Commons Sitting of 28 May 1857

MINUTES.
NEW WRITS.—For Kerry, v. Henry Arthur Herbert, esq., Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; for Reading, v. Henry Singer Keating, esq., Solicitor General.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1°Tenant Right (Ireland); Medical and Surgical Sciences (Queen's University) (Ireland).
2°Joint-Stock Companies, &c.; Princess Royal's Annuity.

IRISH CONSTABULARY—QUESTION.
MR. HASSARDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the Government intend in this Session to carry out the determination expressed by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on the 27th of February last, "to introduce a Bill for the re-distribution of the Constabulary Force in Ireland amongst the several counties?"
MR. J. D. FITZGERALDsaid, he would take upon himself to answer the question, and he had lost no time in bringing the matter before the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who, he hoped, upon taking his seat, would be able to lay a measure before the House.

MILITARY SCHOOLS—QUESTION.
LORD BURGHLEYasked the Under Secretary for War whether the Government will allow the sons of those adjutants of militia, who are retired officers of the line, to be admitted to the military schools on the same terms as the sons of officers of the army?
SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, in reply, that the officers to whom the noble Lord had alluded, had voluntarily retired on half-pay, or had received the difference, or had sold their commissions. In either of those cases they would not be entitled to admission to the military schools on the same footing as officers of the army. In other cases their sons would be entitled to admission the same as those of officers of the army.

TORTURE IN INDIA—QUESTION.
LORD CLAUD HAMILTONasked the President of the Board of Control whether any investigations as to the practice of torture in Bombay and Bengal were instituted by Government in 1854, similar to those which led to the Madras Report of April, 1855, and whether the results of those investigations will be laid before Parliament.?
MR. VERNON SMITHsaid, no commission had been issued in the cases of the two Presidencies alluded to by the noble Lord. The late Governor General the Marquess of Dalhousie had thought it better to act at once. The clauses in the penal code, which were now under consideration by the Legislative Council, would apply to all parts of India. The papers referring to the subject would be laid upon the table as soon as they were copied.

SERGEANTS' GOOD-CONDUCT MONEY.

  QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN TRELAWNYasked the Under Secretary for War, with reference to an Order of the 10th day of January, 1857, allowing soldiers made sergeants since that date to retain their previously earned good-conduct money, whether it is the intention of the war authorities that sergeants created before the 10th day of January, 1857, and whose good-conduct money ceased under regulations then in force on their becoming sergeants, should remain in a worse position than their brother non-commissioned officers who, without more merit, have served for shorter periods in the rank of sergeants?
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, the memorandum to which the hon. Gentleman alluded was one dated, not the 10th, but the 16th of January. It had reference to all sergeants in the service irrespective of the date of their promotion. All were subject to the same regulations.

JOINT-STOCK BANKS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. HEADLAMasked the Vice President of the Board of Trade whether it is the intention of the Government to introduce any measure during this Session of Parliament to regulate the constitution of joint-stock banks, and more especially to apply the principle of limited liability to such establishments?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, in the absence of his right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Board of Trade, he would state that it was the intention of Government to introduce a Bill on the subject; but in the absence of his right hon. Friend he could not answer the second part of the hon. Member's question.

  SCOTTISH HARBOURS—QUESTION.
  LORD JOHN HAYasked the Secretary of the Treasury when it is his intention to move for a Committee of inquiry into the present state of the Harbour of Wick, and the other harbours of Scotland?
  MR. WILSONsaid that, if he were to move for a Committee of Inquiry upon the subject of the hon. Member's question, he should not propose that it should be confined solely to the harbours in Scotland, but should embrace the harbours of the whole of the United Kingdom. He had intended to move for such Committee immediately after the Whitsuntide recess, but he was afraid that its appointment would lead to no conclusive result before the close of the present Session.

  NEUFCHATEL—QUESTION.
  MR. KINNAIRDasked whether the Government has received any conclusive information relative to the signing of a treaty bringing to an amicable conclusion the differences between the kingdom of Prussia and the Swiss Government with reference to Neufchatel?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: Sir, I am happy to be able to inform my hon. Friend and the House that a treaty has been acceded to by both the Swiss Cantons and the King of Prussia, which I believe was actually signed a few days ago, and that the question in dispute between them may be considered as being satisfactorily settled.

RELATIONS WITH BRAZIL.

  COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  MR. ROEBUCK: My purpose on the present occasion is, to invite the House to resume a function which it has abdicated for some time past. It is to undertake some part in the consideration of our foreign relations—matters which have been for some time past wholly and exclusively under the supreme control of the noble Lord at the head of the Government. I repeat, the House has abdicated this part

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  of its functions. We have seen the portentous incident of a war declared against another State, an expedition undertaken, a battle fought and peace declared, and this House wholly uninformed upon the matter. Now, Sir, I want to persuade the House upon a matter very different from that to which I have just referred, to reuudertake its functions, and to apply their consideration to our commercial and foreign relations. The subject to which I invite the attention of the House is, our relations with the empire of Brazil, and if the House will forgive me, I will preface what I have to say, by a very short account of what I believe to be the situation in which we stand with regard to the Government of the Emperor. As far back as 1826 we entered into a treaty with the empire of Brazil—which very shortly before had recovered its independence—on the subject of the slave trade. By that treaty the participation in the slave trade by any subject of Brazil was declared to be piracy. That was an engagement entered into by the Government of Brazil on behalf of the people of Brazil. I think it right on this occasion to state to the House what it no doubt is aware of, but the statement of which is necessary to the understanding of the observations which I am about to make. Brazil, Sir, has a constitutional Government; they have an emperor, it is true, but he is a constitutional monarch; they have a legislature which makes laws for the community, and unless the laws are made by that legislature they are not binding upon the people of Brazil. I think it right in limine to make this statement. Shortly after, 1826, a further treaty was entered into between this country and Brazil, and by that Convention there was created a reciprocal power of search on the part of both countries. And in that Convention there was power given to either party to put an end to the treaty upon notice given. This went on for some years, but in 1844 that Convention was put an end to on notice given, and the rights of search done away with. Thereupon Lord Aberdeen, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, under the late Sir R. Peel, introduced a Bill into the other House of Parliament, by which power was given to British courts of justice to take into consideration and adjudicate upon ships taken under the treaty of 1826. By the Convention which was put an end to there was a mixed Commission, which was abolished by the abrogation of the treaty, and this
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  Act of Parliament was intended to supply the place of that Commission. But Lord Aberdeen, in introducing the Bill, stated clearly and distinctly, that under one of two circumstances its provisions would be put an end to. One was, if the slave trade were abolished and utterly abrogated in Brazil; the other, if another treaty between this country and Brazil on the subject of the slave trade were entered into. Upon the declaration of independence in Brazil, great difficulty and confusion arose in that country. In the year 1825, Don Pedro I. abandoned his throne of Brazil in order to take that of Portugal. He came to Europe, and left his son, a minor, and confusion reigned throughout the great empire of Brazil. Happily for Brazil, at that time there were at the head of the affairs of that country men of great capacity, who undertook the education of the son—the young sovereign Don Pedro II. then a child and left by his father in their hands. They so undertook that education as to make him a model monarch; and he has shown himself thoroughly desirous of carrying out in a liberal spirit the institutions of Brazil. He did not desire to extend his power and dominion, but to keep himself within the boundaries of his own kingdom. In fact, as I have said, he became a model constitutional monarch. But notwithstanding that, great difficulties lay in his path. Everybody must know that a country claiming for itself independence, under the circumstances in which Brazil was placed, must have a difficult task to pursue. Even the United States, accustomed as they were to our Government and institutions, found a difficulty in forming a government for themselves. The people of Brazil found the same difficulty. Notwithstanding this, they carried on their government, and after a time they gained stability and established good laws within the circle of their dominions. At the time when they declared themselves independent, their commerce was in a situation, not perhaps peculiar, but to which I must refer. Slavery was permitted in Brazil, and the slave trade was carried on by Brazilians between that country and Africa to a great extent; so great indeed that alarm was created among the people of Brazil. The importation of slaves was so great that the white population took fright, and public opinion being against the continuance of this traffic, it was determined to put an end to it. In addition to this, circumstances connected with trade had a

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  great influence upon the mind of the public. Sugar had been the chief source of profit, but at the time to which I refer, it was discovered that coffee might be as advantageously cultivated, and without requiring the same amount of labour. As time wore on, the independence of the people of Brazil gained strength, and at length there came to be an end of the slave trade in that country. Am I not justified in saying this, when the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) himself stated, that we might now consider that the slave trade was at an end in Brazil? And so it has been, and is. They have even stretched the law and driven slaveholders out of Brazil, some of whom have come to Europe, while others have sought the more congenial shores of Cuba and North America. I know that the noble Lord has a strong feeling against the slave trade. In that I sympathise with him, and if I thought any act of mine on the present occasion would go to favour that trade in any one of its ramifications, I would not take that step. Under this state of things, I think that circumstances will justify the noble Lord in repealing the Act of 1845. We should remember that Brazil is a constitutional kingdom, and the act of the Executive unauthorized by the legislature cannot have the force of law. Suppose that the Executive of England had chosen, under a treaty with Brazil, to make it an act of piracy to introduce corn into this country. Would that be law? If the House substituted the word "slave" for "corn," that was what the Government of Brazil had done. The Brazilian Government determined that any subject of Brazil engaged in the slave trade should be treated as guilty of piracy. They did not, however, pass a law making it piracy, and when Lord Aberdeen introduced the Act of 1845, he attacked the sovereignty of the people of Brazil. The Act was introduced, no doubt, with very good intentions, and it might have worked well, but it was not the less an attack on the sovereignty of the people of Brazil, and it is only natural that they should resent such an attack. They had resented it, and had refused to enter into any treaty with us on any subject until that Act should be repealed. By that Act English cruizers can go into the waters of Brazil, into its creeks and harbours, cut out a ship which they might deem a slaver, and subject her to be tried, not by a mixed tribunal, but by one which was wholly English. Now we
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  are a commercial nation, having great commercial foes, amongst others the United States of America, which say to Brazil, "We will admit all your goods duty free, we are slaveholders like yourselves; we dominate in the north as you do in the south, and we are willing to enter into a treaty offensive and defensive with you. You will then see whether or not it is possible to be beyond the control of England." Brazil, it is true, under her excellent monarch, had refused to yield to the blandishments of America; she had refused the treaty, but she also refuses to enter into any treaty with us until we repeal the Act of 1845. Brazil is the fourth nation in our list of customers, taking from us to the value of twelve millions annually. America offered to take her goods without tax, while our necessities oblige us to tax every article of her produce. Still, as the sole representative of monarchy in America, Brazil is inclined rather for an alliance with England than for one with the United States, What I ask of the House of Commons is, to consider our relations with Brazil, and no longer to leave them exclusively in the hands of the Executive. All I ask you to do is, to consider, not to determine, anything. Let us inquire into our relations with Brazil, and also into the policy of repealing the Act of 1845. I appeal to the noble Lord under whose control we have been carrying on war with all the world. It is true we have now peace with Russia, but we are at war in Persia and in China, and there is confusion in India. We may, at any moment, be at war in the western quarter of the world, and therefore I ask the noble Lord not to oppose this inquiry, which may tend to preserve friendly relations with a great American nation. I ask him to rely on the feeling which Brazil herself has exhibited as a determined enemy to the slave trade. Although a more magnificent system of rivers does not exist on the face of the globe than is possessed by Brazil, yet the chief communication between her different provinces is by sea, and if it is necessary to remove a party of slaves from one province to another, it must be done by sea. The vessels in which this is done are constantly intercepted by our cruizers, who finding blacks on board, declare the vessel to be a slaver, take her before the court and condemn her, and thus the whole internal traffic of the country is interrupted. The coast line of Brazil extends upwards of 4,000 miles, indented

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  with various ports, between which there is a constant traffic. British ships constantly enter these ports, and take possession of Brazilian ships under the very walls of the forts. I ask, would you dare such a procedure against a planter of the Chesapeak? would you dare to enter the harbour of New Orleans for such a purpose? If we did, America would at once be in arms, and we should be obliged at once to succumb. We should have to show ourselves, as we always have done, under the noble Lord's administration, subservient to the strong and arrogant, and overbearing to the weak. Whenever a nation is able to defend itself, we are its humble servants. Compare our conduct to Brazil, with that which we pursue towards Cuba. Why do we not interfere with Cuba? The noble Lord knows very well why we dare not. I believe that the noble Lord would not do wrong, if in this matter he divests himself of responsibility and throws it on the House of Commons. If the House of Commons takes it in hand, right will be done; but if it is left in the hands of diplomatists, it will be left in the hands of men who think that power and influence were synonymous with violence and bragadocio. I wish to mention the case of a ship which came to Brazil with slaves unresisted by the British authority. The Brazilians said that our authorities were connected with what occurred, but however that might be, forty of the slaves escaped. Subsequently, however, the Brazilians and the local authorities took possession of the vessel, but because some of the slaves had escaped, the Brazilian Government received a most haughty letter from Lord Clarendon, assuming that these authorities were in favour of the slave trade, although they condemned the vessel and confiscated all the runaway slaves. The people of Brazil, solicited on the one hand by the Government of America, and treated on the other with contumely by the Government of England, feel that we are doing all we can to induce them to break off friendly relations with this country, and to ally themselves with a slave-holding Power like the United States. I look upon such a state of things with considerable apprehension. Brazil is a fertile country, capable of furnishing us not only with sugar and coffee, but also with cotton, and thereby of rendering us independent of America, a service which would be appreciated by our children's children. We are now the slaves of America on account
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  of the cotton crop. If we are insulted, we think of Lancashire and the cotton crop, and at once succumb. The hon. and learned Member concluded by moving for a Select Committee, to take into consideration our relations with Brazil, and to report thereupon.
  The Question having been put,
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: Sir, I cannot refrain at the outset from expressing my surprise that a person like the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down, who has given his attention to public affairs, who understands the current of events, and to whom neither the present nor the near past can be unknown, should give countenance to the vulgar and unfounded insinuations which persons far below him in position attempt to propagate—namely, that it is the practice of England to bully the weak and truckle to the strong. Does not the hon. and learned Gentleman remember the time in his life, and in mine, when England stood alone, opposed to almost every Power in Europe, combined against her—when she held a firm front to every enemy that could be brought to threaten her? And does he not also remember that at a more recent period she undertook a great struggle against one of the most formidable empires in the world, and carried on that war at a remote distance of her own shores and on the very territory of the enemy. I allude to Russia—the country there in antagonism with her. I am astonished that for the purposes of argument the hon. and learned Gentleman should wish to impose on the credulity of his hearers and try to persuade them of that which is directly the contrary of historical fact. The hon. and learned Gentleman has, however, made an admission which entitles me to claim his support against his own Motion. He says that nothing is further from his intention than to do anything which may in the remotest degree assist or encourage the slave trade—that no man feels more deeply than himself the horrors of this traffic; and therefore, if I can satisfy him that his proposition has a direct tendency to stimulate the slave trade he is bound in consistency to vote against his own Motion or else to withdraw it. The hon. and learned Member has fallen into error in a material fact which I he stated. Evidently speaking from information not gathered by himself, but furnished to him by interested parties, he asserts that the Act of 1845 is still in operation; that our cruisers now act in

