HC Deb 08 August 1853 vol 129 cc1470-7

(1.) 407,667l., Government Prisons and Convict Establishments at Home.

MR. HUME

said, he wished to know whether there was about to be introduced any general plan of secondary punishment, for he had not yet heard of any plan whatever being about to be proposed? He found in the Estimates a charge of nearly 1,500,000l. for law expenses and prosecutions connected with our Courts, and when he considered the state in which criminals in this country had been left since the abolition of transportation, he certainly thought that some general plan of secondary punishments would have been submitted to that House. He did not know whether any inquiry had been instituted into a matter which was so important to the social condition of the country; but he looked with great regret at the alarming increase of crime, and at the utter impossibility, so far as he saw, of diminishing it. He had always been an advocate of transportation as affording the best chance of reformation in these cases, and he very much doubted whether the recent experiments which had been made upon the criminal population had come up to the sanguine expectations of the noble Lord the Member for London and others. He knew that the expense of those experiments was very great, and that very little had yet been done. The only remedy which he could see was to provide a more extended system of education for the great masses of the community.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

said, he thought that it would be much better to defer any discussion upon this subject until the second reading of the Transportation Bill, which would come on to-morrow. Whatever plan might be adopted, must depend very much upon the change of circumstances from time to time. The alteration with respect to transportation had been in a great measure owing to the present State of the colonies, and the strong feeling that existed there upon the subject.

Vote agreed to.

(2.) 478.740l., Militia.

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

said, that perhaps he should best consult the convenience of the Committee at that late period of the Session if he addressed to them a very few observations in proposing this Vote for the Militia. The number of men that was now enrolled, as far as could be judged from the last returns, was about 62,000. The whole amount that had been taken upon this estimate was larger; but as the force was now before them for the first time, it had been necessary to make allowance for all contingencies, and an ample margin had therefore been allowed. He should, perhaps, also call the attention of the Committee to the fact that the whole of this amount was not for raising and training the militia, but that there had to be deducted about 100,000l. for the old staff of militia and non-effectives who were annually dying off. He must take that opportunity of congratulating the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Walpole) upon the success which had attended this measure hitherto. It had certainly fully justified his expectations. The efficiency of the regiments had been borne testimony to by the most competent officers, who had inspected them, and who had expressed their surprise at the degree of efficiency to which they had attained in the short period they had been embodied. What was more important, perhaps, was the universal good conduct which had characterised these men, when it might, perhaps, have been expected that the congregating of such large bodies of men of such an age might have produced some disturbance. In every part of the country, however, the civil authorities had borne testimony to the excellent conduct of the men forming the militia. He wished also to express, on the part of the Government, their thanks for the great interest which had been taken in raisin men by the colonels and other officers of those regiments, and for the attention ant diligence which they had bestowed upon their duties, which had led to such beneficial and satisfactory results.

COLONEL SIBTHORP

, as one who had the honour of commanding a regiment of militia, begged to express the gratification with which he had listened to the high terms of commendation in which the right hon. Gentleman had spoken of that body generally. He should suggest, however that a second period of training should be allowed, being convinced that both the men themselves and the majority of the civil population also would be favourable to such a step.

