Commons Sitting of 15 February 1864

MINUTES.
— PUBLIC BILLS — Resolution in Committee—Warehousing of British Spirits.
First Reading—Warehousing of British Spirits [Bill 19]; Insolvent Debtors* [Bill 20]; Forfeiture of Lands and Goods* [Bill 21]; Watching of Towns (Ireland) * [Bill 22].
Second Reading—Insane Prisoners Act Amendment [Bill 4]; Conveyancers, &c. (Ireland) [Bill 5]; Malt for Cattle [Bill 6]; Collection of Taxes [Bill 7]; Government Annuities* [Bill 11].

HERRING FISHERIES (SCOTLAND).

  QUESTION.
  MR. CAIRDsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the absence of the Lord Advocate, Whether it is the intention of Government to alter or repeal the recent Laws on the subject of the Herring Fishery in Scotland, which the Royal Commissioners appointed in 1862 to inquire into the operation of these Laws reported to have "unnecessarily restricted the operations of Fishermen; to have repressed invention by prohibiting new and more productive forms of labour; as calculated to be destructive rather than conservative in relation to the future supply of Herring; and, although beneficial to certain class interests, as prejudicial to the consumer of Fish and to the public generally?"
  SIR GEORGE GREYin reply said, he had communicated with the Lord Advocate, who was at present in Scotland, and ascertained that a Bill effecting some alterations in the existing Law was in preparation, and would soon, he hoped, be introduced.

  CHILDREN EMPLOYMENT COMMISSIONERS.—QUESTION.
  VISCOUNT ENFIELDsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to the Report of the Children Employment Commissioners; and, if so, whether he intends to propose any measure founded upon the Report of the said Commission?
  MR. BRUCEsaid, in reply, that the Report had been under the consideration of the Government during the recess. A measure was in preparation, and he hoped very shortly to ask leave to introduce it.

TOBACCO CULTIVATION IN IRELAND.

  QUESTION.
  MR. MAC EVOYsaid, he would beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether it is the intention of the Government to introduce any Bill this Session to repeal the Act which at present prevented the growth of Tobacco in Ireland?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERreplied, that he was not aware that the law imposed any peculiar restrictions upon the growth of Tobacco, either in Ireland or in any part of the United Kingdom. The general prohibition could not be removed, because of the impossibility of charging Tobacco grown in this country with a duty equivalent to that on Tobacco grown abroad. He did not know any way in which that difficulty could be overcome. He should be glad if it could. From what he had been informed he did not think the growth of Tobacco would ever prove remunerative in this country. That, however, was not a question for him. He did not see any mode of getting over the difficulty to which he had referred, and it was not his intention to propose to the House any alteration in the existing law.

RAILWAY ENCROACHMENTS (DUBLIN).

  QUESTION.
  MR. VANCEsaid, he rose to ask the President of the Board of Trade, If he will consent to the appointment of a preliminary Select Committee, composed of Members of both Houses of Parliament, to consider and report upon the various Railway schemes affecting the city of Dublin, such Committee to be nominated in the same manner as that which has been recently appointed to consider and report upon the different Railway projects affecting the Metropolis?
  MR. MILNER GIBSONin reply said, the Government had no intention of proposing such a Committee as that referred to by his hon. Friend.

  ALLOWANCES TO COLONIAL GOVERNORS RETIRING.—QUESTION.
  MR. HOPWOODsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, when the Government intend to bring forward the subject of granting Retiring Allowances to Governors of Colonies?
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, in reply, that the subject of Governors' Pensions had been under the consideration of his noble Friend the Duke of Newcastle during the recess, but he was not at present in a position to say that any measure would be introduced by the Government.

LAW OF COPYRIGHT.

  QUESTION.
  MR. BLACKsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If the Government intend to bring in a Bill this Session for Consolidating the Acts relating to Copyright in works of Literature and Art?
  MR. MILNER GIBSONin reply said, the Government had no present intention of bringing in a Bill to consolidate those Acts. Circumstances had not arisen to render such a measure of urgent necessity.

  METROPOLIS (PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE).—QUESTION.
  SIR MINTO FARQUHARsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he intends to introduce a Bill this year for the better protection of the Metropolis from Fire; and, if so, when he will lay it upon the table of the House?
  SIR GEORGE GREY: I hope, Sir, to be able to introduce a Bill on the subject. Some time ago I communicated with the Metropolitan Board of Works, and laid before them the outline of a scheme for the establishment of a Fire Brigade for the Metropolis, to be under the control and management of that Board. They signified their willingness to undertake the control of such a body, but stipulated that the whole expense of maintaining the establishment should, not fall upon the ratepayers of the Metropolis. As to the principle there was no difference, for it is obviously right that the Government should contribute something in respect of the large number of public buildings, the national property, to which increased protection would be afforded; but in the arrangement of details some difficulties were naturally felt. The Board of Works also thought, and not unreasonably, that the Fire Insurance Companies ought not to be exempted from all contribution to such an establishment, having at present to bear all the expense of their own Fire Brigades. I am in communication with these Com-
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  panies, and again I hope that there is no difference between us in principle; but the details of the arrangement require careful consideration. I am at present waiting their answer; and till all these arrangements are satisfactorily made I cannot say when the Bill will be introduced.

ARTILLERY. — COMMISSIONERS TO UNITED STATES AND DENMARK.

  QUESTION.
  MR. W. EWARTsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for War, Whether any British Officer or Officers have been sent to study and report upon the recent applications of and improvements in Artillery adopted in the war in the United States and in Denmark?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONreplied, that since the commencement of the war with the United States, the War Office had received from Lord Lyons frequent reports as to the progress of science applied to artillery, of all experiments, and of all new guns manufactured by the Government of the United States. Within a short time, however, it had been found that Lord Lyons was not able to supply that department with such correct detailed information as appeared to be necessary; and three Officers were sent out for the purpose of investigating and reporting to the War Office, in the fullest manner possible, all the improvements and alterations which had taken place in Artillery science in the United States. In September, 1862, a Commission, of which Lieutenant-General Sir J. Mitchell was the president, visited Denmark and reported upon the state of its defences and of the artillery in its possession. It had not been thought necessary to send any Commissioners since the breaking out of the present war, either to the Danish, the Prussian, or other armies.

  COURT-MARTIAL ON COLONEL CRAWLEY.—QUESTION.
  LORD HOTHAMsaid, he rose to inquire from what fund the expenses of the late Court-Martial at Aldershot are to be paid; whether the House will be asked to grant money for that purpose; and, if so, when such grant will be proposed?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, in reply, that it would not be necessary to lay on the table of the House any Supplementary Estimate for the purpose of

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  defraying the expenses connected with Colonel Crawley's trial; they would not be paid out of any particular Vote, but would be spread over several of the Votes taken last year. For instance, the pay and allowances of the witnesses would be chargeable to Vote 1; their travelling expenses and provisions to Vote 2 (the Commissariat); the lodging allowances would come out of Vote 4, and only the special expenses incurred by the Judge Advocate General, and immediately connected with the trial itself, would be raised out of Vote 6, the Vote for the administration of martial law. If any addition to the estimated expenses should take place, it would have to be treated like excess arising from any other cause. There would be no objection, however, on the part of the Government to give the Return showing the total expenses incurred upon the trial of Colonel Crawley if the noble Lord should move for it.

  PETITION FROM MALTA.—QUESTION.
  SIR GEORGE BOWYERsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether Her Majesty's Government received an important Petition from Malta asking for reform in the Colonial Government?
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, since he answered the hon. and learned Gentleman's question on this subject a few days back the Petition had arrived, and would receive the most careful consideration from Her Majesty's Government.

  DENMARK AND GERMANY—SCHLESWIG HOLSTEIN —THE RUMOURED ARMISTICE.—QUESTION.
  MR. DISRAELI: Sir, in the total absence of papers with respect to our foreign relations, I am obliged to trouble Her Majesty's Government with more questions than I could have wished. I understood on Friday night from the noble Lord the First Minister of the Crown, that Her Majesty's Government had made a proposition for an Armistice between the two contending parties. It would be convenient to the House to know whether Her Majesty's Government have received any answer to that proposition, especially as from the tone of the noble Lord we concluded that it was made under very favourable circumstances?
  MR. LAYARD: Sir, in the absence of the noble Lord at the head of the Government, perhaps I may be allowed to state that an answer has been received by Her Majesty's Government; but I regret to have to state to the House, that that answer is not of a satisfactory nature. No Armistice, I apprehend, is likely to be agreed to at the present time.

  THE IONIAN ISLANDS.—AMERICAN CRUISERS.—QUESTION.
  MR. GREGORYsaid, he rose to ask the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Whether he is prepared to lay on the table of the House all the communications which have been received from the Government of Greece upon the subject of the demolition of the Ionian fortresses and the neutralization of those Islands; also, all communications received from the three protecting Powers and the Government of France? He likewise wished to ask another question, having reference to a rumour prevalent at Liverpool, and he did so for the sake of those who believed that rumour, not on his own account, for he entirely disbelieved it. The rumour was that vessels, or a vessel, of superior strength and speed, were being fitted out at Liverpool or some other English port, with the intention of pursuing and capturing the Alabama, inasmuch as the Federals had been unable to do it themselves. He wished to know whether any information on that head had reached the hon. Gentleman, and whether he will apply the same vigilance to the prevention of acts of hostility towards a friendly nation to which we have granted belligerent rights, as he has shown in dealing with vessels suspected of being fitted out with designs hostile to the Federal States?
  MR. LAYARDsaid, in answer to the first question of his hon. Friend, he was aware that the treaty relating to the cession, of the Ionian Islands had not yet been signed by the Greek Government, although it had been sent to Athens. Until that treaty was signed it would be impossible to lay upon the table of the House the correspondence connected with it. As regarded the second question, the only information he possessed was derived from the newspapers, and one of these suggested that the whole paragraph might be a wily contrivance on the part of the Confederates. If so, his hon. Friend would probably know more about it than the Government.

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  The law, of course, would be applied impartially to either side.

UNITED STATES.—CASE OF THE "SAXON."—MURDER OF MR. GRAY.

  QUESTION.
  MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALDsaid, he wished to put a question to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of which he had privately given him notice, What is the date of the Despatch forwarded in relation to the murder of Mr. Gray, and by what mail was it sent to America?
  MR. LAYARDsaid, the notice he had received was so very recent that he was unable at that moment to answer the question. Perhaps his hon. Friend would be good enough to repeat it the next day.

  INSANE PRISONERS ACT AMENDMENT BILL— [BILL 4.]—SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the second time."—(Sir George Grey.)
  MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, it was not his intention to enter into the controversy which had arisen with respect to Townley's case, and which had been sufficiently discussed in the press and to some extent in that House. He was not present however when this measure was introduced, and he wished to take the opportunity of saying that, while there was much that was unsatisfactory to the country in the case, he was far from imputing blame to the right hon. Gentleman (Sir George Grey) for the course he had taken. He doubted, indeed, whether any Home Secretary, under similar circumstances, could have acted differently. The conflict of evidence with respect to Townley's state of mind made the case one of great difficulty. A verdict that appeared to be conclusive established his sanity at the time of his trial, but afterwards the evidence of medical men and others pointed to the conclusion that Townley had become insane. Two or three things, however, appeared to the public out of doors to be in consistent with fairness and impartiality. One was that the initiative was not taken after the trial by responsible persons, and another was the supposed compulsion upon the Secretary of State to remove the prisoner to an asylum on the certificate of any two justices and two physicians. And thirdly the public were dissatisfied, not from
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  any thirst for Townley's blood, but because it did not seem fair to them that his sentence should by such means not only be respited, but commuted. For it practically amounted to a commutation of the sentence, because he agreed that it was impossible for the Secretary of State to bring Townley to execution after he had been removed to a lunatic asylum. But the Bill before the House did not provide an adequate remedy for such cases. The law was founded on two Acts of Parliament. The first was the 9th of Geo. IV., but it only applied to prisoners under sentence of imprisonment and transportation. Here the initiative was given to the Secretary of State. He was to direct the removal to an asylum in cases of insanity, and there was no intermediate process as in the next Act, the 3 & 4 Vict., under which Townley was removed. The case of persons under sentence of death was, he thought, advisedly omitted from the first-named Act. It ought to be kept separate, and dealt with in a different manner. Many persons had interested themselves in the state of Townley's mind while he was under sentence of capital punishment, but all the zeal, energy, and prejudice exhibited by these persons had disappeared as soon as the sentence was commuted. The new species of insanity, indeed, was never brought forward except when prisoners were sentenced to death, although if Townley was really believed to be irresponsible for his actions it was as great a cruelty to put him on the public works as to take his life. These persons, however, drew a distinction which might be useful to the Legislature in amending the law. It was monstrous that any two justices should intrude themselves into a gaol with any two doctors they might select, and then make out a certificate binding on the Secretary of State. That might be a light evil in the case of persons under sentence of imprisonment, but if prisoners under sentence of death were once removed to an asylum, the Secretary of State could not carry out the original sentence. It was, he repeated, impossible for the right hon. Gentleman to bring Townley from the asylum and put him to death. Parliament would guard itself sufficiently in the case of prisoners sentenced to transportation and imprisonment by giving the visiting justices the initiative. But in the case of a prisoner under sentence of death, there was an opportunity before trial and at the trial to inquire into the state of his mind. [Sir GEORGE GREY: If the objection is taken