  939
  virtue of the powers given by that law; and that our ships daily stop and detain vessels coasting along the shores of Brazil. This is an entire mistake. The Act of 1845 has by mutual consent been suspended for several years past, our ships do not interfere with vessels sailing along the coast of Brazil, and that law is at the present moment, for all practical purposes, a dead letter. The hon. and learned Member was pretty correct in the historical recital which he gave. In 1826 the Government of Brazil entered into a treaty, not simply to make the slave trade piracy, but to abolish it by preventing any of their subjects from engaging in it. And the discussions which have since arisen between that country and Great Britain have not turned on the technical point dwelt upon by the hon. and learned Gentleman—namely, whether or not the Brazilian Government made the slave trade piracy. They turned on the wider question, whether that Government did not bind itself to exert its authority to put down this traffic, in which respect it had notoriously violated the engagements into which it originally entered. I should be insulting this House if I were to endeavour by any argument to convince them that the slave trade is one of the greatest crimes which have ever stained the human race—that it demoralizes all those employed in it, and is the ruin of the countries by which it is carried on; and that England has in no respect done herself more honour than by the unwearying and persevering efforts she has put forth from 1815 down to the present time to extinguish this detestable traffic. Well, Sir, we had a treaty with Portugal when Brazil separated from that country, and Brazil took with her the engagements by which the Portuguese were bound. Among those engagements were the stipulations of a treaty establishing mixed tribunals, giving a mutual right of search, and enabling those tribunals to adjudicate upon vessels seized while carrying on the slave trade, and also to liberate all negroes who might be thus captured. That treaty was limited in duration. It ceased to have effect upon Portugal, and by the same reason it ceased also to have effect upon Brazil. When this cessation occurred in regard to Portugal, about the year 1839, what did the British Government do? I had then the honour to be at the Foreign Office, and we passed a law precisely similar to the one enacted in 1845 against Brazil. In con-
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  sequence of the passing of that law Portugal, which up to that period had refused to renew her treaty engagements for the suppression of the slave trade, did make a treaty in which she contracted to suppress that trade, and the result was that the Act of 1839 was repealed;—not, indeed, that I think this was a very prudent measure, though I am bound to say, as far as regards Portugal, that it has not been attended with any inconvenience. The difference between the cases of Portugal and Brazil is obvious. The former nation, having been engaged in exporting slaves, has not so great an interest in the maintenance of the slave trade as a country like Brazil, which imported them for the cultivation of its soil. When Brazil, therefore, had put an end to the slave trade treaty she was invited to renew, as Portugal had done, her engagements for the suppression of that traffic. She refused, and in consequence of that refusal the Government of Sir R. Peel, when Lord Aberdeen was at the Foreign Office, in 1845 prevailed on Parliament to pass a law respecting Brazil, the exact counterpart and of precisely the same purport as the measure adopted in relation to Portugal a few years before. Was there any ground for that? Did the Brazilians, in fact, carry on the slave trade to any great degree, and were they bound by treaty not to do so? Why, they stood pledged ever since 1826 to put an end to this abominable traffic; and yet year after year they carried it on to an enormous extent. The precise number of slaves landed at their ports I cannot now specify, but I believe they ranged somewhere from 50,000 to 70,000 annually. Let any man figure to himself the frightful amount of human misery engendered by such a state of things. For every 1,000 negroes landed in Brazil probably 3,000 are ruthlessly dragged from their homes in the centre of Africa, the usual computation being that one-third of them die on their journey to the coast, and another third perish during the sea passage. And what effect did the system have on Brazil? Nothing more degrading and demoralizing could possibly be imagined. The capital of the country was diverted from its legitimate channels to be invested in the purchase of human flesh, and a curse, as might have been anticipated, was brought upon the nation in the shape of the contamination of the race and the depravation of its habits. A people, not belonging to the men of Portuguese

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  origin, was multiplied, and to the tainting of the very life blood of the country was added the dangers of internal convulsion. It may naturally be asked, "Why was this traffic carried on if it was so injurious to Brazil?" It is true that many of the most reasonable men in Brazil soon began to think that the slave trade was a great calamity to the country, but there were those landowners whose estates were to be cultivated, the importers of slaves, those whose duty it was to prevent, but whose practice was to encourage the slave trade, those authorities who received bribes for connivance—all these people practically set at defiance the laws of the country and the stipulations of the treaty. What, then, was the result of the Act of 1845—a law which was perfectly justifiable, because Brazil had broken her treaty engagements to co-operate with England for the suppression of the slave trade, and had thereby entitled England to do for her that which she had by treaty agreed to do for herself? For some four or five years that law was left unacted upon; but in the year 1850, the Brazilian Government having neglected repeated warnings which any hon. Gentleman by looking at the records of the slave trade in the library (consisting of the annual Reports thereon laid before Parliament) will see at full length, and having done nothing whatever to put a stop to this criminal trade, it was determined to entrust the enforcement of the Act no longer to the Brazilian Government, but to put it in force ourselves. Our cruisers were accordingly sent to their harbours, creeks, and rivers, to accomplish that object, and all charged with a violation of the Act were ordered to be tried in British not in Brazilian Courts. A great outcry was immediately raised about the national dignity and independence having been invaded, and every sort of appeal was made against that course. Assurance was given that measures would be taken by Brazil herself that would be as effectual as the operation of that law. Our Minister at Brazil, and our admiral upon the coast consented to accept this assurance and to suspend the operations of the Act. They were suspended, but so also was suspended the action of the Brazilian Government with reference to the suppression of the slave trade. Instead of those measures which the Brazilian Government had promised the slave trade was allowed to revive to its utmost extent. In January following our Minister told the Brazilian Minister, "You have broken your engagements;
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  you have failed to fulfil your promise; the slave trade is not put down; no new measures have been taken for the purpose. Everything is going on just as before; and therefore I tell you that the Act of 1845 must be renewed. It was renewed, and after a certain time the Brazilian Legislature did co-operate with the Brazilian Government iu passing laws, which were to a considerable degree effectual; and when we found that the Brazilian Government was in earnest, and really took steps to put down this abominable slave trade, then, again, the operation of the Act of 1845 was suspended, and has been suspended from that time to this. The Act has not been repealed, and most dangerous would it be for many years to come to repeal it, because its existence is a security for the continuance of the Government of Brazil in the course which it has adopted; and the hon. and learned Gentleman is entirely mistaken in thinking that the Act is now in active operation—on the contrary, it has from that time to this been entirely suspended. The hon. and learned Gentleman says that our commerce is injured by the absence of a treaty, by the position in which it places Brazil as regards the United States, and the temptation it created for the former to enter into a treaty with the latter power. But the Brazilians are more dependent upon the United States than we are, because they draw from the United States a great portion of those breadstuff's which are essential to their subsistence. They are indeed a singular instance of an empire vast in its extent, comprising within its limits every variety of climate and soil, capable of producing almost everything that grows in any other part of the world, and yet importing bread from America and stone to pave the towns of Brazil from Aberdeen in Scotland, having every opportunity to grow sufficient food for themselves, and having stone in abundance which might be applied to the purposes for which they get it from Scotland. But the hon. and learned Gentleman says that though our trade is in danger yet we annually export £12,000,000 worth of produce to Brazil. Why, Sir, if we do that without a commercial treaty, what more could we do if we had one? We made a great mistake with Portugal in times past in making a treaty to limit the amount of duty that was to be imposed upon British goods, for I hold that kind of treaties to be detrimental to the interests both of the country that fixes that limited

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  duty and the country which apparently is to derive a benefit from it. Those treaties are opposed to the fundamental principles of political economy, and I trust that no treaty of that sort ever will be entered into between this and any other country in the world. Brazil should be free to lay upon our importations that duty which she may think best adapted to her financial interests; but does any man seriously imagine that the people of Brazil, who import these £12,000,000 worth of commodities, and who send us an equal value in return, are actuated in any degree by a knowledge of this Act of 1845, which is a dead letter, the existence of which is only known to the Government and to those who wish to encourage that slave trade which it is calculated to prevent? It is very well for those who may wish on either side of the Atlantic to revive this slave trade to represent this Act as a bar to the commercial intercourse between the two countries; but those who know what that commercial intercourse is, and the foundation upon which it rests, know very well that the existence of the Act has no effect whatever in restricting our relations with the empire of Brazil. It is quite true, as the hon. and learned Gentleman says, that the Emperor of Brazil, his present Ministers, and, no doubt, all the enlightened men of that country, are on principle adverse to the slave trade, and determined to put it down as far as their means will enable them to do so; but it is not true, as the hon. and learned Gentleman has been told, that there have been no importations or attempts of importation made. That very case to which he alluded—the importation at Surinam—is in truth an attempt to revive the slave trade, and we know that it is not the only attempt which is likely to be made. It is also a proof of the difficulty which any Government of Brazil, however sincerely anxious to put down the slave trade, must have in resisting that combination of selfish and corrupt interests which tend to encourage and renew the trade. What happened in that case? There was an attempt to land a cargo of slaves. All the authorities were of course supposed to be determined to resist it; but the governor of the district was absent, the Government officers having been told to go another way. Every facility was given for landing the slaves and for their being distributed over the plantations to which they were destined. But our consul, with an activity that did him great honour, interfered,
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  not in the insolent manner described by the hon. and learned Gentleman, but by representing the matter at once to a few Brazilian Gentlemen, who, together with some inferior persons, enabled him to arrest these negroes. And what did the Government do? Why, those persons who were most active in detecting that attempt, and endeavouring to thwart it, were all put in prison and prosecuted, but the guilty parties to whom these slaves were consigned remained at large subject to no proceeding. That very case, therefore, is a proof that there still exists in Brazil among individuals—not, I trust, among the public at large, and certainly not among the members of the Executive Government at Rio, but among a certain number of parties—a proneness to protect and encourage the slave trade, to receive those bribes which slavetraders are quite ready to give. All these are disposed to connive at the slave trade. I say, then, that if the House were to agree to the Motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman to appoint a Committee, intelligence thereof would be received with acclamation by all those adventurers in the United States—by all those culprits still in the Portuguese dominions, and by all those who are interested in the produce of Brazil and in the slave trade, who are only waiting for an opportunity to elude the vigilance of our cruisers, as a proof that this House of Parliament is prepared to reverse the policy which this country has pursued ever since 1815, and they would look with anticipation to some proceeding that would supply them with fresh scope and opportunity for their criminal projects. The hon. and learned Gentleman says that the Earl of Aberdeen made a promise that when the slave trade in Brazil was put an end to be would consent to the repeal of this Act. I know nothing of that promise, but when the hon. and learned Gentleman says that the slave trade in Brazil is put an end to, I maintain that although that is to a great extent true with regard to the present, it is not so with regard to the future. The slave trade is stopped for the moment, but you have no security whatever that it would not revive; on the contrary, we know for certain that there are parties now looking out for opportunities for its revival. There has been a great mortality among the negroes in Brazil. On many of the plantations labour is scarce. The owners of those plantations are men who in former years bought as many negroes as they could

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  get. They do not feel those scruples of principle which we do, and if they had an opportunity of purchasing negroes they would do so to any extent to which the importations would enable them to go. The Government of Brazil has taken some steps in order to increase the free population of the Brazilian dominions, but not to the extent that it ought. It does not give those facilities for immigration which the great variety of the Brazilian soil would enable it to afford. It has not taken those steps which it ought, to turn its Indian population to account by bringing that people into habits of productive industry. But this will come with time. The capital of Brazil, which used to be entirely employed in a traffic of human blood, is now devoting itself to internal improvements, and if, by the continued watchfulness of the British Government and the goodwill and sincerity of the Brazilian Government, the slave trade can for many years be prevented, it is to be hoped that those in the Brazils who have been hitherto engaged in that crime will pass away, that a new generation will spring up, and that those in Africa who have hitherto exported their subjects as slaves will turn their attention to industry of a different kind. It is quite true that Brazil might be made more useful to us by the cultivation of cotton and also of cane in the higher and more temperate regions, and that its great rivers which run through its interior might be made the channels of commerce for Europe as well as for America. But much yet remains to be done. The lurking love of the slave trade is not yet extinguished in the hearts of these Brazilians. It is nothing but the impossibility and danger of indulging in it which restrains them from a commission of their former crimes. I do entreat the House, then, if they have any regard for those principles which have so long actuated this country, to avoid doing anything which can lead to the revival of a crime the greatest of which the human race was ever guilty—a crime which has inflicted upon mankind more calamities than war, famine, pestilence, or any of the other evils incident to humanity, and which has tended to the ruin and degradation of those countries which have been guilty of it. If it is not straining too much thus to interpret the workings of Providence, I may say that from the time when Great Britain emancipated itself from this degrading crime, we may, perhaps, date a
  946
  start of prosperity and well-being which certainly this country never enjoyed before. I do, therefore, entreat this House and the hon. and learned Gentleman (whom I believe to be as honestly and sincerely adverse to this crime as I or any man here can be) not to take a step which would be misunderstood in Brazil, and which would tend to renew those great evils which we have taken such immense pains to avert.
  MR. BRAMLEY-MOOREhad been perfectly astonished to hear the statements which had fallen from the noble Lord, and the great injustice which had been done to a nation of whose sincere desire to put down the slave trade he could speak from his own personal knowledge. He knew the people of Brazil intimately, believed they were most desirous to put an end to this abominable traffic, and would challenge the noble Lord to give a single instance in which Brazilians, for many years past, had been shown to be concerned in the trade. Since the passing of the law in 1850, which had been referred to, not a single instance could be furnished where Brazilians had been connected with the slave trade; nay, more, the only slavers captured on the coast of Brazil had been taken by the Brazilians themselves. The statement that Rio Janeiro was paved with granite from Aberdeen was too absurd in a place which was surrounded by ample supplies of the same material. It was possible that stones might have been taken out as ballast by vessels going from Aberdeen, but the story of the city being all paved with stones imported from Aberdeen itself, was on a par with what happened at the early opening of the trade with Brazil, when some wise persons sent out a cargo of warming-pans and skates to a country where there was never any ice. With reference to the case of one of the slavers taken at Surinam, it was rather remarkable that the individual who was praised, and received the thanks of the English Government through Mr. Consul Cowper, for the assistance he afforded on that occasion, afterwards turned out to be the person implicated in the transaction, and had since been punished by the Brazilian Government. Then, to show that the feeling against the traffic was not confined to the Government, he would instance the case of the Mary Elizabeth Smith, captured at Port St. Matthew. Those on board that vessel had no confederates in Brazil; they attempted to land the slaves

