Commons Sitting of 5 March 1869

MINUTES.
NEW WRITS ISSUED—For Drogheda, v. Benjamin Whitworth, esq., void Election; for Scarborough, v. Sir John Vanden Bempde Johnstone, baronet, deceased.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—SUPPLEMENTARY GRANTS—CIVIL SERVICE; POST OFFICE PACKET SERVICE.
Resolution [March 4] reported—SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE—Abyssinia.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—Bankruptcy.
Second Reading—Court of Common Pleas (County Palatine of Lancaster) [26]; Sea Birds Preservation [28].

POST OFFICE—AMERICAN MAIL CONTRACTS.—QUESTION.
MR. BAZLEYsaid, he would beg to ask the Post Master General, Whether the late Government, before its retirement from Office, renewed the Cunard Contract for seven years at the annual rate of £70,000; the Inman Contract for the same period at £35,000 per annum; and the North German Lloyd Contract at a letter-rate charge, terminable at six months' notice? he had given Notice also to ask, whether such contracts, if granted, are not infractions of the implied promises of Members of the late Government that in future a self-supporting system of Ocean Postage should be established?—but refrained from doing so at present; he however asked, whether, under these circumstances, it will not be the duty of the present Government to withhold the ratification of those contracts?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: With regard to the first Question of my hon. Friend, I have to state that the old contract with the Cunard Company terminated on the last day of December, 1867; the arrangements for the conveyance of the mails between England and America for the year 1868 were of a temporary character, and included a fixed subsidy to the Cunard Company, and a payment at so much per weight of mails carried to the Inman Company, the North German, and the Hamburg American Companies. In August of last year tenders were advertised for by the Government for the conveyance of the mails for the present and future years, and, after some negotiations with the various companies concerned, contracts were entered into with the Cunard Company for two services a week for the yearly subsidy of £70,000; with the Inman Company for one service a week at £35,000 a year, and with the North German Lloyd Company at a payment of so much per weight of mails carried. It is therefore not quite accurate to say that the contract with the Cunard Company was renewed by the late Government, because an interval of one year

717
occurred between the old contract and the present one, and the terms were very different. I am glad my hon. Friend has postponed his second Question, because it is not one which I should be justified in answering. The subject will be again before the House, and it will then be possible for my hon. Friend and those who agree with him to urge their views of the case, and for the Members of the late Government to defend their action in the matter. With regard to the last Question, I have to state that the contracts were completed before the present Government took Office, as far as they could be completed without the sanction of Parliament; they were placed on the table of the House on the 2nd instant, and if not disapproved within a month from that date they will become binding.
MR. HADFIELDsaid, he would like to know whether the noble Lord would take any steps for the establishment of 1d. postage between the two countries?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, this was a question that might very properly be discussed when the question of the contracts came before the House.

NAVY—GREENWICH HOSPITAL.

  QUESTION.
  MR. PEASEsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether it is true that after objecting, on the 29th May, 1865, to the creation of the sinecure office of Governor of Greenwich Hospital, he has constituted that office, with a salary of £1,200 a year; whether it is true that any of the seamen and marines of fifty-five years of age, and who have been for five years on the pension list have, in consequence of the appointment of the Governor of Greenwich Hospital, not received the pension intended for them; and, whether it is intended to increase the number of the medical officers of the Navy at Greenwich, or to allow them any pensions from the Greenwich Hospital Fund?
  MR. CHILDERS: In answer to my hon. Friend, I have to say that on the 29th of May, 1865, being then a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, I objected to the creation of the sinecure office of Governor of Greenwich Hospital, and that on the 8th of June, in Committee on the Greenwich Hospital Bill, I defeated my gallant Friend, now Member for Stamford (Sir John Hay), who moved to insert a clause
  718
  for this purpose, by 57 to 53. But he renewed his Motion on the Report upon the 18th of June, and on the part of the Admiralty, I gave way, and a clause was inserted in the Bill under which I undertook that on Sir James Gordon's death the office with a reduced salary should be continued. It happened that I was at the Admiralty again when Sir James Gordon died, and it has been my duty to carry out the arrangement. But the salary of the Governor is only £433; and as he remains on the active list, no additional charge for pay or half-pay is involved. In reply to the second question, I am happy to be able to say that there is no truth in this suggestion. The fact is just the reverse. One of my first acts was to inquire whether the 5d. a day pension might not be extended to all seamen and marines who had been for five years on the pension list, and were fifty-five years old, beyond the 5,000 originally proposed. This has been done, and the result is that instead of 5,000 men receiving £48,000 in 5d. and 9d. pensions as I proposed in 1865, 5,412 men now receive £59,407. In reply to the third Question, I may state that I certainly do not propose to appoint more medical men to Greenwich or any other hospital than are required for the public service, merely in order to give employment and salary, and I have no reason to anticipate that any more such officers will be required. Although it was not originally intended to give any medical pensions out of the Greenwich Fund, the Order in Council of the 16th of February, 1866, established fifteen such pensions of £80 and £50, at a cost of £780 a year. As to the intentions of the Admiralty with respect to this and other matters connected with Greenwich Hospital, my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) will before long make a full statement to the House.

  SUPPLY.
  Order for Committee read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

  FALSE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES AND ADULTERATION.—OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD EUSTACE CECILin rising to call attention to the state of the Law as

  719
  regards the use of False Weights and Measures and the Adulteration of Food, Drink and Drugs, said, this was a most important question, and one which affected the interests of gentlemen who lived in comfortable houses at the West End, quite as much as it did those who lived in garrets in St. Giles's. The subject was an old and trite one. If he recollected rightly, Mr. Scholefield the late Member for Birmingham had brought one portion of the question before the House, and had succeeded in passing a Bill upon it, and on the latter portion of the Motion his successor had also introduced a Bill last year, which had obtained a second reading, but was not passed into law. The hon. Member for Frome (Mr. Hughes) had also brought forward a Motion on the subject of weights and measures, but from whatever reason it might be, whether it was from the inherent difficulties of the question or from the fact that the Government of the day had been always unwilling to undertake so difficult a task, all the well-intentioned efforts of hon. Members to legislate upon the matter satisfactorily, or to rouse public attention to the present state of the law had hitherto proved fruitless. When he asked himself why it was that this great nation, which boasted itself to be so practical and which was always ready to take up the grievances of other people, had submitted so tamely to this monstrous and increasing evil, the only answer he could give was that what was everybody's business became nobody's. But if any hon. Member doubted the magnitude of the evil, he would refer him to a Return which he had moved for last Session, of the number of convictions for the use of fraudulent weights and measures in the metropolitan districts between the 1st of July, 1867, and the 1st of January, 1868. According to that Return there were no less than 659 convictions in the metropolitan area, and that was exclusive of the five districts of Southwark, Newington, St. George's (Hanover Square), Paddington, and the Strand, which, for some reason best known to the local authorities, had made no return whatever. In other words, it appeared that, according to the Return, there were at the rate of 1,300 convictions for the use of fraudulent weights and measures in the year, and he need hardly tell the House that, with the im-
  720
  perfect system of inspection which now existed, for one person convicted probably three escaped. But if anyone was curious enough to analyze this Return still farther, he would find the most astonishing statistics as to the way in which the poorer classes in this metropolis were habitually cheated. Now, taking the City of Westminster—and he did not do so for the purpose of casting any slur upon it, because he believed that if, as happened to be the case, it stood at the head of the list, that circumstances was owing not to the fact that it was worse than its neighbours, but rather that the duty of the inspectors had been better discharged—well, in the City of Westminster there were 100 persons convicted in the six months, and, on examination, he found that of these twenty-four, or nearly one-fourth of the whole, were licensed victuallers and forty-seven were dairymen, greengrocers, cheesemongers, and others who supplied the poor with food, making in all 70 per cent of provision dealers. That would give the House some idea of the great extent to which this kind of fraud was carried out in the case of the poorer classes. The only wonder was that any result of the kind had been made public at all; because, when he looked at the number of inspectors who were employed in large districts, he could not but think that it was beyond the physical capacity of any man to discharge the duties properly which fell to their lot. He found that in Middlesex, one of the most important counties for its wealth and the number of its houses, though the smallest in area, there were only four inspectors of weights and measures, and that not only were these gentlemen compelled to do their duty in the county, but that many districts which would otherwise have fallen under local Acts were visited by them also. He was quite aware that the system of payment, too, was anything but what it ought to be. The inspectors of weights and measures were paid in a manner unfair to the public and to themselves—namely, by the very objectionable system of fees, and the consequence was—as happened the other day in Middlesex—when the moiety of fees did not come up to the travelling expenses of the inspector, there was a direct premium to his sitting still and doing nothing. He was also aware that in

