SECOND READING.

HC Deb 23 July 1857 vol 147 cc245-80

Order for Second Reading read; Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

MR. WILSON

said, he could assure the House that he never rose with greater reluctance to perform a public duty than on the present occasion. Circumstanced as he had been for nearly five years, in close connection with a body of men whose merits were acknowledged by all, and whose performance of the various duties appropriated to them in the public service had been such as to secure to them not only the respect but the admiration of every one associated with them, he felt that the task imposed on him of opposing the noble Lord's (Lord Naas') Bill, which at first sight had the appearance of making an arrangement highly beneficial to those employed in the Civil Service, was a painful one. Nevertheless, he should be shrinking from the duty he owed that House if, considering the official position he held, he were not to take every pains to state the whole facts, which were necessary for the perfect understanding of the question, in order that whatever might be done should be performed with a full knowledge of the whole case, and of the arguments on which it rested. The impressions under which this question had arisen to one of great public importance, and had come to be considered what might be termed a great public grievance, were, in the first place, to be traced to a belief that the fund which the Civil Service had contributed—or rather the contributions which the civil servants of the Crown had made towards the pensions to which they were entitled by Act of Parliament—were considerably larger than necessary to provide for those pensions, and that indirectly the State had already made, and would in future make, a considerable profit from those contributions. Now, whatever might be the nature of the compact between the civil servants of the Crown and the Crown itself, he was prepared to admit, that if that case could be established, whatever the terms of the compact, it would be politic to abandon the charge; and if it could be shown that the charge was too high, whatever the terms of the Act of 1834 might be, and whatever the implied contract under which the civil servants of the Crown had accepted their offices, he was prepared to say that, if not in strict justice, yet from motives of policy, they would be entitled to the reduction—at least so as to reduce the charge to what was merely sufficient to provide the pensions. The next ground, on which the impressions he alluded to had obtained currency, was the notion that there had been a breach of engagement on the part of the Crown with the civil servants, inasmuch as their contributions were to be created into a fund, which increasing at compound interest, would be entirely at their disposal for one purpose or another. This question stood at the very threshold off the matter, and he thought that no charge could be made more grave than that of a breach of engagement, actual or implied, entered into between 16,000 men engaged in the public service and the Executive Government. However, he thought that that question had been disposed of, because the Commissioners whose Report was on the table of the House, agreeing with the Committee of the House of Commons last year, clearly and definitely decided that there was no such breach of engagement. This was, in his opinion, a point which ought to be cleared up, as it was not so much a question of policy as of the good faith of Parliament. He would, therefore, quote one single passage from the Report of the Commissioners, on the faith of whose Report the present Bill was stated to be brought forward. The Commissioners declared that, whether the deductions charged were more or less than equivalent for the superannuations awarded, no civil servant could justly complain of a breach of engagement on that account, the terms of the engagement with respect to the superannuations and deductions being-well known at the time of the engagement; consequently, whatever impressions might once have existed on the point, there could be no doubt now, after the matter had been considered by the Committee of the House of Commons and by the Commissioners, that no such breach of engagement as had once been alleged did in reality exist. Then, assuming that point to be disposed of, the whole question resolved itself into one of policy; and it was justly stated in the Report of the Commissioners that, after all, this was a question of the remuneration of public servants, lie thought the Commissioners took a wise and just view of the case, when they stated that the claim of pension could not be separated from the amount of salary. With regard to the question of sufficiency of salary, it would be his duty to show that, during the last four or five years, since he had occupied his present official position, there had been revisions of the salaries in almost every Department of the State, not only entered upon, but made; while the charge made for the salaries of the public servants involved an increased grant from the public funds. It was true that it had been stated by the Committee of the House of Commons that in this revision regard had not been paid to those officers who had paid superannuation charges; but he would re- mind the House that if they came to revise salaries not included under the Act of 1834, they were including those who had neither paid abatements, nor had a right to superannuation allowances, whereas if they revised another office at the same time which came under the Act of 1834, the House would be dealing with one which has claims on the superannuation allowance. If, then, they had two men, one not paying abatements, and therefore not entitled to a pension, and the other paying abatements and having title to a pension, they would have a right to consider those salaries as upon the same footing; and it must be observed, that with respect to those who entered the public service before 1829, and whose salaries had undergone revisal, full regard had been paid to their interests, taking into consideration the regulations existing at that time. He would state the amount of the increase of salaries in the three great departments of the Inland Revenue Board, the Board of Customs, and the Post Office. In 1852, the total amount of the salaries connected with those Departments was £2,167,000, and the amount had now risen to £2,450,000, showing an increase of nearly a quarter of a million. He did not say that this increase was an increase entirely of salaries, but he was quite certain that a considerable proportion of it was occasioned by an increase of salaries to individual officers. The appendix to the Report of the Commissioners contained a comparison of the remuneration received by public servants of the Crown and by persons employed in large public establishments unconnected with the Crown. It appeared that in the Bank of England clerks of eighteen years of age received £60 a year, of nineteen years £70 a year, of twenty years £80 a year, and of twenty-one years £100. After the age of twenty-one the salaries went on increasing £5 a year until the age of twenty-nine, when the clerks received £140 a year, and the salaries then increased progressively up to the age of forty-three years, when the maximum salary of £250 was reached. Now, clerks in the public service, in departments where the duties were at all analogous to those performed by clerks of the Bank of England, received a much higher scale of salaries. The lowest salaries given in the public offices in Westminster were £90 a year, and some commenced at £100, and it would be found upon the whole that the public servants were infinitely better paid than the clerks in the Bank of England. If, however, any portion of the public servants considered that they were insufficiently remunerated they had only to submit their case to the heads of their departments, who—as had been repeatedly done during the last four or five years—would bring the subject under the notice of the Treasury, and so far from there being any disinclination on the part of the Treasury to consider such claims, they had always met them most liberally. But, although the insufficient remuneration of public servants might be a just ground for revising the scale of salaries, it could be no reason for an indiscriminate increase of salaries, without regard to merit or efficiency. The proposition of the noble Lord would amount to an indiscriminate increase of salaries, throughout the public service to the extent of 5 per cent. upon salaries exceeding £100, and £2 10s. per cent on salaries below that amount. Now, supposing some portions of the public service were at present underpaid, an increase of 2½ or 5 per cent, upon the existing salaries might be quite insufficient to raise those salaries to a proper amount; and would it be any satisfaction to persons in such a position to receive this increase when the same increase was given to a large body of public servants who could not complain of being underpaid? Some years ago, a proposal was made to reduce the salaries in all public departments by a uniform rate of 10 per cent., and that proposal was opposed on the ground that if any portion of the public servants were overpaid it would be proper to reduce their salaries, but that the indiscriminate reduction proposed was neither just nor reasonable. The noble Lord had complained that a great number of those public servants whose salaries were subjected to abatements never derived any advantage from the fund, but payments of this kind must be regarded in the aggregate, and not as affecting individual cases. They were in the nature of an insurance, which must be judged of by the charge upon the whole, and not upon the individual. It had been argued, and no doubt justly, that great hardship arose when a public servant died before he was superannuated, because his family lost the benefit of the abatements from his salary. The Treasury had proposed that in such cases widows should be entitled to certain gratuities, and he believed such an arrangement would be attended with great ad- vantages, and would afford considerable relief to the officers in the various public department, who were now called upon for private contributions to relieve cases of this nature. It had been complained that the abatements from salaries had not been constituted into a fund. He did not know what difference that could have made to public officers, because by the Act of Parliament no individual officer could receive more than he now received. The Act prescribed both the rate of deduction from salaries and the rate of the superannuation allowances, and he could not understand how these officers could have been in a better position if their abatements had constituted a separate fund than they now occupied with the security of the Government for the payment of their allowances. It was said that if the abatements had constituted a fund which had borne compound interest, the fund would now have been much larger than was necessary for the purposes for which it was formed, and that the civil servants would have possessed a claim to some division or appropriation of that amount in their favour. If it could be proved that the public servants did not enjoy the full proceeds of their contributions such a measure might be justifiable, but there were few things more deceptive than funds of this kind, which from present payments had to meet future contingent charges. As an instance, he might mention the case of the London Police Fund, which was commenced in 1839, under the authority of an Act of Parliament, by contributions from the police to provide superannuation allowances for members of that force. In 1841 the fund had risen to £50,000, while the charges upon it were only £600 a year. In 1852 the fund had risen to £104,000, and a reduction of the contributions made by the men was strongly urged, but upon investigation such a course was not deemed advisable. What had been the result? The fund which in 1852 amounted to £104,000 was at this moment reduced to £4,000, and was so far from being sufficient to meet the demands upon it that aid had been solicited from the Government, in addition to the assistance which was obtained from the metropolitan