Commons Sitting of 11 May 1857

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1° General Board of Health; Bankruptcy and Insolvency (Ireland); Ecclesiastical Corporations.
2° Transportation.

CONSUMPTION OF SMOKE.

  QUESTION.
  MR. BOWYERwished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether Her Majesty's Government meant to take measures for the enforcement of the law requiring the owners of manufactories in London to consume their own smoke?
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, that during the last six months there had been fifty-four convictions in London for violations of the Act to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred. But these convictions by no means represented the whole of the steps taken by the authorities for the enforcement of the law, because, when the police found that parties were disposed to make the alterations which the Act required, they abstained from taking further measures, and only those cases were prosecuted where the parties, after representation, refused to comply with the provi-
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  sions of the Act; so that much more was done in the way of enforcing the law than appeared from the number of convictions.

  THE POOR LAW—QUESTION.
  MR. WISEasked the right hon. President of the Poor Law Board whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce any measures to revise the laws relating to the settlement and removal of the poor, or to alter the present mode of raising the rates for the relief of the poor, by distributing the charge over a wider and less variable basis, or otherwise? Secondly, if Her Majesty's Government were not prepared to propose early legislation on these subjects, whether the President of the Poor Law Board would assent to the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the practical operation of the laws for the relief of the poor in England and Wales, and to consider the policy and general effect of all the laws relating to settlement, removal, and parochial assessment?
  MR. BOUVERIEsaid, in reply to the first question of his hon. Friend, that it was not the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce any measure relative to the settlement and removal of the poor during the present Session. With respect to the second question of his hon. Friend, he had to state, that the appointment of such a Committee was a matter rather for the consideration of the House than of a Minister of the Crown; and before he could assent to a Motion to that effect, he should like to hear the arguments on which such a Committee was recommended. He would further observe, that of late years extensive inquiries had been made into this question. A few years ago the subject of removal was very minutely inquired into, and the case, as regarded the Irish an Scotch poor, was also investigated with great care and minuteness. Under these circumstances, and as the House would in all probability have to devote a considerable portion of its time during the present Session to the consideration of election petitions, he was not prepared, as at present advised, to agree to the appointment of such a Committee.

PLACES OF PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENT.

  QUESTION.
  MR. BRADYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the

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  Government proposed introducing any measure this Session for the better regulation of places of public entertainment which are open for the most part after twelve o'clock at night?
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he had no intention of introducing such a measure in the course of the present Session.

THE NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERIES.

  QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON, who had presented a petition of the Merchants of St. John's, Newfoundland, praying the House not to assent to give effect to a convention with France, said, he rose to put a question, of which he had given notice, to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies. He had lately seen a statement in the public newspapers to the effect that, in deference to the very strong objections which were entertained by the Colonial Legislature of Newfoundland to the proposed Convention between Her Majesty's Government and the Emperor of the French upon the subject of the Newfoundland fisheries, it was the intention of the Government not to proceed further with that Convention. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether that report was correct; and if so, whether he would have any objection to make a public statement to that effect? and also whether Her Majesty's Government had made any communication to the French Government upon the subject?
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he would state exactly what had taken place in the case; but he wished, first of all, to say, that he felt obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for having asked the question, because he had reason to believe that considerable misapprehension had prevailed in the public mind with respect to what had actually taken place in this matter, and the position in which it at present stood. The right hon. Gentleman was aware that questions of a very complicated and embarrassing nature had arisen between the Governments of England and France with regard to fishery rights of the latter country in the waters of Newfoundland, and that these questions arose out of treaties. The two Governments had for several years attempted to arrive by negotiation at a satisfactory solution of the questions, and the Government of this country had also been in constant communication with the colonial authorities upon the point; but unfor-
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  tunately those communications and negotiations had never led to any satisfactory result. At length an attempt had been made by Her Majesty's Government to arrive at a termination of the difficulty by taking another course; and having had all the facts of the case before them, they had thought the best chance they could have—for it was but a chance—of coming to a resolution that would be satisfactory to the two Governments, was to conclude a convention with France without any previous communication with the colony, while an express stipulation should be inserted in that convention that it should have no effect unless it should be ratified by the colonial legislature. Such a convention had been framed and sent over to Newfoundland; but he was sorry to say, that the result had been that the colony had most unequivocally refused to adopt it, and it had, therefore, of course, become inoperative. Some excitement had undoubtedly prevailed at first in the colony upon the subject from an apprehension that an intention had been formed of over-riding the deliberate opinion of the colonial legislature by the action of the Imperial Parliament. But such an intention had in reality never existed, and that misapprehension having been removed, he was happy to be able to say that by the last accounts he had received from Newfoundland, the Executive Council of the colony had expressed their entire satisfaction with the course which Her Majesty's Government had taken in the matter, and with the respect which had been shown for their constitutional rights and privileges. With regard to the future intentions of the Government, all he could say was, that they would take advantage of any opening which might present a chance of bringing these embarrassing questions to a satisfactory conclusion. On the other hand, however, he would never be a party to any proceeding which could tend to compromise or surrender the rights of the people of Newfoundland, without the full approval and assent of that community, as expressed by their legislature. He had only to add, that it was his intention to lay before the House papers which would show in detail the course which these transactions had taken.

  CHURCH RATES—QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN TRELAWNYsaid, he wished to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether it was the intention

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  of Her Majesty's Ministers to introduce early in the present Session a measure with regard to Church rates.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: I can only repeat the statement which I made on this subject on a former occasion—namely, that Her Majesty's Government have the matter under their consideration, and that we are not without hope of being able in the present Session to introduce a measure which will be satisfactory to the parties concerned. But I cannot give any more definite answer to the question at the present moment.
  SIR JOHN TRELAWNYsaid, he wished to give notice that unless he could get a more satisfactory and definite answer from the noble Lord, he would bring that subject under the consideration of the House in the course of the next month.

  LORDS' COMMISSIONERS' SPEECH— SUPPLY.
  Considered; Motion, "That a Supply be granted to Her Majesty."
  Committee thereupon To-morrow.

  SAVINGS BANKS CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE—RESOLUTION.
  Order of the Day for the House to go into Committee on Savings Banks read.
  House in Committee accordingly.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON VISCOUNT PALMERSTON moved that Mr. FITZROY do take the Chair.
  Motion agreed to, nemine contradicente.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Mr. FitzRoy, I rise for the purpose of moving the formal Resolution of which I have given notice, with a view to introducing in the present Session a Bill which differs in no very material respect from the Bill which I had the honour of submitting to the House in the last Session of Parliament. During the recess that Bill has been submitted to the consideration of the trustees and managers of all the savings banks of the country, and I have had the advantage, since the dissolution of the last Parliament, of numerous communications from their trustees and managers, containing their views upon its probable effect. I rejoice to say, that the great majority are of opinion that the principle of the Bill—namely, the giving a Government guarantee to depositors in savings banks—is beneficial, and ought to be adopted by this House. The principal objection which is made to
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  the measure—and it is one very generally put forward by the trustees and managers—is to a provision which I inserted in the Bill of last Session for limiting the amount of deposits to £100, they think that the amount ought to be left at £200, which is the sum fixed by the existing law. That provision is not necessary in principle to the plan which I had formed, and inasmuch as I have seen that it is very generally objected to, I have had no hesitation in deciding to omit it from the Bill which I hope the House will permit me to introduce this Session. That will be the principal difference between this Bill and the Bill of the last Session. There is, however, a minor point of difference which I may mention. By the 7th clause of the Bill of last Session it was proposed that the price of the funds at which the investments of the Commissioners of Savings Banks are made should be determined by the average of the preceding quarter; whereas I now propose to make it the price of the day on which the investment is made. That is another alteration which has been suggested by the managers and trustees, and I have no difficulty in agreeing to it. With the permission of the Committee I will advert shortly to some other objections which are made to this plan in some quarters. It has been thought that the Bill of last Session imposed an unnecessary amount of restriction on the trustees and managers of these establishments, that it carried too far the principle of centralization, and gave the Government an unnecessary power of interference with the local management of these banks. Inasmuch as the success of the plan which I am about to propose will mainly depend upon the view which the House may take of that part of the question, I am desirous to explain, as briefly as I can, the principles which I have followed in framing the Bill in respect to that portion of the subject. At present the Government is responsible only for the money which is actually remitted by the trustees and lodged in its hands. By the Bill which I am about to introduce, the Government will become responsible for all sums deposited in the banks. That will render the Exchequer of the country liable for a very large sum of money. It will be necessary, therefore, that this House should take care that they do not render the country responsible for the money of the depositors without at the same time taking security against fraud, whereby the money may be intercepted;

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  and thus saddling the Government with responsibility where they have no sufficient control. I will now state the extent of the alterations which I propose in the present system; and first, as regards the amount of the operations under the present system. At the close of the year 1856 there were no less than 1,339,000 depositors in savings banks, to whom there was due a sum of £34,899,000. In the course of the year there were 1,409,000 deposits and 793,000 withdrawals of money. The amount deposited during the year was £7,740,000, in sums averaging £5 2s. 3d. each; the amount withdrawn was £8,020,000, in sums averaging £9 19 s. 4d. each; 221,000 new accounts were opened with a deposit in small sums of £2,155,000; 195,000 accounts were closed, and the sum withdrawn was £3,696,000. These figures will show the Committee the magnitude of the operations conducted by the existing savings' banks, and will convince the House of the necessity, if the Government is to assume the responsibility, not only of the money which may come to its hands in London, but also for all the deposits in the local banks, of taking security for the integrity and care of the local officers. That seems to me to be a cardinal principle in any legislation upon this subject. If upon an examination of the Bill which I shall lay before the House it shall be found that any unnecessary securities are taken, or any needless restrictions are imposed, I shall be quite ready to abandon such provisions; but if, as I believe will be the case, it shall appear that I have taken no superfluous securities, have sought to impose no unnecessary restrictions, I trust that the House will, while conferring this boon upon depositors, support me in guarding the interest of the public. If, on the other hand, it should be found that the local authorities, unwilling to part with their own control or to admit my interference on the part of the Government with their local concerns, seek to prevent the insertion in the Bill of the necessary securities, I fear that there will be only one course left to the Government—namely, to abandon the Bill, leave things in their present position and continue a system by which the depositors are left without any securities beyond the assurance of the local officers to the local authorities; while, at the same time, the Government will be left, as now, irresponsible, except for the amount of money which shall be ac-
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  tually lodged in its hands. I trust, however, that it will be found that the plan I propose is a reasonable plan; that it does not, in fact, impose upon the local authorities any shackles of which they can reasonably complain, and that no securities are demanded on behalf of the public beyond what are absolutely necessary. I propose that the appointment and superintendence of the local officers should remain as at present with the local authorities; all that I ask on the part of the public in that respect is, that the Savings Banks Commissioners shall have power to make general regulations as to the duties of these officers, to fix the amount of security to be taken from them, and to possess a power of removing them from unfitness. Some objections have been made to the conditions, a compliance with which it is thought necessary to exact before a savings bank shall be admitted to the benefits of this Bill. That condition—which appears to me to be simple and at the same time indispensable—is that the bank should prove its solvency, and that can only be satisfactorily demonstrated by the production and examination of the books of the depositors. It is said by some that that condition is one which cannot be complied with, but those who make this objection seem to be ignorant of the state of the law in Ireland. In Ireland depositors are required to produce their books every year, and it is found that very many comply with that requirement, and that in some cases as many as ninety per cent of them annually produce their books. According to the plan which I shall propose for the adoption of the House, this operation will have to be gone through only on the first adoption of the bank by the Government; and I cannot see any sufficient reason for supposing that this condition cannot be complied with. I ought to mention that I propose to add to the Bill of last Session a clause providing that no private individual or company shall establish a bank under the simple title of a savings bank. At present it understood that every bank simply denominated a savings bank is a bank established under the Government authority and under the Savings Bank Acts. The trustees of such banks are irresponsible. But inasmuch as after the passing of this Act Government responsibility will be the rule, it is plain that all new savings banks must come within the meaning of the Act. If, therefore, private companies or private individuals are permitted to establish sav-

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  ings banks without any distinctive title, showing that they are not under the public authority, there will be danger that the poorer classes who resort to these banks may be misled and may suffer losses. I shall, therefore, propose the introduction of a clause to prohibit the assumption of the title of "savings banks" by banks not established under the Savings Banks Acts. The right hon. Gentleman then moved to resolve—
  "That it is expedient to amend the Laws relating to Savings Banks, and to provide for the establishment of Savings Banks with the Security of the Government."
  SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, that when this question was before the last House of Commons upwards of 200 petitions were presented, praying the House would not content itself with merely amending the law, but that they would consolidate it; and as one of the claims put forward by Her Majesty's Government to the confidence of the nation was that it was anxious to improve the state of the law, he trusted that they would in relation to this subject comply with that request. There were already seven statutes upon this subject, out of which they had to pick the law, and if the effect of this Resolution was only to add an eighth to the number it was impossible that any one should understand what were the exact provisions of the law. What the trustees and managers of these institutions desired was, that they should be placed under some clear and intelligible law, in order that they might know what they had to do; any alterations being at the same time made which the House might think desirable for the security of the money in the banks. To the first part of the Resolution he had not the slightest objection—he hoped that the question would be fairly grappled with, and the law amended and settled. But with respect to the second part, which related to the establishment of Government Savings Banks, he thought there would arise considerable discussion. What the savings banks of the United Kingdom would most sturdily resist was any interference on the part of the subordinate functionaries of the National Debt Office. They knew perfectly well that the Commission for the reduction of the National Debt was a mock Commission; that though it contained the names of men high in office, it never met. Those Commissioners never sat, and, in point of fact, the whole of the powers conferred by the
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  statute upon that ex officio Commission were wielded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or by the Comptroller General and subordinate officers of the National Debt Office. The savings banks objected to such powers being so wielded, and he trusted that the Committee would share that objection. What ought to be done was to consolidate the law relating to savings banks, and not, by allowing the powers conferred by the Act to be exercised by a subordinate department, to tease and perplex the trustees and managers of those banks. He was glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman his announcement with regard to the reduction in the amount of deposits. He knew himself that in one Bank, the National Provident, of 16, 142 accounts the average of each account was only 4s. 2d. It was the payment upon the higher class of deposits which enabled the banks to meet the expenditure, upon the lower class; and if the right hon. Gentleman bad persisted in the scheme as regarded the amount of deposit which he first proposed it would have caused great dissatisfaction, and would have compelled many of the smaller banks to close. He would not on the present occasion enter into details, but there was one branch of the subject which he felt bound to bring before the Committee, because he considered that it was of paramount importance as affecting the interests of the State. On the 20th of November, 1855, the amount of money for which the State was liable on account of savings banks was £36, 451, 041; to meet which liability there were securities to the amount of £31, 249, 582; so that at that date there was an actual deficiency of £5,201, 459. Now, he wished to impress upon the Committee the necessity of considering how that deficiency had arisen. The question had been brought forward in another place by a noble Lord (Lord Monteagle) well versed in financial matters; and as the House was now asked to give the Government new powers as regarded savings banks, which he (Sir H. Willoughby) believed would be injurious to the public credit, it would be well for them to consider the real facts. The noble Lord, to whom he alluded, said, that the powers now exercised by the Treasury over the stock of the savings banks could not be used without danger to the public credit; that it was a practice of no occasional occurrence, but was resorted to day by day; that the millions of stock which

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  they sell was disposed of without any pretence of the demands of the savings banks, but solely to facilitate and promote the financial operations of Downing Street; that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer finds his bills or bonds low and unsaleable, he sells out savings banks stock, invests the proceeds in the depreciated bills or bonds, thus making the whole transaction subservient to his own views as Minister: he buys, and thus gives his securities an unnatural and artificial value—he ceases to buy, and the same securities suffer an artificial depression; that in 1855 the stock sold nominally for savings banks amounted to £3,260,000, and the balance between purchase and sales of Exchequer Bills was £3,063,000 [3 Hansard, cxliij. 1190]. A Chancellor of the Exchequer was the last person to whom facilities should be afforded for such gigantic jobbery, and he (Sir H. Willoughby) thought that a system could not be other than a mischievous and inconvenient one under which the Chancellor of the Exchequer might use the money of the savings banks for purposes of State in carrying on operations of finance. In amending the law upon the subject it ought to be considered how such a power had arisen. The original statute affecting savings banks declared that the savings bank money should be treated as a sacred trust, and accumulated upon the principle of compound interest. Subsequent Acts, it was true, gave further powers for the management of that money, but those powers were conferred for the benefit of the depositors alone. He would challenge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to point out any phrase in any Act which gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer the slightest right to use that money in the way in which it had been employed. The powers conferred by those statutes were conferred not upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but upon an ex officio Commission which never met at all. Now, how had the deficiency to which he had referred increased from half a million to five millions and a quarter? Why, stock had been sold at comparatively low prices to buy Exchequer Bills when approaching or actually at a discount. In 1855 the savings banks paid in £500,000 more than they drew out. £3,000,000 of stock were sold to buy bills and bonds. Towards the close of the war prices were low, and a considerable amount of stock was sold in 1855 and 1856, at prices of 86, 87, 88, and 89, at some
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  future period to be re-invested at a higher price; so a constant deterioration of the capital of savings bank stock was going on, and the natural result was a deficiency which somebody would have to pay. There was, however, another palpable absurdity, which was that under the statute 4th George IV., chap. 92, section 50, there was a power given to the delusive Commission to which he had referred, to fund Exchequer bills, and create new 3 per cent, stock. That power had been largely used by Governments preceding the present Government (for he believed the present Government had not so used the power), and an addition of £10,000,000 to £12,000,000 had been made to the National Debt, and the savings of the people had been turned into an engine for the creation of fresh debt, which, when invested, might again be sold to job in bills and bonds without the knowledge of Parliament; and if, in addition to the existing powers the Chancellor of the Exchequer obtained the powers he now sought, the abuse might go on ad infinitum, the National Debt might be doubled, and Parliament and the country exercise no voice in the matter. The law on the subject required amendment and consolidation, and what he desired to see was the savings of the industrious classes carried over to a fund sacred and inviolate. Assuming, then, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not in a position to propose a Bill embracing the whole subject connected with savings banks, he should wish to learn from the right hon. Gentleman whether he had any objection to do that which so many of the managers and trustees of those banks had sought at the hands of the Government—namely, to refer the entire question to the consideration of a Select Committee, Such a course appeared to him (Sir H. Willoughby) to be entirely in unison with common sense, and to be calculated to allay the anxiety of the public, who, from the memorials and petitions which had been presented by the Glasgow, the Exeter, and other ably conducted banks, were apt to imagine that there existed some defect in the system by which such enormous deficiencies had been occasioned. The interest paid to the depositors in savings banks was only £2 18 s. 8d. per cent., and that certainly could not be regarded as so exorbitant a rate of payment as to lead to a deficiency of £5,201,000. The amount now deposited in those banks was £36,500,000, while in the year 1828 it