  721
  many other districts of the metropolis there were what were called "Local Acts," under which the local bodies appointed their own inspectors. But of the way in which those inspectors did their duty, he could not give a better idea to the House than by stating, what he had on the best authority, that in the district of St. Pancras there were twenty-four gentlemen appointed by the vestry without any stated remuneration whatever, and in the parish of Islington there were twelve gentlemen appointed by the vestry at the magnificent salary of £30 a year, to be divided amongst them. He left it to the House to imagine how an unpleasant duty of this kind was discharged when it was paid for in that way. He should probably be told by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade when he got up to reply, that the whole of this question was under consideration, that there was a Commission at this moment sitting, and that their Report might shortly be looked for. But that was exactly what he complained of. For the last two or three years that Commission had been sitting, and when any Members who took an interest in the subject asked Questions or moved for Returns, they were invariably told that the matter was under consideration. And all this time there were hundreds and thousands of the poorer classes who were suffering because there was no legislation on the subject. He would now pass to that portion of Ms Motion which related to the Adulteration of Food and Drink, a subject which concerned the welfare, comfort, and happiness of the poorer classes quite as much as that on which he had already spoken. There were many Gentlemen in that House who, no doubt, thought that the questions which interested the poorer classes were those which had to do with the ballot, the re-distribution of seats, or the Irish Church. But these were mainly political questions; the question of which he spoke was a question of daily food, a question very often of health or sickness, and he might even say of life or death. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, in one of those addresses by which he had electrified his constituents and the public, stated that the great panacea for the ills of the working classes was a free breakfast table. Now he (Lord Eustace Cecil) was the last person in the world to object to
  722
  any revision of taxation, if it were based upon really sound grounds. But, with all due deference to the right hon. Gentleman, there was one thing of even more importance—namely, a breakfast table free from all impurities. It was not necessary for him to appeal to medical gentlemen, in or out of that House, to prove that purity of food was of vital importance, whether to the child in its cradle, to the boy at school, or the workman who had to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Those were simple truisms with which anybody who had thought upon the matter at all would not hesitate to agree. Purity of drink was also of the greatest importance to the poor, because many of the vices and crimes common to that class were connected with it. Take, for instance, the criminal brought before a court of justice, or the case of the soldier and the sailor when brought to the bar of a court-martial, and ask them what it was that first got them into trouble. Their answer would be that it was some nasty stuff they drank at a public-house. Or go into any of the streets of our large towns, and ask some of those wretched women—the disgrace of our civilization—who were to be found there, and they would tell you that much of their wretchedness was due, in the first instance, to drugged liquors. Well, what, under these circumstances, had the Legislature done in that matter? As far as he could make out, it had simply punished the crime of adulterating food, by a trumpery fine, quite disproportionate either to the offence or the wrongful gains of the delinquent. And here he would briefly examine the state of the law. Passing by the 9 Anne, the 17 & 56 Geo. III., the 3 Geo. IV., the 1, 6 & 7 Will. IV.—Acts all relating more or less to the adulteration of beer, tea, and bread—the first comprehensive Act which dealt with the subject was the 23 & 24 Vict., which was passed mainly through the efforts of Mr. Scholefield; and he ventured to say, in no disrespectful spirit to that Gentleman's memory, that that Act was a mockery and a delusion, and had entirely failed in its object. Many of them would recollect that a Committee sat in 1855–6 to inquire into that question. A number of witnesses of the highest scientific acquirements were examined, the public attention was generally drawn to the matter, and the result was—he was

  723
  sorry to be obliged to call it so—one of the most ridiculous measures that ever became law. After reciting that the sale of adulterated articles of food and drink, being hurtful to health, ought to be repressed by more effectual legislation, it enacted that the person selling such articles, knowing them to be injurious to health, should be subject to a penalty not exceeding £5 and costs; so that any tradesman might, as far as that clause was concerned, knowingly ruin his neighbour's health on paying £5 and costs. Then, for a second offence, if he had as was probable, poisoned scores of people, and ruined the health of scores of others, the justices had power—to do what? To imprison him, or send him to the Assizes? Not a bit of it; but to publish his name, residence, and offence in any way they thought desirable at his own expense. Thirdly, the Act gave a power—which he believed never had been put in force—to appoint analyists, but not a word was said about the payment of them. Fourthly, it provided a protection, forsooth, against articles of food being tampered with by purchasers. Fifthly, there was a power for the purchaser and the justices to have food analyzed; from which it would appear that the purchaser had to test the food at his own expense. And, lastly, it was provided that this precious Act was not to apply to medical drugs or articles usually taken or sold as medicine. So that it came to this, that the baker who adulterated a loaf of bread with a certain quantity of alum was, if convicted, to be punished with a fine of £5 and costs; but the chemist, who had to supply the necessary medicine to get rid of the alum, escaped with perfect impunity. There was not a word in the Act about the appointment of a really good body of inspectors or supervisors, which he thought a most important point; and he should be very glad to see in any measure brought in on that subject, that an efficient body of such officers was to be appointed, so that any penalties which might be enacted by law should be really enforced. Perhaps some might think he took rather an exaggerated view of the present state of adulteration as far as food and drink were concerned; but let such hon. Members, if there were any, read some of the evidence given before the Select Committee to which he had referred; and
  724
  if they thought that commercial morality was superior now to what it was in 1856 and 1857 he would request them to look at the too frequent cases which constantly appeared in the papers of fraud, both in high and in low quarters. But if they wanted some more modern testimony as to that point, he would refer them to the very able Report drawn up by the chemical officer of the Board of Revenue, Mr. George Phillips; and if they were still dissatisfied he would suggest to them that they should go to the first public-house in town, or out of it, and ask for a glass of beer. He would not trouble the House with a long list of all the disagreeable things which they had to swallow, nor with details of the exact quantities of alum, or red lead, or vitriol, or any other of the pleasant compounds which had been known to enter into their daily food. It was sufficient for him that it had been shown, on indisputable evidence, that those things did exist. It was said that a man must swallow at least a peck of dirt in his lifetime, but he suspected that many of them had to swallow a great deal more. He might mention what occurred not very long ago in the Committee on the Malt Tax, of which he was a Member. Every agricultural witness examined before that Committee testified to the fact that the beer sold in public-houses was adulterated. Now, in speaking of the adulteration of beer, he did not for one moment bring a charge against the great brewers. He believed that the evidence cleared them entirely from all suspicion of adulteration, but this could not be said of the public-houses. Not only did the gentlemen to whom he had alluded speak unanimously of the way in which beer was adulterated, but there was one practical witness who asserted from his own daily knowledge that such was the fact. The only labourer who was examined gave his evidence in these terms. He was asked—"Can a man do hard work on publican's beer?" and his reply was "No." "What effect has it?" he was next asked, and he answered—" The beer is so bad that he cannot work." "It gets into his head?" Answer—"Yes." It makes him feel so bad? "Answer—" Yes; it makes a man feel too bad to do hard work. He always wants to be drinking." Now, there was one fact which established beyond doubt that this man's evidence was truthful—