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  before the trial.] The verdict should, he thought, be conclusive as to the state of his mind up to the period of the verdict, and the inquiry should only refer to the state of his mind after the verdict and up to the period of his proposed execution. The question then arose, how the friends of such a prisoner would be able to bring a certificate under the notice of the Secretary of State? He suggested that the Bill should be left as it then stood in respect to persons under sentence of imprisonment or penal servitude, and be altered only in cases where the prisoner was condemned to death. The words of the clause were, "If any person shall appear to be insane;" but did not say to whom. He would suggest that the words should run, "If any person shall appear to the visiting justices to be insane." The visiting justices should represent the insanity to the Secretary of State, who ought thereupon to issue a commission, The inquiry need not be public, but it should be of a solemn and judicial character, and the proceedings should be published. The report of the commission as to the sanity of the prisoner should be binding on the Secretary of State, but that would by no means affect the Royal prerogative of pardon or commutation of sentence. It was casting an unwarrantable and unfair burden on the Secretary of State to leave the decision to his discretion after a fair and complete inquiry and judgment by competent persons. Much dissatisfaction would be felt if the Home Secretary allowed a man to be executed in spite of a certificate of his insanity. It would, therefore, be in the interest of the Secretary of State to adopt such an Amendment as he now recommended, because he did not propose to touch the prerogative of the Crown. Parliament ought, however, more carefully to define the power of the Home Secretary, not only for his sake, but for the sake of the public. Why should such a duty be thrown upon him under the statute? The right hon. Gentleman had had difficulties enough in recommending the exercise of the prerogative of the Crown, having not unfrequently of late brought himself into collision with public opinion, and caused great ill-feeling. In the existing state of things it had come to this:—If a man was respited and an inquiry commenced into his sanity or insanity, once that he had been removed to a lunatic asylum he was practically saved from execution. He (Mr. G. Hardy) took it to be the law that capital
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  punishment was to be inflicted; and, if so, nothing should be done in any preliminary inquiry to prevent that punishment being carried out if they came to the conclusion that the man was in a sane state of mind at the time the excecution was to take place. The Secretary of State would have the power to appoint a commission, and he (Mr. G. Hardy) would be sorry to see the commission composed wholly of doctors. For when one took up the papers and read them through, it was clear there must be lay persons to decide where doctors differed. For in the first place they had a surgeon who decided when the prisoner was committed that he was sane, and made an entry in the prison book to that effect, and afterwards the same surgeon said that the man was mad, though he believed him to be then in the same state as he was in before, but that when he made the entry in the book the man was not legally insane. Then the Commissioners of Lunacy drew a distinction most dangerous to society, for they thought the man was of an unsound mind, but that he was in such a state that he ought to be responsible for his actions. Finally, they had a commission issued, composed of most eminent and experienced men, who seemed to have conducted their inquiry with a good sense which contrasted strongly with the previous mode of inquiry, and they came to the conclusion that he was not insane when they examined him. In the old times, when an inquiry was made it was always as to the motive, but now when they got the very strongest motive, jealousy, it was said the man was mad because he had been actuated to commit a crime by the most violent of passions. If the visiting justices represented to the Secretary of State that the man was insane, and ought not to be hanged in that state, then the Secretary of State ought to appoint a commission, an independent tribunal, who should publish openly what they had heard and the result at which they had arrived, and the Secretary of State, as far as his statutory capacity was concerned, should be bound by that decision; but if he chose afterwards to advise Her Majesty to take another course he should be responsible for that advice, as he was now. With respect to the statute, the Secretary of State, for his own sake and for the safety of the public, ought to be bound by the decision of the tribunal which he had called into existence. The question was one that would not often arise, and therefore there was leas reason

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  for being in haste to decide as to the nature of the tribunal. Let there be a solemn recognized tribunal. The man having been pronounced sane by a jury and a pre-residing Judge, if a contrary conclusion was to be come to, it ought to be by a tribunal equally solemn and equally judicial; and, in that case, the right hon. Gentleman, who he believed conscientiously discharged his duty, would be relieved from a serious embarrassment, and the public would be satisfied with the decision which would be come to.
  MR. MACDONOGHsaid, there were two modes of correcting an error in the law, one by a declaratory Act, the other by an enacting statute. In the present case, the latter had been adopted, and in his opinion unwisely. The ground upon which the measure had been introduced was this: —The right hon. Baronet, construing the statute of the 3 & 4 Vict, as absolutely imperative upon him, introduced the Bill for the purpose of freeing himself from that obligation. His (Mr. Macdonogh's) opinion was very clear that the statute was not imperative but permissive, and that a discretion was left to the right hon. Baronet. That view had been confirmed by several Acts of Parliament with reference to lunatics, in which the words "shall be lawful" had received the explanation for which he contended, and in which the Secretary of State was said to be "empowered" to do so and so. If that view of the case was right, what was the result? They were now introducing a piece of patchwork. One of the blemishes attributed to our English legislation was, that whenever a fault was found we attempted to patch it up, instead of proceeding upon broad principles and with due regard to reason. The result of passing this Bill would be to give the assent of Parliament to the construction put by the right hon. Baronet upon the words "it shall be lawful," so as to make them absolutely mandatory, and they would then fall into a series of absurdities, for wherever these words occurred in statutes in pari materiâ they must receive an imperative construction. He would suggest that the matter might be remedied by a declaratory statute of some ten lines to this effect:—"Whereas doubts have arisen as to the construction of the words 'it shall be lawful,' in the 3 & 4 Vict. c. 54, be it enacted that the words shall be held to be discretionary." That was the suggestion he had to make, and if the learned Attorney or Solicitor
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  General was in the House he would see its force. He ventured to think that the Bill was wrong in principle, and that its effect would be to leave their legislation in a state of confusion.
  SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLENsaid, that he agreed with many of the observations that had fallen from the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Hardy), but on the whole, he was prepared to support the Bill of the Government. Still, he thought that there were some points in the proposed measure which were susceptible of improvement. The Secretary of State, on being furnished with the certificates by the magistrates, possessed absolute discretion as to how he was to act. He would have been better pleased if, instead of leaving that discretion to the Secretary of State, the measure had proposed to have made some public investigation as to the alleged lunacy of a convict obligatory, so that in the face of the public the alleged lunacy should be tested either by a jury or by some properly constituted tribunal. He regretted that the Secretary for the Home Department had thought proper to confine the operation of the Bill to England alone. In a case of such public importance, there should be uniformity of legislation for the three portions of the United Kingdom; and yet, if the Bill passed in its then shape, the effect would be, that on that subject there would be one law for England, another for Scotland, and a third for Ireland. Was the House prepared to sanction such a course? By the Scotch law, the initiative in the case of prisoners supposed to be insane is taken by the sheriff, who is authorized to call in to his assistance two medical persons, and they forward to the Home Secretary their opinion of the insanity of a prisoner. The moment that opinion is given it is final and conclusive, and the very same mischief which the Bill was brought in to remedy in respect to England might still occur in the case of Scotland. The right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary said, that there had been a miscarriage of justice in a recent case. Was the House prepared, then, to leave the law in Scotland as it is until the same miscarriage of justice occurred there? It was proposed by the present Bill that the certificate of the visiting justices should be backed by duly registered physicians or surgeons; but in Scotland the certificate of the sheriff might be backed by an apothecary. If the English Act required amendment, so, he thought, did the Scotch

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  Act in this respect. In Ireland the law was different from the law in England in regard to insane convicts, and applied only to persons under sentence of imprisonment. It was not applicable to persons under sentence of death, so that a prisoner there under sentence of death, becoming insane, must, if the Act were strictly carried out, be hanged, because no power was given to send him to a lunatic asylum, or else he must receive a free pardon. By the ingenuity of the Law Officers that difficulty might be got over, because the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland might commute the capital punishment to penal servitude; and then the convict, being under sentence of imprisonment, might be sent to a lunatic asylum. But that was not the way in which the law ought to stand, and when an alteration was made, the law in England, Scotland, and Ireland ought to be assimilated. He concurred with those who thought the words "it shall be lawful" in the English Act not imperative; but, at the same time, he considered that the Secretary of State was bound by the practice of the Home Office since 1840. The words in the Irish Act, however, were different, and were not imperative. He had not made these observations in any hostile or unfriendly spirit; on the contrary, he would support the second reading; but in Committee he would propose clauses to make the Bill applicable to the whole of the United Kingdom, or would place them in the hands of the right hon. Baronet if he preferred to propose them himself.
  MR. SCOURFIELDsaid, that he had conferred with many persons whose opinions were well entitled to consideration in respect to the Townley case, and they all admitted, when asked how they would have acted had they been in the position of the Home Secretary, that they must have done just what the right hon. Gentleman did. After all that occurred, it would have been contrary to the sentiment of the country to carry the capital sentence into effect. The question before the House was, whether the present Bill should be adopted? Every one thought that its provisions were unobjectionable, but some persons conceived that it did not go far enough. In his opinion, caution was a fault on the right side in drawing such a Bill, and he was prepared to support the measure. It had been suggested that a commission should be issued, composed of legal and medical men, to determine the question of the insanity of a
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  prisoner. The result of such an arrangement would be that the obscurity which then enwrapped the subject would be as the noon-tide sun compared with the darkness and chaos which would then ensue. The medical man and the lawyer necessarily looked at the question of insanity in different lights. The doctor was bound to consider the welfare of the patient and the mode of curing him. The lawyer, on the other hand, was bound to consider the interests of the community at large and the safety of the public. It was most important, in his opinion, that in determining who was and who was not insane the legal opinion should not be subordinated to the medical. Years ago when the excesses of monomania had risen to a very great height, nothing but determination on the part of the Judges prevented the most serious consequences that threatened to ensue. The report clearly showed that, unless the opinions there laid down by medical men were closely watched, they would be attended with the most dangerous consequences. For example, it was alleged that unconsciousness of guilt was a symptom of insanity. No doubt it might be one of the symptoms, but it was too much to say broadly that the criminal who was contrite and repentant was sane and deserving of the full penalty of the law, while another who justified his misdeeds and would not express any compunction for them should be deemed insane and allowed to escape with impunity. Again, if the tribunal were to be composed of medical men and lawyers, the question would arise—was the decision to rest with the majority? On the whole he supported the Bill, as concentrating the responsibility of the Secretary of State. He was rather puzzled to comprehend how certain letters had crept into the report. There was one from a lady who knew nothing of the case or the prisoner, except what she gathered from the newspapers, but who had been moved to give the Secretary of State some advice on the subject. She was a well-meaning and, no doubt, educated person, for she quoted the case of Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, as bearing on the Townley affair. The Parliamentary papers were voluminous enough already, but if such letters as that were to be published, there was no saying where they would stop. The lady herself expressed a hope that she might hear no more of her communication; but that judicious wish had been disregarded. One person who had some reason to complain of the