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  had been only £14,750,000. So vast an increase in the sum lodged in those institutions naturally lent to them a proportionately augmented importance; and he was, upon that account, desirous that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should accede to his suggestion of referring the subject to a Select Committee, with a view to dealing with it, subsequent to the inquiry, by means of a clear and well-defined legislative enactment.
  MR. H. HERBERTsaid, he should not trespass upon the time of the Committee by entering upon the financial considerations connected with the subject under their notice. Taking as he did the greatest interest in the question, he had listened with much pleasure to the speech in which his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer had introduced that subject, and the only portion of it to which he felt at all disposed to object was that in which the right hon. Gentleman had expressed some doubt and hesitation as to the opposition which was likely to be raised against that portion of his proposal by which the proceedings of trustees and managers of savings banks were sought to be controlled: and, indeed, judging from what had fallen from the hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir H. Willoughby) he was afraid that considerable opposition would be raised to that part of the measure. Now, he (Mr. Herbert) should mention some circumstances which, in his opinion, were calculated to induce the Committee to look with favour upon a proposition of that character, and to view with a considerable degree of suspicion any representations which might emanate from the trustees and managers of those institutions. He must at the same time be understood as not wishing to make any attack upon the various gentlemen who occupied that position, and to whom in very many instances the public were greatly indebted for the valuable time they had devoted to their duties, and for the admirable manner in which those duties had been performed. The very fact that so large a proportion of the enormous sum invested in these banks was perfectly safe, showed that they did their duty, and deserved well of their fellows. He felt it, however, to be his duty to remind the Committee that large sums of money had in more than one case been lost—large, he meant, to the depositor, though no doubt, small in proportion to the whole amount invested
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  in savings banks. And why, he would ask, had that come to pass? It had been in consequence of the enactment of a measure which had, in the year 1844, been introduced into that House in favour of trustees and managers. Up to that period persons occupying that position had been held personally responsible for every farthing which might have been deposited in the institutions over which they presided. At length one of them—the St. Alban's bank, he thought—failed—and what was the remedy adopted by the House? Why, a remedy which when he spoke of it before, he had characterized as it deserved—namely, as legislation for the rich man at the expense of the poor man—they absolved the trustees and managers of savings banks from all responsibility. The sums deposited in savings banks had so greatly increased, that the Legislature might justly think, that the trustees and managers could no longer be fairly called upon to be personally responsible:—but, instead of adopting a measure like that now proposed by his right hon. Friend, they introduced a Bill which merely absolved trustees and managers from all responsibility, leaving the Government responsible only for the money actually paid over to it. Well, what had been the results by which that course of legislation had been followed? The Act to which he referred was passed at the end of the Session of 1844 without much discussion, and the first intelligence of its existence which reached the depositors was when, upon the failure of some particular bank, they were informed that the trustees and managers were no longer legally responsible for the money which had been confided to their hands, and then they discovered that all the respectable names which had been paraded before them as security for the amount of their deposits operated in reality as little better than decoys to induce them to lodge their earnings in institutions in which there was no substantial guarantee that they would be safe. When, therefore, the hon. Gentleman opposite threatened a strong opposition to that part of the measure which proposed certain restrictions, which he (Mr. Herbert) considered absolutely necessary in regard to the future management of savings banks, these circumstances, he thought, should induce the House to receive all objections in the interest of the trustees with caution—considering that the Government were about to take upon

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  themselves absolute responsibility in respect of the vast sums now invested in the savings banks throughout the kingdom.
  MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURTsaid, the fact was that the measure to which the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had alluded was passed when the late Mr. Goulburn was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the cause of its enactment had been the difficulty which was experienced in the establishment of savings banks, in consequence of the pecuniary liability which attached to those who filled the offices of managers and trustees of those institutions. Had not some such clause been passed exempting trustees and managers from liability, except in so far as they bound themselves in writing, there would have been no trustees at all, and they must have given up savings banks altogether. The fact that this protection had been given to trustees formed an additional claim by the depositors on the Government, and the force of that claim was admitted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, instead of proposing to protect the rich at the expense of the poor, boldly proposed to come forward and take upon the Government of the country that responsibility to which for many years it had been almost universally supposed they were liable. His hon. Friend near him (Sir H. Willoughby) had made a most plausible suggestion, that the Bill about to be introduced should not be added to the Acts of Parliament upon the subject of savings banks which were already in existence, and that no legislation should take place unless the whole of the Acts should be consolidated; and that, in order the more effectually to carry out these views, the whole question should be referred to a Select Committee. Now, he should have been disposed to concur in the proposal of his hon. Friend were it not for the particular nature of the Bill, the merits of which they were engaged in discussing. It was not a Bill by which it was sought to introduce any fresh provisions into the statutes in connection with savings banks already in existence. It was a Bill by which it was proposed to establish a new and distinct system of savings banks; and it was therefore necessary, if the measure were to pass into a law, that they should have one or two years' experience of the mode in which the system acted. Eventually he quite agreed with his hon. Friend that all the statutes relating to these insti-
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  tuitions would have to be repealed and the law consolidated, so that any man might turn to one particular statute as containing the code, under the security of which his little savings had been invested. He knew no more of the particular provisions of the Bill that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to introduce than his hon. Friend. But the right hon. Gentleman had told them that the provisions were similar to those laid on the table last Session with a few alterations. One of those alterations he was sorry to hear. Every hon. Gentleman in the House would, he feared, be against him in this respect, but he confessed that he was sorry to hear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was about to remove from his new Bill that clause which restricted the maximum amount of deposit to £100. As it seemed to him, full provision was made in the former Bill to extend the amount of deposit by any individual, not only to £150, but indefinitely to as large a sum as he chose, by means of the clauses relating to investments. He did not, indeed, think that the withdrawal of that clause would affect the interest of the depositors, but it would leave a larger amount of liability on the part of the Government. His hon. Friend (Sir H. Willoughby) said that of the £36,000,000 of money of the savings banks in the hands of the Government only £31,000,000 could be repaid if the demands were all made at one time. This difference between the amount received by the Government and the amount of stock to the credit of the savings banks was to be accounted for, as he understood, by the fact that the Government undertook to return £100 for every £100 paid in, whatever might be the state of the funds at the time the demand was made upon it. If, therefore, it so happened that the funds sunk 10 per cent after a deposit of £100 had been received and invested in stock, instead of there being £100 to answer the demand that might be made upon the Government, only £90 would be realized on selling out. His hon. Friend (Sir H. Willoughby) thought this Bill would withdraw the power from the managers and trustees of savings banks and concentrate it in the functionaries of the National Debt Office. But when it was remembered that a new principle was to be established, the basis of which was that the Government undertook to be responsible for the repayment of every farthing actually deposited in any savings

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  bank, it must be allowed that to justify it in incurring such a risk it ought to be armed with stringent powers enabling it at any moment to suspend and even to remove any officer against whom there was reasonable ground of suspicion. There were upwards of 500 separate banks, with different officers and under different bodies of trustees; and it was therefore just and necessary that the Government should be authorized to stop the whole proceedings of any bank established under this Bill, and to take possession of all the papers and other documents in the custody of the actuary, should circumstances seem to warrant such an extreme step. In whoso hands would his hon. Friend place such a power? He (Mr. Estcourt) had for years held communications, in what he might almost call a public capacity, with Sir Alexander Spearman and Mr. Tidd Pratt, the Comptroller and consulting barrister of the National Debt Office, and he felt convinced that those gentlemen would exercise any powers which might be intrusted to them, not only with integrity, but with discretion and moderation. Sir Alexander Spearman was an old public servant of unblemished reputation, who had greater experience of these matters than probably any other man in the kingdom; and it was impossible to suppose that he could desire gratuitously to act in hostility to the feeling of the local managers and trustees of savings banks. For himself, as a manager of a savings bank, he (Mr. Estcourt) thought his position would be infinitely improved by this Bill. He had never yet attended a meeting in that capacity without feeling how insufficient were the means he had of knowing whether the actuary had bonâ fide carried to the ledger every farthing that had been deposited in the bank. Everybody acquainted with savings banks knew that such a check was next to impossible. His poor neighbours went to the bank with their small savings because they saw his name down as one of the trustees; they knew nothing of the government; they regarded his name and the names of other trustees as guarantees for the security of their money. Yet the fact of his name appearing as a trustee did not make him responsible for a single farthing. If this Bill passed, however, he (Mr. Estcourt) would know that for every shilling deposited there was the security of the Government, and he would therefore attend the meetings with very different feelings than he had hitherto
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  done. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had happily re-introduced his Bill of last Session, with certain alterations, most of which were improvements. There was one point on which he wished to offer a suggestion. The conditions upon which the existing banks were to come under the benefit of the provisions of this measure would necessarily be left to the discretion of the National Debt Office. He did not ask the right hon. Gentleman to lay those conditions on the table with a view to their receiving in any way such a sanction as an Act of Parliament would confer. But, as he believed, the only essential condition that need be required of any existing bank which might wish to come under the operation of the Bill should be that it is in a solvent state when it received the security of the Government, it would be satisfactory if the right hon. Gentleman, without pledging the Government to follow any precise conditions, would furnish the House with a general outline of the stipulations on which he meant to insist. In conclusion, he heartily hoped that this measure would be passed into law, because, as he understood its principle, it would give to the poor depositor the security of the Government upon the easiest terms, and would cause the smallest interference with existing management that was compatible with the liability undertaken by the State.
  VISCOUNT GODERICHconcurred with the hon. Member for Evesham (Sir H. Willoughby) in requesting the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give his best consideration to the proposal for referring this Bill to a Select Committee. It was not alone with a view to the consolidation of the law relating to savings banks that such a reference was desirable, but with a view to ascertain what were the provisions best adapted to carry out the intentions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A new principle was to be introduced which met with his cordial approval, but the subject was a difficult and delicate one. The Government wished to encourage the labouring classes to place their savings in these banks; now, these classes were extremely susceptible, and it was necessary that the greatest respect should be paid to their feelings and even to their prejudices. They had also to deal with the directors and trustees of these banks, a body of gentlemen to whom, notwithstanding what had fallen from the hon. Member for Kerry (Mr. H. Herbert), the country was under great

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  obligation for their voluntary and disinterested services, and whose views were entitled to consideration. The managers and trustees of savings banks in Yorkshire, and, he believed, also, in Lancashire, were most anxious for an inquiry into this subject. The right hon. Gentleman would not be pledged to adopt the views of those gentlemen; all that was requisite was that they should have an opportunity of expressing their opinions and of bringing to his aid the results of their experience. There were several other points beyond those which had been adverted to which in their opinion required consideration, and, as the House was about to legislate on the subject, surely it would be desirable to remedy any defects in the existing law which those persons could point out. They were of opinion, for example, that power should be given to invest the funds of savings banks in other securities than those in which at present they could alone be invested—securities which, being equally safe with those where the money was now placed, would afford the inducement of a higher rate of interest, a matter which was of the utmost importance to the working classes at a time when there were so many other institutions, having no security at all, which offered the attractions of a higher interest. He thought that the views of the trustees and managers were entitled to consideration; and although the Session would be a short one he saw no reason why the Bill should not be referred to a Select Committee, and yet become law in the course of the present year.
  MR. T. BARINGsaid, he was inclined to support the Select Committee. So far as he had ascertained the feelings of the managers of savings banks, he did not believe that they objected to any salutary check or control which could be imposed; they had no objection to anything that was reasonable, but they wished the checks to be defined. What they objected to was that there should be a power lodged in any officer of the Government to impose checks at any particular time, with any particular object, and to any particular extent, at his discretion. If the checks were reasonable and defined, there would be, he believed, no opposition; but there would be an objection if power were lodged with the Comptroller of the National Debt to impose checks according to his good pleasure. He (Mr. Baring) had the honour to be acquainted with Sir Alexander Spearman, and he had no doubt that any checks which
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  that gentleman imposed would be perfectly reasonable; but the objection was to the principle of placing that power in the hands of any particular individual. With respect to extending the amount of deposits, he presumed that the object of the House and of the Government was to make these public institutions as useful as possible; but he feared, if the amount were limited to the smaller sum originally proposed, that there would not be sufficient income to defray the cost of management, and he believed that it would be impracticable to carry on the system of savings banks in this country if the amount of the deposits were limited to a very small sum. It was of the utmost importance in institutions of this sort that the depositors should feel that the country was responsible to them for every penny deposited, and they should be enabled to withdraw their money at any time. His hon. Friend the Member for Evesham had alluded to a question which was not altogether connected with this Bill, but which, nevertheless, was a very serious one—namely, whether there should continue to be lodged in the Chancellor of the Exchequer the power of playing with the funds of the depositors in savings banks in a manner which might not be beneficial to those funds considered per se, but which might be considered beneficial or necessary to his own financial projects. He thought that that was a very important question, which ought to be considered.
  MR. SLANEYsaid, he was satisfied that affording a Government security to the depositors in savings banks would prove a great boon to the working classes; and, having been chairman of the Committee which sat last Session upon the investments of the working classes, he knew how earnest their desire was for some such security as the present Bill afforded. Instead of regretting that the right hon. Gentleman had increased the sum which depositors might place in savings banks, he wished that he had extended it even to £500, because he was sure that not only the humbler, but the middle classes also, would gladly avail themselves of these institutions if they could do so. He thought it possible to devise some mode by which, when the deposit amounted to £200, it might be invested in Government securities, and the exact amount deposited paid back when required. He sincerely trusted that the Bill would pass in the present Session; but, if it would not

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  jeopardize its doing so, he should feel inclined to support the proposition for referring it to a Select Committee.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he was sure that there could be no difference of opinion upon this, that it would be a great boon to depositors to have Government security for every shilling they paid over the counter into the bank; but the difficulty that seemed to arise was, that the Government proposed to set up a great number of new banks. In fact, they would be all new banks under this Bill. And what steps were the Government to take to bring into uniform action with the new ones those 500 old banks in which there was £36,000,000 already deposited? That was the great practical question. The Government were setting up new banks, for they made what conditions they pleased, and appointed what officers they pleased. When he read the Bill last Session, it appeared to him that it was the intention of the Government absolutely to put an end to and do away with all the old banks. What did the Bill say? It said this, that these old banks might come into union with the new banks—or rather be placed on the same status as the new banks;—but on what conditions? On such conditions as might be imposed. Therefore these banks were to come into union without knowing what conditions were to be made. They had had one of the conditions stated that night; and what was it? They could come into union on their solvency being ascertained—a very proper condition; but the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that the solvency could not be ascertained unless they had every deposit book produced—and in this he (Mr. Henley) agreed with him—for unless they knew the position of the books of the depositors they could not tell what the real claims were, for the ledgers might be falsified. The right hon. Gentleman said that these old banks should not come into the new order of things unless every depositor's book was produced; but he believed that almost every savings bank had a rule that depositors' books should be produced yearly under penalty of the interest ceasing; yet everybody who knew anything of the working of savings banks knew that you could not get the books in; and if the books did not come in, the old banks would be shut out from the advantages of this Act. What would be the effect when the new banks were established? Paragraphs would appear in the papers saying that the Govern-
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  ment security was with one bank and not with another, and there would be an immediate run upon the old banks, because every depositor would, of course, desire to have the Government security. There were £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 paid into the savings banks in a year, and surely it was not a subject unworthy of the attention of the House of Commons, to inquire what would be the particular conditions under which existing banks should come into the new system. He believed that there was no difference of opinion at all that adequate security should be taken by the Government from every bank that desired to come under the operation of the Bill; but it was most reasonable to ask the Government what was the nature of the security to be given, and what were the conditions to be observed? The hon. Member for Wiltshire (Mr. Estcourt) would be content with having the conditions upon the table of the House; but he (Mr. Henley) would rather see them in the Bill, that they might have the opportunity of discussing them. The country had had some experience of a Government official's interference in the affairs of savings banks. The hon. Member for Kerry (who had something to do with savings bank defalcations on the other side of the water) had given the House a lecture about a defalcation at St. Alban's; but he (Mr. H. Herbert) surely could not have forgotten that a Government official was sent to Ireland to inspect the affairs of an Irish savings bank, and that that official's advice (although the bank was insolvent) was "Go on; things will mend." That official was sent over by a tolerably cautious Government—namely, that of the late Sir Robert Peel. But what was the consequence? Things went on from bad to worse. There was a continued ebb, and there was a great resemblance between the conduct of the managers of that savings bank and of those of the Royal British Bank. Finally, he believed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day paid the depositors 10 s. or 15 s. in the pound. He thought that they had better have the regulations on the table before them. As to the deposit books, he repeated that they never could be got in, for the depositors put their money in the bank, and then went to all parts of the world. That part of the plan he felt persuaded that the Chancellor of the Exchequer must at all events reconsider. He thought that he would facilitate the pass-

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  ing of this Bill if he sent it to a Select Committee on the question of the conditions on which the old banks were to come in. Of course it would be absolute madness on the part of the Government to make themselves responsible for deposits in cases in which they had not previously exacted proper security; but he believed that the question as to what should be the nature of that security could be best discussed by the Members of that House, whose varied information would be more valuable than that of any single or half-dozen right hon. Gentlemen out of the House. A very important question had been touched on during this discussion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated the great difference that existed between the present funds in the hands of the Government and the amount of their liabilities to the savings banks; but he did not therefore think it was desirable to limit the amount to be deposited. How far it might be wise or not it was not now the time to discuss, but the hon. Member for Wiltshire (Mr. S. Estcourt) had expressed his opinion that all this discrepancy arose from money being paid into the savings banks when the funds are high, and taken out when the funds are low; but, however, they had positive evidence that the market had on more than one occasion been "rigged" by Chancellors of the Exchequer, by dealing with the securities of the savings banks, and when this had been done to a not very limited extent, he thought that it was a question which seriously demanded the attention of the House. They all knew that the Chancellors of the Exchequer had been utterly incapable of using any such powers for any purposes other than what they considered the public interest; but it was not sufficient that they did right; they should be placed in circumstances that people who had not good means of judging would come to a certain conclusion that the Chancellors of the Exchequer did not do wrong. The extensive operations that had taken place in managing those securities did give ground for the supposition, that it had been done to suit some financial scheme of the Government. He thought that it would be a great advantage if this was looked into. He thought that this was a measure that the country had long looked for. Savings bank depositors believed that they had the security of the Government, but the fact was that they had it only in respect of funds deposited with the Government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
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  now proposed to give that security fully, and it was a matter that ought to be well discussed and considered. The hon. Member for Kerry (Mr. H. Herbert) had overstated the alteration in the law consequent upon the failure in 1844, for he believed that the best legal opinion was, that trustrees before then could not be fixed with responsibility unless they could be proved to be personally in fault.
  MR. H. HERBERTsaid, he rose to explain. The right hon. Gentleman had said that his statement as to the effect of the Act of 1844 was incorrect. In one bank that had failed with which he (Mr. Herbert) was acquainted, Mr. Tidd Pratt had been called upon to adjudicate between the trustees and depositors. Mr. Pratt, instead of dividing the available assets equally between all the depositors, had awarded 20 s. in the pound to those who had deposited previous to August, 1844, leaving only a small balance for those who had deposited money since that period. This he did on the grounds that the Act of 1844 had absolved the trustees from all responsibility. As Mr. Pratt had stated in public that he had consulted the law officers of the Crown before he made these awards, he (Mr. Herbert) thought he was justified in his complaint as to the unfairness of the present law.
  MR. CROSSLEYsaid, he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would accede to the suggestion which had been made to him, and would refer the whole subject to the consideration of a Select Committee. For several years past there had existed a state of unprecedented prosperity, and yet he believed there had not been a single additional savings bank established; and even, taking the last seven years, more money had been withdrawn from the existing banks than had been deposited with them. These facts showed that some alteration was required in the law which regulated these institutions, and which he did not think the Bill introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the last Parliament was calculated to effect. There never was among the working classes a greater desire to save money than at present; but the fact was, that throughout the country they found a hundred places of temptation to spend their money, for one where they were invited to save it. He knew of large districts of 10,000 or 15,000 inhabitants, where there was not a single savings bank; they were all placed in the large

