Commons Sitting of 6 June 1866

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Hundred Bridges* [178]; County Assessments * [1791; Public Health * [180]; Dogs * [181].
Second. Reading—Real Estate Intestacy [69], negatived.
Referred to Select Committee—Local Government Supplemental (No. 2) (re-comm.) * [150].
Third Reading—Fallows of Colleges Declaration [26], debate adjourned.

HOLDERNESS EMBANKMENT AND RECLAMATION BILL— [Lords]—(by Order.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. NORWOOD, in moving that the Bill be read a second time this day six months, said, that its promoters sought powers to enclose some 4,000 acres of the foreshore of the River Humber, by means of a large stone wall. An immense quantity of tidal water amounting to 56,000,000 of cubic yards would thus be excluded, and the effect of this would be so to narrow the channel of the river, that fresh sandbanks would accumulate at its mouth and that the sandbanks now in existence would be enlarged. The measure was opposed solely on public grounds by the Humber Conservancy Commissioners, a body created in 1852 by Act of Parliament for the purpose of preserving and conserv-

  1971
  ing the navigation of the river. At high water the foreshore it was proposed to enclose formed a safe fishing ground for small craft; moreover, it was very certain that the wall would form an obstruction to ships making for the port. The promoters declared that the wall would strengthen Spurn Point. This, however, their opponents denied, and, in his opinion, private persons should not be permitted, simply for their own profit, to endanger the navigation of the river. The Board of Trade had reported against the Bill, and he trusted it would not be sanctioned by the House.
  MR. CLAYseconded the Motion.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Norwood.)
  MR. WATKINsaid, the hon. Member for Hull had forgotten the important fact that the authorities of the port of Grimsby, who were interested in the preservation of the navigation of the Humber, had petitioned the House that the Bill might be sent to a Select Committee. While Hull said the work would be a great obstruction to the river, Grimsby said it would be a great advantage. In his opinion the promoters of the Bill should be supported on the ground that their scheme would gain good land for the country, and would make a deeper channel in the river, because it would make a narrower one, and thus increase the scour. It was not therefore in his opinion desirable that the House of Commons should refuse to appoint a Committee to consider the Bill. The question in controversy was one for inquiry before a Select Committee, and their decision would be based upon the scientific evidence to be produced before them. The Bill had already passed the House of Lords, and the Committee of the Lords had the Report of the Board of Trade before them.
  SIR JOHN TROLLOPEsaid, from long experience he had found that for the purposes of drainage or navigation all improvements should commence at the mouth of the river. The works proposed under the present Bill were at the estuary of the river, where an angular bay was to be filled up. The result of that step would be to deepen the channel and improve the navigation; while, at the same time, it would add 4,000 acres of valuable land to the district. He thought the Motion pre-
  1972
  mature. It would be quite time to throw out the Bill on the third reading, when it had been before a Committee of the House, if that course after inquiry were thought desirable.
  VISCOUNT GALWAYsupported the Motion for the second reading on the ground that the scheme had been approved by the House of Lords, and that it was only continuing a scheme of reclamation that had been going on for many years.
  MR. HADFIELDsaid, he thought the opinion of Grimsby was not to be set up against the opinion of Hull, and that after the investigation and report made by the Board of Trade, the proper course was to reject the Bill.
  MR. CLAYremarked that every one who knew anything of the district knew that whenever Hull said "No," it was almost certain Grimsby would say "Yes." But there was but one opinion on the subject of the Bill amongst all the public bodies who were interested in the navigation of the Humber, and that was that the effect of the embankment would be to damage the river. He contended that many precedents existed for throwing out a Bill under the circumstances, and he protested against private persons asking Parliament for its sanction to schemes adverse to public interest and public safety.
  MR. LEEMANwould remind the House that the Committee of the House of Lords in giving their sanction to the scheme had had an opportunity of examining witnesses and investigating the recommendations of the Board of Trade. He hoped that the House would not arrive at the conclusion that it was to be bound by a Report of the Board of Trade. Knowing the locality, he was surprised that the Board should have arrrived at the conclusion stated in the Report. The scheme of the Bill had, in fact, emanated substantially from the Admiralty. Captain Veitch, of the Board of Admiralty, in company of Admiral Perry, examined the locality and reported in favour of the scheme; and the late Mr. James Walker, the eminent engineer, who had the care of the works at Spurn Point, was of the same opinion. He believed that no one who looked at the Bill impartially, would doubt that the works proposed would have the effect of improving the navigation of the Humber.
  COLONEL WILSON PATTENobserved, that the Report which had been presented by the Board of Trade on the subject was

  1973
  very adverse to the Bill; but, at the same time, the House ought to have some deference to the judgment of the House of Lords which had passed this measure, and he would therefore suggest that the Bill should be referred to a Committee for further consideration.
  MR. MILNER GIBSONsaid, that as the Board of Trade had presented a Report in reference to the Bill before the House he desired to make a few observations upon it. An Act of Parliament had devolved upon the Board of Trade the duty of ascertaining the effect of any proposed works upon the interests of the navigation of the kingdom. The present Bill made a proposal to appropriate eight square miles of the estuary of the Humber for private use, the land, at times being covered by nine feet of water, and forming a place of refuge eminently useful to the shipping of the country, especially small coasters, in bad weather. It was well-known that nothing was so valuable to small vessels without anchors or cables in dark nights as a place where they could beach, and thus save life and property. Well, this place, which was so valuable to the merchant shipping of the country, was proposed to be appropriated to the purposes of private gain. No doubt the land would be cultivated, and therefore, to a certain extent, the public would reap some benefit by the reclamation. And he did not say that private gain was any reason why the Bill should be rejected; but the Board of Trade had to look to the effect the proposed works would have upon the interests of navigation. The most competent authorities had been consulted, including the Trinity Corporation and Commander Carver, who had been recently employed in making a survey of the estuary, as well as the professional advisers of the Board, and all were of opinion that the proposal was attended with considerable danger to navigation. Accordingly, the Board of Trade reported in accordance with the opinions of those who had a right to public confidence. He was quite ready to admit that engineers were very often wrong in their estimates of what would be the consequence of works in tidal rivers. In the present case, however, it must be admitted that there was great probability of injury to the navigation being the result of the proposed works, and the House was now asked to enable certain persons to appropriate a portion of the estuary of the Humber for their own private purposes, at the risk of greatly endangering the interests of an
  1974
  important harbour of refuge. Since Captain Veitch made the report which had been referred to, Spurn Point had been rendered secure by works undertaken by the direction of the Government and at the public expense, and therefore there was no necessity for constructing any embankment for its protection. If the hon. Members for Hull chose to divide the House, he should feel it his duty to vote with them.
  COLONEL SYKESsaid, this seemed to be a question between private parties and a body especially intrusted with the protection of the navigation of rivers; the deliberate opinion of the Board of Trade being that the scheme put forward by the promoters of this Bill involved danger to the navigation of the Humber. There seemed to be no doubt that the land proposed to be enclosed was of the greatest possible use to the coastal shipping, and was most valuable in saving life and property, and he should therefore have no hesitation in voting for the Amendment.
  COLONEL EDWARDSsaid, that as a Member for Beverley—the interests of which were identical with those of the neighbouring city of Hull—he fully concurred in all that had been said by the President of the Board of Trade as to the importance and the necessity of maintaining the harbour of refuge at Hull. On that coast harbours of refuge were imperatively required, and the House during the last few years had taken great interest in that question. It was now, however, proposed to reclaim a piece of land upwards of six miles square for a private object, that land being frequently covered by a depth of nine feet of water, and used as a harbour of refuge. Surely it would be madness to sanction such a scheme. If the provisions of the Bill were to be carried out, the coast would be rendered exceedingly dangerous to fishing smacks, which were in the habit of taking refuge on the part proposed to be enclosed; and he would, therefore, give his vote against the measure.
  MR. J. G. KINGprotested against the second reading of the Bill, which sought to damage the only harbour of refuge on the Yorkshire coast. The House had heard much of proposals to construct artificial harbours of refuge, but here it was intended to destroy a natural one.
  MR. BAGNALLthought that if the provisions of the Bill were to be carried out the harbour of refuge on the Humber would be seriously damaged, and he would therefore vote against the second reading.
  MR. CANDLISHsaid, that as the representative of a large constituency on the east coast, he would ask the House to reject the Bill, which if carried out would seriously damage the Humber as a harbour of refuge.
  Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:——Ayes 94; Noes 86: Majority 8.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

REAL ESTATE INTESTACY BILL.
(Mr. Locke King, Mr. Bouverie, Mr. Coleridge.)
REAL ESTATE INTESTACY BILL.

  [BILL 69.] SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Beading read.
  MR. LOCKE KING, in moving the second reading of this Bill, said, that some time had now elapsed since he last brought this question under the consideration of the House. He frankly owned that he did not like the complexion of the last Parliament, and thinking it was not at all likely to entertain a question of this kind, he had not ventured to bring the "subject before it. The present Parliament had been elected under very different circumstances, and would doubtless give the matter a favourable consideration. He was sorry that the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Beresford Hope) had hurried forward and given notice of an Amendment upon the second reading of the Bill, but he hoped to satisfy him that there was no reason for the opposition which he threatened. In asking the House to assimilate the law relating to real property to that which now prevailed with regard to personal property, he was only asking for what was perfectly just. He contended that justice and common sense required an alteration of the law, and that a difference should no longer be allowed to exist between real and personal estate. The great question for the House to consider was what kind of will the State ought to make for a person who died without having made a will for himself. With regard to personal property the law was clear and satisfactory, and the majority of the people of the country concurred in its justice. It was simply this: If under ordinary circumstances a man died possessed of movables, money in the Funds, or personal property, one-third of the actual property went to the widow, and the other two-thirds to the children; or, in the
  1976
  event of there being no children, the widow took one-half of the property, and the next of kin the other half. Nothing could be fairer or more just than this arrangement. The present Bill did not propose to interfere with settlements of any kind. If the law was so just as it was believed to be with regard to personal property, what could be said of the law with regard to real property? If it was just in the one case, he made bold to say that it was thoroughly unjust in the other. In the case of a man dying without having made a will and without a settlement, the whole of his property went to the heir-at-law, while the widow and younger children were wholly unprovided for. He knew that in answer to that, it was said that the widow was entitled to her thirds, but in practice that was not the fact, and he could explain how it happened. The dower in almost every instance was barred. Then in the case of small properties, and when the dower was not barred, what did the widow get? And it was to small properties that this Bill would chiefly apply, because in the case of large estates there was almost always a settlement. It was not a third of the actual property, as it was with personal property, but only a third of the income from that property. What did this amount to? Take a cottage and land, the total value of which was £300, of what benefit was a third of the income from that property to the widow? and what benefit would the younger children derive from it? The cases of hardship which occurred among small owners of property from their entire ignorance of the law were very numerous. Every time that the question was brought under the consideration of the House he had received innumerable letters telling him how grateful the writers were to him for calling attention to it; they had not been aware of the state of the law, but the knowledge which they had gained of it since the discussion of the subject in Parliament, had forced them to make wills to dispose of their property very much in the same way as the law dealt with personal property. He would now give one case of hardship to the House. A man married a woman who had some money of her own. The House would recollect that among the humbler classes scarcely any settlements were made, and no settlement was made in this case: The man was in trade; but not liking to employ his wife's fortune in his business it remained untouched for some years. At