  947
  without success on one point and another of the coast. The Brazilian population to a man joined to resist the landing, even at points where there were no police and soldiers; and at last she was captured by the Olinda, a Brazilian, not an English cruiser, which had pounced upon her in the harbour of Port St. Matthew. The Brazil agent in New York had a photograph of the vessel taken, and she was traced from New York to Monte Video and thence to Africa, and was captured by Lieutenant Lonciero in spite of the American ensign which was flying, so certain was he of the vessel from her likeness to the drawing. For this service, Mr. Jerningham had been directed by the British Government to write a despatch, thanking the Brazilian authorities. With regard to the correspondence that had taken place between our authorities and the Brazilian Government, he could state, from an attentive perusal of that correspondence, that a tone invidious and insolent had been assumed by the inferior British representatives in Brazil, and that the Brazilian Government had just cause of complaint at the treatment it had received. A gentleman of the name of Swan boldly went up the river Amazon and hoisted the English flag, and refused to haul it down, although called upon to do so by the authorities as contrary to the usual regulations; and in that determination he was supported by the British Consul. Such conduct should not be countenanced. There could be no doubt whatever that the Bill passed by Lord Aberdeen, in 1845, was an interference with the sovereignty and independence of Brazil, and the Government there was perfectly right in refusing to enter into any treaty with this or any other country, while we exercised such rights as those of capturing Brazilian vessels and adjudicating with regard to them on the spot in the Brazilian waters. The atrocities, as he might call them, which had been committed by the British cruisers would raise the indignation of any people. One of these cruisers had captured a Brazilian steamer with passengers on board, and after the passengers had been landed, the vessel was set fire to by order of the British commander. This act, though it took place within two days' sail of Rio Janeiro, was justified by the British authorities. Was it treating a nation upon equal terms to decide that its vessels might be condemned upon the meredictum of British commanders.
  948
  Such a course would not have been attempted against any nation strong enough to resist it. There was one statement made by the hon. and learned Gentleman, and adopted by the noble Lord, which showed a great want of information as to our relations with Brazil. The trade between this country and Brazil was represented as amounting to £12,000,000. Now, any man who was at all acquainted with this subject, knew that the trade did not amount to one-half of that sum, and that the entire importations into Brazil from all parts of the world were only valued at £12,000,000. It was of great importance to encourage the relations between the two countries. Brazil was the only nation in South America that had kept faith with its creditors, and it was the only constitutional monarchy in South America, and it was our interest and duty to cherish, encourage, and uphold monarchical principles in this hemisphere. He could respond to every word of praise which had been used with regard to the Emperor of Brazil—a model Sovereign, virtuous and good, whose only object was to promote the happiness of his people. He might remind the noble Lord of the difficulties with which Brazil had to contend in putting down the slave trade. The slave trade on the coast of Brazil was carried on entirely in Portuguese and American vessels, which were fitted out in the United States, and then obtained cargoes of slaves on the coast of Africa; yet they heard of no attempts being made to prevent them quitting the United States. The coast it had to watch was something like 3,000 miles in extent, and when it was remembered that we were not able to put down the trade in our own colonies, it would be acknowledged that the Brazilian Government must labour under much greater difficulties. The slave trade was carried on in Sierra Leone to an extent which would be incredible to the people of this country; but if hon. Members would look over the despatches of Governor Kennedy, they would find him describing the difficulty of suppressing the traffic, and stating that no jury would convict in these cases—a practice, indeed, so prevalent, that Governor Kennedy had even applied to the Home Government to put down trial by jury there. He thought this decidedly a case in which inquiry was demanded, and in which this House was called upon to concede a Committee, and he hoped, there-

  949
  fore, that the hon. and learned Gentleman would persevere with his Motion.
  MR. MONCKTON MILNESadmitted that the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield had made out a good case for the Government of the Brazils, but not for the appointment of a Committee, the Motion for which, he thought, went beyond a mere inquiry, inasmuch as it indicated a change of policy. Besides, nothing had occurred since the Report of the Select Committee of 1852 to authorize the appointment of another Committee, or the attempt to elicit any more facts than were before them. At the same time he thought that they ought to feel greatly indebted to the hon. and learned Member for having elicited the interesting and satisfactory statement which they had heard as to the present policy of the Brazilian Government on this question. The policy of the noble Lord for the abolition of the slave trade had been eminently successful. In 1847–48 a Committee of that House reported that it was vain to hope that the Brazilian Government would be brought to act with good faith, or that there would be any diminution of the slave trade in so far as that country was concerned. At that time the annual import of slaves into the Brazils was between 50,000 and 60,000; in 1852 it was reduced to between 700 and 800. He thought it would be well if the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield or some other hon. Gentleman would move for papers to ascertain whether there had been any increase since, which was probable, as the important events in which this country had been engaged during the last three or four years might have in some degree lessened the vigilance of our cruisers; but to call upon Government to relax its efforts, or to abandon any of the powers it possessed for the suppression of the trade, would be a fatal step. The feeling of the Brazilians as to the slave trade was not that rooted moral abhorrence with which it was regarded in this country, but rather an astute feeling of policy and self-preservation. They knew very well that if any large increase in the number of the black population took place, the lives and properties of the whites would be in danger. A large portion of slaves imported into the Brazils were not of that tame submissive character which marked the black population of the States. The policy of that country was to keep down their slaves to that standard which was necessary to supply the labour to
  950
  cultivate their estates. If any great mortality took place amongst the blacks, no doubt attempts would be made to make up the deficiency by further imports from Africa, consequently it would be most unwise to abandon or relax any of the powers possessed by our Government. Our success in treating with the Brazils should rather induce us to apply the same policy to other nations where the slave trade was encouraged than abandon it in that case. A Committee would be productive of no good result; it would afford no information of which the House was not already in possession, and therefore he hoped that the Motion would not be successful.
  MR. ROEBUCK,in reply, said that he was sorry to find that a question of so much importance did not excite more interest in the House. The noble Lord had given no reason why this Motion should not be agreed to. He stated, that the slave trade was a great enormity, in which it was not difficult to agree with him; and he went on to give a graphic description of the different phases of the slave-trade question in former years; but what had that to do with the question? He could understand that everything which fell from the noble Lord was interesting to the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Monckton Milnes); but to less partial judges there was nothing in the noble Lord's speech which could be said to amount to a real objection to the Motion. The noble Lord argued that if the House of Commons granted an inquiry into this particular branch of our foreign relations those persons who were intent upon the slave trade, would immediately conclude that the House of Commons had expressed an opinion which was favourable to them. Nothing could be more destitute of foundation. He had great confidence in the House of Commons, though he had none in the noble Lord; and he believed that it was as great an enemy to the slave trade as the noble Lord himself, and was as little likely to express an opinion favourable to it. He believed, too, that the House of Commons was thoroughly alive to the honour, interests, and dignity of England, and an inquiry such as that asked by this Motion would be eminently conducive to the honour and dignity of the country. Why should it not? The noble Lord said that the Brazilian Government in times past had been great friends to the slave trade, but that self-interest had

  951
  shown them that it was a dangerous trade for Brazil. But what motive could there he more potent than self-interest? Then the noble Lord warned the House that there were people in Brazil who were friends to the slave trade; but did the noble Lord believe that there were no people in England who were friends to the slave trade? Let him not lay "that flattering unction to his soul." There were people, in truth, who would trade not only in the bodies of blacks, but in their own souls—ay, in England, too—in virtuous England. It was his sincere belief that the real promoters of the slave trade might be found within the three kingdoms called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was maintained in spite of our cruisers, and it was put down in Brazil, not by the noble Lord's laws, but by the will of the Brazilians themselves. All that our Acts of Parliament had done was to sow dissension between us and the Brazilians, and to encourage our diplomatists to insult the Brazilian Government. Had any one written to the noble Lord such a letter as Mr. Jerningham wrote to the Brazilian Minister, how he would have declaimed in that House on the insulted honour and dignity of England, and called upon the country to avenge the insult. The noble Lord charged him with appealing to the vulgar prejudice that it was our policy "to bully the weak and truckle to the strong;"— but was not this the case? Where was the slave trade most flourishing now? In Cuba. And why did not the noble Lord put it down there? Simply because he dared not. Because the French Emperor would not allow him. The noble Lord talked of vulgar prejudice; but had the noble Lord answered the charge he had brought against him of using the power of England to aid and assist the strong and bully the weak. The weak were the people of Brazil—the strong the people of America. Dared they send a cruiser into the Chesapeak? They dared not. America would be in arms, and the noble Lord would go to the Minister of the Republic and humbly beg his pardon that he had presumed to interfere with the inviolability of her flag. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Bramley-Moore) had corrected him as to our exports to Brazil; but he believed that if he referred to documents he would find that our trade amounted to nearly £12,000,000 per annum. Now, there was this difference between Brazil and America, that Brazil had no manufactures,
  952
  while America had. Brazil exported agricultural produce to America, which could supply her with manufactured goods as cheaply as we could; therefore, if we induced the Brazilians to prefer an American alliance to ours, we should lose our trade with their country, and the Americans would get it. He only asked for an inquiry, and he was quite sure that that would lead to no mischief. The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes) said, that he had a policy in view. He had not. What he wanted to come to was the truth; and he asked whether the House was in a condition to say to any one who made out such a case as he had done, "You shall not inquire. We have such confidence in the noble Lord"—for there it lay—"we have such confidence in the noble Lord that we put all the foreign interests of England into his hands, and will not inquire." Shame on the House of Commons that would say so!They might have confidence in the noble Lord. He (Mr. Roebuck) had no doubt that he had confidence in himself, but they might depend upon it that they could not injure the interests of England by inquiring. All he sought was the appointment of a Committee which might obtain evidence, and upon that evidence he would ask the House to decide this question.
  MR. DISRAELI: I was about to speak when the hon. and learned Gentleman rose to reply, and I therefore hope he will excuse my making one or two observations in explanations of the vote I am about to give. This Motion is certainly rather a strong one. Had the hon. and learned Gentleman moved for papers, or had he made some Motion which would have brought more information before the House before he asked it to pronounce an opinion, I should not have taken the course which I now personally feel it my duty to pursue. A Motion, however, which by its language takes the management of our diplomatic relations with Brazil out of the hands of the Government and submits them to the consideration of the House of Commons, has, so long as I have had a seat in the House, been regarded as a Motion which implies a want of confidence in the Government of the day. I have listened with great interest to the remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman, though, owing to an unfortunate circumstance I lost some of his observations, but I did not understand that ho recommended his Motion by any particular instance which

  953
  has recently occurred, or that he represented that any complaint had been made by the Brazilian Government with respect to the Act which has been so frequently referred to. Indeed, I understood from the noble Lord that that Act, of the operation of which the hon. and learned Gentleman complains, is at this moment suspended by an agreement between the two countries. Really under the circumstances I cannot support the Motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman. If the Act of which he complains be at this moment in suspense, it must be in consequence of some previous discussion between the two Governments, and if it remains suspended we have a right to infer that these discussions will be renewed, and that there will be some hope of a satisfactory and amicable settlement of this question. Under these circumstances, and after that declaration from the Minister, I do not feel justified in supporting a Motion of so strong a character as that before the House. I am, however, quite of opinion that the subject which the hon. and learned Gentleman has introduced to us is one that ought to interest the House; and, I think, we are much indebted to him for bringing it forward, because our relations with Brazil are of great importance, and have for some time been involved in very undesirable obscurity. I do not know how many years it is since we first heard of an impending treaty of commerce with that country, from which the greatest advantages were to result. I have myself had the honour of bringing that, together with other proposed treaties of commerce, under the notice of the House; but on such occasions I have never received much encouragement from those who possess extreme opinions with regard to commercial exchange. I have generally been told that treaties of commerce are very old-fashioned inventions, and are by no means so desirable as our forefathers used to consider them. Our trade with Brazil is, however, a very important branch of our commerce, and is one from the increase of which great advantages may be expected to result, not only to this country, but to the Brazilians themselves. Let us see what has been the conduct of the rulers and people of Brazil since that treaty of commerce was first noticed in this House and promised as a possible result of our diplomatic relations. Why, there is no doubt that all the statements which were made some years ago as to the encouragement
  954
  given to the slave trade by the Brazilian authorities and the Brazilian people are at the present moment without any foundation whatever in fact. I quite agree with my hon. Friend (Mr. B. Moore) that it is owing, not to the interference of the British Government or to the activity of our cruisers, but to the policy of the Brazilian Government and the feeling of the Brazilian people, that the slave trade in Brazil has become almost extinct. For twenty years the policy at all times so earnestly recommended by the noble Lord was vigorously pursued, and at the end of that time the number of slaves imported into Brazil was as great as at its commencement. Therefore the utmost energy in carrying out the policy of the noble Lord produced no effect whatever. What, then, had produced the desirable result that the slave trade with Brazil was nearly extinct? What but a change in the opinions of the Brazilian population and community, and the creation of a conviction that it is rather by encouraging emigration, by developing the interior resources of their country, and by pursuing that enlightened policy which the present Emperor of Brazil has at all times supported and patronized, that the wealth and the power of their country will be best secured, rather than by recurring to that system for which Brazil was once so notorious? If this be true, I think the time has come when a spirit of the utmost conciliation and courtesy should be exhibited by the English Government towards that of Brazil. The time has come when it would be well for the noble Lord to consider whether this Act, which is now by mutual consent suspended, may not be altogether abrogated, so that there may be no misunderstanding on the part of the Brazilian Government as to the temper of the Government and people of England; but that the authorities of the Brazils may know that their exertions for the amelioration of society in their own country are appreciated and respected, and that the stories which were the basis and data of earnest, but perhaps in some degree passionate, legislation, are now no longer credited as characteristic of their land. The speech and Motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman have had this advantage—that they have introduced to the House of Commons in its first Session a subject of the greatest interest and importance, and that they will give a proper tone to the manner in which we shall hereafter discuss our relations with the Brazilian

  955
  Government. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman—though I cannot suppose that he will be influenced by any wish that I may express—will not ask the House to divide upon this particular Motion, which is, I think, too strong for the occasion. If he will be satisfied with having induced an interested discussion upon an important subject, and having elicited from a large majority of this House the feeling that the Brazilian Government and people ought to be respected, and that our Government should treat them in accordance with this sentiment, he will have achieved a very great result, and one with which he may well rest content. I trust that he will be contented with that, and will not ask the House to come to a division which will not convey to the country an accurate idea of the sentiments of the House of Commons.
  LORD JOHN RUSSELL:Were it not for an assertion made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, which, according to my view, is likely to lead to a misunderstanding of this question, and create a false impression on the House, I should not have thought it necessary to say a word upon this subject. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire said that the instructions given by my noble Friend at the head of the Government, when Minister for Foreign Affairs, were that our cruisers should go into the waters of Brazil; that, notwithstanding the slave trade in Brazil had increased, and no check had been put upon it by the vigilance of our cruisers, and by the orders under which they had previously acted—that Brazil herself, from her own views of policy, had undertaken this question herself, and had put an end to her own slave trade. Well, if that be a correct interpretation of the facts, the consequent inference would be that, our efforts having failed, and Brazil having performed this voluntary act herself, it would be but reasonable for us to repeal the Act of Parliament which has been so much in question. But I maintain that that is not a correct representation of the facts. My impression of the matter is this—that, for some time our efforts, energetic as they were, having failed to produce the desired effect upon Brazil, in respect to her slave trade, that trade having increased notwithstanding the vigilance of our cruisers, and the orders of the Foreign Office, instructions were at length issued by my noble Friend, that our cruisers should not confine
  956
  their attention to the sea-coast, but should go into the waters of Brazil, and take any slavers which they found there. That order was productive of such good effect that the Brazilian Government at last thought it necessary to pass an Act to put an end to the slave trade, which was then found to be a losing concern by all those who were concerned in it. Many of the slave masters, who had previously been deriving large; profits from the trade, finding that their losses were so very great in consequence of the close proximity of our cruisers, felt convinced—and indeed so confessed to the diplomatic agents of different parts of Europe—that they could not continue it any longer. Now, I believe that that is a correct statement of the facts; and, being so, I am desirous to leave this question in the hands of my noble Friend and the Government. I believe generally that all questions connected with our foreign affairs ought to be left in the hands of the Government, without any interference on the part of this House. I believe that the present question particularly, owing to the diplomacy of this country and the vigilance of our cruisers, has been conducted most successfully, and therefore it is the more befitting the House not to interfere with it by the appointment of such a Committee as has been proposed. If the hon. and learned Gentleman had brought forward a Motion by which the slave trade of Cuba might be suppressed—if he could suggest any measure having that object in view, I do not believe that the Government would be found to be so much afraid of the powerful monarchy of Spain as to be deterred from supporting it; and I only hope that, when the hon. and learned Gentleman again touches this subject, he will show us how the slave trade of Cuba can be effectually suppressed, and how the slave trade altogether can be put an end to.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That a Select Committee be appointed to take into consideration the relations of this Country with Brazil."
  The House divided:—Ayes 17; Noes 312: Majority 295.

BOARD OF ADMIRALTY.

  COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  SIR CHARLES NAPIER, in rising to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the constitution of the Board of Admiralty, said that he should probably be thought unwise and imprudent in bringing forward his Motion. The First and Second

  957
  Lords had usually seats in that House. There were also an ex-First Lord in the House, three ex-Secretaries, and four or five lay Lords. Still, notwithstanding those odds against him, he felt it to be his duty to endeavour to persuade the House, if they wished to avoid some serious disaster, to agree to his Motion. The general opinion of the navy was in favour of his Motion. There was hardly a naval officer with whom he conversed, or a commander in chief at one of the ports, or a superintendent of the dockyards, who did not agree that the constitution of the Admiralty might be improved. He had also held conversations with clerks of the Admiralty and of Somerset House, and he believed that if they were polled they also would agree that the navy was not governed as it ought to be. It was, perhaps, necessary that he should explain to new Members the composition of the present Board of the Admiralty. In former days, in the reign of Edward VI., the navy was governed by a Lord High Admiral and a Vice Admiral of England, a Controller, Surveyor, and Clerk of the Acts. This administration was continued until the reign of James II., who was himself Lord High Admiral and Lord General of the Navy. The navy was then managed by the well-known Samuel Pepys. In the reign of William III. the navy was governed by a board. Queen Anne made Prince George of Denmark Lord High Admiral of England, assisted by a counsel of four, one of whom was Vice Admiral of England. After him the Earl of Pembroke became Lord High Admiral with a Council. The navy after that time remained in commission until the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV., was made Lord High Admiral. For seventeen or eighteen years previous to that time the navy had been ruled by Lord Melville, and during the whole of that time nothing had been done to promote its interests, or to do away with the shameful system of impressment. He remembered that in 1815 a cornet of dragoons was appointed a Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir G. Cockburn, who was at the Admiralty when this appointment was complained of, stated to the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty had very little time to attend to the affairs of the navy, which were left almost entirely to the senior naval Lord. This state of things continued until after the Reform Bill, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlisle was
  958
  appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir John Pechell also became one of the naval Lords. He was an excellent officer, and he knew the defects of the system. He (Sir C. Napier) addressed a letter at that time to Sir John Pechell, complaining of the manner in which the affairs of the Admiralty had been managed, pointing out the defects, and urging certain alterations for the improvement of that department. Shortly afterwards the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle brought in a Bill to improve the construction of the Board of Admiralty. Whether the right hon. Baronet had any communication with Sir John Pechell on the subject of his (Sir C. Napier's) communication to the latter, he could not say, but that right hon. Baronet in his Bill proposed the formation of the Board of Admiralty nearly in the way he (Sir C. Napier) had suggested; but he did not carry out his alterations sufficiently far. The Board was now composed of the First Lord, four Naval Lords, and one Civil Lord. It was Sir J. Graham's intention that the Civil Lord should live in Somerset House, and take charge of the duties of the Accountant General, being responsible for signing all papers relative to expenditure; that one of the Lords should superintend the medical and victualling department; another should have jurisdiction of the dockyrds, &c.; a thirs sould superintend the management of the packet service, &c. In fact, each officer of the board was to have the direction of a separate and distinct department. Now, all that looked very well on paper; but the arrangement, however, had not been carried out. Different Lords worked in separate rooms, and there being no concert between them the most contradictory orders were frequently issued. He himself knew of six orders having been issued about the same time by the members of the Board, all contradicting each other. Sir G. Cockburn, who had had eighteen years' experience both of the old and new systems, had expressed opinions on the subject which well deserved the attention of the House. He said, he had no hesitation in stating that the constitution of the Board was most unsatisfactory; first, in the power given to one man to issue orders in the name, and with the authority of the Board. It was true the principal ought to be able to give all orders; but, as matters stood, there was no responsibility upon the party issuing the order, the Board being alone responsible.

  959
  With regard to the constitution of the Board, he must say that common sense suggested that the person who presided at it should thoroughly understand the duties of his department; but he seldom did understand them. Then, again, the Board consisted of six members, the first and junior Lords, civilians, and four naval Lords, all acting one without the knowledge of the other: much valuable time was lost by such a system in the explanations that constantly became necessary to be made, and a continual state of anxiety, difficulty, and jealousy resulted as a consequence. Those were the opinions of Sir George Cockburn; and here he (Sir C. Napier) must say, that Sir George Cockburn was greatly to blame for not bringing forward his reforms much sooner than he did; but at his death he left the documents above referred to as a legacy to his country and to the Board of Admiralty. It was said that the Board was a responsible body; but he would show, out of the mouth of a First Lord, what was the fact. In his examination before the Sebastopol Committee, the right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Graham) stated that he had consulted Lord Spencer, who was once First Lord of the Admiralty, as to the proper mode of conducting the business of this department; and that Lord Spencer told him that when his fellow members of the Board refused to sign his orders, he used to throw the papers on the table and threaten, if they were not signed before he left the room, to go to Mr. Pitt and have all his colleagues turned out. Thus every man sat at the Board with a rope round his neck, and it was in the power of the First Lord to dismiss the whole Admiralty if he liked. As to turning out, he (Sir Charles Napier) might also state to the House that Sir George Cockburn actually turned the late William IV. out of the office of Lord High Admiral, for an act of irregularity committed by him in his office. Sir George Cockburn represented the matter to the Duke of Wellington, then at the head of the Government, and the Lord High Admiral was removed from his post. What was the reason that a single Lord was able to usurp the authority of the entire Board, and his orders were often signed by a colleague without reading them? They had not been told why Mr. Phinn had lately given up the office of Secretary to the Admiralty, but he (Sir C. Napier) supposed that that Gentleman could not conscientiously receive £1,500 a year for simply signing
  960
  his name to heaps of papers which it was impossible he could read. He (Sir C. Napier) had seen himself instances wherein a Lord of the Admiralty signed a document which he had never read at the request of a clerk. That was the way in which the business of the Admiralty was done. He (Sir C. Napier) knew the working of the system from having himself commanded two fleets; and he had constantly received contradictory orders. A private order was once sent to him by Lord Auckland to take the upper-deck guns out of the St. Vincent, and see how she answered; and when he had obeyed this mandate, another order came out by the next mail, from the senior Naval Lord, expressing surprise at what he had done, and directing him to put the upper-deck guns in again immediately. Considerable difference of opinion existed as to the qualities of the Queen, and he (Sir C. Napier) was directed to take out the squadron to try her. He took her to sea for an experiment, but by the next mail he received a letter from another Lord directing him to send home the Queen immediately. After that, by the following mail, he received another letter, reproving him for sending home that vessel, and expressing regret that she had not been tried. Shortly after, he received a private note from Admiral Dundas, saying, "All the clerks are gone, take this as an order, and send the Queen to Malta directly." The explanation of those contradictory letters was that, after the Admiralty ordered the ship to be tried, somebody in the interest of Sir W. Seymour, who did not wish the trial to take place, got an order from some Lords of the Admiralty to have her sent home at once, and then, when that order had been obeyed, a show of regret was made that no trial had been made. He could state another case, while he was in command of the Baltic fleet. He one day received a letter from the Admiralty directing him to proceed to Wingo Sound, and soon after he received another directing him to open the orders which had been enclosed in a previous letter. He did so, and found that the orders were from the Secretary of State, pointing out what he was to do. In that case he obeyed the orders of the Secretary of State, because he was the highest authority, and also because his orders were the wisest. He accordingly proceeded to Kioje Bay, in order to prevent the junction of the Russian with the Swedish and Danish fleets, a contingency which might

  961
  have happened had he obeyed the Admiralty orders, and anchored in Wingo Sound. A few days after moving his fleet he received a letter from the Admiralty approving what he had done, and yet long afterwards he was censured by the Board of Admiralty for disobeying their orders. He mentioned these cases to show the confusion which arose from having so many masters. The Lords of the Admiralty meddled with things which they did not understand, and the natural consequence was blundering and confusion. Then, again, he had received private letters from the First Lord giving instructions, and others from the Senior Naval Lord also giving instructions, but differing widely from each other. In the dockyards the same state of things occurred. Sir G. Cockburn, after pointing out the faulty construction of the present Board of Admiralty, had pointed out the mode in which he thought that department should be governed. The gallant Officer recommended that the present Board of Admiralty should be abolished, and that the management of the Navy should be transferred to a flag officer as Naval Commander in Chief, to be assisted by two naval officers, to be called Vice Admiral and Rear Admiral of England, or as might be thought desirable. He also proposed that a leading Member of Parliament should be appointed as Controller of Naval Expenditure, who should be charged with the duty of submitting the Naval Estimates to the House of Commons. The Naval Commander in Chief should decide what ships should be built, repaired, and fitted out, and the quantities of stores to be issued, and those orders the Controller should receive as sufficient authority to warrant the expenditure, although he should be at liberty to make suggestions, and, in the event of any irreconcilable difference of opinion between them, the matter to be decided by the First Lord of the Treasury. Sir G. Cockburn thought it better that the Naval Lord should not be in Parliament, and had anticipated an objection that might be raised against the appointment of a Naval Commander in Chief, on the ground of his being inclined to show undue favour to particular officers. He met that by referring to the Commander in Chief of the Army, who was not found to be unfit for the office because he was a military man. As to another objection, that a Naval Officer might not possess the knowledge and requirements necessary to fit him for
  962
  a seat in the Cabinet, Sir G. Cockburn replied that it was not necessary the Naval Commander in Chief should be in the Cabinet; but even were it so, many naval officers were quite equal to the position in all respects. That was Sir G. Cockburu's opinion of the Board of Admiralty, and before giving his (Sir C. Napier's) views he would point out some of the evils attendant upon a constant change of that Board. A Ministry which remained in office several years produced Members of the Board of Admiralty who had their own notions of shipbuilding. Each First Lord and those under him had their own crotchets—some being in favour of three-deckers, some for steamers, others for gun-boats. When a change of Ministry took place, the whole Board was altered, new men came in with new notions, or with none at all, quite ignorant of their business, and no one was left to teach it to them, except, perhaps, the second Secretary. Great confusion necessarily ensued, and the House would be astonished when he showed them the expenses of shipbuilding and altering under different First Lords. Millions of money had been squandered in the alteration, realteration, building, destruction, and rebuilding of ships, to meet the whims of the ever-changing Lords of the Admiralty. Some years ago he took the trouble of ascertaining the number of ships which had been built and destroyed between the years 1815 and 1849. We had got rid of 13 three-deckers and 2 receiving ships; 153 two-deckers and 22 receiving ships; 20 fifty-gun ships and 9 receiving ships; 180 frigates, from thirty to fifty guns, and 17 receiving ships; 65 frigates of thirty guns; 418 vessels of all descriptions and 20 receiving ships; making in all 920 ships. During that period there had been built l4 three-deckers, 49 two-deckers, 73 frigates from thirty to fifty guns, 39 frigates under thirty guns; 141 vessels of all descriptions, not including small craft and steamers. In addition to the expense of breaking tip ships, no less than 28 had had their sterns altered under Sir W. Symond's plan, and 26 under other plans; 58 ships had had their magazines altered—some of them three times and 8 of them twice. The expense of cutting down a frigate was upwards of £52,000. From 1821 to 1849 the Estimates for the Navy amounted to upwards of £156,000,000, of which more than £44,000,000 were expended on the dockyards. He did not mean to say that it was not necessary to

  963
  cut down ships, but he was satisfied that the great number of alterations which had taken place were attributable to the changes at the Admiralty. Any mercantile yard managed as were the affairs of the Board of Admiralty would be instantly ruined. As a remedy for these things he proposed that the chief of the Admiralty should hold his office permanently, independently of any change in the Ministry. He did not go the length of Sir G. Cockburn and Sir G. Clerk, who insisted that that chief should be a naval officer, for he (Sir C. Napier) knew that the prevalent opinion in Parliament was that naval and military men were only fit to be shot at, and that civilians were the only men that knew how to manage the business of the army and navy. Lord St. Vincent made a good First Lord of the Admiralty, though Mr. Pitt said he was not fit to be there. The fact was that he found the navy in a very low state. It was his firmness and character which re-established it after the mutinies of the Nore and Spithead. He restored its discipline. It was said that all the great battles were fought under First Lords who were civilians; but what had those First Lords to do with it? What, in the name of God, had a man taken from the House of Commons, and placed at the head of the Admiralty, to do with the battles? The greatest battle, too—that of Trafalgar—was fought when Lord Barham, a naval man, was at the head of the Admiralty. But he gave no credit to him for that which was really due to Lord Nelson, who would have fought and won that great fight with equal success, whether a naval man or a civilian was at the head of the Admiralty. He believed, with a comparatively trifling alteration in the present system, that the Admiralty would be much more efficient. Sir James Graham did a geat deal, he must confess; he was the first that did reform the Board of Admiralty. The plans which he (Sir C. Napier) had recommended to Lord Melbourne and Lord Althorp had been partially carried out with respect to the registration of seamen, and some other points connected with manning the navy. There was one very important point, and that was the discharge of the continuous-service men. This he thought was objectionable. They were discharged of their own free will, it was true, but the discharge was, nevertheless, objectionable. He understood that there had been an order sent down to
  964
  Portsmouth to discharge all the first-class boys who were just beginning to be useful—that was to say, with their own consent; but sailors were fond of change—and then all the novices who had been taken from the plough tail and trained into ordinary seamen, were also to be discharged. These men ought not to be discharged at all, but they ought to be taken for five years instead of ten, and when discharged at the end of five years, allowed to re-enter for five years more. He understood that several different orders had been sent down—that, in fact, the telegraph was constantly at work, and that the commanders at the ports hardly knew what to do. He would not deny that the present system looked well on paper—the Navy Board, the Transport Board, and the Victualling Board being abolished, and one of the principal dockyard officers being placed at the head of the victualling, another at the head of the storekeeper's, and a third at the head of the surveyor's departments. Nothing could be more correct, and he believed that when well carried out it would be found to work well. When, however, the Bill effecting this change in the constitution of the board was brought I in, Sir G. Clerk and Sir G. Cockburn said that the real power would fall to these officers without the responsibility. He feared that as the system was worked this was very much the case. There was, he believed, no necessity for having a lay lord, as at present, over the accountant general. That officer should have supreme command of his own department. There should then he officers at the head of the medical, victualling, and surveyor's departments. He would return to the old practice of placing the Vice Admiral of Great Britain at the head of the surveyor's department and store department, who should conduct the whole correspondence with the dockyards, should be responsible for their management, and should from time to time thoroughly inspect them, instead of paying them a visit once a year, as was now the case, a hurried visit, which was more a journey of pleasure than anything else. The Rear-Admiral of Great Britain should have the superintendence of the victualling and medical departments, and should inspect the ships, if necessary. These two Officers would hoist their flags when they went to the outports; their names would carry authority with them and would be respected; and he was perfectly convinced that if this were done enormous sums of money