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  towns; and even in those cases, they were very frequently open only on one day in the week, and then at hours when it was most inconvenient for the working classes to attend. He was glad to find that the right hon. Gentleman had resolved to give to the money deposited in these banks the important advantage of a Government guarantee; for he thought that the working classes had a right to expect that their hard-earned savings, when deposited in institutions of this kind, should be perfectly safe. One great complaint he had to make against the management of these institutions was, that the money lodged was not invested to the best account. The Commissioners of the National Debt of course had no interest in laying it out to the best advantage. At any rate, the money should not be used in jobbing in various descriptions of stock, as had been described by the hon. Member for Evesham (Sir H. Willoughby). What he should suggest was, that the managers of the savings banks money should invest one-half—say £18,000,000—on good mortgage security, which, at 4 per cent, would produce an interest over the rate of the funds amounting to £135,000 per annum, which would serve the double purpose of forming an ample reserve fund to provide against any loss that might by possibility arise out of that mode of investment, and would also afford a better rate of interest to be paid to the depositors.
  MR. FAGANsaid, he thought that the objections of the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) were not well grounded; for the law at present was, that the depositors should produce their books once a year; and, surely, if the country were to be made liable for the solvency of savings banks it was but natural to entrust the Government with some control over them. He thought the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer a very wise one, for he believed that the knowledge that the depositors had the security of Government would go far to increase the desire of saving, and thus stimulate habits of frugality. He believed he spoke the sentiments of those whom he had the honour to represent, who were much interested in this measure, when he said that the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman had his entire approbation. His only regret was, that the limit of deposits was not extended to £500.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I have heard with much satisfaction that the Bill which I seek to introduce has met with the approbation of various Gentlemen well acquainted with the subject who have spoken on both sides of the House; and I may refer with peculiar pleasure to the opinion expressed by the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Sotheron Estcourt), who is known to have devoted great attention not only to this subject, but to the kindred one of friendly societies, and who, therefore, speaks upon a question of this description with peculiar weight and authority. I am sorry that he does not altogether approve of reducing the limit to £100; but I accept with gratitude the general approbation he has expressed of the measure which I have described. The objections made to the proposal have been of two kinds—one of a strictly practical and pertinent nature, while another set of objections seems to me (though it bears unquestionably on the subject of savings banks) to have very little reference to the measure which I ask leave to introduce. The more important and practical objections are, as is often the case, those made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley). He seems to me to have laid hold of the practical considerations upon which the fate of this Bill must mainly turn. It is quite true that my object in proposing this measure has not been so much to introduce any new class of savings banks as to suggest means by which existing banks may be brought within the benefit of the Government guarantee; and their admission to that benefit must depend upon the conditions prescribed to their directors. In that view I entirely concur with the right hon. Gentleman, and he is quite entitled to ask what these conditions are to be. He makes a perfectly fair demand when he asks that the House should be informed of these conditions, or even, if possible, that they should be engrafted upon the Bill. On considering, however, the great variety of circumstances which distinguish the different savings banks, I found a difficulty in laying down any imperative rule in the Bill. My object rather has been to avoid those unnecessary restrictions which the inflexible words of an Act of Parliament might enforce, and to leave a reasonable discretion in the Executive authorities in applying the measure to existing banks. That was my object, and it was certainly not to

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  exercise any arbitrary and unnecessary power in this matter. I may state, in general terms, that the only condition which I seek to enforce is, that the Government shall be satisfied of the solvency of the banks. Then the question arises, how is that solvency to be determined? No doubt, the most complete and most conclusive means of ascertaining the solvency is to obtain all the books of the depositors. The right hon. Member says that that is an impossible condition; and if it were so, as lex non cogit ad impossibilia, it would not be right that such a condition should be attempted to be enforced. But why is it impossible to obtain the production of the depositors' books? If it be possible to obtain a very large proportion of them—ninety-five per cent, for instance—I contend that that ought to be sufficient security. In Ireland the law has required for some few years back the production of the depositors' books. In the first year out of 21,000 books forty-six per cent were brought to be examined, or not one-half; and in the last year, out of 39,000 books there had been brought in seventy-two per cent, or nearly three-fourths. In 1855 one bank got in ninety-four per cent of the whole of the books, another eighty-three per cent, another seventy-eight per cent, and another ninety-nine per cent. These might be extraordary cases, but I have stated the result of actual experience, and under the circumstances it is for the House to say whether it is an unreasonable and impossible condition to require, at all events, the production of a considerable proportion of the books. I will attempt, before the second reading, to put in as distinct a form as I can the conditions which I think it necessary should be complied with in order that a bank might have the benefit of the proposed Act, and on the sufficiency of those conditions the further progress of this Bill in the present Session must mainly turn. I now come to the other main practical proposal which has been made—namely, that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee. It seems to me that the effect of the adoption of that proposal would be really to shelve the Bill for the Session. If the Bill were referred to a Select Committee, and if power were given to the Committee to examine actuaries, members of savings banks, and take other evidence on the subject, I ask whether hon. Members think there would be the slightest prospect of passing the measure during
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  the present Session? Therefore, if hon. Gentlemen really wish to reject this Bill, let them resort to the direct and fair course of moving on the second reading that it be read that day six months, but let them not attempt to get rid of it by the indirect means of moving that it be referred to a Select Committee. Besides the practical objections I have referred to, other objections which do not apply to this measure particularly, but affect generally the question of savings banks, have been raised by the hon. Member for Evesham (Sir H. Willoughby). The hon. Member first proposes not to amend the law until the existing Acts shall be completely consolidated. I for one fully agree with the hon. Member, that it is desirable to have a consolidation of the existing Acts; but that question is wholly independent of the measure I seek to introduce, which introduces new provisions, but does not alter the existing law; for the last clause provides that all the provisions of the Acts now in force relating to savings banks, as to matters for which no other provision is made by this Act, shall be deemed, as far as the same are not repugnant to or inconsistent with this Act, applicable to any savings bank established under this Act. It may be expedient, after further experience, to consolidate the whole law on this subject into one Statute; but that is a matter wholly independent of the measure now under the consideration of the House. The hon. Member also made some remarks on the Board by which the affairs of the savings banks are administered; but the objections he urged apply just as much to the existing law as to the law modified as proposed by the Bill about to be introduced. They are of a general nature, and have no special reference to the contemplated modifications of the law. The hon. Member says that the present system is a fiction and delusion; that there are Members of the Board who never attend, and that there is no security for the proper administration of the affairs of the savings banks. Now, let me call the attention of the House to the present state of the law. By Acts passed as far back as the time of Mr. Pitt, certain powers were given to Commissioners for the reduction of the National Debt, and, as often is the case with matters of that description, a Board was created with one active and responsible Member, and other nominal Members placed in connection with him to form the Board. The really responsible Mem-

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  ber of the Board for the Reduction of the National Debt, to which Board by subsequent Acts the management of the savings banks was entrusted, is the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being. In the same Commission there are named certain other officers of State, such as the Master of the Rolls, the Speaker of this House, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and others, with whom are associated the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. At no time has any one of those persons, with the exception of the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank, who attend the quarterly meetings of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, been called on to take an active part in the duties imposed on the Commissioners. In like manner the actually responsible member of the Board of Control, which is formed in a similar manner, is the President,—other official members being associated with him, but not being in the habit of attending to the business. The same practice exists with respect to the Board of Trade, and with respect to some other Boards; and, therefore, there is nothing unusual in the course taken in the case referred to by the hon. Member. In respect both to the duties of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt and to the savings banks, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being is the officer responsible to this House, and he has associated with him the Comptroller of the savings banks, who has the general superintendence of the officers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, is the head of the Board directly responsible to Parliament. Therefore, having considered the remarks made by the hon. Member in a former Session, I have not, looking to the precedent of other Boards, and considering that no practical; inconvenience has arisen from the present: system, deemed it my duty to propose any alteration of the existing law in that respect. The hon. Member next called attention to a matter which he said was urgent and of serious importance—namely, the loss which has accrued to the Government for a series of years by the management of the funds of the savings banks. It is undoubtedly true as a matter of account that there is a certain sum in which the Government stands debtor to the depositors in the savings banks; and if we could suppose that on one given day all the numerous depositors were to draw out their money the Government would endure
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  a loss; but, unless we suppose such an improbable event, the deficiency of the Government is a mere matter of account or a theoretical question, having no practical bearing on the affairs of the savings banks. My hon. Friend seemed to assume that some loss has been incurred by depositors in consequence of the present state of things. He must be aware that that is not the case. No depositor ever fails to obtain the full amount of his deposit with the interest due to him, and whatever loss could by possibility grow out of the present system could only be incurred in the event of the whole affairs of the savings banks being wound up and a deficiency being established against the Government. My hon. Friend also stated that there was an improper varying of securities, or, as another hon. Member described it, a power in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer" of playing with the funds," and he thought some restriction ought to be imposed on the power now exercised of varying the securities. I can only say, as far as I am myself concerned, that I have not on any occasion exercised the power of funding Exchequer bills, though that power certainly exists by law, and I really cannot see any valid objection to its exercise under certain circumstances: Exchequer bills are just as much Government debt as Three per Cent Consols. The annual vote in supply for paying off Exchequer bills has now become nothing more than a fiction, for the Exchequer bills are renewed with perfect regularity, they have become part of the permanent debt of the country; and, as far as I can see, no valid objection can be raised to the conversion of that portion of the unfunded debt in the hands of the savings banks Commissioners in the form of Exchequer bills into Three per Cent Consols. If the House think fit to impose any restrictions which do not now exist, they must remember that they will deprive the Executive Government of the power of sustaining, on certain occasions, the value of the Government securities, and of preventing depreciations injurious to the public. I confess I can hardly believe it possible—and I do not think the right hon. Gentleman who alluded to the subject intended to make such an imputation—that any Chancellor of the Exchequer would use such a power for personal objects. The House must consider, however, whether upon the whole they think it desirable to deprive the Chancellor of the Exchequer of a power which can be

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  used for the benefit of the public, because, in a possible case, he might use it for his own personal objects; but if Parliament think fit to impose closer restrictions than now exist with respect to the use of savings banks money, they must remember that the Government for the time-being cannot be blamed if they do not make the best bargain for the public with regard to the investment of that money. The two objects are inconsistent with each other. You cannot have the money used to the best advantage and at the same time tie up the hands of the Government by restrictive regulations. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Henley) said, in alluding to the case of the Cuffe Street savings bank, that he could not draw a very favourable augury with respect to the superintendence of Government officers when he remembered that Mr. Tidd Pratt, having investigated the affairs of that bank, after discovering that it was in a tottering state, advised the conductors to go on, and that in a short time after the bank failed. The right hon. Gentleman's statement is quite correct, with the exception of one important fact which he has omitted to mention—namely, that Mr. Tidd Pratt advised the conductors to go on, provided they adopted a certain course which he indicated; but they acted only upon one part of his advice, and, unfortunately, did not comply with the other. They kept the bank open, but they did not adopt the course which Mr. Tidd Pratt recommended. I trust the Committee will now agree to the Resolution, in order that I may found upon it a Bill which I shall hereafter introduce.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made one very startling declaration which he could not refrain from noticing—namely, that the whole of the savings bank money might be jobbed away by the Government to sustain the price of Exchequer bills, or for any other purpose, and yet, that the depositors in savings banks would not lose anything, and the public would not lose anything, unless the whole of the money were asked for at the same moment. That was equivalent to saying, that unless all the money were required at one time there was no loss. But, if such a contingency did occur, the public would have to provide the amount in some way or other.
  SIR H. WILLOUGHBYsaid, he would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Act constituting the Commission for the
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  reduction of the National Debt, provided, that to constitute a Board there should be "a quorum of three;" and he should like to know how the Chancellor of the Exchequer could consider himself "a quorum of three." If there was any Gentleman to whom he would be willing to commit the uncontrolled command of £34,000,000 it was the present Chancellor of the Exchequer; but, for his own part, he would not trust any man in the United Kingdom with unlimited power over such a sum. Assuming that 600 Government savings banks should be established, he would ask the Committee whether they thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the proper person to be intrusted with the mangement of those banks? If any financial difficulty occurred the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the person who most wanted to lay hold of money, and therefore he (Sir H. Willoughby) thought he was the last person to whom a power of this kind ought to be given. The conduct of the functionaries of the National Debt Office with regard to the Cuffe Street bank induced him to object to the control of savings banks being intrusted to them. From 1833 to 1847 they recorded a deficiency in that bank commencing with £3,371 rising to £32,922 in 1847, and which was ascertained to be nearly £60,000 when the accounts were examined, while the assets were only £90; and yet they allowed the bank to be kept open, and to receive deposits, although the law enabled them to close the accounts of the bank. When the question was discussed in Committee, whether that was the fitting department to control savings banks he would mention some other instances of a similar nature.
  Motion agreed to.
  Resolved, "That it is expedient to amend the laws relating to Savings Banks, and to provide for the establishment of Savings Banks with the security of Government."
  Resolution to be reported To-morrow.
  House resumed.

TRANSPORTATION AND PENAL SERVITUDE BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the second reading of the Bill read.
  SIR GEORGE GREY: Sir, it will not be necessary, in asking the House to read this Bill a second time, that I should repeat the statements and arguments which

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  I addressed to the House in February, when I moved for leave to introduce a similar Bill, but it is only respectful to the House that I should describe very briefly the provisions and objects of this measure. It is hardly necessary that I should recall to the recollection of the House the provisions of the Act which was passed in 1853 in consequence of the insuperable difficulties which were then experienced in carrying into effect sentences of transportation. By the provisions of that Act all sentences of transportation for periods less than fourteen years were abolished, and in lieu of such punishment there was substituted the punishment of penal servitude for periods of shorter duration than the corresponding sentences of transportation. The option was left to Judges of passing sentences of transportation or of penal servitude for periods exceeding fourteen years. The present Bill proposes to abolish altogether sentences of transportation, and to place the law relating to sentences of transportation for terms of fourteen years and upwards upon the same footing as sentences for less than that term. But, although the sentence of transportation would be abolished if this Bill passed into a law, I do not intend to forego the advantages, which were available under that system. On the contrary, my proposal will give facilities, which do not now exist, for sending out of the country convicts sentenced to penal servitude after they have undergone a preliminary portion of their punishment in separate imprisonment, and subsequently in associated labour in this country. The next provision, which is in accordance with the recommendation of the Committee which investigated this subject, is that the sentences of penal servitude substituted for sentences of transportation, instead of being of considerably shorter duration than the corresponding sentences of transportation, shall be made co-extensive in duration with those sentences; and that a discretion shall be given to the Court to pass sentences of penal servitude below the former minimum period of transportation—seven years,—but exceeding the ordinary period of imprisonment for two or three years, which might have been inflicted under the previous law; thus allowing the Court to pass sentences of penal servitude for four, five, six, or seven years in lieu of seven years' transportation. The object of this proposition, in short, is to fill up the gap, which now exists between penal servitude and imprisonment. The most
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  important provision, however, is that which removes the obstacle which prevents convicts sentenced to terms of penal servitude being transported to Colonies which may be willing to receive them, and in which are to be found the means of employing and absorbing them. Under the terms of the 6th clause of the Act of 1853 it is very doubtful whether Parliament did not intend to confer upon the Executive Government the power which I now ask it distinctly to create. So doubtful was it that, upon a question arising whether sentences of penal servitude could be carried out in Western Australia, the law officers took a very considerable time before they arrived at the conclusion that under the existing law it was not competent for the Government to send convicts under sentence of penal servitude to the colony of Western Australia. The particular clause of the Act of 1853 is the 6th, which runs as follows—
  "Every Person who under this Act shall be sentenced or ordered to be kept in Penal Servitude may, during the Term of the Sentence or Order, be confined in any such Prison or Place of Confinement in any Part of the United Kingdom, or in any River, Port, or Harbour of the United Kingdom, in which Persons under Sentence or Order of Transportation may now by Law be confined, or in any other Prison in the United Kingdom, or in any part of Her Majesty's Dominions beyond the Seas, or in any Port or Harbour thereof, as one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State may from time to time direct; and such Person may during such Term be kept to Hard Labour and otherwise dealt with in all respects as Persons sentenced to Transportation may now by Law be dealt with while so confined.
  After a lengthened and careful consideration, the law officers reported their opinion that, under that clause, it was not competent for the Government to carry sentences of penal servitude into effect in Western Australia subject to the same conditions as sentences of transportation, and, if those conditions were wanting, all advantage from sending out convicts would be lost. At present, under this clause convicts may be sent to Western Australia, or any other colony willing to receive them, but when there, those persons could only be treated as they would be at home, or when employed upon the public works at Chatham, Portsmouth, Portland, or at Gibraltar and Bermuda. As soon as the convict ceased to be actually confined or employed in Compulsory labour, he must be removed from the colony, and thus all the advantages of transportation would be altogether lost; the benefit to this coun-

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  try arising from the removal of offenders, the advantage to the colony from a supply of useful labour, and the advantage to the convicts of affording them a chance of re-commencing life in a new country, removed from the vicious associations of their former career, would be completely lost under the present law. There are at present abundant means in this country of employing convicts during that period of their sentence, when it is possible to employ them upon public works. The demands for Chatham, Portland, and Portsmouth, in addition to the convict settlements of Bermuda and Gibraltar, have been more than we can supply, and we have been unable to select such a number of convicts who, from age and physical ability, are capable of being employed upon public works as would meet the demands of the Admiralty and the Board of Ordnance. The difficulty is not how to deal with convicts during the earlier part of their punishment, while under strict confinement or employed upon public works; but it arises when the strictness of the discipline is to be relaxed, and opportunity is to be afforded to the criminal to re-enter upon life with a chance of becoming a better member of society. The object of a provision in the Bill which I now ask this House to read a second time, is to remove the obstacle which now exists to sending out convicts under sentences of penal servitude to Western Australia, or to any other Colony the inhabitants of which may be willing to receive them, and in which the proper means of employment for them are to be found. The Committee of the House of Lords specially recommended that we should revert to the former system of selection, with a view of sending to Western Australia a class of convicts whose removal would benefit this country, and at the same time confer an advantage upon the colony, which required their labour. It is impossible under the existing law to do so, as the convicts sentenced to transportation are sentenced to long terms in consequence of their heavy or repeated crimes, and the number sentenced to these long periods of transportation are very few in number. It will be recollected that when I introduced this Bill last Session I stated that such had been the effect of the Act of 1853. The number of convicts in the United Kingdom sentenced to transportation in 1852, the year before that Act was passed, was no less than 4,307, while in 1855 it
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  fell to 409. Of the latter number all have been sentenced to fourteen years' punishment or upwards, but many of them from age and other circumstances are physically unfit for transportation. The number of convicts sentenced to penal servitude in 1855 was 2,700, who must be discharged in this country upon the expiration of their sentences. The provision of this Bill will enable the Government, out of the convicts sentenced, to select those who, from their age, physical capacity, and other circumstances—such as the nature of the crimes of which they have been convicted, and the term of their sentence—are fit to be removed to Western Australia or any other colony which may be found willing to receive them, and to avail itself of any facilities that may from time to time exist for sending them, after a certain period of imprisonment here, to a penal colony, there to undergo the remainder of the sentence in compulsory labour, but with a prospect that after a time they may, by good conduct, obtain some relaxation of that sentence, and he afforded the opportunity, if they choose to avail themselves of it, of becoming useful members of society in the colony. There is one objection which I upon a former occasion said I expected would be made to this proposal, and it has been made. It is said you will produce uncertainty as to the execution of your sentences, and that if of the men sentenced to penal servitude, some work out their period of punishment at home, while others are sent abroad to a penal colony, there will arise uncertainty as to the effect of the sentence, which I admit it is desirable, if possible, to avoid. I cannot say there will be no uncertainty, but I do say that if we desire to have absolute certainty in our sentences we must absolutely forego any system of transportation—meaning thereby removal from this country. If we are to adhere to the system of transportation as a punishment we must adopt the principle of selection, such selection being determined not only by the age and physical condition of the convicts —but by a circumstance, which must vary from time to time—namely, the facility existing at any given time for the absorption of convicts in a colony. I said upon the former occasion this objection was not new. I admit it is an objection, and one which I should be glad to obviate, if I could do so without sacrificing the great advantages arising from the removal of convicts from this country. I say, however, that the objection applies quite as

