MR. EVANSsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs by whom the French and Italian Papers in the Correspondence respecting the Cagliari were translated, and who is responsible for the accuracy of the translation.
MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALDstated in reply, that there was attached to the Foreign Department an officer who was called 1989 "the translator," and whose duty it was to render into English such foreign documents as it might be necessary to lay before Parliament. By that means adequate provision was, under ordinary circumstances, made for the discharge of that duty, and it was, he believed, as a general rule, most satisfactorily performed. He might, however, remind the hon. Gentleman who had put the question that within the last few days, before the particular papers to which he referred had been presented to the House, a vast mass of documents had arrived at the Foreign Office, the translation of which required 150 folio pages; and that if any inaccuracy, therefore, had crept into that translation it was to be attributed to the great pressure of business and the necessity which existed of preparing within the very short period of six or seven days—in consequence of the earnestness with which information in reference to the affair of the Cagliari was sought for by the House—an English version of documents to whose translation, properly speaking, six or seven weeks ought to have been devoted.