§ LORD GARLIES, in rising to recall the attention of the President of the Board of Trade to the subject of Portpatrick Lighthouse, said, he must apologize to the House for taking up their time with a subject which would be uninteresting to them generally; but if he was enabled to make the few remarks which he hoped to do, he believed they 368 would agree with him that he was only doing his duty in bringing forward the subject of which he had given Notice. He must preface his observations by thanking the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Bright) for the very full amount of information he accorded him in answer to his Question on the subject a week ago; but he could not say that he was obliged to him for the substance of that information. He understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that it was the present intention of the Board of Trade to discontinue the light in question; but that, if it could be shown that the light was of utility to passing vessels, he would not sanction its abolition. Now, with the permission of the House, he would give a short resuméof the history of that Lighthouse. It was in the year 1790, some fourteen or fifteen years after that port had been first selected as the station for the transmission of mails from Great Britain to Ireland, that a lighthouse was first erected in the harbour. That continued until the year 1836; and in the interim the harbour was very much improved, and during that year (1836) the pier on the south side of that harbour was considerably elongated, and so important was the station considered that a new lighthouse was erected at the end of it. In that same year the charge of the Lighthouse was given to the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners, and they kept it burning until the year 1850, when, he imagined, it was discontinued in consequence of the mail service, which had been conducted by that port for seventy years consecutively, having been abandoned owing to there having been no railways at that time laid down to the ports on either side of the Channel. For two or three years, he must admit, that no accident happened on that part of the coast which could be considered to be mainly attributable to the want of that light; but in the year 1856—he thought it was—that a wreck occurred, entailing both loss of fife and property: and it was on that account that the Board of Admiralty—in whose hands was at that time intrusted the charge of the harbour and works—ordered the resuscitation of the light, which had continued to be burnt ever since. Now, he had been engaged himself for the last few years with others in trying to re-establish a short sea communication between that port and the nearest port on the Irish coast; and it 369 was during his interesting himself towards that end that he learnt from the persons who had practical knowledge in such matters, that that Portpatrick light was more beneficial than any other on the Scotch coast for all vessels from the English or Irish coast which were making for the entrance to the Clyde. Having given those facts, he would not trespass farther upon the time of the House; but he omitted to mention that a few days before the re-assembling of Parliament, he learned by a side wind that it was intended to extinguish that light by the first of March; and the answer he received from the right hon. Gentleman a week ago seemed rather to confirm that intention on the part of the Board of Trade. He must therefore speak, and with some confidence, to the right hon. Gentleman, who had hitherto, he believed, prided himself upon being outdone by no one in advocating the cause of humanity, not to signalize his advent to power by sanctioning the abandonment of alight, the maintenance of which he believed to be necessary to ensure the safety and preservation, not only of the property, but also of the lives of a large and deserving class of Her Majesty's subjects.