  1977
  length the house in which they resided was advertised for sale, and the man at once said to his wife, "This is a fair and legitimate investment for your money," and he bought the house with that money. Some time afterwards the man died, and, not being acquainted with the law, he died intestate. He was extremely fond of his wife, and had no children. What was the result? A nephew of his, the heir-at-law, claimed the property, and the unfortunate widow was obliged to find employment as a menial servant. He had before quoted this instance in the House, because it forcibly illustrated his case, though he could adduce many similar cases. He would give another illustration to show the extreme injustice of the law in another way:—He took the case of a man who had drawn up a will for the disposal of his property in a particular way among his children. The property was personal, consisting of money in the Funds. Subsequently to the making of this will, however, he entered into a contract for the purchase of an estate, determining to invest the whole of his money in land. But before the contract was completed the man died; and what was the result? The executors were bound to complete the purchase of the land, and the whole of the property which was intended for the children went to the heir-at-law. These cases fully showed that Parliament ought to assimilate the present unjust law of succession to real property to that which regulated the disposition of personal property. It was proper to ask whence this custom arose, and what was the history of it. It was not in existence among the Saxons, for they divided property equally among the male children. It was introduced at the time of the Conquest, in order that the Normans might make themselves entirely masters of the country. The object of the feudal system undoubtedly was to make the people poor in order that the conquerors might the more easily rule over them. But now the general desire was to make the people rich, and to give them a share in the responsibility of the Government, that they might, as it were, all govern together. It was almost, if not quite, impossible to alienate land in the feudal time. His hon. Friend the Member for the city of Oxford (Mr. Neate) bad gone most fully into this question, and shown that the Barons were soon compelled to give way to what might he called the public opinion of those times, and to allow their tenants to alienate their
  1978
  fiefs, and in place of rendering persona service to pay a pecuniary fine. In the reign of Edward III. the Crown was compelled to give a similar liberty to its tenants. It was in the reign of Henry VIII, that the power of willing land away was granted to the people. A favourite argument with opponents of this Bill was that it would abolish the law of primogeniture. But since the latter portion of the feudal times, when land could be alienated from the children, and especially since the laws passed in the reign of Henry VIII., he held that the law of primogeniture had practically been abolished, and that since that time there had been no law of primogeniture whatever in this country. Another argument against the Bill was that it was an attempt to introduce the French law into this country. Under the French law, however, the power of giving away property either during life or after death, and whether as to property movable or immovable, existed only to a very limited degree; whereas the present Bill allowed the power of devising to the fullest extent, and it also allowed settlements and entails to remain as they were. In fact, it only proposed to substitute the very just law with regard to personal property in place of the unjust law which existed with regard to real property. As to the supposition that the change proposed would endanger the aristocracy, he hoped that notion would not be put forward. All the great estates were settled and entailed, and it was idle to suppose that the owners of such vast properties would fail to take the precautions which they considered necessary. Then there was the thin end of the wedge argument. Now, he had been fortunate enough to pass many Bills through Parliament, and that argument had always been resorted to. When he proposed to make mortgaged estates bear their own burden that argument was used. However, the Bill was passed into law, and he had never heard of any injustice having arisen from its operation. It would be wise in the aristocracy to give up some of their prejudices with regard to a measure of this kind which the great mass of the people wished to pass. The House of Lords consisted of landowners, and the House of Commons to a large extent also. Clearly, therefore, landed property was always certain of protection, and it was only a matter of fairness to let the small holders of property in this country have a more just and a more equal law to apply to their pro-

  1979
  perty. We lived in a democratic age in an aristocratic country, and it was not even for the advantage of those who might benefit by them to some extent to uphold unjust or unequal laws. It might be said that no great stir was made on this question throughout the country. But it was from persons having grievances that petitions usually came, and in this case persons who were sufferers by the law felt it useless to petition, as the House would not sanction ex post facto legislation, while those who might hereafter be injured were not likely to petition either, younger members of a family being generally in ignorance of the disposition of property made by their seniors. If those who felt anxious that large estates should be kept together desired to perpetuate the present system on that ground, he hoped at least they would offer no objection to the application of the principle for which he contended to small properties, and with this object he would suggest that clauses might be inserted in Committee confining the operation of the Bill to property of some small amount, to be specified—say of the total value of £1,000 or £2,000. Hoping that in this enlightened age reason, and not prejudice, would govern the decisions of hon. Members, he begged to move the second reading of the Bill.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time,"—(Mr. Locke King.)
  MR. BERESFORD HOPE, in rising to move that the Bill be read that day six months, said, that the hon. Member in the interesting and clear narrative which he had given to the House of his measure had dwelt too briefly on the historical passage descriptive of what had occurred just seven years ago in a moribund Parliament, then, as now, engaged in the discussion of a Reform Bill, and then, as now, called on by him to consider this proposed change in the law. There was, however, the difference between the two occasions that at that time the Conservatives were the Reformers, and were sitting upon the Treasury Bench, while the hon. Gentleman and his friends were in Opposition. Accordingly, as might have been expected under such circumstances, there were a great many appeals made—not exactly to "flesh and blood," for that phrase had not yet been invented—but to popular feeling, in the way in which such appeals were dexterously manipulated on the other side of the House: and, there-
  1980
  fore, if there had been any measure upon which a democratic field-day could have been advantageously organized it was upon the Bill of the hon. Member. The hon. Member spoke his best then, as he did now; he gave the one same clear exposition of the law with which he has just been enlightening the House, and he brought forward his one pet case of the same unhappy widow, harshly treated by the cruel nephew, which sounded like the Babes in the Wood reversed. A division took place upon the Bill, and what were the numbers? For the Motion of the hon. Gentleman 76; against, 271. With Reform as the stalking-horse a general election followed shortly afterwards. Such an instance of aristocratic oppression would not, of course, have been kept from the people at the hustings, if it could have been turned to the least use; but in the newly returned Parliament, elected on a Reform cry, and which had since maintained a Liberal Government in power for seven years, the hon. Gentleman had ever kept a sacred silence. At length, seven years later, a younger generation that knew not Joseph having arisen, in this uneventful and lazy Session, the hon. Member has thought proper to revive this little bye-question, and to invite a decision upon the principles of his well-matured grievance. Two great men took part in the debate on the occasion when it was last brought forward, and so signally defeated. Of these one was a statesman whose memory in and out of the House is preserved in honour as that of a wise and kind man, of infinite prudence tempered by infinite acuteness, whose natural—he would not say scepticism—but naturally logical mind always led him rather to understate than to overstate his own case, who made every allowance for those opposed to him, and who proceeded to the discussion of every question with the mind of a Judge rather than of a Member of Parliament. This man, the late Sir George Lewis, having before him the identical Bill which was revived to-day, said—
  "It had been argued on both sides of the question as if this were a narrow and limited Bill—as if it did not affect the whole mass of real property, but would in its operations be only confined to a small portion of that class of proprietors. As he understood the Bill, its effect would be to assimilate the law of descent of real property to that of personal property. The effect would be to extinguish that class of persons who were denominated as heirs. There would be no such thing as inheritance. No person hereafter would be heir to landed property. That, he apprehended, would clearly be the effect of the Bill, The mea-

  1981
  sure, too, would extend to all classes alike."—[3 Hansard, clli. 1125.]
  Sir George Lewis confessed that to him—
  "The sentimental argument with respect to the case of the widow seemed to be wholly inapplicable. If this Bill became law, the natural feeling would be entirely inverted. A person who made a marriage settlement according to the present system of marriage settlements would be robbing the younger children of the rights which the common law would give them. The House had to consider what would be not only the economical but the political effects in this country of distributing real property equally among all the children."—[3 Hansard, clii. 1126.]
  Bearing in mind that Sir George Lewis was at that time in Opposition, was there ever so trenchant a speech delivered against a measure identical in its clauses with that which the House was now invited to adopt? But Sir George Lewis was not the only person on that occasion who spoke against the Bill from the front Opposition Bench. Lord Palmerston "objected to the Bill on every possible ground," declaring it to be "at variance with the habits, customs, and feelings of the people of this country, and incompatible with the maintenance of a constitutional monarchy;" and this at the moment when he was opposing a Conservative Reform Bill, and prepared to go to the country on a Reform cry. The hon. Gentleman was not justified in representing this Bill as a small remedy for a narrow grievance. Whether he were or were not now displaying only the narrow point, upon the testimony of these two statesmen there was a whole wedge behind it, and with it he was poking up one of the cardinal institutions of the country. For this grave estimate of the mischievous import of the proposal they had, on the one hand, the eminently practical good sense of Lord Palmerston, and on the other the cool, judicial, philosophical mind of Sir George Lewis, both opposed to the Bill. He called upon the House for once to be candid and earnest, to grasp the case as it really presented itself, and to accept the issue of a great battle upon just principles.
  The question at issue under this Bill was either the maintenance of the tenure and descent of property undivided—unless specially willed—according to ancient usage in this country, or, again, its compulsory division in the mode which foreign nations, since the great European Revolution of 1789, had incorporated into their system. It led up directly to that greatest of all negations of personal liberty, the denial of the right of a man to dispose of his own inheritance and of his own earnings, which
  1982
  had in the name of the principles of 1789 been made good by the levelling greed of false Liberalism, in so many foreign countries. The hon. Member had brought forward some curious archaeological points in support of his argument. Saxon ancestors had appeared in their picturesque wildness, and Roman lawyers had walked before the House in long procession. But though archaeological meetings during the recess were always curious and often entertaining, he would rather take his place in the House itself as a man of the time. He would discuss the question without so much as quoting the words "feudal" or "allodial," and he promised that he would not refer directly or indirectly to any book or speech of the hon. Member for Westminster. He dealt with the question exclusively in its modern and actual aspects according as it was an integral portion of the system which had existed in the days of their fathers and of their grandfathers, and was now thoroughly established in this country by a prescriptive right of several generations. The hon. Member for East Surrey had taxed his opponents with ignorance for talking of primogeniture, and had said there was no law of primogeniture now in England. Of course, it was open to every hon. Gentleman to make his own dictionary, and when he had done so it was easy enough for him to parse his words according to that dictionary. No one would assert that the same law of primogeniture prevailed now which existed 500 years ago in this country, or which might exist now in Japan; but the succession to property was, nevertheless, well regulated and understood, and, if there was a law by which the land of the intestate went to his eldest son, that descent was, pro tanto, a law of primogeniture. This was the moderate and reasonable law of primogeniture, which they were met that day to discuss and to defend. The hon. Member, of course, had threatened the Conservative party, if they opposed his Bill, with all those mysterious pains and penalties which had been held over their heads so often by the other side of the House, and particularly during the present Session, that at last they were beginning to grow hardened to such threats. Granting all the commonplaces of Liberalism and Democracy, he maintained that the present system of the descent of land in this country was an eminently practical, liberal, and commercial system. It was one of the apprehensions haunting the

