MANNING THE NAVY BILL. (Hansard, 16 May 1854)

§ SIR GEORGE PECHELL
said, he wished to call attention to the several cases in which he considered that the Board of Admiralty had not exercised the powers vested in them to grant rewards for the capture or destruction of pirates. Formerly a sum of 20l. a head was allowed for every pirate captured, and 5l. a head for every pirate killed; but in the year 1850 the law was amended by a Bill brought in by the right hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring) which empowered the Admiralty, after a judicial decision that the case was one of piracy, to award such rewards as they deemed reasonable to the officers and seamen engaged in the capture and destruction. Several such cases had occurred since 1850, and he must complain that the Admiralty had not in those cases exercised the authority vested in them of awarding compensation. In fact they placed the power in abeyance. This was a hardship and a breach of faith towards the officers and seamen engaged in such transactions; and he asked for some explanation.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said, that previously to 1850 the law in respect to the bounties in question was in an unsatisfactory condition; but the Act of 1850 had placed them upon a footing which was at once just and regular. No bounty was now paid to the crews serving on board Her Majesty's ships against pirates, unless there was a previous judgment in a court of competent jurisdiction that the parties killed or captured were actually pirates. Such a judgment having been given, power was reserved to the Board of Admiralty to award remuneration according to the circumstances; and since he had been in office the Board had awarded it in two cases, taking into account in both the importance of the service performed and the risk of life. In cases where there 468 was no doubt of the importance of the service the Admiralty had the power of awarding the maximum fixed by the Act. He was not prepared to recommend any alteration in the law as it now stood with respect to bounties; but he thought this question would be best discussed when they arrived at the 11th clause, which had special reference to bounties to be granted on capture of enemies' armed ships or privateers. The Bill, however, did introduce an important change in respect to bounties. At present, when bounty was awarded it was paid to the agents; but Clause 11 said that payment should be made, not to the agent, but to a public officer appointed for the purpose. The reason was, that when bounties were paid to agents they were paid on account of the parties entitled, and there was no power to compel them to account or to hand over the balance. This clause would obviate that evil.

§ SIR GEORGE PECHELL
said, the Act of 1850 clearly intended that bounties should be paid for the capture or destruction of pirates. He had moved for returns of the adjudications under it, but they had not been presented, and he believed no awards had been made.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said, he had already stated that the present Board of Admiralty had made awards in two cases.

§ SIR GEORGE PECHELL
said, he would ask, then, why the returns were not given? One of the cases of which he complained was that of the Janus, which was engaged in the capture of pirates on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. In that case the Admiralty Court had declared that the crew were entitled to reward as for 800 men; but the Board of Admiralty, notwithstanding that award, asserted that the law did not empower them to accede to it. This was the point he wanted to have cleared up; and he would remind the right hon. Baronet that this case was totally distinct from that of the agents to which he had alluded.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said, he must repeat that the present Admiralty had put the Act of 1850 into force. They had made two awards for the distribution of bounties, both to a considerable amount.

MR. HUME
said, he considered the system of bounties for killing men was inhuman, It resulted in a sad slaughter of innocent men; and as there was a higher prize for killing than for capturing, it held out a premium for inhumanity. 469 Hundreds of thousands of pounds had been paid to reward the slaughter of innocent men. In hundreds of cases men were slain for the sake of the bounty who were not pirates at all. It was an atrocious system, discreditable to the country.

