SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES.

HC Deb 12 July 1869 vol 197 cc1677-711

SUPPLY—considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

(1.) £47,413, to complete the sum for the Foreign Office.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, he wished to draw attention to the large amount of salaries paid to Queen's messengers—£23,700. He did not question the ability and intelligence of these gentlemen; in fact they were too good for their work. In former times, and especially in times of war, this expense might have been necessary, but now the railway and the telegraph might advantageously supersede them. He did not propose, however, to abolish them altogether, but to reduce them to the ordinary class of messengers. He thought that £200 a year and their expenses was sufficient. The Austrian and French Embassies used, he understood, at the present day the Post Office and the telegraph to convey communications for the purpose of carrying which messengers were formerly employed. He did not propose to make any Motion now, but he hoped the Under Secretary's attention would be directed to the matter before the next year's Estimates.

MR. BOWRING

said, he should be glad to hear some explanations as to the changes in the commercial department of the Foreign Office.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, he must express his opinion that it was undesirable for clerks receiving salaries in the Foreign Office to act as agents for diplomatists abroad.

MR. CANDLISH

asked if there had been investigation at the Foreign Office with the view of reducing the large staff engaged there?

MR. OTWAY

said, he must admit that he had always thought the salaries of the messengers in the Foreign Office very large; and he was not disposed to quarrel with the assertion that the duties might be discharged for a less sum and by persons in a humbler position in life. He did not say a word against the present messengers. They had nearly all served in the army, and were gentlemen in the true sense of the word, and he believed there was no instance of any despatch entrusted to them having been tampered with. It sometimes happened in the case of illness, that re- course was had to home service messengers, who were not in the same social position; and it was only fair to say that despatches entrusted to them had always reached their destination safely. The Foreign Office messengers received, in the first instance, a salary of £400 a year, and when travelling, besides expenses, they received an allowance of £1 1s. a day. That was generally looked on as a fair allowance. Since 1863–4 the Vote had been reduced from £10,198 to £9,629. He had been directed by the Secretary of State for the Foreign Department to make some inquiry into the matter, and when that inquiry was completed it would be his duty to propose a scheme which would ensure a considerable reduction in the rate for foreign messengers. In the meantime it had been found practicable to dispense with the services of one of them. With regard to the commercial department, it had had the advantage of being presided over by a gentleman of great attainments, Mr. Spring Rice, and although he had been recently appointed to the office of Assistant Under Secretary, he would continue his superintendence of the department. Whatever objections might be entertained to agencies, they entailed no charge on the public, although he confessed he had no sympathy with the system. The matter was one purely of voluntary arrangement between certain persons in the diplomatic service and clerks in the Foreign Office, and the Office had no direct control over it. Under the arrangement made by Lord Stanley no clerk in the Foreign Office would, in future, be allowed to accept such an agency. The result would be that all the agencies would fall into the hands of one clerk, and when this came about it would be a serious question whether it was compatible with, proper attention to a public office that a gentleman receiving £800 or £1,000 a year from the public funds should be receiving £4,000 or £5,000 annually for acting as the agent of diplomatists abroad. The great difficulty was that these agencies had been in existence during 100 years, and it therefore became a question of compensation for vested interests, if the agency business was at once put an end to. In his opinion the system was objectionable in principle, and he should be very glad when the present arrangement ceased.

MR. W. LOWTHER

said, he wished to call attention to the fact that Foreign Office telegrams were sent without any regulations whatever at an enormous expense to the public. Somebody should be made responsible, and no telegram should be sent without being signed, by the responsible person. This would prevent a great waste of public money, for many of the telegrams sent were of little use. As to agents, he thought some of the pensioned clerks should be appointed, the agency business not making any great demand either in regard to time or intellect.

COLONEL SYKES

said, he did not see why bankers should not be employed as agents instead of the clerks at the Foreign Office.

MR. MELLY

said, he must draw attention to the fact that the hon. Gentleman had not given any answer to the questions of his hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish) with reference to the clerks in the Foreign Office.

MR. ANDERSON

said, he would be glad to know whether the salaries in the Foreign Office were likely to undergo revision? He observed that the office porter had a salary of £230 a year. Surely this was too much.

MR. OTWAY

said, he could not hold out any hope of a reduction in the number of clerks at the Foreign Office. He did not think the number was too large to enable them to get through the business satisfactorily. At times a great amount of work was thrown on the office, and as the entire business of the day was disposed of, as a rule, during the day, the clerks were often kept employed long after the hours when they might expect to leave; and, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of the matter, it would not be possible to do the work satisfactorily, as at present, with a smaller staff. With regard to telegrams, the laying of the Atlantic Cable had made a large addition to the telegraphic expenditure of the Foreign Office, and as telegraphic communication was extended over the world, the charge would, no doubt, be increased. With a view to the interests of the public service, he was inclined to encourage, rather than discourage, the use of the telegraph. The hon. Member for Westmoreland stated that there was an instance of a telegraphic order for turtle being sent, but then it should be recollected this was a delicate fish, and a good deal might turn on the question of its punctual arrival. He only hoped with an increase of telegraphy there would be some diminution in the expense of the messages. The office porter, whose salary of £230 had been alluded to, had filled the situation of head porter for a considerable time, and had the custody of the building, with very valuable documents within its walls. His length of service and good guardianship of the building deserved some consideration.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, he was surprised at the smallness rather than the greatness of the sum which the Government paid for their telegrams. He knew more than one private firm in the City which paid something like £5,000 a year for telegrams.

Vote agreed to.

(2.) £23,884, to complete the sum for the Colonial Office.

(3.) £27,413, to complete the sum for the Privy Council Office and Departments.

(4.) £68,033, to complete the sum for the Board of Trade and Departments.

MR. BOWRING

said, that if he had had the honour of a seat in the House when the Bill for abolishing the Office of Vice President of the Board of Trade and substituting that of Parliamentary Secretary was before it, he should have opposed that measure, because he could speak from personal knowledge—having formerly served as Private Secretary to three several Presidents and Vice Presidents—of the public advantage of the old practice of having the President of the Board in one House and the Vice President in the other. He observed that there was an increase of £3,000 in the salaries, &c, of the Board of Trade, a large portion of which was caused by an addition to the senior clerks of the office. There were now twenty senior clerks—a number out of all proportion to the total clerical staff—and it was worth inquiry whether the office had not become top-heavy. He saw a gentleman down in the list as a corresponding clerk in the Railway Department, who was stated in the Estimates to have been appointed for the unusual period of eighteen months only, which seemed to require explanation. The Accountant of the Board of Trade had claimed his retirement, and he had been succeeded, at a salary of £1,000 a year, by a gentleman in no way connected with the Board of Trade. Now, nothing exercised a more injurious effect on a Department than bringing a stranger out of other professions or some other public Department, and putting him over the heads of deserving clerks, who had a right to look for promotion. The library of the Board of Trade was one of the most valuable collections of works on economical and statistical science in this or any other country. It consisted of upwards of 30,000 volumes, and was of the greatest possible use to the commercial department of the Board of Trade. He understood, however, that when the Board moved over to the building lately occupied by the Foreign Office in Whitehall Gardens, they left their valuable library behind them in a temporary wooden building, where it was exposed to the greatest risk from fire. He was told that the library would either be broken up or retained to form the nucleus of a large library common to all the Public Departments. Now, the value of the special library required by each Department consisted in its easy accessibility to the Department, for if it were necessary to send to a distance for a volume the chances were that it would seldom be consulted. He supposed that the librarian, a gentleman of considerable experience in the commercial business of the office, who received a salary of about £600 a year, would remain with the library, and thus the advantage of consulting him would likewise be in a great measure lost.

MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE

said, the increase referred to was not due to the present Government, but to their predecessors in Office. There had been cases of retirement among the senior clerks, whose places had been filled up as usual from the juniors. An inquiry had, however, been instituted by the President of the Board of Trade into the whole work of the Department, and the Report was now under the consideration of the Treasury. A corresponding clerk had been appointed in connection with the railway accounts. When the accountant resigned, the President of the Board of Trade was exceedingly desirous of filling up the post from the Board of Trade itself, but he could not find anyone sufficiently fit to occupy it, and he ap- pointed a gentleman who was Accountant to the Privy Council. The library was an exceedingly valuable one, and it was superintended by a librarian, a sublibrarian and a clerk. The volumes were formerly spread over the whole of the rooms, and it was not thought worth while to remove them to the late Foreign Office, now temporarily occupied by the Board of Trade. The library was, therefore, left in the temporary rooms of the Treasury buildings, where the volumes could be consulted by other Departments. The Board of Trade were now considering whether this might not be treated as a library for the whole of the Public Departments. He had never found any inconvenience himself in sending across the road for any books he might happen to want. His hon. Friend would, he hoped, excuse him for not entering upon the subject of the salary and appointment of the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, there was an increase of £3,300 in the Vote under consideration. The House of Commons, no doubt, was responsible for some of these additions, and the increase was mainly caused by the creation of new offices and officials, such as inspectors of factories, alkali works, &c. He suggested that fees should be charged, as in the case of the Joint-Stock Companies Registration Department. Those which were inspected ought, in his opinion, to pay for their inspection.

MR. GOLDNEY

said, he thought the Government ought next Session to take up the question of the general reform of the Public Departments. The duties of some of the Departments, such as the Privy Council Office and the Home Office, had been greatly increased of late; while, on the other hand, the In-closure Commissioners were probably not overburdened with work. It was a defect, too, of the present system that one Office hardly ever knew what another Department was doing.

MR. AYRTON

said, in reply to his hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury (Mr. Alderman Lusk), he had to state that the question of making fees and charges reimburse the Exchequer the expense incurred by particular establishments had, to a considerable extent, already engaged the attention of Her Majesty's Government. It would be necessary, however, to examine care- fully the provisions of numerous Acts of Parliament before an alteration in the present system could be proposed; but he hoped that during the approaching Recess the whole subject would be thoroughly investigated. In his opinion, when a special service was carried on for the benefit of a particular class, they ought to pay the cost of inspection.

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, he was glad to hear that this subject was engaging the attention of the Government. His hon. Friend (Mr. Goldney) had asked the First Minister of the Crown to review the staff and personnel of the whole of the Public Departments; but to approach this subject in a comprehensive spirit would be to postpone its settlement for a great number of years. In his judgment it would be much more practicable to take each Department by itself and re-organize it from time to time.

Vote agreed to.

(5.) £1,921, to complete the sum for the Privy Seal Office.

(6.) £13,265, to complete the sum for the Charity Commission.

MR. GOLDNEY

said, that there had been some difficulty in carrying out the Resolution passed last year that the Charity Commissioners should defray their own expenses. There was a large number of charities the objects of which had altogether failed, as well as what might be termed demoralizing charities, and those charities in the City of London and elsewhere, in whose case there was no applicant, such as those for the release of slaves and of debtors in prison; and he should like to see a Bill brought in for the purpose of placing all those charities which were now obsolete or useless in a common fund, out of which the expenses of the Charity Commissioners might be paid. By that means new charities of great advantage to the public might be set on foot.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, he concurred with the hon. Member for Chippenham. He might mention that in one case which came under his own observation, there was a certain sum of money left to bind a boy apprentice to a saddler yearly in a parish in which there was none.

Vote agreed to.

(7.) £6,694, to complete the sum for the Civil Service Commission.

(8.) £13,281, to complete the sum for the Copyhold, Inclosure, and Tithe Commission.

MR. GOLDNEY

said, he must point out the absurdity of having five Commissioners to do work 19–20ths of which was purely mechanical. He did not wish to interfere with existing appointments, but he hoped that as vacancies occurred the Government would see the expediency of not filling them up. One man at the head of the Commission, with assistants, would, he felt satisfied, be amply sufficient to carry on the business.

MR. AYRTON

said, the hon. Gentleman might rest assured that new Con-missioners would not be appointed without very careful consideration.

MR. ACLAND

said, he had made a Motion in the early part of the Session, with reference to the question of having a responsible Minister to deal with agricultural subjects, and an assurance was given by the President of the Board of Trade that the matter should receive the attention of the Government. It was his belief that a good Minister of Agriculture would be able to do the work of the Copyhold Commissioners, and thus save the expense of that Department. He trusted that the Government had not lost sight of the subject, and would give it their careful attention at the earliest opportunity.

MR. BRUCE

begged to assure his hon. Friend (Mr. Acland) that the subject to which he had alluded had not been lost sight of; but, as it would require the re-adjustment of the business of several Departments, it had not been possible to make the necessary changes during the pressure of the Session.

Vote agreed to.

(9.) £7,000, to complete the sum for the Inclosure and Drainage Acts Expenses.

(10.) £25,324, to complete the sum for the Comptroller and Auditor General's Department.

(11.) £28,060, to complete the sum for the General Register Office.

MR. CANDLISH

said, he hoped means would be taken by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to extend the area over which the vital statistics of large towns were published weekly. If something like a population of 100,000 were the line adopted, many new elements of social life would be included—Merthyr Tydvil, for instance, with its mining population; Stoke, with its manufacture of pottery; and Sunder-land, with its maritime and shipbuilding interests. The vital statistics of these large industrial populations would be extremely interesting, and their weekly publication would, no doubt, be attended by beneficial results. The additional expense would probably not exceed £100, or £200.

MR. BRUCE

admitted that there was much force in what had been stated by his hon. Friend. The only objection that could be urged against extending the area of the large towns, whose vital statistics were published weekly, was the expense; and he was informed by the Registrar General that such an arrangement would involve some serious addition to the present expenditure. But he would make further inquiry; and if he found that the number of large towns could be increased, with no further addition to the expense than what his hoh. Friend had stated, his suggestion would be adopted.

Vote agreed to.

