giving employment and the number requiring to be employed; how this state of things was produced in Ireland he could not inquire at any length. It was obvious that the penal laws had degraded the people—that they were satisfied with the lowest description of food—and that they multiplied up to the potato-producing power of the soil. In the poorest districts they were most degraded, and they multiplied in those districts fastest. Those districts had a very small non-agricultural population—one acre of potatoes produced as much human food as three acres of corn. Even with the potato the people were on the verge of starvation—without it what tongue could describe the horrors of their condition? As bad as that of Manchester would be if cotton were to disappear—a vast market of men underselling their industry against one another—employers decreasing—those who required employment increasing. As long as that social state remained, they

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could not expect that capital would flow into the country, or be expended in the improvement of the soil. As sure as water quenched fire, so surely must such a social state stifle all approach to industry or enterprise in the country. The Incumbered Estates Bill, and Land Improvement Bill, or whatever other beneficial measures they might adopt, must fail, so long as this tremendous evil remained unremoved. Hon. Gentlemen who took an opposite view of this question, were very fond of referring to the case of Belgium. But it should be recollected, in the first place, that agriculture and manufactures had grown up together in Belgium, and that the whole foundation of the agriculture of Belgium lay in the large amount of capital which the small holders were enabled to expend upon their farms. The cotton manufactures of Belgium occupied 122,000 hands; the woollen manufactures of Verviers and its neighbourhood alone occupied 40,000 persons; the hosiery trade occupied 50,000; and the linen trade, in spinning, weaving, and bleaching, 400,000 persons. With such a state of manufacturing industry, how could they compare Belgium to Ireland? They should bear in mind that no less than 15 l. per acre had been expended on an average in improvements in Belgium; and could they have any prospect of similar expenditure of capital in Ireland with its present overcrowded population? His belief was, that if they gave a scope to the employment of private capital by the encouragement of emigration from the distressed districts, they would have more land drained and more improvements effected than they could hope to accomplish by any measure like the Land Improvement Act, although he admitted it to be a useful enactment. To use the words of an eminent writer, the actual slate of penury and misery which makes the cultivators helpless and keeps them destitute, is the great obstacle to the commencement of national improvement. It would be unnecessary for him to occupy the time of the House by showing that emigration would benefit the labouring classes, as that was a proposition which no one would be disposed to deny. It would be a mockery to undertake to prove that it was better for people to be in America in the enjoyment of comfort, than to be starving at home. He knew it was said that emigration from Ireland was at present excessive; but it was of a class which was an injury and not a benefit to the
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country. If hon. Gentlemen had read the accounts of emigration from Dublin during the past few days, they would perceive that several vessels had gone away filled with strong and opulent farmers, the very class that it was desirable to retain. In the evidence taken before the Select Committee of that House on the Irish Poor Law, he found the following passages descriptive of the sort of emigration now in operation from Ireland. In the report of the vice-guardians of the union of Carrick-on-Shannon, it was stated—
"We are of opinion a great deal of this poverty is attributable to the emigration of that class of farmers holding from ten to twenty acres of land, who, on their leaving, have disposed of their farms to a class who were desirous of obtaining possession; such have given their entire capital, leaving themselves unable to stock the land, or to pay either the rates or rent, for proof of which there were entered with the clerk of the peace for the last quarter-sessions, in this division alone, 186 ejectment cases; also the loss of the potato, which has affected men of every degree, for we may say the rent was chiefly paid by means of feeding pigs on the refuse of that esculent."
In the Longford union, the Kilkenny union, the Thurles union, and the Kanturk union, the vice-guardians also reported to the same effect. Surely this emigration of capitalists—of the employers of labour—was increasing the disproportion between capital and labour, and therefore increasing overpopulation: a parish with two hundred labourers and ten employers might not have labourers enough, but take away the employers and it would become overpopu lated. Another argument often used was, that the natural resources of Ireland could support double the population. He did not doubt but they might, but he could not see how the possible produce of the country under a highly improved cultivation could have anything to do with the immediate position in which Ireland was placed. How long would it take to develop those national resources sufficiently to employ the existing population? and were the people in the mean time to starve? Merthyr Tydvill 100 years ago had only 200 or 300 inhabitants—now it had between 40,000 and 50,000, who were all employed. Suppose the 40,000 or 50,000 had been there 100 years ago, he could fancy the hon. Member for Stroud addressing them, when they asked him for immediate labour; and telling them of the mineral resources which lay beneath their feet, and assuring them that those when developed would give them ample employment; but he did not think that this answer would have been very

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satisfactory to his starving auditors. Another argument against Irish emigration was that which had been used the other day by his hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the Colonies. His hon. Friend seemed to think that the opinion entertained in some of the colonies was, that Irishmen did not make good colonists. But so far from this opinion being borne out by the facts, every single witness examined before the Colonisation Committee, with one exception, bore testimony to the superior character of the Irish emigrants. Mr. Cunard stated—
"I think the English emigrant the best, and the Irish next, and that the descendants of the Irish make excellent settlers."
Mr. Pemberton said that the Irish emigrants were the best labourers for all works requiring great strength, and that all very laborious works, both in the United States and in Canada, were executed by Irishmen. Mr. Minturn's evidence contained the following:—
"There was then no indisposition on the part of the Irish labourers to support themselves by honest industry?—On the contrary, every man who was able to carry a spade went to work, and although the commission of emigration commenced its operations in May, and those persons were authorised by law to demand assistance from them whenever they were unable to take care of themselves, there were no instances of applications from ablebodied men for admission to the institutions of the commissioners until the winter set in, which greatly diminished outdoor labour, and at no time were there chargeable to the commissioners more than 300 ablebodied men.
"Out of the enormous number that came?—Out of the emigration of 60,000 Irish, and 160,000 of all nations.
"It also produces very good effects to the people, who themselves emigrate into the country?—Surprising effects. In America they imbibe the spirit of the country. The Irish, who are said to be unwilling to work at home, are industrious in the United States. I have scarce ever known an ablebodied Irishman unwilling to work. I can speak with great confidence with regard to their indefatigable industry and willingness to work, and that they do not seek assistance when they can obtain labour."
He could conceive no statements more decisive than those as to the character of the Irish emigrants, and he thought, after such evidence, that it would be most ungenerous to attempt to influence the House by any repetition of this charge. Another argument was often used by the noble Secretary for the Colonies. He said, assisted emigration would interfere with voluntary emigration; surely not, if it was properly managed—surely assisted emigration was the source from which voluntary emig-
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ration flowed. Colonel Wyndham, for instance, or Lord Palmerston, sent out a number of emigrants: those emigrants sent back money to take their friends out, and so the stream flowed on. How was emigration to commence in poor districts where there were no wealthy proprietors, unless it was assisted? So far as the interests of Ireland were concerned, it was no matter whether the emigrants went to the United States or to the colonies. All the emigrants wanted was to be able to earn a livelihood. But, viewing the matter as a Member of the Imperial Legislature, he confessed that it appeared to him to be an exceedingly foolish and impolitic thing not to endeavour to make the colonies attractive to their own subjects. There was no doubt but that the United States were willing to absorb any amount of labour that might be sent over from Ireland. In Mackay's Western World, lately published, a most interesting account was given of that portion of the United States to which emigrants from the south of Ireland had within the last few months turned for the first time—namely, the valley of the Mississippi. Mr. Mackay gave an account of the capacity of that great country for the absorption of labour, and of the extraordinary fertility of the soil, which was cultivated at a cost of only 29 s. 2d. for an acre of wheat. He described how St. Louis had increased its population from 5,000, in 1830, to 34,000, in 1847; while Cincinnati, that at the beginning of the present century had only a population of 750, had now 60,000 inhabitants. Mr. Mackay further went on to say that it was to the valley of the Mississippi the Roman Catholic Church had directed its peculiar attention, and that there were to be found there a larger number of missionary priests, and of seminaries and of members of the different religious orders, than in almost any other part of America. Thus, though in some of the most populous parts of the Union the Roman Catholic emigrant was not able to find a clergyman of his persuasion, he was sure to meet with them in those remote settlements on the very borders of the prairies. Therefore, so far as regarded Ireland, it would be a matter of indifference whether these great works were undertaken or not. In the ease of Canada, he admitted that, after the information which had been received to-day, there was little chance of Canada this year absorbing any large number of emigrants; and the testimony of the dif-

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ferent emigration agents all bore out that view of the case. But he did not think that the information received to-day ought to disincline them, or induce them to consider of little importance the construction of those great works which would tend to the consolidation of our North American empire; and any Gentleman who had seen the remarkable report of Mr. Robinson on the Halifax and Quebec Railway, would see at once the vast advantages which its completion would confer upon that country. For the first 100 miles out of Quebec it would run through the centre of an extended village; the greater part of the remainder of its route would be well suited for emigrants. Its advantages would be great. It would supersede the long and dangerous passage to Quebec of the St. Lawrence, which prevented vessels from making two European voyages in the season without incurring great danger; and it would secure for Halifax the trade between America and Europe. Unless it was made, Portland, which was 400 miles further to the west, would occupy that position, and the whole trade of the western provinces would be lost to Canada. There could be no doubt that the construction of that railway would employ a large number of persons, and it ran through a country peculiarly situated for emigration and for location. He therefore regretted to see that the Board of Railway Commissioners had appended to Mr. Robinson's report some disparaging observations. What might be expected from the construction of that railway, was to be inferred from the results of the Erie Canal, running through a country that was originally as wild and uninhabited as the railway was now proposed to pass through. When Governor Clinton projected that canal it was called in derision Clinton's Ditch. He, however, persevered—an almost miraculous change was effected—the forest suddenly disappeared, and towns and villages sprung up on sites which had long been the haunts of the savage, the wolf, and the bear—only twenty-four years ago forests shrouded what is now the granary of New York. The canal was already found to be too small for the traffic; and notwithstanding the enormous cost of its construction, it was paying 7 per cent upon its outlay. If any importance was attached to the preservation of the connexion between this country and Canada., he would ask the House, was it wise to leave a great work of this sort unattended to, when every person, both here
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and in Canada, knew very well that if Canada were annexed to the United States, the work would be commenced in five years? It depended, he repeated, upon this railway whether New York or the St. Lawrence was to be the channel of outlet for the productions of the rich and fertile country in the west. But he would now come to another colony, which was of still more importance to them—he meant that of South Africa. That colony was divided into two parts by the territory occupied by the Kafirs. The eastern division of Natal, which contained a number of square miles equal to Scotland, produced in abundance wheat, Indian corn, and other important crops. But, in addition to these, it produced the best possible sort of cotton and indigo. He wished the House to consider the importance of cotton to this country. Last year 1,700,000 packages of raw cotton were imported into England, 1,375,000 of which came from the southern States of America; that was to say, from one latitude, and subject to all the vicissitudes of a single climate. What would be the consequence to this country if the crop of cotton in America were to fail for a single year? The capacity of Natal for the production of cotton was shown by the statements of Mr. Blanc before the India Cotton Committee, who stated that the best sample produced in that colony was worth 1s. per lb.—that it produced 600 lbs. per acre—that its productive power was far greater than that of the United States—and that the colonists were most anxious that Government should encourage the emigration of labourers and capitalists, and that the Crown lands should be sold for that purpose. Let the House recollect also that one-half the exports of this country consisted of goods manufactured from raw cotton—that last year more than 25,000,000 l worth of cotton goods were exported. He was sure that every gentleman in this country, particularly those residing in Lancashire and the North Riding of Yorkshire, would feel the importance of encouraging the growth of cotton in a district which was so suited to its cultivation as that of South Africa. On the other side of the Kafir territory, the soil also produced cotton and indigo, and was most fertile. And there could not be the least doubt that the location of emigrants in that district would tend to prevent the repetition of expending large sums of money to repress the outrages of the Kafirs, and he was sure that the money would be bet-

