§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ MR. WYLDsaid, he did not understand upon what ground the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had proposed a few evenings ago that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee. Was it to be referred to a Select Committee to ascertain whether an unconditional guarantee had been given to this company, or to enter into the whole question of telegraphic communication? To his mind, it was not clear that the Company had strictly complied with the terms of the contract. Anybody who read the contract would say that it was the intention of the late Government to give a guarantee only in the case of the Company putting the cable into working order, and the provision inserted by the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn as to the perfect working of the line for thirty days after the laying down, appeared to show that the Company was only to be entitled to a dividend in the event of their having brought the line into working order. A failure had occurred, and the Company had abandoned the whole 432 undertaking, but the House was required to fulfil the guarantee, and the Company demanded that a million sterling should be handed over to them, or interest on that amount for fifty years at 4½ per cent. He thought the Committee ought to have the power of investigating all the circumstances of the case.
§ MR. CONINGHAMsaid, he felt obliged to the hon. Gentleman for raising the question. After looking through the Bill, he was not at all prepared to vote for the second reading. He found words in the Bill which he could not assent to. The Bill contained a summary of the history of the contract entered into by the Government of the Earl of Derby and the Company who had undertaken to carry out the line. It stated that the Company had laid down the line of cable, and had expended their capital thereon, but by reason of accidents over which they had no control had failed in maintaining it in working order. Now, that was begging the whole question. From the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it seemed that the whole line had never been in working order. Links of it had been, but never the whole. Why, therefore, should the Representatives of the people be asked to vote money for that which had never been done? It seemed to him (Mr. Coningham) that this measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not calculated to promote the interests of the public, or to bring to light the secret intrigues—if intrigues there were—or the mal-administration of subordinate officials of the Government. He had read with considerable interest an article in The Times to which he would refer.
§ MR. SPEAKERThe hon. Gentleman will be out of order in doing so.
§ MR. CONINGHAMsaid, that to refer the matter to a Select Committee, which could not take evidence on oath, was a most unsatisfactory thing. At present there was litigation pending between Mr. Newall and the Company, in the course of which no doubt some light would be thrown on the affair. Why, then, should the matter be hurried on? He could not think that a sufficient case had been made out for committing that House to the payment of so large a sum of money in fulfilment of a guarantee, the terms of which, he submitted, had never been carried out. Another singular circumstance connected with the business was that Mr. Lionel Gisborne, the gentleman who had been employed to superintend this line, was a gentleman whose 433 antecedents were not of the clearest nature. He had been employed upon the Rangoon Line, and upon the Gibraltar Line, and, if he were not misinformed, the Red Sea Telegraph was not the first instance of the failure of Mr. L. Gisborne's enterprise. In 1854 there was a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, with a view to a ship-canal, and he had been told that Mr. Gisborne's survey turned out to be a complete delusion. There was, he thought, a primâ facie case for inquiry, and when the question was put he should certainly offer a negative to such an unsatisfactory expenditure of public money.
§ MR. AYRTONthought the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Coningham) had confounded two distinct questions. The first question was, what was to be done with the claimants; and the other was, what ought to be done with reference to the expenditure of money that had been guaranteed? The right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer, in introducing the Bill, said the House was bound to keep good faith with the subscribers, but he did not wish to compromise the House with relation to the expenditure of the capital. The compilation of papers that had been laid upon the table did not give any information as to the application of the capital, nor of the causes of the failure to lay down the line. He intended to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that there should be an instruction to the Committee to inquire into the circumstances under which the Company failed to lay down the telegraph, and, as he did not at all desire to impede the progress of the Bill, he saw no reason why the Committee should not report at once upon its provisions, and afterwards proceed with the other inquiry. He hoped his hon. Friend would not persist in his opposition, as such an inquiry as he suggested ought not to interfere with the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