(12.) £3,000, to complete the sum for the Lunacy Commission.

MR. SCLATER - BOOTH

said, he thought it might be well that the salaries of the Lunacy Commissioners should be placed on the Votes.

MR. AYRTON

said, it would require an alteration of the law to place these salaries on the Votes. They were now charged on the Consolidated Fund.

Vote agreed to.

(13.) £30,550, to complete the sum for the Mint.

(14.) £11,110, to complete the sum for the National Debt Office.

(15.) £23,669, to complete the sum for the Patent Office.

MR. DILLWYN

said, he wished to call attention to the great additional expense which was thrown on patentees and inventors in making searches for patents previously granted, owing to the very imperfect indices kept in the Patent Office. Notwithstanding the large balance of £73,000, to which they had contributed, they were often obliged to expend £50 or £60 more than their fees, in order to find out whether their inven- tions had been anticipated. The staff was too limited.

MR. BOWRING

said, that some five years ago a Committee was appointed to consider the question of the establishment of a patent museum, &c, and that Committee recommended that there should be associated with the Patent Office, a museum of patented inventions, and that a museum of mechanical inventions should be established on the Government land at South Kensington. A vote of £10,000 was consequently taken. for it on the Estimates at that time, but was not proceeded with, and nothing more had since been heard of it. He should be glad of an explanation on the subject from the Secretary to the Treasury.

MR. AYRTON

undertook that the observations of the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) should be communicated, to the Attorney General; and after that, they would probably come under the consideration of the Treasury. But, he would remark, in reference to the sum put down, as derived from patents, that only one-half of the sum was derived from fees on granting patents, and the other half consisted of stamp duties on patents. With reference to the establishment of a patent museum, he observed that the Committee referred to were by no means unanimous, with respect to the conclusion they came to; and the Report of the Committee had not, consequently, carried with it any great weight. Nothing had been done with respect to buildings at South Kensington, as the whole of that question had been from time to time postponed.

MR. DILLWYN

said, that the stamp duties were paid by the inventors, just as well as the fees on patents.

Vote agreed to.

(16.) £13,417, to complete the sum for the Paymaster General's Office.

(17.) £176,762, to complete the sum for the Poor Law Commission.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

said, he desired to call attention to the internal system of the Poor Law Office, and to the arrangement of the work, which he thought might be altered very much for the better. In 1848 the expenditure for clerks at the Poor Law Board was £7,000, and there was a further sum of £1,800 for contingencies. This year the expenditure for clerks was £15,000, and for contingencies £2,400. The business, no doubt, had increased, but by no means in the same proportion. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board might say that no Public Department sent out so many letters as the Poor Law Board. Well, it was a disputed question whether they did not write many more letters than were necessary. They were, indeed, so frequent, and often upon such trivial subjects, as to be received, he feared, with a feeling of ridicule. In 1868 upwards of 64,000 letters were sent out by the Poor Law Board, but a large proportion were of a formal nature, and would not have been written by other Departments, but would have been printed or lithographed. A material reduction might thus be made in the number of clerks and others employed. In 1860 the right hon. Gentleman then at the head of the Poor Law Board (Mr. C. P. Villiers) expressed an opinion to the Treasury that the number of clerks might be diminished, and, in 1867, his right hon. Friend the Member for North Northamptonshire (Mr. Hunt), when Secretary to the Treasury, came to a similar conclusion. No doubt an Act was afterwards passed by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) which threw a great deal of increased work upon the Department; but although the pressure might be great at the present moment, very much of the work would soon be completed and the pressure would then be considerably diminished. There were now two Secretaries to the Poor Law Board—a permanent Secretary and a Parliamentary Secretary—and two Under Secretaries, one a legal gentleman and one in the office. These had existed from 1848, and having himself filled the office of Parliamentary Secretary, he spoke with some knowledge of the subject when he said that this official and one of the Under Secretaries were doing work which might be performed by one man. In the Committee which sat upstairs a proposal was made—he believed by the hon. Member the present Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Ayrton)—that the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Poor Law Board should be abolished. [Mr. AYRTON: I believe I was the hon. Member who prevented it from being done.] It was said that it was necessary that this Office should be retained in case the President of the Board had a seat in the House of Lords. There was, no doubt, some force in that argument, but it was a very exceptional thing for him to be in the other House, and there would be no real hardship if the office were virtually confined to Members of this House. His own chief (the Earl of Devon) was the only head of the Department who had not been a Member of that House, the Members of which had, as a rule, more experience in the working of the Poor Law than those of the other House. The suggestions he had to make were that nine of the supplementary clerks should be abolished, that two of the senior clerks should be reduced, that one of the chief clerks should be abolished, and that one of the Assistant Secretaries should be abolished and his work done by the Parliamentary Secretary. Of course, these changes could not be immediately made, but he trusted that, as vacancies occurred, the right hon. Gentleman would carry out these recommendations. He knew that a great reform was also suggested—namely, whether the Poor Law Board might not do further useful work in the supervision of the Local Government Office. There were no better inspectors in any public Department than those of the Poor Law Board, and he should be sorry to see any reduction made in either their number or their salaries. He had made these few remarks because he was practically acquainted with the subject, and he begged in conclusion to express his belief that the changes he had suggested would unite economy with increased efficiency.

MR. SCOURFIELD

said, he thought that the superintendence of the pauper lunatics might be advantageously transferred to the Poor Law Commissioners.

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, he wished to express his general concurrence in the remarks of his hon. Friend (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach). At the same time he was of opinion that it would be very inexpedient to abolish the office of Parliamentary Secretary, because it ought to be always possible for a Member of the House of Peers to occupy the office either of President or Secretary. It was highly desirable that the House of Lords should be made acquainted with what was going on in matters of such importance, and he was decidedly of opinion that there were many noble Lords as capable as Members of that House to hold either of the offices he had just referred to. It was remarkable that after the lapse of so many years he should have been the first Parliamentary Secretary who represented the Department in that House. The office had been too much of a sinecure, and this was a circumstance much to be regretted. It was absolutely necessary that in future the Parliamentary Secretary should be considered to have cognizance of all the business of the Department, and qualified, if not required, to answer for it in his place in Parliament. He hoped, therefore, that the precedent set by the late Government would be followed on a future occasion. The reduction of the establishment had been undoubtedly proposed by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Villiers); but his right hon. Friend the Member for North Northamptonshire (Mr. Hunt) did not think fit to carry out the reduction to such an extent as had been proposed. He agreed with the remarks of his hon. Friend as to the superfluity of letter writing in the Department, and during his tenure of Office he had done all he could to diminish it. Under existing circumstances the right hon. Gentleman opposite could not be expected to give a pledge of immediate reduction, but if he turned his attention to diminishing the amount of work to be done, no doubt reduction would follow.