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ter spent in the location of Kafirs than in the movement of troops. He did not see why they should not adopt the system in that territory which had been so successfully adopted in the most successful settlement ever effected by this country—that of South Australia, where, between 1836 and 1846, 25,000 persons had been sent out, and 500,000 l. worth of colonial lands sold. There could not be the least doubt that the same number of persons might be sent to Africa for a much smaller sum of money than to the remote colony of South Australia. He would now advert to the means which might be adopted by Her Majesty's Government to promote emigration from Ireland. He would take the liberty of suggesting two separate means for this. In the first instance he would suggest, as stated in a petition which he had presented that day from the board of guardians of Limerick, greater facilities than at present existed might be given to poor-law boards to borrow money for the purposes of emigration; and he was sure that it would be possible in some unions to raise money upon the security of the rates, if that system were sanctioned by law. In his opinion, the facility might be given on condition that the money must be repaid by instalments not extending longer than from five to seven years. Another means he would suggest was, that power should be given to the landlords of Ireland to borrow money on the security of their properties for short terms. He did not think it would be desirable to extend the period for repaying these loans, borrowed for emigration purposes, in the same way as was proposed to extend the drainage loans, over periods of twenty-two years. He was sure that if they did, there would be an exceedingly lavish expenditure of money—that the emigrants would not be carefully selected—and that it would tend to check the emigration that was now going on from voluntary sources. But if money were lent for five or seven years, and if the estates of the proprietors were made liable for the payment of the instalments, he believed they would find a large number of proprietors ready to take advantage of the loan—that the money would be carefully spent—and that it would work exceedingly well. Under such a system nothing could be lost to the Treasury. If the improved estate did not pay its instalments it would be sold. Now, as to the means of raising the million and a half of money which it was desirable to raise for this purpose, he must confess that
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the course the Government had taken, in preferring the rate in aid to an income tax, had put him in some difficulty; but he admitted that the whole expense must be put upon the Irish resources, because he believed the whole of Ireland would be benefited by the operation of the measure. There was a provision in the Rate in Aid Bill to assist emigration. If the money there provided were to be capitalised with the understanding that at the expiration of the rate in aid some new means of paying the interest out of Irish resources should be provided, he, for one, would be perfectly satisfied with the measure, and he believed it would give satisfaction to Ireland. He had now endeavoured to show that, without this measure which he suggested, there was no chance of capital finding its way into Ireland, and that the Incumbered Estates Bill would not work till the social state of Ireland was improved; and he had endeavoured to show that the social state of Ireland would improve, and would improve rapidly, by adopting the course he had suggested. He had shown that the stereotyped arguments against assisted emigration had little foundation in truth. He had appealed to the House on behalf of the poor, who prayed to be rescued from enforced idleness and slow disease. He now left the matter in the hands of Her Majesty's Government and the House. He had no right to blame those at the head of affairs, that they had not all at once found out the course which was the most prudent to adopt. But he trusted they would now turn their serious attention to this matter. He believed that Her Majesty's Government—though he could not say he believed it of every Member of the House—he believed that the Government, as a body, did not rely for the removal of Irish distress and Irish misery on famine doing its full work. But he was afraid that the idea had got into the minds of some, that they were taking "counsel of hunger." If they did so, their crime was greater; because their light was more than those Chinese parents who exposed their children to keep down the population; and, as sure as there was a God in heaven, they would not escape punishment for such tremendous wickedness.
Motion made and Question proposed—
"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that She will be graciously pleased to give directions, that there be laid before this House, Copies or Extracts of any Despatches relative to

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Emigration to the North American and Australian Colonies, in continuation of the Papers presented to this House in August 1848, and February 1849."
MR. FITZPATRICKseconded the Motion.
MR. J. O'CONNELLhad listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member, though he did not in all cases agree with him. He had given himself much unnecessary trouble in proving that the condition of the miserable Irish would be bettered if they were removed to our colonies—in proving the capabilities of the Irish to maintain themselves, and of their disposition to work—and also in proving that there were many places which were in absolute want of the labour of the industrious sons of Ireland. But let him tell the hon. Member one significant fact which went rather against his proposition. It was this, that private capital had not overlooked the points to which he had adverted; and if it had not flowed there, it was because the capitalists saw no rational ground for risking their property. But, after all, the practical question with regard to emigration was, Where was the money to come from? The money was the thing. The hon. Member had not stated how this large sum of money was to be obtained, nor how it was to be expended, nor what number of individuals it would be necessary to take out of Ireland. The next question was, If they had the money, could they not spend it better at home? They could not take out the population of Ireland at a less sum than 20 l. a head. [" Oh, oh!"] He meant to take them out and locate them. That would amount to two millions sterling for 100,000 persons, and he was satisfied that the more persons there were taken out, the greater would be the expense, for the greater would be the dificulty of finding employment for them all; and in common humanity, till that was done, they would be bound to maintain them. But suppose that only one million and a half were required, had this House shown itself so willing to advance the sum? Then there was another point; the more that was done for the people, the less they would do for themselves. [Mr. ROEBUCK: Hear, hear!] He gave the hon. Member the full benefit of that admission; and the truth of the remark was proved by what had taken place on the public works. Besides, the present system of voluntary emigration would be stopped; for if it were known that Government had agreed to
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provide the funds, the intending emigrants would conceal the remittances they had received from their relatives, of which several thousand pounds were now annually received in Ireland, and would reserve them for the purposes of settlement in their new country. If the House were disposed to spend this money, let them spend it at home, and they would save the lives of individuals at much smaller cost. The Amendment he intended to propose was, that instead of stopping emigration, they should rather look to the means of promoting the present disastrous emigration that was taking place, which was going on to an extent that perhaps the Government were not aware of. He could cite one instance, which had come under his own knowledge, where three frieze-coated farmers had gone together to a savings bank to draw their money, intending to emigrate. One of them drew 500 l., the other 170 l., and the third 190 l., making altogether 860 l. that was about to be taken out of the country. Now, if the House adopted his resolution, it would have the effect of keeping the people at home, for they loved their homes, and would not leave them if they had any encouragement to stay. They would spend this money upon their own soil if the House of Commons would only pledge itself to settle the long-vexed question of landlord and tenant, and give the latter a right to the fruits of his own industry. As to the security of farmers against wanton ejectment contemplated in the first clause of his Amendment, nothing was more absolutely wanted. And there he begged that the House would permit him to diverge a little from his subject, in order that he might pay a tribute of admiration to the Society of Friends. Nothing could be more Christianlike, nothing could be more admirable, than the exertions of that excellent body. Every man of right feeling must be aware of and must acknowledge it. But their exertions were not known. They were not trumpeted forth. They had neither their chairman's nor their secretary's names, nor the lists of their committees published in the newspapers, and therefore the world at large knew not the vast amount of good that they were doing and had done. But the Irish people knew it, and nothing that he (Mr. J. O'Connell) could possibly say, could adequately convey the depth of his feelings of admiration at their conduct, at their charity, at the humanity and wisdom which directed their efforts. They had

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endeavoured not only to save life, but to raise the condition of the unfortunate peasant; and he could only say that he felt himself perfectly inadequate to the task of expressing the high feelings of admiration which he entertained for them. To return to his subject: his hon. Friend the Member for the county of Limerick had cited some instances of the good that had been done by the efforts of individual landlords. But it was only another proof that they could not argue from a particular to a general case. He had never heard of any course of similar proceeding in which cases of individual success might not be found, even where a general rule had been excessive hardship. And although instances could be found of merciful and considerate landlords aiding their tenantry to emigrate, it was not so clearly established that the population so sent out had equally profited, and that prosperity had greeted them upon a foreign shore. On the contrary, they had heard sad tales of sickness, poverty, and death, amongst these unfortunate emigrants. His hon. Friend had proposed no specific plan. He merely wished the Government to adopt some extensive system. But he (Mr. J. O'Connell) thought the cost would be enormous, and that the money, if obtained, could be better laid out for the benefit of the people in Ireland. With regard to the second clause of his Amendment, even the newspapers which had hitherto affected to treat as exaggerations, or whose proprietors really imagined that the accounts from Ireland were merely exaggerations or symptoms of the grasping spirit which was attributed to Irishmen in that House, who were said to cry for "money, money" and nothing else—those newspapers were beginning to confess that life was wasting away in Ireland, not in or two districts, but that throughout the entire country it was threatening the very annihilation of the people. Now, would the Government and the House endeavour to put a stop to that state of things? Had hon. Gentlemen seen the charge of Mr. Serjeant Howley, delivered at Thurles to the grand jury of the county of Tipperary? Let them listen to his description:—
"So far as regards felony cases, attacks upon property, cases of burglary, robbery, and offences of that description, they are unusually large. You have been for years attending as grand jurors of this county, and if you carry back your recollection for a few years you will be able to remember that cases of robbery formed but a very small portion of those which you had to investigate.
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Dishonesty is not a vice of the Irish people; certainly not. From notions of fancied wrongs or supposed injuries, which were more immediately connected with land, there were committed very grave, serious, and numerous offences; but certainly there prevailed a spirit of honesty among the people, with regard to the attacks upon the property of others, notwithstanding that they were ready to resent some supposed injury, and to vindicate or avenge it, yet cases of theft were few indeed. Why has it been the reverse now? Whence arose the commission of this great amount of petty robberies, of interfering with property? Gentlemne, what has been the actual cause of those robberies? It is easily explained; the destitution, the famine, the wretchedness, the misery and suffering of the country, which cannot be described—that is a cause of the strongest temptation. There is no doubt, so far as it goes, that the poor-law, in giving outdoor relief, endeavours to deal with the calamity and misery so wide spread among the lower classes. But, gentlemen, every day's experience satisfies us that it is unequal to cope with that calamity, so severe and so extensive is its existence. Therefore the temptation to possess some of the property of others is so strong, and that self-preservation which is implanted in us by nature so ardent, that it over-reaches and disregards all principles of morality." * * * "The Bridewell here, which, although unsuited of course to this new state of things, is rather large, has twenty cells, and in which, previous to their trial, there were over three hundred persons huddled together. There is necessarily great danger in keeping a number of persons of that description, even if they were strong and healthy, in such a crowded bridewell for any length of time; but as many of their constitutions must be broken down by hunger and famine, with the seeds of disease upon them, of course it is a grievous circumstance to have them confined there together. In many instances the persons who have been brought before me committed those offences for the mere purpose of being sent to gaol—a place which in former times was looked upon by the people as one of punishment, and from which they turned away with disgust, but now they looked upon it as an asylum or protection from famine and poverty, as a home, and as a shelter. Notwithstanding, when we consider the condition of the people, who are receiving outdoor relief under the provisions of the poor-law in this country, there can be no doubt that the county gaol is considered as a place of shelter to the poor, wan, emaciated, and famishing people, without houses or friends to assist them, or sufficient food to sustain nature; that it is an asylum to prevent them from experiencing the horrors of famine." * * "Now, gentlemen, what is outdoor relief? It has come to my ears, and I believe your own experience will bear me out, that those who are obliged to depend upon the lodgings which they get from others, and for which they must pay by giving the better half of what they receive in outdoor relief, and thus it is that they are tempted by their poverty and suffering to attack and perpetrate those offences with which they stand charged—because, look at their wan cheeks—the mournful expression of their countenances—their wasted forms—their eyes starting from their sockets—and their limbs tottering by the slow process of want—look at their ragged garments—their wretched clothing

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melting off their backs. Alas! gentlemen, that is a picture which, I regret to say, we will behold in the progress of this session."
So much for Tipperary. What was the condition of the west? He would state a few of the accounts that had been lately published. He had not selected them, as would be at once seen; for many cases as bad, and some even worse, might easily be discovered by any one who would carefully look for them. In Kilmoney and Ibrickane, in the county Clare, 300 families had recently been evicted; 130 deaths had taken place in the workhouse within the last month—fifty in one week. In Kilrush, in the same county, 1,500 houses had been destroyed. In the workhouse of Nenagh, county Tipperary, there were 2,800 paupers; 102 had died in one week, and 941 had died since the 24th December last. In Killimore, county Galway, thirteen people were found dead upon the roads and in the fields within three or four days. In the Ballinasloe workhouse there were 4,700 paupers—there were thirteen auxiliary workhouses; 225 people died in one week in the workhouse; ten or twelve died weekly outside the doors; and he found in the Times of that very day, the 15th of May, the statement that 860 paupers had died in the workhouse in one week. In Moycullen, twenty-seven people died in three days, and the dead lay un-buried for want of coffins. Between Black-water and Ardmore, in the county Kerry, six people died of starvation within the week, on the road side. [The hon. Member then proceeded to give extracts from Irish newspapers, confirmatory of what he had previously stated.] Again, he asked the House what should be done to save the people from such a condition? The poor-law would not do it. The noble Lord at the head of the Government had said, that it was a most extraordinary effort for the people of Ireland to raise 2,500,000 l. in one year for the poor. But the effort had exhausted them, and the poor-law was bringing all down to a level of ruin. There was another point of view: if the rates were now insufficient to preserve life, how could the people be induced to consent to an increased rate for purposes of emigration? What he wanted the House to consider was, that it had not done wonders. For what it had done, he was thankful. It had acted kindly. But it was not yet discharged of its responsibility. Life was still perishing miserably, and something further should be done. He found that he was
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prevented by the rules of the House from moving the third paragraph of his Amendment—that the House should resolve itself into a Committee to consider the further advances for the relief of distress in Ireland; but the House ought to feel convinced of the propriety and necessity of adopting such a course itself. The people looked to the House of Commons, and considered it their natural protector; and unless it agreed in those most unchristian and cursed doctrines to which his hon. Friend had alluded—those economical doctrines put forward by men calling themselves Christians, who said the people of Ireland should be suffered to starve down to a fair proportion of population—unless the House agreed in those hideous principles, it should do something more for the Irish people to keep them from perishing by wholesale. Having spoken of the starving people, he should next speak of the condition of the country generally, and he could not do better with the subject than quote the address of the relief association of the Society of Friends in Ireland:—
"In losing their crop of potatoes they lost all, and sunk at once into helpless and hopeless pauperism. The small farmers still preserved hope. With great exertions, and submitting in many cases to extreme privations, they again cropped their ground. A second failure of the potatoes pauperised them also. Then came the increased poor-rates, heaviest in those districts which were least able to bear them—weighing down many who, without this last burden, might have stood their ground—alarming all by the unaccustomed pressure of an undefined taxation, and greatly reducing the small amount of capital applicable to the employment of labour. The landed proprietor, in order to provide for the payment of rates, has been obliged to leave much useful work undone—thus lessening the numbers of labourers employed. In many cases, his chief effort has been to diminish the population by a frightful system of wholesale evictions, and thus get rid of a tenantry who, under happier circumstances, would have been a source of wealth, but whom his inability to employ had converted into a heavy burden.…The paupers are merely kept alive, but their health is not maintained—their physical strength is weakened, their mental capacity is lowered, their moral character is degraded; they are hopeless themselves, and they offer no hope to their country, except in the prospect so abhorrent to humanity and Christian feeling, of their gradual extinction—by death. Many families are now suffering extreme distress, who, three years since, enjoyed the comforts and refinements of life, and administered to the necessities of those around them.…. That security to the cultivator of the soil does not generally exist in Ireland is admitted. Upon this point there is scarcely a second opinion—the laws which regulate the title to and the conveyance of land, require to be changed, so as to give the utmost freedom to its sale and transfer, so as to pass those estates whose