  965
  would be saved, and that there would be greater economy and efficiency throughout the entire service. With regard to the Admiralty, the fact was that at present the First Lord was not considered responsible because there existed "a Board." Now, he (Sir C. Napier) would give the First Lord more power, and make the position therefore one of greater responsibility. He had no objection to the present occupant of this office, because the right hon. Gentleman did as well, perhaps better, than any other layman. But he would make him Minister of Marine, occupying an analogous position to that of Minister for War, having under him the vice and rear admirals, and assisted by a captain of the fleet in the duties which, as a civilian, he could not be supposed to understand. [A laugh.] Yes, there were very many duties of this kind; in fact, if they placed civilians at the head of the Admiralty the Government might just as well take a naval officer and make him a bishop. As Minister of Marine all orders would emanate from him, and he would have under him two Secretaries, a civilian and a naval Secretary. The advantages of this arrangement would be that when it was desirable to issue secret orders, no one would know anything about them except the First Lord and one of his Secretaries. And, moreover, every officer would in every case know whom to obey. The Minister, the vice and rear admirals, the captain of the fleet, and the two secretaries would be quite enough to do all the work. In fact, the fewer men you had the better, for then you got more responsibility, and were not bothered by having half-a-dozen people all pulling different ways. The House should remember that it was not until the calamities of the late war that the War Department was remodelled, and they might depend upon it that if something were not done, and done speedily, to improve the management of the navy, we should be visited with a series of disasters. He would remind them of what had befallen the English navy in the war with the United States, when so many of our corvettes and frigates were taken into American ports. He admitted that they were inferior to their antagonists in guns, scantling, masts and yards. But still our ships did not inflict so much injury on the enemy as they should have done. The Americans were, in fact, a young nation, paid more attention to the navy than we did, and were proud to beat their cousins.
  966
  Immediately after this Napoleon sent out nine frigates, and although five of them were taken, there were no fewer than four drawn battles. Since the war the French navy had got into a high state of discipline, their ships were just as good as ours, and, above all, they could man their fleets when we could not. What we wanted was a better system and better management, so that our ships might be efficiently manned. Unless this were done disasters would surely befall this country, and when once we lost our naval superiority our reign was over. Let the House look at our condition at the present moment. We had no Channel fleet. In a few months we should not have a line-of-battle ship in England, and in case of a sudden war with France and Russia he did not believe the Queen's throne would be worth six months' purchase. ["Oh!oh!"] Hon. Gentlemen might cry "Oh! oh!"; but what should we do? Our ships were not ready—that is to say we had none but trash at different ports instead of having some of our best ships at home—and how then was the country to be defended? He did not wish to say anything which would give offence, he only wanted to open the eyes of the country; and he repeated, therefore, that if France and Russia were to unite together to-morrow this country had not the means of self-defence. He knew from experience the want of system and preparation. He had been in action; he had been beaten; he had had his thighbone broken, simply because his ship was badly manned and the crew badly disciplined. Look at a London mob, which a handful of cavalry could easily disperse. Well, a mob on board ship was not a bit better. When he fell in with the Miguelite fleet, which was double or treble his force, one of the enemy's ships was first boarded by his captain and his son, now no more, and they were hardly followed by a single man of the crew. Yet these were British sailors! And out of the fifty marines only three boarded! Why was this? Because the men were undisciplined, and had no confidence in themselves. True, the Miguelite fleet was taken. [A laugh.] Yes, but by all the rules of warfare it was the British fleet which ought to have been taken. The proper manning of our vessels was of the last importance. As well build forts upon land and not garrison them as man inefficiently our floating forts. If we put badly-disciplined men into them, what in the name of God would they do with

  967
  68-pounders? Why, they would be afraid to touch them! The First Lord of the Treasury was responsible for all this, and if his Lordship were to stand up in the House and to say that he would not remain at the head of the Government unless an efficient fleet were constantly maintained, he would be supported by the House and by the country. This fleet need not be a large or expensive one, but it ought to be in high order, commanded by young, energetic officers, and thoroughly well manned and well disciplined. If they had a properly-manned fleet that fleet would defy the world. He knew what British seamen were, and he knew that when they got accustomed to each other and to the work, they had a skill and boldness that nothing in the world could face. However, when the sailors they sent out were men picked out of the street for the occasion, their fleet was not well manned. It was said that they could teach a soldier his evolutions in six months; but they could not teach sailors to fight the guns properly and act as disciplined men in any time much short of a year. He hoped the House would agree to his Committee, and he would undertake to show before it that the present state of the Admiralty could not be maintained except at a great risk. He wanted no First Lords on this Committee—no prejudiced persons, but a Committee that would go into the question with unbiassed minds and examine naval officers, and, if they pleased, the Board of Admiralty itself. He knew that many of the present Board of Admiralty disapproved of the system, if they would only stand up and say so, and if the House would grant this Committee he would produce them and many naval officers of experience before it who would fully prove every proposition which he had laid down. The hon. and gallant Admiral concluded by moving for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the constitution of the Board of Admiralty, with the view of rendering it more efficient and better adapted to the various duties it has to perform.
  MR. BENTINCKseconded the Motion. It was not his intention to advert to the many points which had been adverted to by his hon. and gallant Friend. If he did so, he could have no claim to the attention of the House; but there was one point on which, although his hon. and gallant Friend had passed it over as hopeless, it was competent for any man to form an
  968
  opinion, and which was very closely connected with the well-being of the country at large. He alluded to the practice of placing civilians at the head of the Admiralty. He considered that practice to be anomalous, he might say absurd. In saying that, he wished it to be distinctly understood that he was not impugning the abilities of the right hon. Baronet or his predecessors at the Admiralty. So far from that, he admitted the abilities of that right hon. Baronet, for whom he had great respect, and he thought that he and his predecessors deserved great credit, for they had been placed in circumstances of the greatest difficulty; still to the practice he objected, as most injurious to the well-being of the service, and as being absurd. Looking at the other branch of the war service—what, he asked, would be thought of any hon. Member who should stand up in that House, and propose the appointment of a civilian as Commander in Chief? Yet he believed it would be easier to find a civilian capable of filling that high office than one competent to act as First Lord of the Admiralty; and the inconvenience of such an appointment would be much less, as the duties would be more easily learnt. In all other departments it was the profession—if not always the practice—to appoint the man who was best fitted for the post; but how was it possible for a civilian, however great his talents, appointed for the first time to the office of First Lord of the Admiralty, to discharge the duties of that office satisfactorily? This appointment of civilians, then, he looked upon as a great evil; and, with the hon. and gallant Admiral, (Sir C. Napier) he believed that evil to be much increased by the frequent changes of First Lords. A civilian who had been for some years in the office was more competent to discharge its duties than a civilian just introduced at the Board, and whose previous habits had not been such as to prepare him for the very responsible task which he was about to undertake. The House was told that the evil was counteracted by the ability of the permanent servants of the Crown. He believed that nothing could be more meritorious than the services of those permanent officers; but if permanency was in their case attended with such good results, why was not permanency extended to the higher grades? Again, the system of divided responsibility—the system of the orders of one day being countermanded by

  969
  those of the next—was one under which it was impossible for things to go right. He commended the present First Lord for the course he had adopted on the Motion of his (Mr. Bentinck's) noble and gallant Friend the Member for Sandwich, when the subject of the comparative merits of frigates and three deckers was before the House. On that occasion the First Lord took upon himself a responsibility which others in his position might have sought to evade; but why should the right hon. Baronet, a civilian, be placed in the position of having to decide as to the number of vessels of each class that ought to be built? The system of placing a civilian at the head of the navy was so anomalous, that when it was knocked on the head people would wonder that it ever existed. He (Mr. Bentinck) trusted that, under all the circumstances, the House would grant his hon. and gallant Friend the Committee which he asked for.
  MR. BERNAL OSBORNEwas afraid that the speech of the hon. and gallant Admiral had been so discursive, that he should find it totally impossible to follow him through all the points on which he had touched. The point upon which he chiefly insisted was, that the First Lord of the Admiralty was not a permanent officer. Under our Parliamentary system none of the Members of the Government were permanent, and it would be impossible to have a permanent officer at the head of the Admiralty with a permanent officer nowhere else. It would be an agreeable thing to many, if they could. It was said that the Duke of Cambridge's appointment as Commander of the Forces was permanent, but that was not a parallel case. He was in a totally different position. He was not a Cabinet Minister. The Secretary of State for War, who was the head of the military establishments of the country, was the functionary who answered to the First Lord of the Admiralty, and he was not a permanent officer. The changes which the hon. and gallant officer suggested were no changes at all. According to his plan, the Board of Admiralty was still to be a Board, but it was to be called a Council. The First Lord was still to be First Lord, but was to be called the Minister of Marine. What happened when they had a Lord High Admiral? They had a Council—the very thing that the hon. and gallant Admiral proposed. And what happened then? Sir G. Cockburn complained and a change took place, and they went to the
  970
  Board again. The hon. and gallant Officer in moving for this Committee, had quoted frequently from his own book on the navy. He did that before, and the result was to send his book through another edition, from the number of copies wanted by the Admiralty and by hon. Members. Probably his reference this evening would lead to the remainder of the stock being sold off. He had cited a letter (quoted at page 84) which he wrote to Sir G. Pechell, but he had omitted to inform the House that in that letter he recommended that the purchase system—a system which in the army the House was rather disposed to question—should be introduced into the navy. The gallant Officer had also referred to a pamphlet written by Sir G. Cockburn—or rather not a pamphlet, but some loose notes which were left by that gallant Officer, but which were unfinished and not intended for publication. Sir G. Cockburn, who was a long time at the Admiralty, had many quarrels, not with civilians, but with the naval officers at the Board, and in consequence of those quarrels he left the notes to which the gallant Officer had referred. But what opinion did Sir G. Cockburn express in that House? In 1820 he said that:—
  "He had no hesitation in stating, and in staking his private as well as his public character on the statement, that it was necessary that the Admiralty Board should remain constituted as it was at present,"
  [Sir C. NAPIER: That was just when he came into office.] Five years later he said:—
  "Speaking from the experience which he had had, he would say that he was sure that any alteration in the Board's present constitution would be injurious to the best interests of the country."
  Probably, when Gentlemen went out of office, as when they left their commands, they changed their opinions as to what was conducive to the best interests of the country; but those were the opinions which Sir G. Cockburn expressed in that House. If he were rightly informed, in the year 1846 the hon. and gallant Admiral applied to be put on the Board of Admiralty. He could refer to his own pamphlet. [Sir CHARLES NAPIER: The page?] Page 213. This was Lord John Russell's letter to him:—
  "You may remember when you applied to me in 1846 for a seat at the Board of Admiralty, then about to be formed under Lord Auckland (a civilian), and I stated my opinion that your services would be more useful to the public in a naval than a civil department."

  971
  He thought it rather extraordinary that the hon. and gallant Admiral, having applied for civil service under a civilian First Lord in 1846, should in 1857 come down and tell them that it was impossible to carry on the naval affairs of the nation with a civilian as First Lord. He (Mr. Osborne) had a word or two to say about civil and naval First Lords. There had been a great many naval First Lords, and, although their appointments had been received with great approbation by the navy, yet they had generally ended by giving the greatest dissatisfaction. And the Parliamentary inquiries into the administration of the navy had occurred under naval, and all the great improvements had been introduced by civil First Lords. The institution of that gallant body of men, the Royal Marines, the inspection of the dockyards, and the auditing of the accounts, were all due to Lord Sandwich, a civil First Lord, than whom no man had ever been more successful at the Admiralty. These improvements were opposed by the Controller of the Navy, who was always either an admiral or a captain. Of the administration of Lord Keppel, a distinguished naval commander, Lord Shelburne said, that "peace was necessary since the discipline of the navy had become so bad." Lord Howe became First Lord in 1787, and in 1788 debates occurred both in that House and in the House of Lords, with regard to the favouritism exhibited in his promotions. Mr. Fox said in that debate—
  "He approved Lord Howe's conduct while at sea, but his merit and ability vanished when the naval Lord got on shore."
  Lord St. Vincent, whom the hon. and gallant Officer had referred to as a successful naval First Lord, was the most unfortunate man who ever took office at the Admiralty. A Motion was made in that House calling him to account, because, to reduce the Estimates, stores had been sold to France. In the course of the debate on that Motion, in 1804, Mr. Pitt, in one of his celebrated speeches, said:—
  "I am apt to think that between Lord St. Vincent, as a commander and as a First Lord of the Admiralty, there is a very wide difference. He is much less able in a civil than in a warlike capacity."
  [Sir C. NAPIER: What did Mr. Fox say?] Mr. Fox on that occasion voted against Mr. Pitt, but he did not say anything in favour of the civil capacity of Lord St. Vincent. [Sir C. NAPIER: Yes, he did.] Then the hon. and gallant Admiral ought to be ready with his quotation. Lord
  972
  Barham had been thirty years Controller of the Navy, and he was made First Lord to get rid of him at the Council, and he (Mr. B. Osborne) believed that his Lordship never sat at the Board. The gallant officer was guilty of a little inconsistency in speaking of Lord Barham, because, while asserting that the First Lord of the Admiralty had nothing to do with fitting out fleets, he claimed for that officer the credit of having equipped the squadron which won the battle of Trafalgar. He should maintain that the duties of a First Lord of the Admiralty partook as much of a civil as of a naval character, and he might add that, with the exception of the case of Lord Barham, nearly all the great naval actions which had been fought upon the part of this country had been fought under the administration of civilians. A civilian had been at the head of the Admiralty when the victories were won in 1794, when that great victory was gained under Rodney, and the battles of the Nile and of Copenhagen had been achieved under similar auspices. The hon. and gallant Admiral must not forget that the efficiency of a fleet depended very much upon the selection of a proper officer for its command; and he very much doubted whether the appointments which had been made under the direction of naval First Lords had been so satisfactory as those which had been made by civilians, with perhaps a single exception. He might also observe that the greatest improvements which had ever been introduced into the navy had originated under the administration of civilians. In the year 1834, for instance, Sir James Graham had effected a saving in the service of £1,200,000 by a consolidation of the different Boards of Admiralty, and had introduced—that which had never previously been the case—that system of auditing the naval accounts to which they were now subjected. He (Mr. Osborne) by no means desired to lay it down as a rule that a naval man should never be appointed to fill the office of First Lord of the Admiralty. Far from it, he should wish to see a naval man, who was fitted for the position, occupy it as well as anybody else; but what he objected to was that the House should be asked to stultify itself by coming to a decision that a naval man alone should be placed at the head of so important a department. The hon. and gallant Admiral had thought proper to indulge in several remarks with respect to the constitution of the Board of Admiralty,