MR. ELLIOT

said, he would be glad of an explanation respecting the expenses of some of the inspectors being in some cases merged in their salaries.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he thought the hon. Baronet (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) who introduced this question supplied, in his own person, a most excellent argument for the retention of the office of Parliamentary Secretary, since but for the existence of that office the hon. Baronet would not have gained that accurate and extended knowledge of Poor Law matters which placed him in a position to contribute so usefully to the debates on that subject. The work of the Poor Law Board was quite as great as that of the Board of Trade, the Committee of Council on Education, and other Departments which had both a chief and a Parliamentary Secretary; and the tendency at present was to an increase rather than to a diminution of that work. He had himself derived valuable assist- ance from his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary (Mr. A. Peel); and it would be highly desirable not to abolish the office—at all events, until the whole Poor Law system was changed. As regarded the number of letters written, or the number of persons to whom letters were addressed, he believed the correspondence of the Poor Law Board exceeded that of any other Department. When there were 700 Unions, the correspondence must be very voluminous, and though it might be possible to shorten and simplify the work, the details would always be enormous. But he must state that during the six months he had been in Office he had issued much fewer circulars than his predecessor, who had had a tendency to bombard Boards of Guardians with them. No doubt the Department was susceptible of improvement, and he should hesitate to fill up any vacancies as they occurred without taking into consideration those points which had been submitted by the hon. Baronet to the notice of the Committee. As to the increase of expenditure, he must remind hon. Members that the work to be done by the Poor Law Board had increased enormously. The public demanded more work of it, and the consequence was that if more was to be done, the cost of the machinery for doing the work would be naturally more or less increased. He should, however, turn, his attention with the utmost care to the reduction of expenditure as far as possible. The incidental expenses, he might add, were greatly increased by the very large number of Returns which were moved for by hon. Members. Nothing, however, seemed to annoy a Member so much as the refusal of a Return. That very day he had been asked to give a Return which would cost £200, and would be, he thought, of very little value. In answer to the question which had been put by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Elliot), he had to state that a new arrangement had been made with regard to inspectors, the whole salary being, in the case of the later inspectors, merged into one payment. As to the case of the pauper lunatics, the subject, with the exception of the heavy charge made for paupers in county asylums, had not been brought under the notice of the Government, but the entire question should receive consideration. A special knowledge was required to frame the regulations for pauper lunatics; but he must confess that he had been startled at seeing the sums charged for some of the county asylums.

MR. GILPIN

said, he believed that the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board, instead of being a sinecure, was one of great importance. Speaking with a considerable knowledge of the facts, he could state that only in one instance had that absence on the part of those filling that office, of which complaint was made, occurred; and in that instance the Parliamentary Secretary was also what was technically called a "Whip" of his party. He concurred in the view that in certain portions of the Department expense might be saved; but it should be borne in mind that there was no Department whose efficient working was of greater consequence to the country. It was an important question whether the Poor Law Board should interfere quite as much as it did with Boards of Guardians, and whether some saving might not be effected in that direction. He should be glad if the Board could, consistently with the performance of its other duties, take under its control the pauper lunatic asylums. The cost of their maintenance might, he believed, be very materially reduced by a better system of supervision.

MR. ACLAND

said, he knew that county rate-payers were dissatisfied with the expense of the lunatic asylums, and he believed that if the expenditure were brought more directly under the review of that House and the action of a responsible Minister great advantage would be the result. With respect to local taxation generally he trusted that the pledge given by the President of the Poor Law Board at the commencement of the Session to consider the subject would produce fruit at no distant period. He did not, however, believe that the investigation of the subject would do much in the way of transferring burthens from the land.

MR. BLAKE

said, he had visited almost every lunatic asylum in England, and he found they were better managed than those in Ireland, the patients receiving much greater advantages in the way of education and amusements. In the Irish lunatic asylums the average cost per head was £22, and in England £27 or £28; but then it must be re- membered that in Ireland provisions were cheaper and the rate of wages lower, so that there was very little to complain of with respect to the difference of cost so far as this country was concerned. A considerable saving might, however, he thought, be effected by removing those lunatics who were hopelessly incurable from the asylums to the workhouse.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, that the poor rates were becoming a very heavy burden, and there was an impression among some of his constituents that this burden was increased by large official expenditure; but he felt confident that the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Poor Law Board would do his best to lessen all charges in his power.

MR. KEKEWICH

said, he thought it would be extremely difficult to reduce the staff of the Poor Law Department. There were few members of the Government of whom more questions were asked than of those connected with the Poor Law Department; and there were few who gave more satisfactory answers, whether of those now in Office or of their predecessors. He was exceedingly anxious that by some means or other the Poor Law inspectors should become inspectors of pauper lunatic asylums; but looking to the increased price of provisions, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman (the President of the Poor Law Board) would not think that those asylums were managed in an expensive way. In Devon they had never been able to get the weekly cost of maintenance under 8s. a week, and it was now 9s.6d. Having been chairman of the Visiting Committee of the Devon County Asylum for twenty years, he knew it was the opinion of medical men that the poor inmates had no chance of recovering unless their physical strength was well sustained with food. The question of local taxation was a most difficult one; but he was of opinion that some portion of the sum required for pauper lunatic asylums should be thrown on the Consolidated Fund.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

explained that he never intended to imply that the office of Parliamentary Secretary of the Poor Law Board should be abolished, but rather that the Gentleman holding the office should perform a certain amount of office work.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he could assure his hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Mr. Acland) that the Government would by no means shrink from the investigation of the subject of local taxation, but would give their earnest attention to it during the Recess, and he trusted that by-and-by they would be able to submit measures dealing with the question.

Vote agreed to.

(18.) £14,624, to complete the sum for the Record Office.

MR. MONK

said, he wished for some explanation of the item £481 charged by the police for watching the Record Office.

MR. ATRTON

said, the charge was made in respect of the special guardianship of the police, required in consequence of the extreme value of the contents of the Record Office.

Vote agreed to.

(19.) £3,009, to complete the sum for the Public Works Loan and West India Islands Relief Commissions.

(20.) £1,684, to complete the sum for the Registrars of Friendly Societies.

(21.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £264,133, 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 1870, for Stationery, Printing, Binding, and Printed Books for the several Public Departments, and for Stationery, Printing, Binding, and Paper for the two Houses of Parliament, including the Salaries and Expenses of the Stationery Office.

MR. SCOTTRFIELD

said, it was much easier finding fault with this large amount than suggesting a remedy. He had once suggested that if every hon. Member were obliged to pay a small percentage on the cost of the Returns moved for, he might not be so ready in moving for them; but certainly before Returns were granted some estimate of their expense might be made, and it might then be put to Members whether they would insist on their production in view of the expense they would occasion. On one occasion the same Paper appeared in two Returns laid on the table at the same time.

