MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he rose according to notice to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, according to his promise, he has obtained the opinion of Mr. Attorney General respecting the legality of the Earl of Malmesbury refusing to pay the £200 Stamp Duty required by the Act 55 Geo. III., c. 184, to be paid on the patent of appointment to the office of Secretary of State? When he asked a question on this subject a few days ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the Earl of Malmesbury's reasons for not paying was that he held his office by the de- 1809 livery to him of the seals. Such was not the case, the Secretaries of State from the most distant times were constituted by letters patent under the great seal, and the duty was imposed on all officers of the Crown receiving £3,000 a year. Every member of the present Government had paid it except the Earl of Malmesbury, and all his predecessors in office had done so except one gentleman, who had been temporarily appointed to the office for a short time. It was a had example for a nobleman to set, in thus violating the law. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman, who had no doubt paid the stamp duty himself, would be able to give the House some explanation of the subject.
LORD STANLEYsaid, he rose to answer the somewhat miscellaneous series of questions which had been put to him by various hon. Members during the course of the discussion. And first with regard to the delay of which the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Kinnaird) complained in the transmission and distribution of official papers from India: there were two reasons for that delay. In the first place it was in the nature of things that an official and authorized account of a transaction should generally arrive rather later than a private and unauthenticated account, because a private correspondent of any person in this country, or a correspondent of a public journal, generally took their facts from current rumour, not writing under the same sense of responsibility for absolute and entire accuracy; but as this sense did operate on the minds of those who were responsible for the transmission of official documents, more consideration was given to them. This was one cause of delay in the forwarding of those documents. Again, except in cases of great importance, it was not customary to transmit an official narrative of events from India until the local authorities had considered and given an opinion on them. This was another cause of that delay to which the hon. Member referred. With regard to the hon. Gentleman's statement as to what had taken place at Travancore, he (Lord Stanley) had heard various versions of those transactions not exactly tallying in details. When the hon. Gentleman, however, asked him to give a hypothetical pledge as to what he would do in the event of certain circumstances turning out to have occurred in this way or in that, he (Lord Stanley) must, with all courtesy to the hon. Gentleman and all respect to the House, say 1810 that he did not feel called upon to give any such pledge. When he received authentic information with respect to the facts, he would be prepared to acquaint the hon. Gentleman and the House with the intention of Her Majesty's Government in respect to the particular case with which they were called upon to deal. In reply to a question of the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster (Sir De Lacy Evans), he must say that he was not authorized to make any statement as to whether it was the intention of the Government to confer any further honours on persons who had distinguished themselves in India. As to the question of the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Colonel Kingscote) on the subject of retired field officers, he had to state it was not the intention of the Government to extend to retired field officers the privilege enjoyed by those of the Royal Artillery and Engineers, of not allowing them to be superseded in rank by their brother officers who remained on the effective strength of their corps. It was not the intention of the Government to take the course indicated in that question. The House could hardly expect that he would, within the limits to which it was ordinarily expected that replies on such matters were confined, enter into the reasons for this determination on the part of the Government. Those reasons were rather technical, but he could assure the House that the Government had given the matter attentive consideration, and had not arrived at a decision on it without great deliberation. The next question referred to the subject of the financial operations of the Indian Government. The hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Had-field) asked what duty the Government in India had placed upon hardware. The only copy which he (Lord Stanley) possessed of the Indian tariff was a draft which had been laid before the Legislative Council of Calcutta, but which had not passed through that Council, and was therefore still liable to alteration. But in that draft, which no doubt represented, in the main, the decision which the Indian Government would come to, the duty on hardware had been increased from 5 to 10 per cent. The noble Lord (Viscount Duncan), had asked whether the Indian Government had acted on their own responsibility in respect to that tariff. He (Lord Stanley) understood it was held that since the Act of 1853 the Legislative Council had been empowered to make alterations in the tariff without re- 1811 ference to this country. That rule of law was, he apprehended, that the Governor General of India in Council had power to amend all laws and regulations except such as affected the prerogative of the Crown; and the Customs duties had been altered before now on the order of the Governor General in Council. The Home Government were sending out to India—they had, indeed, sent out—instructions to deal with those duties, and the alterations directed by the Home Government concurred almost exactly with those introduced by the Indian Government on their own responsibility. It seemed that those financial difficulties came rather suddenly on the Indian Government. Viscount Canning had in fact communicated to him that it would be impossible for him to meet the pressure upon him unless on his own authority he took the step of levying this impost. He had, therefore, taken upon himself to follow that course, relying upon the Government to give him their support. That support he need hardly say the Government were prepared to extend to Viscount Canning, and the more readily because he found, on comparing the scale proposed here with the draft received from India, that the latter did not differ with it, but was, in fact, in almost absolute accordance with the opinion of the Government at home. The hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Wilson) had asked him whether the increased duty was intended to be an increase on British goods imported into India, so as to make the duty on those equal to that on imports from foreign countries. In reply he had to say that that was so.