  973
  and had stated that his (Mr. Osborne's) late colleague, Mr. Phinn, had resigned his office because he objected to being obliged to sign letters which he could not read. Now, he was in a position to say that Mr. Phinn had resigned for no such reason. He could not have had, as the hon. and gallant Admiral seemed to think, a conscientious objection to signing letters which he never read, inasmuch as he did read those letters. [An intimation of dissent from Sir C. Napier.] The hon. and gallant Admiral might shake his head, but, unless he could inform him that Mr. Phinn had stated to him the contrary, he (Mr. Osborne) must maintain the accuracy of what he had just said, and he might add that Mr. Phinn had retired from the Admiralty because he preferred returning to his profession to continuing in the office which he held in that department. The hon. and gallant Admiral, however, had gone on to talk about the circumstance that private letters had been written, but he (Mr. Osborne) felt astonished that the gallant Admiral should have made any allusion to that subject, considering the use which he had upon a former occasion made of the private letters of his (Mr. Osborne's) right hon. and gallant Friend Sir M. Berkeley. The hon. and gallant Admiral had also contended that a permanent officer should be attached to the Admiralty; but he seemed to have forgotten that there actually was such an officer in the person of the surveyor of the navy. And what was the opinion of the gallant Admiral of the officer who now held that situation? Why, at page 151 of his own work he observed that no better man as a Surveyor of the Navy could be found than Sir Baldwin Walker. The hon. and gallant Admiral went on to add, in not very elegant phraseology, "Give him rope enough, and I will answer for it he will save the service hundreds of thousands." [Sir C. NAPIER: Sir B. Walker is not First Lord of the Admiralty.] The hon. and gallant Admiral seemed determined to keep up a tirade against him (Mr. Osborne); but he, however, did not incommode him, though, no doubt, he thought he did. Sir B. Walker, it was true, was not First Lord of the Admiralty, but then he was a permanent officer connected with the department; and while he remained so, no mistake in the building of vessels would happen through want of professional knowledge. To pass, however, to the
  974
  book of the gallant Admiral, he was glad to find it there stated
  "That the well-being of the navy depended so much upon the management of the Minister at the head of the Admiralty; that in order to be acquainted with the merits of that functionary and of the Board generally it was only necessary to see whether the ships were in an efficient state, well commanded, well officered, and well manned."
  Well, what, he would ask, was the present state of the navy? He believed that it had never been more efficient. Referring even to that fleet which the hon. and gallant Admiral himself had commanded, and which he was so fond of maligning, he perceived that it had been spoken of by the Russians themselves in language the most complimentary. In an extract which he had taken from the Marine Journal, and which related to the movements of the fleet in Barro Sound, he found it stated that the Duke of Wellington had taken the lead in entering the Sound, and had been followed by the rest of the fleet, which had anchored in the most splendid order. The extract went on to add that the vessels had proceeded through portions of the Sound where no Russian pilot would have ventured to take deep-sea ships. Such was the nature of the Russian testimony as to the efficiency of the fleet which had been under the command of the hon. and gallant Admiral in the Baltic, and he was astonished to find that the hon. and gallant Admiral should have seized the present moment to give expression to the opinion that, in case of invasion, the throne of the Queen of England would not be worth six months' purchase. Indeed, if he had not been aware that the hon. and gallant Admiral entertained notions somewhat wild and extravagant upon the subject which he had that evening brought under the notice of the House, he should feel ashamed of one who, in his position, could venture upon such a remark. While we had a navy in so efficient a state as that which we now possessed, with such men directing its management as Sir R. Dundas, Sir M. Berkeley, Captain Milne, and Admiral Eden, who would never cease their exertions if they thought that the throne of the Queen of England was in the slightest danger—he felt assured that the House would see how little foundation there was for the alarm of the hon. and gallant Admiral, and how little necessity existed for a Motion to alter the constitution—or rather to change the name, for that was what the hon. and gallant Admiral

  975
  really proposed—of the Board of Admiralty. He trusted, therefore, that the House would, by a large majority, reject the Motion, which, if carried, could in no way tend to the benefit of the public service.
  SIR GEORGE PECHELLsaid, he thought it was quite clear that the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down carried a good many guns, and that he had used them somewhat unsparingly against the hon. and gallant Admiral who had brought forward the Motion. Although he did not concur in all the sentiments expressed by the hon. and gallant Admiral, yet he thought there were some grounds for his Motion. He doubted very much whether any weight ought to be attached to the opinions of Sir G. Cockburn, because he held a seat in that House for seventeen or eighteen years, and never said a word with regard to the constitution of the Admiralty when that subject was brought forward on the Motion of Sir Charles Napier. In his enumeration of First Lords, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Osborne) had omitted to mention Earl de Grey, who was one of the best civil First Lords of the Admiralty which he (Sir G. Pechell) recollected. He regretted, moreover, that the hon. Gentleman had not gone more fully into the history of the civil administration of the Board of Admiralty, and had not brought his observations upon that head down to the Boards of Admiralty of the present day. The Duke of Northumberland when at the head of the Admiralty, an appointment he (Sir G. Pechell) had hailed with the greatest satisfaction, although he was directly opposed to him in political opinions, had a glorious opportunity of accomplishing those necessary reforms which others had been frightened from attempting. The noble Duke should, for instance, have resisted the abstraction of their half-pay from the poor officers in Greenwich Hospital, and should have taken an independent course apart from all political consideration. Complaints had been made that Englishmen were always found exclusively at the Admiralty. It would, however, be more correct to say, that the current had run in favour of Scotchmen rather than Englishmen. Lord Melville was First Lord of the Admiralty for sixteen years, the Earl of Minto for six years, and the Earl of Haddington for five years. Irishmen certainly did not appear to have held the chief post; there was, however, one famous
  976
  Secretary from that country who ruled supreme at Charing-cross for near a quarter of a century. He contended that a naval officer should not be disqualified for the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. [Sir C. WOOD: Hear, hear!] The Duke of Northumberland might not have owed his appointment altogether to the fact that he was a naval officer, but still it was a step in the right direction, and he highly approved of the constitution of the noble Duke's Board—not so much of the men themselves as of their being all naval officers. In Lord Melville's time, four out of the seven Lords of the Admiralty were civilians, and they were therefore strong enough to outvote the naval Lords upon all questions. Such a state of things could not be satisfactory either to the profession or the public. He was ready to admit that the last two or three Boards of Admiralty were well deserving of the thanks of the country. Of "present company" he did not like to speak, but the services of one officer who was absent ought not to be omitted upon a discussion affecting the constitution and character of the present board. He referred to Sir Maurice Berkeley, who had been captain and Admiral for forty-three years, and who had been for thirteen years and four months at the Board of Admiralty, and who in every respect was fitted to take the chief command at the Board. He knew the zeal and activity of that hon. and gallant Officer in manning the fleet and in carrying out reforms and improvements in the food, clothing, and pay of seamen, and it was satisfactory to know that those improvements had greatly promoted the efficiency of the service. The present Government was stated to be in favour of reform and retrenchment, and whether those principles would be carried out at the Board of Admiralty remained to be seen. He thought the constant shifting and changing of the Board of Admiralty calculated to prevent the First Lord from knowing the best men for particular commands, but whether his hon. and gallant Friend (if he got his Committee) would be able to induce the House to recommend an alteration of the present system of forming Admiralty Boards, he would not venture to assert.
  MR. KERsaid, he thought this was not the most favourable time for bringing forward such a Motion, as the navy had greatly distinguished itself in the late war.

  977
  He wished, however, to draw the attention to the facilities offered under the existing system to foreigners for obtaining detailed information with regard to plans and shipbuilding in the Government dockyards. The problem was not yet solved how large and how broad our men of war ought to be, and it was very important that some reserve should be exercised as to the experiments in progress. A very distinguished person was expected to arrive shortly on a visit to this country. He was very much interested in naval affairs, and would no doubt visit our dockyards, to which he should be the last to object. But he objected to facilities being afforded to foreigners to obtain plans and drawings of ships, which, when put into the hands of an imitative people like the Russians, would enable them to build them almost as well as we could. In 1852 he met at St. Petersburg a gentleman employed in the Russian service, who showed him a large design of the Duke of Wellington line-of-battle ship, then in the course of being built in this country. He thought that means should be taken to prevent such designs from getting into the possession of foreign countries. A Russian, like a Chinaman, was very expert in making models from designs, and could turn out as perfect a piece of work with an axe as an English carpenter could do with all his tools.
  ADMIRAL WALCOTT: Having been unaware of the precise manner and terms in which the hon. and gallant Member (Sir C. Napier) proposed to introduce his Motion for securing the better administration of the Admiralty, I am unable to direct my observations to the subject in that way which I should have desired. Concur I do in many of the observations of the gallant Admiral, but not in all. I consider it of the highest importance that the naval authorities should pay close attention to the progress in science and the improvements made in the fleets of foreign countries. I agree in opinion with the noble Lord the Member for Sandwich in the advantage of a Board to assist the Admiralty in improving the construction of our vessels of war, but then it should not be restricted, as he has proposed, to naval officers, but composed of experienced and scientific men, who should receive the suggestions and consider the inventions of those who have turned their attention to improvements in naval architecture and other inventions pertaining to the naval
  978
  service—men able to determine and direct to the best advantage the inventions submitted to them from time to time by those who devoted their whole thoughts to the improvement of naval architecture. When it was remembered that towards the close of the last European war we had nearly 1,000 men-of-war in commission, there was nothing surprizing in the fact mentioned by the hon. and gallant Admiral (Sir C. Napier), that we sometimes found ourselves at a disadvantage with the Americans, because it was manifestly impossible to have the whole of such a vast number of vessels efficiently manned, and it was not to be expected that a small ship should be able to contend successfully with a larger. But what a British vessel could do when fairly matched was shown by the Shannon frigate, which, under the command of Captain Broke, beat an American frigate in the short space of fifteen minutes. Such examples of British courage and seamanship showed that there was no danger to our supremacy on the seas. I regret the hon. and gallant Admiral should think we were open to invasion, but I am comforted by the reflection, that in the event of a hostile force approaching our shores—a contingency which I confess I do not regard as very probable—we could in a week encircle our coasts with an ample number of steamers sufficiently armed, and there was not a seaman connected with our mercantile marine who would not be glad to join our standard. It has given me great pain to hear that the late Admiral Sir George Cockburn, whom I had always deemed a high-minded man and an able officer, possessing the highest qualifications, had not the manliness—I can use no other word—when he occupied a seat in this House, to express the sentiments which he regarded as of importance to the interests and welfare of his country, but had left them in memoranda to be made known after his death. Sir George afforded another instance of how differently men in office and men out of office thought and acted. Sir, nothing can astonish me more than the statement of the hon. and gallant Admiral (Sir C. Napier), which I trust to be far from correct, that the Naval Lords of the Admiralty sat at the Board as it were with ropes round their necks. All I can say is, that if they have not the courage to speak their sentiments when they supposed the interests of this country to be in danger, that I hope the rope will be tightened

  979
  until they were strangled. I do not believe, however, that there is one man in my profession who could be guilty of such dastardly conduct. Undoubtedly there has prevailed in the service from the period of my admission into the navy up to the present time a distrust of the motives on which the patronage of the Board of Admiralty has been bestowed, whether in promotion, employment, or the recommendation of officers to the Sovereign for honours. This painful feeling can only be removed by making the Naval Lords of the Admiralty responsible with their political chief on every occasion for the exercise of that high trust. They necessarily would be regarded by the profession as the competent authority in all matters of detail, and naturally would weigh the personal recommendation of the individual, unbiassed by party favour or interest of family connection. As the case stands now, officers are appointed and reappointed to ships and commands. In some instances these die, and thus the profession not only loses those who have acquired experience, but actually loses also the services of their survivors, who had been so debarred from opportunities of service. I trust some change will, ere long, take place in this respect. I do not care one straw whether the Head of the Admiralty is a naval officer or a civilian, provided he impartially devotes his whole time and energies to the improvement of the service and the promotion of our national interests.
  LORD CLARENCE PAGETsaid, that several hon. and gallant Members had entered very minutely into an argument as to the merits of a naval or none-naval First Lord. On that point he would say as few words as possible, because he believed the present system worked, on the whole, most advantageously for the country. What he wished to remark was that the House ought not to be led away by the opinions of Sir George Cockburn—a man who, although a high authority, and one of the greatest naval officers England ever produced, was well known towards the latter end of his life to have exhibited a certain impatience of control and an uneasiness at the criticism of other members of his Board. He lamented that so great a man should have ever left such an unfinished and, he might add, unreasonable plan as that which had been described, as a legacy to his country. The tone and temper of the document showed that it had been written under the influence of strong excitement
  980
  and amid circumstances incompatible with the frame of mind in which any man ought to draw up a scheme to remodel our whole naval administration. There was one paragraph in Sir G. Cockburn's pamphlet which at once showed that the work could not be consulted with propriety in reference to any changes in the Admiralty. After stating that he was obliged to abandon various measures from the opposition of one or other of the members of "this disjointed ruling body,"—an opposition, too, springing from parties having no professional knowledge on the matters under consideration, and whose objections were therefore based on what had been suggested to them by some irresponsible person out of doors, Sir George Cockburn went on to say that, indeed, during his long seat at the Admiralty Board, the annoyances to which he had been subjected from these causes had kept him in a perpetual state of anxiety and perplexity, and had required the exercise of the utmost forbearance on his part to admit of his retaining a position so little consistent with the efficient conduct of the multifarious affairs of the navy. As a naval man, he (Lord C. Paget) knew under what circumstances this passage was penned, and that this great and good man was suffering under what amounted almost to mental aberration, in consequence of the disputes which then prevailed in the Admiralty. He, for one, would never admit that a naval officer was unfit to administer the navy, or to fill the office of First Lord; but after a careful study of past history on this subject, he could not find that during a purely naval administration the service had derived any peculiar advantage. In fact, our bygone naval administrations had, on the whole, been unsuccessful. Those who served in the navy and had had experience of the admirable arrangements for arming, equipping, and fitting out our ships must feel that a deep debt of gratitude was due to the present Board of Admiralty, and also to the right hon. Member for Carlisle, whom he begged to thank for the very flattering manner in which he had spoken of his (Lord C. Paget's) humble services. Under these circumstances, he should be sorry to see a Committee formed to displace the existing machinery, which had worked so well.
  MR. WARREhoped that good faith would be rigidly kept with the continuous-service men of good character who wished to remain in the navy, and that the House

  981
  would not grudge any extra charge which such a course might entail upon the country. The hon. and gallant Admiral who spoke of the throne of Her Majesty being in danger went entirely on the hypothesis that France and Russia might combine to assail this country. That, it was to be hoped, was but an improbable event; yet if it unfortunately occurred, and we had an inadequate force at home, it was obvious that our shores would be in considerable jeopardy. [Sir C. NAPIER: Hear, hear!] Burke had, in 1786, warned this country of what the French were doing at Cherbourg, and the French had never, since the age of Louis XIV., lost the system of naval and military conscription; nor had they ever lost sight of Napoleon's scheme of invasion. The internal communication of France was now by the railroad system so improved that she had the power of manning very rapidly a powerful and formidable navy, and she possessed great powers of obtaining men. It was all very well to rely on a steam navy, but a navy was no good without men; and he felt that it was true wisdom and economy to keep our navy well manned, for which reason he strongly recommended that good faith be kept with our "continuous-service" men.
  MR. LINDSAYsaid, he had not heard from the Secretary of the Admiralty any answer to the reasons put forward by his hon. and gallant Friend (Sir C. Napier) for the appointment of a Committee. He should support his hon. and gallant Friend because he believed that the present management of our navy required an inquiry. Even if the system were unsusceptible of improvement, an inquiry could do no possible harm. Great expense was incurred in our dockyards by the continual alterations of ships; nor could they lose sight of the various contradictory orders issued by the Admiralty; nor of the fact that no change had been made in the constitution of the Admiralty; and yet when we were suddenly involved in a great war with Russia, everyone must feel that there was something radically wrong in that department. A great change had been made in the administration of the army. He thought a great change could and ought to be made in the administration of the navy. He admitted there were some able men at the Admiralty; but what was the use of that, unless the opinions of those men had their due weight? Believing that an alteration ought to be made in the constitution of the
  982
  Board, he would vote for the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend.
  SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, he wished to say a few words in reference to some remarks of the hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. Warre), with respect to the continuous-service men. He begged to say that no order had been given for the discharge of continuous-service men, and no men of that class who were men of good character had been discharged, except upon their own request. Some men of bad character or physically unfit for further service had been discharged, but even including all such men the number discharged did not exceed 100. An order, however, had been sent down to the ports that all seamen, whether entered for continuous service or not, who wished to leave the service should be permitted to do so. That he could not admit to be anything like a breach of faith. Taunts had been thrown out of contradictory orders being issued upon this subject, but he could state positively that no contradictory orders had been issued. He should not imitate the hon. and gallant Admiral in going back to the constitution of the naval administration in the time of Edward the Sixth, nor did he think this the proper occasion to enter upon the subject of manning the navy, which he regarded as entirely distinct from the question as to the composition of the Board of Admiralty which the hon. and gallant Member for Southwark had raised. The hon. and gallant Member for Sandwich (Lord C. Paget) had given a very just explanation of the memorandum of Sir G. Cockburn which had been so much referred to. That gallant Officer had not agreed very well with all his colleagues at the Board of Admiralty, and it was evident from the tone of the memorandum that it was written under feelings of some irritation. The proposition that there should be a naval Commander in Chief, with a civil officer below him, was simply a repetition of the old arrangement for the army of a Commander in Chief and the Secretary at War, which had been lately abolished as inconvenient. The hon. and gallant Admiral's proposition had been shown by the Secretary to the Admiralty to be little more than a nominal change from the present system, and it mattered little whether the head of the navy was called First Lord or Commander in Chief, as the civilian First Lord was advised in