  1983
  minds of philosophers that in a country like England, of limited extent, land would rapidly become absorbed in a few hands, and that that accumulation might be productive of dangerous results. But when they looked at the condition of the country with an impartial eye, they would find that the contrary was the case. They would find that though there might be to some extent an absorption of small estates, there was in every county a considerable creation of minute properties by the operation of those freehold land societies which both parties, for political objects, had competitively created with so much energy. There were, no doubt, parts of the country, generally inhabited by respectable old-fashioned families, where the visitor would be told, in tones in which horror of the invasion was tempered by admiration of the physical greatness of the invader, of some Manchester man who had come down like the dragon of Wantley to gobble up gentle and simple, church and land, so as to create one gigantic estate; but in such a case a measure like the present would be simply inoperative, for a man who thus laid himself out to become a territorial lord would have sense enough to closet himself with his attorney and make a will or a settlement giving stability to the family which he had so carefully founded. The very desire, however, and zeal to accumulate land had, by raising its price, rendered the process of accumulation more difficult; and so a counteracting influence had begun to make itself felt, to which he begged to direct the particular attention of the House, as it had a special bearing on the present case. The anxiety which so strongly prevailed in this country to obtain a residential position was itself a natural corrective of the tendency to a too great accumulation of land in the hands of individuals. There had grown up a class of opulent proprietors, increasing in number as the facilities for locomotion increased and the distribution of wealth had become more general, who did not look upon land merely as a source of income, but as a place of residential interest with responsibilities attached to it. These were men of business, who in the last generation would have lived in the town where their occupation was carried on, or at most in its outskirts, with only perhaps an occasional trip to the sea. But for people of this generation it was impossible to live within a circle of 100 miles from London as he himself did, or of Manchester or Leeds,
  1984
  and not take cognizance of the fact of the multiplication of country places belonging to persons of the stamp which he had indicated, which were the true, natural, and healthy corrective to the excessive accumulation of property in the hands of single lords, on which the democratic cry for equal distribution was apt to base itself. In due time the same phenomenon would, he had not the least doubt, extend itself to more remote counties, until, as of old in Holland, its residential advantages would be a main element in the value of all land in England. This was not a naked theory—he could himself quote within his own knowledge farm after farm which had gone through the transmutation from mere profit to amenity and residential obligation, as the growth of railroads opened up desirable districts. For his own part, he regarded this multiplication of moderately sized "country places" with unmixed gratification, as vitally tending to the moral and material well-being of the realm. He felt that the present law of inheritance fostered their creation, and he was therefore unwilling to see that law altered. Residential occupancy contributed greatly to the creation of that state of things which was known as "doing good" in one's neighbourhood. Those who founded such places were men who made their garden, and their keeper's yard, and their model farms, and who built or restored and endowed their church and founded their village school. It was accordingly the pleasure and the interest of such men to surround themselves with agricultural and rural retainers, who were better paid, better looked after, of higher and more intelligent class, and with children better schooled than could be the case where the agricultural labourer upon the fiftieth or sixtieth farm on a large estate never saw, or, perhaps, never expected to see, the face of the freeholder, and had only to do with the tenant farmer or the steward. But was it to be supposed that having erected homes like these the intelligent, wealthy, middle class would relinquish with the term of their own natural lives the stake in the country they had won, and the local position they had attained, and would not seek to hand them over to their descendants? Naturally they would desire to be assured of the safe and unquestionable descent of their favourite creation under any accident. So true was it, that the actual system of inheritance of land was to be defended on sound modern principles of commerce. The whole ar-

  1985
  rangement worked admirably, and afforded a proof how well social usages which had sprung up under a different state of circumstances might adapt themselves to the requirements of a more advanced civilization, and to the enlightened commercial condition of affairs on the present day. Suppose the Motion of the hon. Member carried, and what then? A horse might stumble, or a boat might be upset in a sudden squall. Any unforeseen accident might carry off the proprietor of an estate, who, being a minor—perhaps the last in an entail—was forbidden by the law itself to make a will. The hon. Member found it convenient to overlook this question of minorities, and to argue as if intestacy must always be wilful, and as if the man who had not made his will must either have wished not to make it, or have been culpably careless as to giving force to his wishes. Were all the model cottages, all the model farms, examples of science, thrift, and providence to the country round, to be cleared away; all the sustentation of schools and charitable societies to be stopped; all the ties of family connection and friendly intercourse to be ruptured, and the property brought to the hammer with a view to its division possibly among second or third cousins, who knew nothing of the district, possibly had never even visited it, and perhaps had looked upon the creation of the place with a jealous eye? Would that be, in the opinion of the hon. Member, a satisfactory change in the descent of property? Would all the advantages so thrown away be easily replaced? The land of England was necessarily limited—bound in by the circumfluous sea—but while limited it was at the same time visible and tangible, and the measure of its acreage was public property, thanks to the Ordnance Survey. The commercial wealth of the country on the other hand was in one respect illimitable, but in another untangible and uncertain.
  The moral he drew from those considerations was this. He could not help comparing the land of England as compared with the universal wealth of to-day with the bullion reserve in the Bank of England. With all the wealth, the vast commercial enter prize, the finadcial power—which recent events had shown might sometimes prove illusory—the land of England was the solid backbone of the country, and on its stability indirectly rested the solvency of those whose income represented other modes of
  1986
  property. It ought not to be tied up capriciously or tyrannically; but, at the same time, it ought not to be made too easily convertible. The question had to be farced as it effected the practice of mortgages. This was a matter about which there was often a good deal of misapprehension. When a squire was heard of as raising money on mortgage, the first illnatured idea was that he might have known too much of Epsom. The surmise was in innumerable instances unfounded; for the common sense and commercial exigencies of various classes had discovered that the security of land afforded on the one hand an unrisky and ungambling method of investment at rather higher interest than the funds afforded; and on the other a method of easily finding that material and by which the value of the land itself might be developed and enhanced. The people of our country had thoroughly appreciated this advantage, and every one who had anything to do with the management of land in this country must have known how common it was for people possessed of small sums of money to lend them to some neighbouring landowner on the security of his property; and there could be no doubt that such an arrangement was, as he had just said, a source of mutual convenience, inasmuch as it enabled the lender to obtain a higher amount of interest than he could otherwise command, while it placed at the disposal of the borrower money which he could beneficially invest in the improvement of his estate. But this whole system of mortgages under which money was easily obtained at a moderate rate of interest hinged upon the belief that land would never become divisable to excess. Once make it clear that land must constantly be sold in lots, and that accordingly these incumbrances would have to be periodically got rid of, in this case most assuredly that form of investment would go out of favour both with borrower and lender, for of course the increased uncertainty of tenure and the augmented risk of an inconvenient and unexpected paying off, would soon make itself felt by an alteration both in the rate of interest and in more suspicious and narrow investigation of the securities. But the evil would not even end there. Parliament had, not many years since, passed a series of very useful measures chiefly at the instance of that admirable country gentleman and distinguished representative, whose untimely loss both

  1987
  sides sincerely lamented, Mr. Ker Seymer, which had created certain societies with powers to advance money on easy terms for the improvement of estates. The financial arrangements of these bodies were practically those of ordinary mortgages based on the recognized normal indivisibility of land, and it could not he supposed that the insurance companies which really found the money for those societies would continue their present accommodation if this Bill became law.
  He thought, therefore, that the change would be simply unsettling and mischievous, as far as regarded what he might call the gentry or middle-class estates, and he believed that its operation would be at least as pernicious in the case of the smaller estates held by yeomen. No Duke or Scotch Earl could have more pride than a yeoman in keeping his land together. The yeoman would cling to his own land, and reject the best offers to part with it, sometimes, as he (Mr. Beresford Hope) well knew, a little to his own cost. He had had to do with that class of proprietors in Kent and in the North Midland Counties, in both of which they still abounded, and he could vouch for the tenacious pride which led them to stick to their condition of freeholders. He believed that the pride of that class was often even carried to an extent at which political economists would shudder, and that those freeholders in many instances clung to the possession of their land when they would become much richer and much easier-minded if they were to sell it. But it would ill become Parliament to discourage their honourable ambition, as it would necessarily do, if it were reckless enough to pass the present measure. They loved their land much, and withal they wished to have as little to do with the attorney as good Christian people could. They had no great fancy for making wills, and when they made them they were too apt to go to the village schoolmaster and make a bad one, with an ugly law suit on its back. But once this Bill was passed, they must either sign a deal of parchment or else lose the land which had come unbroken to them from their fathers and grandfathers, in some cases from the very earliest days of the English monarchy. At best, they would have to pay costs that would have the effect ultimately of depriving their race of their small holdings; for the descent of land in the yeoman class was not by settlement, hut by the customary law of
  1988
  the land; and once that customary law was unsettled the whole system would crumble.
  He next came to the smallest holder of all—to the working class freeholders, whether of ancient descent or created by modern election societies—the freeholders who constituted, as it had been proved, the working-men element in the county constituencies. Was it desirable, was it seemly, for Liberals to disfranchise and destroy this class as they would do were the present Bill to pass, for these little freeholders were not the folks to make will is. It was true that these peasant proprietors had been termed by a very high authority, and in that House too, "the flies in the pot of ointment." But if they were flies, was that any reason why they should be chopped up? The proposition of the Member for East Surrey was one of broad disfranchisement, and for that reason, if for no other, it never ought to have been brought in from the other side of the House, So much for the matter as it stood; but if the Bill passed it must, as he had shown, lead to still greater changes. The hon. Gentleman the Member for East Surrey, and those who supported his proposition, had taken up a purely sentimental grievance, and in the name of that sentimental grievance they sought to unsettle a custom which had been the law of the land from time immemorial, and on which the social happiness and the political stability of this country in a great degree depended. They sought to effect that change at a moment when the condition of all Europe was being disturbed by imminence of a general war. He hoped the House would refuse to have its time occupied by the discussion of such questions, and, with confidence that it would do so, he begged to move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
  MR. GOLDNEY, in seconding the Amendment, said, the Bill was an attempt to alter the whole law of landed property in England; and if such an alteration was to be made it ought to he made by a direct proposition coming from Her Majesty's Government and not by a side-wind coming from a private Member, A Commission, whose investigations were made during a period extending over four years—namely, from 1829 to 1833—had considered the whole subject of real property, and in the Report of that Commission it was stated that in the case of a person who died intestate it was more in accordance with the spirit of our constitution that land should descend by the law of primogeniture than