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proprietors are irretrievably ruined into other hands, and to enable those who are partially encumbered to free themselves from their difficulties by disposing of part of their landed property. Until this be effected—until the soil of Ireland be held by a clear and marketable title—until the owners be enabled to sell the whole or any part of their property, without the ruinous delays and heavy costs which now prevent them—until the creditors of a landowner have those facilities for enforcing payment of their debts to which justice entitles them—it is vain to hope that Ireland can raise herself from a state of poverty and degradation. But without those changes in the laws relating to the tenure and conveyance of land which shall open a free scope for the employment of its capital and its industry, and give ample security to the cultivators of the soil, we cannot hope for general and permanent improvement. Measures of a much more decided character are necessary to produce any permanently useful effect: the situation of the country is daily becoming worse—there is no time to lose if those now suffering are to be saved. But our paramount want is not money—it is the removal of those legal difficulties which prevent the capital of Ireland from being applied to the improved cultivation of its soil, and thus supporting the poor by the wages of honest and useful labour."
No Irishman Could say that that description was overcharged. Was it to be allowed to continue? Let the noble Lord beware, lest, whilst he introduced only measures that would take a long time to become operative, he would but make a desert, and then call it peace. He (Mr. J. O'Connell) would himself propose meatures. He could not say how wild they might be deemed. They could not be more completely revolutionary than the plan of the anti-revolutionist the right hon. Member for Tamworth, or that of the other anti-revolutionist the noble Lord himself. He (Mr. J. O'Connell) said, that every man who received an income from the soil of Ireland ought to be at home there to do his duty at such a time. The landed proprietors were wanted there. The House said that the property of Ireland should support its poverty. The proprietors should then be compelled to come home—rates should be doubled or trebled upon absentees. Where there was a will there was a way, and they could easily find means to compel their presence. Let them carry out their improvement of property measure—their Drainage Bills—their reclamation of Waste Land Bills; and there was no reason why the plan of his hon. Friend should not come in as an accessory, but as a great leading measure it would not do. It would be better if the House at once appointed a Committee of the leading influential Members to go over to Ireland to examine, with their own eyes and ears, the
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condition of the country, and report accordingly. Much time would be saved by such a course, and they could then legislate with a knowledge of the country. But their present legislation was doing nothing to put a stop to the frightful evils that existed. With these views he begged to move the Amendment of which he had given notice.
Amendment proposed—
"To leave out from the word' That' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words,' Emigration is, at the best, a partial, tardy, and most expensive remedy for the evils of Ireland; and that it is more immediately necessary at present to endeavour to check the disastrous emigration of the farmers and small capitalists of that country, by giving them security against wanton ejectment, and loss of the fruits of their industry and enterprise, rather than to stimulate their departure, or that of the labourers who would be employed by them if such security were given:
'But that the most immediate and pressing object for this House to consider, is the frightful progress of starvation, disease, and death, in Ireland; the total insufficiency of local means, as well as of any assistance now afforded by the State to arrest that progress; and the urgent necessity that exists for additional contributions from the State to save hundreds of thousands from perishing, and whole counties from being depopulated.' "
MR. SCULLYseconded the Amendment.
MR. MOOREobserved, that it was with great pain he saw the two Motions which had been proposed by the hon. Members sent to that House from the same county to represent the people of Ireland. What hope could the people have that their representatives could have any weight in the House, when they saw one hon. Member bringing forward a Motion to counteract, neutralise, and frustrate a Motion of another hon. Member from the same county? With respect to the first paragraph of the Amendment, that emigration was a partial, tardy, and expensive remedy—a more ill-timed, ill-judged, and incongruous statement, one more inconsistent with itself and with the facts, he never heard. Why, all remedies for grave diseases must be partial, tardy, and expensive. It was only quacks, charlatans, and impostors who pretended to cure complaints of forty years' standing by nostrums which were to act at the moment. The people of Ireland were emigrating in the most disastrous way in which emigration could take place, for those who went took with them the capital of the country. If the hon. Member for Limerick were to try his hand at persuading a half-starved Connaught peasant

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to reject a free passage to Australia, and to stay at home for his outdoor relief and Indian meal, he would most probably be met with the reply, "Give me the passage to Australia, and try the Indian meal yourself." But the hon. Gentleman suggested a remedy for the evils of Ireland. It was security against ejectment. That might have done very well some years back, when land had value, and when the people were not anxious to fly the country; but it would be of as much service now in Ireland as it would be to tell a soldier in California you would not dismiss him in order to prevent desertion. The Government must act at once. In the name of that hapless race who were fast vanishing from the land their ancestors had reclaimed, he called on the House to declare that by some means or another—by national taxation, or by confiscation, if they liked—Government should discharge its first duty to humanity; that this duty should be enforced, and death and desolation should be put an end to. He had received accounts the details of which were so horrifying to our common humanity, so degrading to the wretched creatures themselves, and so nauseous and disgusting in effect, that he could not bring himself to lay them before the House. Under their system of outdoor relief they had realised on this earth the terrible phantom of the poet's imagination—
"The nightmare Life-in-death."
Unless they did something more, their present system of relief was only helping the people on their journey to the grave; and he called upon them, for the sake of their own characters before the world and posterity, to avert from themselves the shame of what must ensue should the Government persist in the course they had taken.
SIR G. GREYwould admit that there was something worthy of consideration in the Motion of the hon. Member for the county of Limerick, and thanked that hon. Gentleman for the manner in which he had brought his Motion forward. He conceived that the hon. Member for the city of Limerick had not dealt fairly with the view of his hon. Friend, who had brought forward this Motion, when he represented him as asserting that the only remedy for the evils of Ireland was emigration on a large scale, and that the national resources should be devoted to that object only. He admitted that there were parts of Ireland
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where there was what might be termed a congestion of the population, which might be relieved by emigration; and he thought that emigration as applicable to those parts of Ireland could not be spoken of as an evil; whatever opinion might be entertained as to the proportion of population to the whole area of the country. Looking at the vast number of persons who had emigrated from Ireland in 1848, it could not be said that the emigrants generally consisted of farmers who had capital in the country. In 1848, 250,000 persons had emigrated, the greater portion of which were Irish; and in the course of the following year, 104,000 persons had emigrated, the majority of whom were from Ireland. This number must have comprised a large proportion of persons without capital. It would, of course, be a great advantage to this country and to Ireland if all the persons who emigrated were those without capital—if the emigrants only carried with them to distant lands their labour; but the House must not forget the objection which our colonies made to receiving vast numbers of persons in a state of utter helplessness, wretchedness, and disease; and he believed that nothing could tend more to render the colonies willing to participate in any system of emigration than the practice of sending out as emigrants mixed classes, consisting both of those who had capital, and were able to employ labour, and of those who only possessed their labour—a most valuable capital to them. The House should also bear in mind the remarkable fact that no less than half a million of money had been remitted in one year from America by Irish emigrants for the purpose of enabling their friends to follow them to that country. That was a source of assistance perfectly unobjectionable; no disadvantage could accrue from the assistance thus afforded. The hon. Member for the city of Limerick, deprecating emigration, had stated the expense of it very much beyond that which it really was. Persons might emigrate, with very proper provision for their comfort, at about 5l. per head; but the hon. Member had stated it at about four times that amount. He trusted that nothing which should pass in that debate would interfere with the stream of emigration which was setting in most usefully from some districts of Ireland; and, without at all interfering with the means which were now in operation, he could assure the hon. Member for the county of Limerick that there would be no

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indisposition on the part of Her Majesty's Government to consider any proposal which could be made for assisting that emigration. He understood the hon. Gentleman to make two proposals: the first, that increased powers should be given to the boards of guardians, of advancing from the rates; and increased powers of borrowing, on the security of the rates, money to be applied to the purposes of emigration; and he understood that the hon. Gentleman believed private individuals were willing to advance money on that security. Now, if in Committee upon the amended Poor Law Bill, the suggestion of the hon. Member should be embodied in a clause, he could only say that the Government would give it a fair consideration. It certainly would be the adoption of no new principle; but the extension of powers which had already been given, but which had proved inefficient. Existing powers of the same sort were conferred by several Acts. By the 1 and 2 Vict. c. 56, s. 51, on the application of the guardians, the ratepayers might be assembled, and if a majority agreed, a rate might he made not exceeding 1s. in the pound for a year, for the purpose of assisting emigration; but that emigration was limited to the British colonies; and he thought that perhaps that limitation might be usefully removed, as well as the necessity of obtaining the consent of a majority of the ratepayers, which no doubt might he a serious obstacle to the successful operation of the measure. He found by a return which he had obtained, that in 1848 only twenty-seven persons emigrated under that provision. By the 6th and 7th Vict. c. 92, two-thirds of the guardians, subject to the regulations of the Commissioners and the sanction of Her Majesty's Government, were empowered to make a rate for the same purpose not exceeding 6d. in the pound; but that emigration was also limited to the British colonies; and, in fact, only seven persons had in 1848 availed themselves of that Act; but it had been made use of in promoting a very useful class of emigration, the emigration of destitute orphans from the workhouses. By the 10th Vict., c. 31, s. 14, provision was made enabling the boards of guardians to afford aid towards emigration to the occupiers of land, upon their surrendering the land, all the rent being forgiven, and the landlord having paid two-thirds of the expense; and about sixty-seven persons, in 1848, had emigrated under the provisions
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of that clause. It was clear, that the provisions of the existing poor-law, in this respect, were in a great measure inoperative; and if the experience which his hon. Friend opposite possessed enabled him to suggest any improvement in those provisions which would render them efficient, and promote emigration in a manner which they were designed to accomplish, he should be most happy to see that result, which would be in accordance with the expressed intentions of Parliament. The next suggestion made by the hon. Gentleman was, that power should be given to landed proprietors to borrow money, to be applied to emigration on the same principle as that in which they were enabled to borrow it for land improvements. The obvious objection to that proposal was, that it would be extremely difficult to apply the rule with fairness to all parties, which was applied on the case of land improvements, by making the loan a charge on the estate. The advantage of emigration was more direct to the immediate owner, though it might not produce any permanent improvement in the property; and the immediate owner would be more ready to spend money upon emigration than on those improvements, the benefit of which would not be so immediate, but would be more lasting. But the hon. Gentleman proposed to meet that objection by limiting the period of repayment to five instead of twenty-two years; and, to some extent, no doubt, that course would meet the objection. He did not understand the hon. Gentleman to propose that any part of the money which had already been appropriated for the purpose of land improvements should be applied to emigration; and he certainly thought, that to divert any portion of the sum which had been so appropriated, would be doing very little for the object which the hon. Member had in view, and would be withdrawing that money from an object in which the whole of it might be spent with great advantage to that country. But the proposal to give landed proprietors powers of borrowing money for the purpose of emigration, was one which, if embodied in a Bill, would meet with the careful attention of Her Majesty's Government. As to the employment of the money which had been already appropriated, he believed that 20,000 was the number now actually employed and receiving wages out of the money already issued to landed proprietors, and these 20,000 were of course ablebodied persons,