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  much to the former system of transportation, as to that which will exist under this Bill if it becomes law. Upon the former occasion, when I brought forward this measure, I stated to the House that the practice formerly was not to send out of the country convicts who were sentenced only to seven years' transportation—those persons serving a certain portion, usually one-half, of their punishment in this country, and then, if well-behaved, receiving their discharge here. I was reminded by the right hon. Gentleman opposite that there was a Resolution of this House condemning that practice, in consequence of which the Government endeavoured to send out all convicts to Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales instead of retaining them in this country. The greatly-increased number of convicts thus sent from this country overwhelmed the colonies, and led to the total break-down of the system under an attempt to introduce the element of absolute certainty into our sentences. But even while the Government were endeavouring to carry out the Resolution of the House, the fact was that all convicts were not sent abroad. I find the total number of convicts in Great Britain sentenced to transportation during the ten years from 1843 to 1852 inclusive—I stop there, as 1852 was the last year previous to the alteration of the law—was 31,020, of whom only 22,322 were actually sent abroad, leaving a balance of 8,698, who, although sentenced to transportation, yet underwent their punishments in this country. In Ireland, during the same period, there were sentenced to transportation 12,631 men and 3,460 women, making a total of 16,091. Of these there were actually transported only 4,710 men, and 3,038, nearly the whole, of the women, leaving 8,243 convicts, of whom 7,921 were men who were retained in Ireland. There was, therefore, taking the United Kingdom altogether in the ten years I have mentioned, a difference of 17,041 between the numbers of those sentenced to transportation and of those who actually were sent abroad. I quote these figures to show that, practically, uncertainty characterized the former system quite as much as it is likely to do with reference to the proposed plan. Indeed, I think there was more uncertainty formerly, because the sentences then pronounced being sentences of transportation could not be fully carried into effect without the actual removal of the convicts from this country, while the sentences which I
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  propose to substitute, being sentences of penal servitude, can be carried into effect either here or abroad. I have thus gone over the provisions of the Bill, and trust that they will meet the approbation of the House. With regard to the manner of carrying the sentence into effect, it is manifest that the discretion must rest with the Executive Government, and not with the Judge. It is impossible the Judge can know, at the time when he passes the sentence, whether a man before him is a fit person to be sent to a distant colony; nor can he know what demand may exist at the time for such description of persons in any particular colony, or the various other circumstances which must aid in determining whether the convict ought to be sent abroad or detained at home. It is from no distrust of the Judges that I say this. The most ample discretion should be vested in them in determining what the length of the sentence should be, but it is the impossibility of investing them with the knowledge and information necessary to enable them to decide when transportation should take place, and when it should not, that renders it necessary to leave the decision with the Government. On this occasion I do not wish to enter into the question—which has been fully discussed at a former period—of tickets of leave. The Bill leaves the law exactly as it now is; but the number of convicts under sentence of transportation, and who can be dealt with as the system is now administered, is very much reduced. In lengthening sentences of penal servitude, so as to make them correspond with sentences of transportation, we have in view the adoption of the system recommended by the Committee of this House, which thought it desirable that a stimulus to good conduct should be held out to convicts under sentence, in the prospect of a remission of part of the term of punishment. I do not want to enter upon that question on the present occasion, though, perhaps, it may be raised in Committee, but to the principle I am prepared to give my concurrence, believing that the opinion of the Committee of this House is entitled to great weight. At the same time I think that, while the remission of the remainder of a sentence by means of a ticket of leave is a power that ought to be retained, the general rule ought to be an absolute remission, rather than a qualified one. Gentlemen may have observed in the Bill now on the table some alterations as compared with

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  the one which I introduced into the last Parliament. Those alterations are not material, and are intended to clear up certain points on which there existed some doubt—as, for example, in the second clause, in which reference is made to the power of the Court to sentence under the former law either to imprisonment or to a period of transportation. The clause has been framed so as to adapt this power to "penal servitude." And the fifth clause has been added, namely—
  "Where in any enactment now in force the expression 'any crime punishable with transportation,' or 'any crime punishable by law with transportation,' or any expression of the like import, is used, the enactment shall be construed and take effect as applicable also to any crime punishable with penal servitude."
  There are Acts imposing certain penalties upon persons threatening others with crimes punishable with transportation which had been overlooked in the Act of 1853, and which it is necessary to extend to the punishment provided by this Bill; and there are also restrictions on sentences of transportation passed by certain courts, which ought to apply equally to corresponding sentences of penal servitude. With these exceptions, I may repeat that the main features of the Bill are identical with those of the measure which I formerly introduced. I trust the House is satisfied with the explanation which I have endeavoured to give, and I now move that the Bill be read a second time.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 2°.
  MR. BENTINCK MR. BENTINCK moved as an Amendment that the Bill be read a second time that day six months. He could assure the right hon. Baronet that he brought forward his Amendment in no spirit of hostility to the Bill, and in common with the rest of the House he admitted the great attention which the right hon. Gentleman had paid to the subject, and the great ability with which he had dealt with it; but he took this method of introducing his own views to the notice of the House, being opposed in toto to the principle of transportation. There were three great objects to be attained in dealing with the question before them—first, to protect society by the prevention of crime; secondly, to effect as far as possible the reformation of offenders; and, thirdly, to deal with the subject with the utmost regard to economy. Now, with regard to the first of these objects—the protection of seciety—he believed it would be more likely to be attained if the punishment consequent on crime was car-
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  ried out nearer home, and brought more under the observation of those who were disposed to transgress against the laws. If he might so express himself, the deterring influence of punishment was now mystified by distance, and those who were disposed to transgress had a very vague and indistinct idea of the punishment to which they would be subjected, and this uncertainty diminished that salutary dread which all punishment ought to carry with it. This effect would be obviated if the punishment was carried out in their own neighbourhood. The next point was the reformation of offenders. It was unnecessary to refer to the horrid system of iniquity and disgusting depravity which existed in Norfolk Island and our other penal settlements abroad; and surely such places were not calculated to bring about a process of reformation. On the contrary, they must tend to demoralize the unhappy persons consigned to them. As to the third point, that of economy, he believed that if a different system were adopted the convicts might be made, if not remunerative, at least able to pay their own expenses. He should like to see transportation done away with, and a system of penal settlements established within the four seas of Great Britain. One, or two, or more places, might be selected admirably adapted for the purpose, and if established on a proper system, the labour of the men, women, and children confined in them would not only serve to defray the whole expense incurred, but would in many other ways be beneficial and useful to society. It would be premature in him to mention localities adapted to the purpose, but he did not think much difficulty need be experienced in making a selection. The great gain in the first place would be that the convicts would be under a proper supervision, and that the objection to penal settlements abroad—that they were such scenes of crime—would be avoided. With regard to the financial part of the question, he did not think he was too sanguine when he stated his belief that the whole expense now incurred would be saved; but, at all events, a part of the expenditure would most certainly be saved. At present convict labour was almost, or entirely thrown away. It was of no advantage to the community, and it would surely be a great gain if, by the compulsory labour of this class on useful works, a great pecuniary advantage was conferred upon the country. He admitted there was one objection to

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  the system he proposed, and he had stated it on a former occasion—namely, that there was an unfortunate tendency in this country, among a certain portion of the population, to entertain a feeling of maudlin humanity towards a man who had committed a crime; the moment a man became a malefactor one might almost imagine he was held entitled to become a martyr. Probably the right hon. Baronet was only too well aware how numerous were the applications for commutations of punishment in such instances. He was, therefore, quite ready to admit that that peculiar sympathetic feeling might render the carrying out of a system of home penal settlements somewhat difficult; still he thought the difficulty might be got over by the Government determining not to listen to applications for alterations of sentences. Surely a man who had brought himself within the ban of the laws of his country was bound to contribute to the resources of the country by any labour of which he was capable. But not only might a convict thus be made to pay his own expenses, but his labour might be turned to account in the construction of great public works—such as harbours of refuge, coast defences, and other works of great national value—which were so much needed, and which would never be carried out without some such assistance as this. Two-thirds of the expense of those works, it was said, consisted in the cost of labour, and if convict labour were employed the want of funds, which was always the argument advanced against the commencement of them, would be got over. It was needless to point out the great advantage which such works would confer on the country. There were several places in which the construction of harbours of refuge would be the saving of an immense amount of life and property annually, and without the aid of convict labour it was hopeless to expect that any such works would ever be undertaken. There was another question, which related to the disposal of the convicts at the termination of their sentences. There might be a system provided by which every man might at such termination, be provided with work by the Government, which would enable him to save money, and then to leave the country as a free emigrant. There was, again, the question whether the Government was to have the power of selecting who were to go out and who were to remain in the
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  country, which was connected with another difficulty raised by the Home Secretary, that of deciding what men were by their physical capacity fitted to be sent abroad and which ought to be kept at home, and it would have the further advantage also of abolishing the ticket-of-leave system, which he was glad to hear was falling into disuse. It was impossible to say that the Home Office should not have the power of remitting punishment in certain cases, but the power ought to be exercised with great reserve, and only in cases where there had been miscarriage of justice or where new facts had been discovered. One of the greatest evils in the present system was the uncertainty of punishment; and to make it perfectly certain that an offender, except in such cases as he had just named, would receive the full amount of the punishment to which he was sentenced on his conviction, would do more than anything else to deter from crime. His plan would have the effect of saving a large amount of expenditure; it would lead to a better state of things for the future, and it would also enable the counntry to undertake the construction of important public works which were much needed and which could not be hoped for without convict labour; and the objections, therefore, which he had urged to the Bill were, he submitted, worthy of consideration. The notice which he had put on the paper was not meant in a spirit of hostility to the Bill. He approved its principle, but it did not go far enough, nor did he think that it could be sufficiently amended in Committee to meet the views which he had laid down. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
  The Motion not being seconded,
  MR. ROEBUCKsaid that, as the Amendment did not appear to have found a seconder, he presumed that it had fallen to the ground, and he should therefore address himself entirely to the Speech of the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman had not touched the real difficulty of the case. He had found a certain legal difficulty in dealing with convicts, and to avoid that he brought in the present Bill. With the convict we could deal in any way we chose, but when he censed to be a convict we threw him on the world, and he had to deal with what he found in that world. In England we had plenty of labour, but the great cause of crime was the difficulty of finding employment. If everybody could find employment who wanted it, the amount

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  of crime in this country would not be so great as it was, and the number of convicts would be far smaller. But though employment was not to be found, the labourer was; and the difficulty was increased by the circumstance that tainted labourers could not find employment. A man who had been convicted, who had gone through penal servitude, came out upon society a branded man. He was driven, therefore, in actual self-defence, to the very crime for which he had been convicted. He was shunned by everybody; if he lived in a town, he was followed from street to street by the policeman; if he lived in the country, everybody knew that he had been a convict. Nobody would use his labour, and he must either starve or steal, and with those two alternatives before him, there was little doubt which he would choose. The difficulty lay not with the convict, while he was a convict, but in dealing with him after he had ceased to be a convict. There were two sets of circumstances to be considered—those which affected the convict in this country, and those which affected the convict in the Colonies. He would first allude to the Colonies. All our Colonies, with the exception of West Australia, had determined to receive no more convicts; and some of them—Victoria and New South Wales for instance—had gone so far as to say that no man who had been a convict should come among them at all. Cases of great hardship had been laid before that House, where people who had been forty years in Van Diemen's Land, having gone there as convicts, had been excluded from Melbourne because they were convicts, though they had lived many years in the town. He would suppose a man sentenced to one of those penal settlements referred to by the hon. Gentleman opposite. What was he to do when liberated? Nobody would employ him. The man must steal in order to save himself from starvation. Well, he does steal; he comes back—he is re-convicted, and goes back to penal servitude again. Such a man was in fact condemned for life. Society would not bear him. You make him a convict—you brand him as a felon. Once a convict always a convict, and the man must continue a thief until the gallows ended his career. It had been said that we might make penal servitude in England for life. He appealed to every Gentleman if that were possible. Penal servitude for life was so shocking to our feelings that compassion would be excited immediately for any
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  man thus condemned, and we should have a criminal the object of all that morbid sentimentality which had been so severely and so justly censured by the hon. Gentleman opposite. But you had convicts who were practically convicts for life when once they had been convicted. You could not send them abroad—and you could not sentence them to imprisonment for life. What were you to do? Well, he (Mr. Roebuck) thought there was only one course which, under the circumstances, it would be wise to pursue—namely, to find out some uninhabited part of the globe which could receive our penal population. Let them take, for example, an island in the South Seas, which would be quite far enough to prevent the possibility of escape. He was now going to make a statement which he was afraid would shock the House. The circumstance which created our difficulties was to find employment for our convicts after they had undergone their term of imprisonment. He therefore said, let transportation in every case be transportation for life. When once a man was sent from this country, never let him return again. A man could not hope to come back with a character which would find him employment, and, therefore, when once he had committed a crime which brought upon him the punishment of transportation, let that transportation be for life. It was not necessary that the punishment should be the same in all cases. All transportation should be for life, but the term of penal servitude should vary. Thus, if a man committed a great crime he should be condemned to transportation for life, but to penal servitude for fifteen years. The man who committed a crime of less magnitude should be condemned to transportation for life, but to penal servitude for seven years. He would first of all send the convict to a penal servitude, and would then put him under the "surveillance" of a body of men who should control his labour. What was it that induced the House to give up the system of transportation? It was done, he believed, at the instance of the late Sir William Molesworth, who obtained a Committee to inquire into the subject, and the evidence produced before that Committee brought forth such an amount of horrible atrocities committed in our penal settlements as shocked the feelings of the people, loading to the belief that we were sowing broadcast crime in all its shapes. This was a thing which England ought not to do, and therefore the House, in the

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  hurry of the moment withdrew the system of transportation. All the crimes in question arose from one cause. In dealing with this question, he hoped the House would not think he was doing so without the gravest consideration. What was the cause of those crimes? It was the absence of women from the penal settlements, and, therefore, in order to prevent the recurrence of the horrors which were laid before the Committee, he would in every case of women being sentenced to transportation, transport them. Penal servitude in England, as had been remarked, was liable to the same abuse if men were congregated together as they were at Norfolk Island. The only way to prevent it was by mixing in equal, or very nearly equal, proportions the two sexes, and that object he would effect by transporting every woman condemned to transportation. Thus he provided for the punishment of the criminal by subjecting him to penal servitude for a certain time. Having undergone that penal servitude in England, he would be thrown upon society. We all knew what had been the consequence of such a system. Society had been horrified and frightened by the uncertainty of life and property created by the ticket-of-leave men throughout the country, and the terror had proceeded so far that people had been afraid during the late winter of walking through the streets of London. To avoid that he would take the criminal population entirely away from England; he would subject them, in the first instance, to a term of penal servitude, he would make them go through the whole of that servitude, and then he would take them, not to any of our existing colonies, but to some new spot yet untouched by human adventure, where they might prove, as the same classes had done before, the beginning of a great empire. It would he invidious to point out particular instances, but it had been our fate to spread the English race abroad by means of our convict population, and what had once been done could be done again. So far from dealing with the question as the Home Secretary proposed to deal with it, he would alter the whole law, and, instead of not having recourse to transportation, he would have recourse to it in a greater number of cases than before. He would transport in every case for life—in the first place, to a penal colony, and thence to a spot where the criminal could provide for himself. Such appeared to him to be a
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  course which the House might safely and beneficially pursue, and one far superior in statesmanlike character, to that peddling with difficulties which the right hon. Baronet had submitted for their consideration.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: I cannot agree, Sir, with the hon. and learned Gentleman, the Member for Sheffield, that the want of work is the main cause of crime in England—on the contrary, I believe that the two great causes of crime are, firstly, ignorance, and secondly, drunkenness. Nor can I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that the principal point I we have to consider is how to deal with our criminals after their punishment ceases. No doubt that is a most important matter; and one to which we are bound to give attention; but the Bill before us is founded upon the avowed difficulty of treating our convicts during that period in which the interests of society require that they should in some manner be penally dealt with. My hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Bentinck) called this a dull subject. It doubtless is so, but it is also one of the highest social importance, as well as one of extreme difficulty, and it is our duty to help the Government in dealing with an evil of such magnitude. I am afraid that the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield will not help us much by his plan, which, as I understand it, deals with convicts by transporting them for life, and sending them all to some new spot in the world not yet discovered—[Mr. ROEBUCK: Not discovered?] Not yet settled, then; or, at any rate, on which the hon. and learned Gentleman had not yet determined. The hon. and learned Gentleman cannot mean seriously that every one of the large class of men whose interests were involved in the Bill before the House should be transported for life; nor could he mean to introduce something like the old Spartan law, which held that the smallest crimes deserved death, and that no other punishment could be inflicted for the greatest.
  MR. ROEBUCK: I said that every person subjected to transportation should be transported for life.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: I am sorry to say that, practically, that has been the case during the whole period for which we have carried out sentences of transportation. It is not to the credit of this country that, although our courts have sentenced criminals to be transported for periods of

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  only seven years, the Government has never brought home any transported convicts from the colonies to which they have been sent after their period of punishment had expired. The hon. and learned Gentleman, in arraigning this Bill, says that we ought to fix upon some new spot to which convicts may be transported. Will he go a step further and tell us where such spot is to be found? A short time since I entertained an opinion similar to that of the hon. and learned Gentleman, and I thought it most desirable that Her Majesty's Government should select some distant part of the Queen's dominions in which a new penal settlement might be founded; but I have gradually and inevitably been brought to the conclusion that the difficulty of finding any such place is so great that this scheme must be abandoned. Although I have for some years considered this subject, and a few years ago had my attention officially directed to it, I have only heard of four places in which it was supposed to be possible to establish a new penal colony. One is the northern coast of Australia, to which I myself at one time very much inclined; but the space intervening between the northern part of Australia and the settled portions of New South Wales is so small that, when that fact is considered in connection with the disadvantages arising from the tropical climate, I believe the Government are perfectly right in abandoning the idea of sending convicts there. The Falkland Islands are another place which is mentioned, but there there is so little means of employment, the soil is so bad and the climate so unfavourable, and the islands are so near to America, where great jealousy of a convict settlement would be entertained, that I think it would not be discreet to send convicts to that colony. Vancouver's Island, another place which has been suggested, is open to the same objection, in addition to that which arises from its neighbourhood to the gold fields of California. The fourth place mentioned is the Hudson's Bay territory. There again the climate constitutes a very great objection, and I think that both our own North American Colonies, the Canadas, and the United States would be greatly offended by the establishment of a penal settlement in that territory. I have mentioned these places, in order to remove from the minds of Gentlemen who may have been carried away by the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the idea that it is so easy as
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  he supposes to find in Her Majesty's dominions a place where it would be safe or prudent to establish such a colony as he proposes. These are the difficulties under which Her Majesty's Government have felt themselves compelled to deal with this subject; and it has given me much satisfaction to find them pressing forward this Bill as soon as possible after the meeting of the new Parliament. I certainly cannot support my hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Bentinck) in objecting to this measure. There is a great deal of truth in what he said, but I heard nothing from him which supported any objection to this particular Bill. It seems to me that his observations from first to last were founded very much upon the views which have been urged with great ability by Mr. Charles Pearson, the City Solicitor, who was some years ago a Member of this House, and who has with great labour and great ability suggested and arranged plans for large district prisons, which he thinks might with advantage be established. He urged these views upon the Prison Discipline Committee a few years ago. That committee reported very much in favour of his plans, and I think I may say that the existing establishments at Portland and Dartmoor were founded very much upon the principles recommended by Mr. Pearson. Therefore, while I concur very much with these views, I cannot agree with my hon. Friend that they constitute any objection to the plan proposed by the Government, which, in a great degree, seeks to deal with a different class of criminals from those who, would become inmates of such establishments as he recommends. The Bill corrects what I have frequently given my opinion was a great fault and defect in the Bill of the noble Lord opposite introduced in 1853—namely, that the sentences of penal servitude imposed by that Act were so short as not to be fair equivalents for the periods of transportation for which they were substituted. This Bill corrects that defect by enabling Judges to pass sentences of penal servitude identical as to the length of time with the periods of transportation which they are to supersede. This great improvement in criminal law is founded upon the report of the House of Commons Committee which sat last year, and so far from objecting to it, I accept it with thanks from the Government. Another great objection to the present state of the law is the want of an intermediate sentence between two years' imprisonment, which