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  publication of that epistle was the Judge who tried the case. The lady suggested that the Judge was, perhaps, prevented by some deficiencies in his own mind from discriminating justly as to a case of insanity, and had been influenced by "the maxim only made for dastards," that, if he did not take care, he might lay down principles adverse to himself. The Judge was, fortunately, a man of so much good sense and good humour that he would doubtless bear the castigation thus inflicted on him with perfect resignation. Such letters, however, ought certainly not to be published in official papers.
  MR. DIGBY SEYMOURsaid, he should be glad to know what provision there was in the Bill, for such a case as that which had suggested the measure, where a prisoner, having been certified to be insane, was removed to an asylum, and afterwards pronounced to be sane. He did not think that the Bill met that case.
  MR. HUNTsaid, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would give due weight to the objections which had been raised by the hon. and learned Member for Leominster, the principal of which was that the Bill did not draw a distinction between persons imprisoned for minor offences and persons sentenced to death or penal servitude. That was a branch of the subject which ought to be seriously considered. By the Bill, the visiting justices and two medical men were to deal with all cases, whatever the sentence might be and so far as regarded sentences of short duration, it was an improvement on the existing law; but with respect to cases similar to the Townley case, it was hardly any improvement at all. Supposing the Bill had been law at the time Townley was convicted, what would have been the result? If it had appeared to two visiting justices and two medical men that Townley was insane, they would have given a certificate to that effect to the right hon. Gentleman. Why, what was there to have prevented the visiting justices being put in motion under the Bill if it had been then law? The surgeon of the gaol might have set them in motion, and they could not refuse to make the investigation. Suppose they had called in Dr. Winslow or any other medical man, they would have had his evidence and that of the surgeon of the gaol that Townley was insane, and would have had to send up a certificate to that effect, and then the right hon. Gentleman would have been placed in exactly the same position as he was under the existing law, ex-
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  cept that the certificate would have had greater weight, being signed by two visiting justices, instead of two justices who might have been picked up here and there in the street. There ought to be a distinction in these cases. When a man was working out an ordinary punishment he had no adequate motive to affect lunacy, and there was no scope for the energies of those philanthropists who were always ready to save a murderer from the gallows. When, however, the sentence was of a very grave and heavy nature, such as penal servitude for a long period or death, there was a strong temptation to the prisoner to feign insanity, and to his friends to urge that plea in his favour. Hence greater precautions were required in the latter than in the former case to prevent a miscarriage of justice. He therefore trusted the right hon. Gentleman would draw a distinction between the cases to which he had referred before the Bill went into Committee. He concurred with the hon. Member for Leominster, that where a plea of insanity had been set up at the trial, the solemn verdict of a jury ought not to be overruled by the opinions of visiting or any other justices. In the case of Townley the plea of insanity had been put in, and the Judge and jury decided that Townley was sane at the time of the murder. Supposing that the certificate of two justices and two medical men had followed that verdict, would it have been satisfactory if the verdict had been set aside in that way? In all the graver cases the verdict of a jury should stand, unless some equally solemn tribunal should decide that the particular party was of unsound mind. The only case in which a new investigation should be permitted was when the prisoner became insane after the passing of the sentence. By the Bill as it stood a discretionary power was given to the Secretary of State to remove a prisoner certified to be insane, to an asylum; but what Secretary of State would venture to hang a man in the face of such a certificate? He quite agreed that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary could have taken no other course than he did in Townley's case, and therefore he thought that all the obloquy which had been cast upon him was entirely undeserved. At the same time, he thought the Bill before the House would not have the effect which was intended—that of placing the law upon a satisfactory footing.
  VISCOUNT ENFIELDsaid, that passing by the legal aspect of the question he wishe

  577
  to observe that some safeguard ought to be given to the visiting justices, who would then be glad to take upon themselves the responsibility, which, if they had not that safeguard, many would shirk. If the visiting justices thought that the state of mind of a prisoner after conviction was such that further inquiry was necessary, they would report to the Secretary of State who, after weighing the whole case, would commission proper legal and medical authority to inquire into the matter. He believed that no miscarriage of justice could happen if the visiting justices were intrusted with the safeguard which the Member for Leominster suggested.
  MR. MONTAGUE SMITHsaid, that the Secretary for the Home Department must, no doubt, have been considerably perplexed by the difficulties by which the Townley case was beset, but he had the satisfaction of knowing that ample testimony had been borne in that House to the conscientious manner in which he had discharged the duties of his office in connection with that case. He was sorry, however, to find that the proceedings in the matter seemed to have given rise to the feeling out of doors, that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, a feeling for which there was not the slightest foundation; for, as one conversant with legal proceedings, he could safely say that if tenderness was ever shown in the administration of the law it was rather in favour of the poor man, and if rigid justice was exacted it was against the rich. The same principle, he believed, prevailed at the Home Office as in the courts of justice. The existing law not only placed the Secretary of State in great difficulty, but tended to throw suspicion on the pure administration of the law. If it was desirable to relieve the Secretary of State from the painful position in which he was placed in such cases as that of Townley, it was no less desirable that justice should be relieved from the scandal of having the solemn verdict of a jury reversed by a secret tribunal of no authority, the evidence taken before which was not published. These were the two evils for which it was sought to provide a remedy, and having looked at the Bill under discussion, he had, quite independently of the hon. Member for Leominster, come to precisely the same conclusion as that at which he had arrived. It appeared to him that the Secretary of State would be left in precisely the same
  578
  position after the passing of the Bill as that in which he was before, with the exception that the Act would give him a discretion which it was then supposed to be a matter of doubt whether he did or did not possess. For his own part, he was disposed to concur in the opinion that the words of the statute were not mandatory; but be that as it might, if any one in authority supposed the matter was doubtful, and that the Act was imperative, the Secretary of State might well be pardoned for acting on that construction. But the proposed remedy was utterly insufficient. What, he would ask, would be the position of the Secretary of State when the Bill under discussion became the law of the land? He must act on a certificate from the visiting justices without any means of ascertaining whether that certificate was correct or not; and when further inquiry took place, as in the case of Townley, he would have precisely the same difficulties to contend with as then existed. But if the Bill would give the Secretary of State no relief, would its operation be satisfactory to the public? Would they like to see the verdict of a jury solemnly given, and three or four days after reversed by means of a certificate given by two justices and two medical men? He thought not, and he was therefore of opinion with the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. G. Hardy), that there should be some more open mode of proceeding before the sentence should be even respited. Various suggestions had been made, and one was that a kind of congress of lawyers and doctors should be called; but that, he agreed, would be anything but a satisfactory tribunal. Who were to be the Commissioners? That was a great difficulty. His suggestion was, that the old constitutional tribunal of a jury should be adopted. Twelve men in the jury-box were the persons who could best decide between conflicting evidence, and not only would they be likely to decide rightly, but their decision would give a satisfaction to their fellow-citizens which could be given by that of no other tribunal. In making that suggestion he was not proposing anything which would be regarded in the light of an innovation. There were instances which bore a close analogy to the matter under discussion. Sir Matthew Hale, for instance, said, touching the plea of insanity—
  "And if such person after his plea and before his trial becomes non-sane he shall not be tried;

  579
  or if after judgment, his execution shall be spared."
  He added—
  "But because there may be great fraud in this matter, yet if the crime be notorious, as treason or murder, the Judge before such respite of trial or judgment may do well to empannel a jury to inquire, ex officio, touching such insanity, and whether it be real or counterfeit."
  The justices of Derbyshire, he might add, said, in writing to the Secretary for the Home Department—
  "In this and other like cases the prisoner has been tried by Judge and jury, acting under the sanction of an oath, aided by the counsel employed on both sides, witnesses examined and cross-examined, all in open court. We think that respect for trial by jury in criminal cases and confidence in the pure administration of justice will be seriously weakened if a verdict and sentence, following such a fair and solemn public trial, may in this or any other criminal case he interfered with by any inquiry less public and complete than the trial itself. We, therefore, most earnestly urge on you the propriety and necessity of abstaining from further acting upon this private and ex parte information, and of causing a full inquiry to be made into Townley's state of mind and the inquiry before referred to by some responsible authority, and in as public, fair, and complete a manner as criminal trials are conducted."
  These justices had great experience in the administration of justice, and knew the feelings of their fellow-citizens, and therefore their opinions were entitled to respect. It was only in the case of prisoners sentenced to death that such a mode of investigation would be necessary. In the case of prisoners who had been sentenced to transportation or imprisonment, and who afterwards became insane, it was rather the place of confinement than the sentence which was altered; but in the case of a person condemned to death there was an alteration of the nature of the sentence. The provisions made for the case of prisoners under sentence of imprisonment were totally inapplicable to persons under sentence of death, and originally they were not applied to the case of such persons. In the case of prisoners who were sentenced to death the conflict between the verdict of the jury and the subsequent inquiry necessarily arose almost immediately, for the execution of such prisoners took place in two or three weeks. It was plain, therefore, that one inquiry was brought, as it were, face to face with the other; and it never would or could be satisfactory to the public mind, that the solemn decision of a judge and jury should virtually, if not technically, be overborne, almost as soon as it was pronounced, by a ' secret inquiry before justices.
  MR. EVANSsaid, he had been a good deal concerned in the unfortunate matter of Townley, and concurred in the opinions which had been so generally expressed, that under the circumstances his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could not have acted otherwise than he did with regard to the case, and that he had done quite right in taking the first opportunity of proposing an alteration of the law which had, in that instance, been attended with such unfortunate results. Although he admitted that there was some force in the observations which had been made by the hon. Member for Northamptonshire, and the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Viscount Enfield), he thought that some security against the evils which they feared would be provided by its being required that the certificate should be signed by two visiting instead of by any two justices. It was necessary that there should be some power of staying execution in the case of persons who became insane immediately before the time fixed for their execution; that, if done at all, must be done upon the representation of some one, and the persons at whose instance the Home Secretary could most properly act were those who had the superintendence of the gaol in which the prisoner was confined. As he had signed several of the memorials which had been presented to the Home Secretary, he might be allowed to say that the justices of Derbyshire were decidedly of opinion that an entirely different system, which was not at all alluded to in the Bill before the House, ought to be established for the revision of these cases. That, however, was a separate matter, and in his opinion the right hon. Baronet was right in first dealing with the manifest defects of the existing law. It was desirable that when a Judge certified that further inquiry ought to be made into the state of mind of a prisoner, some tribunal, concerning the competence of which there could be no doubt whatever, and the proceedings of which should be public, should be constituted to decide the question. Such was the opinion of all the magistrates of the county of Derby with whom he had spoken on the subject. He hoped that when the right hon. Baronet rose to reply, he would explain the meaning of the latter part of the second clause, and tell the House whether it was intended to provide that in no case in which a prisoner had been reprieved should the sentence of death be carried into execution. He, for one, certainly thought

  581
  that it could not be carried out in Townley's case after the inquiries which had taken place.
  SIR GEORGE BOWYERsaid, he was anxious to explain that he had never recommended the adoption of the scheme of a congress of doctors and lawyers. On the contrary, he had endeavoured to give some reasons why such a Congress could produce no satisfactory result. He wished also to call the attention of the House to a question which had excited considerable interest in the medical profession. The certificate in Townley's case was signed by a gentleman named Harwood, who was not a practitioner registered under the Medical Act. A doubt having occurred to the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary whether, under those circumstances, the certificate was valid, he had consulted the Lord Chancellor, who had given it as his opinion that, although Mr. Harwood was not registered under the Medical Act, the certificate signed by him was perfectly good. Now, it so happened that the 27th section of the Medical Act contemplated the very case, and it enacted that—
  "No certificate required by an Act now in force, or that may hereafter be passed, from any physician, surgeon, licentiate in medicine or surgery, or other medical practitioner, shall be valid unless the person signing the same be registered under this Act."
  There was clearly a conflict between the opinion of the Lord Chancellor and the words of that section, and he should like to hear what the right hon. Baronet thought upon the subject. The proper time to discuss the details of the Bill would be when it got into Committee. All he could say upon the second reading was that a change of the law was undoubtedly necessary, and, therefore, they were bound to support a measure which was brought forward by the Government for the purpose of remedying notorious and undoubted evils. He objected to the joint Commission composed of physicians and lawyers, because he thought that the two classes of men would, to a certain extent, act at cross purposes. The legal and medical ideas of insanity were quite different. Physicians would examine a man's sanity with reference to the existence of disease and with a view to medical treatment; while the only question which would present itself to the mind of Judges or lawyers would be, was his state of mind such that he was responsible for his actions? A man might have some-
  582
  thing morbid in the recesses of his brain, and still be sane for practical purposes, and amenable to criminal law. A man, on the contrary, who even after sentence fell into a state in which he became unaccountable for his actions, was justly exempted from punishment, being, in the words of a great authority, "sufficiently punished by the insanity with which he was visited by Providence." The only constitutional method of testing whether a man had become insane after his conviction was, in his opinion, trial by jury. But whether the fact were established by the decision of a jury or of a commission —whether the question of the prisoner's sanity arose before or after conviction— medical men ought to appear only as experts, and not as judges. The great defect of the present practice was, that medical men appeared not as witnesses, but as advocates. If called for the prisoner, their object, disguise it as they might, was really "to get him off." The question of sanity, if raised at all, ought to be treated by parties having no interest in the case other than the elucidation of truth; and he thought it might be worth considering whether the Crown ought not to appoint professional gentlemen of high standing, who would deliver their opinions officially —of course, receiving a proper remuneration.
  SIR FRANCIS GOLDSMIDsaid, that whatever might be the tribunal which the House might think fit to constitute, the difficulty in a great measure arose, both as the law stood at present and as it was proposed to be left by this Bill, from the circumstance that the decision of that tribunal might conflict with that which had been pronounced by the jury. He thought it highly desirable to prevent any such conflict of opinion; and that result might easily be achieved if the inquiry of the commission were limited to the state of mind of the prisoner after his conviction, taking it for granted that his sanity at the time the act was committed and at the time of the trial had been duly established.
  SIR WILLIAM JOLLIFFEsaid, that though the Bill would be ample in all cases short of a capital conviction, he was convinced that the single clause to which the assent of the House was asked would neither extricate the Home Secretary from his difficulty, in cases where a sentence of death had been passed, nor would it satisfy the public mind. He felt sure that a Court or commission of inquiry, locally consti-