MR. RYLANDS

said, he begged to call attention to the item of £13,285 for the sale of waste paper and Parliamentary Papers, with a view of suggest- ing a mode of utilizing a portion of them. He wished to draw the attention of the hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury to the Report of the Select Committee on Parliamentary Papers appointed in 1853, of which Mr. Tuffnell was the Chairman, and Mr. Ewart, Mr. Brotherton, Mr. Hume, and other distinguished Members of the House were Members. The Committee reported that all the witnesses, who gave evidence on the subject, were agreed as to the great advantage that would accrue from a general diffusion of Parliamentary Papers, by dispelling ignorance, correcting misrepresentations, and enabling the mass of the people to form for themselves a just opinion upon subjects of legislation, and other important questions of the day. One of the witnesses, the Rev. Dr. Booth, F.R.S., said— I think on public grounds the country should know what is done in Parliament; that as Parliament has thrown open to the public what is said in Parliament, it ought also to have the means of access to know what is done in Parliament. And if this opinion were correct in 1853 it was still more applicable at the present day, when so large an increase had been made in the number of the constituencies. The Committee, after hearing a considerable number of witnesses, recommended that a selection of Parliamentary Papers should be sent to mechanics' institutions, and other popular literary institutions, and in the case of free libraries, established under Mr. Ewart's Act, they recommended that the whole of the Parliamentary Papers should be sent free of charge immediately upon publication. He (Mr. Rylands) regretted that this recommendation of the Committee had never been attended to, as there was really no difficulty in carrying it out, and the cost would be practically nothing. He believed that free public libraries had been established in about forty towns. The actual number was not accurately known, though they would shortly be in possession of the information, as a Return had been moved for by his hon. Friend the Member for Leeds (Mr. Baines). The Act had to be adopted in the first instance by a majority of the rate-payers at a public meeting, and the Town Council had power to levy a rate in support of a free library and museum not exceeding 1d., in the pound, the manage- ment and property being vested in public authorities. They, therefore, possessed a permanent character which justified the recommendation of the Parliamentary Papers Committee. In other respects these institutions deserved every assistance, as they were of great use to the working classes in large towns. In Liverpool the Town Council devoted £10,000 a year to its museum and library, and about 1,000,000 volumes were annually issued. Manchester paid £5,000 a year, and its library issued 673,432 volumes annually. Sheffield paid. £1,800 a year, and issued 162,573 volumes. The Birmingham library issued nearly 250,000 volumes annually, and so with the libraries in similar proportions in other large towns. As to other public libraries connected with mechanics' institutions, &c, it was recommended that a Select Committee should sit from year to year to decide to which of them the papers and blue-books should be supplied. He believed that there were many intelligent working men connected with those institutions who would be glad to have an opportunity of seeing Parliamentary Papers, and who would probably make good use of them, by calling the attention of their representatives to many matters of interest. In the case of the Estimates, even, he thought it not unlikely that if the bulky book of the Civil Service Estimates, which they were then discussing, were brought more generally under public notice, the effect would be to lessen many charges in future years. In addition to the ordinary Parliamentary Papers, he (Mr. Rylands) urged that the calendars and historical documents published by the Record Office, and for which considerable sums of public money were voted, should be presented to the free public libraries, established under Mr. Ewart's Act.

MR. O'REILLY DEASE

said, many of the documents printed by order of Parliament were utterly worthless.

MR. CANDLISH

said, he had heard a great deal of the expense incurred by printing the Returns of private Members, and in order to test the matter he had moved for a Return on this subject. He found that out of an expenditure of £413,000 last year for Parliamentary printing, the cost of printing the Returns moved for by private Members did not exceed £4,700. This showed conclusively that this Vote was not unduly swollen by the Returns moved for by private Members. He trusted the day was far distant when, under the plea of saving public money, they should combine to keep the public in the dark as to the work of Parliament.

MR. PIM

said, he agreed with the hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) that the distribution of Parliamentary Papers would supply the most valuable information on political affairs. Some economy might he effected if a larger proportion of blue books were sent to those Members only who expressed a desire to have them. For himself he did not know what to do with so many.

MR. AYRTON

said, a great deal of misapprehension existed both inside and outside the House with regard to this Vote of £71,750 for Parliamentary printing. The sum included the whole expense of the printing operations of both Houses of Parliament. Those operations were not confined to the mere printing of Returns, but extended to the printing of all documents necessary for the information of the 658 Members of the House of Commons, and the Members—more than 400 in number—of the House of Peers, as to all done the day before, and all to be done on the current day. This required an expensive system of printing to be carried on between two and eight o'clock a.m. The Vote also included printing connected with the proceedings of Committees and Royal Commissions, which was also of a very expensive kind. He was glad that his hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish) had obtained the Return, which showed that no less than £4,700 had been spent in. satisfying the demands of hon. Members who moved for the production of Returns. The question of economizing printing under this head had been under the consideration of the Printing Committee during the present Session. As to the circulation of Papers, he might mention that attempts were made every Session to discriminate between Papers which it was probable a great many Members might not desire to see, and those which every Member ought to peruse in order that they might properly discharge their duties in that House. Her Majesty's Government, however, felt great delicacy in withholding Papers from hon. Members. The Printing Committee had been lately considering how far the system of printing only a limited number of certain Papers might be extended, and in many cases only 250 copies were printed instead of between 600 and 700. One hon. Member had suggested that instead of limiting the circulation of these Papers they ought to be sent all over the country for the information of the working classes; but he could not help thinking that the people had access to so large an amount of instructive literature that they had much better not embark upon the study of Parliamentary Papers which, he thought in many instances, would only be misunderstood. It was far better to leave to periodical publicists the task which they so ably performed of popularizing the information contained in the more interesting of those documents. In conclusion, he assured hon. Members that the Printing Committee would do all it could to keep down the expense of printing within the narrowest limits which were consistent with the legitimate requirements of the House.

MR. MONK

said, he wished to call attention to the enormous item of £9,870, arising from the sale of waste paper, consisting of the publications of the Record Office. He would suggest that fewer copies of documents should be printed. As to sending the Parliamentary Papers and blue books to mechanics' institutes and free libraries, he had tried the experiment in the city he represented (Gloucester), and he afterwards found that the copies he sent were all covered with dust.

MR. MILLER

said, he should be glad to know if the printing was done at the lowest cost for which the work could be done. He thought the salaries in the Stationery Office, in some cases, were exorbitant. There was an Examiner of Binding at £450 a year, while a respectable journeyman bookbinder would do the work better. The same system seemed to prevail here which he was ashamed to find in Scotland—of first appointing a big man with a big salary, and then appointing a small man to do the work.

COLONEL SYKES

said, he supposed that when the Secretary of the Treasury spoke of statistics being misleading, he meant the word to apply to his own estimates. Statistics meant a statement of facts, and facts could not be erroneous, He was of opinion that although there were many Parliamentary Papers, such, for instance, as the Poor Law Returns, which there would be no use in furnishing to the public, Papers such as the Estimates and the Statutes as they were passed, might, with advantage, be supplied to mechanics' institutes and free libraries throughout the country.

