QUESTION. (Hansard, 8 June 1860)

§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, the question put by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Horsham (Mr. S. FitzGerald), would perhaps be answered with greater advantage by his noble Friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He believed, however, that for the present the answer must be in the negative, that was to say, he had not understood that any point had been reached in the labours which were now being performed at Paris, which would enable those who were concerned in them to make a definite communication to the Government—those labours being, in point of fact, an adjustment of details. He had not the terms of the Treaty sufficiently in his mind to speak with very great confidence, but he apprehended that the hon. Member was not correct in supposing that the necessary consequence of failing to agree upon any particular terms with regard to the conversion of any particular duties would be that the ad valorem duties would be levied at the maximum rate. [Mr. S. FITZGERALD: There is the right to do so.] There was a right 179 to fix the specific duties at the maximum; but he was not aware that the maximum was at all affected by the duties being either ad valorem or specific. As he had said, however, he was not aware that there was any official information that could be laid before the House. If he remembered right, there was a stipulation in the Treaty that the stipulation of the Supplemental Convention should be framed before the 1st of July; but he presumed, if these examinations should be greatly prolonged, which he conceived was very probable, it would be the object of both Governments to give facilities for extending the time necessary to conduct the investigation.

With respect to what had fallen from the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. T. Duncombe) he could venture to assure him that he should be very glad to do justice to any class, and particularly to those whom the hon. Gentleman represented, where it was shown to him (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) that he had done injustice; but his hon. Friend had pursued an inconvenient course in relation to this matter, inasmuch as he had taken three months to produce this vindication, which it appeared was in his possession a great part of the time. If the hon. Gentleman had kindly favoured him with the documents he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) should have been in a condition to examine the case, and to have reverted again to the sources from which he received information, and to have given to the hon. Gentleman a reply, either abiding by, retracting, or modifying what he had stated. As the hon. Gentleman had not taken that course, and the statements now made were new to him, he thought it necessary to investigate those statements before he could be bound by them. The hon. Gentleman had met but a very small portion of the allegations which had fallen from him, and those with whom the hon. Gentleman had communicated had entirely misapprehended him on the principal point of that statement to which the hon. Gentleman had referred. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had never said that masters had been driven to the employment of boys, but he did say that the regulations of the trades' unions very greatly limited and fettered trade, and some of them tended to restrain the employment of boys. Some masters, however, did not submit to those restrictions, and were placed under ban by the trades' societies for having used their own discretion in the employment of boys. With regard to the 180 six Catalonians, he had received no particular information on the subject, and whether they were men of good or bad character he was not prepared to say; but he had stated that he was informed that the six Catalonians who came over from Spain to this country, for the purpose of working at the trade of corkcutting, under all the disadvantages of foreigners in a strange country succeeded in earning more at corkcutting in England than the English corkcutters. Whether that statement was correct or not, it at all events stood unshaken by anything which had fallen from the hon. Gentleman. With regard to any change in the law of Spain with respect to the exportation of the raw material of cork, the hon. Gentleman must be very sanguine indeed if he thought by this time the Government would have been able to announce that any change had been effected. The change in our own law had not yet taken place. In Spain the state of the law was peculiar. The general law of Spain did not prohibit the exportation of corks; it was only the local regulations in Catalonia which prohibited that exportation; and those regulations, he believed, were mainly founded upon what his hon. Friend ought to have great respect for, namely, the operation of a principle in Catalonia very like to the principle of trades unions in this country. The people of Catalonia combined against the exportation of cork, and the authorities were unwilling to place themselves in conflict with the people, just as the authorities here were unwilling to place themselves in conflict with the workmen who belonged to trades unions. He believed that his noble Friend the Foreign Secretary intended to make an application to the Spanish Government with respect to these commercial arrangements; but possibly it might be judged premature to make such application until the subsidiary arrangements connected with the French Treaty should have been fully determined upon and carried into effect.

With respect to the question which had been put to him by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, the Member for Ludlow (Colonel P. Herbert), that naturally was a subject which deserved the attention of the House; but he must be excused if he did not enter fully into it at the present moment, inasmuch as a Vote would be proposed to Parliament in the Estimates, for the purpose of completing the manufacture of the cable, and when that Vote came before the 181 House, hon. Gentlemen would have a full opportunity of discussing the matter. He could assure the hon. and gallant Gentleman, however, that nothing had been done by her Majesty's Government upon their own responsibility:—it would, in point of fact, have been an act of presumption on their part to anticipate the judgment of the House upon the final application of the money which was taken last year. It was true that, when the Government came into office, they found that a contract had been entered into for the manufacture of certain submarine cables; it was also true that there was not time to carry the operations into effect last year; but he looked for the accomplishment of it during the present year. A variety of circumstances had led the Government to think that, upon the whole, they would not be justified in asking the House to vote money for the purpose of undertaking that operation at the expense of the public, in the present state of that description of enterprise, and of the knowledge which bore upon it. It might be within the recollection of the House that when this project was originally entertained by the late Government, there was a very great difference of opinion among the authorities with regard to the practicability of laying down deep-sea cables with a fair prospect of their working, and unfortunately the whole experience which they had had during the last twelve months had tended very greatly to confirm that view. The instances of failure in the working of deep-sea cables had been unfortunately so numerous as almost to be universal. He believed that at this moment there was only one deep-sea cable—a cable 1,000 or 1,200 fathoms deep—in efficient operation. The operation of laying had failed in many instances, and in several conspicuous instances during the last twelve months, including that from Malta to Corfu. The knowledge of those facts had made the Government very cautious in the expenditure of the public money on these projects. The Vote of £30,000 to which the hon. and gallant Member had referred, was, in fact, a Vote of £135,000, and it would be necessary to take a further Vote this year on account of it, even if it were taken to Singapore. India, being interested in the laying down of the cable between Rangoon and Singapore, would bear a portion of the expense attending that work, He begged to assure the hon. and gallant Colonel that nothing which had been done would preclude the 182 House from taking any course which they might think fit with regard to this important undertaking.