rates. He thought this case would satisfy the House that very mistaken ideas might exist with regard to the accumulation of abatements under circumstances of this description. He held in his hand a return, showing the amount charged from year to year on the public funds for compensations and superannuation allowances. It appeared that in 1834 when the Act was passed, the whole amount of pensions payable in respect of the public service was £358,000 and the whole amount of allowances, including compensations for abolished offices, was £693,000. Year by year, since that time, the amount under the head of compensations had rapidly diminished, until in 1856 it was reduced to £210,000; but year by year the amount of superannuation allowances had increased more rapidly. The sum chargeable in 1834 for pensions alone was £358,000, but it had now increased to £606,000. The total of compensations and allowances, taken together, had increased from £693,000 in 1834 to £830,000 in the present year. Moreover, this was an annually increasing sum, for last year the whole charge was £799,000, while the sum required for the present year was £830,000. And there was this remarkable fact—that whereas the whole amount of abatements taken at present from the whole public service was £74,000, the increase within the last four years in pensions alone was equal to the whole of that amount. In 1851 the amount of pensions payable to the civil servants, as distinguished from compensations, was £509,000, while last year it had increased to £589,000, being an increase of £80,000. It had been stated as a grievance that those public servants who entered the service before 1829 did not contribute to this fund, although they received pensions to a larger amount than those who did. Let the House see how the case would stand between the civil servants and the Crown on the showing of the civil servants themselves. The amount of pensions and compensations voted for the present year was £827,000, and the civil servants themselves, on their own showing, said that when the whole public service should consist of officers who had entered the service since 1829, the amount of abatements would be £94,000 a year, and that, taking the principle of the fund, and charging compound interest upon the abatements from year to year, they would have an accumulated fund in 1891 of £5,000,000. They reckoned, therefore, that the amount of abatements at that time would be £94,000 a year, and adding to that sum £150,000 as interest at 3 per cent., on the accumulated fund of £5,000,000, they would have a fund of £244,000 a year. That was taking what he did not admit to be a fair calculation, but he took it on the showing of the civil servants themselves. Now, what would be the charge on that fund at that time? The charge voted for the present year was £827,000, and if they took the present charge as being the then probable charge, and deducted £94,000 as the maximum payment in respect of abatements, and £152,000 as interest on the fund from £827,000, there would be a deficiency of £581,000 to be made good by the public. But it was said that the charge of £827,000 would be greatly reduced in consequence of the diminished amount of pensions that would have to be paid. His right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring) gave it as his opinion before the Committee last year, that when the amount of charge should be reduced to the lowest rate it would be one-third lower than the sum charged at the highest rate. Admitting the calculation of his right hon. Friend to be true, they would have the £827,000 reduced by £275,000—a third of it—which would leave £552,000 as the probable amount of charge; but from that they would have still to deduct £246,000 a year—namely, £94,000 the maximum payment in respect of abatements, and £152,000 as the interest on the fund, so that there would be still a deficiency of £306,000 to be made good by the public. The civil service officers themselves said that it was impossible to arrive at an accurate calculation, but that it was probable the future charge would be half the amount of the present charge, that was to say, about £413,000, against the contributions from interest and abatements of £244,000. Thus it appeared from the showing of the civil servants themselves, that the deficiency which would have to be made up by the votes of the House of Commons would amount to £169,000. It might be said, however, that it was not fair to include the compensations. Well, he had not omitted that fact. It was not his object—far from it—to make out a case against the civil servants; but he wished to state the facts precisely as they appeared to him to stand. Now, although it might not be fair to include the compensations in every view of this case, he must observe that if the amounts given did not appear in the form of compensation, they would appear in the form of pension. But how stood the case in regard to pensions alone? The pensions in the present year, independent of compensations, amounted to £606,000, which, on the calculation of one-third, as assumed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Portsmouth, would still leave a deficiency of £158,000 to be met. Or, taking it as the civil servants themselves took it, at one-half or £303,000, and deducting £246,000 from that amount, there would be a deficiency of £57,000 a year, to be made good by the House." He was of opinion that if the whole of the contributions of the civil servants were made into a fund, compound interest added, deductions only made of payments for pensions to those who had retired since 1829, and 50 per cent given by Government, it would be no more than sufficient to defray future charges. He hoped he had satisfied the House that whatever course the Government had taken it was, in their opinion, not attended with any degree of injustice to the civil servants. One very important consideration seemed to have been altogether lost sight of in this discussion, although it would affect the calculations very much. Hon. Members must bear in mind that the deductions were made from the salaries actually received by the servants. A man entered the service at 19 years of age, at a salary of £100 a year, and the deduction was 5 per cent. He went on until he had been 40 or 45 years in the public service, and by gradual increase his salary was £1,000, £1,200 or £1,5000. ["Oh! oh!"] He could quote a great number of such cases. ["Oh!"] He did not mean a great number in proportion to the whole 16,000 civil servants, but there were many such cases, During the whole period of service the deduction was the same per cent, although the salary was increasing, and upon retirement the pension was calculated upon the full amount of salary. There was one point to which he begged to call the serious attention of the House. Until the noble Lord introduced this Bill no proposition had ever been made to give up the abatement unaccompanied by a revision of salary. In the Committee of the House of Commons last year the hon. Bart, the Member for Evesham (Sir H. Willoughby) proposed a series of Resolutions, one of which was:— That, adopting the principle of remuneration stated in the second Resolution, the salary of all appointments hereafter to be made in the Civil Service shall be revised according as the amount of such salary shall be judged to be too high or too low, duly considering the service to be performed and the amount of deductions (if any) which have been paid. Sir Stafford Northcote produced a set of Resolutions, and one of his Resolutions was as follows:— That, in accordance with these principles, the system of making deductions from salaries for superannuation should be abandoned; the salaries of civil servants should, where necessary, be revised so as to make them justly equivalent to the work demanded, and the new Act should distinctly recognize the right of the Government to call upon those who have attained a certain age, or whose state of health prevents their regular attendance to their duties, to retire from the service with or without a retired allowance, as the circumstances of the case may require. There was a distinct connection kept between the superannuation allowance and the salary to be paid. The hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. S. FitzGerald) proposed:— That in carrying out these Resolutions, the Committee contemplate the propriety of re-considering the scales both of pensions and salaries, as at present arranged. He was sorry to say that the noble Lord's Bill did neither the one nor the other. When the Committee came to consider their Report the following Resolution was proposed by the noble Lord the Member for Lynn (Lord Stanley):— That, in the event of such deductions being done away, the rates of payment in the various branches of the Civil Service should be revised, there being no ground for an indiscriminate augmentation of salaries, which would otherwise result from the change proposed. The Resolution was not thought sufficiently distinct as to the object intended—that the reduction of the salaries should be governed by the reduction of abatements—and an Amendment was proposed to insert the words "with a due regard to the amount of reductions remitted." The noble Lord the Member for Cockermouth (Lord Naas) professed to have founded his Bill upon the recommendations of the Commissioners appointed last year, and simply proposed to give up the abatement. No doubt the Commissioners reported that the abatement should be given up, and that there should be no reduction in the salaries of the present public servants; but they obviously felt there were very great objections to the proposal to make a present of £100,000 a year as a future charge to the public servants indiscriminately, without any special reason whatever. The Commissioners said:— We have spoken of the supposed loss of revenue us temporary. It must be evident, in the case of any civil servant now liable to deductions, that under any circumstances this loss could not continue for a longer period than the remaining time during which he continues in the service. On his retirement an opportunity will at all events occur of revising the salary. But it is probable that in the majority of cases an opportunity of revising the salary will occur at a much earlier period. It appears that in each public department the clerks are divided into classes with reference to the importance of the duties which they have to perform. In the same class each clerk proceeds from the minimum to the maximum salary by length of service; but in all promotions from an inferior to a higher class it is required that the selection shall be made ' only from superior fitness for such higher class.' The principle of promoting from class to class in consequence of merit alone, without regard to seniority, has been enforced on the Heads of Departments by the highest authorities, and may be considered the established rule of the Civil Service. The practice has been to revise from time to time the salaries in each class, such revision to take effect only with regard to such persons as might thereafter be introduced into the class, and not to affect the salaries of those who were already within it. What would be the effect of that proposition? The public servants now complained of the injustice of having two classes—those who paid, and those who did not pay abatement; but if the recommendations of the Commissioners were adopted there would be two or three servants in one class receiving a higher, and two or three in the same class performing the same duties and receiving a lower rate of salary, so that in attempting to cure a present inequality they would be creating a new inequality of a far more grievous nature. Let it be remembered that for some years after the passing of the Act of 1834 and so long as but a few civil servants had been appointed under it they heard nothing of these complaints, but as soon as they were sufficiently numerous to produce an effect, this agitation—he hardly liked to make use of such a word, but it was the one which would best express his meaning—was set on foot. It would be the same a few years hence with regard to this Bill. As soon as ever the number of civil servants, appointed after the Bill passed, was sufficiently