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representing families, averaging four persons to each one so employed. As to our colonies, he quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman that they would derive great benefit from a well-conducted system of emigration; and when he said a well-conducted system, he meant a system which should include not only emigrants of the poorest class, but those also who had the means of employing labour. It was not necessary for him to say more at the present time on the Motion of the hon. Gentleman opposite, because the hon. Gentleman had not submitted any Motion upon which the opinion of the House could be taken, but had concluded with a formal Motion only; and when the proposals of the hon. Gentleman were before the House in a practical shape, that would be the time for expressing an opinion upon those distinct propositions so submitted. As to the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the city of Limerick, he would only say a few words. He thought that, as the hon. Member had complained unfairly of the hon. Gentleman opposite for bringing forward emigration as the sole remedy for the evils of Ireland, so he had erred in a different direction by denying that emigration, as one means of relief, might be of great advantage to that country. The hon. Member had stated, with great truth, that the distress in Ireland was almost unprecedented; but he had also unnecessarily exaggerated that distress; for he had said that, in the workhouse of Ballinasloe the deaths had amounted to 500 in one week, and in the succeeding week to above 800; but he (Sir G. Grey) learnt from the best authority—the noble Lord who had devoted himself with so much energy to the relief of distress in that district—that the cholera had broken out there, and that many persons were brought in a dying state into the workhouse, in consequence of which, in one week, between 400 and 500 persons did die in the workhouse; but in the succeeding week the number was much diminished, and by the last accounts the deaths were not more than six per day. It was unhappily quite unnecessary to exaggerate that distress; the statement of it made in the valuable report of the Society of Friends was only too true a picture. But when the hon. Member said that the responsibility of all that distress rested on the Imperial Parliament, he must protest against any such doctrine. Neither the Imperial Parliament nor Government could
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take upon themselves the responsibility of averting all the consequences of famine which was the result of natural causes. They might attempt to mitigate them; and if the hon. Member had read the paragraph preceding that which he did read from the report of the Society of Friends, he would not have charged the Government or the Legislature with inattention to the distress of Ireland. [The right hon. Baronet then read a passage which stated that the large amount of money expended by the Government and other contributors had probably prevented many persons from dying of starvation.] Really, it was too much to say that because misery and distress still existed, therefore all that money had been thrown away. [Mr. J. O'CONNELL: I did not say so.] He did not believe that more could have been done than there had been to mitigate that distress; but the hon. Gentleman called upon them to make further advances now. Advances had been made, and were still being made, for the purpose of supplying aid in the districts where the distress was the greatest; but the hon. Member said they ought to have looked to the opinion expressed in the report of the Society of Friends, and to have given security to the cultivator of the soil. Now, what did the Society of Friends say? They said that the laws which regulated the title to land required alteration—that freedom ought to be given to the sale of estates—that incumbered proprietors ought to have facilities for getting rid of their land—and that until the soil of Ireland was held by a clear and marketable title, until creditors had the means of enforcing payment by sale of the estates of the debtor, it was in vain to hope that Ireland could be raised from the state of poverty and misery into which she was plunged; that the paramount want of Ireland was not money, but the removal of the legal difficulties which prevented the sale of land. He was convinced that it was by the adoption of such measures that Parliament could best interfere; in the meantime, doubtless, they were bound to do what they could to mitigate existing distress; and he trusted that means would still be found sufficient to mitigate that distress to a great extent. The true remedy was to be found in the land being placed in the hands of persons with capital capable of employing labour in the improvement of the soil, and in the payment of wages, which would enable the labour-

527
ing population to live in comfort—in the creation of a class of substantial tenant farmers and of agricultural labourers. It might he long before such a system could be perfectly established; but that was the object at which they ought to aim; and he trusted that in the end it might be accomplished.
MR. J. O'CONNELLsaid, the right hon. Baronet had misunderstood him in supposing he had said that the money contributed had been thrown away. He, on the contrary, admitted it had done much good; but he conceived it to be wholly inadequate to the occasion.
MR. E. B. ROCHEbelieved the proposal of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the county of Limerick, as explained by the right hon. Baronet, to be a practical delusion. He was inclined to think, with his hon. Friend the Member for the city of Limerick, that the expense of emigration would be 20 l. a head. They might possibly find a few individuals who might be sent to our colonies for 5l.; but if they meant emigration to be carried on upon a large scale, so as to produce an effect upon the present state of Ireland, then they must be prepared not only to send them to the colonies, but have some arrangements made for them on their arrival. It would not suffice to sweep the workhouses of Ireland, and fling their contents wholesale upon another country. In fact, to do any good, there must be colonisation as well as emigration. With the landlords and farmers bankrupt, and the poor starving, what would be the benefit of any partial system of emigration? Though the harvest prospects were good in the south, the distress of the labouring population there was greater than he ever remembered it; the workhouses were crowded, so that a frightful epidemic had broken out. Unless some means were adopted to give employment to the ablebodied poor, Mr. Twisleton's prophecy would be fulfilled, and the Legislature would be a party to the ruin of a great nation. One thing recommended in the Amendment, the security of tenure, was absolutely necessary. Much was said of the want of capital in Ireland; and no wonder, when there was no security of tenure. Though the landlords were now prepared to do their duty, they had neglected it heretofore by resolving in a body not to give leases to Catholic tenants. The only class now in Ireland who had capital was the working farmers. Give them security, and induce them to
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lay out their capital on the land, and they would do much, though not all, for the welfare of the country. Ireland had never been allowed to govern herself, or develop her own energies; and if, as the hon. Member for Sheffield proposed, all further advances were refused, Ireland would with one voice demand to be allowed to govern herself. If England repudiated her, she would repudiate the legislative Union. It was impossible to carry out emigration on a sufficiently large scale to be of any use; therefore, whatever tropical remedies were proposed, they ought to be immediate.
MR. F. O'CONNORsaid, the proposition of the hon. Member for the county of Limerick very much reminded him of the practice adopted by some persons to get rid of an old dog-that of sending him out to get lost. The parallel drawn between Connaught and Belgium was most defective, as in the latter country, after deducting the 600,000 employed in manufactures, there was still a larger proportionate number supported on the soil. The hon. Gentleman and his class were not averse to the expatriation of the poor; but they lamented over the departure of capital. The fact was, as the hon. Member for Manchester had stated, that Ireland was not half populated. The money locked up in the savings hanks amounted to 400,000 l.—the strongest possible proof of the want of confidence in the landlords. Let them give their tenants leases, and every farthing of that money would be applied to the cultivation of the soil. Because the landlords chose to keep their estates but half cultivated, were the people to be thrust out by wholesale on that account? No one could say the land in Ireland was sterile. There were a few good landlords, such as the hon. Member for Northamptonshire, but they were the exception; and it was through the bad landlords that the House received its impression of the Irish people. The new crop of paupers had been created by the landlords ousting those tenants whose leases had expired, and who no longer possessed the franchise. Hence they had sacrificed the welfare of the country, and their own real interests, to their political feelings. But he had predicted what would be the effect of free trade; and hitherto the Irish landlords had not had more than a taste of it, and the English landlords had not felt it at all. It was impossible now to go back to protection; but the Irish Members had nobody but themselves to thank, for they were led

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up in a body, at any one's bidding, to vote for free trade, and now they would vote against it to a man. Last year he had foretold the deficient harvest, and said that Canada would be lost. The one prediction had been verified, the other was on the eve of fulfilment; and if Ireland were lost too, it would be the fault of the English and Irish landlords. After passing Coercion Bills, and taking away the last remnant of the constitution, could they suppose the people would lie down and die? It would be well if Ireland was not lost to this country within a twelvemonth. He would tell the manufacturers that Ireland might have been made a better customer than all our colonies put together; but the landlords, and the Government, by permitting them to do so, had destroyed her both as a consumer and a producer. It was true that Ireland had produced hodmen and wharfingers for England; but she had produced also, he was sorry to say, soldiers and sailors for England, and statesmen and poets. [An Hon. MEMBER: And agitators too.] Yes, and agitators too—a class of men who, he was sorry to say, took exceedingly good care of themselves while pretending to devote themselves to the public good. The present degradation of Ireland was owing, more than anything else, to that fatal system of agitation which had kept the country in a state of excitement, without directing it to any valuable object. He rejoiced that that course of agitation was now at an end. He would tell Ministers that it would be impossible for them to preserve Ireland, and difficult to preserve England, amidst the storms and conflicts prevailing in every country of Europe, if they did not compel the landlords to do their duty to the people. It was monstrous to see such men coming down and opposing a rate in aid, when they would not stir one step in a right direction for relieving the distresses of the country. Ireland had been, might be, and yet would be a great country; but not under the rule of her present landlords. Were absentees compelled to to do their duty, there would be much less of complaint. He regretted that the rate in aid, which he had supported in every stage, had not been five shillings, instead of sixpence; that would have been a step towards compelling the landlords to do their duty. He did not anticipate much benefit from the Incumbered Estates Bill, for neither the landlords nor the mortgagees would consent to sell.
SIR J. YOUNGsaid, the hon. Gentleman, according to his own account, had predicted everything that occurred for the last four years; but if he were a prophet, he had certainly never been believed in his own country. He (Sir J. Young) denied that the evils of Ireland were at all attributable to free trade; instead of an injury, it had been a great benefit to Ireland, more than to any other part of the empire. The only product of the soil which had yielded the best return was flax, and that had not been protected. Nevertheless, the county he represented (Cavan), was in a state of the greatest distress; but this was mainly attributable to the loss of the potato, many of the farmers having lost three-fourths of their produce. The evil had been aggravated by the commercial depression in this country, and by the disturbed state of the Continent. The distress of Cavan had not been caused by the poor-laws; the rates, varying from 3s. to 4s., had been paid; and the burden was not very heavy. The proportion of agricultural labourers throughout the county was as one to every nine acres, and as one to seven in some districts, while in England it was as one to every thirty-three cultivated acres. Now, though he believed that the landlords generally were anxious to give employment to the people, so as to prevent them from going into the workhouse, it was totally out of their power to do so, the number of labourers being so great in proportion to the means of giving them employment. They therefore looked to emigration as the best, the surest, and almost the only resource in the present condition of Ireland. He believed that a small amount of emigration, as compared with the population, would ease the pressure on the labour market, and would raise the condition of the labouring class materially. He believed that in no part of Ireland was emigration so necessary as in those places where it was thought least necessary—namely in Leinster and Ulster. The condition of Scotland a century ago was not unlike that of Ireland at the present moment. It was the boast of a statesman of that day that he had made brave and intrepid soldiers of those who were till then inveterately disaffected to the Crown of England. It was not necessary to make the Irish brave and intrepid—but they might be made fellow-citizens and prosperous subjects of this empire. He advocated this measure because he had not much faith in the other expedients which

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had been proposed. He did not attach much importance to the small area rating or to a labour rate. In legislating for Ireland generally they should not attempt to stimulate any particular class, or even the Government, to take care of the people, because there was only one class that could take this care upon them, and that class was the people themselves. He had confidence in the energies of the people of Ireland. He thought that education should be promoted by all means, that they should elevate the moral standard of the people, that they should leave industry free and unfettered. By these means, he was perfectly confident, the people of Ireland would right themselves sooner, and better, and more effectually, than could be done through the interposition of either landlords or the Government.
MR. SCULLYconsidered that emigration was a useless measure for Ireland as long as so much unproductive land remained at home which was capable of being brought into cultivation. He could bear testimony to the accuracy of the picture drawn by his hon. Friend the Member for the city of Limerick respecting the condition of the people in that county and in the neighbouring county of Tipperary. The fields were untilled, the lands were unstocked, and the roads were filled with men, women, and children, whose occupation was that of breaking stones. Emigration in connection with other measures might be useful; but the question to be decided at the present moment was a question of life and death, and he should therefore give his warmest support to the Amendment of his hon. Friend.
MR. BOURKEbelieved that the question of emigration was of paramount importance to the people of Ireland. It was a mistake to suppose that the boards of guardians would not be able to raise money on the security of the rates for the purpose of promoting emigration. His experience of parties who had money to lend was quite the contrary. It seemed surprising to him that there should be such disparity in the statements respecting the cost of emigration. He believed that the emigration from Ireland had cost under 5l a head, and that the noble Viscount the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who had done so mach for the improvement of his tenantry, had sent out persons from his estate under 4l. 10 s. a head. It was said that it was now too late for emigration. He did not agree in that opinion, for if
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carried out at once, emigration would bear immediate fruit and confer instant benefit. He should support the scheme of his hon. Friend whenever he brought it before the House, and he believed that no measure was likely to be so popular amongst all classes in Ireland.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
The House divided; Ayes 45, Noes 10: Majority 35.

List of the AYES.

Adare, Visct.

Hill, Lord M.

Anstey, T. C.

Hobhouse, rt. hon. Sir J.

Arundel and Surrey, Earl of

Howard, Lord E.

Humphery, Ald.

Bass, M. T.

Jones, Capt.

Blackall, S. W.

Kershaw, J.

Bourke, R. S.

Labouchere, rt. hon. H.