  725
  namely, the fact that the importation of cocculus Indicus had largely increased within the last few years. Cocculus Indicus was a narcotic of an intoxicating and stupefying character, and, as far as he was aware, was only used in this country for two purposes, the poisoning of fish and the poisoning of men. He found that in 1857 the quantity of the drug consumed in this country was only 68 cwt., but in 1858 it had increased to 394 cwt.: while in the years 1867 and 1868 the quantities consumed were respectively 689 cwt. and 1,064 cwt. The drug was thus extensively used notwithstanding the fact that the very heavy duty of 5s. per cwt. was levied upon it. No wonder, then, that the statement made by the poor man before the Committee was perfectly true with regard to many labourers in the country. No wonder that he complained that they could not do their work, and that they always wanted to be drinking. We often heard of labourers being knocked down with sunstroke during the hot season, but we ought not to be greatly surprised at this if we remembered that an enormous quantity of cocculus Indicus was imported into this country and that this subtle poison entered into their daily drink. Then there was another article which he believed was very considerably adulterated, and it was one which our seafaring population were especially interested in obtaining in a pure state. It was only the other day that he read a newspaper paragraph which stated that in Liverpool it was quite impossible to procure limejuice of sufficient purity to meet the requirements of the Board of Trade. Of course, he could not vouch for the truth of the statement, but if it were true, such a fact certainly did not tell well for our commercial morality. He thought he had sufficiently proved that the law required amendment of some sort. In his opinion a penalty of £5 and costs was much too insignificant to prevent the recurrence of this class of offences, and the law was likewise defective because it did not provide for a proper supervision and inspection with regard to weights and measures as well as the adulteration of food. Should a Bill on this subject be introduced, it would be well to consider what was the practice in foreign countries with respect to these matters. He found that in almost every civilized country the provisions of the
  726
  law were far more stringent than with us. In France, for example, all frauds of this kind were under the supervision of the police. A commissary of police had a right to enter premises and seize any suspected goods he might find, bearing all the responsibility, of course, if the seizure were a wrongful one. Then the inspectors, both of weights and measures, and of food, were not, as with us, retired tradesmen, but were appointed by a central authority—the Minister and Prefect. With regard to drugs, there was a special body, called Inspecteurs de Pharmacie, and the tribunals had the power to punish offenders with fine and imprisonment, to advertise the names of delinquents, and to order the adulterated goods either to be destroyed before the owners' doors or to be confiscated for charitable purposes. The law of Prussia was still more stringent. Whoever knowingly used false weights and measures in that country was liable to imprisonment for three months, to be fined from fifty to 1,000 thalers, and to suffer the temporary loss of his rights of citizenship. Secondly, where false weights and measures were not regularly employed, a fine of thirty thalers might be imposed, or the delinquent sent to prison for four weeks. Thirdly, the adulteration of food or drink was punishable with a fine of 150 thalers, or six weeks' imprisonment. Fourthly, if poisonous matter or stuff were employed, the offender was liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ton years. Fifthly, where adulteration was proved to have caused severe physical injury, a sentence of from ten to twenty years' imprisonment might be passed. And yet in this country offences of this nature could only be punished by the imposition of a penalty of £5 with costs. It might, however, be asked why he, who had gone so deeply into the subject, and had pointed out the defects of the existing law, did not try his hand at amending it in the best way he could? His reply was, that questions of this kind could be much better dealt with by Government. For his own part, he was very much opposed, as a rule, to private Members bringing in measures of a national character. Now, this subject was one which, in his judgment, ought to have been looked into and legislated upon long ago. He had hoped, that the late Government would have taken it up,

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  but they had too much of other work on their hands. Besides, they had not the power, if they had the will, to do justice to it, on account of the powerful Opposition arrayed against them. He might, indeed, say that the late Government only existed on sufferance. This, however, was far from being the case with the Government now in Office, who, being backed up by a majority of over 100, had the power, and, if report spoke truly, the will also, to deal with this question in a satisfactory manner. He sincerely trusted, however, that the Government would not appoint either a Committee or a Royal Commission to investigate the subject, for in nine cases out of ten the labours of Commissions and Committees led to the shelving of the questions which they were appointed to consider. Of information regarding this matter, and, he might add, of delay also the country had had quite enough. What was required was action, immediate action; and the Minister who should deal with the subject quickly, thoroughly, and comprehensively would entitle himself to the gratitude of the whole community, and would go down to posterity as one of the greatest benefactors to the labouring classes.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is expedient that Her Majesty's Government should give their earliest attention to the widespread and most reprehensible practices of using False Weights and Measures and of adulterating Food, Drink, and Drugs, with the view of amending the Law as regards the penalties now inflicted for those offences, and of providing more efficient means for the discovery and prevention of fraud,"—(Lord Eustace Cecil,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, it was clearly shown by the evidence which had been taken before the Committee to which the noble Lord (Lord Eustace Cecil) had particularly referred, that the chief cause of adulteration was the legislation which had rendered the food and drink consumed by the working classes artificially dear. Let that cause be removed, and the evil itself would, to a great extent, cease to exist. Among the witnesses who spoke to this effect
  728
  before the Committee were Professor Taylor, Mr. Gray, and Professor Calvert, of Manchester. He very well recollected the eloquent terms in which the First Lord of the Treasury in 1861 dwelt upon the expediency of reducing the duty on wine, so that the temptation to adulterate it might be taken away, and the same argument applied, in his opinion, with equal force to such articles as tea, sugar, and coffee. It was extraordinary, he might add, to what an extent the adulteration of whisky in Ireland had increased since an additional duty had been imposed upon it by the right hon. Gentleman. The quantity sold had diminished, but then the consumption of it was now in many instances accompanied by delirium tremens, verging sometimes on insanity to an extent which never previously existed. The way to put an end to the evil which led to such results was not by the agency of the police, but by doing away with the temptation which was the real cause of its prevalence. The Government which should accomplish that object would, he quite agreed with the noble Lord, be great benefactors of their country.
  MR. POCHINsaid, he thought the noble Lord had done good service by directing the attention of the House to the subject, though he (Mr. Pochin) was of opinion, that the reason why there had not been more prosecutions under the Act of the 23 & 24 Vict, for the prevention of adulteration was, that adulteration was not so general as the House and the country had imagined. Adulteration might be divided into two classes; first, that which simply reduced the commercial value of the article sold to the public; secondly, that which was calculated to interfere prejudicially with the general health of the community. Under the first head he was of opinion that a very serious amount of adulteration existed, and the attention of the Government had very properly been called to it; but he doubted very much whether the statement of the noble Lord was correct so far as adulteration affecting the general health of the people was concerned. His own impression was—and it was the result of much careful investigation of the subject—that the articles of food which were adulterated in such a manner as to affect to any material degree the public health, were exceedingly restricted in number, and a