§ MR. CRAWFORDsaid, he did not doubt that the hon. Member for Brighton was influenced by the best motives in taking the strong views which he had enunciated, but he was hardly justified in indulging in harsh insinuations as he had done. The hon. Member had referred to Mr. Gisborne's antecedents, and especially to his survey of the Isthmus of Darien, but it was hardly fair to prejudice that gentleman by allusions to former alleged failures, and certainly he was not justified in speaking so harshly of him without be- 434 ing prepared to state the grounds upon which he did so. He (Mr. Crawford) protested against an absent man being prejudiced in the opinion of the House, but if the hon. Member thought he bad grounds for the imputation he had brought against him, he should communicate them to the House. The hon. Member had also indulged in insinuations of secret intrigues and mal-administration on the part of the subordinate agents of the Government. If those subordinate officers had been guilty of mal-administration it was the duty of the hon. Member to state in what respect they had thus been guilty. The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Wyld) said there had been a failure in the laying down of the line, but this was a mistake. The failure had been in the practical working of the line, for which the Company were not responsible, and which was incidental to the nature of the undertaking. He had not the slightest personal interest in the Company, but he was satisfied the line was undertaken in perfect good faith to the public. All the best science of the day was employed in the undertaking, and the failure arose from certain occult influences at the bottom of the sea which could not be provided against.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, that an impression had gone abroad which had found its way into the city article of The Times, and which appeared to have arisen from a misapprehension of a statement made the other evening by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Disraeli). The facts were that the Government entered into a contract with the Company that the line should be made and handed over to them in working order. The contract between the Company and the contractor was submitted to the Government for its approval. It was found to contain a stipulation that each portion of the line should be kept ten days in working order by the contractors before it was handed over to the Government. It was pointed out that ten days were too short a term, and the Government required that it should be extended to thirty days. That was a contract between the Company and the contractors, and not between the Company and the Government. The distinction was important, because it was said that the entire line had never been in working order for thirty days, and it was held that this invalidated the contract, whereas the contract between the Government and the Company contained 435 no such stipulation. He entirely concurred with the hon. Member for London (Mr. Crawford) in thinking that the insinuations advanced by the hon. Member for Brighton, were unfair both to Mr. Gisborne and the subordinate officers of the Government. If the Government and the House thought proper to refer anything connected with the undertaking to a Committee, none would be better pleased that the matter should be thoroughly investigated than the late Government and Mr. Gisborne.
§ MR. DUNLOPremarked, that having been Chairman of the Select Committee on this subject, he had moved and carried a Resolution in the House that in future no public guarantee should be introduced into a private Bill. That Resolution would now become one of the Standing Orders of the House.
§ MR. DISRAELIsaid, he certainly thought it advisable that contracts of this kind should be brought before the House in the form of public Bills. But it was only fair to remind the House that, although this contract was introduced through the form of a private Bill, nothing could have been better known at the time than that the Government proposed to enter into an arrangement with a company for the construction of a Red Sea and India telegraph. A Bill was brought in upon the subject; the House was perfectly well informed as to the facts of the case; and nothing could have been watched with greater intensity, excitement, and curiosity in the City of London, than the chances that the contract would be entered into. It would be the height of hypocrisy, therefore, to pretend at the present moment that they were placed in an embarrassing position in consequence of that contract having been introduced silently into a House of Commons which had not the slightest suspicion of what was going on. So far for the form; and now as to the spirit of the transaction. He had to state that in consequence of the relations which then prevailed between Her Majesty's Government and our Indian empire, if a company had not been formed to carry out this scheme it was his intention, and that of his noble Friend the late Secretary for India (Lord Stanley), to have advised their colleagues to undertake the construction of that line of telegraphic communication. And he was quite certain that if he had made that proposal, such was the state of the relations between England and India at the moment, it 436 would have passed unanimously. He did not wish to avoid any responsibility in this matter, but he held that it would have been the duty of any Government to carry such an undertaking into effect. That it had failed was greatly to be deplored. But it was to be expected that in the infancy of such enterprises failures would occur. Notwithstanding this failure, however, and that of the Atlantic Telegraph, he remained profoundly convinced that the time would speedily come when the Red Sea and the Atlantic Telegraph lines would be completely successful. Enterprises of this kind, that gave a new colour to civilization and a new impulse to the progress of mankind, could not be undertaken without some risk of failure. The Government, however, did not the less do their duty in patronising and supporting the scheme, and if they had not found the machinery of a public company for executing the undertaking it would have been the duty of his colleagues and himself to come to Parliament and ask for leave to carry it out on their own responsibility. The patriotism and sagacity of Parliament would, he was confident, have supported the Government in such a proposal.
