§ Lords' Amendments considered; several agreed to.
§ MR. WATKIN moved that they should disagree with one of such Amendments, and reminded the House that the interests of about 5,000 persons were involved in this matter. His object was to get restored to the Bill a clause which their Lordships had struck out, and which clause gave the shareholders power to divide their stock into two classes, preferred and deferred stock, and this had, in other instances, been found to be a most convenient course. One great advantage was, that it discouraged those speculators who endeavoured to keep down the price of stock; and another was that it gave large holders a very valuable mode of distributing their property in the stocks. The South-Eastern Railway Company now wanted to raise £400,000 for the purpose of constructing a railway to Woolwich and elsewhere, and they would have considerable difficulty in raising the money unless this power were 1249 granted. There were numerous precedents for granting it, especially in the case of the Great Northern and in the strictly analogous case of the East Anglian. The Railway Commissioners in their Report said that the shareholders ought to be permitted to arrange these things for themselves, and Lord Redesdale, in his model Railway Bill, had inserted a clause giving the power. No one in the other House had objected to the power being in the present Bill except the Chairman of Committees, who carried his point by a small majority, and in so doing he (Mr. Watkin) must express his opinion that the noble Lord had been eminently inconsistent and eminently unjust, and therefore he proposed, in no spirit of offence to their Lordships, that the House disagree to the Amendment.
§ MR. STEPHEN CAVEI should be sorry to make any attack on the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords. I have never found him wanting in courtesy, and I believe him to have frequently done excellent service in protecting the interests of the public. In this instance I regret that a personal attack upon me by the noble Lord obliges me to say a very few words. The noble Lord, in complaining of railway influence at the Board of Trade, is reported to have said in reference to a similar clause to that of which I have given notice in the Railways' Regulation Bill—
In all probability the imprudence of the Vice President will impose upon your Lordships the necessity of reversing a decision of the other House."—[3 Hansard, cxciii. 1078.]As to railway influence at the Board of Trade, I do not care to say anything. The opinions expressed to me by the railway interest in this House in reference to this very Bill do not lead me to think that they share in that opinion. With reference to the charge against myself I have three remarks to make. In the first place, that it is somewhat strong ground to take, that a collision between the two Houses is provoked by the introduction into a public Bill of a provision rejected in the House of Lords chiefly because it was not in a public but in a private Bill. Secondly, it would seem somewhat unusual to discuss "elsewhere" an Amendment which is merely on the Notice Paper of this House, and has never been brought forward. Lastly, that the President of the Board of Trade is responsible for the conduct of the Department. He is a Member of the House of Lords. Surely, then, the noble 1250 Lord ought to have called him to account, and not have attacked—as I understand, in the temporary absence of the noble Duke—his representative in this House, who acts of course under his direction in these matters. I venture, therefore, to think that the term "imprudence" may be more justly applied to the remarks of the noble Lord than to the conduct of the Vice President of the Board of Trade. I shall not speak or vote in reference to this Amendment, as I shall be prepared to support it to-morrow when it comes before the House in Committee on the Railways Regulation Bill.
§
Amendment disagreed to.
Committee appointed, "to draw up Reasons to be assigned to The Lords for disagreeing to the Amendment to which this House hath disagreed: "—Mr. MILNER GIBSON, Mr. LAING, Mr. LEEMAN, Mr. WATKIN, and Mr. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN:—To withdraw immediately; Three to be the quorum.