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  was practically our maximum, and seven years' transportation or penal servitude. Here again the Bill adopts a recommendation of the Committee, and enables Judges to sentence prisoners to four years' penal servitude. I will only suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the scale of punishment would be more complete if he would go a step lower, and make the minimum period of penal servitude three years instead of four. Perhaps the right hon. Baronet (Sir George Grey) will be kind enough to consider the point. So far I have spoken only in terms of approbation of this Bill; but I now come to a matter which seems to me unnecessarily to introduce an increased element of uncertainty into our punishments, and about which, therefore, I feel great and serious doubt. Construing the Bill with the spirit with which the right hon. Baronet (Sir G. Grey) originally introduced it, I infer from it that practically the Government contemplate a very considerable increase of the punishment of transportation. I apprehend that the intention of the Government is, acting, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, upon some principle of selection, that a much larger number of convicts should be sent abroad than has recently been the case; and simultaneously with this practical increase of transportation the right hon. Gentleman entirely does away with the sentence of transportation. One of the greatest evils there can be in a system of punishment for crime is uncertainty as to what the punishment means; but hereafter, under this law, when a Judge sentences a man to ten years' penal servitude, neither the Judge who pronounces the sentence, nor the public, nor the prisoner, will know whether the man is to remain close to his friends in England, or to be sent to Gibraltar, Bermuda, or Western Australia, from the latter of which it is probable he will never return. The right hon. Baronet (Sir G. Grey), in his speech to-night, said that this element of uncertainty always existed—that although sentence of transportation was passed it was not always carried out. Undoubtedly there were cases of illness, infirmity, or age, in which convicts were not sent abroad, but these were exceptions: the rule was transportation.
  SIR GEORGE GREY: The only cases in which transportation was not carried out were those in which the sentence was only for seven years.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: I think
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  that the period at which these exceptions were made was that in which the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir J. Graham) presided at the Home Office. The right hon. Gentleman stated on a previous occasion that it was never the practice to send abroad persons sentenced only to seven years' transportation. He has this evening candidly admitted that that system was much complained of, and that after a Resolution passed by this House in 1841 that practice was corrected, and transportation went on until Van Diemen's Land was flooded with convicts. Transportation then ceased altogether for a time. After two years it was renewed. It was renewed for convicts sentenced to seven years' transportation quite as much as for convicts sentenced to a longer period, and again it became the general rule that all persons sentenced to transportation were transported. The cases in which they were not transported were exceptional, and therefore the right hon. Gentleman is not justified in founding any argument upon that exceptional practice. It is no justification for the great change which is now proposed of increasing transportation, while doing away with the name of transportation, whereby the public will not know what penal servitude means, or where that punishment is inflicted. I think the right hon. Gentleman would have done better if he had acted upon the 4th Resolution of the Committee last year, which says "the convict prisons beyond seas ought to be regarded as places I for carrying out the sentence of transportation." I have always considered as a very objectionable and a very absurd element of uncertainty the theory of the law that men who were sent to Bermuda or Gibraltar under sentences of penal servitude were punished at home. It is a distinction which the public do not understand. The public do not consider it the same thing whether a man is imprisoned at home or sent to Bermuda or Gibraltar; and I wish the Government had decided that Bermuda and Gibraltar should be devoted, like Western Australia, to the reception of convicts sentenced to transportation. I wish the Government would make more clear than they have yet done what is to be the system under which the punishment of penal servitude is carried out, what convicts are to be sent abroad, and how far the Judges will know the nature of the sentences which they pass. I should wish to see transportation carried

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  out as a punishment for the greater crimes, reserving penal servitude for other and lesser offences. Having thrown out these suggestions I can only hope that the Government will pursue the course indicated by this Bill, and that they will be successful. With the permission of the House, I will now turn to the observations of the hon. and learned Gentleman, who has dwelt upon what he justly called an important, though not the most important, part of the subject. It is perfectly clear that, whatever proportion of our criminals the right hon. Gentleman may intend hereafter to send either to Western Australia, Gibraltar, or Bermuda, the great majority will, at the end of their sentences, be turned loose in this country. A very difficult part of the subject then is involved in the question, what are we to do with our convicts when they are discharged? It is very important that the Government should address their thoughts to the best mode of rendering the great fact of a majority of them being released in this country as innocuous as possible. With this feeling I heard with regret the expressions used by the hon. and learned Gentleman this evening against the system of tickets of leave. Although I am happy to say the aggregate of crime diminished in 1856 as compared with the preceding year, it is perfectly true that certain classes of grave crime increased, and during last winter a panic prevailed, connected with a cry against the system of tickets of leave. But, in the first place, I ask, was that connection fair and just? and, in the second place, I ask, much more anxiously, ought there to be that danger in tickets of leave which the hon. and learned Gentleman seems to apprehend? My view of the question is this—that, assuming the prisoner is at the end of the punishment to be released in England, it is much better for him and much safer for society that he should be released with a well-regulated ticket of leave, than that he should be turned out perfectly free and unchecked. And here I would remind the House of the 5th Resolution of the Committee—
  "That every punishment by penal servitude should include, first, a certain fixed period of imprisonment and hard labour on public works to be undergone at all events; and, second, a further period, which should be capable of being abridged by the good conduct of the convict himself."
  What does that mean? Is the abridgment of the period to be a complete and
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  absolute termination of punishment, or a release with some check upon him? I say the latter was meant, and I think it most desirable that the spirit of that Resolution should be carried out. I hope it is not intended by the right hon. Gentleman that all sentences shall be carried out to the letter. [Sir GEORGE GREY: I said it was not so intended.] I am glad to hear it, for I am convinced all experience and authority show that in dealing with prisoners under punishment you must not altogether shut out the element of hope. It is essential to the successful treatment of convicts that you should allow every man to hope that he may by good conduct shorten his punishment, and, on the other hand, it is due to the public that there should be some check against the misconduct of such persons when discharged. In my opinion the cry against the ticket-of-leave system was really founded upon inefficient regulations, and even these regulations being injudiciously carried out. In Ireland the ticket-of-leave system has not led to such alarming or bad consequences. I believe I am right in attributing the superior success of this system in Ireland to the fact that the regulations under which the tickets of leave are granted are strictly carried out. But in England, although I am sure from the best of motives, the right hon. Gentleman did not think it necessary to carry out the regulations and conditions under which the tickets of leave were granted with that strictness which, I believe, the interests of the public demanded. I will recall to the mind of the House a remarkable instance of this neglect. A man of the name of Wotton, who was residing in Birmingham under a ticket of leave, was noticed by the police, as associating there with thieves. Now, the right hon. Gentleman was warned of these facts. That warning was disregarded, and this man Wotton, while perpetrating a burglary, was shot by a clergyman, the owner of the house attacked. This might have been prevented had his ticket of leave been withdrawn upon the breach of the conditions, and the man sent back to gaol. This example is, I think, sufficient to show that the regulations carried out by the Home Office are not as strict as they ought to be. I do not hesitate to say that under proper precautions the system of tickets of leave ought not to be abandoned. I quite admit without any precautionary measures such a system would be highly dangerous. With them,

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  I believe it would prove a most valuable auxiliary to our criminal law. I am glad to find that the right hon. Gentleman subscribes to the opinion that the convict, though sentenced to a severe punishment, may yet be encouraged by the hope that by good conduct his punishment may be shortened. I have now only to thank the House for the patience with which it has listened to the observations I have felt it my duty to make on this important subject.
  MR. COLLIERsaid, the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary had to answer objections of a very different character. The hon. Member for West Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck) objected to transportation altogether, whilst the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Roebuck) found fault with the Bill because he was for nothing but transportation. The hon. Member for West Norfolk had fallen into the error of not distinguishing between the two senses in which the word "transportation" was used—the successful sense and the unsuccessful sense. Transportation had been found successful, in the opinion of the best judges, and of every one competent to form an opinion on the subject, when a criminal was sent to a colony where a demand existed for convict labour, and where the colonists were desirous of receiving him. In that case he was separated from his criminal associates, and transferred to a country where he was not looked upon as tainted, but where he had a chance of becoming a respectable man. Transportation had failed in those cases where there was a mere deportation of the criminal to a penal settlement, which was, in other words, only a prison at the other end of the world. The hon. Member for West Norfolk objected to transportation on account of the horrors which had been witnessed at Norfolk Island and some other, penal settlements. Now, there was nothing in the Bill before the House tending to the establishment of anything like a Norfolk Island. It merely related to a species of transportation which had been found to operate beneficially. Its object was to enable the Government to send a certain number of criminals to Western Australia—the only country remaining to us where a demand existed for convict labour. Under the other provisions of the Bill, the employment of convicts in this country would be ensured at Portland, Dartmoor, and other places; and therefore a great part of the hon. Member's objections amounted to nothing. It would be
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  evidently necessary to make a selection of the criminals sent out, for there were many criminals who were too bad to be sent to any colony. In many cases men would be convicted of capital offences, but for the objections entertained by juries to the infliction of capital punishment. By this means such criminals escaped the gallows, but we had no right to send to a colony a determined murderer, or a man who had been convicted over and over again of desperate assaults or of burglaries with violence. Such persons ought to be confined for their lives, and, if so, it was better that they should be confined at home rather than abroad, for there would not only be a saving of the expense of sending them abroad, but they would be kept under better surveillance here than in another country. The arguments of the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield were of a startling character. The hon. and learned Member contended that a man who had committed a crime was to be considered a tainted man; that he could get no employment in this country; that he must either starve or steal; that he would not starve, and that it was therefore desirable that all sentences of transportation should be for life. But that applied, not only to men sentenced to transportation, but to those under every term of sentence. The logical result of this was, therefore, that all criminals must be transported for life. The island which he proposed as the locality to which these persons were to be transported, and which, though not designated, might he referred to by the letter "L," would therefore soon have a very considerable population; and the more so, as the hon. Gentleman proposed to send out a considerable number of females. The hon. Member had not, however, stated what he would do with the children born there; nor had he pointed out where was the other island to which the criminals were finally to be sent for the rest of their lives. Only four places had been mentioned, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Droitwich had shown that none of those were suitable. On further consideration, he thought the hon. and learned Member would not press that view of the case. Now, with regard to the question of uncertainty. The case stood thus. It had boon said that the Judges were in the habit of sentencing persons to transportation, knowing that they would not be transported, but imprisoned. That certainly had an injurious effect, because

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  it was passing a sentence that was known to be false. But the sentence which was now passed—that of penal servitude—was not false. There was a certainty that the criminal would undergo penal servitude for a time. The uncertainty which prevailed respected the place of that servitude. Now, that was inseparable from the nature of things. The Judge was not in a proper position to decide whether a prisoner was a fit subject for transportation or not. A certain number only could be transported, and if the wrong ones were sent, the others must remain, for the colonists would not receive more than the prescribed number. Who then was the proper person to decide the question, the Judge or the Home Secretary? The Judge could not possess the information which the Home Secretary could procure, and the Home Secretary was the proper person to select the criminals to be sent out. The treatment of criminals on their discharge did not come within the scope of the Bill, and he would only observe that the ticket-of-leave system had not worked well in this country. A well-regulated ticket-of-leave system would place a man under the perpetual surveillance of the police—a system alien to the minds of the people of this country, and one which would rather have the effect of retarding than promoting the reformation of the criminal. He thought it desirable to reserve to the Crown the right of granting tickets of leave in some exceptional cases, but in every instance the criminal ought to be subjected to a certain term of imprisonment, accompanied with hard labour.
  MR. DRUMMONDsaid, that when he considered how many of the Members of that House belonged to clubs where they could have access to some map of the world—that on Mercator's projection would probably be the best for the purpose—he could not conceive the difficulty of their finding at least 100 places to which convicts might be sent. The ticket-of-leave system had done some good; it had frightened a few old ladies, but it had startled a number of gentlemen into employing their common sense in considering what had been going on year after year with regard to the treatment of criminals. His hon. and learned Friend beside him had truly said that the number of these Bills which had been brought in year after year by right hon. Gentlemen, and each of which was a satire upon the philosophy of its predecessors and those who had introduced
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  them, arose from this. We had a settlement to which we used to send our convicts, but it had been most grossly mismanaged; instead, however, of having amended that management, we had come to the absurd conclusion to give up the system altogether. From that day to the present we had been going on with all sorts of schemes, confounding things which were wholly dissimilar, talking about the reformation of criminals, when our object ought to have been to protect society. The House of Commons had nothing whatever to do with the reformation of criminals, which, like many other secondary matters, should be regarded as of a nature entirely collateral and subsidiary; as one of those social improvements, in short, which if it took place, so much the better, but which, whether it did or not, was a point with which it was not the business of statesmen to deal. The Government of a country transported people because they must protect society at home. They hanged people for the same reason, save when our pity was so great that it taught persons to perjure themselves, by declaring men to be innocent whom they knew to be guilty. All that now remained to us was to carry out the system of transportation to a greater extent than had been the case for some years past. There was no difficulty about finding a place to which to send our convicts. As to the question whether they were to have more or less punishment in one place than in another, that was a matter of detail which it was unnecessary to discuss on the second reading of the Bill, as they might be considered in Committee. In conclusion, he must express his surprise that any practical man could suppose that profitable labour could result from the employment of convicts in this country, and a hope that the Bill would be allowed to pass through its present stages.
  MR. PHILIPPSobserved that he was prepared to support the Bill, as calculated to effect a decided improvement in the present state of things. The evidence which had been given upon the subject of secondary punishments by Mr. Justice Erle and Mr. Justice Cresswell had represented the effect produced by the sentence of transportation, not only upon the criminal himself, but upon all those who happened to hear it pronounced, as of a character the most deterring; and, so far as he himself had had an opportunity of forming a judgment upon the matter, he had been induced to arrive at a precisely similar conclusion.

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  He believed it produced a much stronger effect than a sentence of imprisonment; and it was impossible to calculate how many persons had been operated upon in that way. For these reasons—if a place could be found to which our criminals could be sent—he thought a return to the system of transportation must be regarded as to a certain extent desirable.
  MR. BYNGexpressed his cordial concurrence in the general principles of the measure which was under discussion, and stated his object in rising to address the House was rather to point out some omissions in the proposition of the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department than to comment upon the provisions which it actually contained. He bailed with gladness the prospect of a return to the old system of transportation in its limited, amended, and restricted sense; and he felt assured that the adoption of such a course would be as beneficial to the community as it would be generally popular with the various classes of which it was composed. He must, at the same time observe, that he thought it necessary that some reform should be effected in our ticket-of-leave system, that something like certainty should attach to the infliction of secondary punishments, which ought to graduate according to the character of the offences, but should be at the same time fixed and immutable, and that greater care should be taken with reference to the separation of criminals after their conviction than at present existed. With respect to the ticket-of-leave system—it was, in his opinion, impossible to deny that the evils which flowed from it had been much exaggerated in the public mind, inasmuch as the crimes which had created so much apprehension during the past autumn and winter might very fairly be looked upon as not so much the result of a vicious system as arising from the want of the due administration of that system in certain cases. Some line ought, therefore, he thought, to be drawn between those criminals who happened to have been several times convicted, or whose offences had been attended with gross violence, and those who were convicted for the first time, or whose transgressions were of a comparatively venial character. When a notorious criminal was convicted he would have the Judge say to him, "You are a great offender, and the law has determined that you shall for your crimes undergo a certain term of punish-
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  ment. No pretended reformation, no feigned submission to the rules which the chaplains of the gaol may lay down for your observance, shall enable you to forego that punishment." Means should be provided by which they might learn their duty towards God and man, but they should be given to understand that so long as they remained in prison they would have to accomplish their term of punishment. That was the course which he would wish to see adopted in the case of the graver class of offenders, while he was desirous that those who had been convicted for the first time or for trivial transgressions should not have the door of hope shut against them, but should be allowed to experience the advantages of a system which he could not help thinking was at the present moment more unpopular than it deserved to be. If the punishment inflicted upon criminals were of a more fixed and durable character, a great benefit to the country would, in his opinion, be the result. Those offenders who were at large would then know what they had to expect if they were brought to the bar of criminal justice. The Judges of the land would be guided in the discharge of their duties when they were aware that any punishment they might inflict would be rigorously put into execution, and might, as a consequence, be induced to pass a lighter sentence, and to take extenuating circumstances into their consideration. The question of the separation or classification of criminals, to which he had adverted, was not perhaps one which came within the scope of the measure before them; but it was nevertheless a subject of the highest importance, and if it could be effected upon a sound principle, while honest employment was provided for the thousands who annually left our gaols, much would have been done to solve one of the greatest social problems of our day. That was a state of things which perhaps must be brought about rather by the exertions of private philanthropy than by the efforts of any Administration; but it was nevertheless a question to which the attention of a Government ought, in his opinion, to be directed; and if any measure of that description could be framed by the Government, he believed it would meet with a consistent and conscientious support. It only remained for him to thank the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department for the promptitude with which