  729
  thorough examination of the evidence which had been taken on the point would, he ventured to say, establish the soundness of that view. The greatest service which had been done the country in connection with the subject, was that which had been rendered by the Analytical Commission which prosecuted its; labours some fourteen or fifteen years ago, under the able direction of Dr. Hassall, the result of whose investigations had been published in The Lancet. The result of the inquiry went to prove that while the articles which were adulterated were very numerous—there being scarcely any article of commerce which was not adulterated—yet adulteration tending to injure the health of the community was extremely limited. He believed indeed he was right in saying, that the list of articles which had been found to be adulterated to an extent deeply injurious to health, was pretty nearly confined to pickles, sweetmeats, and Cayenne pepper. It had indeed been discovered that there was scarcely a single sample of arrowroot which was not extensively adulterated; but then it was adulterated with inferior and less expensive varities of farina, injurious rather to the pocket than to the health of the consumer. He had another reason for believing that the conclusions at which he had arrived in the matter were correct. Soon after the passing of the Act 23 & 24 Vict., the Act was taken into consideration by a very energetic Committee, who conducted, its labours in Manchester, connected with the Sanitary Association, and whose members were of opinion that adulteration injurious to health very largely prevailed. They accordingly persuaded six of the most eminent chemists in Manchester to examine articles collected from all parts of the town, and to report upon them. He held in his hand the Report which was drawn up as the result of that investigation by Dr. Angus Smith, who he understood held some official position under the Government, and than whom a more able man as the head of such an inquiry could not be found. The conclusion arrived at by the Committee was, that out of eighty substances which had been procured from shops in which the labouring classes dealt extensively, none were adulterated in a way deeply to affect the public health; and he was happy to
  730
  be able to add that the evil of adulteration, instead of being constantly on the increase, was rather shown to be diminishing, by the evidence furnished by recent investigations. He did not, however, mean to contend that the question was not one in which the Government might very well take action. Nothing was more objectionable than that there should be any mistake with respect to it out-of-doors, and he could very well imagine, that if the statement of the noble Lord were to go forth to the public unquestioned, that articles of food and drink were so adulterated as to be deeply injurious to health, the shock to the nervous system of a large portion of the community would be far more prejudicial than any actual amount of adulteration which now exists. What the House wanted were the real facts of the case, and the Government had it in their power to supply these at a comparatively small outlay. He agreed with the noble Lord, that it would be useless to appoint a Committee or a Commission, before which anybody who had a bee in his bonnet on this subject might exhibit the bee, as had been done in the case of the last Committee. He thought the proper action of the Government would be to follow the course prescribed by the late Mr. Wakley, by placing the matter in the hands of one or two official analysts, such as Mr. Phillips, of Somerset House, and Dr. Angus Smith, and he felt satisfied that if those gentlemen associated with themselves a microscopist, they would give to the country the exact state of the case. Parliament would then legislate with much greater certainty and confidence than it could at present. Two kinds of adulteration had been specially named—the mixing of alum in bread and cocculus Indicus in beer. Now he was not going to dispute the poisonous nature of cocculus Indicus, but no one had yet shown that the effects produced on the system by intoxication from cocculus Indicus were more injurious than intoxication from spirit. As to the presence of alum in bread, the general opinion on this point was quite at variance with that of the most able chemists. Professor Liebig had acknowledged that the ordinary mixture of alum in bread as practised in this country was not injurious, but positively beneficial. [Laughter.] Hon. Members laughed, and he should

  731
  like to convince them by going into the question somewhat technically. In general terms, however, he might say that flour contained a quantity of gluten, which very readily passed into a state of decomposition and decay. The presence of a small quantity of alum arrested that decay, and enabled, the baker to produce by the use of seconds flour a very much superior bread than would otherwise be possible. The substitute which Liebig recommended the baker to use in such cases was caustic lime. Hon. Members might take their choice between the addition of alum and caustic lime; for his part he preferred the alum, and he thought that would be the general judgment of the community. He had said that the general health was not extensively interfered with by adulteration; but adulteration was practised so as to amount to a fraud upon the community. It was, therefore, rather on the ground of injury to the pocket, than of injury to health, that he joined the noble Lord in urging the Government, to give their immediate attention to this very important subject.
  MR. BRIGHT: The noble Lord (Lord Eustace Cecil) has taken great pains upon this question, and has brought before the House a great amount of detail in connection with it. As I listened to his observations I hoped and believed that there was, though it was entirely unintentional, no little exaggeration in them. Although there may be particular cases in which great harm to health and great fraud may possibly be shown, yet I think that general statements of this kind, implicating to a large extent the traders of this country, are dangerous and are almost certain to be unjust. Now, my hon. Friend, the Member for Stafford (Mr. Pochin), who has just addressed the House in a speech showing his entire mastery of the question, has confirmed my opinion, for he has shown—and I dare say he knows as much of the matter as any Gentleman present—that there is a great deal of exaggeration in the opinions which have prevailed in many parts of the country, and which have even been found to prevail upon the matter in this House. The proposition of the noble Lord is—
  "That it is expedient that Her Majesty's Government should give their earliest attention to the widespread and most reprehensible practices of using False Weights and Measures and of Adulterating Food, Drink, and Drugs,"
  732
  and so on. Now, I am prepared to show that the exaggeration of the noble Lord—I do not say intentionally, of course; I am sure he is incapable of that—is just as great in the matter of weights and measures as in that of adulteration. Probably he is not aware that in the list of persons employing weights that are inaccurate—I do not say fraudulent—no distinction is drawn between those who are intentionally fraudulent and those who are accidentally inaccurate, and that the penalty is precisely the same, and the offence is just as eagerly detected, whether there be a fraud or merely an accident. Now the noble Lord will probably be surprised when I tell him that many persons are fined annually, not because their weights are too small, but because they are too large. In fact, when the weights are inaccurate but are in favour of the customer, still the owner and user of the weight is liable to the penalty and is fined. I have here a statement made by the Secretary of the Standards Commission, to which this matter has been referred, and he says—
  "During recent years many Returns have been laid before Parliament of convictions for false and unjust weights and measures, more especially in the metropolitan district, and a close examination of these Returns will show very few convictions for fraudulent weights and measures. The great majority are for defective or unjust weights and measures, deviating more or less from the standard, many of these deviations being of comparatively trifling amount, and frequently in favour of the purchaser—that is to say, the weights are too heavy and the measures too large. The convictions for unjust balances are also, for the most part, for defective, not for fraudulent balances."
  That is a statement, coming from undoubted authority, which may, I think, relieve our countrymen connected with trade from the stigma attaching to them that there exists a general or widespread system of using inaccurate and fraudulent balances. An Act on this subject was passed in 1835, and penalties were inflicted as I have said. The noble Lord is against any more Commissions or Committees, and I do not ask for them for a moment, but a Commission is now engaged in inquiring into this very subject. It was appointed with a view to a revision of the standards, because, while fining shopkeepers for the use of inaccurate weights, it was found in a great many cases that the standards themselves were inaccurate, and for a tradesman to be fined because he did not keep his