large to make an impression upon Parliament, they would seek to get rid of the clear understanding upon which they were engaged, because of the inequality which would certainly be introduced. He would now proceed to consider the Bill itself. The Commissioners pointed out not only the inequality, but the anomalies of the existing system, which required to be remedied. For what did the Commissioners say? They showed that this was only one and almost an inferior cause of complaint on the part of the public servants. They pointed out existing anomalies without end, with not one of which did the noble Lord propose to deal. The Bill of the noble Lord, indeed, would create an anomaly greater than any which now existed. It proposed to repeal a single clause in the Act of 1834—the clause, namely, which imposed abatements. The noble Lord left the Act in every other respect as it was. Now, the effect of that Act was that certain persons only were entitled to pensions. The Bill of the noble Lord sought to relieve these persons from the payment of abatements, but it did not propose to give pensions to any other class of public servants. The officers of the Poor-Law Board were not entitled to pensions, and they felt that they had no reason to complain, because they were not required to pay abatements. The officers of the Treasury, on the other hand, were entitled to pensions, and therefore they had no right to consider themselves aggrieved in being called upon to pay abatements. Under the Bill of the noble Lord the officers of the Treasury would continue to be entitled to pensions, although relieved from the payment of abatements; while the officers of the Poor-Law Board would not be more entitled to pensions than they were at the present moment. Nothing could be more unjust than such a distinction. If all public servants were to be put upon the same footing with regard to abatements, so ought they also with respect to pensions; and if the Bill of the noble Lord passed, it would be impossible to resist their demand. None of the officers of the Post Office, with the exception of those in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, were entitled to pensions; and, in order to show how much the advantages of the Act of 1834 were appreciated, he might state that only last year the postmasters throughout the country requested to be permitted to purchase pensions by paying abatements; and they had only ceased to urge that demand since the present efforts had commenced to obtain pensions for the civil servants without the payment of any abatement. How were they to be dealt with after the extinction of abatements? The Bill of the noble Lord would not entitle them to pensions. Again, the supplemental clerks, who now formed a large body of public servants, paid no abatements, and bad hitherto been superannuated on a different scale from those who did. The Bill of the noble Lord, by abolishing abatements, would do away with the distinction which now existed between the supplemental clerks and the permanent members of the public service. The Education Board, the Poor-Law Board, and a great number of other public offices not included in the Act of 1834, presented anomalies which must be redressed, but which the Bill of the noble Lord left wholly untouched. That Bill, if passed, would destroy the line of demarcation between those who were and those who were not entitled to pensions. It was proposed that they should then give up a sum of £100,000, without any discrimination, to public servants; but he would answer for it that if that proposal were adopted they would have to add another sum of at least £250,000 for pensions to persons who were not at present entitled to receive them. He would go farther, and express his belief that, under that proposed arrangement they should look forward to an addition to the public expenditure of not less than from £300,000 to £400,000 in the course of the next eight or nine years. Again, had they considered what the effect of the Bill would be with respect to the army? The payments now made to the public service in the shape of superannuation allowances of every kind amounted to the sum of £606,000 a year, whereas the pensions and half-pay for the whole of the officers and privates of the army did not exceed £568,000; so that 16,000 civil servants received a larger amount in pensions than the whole army. At present the difference in the payments to the two services could be defended, because the Civil Service contributed to a superannuation fund, which the army did not; but the moment the abatements were abolished no such defence could be made; and it would then be very difficult to show that those gentlemen whose duties were of a comparatively light character ought to receive a larger amount than the whole of our soldiers. Some hon. Gentlemen were disposed to think that the abatements were no security to the public servants for their pensions. Those who took that view were not acquainted with the fluctuating temper of the House of Commons. Not long ago a proposal was made to the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), and supported by a large minority, to reduce the salaries of the whole public servants by 10 per cent. The Government of the day had great difficulty in resisting that proposition. What, however, was the answer which had enabled them to do so? It was that the Government had made a contract with the civil servants, and that it would be a breach of faith to reduce their salaries. Supposing that the same cold fit were to come over the House with respect to the pension fund, would it not be an advantage to the public servants if they could say that Parliament had entered into a contract with them, that in consequence of that contract they had paid abatements, and that they therefore claimed their pensions as a right, and not as a favour? Under any circumstances, indeed, he did not think the House ought to separate the pensions from the salaries, or to abandon the system of granting superannuation allowances. He believed not only that the existence of such a system created a bond between the Crown and its servants, but that the discontinuance of it would be highly injurious to the public service. It was all very well to talk of discharging public servants when they were unfit for duty, but the thing was simply impossible. In this country, where the Heads of Departments were continually changing, no chief of a department would ever expose himself to the odium of discharging a public servant without some provision. Moreover, a superannuation viewed as a means of promoting the efficiency of the service was, upon the whole, an economical and beneficial arrangement. He could not help thinking, indeed, that the demand for a reduction or a cessation of the abatements would never have been made had it not been for the pressure of the income-tax upon the public servants, to whom that tax assumed a character very different from that which it presented to the rest of the community. Other people paid the income-tax to the collector in the way they paid any other tax; but the public servants paid it in the shape of, and looked upon it as a deduction from their salaries. The pressure was felt by them in an aggravated form. But a great relief had been recently afforded in that respect, and the tax had been reduced by more than one-half in the present year. Another great point should not be overlooked by the House, when they were invited to compare the position of civil servants with that of persons employed in mercantile and banking houses. The rate of salary might be higher in the latter instances, but the civil servant had the great advantage of certainty in his employment, and if he should be discharged from it when unable longer to perform the duties, or if his office ahould be abolished, he would be entitled to a retiring allowance or to compensation. He would also remind the House of the large amount that would become chargeable on the House, and which they must make up their minds to pay, if the Bill of the noble Lord were to be passed. The taxpayers were beginning already to complain that they were called upon to pay large sums for which no corresponding benefit was received. The House must also bear in mind that in deciding upon this question they were not deciding between the civil servants and the Government, for as far as the Government were concerned nothing would be more agreeable to them than to yield to the request of the civil servants. There had been a very large increase in the expenditure lately, and during the last four years the three great revenue departments had imposed an increased expenditure of £260,000 per annum. In fact, he believed that no departments of the public service could complain that their claims had not been fully and generously considered, and that in performing the disagreeable duty of resisting this Bill it was only as a matter of imperative duty towards the public. He had, during many years of his life, been in constant and immediate connection with the civil servants of the Crown, and he was bound to say he did not believe there was a more respectable body of men, or any who performed their duties in a more satisfactory manner. At the same time, he repeated the question was not between them and the Government, but between them and the taxpayers of Great Britain; and it was the duty of the Government to watch the finances of the country and to see that no charge was placed upon the public revenue which was not in their opinion justified by circumstances. He therefore hoped if the House of Commons, judging between their constituents, the taxpayers, and the civil servants, should decide that the latter were inadequately paid, and that therefore they were justified in throwing away £100,000 a year directly, besides some £300,000 or £400,000 a year indirectly, they would be equally willing, when they had forced the Government into a corner, and it became necessary to propose new taxes for meeting that increased expenditure, to support the Government, in adding to the income-tax, or imposing any new tax that might be required to equalise the expenditure and the means of the country. He trusted he had relieved himself from all suspicion of personal feeling in the matter, but he must say that if the Bill were passed the responsibility must rest upon the House of Commons. For himself, he did not believe that any ground of justice, or reason, or public policy, had been shown for the adoption of the Bill of the noble Lord. He believed that Bill would leave untouched the greatest anomalies of the present system, and would introduce fresh anomalies as great as any which it professed to remove. Although, therefore, he felt that the question could not be allowed to remain in its present position, he would ask the House of Commons whether it was—he might almost say—decent that pending an inquiry which bore considerably on that subject they should force upon the Government a large expenditure of public money, without at the same time seeing that they secured the removal of all those evils incident to that question, and settled all the anomalies which the Commissioners had pointed out in their Report. The House was then asked to adopt one single recommendation made by the Commissioners, but they were not asked to make any of the adjustments consequent and contingent on the adoption of that recommendation. He could only repeat, that if the House in its wisdom should think fit to adopt that measure they would carry it, not against the Government, but against those who contributed to the taxation of the country. The Government were bound to defend the rights and interests of the public; but at the same time they admitted that that question could not rest where it was; and upon their part he promised that every attention in their power would be paid by them to the Report of the Commissioners, with a view to a satisfactory settlement on that subject. Under these circumstances, and without any feeling of unfriendliness to the parties whose interests were immediately interested in the matter, he begged leave to move that the Bill be read a second time that day three months.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the question to add the words "upon this day three months."

Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

MR. G. CLIVE

said, he was ready to give the hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Treasury full credit for goodwill towards the civil servants, and at the same time must compliment him upon the ingenuity he had displayed in combating this measure, for while listening to him he had almost forgotten there was any other side to the case, except that which the hon. Gentleman was advocating. There was, however, only one point involved in the discussion, and that was a point of plain justice, for he should leave out of consideration all that the hon. Gentleman had said about the understanding between hon. Members and their constituents, and also the reference he had made to the army, which was entirely unconnected with this subject. The main point was this,—the hon. Gentleman said the revenue would suffer because £306,000 would have to be paid for pensions some years hence; and that even according to the civil servants' own statement, the amount would be only £240,000. There was a fallacy in that statement. The civil servants complained of the injustice that a certain number only of their body, appointed since 1834, paid the deduction, and that they did not receive a quid pro quo for those payments. The hon. Gentleman had stated that all those deductions were swallowed up in the payment of pensions and superannuation allowances, but on one side of the estimate were included the whole of the pensions and superannuation allowances, while on the other side was taken only the amount paid by a portion of the civil servants. If the whole of that body paid alike, the calculation would be correct, but at present the deductions were paid by a small class, while the pensions were open to all.

MR. WILSON

explained that in his statement he had altogether thrown out of consideration all civil servants appointed prior to 1829, and, according to the civil servants' own statement, the charge only referred to those appointed since 1834.

MR. G. CLIVE

said, he would also ask whether the hon. Gentleman meant to say that in the year 1890, which had been referred to, the payments for pensions would amount to a balance of £306,000 against the country?

MR. WILSON

said, according to the statement made by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring), the charge for pensions would be reduced, when all deductions came into operation, by one-third, or, according to the statement of the civil servants themselves, by one-half. In the former case there would be still a charge of £306,000 against the public, and even upon the other statement there would remain a great excess to be paid by the country.

MR. G. CLIVE

said, according to the calculation of Dr. Farre that estimate was unfounded. At present the civil servants appointed since 1829 were paying £70,000 a-year, while they were receiving only £12,000 a year in pensions. They also complained that a large class of public servants escaped entirely and paid nothing in the shape of deductions, but were still entitled to pensions. A man appointed to an office before 1829 might have had his salary going on increasing till it reached £1,500 per annum, and yet receive the full amount of superannuation, though exempted from the payments. The hon. Gentleman said that no other persons were entitled to pensions, but he would ask whether it was not practically true that all persons appointed to permanent offices did receive pensions? And if that was the case, how was it possible to make a distinction between those who paid the deductions and those who did not? The whole question before the House was, as it seemed to him, whether the arrangement originally made with the civil servants was to be considered in the nature of an assurance, or as a matter of salary. If there ever had been a contract in the case, it was such a contract as a superior had no right to make with a servant; and it certainly was pregnant with ambiguity, which ambiguity had never yet been explained. The civil servants had a good right to suppose that if they paid £5 towards an allowance they were entitled to full value for that amount, but it was proved that this they did not receive. He thought the supporters of the Government had a right to complain of the obstructive course taken by Her Majesty's Ministers on this question. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury told them the question could not rest where it was, and on a former occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of the matter as one requiring remedy, and yet no prospect was held out that either in this Session or the next an attempt would be made to introduce a measure on the part of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlisle (Sir J. Graham) at the time the present system was introduced, said expressly that the civil servants were to contribute to insurances, and would receive the whole benefit. He could not say whether he used the word "fund," but he admitted having used the expression as to insurance. Now, if the arrangement was in the nature of an insurance, surely the civil servants had a right to the whole benefit, and the question was whether they had the whole benefit or not. He wished now to ascertain whether the Government would undertake to give them the full benefit, for if so he, for one, would be satisfied. The hon. Gentleman need not trouble himself about the state of public feeling on this question. He believed that the public feeling in this country was in favour of honour and justice, and that it leant very much towards generosity. He did not think they were amenable to the charge of inconsiderate extravagance brought against them by the hon. Gentleman, or to the charge of indecency either. [Mr. WILSON: "not decent."] Well, not decent meant indecency. The Government took credit for its guardianship of the public purse, but it might safely enough leave the House to settle the matter with their constituents. They were inclined to honour and justice and even to generosity in dealing with their servants, but they were not at all inclined to sharp practice.

