Commons Sitting of 29 July 1858

OPERATIONS IN INDIA.
MR. SPEAKERacquainted the House that he had received two letters from Viscount Canning, Governor General of India, dated the 14th and 16th days of June last, enclosing copies of letters from the Hon. F. J. Halliday, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, and Major General Sir James Outrun, acknowledging the Thanks of this House for their services relative to operations in India, expressed in the Resolutions of the 16th day of March and the 8th day of February last.
Letters read, as follow:—
"Allahabad, the 14th June, 1858.
"Sir—With reference to my Despatch dated the 11th ultimo, I have the honour to enclose for your information, the accompanying Copy of a letter from the Hon. F. J. Halliday, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, expressing his gratitude for the testimony of approbation which his services have received from the House of Commons, in the Resolutions passed by the House on the 16th March last. I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your most obedient, Servant,
CANNING."
"To the Right Hon. John Evelyn Denison,
Speaker of the House of Commons."
(Copy.)
"Allipore, 27th May, 1858.
"My Lord,—I have had the honour to ceive your Lordship's letter of the 11th instant, forwarding to me the Copy of a Resolution of the House of Commons, dated 16th March, 1858, on the subject of my share in carrying into effect the measures directed by your Lordships, as Governor General of India, in Council, for the suppression of the mutiny in the Bengal Army.
"I am greatly honoured by the testimony of approbation which my very humble services have obtained from the House of Commons, and I desire to express my gratitude for it, and at the same time to thank your Lordship for the manner which the Resolution has been communicated to me in your Lordship's letter.—I have, &c.,
"(Sd.) FRED. JAS. HALLIDAY.
"The Right Hon. Viscount Canning,
"Governor General of India, &c., &c., &c."
"Allahabad, 16th June, 1858.
"Sir,—In continuation of my Despatch, dated the 14th instant, I have the honour to enclose for your information the accompanying Copy of a letter from Major General Sir James Outran, G.C.B., expressing his grateful sense of the honour

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conferred upon him by the approbation which his services have received from the House of Commons in the Resolution passed by the House on the 8th February last. I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant, "CANNINU.
"To the Right Hon. John Evelyn Denison, "Speaker of the House of Commons."
(Copy.)
"Calcutta, 30th May, 1858.
"My Lord,—I have had the honour to receive your Lordship's letter of the 11th instant, forwarding to me a copy of the Resolution of the House of Commons, passed on the 8th February, 1858, relative to the performance of the duties which devolved on me while humbly contributing, I under the instructions of your Lordship and His Excellency the Commander in Chief, towards the suppression of the disturbances which originated in the mutiny of the Bengal Army.
"It will ever be esteemed by me the greatest of honours that my humble services should leave received the approbation of the House of Commons. And I trust your Lordship will do me the favour to acknowledge in my behalf, and in suitable terms, my profound and grateful sense of the high honour which has been conferred on me.
"For the very kind and flattering manner in which your Lordship has been pleased to communicate to me the Resolution of the House of Commons, I beg to tender my respectful and most grateful acknowledgments. I have, &c.,
"(Sd.) "J. OUTRAN, Major General.
"To the Right Hon. the Viscount Canning, Governor General of India."
Mr. Speaker also acquainted the House, that it appeared from a private letter from Viscount Canning to himself, dated Allahabad, May 11th, 1858, that he had transmitted by that day's mail a letter conveying his own acknowledgments of the thanks of this House; but that the letter alluded to had not reached his hands.

RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY IN FERNANDO PO.

