COLONEL HARCOURTsaid, he wished to repeat a question which he had put last month to the First Lord of the Admiralty, and to which he had received rather an unsatisfactory answer. It was, whether any order had been issued with reference to the non-admission of boys into the navy from unions? The right hon. Baronet told him that no such order had been issued, but he could not reconcile that statement with a communication received by the clerk of the union of which he was a member from the commanding officer of the Victory, in answer to an application upon the subject. That communication, dated February 19, 1855, was to the effect that boys from houses of industry could not be received. Now, if the right hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Admiralty did not know whether any order on the subject had been issued, he ought to have said that he would make inquiry; but if he was aware that there was such an order in existence his conduct was still more reprehensible. A short time ago there appeared in The Times a paragraph stating that, complaints having been made as to the non-admission of boys into the navy from unions, an order had been issued for their admission. That showed that an order was given upon this very point; and it also showed what was the impression which had gone forth to the country upon the subject. The right hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Admiralty said he could not find that any such regulation had ever existed, but he (Colonel Harcourt) had shown that it did exist.
§ SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, it was true the hon. and gallant Gentleman did, on a former occasion, ask him a very simple question, to which he gave a straightforward answer. The hon. and gallant Gentleman asked whether any order had been issued by the Admiralty against the admission of boys from the workhouses to the navy. He (Sir Charles Wood) did not evade the question in the 885 slightest degree. He inquired at the Admiralty whether any such order had been issued, and, finding there had not, he answered the hon. and gallant Gentleman accordingly. He did not know how he could have more clearly stated the fact. Nor did he now know how he could make the fact clearer to the apprehension of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. There was no order from the Admiralty in existence against receiving boys from workhouses into the British Navy. He did not, however, think it desirable that boys should in large numbers be admitted from workhouses into the navy, as it might operate prejudicially to the entering of other boys into the naval service; but he could only repeat that there was no order against it.