§ MR. ROEBUCKsaid, he wished to repeat a question which on Friday last he put to the First Lord of the Admiralty, namely, whether the Government had any intention of sending out an expedition to the Arctic Seas in search of the persons who were lost in the expedition which went out some years ago under the command of Sir John Franklin; and if so, whether it would be upon the plan which had been suggested to the Admiralty of sending a small screw steamer and a land expedition to the Great Fish River, and whether it was intended to despatch it as early as the 1st of March?
§ SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, that the Committee which had inquired into the Army, Navy, and Ordnance Estimates had made a recommendation—a recommendation in which he himself entirely concurred—that no fresh expedition in search of Sir John Franklin and his companions should be sent out by the Government before they had submitted to the House of Commons an estimate of the cost of such an undertaking. The Government had not, how- 352 ever, yet proposed any such estimate, and had not even determined on proposing it, and of course they had taken no steps for forming such an expedition.