  QUESTION.
  MR. STAPLETONsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is in receipt of intelligence to the effect that a Spanish Governor of Fernando Po has issued a Proclamation forbidding schools and prohibiting any person from going to any church or chapel except a Roman Catholic one; and further, whether Fernando Po, which was an English Military Station from 1827 to 1834, is now recognized by England as part of the dominions of the Crown of Spain.
  MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALDsaid, that he would, in the first instance, reply to the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's question. Fernando Po was not an English military station from 1827 to 1834. It had never belonged to England, nor did England Claim any jurisdiction or authority
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  there. It was in 1778 ceded by Portugal to Spain, and had since been recognized as a Spanish possession by Lord Palmerston and the Earl of Aberdeen, both of whom had been in treaty with Spain for the purchase of it, considering that its possession by this country would be desirable in reference to our operations against the Slave Trade. With respect to the first question, Her Majesty's Government had received intelligence that on the 27th May last the newly appointed Spanish Governor of Fernando Po issued a Proclamation stating that the religion of the colony was that of the Roman Catholic Church; and that no other religion would be tolerated or allowed but that taught by the missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, nor any schools but Roman Catholic Schools; and that persons who professed any other religion but the Roman Catholic should confine their religious worship and practices to their own houses. That Proclamation was under the consideration of her Majesty's Government, as it appeared to them to be contrary to a Proclamation issued in 1843 by a former Governor, by which security to liberty in person, property, and religion was accorded to all who obeyed the laws of the colony.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. JOHN LOCKEsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether any information has reached Her Majesty's Government in respect to the inaccurate state of the Copies of Exchequer Standards of Weights and Measures used by Inspectors and Leet and Annoyance Juries; and, if so, whether it is their intention to adopt any means to enforce a periodical adjustment of the same.
  MR. WALPOLEin reply said, that he had made inquiries on the subject, and he did not find that any information had reached the Home Office in reference to the inaccurate state of the Copies of Exchequer Standards of Weights and Measures. Under the Constabulary Act the Chief Constables were intrusted with power to ascertain the propriety of the Standards used, and he found that the Chief Constable of Leicestershire had in the first six months verified and stamped 18,000 weights and measures. According to the Police Returns of 1857 the Police had proceeded against 1,655 persons, and 1,555 had been convicted. He would endeavour to obtain the information desired by the hon. Member if it were more particularly specified.

DELAYED RETURNS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. RICHsaid, he rose to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what causes have prevented the presentation of Returns of all persons who, having been nominated for junior situations in any of Her Majesty's Civil Establishments, subsequent to the date of the Order in Council of the 21st day of May, 1855, and not having obtained certificates of qualification from the Civil Service Commissioners, have been employed, and paid for such employment, in such establishments; distinguishing, in each case, under separate columns, the name of the establishment, the name of the person employed, the nature of his situation, whether temporary or permanent, the period of his employment, the amount of his pay, the authority under which such pay has been issued and allowed, and whether the person failed to obtain a certificate of qualification, or did not present himself for examination before the Civil Service Commissioners. And of all persons who having obtained certificates of qualification from the Civil Service Commissioners have been employed and paid for a period prior to the date of such certificate, and subsequent to the date of the Order in Council of the 21st day of May, 1855; distinguishing, in each case, under separate columns, the name of the establishment, the name of the person employed, the nature of his situation, whether temporary or permanent, the period of his employment, the amount of his pay, the authority under which such pay has been issued and allowed, and the date of the certificate of qualification, ordered on the 13th day of April?
  MR. G. A. HAMILTONsaid, he must beg to explain that the cause of the delay was that reference had to be made to all the various Departments of the State for the information required; but the papers were nearly ready, and would be produced almost immediately.

PUBLIC HEALTH BILL.

  LORDS' AMENDMENTS.
  Order for consideration of Lords' Amendments read.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That the said Amendments be now taken into consideration."
  MR. T. DUNCOMBEsaid, he must complain that they had not the Amendments of the Lords before them before they were called upon to consider them.
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  The Bill was far from a good one as it was sent up from the Commons, and, as he understood, it had come back far worse. He believed one of the Amendments made by the Lords was to give a power to appoint a medical council or a medical officer permanently. As the Bill left that House, it provided that that appointment should be temporary only; but the word "temporary" had been struck out. Another Amendment was a violation of an arrangement made between the Government and the opponents of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) would remember that on condition that the Bill should expire on the 1st of August, he (Mr. T. Duncombe) consented to waive his opposition to the Bill. But the Lords, by their Amendments, had given a two years' life to the Bill. The Bill was a bad one; at all events no inconvenience would follow from its postponement till another Session, and he therefore would move that the Lords' Amendments be considered that day six weeks.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word, "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six weeks."
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. PALKsaid, he quite agreed that the Bill was a bad one; indeed, he thought it the worst Bill that had ever been brought in. The faith of the Government was pledged that the Bill should only continue for one year, and the adoption of the Lords' Amendments therefore would be a violation of that pledge. It was also clearly understood that no power should be taken in the Bill for the permanent appointment of a medical council. If they were to have a paid medical Board, let them know what the duties of that Board were to be. He, for one, saw no necessity for even one medical officer, and certainly it was unnecessary to keep a medical Board attached to the Board of Health, with salaries of £1,500 a year, to make an annual report.
  MR. ADDERLEYsaid, he understood that the ground for the omission of the word "temporary" after "from time to time" was, that it was simple tautology. As the Bill stood, there was no power to appoint more than one medical officer. The Bill merely defined his duties. The Amendments made in the other House were three, two of which were verbal only, and the last was for continuing the Act to