  983
  all naval matters by the senior naval Lord. He did not mean to contend that naval men were or ought to be incapacitated from presiding over the Admiralty, but he said it was not necessary that the First Lord should be a naval man. Indeed, even in command of a fleet or of an army, how much there was which was not of a naval or a military character. The truth was, a great portion of the business transacted at the Board of Admiralty required little or no naval knowledge—such as the purchase of timber-stores, victuals, building materials—all of which matters, it was evident, needed no naval knowledge. Take the late campaign in the Crimea. Why, the chief failures were in such matters as required no military knowledge—such as the supply of stores and provisions, the construction of roads, and the medical department. If this was so in the field, how much more was it the case in the administration of the department at home? The hon. and gallant Officer proposed that the principal Officers should be rendered independent of the Admiralty; but he (Sir C. Wood) believed that the present system was much the best. At present the principal Officers had their separate departments, and in matters of detail acted for themselves. If any matter of great importance arose they referred to the Lord superintending their department, and if the matter was of still greater importance it came before the whole Board. It was quite impossible that the whole Board could attend to every matter of detail, neither was it desirable. When any matter of great importance had been brought before the whole Board and had been decided upon, its execution was always left to the Lord in whose department it was. The hon. and gallant Officer proposed to create officers, with the title of Vice-Admiral and Rear-Admiral of Great Britain, to give orders about stores and such matters; but that was done now by junior Lords of the Admiralty, and the public services would not be promoted by any mere change of title. The proposed change would be purely nominal, except that it would deprive those officers of the opportunity they now enjoyed of consulting their colleagues whenever any matter of difficulty arose. Then, again, with respect to the proposed changes in the mode of governing the dockyards, apart from the Admiralty, he was not disposed to regard it with favour, believing
  984
  that the present system of visitation tended to the public advantage by keeping the Board of Admiralty acquainted with what was going on, and rendering it necessary for the dockyard authorities to be prepared to meet those periodical inspections. For himself, he must say, he thought the best form of government for the navy was a board of naval officers, presided over by a chief, whether a civilian or a naval officer did not matter much so long as he possessed a competent knowledge of public business; and such a board, he believed, was preferable to the scheme of the hon. and gallant Admiral, from which, in fact, it differed little save in name.
  SIR CHARLES NAPIER, in reply, said, the Secretary to the Admiralty had taunted him for not alluding to his advocacy of the sale of commissions in the navy, but that had nothing to do with the present question. He had also taunted him with having offered to serve on the Board of Admiralty under Lord J. Russell's Government; but the fact was that he had written to him for his services generally, and it did not follow that because the noble Lord had written to him to say that he could find him a more fitting place than a Lordship in the Admiralty, he had applied for such a post. The hon. Secretary to the Admiralty had not acted wisely in taking advantage of his (Sir C. Napier's) observation that the Queen's Throne would be in danger if a particular combination took place. He had simply made use of that expression to show to the country the inefficient state of our preparations. He was very much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for reading an article from a Russian paper, because it showed that the enemy gave him a great deal more credit than the people who governed him. The hon. Gentleman said he was the last man who ought to complain of use being made of a private letter. Sir Maurice Berkeley made use of his private letters, but, as Sir Maurice was not present, he avoided saying a single syllable on the subject. The hon. Gentleman had referred to it, and he therefore felt bound to say that, after the manner in which he had been traduced, he thought he had done perfectly right in taking every possible step to show the manner in which he had been treated. Lord St. Vincent, in a letter to the Admiralty, used the expression that he had long been acquainted with the dulness of the Lords, and he

  985
  thought a similar letter might have been written by him to the present Board. He had very little more to say in favour of his Motion. The change he proposed was very trifling. He only wanted the Lords of the Admiralty to attend and do their duty. What was the use of them if they were never present at their posts? They ought to see with their own eyes instead of trusting everything to their subordinates. No man could read through all the documents which the Secretary of the Admiralty had to sign, and he had heard that Mr. Phinn resigned the appointment because all the business was left to him to do by the hon. Gentleman opposite.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the constitution of the Board of Admiralty, with the view of rendering it more efficient, and better adapted to the various duties it has to perform."
  The House divided:—Ayes 35; Noes 152: Majority 117.

LAND TAX.

  COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  MR. WILLIAM A. MACKINNON: Sir, I rise for the purpose of moving, in pursuance of notice which I have given to that effect, "for the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the expediency of a more equitable adjustment of the Land Tax. Also for allowing a further redemption of the same. And whether by any other means the land tax might be made more beneficial to the Revenue of the Country, and to the reduction of the National Debt." Since I placed the notice on the paper, I have received three additional petitions complaining of the unequal and inequitable operation of the tax, and praying that some fair and just mode of levying it may be adopted. It is not my intention to occupy the attention of the House, at this late hour of the evening, with any lengthened observations from myself upon the importance of this question to those who are most deeply affected by it, or on the unjust and unequal manner in which the tax is levied; nor shall I enter into any lengthened details or statistical statements to support my Motion; because if the House will accede to it, and grant me the Committee, that I think will be the proper place for entering into those particulars. Indeed, if it had not have been that I myself was
  986
  deeply impressed with the unjust and oppressive operation of the tax, I should not have taken upon myself the task of bringing the subject under the consideration of the House at all; but fully satisfied as I am that it is a tax of the character I have described, I feel no hesitation in doing so, as well as in expressing my astonishment how it was possible that in a free country like this such a tax has been suffered so long to exist, and to be paid. Let me ask, then, why is it, or how comes it, that this tax has been allowed to remain so long in existence as one of what I may call the permanent taxes of the country? If we look into the history of the origin of the impost, we find it stated by no less an authority than that of Sir John Sinclair, that the land tax was one of great antiquity, and that when it first came to be imposed it amounted to no less a sum than 4s. in the pound, and that that amount was levied not only off land, but that all who were engaged in business pursuits, no matter of what nature, had also to pay it out of the profits arising out of such business or mercantile calling. We also find that it is a tax which almost from the earliest date of its imposition by continued renewal every year, from year to year, until the breaking out of the Revolution in the year 1688; that with the exception of a short interval during that eventful period, it was kept on until the year 1692, the time of the reign of William and Mary; and that during that reign an Act of Parliament was passed by which it was declared to be one of the permanent taxes of the country, and as such it was continued to be levied regularly for over a century, until the year 1798 when the Prime Minister of the time, Mr. Pitt, seeing the pressure upon the Government, of which he was the head, for financial resources, and the necessity of devising some means by which to supply them, he hit upon a scheme for which he got the sanction of Parliament, and that was a power for redeeming the tax. At the time when that power was granted, this tax amounted to no less a sum than nearly two millions sterling, that is to say, to £1,925,000; the result of that measure was, that the public treasury received an accession of something like £21,000,000, or a redemption equal to one-third; but the Act

  987
  under which this measure was carried into effect by Mr. Pitt, was attended by one most unfortunate mistake; and that was, that statesman still adhered to the Act of William and Mary, and persevered in maintaining this tax in accordance with the rate established by that Act; and as an inevitable consequence, the result of Mr. Pitt's measure was, that all those who did not redeem according to the provisions of his Act were compelled to pay in accordance with the old scale; and in that state the enforcement of the tax has been allowed to be carried on up to the present day. Now, just let the House mark what the consequences have been of this mode of legislation. It has been this, that in a great many instances large parishes, inhabited by a numerous and very poor population, have had to pay this most obnoxious tax to an amount most oppressive to them, while a great many very wealthy parishes have actually been exempt from the payment of a single farthing of the tax. I will substantiate this statement by mentioning a few facts from a document I hold in my hand; it is the Report of the operation of the land tax in the different parishes upon which it is levied, and by it I find, that in the parish of Evesham this tax amounts to the incredible sum of 3s. 6d. in the pound upon every individual inhabitant of that parish, or in round numbers to about £190 a year. Now, just let me ask what does the House think was the sum paid to the land tax by the rich town of Liverpool? Just £100 a year: and the result in that case is, that each individual there paid only one farthing in the pound, while in the poor parish of Evesham they paid 3s. 6d. in the pound. So also in Brighton, Manchester, and other wealthy towns, the inhabitants did not pay more than one farthing in the pound. Let us see what was paid by the parishes in this great metropolis. While in St. George's, St. Marylebone, and St. Pancras' parishes they only paid about a farthing in the pound, in St. Ann's, Soho, and in St. Paul's—comparatively poor parishes—they paid 3s. in the pound. Thus, while the tax fell lightly on the wealthy community (who ought to pay the whole of it), it fell oppressively on the poor community. The only plan whereby these inequalities of the tax can be remedied, seems to me to be equalization of it. Nothing can be more monstrous than the operation of the tax. The
  988
  subject is deserving the most serious attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The evil must be met some time or another, and surely no delay ought to take place in getting rid of so anomalous a system. Sir, I shall not further occupy the time and attention of the House with the subject. In conclusion, I have only to say, that I think I have made out such a case as calls for the appointment of a Committee. I have asked for, and therefore I beg to move that that Committee be appointed in the terms of the notice I have given, and to thank the House for the kind and patient attention with which I have been heard.
  MR. NEATEseconded the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a Select Committee be appointed to consider the expediency of a more equitable adjustment of the Land Tax; also of allowing a further redemption of the same; and whether by any other means the Land Tax might be made more beneficial to the Revenue of the Country, and to the reduction of the National Debt."
  SIR JOHN TROLLOPEsaid, that he had hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have risen to point out to the House the extreme impracticability of this Committee; and simply because the experiment had often been tried before, both here and elsewhere, to arrange a more equitable adjustment of the tax. The attempt had puzzled every finance Minister, because the impediments in the way of an adjustment were so great. It was clear that the difficulty arose from the assessment of William and Mary having been made perpetual, and the Redemption Act having been settled on that basis. When the tax was originally imposed it was 4s. in the pound upon income arising from property of all descriptions. But that was before customs, excise, and other modes of raising the public revenue were resorted to. The only equitable readjustment that could be made, and which was occasionally made by the Commissioners of Land-tax, was a readjustment of the quota of each parish respectively. But it would be unjust to take from the charge of one parish and put it upon another. If the hon. Gentleman was prepared to recommend a reassessment of the tax altogether, let him so state it—let him propose to place a new income tax on the country of 4s. in the pound. He did not see how any Committee could deal with

  989
  the question except by an entire reassessment. At the time the Act was made perpetual the quotas for the respective parishes were settled upon their then value, and consequently in counties where enclosures existed, such as Buckingham, Suffolk, and other anciently-enclosed districts, the highest rate of assessment prevailed, while in a very large extent of country where the land was unenclosed and not then cultivated the tax was of course low. But the hon. Gentleman himself had shown that in the present position of the tax no undue advantage was obtained by the landed interest, which bore the chief burdens, the advantage of a small assessment being entirely with the metropolis and other large towns, which had been so greatly increased in value by building. The difficulty was in making the tax perpetual, which was necessary under the arrangement for redemption. He confessed he did not see how the question was to be dealt with. [Mr. MACKINNON: By redemption.] He doubted whether redemption was now practicable. The principle of Mr. Pitt's Redemption Act was that stock should be taken as the equivalent; and during the Peninsular war, when Consols went below par, many gentlemen did redeem the tax on their estates, for it was then a profitable transaction; but the rate of the public funds ever since the peace of 1815 had been such as to admit of no practical redemption whatever, and consequently no one had attempted to redeem. Unless the House was prepared to repeal the Redemption Act altogether, he saw no advantage that could result from a Committee. He reminded the House, too, that in a very short period the time of hon. Members would be more than sufficiently occupied by attendance on Committees to have the number of such Committees unnecessarily augmented. Taking into account the Committees already sitting, and the different Election Committees which were shortly to be appointed, he believed it would be almost beyond the available means of the House to constitute such a number of Committees at one time. He therefore thought it would be a waste of time to appoint a Committee on a subject beset with such difficulties.
  MR. NEATEsaid, that every one would agree with the hon. Member who had moved the Committee as to the unjust and oppressive operation of this tax. With respect to the relative weight with which the tax fell on town and country, it was true it fell much heavier on the country parishes than it did
  990
  on those in towns; but then the inhabited house-duty was to be taken into account. That of itself was a species of land-tax, and the parish of Marylebone contributed a much larger sum towards it than any of the rural parishes. Before the House entered on a consideration of the question hon. Members ought to have a clear view of the inequalities of the present tax; and of those inequalities he was surprized that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Mackinnon) did not advert to the most glaring, which was the £48,000 only paid by Scotland, compared with the £1,900,000 which England contributed. That would be of itself a sufficient ground for reviewing this tax; but the real point was, how far the Act of Mr. Pitt precluded the House from considering the question of the restoration of the tax to an efficient and productive source of revenue. He thought the condition of the landed interest was such now that it must be forced upon the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as that of a class in the kingdom which was by far the most able to bear the weight of increased taxation. All that was done by the Act of William and Mary was to provide for a fresh valuation, and what Mr. Pitt did was to make the tax perpetual; but he made it perpetual as between the Government and the taxpayer in no other way than other taxes had been made perpetual. There were contracts that arose out of that Act which he (Mr. Neate) would not disturb without an adequate compensation to those whose enjoyments under such contracts might be interfered with; but, he repeated, the object of Mr. Pitt was to make this a perpetual tax. as other taxes had been granted in perpetuity before, in order to lay the foundation for a great financial scheme he had for raising the funds—which were then at 50 only—by bringing into the market the landed proprietors as purchasers of stock. The hon. Member read extracts from a speech of Mr. Pitt to show the objects that distinguished statesman had in view in dealing with the land-tax, and he contended that there was nothing in the Act of Mr. Pitt which precluded the House from considering the question in its widest bearing.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: The dissolution of Parliament, which has given us two Sessions this spring, although it may be a subject of regret to many Gentlemen whose familiar faces we may miss in the present Parliament, has nevertheless been extremely

  991
  advantageous to my hon. Friend who has brought forward this Motion, inasmuch as it has enabled him to make the same Motion twice in the same season. A short time before Easter my hon. Friend brought before the House a Motion substantially identical with the one we are now considering, and he then stated, in much the same terms that he has used on the present occasion, the reasons for which he thought the House ought to give its consideration to such a proposition. It then devolved upon me to state my reasons for objecting to that Motion; and my hon. Friend admitted the validity of those reasons, and withdrew it. Now, my hon. Friend, in reviewing the material facts of the case, has come to the same conclusion on this occasion, and I hope that he will not think it necessary to press his Motion on the consideration of the House. He must surely be aware that this is a well-understood subject; that it has been repeatedly under the consideration of this House and of Committees of this House; and that the anomalies and inequalities of the present tax are fully admitted by all persons who have given their attention to the subject, but that the difficulty of remedying them arises, not from the perpetuity of the tax, a quality which it has in common with many other taxes, but from the system of redemption introduced by Mr. Pitt, under which some persons who were assessed to the tax have redeemed, while others still remain liable. Now, if we were to depart from the fixed standard and reduce the tax on the latter, while those who had redeemed had redeemed at a higher rate, we should commit an act of injustice. The only way in which we can avoid that injustice is in every case to increase the tax beyond the highest amount at which any person had redeemed. If that course were adopted, no one could have cause of complaint, and that, I presume, is the object of the Motion, which the hon. Gentleman recommends as beneficial to the revenue, and as tending to the reduction of the national debt. I suppose the hon. Gentleman means to bring forward a proposal for a considerable increase of taxation—a plan which would, in fact, amount to the imposition of an additional income tax. Not long ago, with, I believe, the general approbation of the country, we removed what was called "the war 9d.," the addition which was made to the income tax during the war. I presume what my hon. Friend wishes to do is to restore some portion of that 9d. I think, too, as
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  the hon. Member for Lincolnshire has said, that it would be difficult at this period of the Session, when so many public Committees are sitting, and when it will shortly be necessary to appoint so many Election Committees, to find fifteen gentlemen to sit upon a Land-tax Committee; but, even if we could find a sufficient number of hon. Members to constitute a Committee, we should be delegating to them the formation of a plan for an additional income tax. I doubt whether we should delegate such important functions to a Committee, and I trust therefore, considering the period of the Session and the fact that the Motion was virtually rejected on a previous occasion during the present year, that my hon. Friend will not think it necessary to divide the House.
  MR. WILLIAM A. MACKINNONreplied in a few words, and said he supposed he should yield to the remonstrances of the right hon. Gentleman, and withdraw the Motion; at the same time he did entertain a hope that the Government would give the question their serious attention in the ensuing Session.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

TENANT RIGHT (IRELAND) BILL.