§ MR. OTWAY
said, that the clause enacted that the Act should come into operation in 1854. The effect of inserting the date 1854 would be, that it would operate retrospectively, and thus materially affect the interests of officers who up to this moment had had the arrangement of prizes. Cases were now in litigation of slavers, the proceeds of which had not yet been realised. If this Bill was passed, these proceeds would be taken out of the hands of the agents who had conducted the case from its commencement, and placed in the hands of some Government officer. The agents, consequently, would be mulcted of their just payment.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said, the main object of the Bill was one of a prospective character with regard to the war with Russia. Prizes were coming in gradually, and it was necessary that this Bill, or a Bill in the nature of a Prize Bill, should be passed without delay. As regarded agents, it was unnecessary for him to remind the House of the losses occasioned by the failures of such parties. It was decidedly against the interests of the men engaged in the active service of the war that the agency system should be allowed. With regard to the officers, it frequently happened that the agents were very much in advance to them on account of prize money, so much so that it was a matter of indifference to them whether the prizes were distributed or not. But in cases of failure, the loss fell grievously upon the great body of the men. It was, therefore, the duty of the Government to see that precautions should be taken against the evils which existed in the last war; and the Bill had been deliberately framed with the view of securing that the prize money should be fairly distributed to the advantage of the great body of the crew, apart from the ease of the officers. The Bill would materially affect the distributable amount of prize. Hitherto agents had received 5 per cent upon the money distributed on account of the men, and a very high percentage on account of the officers. With regard to the men, the percentage would be saved by the distribution being through a public officer, and be added to 470 the distributable proceeds among the whole crew. With respect to the officers, there was nothing to prevent the appointment of agents; and where the majority of a crew, including officers, agreed to appoint a particular agent, the agent would receive 2½per cent instead of 5 per cent, as during the last war. On the whole, therefore, he did not think the interests of any party had been disregarded by this Bill; and he hoped the Committee would not yield to any representation proceeding from agents, which might lead them to act in a manner inconsistent with the interests of crews.

§ SIR GEORGE PECHELL
said, he had never heard of any deficiency on the part of the Navy agents, and he did not consider the proposed arrangement at all satisfactory.

§ SIR GEORGE TYLER
said, he had never heard of any great defalcation among Navy agents in this country. He knew many of them, and believed them to be an honourable class of men. At all events it was not fair to condemn the whole body for the faults of a few. With regard to the Bill, he thought they had better go on, and take the clauses in the order in which they stood.

§ MR. OTWAY
said, that the right bon. Baronet at the head of the Admiralty had made the most unfair insinuation that he was the advocate of the Navy agents, and that he, the right hon. Baronet, was the advocate of the officers and seamen. He had no more connection with Navy agents than the right hon. Baronet had. The right hon. Baronet knew that all his (Mr. Otway's) earliest associations were with the Navy. If he had thought that this Bill would act in favour of the officers and seamen, he would have been the last person to have offered any objection to it. The right hon. Baronet assumed that very large sums had been lost by the defalcations of Navy agents in England. [Sir J. GRAHAM: Not in England.] That was the question. If the failures had taken place in the West Indies, what security was there in this Bill that they would not take place again? By whom would prize money in the West Indies be paid? [Sir J. GRAHAM: By the Commissariat.] Since the right hon. Baronet has been so unsparing of his aspersions on private agents, and so much in favour of Commissariat agents, he would refer the right hon. Baronet to a paragraph in a morning paper of the other day, in which the failure of an important functionary of the 471 Admiralty Court was announced to no less an amount than 66,000l. He challenged the right hon. Baronet to prove his assertion that 300,000l. or 400,000l., or even anything like 30,000l.. or 40,000l., had been lost by the failure of Navy agents in this country. There were numerous cases in the late war in which the agents of captors had procured the condemnation of prizes against the opinion of the law officers of the Crown. There was a capture made by the Lapwing, in which the energy displayed by the prize agent secured 68,000l. to the captors; and the case of the Samarang, in which the agent, under like circumstances, had procured the distribution of 13,000l. Would the right bon. Baronet say that the interests of the officers and men would be less looked after by their own private agent than by Government officers? No one could suppose that the whole of the business connected with prizes during a long war could be carried on by the present staff of the Admiralty. Within the last fortnight he had made inquiries among a great many officers regarding the proposed alteration, and he had not met with one single officer who approved of it.