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  the end of next Session. As, however, this was a longer period than the time fixed upon by the House of Commons, and his hon. Friend and the House appeared to consider it a violation of the arrangement entered into, he proposed that as to that Amendment the House should disagree to it.
  MR. COXsaid, that the effect of another of the Amendments, which the right hon. Gentleman stated to be a more verbal one, made the appointment of the medical officer a permanent one. He therefore considered the word "temporary" necessary.
  MR. WALPOLEremarked, that the Act being only a temporary one, no permanent appointment could be made under it. The one paid medical officer which the Act authorized them to appoint could therefore hold the appointment only for the year to which the operation of the Bill would be limited.
  MR. W. WILLIAMScomplained of the practice of calling upon the House to agree to Amendments made by the Lords, without those Amendments being previously printed and placed in the hands of Members.
  MR. WALPOLEsaid, he believed the usual practice was, that when there was no opposition anticipated to the Amendments, for the hon. Member who had charge of the Bill to give notice to move the consideration of those Amendments on a certain day; but when opposition was expected, then the practice was to print the Amendments.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Amendments considered; several agreed to; and one disagreed to.
  Reason for disagreeing to one of the Lords' Amendments reported, and agreed to.
  To be communicated to the Lords.

MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS BILL.

  LORDS' AMENDMENTS.
  Order for Consideration of Lords' Amendments read.
  MR. COWPERsaid, that all the Amendments were verbal, with two exceptions. The first of these was a clause introduced by the House of Lords for the protection of homœopathists. Recently, the officers of the University of Aberdeen, in examining a candidate, asked whether, if he obtained his degree, he was prepared utterly and solemnly to renounce the practice of homœopathy. The candidate declined to
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  give such a pledge, and a clause had been introduced in the other House, providing that if any college of physicians or surgeons, or any university, should impose any tests or conditions upon any person who presented himself for examination, the Privy Council should be empowered to issue an order restricting the degrees or diplomas of such body from entitling any person to be registered under this Act so long as those conditions were maintained. The other Amendment related to the registration fee, which it proposed to make £5 in the case of persons becoming entitled to registration after the passing of the Act, and £2 in the case of persons already entitled.
  LORD ELCHOsaid, that he wished to say, before the Bill left the House, that he believed the measure to be, on the whole, a very liberal one. The subject had for thirty years been under the consideration of Parliament, and if they had now succeeded in passing a good Bill into a law it would, in a great degree, be owing to the just and conciliatory spirit displayed by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary.
  MR. BRADYsaid, he wished to express his belief that the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary deserved the warmest thanks of the profession, who, he was sure, would reward with gratitude the efforts of the right hon. Gentleman to settle a question which had puzzled so many statesmen for the last quarter of a century.
  Lords' Amendments agreed to.

EDUCATION.—PAPERS MOVED FOR.
MR. COWPERsaid, that he rose to move an Address for copy of correspondence between the Committee of the Privy Council on Education and the Managers of Schools and Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, relating to the distribution, publication, and preparation of the annual Reports of the Inspectors. He wished to take that opportunity of stating that certain circulars had recently been issued by the Committee of Privy Council, which had excited a considerable degree of alarm and dismay amongst the promoters of many schools in the country, and he thought it desirable that the House should have full information as to what the contents of those circulars were. It appeared that one order had been sent to the managers of schools with reference to the tabulated reports, and the statements of the Inspec-