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  he had introduced the present Bill, and to state that it should have his most cordial support.
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, that he thanked the Government for having introduced the Bill, and that what the people of this country—the quiet people—the heads of families—demanded was, that their homes and households should be secured from those criminals who were so deeply steeped in vice that no reformation in their characters could reasonably be anticipated while they continued to dwell amid the scenes of their guilt. That it was which the people called for; but he regretted to say that the Blil at its very outset tended to deprive them to some extent of the security to which they were entitled, inasmuch as it provided that sentence of transportation, under certain modifications, should be commuted to penal servitude, while it left the point in complete uncertainty whether that term of "penal servitude" involved transportation or not. According to the testimony of the Judges, one great advantage which the system of transportation possessed was the certainty with which the punishment was carried into effect. It began with banishment, and it was the certainty of this which deterred the gravest offenders from subjecting themselves to its infliction. Why was it, then, that transportation was not again to be resorted to in compliance with the acknowledged requirements of the community? Simply because the Government had not applied themselves vigorously to the solution of the question, or because of the difficulty which is was said existed in discovering an available site for a penal settlement. He thought, as had been already stated by an hon. Member during the debate, that the Colonial Office had been lax in their endeavours to discover a site for a penal colony. That might have arisen in some degree from the arguments of the able staff of officials now engaged in carrying out the present penal system, who, naturally enough, did not like the idea of seeing themselves superseded by any change which it might undergo, and were consequently warm advocates for the retention of our criminals at home. Be that as it might, the House had, on the one hand, a disinclination on the part of the Colonial Office to discover a site for a penal colony, and, on the other, a number of most able advocates for the detention and treatment of our convict population at home. He
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  trusted the House and the country would continue to urge on the Government the necessity of finding and adopting some penal settlement wide enough to receive the whole of the worst of our criminals, but of continuing at the same time the merciful advantages of transportation, which afforded to men desirous of amending their lives the means eventually of founding a home and establishing a new character in a new field. Thanking the right hon. Baronet (Sir George Grey) for the introduction of the Bill before the House, he still trusted it was but a step towards the renewal of transportation under the sentence of the Judges, and of that certainty of punishment which was, or ought to be, the first object of all penal legislation, provided at the same time it opened up to the convict the prospect of a new home and a new field of honest industry, where the taint of his former crimes would not follow him.
  MR. W. EWARTsaid, convinced of the soundness of the conclusions to which the Committee of Sir William Molesworth arrived, he was of opinion that transportation should rather be the supplement of a punishment than itself a punishment. If the plan of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire were carried into execution, he did not believe that a penal colony would long exist. He should prefer that punishment, whatever its character, should be carried out in this country, before the eyes, as it were, of the whole community, so that it might operate in deterring people from the commission of crime, and that in all cases the convict should clearly understand that his sentence, whatever it was, would certainly be carried into effect. He concurred with M. Salvandy, who died not long since, and with M. Leon Faucher, as also with the conclusion arrived at by the Committee of Sir W. Molesworth, that as respected the worst class of criminals the most desirable course to pursue was deportation following on a preparatory ordeal of reformation at home, as having a tendency in the end to afford a fair prospect of amendment to the convict at home and a new career of colonization abroad. This, also, he believed to be the tendency of the present Bill.
  MR. LIDDELLcontended that, on entering on the consideration of this difficult problem, the House should, in the first instance, make up its mind as to the precise light in which it ought to regard transport-

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  tation—whether as a punishment or as a reward to criminals who had passed the period of penal probation satisfactorily and honourably to themselves. While disposed to assent to the measure of the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department, he would still say if transportation was to be regarded in the light of a punishment, it could not be considered as a severe one, if a punishment at all, to send criminals to a favoured land such as Western Australia, for it was a smiling country with a luxuriant soil, and the condition of the settlers there, according to the last accounts, was in the highest degree comfortable and creditable. At the same time, he was willing to admit that if the powers proposed to be given by the Bill under consideration were judiciously exercised, the result might fairly be expected to be the riddance to the country of many of the more dangerous class of criminals, whose lives here were supposed to operate as a bad example to others, and who often relapsed into crime from disappointment at not obtaining employment on their discharge. It would also be a boon to the criminal himself, because by opening up to him eventually the opportunity of pursuing a course of honest industry in, to him, a new part of the world, he would be given to understand he had still a chance left of well-doing, while to the colony to which he might be expatriated his labour, where labour was in great requisition, would be an advantage. He must, however, protest against the most favoured spots of our colonial dominions being selected as the places of destination for that class of convicts. The hon. Member for Haverfordwest (Mr. Philipps) rested his arguments as to the effect of transportation in deterring from the commission of crime on the opinion of the Judges, but he (Mr. Liddell) thought he could show that criminals themselves regarded transportation in an opposite light. Colonel Jebb, in his evidence given last year in his Report on transportation, pointed out that the result of the probation system adopted a few years ago in this country—namely, imprisonment here for certain periods proportionate to the sentence, followed by employment on public works—was, as respected its effect on the convicts subjected to it, that transportation was looked upon by them in the; light of a reward for good conduct. In confirmation of this view Colonel Jebb related a remarkable fact in connection with
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  the proceedings which took place at Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort, when the abolition of the Bagnes was resolved upon by the Emperor of the French by a decree in March, 1852. Differing from the view of the old Chamber of Peers, which was that the existing places of confinement should be suppressed, and that prisons on shore should be substituted for them, the French Government then resolved that Cayenne should be taken as a place of transportation for a certain category of offenders. The men, however, then at Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort, were under sentence of imprisonment, and not under sentence of transportation; and they were given the choice of completing their sentences in prison or of being sent to Cayenne. The terms of their transportation to that place were explained to them, and in the first few hours after the registers were opened for their accepting this offer or rejecting it, 3,000 men came forward to give in their adhesion and to express their wish to go to Cayenne. Not one hundred yards from that House was an establishment where men willingly submitted to one year's hard probation that they might afterwards obtain a passage as emigrants to a colony. These facts, he submitted, showed that the deterrent effects of transportation were not quite so strong on the minds of criminals as some hon. Gentlemen had represented during this debate. The punishment of criminals of the worst class could be conducted more effectually and cheaply at home under our own eyes; and it was quite a mistake to suppose that their labour could not be made available. Colonel Jebb's Report had shown that in the four chief prisons where men were employed on public works, the value of the labour of each convict was £24 per year. In those prisons where the work performed was purely agricultural its value was only £5 per annum. He would only, in conclusion, hope that the whole of this important subject would be well considered, and that, at all events, the effeminate system pursued at Millbank, Pentonville, and other kindred institutions would undergo a change, the result of which would be greater economy in the treatment of our convict population and a more wholesome effect upon the convicts themselves.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, there could be no doubt that their legislation in respect of criminal punishment had been unfortunate, when within the short space of three years the House was asked to make "ducks and

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  drakes" of the penal system of this country. Let them consider for a moment what they had already done and what it was they were now asked to do. Three or four years ago they came to the conclusion that four years of penal servitude were equivalent to seven years of transportation, and six or eight years of the former also equal to about ten or fifteen years of the latter. But now it was also of a sudden proposed that they should entirely reverse this decision, and go back to the original periods of punishment. This course they were asked to take without any information as to the proposed change in the nature of penal servitude; yet the Government which recommended the conclusion adopted three or four years ago was composed of nearly the same Members as the present one, the noble Lord the First Minister then being Home Secretary! The country had shown itself so dissatisfied with the effect of their late legislation on this subject that it had become imperative on the Government to do something to amend it. There was a universal outcry against the working of the system. Tickets of leave were introduced because it was held that seven years of transportation were equivalent to four years of penal servitude, and that therefore it was unjust to keep a man who had received the former sentence for an equal number of years under the severer form of imprisonment. Accordingly large numbers of criminals were let loose, and what was the result? A general distrust of Government pardons was excited in the public mind, and the prisoners who were pardoned and those who had worked out their full sentence and the ticket-of-leave men were looked upon with equal jealousy, and found equal difficulty in obtaining employment. They had also, by altering sentences, made their secondary punishment insufficient in severity for the crimes which they were intended to punish. There had been of late years—and no one rejoiced at it more than he did—a considerable diminution in the number of capital sentences, and also in the number of such sentences carried into execution; but this made the system of secondary punishment more important. What did this Bill provide for? Why for altering altogether the number of years for which convicted persons were to undergo punishment—in fact, going back again to the system of transportation. This was undeniably the fact, yet by some strange shuffle of words,
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  which he could not understand, the Government got rid in the Bill of the word "transportation." What would be the effect of that upon the public mind? Say what they would, transportation held out greater terrors to the criminal class than penal servitude. This is asserted without fear of contradiction from any one who magisterially or otherwise came in contact with that class. It more completely cut them off from their wives and their other connexions, because when the sea did not lie between them and their friends they never would give up the hope of communicating with them. Every person in this country, from the highest to the lowest, felt that it was in the power of the Crown, at its discretion, to extend its mercy to any criminal and mitigate his sentence. But they were about to do this:—A Judge sentenced a man, it might be for a light or a heavy offence, to penal servitude. Then, without any reason assigned, without any cause that the public could know or the friends of the prisoner could conceive, this man was to be suddenly transported. This could be viewed in no other light than as an aggravation of the sentence, and an aggravation, too, produced by an arbitrary and capricious exercise of the power of the Crown, though no doubt sanctioned by Act of Parliament, and the effect could not but be mischievous. They could feel it no other way, and, therefore, the proposed alteration would not have a good effect. It was certainly difficult to find a foreign settlement to which to send our criminals; but, unless we meant to give up the system of transportation, we ought to retain its name, and he hoped when the measure got into Committee the right hon. Gentleman would allow the word to stand. The hon. Member for Dumfries recommended them to confine their criminals for a time here, and then to deport them. If they were not let loose in this country the system might prove satisfactory; but it might be better that as long as they were kept within four walls they should remain at home, where a more efficient surveillance could be maintained over them than was practicable at a remote distance. For the sake not only of the people at home, but also for the interest of the criminals themselves, it was highly desirable that as many of them as possible should be sent abroad. When turned out of prison, not, as formerly, with pardons, but with tickets of leave, and in a country where the labour-market was pretty well stocked, these unfortunate men

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  were looked upon as something even worse than criminals. An ugly name was attached to them, and what with the policeman and what with other people, they were hunted about until they had no other resource but to return to their old associates, when they soon found their way to prison again. With so much difficulty in finding-work in a field where they had many competitors of untainted character, it was not likely, even if reformed—which must always be questionable—that they would have strength enough to resist the temptations to which they might be exposed. In a new country, on the other hand, they would be removed alike from their vicious companions and from the reach of temptations, while the means of obtaining an honest livelihood would be easily open to them. They had abundant evidence that a very large proportion of the convicts sent to the colonies conducted themselves in a manner which at least did not render them obnoxious to the law, and when that was the case charity required us to believe that they were leading proper lives there. He hoped, therefore, they should have the assurance of the Government that they would not by this measure narrow down, more than they had already done, the means of sending those persons abroad; but, as the Bill stood, it certainly had an ugly look. Though such might not be their real intention, the omission of the word "transportation" would, in the eyes of the public, bear the appearance of a wish to put an end to that system. He hoped, however, that in Committee this and other parts of the measure would be made less objectionable.
  MR. BAINESsaid, there was one point on which he should be glad to say a word, especially as, by the forms of the House, his right hon. Friend (Sir G. Grey) was precluded from again addressing the House, owing to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck) failing to find a seconder. He (Mr. Baines) might also ask to be heard, because he had had the honour to act as Chairman of the Committee which conducted a long, patient, and very diligent investigation into the whole of this question. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke last had been guilty, no doubt through inadvertence, of considerable injustice towards the Government, having accused them of dealing in a wanton and careless manner with a subject of first-rate importance. The right hon. Gentleman had charged them with making
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  "ducks and drakes" of this question. He was correct in his quotation of the terms used by the right hon. Gentleman; and from those terms it was certainly to be inferred that the Government were not acting according to any well-settled or matured plan, but in a wanton, crude, and unjustifiable manner. That he thought was an unjust accusation. The House should bear in mind the circumstances under which the 16th and 17th of Victoria was passed for the amendment of the law with regard to transportation. That Act was passed suddenly and at the end of a Session, by way of an experiment, the Government having been compelled to resort to that expedient by the refusal of the Colonies to receive any more convicts. That experiment was fairly tried for three years, and then there arose a demand in both Houses of Parliament for an investigation as to the manner in which it worked, in order that it might be seen whether any change was desirable. Committees were consequently appointed to inquire into the operation of the Act, and of the House of Commons' Committee he had the honour to be Chairman. The entire subject was carefully investigated, and at last certain resolutions were adopted, as the result of a great body of evidence, and laid before the House, and a similar course was adopted by the House of Lords' Committee, who investigated another branch of the subject also in a careful and diligent manner. The Government having considered these resolutions, deemed it to be their duty to found upon them the present measure. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) had, therefore, no ground for saying that the Government had introduced this measure wantonly, and without any greater reason for legislation than existed when the Bill of 1853 was proposed. He (Mr. Baines) did not now propose to enter upon a discussion of the various points connected with this important subject, as there would be an opportunity of discussing them bye-and-bye; but there was one on which he wished to say a few words. The hon. Member for Sheffield had said that it would be a very easy thing for the Government to discover some place to which convicts might be sent, and by this means they might get rid of the practical difficulty which had arisen from the Australian and Cape Colonists refusing to receive convicts; but the hon. Gentleman must permit him to say that in that which he thought so easy, the Committee found involved difficulties which were utterly in-

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  superable. And so with regard to the Committee of the House of Lords: they inquired particularly into this part of the case, and suggested particular places which had been alluded to by the right hon. Member for Droitwich. The result was that both Committees came to the conclusion that it was a matter of regret that the country should forego the advantages of sending convicts out of the country, and yet that they were unable to point out any place, except Western Australia (which would receive them for the present), to which convicts might in future be sent. The hon. Member for Warwickshire said the sending them out was a very simple matter, but the right hon. Member for Droitwich told them that, though he originally had an opinion that they might find places to which convicts might be sent, and had that opinion when he went into the Committee, yet that after going through the whole of the investigation he came to the conclusion that it was difficult, if not impossible, to find out a place of that kind. The right hon. Gentleman had been Secretary for the Colonies, and so had unusual facilities for forming a correct opinion, besides those which he derived from a very assiduous attendance upon his Committee, and the evidence of such a witness was worth a host of suggestions from those who had had no such opportunity of forming correct opinions. The House of Lords' Committee suggested to Her Majesty's Government the names of one or two places which it was thought might possibly be selected in lieu of Van Diemen 's Land for the purpose of punishing convicts; and on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, the Colonial Secretary, he took the liberty of saying that he had spared no effort to discover the truth upon that subject. For the present, however, it was the strong opinion of the Government that it would be almost impossible to discover any new place that could be used for the purposes of a penal colony.
  MR. WHITESIDEthought his right hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire was quite right in saying that it was unfortunate that the criminal law of England should consist of a series of experiments. That was the statement of his right hon. Friend. He was of opinion that it was contrary to all principles of law to allow the Judge to pass a sentence, and allow the Executive to carry out a different and a severer one—to allow the Judge to pass a sentence of penal servitude, and au-
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  thorize the Executive to—without having heard one word of the evidence—inflict a punishment heavier than that directed by the Judge. He quite concurred with his right hon. Friend that transportation was by the people considered to be the severer punishment. At least, in Ireland it was so, as he could bear witness, after twenty years' experience at the bar in that country. It was so considered both by the criminals and their relatives and friends.
  MR. KEATINGsaid, that, admitting that the Act of 16 & 17 Vict, was to a certain extent an experiment, yet it must be remembered that the necessity for that experiment arose from circumstances over which the Government of the day had no control whatever. That necessity arose from the refusal of the colonies to receive our convicts, and that necessitated a different legislation, and imposed an obligation upon the Government of seeking some remedy or other for a state of things that had unexpectedly arisen. That experiment was embodied in the 16 & 17 Vict., and he regarded it with considerable doubt. He was one of those who ventured, when the Bill passed the third reading, in a thin House, to question the propriety of the experiment of granting tickets of leave, and he suggested to the noble Lord now at the head of the Government, but who was then Secretary for the Home Department, that the three clauses which embodied that principle had not been sufficiently considered, and that they had better be withdrawn from the Bill, and reintroduced if found upon consideration to be necessary. However, the Session had arrived at that period that it became necessary, he presumed, for the Government to pass a Bill in that shape. He entirely agreed with the present Bill, in the principle of restoring transportation in effect; and he was somewhat disappointed in finding that the Secretary of State for the Home Department had not thought it right to follow what he could not help thinking, when he introduced this Bill in the last Session of Parliament, to be really his opinion, that those clauses were introduced for a mere temporary purpose, which, perhaps, had been answered; and he thought that these clauses, repugnant as they were to the public feeling, had better be withdrawn; from the Bill. The Bill, at first sight, appeared to introduce additional uncertainty with regard to the nature of the punishment that was really awarded by the sentence of the Judge; but accepting, as he

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  did, the explanation of the Home Secretary, that, upon this Bill passing, the sentence of penal servitude would involve the penal consequence of liability to transportation, and presuming it to be the intention of Government that actual transportation should be persisted in, as far as the colonies would allow of its being carried into execution, then he did think that the principle of the Bill was a decided improvement upon the Act of 16 & 17 Vict., and he rejoiced that so much unanimity prevailed in the House as to allow the Bill to be read a second time without opposition.
  MR. PACKSsaid, although he would give his support to the Bill, he believed there could not be a question in the mind of any one who ever witnessed the trial of a prisoner that the sentence of transportation had far greater effect in deterring from crime than what he could not help calling the "milk and water" sentence of penal servitude. The friends and companions of the convict felt that banishment from their native country was one of the most serious sentences that could be passed upon them. And what was the object of all punishment? To deter from crime those who were badly disposed, and nothing could have more influence in this respect than the knowledge that the severe sentence pronounced would be carried into effect. At the last winter sessions, at which he presided as chairman, a numerous bench of magistrates agreed to a memorial to the Secretary of State upon this subject, which set forth that the substitution of a comparative short period of penal servitude for transportation was the main ground of the great increase of crime which had taken place; and that it had entirely failed, both as a means of reformation of offenders and as an example to deter from crime. The great benefit of passing the sentence of transportation was, as he had already observed, in its being publicly known at the time it was passed that the criminal would be banished from the country; but as the Bill stood, the Judge would not be able to hold out in terrorem that banishment would follow the sentence, and the convict would be secretly informed afterwards, without the public knowing anything about the matter, that he was to suffer the actual penalty of transportation. Upon this point he agreed with his right hon. Friend, and hoped the Government would, before the Bill went into Committee, reconsider whether it might not be advisable, if transpor-
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  tation was to be allowed by the Bill, that it should form a part of the sentence pronounced in open court.
  LORD STANLEYdid not intend to discuss the details of the measure, and but for some remarks made that night he should not have risen at all. There was one point intimately connected with this question, upon which opinions in this House and among the public at large appeared to be greatly divided; and it seemed I to him that it was the duty of those who upon that subject had formed a clear and decided opinion, to express such opinion in a manner that might leave no doubt in the public mind. The real dispute, and it lay at the bottom of the whole subject, was, whether it would be possible permanently to continue the practice of transportation beyond the seas, or whether the time had arrived when that practice must necessarily cease altogether? He did not think it was fair or satisfactory to limit their arguments to the mere question of transportation being desirable. The point really at issue was not whether transportation was desirable, but whether it was possible or not. He had read every report that had been published upon the subject; he had conversed with many persons who were acquainted with all its bearings; and he confessed that the impression left on his mind was that any attempt to found a new penal settlement in any part of the globe would be an experiment necessarily ending in disappointment and failure. It was not for him to supply proof of so general a proposition; such proof, from the nature of the case, could not be given; but he thought it was easy to show, if any particular spot or specific locality were chosen for a new penal settlement, that to that locality, wherever it might be, there would be found grave and even insuperable objections. If they tried the Falkland Islands, which had often been proposed, they had an area which was far too limited in extent to supply the main advantage of such a colony, namely, a wide space with a scanty population, and a climate in which it would be impossible to raise so much as a crop of grain. If they went to Vancouver's Island, the Americans would naturally and reasonably complain of arrangements, the practical effect of which would be, that the convicts, so soon as they became free, would at once flock to the neighbouring gold fields of California, lying within the United States territory. Passing from Vancouver's Island, if they established a

