HC Deb 17 February 1853 vol 124 cc242-4
SIR JOHN SHELLEY

said, he would now beg to nominate the Members of the Select Committee on Coal Duties.

MR. ALCOCK

said, he wished the nomination of the Committee to be postponed for a week, in order that an opportunity might be afforded of ascertaining that all the interests concerned in the inquiry were fully represented. These coal duties operated with peculiar injustice on many of his constituents in Surrey. Take the case of Croydon, for instance; the inhabitants of which were called upon to pay some 3.000l. or 4,000l. a year to the City of London, for objects from which they obtained no benefit. In the days when coal was only brought to London by the river, of which the corporation were the conservators, there might be some reason for the tax, but it was utterly preposterous at the present day; and yet the City claimed the right of taxing an area of forty miles in diameter—extending over about 1,500 square miles. It was absolutely necessary that the inhabitants of this vast district should be more adequately represented on the Committee.

SIR BENJAMIN HALL

hoped the hon. Gentleman would not persevere in his objection. Great difficulty had been experienced in constituting this Committee in a manner satisfactory to the Government and the City, and if the arrangement were now departed from, the whole subject might be postponed indefinitely. He thought those Gentlemen who took no part in opposing the clause introduced by the City in the last Coal Duties Bill, which had extended the area of those duties by fixing the limit to twenty miles in a straight line, instead of by the nearest road, had the less right to complain now. There were on the Committee, as now proposed, three Members to represent the City, three for the metropolis outside the City, three for the outlying districts, one for the coalowners in the north, and four for the general public; and, so far as he could see, it would be impossible to strike the Committee more fairly. It should be recollected, too, that the object of the Committee was not to consider whether the duties ought to be maintained—for, as they were already mortgaged for specific purposes, that they would have no power to do—but whether, under better management, those purposes might not be satisfied before the year 1862?

MR. STUART WORTLEY

also begged the hon. Member not to oppose the nomination, for the public mind was excited on the subject, and it was desirable the earliest investigation should take place into it. On the present occasion there was no difficuly in obtaining the Committee, for the City was anxious for the fullest inquiry, and he undertook that every information would be given by the officers of the corporation. As to the accusation against the corporation that they had extended the sphere of taxation by the insertion of the words to which the hon. Baronet alluded, it was utterly groundless. In the first Act it was provided the tax should be levied on all coals coming "within" twenty miles of London; and as the Judges had several times decided that this meant in a direct line, when the second Bill was introduced the corporation thought it only fair to insert the words "in a direct" line, to explain the construction placed by the Judges upon the former Act. He might add, that he was present at a consultation with Sir William Page Wood, at which not the slightest doubt existed but that the two Acts were the same in respect to the extent of their operation.

SIR BENJAMIN HALL

replied, that the clause had had the effect of taking in a larger area than had been liable to the duty under previous Acts.

MR. INGHAM

said, he could not agree that the Committee was quite fairly constituted. In all his experience he had never seen a Committee in which the in- terest to be dealt with was not fully represented; but on the present occasion London and the surrounding districts had a full number of Members, while Newcastle had only one.

MR. STUART WORTLEY

said, that Sir James Duke was closely connected with the coal trade, and he would be on the Committee.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at half after Eleven o'clock.