MR. SERJEANT DOWSE

said, he had been a member of the Library Committee of the Dublin Society, of which the élite of the working classes were members, and that he found the Parliamentary Papers with which it was supplied were put in places where they could not be got at. He might add that if they could be got at they would not be read, and since he had been a Member of Parliament himself he by no means felt disposed to quarrel with the taste of those who felt no inclination for such reading.

MR. M'LAREN

said, that it made little difference in the expense of supplying a Parliamentary Paper, whether 200 or 500 copies were printed. The great waste was incurred in the printing of matter which was totally useless, seeing that the waste paper which was sold for £13,285 must have cost nearly £52,000 in white sheets. For the first time in his life he found the work of printing in Dublin cheaper than in Edinburgh. The Dublin Gazette cost £285 17s. 2d., the Edinburgh Gazette cost £1,138 19s. 10d. He should like to know from the Secretary of the Treasury how much of the printed work in the case of the Edinburgh Gazette was done in that city, how much of it was contracted for, and what was the date of the contracts. As to sending Parliamentary Papers to the libraries throughout the country, that, he thought would be a useless expense; but if every Member were allowed to send, free by post, the copies which he did not wish to retain, the privilege being limited—say, to those who sent through the post office of the House itself—much benefit might result, because then they might be sent to those who were known to take an interest in the subject to which they related.

MR. GLADSTONE

said, he must protest against the closing sentence of his hon. Friend's remarks. Of all descriptions of public expenditure, by far the worst, in his opinion, was that which was never brought to account, and which the House of Commons had no means of ascertaining or criticizing. If they went back to the old system of compelling the Post Office to do a great deal of gratuitous work for the public, they would be taxing the people of this country without their knowing it. Bills were now distributed gratuitously from that House, and when it was taken into account how great was the interest which persons had in those Bills, and how desirable it was that they should be speedily distributed, he was not prepared to offer any objection to that being done. But to send a large mass of Parliamentary Papers through the Post Office free of charge, and thus to impose a heavy tax on the public, was, he felt sure, a proposal to which his hon. Friend would not adhere. Experience had satisfied the heads of the Public Departments that the gratuitous distribution of these Papers was unwise. These Papers were produced and sold, he believed, considerably under cost price, and if they were circulated gratuitously there was no doubt that many would desire to have them, who did not want them, merely because they could get them for nothing, taking no account of the fact that the public money had been expended upon them. The subject was a very fair one for investigation, and before anything was done the matter should be examined by a Committee. He must say a word in defence of the Stationery Department. As far as the arrangements of the House of Commons were concerned, they were better than formerly, but they were still defective, and, in the main, they were accountable for the production of this great mass of waste paper. Justice should be done to the efforts of public servants out-of-doors; and he must say that ever since the Stationery Department was placed under the late Mr. McCulloch it had been, conducted in a spirit of great economy. If there were room for amendment—as he did not deny there might be—he was satisfied that any suggestion proceeding from that House would be met by the Stationery Department in a spirit of sympathy and co-operation.

MR. MACFIE

said, he thought that the publications of the Patent Office, would, if distributed, be found very acceptable by persons throughout the country.

MR. MILLER

said, that unless some satisfactory explanation of the item of Examiner of Binding were given he would move that his salary, amounting to £450, be struck out.

MR. AYRTON

stated that the Examiner of Binding superintended to a very large amount the binding for all the Departments, and the office must necessarily be filled by a person of intelligence and of considerable responsibility. He was not aware of the state of the contracts in Edinburgh; but the officers of the Government had revised the contracts for the printing for this House, and had shown a disposition to retrench.

MR. KINNAIRD

said, that the Examiner of Binding ought to be a practical man and a most competent person, for a man to do this duty might be obtained for £100 a year. It was melancholy to observe the change in his hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Ayrton), who, when an independent Member below the Gangway, was most active in picking out these faults in the Estimates, but was now, when in Office, the most ready defender of them.

MR. HUNT

said, that a similar observation was made in the time of Lord Palmerston, and the noble Lord explained that independent Members, when they came into Office, found that what they had before thought unreasonable and improper was both reasonable and proper.

MR. AYRTON

said, he had endeavoured to show that this salary was not for a workman, but for a master, who had bookbinding to the amount of £39,000 to superintend, and had a very large number of men under him.

MR. SHERLOCK

said, he thought that the House should turn its attention to large comprehensive items, for to strike at these small items was not the true principle of economy.

SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHER

said, he thought, on the other hand, that if they wanted to effect reductions they must look after the small items.

MR. CRAUFURD

said, he wished for further information as to the cost of the paper, binding, and printing.

MR. MILLER

moved that the Vote be reduced by £450, the salary of the Examiner of Binding, and by £500, the salary of the Examiner of Paper, being a total reduction of £950.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £263,185, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment dining the year ending on the 31st day of March 1870, for Stationery, Printing, Binding, and Printed Books For the several Public Departments, and for Stationery, Printing, Binding, and Paper for the two Houses of Parliament, including the Salaries and Expenses of the Stationery Office."—(Mr. Miller.)

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 35; Noes 110: Majority 75.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

(22.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £18,227, 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 1870, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, and of the Office of Land Revenue, Records, and Inrolments.

MR. ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCE

said, he wished to call attention to an item in this Vote of £143 15s. for keeping the Queen's Road, better known as Kensington Palace Gardens, private, except for carriages. There was a keeper at either end of the road, and he (Mr. Alderman Lawrence) had himself seen great inconvenience arise from the manner in which the regulations were enforced. Cabs with fares had entered at one gate—the keeper being away—and had been turned back when they arrived within a few yards of the exit. When the public had been allowed to travel in public cabs across St. James' Park in front of the Royal Palace, and also across Hyde Park, it seemed inconsistent that this exclusiveness should be maintained in Kensington Palace Gardens, in regard to a palace not in the Royal occupation, and to a road partly kept up at the public expense. The truth was that the Woods and. Forests always acted antagonistically to the public advantage, and were always ready to erect barricades against the public. The road was about 100 feet wide, and there was no reason why cabs should not traverse it. If, however, the occupants of the; houses insisted on keeping it private the least they could do was to pay this £143 15s. 11d.

MR. AYRTON

said, that this road was part of the estate of the Crown, and the Woods and Forests were the guardians of the rights of the nation. The mistake was in considering these roads as the property of the inhabitants of the metropolis. The estate in question was laid out for improvement, and fine mansions were built upon it on certain conditions and with certain advantages, one of which was that the road should be kept private. Other portions of the property of the Crown in various parts of the metropolis were let on building leases on similar terms, and the leaseholders claimed the right of putting up gates and closing the roads against public vehicles in consideration of the large ground-rents they paid. Whenever the Metropolitan Board of Works were able to consider this question, it would be for them to discover whether, and in what manner, they could free these gates, with or without compensation, and consistently with the rights of particular parties. With regard to the form of these accounts, the matter had been before the Committee of Public Accounts, and their Report would be considered by the Government before the next Estimates were framed.