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he was sorry to find that the right hon. Gentleman had that evening very much widened the field of that discussion, and that he had not kept within those bounds to which he had very prudently and very carefully confined himself on the preceding evening. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) wished it to be understood, that if he did not follow the right hon. Gentleman in all his details he must not be understood therefore as necessarily embracing all the doctrines he had laid down. No doubt it was true that in the infancy of great inventions many failures were to be expected, but then that raised another and a very difficult question — namely, at what stage of the infancy of those inventions the Government ought to take them into their hands, and promote them by means of the public money. That was a question of great importance. But, on the other hand, he was ready to admit that it was one which could not be decided on mere abstract considerations, but that the urgency of the circumstances should be taken into account, as well as the state of public feeling at the time. All that, however, he believed, had better be kept apart from the discussion in which they were then engaged, because that discussion 437 turned strictly upon a point of public faith and honour, and he thought the importation of any other topics into it tended only to distract their attention, and to weaken the sense of their obligation to give effect to a pledge which had received the sanction of Parliament. He hoped, therefore, they would be allowed to confine themselves strictly to that question. He begged his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton (Mr. Coningham) to believe that there was no indisposition in any quarter to have the fullest investigation into all and every portion of the history of this transaction. But the point then before them lay in a narrow compass. It did not in any way embrace the consideration whether or not the Government were justified by motives of general policy, or by the peculiar urgency of the crisis which at that time prevailed, in departing from what would, perhaps, be universally recognized as the safe and prudent rule in such cases. It did not embrace the question whether the details of their proceedings were judicious; whether the amount of capital for which they gave the guarantee was moderate or sufficient, or excessive; or whether the terms of that guarantee, tested by the state of the public credit at the moment, was or was not reasonable. It was, he thought, desirable to keep the two subjects apart. Those persons who had engaged their property in the enterprise not only depended on the House of Commons giving effect to the engagements of the country, but also on that being done with all possible dispatch; and he believed that to mix up this small and simple question of public faith with those other larger questions involved in a full investigation of the whole matter would create dissatisfaction out of doors, and perhaps, give rise to a suspicion which, of all others, would be unjust to this House —namely, that the House was seeking for some occasion to elude the fulfilment of its, pledges. He trusted, therefore, that his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton would be satisfied to allow this Bill to go forward without taking the sense of the House on the second reading. With regard to what had fallen from the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ayrton), if it were considered desirable — and he thought it might be reasonably desired—to examine into the matters to which that hon. Member had called attention, there would be no objection on the part of the i Government to allow or promote that investigation; and if he had delayed to an- 438 nounce, on the part of the Government, any fixed intentions on the subject, it was not so much in relation to the failure which had just occurred as in relation to the general merits of other similar arrangements which were likewise examined in the Telegraph Committee of last year; and it might still he a question how far it was desirable that, if another investigation of this kind were made, it should be limited to the particular arrangements with the Red Sea Telegraph Company, or embrace a wider range. On that question he would like time for consideration whether the Committee to whom the clauses of this Bill were to be referred should likewise investigate the matters to which his hon. and learned Friend desired to direct attention. But, at all events, he trusted that the progress of that particular Bill would not be retarded, while the reference of those other matters to the same or another Committee remained a matter of decision. He trusted, then, that the hon. Member for Brighton would not insist on dividing on the second reading.
§ MR. CONINGHAMpointed out that the preamble of the Bill recited that the Company were to present their line in working order.
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, this was a point which would be examined into by the Committee on this Bill. The questions involved in the Bill were altogether different to those general questions which applied to other similar arrangements. He must say that he did not agree with the retrospect of the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, who said there never was a measure of which the nature was better understood by Members of Parliament than the Red Sea Telegraph Bill of 1858. It was not a question of praise or blame one way or the other. The practice pursued was the established one. But he did not concur in thinking that the nature of the measure was well understood by the Members of the House of Commons who passed the Bill; and, he thought, the hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. Dunlop) had done well in calling attention to the subject, and proposing to provide for a different practice in future by a new Standing Order; and the hon. Baronet who represented Evesham for suggesting that the securities of a Money Bill should, in time to come, be thrown around Bills for the ratification of such arrangements as that which had been made in the present case.
§ Bill read 2°, and committed for To-morrow.