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tors of what they had observed in reference to the buildings, playgrounds, furniture, organization, instruction, and general proficiency of those schools. Hitherto the promoters of schools had had, in addition to the condensed report on their own school, access to what were called the "tabulated" reports as to other schools within their districts, and this had had the very best effect in stimulating the exertions of the promoters by enabling them to compare their own schools with others in the neighbourhood, and to ascertain in what respect they differed on the score of efficiency of management. Now, the impression prevailed that the circular of the Committee of the Privy Council, to which he referred, proposed the discontinuance of the "tabulated" reports, and if that proposal arose from economical considerations, he should say that economy had never been more unfortunately misplaced, as the only cost was that of printing 1,600 pages. He hoped that whatever might be the nature of the circular, it would not be persevered in so far as to prevent masters of schools from having access hereafter to the printed tabulated reports of all schools in their districts. Another circular had also been sent out by the Committee which had created a good deal of dissatisfaction among the Inspectors; but upon that he (Mr. Cowper) would not venture to offer an opinion. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman would place the circular and the correspondence upon the table, and the House would then have an opportunity of ascertaining the exact bearing of the orders which had been issued.
MR. ADDERLEYsaid, he felt obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for proposing a Motion which would enable him in a few words to remove a considerable amount of misapprehension which had gone through the country upon the subject of the circular which had recently emanated from the Committee of Council on Education, to the Inspectors throughout the kingdom. There were not, however, two circulars, as the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think, but one relating to the two subjects that the right hon. Gentleman had alluded to. It was a complete misapprehension on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to suppose that there was any intention on the part of the Committee of Council in that circular to suppress or even to discontinue the printing of the reports of the Inspectors; nor was there any primary idea or notion in it of enconomising the expense
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of printing. What the circular proposed was in distinct terms, the continuance of similar instructions which had been given to the Inspectors by every Committee of Council during the last fifteen years; and the tenor of the circular amounted to this —that the annual Reports, in the first place, should be henceforth embodied in one Report from the Committee of Council on Education addressed to Her Majesty in Council, but that in the embodiment of the several Reports in that Report of the Committee, the individuality of each Inspector's Report should be by no means lost, that the process should be by the excision of such matters as the Committee conceived to be unnecessary, and not of the nature of a bona fide Report, but by no means the fusion of the Individual Inspector's Report in the one made by the Committee themselves. The only object which it was sought by means of the circular to attain was, in short, of a character precisely similar to that which the correspondence of the Education Office proved to have been kept in view for many years, and it was an important one, to restrict those Reports within proper limits, and also to restrain the pamphleteering tendency which those Reports had assumed. With regard to the "tabulated" Reports, the circular made a proposition which he (Mr. Adderley) thought was of great value and importance—namely, that the Reports of individual schools, instead of being kept waiting until the end of the year to be put together in the form of an annual summary, should be at once addressed in detail and in manuscript to each school immediately after its inspection. The Report of a school at twelve months' date was absolutely valueless, either in the way of encouragement to a good teacher or of warning to a bad; but if that Report came came within seven days of the inspection, it would be of great efficiency for both those purposes. He hoped he had now made clear what was the intention of the circular which, after mature reflection, and a correspondence which was not yet closed, the Committee had seen no reason to alter. He again thanked the right hon. Gentleman for having given him an opportunity, before the termination of the Session, to explain away the misapprehension which was entertained with regard to the suppression or discontinuance, or even the fusion of the Reports. As to the right hon. Gentleman's Motion, the memorials which had come in were already very

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bulky, and not all upon the point which the right hon. Gentleman wished to have explained; and if the right hon. Gentleman would consent to insert the words "or extracts" after the word "copy," and upon the understanding that the correspondence was not yet closed, but other memorials were expected from other inspectors which had not yet come in, he was perfectly willing to accede to the Motion.
MR. COWPERsaid, he would assent to the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman.
Address for.—
"Copy or Extracts of Correspondence between the Committee of the Privy Council on Education and the Managers of Schools and Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, relating to the distribution, publication, and preparation of the Annual Reports of the Inspectors."
Motion agreed to.

COLLECTORS OF THE REVENUE.

  RETURN MOVED FOR.
  MR. INGRAMsaid, he rose to move for a Return of the number of persons employed in collecting the taxes paid into the Exchequer, distinguishing the number employed for the land, assessed, property, and income tax, and those employed in the Excise Department of the Inland Revenue, and the number employed in collecting the Customs dues. The Motion was unopposed, but he hoped he might be allowed to take the opportunity of saying that the system of collecting the revenue was in a very unsatisfactory condition. In every parish there were several persons employed in collecting the revenue, apparently without any regular system or control. He trusted that Her Majesty's Government would take the subject into their consideration.
  Return ordered,—
  "Of the number of Persons employed in collecting the Taxes paid into the Exchequer, distinguishing the number employed for the Land, Assessed, Property, and Income Tax, and those employed in the Excise Department of the Inland Revenue, and the number employed in collecting. the Customs Dues."
  Motion agreed to.
  House adjourned at a quarter before Ten o'clock.