HC Deb 19 March 1860 vol 157 cc915-25

Resolution reported, That a sum, not exceeding £850,000 be granted to Her Majesty, towards defraying the expenses of the Naval and Military Operations in China, beyond the ordinary Grants for Navy and Army Services for the year 1859–60.

Motion made, and Question proposed,—"That the said Resolution be read a second time."

GENERAL PEEL

said, that nothing but the circumstances stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other evening, that this Vote was absolutely necessary, could possibly justify the Government in proposing such a Vote, without the slightest explanation as to its object. The unusual course that had been adopted of introducing the Budget before the Estimates was a course which he had no doubt was rendered necessary, and which he did not now intend to impugn; but still it attached an import- ance to every Vote, not only with reference to the service to which it belonged, but also to the whole financial scheme of the Government, because it was perfectly evident that if the estimate of expenditure was incorrect, then the deficit on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had calculated was incorrect also, and the provision which he had made for it was necessarily insufficient. It was not his intention to enter into any question of prospective expenditure; he should confine himself, therefore, on the present occasion, entirely to the expenditure taking place in the course of the present financial year, and he should proceed to show the House why he had no hesitation in saying this particular Vote, out of which £500,000 was for the army, would not meet the excess of expenditure that would occur over the Army Estimates by a sum at least equal to that now asked for. He ventured to predict that in February next, or sooner, perhaps, the House would be asked for a further sum of at least £500,000 to meet the excess. His opinion was formed from his experience in framing the Estimates for the army during the two last financial years. At the end of the years 1857–58 the sum required to be voted by Parliament in excess of the original Estimates was no less than £1,050,000. He was not at all responsible for that, for he had not framed those Estimates, and was only in office during the last month of the financial year; but he was called upon to ask for that sum to make up the excess of expenditure required; and during the last month the Secretary of the Treasury moved for £407,000 for the excess of the expenditure during the year 1859–60, for which he was responsible. He was never more astonished, because he had never exceeded the number of men voted by Parliament. He only stated this to point out to his right hon. Friend (Mr. S Herbert) how impossible it was to tell, until the accounts of the year were made up, what sum would be required. The whole of that excess of £407,000 arose out of the Votes connected with the number of men on the establishment, Votes over which the Secretary at War had no control whatever as to expenditure, further than he had upon the number of men on the establishment. The fair way of comparing it would be to state the Votes entirely dependent on the number of men in the establishment, namely, the Votes 2, 3, 4, 9, and 10. Vote 2 was for pay and allowances to the men; Vote 3, for miscellaneous charges; Vote 4, for the embodied militia; Vote 9, for clothing; and Vote 10, for provision, fuel, and lights. He thought everybody would admit that the expenditure in connection with those Votes must depend on the number of the men on the establishment. The total sum of money that was voted on account of those five Votes during the year 1858–59, amounted to £6,187,772, and the excess upon those Votes amounted to £711,251. making the expenditure on those Votes amount to £6,899,023. The amount voted by Parliament during the present financial year to meet those Votes was £6,391,647. Supposing, then, there were the same number of men effective during the present as during the past year, the excess required to meet the amount would be £507,376. which was exactly the sum now called for to meet the whole expenses of the army during the year. But the question was, whether there was not more than 130,135 men now in active service. The number that he had on the establishment during the time he was in office never exceeded the number voted by Parliament more than by 100 men. Therefore the whole number of men amounted to 130,235. Now if his right hon. Friend (Mr. S. Herbert) had more than that number during the present year he thought the excess would amount to more than that during the last year. He had left on the 1st June in last year, including the embodied militia, 130,417 men; that was about 200 more than he had on the establishment during the previous year; and having the other day asked Mr. S. Herbert for the return of the number of men now on the establishment, he found that on the 1st February last, including the embodied militia, it was 148,417, that is to say, 18,000 more than he (General Peel) had had in the year ending 1859. Therefore he left the House to judge whether the excess on the five Votes he had mentioned would not absorb the £500,000 which the Chancellor of the Exchequer now asked for. He had so far taken them in the aggregate, but he would now proceed to consider them separately, although it would amount to the same thing. The embodied militia during the year 1858–59 had cost £821,254, and they had never, equalled, so far as he recollected, the number enrolled during the present year. They were asked to pay during the present year £560,000 only, showing a deficiency of £261,254, or nearly half the Vote asked for. As the embodied militia had more officers for their strength than, comparatively speaking, there were in the line, it would cost more than half the vote. Then he would take the line. He found on the 1st February we had effectives exceeding the number of men for