§ (In the Committee.)
§
(1.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £87,615, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1869, for the Establishments of China, Japan, and Siam.
§ MR. H. B. SHERIDAN moved that the Chairman report Progress. He was not a very young Member of the House, but he had never seen anything so extraordinary as what had just occurred. He had waited from nine o'clock until twenty minutes to twelve to hear Mr. Speaker call upon him, in accordance with what he submitted was the custom of the House. He supposed that Mr. Speaker was putting 669 the Motion of the hon. and gallant Member (Captain Mackinnon), and he did not for a moment suppose that the Question being put was whether the House should go into Committee of Supply. The custom of the House was that the fairest chance should be given to all hon. Members, on whatever side of the House they sat; and he really felt inclined to doubt whether he could be awake, the scene that had just passed was of so unusual a character. To say the least, it was very sharp practice.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Henry B. Sheridan.)
§ MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, he was greatly surprised at the course taken by hon. Members. In the first place, an hon. and gallant Member was simply calling attention to a subject, and no Motion was before the House except that the Speaker leave the Chair. The Speaker waited some time, and then put the Question most distinctly that he should leave the Chair, which was carried, for no one objected to it, and he left the Chair in the ordinary course.
§ COLONEL FRENCHsaid, that the right hon. Gentleman had not given a very accurate description of what had passed. The noble Lord opposite (Lord Henry Lennox) was in conversation with Mr. Speaker at the close of the speech of the hon. and gallant Member (Captain Mackinnon); but it was impossible for the House to know the nature of the conversation, and he thought that at least Mr. Speaker had taken hon. Members by surprise; he thought that the hon. Members whose names were on the Paper ought to have been called on before the Question was put. Without any notice or understanding of what course Mr. Speaker was about to take, the right hon. Gentleman left the Chair, although he called the right hon. Gentleman's attention when he was on the step of the Chair, He thought there ought to be an understanding between hon. Members and the right hon. Gentleman.
§ MR. DISRAELIsaid, he thought the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel French) was mistaken in his recollection. So far as his (Mr. Disraeli's) experience went—and it was not inconsiderable—the Speaker had followed the usual course. It had never been the practice to call the names of Members 670 who had given Notice of Amendments on going into Supply. He should, however, be happy to give any assistance in his power to enable Members who considered themselves aggrieved to bring forward their Motions on an early day. When he looked at the Paper he did not see that any serious injury had been done to any hon. Gentleman; but even if so, it had been by his own inadvertence. There were two or three Notices on the Paper which took precedence of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's—one relating to the Royal Irish Academy, which was a very fertile subject, and after that a Motion on the subject of the Privy Council and the importation of foreign cattle. These would have occupied the available time of the House if they had come on, so that he had sustained no injury whatever, even if the Speaker had waited until it came to his turn. His Question was, moreover, addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as his right hon. Friend was absent, and the Question was one which he alone could answer, the Government would have been obliged to appeal to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to postpone his Question. He felt certain it would not be his wish to obstruct the progress of Public Business. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. H. B. Sheridan) would also have had no opportunity of bringing forward his Motion if those before him on the Paper had been called upon. He trusted he would withdraw his Motion, because if Progress were reported it would not furnish the hon. Gentleman with any remedy, or enable him to bring forward the subject of his Notice.
MR. OTWAYsaid, that though he was inconvenienced by what had occurred, yet he was perfectly willing to submit with good humour. There was, however, no opportunity, except on Fridays, for private Members to bring any matter under the attention of the House, Tuesdays having now been taken from them, so that they had only three more nights this Session. He roust say that the Speaker distinctly put the Question that he should leave the Chair, and he (Mr. Otway) remained quiet, thinking that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel French) was about to rise. The Prime Minister was willing to give every facility he could to private Members to bring on their Business, and therefore he would make the small return of offering no obstruction to the progress of Public Business.
§ MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, that on Tuesdays every Motion was a substantive Motion put from the Chair, and the practice was for the Speaker to call upon every Member to make his Motion. But on Friday there was technically only one Motion, and the various Notices were merely Amendments to the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair. It was then "each man for himself."
§ MR. H. B. SHERIDANsaid, he had erroneously expected that Mr. Speaker would have called upon each Member having Notices on the Paper.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Original Question again proposed.