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  settlement in the northern parts of the Hudson's Bay territory, they would have to deal with a climate in which all attempts at agriculture were totally out of the question; where, at a few inches depth, the ground was permanently frozen throughout the year; whilst if they went to the southern part of that territory they must select those localities which bordered upon the colony of Canada, and he need not say that to establish a penal settlement upon the borders of Canada was practically to establish a settlement in Canada itself. Let them turn now from America to what he believed was the only other locality of which mention had been made—he meant the northern coast of Australia. Of that part of the Australian continent little was known; but what we did know was not much in its favour. It lay far within the torrid zone. It was a low-lying land, with a tropical climate; and the experience of every other part of the globe showed that under those circumstances, and in such a climate, Europeans had not been able to labour successfully, or even to preserve life. Look, again, at the latest map of Australia, and hon. Gentlemen would see how rapidly the colony of Western Australia was extending upwards to the northern coast. However, therefore, they might for a while isolate those convicts whom they planted on the north coast, still in time, and that time not distant, a way would be made from the new to the older settlements. So that, however they might keep the letter of their promise to the colonists of Australia that transportation should cease, they would be breaking it in spirit, because, as soon as their term of punishment had expired, the convicts would be sure to find their way to the older settlements. If then it were, as he thought, impossible to find another spot where, with any fair prospect of success, we could establish a new penal colony, we were thrown upon the only colony which at present did still consent to receive our convicts—he meant Western Australia. Up to the present time the inhabitants of Western Australia had shown no objection to receive convict emigrants; he was glad to see that willingness on their part, and he hoped it would continue. But he could not forget that in Van Diemen's Land and those other colonies to which transportation was formerly carried on, a very short time before that outbreak of popular feeling which compelled the Government at home
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  to abandon the practice of transportation, there was apparently the same willingness to receive convicts which was now to be found in Western Australia. In Van Diemen's Land, the opponents of transportation were a small minority, only a few months before their final triumph. Public opinion had there shifted very rapidly, and we must be prepared for its doing the same in Western Australia. The only precautions which were in the power of the Government to take, in order to secure a continuance for as long a term as possible of transportation to that only colony with reference to which it now existed, were—first, to avoid sending out at any one time an excessive number of convicts; secondly, to take care that they sent out none but those who might reasonably be supposed capable of being reclaimed; and lastly, which was the most important point of all, it was necessary that the inhabitants should clearly understand that transportation to their colony would continue only during their pleasure, and that upon a hostile expression of feeling on their part it would cease at once. It was, he believed, quite as much a feeling on the part of the inhabitants of the other colonies that compulsion was practised towards them—that they were allowed no choice in a matter deeply affecting their destinies—that they were used for the purposes of Government at home, without reference to their interests or their likings—it was quite as much this feeling as it was their actual aversion to the system of transportation which had caused so strong a revulsion of sentiment upon the subject. But admitting that the disposition of the colonists of Western Australia continued favourable, still it was clear that that was not a state of things upon the permanent continuance of which we could reckon; and at best it only afforded an outlet for a very limited number of convicts. The question before the House now, and the question which would a few years hence be still more plainly before the House and the country was, what would they do with the great majority of those who were sentenced for long periods? There was no part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary to which he had listened with more pleasure than that in which the right hon. Gentleman had for the first time in that House distinctly admitted the existence of a class of criminals to whom it was necessary to apply a distinct mode of treatment—the

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  class which must be considered as incorrigible. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would carry that admission into practical effect, and found upon it the only measure which it necessarily led to—namely, that as, after the strictly penal term of imprisonment had expired, there would always be some criminals whom it would be impossible to let loose upon society, these should be in some measure and by some means kept in seclusion, and detained apart from the rest of the community during the term of their lives. When he said this he did not mean to propose that they should be imprisoned for life, permanently shut in within the walls of the gaol; public opinion would not sanction, ought not to sanction, any such proposal; what he meant was, that there were many places having the advantages of an isolated situation, within or near those islands, in which it might be possible to detain, seclude, and employ, in remunerative labour, with some measure of Indulgence to themselves, but with no permission to go forth beyond the limits of the settlement, criminals, whom, from their habits of crime and the gravity of their offences, it was not safe again to turn loose upon society. Turning from this class—that of the more aggravated offenders—to those who might be regarded as corrigible, the question was, could they continue or modify the ticket-of-leave system so as to make it really a benefit. Upon that subject he knew there was a good deal of hostile feeling—under the circumstances he could not term it prejudice—in the public mind. His answer to the objections which had been raised against the system of tickets of leave was, that it had never, in reality, had a fair trial. The theory had been one thing, the practice had been altogether another. In theory the only thing which distinguished the holder of a ticket of leave from a man who had undergone his term of imprisonment, and been discharged at the end of it, was (he apprehended) the liability of the former, at any time when it might seem necessary to the proper authorities, to be called upon to show in what manner he got his living. He knew that it might be said of a system of police surveillance that it was alien to our feelings as Englishmen and citizens of a free country. But the question arose, whether criminals, convicted of grave offences, might not be considered as having permanently forfeited some of the privileges of free men. It was argued again, that any supervision over these
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  men by the police was necessarily an obstacle to their finding employment. But he would remind the House that there was another side to the question, which deserved at least an equal amount of consideration. They had heard a great deal about the hardship inflicted on a ticket-of-leave man, who had obtained honest employment, by causing his character to be made known to his employer. But suppose no such information were given with regard to his former pursuits; suppose his employer had taken him into service with a false—possibly a forged—character, or at any rate totally ignorant of his antecedents; and suppose the man, after this, to have abused the confidence so placed in him. Assume these facts, and they were not at all improbable, and then let it be known that the police, being aware of the character of the man, had nevertheless out of tenderness towards him forborne to give the information, he thought the sympathy of the public would change sides, and it would be said that, however desirable it might be that a man who was discharged from prison should find employment, yet that that employment ought not to be given to him under colour of what was nothing less than a deception, and by an arrangement which would make it be believed that he was a man of unblemished character, whereas really he had come out of a gaol. It was most desirable, no doubt; it was even necessary that occupation should be found for these men; but if it were done under false pretences, if there were any attempt to hide from their employers their characters or antecedents, the inevitable result would be to create a feeling against the class even stronger than what existed now. No doubt, when there was a considerable number of ticket-of-leave men in the country, under the operation of the system, there would be a difficulty in finding them work. He thought, therefore, it was a fair question for the Government to consider, whether it might not be possible to put them upon public works when their terms of imprisonment had expired, avoiding at the same time the feeling of envy which would naturally be created amongst the honest labouring classes, by fixing the remuneration for their labour somewhat lower than the ordinary rate of wages in the country. Again, the present ticket-of-leave system was defective in that the tickets were granted almost indiscriminately, their refusal being the rare exception, and the granting of

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  them the rule. He did not think that any ticket of leave ought to be granted until the prisoner had passed through something like a probational stage—a state of partial and incomplete freedom, arrangements for which could be made, and had been made, in more than one prison. By such machinery they might ascertain, not merely his good conduct when he was absolutely under restraint, but his continued good conduct when a certain degree of freedom was given him. It was a great mistake to suppose that those prisoners whose conduct was best whilst in confinement were necessarily those who would do the best upon recovering their liberty. The prisoner who conducted himself best in gaol was, generally speaking, the man of most docile character, the man who was most amenable to any influence, whether good or bad, that was brought to bear upon him. Such a man, therefore, when he found himself upon his discharge once more amongst his old associates, was most liable to relapse into crime. Another point in connection with this subject was of some moment and deserved attention. It was stated, when the question was last discussed, that out of 1,140 tickets of leave which had been revoked, all except forty-one had been revoked in consequence of fresh convictions. The revocation of the ticket of leave, therefore, became altogether nominal; because, where a man was so convicted after his previous sentence arid imprisonment, it was almost certain that the subsequent sentence passed upon him would of itself include a longer term of imprisonment than if his original sentence had been carried into effect. If it was laid down that tickets of leave were not to be revoked, except upon an actual sentence of a court of justice, then the granting of them was merely nominal, and they might as well not be granted at all, but the criminal be sent out of prison without one. The measures which he would recommend were—one, that they should require a probational course of good conduct before the ticket of leave was granted—the other, that the ticket-of-leave holder be subjected to a closer system of supervision. These were the principles which should be looked to for safety in dealing with the criminal population of this country; he believed if they were adopted that the country would pass safely through the dangerous period which must follow on; but whether we were to pass safely through that crisis or not, of
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  one thing he was assured—that to return to transportation on a large scale was impossible.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, that he considered the discussion to be altogether misplaced, and that the view which had been taken of this subject might be looked upon as a sort of prospective retrospect of what the system would be some three years hence. What was the state of the case? The old system had been found ineffective, and the criminal population was now brought to such a state as to frighten the timid, and to make the wise pause. The country was now reduced to utter helplessness as to what system should be adopted with regard to the criminal population. The result was the Bill before the House, the great merit of which was its brevity and vagueness. It contained but one general principle—viz., that the criminal, upon conviction, forfeited his time and his labour to the service of the state, in whatever place or manner the state should determine to avail itself of it. There at least they had attained something tangible—they had reached something like common sense—let them be satisfied with that. The noble Lord (Lord Stanley) had availed himself of the ambiguous meaning of the word "transportation." He had treated the Motion in terms peculiarly appropriate to the case of a penal colony, whereas the word signified in this case nothing more than a few penal gangs scattered throughout the colonies, which might be kept under the same control as similar gangs at home. Hence all that magnificent array of apprehensions was but the phantasm of an over-heated imagination. The great principle of the measure was, as he (Mr. B. Hope) had stated, that the time and labour of the criminal became forfeited to the state upon his conviction. How to apply that principle was the problem of the age.
  MR. MARSHhaving had many years' experience in a penal colony, hoped the House would bear with him for a few moments. The three objections to transportation were, that it had no terror for the criminal; that it did not reform him; and its cost. As regarded the first of these objections, it was well known that the common people of this country had a great objection to transportation; while, with respect to reformation, he (Mr. Marsh) knew several convicts who had become really reformed men, and many others who had discovered that honesty was the best policy, and had acted on it, The cost was

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  scarcely a question to be argued in such a case. He agreed in many things that had fallen from hon. Members in favour of the Bill; but he thought the noble Lord was quite right in saying that the question was not if there should be transportation, but to find out a place to transport to. The only point, in fact, was North Australia; but that he considered to be a highly eligible spot for the purpose, as in many parts the land was 2,000 or 3,000 feet above the level of the sea; and it was next to an impossibility that the convicts, unarmed and unprovided for, could work their way through 12 degrees of latitude down to the older colonies. He wished to say a word upon the subject of penal discipline before the convict went to the colonies, and that was to tell the House that the gaol was a very bad place to prepare the convict for a colony. Indeed, it was of all places the very worst. The colonist was obliged to "rough it," to cook his own dinner, to make his own bed, and to make himself useful generally; but in the gaol the prisoner's wants were all supplied—he had no occasion for—he was not even allowed—to exercise his skill, and the consequence was, that when such a person found himself in a colony he was helpless—more helpless than he was before he was put in gaol.

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. ADDERLEYsaid, it would be unnecessary for him to trespass upon the attention of the House at any length in moving the second reading of this Bill, for, as more than two-thirds of the present Members occupied seats in the late Parliament, they would be fully acquainted with the principles and details of the measure which was introduced during the last Session by his hon. Friend Sir Stafford North-cote. The principle of the Bill was then discussed at considerable length on the second reading, and met with general approval. It had gone into Committee pro formâ, and but for the dissolution of Parliament he believed the measure would have become law. The object of the Bill was to render available such private institutions, in the nature of industrial schools, in England and Wales, as might be adapted for the care and education of vagrant children, and to enforce, as far as possible, parental care. It was, indeed, intended as a supplement to those reformatory measures
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  which the late Parliament, much to its credit, had adopted. It was calculated that the number of children, in this Kingdom alone, who might be dealt with under a measure of this nature, was about 50,000. At present no means of education whatever were provided for these unfortunate children. The late Mr. Tufnell said that they were the class of children for whose education it was most important that the State should make provision, and that their redemption from idle and dissolute habits would do more to promote the true interests of the country than any number of gaols and gibbets. In fact, these children formed the basis of an hereditary class of criminals, the insuperable difficulty of disposing of whom the House had to-night been discussing for some hours. He did not think it desirable to go too far in establishing new institutions for new classes of cases, but this Bill merely sought to render available existing institutions—for instance, primary schools, workhouse schools, district schools, while reformatories would be kept distinct for criminal children alone. These would altogether make a provision of education for a great number of children, who were now totally without any means of obtaining it. He did not claim any credit on his own part for the measure, which had been brought forward, as he had said, by Sir S. Northcote, and he regretted that that gentleman was not now a Member of the House, that he might carry out his own plan. A similar system to that contemplated by this Bill had been applied to Scotland, on the proposition of the hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. Dunlop), and had proved most efficient. He (Mr. Adderley) hoped the same benefit would be extended to England, and he wished to call attention to the circumstance that this Bill would carry out the measure which had been introduced by Mr. Speaker three years ago and assented to by Parliament, empowering the guardians of the poor to make provision for educating the children of out-door paupers. The present measure would supplement that Act, by enabling the guardians to educate all vagrant children in industrial schools. He believed the only probable opponent of this Bill was the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Bowyer), who had opposed it last Session, on the ground that it had a proselytizing tendency, and that the establishment of these industrial schools was intended as a means of converting Roman Catholic children to Protestantism. He thought

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  the hon. and learned Gentleman did his co-religionists in this country great injustice by raising such an objection, for no one could doubt they were both rich and zealous enough to provide refuges for the vagrant children connected with their own religious community. By the Bill he proposed the Roman Catholics would be placed upon a perfect equality with other bodies. Indeed, he might have anticipated some objections from his hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Spooner), upon the ground that no distinction was made in respect to Roman Catholics, but certainly none from that body itself. He trusted the hon. Member for Dundalk would see that his objections formed no ground at least for opposing the second reading of the Bill, as, if he wished to introduce any clause to protect Roman Catholic interests, he could do so in Committee. If, however, the hon. Gentleman persisted in opposing the second reading, he and those who voted with him would place themselves in the invidious position of saying that, because they could not get provisions exactly as they wished to have them, therefore they would oppose the principle of industrial schools for the reformation of all vagrant children throughout England. The hon. Member concluded by moving that the Bill be read a second time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. BOWYER,while fully admitting the honourable and benevolent intentions of the promoters of the Bill, still felt it an imperative duty to oppose the second reading. He objected to the Bill upon two grounds. The first ground was, that the Bill had not been sufficiently considered, as it was only read a first time on Friday last, and had only been delivered to hon. Members on that morning. Many hon. Members had not seen the Bill at all. He might be told that the Bill was the same that had been introduced last Session; but he replied that there were very many Members of that House who were not in the last Parliament. Besides, they had all lately been engaged in transactions very interesting to themselves, and, he trusted, beneficial to the country, but which had not left them much time to think over the provisions of former Bills. If, however, the Bill had been one of small moment he would have raised no objection as to time, but upon examining it he found a measure of great—he might say—of dangerous im-
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  portance. It introduced principles totally new to our jurisprudence. It was acknowledged that our present laws as to vagrancy were the most invidious portion of our jurisprudence. Those laws were, to use a technical legal term, odious. Foreigners frequently asserted that poverty in England was treated as a crime. The proposed Bill provided that, whenever a child was taken into custody upon a charge of begging or vagrancy, the magistrate should have power to send such child to any certified school, where he or she would be liable to be detained until attaining the age of fifteen years. It was all very well to call such establishments schools, but really they would be prisons, in which children might be kept away from their parents until reaching the age of fifteen years. That, he contended, was an interference with the parental authority of the poor which should be regarded with extreme care, if not with jealousy. They all knew what a charge of begging or vagrancy might mean. A policeman might take up any child he found selling matches or flowers, or sweeping a crossing, or (unless he belonged to Lord Shaftesbury's favoured brigade) cleaning shoes, for in the city no one was allowed to clean shoes unless he belonged to a brigade which had a religious as well as an industrial organization. They all knew that many of the children in London who sold matches and swept crossings did so rather as a pretence for bogging, but he should be sorry to see the day when any one would advise so un-Christian a course as to put a stop to the harmless industry of those poor people, although it might be mixed up with what was called begging. He thought there had been of late too much interference with the poor, and he hoped the House would not carry that interference much further. His second objection arose, he admitted, upon more delicate grounds. The Roman Catholics in this country were in a minority, and, as a minority were liable to go to the wall unless they kept a sharp look out, they were obliged to take every means of protecting themselves, even at the risk of sometimes being placed in an invidious position. The hon. Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) had spoken of the means of the Roman Catholics in this country, but he was greatly mistaken in supposing that those means were at all large as compared with the Protestant bodies. The Protestant Church had the benefit of all the endow-

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  ments bequeathed by munificent founders to the Roman Catholic Church; it had tithes, and, although perhaps only for a short time, church rates. He would point out to the House the working of this Bill with regard to the poorer classes of Roman Catholics. In London, Liverpool, and other large towns there was a numerous class of poor Irish children exercising the miserable employments to which he had already called the attention of the House; and if the vagrancy law were strictly enforced the greater portion of these children would be brought under its operation. When this Bill was first introduced there was in it an extraordinary provision by which the police were entitled to take up children without any offence whatever being committed, and bring them before a Magistrate. The hon. Baronet (Sir S. Northcote) who then had charge of the Bill made an alteration in this respect, and provided that the police should not be at liberty to take up children without any charge, but when they were brought upon a charge they were to be dealt with according to the provisions of the Bill. This improvement was, however, rather nominal than real. The police did not now sweep the streets of these poor children, because the magistrates would not know how to deal with them when in custody; but this Bill enabled magistrates to dispose of them. The children might be brought upon a charge of vagrancy, and then the magistrate had power to send them to a school. In the first instance all the schools would, no doubt, be Protestant—very good schools probably for purposes of education—but it should be borne in mind that Roman Catholics deemed it important that these children should keep their religion. They wished to see them educated, but in their view the most important thing was that they should keep their religion. They would, however, be sent to Protestant schools, where they would lose their religion. The Bill provided that before a child was sent to school notice was to be given to the parents or the persons with whom the child had been residing; but these poor people were in very humble circumstances, and generally speaking were so afraid of the police and of the magistrates, that they would not come forward to claim a child in such a case, so that, practically, the notice would have no effect. But supposing parents or relations did come forward, they could not remove the child, if they disapproved the school, unless they gave secu-
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  rity to pay the expense of removal. Now, considering the poverty of these people this would render the clause perfectly nugatory. He hoped the House would appreciate the motives he had urged for opposing the Bill, and, although he did not impute to the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) any intention to proselytize by means of this Bill, yet the Bill would, nevertheless, have that effect, and he most oppressive to a very poor class of people. For these reasons he should oppose the second reading of the Bill.
  LORD ROBERT CECILcould not see the force of the hon. and learned Gentleman's objection founded on the shortness of time given to peruse the Bill. It was a Bill of only seven pages and could be read in a quarter of an hour, and besides, it was exactly the same Bill that was brought forward in the last Parliament. The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to wish the establishment of the Lazzaroni system of Italy in this country. He told the House that to take up vagrants who were guilty of begging and keep them in prison disgraced us in the eyes of foreigners, and that we ought to assimilate the law of England, in this respect, to that of foreign countries. [Mr. BOWYER: No, no!] He could only say that the hon. and learned Gentleman referred to the opinion of foreigners on the subject, and represented them as calling our vagrancy laws a disgrace; but certainly the Lazzaroni system of the Italian States was not a wholesome system, or one that ought to be copied in this country. If the hon. and learned Gentleman had read the little book containing the Standing Orders of the House he would have seen that it was not competent for any Member of the House to call any statute of the realm "odious;" and when he used that term he ought in strictness to have been called to order. [Mr. BOWYER said he had spoken it merely in a legal sense.] It might be a legal expression, but in that House it was certainly a disrespectful one. The object of this Act was not to increase the stringency of the vagrancy laws, but to prevent children from falling under their operation. It was not true, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said, that a child could be taken and kept in prison till the age of fifteen in spite of parents or relatives. If the parent or any other person could show that the child had a chance of getting an honest way of living, that moment the child would be restored. The hon. and learned