  1989
  that it should be distributed among the surviving members of the family. He had not heard the hon. Member for East Surrey make out any general grievance; and in considering such a violent remedy as that which the hon. Gentleman proposed, one must not look to isolated cases. No principle of law was better understood in this country than that the land which had been held by intestates should descend to the eldest son, and the consequence was that many pro prietors, and more especially many proprietors of the smaller class, never made any wills. It was a common saying in the West of England that what comes by heirship goes by heirship; and the effect of a departure from that principle, and the adoption instead of the principle of the Bill now before the House, would be to break up and destroy the class of small freeholders, and to put the great bulk of the small estates in the hands of attorneys and auctioneers. If the principle on which the law was based were wrong, let the subject be dealt with as a whole; but to treat it in the partial manner proposed by the hon. Member would be highly objectionable, even if he had made out a case against the present system.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Beresford Hope.)
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL: With respect to the suggestion that fell from the hon. Member for East Surrey in the close of his speech—that in Committee the operation of this Bill might be confined to small properties—I think that will not be the view of the House. We cannot legislate for small properties and not for larger properties: the law must be looked upon as a whole. The hon. Member argued that the law is bad because it leads to some hard cases. There is a saying among lawyers that "hard cases make bad law:" and certainly it is not the best way of discussing these questions to say that some woman or some man has been disappointed of what he or she might reasonably have expected. The better way is to look at the law as a whole and see whether there is any reason why the House should be dissatisfied with it and should therefore commence a course of departure from it. It is an assumption of my hon. Friend that the law relating to landed property is an unjust one and one essentially founded on injustice; but with great deference to him and
  1990
  those who adopt his view, I think that is a point which ought to be established and not merely assumed. And I confess I am not able to see what à priori injustice there is in this law more than in any other which might be made on the same subject, especially in a country where there is so much freedom of action as exists in England. The owners of property are permitted by deeds in their lifetime, and by wills to take effect after their death, to dispose of that property exactly as they may please. Therefore there is no real hardship at all, and the portion of the law which applies to the cases for which it is now proposed to legislate—namely, those in which persons omit to make a will, is merely supplementary, and operates only when there has been no intention manifested to exclude its operation. I cannot but think it is a mere begging of the question to speak of injustice, because, if there were any solidity in this argument of my hon. Friend, it is obvious it would put an end to his other argument that this is not the thin end of the wedge. I admit that the argument about the thin end of the wedge is not to be received without examination; but when you come to speak of an injustice in the law it is necessary to examine it, because if the argument on the ground of injustice be well founded, we cannot slop at the point which my hon. Friend has indicated. If the policy of the law be wrong, injustice may be inflicted as much in cases of wills and family settlements as in the case of omission through accident to make a will. But really, the question we have to consider is one of public policy; and in questions of public policy the burden of proof is on those who propose to alter a particular institution of the country. But I have no objection to examine the state of the law, and to contend that the law of primogeniture is not inexpedient. It is not arbitrary, because the greatest freedom of action over property is allowed. I cannot help thinking it would not be desirable that there should he a general system of division of estates. It seems to me that considerable benefits have always arisen and do arise in this country from keeping landed property together. By means of this system the duties of property are handed down and are better performed; there is more family and hereditary interest felt in the welfare of labourers and tenants; and improvements in land are made on a longer prospect, and with greater interest in their permanence. The

  1991
  class composed of the owners of landed property stands between the Crown and the lower orders—supporting the Throne and the higher institutions of the country, and at the same time maintaining excellent relations with those below them. The existing gradations of society in this country, including the hereditary peerage, are in harmony with this state of the law; and the maintenance of that graduated scale of society has been in times past of essential importance to public liberty, and still operates as a very strong encouragement to the increase of wealth and intelligence, and to every kind of laudable ambition. That, of course, is a political benefit which arises incidentally from the advantages which the eldest son gets by primogeniture. But is this injurious to younger sons? I think quite the reverse. On the contrary, if there is one argument stronger in its favour than another, it seems to me to be that derived from its effects with regard to younger sons. Instead of being, as they are in some countries, a class who keep apart from the other classes of society, in this country the younger son of a nobleman or landed proprietor is sent into the world and immediately goes into the ranks of the people, and takes his place among them; while, at the same time, he retains the social advantages arising from the position and influence of the head of his family, and from the connection which he is able to keep up with his old ancestral home. He enters one of the learned professions, or the army, or he becomes a civil engineer, or goes into commercial business, or, as is now very common, into trade. And as time goes on in this country we find a tendency—which I think is very desirable—to abandon the objection which formerly existed to the younger sons of what are called good families entering the ranks of the people. There is now among the aristocracy a more widely-spread recognition of the power and importance of every independent occupation in which a man may be embarked, and there is a disposition to get rid of those absurd distinctions which formerly prevailed as to some occupations being honourable, and others, though equally useful, and suitable to the education and talents of the individual, not so. Then, as regards small properties, I agree with the hon. Gentleman who spoke last that under this Bill those properties would be likely to change their character. They would change hands and contribute to make larger properties. I believe that
  1992
  such a change would not be desirable. I think nothing would be more satisfactory, in a natural point of view, than the gradual growth of small into large holdings; but by this Bill you would be making it absolutely necessary that every small estate should be sold. In this way they would get sooner or later into the hands of great owners, and through the medium of the Court of Chancery many of those properties would be incumbered with costs which would render them of little value to anyone. For these reasons, I trust the House will not be disposed to adopt the change proposed by my hon. Friend.
  MR. BRIGHTsaid: I was not aware until I came into the House that this question was about to be discussed to-day; and I will not trouble the House with many observations upon it. I will say, in the first place, that the speech of the Attorney General is one we have heard very often on this subject. I will say, moreover, I live in hopes of hearing him make a speech exactly contradictory of that which he has now delivered—I think that extremely probable. The hon. and learned Gentleman began his speech by saying that the charge of injustice brought against the present law was a charge which had yet to he established. Of particular cases of injustice I think he made no denial. He did not deny that there are particular cases of injustice but I should like to ask the Attorney General, if there be no injustice in this law, would he be willing to extend it to all descriptions of property—to personal property as well as real property. Now, if he will answer me that question in the affirmative—that he would so extend it, and that he thinks by so extending it there would be no injustice—to keep him to his own phrase—I would believe what he said upon that point; but until he does so I must believe that in his observations today he did not mean exactly what his words indicated. I will undertake to say that the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Goldney), who is so delighted with the four years' sitting of that Commission, knows—and men who know even less about the matter know—that to extend this law to all the property of the' country would involve the country in convulsion and confusion within the next twelve months. There are many forms of injustice which, having been long established amongst us by law, the people are able to bear without the disasters occurring to which I have

  1993
  referred. But if the principle of this law were extended to all other kinds of property, and the principle could be judged of as a whole, it would not last a month, and every Member of the House is perfectly conscious of that fact. Now, the Attorney General tells us that everybody is left by the law to perfect freedom of action. Well, he knows, too, that was not a fair mode of stating the case. Of course, with regard to property that can be left by will, every man is left in perfect freedom to make a will, but the question is what happens if he does not make a will. Whether he has a freedom to make a will, or not to make a will, surely the law has no right to do injustice if he exercises the option and does not make a will. Take the case of game, one which must be very interesting to many hon. Members of this House. If there be no contract between the landlord and the tenant what does the law say? The law says that the game belongs to the tenant. Why does the law say so? Because it is clearly right, that if there be no contract, it should be presumed that the tenant on engaging to take the land, to pay a rent, and to cultivate it, should have a right to all the animals that live upon it; and the law acting upon that wise principle declares that, if there be no contract between the landlord and the tenant, the game is the property of the tenant. And so in this case, if the law were equally just and wise it would say that if the owner of the property at his death had failed to make any appropriation of the property to those who survived him, the law should undertake to do that which it is to be presumed he would have done had he made a will. Well, it is to be presumed, I assume, that any man making a will and leaving children behind him, would treat those children with some show at least of an impartial affection, and would divide his property with some degree of justice amongst them. Why men do otherwise than this is the great condemnation of your law, for it destroys in their minds the sense of right and wrong—and induces in thousands of cases every year a making of wills and a devise of property which is contrary to all natural right, and which makes in many cases the last act of a man's life the great crime of his life. I have said often with regard to the character of men and the lives of men that I will judge of no man's life and character until I bear of the will that he has made. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite treat that obser.
  1994
  vation with a sort of derision and contempt. That is only another proof of the effect of this bad law upon their feelings and their judgment. Now, the Attorney General says that It is not to he discussed as a question of justice or injustice, but as a matter of public policy. Well, there he passed on to ground where, no doubt, he was more in accordance with the facts of the case. Me says that if you have a hereditary peerage, a law of this nature is desirable, and, it may he, is also necessary. I sat some years ago on a Committee with regard to the affairs of Ireland, and a great deal of evidence upon this matter was taken. Amongst others we had the evidence of Professor, now Judge, Long-field, of the Incumbered Estates Court in Ireland, and it would he very valuable to Members of this House if they would read that evidence. We had the evidence also of another eminent lawyer, who argued in his evidence strongly in favour of this law, but he was obliged to admit at last that if he confined himself to the questions and principles of political economy he must condemn the law; but taking the law in connection with a hereditary peerage, and looking at it as a political institution, he was obliged to support the law. Well, Sir, I prefer morality and justice to all the peerages and all the dynasties that ever existed in the world—and if I were in favour, as hon. Gentlemen are, and to the extent that they are, of hereditary succession, I should be afraid of tying up the hereditary peerage of this country with a law so obviously immoral and unjust as that which we are now discussing. The Attorney General told us of the duties of landowners as if nobody but great landowners would perform their duty. Why, it would be equally an argument for a law to maintain great factories in Lancashire, and yet everybody in Lancashire knows perfectly well that small manufacturers perform their duties just as well as large ones, and there being no law to create and keep only the largest manufactories, that there is much greater facility for little men gradually to grow and become greater men than there could be under a law that would affect manufactories in the way that the law of primogeniture affects land. Does the Attorney General mean to say that all over Europe, all over the United States of America, all over the Australian colonies, and wherever—and it is almost everywhere—this law does not prevail, that the duties of landowners are not per-