which money had been voted by upwards of 7,000; because, although they had voted 122,000, they deducted from the Vote the pay and allowance of 5,000 men, therefore they had in reality only the bare allowance of 117,000 men, and they had effectives absolutely at present, according to the return he had alluded to, amounting to 123,614. He had no doubt that he should be told that in the early part of the year there was a great deficiency in number, but the deficiency in number of men had never amounted to less than 20,000 in the year 1858.9. The only way to look at it was to see how many men they had at present. He had had only 130,217 men. The present Government had never had less than 130,447, and that number had been increased to 148,000, the present number. He, therefore, left the House to judge whether he might not fairly calculate that the excess of the five Votes he had mentioned would take up more than the money now voted. But this related to those services that were estimated for. During the recess a warrant had been issued authorizing the raising of an army of 120,000 men in reserve, as to which, as yet, the House had not heard one syllable. But if one single man had been raised towards that reserve it would be an excess to add to this Vote. Now he would come to that in respect of which this Vote professed to be taken—namely, the excess of expenditure on account of the Chinese war, or rather the force in China without a war. The House knew that there were three native regiments in China, the expense of which had been placed upon the Indian finances. If this were not so, no provision had been made for them, or for their cost from the time they had first gone to China. It might be asked why he had not put them on the Estimates. His answer was, that they were sent there by the Governor General of India without any communication with him; they had never been placed on the British establishment. It was true that a Vote of credit was taken for the Chinese war, but the navy had monopolized the whole of that Vote—not a shilling had gone to the army. The whole of that expenditure had therefore to be provided for, and must sooner or later be a charge upon the country, and he felt justified in saying that they would require an additional Vote of £500,000 in addition to provide for it. He did not blame the right hon. Gentleman for this excess, but this he said, that if the Government had any idea of this excess they were bound to have stated it to the House when they brought forward their financial measures, because it was impossible to say what the decision of the House would have been if they had known of this excess, with regard to the reduction of the paper duties, or any other of the measures introduced in their Budget. He voted against the Budget, not from any aversion to the principles of free trade, because when hon. Gentlemen opposite talked of recent conversions to the principles of free trade he had only to say that he believed his conversion took place at the same time with that of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he believed he was as earnest a Free-trader, as he was. But then free trade, like other good things, depended on the manner and the time in which you applied it. It was, in short, a thing of time and circumstance, and he repudiated altogether the assertion that in adopting such a financial scheme Parliament was following in the steps of Sir R. Peel. In the first place, the fame of Sir R. Peel as a financier did not rest on the policy of free trade, that belonged to others; and Sir Robert Peel would be the last man to take credit for that which did not belong to him; his distinction consisted in applying those principles at the right time. He protested therefore, and ever should protest, against the name of Sir Robert Peel being associated with the principles of a Budget the failure of which he (General Peel) confidently predicted. He foresaw that at the end of the present year there would be an enormous financial deficit. The right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer was perfectly right in only taking his income tax for one year, because, at the end of that year he would have greatly to alter its proportions. No one could be more opposed than was Sir Robert Peel to an income tax in time of peace. But he had no doubt his right hon. Friend flattered himself he would be able to meet this deficit by a great decrease in the naval and military establishments next year. He said as much in bringing forward his Budget; but the House ought to pause before making any such reductions. Hon. Gentlemen who fancied that great economy might be practised in this way ought to point out how it was to be effected, and not follow the example of the hon. Member for Birmingham, who some time ago went through the country declaiming against the enormity of the establishments and the abuses connected with them, and the want of control which this House had over the Estimates, while as soon as the Estimates came on for discussion he deliberately walked out of the House without giving any opinion whatever. He hoped they would meet in that House face to face and discuss the character of those Estimates; and he trusted it would ever be prepared to vote all the necessary means for the defence of this country—that they would allow no treaties of commerce or promises of friendship to induce them to rest the independence or the existence of this country upon the favour of another Power. He had now done his duty. He had no doubt his right hon. Friend would meet him with a very eloquent argument; but he appealed from eloquence to fact. He would leave it to be decided, when the accounts came to be made up for next year, whether he was not correct in saying that a much greater sum than was here asked for would be required. Of course he had no objection to the present Vote, except to say that it did not ask for half the sum that was necessary.