MR. WEGUELIN

said, that as he had been one of the Commissioners who had inquired into this subject, he hoped the House would allow him to state his views upon some of the points which had been raised in the course of that discussion. Reference had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer on a preceding occasion, and by the hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury that day, to the recommendations of the Commissioners. The House had been told there were so many special recommendations in the Report of the Commissioners that it was desirable to delay till all those recommendations could be included in any measure that was passed. The first of those special recommendations was a new scale of pensions. Now, this new scale of pensions was recommended by the Committee of last year, and the Government were prepared to include it in a Bill of their own. The next special recommendation was an alteration with regard to the age of retirement, and a provision for compulsory retirement. This measure also was in the Bill No. 2 brought forward by the Government last year. The third special recommendation of the Commissioners regarded gratuities to be allowed to public servants. This provision was also in the Bills Nos. 1 and 2 of last year, as was likewise the next, having reference to compensations, which had the recommendation of the Committee. The recommendation of a superior and special scale of pensions for professional and legal officers was also in the Bills Nos. 1 and 2 of last year, as recorded by the Committee. So far, therefore, as the Committee's recommendations were concerned there was no cause for delay, for the Government had already shown that they were prepared to adopt them. The points in the Report of the Commissioners that the Government had not yet agreed to were:—First, that the ordinary scale of pensions should be extended to dockyard officers instead of the scale of fortieths they now enjoyed, and he contended that, notwithstanding what had fallen from the Secretary of the Treasury, the amount affected by this recommendation would be exceedingly trifling. Then there were recommendations respecting the Post Office, and these were of a very modest character indeed. The servants of the Post Office in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, were placed on a footing different from others, and the recommendation of the Commissioners was, that the system of pensions should be revised with the view of placing it on a more uniform principle—the remuneration for services, to consist partly of salaries and partly of superannuation allowances. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury had endeavoured to alarm the House by stating, that if the present Bill were passed a large demand for pensions would be made by the country postmasters. But the fact was, that the practice at present was to give pensions to the greater portion of those persons. The case of the postmasters was one in which a special arrangement should be come to by the Treasury, and which should not be included in any general measure. Then there was the case of the extra clerks, the salaries of whom it was proposed to increase by one-tenth, and consider them fixed clerks in the service. On the whole, he would appeal to the House whether the special recommendations afforded a sufficient cause for deferring an act of justice on this most important subject. With regard to the next point which was made both by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and by the Secretary of the Treasury—namely, the magnitude of the sum wanted—no doubt the House would require very clear explanations upon that. The total sum of the pensions now payable had been stated as amounting to £1,208,264; but on referring to a Return presented to the House of Commons on the 11th of May last, he found that the pensions of the Civil Service amounted to £589,139, and the deductions to £74,212. Now, if that scale of pensions, which included the great majority of pensions in the scale of 1829—which was a very superior scale to that passed by the Act of 1834—if the latter scale had uniformly existed, the amount, instead of being £589,000, would have been £450,000 only. The compensations were not included in that, as they stood on a very different footing. There would be no compensation unless they abolished the salary, and therefore what was lost on one hand was gained on the other by reduction of salary. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury stated the salaries of the civil servants to be £2,426,699, subject, to the deductions under the Act of 1834, and those not subject to deduction, £4,910,612; and it was stated that the officers of the latter class were not entitled to superannuation. But what was the case? In the Report to which ho referred there was an appendix, and page after page was filled by Acts of Parliament giving a title to superannuation pensions to persons who had not paid any deduction. In the first place there were the legal pensions, amounting to £250,000 a year, upon salaries of £914,052; there were no less than forty-two Acts of Parliament to make provision for the declining years of gentlemen in that branch of the Civil Service. In the next place, that £4,910,612 included the wages of all the artificers who received pensions; and since 1834, nearly 4000 such pensions, amounting to £74,000 per annum, had been granted to persons who did not pay deductions. Then there was the case of the police, which the right hon. Gentleman made a very strong point of, and with respect to which, he said the deductions were sufficient to cover the pensions. The fact was, they paid a very small deduction—about 2¼ per cent.—and had very high pensions secured them by Act of Parliament, and therefore they must also be excluded from the category. The diplomatic pensions, again, were large as compared with the salary, their pensions being £25,718 and their salaries £144,360, and with respect to the convict service pensions, notwithstanding the hon. Member for Richmond, when Secretary of the Treasury, had abolished the deductions, there had been no revision of salary. In short, it might be confidently stated that by law and usage there was not a single civil servant who was not entitled to superannuation at present. Where, then, was the ground for saying that only those who paid deduction were entitled to pensions, and that if they broke through the line of demarcation between those who paid deductions and those who did not, they would introduce a vast number of new pensioners in the form of an annual charge upon the country? It was said that the increase of charge would be £250,000 a year; but for his part, he could not conceive that there would be any material increase in the charge. The only officers who did not pay deductions, and who might be said not to be entitled to superannuation, but who, in fact, did receive it, were those appointed to the temporary offices created since 1834, and which were charged with no deduction. But the Treasury, when the Commission was sitting, on the 13th of January last, by a Treasury Minute had given those very officers a title to superannuation—it was true superannuation on a reduced scale—but still a title to superannuation. The hon. Gentleman stated that there was a corresponding deduction, but he had, in fact, by calculating upon a system of life annuities, given them the deduction as well; and they were now laying by whatever deduction they might choose, and yet at the same time became entitled to superannuation, although on a reduced scale. The Commissioners recommended that the superannuation on a scale proportionate to the salary should be paid to the civil servant, and that the salary should not be reduced in proportion to the superannuation. The great difficulty by which this question was surrounded was caused by the inequalities of the Civil Service itself. If they were to reduce the salaries in proportion to the superannuation, the effect of that would be to give a different scale of pensions. They would have one scale for those reduced, and another for those not reduced; and, in short, it would have no other result than to perpetuate and stereotype the anomalies and inequalities which at present existed. The Commissioners also recommended that there should be a revision of the salaries. That of course was an inherent power possessed by the Treasury, who were no doubt always engaged to some extent in the revision of salaries, and that was a power which he apprehended neither the Commissioners nor the House of Commons were desirous to deprive them of. The hon. Gentleman said they would introduce inequalities; not necessarily so, because in some cases they might find the