Bremridge, R.

Lincoln, Earl of

Broadwood, H.

Magan, W. H.

Brockman, E. D.

Napier, J.

Clay, J.

Pearson, C.

Cobden, R.

Power, N.

Cubitt, W.

Salwey, Col.

Denison, W. J.

Sandars, G.

Duncuft, J.

Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.

Ferguson, Sir R. A.

Tancred, H. W.

Fitzpatrick, rt. hon. J. W.

Thompson, Col.

Fox, W. J.

Thornely, T.

Grace, O. D. J.

Trelawny, J. S.

Greenall, G.

Wilson, J.

Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Gwyn, H.

Hawes, B.

TELLERS.

Heald, J.

Monsell, W.

Henry, A.

Young, Sir J.

List of the NOES.

Devereux, J. T.

Reynolds, J.

Fagan, W.

Scrope, G. P.

Meagher, T.

Scully, F.

Moore, G. H.

O'Connor, F.

TELLERS.

O'Flaherty, A.

O'Connell, J.

Rawdon, Col.

Roche, E. B.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

PRISON DISCIPLINE.
MR. CHARLES PEARSONmoved for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire and report upon the practicability of establishing one uniform system of Prison Discipline, to be applied to all persons sentenced to imprisonment for crime. He said he asked for the appointment of the Committee upon various grounds, either of which would, he apprehended, entitle him to his Motion. The enormous expense of our present prisons, and present systems of prison discipline, demanded inquiry. Nearly 500,000 l. a year were expended upon prisoners, besides the extra-

533
vagant cost of the prison palaces in which they were confined; and besides nearly half a million a year expended by Government for the hulks, and the cost of transports and penal establishments at home and abroad.
The incongruity of the various systems practised in different gaols in the united kingdom required immediate correction; they varied as much in principle as in practice and expense. These systems could not be all right. At this moment in some prisons we had the congregated, in some the separate or solitary, system; in some tread-wheel labour, in some productive labour, and in some no labour at all; in some prisons the inmates cost 50 l. a year, and in some not 10 l. each. He would undertake to prove, if the Committee were granted, that more than half the sums now expended for prisoners might be saved; that with prison farms and prison workshops, instead of prison palaces, convicted prisoners might, as a class, be made to feed and clothe themselves and their guards by the produce of their own labour, without interfering unjustly with the industrious occupations of the honest poor.
The cost of the buildings erected for the confinement of prisoners was as unequal as the cost of their maintenance and management. Millbank Penitentiary was said to have cost the enormous sum of 500 l. per prisoner. The prison inspectors said that York gaol had been enlarged at a cost of 1,200 l. per prisoner; and Reading prison palace, called the Model County Gaol and House of Correction, cost upwards of 49,000 l., though the daily average of prisoners was but 140, being equal to 350 l. or at 5l. per cent, 17 l. 18 s. per annum for the lodging of every prisoner, man, woman, and child, confined within its walls. This was denominated the model goal; and if its expensive construction should be carried throughout the country, it would require six millions of sterling money to furnish the same princely accommodation for the average number of prisoners confined in the various gaols of the kingdom. The increase in the number of commitments for crime in this country, was sufficient to startle every reflective mind; it imposed upon the Government and the country the unavoidable duty of making a searching inquiry into the causes of this increase, and the means of repressing its further augmentation. The number of commitments and recommitments had
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increased during the last forty years upwards of 400 per cent, while population, during the same period had been augmented only 65 per cent. He did not mean to say that crimes had actually increased in this ratio, either in number or amount during this period. It would be most unfair to measure the comparative morality of the nation at the commencement of the present century, and at the present period, by any such standard; it would be notoriously untrue. In many respects the national character had greatly improved during that period, and a considerable portion of the increase of commitments might be accounted for by circumstances that had occurred in the intervening time which served to influence our criminal statistics, without in any degree showing a corresponding increase in the depravity of the people, or even of the classes which, on account of their poverty and their numbers, furnished the largest portion of our prison population. Amongst these circumstances may be reckoned the disbanding of a large portion of our Army and Navy, and the cessation of impressment and recruiting, which, upon the return of peace, threw hack upon society the portion of loose population which, during the war had been otherwise absorbed. A more effective system of police in both the metropolitan and provincial towns, and in the rural districts, had, at least for a time, increased the number of commitments in a greater ratio than the number of crimes actually committed. The payment of prosecutors' and witnesses' expenses out of the public funds, had led to the same result: the abolition of capital punishments, the diminution of transportation, and the shortening of sentences, had all had a telling effect upon our criminal statistics. There was yet another source of the increase of commitments, which probably produced a greater effect upon the number than all the preceding circumstances put together; he meant the meddling system of legisla-lation—the consequence of a high state of civilisation, which sought to give increased protection to the possessions and the enjoyments of the wealthy classes, by elevating into crimes punishable by imprisonment acts which were not formerly the subject of penal infliction. The" prison inspectors' returns, carefully examined, proved that 80 per cent of all the commitments were for larcenies, misdemeanours, juvenile delinquencies, acts of vagrancy, and other petty offences, the moral and

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legal gravity of which was fixed at, so low a point, that the punitive and reformatory justice of the country was satisfied by sentences of imprisonment varying from seven days to six months. There was still another mighty cause of the increasing numbers of prisoners, who flocked to our gaols as places of refuge for the lazy and the luxurious, rather than as places of punishment: the increasing comfort of our gaols, coincident with the decreasing comforts of our labouring poor, afforded a direct premium for crime, of which the worthless members of the community, particularly in hard times and hard seasons, were not slow to avail themselves. Prisoners in our modern gaols were better fed, better clothed, better housed, better taught, and their health and comforts better cared for, than the great mass of those classes of the community from which they proceed, and to which at their discharge they must return. In the model prison of Reading, for instance, criminals were not only not compelled to perform any hard labour, as a punishment for their crimes, but they were not even allowed employment for their reformation and improvement in habits of industry, except by way of recreation and relaxation from their principal occupation, mental education. They acquired in that prison a taste for luxurious indolence, which it was impossible for them to gratify by honest means when they quitted the establishment; and they must leave that palace of a prison with less capability of earning their living by honest industry, than when they entered its splendid portal. Thus while they inflict a serious injury upon the struggling ratepayer, whose hard earnings defray the charges of this costly establishment, and while they deteriorate the power and the capacity of the prisoner as a free labourer, they undermine the honest disposition of the industrious poor by teaching them that crime is rewarded with comforts which honest industry cannot procure.
If the reports of our prison inspectors, and the evidence of the chaplains and governors of prisons, the Judges and others engaged in the administration and execution of our criminal laws, were consulted, it would be found that the chief causes of the offences which filled our criminal gaols, were idleness and self-indulgence—an indisposition to continuous industry, and a disregard of the practice of self-control. These were the remote, if not the proximate, causes of crime. He did not mean to say that idleness picked a pocket, or
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knocked down a peaceful subject, but he did mean to say that if you would nicely examine the history of crime, and the springs and motives of human actions, you would find that these evils were mediately or immediately the great moving causes of crime; and if you desired to arrest its fearful increase, it must be by the inculcation, as part of our prison discipline, of industrial acts confirmed by industrial habits, by the constant exercise of every prisoner while working out the sentence of the law within the precincts of the gaol.
The criminal population were of the age when idleness in a gaol was most dangerous and most pernicious, and when industry might be rendered most productive and most beneficial both to themselves and to the community at large. Eighty per cent of the criminal population were between the ages of 16 and 45, and forty-seven per cent between the ages of 20 and 35; so that while the majority of the offences of the country were of so trivial a character that eighty per cent of the whole number were atoned by short imprisonments, varying from six months to six days, crimes were committed in the same proportion by the youth and strength, the pith and marrow, the muscle and sinew of the nation. If the House would grant him a Committee, he would prove that by introducing continuous industry and productive employment into our gaols, the culprit might be effectually punished, while he was made to support himself without becoming a burden to the honest portion of the community, as was now the case to the extent of between 30 l. and 40 l. per annum for every prisoner, man, woman, and child within the prisons of England and Wales. In opposition to his proposal to render our prisons self-supporting, it had been said that England was a free country, and that prison labour or slave labour as it was designated, would not be tolerated by the people of England. But he contended that hard labour was the best punishment for crime, and when a culprit forfeited his liberty by crime, the forfeiture of all the rights of freedom should accompany the sentence. The State had a right to exact from each prisoner the utmost amount and value of his labour for his own maintenance, and for the payment of the cost which his imprisonment and punishment had entailed upon the nation. The Mosaic law actually required that a thief should be sold into bondage; our old Saxon laws recognised the same principle, and condemned the criminal

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to the "thew" work; and numerous were the statutes which, until the separation of the American States from the Crown of England, authorised the gaolers to sell to men-merchants the convicted criminals in their custody, to be conveyed to the colonies, and then to be transferred by deed to purchasers, "their executors, administrators, and assigns." He did not recommend the return to any of these practices, not because he believed they were morally wrong, or that they were beyond the scope of legislative authority to re-enact, but because he believed they were unnecessary, inexpedient, and contrary to the spirit of the age. But to compel criminals by rational means and moral motives to labour for their subsistence, was, in his judgment, both necessary and expedient, and in perfect conformity with the intelligence of the enlightened age in which they had the good fortune to live. In the gaols of Massachusetts, in the United States, the prisoners, out of the produce of their industry, maintained themselves and their keepers, paid for their diet, clothing, and bedding, for the repairs of the prison, and the salary of every officer from the governor down to the lowest turnkey; and by the sale of surplus productions they were enabled to present each prisoner, on his discharge, with four dollars, and a new suit of clothes—to create a sinking fund to liquidate the cost of constructing the building, and to subscribe a considerable sum to that excellent institution, the Boston Prison Discipline Society. He did not introduce this statement respecting the American gaols for the purpose of recommending them as models for imitation in England, but merely as illustrative of the fact for which he contended, and upon the truth of which his proposal must be made to rest, namely, that there existed the means of obtaining such complete power and dominion over the conduct and will of a prisoner, as to evoke into healthy action the full amount of labour and industry he was capable of putting forth, if subjected in gaol to the laws which were propounded in Holy writ without limitation or exception, and were as obligatory upon the bond as upon the free, namely," by the sweat of his face man shall eat the fruits of the earth;" and," if any man will not work, neither shall he eat."
In the principal Belgian and French prisons, the truth of these great principles had been made equally manifest, although the system practised in those gaols was
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worked by very imperfect machinery; they were made nearly or entirely self-supporting by calling into action the productive powers of the criminal inmates.
["Mr. Pearson read extracts from Mr. Rawson's report to the Statistical Society, describing the Belgian prisons, the reports of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, and also the report to the Chamber of Peers in France, from which it appeared that some of the largest prisons in those countries defrayed nearly or entirely the charges of the establishment by the labour of the prisoners.]
He (Mr. Pearson) had said that he did not offer the American system as a model for imitation; he must say the same of the practices pursued in the Belgian and French prisons.
In America, the prisoners were taught a trade in prison, and were employed as artificers, mechanics, and artisans in various handicraft occupations—those branches of industry were in great demand in those States, and they might, therefore, be carried on with comparatively little injury in the market of industry; but that would not be the case in this country. To prosecute handicraft occuptions in our gaols to an extent and for a lengthened period, which would be indispensable if you desired to make industry reformatory and remunerative, would be productive of the most serious injury and injustice to the humble and honest artisan engaged in the same pursuits. The Belgian and French systems were equally objectionable, though the objections were of another class. The labour prosecuted in those gaols was principally spinning and weaving woollen, cotton, and silk fabrics. Many of the productions of those gaols were of exquisite texture, and realised considerable profits in competition with the productions of free labour. As these operations were conducted through the instrumentality of eon-tractors, who purchased the labour by public tender, some of the objections to this mode of employment upon the score of the competition of prison labour with free industry, were removed; but there remained one great objection to this description of employment—prisoners required the command of machines to prosecute it on their restoration to society. But without means they could not purchase machinery; and what body of operatives would be disposed to receive into their associations competitors in an already overstocked occupation, who had been initiated into the mysteries