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  Gentleman wanted them to believe that in case a child were sent to a Protestant school he could not be removed to a Roman Catholic school. He said the Roman Catholic community were very poor, and perhaps they were; but the case of Alicia Race would be in the memory of the House. The Roman Catholics found funds enough to draw her from a Protestant school, and, if they could get money to do that, they would find little difficulty in procuring what was necessary to remove a child from one of these schools. What was the real case as regarded these poor children? Their parents could not support them, and they were compelled to seek a living by begging, or by worse means, so that in course of time they found their way into the gaol, or into one of our penal settlements. This Bill proposed that they should be taken from the streets, placed where they would receive a good education, and put in the way of earning an honest livelihood. But the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Bowyer) came forward and said, "No, you may wish to save them from immorality, but we wish to keep them from becoming Protestants—we prefer to see them remain vicious rather than that they should be taken to a Protestant school." He hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman would find, however acutely he might argue this question, that he could not receive the support of the House of Commons.
  MR. PALKsaid, that this Bill contained so many clauses objectionable to the agricultural districts, that without taking measures to oppose its second reading he felt he should not perform the duty he owed to his constituents if he did not protest against it. The Preamble was wholly unobjectionable. At the present moment, however, through the benevolence of individuals, poor, neglected children, in danger from their situation of becoming criminals, were maintained in establishments which were supported by voluntary contributions. To that system he gave his most unqualified assent, but protested against any system which should render it compulsory upon the ratepayers of this country—which should increase those rates which year after year were more burdensome than they should be. The House would allow him to call its attention to the unconstitutional steps by which they proceeded every year to levy taxes upon this country. First of all they had the organization of our gaols, our
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  lunatic asylums, and our police establishments, the funds for those purposes being raised not by the voices of the ratepayers, but by that of magistrates appointed by the Lord Lieutenant of the county. Nothing could be more contrary to the constitutional maxim than taxation and representation should go hand-in-hand than this system; and now another rate was proposed to be laid in the same way on the agricultural ratepayer. The effect of it might be to condemn the labourer to hopeless poverty, and thus to drive him to that very crime which it was the object of this Bill to prevent. His main objection was to the 16th and 17th clauses, which enacted that when a Justice of the Peace should order any child to be sent to one of these certified industrial schools, the Guardians of the poor of the parish to which the child belonged should pay to the managers of the school a sum not exceeding 3s. a week. In the first place, where were the industrial schools, and where were the funds by which they were to be supported? At present they were not visible, and the promoters of the Bill were in the position of persons asking permission to send children to places which had, as yet, no existence. If the House would reflect on the immense addition which the 16th clause would cast on the rates of the agricultural parishes they would hesitate before passing so sweeping a measure. In all these agricultural parishes there were already schools supported by private charity or by the parishes themselves, and in them there was every facility for the honest man's child obtaining an education—if not sufficiently good, yet as good as circumstances would allow. The schools within the unions themselves appeared to have been entirely forgotten by the promoters of this Bill, and before seeking to legislate for that which did not at present exist, either some attempt ought to be made to improve the union schools, or they ought to be abolished altogether. Either a system ought to be adopted which could be worked out thoroughly and efficiently without the aid of voluntary contributions, which must always be varying and uncertain, or the union schools ought to be placed on such a footing as would enable them to meet all the difficulties of the case. He did not intend to support the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member opposite, but he felt it due to the agriculturists to resist the burden sought to be thrown on them, and, therefore, in Committee he should endea-

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  vour to introduce such Amendments as would separate the agricultural from the urban parishes.
  MR. BARROWfelt the strongest objection to the Bill as being an interference with the parental authority, which ought not to be tolerated in any free country. It was a perfectly superfluous piece of legislation. If its object was to remove children who were in the way of crime, or who had become criminals to a certain extent, that was already provided for by the reformatory schools, and the establishment of other schools would only bewilder those who were disposed to forward institutions already established. The child who was found beginning a course of crime might be taken up and sent to a reformatory school. He was quite ready to admit the necessity of having some class of schools intermediate between the ordinary schools and the gaols, and therefore it was that he was anxious that the experiment of the reformatory schools should be fairly tried, but he objected to the establishment of a second set of schools before that experiment had been tried. He had the strongest objection, too, to the manner in which the provisions of this Bill were to be carried out, and particularly to the provisions which allowed the policeman to select the Justices of the peace before whom he was to take the vagrant child whom he had apprehended, instead of taking him, as a matter of course, before the next meeting of justices in the ordinary petty sessions, and having the hearing in open court. The Bill carried the principle of the Reformatory Bill to an extraordinary length. By the law of the land an adult vagrant in full knowledge of the consequences of all his actions could only be punished with a month's imprisonment for the first offence, two months for the second, while for the third he must be tried at Sessions, and then could only be sentenced to six months' imprisonment; but under this Bill a child found begging in the streets might be subjected to an indefinite term of imprisonment from the time when he was apprehended—which might be at the age of five years—until he was fifteen years old. This was an amount of punishment so entirely inconsistent with the crime that he could not consent under any circumstances to vote for such a provision. In the Reformatory Bill a child who bad been convicted of felony even could not be detained for more than five years. He would not enter into the political inquiry whether it would be right to interfere with the labour-market by taking
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  children out of the hands of their parents for the period proposed by the Bill. In the agricultural districts it was of the utmost importance that a child should learn the use of his hands as well as of his head, and to keep a boy at school up to the age of fifteen would altogether unfit him for earning his bread at a future period of his life. He had another objection to the Bill. By the new Poor Law Act the management of the poor was placed in the hands of Boards of Guardians representing the ratepayers. Previous to the passing of that Act it was alleged that some of the Magistrates were too anxious to exceed the power assigned them by law, and to make extravagant charges upon their parishes; and there could be no doubt that the administration of the Poor Law by Boards of Guardians was generally preferred to that by Justices of the peace. Now, the present Bill reintroduced the old principle of antagonism between Justices and Boards of Guardians, and upon that ground, among others, he could not vote for the second reading. He believed, moreover, that the children in workhouse schools—at least in those with which he was acquainted—were better fed, clothed, and taught than the children of any labourer could possibly be; and there was, therefore, no justification for taxing the industrious classes to give to the children of the profligate a better education than the independent labourer could afford to his own children. His objections on the score of pecuniary expense were, however, far inferior to those he felt from other reasons, as his main objections to the Bill were that it attached an enormous punishment to a trifling offence, and provided for an unjustifiable interference between parent and child.
  SIR GEORGE GREYdid not intend to offer any objection to the second reading of the Bill, although he confessed that, the Bill having been delivered only that day, he had not been able to read it through. He supposed, however, that it was the same measure, somewhat amended, which was read a second time before the dissolution of the last Parliament, and committed pro formâ, with a view to the introduction of certain amendments. In the discussion of the Bill, taking place as it did on the night after the debate and division on the Chinese question, he was unfortunately unable to take any part. If so, it would require the most careful consideration in Committee, and he hoped its Mover would give to the House ample opportunity for examining its provisions before the arrival of the next

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  stage. Some of the objections urged against this Bill by the last speaker were entitled to weight. The Bill was said to be founded upon the Scotch Industrial School Act passed at the instance of the hon. and learned Member for Greenock; but, on looking at its clauses, he found that they applied only to children who were already under the operation of the Reformatory Act in England—viz., those who were charged with offences against the law. The Scotch Industrial School Act, on the contrary, was distinguished from the Reformatory Act, inasmuch as it referred to children who were expressly declared not to be charged with any offence against the law. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would explain in Committee why he proposed to apply this Bill to children who were vagrants and beggars, when such children were already dealt with under the Reformatory Act, and sentenced for a less time, indeed, than they would be under this Bill, but still for a considerable period, to detention in a school. There were other provisions in the Bill connected with the working of the Poor Law, to which he knew his right hon. Friend the President of the Pool-Law Board was anxious to direct the attention of the House. When the Bill went into Committee his right hon. Friend would make some suggestions with regard to the clauses which affected the administration of the funds in the hands of the Poor-law Guardians. At the same time he was not prepared to oppose the second reading, but he hoped that the promoters of the Bill would afford the House some explanation upon the various points which had been raised, and would permit a considerable time to elapse between the second reading and the consideration of the Bill in Committee.
  MR. BRADYsaid he agreed entirely with the right hon. Gentleman, that the projector of this Bill should show cause for the Bill; he complained, moreover, that they should be called upon to debate a Bill in the evening which had only been printed in the morning; and he was perfectly convinced that nine-tenths of the Members had not read a line of it. The measure would consign children to virtual imprisonment for years without committing any crime whatever; and he considered that the hon. Member for Dundalk was quite justified in resisting the second reading of the Bill, and as for himself, he would oppose it at every stage.
  MR. PATRICK O'BRIENsaid, he had found so many objectionable provisions
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  in the Bill, that he would oppose it to the uttermost. His objection to the Bill was also founded upon another consideration. There were grave differences existing in England in reference to education, and it was now attempted by a side wind to make use of this industrial school system to interfere with a grave principle which ought only to be brought forward on well considered grounds.
  MR. B. STANHOPEgave his hearty support to the second reading. They were told they were going to send the children; to gaol, but he had looked at the clauses, and only found that they were going to send the children to school. He also found in clauses 12 and 13, that they could release a child at any time, provided security was given to the State that such child could become a useful member of society. Any justice of the peace could release a child who obtained employment. If it could not obtain employment, it was better for its own sake, and for that of the community, that it should remain at school than grow up wild in the streets. He might say, further, that so far as his own county was concerned, he believed that the ratepayers were satisfied with their own control over their affairs, and did not wish, in a Bill like the present, to have general management by the Board of Guardians. For these reasons he should support the second reading, though he could not pledge himself to support all the clauses in Committee.
  MR. RIDLEYcould not give his support to the Bill going beyond its present stage unless very great and general alterations were made in it. It was proposed to send the children, when brought before a Justice of the peace, to industrial schools; but the same objection appeared to him to apply to sending them to industrial schools as applied to sending them to workhouse schools.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 177; Noes 18: Majority 159.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Wednesday, 20th May.

BANK ACTS.

  SELECT COMMITTEE APPOINTED.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERmoved the appointment of a Select Committee "to inquire into the operation of the Bank Act of 1844 (7 & 8 Vic. c. 32), and of the Bank Acts for Ireland and Scotland of 1845 (8 & 9 Vic. c. 37, 38)." The right hon. Gentleman said the Motion was similar to one to which the House

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  agreed in the last Session. The Committee was then appointed, but only one witness had been examined when their further proceedings were interrupted by the dissolution of Parliament.
  MR. ROEBUCKwished to know whether it was the intention of the right hon. Gentleman to move that this should be a Secret Committee? The last was a Secret Committee, and it was a sort of hocus pocus which he did not understand.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, it had been the uniform practice of the House to have Committees of this description Committees of secrecy. The only difference between Committees of secrecy and Committees not of secrecy, but which excluded the public during the examination of witnesses, was, that in the former case Members were not able to go into the room while the examination of witnesses was proceeding, find, therefore though there was something very awful in the sound of the term "Secret Committee" there was very little difference between a Committee of secrecy and another Committee. He did not attach any importance to the Committee being a Committee of secrecy and it was merely in deference to the practice of the House that he moved it should be so in the last Session. There was nothing in the relations between the Government and the Bank of England which the Government desired to be concealed; but he believed it was thought questions might be asked reflecting on the credit of particular establishments, or involving matters which it might not be desirable to have discussed in public during the progress of the inquiry, and considerations of this kind had led to the adoption of the precedent to which he had alluded. Hon. Members would see, if they referred back, that in old Committees of this sort even witnesses had requested that their names might be suppressed and initials only given; but the weekly returns of the Bank of England had given more publicity to financial matters than had formerly existed, and if it was the general opinion of the House, he would accede to the request that the Committee should not be one of secrecy.
  MR. MALINSsaid, he rejoiced that no time had been lost in proposing the reappointment of this Committee, but he should have been glad if the Government, taking into consideration the difficulties existing in the money-market, had brought forward a measure on their own responsi-
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  bility, because he did not think that the labours of the Committee would lead to legislation during the present Session. At present a state of things existed which was most detrimental to the commercial interests of the country. The rate of discount of the hank of England on the 21st of March last was 6 per cent, and on the 2nd of April it was raised to 6½ per cent, at which rate it had since remained, and one day last week the Bank of England had refused to make any advances upon Government securities. It was most essential that in a commercial country money should be procurable at an easy rate, and if the present state of things continued it would be the destruction of small operators. What had led to the present state of things was the absurd division, by the Act of 1844, of the Bank of England into two departments. As he had explained on a, previous occasion, the only resource which the Bank had to operate upon was its reserve notes, and those were at present reduced to £3,500,000, and hon. Gentlemen conversant with those matters would agree with him that when the amount of reserve notes fell below £5,000,000 commercial transactions in this country could never be carried on with advantage. He would venture to say that war taxation had not been so much felt by the commercial community as was the present high rate of interest. Its effect was to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer, and the Government would find that the commercial interest were beginning to be alive to the importance of the question. The subject seemed to him to be of such importance that he had felt it his duty to offer a few remarks to the House, and his principal object in rising had been to express the hope that the Government would lose no time in bringing forward a measure upon the subject, and that they would not consider that having appointed this Committee they had discharged all their duty. His suggestion was that we should have by law the power of relaxing the Act of 1844, and so important did he consider the subject to be that unless he saw the progress made by the Committee was such as to enable the Government to legislate during the present Session, and if the existing pressure in the money-market should continue, he should before the close of the Session bring the whole subject under the notice of the House, and submit to it a Resolution for its approval.
  MR. T. HANKEYsaid, that from the

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  observations which had fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just spoken one would be inclined to conclude that absolute ruin had been brought upon the mercantile community by the operation of the Act of 1844; but he, for one, did j not believe that the general rate of interest had anything whatsoever to do with the working of that Act. He did not wish that the opinion should prevail out of doors that great commercial distress existed when such was really not the case; and in corroboration of his opinion upon the subject he might add, that when in Manchester the other day, he had been informed, upon the best authority, that the high rate of interest had had no effect whatsoever upon trade, which was in a most thriving condition in Manchester, Liverpool, and in other great commercial towns. His own experience in London went to confirm that statement. The object of the Committee was merely to inquire whether the provisions of the Act of 1844 had been carried out.
  MR. HUDSONexpressed it to be his opinion that to make the proposed Committee one of secrecy would be an useless proceeding, inasmuch as the Committee of 1844, of which he had been a Member, had been a Secret Committee, and yet all the evidence which had been taken before it had been published to the world. Sir R. Peel had attended most assiduously upon that Committee, and the acquisition of a great deal of information had been the result of its labours. He therefore could not understand why further inquiry into the subject should be instituted, and he thought that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should at once legislate with respect to it, if legislation should be deemed to be necessary.
  MR. A. AYRTONcontended that the proposed inquiry should be conducted with the utmost vigour and should embrace within its scope every subject connected with the Bank of England, and the relation which it bore to the trade and commerce of the country. He was of opinion that, as there was no necessity for immediate legislation upon the matter, it would be highly inexpedient that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should at once introduce any measure in reference to the Act of 1844. The Bank Charter was now granted in perpetuity, but with the liability to be redeemed whenever Parliament should deem it desirable to take that course, and he might state that he had been in com-
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  munication with many gentlemen of considerable authority upon the question in the City of London who believed that that charter might be altogether abrogated with great advantage to the community. There were others, however, who thought that the Bank of England should be charged with the management of the whole currency of the kingdom, with such intended powers of control as would enable it to relieve the existing commercial distress. He was not one of those who deemed that such a scheme would be attended with much success, but, as men of great practical experience differed in opinion, it was, at all events, desirable that the Committee should pursue their labours energetically, and that legislation should be proceeded with in no hasty spirit.
  Motion agreed to.
  Select Committee appointed. [See p. 223.]

GENERAL BOARD OF HEALTH.

  LEAVE. FIRST READING.
  SIR GEORGE GREY SIR GEORGE GREY moved for leave to introduce a Bill "for transferring the powers of the General Board of Health to a Committee of the Privy Council." The right hon. Baronet in doing so took occasion to observe that the Board had originally been created in the year 1848; its members having then consisted of the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and two other gentlemen appointed by the Crown, one of whom was in the receipt of a salary. The original Board had, however, been dissolved in the year 1854, and a new Board had been constituted, having at its head a president, who received a salary of £2,000 per annum, he being the only paid member of the Board. By virtue of the Act, under which the department had been instituted, its powers were to continue until the 29th day of July next, and until the end of the next ensuing Session of Parliament. Paying regard, however, to the ordinary duties, which the Board had to perform, the Government had come to the conclusion, instead of proposing a renewal of the existing Board, to dispense with it as a separate department, and that such portion of its present duties, as it was desirable should continue to be discharged, should be transferred to the Council Office to be performed by the Lord President, with the aid of a Committee of the Council. If the House should agree to that proposal an immediate re-

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  duction of £3,000 or £4,000 per annum in the expenses of the department would be the result, while a still greater reduction might after some experience of the working of the new system be effected.
  Leave given.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir GEORGE GREY and Mr. MASSEY "for transferring the powers of the General Board of Health to a Committee of the Privy Council."
  Bill presented, and read 1°.

BANKRUPTCY AND INSOLVENCY (IRELAND) BILL.

  LEAVE. FIRST READING.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALD MR. J. D. FITZGERALD moved for leave to bring in a Bill "To consolidate and amend the Acts relating to Bankruptcy and Insolvency in Ireland."
  MR. WHITESIDEreminded the Attorney General for Ireland that about twelve mouths ago a Resolution was passed by a Committee of that House stating that it was essential to the due administration of justice in the Irish Incumbered Estates Court that a proper place should be provided for the transaction of its business, and to which the professional practitioners the suitors could have convenient access. He added that, notwithstanding that Resolution, at that moment nobody know why or wherefore it had not been acted upon, though it related, as they all knew, to a tribunal which from time to time disposed of an immense amount of property, and had proved to be of great advantage to the public.
  Leave given.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by the ATTORNEY GENERAL for Ireland and Sir GEORGE GREY.
  Bill presented, and read 1°.

  THE PRINTING COMMITTEE.
  MR. WILSON MR. WILSON moved that Mr. G. A. HAMILTON, Mr. GREENE, Mr. WILSON, Mr. DIVETT, Mr. GASKELL, Mr. VERNON SMITH, Mr. ESTCOURT, Mr. BONHAM-CARTER, and Mr. THORNELY, be the Members of the Printing Committee.
  SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYcalled the attention of the House to the enormous amount of the printing expenses, and stated his conviction that, unless some effective control were placed over the various departments connected with this subject, the evil would continue, if, indeed, it did not go on increasing.
  MR. WILSONsaid, the Treasury had prepared a set of rules, which he should present for the opinion and adoption of this Committee when it sat, and which he hoped would have the effect of accomplishing the object the hon. Baronet had in view. He (Mr. Wilson) quite admitted that there had been an enormous amount of unnecessary printing from first to last, and he hoped the House would assist the Government in its desire to mitigate the evil, for during some years past they had had returns moved for which were of no earthly use. The Resolutions he meant to propose would be such as would reach and control every department of the State concerned in the subject of printing, and such as he hoped would effect a material reduction in that branch of the public expenditure.
  Motion agreed to.
  House adjourned at half-after One o'clock.