  1995
  formed in just as exemplary a manner as they are performed in this country? Why, it is one of the great calamities of this country at this moment, and a calamity constantly increasing, that the limited amount of land, to which the hon. Member for Stoke referred, is gradually becoming the property of a more limited number of the people—and I will undertake to say there is no other civilized country in the world in which the same state of things is taking place, and it would be impossible to place your finger upon any single fact connected with this country which is more deplorable and more dangerous than that. The Attorney General went on to tell us about younger sons. Well, Sir, I am not at liberty to tell the House everything I have heard from younger sons upon this question—but I recollect, only two years ago, coming to this House very soon after I had made a speech in Birmingham referring to this very question, and I met a younger Son, who has before this time been seen in this House. He made a communication to me which I am anxious to repeat. I am not sure whether the language he used would be quite Parliamentary for me to use, but, I think, Sir, you will forgive me if I use it. He said—"I read your speech at Birmingham; I agree with you; we younger sons are damned badly used." Now, Sir, I think that remark, for which I vouch—and I have not altered a syllable of it—is a very fair answer to the arguments of the Attorney General with regard to the younger sons. I understood the hon. and learned Gentleman to say that he thought there was a great advantage in the present system, inasmuch as by its means younger eons were induced to descend into the ranks of the people, and to turn their attention to obtaining an honourable living by following professions, commerce, and so forth. That would be an argument equally for robbing the elder son—but I am not sure that the Attorney General intimated that he would like the principle to be extended to every member of the family. If the property were more equally divided, perhaps younger sons might hereafter come into the ranks of commerce, or enter the professions, and the object of the Attorney General would be obtained perhaps a little later. But now, if this principle that is here made so sacred is held to be sacred nowhere else—if it is held to be of a most pestilent character in every country in the world but this—was not my hon. Friend the Member
  1996
  for Westminster justified when he said that England in regard to this question of land was the exceptional country, and not the country from which you could argue as the rule. I remember having read in a biography of Mr. Jefferson who was, I think, twice the American President, and one of the most able and illustrious men that the English colonies in America have ever produced—that he considered it the greatest act of his life, or one of the greatest, that he abolished this law of primogeniture in his native State of Virginia. And his biographer quotes, I think from some letter or declaration of Mr. Jefferson, in which he described the great advantage that the abolition of the law had been to that State, and he used one phrase as an illustration which will convey to the House what he meant. He said, "Some years after the abolition of the law there were fewer carriages-and-six in Virginia but a great many more carriages-and-pair." And he took it for granted, as we may all take it for granted, that a country is better off where there is a greater equality of condition and a greater division of property, and where there is no particle of injustice in the law. Now, I believe there has been a multitude of cases in which this law has produced injustice of the most grievous kind. If the hon. Member for Surrey brought forward one case or half-a-dozen such cases, they are but, as it were, one in a hundred or one in a thousand of those that are continually taking place throughout the country; and I maintain that nothing can be worse for a Legislature, nothing worse for the permanence of any Government, than that we should in any matter of this kind maintain a system which we in our own hearts, if applied to anything else or in any other way, should condemn; because if a law, which is made by the general judgment of the ruling class in a country, be unjust and the instrument of injustice, how can you expect that morals and a regard for justice should spread and become as it were Bottled in the minds of the people? I do not expect that my hon. Friend will carry his proposition to-day, but the day will come—and it is not very remote—when his proposition will be carried. Hon. Gentlemen opposite always fancy that they are going to be ruined. They do not believe that they can keep possession of their own estates if the law allows them to deal with them. They seem to me to be unable to comprehend any question connected with land, They be-

  1997
  lieve that we on these Benches are hostile to the land and to the owners of great estates. But you know we have done you more good than you have ever done for yourselves. We, in discussing this question, own allegiance to the highest principles of a true political economy and of justice between a man and his children, and between the State and those whom the State governs; and therefore, without regard to any special inconvenience that might happen here or there from the establishment of this principle for which my hon. Friend contends, we avow ourselves the supporters of this Bill, and we believe the time will come, and that before long, when it will be accepted by the House of Commons and the Legislature.
  MR. HENLEYsaid: I should have contented myself with stating that which I believe to be the effect of this Bill in itself had it not been for the somewhat powerful speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down. In spite of the denial of the hon. Member who brought in the Bill, it is now quite clear that the measure is not to be looked on as a matter by itself, because the hon. Member who has just sat down most distinctly asserted that he and those about him support the Bill for the purpose of bringing about a first change in the present state of the law, which he describes as being wholly unjust. The hon. Member for Birmingham went so far as to say that however good a man's life may have been in itself, he could form no opinion of that man, unless he found that at the close of his life he had acted in conformity with what the hon. Member believed to be just. That shows how strong the hon. Member's opinion is, and pretty strongly also that he would not leave much latitude to persons who might differ from him. That is a proposition from which I think it is impossible the hon. Member can escape. The hon. Member seems to say that this particular law must be unjust because its principle is not universal, and that it must be unjust unless it is applied to every description of property. Now, I believe that a law may be perfectly just, right, and convenient as applied to one description of property, and very unjust, wrong, and inconvenient if applied to another description of property. Indeed, my chief objection to the proposal of the hon. Member for East Surrey is that it is in-applicable to the peculiar species of property with which it professes to deal. In itself the Bill does not touch the great
  1998
  question of primogeniture. It does not profess to meddle with that vast question, but it merely professes to deal with the limited number of cases in which persons have not made a will. Speaking generally, there are three classes of persons to be considered—the rich, the less rich, and the poor. Each of these classes are more or less, or not at all, interested in these matters. That ugly customer, Death, catches all classes, catches them napping and unawares. Nobody knows when he comes. But here it may be said that the higher and better educated classes have more right to be prepared and to be guarded against the contingencies with respect to those who come after them than the less wealthy and the less educated classes. How will this Bill cut? According to the law of this land every man can do what he likes with his freehold property provided he has an absolute interest in it—provided that it is absolutely at his own disposal. As to the higher classes, or those who are designated by the other side of the House as the "aristocracy," but who might more properly be called the richer, in ninety-nine cases out of 100 the property is settled—dealt with by will—and such a Bill as this would not apply to them at all. It applies in a less degree to the middle classes; but how would it apply to the poor? I am not talking about small landed estates, but of the poor men throughout the country, who are a very numerous class, who own a cottage. Do you not think the possession of a cottage is as much valued by the poor man, because he has had it from his father, as the great Duke's estate is by the Marquess who succeeds him? Everyone knows the pride the poor take in these cottages; but the hon. Member for Birmingham says it is unjust not to divide them. The hon. Gentleman complains of the great accumulation of land which takes place under the present system, but if the change which he advocates is carried out, what will become of every little bit of land belonging to a man who dies intestate? The Bill absolutely says the property shall be divided. But if it be a house it cannot be cut into bits. I remember a late colleague of mine telling me, when a similar Bill was before the House, that he knew of a walnut tree in France which belonged to two and-thirty people. If you do not want to accumulate these landed estates the natural course is to allow them to remain in the hands of the small people to

  1999
  whom they belong. Because if you divide a small estate on a man's death you may be sure that the person holding property contiguous to it will get it when sold, and thus you will go on aggregating property, which you say is a misfortune. That would be the natural and inevitable effect of the matter. Every one who has much acquaintance with the cottage holders of this country know that they have a great respect for gentlemen filling the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that, from want of modesty, they rarely trouble him by making a will, because they know that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the lawyers betwixt them get hold of a great deal of the property left. These people, wise in their generation, never make wills, and think it better to let a cottage and twenty-five yards of garden go from father to son than make a will, in which case should this measure pass the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the lawyer are pretty sure to get possession of the best part of such properties. You propose to compel these poor persons to make a will or that the property shall be sold. That is a hardship. I do not propose to go into the great question of primogeniture. I deal with this question as it is. It is a simple Bill, the defect of which will be that the property of poor cottagers in the country will be bought up by neighbouring landowners. As to the larger question, I am perfectly content to abide by what the Attorney General said with respect to it. But I oppose the present Bill because I believe it will inflict great hardship, injury, and injustice on the cottagers throughout the country,
  MR. NEATEsaid, that with respect to the argument that this measure would render it less easy to lend and borrow money on mortgage, it would be sufficient to point out that the law of settlement was a bar to the power of mortgaging altogether. The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Beresford Hope) had spoken of the pride which the holders of moderately-sized freeholds felt in their estates, and referred to several instances in the county of Kent; but he would remind the hon. Gentleman that that was the very county in which the law of gavelkind prevailed, under which property was equally distributed. He by no means wished to see any system established which would lead to a minute subdivision of landed property. Indeed, in travelling through Brittany he was shocked and disgusted at seeing the number of fields no bigger than
  2000
  the floor of the House of Commons, and fences no higher than the table. He agreed that every one ought to be at perfect liberty to dispose of his property as he pleased; but the question now under discussion was, how real property should be disposed of in the event of its owner dying without having made a will. The Attorney General had said that the effect of the proposed change would probably be that the owners of property would feel a sort of pressure upon them to make their wills in the manner which would seem to be suggested by the State; but, for his part, he did not apprehend that any such result would follow the adoption of this measure. This Bill tended to a perfect assimilation of real and personal property, and the assimilation of the settlement of land to the settlement of personalty. The consequence of that change must be that you would allow to the tenant for life, not a power of alienation, but a power, which he did not now possess, of distribution to his children. That was an inducement to him to support the Bill, which he believed would be most conducive to the peace and happiness of families. He should not, however, object to an inalienable endowment being connected with every peerage, inasmuch as he traced our liberties to the feudal lords of 400 or 500 years ago. The reason why primogeniture co-existed with feudalism was because an estate at the period of feudalism was a sort of office to which military duties and jurisdiction were attached; and if an estate held on those conditions had been divided there would have been a necessary division of service. But as feudalism was a thing of the past, he saw no reason why the things which sprang out of it should not also pass away. The Act regulating the succession duty with respect to real property, was a legislative measure which constituted a step in the right direction; and in his opinion the time had now arrived when personal property ought to be dealt with in the same way.
  MR. WHITESIDEsaid, the question before the House is one which affects the whole of our system of law with respect to property, and therefore, according to the fashion of our times, it is introduced on a Wednesday by a private Member. It has been opposed, in an able speech, by the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Beresford Hope), and his arguments have not yet been answered. Then the Attorney General has delivered a very sensible and conclusive