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of their art at the expense of the nation, as the means of punishing a life of crime? By the system pursued in the foreign prisons, they often spoiled a good labourer in their endeavours to make but an indifferent workman. Indisposed to return to a life of more severe manual toil, and unable to obtain a living by the art to which he had been in gaol accustomed, the discharged prisoner, often driven by necessity rather than choice, relapsed into a life of crime, and became again an inmate of the gaol. In some of our English gaols, both the American and the Belgian systems prevailed to an extent which introduced the evils of both systems, without the advantages of either. In Pentonville, Millbank, and some other gaols, weaving, shoemaking, tailoring, and other trades, were taught and practised; but the expense of teaching was so much, and the productive labour so little, that while it disturbed by competition the free-labour market in those departments of industry, it did but little in defraying the charges of the prisons, and left them a serious burden upon the resources of the State. More than half the criminals sent to those prisons were mere unskilled labourers. The attempt to make such men tailors or shoemakers fit to get their living, upon their restoration to society, by competition with the skilled artisan, who in youth had acquired the knowledge of his trade, was, in the great majority of eases, a chimerical expectation. You gave them education enough to spoil them as hardworking labourers, but not sufficient to qualify them as skilled handicraftsmen. Their productions while in prison would sell, it was true, but at prices so low that no self-supporting workman could compete with the prison tariff. The consequence was, as the annals of the Mansion House, and other police courts, often showed, that by attempting to make thieves into tailors, you only succeeded in making tailors into thieves; for it was impossible for the most industrious to live honestly, by working at prices so ruinously low as the prisons turned out their work. But if the fact were the reverse of what it actually was, and if by instruction in a gaol for a few months, or a year or two, a criminal labourer could be elevated—by learning at the public expense—into an accomplished artisan, it would be most unjust to reward crime by raising its perpetrator from the power to earn eighteen pence or two shillings a day, and placing him in the social scale upon a
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footing with the honest workman whose early years as an apprentice had been sacrificed in acquiring the skill requisite to earn double the amount. If he (Mr. Pearson) objected to the American system, and the Belgian and French systems of prison discipline, which were based upon industry and productive labour, and yet insisted upon labour—continuous and productive labour—as essential, indispensable conditions of any sound system combining punitive with reformatory discipline, it might be fairly asked, what was the system upon which he relied to carry out this object? He did not hesitate to affirm that, as the great mass of the criminal population of this kingdom were of the unskilled labouring classes, and were of an age when the greatest power to labour existed, it was to unskilled labour, to hard labour, and constant labour, they must look as the great engine of a punitive, reformatory, and self-supporting system of prison discipline. In making this broad assertion, he did not propose to exclude skilled industry from the business of the gaol; on the contrary, as in every community a proportion of criminals of every trade, and every class, would be found included in the catalogue, he proposed that the utmost amount of each prisoner's powers should be called into action, in the department of industry in which they might be made most profitably available. The criminal shoemakers, the criminal tailors, the criminal spinners and weavers, might all be constantly employed in making shoes, and shirts, and coats for the criminal labourers, who, in their turn, would be employed with equal propriety in raising food for the use of those who clothed them. Even unskilled labourers, during the long evenings of winter, and the days and hours when, from frost and rain, the land was closed against outdoor employment, might be engaged in mending and patching their clothes, or even, if necessary, in making them—a course of industry which, without pretending to send them out to compete with skilled artisans, would, by giving them facilities for useful objects, render them better fit for a life of emigration, and more likely to render them companions of their homes and their hearths, than the haunters of beershops, the common receptacle for the idle, and those who will do nothing, or have nothing to do. But though other descriptions of industrious occupation would find a place within the precincts of a prison farm, it

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was to the productive powers of their mother earth they must chiefly look for both the means and the produce of prison labour. He undertook to prove to the satisfaction of any Committee the House might think proper to appoint, that if one thousand convicted criminals, of the average age and strength of any class of prisoners—say those who were under sentence of one or two years' confinement—were placed in a prison upon one thousand acres of land, walled in, they might be made to work the land by means of spade husbandry and garden cultivation—by deep digging and trenching, combined with the abundance of manure which the refuse of the establishment would afford, so as to yield a produce of bread, meat, potatoes, and oatmeal, sufficient, by the coarsest and plainest fare, to sustain the hardworking prisoners to the complement of health and strength requisite on their discharge, to enable them to maintain themselves as honest labourers when thrown upon their own resources, by their daily toil, to gain their daily bread.
The experience of a lawyer as to the productive powers of land, when subjected to the continuous industry of man, would in that House pass for no more than it was worth, although it should be remembered that Tull, who had done more for agriculture than any other man, was himself a lawyer. He (Mr. Pearson) could boast of no patrimonial acres, and had no personal or hereditary experience of their productive powers; but he was backed up in the statements he had made by the testimony of above one hundred of the most eminent agriculturists, and of the largest tenant farmers in the land. He had, during the last Christmas agricultural show, discussed this subject at the Farmers' Club, of which they were pleased to elect him a member; and having sent printed letters to above 400 of the most eminent members of the club, scattered over all parts of the country, requesting to be informed as to the powers of the land to produce the specified supplies, calculated by the standard of the existing prison dietaries, he had received answers, giving in detail the proper rotation of cropping, the mode of treating the land, so as to tax it to its highest productive powers without exhaustion, and showing the quantity of labour it could be made profitably to absorb, and the amount of produce it might be made to yield. The conclusion at which they had arrived was,
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that the land, combined with labour equal to 500 labourers, with the manure of the establishment, might be made to produce wheat, oats, potatoes, and meat sufficient for the consumption of the whole establishment, prisoners and keepers, and leave a money surplus variously estimated at from 1,500 l. to 4,000 l. per annum towards the interest on the outlay, and the wages of the establishment.
Labour on land might be recommended as the best occupation for criminals, because it did not interfere unjustly with free labour; for there was no dogma of political economy, no canon of our social institutions, which could forbid an establishment of criminals from making their own clothes and their own food, to relieve the taxpaying portion of the community from the burden of supporting them. But this occupation had other recommendations; it was the original occupation of the majority of criminals. The process of digging did not, like handicraft and mechanical pursuits, require a lengthened apprenticeship to qualify persons for profitable employment; a few days' instruction and diligent exertion would soon bring the thews and sinews of a young or middle-aged London pickpocket into harness, and in a few months he would be qualified to wage war with the forests of Canada, or to earn his living as a free emigrant in any part of the colonial world. Labour on land also afforded the best means of noting the quantity of each man's exertions, and it provided work suitable to each man's strength and capacity; for while to punish one man with fatiguing labour, ten, twelve, or fourteen hours out of the twenty-four ought to be employed in deep digging and trenching, other prisoners of impaired strength would be subjected to an equivalent infliction if compelled to work the same number of hours in the lighter employments of husbandry, suited to their inferior strength. Labour on land was, moreover, a healthful occupation, and would enable the conductors of prisons to maintain the prisoners with coarser and less expensive, less stimulating, and less palatable diet, than was required to counteract the effects of the depressing indolence and relaxation superinduced by the unnatural atmosphere of the separate cells in our modern gaols. It would be readily seen that all these calculations were built upon the assumption that there existed means and motives which, if properly called into action, would draw out from the prisoner the full amount of his working powers, He

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(Mr. Pearson) was prepared to prove before any Committee the House might appoint, that the entire bodily powers of the prisoners might be evoked by moral means, without the application of the lash, or any other soul-degrading and body-tormenting infliction.
Upon this subject he pretended to be some authority. For nearly the third of a century his mind had been devoted to the contemplation of these subjects; he had sat at the feet of the Romillys, the Benthams, the Mackintoshes, the Buxtons, and the great and good men who had now passed away; he had visited most of our English and many of our Continental gaols; he had read every work upon the subject of prison discipline which came within his reach, and had communicated with many of the distinguished men of the present day in our own and in foreign countries, upon this most interesting subject of social improvement; but above all things, he had enjoyed opportunities, from his official appointments, of studying and observing the criminal character in all its forms and phases. He had filled the office of under-sheriff of London and Middlesex during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834, and had thus possessed opportunities of studying these subjects with the aid of the intelligent chaplain and governor of the gaol of the Central Criminal Court, which contained prisoners who had been confined in all our metropolitan and many of our provincial gaols; besides which, for the last nine years he had been City Solicitor, one portion of the duties of the office being, to act as public prosecutor by order of the magistrates within the city of London. Possessing all these combined advantages for judging of the matter in hand, he must indeed be dull of comprehension if he were not some authority as to the mode of dealing with our criminal population; and he had no hesitation in saying that there were few prisoners so fallen in the scale of human degradation as to be incapable of restoration, if subjected to a proper system of punitive, reformatory, and probative discipline. Such a system would blend kindness with firmness, and would couple with moral instruction and religious exercises, continuous labour and industry, called into action by the free will of the prisoner himself, stimulated and sustained in healthy exercise by rendering the duration of his confinement, and the quantity and quality of his diet, dependent upon his labour and conduct in gaol; always
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taking care that it shall be one fundamental and essential condition of the system, that a prisoner shall have less time for sleep or relaxation—less bodily comforts of every kind—to be purchased by more bodily labour than would suffice to procure a greater amount of bodily comfort for a labourer unconvicted of crime. Such a system as he proposed was in direct conformity with the word of God, and with the dispensations of His will, as they might be read in all his works. He proposed to subject the actions of the prisoner to the government of his own will moved only by the same motive power that governed all mankind in a free condition. To supply men's daily bodily wants, and to make some provision for future independence, were the mainsprings of human action. "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," was the Divine law by which the universal world was to be governed; and yet, without producing any patent of exemption from its obligation, the criminal class were permitted to evade its injunctions, and to cast the burden of their maintenance upon the honest, industrious portion of the community. This absurd and wicked mode of dealing with the criminal class, prevailed to a considerable extent in all our gaols; so much so, that while the expense of maintaining our prisoners in England and Wales amounted to upwards of 450,000 l. per annum, exclusive of the enormous cost of the mansions in which they reside, their entire productive labour did not exceed 20,000 l., and the greater part of that sum was realised in the Government and metropolitan prisons. It appeared by the Prison Inspectors' Returns that at the model gaol of Reading, while the annual cost of each prisoner, besides the expense of his palace residence, was upwards of 30 l his productive labour only amounted to 2s. 8d. for the entire year's work, which the magistrates say is not enforced, but only allowed for the prisoner's recreation and relaxation from his mental and moral studies. In support of the position which he had assumed, he (Mr. Pearson) could adduce high authorities: the philanthropic Howard, Archdeacon Paley, and Archbishop Whateley, were in favour of stimulating the mind and body of prisoners to healthful and vigorous action, by rendering their position in prison, and their future release, dependent upon their conduct and industry, while suffering the sentence of the law. Archbishop Whateley had said with equal beauty and truth, that if the prisoner

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had even no labour but a treadwheel, and the duration of his captivity were made dependent upon the number of thousands of revolutions he would daily make, a disposition to labour would be excited, for he would feel that every step he took was a step towards liberty; and if digging were his employment, he would dig with a hearty good-will, feeling that each stroke of the spade was the means, and the only means, of cutting his way out of prison to a state of freedom. But they had not only the judgment of philosophers, who had reasoned from the nature and constitution and natural dispositions of man, in favour of these views; but they had abundant practical experience to justify their conclusions. America, and Belgium, and France, as had been stated, were exponents of the principle, although the details of the means by which they brought it into practical operation were imperfect and defective, and admitted of great improvement. Captain Maconochie had at Norfolk Island systematised the principle, in a manner which had been eminently successful, even with such unpromising materials, and with such limited powers as had been placed at his command. He (Mr. Pearson) humbly and respectfully, but firmly and confidently, asked leave to co-operate with Her Majesty's Government in their avowed determination to endeavour to discover an improved system of secondary punishment. If they would give him a Committee, he pledged himself to show that they might solve the problem with certainty and success; and he called upon the present Government to lead the van in this important movement in the improvement of penal science, which it was worthy of the Government of this great nation to undertake. Her Majesty's Ministers were at liberty to call his declaration by the name of presumption, or any other name they pleased; but if they would give him a fair and impartial Committee, he would stake his seat in that House on the result of the Committee's report. If they did not report the plan to be practicable as a most valuable and important agent of prison discipline and social progress, he would resign his seat, confident that the measure had failed, not from its own defects, but from the defects of the humble individual who had been chosen as its exponent and advocate by a constituency which, for numbers and intelligence, was surpassed by few, if any, in the nation.
It had been assumed by some persons
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who were willing to admit the economy and efficiency of the system he proposed, that the construction of the prisons, and the purchase of the land for carrying it into execution, would entail upon the public a large original outlay. Nothing could be more unfounded than such a supposition. It was the unnecessary beauty, and strength, and ornament, and comfort, and convenience of existing prisons, that created such an enormous cost. There was no necessity for a palace like Reading, or a fortress like York, to immure the petty larceners, and vagrants, and pickpockets, and misdemeanants, who crowded their gaols, and were more likely to break lamps or windows to get into them, than to break walls or bolts to get out. He undertook to prove, by the evidence of the most eminent architects and the most experienced contractors, that a prison for one or two thousand prisoners might be erected sufficiently strong to ensure perfect safety, and sufficiently large and convenient for the purposes of health, with chapel, workshops, and apartments for the keepers, and separate sleeping rooms for every prisoner, at 40 l. each. A wall round the land might be erected as lofty and as strong as the wall round Millbank Penitentiary, at an expense, for 1,000 acres, of 45,000 l., and of course for a larger quantity at a proportionately smaller sum. At 40 l. per acre, agricultural land might be purchased in the open market, fit, with the amount of labour and manure, to produce in rotation every species of grain, root, and grass crops; so that, upon this calculation, the cost of a prison for 1,000 prisoners, including land enough, combined with labour, to support the establishment, would not amount to anything like half the cost of each prisoner's lodging only at Mill-bank or Reading, without any land, either for healthful labour or productive use. He (Mr. Pearson) should call upon the Government to relieve the counties altogether from the expense of convicted prisoners, by themselves erecting labour gaols for their reception. There were many thousand acres of land near to the great trunk railroads, belonging to the Crown, that did not produce a shilling per acre per annum, though they were of a staple quality equal to the highest powers of production, if properly drained and cultivated by the spade in the way proposed. The Legislature had recently passed an Act, taking from larceny the punishment of transportation. The effect of this enact-