MR. LOCKE

said, the Secretary to the Treasury was in error if he supposed that these gates were maintained by the proprietors of the houses on the estates of the Crown. He lived among gates in a part of the town sometimes called Belgravia, and he and other occupiers of houses paid £1 1s. a year to the people who looked after these gates. He said with confidence that the Woods and Forests was a Department which was not entitled to the slightest consideration from that House. It was a Department that was leagued against the British public, and which endeavoured to do them all the mischief it possibly could. He had the honour to be the Chairman of the Select Committee on Open Spaces, and it came to their knowledge that the Woods and Forests had let out to different persons the right to dig gravel over Blackheath, which was disfigured by enormous holes in consequence. And how much did the Committee think the Woods and Forests received for damaging and disfiguring this splendid recreation ground? Why, the trumpery sum of £54 a year. Blackheath was a place on which people rode, although, he admitted, it was sometimes on donkeys. That, perhaps, was a reason why so aristocratic a body as the Woods and Forests discountenanced such recreation. The Committee had Mr. Gore before them and asked Mm how he reconciled it to himself to commit such an infamy. Strong words were, in fact, used to Mr. Gore, but he cared not. He said— I care not for the British public at large, or for the British public in particular. My only duty is to exact as much as I possibly can, and when I do so I am upheld by those in high authority. Mr. Gore now said that no one in a cab should go along this road in Kensington Palace Gardens, and to the power of saying this he joined the power of mulcting the public in the sum of £143 for keeping up the road. This was not a new question, and he commended it to the attention of the Secretary to the Treasury. If the inhabitants of these gardens insisted on having a private road let them pay for it, like the inhabitants of Belgravia.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

said, that without joining in an attack upon the Woods and Forests, he hoped the roadway would be opened, as a great benefit would be thereby conferred on the inhabitants of the district.

MR. KINNATRD

said, he could endorse what the hon. Member for South-wark had said respecting the Woods and Forests. The Thames Embankment had been vehemently opposed by that Department, which engaged in an expensive and tedious dispute with the Metropolitan Board of Works on the subject. Surely nothing could be more unseemly than the spectacle of two public Departments fighting each other in such a manner.

MR. GOLDNEY

said, that there were in the metropolis no fewer than 247 of these private obstructions. He hoped the roadway would be thrown open to the public. The Government must, sooner or later, take up this question of private obstructions.

MR. AYRTON

said, that two or three years ago he presented to the House the Report of a Committee, which recommended a method of dealing with this question. The recommendation was to the effect that the Metropolitan Board of Works should, at the instance of the local authorities, take immediate measures to free the metropolis from these interruptions of private gates. It was the duty of the Board in accordance with that Report, to communicate with the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, in order to free the roads from the gates. If no steps had been taken it must be owing to the neglect of the local authorities.

SIR PATREICK O'BRIEN

said, it was not the duty of the Committee to enter, on the present occasion, into a discussion of the larger question raised by the Secretary to the Treasury, as to roads upon private property, but to consider that of a road upon Government property, and which was closed to the public. He moved that the Vote be reduced by £143, the sum paid for the maintenance of the gatekeepers.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £18,084, 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 1870, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, and of the Office of Land Revenue, Records, and Inrolments."—(Sir Patrick O'Brien.)

MR. ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCE

said, he was dissatisfied with the answer of the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury. This roadway could not be opened until the Government took the matter in hand, and it was idle, therefore, to attempt to throw the odium on the Board of Works, or the local authorities.

MR. STANSFELD

said, the Motion could not be received, as the £143 formed no charge in the Vote under consideration.

COLONEL BARTTELOT

said, that the money ought not to be paid except on the assurance that the roadway would be opened.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

asked the Chairman if he was out of Order in moving that the Vote be reduced by £143?

THE CHAIRMAN

ruled that it was quite competent for the hon. Baronet to move the reduction of the Vote.

MR. AYRTON

said, this part of the Crown estates was let on building leases at very high rents, and the sum of £143 was a portion of the expense required to obtain those high rents. Before the gates could be opened it was necessary that the local authorities of the district or of the metropolis should make with the Crown the arrangements requisite for converting that part of the estates of the Crown into a public road.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

said, he did not think the hon. Baronet (Sir Patrick O'Brien) would divide the Committee if the Secretary to the Treasury would give an engagement that the Government would bring their influence to bear upon the mysterious local authority to which he alluded, with the view of inducing it to open the street for the use of the public.

MR. BROGDEN

said, he thought that 25 per cent on the gross rental was a very extravagant sum for the management of the property.

MR. CANDLISH

said, that if there was a proprietary obligation to keep the road closed, the lessees of the houses would have a claim for compensation if it were opened against their consent.

MR. AYRTON

said, if the local authorities, whether the parish or the Metropolitan Board, would undertake to maintain the road as a public road, there would be no objection.

MR. STANSFELD

said, that even if the Motion for the reduction of the Vote were carried, it would in no way effect the object which the hon. Baronet who made it had in view, but would merely reduce the salaries of the clerks. He might add that the Motion was not needed to induce the Government to look into the matter in the public interest.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, after that promise he would withdraw his Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

(23.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £18,722, 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 1870, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Works and public Buildings.

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, he had to complain that a correspondence which the Secretary to the Treasury had promised some time ago should be laid on the table of the House, relating to the changes which had been made in the establishment of Works and Public Buildings, had not been produced. The Estimate, as it stood, contained on the face of it no explanation of those changes, and he was disposed, under these circumstances, to ask that it should be postponed. From the Estimate it appeared that the expenses of the secretariat had been reduced by £500 a year, but then there was a new officer called the Surveyor of Works, who was to have £750 a year, so that there was a net increase for the secretariat in reality of £250 a year. Then the salary of the Architect and Surveyor was reduced from £1,000 a year to £750. The architect was Mr. Pennethorne, and it was reported that that gentleman had been dismissed, and that the reduction of salary was connected with his dismissal. He should like to know who was the officer who was to succeed Mr. Pennethorne, and what were to be his duties.

MR. LAYARD

said, that when he had acceded to his present office, he found that a most valuable public officer, Mr. Austin, the Secretary, having resigned his place, it was absolutely necessary to fill it up without delay. He at the same time found no officer in the Department competent to give the First Commissioner advice on the many questions relating to architecture and estimates which were constantly being brought before him. Mr. Pennethorne was called the architectural adviser of the Office of Works, but he was at the same time an architect engaged in the practice of his art, and therefore he did not feel that it was open to him to give an opinion on the estimates and plans of other architects. He thought it fair, Mr. Austin having resigned, that he should be succeeded by Mr. George Russell, a gentleman who had long filled the office of Assistant Secretary with much ability. A place then remained to be filled, and it seemed to him that it ought to be filled by a gentleman of competent architectural knowledge, who was at the same time not a practising architect, and who could advise the First Commissioner upon the questions connected with public buildings which were constantly brought before him. It was difficult to find such a person, and, indeed, there was but one name which presented itself, and that was that of Mr. Fergusson. He proposed to that gentleman that he should accept the office of Secretary for Works and Buildings, and the House would admit that the salary of £750 was a moderate one for a gentleman of his distinction and reputation. For a short time Mr. Pennethorne would continue in office, as it was thought desirable to retain his services while certain sales and Government works, in which he was directly concerned, were going on. A reduction of £200 was made in the salary of the Secretary. The Surveyor of Works, Mr. Hunt, who had £1,000 a year, agreed to a reduction of 25 per cent. Other salaries had also been reduced, and now, with the addition of Mr. Fergusson, there was no increase of expense in the staff of the Department.