  583
  tuted, as the Bill proposed, would never give satisfaction, as the members of it, whether magistrates or doctors, would he influenced, or exposed to the suspicion of being influenced, by prejudices or by the solicitations of friends. He would therefore urge upon the right hon. Baronet to give that circumstance his consideration, and to endeavour to frame a clause upon a system which would admit of a proper investigation being made in cases where insanity had supervened upon capital conviction. There was another subject to which he wished to allude. The eighth section of the 23 & 24 Vict, gave the Secretary of State, in the cases of ordinary prisoners, the opportunity of discharging those prisoners after the expiration of their sentence, to the intent "that they should be sent to lunatic asylums." This seemed to him almost to contain a contradiction in terms, because those persons remaining insane, to use the term discharge, implied a contradiction. It appeared to him that they should be removed to their legal settlement, the counties from whence they came; and a few words inserted in the clause would meet that object, and the country would be saved the enormous expense of keeping, for an indefinite time, a great number of persons, no longer criminal, in the confinement provided for criminal lunatics.
  SIR FITZROY KELLYsaid, they were called upon to amend the law in relation to criminal lunatics, and before they proceeded in the execution of that task it would be well to consider the course of legislation and the state of the law as it then existed. If the common law had been left untouched to its own unaided operation, he believed they should have avoided many of the evils and mischiefs of which they now complained. By the common law no man could be found guilty of an offence when it appeared that he was a lunatic at the time of the commission of that offence. If put upon his trial, and it appeared that he was then insane, the trial was at once stopped, and proceedings were adopted which allowed an opportunity for further and ultimate inquiry. The common law in such cases was assisted and carried into practical effect by the 39 & 40 Geo. III., by which, when a man was put upon his trial and found insane, a verdict of acquittal was to be pronounced, but power was given to the Crown to keep the lunatic in such custody as might be thought expedient during the pleasure of the Sovereign. If it were sug-
  584
  gested that insanity existed at the time of the trial, an appeal must be made to the jury; and if the jury found the prisoner insane then a verdict was recorded of insanity, and no verdict was pronounced with regard to the commission of the offence or the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, in whose case proceedings were afterwards taken at the pleasure of the Crown, according to the exigencies of the case. The law continued in that state until the 56 Geo. III., passed in the year 1816. The law had already provided for cases of insanity at the time of the offence, and at the time of the trial, but no provision, at least no express provision, had been made otherwise than by the common law for insanity supervening after the trial and before the execution of the sentence. Accordingly, by the 56 Geo. III., and afterwards by the 9 Geo. IV., it was enacted that where the prisoner convicted of any offence should appear to have become insane after the conviction, and before the carrying out of the sentence, then an inquiry was to be made by the justices, and upon the report of the justices to the Secretary of State that the prisoner had become insane, the Secretary of State had to deal with the case, and send him to a lunatic asylum, with the result that if he recovered he might be remitted to custody and the sentence carried out; or he might be pardoned and liberated. But throughout the whole of these Acts of Parliament no attempt was made, and no suggestion that he was aware of was offered in either House of Parliament, that it was expedient to empower those occasional and limited tribunals to deal either with cases of capital conviction, followed by sentence of death, or with cases in which insanity was alleged to have existed, at the commission of the offence, or at the time of the trial. But in 1840 the Act was passed which they were called upon to amend, and for the first time the Legislature assented to an extraordinary provision, the effect of which, incredible as it might appear, was to enable any two justices, with the aid of two medical men, by a decision of their own, by a proceeding conducted in secret, without the administration of an oath, without an opportunity being given to the prosecutor or the Crown to cross-examine the witnesses, or to contradict or explain the evidence, to set aside and nullify the verdict of a jury, the judgment of the Judge, and even the decision of the Secretary of State himself.
  It was necessary, in the next place, to

  585
  consider what the Act before them provided. They had heard something of late in that House about special pleading; but if the most astute special pleader had been instructed to draw a statute calculated to create litigation, doubt, error, and confusion without end, he could not have better performed his task than in framing the statute after the model of 1840. That statute was full of errors, and some of those errors were not corrected by the Bill under consideration. He had pointed out that under the Act of 39 & 40 Geo. IV., and the subsequent statutes passed in that reign, no power was given either to justices of the peace or to medical men, by any secret process whatever, to interfere with the verdict of a Judge and jury. It was the Act of 1840 which conferred jurisdiction on two magistrates and two medical men, and constituted a secret and unseen tribunal. That great and fundamental error was continued in the proposed measure. Whatever might be the right construction of the present Act, whether it rendered it imperative or only permissive on the part of the Secretary of State to remove the prisoner to a lunatic asylum, the words providing for what was to be done afterwards were clear and unambiguous. Then it was made compulsory on the Secretary of State, and on the keepers of the asylum, that the prisoner, once removed there, should remain in the asylum until a medical certificate was obtained, that he had become sane again—that is, had recovered his soundness of mind. What was the effect of that as applied to Townley's case? Having once directed Townley to be transferred to the lunatic asylum, the Secretary of State had no legal power to send him back to prison, except upon a certificate such as had not been, and as under the circumstances could not be, given. The certificate testified that he was now sane, not that he had "become sane;" for to "become sane" obviously implied that he had previously been insane. He did not blame the right hon. Gentleman for the course lie had pursued in that case, although he believed that if the right hon. Gentleman, with his great legal knowledge and ability, had been guided by his own unaided and unbiassed judgment, he would have concluded that the words of the Act did not make it imperative on him to transfer Townley to a lunatic asylum. He had, however, so transferred him, acting upon the precedents and traditions of the Home Office; and, having done that, the right hon.
  586
  Gentleman had again no other alternative but to send the prisoner back to his former custody upon a medical certificate, not that he had recovered his sanity—for he could not recover what he had not lost—but that he was sane, which was not what the Act contemplated. Now, the Bill before the House provided no remedy for the great and most important error in the Act of 1840. It only proposed to leave it discretionary with, instead of making it compulsory upon, the Secretary of State to act upon the original certificate of two magistrates and two medical men. He believed that capital cases must have crept into the existing Act entirely per incuriam, for that Act for the first time gave jurisdiction to a secret tribunal to interfere with the verdict of a jury. If they were to exclude capital cases from the operation of the Act, and to limit the discretionary power vested in the Secretary of State to cases of felony and minor offences, no great mischief would ensue should a prisoner happen to be certified to be insane when he was really sane. Either the right hon. Gentleman and every future Secretary of State would, in capital cases, determine whether or not a prisoner was insane, in which event the whole machinery of the Bill would be superfluous and useless; or he and they would adopt the certificate, setting aside the verdict of a jury, the judgment of a Judge, and perhaps the decision, as in the Townley case, of persons competent to decide and actually deciding that the prisoner was not suffering from any species of insanity which absolved him from responsibility for his acts. The proper course was to exclude capital cases altogether from the Bill, as was done in all the Acts preceding the statute of 1840.
  With respect to the case of Townley, he would make a few remarks, and he did so not for the purpose of throwing the slightest reflection on the right hon. Baronet, or upon any of the parties concerned, but with the view of showing, that so long as the law allowed the Secretary of State a power of supervision—under the pretext (and he said that without wishing to give offence) of exercising the Royal prerogative of mercy—so long would the law be ill-administered, unsatisfactorily executed, and be exercised in a manner repugnant to the principles of the constitution. What had occurred in the case of Townley? A heinous murder was committed, the accused was put upon his trial before a very competent and intelligent jury, and before a Judge whom all agreed in praising for his great

  587
  knowledge of the law and for his humanity. After a long and solemn trial the jury pronounced a verdict of guilty, the Judge was satisfied with that verdict, and the prisoner was sentenced to death; but in consequence of a communication from the learned Judge, the right hon. Baronet sent down the Lunacy Commissioners to inquire into the prisoner's sanity. But here he (Sir FitzRoy Kelly) would insist that no distinction could be satisfactorily drawn as to the insanity which should absolve, or the sanity which should condemn, a prisoner, except before a Judge and jury. The Report of the Commissioners, disfigured by a great deal of verbiage, which he regretted to see in it, was, in substance, that the prisoner was sane and ought to be held responsible for his acts. The Lunacy Commissioners saw no reason why the sentence should not be executed, and the right hon. Gentleman, agreeing with the Judge, with the jury, and with the Lunacy Commissioners, expressly said that he was not disposed to interfere. Then came the certificate, and the right hon. Gentleman, without inquiring as to who set the proceedings in motion which led to the prisoner's certificate of insanity, without inquiring whether it was the prisoner himself or his attorney who named and feed the medical men who signed the certificate, made himself the mere minister of that secret and unconstitutional tribunal, and at once sent his warrant to remove the prisoner to an asylum. The right hon. Baronet told the House, that by the force of precedent and the usage of the Home Office, a prisoner once sent to a lunatic asylum under warrant— no matter how procured—could not afterwards be executed. He urged this upon the House, not for the purpose of imputing a shadow of blame to the Secretary of State, but of showing the unconstitutional and mischievous character of the Home Office jurisdiction. He trusted that jurisdiction would soon be put an end to, and with that object he should shortly ask leave to introduce a measure, by which the great question of life or death should be referred to the true, constitutional, and legal tribunal —a Judge and jury. Throughout the suggestions which had fallen from hon. Members in the course of the discussion, that appeal to a Judge and jury was pointed at. In order to avoid the absurdity of acting on the certificate sent up from the country, the right hon. Gentleman was obliged to send four medical men to examine Townley in the asylum, and they reported not that
  588
  the prisoner had become sane, which was what the Act of Parliament required, but that Townley was then sane. That, to his mind, was proof conclusive that the Act never contemplated conferring such powers on two justices, and that a discretion was left to the Secretary of State in the matter. The Bill before them repeated the original vice in the former Act, for under it two visiting justices, with any two medical men they might select, would have the power, in a case of life and death, of setting aside the verdict of a jury. He should object to that clause, and he trusted that when the House went into Committee the provisions of his own measure would be before the Committee. It would then be for the House to say, whether the duty of deciding in such cases should rest with the Secretary of State, or whether it should be decided by a Judge and jury, whose verdict would he conclusive on all such questions. Until the whole system of capital punishments was entirely abolished, they would not be able to get a complete remedy. Until the time should come—and he trusted it might soon come—when capital punishments would be altogether abolished, and when they might impose on criminals the next severest punishment — namely, an effective condemnation for life—these unseemly questions must arise. Till then it was their duty to look at the statute hook and consider how best they could provide for justice being done. But he trusted that they would not, by passing the Bill in its then shape, perpetuate the fundamental error which had led to all the mischief— the error of including prisoners under sentence of death in a measure relating to cases of ordinary felony and misdemeanor, and which had led to that popular dissatisfaction which, with some exaggeration and much injustice, had been thrown upon the right hon. Baronet.
  MR. M'MAHONsaid, he wished to make only one remark, that all such cases as they were discussing were provided for by the New York code, which required cases of lunacy, occurring after conviction, to be tried by a Judge and jury.
  MR. ALDERMAN ROSEobserved, that he could bear testimony to the anxiety always manifested by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Home Office, to perform his duties in all such cases with fairness and impartiality. But during the discussion of the celebrated case of Townley, another case of murder had occurred, to which public attention had been directed,