  733
  weight by an inaccurate standard seems to be rather a stretch of power, This Commission is now sitting; they have extended their inquiry to this very Act to which the noble Lord alluded. In four or five months their Report will be made, and there is an expression of opinion on the part of the Secretary that the whole of the laws connected with weights and measures appear to require revision, and that a comprehensive measure is required for amending and consolidating those laws. The Report of the Commission will not be issued for some time, and as Parliament has on its hands, probably, quite as much as it can do in the present Session, I do not think that any legislation will be possible this year. Now I come to the question of adulteration. My late lamented Friend and Colleague, Mr. Scholefield, brought in a Bill in 1860 or 1861. He was much urged to do this by very enthusiastic constituents of his who took a prodigious interest in the matter. I have not the Act before me, and I do not know exactly how far its provisions extend; but it gave corporations and magistrates power to appoint analysts who should take care to examine into adulterations, and penalties were to be inflicted under the Act. If the corporations and the magistrates have not sufficient interest in the matter; if the people who elect the corporations care so little about it, I think that is fair evidence that the grievance is not near so extensive and injurious and burdensome as it has been described by the noble Lord. My own impression with regard to this adulteration is that it arises from the very great, and, perhaps, inevitable competition in business; and that to a large extent it is promoted by the ignorance of customers. As the ignorance of customers generally is diminishing, we may hope that before long the adulteration of food may also diminish. The noble Lord appears to ask that something much more extensive and stringent should be done by Parliament. The fact is, it is vain to attempt by the power of Parliament to penetrate into and to track out evils such as these on which the noble Lord has dwelt at such length. It is quite impossible that you should have the oversight of the shops of the country by inspectors, and that you can organize a body of persons to go into shops to buy sugar, pickles, and Cayenne pep-
  734
  per, to get them analyzed, and then to raise complaints against shopkeepers and bring them before the magistrates. If men in their private businesses were to be tracked by Government officers and inspectors every hour of the day, life would not be worth having, and I should recommend them to remove to another country, where they would not be subject to such annoyance. The question, too, as the noble Lord has put it, is one of great difficulty, because, if the Government proposed to legislate on the whole of this matter, I suspect it would be found that, in the clauses of a Bill, however carefully it might be drawn, there would be points that would create so much difference that it would be impossible to settle them. It was the case, I know, when my late Colleague brought forward his Bill, and it was found almost impossible to pass it through the House. If any hon. Member chooses to go into this question before the Government can touch it, and to suggest a measure which he may think will be likely to give satisfaction, the Government will be perfectly ready to examine it, and give it fair consideration. I regard these subjects as about the most difficult, and, at the same time, I think, about the least advantageous to which Parliament can devote itself. Most of the Bills of this kind which have been passed during the twenty-five years I have been in Parliament have failed in their operation, and I suspect that most of the attempts which will be made hereafter will be equally unsuccessful. The question of weights and measures is a different one; it is simple; you can reduce it to an accurate standard; and Parliament can accomplish something. The Report of the Commission will soon be made; and it is, I believe, the intention of the Government, as it would be my own disposition, when it is made, to take such steps as may appear best, with a view to asking Parliament for fresh legislation on this subject. I shall be glad if, after this answer and explanation, the noble Lord may not deem it necessary to press the Motion which he has placed on the Notice Paper.
  MR. BENTINCKsaid, the House and the country ought to feel obliged to the noble Lord (Lord Eustace Cecil) for the way in which he had brought the question forward; but he did not regard the reply of the right hon. Gentleman the