MR. GOLDNEY

said, he understood from the right hon. Gentleman's explanation that Mr. Pennethorne was dismissed because he had private business, and that a Surveyor of Works was appointed who was still to have the power of carrying on private business.

MR. LAYARD

said, that in the one case an architect had been employed who received a percentage, and in the other case the person employed would only give his professional advice without having to construct any buildings for the Government.

MR. HUNT

said, that the question put to the right hon. Gentleman had remained unanswered, which was why certain correspondence passing between the Treasury and the First Commissioner of Works had not been produced; and he thought that the Vote should be postponed until the correspondence was produced. The reduction in the Vote appeared to be only nominal, as the travelling expenses had increased.

MR. AYRTON

said, there were two questions—that of the permanent arrangement and that of the temporary. The former architect and surveyor was in the delicate position of being consulting and advising officer of the Department, while, at the same time, he had the privilege of undertaking works for the Government, on which he was paid by a percentage as in his private practice; therefore, in the latter capacity he came into competition with any architect whom the Government might desire to employ, and could not, consequently, properly revise the operations of a person who might be his competitor. In the new Secretary for Works and Buildings his right hon. Friend would find an officer able to advise him on all operations in his Department. With regard to Mr. Pennethorne, it was necessary to make a special arrangement to the effect that he should complete the works which he had in hand. The Papers were now in readiness for production, and would be presented. They had not been kept back an hour longer than was necessary, and there was even now wanting one letter to complete the correspondence. He trusted, therefore, the Committee would not think it necessary to postpone the Vote.

COLONEL SYKES

said, he hoped there would be a reduction in the furniture department. One of the charges was for a clerk of the furniture, with a salary of £600 a year; while altogether not less than fifteen persons were employed in that department.

MR. BOWRING

said, he wished to bear testimony to the great value of Mr. Hunt's services.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

said, he hoped the Government would not object to the postponement of this Vote. The correspondence relative to the change in the office had been promised three months ago, and had not yet been produced. What the Committee desired to know was why a gentleman of Mr. Hunt's qualifications had consented to take a salary of £750 instead of £1,000. Was he to be recouped by any portion of the item in which there was a large increase for travelling and personal expenses?

SIR WILLIAM GALLWEY

said, he also desired to bear testimony to the eminent character and valuable services of Mr. Hunt. He wished, however, to know whether Mr. Fergusson and Mr. Hunt were to have the privilege of carrying on private business? He did not believe that a more able or more disinterested person existed than Mr. Pennethorne, who was also an old servant of the Government. He wished to know if that gentleman was to leave the service without any retiring pension or allowance.

MR. M'LAREN

said, he wished to ask whether it was not the fact that all estimates and plans for public buildings in Scotland were prepared by one gentleman, Mr. Matheson, at a salary of £925. He could not understand how fifteen persons appointed to examine furniture for the public offices should receive a yearly sum of £4,000.

MR. LAYARD

said, Mr. Hunt had behaved in the most generous manner. The desire being to make the office more efficient without increasing the expenditure, Mr. Hunt had himself offered to give up 25 per cent of his retaining fee. No part of that reduction would be made up by allowances for travelling and personal expenses. Mr. Hunt was a most valuable public servant, and had saved the office many thousands of pounds. There was no intention to lay the slightest blame on Mr. Pennethorne, and the only object had been to release him from a disagreeable position. Mr. Fergusson was not a practising architect, and could give an independent opinion on all matters connected with architecture. He could state that during the three or four months Mr. Pergusson had been in office his services had saved many thousands of pounds to the public. With regard to the Scottish business, the salary of £925 did not include travelling expenses. He should use the best exertions he could to reduce the expenditure on furniture, not only in London, but in all the public offices wherever placed. Mr. Austin, it is believed, had saved £50,000 a year by his system of cheeks on the expenditure on furniture, and it was this gentleman who formed the present staff and introduced the present system. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Hunt) would not insist on the postponement of the Vote, which would lead to great inconvenience. There had really been no desire to delay the production of the correspondence. As soon as Mr. Pennethorne had finished the works in hand he would receive his pension, and he was perfectly satisfied with the arrangements made.

MR. CRAUFURD

said, many Gentlemen round him were not at all satisfied with the explanation relative to furniture. While the item for furniture was £14,000, the cost of examining the furniture accounts was £4,000 a year. He moved to reduce the Vote by half that item—namely, £2,000.

Whereupon Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £16,722, 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 31at day of March 1870, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Works and Public Buildings,"—(Mr. Craufurd.)

MR. AYRTON

said, that one of the most onerous duties thrown upon the Office of Works was to control and examine the demands for furniture and fittings which were incessantly made from all the other Departments. The sav- ings resulting from these investigations amounted to many thousands a year.

Question put, and negatived.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

(24.) £18,000, Foreign and other Secret Services.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, he wished to express his gratification at the reduction of £5,000 in this Vote, and assumed that next year would see a further and similar reduction.

Vote agreed to.

(25.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £4,317, 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 1870, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of the Queen's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer in the Exchequer, Scotland, of certain Officers in Scotland, and other Charges formerly paid from the Hereditary Revenue.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

said, he must object to the item of £217 13s. for Queen's Plates. He viewed with much disapprobation and feelings akin to disgust the system of plunder carried on in connection with races, which led to men ruining themselves by wholesale. This might be of little consequence to Dukes and Earls, who were supposed to be able to take care of themselves, but he much feared that the same system was spreading widely amongst the lower classes, and the House ought not to encourage it. He denied that there was any real pleasure or amusement in this feverish pursuit, and looked upon the allegation of improvement in the breed of horses as a mere pretence to cover a most demoralizing system. He moved that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £217 13s. for Queen's Plates.

Whereupon Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Item of £217 13s., for Queen's Plates, be omitted from the proposed Vote."—(Mr. Lush.)

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, he would beg to ask whether the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury would state, before the Report was brought up, what were the intentions of the Government with regard to the office of Lord Treasurer and Queen's Remembrancer?

MR. AYRTON

replied in the affirmative.

MR. M'LAREN

said, he wished to know the amount of fees received in the Lord Lyon's Office for patents of heraldry, and why they were not stated in the Estimate?

MR. AYRTON

said, he could not at present answer the question, but he would make inquiry and state the result.

Question put,

The Committee divided:—Ayes 73; Noes 191: Majority 118.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

House resumed.

Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next.

Committee to sit again upon Wednesday.