  2001
  argument against the Bill, and the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken appears to me not to be really in favour of the Bill, though he thinks he is. He is under a delusion. Why, he spoke in favour of feudal times. His heart was on the plains of Runnymede, and I thought he was going to quote Magna Charta. I understood him to say that he should be willing that a portion of the landed property of the country should be set aside for the peerage and made inalienable for ever after. If so he has given a conclusive argument against his own opinion, for it is not philosophic to say that you are to have a national law, which is exceptional on the face of it, and applicable only to the House of Peers. Now I am so far a Radical that I would subject the Peers to the same laws as the other members of the community are subjected to. I respect the members of the aristocracy; but, at the same time, I cannot adopt the revolutionary theories of the hon. Member on their behalf. It is extremely difficult to substitute better laws and a better Constitution for those which we now possess. And this leads me to the arguments of the real admirer of this Bill—the hon. Member for Birmingham. He is always sincere, and I am sure that what he spoke to-day he sincerely believed to be true. The hon. Gentleman, indeed, has frequently published his opinions that the law of primogeniture is a nuisance and ought to be abolished, and that the law of entail is unjust and ought to be subverted. Knowing what is to happen the hon. Member told the Attorney General, as a compliment to him, that he is quite sure we shall live to hear the Attorney General unsay all he had said to-day, and make a speech exactly the reverse of that which he has addressed to us on the present occasion. How does the hon. Member for Birmingham know that? Is the hon. Gentleman in the secrets of the Attorney General? I ask the question because at the close of his speech the hon. Member said that the time was rapidly approaching when the Attorney General would be converted by him and seduced into the belief that his views were right, and that they would then join together for the purpose of overturning the Constitution of the country. I agree with him that the time might come when that object might be attempted, and I believe he believes what he said to be true, The hon. Member prefers what he calls the rights of morality and justice to peerages and dynasties, Now, I do not like to
  2002
  hear peerages and dynasties spoken of in so unceremonious a manner; but I suppose the hon. Member does not care much for either. If the present law is, as the hon. Gentleman alleged, immoral, unjust, and pestilent, then the English nation must be immoral and incapable of ascertaining what is moral and just, because they have endured this law for centuries. The hon. Gentleman really does not do justice to his own abilities. How could the people of this country be the respectable people they are, if they did not have a law like this? The hon. Gentleman has given us a touch of America, but I am always prepared for that whenever the hon. Gentleman addresses the House. He pronounced a panegyric upon Jefferson, because Jefferson overthrew the law regulating the descent of freehold property in Virginia. I do not draw the same conclusion as the hon. Gentleman, but rather think that that fact goes far to account for the position of Virginia at the present day. The institutions of England once existed in America, but surely the present condition of that country is not likely to animate us to walk in the footsteps even of Jefferson and his biographer. But, perhaps, I only just perceive the meaning of the hon. Gentleman, who must have held up the example of America to induce the House to avoid it. Then the hon. Gentleman referred to the example of countries on the Continent—no doubt he intended to refer especially to France. Well, Sir, the operation of the Code Napoleon made it impossible for a man to leave his property to one of his children to the exclusion of the rest, and consequently the moment the Code Napoleon was carried it became impossible to have a gentry in France, and it also became impossible to have any other kind of Government than a mock Republic and an absolute Empire. I have been informed, though I cannot state it positively, that the present Emperor and his advisers are trying to invent a mode of making property in France divisable in another way than it is now, but however this may be, it is well known that the Emperor relies upon the working classes, and not upon the middle classes, who, had they but the power, might perhaps have prevented the outbreak of the impending war. So much for the example of the most powerful country on the Continent. The hon. Member for Birmingham attempted to argue, but how did he argue? He said, "I call upon the Attorney General to answer me a question," when he knew that, according to the

  2003
  rules of the House, the Attorney General could not make an answer. The question he asked was, "Would you extend the principle of the existing law to personal property?" I say that I would not. The law extends the principle only to the land, which partakes of the stability of the Constitution of the country, but that is no reason why the same rule should be applied to personal property. The hon. Member said he would make out his case by referring to a speech made by a younger son of his acquaintance. I collect from the Very irreverent manner in which that younger son spoke that he was what is popularly called a scamp, and that, being a scamp, he disapproved the law which preserved the paternal property for an older and a wiser man.
  MR. BRIGHT: The gentleman in question was a gentleman of the highest rank and character.
  MR. WHITESIDE: I am very sorry to hear that, but if the rank and character of the gentleman are indisputable, at all events I have a right to dispute his good sense, and I think if he were a man of good sense he ought to have respected the institutions of his country. The hon. Member should recollect that it was open to younger sons to devote their abilities to the service of their country, or employ them in the study of the learned professions. The present Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was a younger son, and so was the celebrated Lord Mansfield and Lord Erskine; for a man may have sense and yet be the son of an Earl. The present system worked well, and that was the best argument in its favour. With respect to what has been urged about political economy, I confess I distrust a great deal of what political economists state, as, for instance, that the right of voting in this country should be separated from the possession of property. The hon. Gentleman said that landed property was in fewer hands than formerly; but how can he prove it? Unfortunately we have no statistics on the subject, and if we had the hon. Gentleman would not believe them. The hon. Gentleman has adduced nothing in proof of his statement, and I doubt it. There is a court in Ireland for breaking up estates, and I heard a newspaper commissioner swear in the court that, having inquired into the manner in which the new proprietors had dealt with the land, he found that the new small men had generally raised the rents 50 per cent. I
  2004
  can quite conceive that if inquiry were made among the tenants, in order to ascertain on whose estates they were treated with most kindness, gentleness, and liberality, every one of them would say, "I would rather live on an estate belonging to one of the old gentry, than on the estate of a new small proprietor, who pinches and takes the last farthing he can get." Hon. Gentlemen must not assume as a fact that there are fewer proprietors than formerly, and must not draw the inference that if there were more it would be a great advantage. There is enough land for those to buy who wish to purchase. One would think that we were living in a very unfortunately circumstanced country. If the law is immoral, vicious, pestilent, it is marvellous it should have existed so long, and England is not the country that poets, historians, and patriots have described it to be if we are to accept the description given by the hon. Gentleman. I hope he may live to see the error of his ways, and come round to my opinion of our good old Constitution. MR. JAMES said, he could not help thinking that an attempt had been made to turn the discussion from that which was the real question before the House. They were not discussing whether the law should he so altered as to take away from owners of property the power of disposing of it, as one might have thought from the serious consequences which had been depicted by hon. Members as the result of the passing of the measure. The question had been argued as if the aristocracy were to be ruined, and as if no man was to have an opportunity of preserving a great estate intact. But what was the Bill? The law at present enabled every man to dispose of his real and personal estate in whatever manner he pleased, and the only principle which the hon. Member for Surrey sought to introduce was, that in the event of the owner of real property dying intestate, there should be a more just disposition of the property than there was at present. For the last 200 years the law had, under such circumstances, dealt in a manner dictated by sound policy with the disposition of personal property, which included not only horses and dogs, and tea and coffee, but even leases of large estates, which might be for an indefinite number of years, and relate to thousands of acres, and all that the Bill proposed was in similar circumstances to deal in like manner with real estate. The hon. Member for Surrey thought it not unreasonable that if a man

  2005
  did not choose to dispose of his estate by will in his lifetime, it should not be disposed of after his death for the benefit of one member of his family. The Attorney General had told them that if a man had a wife and a number of children, it might not be fair to assume that he meant to dispose of his estate among all the members of the family; but surely, on the other hand, it ought not to be assumed that he had an invincible desire to benefit one. The reason was as good for the one case as for the other, and if the man had neither wife nor children, how could it possibly be assumed that he was desirous to benefit one distant relation, who, according to the present state of things, was the heir-at-law, to the exclusion of all others who might claim some degree of relationship? The remedy proposed for the evil of the existing system was founded not only upon justice but upon policy, for it was the duty of a man to provide for those whom he had introduced into the world. And the measure would be productive of no inconvenience, because there were very few of the great estates of the country, whether attached to peerages or held by the gentry, which were not settled; and if a man who had made a large property by commerce or manufacture had invested that property in land, there were very few instances in which he would neglect to exercise his power of disposing of it by will. But it was said that the measure would affect the humbler classes, and would throw property into the hands of attorneys and auctioneers. That was an argument of little weight when twelve words would enable a man to dispose of property to the extent of £10,000, and when a man might leave his cottage in the hands of his children by merely filling up a printed form. The State interfered at present to the extent of declaring that, in the event of a man leaving a freehold estate undisposed of by will, it should go to his eldest son; but the anomaly was, that if the property consisted of leasehold land or houses, the law stepped in and said it should be divided among all the next of kin. They were not asked by this measure to undermine the Constitution, but simply to establish a principle which was both just and politic, and he trusted the measure would receive the sanction of the House.
  LORD JOHN MANNERSsaid, that he was not either a lawyer, or a great landed proprietor; but before the House went to a division he thought they ought to know
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  from the hon. Member for East Surrey, whether the intention and purport of this Bill were that, supposing a landed proprietor, whether Peer or commoner, possessed in fee-simple, died intestate, his property, be it castle, palace, or hall, necessarily under the operations of this Bill, should be sold and divided, as the provisions of the Bill seemed to indicate?
  MR. LOCKE KINGwas rather surprised that the noble Lord should have put a question of that sort to him. This Bill did not contemplate any difference between rich and poor. If the owner of such a property as the noble Lord had described should die intestate, the estate would be divided; but the noble Lord must know that, practically speaking, all the great estates were settled and entailed, and he would make bold to say that this Bill would not practically affect the great estates of the country.
  MR. HIBBERTsuggested to the hon. Member for East Surrey that as many hon. Members would vote against the Bill in the fear that it would operate against the large estates it might be consistent with the object of his Bill to stipulate for the registration of all estates coming under its operation. Of late years there had been a great increase in the number of small estates, and the present law inflicted great hardships on the proprietors of them. It would only be justice if they were allowed to register their estates on their becoming possessed of them, so that they might come under the operation of such a Bill as this, and in this way no interference would take place with the estates of the great landed proprietors.
  MR. EWARTreminded the right hon. Member for the University of Dublin, that Adam Smith, in his last volume, strongly advocated the principle on which this Bill was founded, which was, in effect, but carrying out the great principles of free trade which had so long governed the policy of this country. He had himself thirty years ago called attention to the subject, but had not pressed the question because he felt sure that a better opportunity of dealing with the matter would occur. He was convinced that the proposed change was consistent with right and justice.
  SIR JOHN WALSHsaid, that the question was one of so much importance that he thought it would be satisfactory to the House to learn the opinion of a Cabinet Minister before they went to a division upon it.
  MR. BARROWsaid, he represented a great many small freeholders, and he well knew what their wishes were on this question. He felt that the land should not he cut into ribhons, or that the cottage which a man might build by his industry should at his death be split up into lots of bricks. The question was what sort of a will they ought to make for a man who did not make a will for himself, and he would state, without reference to the aristocracy, that the wishes of small proprietors was that their land should not be divided.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I had no intention of addressing the House, nor do I intend to enter upon the question at any length. It is one of great interest and importance, and I should not like to address the House upon it without endeavouring to make my sentiments fully and clearly understood; but, after the appeal which has been made to me by the hon. Baronet opposite, it would not be respectful in me to allow the House to go to a division without my saying a few words. I am not aware of any sufficient reason for the passing of such a Bill as this, and I am opposed to the principle of the Bill. I am far, however, from regarding the present state of the law as perfectly satisfactory. It has never been thought necessary, or even, under the circumstances, becoming, that the Government, as such, should take part in the discussion of this measure. My hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General has explained his views with great force and clearness, and, without adopting particular expressions and every incidental sentiment, in the general views of my hon. and learned Friend, the Government—or at any rate, I—heartily concur. I hope this will be deemed sufficient, as, but for the appeal made to me, I should not have thought it necessary to address the House at all.
  Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 84; Noes 281: Majority 197.
  Words added.
  Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.
  Bill put of for six months. Sir John Walsh