  735
  President of the Board of Trade as satisfactory. Every householder must have felt extreme difficulty in obtaining articles of food that were not more or less adulterated; and, however much the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Pochin) might be master of the subject, all the speeches he might deliver would not convince the House that bread without alum was not more wholesome than bread that contained it. But when the right hon. Gentleman spoke of tradesmen going abroad to avoid inspectors, he should remember that in Prance, and other countries, every baker and every vendor was under the strict and watchful eye of the police; and that a baker in France dare no more sell adulterated bread than commit an offence against the criminal law. The result was, that on leaving behind the alum loaf at an English port you got excellent bread at the first port or station you stopped at in France. Again, from the north to the south of Italy, as the Prime Minister would know, you would find no bread adulterated or food tampered with. If the Government would inquire into the practice of foreign countries as regards the inspection of food, they would learn a useful lesson which might be applied in this country at a future time with great benefit. In attributing adulteration to Customs duties, the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Pollard-Urquhart) no doubt alluded to tea, coffee, and sugar, but he forgot that that argument did not apply to bread nor to flour, which was as extensively adulterated as anything in this country. The other day, visiting a family in London, who were having bread made, he inquired and found that the flour was obtained at a distance because it was impossible to get it pure in the neighbourhood. The taking of the duty off wine had not lessened the adulteration of that article, and no man had more sins on his back than the Prime Minister had for taking off the duty. Its removal offered a premium to foreigners to send to this country every kind of poisonous mixture. As to weights and measures, why not bring in a measure to discriminate between fraud and unintentional error? Nothing was so unsatisfactory as the arbitrary power vested in the magistrates. In the county of Cumberland an eminent tradesman, who had one large establishment and many shops in different districts, was
  736
  discovered to be using weights and measures that were, not colourably, but actually, false, and when this eminent tradesman—who dealt among other things in so-called Liberal politics—was before the magistrates, and the case was proved, they said that really this tradesman was such a very respectable man it was quite impossible he could have known what he was doing, and they did not fine him. The protection of the public required that every individual who had false weights should be severely punished; and it would be well if the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade would consider the expediency of adopting a mild measure of punishment resorted to in France—that of compelling the convicted tradesman to provide a placard setting forth his guilt, and to exhibit it prominently in his place of business. In the hope that the Government would pay early attention to the subject, and bring forward a measure upon it, he should advise his noble Friend to withdraw the Motion.
  MR. PEEK, as one whose business for thirty years past had been in the colonial markets, which covered the principal articles of the breakfast table, had no hesitation in saying that, the country through, fully a hundred tons of tea as imported were retailed, to every pound adulterated here. In some minor articles a good deal of adulteration, no doubt, went on; but the motive was extra profit, and very few of the adulterating materials were injurious to health. With regard to the punishment of persons using false weights and measures, he believed it would be unwise to increase the penalties, and both unjust and cruel to make, as had been suggested, the punishment imprisonment—the clerks to the magistrates, both of Middlesex and Surrey, agreeing that in fully 80 per cent of the cases brought before them, the inaccuracy arose from carelessness rather than design. That morning above 200 licenses had been brought before his petty sessional bench; of the very few complaints made throughout the expired year, only one was of at all a serious a character.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.—QUESTIONS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, he would beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade, If his attention has been called to the increased number of Railway Accidents during the last few months, arising from the enormous traffic now carried on by the principal lines? He divided accidents on railways into two classes—those which arose from circumstances in some measure under control, and those which occurred in defiance of reasonable supervision. At present it happened that when a fatal railway accident occurred it excited public attention but for a few days, a jury inquired into the circumstances which led to the deaths, sometimes their deliberations ended with a simple verdict, and at the most one or two of the company's servants were committed on a charge of manslaughter. He maintained, however, that accidents were, in most cases, the fault of the system and not of the servants; the lines were gorged with traffic to such an extent that the delay of a minute, in some instances, would lead to the most deplorable results. He had noticed more than four-and-twenty accidents had occurred during the last four months, nineteen of which were collisions of trains, and eight of these had been marked by gross carelessness. But, as the House would, perhaps, prefer the statistics of a Government Department to these collected by an individual, he gave a digest of the Board of Trade Returns of Accidents during the last four years. From these, it appeared that the collisions far exceeded accidents of other descriptions, and that the percentage of personal injuries was larger in the case of collisions. During 1864, 88 accidents of all kinds occurred; 59 of them were collisions, and 29 other accidents. The passengers killed and injured in the collisions numbered 642, and in the other accidents 142. In 1865, there were 112 accidents, of which 69 were collisions, and 43 others; the killed and injured in consequence of the collisions numbered 838, and in the other cases 267. In 1866, there were 75 accidents, 53 collisions, and 22 from other causes; the killed and injured in the one case were 498, and in the other 114. In 1867, which was the last year dealt with by the Returns as yet, 106 accidents occurred, 65 through
  738
  collisions, and 41 from other causes; the killed and injured in the one case were 571, and in the other 221. These were remarkable facts; they showed that collisions were not only more frequent than all other kinds of accidents put together, but that they were also more fruitful of personal injury. The four years showed a total of 246 collisions, as against 135 other accidents; the killed and injured from the collisions numbered 2,549, and from accidents through other causes 744, giving a proportion of 10¼ persons injured by each collision against 5½ by each accident from other causes. He trusted the Government would study these statistics, and see what could be done to remedy the defects in our railway system, of which they were the result. In conclusion, he asked whether it is the intention of the Government to do anything with a view to regulate such traffic, so as to give greater security to passengers; and, if not, whether they would grant a Select Committee to inquire as to the best method of regulating such traffic, either by the establishment of a separate line for the conveyance of goods, or by a compulsory system of telegraphic signals?

ACCIDENTS IN THE CARDIFF DOCKS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. CANDLISHcalled the attention of the House to the great loss of life by drowning in the Bute Docks at Cardiff. Though the Notice which he had put on the Paper was limited to the Bute Docks, the facts he had to bring forward applied to the whole of Cardiff harbour. From 1862 to 1868, both inclusive, no fewer than 208 human beings had lost their lives by drowning at Cardiff, which was nearly at the rate of 30 a year. In 1862, 21 persons were drowned; in 1863, 24; in 1864, 30; in 1865, 32; in 1866, 37; in 1867, 34; and in 1868, 30; making a total of 208. In some years every month had its human sacrifices. He would ask was there anything special in Cardiff from which this loss of life must necessarily result? He was informed that there was nothing like it even in London or Liverpool. One of the causes he was told was that there were no railings or chains by the water's edge, and again and again people walked over into the water. Another cause was that in one of the docks there was not a single light; in another the lighting was

  739
  very imperfect, and in both there was want of watching. Again, the coals shipped there gave off a light kind of dust which lay alike on the water and the ground, and the consequence was that people mistook the one for the other. The question was whether this loss of life was preventible. He did not suppose that any precaution which could be adopted would prevent the loss of some lives wherever there was work and water, but he believed there was a preventible loss here, and that either the Government or the House, which had given power to construct these docks, ought to see that proper arrangements were made for the preservation of life. Many of the accidents, he was told, might be prevented by means of a moveable chain, which could be taken away when men were at their work, and by better lighting; but it was for the parties concerned to devise the necessary preventives.
  COLONEL STUARTsaid, he was not prepared to admit, especially upon the very short notice which his hon. Friend had given, the accuracy of the statistics which he had quoted. He could assure the House that the managers of the docks were quite alive to their responsibility, and would be glad to take every possible precaution, for they had always exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent those calamitous accidents which were almost unavoidable in the case of docks. Believing that the hon. Member's Notice referred only to the Bute Docks, he had not made any inquiry as to the other docks, but he found that in 1867 the deaths by accident in the Bute Docks were only twenty-one, of which five took place by day, and three or four were "females" and supposed to be suicides; and as about 60,000 sailors entered the docks in that year, that was an average of about one casualty to 5,000 sailors. In 1868 the average was greater. In consequence of some extensive works which were going on, the number of sailors that entered was only 54,000, but the casualties were as one to every 3,200 sailors. He could assure the House that the proprietors of the Cardiff Docks would be most happy if the Board of Trade would assist them in carrying out measures for the greater preservation of life in future.
  MR. BRIGHT: The Question that has been put to me by the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish) I take to
  740
  belong rather to the Home Office, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will probably answer it by-and-by. The hon. Gentleman who has brought forward the question of railway accidents appears to me to have based his Question and his proposition on a very insecure foundation, because he asks me whether my attention has been called to the increased number of railway accidents during the last few months, arising from the enormous traffic now carried on by the principal lines. Now, so far as the figures which are before the Board of Trade prove, there has been no increase in railway accidents; and, in fact, if we consider the constant increase in the amount of mileage, and the number of trains run, and of passengers carried, it is quite clear that the accidents have steadily diminished. Now, these are the figures which will perhaps interest the hon. Gentleman—The number of accidents—I do not speak now of injuries to person or loss of life—was, in 1864, 78; in 1865, 92; in 1866, 69; in 1867, 95; and in 1868, 87. These are accidents that were more or less considerable, and the number, though it varies to some extent, does not show anything like the increase to which the hon. Gentleman has called the attention of the House. Well, the passengers killed in 1864 were 14; in 1865, 22; in 1866, 15; and in 1867, 19. Then we come to the extraordinary accident at Abergele of which, I believe the hon. Gentleman himself was a witness, in which thirty-one persons lost their lives, and yet the whole number of passengers killed in 1868 was forty, so that, deducting that accident, the whole number of lives lost during the year besides was only nine, An accident of the kind that occurred at Abergele, grievous and horrible as it is, should not be taken into consideration in looking at the figures and the averages. The number of persons injured stands thus—in 1864, 697; in 1865, 1,034; in 1866,540; inl867,689; andinl868,519. Therefore, the number of persons injured in railway trains in 1868 was lower than in any of the previous four years, and that notwithstanding the increase of carriage and trains, and the enormous increase constantly occurring in the mileage and number of persons travelling. That loss of life, I ought to state, does not include the servants of the companies, nor does it include trespassers,