salary too low. It must be always understood that the reduction only took place on a rise of salary, and the recipient of an additional salary could not fairly object to that reduction. As to the sum of money involved, it was stated that the present sum was £75,000 a year, and that there was no doubt that the deductions would amount to £100,000. But in that there was a fallacy, because if they continued to increase the pensions with a reduction of salary, what they would lose on the one hand they would gain on the other. The abolition of abatements simplified the matter, for how was it possible that those engaged in revising the salaries could accurately compare the value of the labour with the salary, unless the conditions on which the salary was fixed were of the simplest form? But if they were on different scales of pension he defied any one to place the fixed salary in a fair proportion. Then he came to the question of contract. He admitted fully that there was a contract existing between the civil servant and the Government. No doubt it was not the intention of the Act of 1834 to create a fund, for he thought it must be admitted that if there was any such intention it would have been specially mentioned in the Act itself. Therefore there was no injustice to the civil servants in insisting on the fulfilment of the contract into which they entered when they came into the service. It might not, indeed, be very generous to do so when they had entered it at a very early period, because the families of those who were anxious to obtain employment for them always assumed that the civil servants of the Crown would be adequately remunerated for their labour. It was true the civil servants had no real cause of complaint as far as strict justice was concerned, but he thought Parliament were bound not only to deal out strict justice but equal justice to all classes of civil servants. As far as the Executive were concerned strict justice had been done, but the civil servants complained, not that injustice had been done under the Act of Parliament, but of the Act of Parliament itself, and wished it altered. He thought that was a fair claim to make, because the Act pressed unfairly on individuals. The noble Lord the Member for the City of London said the other day that he saw no objection in the world, if the civil servants were subjected to a great grievance, why they should not endeavour to get rid of it, nor did he. The right hon. Gentleman stated that it might be viewed as if a tax on the Civil Service was intended to be levied by the Act of 1834. That, however, was worse than a reduction; for taxation should be general, and ought not to be placed upon particular classes, and this was eminently a class taxation. There might, it was true, be certain class taxations, and they were justified in taxing by way of granting licences to particular classes; but that was only in the case of where a person wished to carry on a particular trade under that licence, and the tax in the end fell upon the public. But this was an instance of taxing not a class, but a section of a class; and not only that, but individuals of that particular section. Of 49,000 civil servants only 16,000 were taxed. The gravamen of the complaint was, that by the present system of deductions an enormous inequality was created between one class and the other. Both the highest and the lowest classes were exempt, and the weight of the burden fell upon the middle; the poor clerk subject to the deduction having to bear the weight of the whole of the pensions. Another reason urged for delay was the non-presentation of the Report of the actuaries. He could not understand why that should be urged as a reason. If the abatements had accumulated, and the Government admitted that a fund had been created, the case would be different. But if they said the clerks among themselves had no right to the principle of mutual assurance, he could not tell why they should wait for the Report of the actuaries. The appointment of actuaries necessarily assumed that there was a fund—that the deductions paid by other classes had formed a fund out of which to pay the superannuations. They were then in this dilemma: either there was a fund, which was contrary to the statement of the hon. Gentleman, or if not, then there was no occasion to wait for the Report of the actuaries. He thought the real question for the House of Commons was, as to the policy of continuing these abatements. Everybody, when they came to examine the matter, abandoned them. The Committee appointed to investigate the matter had thrown them over; the Commissioners had given them up; every debate in the House had been conducted on the principle of the abandonment of the system of abatements, and the real question now before the House appeared to him to be, whether or not there ought to be an increase of salary on account of these deductions. That question of salary he admitted the House were incompetent to enter into; it must be left to a Committee of the Treasury. Judging from what he saw around him, he believed that salaries generally were on the increase. He knew they were in commercial concerns; but with respect to that the right hon. Gentleman made a statement which was not exactly in accordance with the fact. He stated that the average salaries at the Bank of England were lower than the average salaries paid to the civil servants. [Mr. WILSON: Not higher officers.] The general average, however, in the Bank was £195 per annum, whereas in the Civil Service it only amounted to £147 [Lord NAAS: £141.] It was very unfair for the hon. Gentlemen to take the salaries of the higher officers only; he (Mr. Weguelin) had included the average of the whole, which was the simplest plan, and he had taken into his account the salaries of the junior clerks and even the porters at the Bank. He would now take the opportunity to make a remark with reference to the statement of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Richmond (Mr. Rich) who addressed the House upon this subject upon a former occasion, and who put into the mouths of the Commissioners several recommendations which had no sort of existence. The hon. Gentleman stated that they had made substantially four recommendations—first, that abatements should cease; secondly, that the abatements should be returned to those who made them—there was no such recommendation made by the Commissioners at all. Thirdly, that the retiring pension should cease, as far as respected certain classes; and fourthly, that a sort of fund should be created, with a view of paying the pensions. There was not the slightest recommendation of the kind. Other propositions were made, which were contrary to the simplest rules of arithmetic. What was the present position of this question? It had been frequently debated in that House, it had been referred to a Select Committee, the Government had brought in two Bills on the subject, and a Commission had been a appointed to inquire into the case. There had been a remarkable coincidence of opinion, and yet the Government were not prepared to act. He must say he did not think the Government occupied a very worthy position. Their position would not even be worthy of a weak Government, and it was certainly unworthy of the enlightened dictatorship under which they lived. The expectations of the civil servants had been raised by the repeated action of Parliament, but only to be disappointed, and he hoped the House would now be prepared to give effect without loss of time to the recommendations of the Commissioners, the main points of which were embodied in the noble Lord's Bill. It was most desirable that their civil servants should be satisfied and contented, for nothing could be more detrimental to the public service than the existence of general discontent, engendered by hopeless poverty or a sense of injustice. He knew from experience in Russia and in other foreign countries, that no greater curse could exist than an underpaid, corrupt, and discontented body of civil servants who preyed on the very vitals of the country. In this country there was no reason to fear corruption among such a class, but if they were not treated with fairness and justice it would not be surprising if a want of Zeal and energy should be apparent in the public service. It was the true economy of this country not to act in a parsimonious spirit towards persons employed in the lower departments of the public service. The question affected the interest of some 16,000 persons, who were waiting with great anxiety for the decision of Parliament, and he appealed to the House, on grounds not only of justice but of policy, to abolish this odious tax, and to settle this question at once and for ever.