  LEAVE. FIRST READING.
  MR. G. H. MOORE MR. G. H. MOORE moved for leave to bring in a Bill to provide for the better securing and regulating the Custom of Tenant Right as practised in the Province of Ulster, and to secure compensation to improving tenants who may not make claim under the said custom, and to limit the power of eviction in certain cases. It would be in the recollection of many hon. Members that he had last year introduced a Bill on the same subject, which was read a second time with the sanction of the Government. That measure contained some clauses to which considerable objection was entertained, but in the present Bill he had expunged those clauses, or had modified them in such a manner as, he believed, would render them acceptable to the majority of the House. He anticipated that no opposition would be offered to the introduction of the Bill, and therefore would not detain the House with any further remarks.
  "Bill to provide Compensation to Tenant Farmers in Ireland for improvements made by them upon lands in their occupation, and to limit the power of Eviction in certain cases, ordered to be brought in by Mr. MOORE and Mr. MAGUIRE."

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL SCIENCES (QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY) (IRELAND) BILL.

  LEAVE. FIRST READING.
  MR. FAGAN, in moving for leave to bring in a Bill for securing the more effectual promotion of the Medical and Surgical Sciences in the Queen's University in Ireland, by enabling the ratepayers, if they think fit, of the unions of Cork, Belfast, and Galway, respectively, to provide for the enlargement and better maintenance of certain hospitals in said cities and towns, and for the further extension of the provisions of the Act of the eighth and ninth years of Her present Majesty, to endow new colleges for the advancement of learning in Ireland, said that it was nearly similar to a Bill which had been introduced by the Government about two Sessions ago, but which had contained certain objectionable provisions from which his Bill was free, and therefore it was so far an improvement on that measure. One change which he proposed was that the charge of the maintenance of the hospital should be defrayed out of the poor rate instead of the grand jury cess, thus transferring it from a tax paid entirely by the occupier to one paid equally by the landlord and tenant. He also provided that the workhouse hospitals should not come under the operation of the Bill, and took every precaution to guard the rights and functions of the physician of the hospitals affected by it. His constituents took the greatest interest in the Bill, without which the study of medical science in the locality which he represented would fall to the ground; but, as he did not know what might be the feeling in Belfast and Galway, he had incorporated the clauses of the Towns Improvement Act, so that the Bill would not be put in force without the consent of the ratepayers.
  MR. GROGANexpressed his regret that he felt it his duty to oppose the introduction of this Bill, which would have the effect of imposing a new and most objectionable tax upon the people of Ireland. A similar measure was submitted to the House about a year and a half ago by the responsible advisers of the Crown, but it involved so wide a departure from the principle of the poor law that it was withdrawn. That, he thought, was a reason which should induce the House to reject this Motion. He also opposed the Motion on the ground that a Commission was now inquiring into the whole system of education pursued in the colleges, and that the new Secretary for Ireland, who was thoroughly
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  conversant with the subject, had not at present a seat in the House, and was therefore unable to afford them the advantage of his information and opinions. The Bill tended to introduce into Ireland the principle of the law of settlement as it prevailed in England, and that was strongly objected to in Ireland.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALDsaid, the subject excited great interest among the medical profession in Ireland, especially in the three cities referred to, and the introduction of the Bill did not bind the House to an assent to its provisions. The Government, therefore, did not mean to oppose the Motion to lay the Bill on the table, as a matter proper for consideration. On the second reading the Secretary for Ireland would be in his place, and would then be able to state the course which the Government would take. He therefore hoped the introduction of the Bill would not be opposed.
  LORD NAASdid not oppose the introduction of the Bill, but it appeared to contain more than one objectionable principle. It imposed the necessity of paying a rate for the support of hospitals intended for other purposes than the relief of the poor, and to change the present control of county infirmaries and other places of that description.
  "Bill for securing the more effectual promotion of the Medical and Surgical Sciences in the Queen's University in Ireland, by enabling the Ratepayers of the Unions of Cork, Belfast, and Galway, respectively, to provide for the enlargement and better maintenance of certain hospitals in the said cities and towns, and for the further extension of the provisions of the Act of the eighth and ninth years of Her present Majesty to endow new colleges for the advancement of learning in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. FAGAN and Mr, BEAMISH."
  Bill read 1°.

AGGRAVATED ASSAULTS.

  COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  VISCOUNT RAYNHAM VISCOUNT RAYNHAM moved for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the operation of the Act of the 16 & 17 Vict. c. 21, for the punishment of persons convicted of Aggravated Assaults on Women and Children. He said it was lamentable to consider that the number of these offences had increased to such an extent as to become a disgrace to the country; and he therefore wished the matter to be discussed in order that measures might be adopted for the more effectual prevention of the atrocities he alluded to, When

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  the attention of the country was being called to the social evils which prevailed, he could not conceive that any subject more proper for consideration could be submitted to the House than that to which he now directed attention. It was his opinion, and that of many other hon. Members, that the Act now in force for the prevention of these crimes had not had the effect which had been hoped from it when it was passed. He would not detain the House by an enumeration of the cases of cruelty which had lately been reported, but only mention one of peculiar enormity. It had occurred at Horncastle, in which a girl, for some trifling offence, was twice beaten by a man and a boy at the direction of her mistress, and then placed against a grindstone, which was turned round in a way seriously to injure her person. The magistrates before whom the case was brought expressed the greatest horror at its atrocity, but only fined the mistress £5, the man £3 5s. 6d., and the boy £1 5s. It might be very true, as he had heard observed, that no punishment which they could inflict would actually prevent the commission of any crime, and he did not expect, therefore, by the measure which he had in view altogether to repress offences of this description; but when he compared the maximum amount of punishment which was awarded for this crime with that which was inflicted in cases of a trivial character, he thought that great inconsistency was the result, that the punishment was inadequate, and that the state of the law should no longer continue as at present. In merely moving for a Select Committee, he should not press his own views upon the House beyond stating his belief that corporal punishment was the only proper punishment for this crime. He trusted that the common sense and manly feeling of the Members of that House would lead them to the decision that, in the absence of such an acquaintance with all the bearings of this important subject as would at once guide them to a correct decision, they should allow a Committee to be appointed to examine and report upon the whole question. In conclusion, the noble Lord moved for the appointment of a Select Committee.
  MR. DILLWYNseconded the Motion.
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, that he should be very happy to concur with his noble Friend in any measure which would have the practical result of putting an
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  effectual check to crimes of the nature to which he had referred. They naturally and properly excited great indignation in consequence of the frequency of their committal, and the impunity with which they had been perpetrated. An Act, however, had recently been passed at the instance of his hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. FitzRoy) giving a summary jurisdiction to magistrates in these cases, and enabling them to inflict a punishment of six months' imprisonment with hard labour. Previously, these crimes were often committed with impunity, because it was found impossible to collect the witnesses and to prosecute the offender with success when the case had to be sent for trial to the assizes; but the consequence of the recent Act giving summary jurisdiction had been to ensure the trial and punishment of the offender. He believed that that Act had been successful in its operation so far as the punishment of offenders was concerned; but he did not see how the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into that Act could have the practical effect which his noble Friend desired. If his noble Friend wished to see what had been the effect of that Act, by means of a classified return showing the number of convictions which had taken place under it, and the punishment inflicted in each case, and testing those convictions periodically, so as to see whether these offences were on the increase or decrease, he should be happy to arrange for such a return with him. From a document of that kind the House would be able to understand what the operation of the Act had been, but the return would not show what had been its effect in checking crimes of this nature, owing to the almost invariable impunity with which, previously to the passing of the Act, such crimes had been committed. With respect to the Horncastle case, to which his noble Friend had referred, and in which he thought that sufficient punishment had not been inflicted, the only inference that could be drawn from it, even supposing his noble Friend's view to be correct, was that the magistrates had not inflicted the full punishment which the law allowed them; and it by no means showed that the punishment which the law permitted was insufficient for the purpose. In conclusion, he reminded the House of the inconvenience which would arise, seeing the calls which must be made upon Members to serve upon private Bill and Election Committees, if they granted Select Committees

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  without an urgent necessity for their being established. He did not think that any sufficient case had been made out in the present instance; he thought that no practical good would result from the appointment of a Select Committee; and he trusted, therefore, that the House would not agree to the Motion of his noble Friend.
  MR. BENTINCKthought that the right hon. Gentleman had misunderstood the object of the noble Lord who had brought forward this Motion, which was, as he understood the noble Lord, to prove that this subject had never yet been fairly and fully discussed, and that the only way of checking the offence in question was by summary corporal punishment. He could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the effect of the Act introduced by the hon. Member for Lewes had been to diminish the amount of crimes of this description; for, he held in his hand a number of convictions that took place in the metropolitan districts, by which it appeared that last year there were on an average 374 in each district, and if he recollected rightly the convictions under the same Act were in the previous year as nearly as possible the same in amount. He, therefore, contended that the Act had been totally inoperative in producing any diminution of these offences. Detailed evidence might be obtained in a Select Committee which could not be obtained in any other way, and a report might be agreed to which would be the groundwork for future legislation. As for the argument of the want of time, and the small number of Members who were available for Select Committees, the inquiry need only take a short time, and might be terminated before the pressure of the Election Committees came on. If the House determined not to deal with this question in any way it would make itself responsible for the offences of this character which might occur hereafter.
  MR. P. O'BRIENsaid, he supported the Motion. He was certain that there was no one who read the papers but must feel that there was a system of brutality pursued by husbands towards women in England that required an amendment of the law. The Bill of 1853, which gave magistrates the power to inflict six months' imprisonment on husbands who ill-treated their wives was not a punishment on the wrongdoer, but it was a punishment on his wife and family, who lost the man's services for the whole of that period. There
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  were Committees appointed to investigate the crotchets of individual Members, and why should the Secretary for the Home Department object to the appointment of this one, which had reference to a national object. He could not say that Ireland had anything to do with it, for they never beat their wives in Ireland; but England had a great deal to do with it, and that being the case, why not grant the inquiry? The argument of the Home Secretary, of taking away hon. Members from other Committees, was of no effect, as the inquiry would not last above five or six days. There would, therefore, be little injury done to other Committees, and no great tax laid upon the energies of hon. Members. He should, therefore, vote for the appointment of such a Committee.
  LORD CLAUD HAMILTONsaid, he thought that the statistical account promised by the Home Secretary would not attain the end which the noble Lord the Member for Tamworth had in view. The noble Lord's object was to inquire into the Act. of 1853, and this of course could only be done by obtaining information from persons—police magistrates and others—who took an interest in the question and had practical experience of the effects of the Act. That Act when passed was described as being experimental, and when it was proposed to introduce into it corporal punishment it was objected to as too great an innovation. The tone of the debate was that it would be better to begin by a milder punishment; but the House did not preclude itself from imposing corporal punishment if the milder punishment should fail. That, he believed, was the tone which the noble Lord at the head of the Government took on that occasion. They ought, therefore, to show themselves doubly anxious to redress any evils which peculiarly affected the other sex. Women were unfairly circumstanced. The Members of the House of Commons were all men. The Judges were all men. In fact, those who made the laws and administered them were men, and the women had no voice in either.
  MR. CLAYwas of opinion that, though an inquiry into the subject was necessary at some time or other, it could not be made satisfactorily now, because many of the police magistrates—who would, of course, be the most important witnesses to be examined—had not yet made up their minds as to the working of the Act, In some districts, though the convictions had

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  decreased, the charges had increased, showing that the women were by no means backward to avail themselves of this weapon against their husbands by bringing forward charges against them which were either exaggerated or totally groundless.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the operation of the Act 16 & 17 Vict. c. 21, for the punishment of persons convicted of Aggravated Assaults on Women and Children."
  The House divided:—Ayes 84; Noes 125: Majority 41.

JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES, &c., BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. WYLDhoped that this Bill would be amended in Committee, because, as it stood, it did not attain the object it had in view—the establishment of one jurisdiction for winding-up Joint-stock Companies. It left the conflicting jurisdictions of the Commissioner of Bankruptcy and Courts of Equity as they were now.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALwas afraid that the object contemplated by the hon. Member was too large for any legislation to take place on it during the present Session. The object of the present Bill was a more limited one, and the usefulness of the measure depended materially upon its being carried as soon as possible. He should, however, be ready to consider in Committee any suggestions of the hon. Member.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Thursday next.

BILLETING OF SOLDIERS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  On the Report of Supply being brought up,
  MR. BOVILLsaid, he did not wish at that late hour to trespass on the attention of the House, but he felt it his duty to refer briefly to the gross injustice and inconvenience sustained by innkeepers in consequence of the present system of billeting soldiers. The allowance to an innkeeper for a soldier was only 10 d. a day, and for this each soldier was entitled to one pound and a quarter of meat, one pound of bread, and one pound of vegetables, besides beer, lodging, fire and candles. Now, it was perfectly impossible that an innkeeper could do this for 10 d., as any one taking the trouble
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  to add up the several items might readily discover. Why, under present prices, it could not be done for less than 15 d. or 16 d. He saw no just grounds for imposing this tax on publicans. If the system of billeting were necessary for the maintenance and support of the army when on the march, the burden should not he imposed on any particular class. The fairest way would be to have those charges defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund or by a general tax. This tax was unfair towards the whole of the innkeepers throughout the kingdom, and unequal, as it fell only on the publicans situated on the line of march through which the troops passed, and with a similar inequality in the towns in which the troops were located. Take any town within twenty or thirty miles of London, and what was the effect of the existing system? Why, the officers who had money to spend occupied the larger hotels, where they enjoyed every luxury, and their expenditure compensated the proprietors for any loss they might sustain by the private soldiers billeted on them; but the small innkeeper, while he was obliged at a loss to maintain the private soldier, had none of the advantages derivable from the custom of the officer. Besides, the small innkeeper who happened to have a stable was obliged to find hay and straw for the soldier's horse for 9d. a day. This allowance was also quite inadequate. This unjust system provoked ill-will and discontent in a large class of her Majesty's subjects towards those who were devoted to the public service. It was impossible to justify a system at once so oppressive and unjust. He had mentioned this grievance now, in the hope that the attention of Her Majesty's Government would be directed to the subject, and that when the next Mutiny Bill came before the House, the class of persons to whom he referred, would be relieved from this injustice.
  Resolutions agreed to.
  House adjourned at half-after Twelve o'clock.