  741
  it includes merely passengers who have been killed by circumstances over which they had no control, and, as it may be said, either by accident or the fault of the companies. The House -will see, if I next give them some figures as to the increase of passengers, how much better this account shows than it does as I have read it. In 1857 the number of passengers carried (exclusive of season tickets) was in round numbers 139,000,000; in 1864 it was 229,000,000; in 1865, 251,000,000; in 1866, 274,000,000; and in 1867, 287,000,000. The Return for the last year has not yet been furnished. But, notwithstanding that enormous increase in the number of persons carried, the number who lost their lives is almost stationary; while the number injured has really fallen off. Therefore, looking at the whole case, there is nothing to create alarm in regard to this question. The hon. Gentleman asks whether the Government will do anything more to regulate this traffic, and give greater security to passengers? I think I have shown that there is no diminution of security so far as the figures go; and the hon. Member must know that there has been almost any amount of legislation heretofore with the view of in some way or other giving the Board of Trade power to interfere with the railway companies. My own impression—and it is also the impression of the most skilled and most experienced gentlemen in the Department with which I am connected—is that it would be a very perilous thing, and one not good for the public, to add continually to this interference with railways on the part of the Board of Trade, because you take from them some of the responsibility which ought to attach to them; and you ask me, or those who are assisting me in that Department, to regulate that which no man in it can know one-hundreth part as much about as the actual managers and directors of these railways. But then there comes this other question—What are the inducements which the companies now have to afford security to their passengers and prevent accidents? I will give the House two or three figures that are to me most astonishing, although I had before an opinion that the inducements for the good management of their lines were very great on the part of the companies. By the force of law passengers who are injured on
  742
  railways, and the friends of those who are killed, can claim compensation from the companies on whose lines the accidents by which they suffered have happened. Now, in the year 1865, the compensation paid for these personal injuries alone amounted to more than £333,000, while the amount paid for damage done to goods in the same year was £115,000. In 1866, the sum paid as compensation for personal injuries was £306,000, and for damage to goods £178,000. In 1867, the compensation for personal injuries was £347,000, and the amount paid for damages to goods £ 166,000. Thus the total amount of compensation paid in each year was—in 1865, £449,000; in 1866, £484,000; and in 1867, £513,000. The Returns for 1868 are not yet furnished, and therefore I am unable to give them to the House. Let the House bear in mind that there is this enormous expense to the companies of more than £500,000 annually, which is equal to a capital sum of from £10,000,000 to £15,000,000. In addition to that there are law expenses to a very large amount. I ask, then, is it possible for Parliament to pass any law which shall add to the force of this great argument acting on railway directors and managers with the view to induce them to give the greatest possible security to the passengers and goods travelling on their lines? The London and North Western Company paid in 1867 not less than £86,000 for personal injuries alone. And, without wishing to give any additional authority to my opinion on account of the office which I hold—for I am now only expressing the opinion I have entertained for years past—I venture to say that the law itself as it stands, without limit of compensation, is a law of very questionable character; and I think, further, that neither the Press, nor juries, nor the public are disposed to give the credit which is due to the managers of the great lines of railway in this kingdom. My own belief is that, owing so much as we do to them, and considering their vast expenditure of capital, with the service they render to the public, we might, on many occasions, take a fairer view of the conduct and the success of railway management than we are accustomed to do in this country. The hon. Member asked, further, whether the Government would not grant a Select Committee—

  743
  "To inquire as to the best method of regulating such traffic, either by the establishment of a separate line for the conveyance of goods, or by a compulsory system of telegraphic signals?"
  I think the hon. Member can hardly suppose that it would be possible for a Committee to recommend, or for Parliament to insist on, the formation of separate lines for the conveyance of goods. As the lines become more and more crowded, in some circumstances it is possible that recourse may be had to other lines. The London and North Western Company have, for some miles, another line out of London; and that example may, perhaps, be followed elsewhere. But when you consider the difficulty which many of these companies are now under in regard to capital, I think it would be throwing away the time and labour of a Committee to ask it to investigate a question like that. With respect to a compulsory system of telegraphic signals, these signals are, I think, universal on the lines; they are, as far as I understand, very complete; and if the Board of Trade or any Act of Parliament were to interfere with a matter so delicate and minute in the management and arrangements of railways as that, I think that in all probability it would do ten times more harm than good. I hope, then, that the statement I have made may not only be deemed a sufficient answer to the Question of the hon. Gentleman, but may do something to allay the fears which have been created among those who have not examined the facts, and which no doubt give a shock to the nerves of many persons who travel by railway. For myself, I agree very much with those connected with railways when they say that there is no place in which a man can put himself where he can remain so long and go so far without taking any harm as in a first-class railway carriage.
  MR. BRUCE: In answer to the appeal of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish), I think I need hardly assure him that the Home Office has no power of direct interference in cases such as that which he has brought under the notice of the House. I have no doubt that the facts he has mentioned will cause the attention of the local authorities of Cardiff and of the proprietors of the Bute Docks to be directed to the many accidents which happen there, whether they are or are not as
  744
  numerous as he has stated. But under the circumstances it will be my duty to communicate with the local authorities, and to call their attention to the facts to which the hon. Gentleman has referred; and I hope the result will be that steps will be taken for affording security to human life in these docks.

IRELAND—APPOINTMENT OF SIR E. R. WETHERALL.—QUESTION.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  COLONEL GREVILLE-NUGENTrose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland the Question of which he had given notice respecting the appointment of the late Government, on the eve of their resignation, of Colonel Sir E. R. Wetherall as Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. The hon. and gallant Member said, he did not find fault with the late Government for accepting the resignation of Sir Thomas Larcom, but with the mode in which they had appointed his successor. He took exception to that appointment, first, because it had been made permanent, and next, because it was held by a military man—a system being thereby introduced into Ireland quite the opposite of that which prevailed in England and Scotland. Probably his right hon. Friend had made inquiries into the subject since notice of his Question had been given, and would be able to inform them how, when, and for what reason that appointment was made permanent. For a period of eighteen years, or from 1835 to 1853, he found that under the successive Administrations which held Office in this country the appointment of Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was, like that of the Lord Lieutenant, a political office, which changed its occupant with the change of Government itself, and it was not until after that date that it became permanent. In 1835, when Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, Lord Normanby was Lord Lieutenant, and Mr. Drummond was Under Secretary, and on his death in 1840 he was succeeded by Mr. Norman M'Donald. In 1841 Sir Robert Peel appointed Lord De Grey Lord Lieutenant, and Mr. Edward Lucas Under Secretary, and before Sir Robert Peel left Office Mr. Pennefather held the Under Secretaryship for a year. In 1846, when