COLONEL SYKESlamented that he had to address the House at that late hour (a few minutes to twelve o'clock), when, after a lengthened sitting, he could not hope to command its attention. Time was when Mr. Brotherton used to move the adjournment of the House at midnight, and it would be well for the interests of the country if the practice were resumed, particularly on nights when Estimates were proposed. He would prefer postponing his Motion; but, if the House wished it, he would proceed! ["Go on."] Well, then, he rose to move that the salary of the Envoy and Chief Superintendent at Pekin be put on the same footing as that of the Envoy Extra-ordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul General in Japan, and said he should lament exceedingly if it were thought that in making this Motion he desired to depreciate the services of Sir Rutherford Alcock, our Envoy in Pekin. The votes for diplomatic salaries had gone on increasing year by year. There was a net increase of £16,632 this year for the diplomatic service of China, Japan, and Siam, the total amount being £100,983 last year and £117,615 for the coming year. Colonel Crossmnn had moreover reported in favour of building houses for the diplomatic, judicial, and consular services at an expense of £171,402, and there was in addition a sum of £7,500 to be asked for the purchase of a wharf for the Admiralty at Shanghai. He contended that the salary of £6,000 per annum was now disproportionate to the; duties of the Envoy. There was no such thing as an Executive Government in China. The Emperor was a boy of twelve years of age, in the guidance of two women—the widows of the last Emperor—the provinces were in the hands of viceroys who had enough to do to hold their own against 672 rebellions which existed in many of the viceroyalties, and the viceroys either could not obey or slighted the mandates from Pekin, where the authority was so feeble that it could not guarantee the safety of its Ambassador to Europe—Mr. Burlinghame, on his short journey from Pekin to Tien-Tsin—rebels, even in the vicinity of the capital, rendering the roads dangerous, and Mr. Burlinghame was only enabled to reach Tien-Tsin by the aid of British sailors. Under such circumstances, the position of Sir Rutherford Alcock was most undignified, for he was accredited to an impotent Government which could not fulfil any engagements it might enter into with him. The treaty of Tien-Tsin, for example, contained clauses respecting transit duties, of vital importance to the foreign trader, which were violated by the local Mandarins; and the remonstrances of our Minister were wholly without effect. The salary of our Envoy and Chief Superintendent at Pekin was £6,000, which was a large sum compared with the salaries and allowances of our Envoys and diplomatic agents in different parts of the world. Sir Henry Parkes, our Envoy Extraordinary in Japan, whose life was daily exposed to the utmost risk from the fanaticism of the Japanese people, and whose labours were ceaseless, received only £4,000 a year. In conclusion, while entertaining the highest respect for Sir Rutherford Alcock, he felt it his duty, in the interest of the British taxpayer, to move that the Minister's salary be reduced from £6,000 to £4,000 per annum.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the item of £6,000, for the Envoy and Chief Superintendent in China, be reduced by the sum of £2,000."—(Colonel Sykes.)
LORD STANLEYsaid, he could hardly think the hon. and gallant Gentleman was in earnest in making that proposition. [Colonel SYKES: Quite.] Nobody understood Chinese affairs better than the hon. and gallant Member; but when he urged that the salaries of our Ministers at Pekin and in Japan should be the same, he forgot that our commercial interest was exactly ten times greater in China than it was in Japan. That was one ground of the difference between the salaries of the two Ministers. Again, China was a very distant country, and every article of European comfort was very expensive at Pekin, where there were no hotels, and they could 673 not expect to get service there at the same price as in Europe. Our countrymen naturally looked to the Envoy for hospitality. As to the weakness of the Chinese Government, with that we had nothing to do. If the Taepings got the upper hand—which they had not done and did not seem likely to do—we should recognize them as the de facto Government. With regard to the execution of the treaty of Tien-Tsin there was a Minister from the Court of Pekin accredited to Europe to take that question into consideration. That, therefore, was no reason for diminishing the salary of our Minister in China: £6,000 a year was not an unreasonable sum to pay the person who at the other end of the world was charged with commercial interests involving £60,000,000 or £70,000,000, and which were rapidly increasing.