§ ADMIRAL WALCOTT
said he thought Navy agents had three great incentives to act in the interest of those who appointed them—first, from the honourable confidence reposed in them; secondly, from the 5 per cent they received upon the net proceeds of the capture; and thirdly, from the conviction that the conscientious discharge of their duties would lead to the extension of their business. He believed the Bill would not meet with that success which its promoters calculated upon.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said, he thought that it would be more convenient to proceed as the hon. and gallant Member (Sir G. Tyler) had suggested with the clauses as they stood. But after the speech of the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Otway), he must refer to one or two points. He had not stated that the loss sustained had been from the failure of Navy agents in this country, but from the failure of Navy agents generally. He would not mention any names, but he held in his hand a list of cases showing the losses sustained by failures of agents from 1812 to the end of the war. One of these was an agent in the West Indies, who failed to the amount of 33,000l., of which not more than 19,000l.. was recovered; another for 21,000l., of which not more than 472 10,000l. was recovered. Another was the case of a London agent to the amount of 24,000l., of which not more than 12,000l. was recovered; another in Jamaica to the amount of 115,000l., of which not more than 70,000l. had been recovered. The last case was that of a London agent, in 1844, to the amount of 6,000l., of which not more than 2,300l. was recovered. During the war great failures took place, and heavy losses were sustained. With respect to abuses in the Admiralty Court, when he was at the Admiralty in 1830, all the offices were regulated, and all the appointments placed under the control of the Judge of the Admiralty Court; and when the Committee recalled the name of the present holder of that office, Sir Stephen Lushington, they would not doubt that any offenders would be brought to a summary and strict account. With respect to the failure of the Registrar of that Court, alluded to by the hon. Member for Stafford, no securities had been taken on his appointment, but ample precaution and security had been taken in the appointment recently made. Under the old system the Registrar of the Admiralty, for a certain period after the condemnation of the prize, kept the proceeds under his control; but by this Bill the money, immediately on being realised, would be paid into the public account. It had been asked where the seamen would go for their money. They would have to go to the Paymaster General or to the Accountant of the Navy. The money would be paid into the public account, and the public would be responsible. With respect to insurances on prizes, that point had not been overlooked, and directions had been given that the prizes should be insured. The hon. Member had assumed that no private Navy agents would in future be employed, but that was not the case. If the majority of the captors thought that their interests would best be consulted by their appointing agents, there was nothing in the Bill to prevent them doing so. The agent's commission was fixed at 2½ per cent, with an addition of 3 per cent on the private share of the captain, so that it could not be said that the interest of agents had been much neglected.
Clause agreed to, as was also Clause 3.
Clause 4.

§ CAPTAIN SCOBELL
said, he would remind the Committee that in the course of last Session he had endeavoured to intro- 473 duce amendments which would have the effect of encouraging the entry of men into the Navy. If anything would induce men to enter Her Majesty's service, it would be the holding out of an encouragement in the shape of bounty. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir J. Graham) had stated that it would require a sum of 200,000l. to give a bounty to men entering the naval service. He denied, however, that it would amount to anything like that, as he would not give the bounty to any but able seamen, and half the money would be amply sufficient. But a better plan still would be to give the men a pound a year for every year they would enter for, and that would enable them to put the ships to sea and have them employed actively much sooner. A pound a year would only be three farthings per day, and he was sure the services of able seamen were well worth that sum. He objected to the arrangements made in the Bill with regard to the division of prize money, which did not award a fair proportion to the leading and able seamen.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said, the arrangements now made for the distribution of prize money were in strict accordance with the recommendations of the Navy Committee. As regarded the question of bounty, he would observe that the prize money to which the seamen were now entitled would be a bounty in the most legitimate sense, inasmuch as it would be paid by the enemy instead of by this country. If the scale was compared with that which existed at the beginning of the last war, in 1793, it would be found that the seamen and petty officers received a much larger sum now than then, and that at the expense of the flag officers and captains. He hoped that explanation would satisfy the Committee that the interests of the seamen were not neglected by the present Board of Admiralty.
Clause agreed to; as were also Clauses 5 to 23 inclusive.
Clause 24.

§ MR. OTWAY
said, he hoped the right hon. Baronet would agree to report progress, as he had a long Amendment to propose on this Clause.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
hoped the hon. Member would not obstruct the progress of the Bill by his proposition to report progress.

§ MR. OTWAY
said, his Amendment had reference to the payment of prize money into the hands of the Government 474 accountant. Now, after what had been said about the untrustworthy character of many Government officers, he hoped precautions would be taken to prevent any objectionable appointment to the post of Government accountant. If the money stood in the joint names of the Paymaster General and the agent of the captors, and was paid by them into the Bank of England, nothing could be more secure or satisfactory than such an arrangement. He hoped the right hon. Baronet would assent to his proposition.

§ SIR JAMES GRAHAM
said he must object to the Amendment, because it was totally opposed to the principle on which the Bill was founded.
Clause agreed to; as also were Clauses 25 to 33 inclusive. Clause 34 omitted. Clauses 35 to 40 agreed to. Clause 41 was postponed. Clauses 42 to 58 agreed to; Clause 59 withdrawn; remaining Clauses agreed to.
House resumed; Bill reported; as amended, to be considered to-morrow. The House adjourned at half after One o'clock.