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ment would be to fill to overflowing all existing gaols; and, if they were to be enlarged, or others built to meet the increasing demand for prison accommodation, and the Reading system were adopted as a model, the first outlay cast upon the countries would far, very far, outweigh the cost of construction which the self-supporting prisons would entail upon the nation.
Upon these various grounds he was, he contended, entitled to expect Her Majesty's Government would consent to a Committee to inquire into the whole subject of prison discipline, in connexion with the plans he had submitted for consideration. He, however, perceived from the silence of the hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home Department, that it was not his intention to grant a Committee. He (Mr. Pearson) should therefore take a course which under other circumstances he would desire to avoid: he should open somewhat at large his objections to the existing systems of prison discipline, which he believed had caused the increase of crime—not only the demoralising system of unrestricted association which had prevailed in English gaols, but the lazy, idle, luxurious system practised in the Reading gaol, recently established under the auspices of Government, to serve as a model for county gaols and houses of correction, throughout the country. The enormous expense of original outlay, and of annual charge which the universal adoption of this cellular system would entail upon the country, afforded in itself an available objection; but he confessed that if it could be proved that it operated as a reformatory agent, through the instrumentality of religious conversion, he should consider that the increase of expense would be outweighed by its beneficial results; but he was prepared to prove that this was not the case; that the supposed subjects of religious conversion—however specious appearances at the commencement might have been—had not stood the test of temptation when returned to society. The cellular system, from the bodily comforts it afforded, was, moreover, attractive to criminals at large. It appeared by a comparison of the reports of the chaplains of Newgate and Reading, that the recommitments from other gaols in the former prison, was not greater than in the latter, although Newgate might be considered as the common receptacle of the crime of the nation; and although from the circumstance of its being a mere transit gaol for untried prison-
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ers, it was impossible to maintain in it a discipline equally stringent to that which could be upheld in county gaols. The great corrective principle sought to be maintained in Reading gaol was solitary reflection, combined with religious instruction by means of scripture reading, if the prisoner could read on entering the prison, or if he remained there long enough to learn. The system inculcated and practised at this prison consisted of education, reading, writing, and arithmetic, religious instruction, separate reflection, knitting stockings, and other amusing work for those who liked to engage in a light occupation, to relieve them from the fatigues of study, and the tedium of ennui, idleness, high diet, enervating warmth, and ten hours' sleep. As to their diet, to use the language of one of the magistrates, some of them ate till they were ready "to burst." By way of illustrating its character, he might say from his own observation, that the bread was of the finest description, and the quantity weekly given to the prisoners was twice as much as that given to the first-class paupers in the opulent parish in which he was then speaking. [The hon. Member then read extracts from the visiting magistrates' evidence before the Committee in the Lords, and copies of thep rison regulations, showing the manner in which the prisoners spent their time at Reading, and pointed out the injurious effects, mental, moral, and physical, which, he believed, the system must necessarily produce.] He said it evinced but a slight knowledge of the human heart, to assume that stone walls with bolts and bars could shut out sinful thoughts, which in the mind of a depraved and profligate prison population would be found struggling for the ascendancy—if accompanied with luxurious indolence and the hours of dreamy sleep, with the other creature comforts with which the prison abounded. Solitude had its vices, as well as society; and no medical work upon prisons could be consulted, but referred to prisons as the hotbed of vices which could be read in the countenance and appearance of the victims of the solitary system. If the separate system were applied with parsimony and severity, idiocy or lunacy would be the consequence in many cases; if applied with liberality, as at Reading, the expense would be enormous, and the enervating influence upon the habits of the prisoner would be detrimental to him when sent back to the world to get his

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living by the sweat of his brow; but it was possible to combine severity with expense, as had been proved at Reading, for there was now in Bedlam a lunatic, who had enjoyed all the bodily luxuries of that prison, whose mind had been broken down under the system of mental infliction which there prevails, apparently from the want of those mitigating means of association which the strongest advocates of the system say should be applied so soon as the symptoms of mental decay exhibit themselves in any one subjected to cellular confinement. His (Mr. Pearson's) objections to the system were various under its various aspects; it was always unnecessarily costly; it was always injurious to the physical condition of the prisoner, and destructive of the habits of labour upon which he could alone depend for an honest maintenance on his discharge. By the reverend chaplain himself it was admitted to be utterly useless, and worse than useless, as a reformatory agent upon prisoners confined for less than three months—a class of offenders which constituted the great bulk of their prison population. But even upon prisoners for a lengthened period the effects of this process of reform appeared to be of the most transient description: out of the 3,000 prisoners who had been subjected to the new treatment in Reading gaol, for a greater or shorter period, only three had been introduced to the world by name, as selected specimens of the reformatory effects of the system. These three prisoners had been subjected to eight or ten months' imprisonment, and had profited to such an extent by the religious instruction they had received from the excellent chaplain of the prison, and by their mental studies in the quietude of their cellular retirement, that they had committed to memory the New Testament as far as the Ephesians, and had written themes upon religious subjects illustrated by parallel texts from the Old and New Testaments, and had, in fact, rendered themselves complete peripatetic concordances. These young men had the remainder of their sentences commuted by the visiting justices on account of their thorough reform, and great proficiency in the studies of the gaol: good places were procured for them on their discharge, and they were chronicled to the world in the bulletins at subsequent sessions, as standing stedfast in their reform. But, alas! a reformatory conversion, produced in a hotbed of idleness, could not withstand the rude assaults
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of external temptation: two have been returned to Reading to conclude their course of study, and the other has fled the country on a charge of felony. He (Mr. Pearson) did not mean to say that many of those who had passed through the prison were not now living in the pursuit of honest industry: that fact might happily be predicated of a large proportion of those who had been the inmates of every gaol in the kingdom; but he contended, that in this respect the Reading system was less likely to prove successful than other prisons where the practice of hard labour and well-regulated employment were enforced. The lazy cellular system was directly contrary to the laws of God; it was contrary to the laws of nature, and even to the laws of the land in which it was now being carried into operation. Upon what principle was it that there was no hard labour provided in the model prison, when the statute of the 4 George IV., c. 64, required that in every gaol there should be hard labour provided? The Act, moreover, required that in every prison in this country, where hard labour was not a part of the sentence, the prisoner should be made to labour towards his own support. The enforcement of hard labour was not permissive, but obligatory. Now, the prison inspectors had reported to Her Majesty that there was no treadmill, nor anything approaching to the hard-labour system, in the Reading gaol. The number of prisoners, whose names were on the printed calendar as having been sentenced to imprisonment in Reading gaol, with hard labour, from 1844 to 1849, was 1,625; and yet in that gaol the provisions of the statute were utterly disregarded. Notwithstanding the inspector's report, the Home Office had taken no steps to enforce obedience to the law. Many of those prisoners had been committed again and again to the soft and effeminate indulgence of that gaol. Who could say, if the law had done its office to those individuals, that the county would have had again to pay for their support while suffering imprisonment? If they had not been reformed, they might have been deterred, by the severity of the punishment, from subjecting themselves to it a second time. He thanked the House for having afforded so patient a hearing to a long address upon a very unpromising subject. His presence in that House as the representative of a large constituency, anxious to see the principles of a reformatory self-sup-

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porting system of prison discipline receive a fair trial, under the authority of a legislative enactment, must plead his apology for the pertinacity he had manifested in pressing his opinions upon the attention of the House. Had it not been for his advocacy of these opinions, he should not have found favour with the constituency of Lambeth; for he had distinctly told that independent body of electors, although he should maintain by his votes the consistency of his early political opinions, he should take no active share in the party discussions which at times agitated the House. Had it been his fortune to have attained a seat at an earlier period of his life, the excitement of young ambition might have tempted him to peril the breakers of that stormy sea. His only desire now was, that the remnant of his public life should be devoted to the improvement of their social institutions; and he knew of no object more worthy of a man's best efforts than the endeavour to devise and establish a sound reformatory system of prison discipline. The noble Lord at the head of Her Majesty's Government had, in his address to the electors of London, stated, that one of his objects in taking the reins of Government was to endeavour to solve the difficult and important problem of secondary punishment and prison discipline. He (Mr. Pearson) had sought a seat in Parliament to co-operate with the noble Premier in endeavouring to solve the important question. Having devoted more than a quarter of a century, with extended means of information possessed by few, to the consideration of the question, he thought he ought not to be deemed presumptuous in imagining himself capable of contributing his contingent of facts and opinions to aid in its solution. He again repeated, that he felt confident a sound system might be devised, founded upon the principles propounded by Howard, and practically illustrated by the experience of the prisons in America, France, and Belgium, and improved by the additional light and knowledge which subsequent inquiry had cast upon the subject. Let them deal with a man in gaol according to the same precepts of religion, and the same laws of political economy, by which he was governed in a free condition. Let him have nothing but water and coarse bread until he had earned better fare by hard and continuous labour, except in cases where from age, infirmity, or sickness, a just exception might be made to
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the otherwise edict of the divine law, that if "a man will not work, neither shall he eat." The number of criminals would then be soon reduced by the operation of a system which would prove itself at once punitive, reformatory, and economical. Stimulate convicted prisoners by adequate motives to habitual labour and industry—by making the quantity and quality of their food and the duration of their imprisonment dependent upon the gravity of their crimes outside the prison, and by their conduct and the amount of their work and labour within it—they would be found as a class able and willing to provide themselves and their keepers with food and clothing, without unjustly interfering with the rights of free labour, and without subjecting the revenues of the nation or the rates of the county to one single shilling of expense. The hon. Gentleman concluded by proposing his Motion.
Motion made and Question proposed—
"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire and report upon the practicability of establishing an uniform system of Discipline, punitive, reformatory, and self-supporting, to be applied to all persons sentenced to imprisonment for crimes."
MR. OSBORNEseconded the Motion.
SIR G. GREYgave every credit to the hon. Gentleman for the attention and pains which he for many years had bestowed upon this subject; and he hoped the hon. Gentleman would not suppose, because he did not assent to the Motion without requiring the hon. Gentleman to make a speech, that he at all undervalued its importance. With many of the opinions which the hon. Gentleman had expressed, he (Sir G. Grey) perfectly agreed, and he had no doubt they would meet with the concurrence of all persons who had had their attention called to prison discipline; but from many other opinions delivered by the hon. Gentleman he entirely disagreed. If the House were to enter upon an inquiry according to the terms of the resolution, the Session would expire long before their investigation could be brought to a close. If any inquiry were to be instituted into the existing system of prison discipline, it ought to be of a much more limited and specific character than that now proposed. It was true, by the important alteration which the hon. Gentleman had just made, he excluded from his inquiry the prisons at Millbank, Pentonville, and Portland, and also the hulks, which were appro-