  589
  and which, by its different conclusion, had given rise to the impression that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. The second murder was one of a very mild character; and, looking to those crimes which had escaped capital punishment, it might he considered that if the wretched man Wright had had anyone to advise him to plead not guilty, or to have obtained the postponement of the trial, he would not have suffered death. It should be understood that there was only one law for the rich and the poor, but he was satisfied that the working classes throughout the country entertained a strong impression that this poor man—who committed the murder on a Sunday, in a state of semi-intoxication, and possibly in the heat of passion, when provoked by a violent, exasperating woman, who, when apprehended the following morning, was so penitent that he confessed his crime, and who, when brought to trial on the Wednesday, persisted in his plea against the advice of every one in the Court, the trial following so closely the commission of the act that the first impression had not left him—would not have been executed if he had been well advised. There were extenuating circumstances in that case, and it was not surprising that when this man was hung, while another, a rich man, who deliberately planned and carried into effect the coldest-blooded murder that was ever committed, escaped, that amongst the unthinking classes there should be an impression that the rich man was more favoured than the poor. He should be unwilling to make medical men the sole judges in cases of insanity. He happened to be High Sheriff of London and Middlesex, when several important trials came before the Court, including the Palmer case, in which the medical evidence occupied fourteen days. The right hon. Gentleman had suggested that such questions should be left to a medical tribunal, but experience showed them that any amount of medical evidence was to be procured on either side. If it were necessary to have the opinions of medical men as to the soundness of a prisoner's mind, they ought to be submitted to a jury under the direction of a Judge, who might be able to distinguish between the niceties arising upon the question; and independent jurymen should be called on to say "ay" or "no" upon the point. Upon the decision of such a tribunal only would the country be satisfied whether the prisoner was responsible or not. It was
  590
  argued that the difficulty in carrying out any suggestion of the kind was, that a man could not be twice placed in peril of his life for one offence; but that would not be the case, for the man's life was already forfeited before the question of sanity would be tried. With respect to the question raised by another hon. Gentleman, his experience as a public man led him to believe that it would be a great calamity if when a life had been taken by a murderer, his life should not be required.
  SIR GEORGE GREY: Before I notice the remarks that have been made in debate, I must express my thanks, not only for the fairness with which this Bill has been discussed, but also for the justice, candour, and, I will add, generosity, with which my conduct has been regarded in the case out of which the necessity for this Bill arose. I think it undesirable, on this occasion, to discuss the question of capital punishment, or to go into the ca3e to which the hon. Alderman has referred. I will only just say that in what he has said he has appeared to cast a grave imputation on a learned Judge by complaining that the trial was not postponed. If that learned Judge, with all the facts before him, had thought there would have been the slightest injustice to the prisoner in proceeding, he would have postponed the trial.
  MR. ALDERMAN ROSE: I did not intend to cast any imputation on the learned Judge. What I said was, that an impression was created out of doors that injustice had been done.
  SIR GEORGE GREY: I hope the hon. Gentleman does not share that impression. [Mr. ALDERMAN ROSE: Not at all.] With respect to the various suggestions that have been made, I should be sorry to express a very decided opinion upon them till the Bill is in Committee, though they have all been considered by us. The main suggestion made by the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Hardy) is this, that capital cases which were brought within the provisions of the law for the first time by 3 & 4 Vict. should no longer be subject to the same rule as other cases. But I must remind the House that the 3 & 4 Vict, did not merely include capital cases, and that without consideration, but it included, clearly and deliberately, the case of every criminal, not only the highest, but the lowest—all cases, in fact, except of prisoners confined on civil process. It also included cases of prisoners charged with an offence who have never been put upon

  591
  their trial, but become insane before the time of their trial. I thought there were good reasons for including every class of prisoners in the same provisions, the effect of which would be to remove them from prison to an asylum where they might be not only in a place of safety, but where, with a view to their recovery, they might be properly cared for. The principal object of the Act was to insure the removal of pauper lunatics and prisoners from the workhouse on the one hand, and the prison on the other, to asylums with a view to their proper treatment. It has been said that there ought not to be any certificate from either visiting justices or medical men, as the effect of such certificate was to reverse the solemn verdict of a jury, which ought not to be done except upon an inquiry equally public and equally solemn.
  But the real question is not whether the verdict of the jury is right. The verdict only decides that at the time of the commission of the offence the prisoner was of sound mind. In the case of Townley there were five months between the time the offence was committed and the trial. The trial took place in December, and the offence was committed in July. There was no question before the jury as to the state of Townley's mind at the time of the trial; the question was, whether he was sane when he committed the offence? The evidence adduced did not profess to go to this extent, that the prisoner was insane at the time the crime was committed; the witnesses merely spoke of the prisoner's state of mind at the time they gave their evidence; and the learned Judge subsequently called attention in a marked way to that evidence, as showing that the prisoner might have become insane since the commission of the offence. In the case of Clarke, tried at Newcastle two years ago, before Mr. Justice Willes, the prisoner was convicted, and rightly convicted in the Judge's opinion, having been of sound mind at the time he committed the crime; but doubts arose in the Judge's mind as to the actual state of Clarke's mind at the time he was being tried. The Judge, in summing up the evidence to the jury, told them however insane the prisoner may have been at the time of the trial, the jury had no right to acquit him on the grounds of insanity unless he was insane when the crime was committed. Therefore, the investigation as to the insanity of the prisoner at the time of, or subsequently to,
  592
  the trial does not at all involve the assumption that the verdict is wrong or overrides the verdict. If the hon. Gentleman takes the trouble to read my letter to the Lunacy Commissioners, he will find that I excluded from the scope of the investigation any inquiry as to the state of Townley's mind at the time of the trial, and limited it to the question raised by the Judge, whether he had since become insane? Any inquiry that takes place subsequent to the verdict is with that view. It is not a reversal of the verdict, therefore, but, according to the common law of England, has the effect of interposing between the judgment and the execution. It has been suggested that the visiting justices in capital cases should not sign a certificate, having called in medical men to make an inquiry, but that they should write to the Secretary of State to inform him that they believe the prisoner to be insane, and that some public inquiry ought to take place. In introducing this Bill I explained the reasons why it was thought better the visiting justices should call in two medical men to make an inquiry, and obtain their certificate before any subsequent steps are taken. It is an undoubted fact that there is a great anxiety on the part of many persons throughout the country to rescue a man from capital punishment, and great exertions are made for that purpose. No doubt a very great pressure would be put upon the visiting justices if they were authorized, without going through the form of an inquiry, or without any medical advice, to write to the Secretary of State suggesting that the prisoner was insane; and if that was sanctioned by law, and the Secretary of State authorized to make an inquiry, there is no case in which he would not be bound to institute such inquiry, as the pressure would be irresistible. We therefore thought it better there should be some solemn and deliberate act on the part of the visiting justices and medical men previous to setting the Secretary of Stale in motion. The hon. Member for Northamptonshire (Mr. Hunt), would not allow any prisoner to be considered insane without a solemn inquiry before Judge and jury. My objection to such an inquiry is that it would take a long time, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leominster, that this would interfere with the administration of justice. If this inquiry is to be final, I quite admit it ought not to be couducted exclusively by medical men; but the mode proposed by the hon.

  593
  Gentleman might not lead to a more satisfactory result than the inquiry by the Lunacy Commission in this case, which was conducted by two laymen and one medical man, while the subsequent inquiry by four medical men was much more conclusive. If there was to be a public inquiry, the only course to take would be, where there was primâ facie evidence of insanity, to respite the prisoner, and then before a Judge and jury to carry on the inquiry. But then it should be borne in mind that great delay would be inevitable, and all the consequences of delay must follow. Taking all these circumstances into account, it was fully considered by the Lord Chancellor and myself, that it would be better, on the whole, to leave all the increased responsibility upon the Secretary of State, as to whether he would be justified in interfering to prevent the execution of the sentence or allowing it to take place, and to leave also to him to determine by whom any further inquiry should be made. At the same time, I should be better pleased to leave this point for further consideration in Committee.
  With regard to the want of confidence expressed in the visiting justices, if that consideration is to prevail it comes very much to this—that they ought not to be charged with the responsible duties devolving on them, and thus the principle is involved of placing the administration of our gaols in the hands of a central authority. As to the question put by an hon. Gentleman (Mr. D. Seymour) whether it would be competent, under the last clause of the Bill, for the Government to order the execution of a person who having been removed to a lunatic asylum under the Bill should afterwards be certified to be sane, there can be no doubt that under this clause, and under the existing law also, the Secretary of State would be justified, technically and legally, in directing the sentence to be carried into effect; but, as I said on a previous occasion, there is no instance of that having been done. The hon. Baronet opposite (Sir George Bowyer), had asked a question as to the fact of the registration of the surgeons, which might have turned out to be of some importance. It was a fact, that one of the medical men who had signed the petition in Townley's case was not registered as a surgeon, though he was registered under the Act; but, as I have said before, having communicated with the Lord Chancellor, and taken, into considera-
  594
  tion the fact that he had acted for forty-three years as a surgeon, and that he had been frequently in the habit of signing such certificates, we came to the conclusion that the certificate was correct. Had the Commission, which I afterwards appointed, certified that the prisoner was insane, a question might possibly have been raised as to the validity of the removal under the certificate, but that question cannot arise now. To make the matter perfectly clear for the future, this Bill provides that the physician or surgeon signing the certificate must be registered as such under the provisions of the Medical Registration Act. The hon. and learned Member for Clare (Sir Colman O'Loghlen), alluded to the state of the law in Ireland and Scotland. I am quite aware of the provisions of the law in both those countries; but if I had attempted to make the law uniform in the three kingdoms it would have involved the consolidation of a great many statutes, would have occupied a great deal of time, and would have made it impossible to apply the prompt remedy which was needed. In Scotland and Ireland there are no visiting justices. The law in Scotland is very similar to what it now will be in England. The certificate must be given by the sheriff, who is a judicial officer; there is, therefore, no fear of his being set in motion by any improper influence; and he is instructed to call to his aid physicians and surgeons. In Ireland, there is clearly a discretion left to the Lord Lieutenant. But I am quite ready to admit that the whole subject of criminal lunatics is not in a satisfactory state. The review of the whole law would be very desirable, but it would have to be preceded by a protracted inquiry. This improvement of the law will not in the least degree prevent the consolidation of the various existing Acts, so as to render the law as uniform as the different machinery existing in the three kingdoms will allow. There seems to be a general concurrence in the second reading of the Bill, and I shall say no more than that in Committee I shall he ready to consider any suggestions which may be made by hon. Gentlemen; and I hope, that at no distant period, we shall see the law placed on a footing which will effectually prevent the repetition of any such case as that which has recently occurred.
  Motion agreed to.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Friday.

CONVEYANCERS, &c. (IRELAND) BILL.

  [BILL 5.] SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. O'HAGAN (THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND)said, he would shortly explain the objects of the Bill. The certificated conveyancers were a body of professional men who were largely consulted on matters of business in Ireland, and the sole test of whose position was that they had taken out a certificate. It was manifestly of the highest importance that these persons should be properly qualified for their duties. By a late statute, the 22 & 23 Vict. c. 157, persons who were conveyancers in England were not permitted to receive certificates unless accompanied by an order or permission from the benchers of an inn of court, and he proposed by the measure to assimilate the law of Ireland to that of England. A regulation of that sort, indeed, was more needed in Ireland even than in England. In this country, conveyancers properly so called were always barristers below the bar. In Ireland the certificated conveyancers were in many cases solicitors' clerks and other uneducated persons often of a very humble position. He therefore proposed that conveyancers should not only have the certificate for which they paid, but an order from the benchers of the King's Inns in Ireland, who should have an opportunity of arranging the conditions upon which that order should be obtained. The object of the Bill was to prohibit persons from practising as conveyancers without having, in addition to the certificate, an order from the benchers of the King's Inn at Dublin.
  MR. M'MAHONsaid, the effect of the Bill, he thought, would be considerably to lessen the number of persons practising as certificated conveyancers in Ireland, and thus limit the number of advisers to whom the public might look for assistance in legal matters. He would therefore suggest to his hon, and learned Friend to extend the provisions of the measure by enabling any person who had obtained a certificate from any inn of court in England to practise as a conveyancer in Ireland. In the second clause, he found a provision which he thought very dangerous. If that clause became law no one could draw a lease in Ireland under a penalty of £20, unless he were an equity draftsman, a pleader, a certificated conveyancer, an attorney, or a solicitor. He (Mr. M'Mahon) should move the rejection of that clause in Committee.
  MR. GEORGEthought the hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced the Bill deserved great credit for endeavouring to remedy what had long been considered a great grievance, and he concurred in thinking it desirable that power should be given to the benchers in Ireland to define the proper qualifications for persons who desired to practise as conveyancers and equity draughtsmen. He had received communications from persons in Ireland connected with every branch of the legal profession, and they highly approved the introduction of the Bill.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Friday, 26th February.