§ MR. ALDERMAN LUSKsaid, the mission appealed to be altogether one of a very expensive character. He objected to the largeness of the Vote, and still more to its increase year after year. £172,000 was a heavy sum per annum to pay for China. There were abundance of Scotchmen in China seeking situations, and there would be no difficulty in finding men at less salaries than were now paid.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he hoped the hon. and gallant Member would not press his Amendment to a division. The sum proposed was by no means too great for a Minister in China.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Original Question again proposed.
COLONEL SYKESthen moved that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £500, the salary of the Vice Consul at Taku. The place, he said, consisted of a little more than a mud shore and a few huts, and literally contained no house in which an European gentleman could reside. There were three Consuls at Tien-Tsin, and a Vice Consul at Taku. The three former were absent, and the work of the four had to be done by the Vice Consul at Taku. The services of the latter could very well be dispensed with.
LORD STANLEYpointed out that Taku was the port of Tien-Tsin, and that the last Returns showed that ninety-two British ships had been cleared and ninety-one entered there. The trade, which was a glowing trade, was only just beginning to be developed, and a salary of £500 a year to the person who looked after our interests 674 at Taku was, under the circumstances, he thought, not too much.
§ Motion made, and Question, "That the Item of £500, for Salary of the Vice Consul at Taku, be omitted from the proposed Vote,"—(Colonel Sykes,)—put, and negatived.
§ Original Question put, and agreed to.
§
(2.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
'' That a sum, not exceeding £36,314, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1869, for the Extraordinary Expenses of Her Majesty's Embassies and Missions Abroad.
§ MR. ALDERMAN LUSKobjected to the payment of sums of money to Noblemen for going to Russia and Austria to invest the Sovereigns of those countries with the Order of the Garter, and moved that the Vote be reduced by £2,500.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREthought the expenses of these official ceremonies were very extravagant. The Persian Boundary Commission, he believed, was in a state of suspended animation as regarded everything but the charge for which it appeared on the Estimates. He observed that a charge of £478 was made for the extraordinary expenses of the mission at Frankfort. There was a large number of Englishmen there, and there were also great commercial interests requiring the attention of the Consul, who received no pay. He thought that the whole system of unpaid Consuls was bad.
LORD STANLEYsaid that it would, no doubt, be more satisfactory to have all Consuls paid; but if the system of paying all Cousuls were introduced, the House must make up its mind to increase the Estimates by something like £100,000. He had been in hopes that they had heard the last of the Persian Boundary Commission, but some delay had arisen within the last year, and he could only say that he trusted it would not again appear on the Estimates. With respect to the investiture of Foreign Sovereigns with the Order of the Garter, he observed that that was an international compliment, and it was the practice of all the great Powers of Europe reciprocally to confer similar compliments.
§
Motion made, and Question,
That a sum, not exceeding £33,814, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of
675
payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1869, for the Extraordinary Expenses of Her Majesty's Embassies and Missions Abroad,'—(Mr. Lusk,)
—put, and negatived.
§ Original Question put, and agreed to.
§
(3.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £52,950, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1869, for the Salaries and Allowances of Governors, &c, and for other Expenses in certain Colonies.
§ SIR WILLIAM GALLWEY moved that the Chairman report Progress.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Sir William Gallwey.)
§ MR. DISRAELIsaid, he feared that when, after a Morning's Sitting, the House resumed at nine, hon. Members were in danger of supposing that twelve o'clock was midnight, and feeling as if they had been sitting for a long time, whereas they were in fact only commencing the Public Business. He hoped that they might be allowed to proceed.
§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHThis is a proof of the inconvenience of sitting at two o'clock.
§ SIR WILLIAM GALLWEYThe right hon. Gentleman does not attend here at eleven o'clock and sit on Committee till four.
§ MR. SCLATER-BOOTHI hope the hon. Baronet will allow these last three Votes of Class V. to be taken.
§ SIR WILLIAM GALLWEYassented.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Original Question put, and agreed to.
§ (4.) £3,072, to complete the sum for Orange River Territory and St. Helena.
§ (5.) £9,231, to complete the sum for Emigration. House resumed.
§ Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next.
§ Committee to sit again upon Monday next.