  FELLOWS OF COLLEGES DECLARATION BILL— [BILL 26.]—THIRD READING.
  (Mr. Bouverie, Mr. Dudley Fortescue.)
  Order for Third Reading read.
  MR. SELWYNrose to present a Petition signed by 179 residents in the University of Cambridge—namely, the Chancellor and twelve Heads of Colleges, ten professors, seventeen tutors, thirty-seven assistant-tutors, twenty-two deans and other officials, seventy-four members of the Senate, and six B. A. resident fellows, which set forth that a very short time had elapsed since very important questions relating to the endowments, discipline, studies, government, and religious condition of the University were examined into and carefully considered by certain eminent persons acting under a Royal Commission, and who were themselves familiarly conversant with all matters connected with the constitution of the University and with the government and general working of the several colleges; that the opinion of these gentlemen was—
  "That many of the endowments of the Colleges and the University were connected with the Church by links which it would be an injnstice to sever, and that its whole school of theology was identified with the Church and incapable of a separate existence."
  That an Act was passed in the 19th and 20th years of the present reign to allow persons not members of the Church of England to avail themselves of the University education to be admitted to all the scholarships, prizes, and exhibitions, and to proceed to degrees; that it was specially provided by that Act that those degrees should not entitle them to become members of college or qualify them for holding any offices in the University which had heretofore been held by members of the United Church of England and Ireland; and that the Bill before the House was calculated to unsettle what had been done in the University and Colleges in accordance with this recent legislation; and the petitioners, therefore, prayed that the House would not allow the Bill to be passed.
  MR. BOUVERIE MR. BOUVERIE moved that this Bill be read a third time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time,"—(Mr. E. P. Bouverie.)
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY, in rising to move the rejection of the Bill, said, that he was sorry that the third reading had

  2009
  come on at so late a period of the sitting,) as it might prevent them from fully discussing the question. He was anxious for the sake of both sides of the House that they should come to a decision upon the question, for as the Bill involved a great principle it was desirable that the House should pronounce its opinion upon it. The present Bill differed materially from the Bill of the hon. and learned Member for Exeter (Mr. Coleridge), which related to University tests. In the first speech he made the hon. Member for Exeter stated that the two measures stood upon quite distinct grounds, and that no one who should vote for his Bill would by so doing be prevented voting against the Bill of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock. The Bill of the right hon. Gentleman introduced a principle that was absolutely novel, affecting as it did the teaching of the Colleges, which were a kind of domestic foundation, by placing the governing power in the hands of persons of different religions, or of no religion at all. It had been stated, both by the Mover of the Bill and his supporters, especially the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Fawcett), that the Bill would not interfere with the statutes or ordinances of the Colleges, or put them under any coercion, but he should be able to show that it could not be passed without necessarily leading to such a coercion being applied to them. It was contended that inasmuch as most of the Colleges were founded before the Reformation, they had been dealt with by Act of Parliament, and handed over from one creed to another, and that Parliament could deal with them again if necessary. Now this argument went beyond the Bill, for if it were just so to deal with endowments given before the Reformation, and now attached to the Church of England for purposes of religious education, they must be prepared to go farther, and to extend the principle to foundations attached to clerical fellowships, and even to the temporalities of the Church itself. He would venture to say it was the same Church of England, holding the same creeds as the Church before the Reformation; but that point had been before urged in the House, and it was enough for his purpose to state his view without further argument. He considered that the pro-Reformation endowments justly belonged to the Church of England. But with respect to the post- Reformation endowments, on what ground would they put their hands on them? They at least had been given
  2010
  on the sanction of Acts of Parliament, up to the present time recognizing these as Church of England Colleges, and so affording a guarantee that funds given to them would be protected as bestowed for Church purposes. Yet it was proposed to deal with them as with pre-Reformation endowments. This proposal was admittedly wrong as applied to other communities; but a strange reason was given for its justice when applied to the Church. In a very important inquiry before a Committee of the other House, a question was put to a gentleman opposed to all connection of Church and State, and desirous to seize Church property for other purposes. How would he distinguish between Nonconformist and Church of England endowments? He said, Oh, the Church of England was national; therefore the endowments were given to the nation, and the nation had a right to deal with them as it thought fit; whilst those of the Nonconformist were given to individual bodies, and could not be claimed by the nation. Was the Church of England to be placed in a position different from all other denominations—that if persons conferred these benefits on Colleges they should be alienated from the purposes they were intended for, and devoted to purposes for which the donors would never have given them? It was an injustice that had not been attempted on any other denomination but the Church of England; and it was in the present instance as inexpedient as it was unjust. Mixed religious teachers could not properly or effectively carry on the only education that could be called real—namely, religious education, And as a general rule all in the education of their children sought for instructors of their own creed. They found this natural desire responded to in the Colleges and schools of various denominations, which had teachers of but one religion in them. Look at the Colleges affiliated to the London University, as King's College, Stonyhurst, Oscott, for examples, and yet the right hon. Gentleman opposite asked them to introduce a new principle, and make the governing body of the Colleges one composed of persons of different religions, and on what grounds is the proposal made? Hard cases are put forward, which if listened to will cause bad laws. The case which the right hon. Gentleman had brought forward was that of persons on the verge of the Church of England, differing very little in doctrine or forms from it, but who did not admit they were

  2011
  members of the Church of England. He was led to ask himself whether these almost Churchmen were not put forward as a screen for those on whose behalf the hon. Member for East Surrey had formerly spoken, the freethinkers nominally within the Church, but withheld from assailing her doctrines by the pledges which they have given; or such as those for whom Mr. Goldwin Smith and other writers were advocates, with a somewhat expansive and intangible creed which he could not understand. On a former occasion he had pointed out that Roman Catholics were not admissible under this Bill, and the right hon. Gentleman in his speech two years ago confined his remarks to Protestant Nonconformists. [Mr. BOUVERIE: I do not admit that.] The right hon. Gentleman should look back to his speech, and to the comments then made by the right hon. Member for the county of Limerick (Mr. Monsell) on the subject. But he would not dwell further, as the time was short, upon that point, except to state that under the measure of the right hon. Gentleman Roman Catholics would not be admissible to the Colleges, but that further legislation would be required. If, as he contended, the endowments of these Colleges were for the advancement of the religion of the Church of England; if these Colleges were never intended for such persons as the right hon. Gentleman proposed to legislate for, the grievance that they were excluded fell to the ground. The right hon. Gentleman said his only wish was to leave the Colleges to deal with their statutes as they pleased—to remove a bar, but to put no pressure upon them. But a grievance was put forward that the Colleges did not admit certain persons, who had greatly distinguished themselves, but who did not agree with the Church of England, to the benefit of fellowships. Well, suppose the Colleges refused to do this, when the barrier which this Bill proposed to do away with was removed, was any one silly enough to believe that the grievance would be allowed to slumber; that it would not be said they had passed a measure, permissive indeed, but containing a principle? He knew the history of permissive Bills. They invariably led to coercive Bills. The principle having once been admitted, would not this become a coercive measure? Suppose one or two of the Colleges admitted into their teaching bodies members of other denominations than the Church of England, would there not be pressure put upon the
  2012
  others, and appeals made to the House to coerce those Colleges? It was said that these gentlemen were not admitted to the privileges of the Universities. That was not the case, for they were admitted to all the honours of the University, and what they asked was honour, emolument, teaching and governing power within the Colleges. They were not content with the honours of the University; they sought to get the emoluments of the Colleges. He said they were not intended for them, and it was proposed to apply the sums given for the foundation of the Colleges and the promotion of the religion of the Church of England to a purpose entirely opposite. For if the right hon. Gentleman made out his case of grievance for persons almost Churchmen, it was fair, on the other hand, for his opponents to assume that men of strong religious or irreligious views adverse to the Church would claim admission on account of their attainments, and cause strife and dissension within the Colleges. In reply to the argument that the course now proposed would lead to dissensions in the Colleges, it was said that there were dissensions now. Truly that was so, and differences of opinion would arise, but they subsided as they arose, and at least they were within the limits of the creed which all received, and which bound to harmony on the greatest points those who united in a common worship. There was an essentially Church life and feeling maintained within a College. This Bill tended to destroy these, and the object sought was a bad one, for he did not believe that there was any efficacy or advantage in having instructors of varied religions, either in schools or Colleges, and especially in such peculiarly English institutions as the Colleges, which, as he had said, were of a quasi-domestic character, and where the relations of tutor and pupil were of a confidential character. It was a wrong principle. What the parties complaining really wanted to do was this. Those persons who were so anxious for mixed religious teaching founded nothing for themselves; therefore it was, when not prepared to put their hands in their pockets and give handsomely of their substance for their vague and unintelligible system of mixed religions, which must become secular education, they were ready to take what was given for other purposes by founders and donors, whose main object was education founded upon religion, and that one fixed and definite. The right hon. Gentleman