MALT FOR CATTLE BILL.— [BILL 6]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Moved, "That the Bill be read the second time."
  SIR HENRY STRACEYsaid, that he could not allow the Bill to be passed without making a few comments upon the measure; because he should not like his constituents to suppose that he received the Bill in the same way as the majority of the speakers who had, on a former occasion, addressed the House upon it. His hon. Friend the Member for East Suffolk, had thanked the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the great benefits which the Bill would confer upon the agricultural interest, and other hon. Members had spoken in a similar strain. He could not himself coincide with those hon. Members; for, in his opinion, the Bill was nothing more than a sop given to close the mouth of the farmer, who justly complained of the burdens on land. He believed that the credulity of hon. Members had been practised upon, when they were induced to believe that great advantage would be derived from the Bill. The hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass), however, was one who did not think that there would be any great benefit to the farmer; and he also said that he thought that the revenue would be injured. The hon. Member further added, that he had had a correspondence with Professor Liebig, who was by no means an advocate for the measure, and another hon. Member had read the Professor's letter, as to the blood-making and fattening qualities of malt. But the utmost encouragement which Professor Liebig gave wag that malt might possibly be easier of

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  digestion than barley, and might, therefore, be of a more fattening quality. All the matter lay in a nutshell—was it worth the farmer's while to malt his barley? He declared that it was not. The best barley the farmer could sell at a remunerative price, and consequently he would not malt that; and as for inferior barley the farmer could now by grinding and mixing it with oilcake, turn it, at a most trifling cost, to a useful purpose in feeding pigs and cattle. In his opinion it was thus turned to a better account than the farmer would secure from building malting houses, and placing himself under the supervision of the excise. He conceived it to be absurd to talk of danger to the revenue from the Bill, because he believed that little or none of this malt would be made. Still, he would vote for the second reading, because he regarded it as a perfectly innocent and harmless measure. It was a mere ministerial mixture, intended to throw dust in the eyes of the farmers; and to cause them, at the next general election, to look favourably upon the candidates who supported the Ministry which had brought in the measure. He gave the right hon. Gentleman much credit for his address in introducing the Bill.
  MR. BRISCOEsaid, he for one thanked the right hon. Gentleman for the introduction of the measure. He had always thought it a great hardship on the British farmer that he was unable to malt a particular produce of his land for fattening his own cattle; and therefore he considered that the Government had acted well in introducing this Bill, if merely as an experiment. He could only say that one of his constituents, whom he happened to meet very recently, spoke of the measure as a great boon, and expressed a hope that, through its means, he should be able to fatten three oxen for every two, and five sheep for every three he now fattened.
  MR. PACKEsaid, in discussing the Bill they were placed under a disadvantage owing to the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had charge of it. He (Mr. Packe) was sorry not to see him in his place, but he hoped that some Member of Her Majesty's Government would report to the right hon. Gentleman what was said during the debate, and that he would consider the suggestions which Members might make for the improvement of the Bill. He looked upon the Bill as only a trifling mitigation of the burdens which
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  fell upon land; it was but a diminutive instalment of what the British farmer was entitled to. At a time when cereal produce was under a great depression, and the loss of cattle from disease had been very serious throughout the entire of England, the farmers might reasonably expect something more than duty-free malt for feeding their cattle. He would give the Bill his support on the second reading; but he wished to suggest that in the very title of it, and the words used throughout, there was a defect, which if it remained in its present shape would prevent the right hon. Gentleman from carrying out the entire object which he proposed to effect. It was called "The Malt for Cattle Bill." Now, cattle generally were taken to be beasts, and that definition excluded sheep, pigs, and farm horses. If the right hon. Gentleman proposed to extend the benefits of the Bill to farm stock generally, he ought not to use the word cattle, but ought, to avoid misapprehension, to substitute for it agricultural stock. If the right hon. Gentleman intended that all farm stock should be benefited, the alteration which he (Mr. Packe) suggested was only a verbal one, which did not affect the principle of the Bill.
  MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, he thought that hon. Gentlemen opposite rather undervalued the boon likely to be conferred upon the farmer by the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman. Many farmers who would otherwise be disposed, during the present low prices of corn and high price of meat, to try what they could do with their grain in feeding cattle, were now unwilling to boil and mix it for fear of a visit from the exciseman. The measure would enable such persons to experimentalize. He admitted, however, that as soon as the state of the revenue allowed, the agricultural interest had a right to something more than this concession. There was no reason why they should not then receive the total repeal of the malt duty; but meanwhile they ought to be obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, because science, when applied to agriculture, taught them that the more the produce of a farm was consumed upon the farm the better.
  MR. BENTINCK(the Chancellor of the Exchequer having just entered the House) said, if any proof were wanting of the very small importance which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to attach to the measure, it might

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  be found in the fact that he did not condescend to be present at the early part of the discussion upon it. He agreed with the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Pollard-Urquhart), that under free trade the very existence of a malt tax was an absurdity. Under a system of free trade it was a monstrous outrage on all justice. At the same time, he (Mr. Bentinck) could not admit that the right hon. Gentleman was entitled to receive the gratitude of the country for the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had misconceived the wants of the agriculturists in their agitation for the repeal of the malt duties. Aware of that agitation he had brought in the Bill; but what the agriculturists wanted was not this miserable measure. What they wanted was the total repeal of the malt duties. He did not say that this could be obtained for them now. This would be asking too much. But any measure which intervened to prevent such a result, was to be regarded by them as a hostile proceeding. He (Mr. Bentinck) ventured to anticipate that that hostile proceeding on the part of the Government would be taken, and he was not astray in his predictions. The right hon. Gentleman had tried what might be called a sop in the pan. But his sop in the pan would not answer the purpose for which it was intended. The right hon. Gentleman had been so determined an opponent to the interests of agriculture, that it was worthy of remark that he was now showing symptoms of leaning in an opposite direction. Now he (Mr. Bentinck) did not suppose the right hon. Gentleman had changed his nature; for though his opinions might change, his nature remained the same. The present change, however, was remarkable. The right hon. Gentleman had found himself compelled to admit the necessity for some alteration, and with the great ability and the great ingenuity for which the right hon. Gentleman was remarkable, he had set himself to find some mode of shelving the question of the repeal of the malt tax. That was the object of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman proposed to deal with certain restrictions, but it was not on the ground of restriction that those who attended anti-malt tax meetings complained. What they complained of was the entire nature of the tax. If the right hon. Gentleman supposed that by the paltry measure before the House he would palliate or mitigate the mischief, or conciliate those who suffered from the tax, he was greatly mistaken,
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  and he had mistaken the feeling of the country. There was another point in which he had mistaken the feeling of the country: it was that he proposed the intervention of that most objectionable person — the exciseman, in a more objectionable shape than ever. One of the things which rankled most in the minds of those who were affected by the malt duties was the intervention of the exciseman, and yet that was the very thing which was perpetuated by the Bill, and if it became law the farmer would be saddled with the exciseman in a more inconvenient and more inquisitorial manner than ever. In Committee the objections to the details would be more fully pointed out; but he must point out that the right hon. Gentleman, according to his usual practice, encouraged adulteration. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to like the adulteration of a pure commodity; his mind took that turn; and the process of adulteration was congenial to his feelings. The right hon. Gentleman had tried his hand at adulterating coffee, and was now about to try his hand on malt. But even that feature of the Bill would fail to meet the object which the right hon. Gentleman had in view. Moreover, the Bill, though it was described as an experimental one, threw upon the farmers such additional expenditure for new buildings, that nothing but the certainty that it would be permanent as well as advantageous would justify the outlay. Again, the Bill proposed to put every person who came under the benefit of the Bill in the position of a licensed maltster; but the House must ask the right hon. Gentleman to do away with that proposal. It was something, perhaps, that they had at last obtained from the right hon. Gentleman an admission of the injustice to which the agricultural interest was subjected by the retention of the malt duties. The hope was not almost desperate that they might look forward to the time when on other grounds their interests might be thought worthy of further consideration by the right hon. Gentleman. He was afraid, however, it was almost asking 100 much of the right hon. Gentleman. He believed that the present Bill, so far from being advantageous to the agricultural interest in its working, would do more harm than good; and if the right hon. Gentleman thought such a Bill would do away with the agitation for the repeal of the malt duty, he ventured to say that the right hon. Gentleman would be mistaken. So far from its being

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  a stop to agitation, it would add fuel to the flame. It was not, however, in that place that the battle must be fought—it was at the hustings. When the rural districts awoke to the fact that they required an enlarged representation, there would be some hope of redressing the grievances under which agriculturists laboured.
  SIR EDWA D DERINGsaid, he regretted to find that the Bill had not been appreciated at its full value by hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Gentleman who had just sat down appeared, from the general tenor of his observations, to have combatted it in a hostile speech, rather than to have accepted it as a boon, so far as it went, to the agriculturists. [Mr. BENTINCK: Hear, hear!] He thought there could be no doubt the Bill was a very fair instalment and indication that the right hon. Gentleman was disposed to favourably consider the claims of the agriculturists and give them relief. The Bill, in the first instance, proposed to relieve them from what had been considered for years as one of the most vexatious restrictions to which they could, by any possibility, be subjected. It would open out a fresh branch of manufacture, and in so doing it would add materially to their wealth, by giving a feeding quality to two-thirds of the barley produce of the country, which was now unavailable for brewing purposes. He was quite aware that a very wide difference of opinion existed between practical and theoretical men as to the amount of benefit which was likely to accrue from the conversion of barley into malt for feeding purposes, and there could be no doubt that until it had been largely tested no adequate reliable information could be obtained. He believed they might attribute, with justice, great efficacy to the feeding qualities of malt. It was well known that in the neighbourhoods of distilleries large quantities of cattle were taken in for the purpose of fattening upon the wash or refuse; and so high an opinion did prize cattle associations entertain of its fattening qualities, that in many instances they debarred candidates from feeding their animals upon it, in order that no unfair advantage should be taken of those who had not the means or the opportunity of availing themselves of it. If, therefore, distillers' refuse or wash was so valuable, of how much greater advantage would it be if agriculturists could avail themselves in feeding their cattle with malt retaining the whole of its inhe-
  602
  rent saccharine property. Mr. Fisher Hobbs, who was the winner of more prizes probably than any other living man, in a speech recently delivered at Lincoln, accounted for the superiority of his animals by stating that, whatever food he gave his cattle, he always topped them up with malt. So far as he had had an opportunity of judging, the present measure was likely to give general satisfaction to the agricultural community at large, and he hoped it would shortly become the law of the land.
  MR. MORRITTsaid, that they had a Liberal and Free Trade Government; they were in the enjoyment last year, and he hoped they would this year also have, a surplus of revenue over expenditure; and they were blessed with a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was always telling them how advantageous it was to mitigate taxation without destroying revenue. The right hon. Gentleman told them that the reduction of taxation did not always lead to a reduction of revenue, but on the contrary, of tenled to increase. Seeing these things—without going so far as his hon. Friend the Member for West Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck), he could not see why they should not forego two-fifths of the malt tax, and still not lose our revenue. He read in the report of a speech recently delivered by the President of the Board of Trade, that the country, in spite of all the distress under which we had been labouring for the last two or three years, was progressing steadily in wealth and prosperity. In 1861, he said, our exports were £113,000,000; in 1862, they were £115,000,000; and in 1863, notwithstanding the suffering from the cotton famine and the war in America, our exports were £130,000,000; therefore he could not say we were in any way badly off for money. It was, then, strange that with all those circumstances a free trade Government, a flourishing exchequer, and the country in the highest state of prosperity under such distressing circumstances they should maintain a tax which fell most heavily, he would almost say unjustly, on some particular classes. He was not standing there to badger or bully the Chancellor of the Exchequer, though from what he had seen of Parliamentary debates it was usual to do so, about everything he wished to do. He was willing to believe the right hon. Gentleman acted from a bonâ fide desire to do good, and to give him credit for looking to the welfare of the country; but he was often too clever and too ingenious for them, and he