MR. BRIGHT

said, he wished to ask whether it was the intention of the Government to fill up the numbers of the militia to 80,000, as fixed by the Act of last Session, because Ministers had said that they did not want to raise any more men than was absolutely necessary. Now, the Committee would doubtless remember, that last year there were very alarming rumours spread abroad in the country, and in that House, with the view of persuading the Legislature to re-establish the militia; and the noble Lord who now filled the office of Home Secretary even went the length of saying that he thought it probable that 60,000 Frenchmen might some night be landed on the shores of Great Britain, and, therefore, it was very necessary that 80,000 militia should be embodied to oppose them. Now, the friends of peace had stedfastly maintained the emptiness of these apprehensions; and he thought that subsequent events had shown that they were not the party who were wrong in their anticipation of the events about to take place. He understood even that a Member of the Government of the noble Lord, who was not now in his place, had fixed precisely the time—it was to be within three months—at which this dreaded event was to come off. Upon statements such as that to which he alluded, great preparations had been made; the militia had been embodied, additional votes of men had been passed, and large expenses incurred, but for which the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been enabled to make his valuable Budget more valuable still, by the remissions of taxes. As, however, instead of those alarms having proved to be well founded, he understood that Admiral Dundas had received the French officers on board of his ship, and that he himself and the English officers had been entertained at dinner on board of the French ships, and that they had drunk the health of Queen Victoria and of Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French, with so much cheering that it was difficult to hear the artillery. He wanted to know, under these circumstances—when the two nations were on such friendly terms, and when with respect to another matter in dispute there seemed a probability of no war arising out of it—whether Government considered it necessary to go on increasing the militia force, and to fill it up to the whole complement. Having got over the panic of last year, and discovered that we had made fools of ourselves, we might now venture to let the wave subside, and the country might, perhaps, feel itself sufficiently secure to allow this portion of our force to fall into decay, as it did before; by which the expense of its maintenance would be saved. It was said that the militiamen made very fair soldiers after twenty-one or twenty-eight day's training. [Colonel SIBTHORP: Hear, hear!] He was not going to dispute it, because he was not a judge. [Colonel SIBTHORP: No!] But if men could be made fair soldiers in so short a time, it would not be necessary to take them for years before you required their services. The noble Lord the Member for Tiverton (Viscount Palmerston) had turned out to have been wrong as regarded last year; he might be wrong also as regarded the future, and 60,000 invaders might not come over at all; so that the constant expenditure of 400,000l. or 500,000l. a year might be avoided. Unless they were certain that this expenditure was absolutely required, and this force absolutely necessary, they would fail in their duty to the country if they voted it; and, for his part, he did not hesitate to say that he regarded the whole matter as an imposture, got up in order that the public might be deceived and robbed. The only result was to diminish the power of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remit taxes; and there was a far greater probability of the evils of war when nations pursued the mad system of maintaining great rival armaments. He would, therefore, suggest that, in the present friendly state of our relations with France, seeing the right hon. President of the Board of Control no longer made speeches to his constituents at Halifax discreditable to himself and injurious to his country, it might be proper to make representations to the French Government before any long period elapsed, for the purpose of seeing whether both nations could not agree to reduce their armaments to some extent. It was not his intention to divide the Committee against this Vote; but he was so convinced of the folly of the course pursued by our statesmen upon this subject, that he took this the first opportunity of the Session of raising his voice against it.

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

said, he should offer but a few words in answer to the observations of the hon. Member. In the first place, with reference to the remark of the hon. Member that a militiaman could be trained into a good soldier in twenty-one days, he begged to say that he had every disposition to give credit to the militia force; but the Committee must not imagine that at the end of that short period the militia would be in as effective a state as the army. They were trained, no doubt, more rapidly than the army, because men coming to the task in the way they did took a greater pleasure in it, and devoted themselves to it with greater zeal than regular soldiers could be expected to do. The hon. Gentleman had asked him whether he intended to raise the 80,000 men which the Act permitted them to raise? In reply to that question he begged to say, that deducting the non-effective part of the service, he believed that, in all probability, there would be raised about 74,000 or 75,000 men, if the enlistment continued to go on as rapidly as it did at present. He certainly was not prepared to assent to the doctrine of the hon. Gentleman, that because there were indications of familiarities between two nations—that, however much good feeling there might be apparent between them—and he sincerely trusted that in the present case the good feeling might long continue—their armaments should be changed and altered up and down according to these indications. Besides, he begged to remind the hon. Member, that a certain amount of force must be presented to that House by the Government on their own responsibility, as that which they considered necessary for the general security of the country. The House had assented to the propositions of Government on this head, and voted the amount of force proposed. He would only observe that the expense would not be much diminished by disbanding the militia, because they had engaged to make for five years an annual payment of 1l. for bounty, and of course the whole payment must be made. He admitted that the original estimate of the expense of the force might have been exceeded in some degree in consequence of the period of training having been extended from twenty-one to twenty-eight days, and in consequence, also, of some few items which were not foreseen when the plan was first mooted. The number of men voted last year was 50,000; it was now proposed to vote an additional 25,000, making in all 75,000.

MR. BRIGHT

said, the vote was 100,000l. more than last year, and it would, he supposed, be more next year, so that 200,000l. would be added to the expenditure. Was it intended to fill up the number of men to 80,000 this year?

MR. SYDNEY HERBERT

said, the number to be raised last year was 50,000, and this year 30,000. It was only proposed to raise 25,000 this year.

MR. BRIGHT

said, that there was no sufficient reason for the number of men which had been raised, and still less for adding to the number, for the reasons on which the arguments in favour of a militia last year were founded had passed away, and there were no valid reasons for such an expenditure.