  2013
  said the fellowships were "simply prizes for intellectual and scientific attainments." They were not only this; they were given for persons who were to have the charge of the education, and who were therefore the guardians of the religious instruction of the members of the Colleges. He said at this moment a distrust had arisen in the minds of men disposed to make these endowments, lest their gifts should be applied to purposes opposite to those for which they intended them. He did not oppose the Bill simply because he represented the University of Oxford. He opposed it long before he held that position. He did not believe in mixed religious education that was superintended by men of different religious opinions, and he had never known an instance in which it had succeeded. The very success of the Colleges on their present system was against the change proposed; and believing, as he did, that they were founded and endowed upon right principles which had obtained such success, and that the Church would always furnish, as she had done, abundance of men of scientific and intellectual attainments for the purposes of instruction within them, he begged to move that the Bill be read a third time that day six months.
  MR. POWELLsaid, it had been a common observation during the discussions on this Bill that its opponents were not the most enlightened of men. In seconding the Amendment he had, however, the satisfaction of feeling that he was representing the feelings of the University of Cambridge, who had sent up a petition which had been or would shortly be presented to the House against the Bill, a petition that was adorned by the names of men the most eminent in mathematical science. A petition signed by such men as Professors Cayley, Challis, Stokes, and Adams was worthy of the consideration of the House. He doubted not that the right hon. Gentleman would meet this petition in the same way as on a former debate—namely, by saying that "if the University had ever done anything for the advancement of the cause and the improvement of education the petition would be entitled to some consideration, but that the reverse was the case." Although it might not be described as a dishonest Bill, yet it evidently concealed some of its objects. With reference to the tests imposed by the Act of Uniformity, none could fail to observe the uncertainty of the position occupied by those who objected to them. Sometimes they asserted
  2014
  that the tests were weak; sometimes they objected to them on the ground of their strength. He contended that the test now complained of was of the mildest character. They were sometimes told that there was so little of religious teaching in the Colleges that it was of no value; at other times that religious teaching was too severe and stringent. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman who brought forward the Bill would have spoken scornfully of the religious education in the Colleges. During the last twenty years he (Mr. Powell) had had the advantage of association with Cambridge, and had not failed to observe great improvement in the moral and intellectual and religious culture of the graduates of the University. Religious education was now given partly by lectures, partly by examination, partly by Divine service in the College chapels. It had been suggested by a gentleman who was once a Member of that House that a simple form of prayer might be adopted in the College chapels, similar to that which was used in and gave a solemnity to the proceedings of that House. But few, he thought, would venture to approve of such an arrangement. The whole system of the Colleges was based upon the idea of "unity of creed." But once introduce "diversity of creed" and none could say what results might follow. Another objection would arise from the distraction from the usual studies of the place which must ensue. It was because he felt convinced that the introduction of these varied elements must distract the minds of the teachers of Oxford and Cambridge from their duties that ho was anxious to shut out those elements. Supposing the hon. Member for Birmingham had acquired a position in one of the Universities, would any one venture to say that the teaching of that University would be conducted without acrimony and distraction from practical work? It had been stated that if this Bill passed there would still remain many harriers against the Nonconformists, and that the Church of England men might shelter themselves under them. But could any one believe that such barriers could be allowed long to remain? No. Agitations would spring up for the very purpose of destroying them. For all these reasons he asked the House not to pass this Bill. He felt certain that it would be fraught with great inconvenience and disaster; that, instead of advancing religion and sound learning, religion would fail under

  2015
  its influence, and the Colleges now so full would be comparatively deserted, and lose a large share of the public confidence it was now their privilege to enjoy.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Gathorne Hardy.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. FAWCETTsaid, he should not have ventured to address the House a second time on this subject, did he not think that by doing so he might be able to remove a misapprehension. It had been stated during the debate that this Bill would give no relief to Roman Catholics. Now he was anxious to assure his Roman Catholic friends in the House and the country that they who first started this movement in Cambridge—and it was a movement first started in the University, and not outside of it—were not in the least degree aware of any other Act that would exclude Roman Catholics. It was their desire that the Colleges should have power to admit persons of any religion, whether Nonconformists or Roman Catholics, if they thought the student sufficiently distinguished, and if they thought he was a man who would do good to the College. There were some doubts as to the operation of an Act of Parliament and of the Act of Indemnity, but he gave his Roman Catholic friends this distinct pledge, that they who were in favour of this measure, if it passed and if they found that it did not give to Roman Catholics the same privileges that it gave to Nonconformist Dissenters, would at once introduce a measure that would confer the same privileges on Roman Catholics. But he had consulted eminent Roman Catholics on the subject, and he was told that this Act, if passed, would admit Roman Catholics, because the operation of the Act of Henry VIII. virtually became inoperative by the Act of Indemnity. There were one or two other points to which he wished to direct attention. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had alluded to a petition from resident Members of the University of Cambridge. Many of those who signed the petition were intimate friends of his, and he would be the last person to say one word in disparagement of its influence or of its importance. He was aware that it had been signed by some of the most eminent men in the University, but still this
  2016
  did not in the least degree affect the case that he wished to put. Strong as the petition was there was still a great majority in favour of this Bill in some of the Colleges, and all that they asked for was to try the experiment gradually and in the smallest Colleges. He had authority to state that there was one College that was ready immediately to try the experiment; that a Dissenter there had lately taken a distinguished degree, and they would have let him into fellowship immediately. That would have been making an experiment on a small scale. The hon. Member for the University of Oxford had laid great stress upon this principle. He said that the Colleges were private institutions, just like private schools. Now he denied that, and he maintained that Parliament had likewise virtually denied the principle, because it had given to Commissioners power to frame their statutes, and to a certain degree against their will. And in every other respect the Commissioners had allowed the Colleges to have the greatest variety in practice. In some of the Colleges there were married Fellows; in others all the Fellows must be clergymen, and in others all the Fellows must be laymen. All these differences of practice existed, and therefore he asked why did they not let one or two Colleges who wished to try this experiment do so, and see whether, as they believed, the best interests of the College would be promoted by occasionally electing a distinguished student to a Fellowship, who did not happen to be a member of the Church of England? The advocates of this measure based their case on two grounds. In the first place, they considered that what they asked for would promote the best interests of the University; and, in the second place, they advanced a wider and more important argument; they said it would promote the best interests of learning. What was more important to a great educational establishment than this, that they should have the opportunity of retaining among their body the most distinguished students, in order to promote education? Instances had been adduced in which the Colleges had been prevented from electing a student to a Fellowship because he was not a member of the Church of England. What harm could it do to religion if a student, though he did not belong to the Church of England, but being a brilliant mathematician, were elected to a Fellowship so that the College might put him on the educational staff? But this Act of Parliament virtually

  2017
  said they should not appoint a man who would best promote education in their Colleges. Then, again, he put it on another ground. He said that the present system made an inroad on a cherished principle, which was that the emoluments and distinctions of the College should be conferred on the most distinguished student, and it was a bitter mortification, and a great inroad on this principle which they so cherished, if they saw a distinguished student passed over, and a less distinguished student gaining the honour which this man had fairly won, and all simply because there was some slight difference in their religious creed. But he put the question on a wider basis than this. He said it was a question in which the nation at large had a deep interest. He looked upon the Colleges as something more than private establishments. He maintained that their magnificent endowments and their history in some respects illustrated the growth of this nation. There, there was always the quiet retreat to which the student might retire. When the nation was convulsed, there on the banks of the Isis and the Cam, the student might produce those works which would tend to give lustre to the age. Ages had been rendered illustrious, not so much by the wealth that was accumulated, but what made an epoch illustrious was to look back and think that at that time there was the scholarship of an Erasmus, the poetry of a Milton, the philosophy of a Bacon, the discoveries of a Newton. And was it not equally important at the present time, in this age of material progress, when there was such striving for wealth, that there should be a retreat where superior intellect could peacefully and calmly pursue its investigations, and where the noble principle was recognized that it was not wealth that could confer distinction, but that the only way to honour was the culture of the intellect? He appealed to the great Liberal party to remove these restrictions, which were the remnants of that unfortunate policy the upholders of which seemed to think that religion would be promoted by the maintenance of restrictions which only tended to foster the rancour of sectarianism. Lately, we had heard a great deal from the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the burdens which had been handed down to us by our predecessors. These burdens had to be borne by us all. But we had inherited something more; we had inherited magnificent endow-
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  ments and a great and illustrious history. If we had all to bear these burdens, let us, let the nation at large, enjoy those other gifts that had descended to us with the burdens. These were questions in which the humblest citizen of the land might take an interest, because it was the glory of the University that many a poor boy with no other possession than his intellectual gifts had gone to Oxford or to Cambridge, and had there obtained those pecuniary rewards which had enabled him to win great distinction. He therefore confidently asked the House by passing this Bill to allow the nation at huge to have a full opportunity of participating in these inestimable advantages.
  MR. BENTINCKsaid, this Bill was an illustration of what the right hon. Member for Calne called the doctrine of stepping-stones and instalments. One instance of such a stepping-stone had been just dealt with by the House, and he hoped the present one would share the same fate. When this question first arose, they were told that if the Universities would allow Dissenters to write B. A. and M. A. after their names that was all that would be asked for. When that concession was made, claims were immediately made both to the emoluments and the government of the Universities. He quite agreed with the Member for the University of Oxford that this Bill interfered with, and was injurious to, the rights of property in the country. The endowments of the Universities were of two kinds—the pre-Re-formation and the post-Reformation endowments. His hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford had argued the question with regard to the former in a way which made it unnecessary for him to touch upon them. But with regard to the latter, and speaking of the University of Cambridge, he could say that the post-Reformation endowments constituted a very large proportion of the whole, and if the State were to interfere with such property it would amount to neither more nor less than confiscation. Many of the Colleges at Cambridge had been founded since the Reformation, and one even in the last century, and to divert these endowments to different purposes from those to which they were intended would be monstrous. The hon. Member for Brighton had argued that the State had a right to interfere. No doubt the State had interfered in many cases, and

  2019
  had interfered most injuriously. Some centuries ago Queen's College was instituted for the benefit of Westmoreland and Cumberland, and with the sole view of educating clergy for those poverty stricken districts; but the State had most unjustly thrown the College open. The most rev. Prelate who now filled the archiepiscopal throne of York was educated at Queen's College, where he obtained first scholarship, then fellowship, and was afterwards elected to the headship of his college. His merits became known in that way, and, perhaps, only for that he might not now occupy the position which he so worthily filled. It had been said that the education given at Cambridge was not religious, and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bouverie), who said so adverted to his own experience. He said that he attended chapel regularly, that he was a most profound student of Paley's works, that he attended lectures on the Greek Testament, and so on. Well, he would ask the House, was not all that religious education? Nothing could be more pertinent than the observation made by the hon. Member for Oxford University, when he referred to Stonyhurst, Oscott, and other Colleges affiliated with the London University, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman opposite would be puzzled to say how the religious education of those establishments was different from that of the Colleges.
  Debate adjourned till Wednesday, 11th July.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUPPLEMENTAL (NO. 2) (re-committed) BILL.
  Order for Committee read, and discharged.
  Ordered, That the Bill, so far as it relates to Linthwaite and Briton Ferry, be committed to a Select Committee, to be nominated by the Committee of Selection, as in the case of a Private Bill.
  Ordered, That all Petitions which have been presented during the present Session against the Bill be referred to the Committee, and such of the Petitioners as pray to be heard by themselves, their Counsel, or Agents, be heard upon their Petitions, if they think fit, and Counsel heard in favour of the Bill against the said Petitions.—(Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen.)
  House adjourned at six minutes before Six o'clock.