  603
  thought he had been so in the present instance. He must, however, take exception to the Bill for its own sake. In the first place, he agreed with the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass) that it was a Bill that would certainly lead to fraud. It seemed to tempt the honest agriculturist, and he took it as a compliment to them, for this was a Bill that would almost make rogues of any set of men. The Bill must of necessity lead to fraud. A man went to an enormous expense in building a malthouse or converting a building into one, with his name painted on it in magnificent characters, as they had been told, showing that he was a licensed maltster; but how were they to know he mixed the one-tenth linseed with the malt unless they had a large staff of excisemen throughout the country? So far, then, from the Bill being a step in the right direction, in his opinion it would prove "a let-off, a hindrance, and a stumbling-block" in the road they wanted to go— namely, for a mitigation of the duty on malt. The laxity of the right hon. Gentleman the other night in conceding five years instead of three, was rather a proof of what he now asserted, because it would shut their mouths two years longer. The agriculturists were quiet, good-natured, easy-going people, not gifted with the eloquence of many representatives of large boroughs; and possibly the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in casting a retrospective glance over his past career, may have thought that perhaps he had not acted well towards the agriculturists, and owed them a good turn, and that although he had not taken off the duty on paper to curry favour with a particular class, yet he hoped if the agriculturists would pay fairly for a few years longer, he would be able to consider what he could do for them. The plan now proposed could not be carried out without promoting, and even encouraging, fraud. It would be easy to mix linseed with part of the malt only, and to sell the remainder for other purposes: and the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass), a good authority on the matter, had told them how easy it was to adulterate malt, and he also hinted a doubt whether the admixture of one-tenth of linseed with malt would make bad beer. Although this Bill might be thought by some persons to be a step in the right direction, yet he believed it to be a hindrance to further progress; and, so far from stopping the agitation, he thought it would increase until they had obtained the abolition, or at least the reduction, of the malt duty.
  MR. RICHARD LONGsaid, that whatever opinions might be entertained as to the exact value of the Bill before the House, there could be no doubt that it was a gallant and straightforward effort of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, to redeem the conditional pledge he gave last year to many hon. Members, leading agriculturists, and others, who came to him to press upon his attention the whole subject of the Malt Tax, and more especially the grievous injustice which this Bill was intended to remedy; and he, for one, begged to thank the right hon. Gentleman for so promptly redeeming his pledge. He confessed, however, that he was one of those who, when first hearing of the Bill, felt great surprise, not to say suspicion, considering the quarter from which it came. But the right hon. Gentleman would, perhaps, allow him to say, that it gave additional point to the old adage, that "it is never too late to mend;" and he hoped, that now the right hon. Gentleman had come out in a new character, the agriculturists might look, not in vain, for some of those "blessings" of which they had heard so much, but felt so little. But he would ask leave to recommend the right hon. Gentleman not to stop where he was, but manfully to grapple with the larger question of the Malt Tax. He was convinced it could be removed, by the substitution of a tax upon beer and a graduated scale of licences on brewing. If the right hon. Gentleman would seriously consider these suggestions, which he begged with all humility to offer, he was convinced that ho would be able—and never more easily than at present—to remove an unjust tax from the shoulders of one of the most loyal and deserving classes of Her Majesty's subjects, to cheapen the production of meat, and to satisfy hon. Members on both sides of the House, without material damage to the revenue.
  LORD ROBERT MONTAGUsaid, the debate had taken an impractical turn. The hon. Member for Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck), had called the tax a "monstrous absurdity," and had expressed his desire for a total repeal of it. Now, every tax was undoubtedly a hardship. Every tax necessarily lessened the luxuries of the poor and curtailed the income of the rich. It was therefore easy to make out a case of grievance against any tax. He should very much rejoice if the tax could be repealed, so that people might brew their beer at home, and drink it at home, instead of going to the public-house. But how was that to

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  be done? How were they to get rid of five millions of taxation? His hon. Friend had expressed a strong opinion the other evening against reducing the armaments, he would not consent to a redaction in the army or the navy; then how were they to get rid of taxation? Were they to put it on the income tax? If so, it would amount to another sixpence in the pound, and that would be found disagreeable, not only to the farmers, but to every other class of society also. An increase in the charge for licences and a duty upon beer had been suggested by the hon. Member who had just sat down. But the result of such measures would be to press upon the agricultural class, whom it was desired to relieve. A duty upon beer, or an increased duty on licences, would increase the price of beer. The money would still be paid by the consumer. He did not see how they could get rid of £5,000,000 of taxation, and those who desired to take a practical view, must not tell them to get rid of it, but show them how to find a suitable substitute for it. He was always amused to hear the hon. Member for Norfolk speak of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but on that occasion he had imputed most unworthy and undeserved motives to him. The right hon. Gentleman had received a deputation whose arguments appeared to have had no effect, until a farmer from Suffolk suggested the case of a man who had exported sheep from Cambridge to Boulogne; who had also exported malt, receiving the drawback of duty; and who had afterwards sent back the sheep when fattened to compete with the animals fattened in this country under the disadvantages of the malt duty. That point appeared to stagger the right hon. Gentleman, and no doubt he saw the real hardship of which he intended the Bill as a relief. There was one blemish in the Bill—the increased interference of the exciseman. One of the restrictions was, that a certain amount of linseed meal was to be mixed with the barley. How were they to know whether that was done? The exciseman must enter the house, and be ever on the watch. That was his only objection to the Bill. Additional excisemen would also be required to perform the duty, and that would create an additional expense. Again, if, as had been stated in the debate, cattle could be as well fattened on ground barley as upon malt, it was not easy to see the hardship which used so often to be complained of by the agriculturists. He thought they had made a mistake in
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  bringing under the consideration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer such an argument. For he had taken them at their word, and given them what they had claimed. He felt it desirable to trouble the House with these few remarks, and he trusted that they had been of a practical character.
  SIR FRANCIS CROSSLEYsaid, he believed that it was a mistake to suppose that the malt tax pressed unfavourably on the agricultural interest. He believed that it did not press upon the agricultural interest—but upon the consumers of malt; and such was the opinion of many eminent agriculturists. Wheat was being sold for almost what it cost to produce, while barley was a profitable crop. If the malt duty were repealed, inferior barley would be imported from the Continent to compete with English barley. With respect to the Bill before them, he believed that malting barley would not add to its qualities for feeding purposes, but it might add a quality which would render it more acceptable to cattle. The addition of a little malt would probably make other food a little more palatable to cattle, and there might be something in the saccharine matter to render its addition useful; but the representations he had received from Yorkshire maltsters led him to believe that their trade would be very much interfered with by the Bill. If they had to pay the duty on malt they feared they would find it very difficult to sell it against that which had not paid duty. As to the chance of fraud, would there not be found some riddles sufficiently fine to be put in requisition, so that what came through the sieve would do very well for fattening cattle, while what remained on the other side would do for beer? He feared the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he expected to have his revenue from malt undiminished, would be disappointed. He also thought farmers would be obliged to look sharply after the pockets of their labourers, as the tendency of the Bill would be to produce dishonesty in the country. Altogether, he looked on the measure with great suspicion. It was fraught with danger in many respects, and he certainly was not sanguine as to its results.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he had no intention of going into the general question of the malt duty, though it was a tempting subject after some of the observations that had been made. He should confine himself to the Bill before them, with one exception. It was not a very gracious thing to "look a gift horse in

  607
  the mouth," but he did not believe for a moment that the Bill would relieve the vexed question — and vexed it was — whether malt was or was not beneficial in feeding cattle. He did not believe the Bill would go at all to that point, and for this reason. No one would contend the difference was very great, and the various opinions expressed on all sides showed it could not be the case. He wished the Government had given them the result of the experiments which he believed were made last autumn—he believed they were made, but he might be misinformed. But what was the case? This malt must be manufactured as a specialty; it would be made in premises where nothing else was manufactured; it was also to be mixed with another article in a particular manner. For manufacturing such a specialty, a tradesman must have considerable profit, because he could not be certain of the amount of trade he would have. That would enhance the price of the article in addition to any provision he might make against the penalties which, doing anything under the direction of the excise, must necessarily carry with it. Therefore, the expense of malt so mixed would be greatly enhanced to what it would be if the trade was free. If the agriculturist were allowed to perform the process himself he would soon find out whether malt was best for feeding cattle, ground as now, and whether it should be given steeped or dry. The doing away of the malt credits had shut up a good many malt-houses, and farmers would have to pay through the nose for linseed. The maltster must get a profit, and he might mix some very curious articles with his malt instead of linseed. It was impossible to Bay what might be used. It was doubtful whether adulteration would not take place to a considerable extent, and if the cattle did improve by the feeding, it would be impossible to tell whether it was attributable to the malt or the linseed. An hon. Gentleman who spoke before him said the malt duty was a consumer's question. He would like to ask the hon. Gentleman if his constituency would like to have a tax on all produce that came out of their mills instead of a farthing being charged to each consumer. The malt tax was a consumer's as well as a producer's question, and it was difficult to tell in what proportion it affected the one or the other. This Bill might be of some advantage, he did not say whether it would or not; but the right hon. Gentleman could not expect—he would
  608
  be disappointed if he did—that the measure would tend to settle the question, which involved so large an amount of revenue.
  MR. MARSHsaid, he thought if the Bill did little good it would do no harm. The trade in malt, however, should be perfectly free. The article might be charged with duty only when made into beer. There might be a slight loss on the revenue in consequence of the measure, but he should not object to that, provided the people had good beer. He believed that the Bill would not cause much loss to the Exchequer. The machinery existed for levying the duty on malt when made into beer. All public brewers were bound to give notice to the excise when they were going to mash a quantity of malt, and no great difficulty could arise from the operation of the Bill. As to the objection that the Bill might lead to illegal brewing, it should be remembered that beer could not be brewed without giving to the surrounding country the smell of what was going on, and nothing could be so easy as to levy a tax on beer.
  MR. DUTTONsaid, he feared the measure would turn out to be a dead letter. At the same time, he gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer full credit for his good intention in introducing the Bill. The Bill provided for a great experiment—that of fattening cattle by means of malt. The first condition, however, of making an experiment was that it should not be expensive. But in the Bill there were eight conditions, any one of which was sufficient to deter a man from making the experiment. He should be inclined to call the Bill "A Bill to prevent the experiment from being made." Linseed cake was an article, the price of which varied from £5 to £12 or £13 per ton; it would, therefore, be at the option of the maltster to use a good article, or what was comparatively deleterious. He did not think that the Bill would afford much inducement to labourers to steal malt, for beer could not be made with it without the use of hops. He was not so sanguine of the beneficial result of the measure as many hon. Members seemed to be, but he should not oppose the second reading.
  SIR FITZROY KELLYsaid, he felt disposed to accept the Bill in a spirit of thankfulness. There were several provisions which were open to objection, but they could be dealt with in Committee. He submitted that it was not desirable that the Committee should be appointed at so early a period, as that hon. Members would be debarred from all opportunity of ascertaining the views and

  609
  opinions of those who were practically acquainted with the subject.
  MR. BARROWsaid, he also thought it was desirable that the discussion in Committee should be postponed till an opportunity was given to hon. Members for communicating with the practical men among their constituents. He thought that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to be thanked, not for introducing the measure, but for admitting that the farmer was hardly dealt with in not being permitted to use his own materials for the purposes of his own trade. The Bill, he was afraid, would not do much good. It was a bone thrown to a hungry dog, but there was little flesh on it. He wished to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he thought the provisions of his measure would operate as a prohibition on the excellent practice, followed in some places, of germinating barley without drying?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I shall begin by adverting to one or two points purely incidental and separate from the general discussion. The hon. Member for Nottinghamshire (Mr. Barrow) asked me whether this Bill involves a prohibition of that which is at present granted to all persons—namely, the power of carrying the conversion of their grain into malt up to a certain point, provided it does not proceed so far as kiln-drying. I am not aware that there is any reason why the liberty given by this Bill should interfere in any manner with any other liberty at present enjoyed under the regulations of the Excise. Then, the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) said he wished the Government had laid before the House the results of the experiments which have been made under their direction during the autumn, with respect to the use of malt in the feeding of cattle. The results of those experiments will be made known at the earliest possible period, but they are not at present in my hands. I am sure, however, that the right hon. Gentleman will feel that, whatever might have been the results of those experiments, unless they had amounted to an absolute negative—which they could not have done —they could not have constituted a reason why, on the grounds on which I have based this Bill, it would not have been my duty to submit it to the House. I have also been asked to allow further time before going into Committee. The day on which I had purposed going into Committee was next Wednesday week, that being a day
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  which is not at present much engaged with business; but I am entirely in the hands of the House, as I have no desire to press forward this Bill. There is no public interest connected with the Exchequer which requires me to hasten it, but my motive for not wishing to delay it too long was that when once Supply begins, which it must do next week, the Government will have but a limited portion of time at its command; and, for various reasons, I did not think it would be satisfactory to have unnecessary delay in passing the Bill into law. Therefore, I propose to appoint the Committee for Wednesday week; but, at the same time, if any general desire is intimated to me for postponement beyond that period, I shall not stand in the way of it. I am glad that this Bill has been so fully discussed, and that there has been so free an expression of opinion upon it. The Government has no reason to complain of the very courteous and indulgent manner in which the measure has been received in every quarter. I hope the House do not suppose that I have introduced it under any notion that it is to work a magical effect either in one direction or the other. In bringing forward the Bill, I did not endeavour to present it to the House with a nourish of trumpets, as a measure which was to be of wonderful and universal efficacy. I submitted it as an experiment which was worth trying, and which it was our duty to permit to be tried, provided we thought it could be tried without fatal risk to the revenue. That is the point in which I am chiefly interested, for if any serious evil were to accrue to the revenue I should undoubtedly hold myself deeply responsible. It is with reference to the interests of the Exchequer that the restrictions in the Bill have been introduced. Our desire has been to reduce those restrictions to the lowest point compatible with security. When we go into Committee, and the details of the restrictions are considered, it may be found that they may be still further amended; but as regards the substance of the Bill I should not be dealing fairly with the House if I were to bold out expectations that the provisions connected with the supervision of the Excise may be materially altered. Those provisions are essential in any experiment of this kind, if we are not to adopt the principle that all manipulation of malt shall be free, and that the revenue shall be raised on beer.
  Nothing could be more agreeable to a Chancellor of the Exchequer than to con-