COLONEL SIBTHORP

would tell the hon. Member for Manchester that he recollected his Delectus at School—cuilibet in sua arte credendum est. He should not expect the hon. Member to be a very efficient soldier, nor would he be extremely anxious to have him in his corps. The hon. Member might, perhaps, possess intelligence enough to know that prevention was better than cure, and he did not hesitate to say, attached as he was to this country, that he wished the French had made an attempt to come here, and that he had had the happiness of being one of those down at the coast to meet them. They would very soon have been glad to go back, and would have got a lesson that he thought they never would have forgotten, for he believed they would never have attempted to put their fingers in the fire again. He did not know where the hon. Member would have been on such an occasion, but he should certainly have made inquiry as to his whereabouts. The militia were not only liable to be called upon in case of an attempt at invasion, but they were very necessary to keep Manchester, and similar places, in good order. Their services would be found useful should any domestic disturbances arise; and the hon. Member ought to know that the French might have a disposition both to invade and to revolutionise this country.

SIR JOHN DUCKWORTH

said, he could bear testimony both to the efficiency of the militia as soldiers, and to their good conduct in quarters. He would suggest that it would be a great improvement to have them placed in barracks, instead of being billeted on the publicans, for not only was it advantageous to a regiment to be kept together in barracks, but the publicans would thus be relieved from expense and inconvenience, for which they did not receive adequate compensation as matters now stood.

MR. HUME

said, he considered the alarm of last year to have been utterly unfounded, and was still of opinion that we were wasting the public resources, instead of proceeding to relieve them of every burden which could be removed. The military mania now abroad would cost the country very nearly 1,000,000l. The irrational panic that prevailed had now subsided, and we enjoyed the friendship of the French nation. He was of opinion that one of the best things that could be done, by way of showing our confidence in their ruler, would be to reduce our forces. Including disembodied officers, there were not less than 91,819 persons connected with the militia.

MR. WALPOLE

said, he would beg to remind the hon. Members for Montrose and Manchester, that when this measure was brought forward by the late Government it was distinctly stated that it was not proposed in consequence of any apprehension of hostile proceedings on the part of any other country. He (Mr. Walpole) then said, that the measure had been propounded by the late Sir Robert Peel's Government, and by the Government of the noble Lord opposite; and it had been urged upon the consideration of Administration after Administration, by those who were most competent to form a judgment upon such matters, that it would be wise and judicious to establish for the permanent defence of the country some such force as that which had last year been sanctioned by Parliament. He thought, then, that the Legislature had not taken a false step on this subject, and that it would be most injudicious to disband the militia force, especially after the testimony which had been borne, not merely to its popularity, but also to the admirable conduct of the men, and to the great efficiency they had attained, after a very short period of training. He wished to take this opportunity of expressing his opinion that the successful working of the measure was attributable in a great degree to the assistance afforded to the Government in carrying it out by the noblemen and gentlemen in the various counties, to whom the country was under great obligation.

MR. HUME

said, he would have placed his opinion on record by going to a division, had he not been aware that public feeling was in favour of the measure. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Walpole) seemed to forget the addition made to our naval force, which had been augmented by 10,000 seamen. We had now 380,000 troops in arms, or ready to be called out, which, in proportion to the population, was a larger military force than that of France.

MR. VERNON SMITH

begged to ask whether the system which prevailed under the old Act of making mere complimentary colonelships, by giving the commissions to gentlemen of the county, was to be continued in the present time? He hoped not; for the great point was to make the corps efficient. If the old system went on, then you would find some noble Lord or Gentleman being at the same time colonel of a regiment of yeomanry and a regiment of militia; and what was then to be done if a war broke out?

SIR JOHN SHELLEY

said, he would also inquire, at the same time, whether the old system would be continued of allowing officers who were abroad to hold militia commissions?

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

said, the attention of the Secretary of State for the Home Department had been called to the circumstance that persons employed in the colonial service also held commissions in the militia. There were not many cases of that nature, but the noble Lord had insisted that all persons who were permanently employed in the Colonies should resign their commissions in the militia. In future, also, lieutenant colonels commandant, instead of full colonels, would be appointed to militia regiments; so that, if the militia should be stationed in a garrison town where there were troops of the line, the command of the whole force would be taken by the officer Commanding the regular troops, who would probably be superior in rank to the lieutenant colonel of the militia.

Vote agreed to.

House resumed.