§ MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, he would take that opportunity of answering a Question which had been put to him on the preceding evening by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gathorne Hardy). The right hon. Gentleman asked, whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to send home, at the public expense, those Fenian prisoners in Australia to whom the clemency of the Crown had just been extended. In reference to that point he had to observe that the general practice at the Home Office, with respect to convicts who had received a free pardon in Australia, was not to furnish them with a free passage home, unless in those cases in which the pardon had been granted in consequence of some error in the conviction, or the existence of a belief in the original innocence of the parties. With respect to that particular Question, without saying or implying that that general rule would be departed from, he desired to reserve to the Government entire freedom whether they would or would not enforce it in the case of those convicts generally or of any one of them.