§ MR. DISRAELISir, I rise for the purpose of bringing before the House, as briefly as possible, what would appear to be a great grievance, and of making inquiry of the Secretary for War in reference to it. Though this grievance has been experienced by persons of a very humble position, I am sure the House of Commons will not attend to it less on that account, and it affects a considerable class of Her Majesty's subjects. The facts of the case are these:—Some years ago a Buckinghamshire lad, by name Sadler, enlisted into Her Majesty's service, and shortly afterwards was ordered to India. In August, 1863, his father, who was an agricultural labourer, received intimation of the death of his son. It so happened that a very brief time before this intimation reached the father he received a letter from his son, written not at all in the contemplation of approaching death, for he was not even suffering from any illness: the son informed him that he had deposited £15 in the military savings bank. It was, therefore, very natural that the father, on receiving the sad announcement of his son's death, should make some effort to obtain the money; and he therefore wrote to the Department over which the noble Lord (the Marquess of Hartington) presides. For some considerable time he received no 737 answer; but at length he received a communication enclosing an order for the sum of £1 0s. 1d., with the notification that that sum was all the father need expect. I would here say that I do not complain of the delay in answering the man's letter, for I can easily conceive that there may have been circumstances which prevented on immediate answer. In the letter there was no savings bank book or any voucher enclosed, or any official document of any kind. The father was very naturally disappointed at such a result, and he accordingly went to the person who is often the poor man's only friend, the parish priest. The vicar of the parish drew op a letter which stated the whole case in a lucid manner, which was afterwards copied by the father and forwarded along with the son's letter to the War Office. No answer was ever received to this epistle, and even the son's letter, the only voucher for the money deposited in the savings bank, was not sent back, although it was particularly requested that it should be returned. A. period of two years and a half then elapsed, during which the father died. A very short time after this event a letter arrived from the War Office, addressed to the father as the representative of the young soldier, enclosing an order for 2s. 2d., as the balance of his account. The case appears to be one of great injustice. We hear night after night of the difficulty which is experienced in finding recruits for our army; we see that it. is necessary to hold out inducements in order to get men to enlist—and here is a youth who gave his youth and his life to his country, who would seem to have been of a provident and moral turn of mind, and at a great distance from his home, guided by those principles which we cherish in England. There can be no doubt that the possession of such a sum of money is of great importance to a labouring man, and yet of this sum only a very inconsiderable part came to the father's hands. Nearly three years have elapsed, and such would appear to be the conduct of affairs on the part of the War Office that it is impossible not to suspect, and almost to believe, that this is not a single and exceptional case, but an instance from a variety of cases of oppression and hardship which do occur. Under these circumstances, I have deemed it my duty to bring the subject before the House, and I feel satisfied that the noble Lord at the head of the War Office if he should not have it in his power to give a satisfactory explanation on the 738 points to which I have referred will take them into his serious consideration. This, when we are about to be asked to vote the public money, is, I think, the proper occasion to bring such a matter forward, and I should be happy to learn from the Government that there was some chance that those on whose behalf I speak should obtain redress for the loss to which they have so long and so unjustly been subjected.
§ MR. FERRANDsaid, that he had not the slightest idea that his right hon. Friend was about to bring forward the subject to which he had just called attention, but he would now take occasion to say that a similar instance had come under his own; notice. A short time ago a widow in a village near where he resided received a I letter from her son stating that he was travelling down the coast with his discharge on his way home; adding that he I had saved £30 or £40, which he had placed in a savings bank, and with which he hoped to start in some trade and contribute to her support. The next account of him, however, which reached her was conveyed through a paper which was forwarded to her from the army agent in London, authorizing her to receive a sum of about 20s., but not saying a word about the money in the savings bank. He bad laid the matter before the War Office, but had never got any satisfactory reply with respect to it, and he was afraid there was something radically wrong connected with the management of the affairs of our soldiers in India, otherwise no such circumstances as those to which attention had been invited would have occurred.
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERI must express my deep regret that my noble Friend at the head of the War Department (the Marquess of Hartington) is not in his place to reply to the Questions which have been put by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The subject, I may add, has been brought on out of the ordinary course of the business for the evening, as set down in the Notice Paper; and even if my noble Friend were present he could hardly give an immediate answer to the statements of the right hon. Gentleman, inasmuch as he could only address the House once on the Motion before it, and the next subject for discussion also relates to matters connected with the War Department, on which he would have to; speak. I, of course, can offer no satisfactory explanation as to a case with the 739 circumstances of which I have been made acquainted only within the last few minutes. At the same time, I may say, that it is a case which seems to demand explanations on both sides. It happened to me to have to apply to the War Office with respect to the affairs of soldiers coming from India, and I must say that the accounts for which I asked were given with the utmost promptitude. I quite agree that this is a case which calls for careful inquiry; but I would remind the House that it does not appear that any depositor's book was sent to the War Office, and the letter of the soldier was obviously no voucher at all. I do not like to make a suggestion that the papers should be produced, nor can I exactly say what would be the right course to take, until I have some further knowledge of the particulars of the case. I, however, agree with the right hon. Gentleman that these matters ought to be looked into with the utmost punctuality, otherwise an injurious effect may be produced.
§ MR. DISRAELIThe right hon. Gentleman, owing, no doubt, to some fault of mine, has entirely misapprehended my statement. There was no controversy in this case as to the title to the property. The War Office recognized the title by making two remittances. The savings bank books, I may add, necessarily remain in the hands of the Government. A peasant in Bucks could not well have in his possession the savings bank books of a soldier in India. The books, and all the other property of the man were, directly he died, taken into the hands of the authorities in India, by whom and the War Office the disposal of the assets is effected.
§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he rose to a point of order. According to the rules of the House, Motions on going into Committee of Supply should be brought in regular succession, in the order in which they stood on the Notice Paper. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks, however, interfered with that arrangement by bringing on before any of those Motions were disposed of a subject with respect to which there was on the Paper no notice whatsoever, and the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Ferrand), who had announced it to be his intention to bring on another question on the Motion for going into Committee of Supply, had been entrapped into sacrificing the privilege of doing so, inasmuch as he had already spoken once. It was productive of great 740 inconvenience, in his opinion, that the rules regulating the conduct of public business should thus be departed from.
MR. DEPUTY SPEAKERsaid, that the hon. Member was correct in point of order; but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks had been enabled to make the statement which he had made by the consent of the House.
§ Afterwards—
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, he wished to take that opportunity of expressing his regret that he had not been in the House in the early part of the evening, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire had put a Question respecting the effects of a deceased soldier. The right hon. Gentleman had privately given him notice that he would ask that Question; but he had expected that the right hon. Gentleman would not have done so until the other Notices on the Paper previously to their going into Committee of Supply should have been disposed of. He understood the right hon. Gentleman to have stated that the relatives of a deceased soldier of the name of Sadler had been unable to recover the sum of £15 which he had placed in a regimental savings bank. But the War Office had been informed by the commanding officer of the regiment that that soldier had not for a considerable period before his death had any account in that bank. He could not account for the circumstance, but the testimony of the commanding officer was conclusive that there was no such sum in the savings bank, and the soldier's friends were informed of that fact.