SIR FRANCIS BARING

said, he could hardly allow the second reading of this Bill to pass without troubling the House with a few observations. He concurred entirely in the concluding opinions of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that it was of the greatest possible importance that this question should be settled, and settled in a fair, candid, and liberal spirit. But, on the other hand, he objected to the Bill of the noble Lord precisely because it was no settlement whatever of the question. It was his decided opinion, after all the discussion he had heard, that in consequence of the noble Lord's adopting but a small part of the recommendation of the Commissioners, if the Bill passed it would, so far as his experience of a large body of the public servants was concerned—and he meant the lower class—it would give the greatest dissatisfaction. He concurred with the hon. Gentleman, that the question of deductions appeared to be settled; the Government had given up that principle, and the very attentive Committee which had been appointed agreed with the Government on that point. They came to the conclusion, also, that there was no reason for a general increase of salaries by paying back the deductions, but they agreed that a system of deductions was an improper mode of raising a fund, and the Commission endorsed that opinion. An hon. Member who addressed the House upon the last occasion when this subject came before it, talked about the decency of the House of Commons. He (Sir F. Baring) knew that, whether decent or indecent, things that were considered wise two years ago were not considered wise now, and that the recommendations of one of the ablest Committees that ever sat—he alluded to the Finance Committee—were held to be utterly valueless by the Commissioners, and they seemed also to be disregarded by the House. Well, then, he was not sure that what would be considered very liberal and generous this year would be considered proper two or three years hence, if right Hon. Gentlemen found themselves unable to take off the income tax; nor was he sure that if the House, now acting upon strong pressure from without, came to the conclusion of increasing the salaries of the civil servants £5 per cent., they might not come to a vote in exactly the opposite direction at that time when they found the public feeling the other way. He had seen so many changes of opinion in that House that he, for one, should scrupulously guard himself from guaranteeing for ever any decision they might now come to. He agreed with respect to deductions with the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Clive), that although the public servants would have no right to complain of a contract between themselves and the Government, yet it would have been better in the first instance, as a matter of fairness and policy, to have ascertained whether the deductions were too large in proportion to the retiring allowances, and if that were the case, then those deductions should be diminished. He was a member of the Committee referred to, and was very anxious to ascertain whether, in the change made, the public servants paid too much or not, and he was bound to say that he considered that the Committee were quite justified in coming to the conclusion which they arrived at. Dr. Farre himself was asked whether he could form an opinion on that point, and he replied that he had no evidence upon it which he could rely upon, and although he afterwards found some papers on which he thought reliance could be placed, yet he thought it was not extraordinary, that considering the time he had for the preparation of evidence, the Committee should not place implicit reliance upon that which was afterwards obtained in the course of two or three days. The Committee also took the opinion of the two actuaries, and they stated that, with regard to that subject, they had no sufficient data upon which to form any conclusion whatever. His firm impression was, that the public servants were rather inclined to believe, if they were taken at their word and asked if the deduction should be given them and the money taken from the salary, that on the whole the bargain was not such a very bad one. The public had been so deluded, and there had been so little truth stated upon the subject, that, at the risk of being tiresome, he felt called upon to make some observations upon it. He would state one fact to show what sort of stories had been circulated. It had been put forward as a most cruel case that not one out of seventeen who had subscribed to these deductions had received any benefit from them, and a return had been referred to, which, by the way, afforded a good specimen of how these returns were made up. It was supposed to be a return of the number of persons who had died, or otherwise left the service, without having received a pension. It was made out for five years. He had been much struck with the number of officers represented to have left the Civil Service of the Admiralty without pensions. On making some inquiries on the subject he found that most of them were officers in the navy, who had been appointed to places in the dockyards, and then at the end of five years had been superseded or removed and others appointed in their stead. Those officers never paid any superannuation deductions, but notwithstanding that, they appeared in the Return in question as individuals who had been hardly dealt with. For example—an officer at Portsmouth was promoted to Plymouth, and then again, it might be, to Chatham. At each remove he got promotion; but still he appeared in the Return, at each change, as an officer who had retired from his situation without receiving any retiring allowance. Was that a case of hardship to be complained of? In the Return he found 4,687 officers who, under the letter R, had been set down as having retired from the Post Office without any superannuation. No doubt the public supposed that those officers had paid deductions, but that was not so. They did not pay sixpence, and yet they appeared there as persons who had been most cruelly dealt with because they did not receive a retiring allowance. Everybody knew that there were two classes of retiring pensions—one strictly under the Superannuation Act, and the other a retiring allowance on the discontinuance or remodelling of the office. Now, to show how absurd the Return was, he would instance a case. Supposing an office with ten clerks done away with, each of the clerks would receive as compensation a pension fully as much as the Superannuation Act would allow, but not one of them would come strictly within the Superannuation Act; but they would actually appear upon the Return as officers who had paid deductions, but who had received no benefit whatever from them. Such was the foundation of many of the statements which had been laid before the public—statements founded upon the purest fallacy in the world. But the real question was not about deductions, but the second reading of this Bill, and to that he would state his objections. Not only did he object to it because it would be no settlement of the question, but because it would make a large increase in the salaries of the public servants in a manner not required, and at the same time most injudicious. They were going to increase the higher services by £5 per cent., and to increase the salaries of the lower class of civil servants by only 2½ per cent. That arrangement had been entirely kept in the background, because it did not tally with the declamation we heard about the poor public servant. The Bill, therefore, gave advantages to the highest and best-paid class of public servants, which it withheld from the poorer and hardest-working servants. It might be said that the recommendation of the Commissioners went to the extent of increasing the salaries; but, he asked, was it borne out by any really inadequate payment to the public officers? Was it true that the public servants were ill paid? The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Wilson) had told them that, within the last four years, there had been a great increase in the public service; but was that a reason why they should increase the public salaries? Hon. Gentlemen sometimes said that they should be glad to get rid of the number of letters they received from their constituents daily. But, he asked, did they believe that if the public service was so badly remunerated, they would receive such numerous applications to get people into it? In the Admiralty, of late, there had been occasion to employ many extra clerks. They knew very well what the work was, and what the deductions were, and yet there was not one of them but would gladly accept a permanent appointment, and be grateful for it. Sir Charles Trevelyan's Commission said, if the House would throw open the public service to competition, they would have a much better class of persons in it. But, if they did that, would they have any one competing for employment in a service alleged to be so ill-paid? To be told by the Commissioners that the public servants as a body were underpaid, and had been underpaid for a long time, seemed to him perfectly absurd. He agreed with the Commissioners, that there was one class of public servants who were underpaid, but that was a class whom the Commissioners regarded as well off, because they were not caught in the net—viz., the labourers in the dockyards. It had been said, in the course of the discussion, that the labourers in the dockyards received retiring allowances, but paid no deductions. It was quite true they paid no deductions in that way, but they paid them in the shape of lower wages than other men received in the same trade. When they came to the Admiralty and said, "You don't give us what shipwrights and sawyers get in other yards," the answer was, "You cannot have the same wages and retiring allowances besides." He believed that the dockyard labourers understood the working of the system much better than the Commissioners, and that they would be grateful for the boon of being placed upon the same footing as those parties who complained that they were unjustly treated.

MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALD

said, he should not have attempted to address the House if he had thought there was any probability of their coming to a division, but as that was not likely, he wished, as a member of the Committee which sat upon the question two years ago, to offer a few remarks in reference to it. No one could doubt that it would be most agree- able to the Secretary of the Treasury, who had been so long in the service of the Crown, who knew so well the value of the services of the civil servants, and who must feel how much his own reputation was owing, not only to his own industry, but to the industry of the servants in the department over which he presided, to concede the claim of those with whom he was brought into contact. He willingly accepted the issue which the hon. Gentleman himself had raised—whether that claim was founded in justice and equity, or not? It was not put before the House as a breach of contract on the part of the Government, but the civil servants said, "Granted that there has been a contract between ourselves and the Government, and pro tanto that it has been fairly fulfilled; at the same time that contract ab initio was so unjust, so unfair, and so inequitable that we have a claim upon the justice of Parliament to relieve us from a contract into which we ought never to have been invited to enter. Assuming that to be so, there was nothing in the objection of the hon. Gentleman on the score of expense, for in considering whether they could justify to their constituents a vote in favour of the Bill, he was perfectly ready to face the extra expense for the sake of the extra advantage from the increased efficiency of the public service. It was fair that the House should know what it was the noble Lord called upon them to do. It was nothing which the noble Lord had himself originated. It was not the mere claim of the civil servants, urged by a large section of the House, which those hon. Members were prepared to support. They were called upon to give effect to the recommendations of a Commission appointed by the Crown, and appointed under particular circumstances, because it was certainly a peculiar circumstance that the Crown should interpose a Commission to attempt to reverse the Resolutions and recommendations of a Committee; and he was bound to say that he did not think it was treating a Committee of the House with that respect, or attributing to their Report that weight which they ought to possess. Having been a member of the Committee, he wished to correct the Secretary of the Treasury's statement of their proceedings. The amendment of the hon. Member for Richmond (Mr. Rich), which was carried by a majority of one, was an Amendment upon his Resolution, and not upon a Resolution of the noble Lord the Member for Lynn (Lord Stanley). The Resolution was, that the salaries of the civil servants should be revised, but having regard to the scale of superannuation pensions which they were likely to receive, because at that time the Committee had four different scales of compensation before them—the scale received by those who had entered the service before 1829; the scale received by those who had entered since; the scale first proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and the scale which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed in his amended Bill. The hon. Member for Richmond (Mr. Rich) succeeded in carrying an Amendment upon that Resolution, and his Amendment was, that due regard should be had to the amount of the deduction remitted. How did the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the right hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring) interpret those words? Why, that there should be an indiscriminate reduction to the full amount of the deduction remitted. Such, however, was not the meaning which the Committee attached to the term "revision," for they were told by Mr. Bromley, Mr. Stevenson, Sir Charles Trevelyan, and others who had been engaged in a revision of salaries in almost every department of the State, that though the salaries were sometimes reduced they were also sometimes increased. The true principle, in fact, was to deal with each particular case upon its own merits, regard being had to the amount and value of the work done. The Secretary of the Treasury had stated that the contributions now made by the public servants, in the shape of deductions from their salaries, were insufficient. That had really nothing to do with the question before the House; but he could not help saying that the hon. Gentleman had represented the matter most unfairly. His first statement was that the superannuations had greatly increased. Of course they had, and it was possible that for some little time they might continue to increase, because the present was just the period when those who entered the service before 1829, who had paid no deductions, but were entitled to the highest rate of salary, were coming upon the pension list. But the hon. Gentleman had committed what seemed to him another act of injustice, because, when he represented what was the amount now paid in the shape of superannuations, he did not state what proportion was paid to those who contributed to the fund. [Mr. WILSON: I included none but those who contributed to it.] The hon. Gentleman stated that, excluding the compensation for abolished offices, £552,000 was paid in superannuations and pensions, but he did not tell the House that only between £11,000 and £12,000 was given to those who were liable to deductions, although the amount contributed by them was between £60,000 and £70,000 per annum. The hon. Gentleman stated on one side the amount paid for deductions, and then on the other side the whole amount paid for superannuations. But he included in the latter the superannuations paid to those who were never liable to deductions. The claim of the civil servants was simple and powerful, and constituted a claim to justice. They based it chiefly on these two grounds—first, they said that a great many of them were called on to contribute to this fund who never by any ordinary chance could have the slightest benefit from it. The hon. Baronet (Sir F. Baring) referred to returns but did not venture to deny that there were many cases in which those who contributed to the fund could receive no benefit from it. It was only the other day that a member of the Civil Service gave him (Mr. S. FitzGerald) a case which happened in his own family. A civil servant had contributed to the fund for sixteen years, and on his death, which took place last week he left a widow and seven children totally unprovided for, and without the slightest claim either upon the fund or upon the Government. The civil servants felt such a case as that to be very hard. Nothing was more honourable to the middle classes than their desire to assist persons in difficulty, and he was sure that they would condemn a system by which the members of the Civil Service were compelled to contribute to a fund from which, in the long run nine out of every ten would receive no benefit whatever. The next allegation of the civil servants was, that the deduction made their salaries insufficient. The income-tax, coupled with these deductions, pressed most hardly upon them, and their salaries were regulated without any regard to the question of superannuation. [Mr. GLADSTONE: No, no.] The right hon. Gentleman would find, at page 18 in the evidence of Sir C. Trevelyan, this passage:— I have been engaged in more departments of the Civil Service than almost any other person in it; in some they pay the deductions, in other they do not; in regulating the rates of salary we consider what the rates of salary are out of doors, but never whether the deductions are paid or not. What was the consequence of that? Why this: that if one man who did not pay deductions, received £100 a year, another who paid the deductions did not receive £100 a year, but £100 a year minus the deductions. The right hon. Gentleman would say, doubtless, that the difference was made up thus, that one received the pension and the other did not. [The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Hear, hear!] But that is not so. For, in the first place, nine out of ten of those who pay the deductions do not receive, and have no chance of receiving, the retiring pension; and, in the next place, it is admitted, in the late Minute on the subject, that many of those who do not pay the deductions receive retiring allowances. The Minute of January last showed that the anomaly and injustice increased, for the result was that the pensions of those who did not pay the deductions would be larger than the pensions of those who for a long period of years had paid the deductions. Upon these grounds the civil servants had a distinct claim upon the justice of the House. There had been, he would not say a breach of contract, but a mutual misapprehension, by reason of which an unfair and inequitable contract had been entered into. That being so, they had a right to come to Parliament and demand that their case should be dealt with liberally and generously. It was absurd to attempt to influence the House by telling them, as the hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury told them, that the concession of their claim would necessitate the continuance of the income-tax. Ridiculous, to suppose that an increase of expenditure to the amount of £100,000 (which was the limit of their claim) could involve any necessity for a tax amounting to millions. Conceiving, then, that the civil servants had a clear claim to the justice of the House, he should not be deterred by that statement from giving his cordial assent to the second reading of this Bill.

MR. W. WILLIAMS

said, as no Member of that House had a larger number of constituents engaged in the Civil Service than he had, he felt an interest in this measure. It was admitted that the present system of deductions from the salaries of the civil servants was most unjust. Even the Secretary of the Treasury did not deny it. And if the hon. Gentleman or the Chancellor of the Exchequer had come down with a new scheme upon the subject he might have spared the House this long debate. What he (Mr. Williams) desired was, that justice should be done to the civil servants with reference to the amount taken from their salary; but he was not prepared at once to add 5 per cent. to their salaries. He had not understood that this was their claim; but a just appropriation of the portion of income deducted. That was a claim to which he gave his cordial assent, and he was surprised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not assented to it.

MR. RICH

said, he had been represented by the hon. Member for Southampton (Mr. Weguelin) as having stated that the Commissioners recommended that the civil servants should be repaid their deductions. What he stated was, that the recommendation was that they should be remitted. Again, he had put the case thus:—The Secretary of the Treasury received a salary of £2500, from which was taken £125 for this pension-fund; therefore his salary consisted of £2375, plus the amount of his contingent pension; and if the £125 was remitted, then his salary would be equivalent to £2625, being the amount of £2500 plus the £125 as the equivalent for the retiring pension. (Hear!) The House seemed, he said, to fancy that he rose to speak against time, but the more he was interrupted the longer he should be. The hon. Member (Mr. S. FitzGerald), and the noble Lord (Lord Naas) had stated that 11,000 civil servants paid the pensions, and that 30,000 who did not pay them were guaranteed pensions. If that were so there would be certainly a strong ground for the measure; but was it so? Why, of the 30,000 referred to most of them were mere artisans and coast-guard men.

The time being ten minutes to four,

MR. SPEAKER

declared the debate adjourned.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he was desirous that the House should have an opportunity of expressing its deliberate opinion on this measure. On Wednesday next there was one Bill which would not occupy much time, and another, on agricultural statistics, which he understood it was not intended to proceed with this Session. In these circumstances he proposed that the noble Lord (Lord Naas) should fix Wednesday for resuming the debate. If, however, there was any difficulty with regard to Wednesday, he would try to find another morning sitting.

LORD NAAS

said, he had no alternative but to accept this suggestion; he could not, however, help observing that the debate might well have closed that day, if the Government had really desired to come to a decision. The subject had been fully discussed, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had spoken at length upon it. He trusted that on Wednesday there would be a clear understanding that the decision of the question should be arrived at; but if the course taken that day were repeated it would be impossible.

The Debate was then fixed for Wednesday next.