  611
  vert the malt duty into a beer duty, provided he found it to be consistent with the essential demands of his office. More than one Chancellor of the Exchequer has looked anxiously at that question, and endeavoured to satisfy himself that the thing was practicable; but there have been several obstacles in the way, One has been the question of private brewing, and the difficulty of determining whether it would be possible to induce the community to pay duty upon beer brewed within the dwellings of private persons. That is a most serious difficulty. Recollect what happened in this House when we had the commutation of the hop duty under consideration. At that time I felt it to be my duty to the public brewers to propose that we should charge a licence for the use of hops in private breweries; but the proposal was generally objected to in this House. The brewers said they could dispense with it, and I was glad to withdraw it. Yet what was the nature of the licence duty I proposed on the use of hops? It was not a duty involving inquisition or supervision of any kind. It was a duty of a fixed amount, or rather of two fixed amounts, having no reference to the quantity of hops which each particular person might use, but founded entirely upon the rental of his premises, and rather being of the nature of an assessed tax. Yet even in that mild form the tax was generally objected to. How much more would it be objected to if we were to levy a duty upon beer brewed in the dwelling of a private gentleman? Such a duty could not be disposed of by a reference to rental. It would require minute supervision, and it would have to be regulated with reference to the quantity and strength of the beer.
  But there is another difficulty. It is felt on all hands that the supervision of the Excise is a burden and an impediment, if not a grievance, to trade. The wish of Parliament and the Government has always been to reduce that supervision to the minimum, to bring it to bear in as few cases as possible, and to make it operative upon as few persons as possible. What would happen if the malt duty were converted into a beer duty? Instead of having the Excise supervision established upon a body of some 7,000 or 8,000 maltsters, we should be obliged to fasten it upon 40,000 brewers, besides all those who brew in their own private premises. These are difficulties of a most formidable kind; and I cannot say that I am prepared to make a proposal
  612
  which I am afraid would only be to ask the House, to use an old homely phrase, to jump out of the frying-pan into the fire. Some hon. Gentlemen have threatened that under the operation of this Bill the malt duty may disappear; others again have warned me not to expect by means of this Bill to mitigate or get rid of the agitation for the repeal of the malt tax. Well, as regards security against loss to the revenue I hold myself responsible; but as to the agitation for the repeal of the malt tax, I have not felt it my duty to inquire what effect the measure might have on that agitation. Hon. Gentlemen will be perfectly free, if they choose, to continue in their old course on that subject. I am not very sanguine myself in the belief that the time is near at hand when a reduction of this duty can be brought about. It is impossible to forget, first, the enormous amount of revenue involved in this tax; and next, that still more weighty consideration, the amount of revenue levied from articles which come into competition with the product of malt. Upon beer we levy a duty amounting on the average to, perhaps, 20 or 25 per cent of the value; on spirits, a duty of 400 per cent; and on wine—and particularly on the description which competes with beer — a duty of, putting it moderately, from 50 to 100 per cent. Then, leaving strong liquors, take the case of tea. On tea we still levy a duty of not much less than 100 per cent, and also on the sugar mixed with it a duty of some 60 per cent. It is impossible, then, to say that the duty on malt can hold the first place in the demands for further reduction while it stands related in that manner to these competing duties, independently of the immense revenue raised from malt. There are some distinguished politicians in this House who in other respects have conferred great service on the country, and who hold that all Excise and Custom duties are bad, and that all our revenue ought to be obtained from direct taxation. I am sorry to say that I am not able to keep company with them on these matters.
  I will state to the House in a few words the history of this question, and how this Bill stands related to the general fiscal policy pursued of late years. For many years past there has been a fixed conviction, both on the part of the Legislature and of successive Governments, that it was desirable to get rid of the system of Excise wherever the thing was practicable. It is a fact in English history that the introduc-

  613
  tion of that system was odious to the community. And although things are borne from use which can hardly be borne when novel, yet I think it is a just, and certainly it has become an established principle for us to reduce to the utmost the operation of the Excise system on the production of commodities. To that principle I ascribe the abolition of the duties on soap, leather, bricks, glass, paper, and other articles. But there was a point at which we were obliged to stop. Our fiscal system absolutely involves the levy of large sums from strong liquors; and I do not pretend to see how that principle is to be eradicated from it. Nay, more, I frankly own I do not desire it. I do not speak of the use of beer as a practice which ought to be restrained by taxation; but, we must consider the use of beer in its connection with the tax on spirits; and I hold that it is not a bad policy to restrain the use of spirits by taxation up to the point at which you are met and counteracted by the smuggler. However, I do not think the Government of this country ever entertained the idea of being enabled to liberate spirits or even malt liquor from taxation. But we encounter this difficulty. First as regards spirits, because the tax on them is so much more onerous. Spirits are distilled not merely for ordinary consumption, but for the purposes of trade. There are various branches of industry in which the use of spirits is either essential or important; and the heavy duty on them was long felt by the manufacturer to be a grievance. We were met, as we were at many other points in our efforts to relieve foreign articles from Customs duty, by this argument from the home producer:— "My rival abroad produces an article with out paying a duty on the spirits he uses, whereas I am liable to a duty of 300 per cent on mine." Well, it happens that the resources of modern science have been enlisted in the service of the Government in these matters; and a department is now attached to the Board of Inland Revenue which I believe is deserving of our most implicit confidence. The business of that department is to try what can be done by the application of exact science to improve the machinery of taxation; and we can hardly tell how many improvements, how many relaxations of our fiscal system, is due to its operation. Ten or fifteen years ago it was proposed as a problem for that department to discover, if possible, a mode by which ardent spirits should be entirely
  614
  spoilt for the purposes of consumption as a beverage, and yet left in an efficient state for the purposes of manufacture. Under the late Mr. John Wood—one of the best of our civil servants—these inquiries were brought to their completion; and a Bill was introduced into this House to permit the use of methylated spirits in manufactures. That use is now made generally lawful, and, as a consequence, both the trade and the distiller have been benefited; and, on the other hand, our manufacturers are relieved from a grievous burden on an article employed in their industry. Well, precisely in the same way experiments have been lately made as to the free use of malt for feeding cattle. For a long time it had been a desideratum in the Revenue Department to discover a means by which some admixture might be made with malt of such a character as would render it in no degree less wholesome for feeding cattle and yet unavailable for beer. Hon. Gentlemen came to the House and said — and the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass), one of the greatest practical authorities, says—that the use of linseed cake, admixed with malt, would probably not disable malt from being employed in the production of beer. My answer to that is, that, while it would be the greatest presumption for me to offer any opinion of my own on such a question, I have great confidence, founded on the result of much experience, in the precision, the comprehensiveness, and the certainty of the results which have been come at by the chemical staff attached to the Inland Revenue Board. In the case of methylated spirits the difficulty was exceedingly great, because, whereas the premium upon evading the law in regard to malt will be some 30 or 40 per cent, that in respect to methylated spirits was 300 or 400 per cent, and yet the difficulty was successfully overcome. In the case of tobacco, again, with which this House dealt last year, similar results have been attained through the skill and knowledge of the scientific department. Well, admitting the present Bill to be an experiment, but being assured by those whose duty it is to advise us, and whom, judging from former experience, we think we can trust, that we may allow this freedom to the farmer in feeding his cattle without any appreciable risk to the revenue, we could not stand in our places and look in the face those who ask for this remission without saying that we are prepared to make the experiment. That is the long

  615
  and the short of the matter. It is not for me to say whether this privilege will be embraced extensively or not; but I confess that I am more sanguine than the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley). I do not believe, from the information I have obtained, that the expense attending this experiment will be so great as the right hon. Gentleman supposes; and, moreover, I have seen so much suppleness, ingenuity, and resource on the part of the British tradesman where he has an object to accomplish, that I know he often makes light of obstacles which to others may seem insurmountable. I confess that I think the Report read to us the other evening from so high an authority as Baron Liebig goes to show that the experiment will be worth the making. Since that Report was read I have had a communication from a gentleman, perhaps second to Baron Liebig—I mean Dr. Lyon Playfair, who takes exactly the same ground, and admits, that while the effect of malting barley is to diminish the sanguifying ingredients, on the other hand it makes them more soluble and accessible; and therefore, either with reference to feeding as a whole, or with reference to feeding in certain states of the animal, or in combination with other articles of food, this process may produce, if not a primary, at least a very important secondary article of diet for cattle. I think the experiment is, at all events, one of sufficient importance to make it well worth trying, and one to which it was our duty to invite the sanction of the House.
  MR. BENTINCK, in explanation, said, that he had never stated that he was going in for a repeal of the whole of the malt duty. He had objected to the Bill on various grounds, as he thought it would not have the effect of putting a stop to the agitation for the repeal of the malt tax. He, however, distinctly stated his belief, that under present circumstances, the repeal of the malt tax was wholly impossible until the rural districts had obtained a full share of Parliamentary representation.
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give a full opportunity to the intelligent farmers of England to express their opinions on this measure.
  Motion agreed to.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Wednesday, 24th February.

COLLECTION OF TAXES BILL.

  [BILL 7.] SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read the second time."—(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
  SIR BALDWIN LEIGHTONremarked, that he did not think sufficient provision was made for special meetings of the Commissioners.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he did not see any sufficient provision for the supplemental assessments and surcharges. There was a strict machinery for the assessments, which were to be handed over to the collector between April and Michaelmas. The supplementary assessments were going on through the winter quarters, and he did not see any provision to meet these difficulties.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he agreed with the hon. Member for Shropshire, that there ought to be a provision for special meetings of the Commissioners, or for the purpose of allowing a longer period for those meetings. The general effect of the clauses would be to produce a great improvement. The assessments would be made with greater rapidity, and sufficient time would be given for the appeals, which would be heard before the collection took place, whereas now they could not be heard before the collection became due, and therefore the parties appealing had to go through another process—that of getting back their money if the appeals were allowed.
  Motion agreed to.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Friday, 18th March.

WAREHOUSING OF BRITISH SPIRITS BILL.

  LEAVE. FIRST READING.
  Warehousing of British Spirits,—considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he wished to move for leave to bring in a Bill "to amend the laws relating to the warehousing of British and Foreign spirits duty free." The Bill was intended for the accommodation of trade.
  Motion agreed to.
  Resolved,
  "That the Chairman be directed to move the House, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Laws relating to the Warehousing of British Spirits."
  Resolution reported.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, Mr. PEEL, and Sir WILLIAM DUNBAR.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 19.]

  INSOLVENT DEBTORS BILL.
  Bill to facilitate the discharge of Insolvent Debtors in certain cases, ordered, to be brought in by Mr. PAULL, Mr. JOHN LOCKE, and Mr. M'MAHON.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 20.]

  FORFEITURE OF LANDS AND GOODS BILL.
  Bill to abolish the Forfeiture of Lands and Goods on convictions of Felony, ordered to be brought in by Mr. CHARLES FORSTER, Mr. WILLIAM EWART, and Mr. LOCKE KING.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 21.]

  WATCHING OF TOWNS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Bill to provide for the better Watching of Towns in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Sir HERVEY BRUCE, Sir FREDERICK HEYGATE, and Captain STACPOOLE.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 22.]
  House adjourned at half after Ten o'clock.