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

said, he could assure his right hon. and gallant Friend that he bad not the slightest intention of meeting facts by eloquent argument. He too would appeal to facts—not to estimates, but to formal accounts of the money which had been spent—and the House might rest assured that the Government were running into no excess beyond that met by the present Vote. First with regard to the army of reserve, the fact was, that a small sum had been taken for that service. He had at the time declared his expectation to be that that Estimate would not be absorbed by the number of men actually raised, and that no large body of soldiers would be forthcoming for this army of reserve, at all events for some time, seeing that they were to be the products of the ten years' men who had served their time. Accordingly, the result had been that not 300 men had entered since the publication of the warrant. As to the number of troops taken by his right hon. and gallant Friend, what had been the result up to the pre- sent time? In the Estimates of 1859–60, which his right hon. and gallant Friend had moved, provision was made for 121,601 regular troops, in addition to £410,000 for militia, which would maintain 13,000 men during the year. In the Vote of credit for China services for 1859–60, also moved by his right hon. and gallant Friend, £240,000 was taken for pay and allowances, which would maintain 7,000 men for one year, so that provision was made in that year for-a total force of 141,600 men. In April of last year the force was less than this number by 14,000, which produced a saving of £43,200. In May there was a saving of 12,400 men, and of £37,000. The amount of saving then went on decreasing until November, the upshot being that if in March all the troops going from India to China had actually gone, there would be 15,000 in excess. In point of fact, however, it was known that the vessels which were to convey those these troops had not sailed from Bombay and Calcutta in time to land the troops in China before the expiration of the financial year, and would not come within the Estimates until they were disembarked. There would thus be an excess of £97,000 for the payment of the men against £192,000 of savings accruing as he had mentioned in the early part of the year. To make all safe £50,000 had been added as the difference between the organization of the militia and the regular force, the militia having a greater number of officers in proportion to the men than the regular army. Again, £40,000 had been added for an increase which might occur upon the miscellaneous items of Vote 3, but with all these additions, which were stated to be more than ample, there was still £192,000 to meet the £187,000 of excess. But this was not all. Upon the Votes taken for buildings, stores, and so on, it invariably happened, he was sorry to say, that the deliveries were not fast enough to allow of the payments being made in the financial year, and there was almost always a saving under this head. Accordingly there was this year a large saving upon the Vote of stores, and he therefore felt confident that unless the Indian Government should fail in some of their payments he should be perfectly safe for the present financial year. As far as he could make out, he thought they were perfectly safe, and that they had taken money enough to cover the expenses of the present financial year. They had taken the money assuming that the troops would go to China earlier than they had done, for it turned out they would not be there within the present financial year. He must decline at that hour of the evening to follow the right hon. and gallant Member in his criticism of the Budget. Including the present Vote and the sums contained in the army and navy Estimates, about two millions and a half had been taken for the China war. No one objected to the amount of the Vote; on the contrary, it was pronounced to be not large enough; and he hoped therefore the House would agree to it. They had not taken into account, he owned, the Native troops belonging to the East India Company at Canton. These would no doubt eventually have to be paid for, and there would be a charge made by the East India Company to the Treasury for that purpose. He was speaking at present, however, only of the sums within the present year's Estimates. He was not disposed to indulge in prophecy with respect to the cost of the Chinese War, though various prophecies had been indulged in. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Whiteside) had alluded to something like £10.000,000.

MR. WHITESIDE

No, I said as much would be spent as was expended in the Persian war.

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

said, that more than was spent in the Persian war had already been voted. As he had said, he would only assure the right hon. and gallant Officer that he had looked through the accounts with the greatest possible care, and he was confident that there was not only enough for the troops, but a surplus to provide against any deficiency.

MR. PALK

said, he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman if any estimate had been taken for the depots of those regiments now quartered in India that were about to return to this country, and which, on their reaching England, would be placed on the English establishment. He wished also to know whether any estimate had been taken for the Portman Street barracks, for which contracts had been entered into in pursuance of the recommendations of the Committee of last year, and also whether any estimate had been taken for the fortifications which had been erected at Plymouth and Devonport within the last year.

SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY

said, he regretted that the good old rule had been departed from of not going into Committee after 12 o'clock, when this Vote was passed the other morning. There never was Vote he was more inclined to resist, for he believed the money spent in these China wars was not only thrown away, but did positive mischief to the country. Recent accounts received in London by the most eminent houses described China as at the present moment in a state of great danger, and yet that was the very time selected for a joint expedition of the French and English against that unfortunate empire. He looked with the greatest fear and alarm upon the probable results of an attack on that empire, already torn by intestine rebellion and shattered by the repeated assaults of our arms. Nor could he see any advantage to our commerce in these hostile expeditions. He should like to know what particular item of expenditure this £850,000 would cover. Would it cover the extra expenditure of the China war for 1860 and 1861? or if not, what portion of the expenditure would it cover? He should like to know what the expenses of transport were, and what those for the article of coal. He should also like to know if there were any outstanding accounts with the East India Company. He should also like to know whether the East India Company had any pecuniary demand on the British Government, and whether that demand applied to the financial year which expired on the 31st of this month, or to the next year. He should lastly like to know if beyond the £850,000 there would be another Vote for the year 1860 61, and in what way this tremendous expenditure would be met. If he recollected rightly 14,000 men were to go to China and 60 pennants.

COLONEL DUNNE

said, he should like to know whether any provision had been made in the Estimates for the regiments ordered home from India, for if not, the deficiency must be so much the greater.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, he understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that as much money had been spent as was spent in the Persian war.

MR. SIDNEY HERBERT

explained that what he said was, that as much money as the cost of the Persian war would this year or next year be voted.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, that, if such an enormous amount was spent before the force was moved, there was ground for alarm as to what would be the expense after the expedition had been twelve or fifteen months in operation. It justified hon. Members on that side of the House in their constant opposition to the Budget. He saw no reason to doubt that there would be a deficiency next year of £15,000,000, and that they would gradually drift into a state of difficulty such as that from which Sir R. Peel extricated the country by means which would no longer be available.

COLONEL HERBERT

said, he wanted to know how the Indian regiments which had been for some time in China were paid, and what provision was made for those troops which were now being sent there. The expense would probably fall in the first instance on India, but we should have to pay it eventually, or it would come in the shape of a surprise next year, when we were discussing the income tax, and there would be no waifs and estrays like the malt credits, and other contingencies to meet the difficulty.

SIR CHARLES WOOD

said, that at that hour of the evening, or rather morning (half-past twelve), he must decline to enter on a discussion of the finances of next year. The Vote before the House was a Vote of credit for the expenditure chargeable to the country for the year ending the 31st inst. The regiments which had been in China for some time were paid out of the Indian revenue. There was a running account between the revenue of India and the revenue of England; but, sooner or later, a Vote must be brought before Parliament and provision made in the proper way. With regard to the expense of transport of troops to China, the Indian revenue was chargeable with the expense of taking troops from England to India, keeping them in India, and sending them home or to a colony. When, therefore, these troops were sent from India to China the Secretary at War asked the Indian Government whether they would pay for their transport to China or wait to pay a proportion for their transport home. The Indian Government thought short accounts were the best, and preferred to take the charge of transport to China. They would have to pay for the transport of a larger number of men the shorter distance instead of for the transport of a smaller number of men the longer distance, but upon the whole there would not be much difference between the two. The Indian Government had taken upon themselves the payment of the troops until they were fairly disembarked. The state of the expedition was this. Two regiments went from India to China some time ago. A second Queen's regiment, with one Native regiment, sailed from Calcutta. Of the sailing of a fourth regiment from Madras they had received an account. Another regiment, the 31st, had probably sailed from Bombay: but they had no account beyond what he had stated.

SIR MICHAEL SEYMOUR

said, with the permission of the House, he wished to make an explanation in reference to some remarks of the Prime Minister on the mission of the American Minister to Pekin. He should be sorry if anything like discredit should be cast upon an eminent man, or that the American nation should be supposed to have submitted to insulting conduct. A distinguished American wrote to him:— You may be interested to know the actual truth as to Mr. Ward's visit to Pekin, for your newspapers, I regret to say, are full of misrepresentations. I have received a full account from him in a private letter, in which he speaks of his visit as in every respect satisfactory. He was treated at Pekin with every mark of respect. He writes in the same tone to the Government, adding further intelligence, which I doubt not will be soon made public. He ascertained that arrangements in the way of houses were made at the capital for the reception and entertainment of the English and French Ministers. He also wished to call attention to the gallant conduct of the flag officer, Commodore Tatnall, who commanded the American force, and who seeing the difficulties of the gallant Admiral Hope, offered to bring up reinforcements; and though his boat was sunk by the heavy fire, and some of his men wounded, insisted in conveying his sympathy and desire to give every assistance to the English commander.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolutions read 2° and agreed to.