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priated to persons sentenced to transportation. These the hon. Gentleman now-left out, although a great part of his speech did apply to those prisons. The hon. Gentleman dwelt upon the importance of penal labour as connected with imprisonment, and contended that we ought not to allow prisoners to remain in a state of idleness, which was the practice under the old system. Before the great experiment which had recently been attempted to be carried into effect, prisoners were associated together without any order, decency, or control, and were allowed to spend their time in complete idleness, without anything approaching to a good system being adopted, whether in a moral, a social, or a religious point of view. But the hon. Gentleman had not done justice to the great improvements which had been introduced in recent times in the system of prison discipline. In the latter part of his speech the hon. Gentleman advised a uniform system in the erection of prisons, and also some uniformity in the cost. In a resolution which the hon. Gentleman had moved elsewhere, he stated that there ought to be no needless expense in the construction of a prison; that not one shilling should be expended on the beauty or ornament of the building, but that all that was required was convenience and security, and such arrangements as were necessary to health. In that opinion he (Sir G. Grey) entirely concurred; and if these things had not uniformly been attended to, the fault was not with the Government, which had no controlling power over the expenditure beyond that which was involved in the approval of the plans. The hon. Gentleman had referred to a passage in the report of the inspector of prisons for the northern district, containing an extraordinary statement, which he (Sir G. Grey) could neither verify nor contradict, to the effect that a portion of the prison in York had recently been enlarged at an expense of 1,200 l for each prisoner. Now, he understood that the part of the prison to which the hon. Gentleman's reference applied was built 25 years ago, before the introduction of the modern improvements, which had tended rather to reduce than increase the expense of erection. [Mr. PEARSON said, he had quoted the passage from the last year's report, which said" recently."] He repeated that he understood it was built 25 years ago. The hon. Gentleman had also alluded to the
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increase which had taken place in the number of commitments. He (Sir G. Grey) understood him at first, when he alluded to that point, as intending to adduce it as a proof of the inefficiency of prison discipline; but the hon. Gentleman had been candid enough to admit that the increase had been owing to various causes, such as an improved system of police, which had led to the better detection of crime, and to modern legislation, which had constituted various new offences. The hon. Gentleman had fairly admitted that a great improvement in the general state of society had taken place. Therefore, the inference, if any, which should be drawn from the statistics quoted by the hon. Gentleman, was rather in favour of the efficiency of the present system than otherwise. The hon. Gentleman had left the House in the dark as to the system which he proposed for the prisons with 1,000 prisoners, which he wished to see erected. When he complained of the system at present in operation, and when he spoke of the expense which was incurred in the erection of existing prisons, he ought to have given the House a little more information about the accommodation of the prisons which he proposed to erect, and whether all the prisoners were to be furnished with separate sleeping places—as almost all persons who had studied the subject considered to be indispensable—or whether the prisoners were to be forced to associate together day and night. The hon. Gentleman stated, that in these days we thought only of the comfort of the prisoners, and he had drawn a picture of a prison which was extremely well regulated. He (Sir G. Grey) had not, like the hon. Gentleman, had an opportunity of seeing that prison, and he was not prepared to say that Reading gaol was perfectly administered; but he must say, from his experience of the prisons on the separate system at Pentonville and elsewhere, that he believed no system was so effectual both for the repression of crime and the improvement of the criminal. The hon. Gentleman had also affirmed that the philanthropic Howard had never contemplated the adoption of the system of separate imprisonment. He (Sir G. Grey) would read a passage from the third report of the inspectors of prisons, which contradicted that opinion. [Here the right hon. Gentleman quoted the passage to which he referred, and also an extract from Paley's Moral Philosophy, showing that he too

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was in favour of the separate system.] He quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman, that there ought to be labour associated with imprisonment; and he believed, in every well-regulated system of imprisonment it was so. No doubt it would be a great advantage to have a sufficient space for the occasional employment of prisoners in the open air; but when the hon. Gentleman proposed to have 1,000 acres appropriated to spade labour for the prisoners, he (Sir G. Grey) must appeal to the county Members whether they were prepared to build prisons in every county of the kind which the hon. Gentleman had described? He certainly considered that the first outlay for such buildings would form a serious obstacle to the general adoption of the hon. Member's plan, whatever its results might be as regarded industrial labour—respecting which, however, he was not so sanguine as the hon. Gentleman. With respect to the profitable employment of prisoners, he begged to tell the hon. Gentleman, that, in the Government prisons, the practice was to do precisely what the hon. Gentleman had recommended, namely, to cause the tailors to make the clothes, and the shoemakers to make the shoes, of the prisoners, so as to prevent the necessity of paying for that work out of doors. No doubt there was considerable difficulty in finding profitable employment for prisoners, without interfering with the industrial occupation of others; and that was a very formidable objection to the scheme of the hon. Member. With regard to that plan, he begged to say he did not see what a Committee was to inquire into. He was not prepared to say, that an inquiry might not usefully be instituted into the system of prison discipline. An inquiry into that subject had taken place before a Committee of the House of Lords not long ago. There had been inquiries at previous periods from time to time into the same subject; and he was not prepared to express a final opinion that another inquiry might not be instituted with advantage; but he objected to inquire into a speculative plan like that proposed by the hon. Member. When the hon. Gentleman talked of stimulating the minds of the prisoners by means of compulsory labour—or rather by labour which in one sense was not compulsory, because it was the result of their own will-he (Sir G. Grey) presumed he meant the system advocated by Captain Maconochie, of substituting labour
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sentences for time sentences. The Government were at one time anxious to introduce that principle; but, after communicating with persons whose opinions were entitled to great weight, they found there were very obvious objections to the adoption of any alteration of the law on that subject. The plan of labour sentences was founded on the supposition that all ablebodied men were capable of performing the same amount of labour, whereas it was obvious that that must necessarily vary with the health, skill, age, and physical circumstances of each individual, which it was impossible for any judge to know at the time of passing the sentence, so as to enable him properly to apportion the punishment upon each prisoner. Now, under the existing system, the sentences both of persons transported and persons imprisoned might be abridged in cases of good conduct, without involving the obvious difficulties he had pointed out. He repeated, that he did not see what advantage was to be gained by appointing a Committee to inquire into the hon. Gentleman's plan, because it was not a matter of fact which could be settled by a Committee. A prison of the kind described by the hon. Gentleman might cost double the amount in one situation from what it would do in another. The price of a site, for instance, would be materially affected by being near a large town, and the price of building materials in one place might be higher than in another. The hon. Member was mistaken, also, in assuming that every acre of land would produce the same amount of profit. In these circumstances he did not think that so far as the hon. Gentleman had developed his plan, he had made out any case to justify the House in appointing a Committee to inquire into the plan and estimates which he proposed to lay before them. With respect to the existing system of separate imprisonment, he believed that the more it was inquired into, the more efficient it would be found; for, although it would require to be watched with great care and vigilance, it was a system which had not only been recommended by persons of great philanthropy and enlightened and enlarged views, but by experience. The hon. Gentleman had talked of its expense; but the fact was, that the expence of erecting a prison with separate cells and sleeping places was not materially higher than the expense of other prisons. In the diet of the prisoners there might be additional expense. He

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understood the hon. Gentleman to advocate only such diet as was necessary for health, and nothing beyond, and to contend that there should be nothing attractive in a prison; and he agreed so far with the hon. Gentleman; but it should be borne in mind, that when a man was shut up in prison he did require more to sustain him than when he was in the open air and following his usual occupations. The dietaries in force were adopted after considerable inquiry, not by himself, but by his right hon. predecessor in office, the Member for Ripon. In several cases they had been dispensed with, and lower dietaries adopted on the recommendation of the magistrates, when those lower dietaries were found consistent with the maintenance of the health of the prisoners; and certainly beyond that point the dietaries ought not to go. Consistently with the maintenance of health, which was an object always to be kept in view, the more severe the punishment, and the more distasteful it was rendered, the more likely was it to deter from crime; and the next object was the reformation of the criminal. With respect to separate imprisonment, the right hon. Gentleman, in addition to the other authorities he had quoted in its favour, here referred to the authority of Sir S. Romilly; and in proof that it was not calculated to produce insanity, he referred to the report of the inspector of prisons in the western district, contending that it did not tend more to that result than any other system of imprisonment. The hon. Gentleman had alluded to a prisoner at Reading, who, he said, had insanity brought on by his imprisonment; but it did not follow that that individual might not have become insane by imprisonment in any other gaol. The hon. Gentleman had made an attack on Reading gaol, and had observed that the recommittals to that gaol proved the in-efficacy of the system adopted; but he (Sir G. Grey) would read a statement on the subject, made by the chaplain of Reading gaol:—
"I will first disprove the statement by correcting the table given by Mr. Pearson, and then by referring to some facts which contradict the representations made. In the eighth page of the Synopsis we have a table which gives the number of commitments during eight years; and, taking the average of the first five years, we observe 1,078 under the old system—taking the four succeeding years under the separate system, the average is 990. But from the last number must be subtracted 65 convicts, committed from different parts of the kingdom, and sent by Government to be subjected to the discipline of the
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Berkshire gaol. Again, the new class of criminal debtors, sentenced to imprisonment by the county courts, amounting to 48 during the last two years must be deducted, and thus the average number under the separate system is 962, being an annual decrease of 116. Mr. Pearson says the adoption of the system has led to 'numerous committals,' A very indefinite expression and, reverting to the diminution I have noticed, certainly as strange and unwarranted an inference as could have been deduced. The separate system at Reading has lessened the number of committals by 116—more than 10 per cent—therefore, the separate system attracts I"
That rev. gentleman referred to the report of the inspector of prisons for the northern district, who stated—
"On the general subject of recommitals, it may be remarked, that the present mode of ascertaining the proportion of recommitted prisoners is very unsatisfactory; and, moreover, that this proportion, even if correctly ascertained, affords but little indication, unless others be also taken into account, of the comparative efficacy of the system of discipline in different prisons, in reforming offenders, or deterring from crime. At present, some of the worst prisons have the fewest recommitments."
He (Sir G. Grey) would not read other extracts which went to prove, what many Members in that House acting in their magisterial capacity, were able to bear testimony to, that there was a tendency in the separate system to prevent recommittals; and at that late hour he would not go more fully into the subject. He must, however, say, that whatever system was adopted, it ought to be a deterring system; and he thought that this object was better attained under the system coming now into operation through the country—namely, the separate system, than under any previous system which had existed. If the hon. Gentleman intended to substitute the prisons he had spoken of for the existing county prisons, an enormous expenditure would be occasioned. What would the hon. Gentleman do with untried prisoners? The hon. Gentleman's system was applicable to tried prisoners; but there must also he prisons in which persons committed for trial could be kept, and these added to the others would entail a very heavy expense on the counties. Having stated the grounds on which he thought that the general Motion of the hon. Gentleman should not be adopted, he would add, that if there were a wish on the part of the House to have a Committee of Inquiry next Session respecting the building of prisons and the treatment of prisoners, he was not prepared to say that he should have any objection to its appointment.

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Since he had been in the House, he had received information from a friend of his, a magistrate of Berkshire, that, so far as Reading gaol was concerned, the magistrates courted inquiry, not being disposed to shrink fron investigation to the fullest extent, and being prepared to abide by the result, as from their experience they believed that the system adopted tended to diminish crime. Under all the circumstances, he hoped that the hon. Gentleman would not press for a decision of the House on the Motion he had brought forward.
MR. ROBERT PALMERsaid, that though he had no connexion with Reading gaol beyond that which arose from the circumstance of his belonging to the general body of the county magistrates, yet, as that establishment had been very much attacked by the hon. Gentleman who brought forward the present Motion, he would state in a few words the view he took on the subject. With respect to Mr. Merry, who had been alluded to, he was most zealous in the discharge of his duty as a magistrate, and he expressed a wish for the fullest inquiry into the circumstances of Reading gaol, stating that there was not a record or an account which would not bear the strictest investigation. He (Mr. Palmer) apprehended that the great distinction of this new system was the separation of prisoners from one another; and when Reading gaol was fust built, and that system was proposed to be carried out, he had great doubts whether it would answer; but, having carried on the system now for some time in Reading gaol, he believed that those who opposed it the most when first introduced, were now inclined to believe that it had effected considerable good. The chaplain of Reading gaol could not be too highly praised for his zeal, and for his attention to the prisoners under his charge; and he stated, that greater effect was produced on the prisoners under the new system than under the old. Under the old system twelve or fifteen prisoners were locked up in a ward without any one to overlook them, and the consequence was, they were at liberty to concoct any sort of mischief. Now they were placed in separate cells. And it must be observed there was great difference between separate and solitary confinement. The latter was almost the greatest punishment that could be inflicted; the former, one under which the prisoners could have frequent visits from those who could afford them instruction. He could not but think
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there were errors in the statement of the hon. Gentleman as to the number of recommittals, and indeed the observations of the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary seemed to bear out that impression. With respect to the expense of constructing the new gaol, it had been admittedly very great; but it should be remembered that it was built under the advice, and almost superintendence, of the inspectors of prisons—that the contracts were open, and that several architects had competed for the honour and profit of its construction, and that the Committee of Management had the authority of the inspectors of prisons to say that the cost would come to a certain sum per man. The original expense was calculated at 35,000 l.; but a considerable increase had certainly taken place in consequence of several additions, and of plans for warming and ventilating the building. With respect to the expenses of prosecutions, he could inform the hon. Gentleman that they had been much diminished, and the county rate proportionably lightened. The plan of Reading gaol, and the system adopted there, had been approved of by more than one Government. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the use of hard labour there. Now, it was excessively difficult to determine what different persons called hard labour. When Acts of Parliament specified hard labour, it was necessary of course to inflict it; but he could inform the hon. Member that the treadmill, which had formerly been in use, was now abandoned, and other modes of punishment resorted to. There was no doubt that the prisoners received better diet than many men who had only their own earnings to depend upon; but he had been told that those in confinement, particularly under the separate system, required more food than prisoners under other circumstances.
MR. BROTHERTONmoved the adjournment of the debate, as it was after twelve o'clock, and the subject could not possibly be concluded that night.
Debate adjourned.
The House adjourned at half-after Twelve o'clock.