  745
  Lord John Russell was Prime Minister, Lord Bessborough was appointed Lord Lieutenant, and Sir Thomas Redington the Under Secretary. In 1852 Lord Derby appointed the Earl of Eglinton Lord Lieutenant, and Mr. Wynne Under Secretary; and the Earl of Aberdeen, in June, 1853, appointed the Earl of St. Germans Lord Lieutenant, and Colonel Larcom Under Secretary. It was considered in 1835 that it would be advantageous for the country if the office were made a political one, and that the person filling it should be in unison with the Government of the day. The objection to the appointment being made permanent was one of long standing among many of the Gentlemen who represented Irish constituencies; indeed, he might say that almost all the Irish Members entertained a very strong opinion on the subject. The present Government did not wish to treat Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom, and he hoped that they would state why a course which was in accordance with constitutional usage, and which had proved very beneficial, had been departed from. He also objected to the office being conferred upon a soldier. Sir Edward Wetherall was, no doubt, a most meritorious man, but the training he had gone through was not of the kind required for an Under Secretary for Ireland. He had distinguished himself as a soldier in Canada, India, the Crimea, and elsewhere, and in 1868 he was taken from the Horse Guards and appointed to the Under Secretaryship. He (Colonel Greville-Nugent) did not deny that Sir Edward Wetherall deserved to be rewarded for his important professional services, but that was a matter that ought to have been left to the Horse Guards. But the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Colonel Wilson-Patten) might, perhaps, allege that in appointing a soldier to the office he did not depart from the established custom. It was no doubt true that Sir Thomas Larcom was a soldier, but he was an officer of the Engineers, which was a different service from the rest of the army, and, besides, he was employed by the Board of Works in Dublin and on the survey of Ireland for a great number of years before he was made Under Secretary. There was no parallel, therefore, between the appointment of Sir Thomas Larcom and that of Sir Edward Wetherall. The ap-
  746
  pointment of Mr. Drummond could not be referred to in justification of the late appointment, because Mr. Drummond had been engaged on the survey in Ireland, and had been long acquainted with the country and the people, and had more of their confidence than any other man that had filled the office. If the Lord Lieutenant required to consult a soldier there was the Commander of the Forces, who was perfectly competent to regulate all the military part of the business. An account of the duties of the office of Under Secretary was given in a recently published life of Mr. Drummond, from which it appeared that his functions were exceedingly diversified. For instance, he had to receive and reply to a variety of communications similar to those which were addressed to the Home Office in England. He also had to receive constabulary reports, and to carry on an extensive daily correspondence with the local and stipendiary magistrates, to bring under the notice of the Lord Lieutenant all matters of an important nature, and to communicate with the Chief Secretary and other officers of Government. In addition, he was, during the absence of the Viceroy and of the Chief Secretary, virtually the Irish Government. If it was intended to govern Ireland in future as it had been governed in the past, by all means let a soldier be Under Secretary—let the country, in fact, be kept under martial law; but if they looked to governing Ireland as a constituent part of the United Kingdom, let the great offices in its Government be placed in the hands of civilians changing with the Government of the day; and the sooner they made this office political the better. In conclusion, the hon. and gallant Gentleman asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, If Colonel Sir E. R. Wetherall, appointed by the late Government on the eve of their resignation as Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, is the same person whose name appears as Deputy Quartermaster General at the Horse Guards; if the appointment is permanent; and, whether the present Government considers it desirable that the whole Civil Administration of Ireland should be under the control of a Military man, holding his appointment independently of the Government of the day, instead of a civilian, according to the custom which

  747
  obtains in the Government of England at the Home Office?
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Longford (Colonel Greville-Nugent) has thought it his duty to bring before the House the question of the appointment of Sir Edward Wetherall to a very high and important office in the Irish Government. Now, I think the best thing I can do is to endeavour to give an accurate statement of what happened in regard to this matter—a statement which, if it be inaccurate in any respect, will, no doubt, be corrected by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the Member for North Lancashire (Colonel Wilson-Patten). For some time the late Under Secretary for Ireland, Sir Thomas Larcom, had been most anxious to resign the arduous office which he had filled for so many years with so much benefit to the public service. He had, on several occasions, offered his resignation to the Earl of Mayo, and had more than once been persuaded, he believed, by his Lordship, to continue to assist him during his tenure of the Irish Office, especially under the grave circumstances connected with the Fenian disturbances with which Lord Mayo had to deal. Lord Mayo afterwards went to India, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lancashire succeeded him as Chief Secretary. Sir Thomas Larcom then renewed his application for what I may term a release from his laborious duties at the the Irish Office, but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lancashire very naturally protested against being deserted at such a time in an office which was new to him by a gentleman of such immense experience. Sir Thomas Larcom accordingly consented to continue in office for some weeks longer. Upon receiving positive information of Sir Thomas Larcom's determination to resign his office, the late Government proceeded to take measures to find a successor; and the result was the choice of Sir Edward Wetherall, a distinguished soldier, then filling an important office in the Horse Guards, where, I must say, the late Government might, in my opinion, have far more wisely left him, with great advantage to the military service of this country. Well, the result of the inquiries of the Government was to place Sir Edward Wetherall in the Irish Office.
  748
  The letter appointing him is dated the 18th of November, 1868, and he was gazetted on the 1st of the following month. I sincerely believe that that choice was made by the late Government with the best possible intentions. They did, I believe, endeavour to find the best person whose services they could procure to fill the important office which was vacant, and I am far from imputing to them any such impropriety as that of creating a vacancy merely for the purpose of obtaining the patronage connected with the appointment. More than that, I am bound to tell my hon. and gallant Friend and the House that the late Government were perfectly entitled to look upon this office as a permanent one, inasmuch as it had been placed on that footing for some years. I hold in my hand a Paper which has been already moved for, and which will show my hon. and gallant Friend and the House how the change in it was made. The fact is that this office, which until the year 1834 or 1835 was a permanent office, was in that year accepted by a man to whom my hon. and gallant Friend has paid so just a tribute—Mr. Drummond, and converted into a political appointment, which it continued to be until January, 1854. At that time a correspondence passed between the Treasury and Sir John Young, who was Chief Secretary for Ireland, in which Sir John Young gave reasons to show the Government that it was desirable to restore the office to its former permanent character, Sir John Young writes—
  "It is only of late years, since 1834, that the practice has grown up of considering this office political, and to be filled up by a gentleman attached to the party in power. There is nothing in the duties assigned to the office which invests it with this character; on the contrary, it is of moment that the business chiefly connected with the local administration of justice, the supervision of the constabulary, and the regular routine of the Executive Government, in its details, should, as far as possible, be dissevered from party and political influence, and be understood to be held by an officer not interested in, nor even liable to the suspicion of such influence."
  The question, therefore, was considered on its merits at the time, and the Paper which I hold in my hand contains a Treasury Minute embodying the views of the Government on the subject, and placing the office on a permanent footing. On that footing it has been filled by Sir Thomas Larcom, under successive changes of Government, until the other

  749
  day; and upon that footing there can be no doubt the late Government were justified in filling it up. Having said thus much, I feel bound to add that the late Government seem to me to have committed in this matter two very serious errors of judgment. One of those errors of judgment relates to the time at which the appointment was made; the other to the quarter to which they resorted for a successor to Sir Thomas Larcom as Under Secretary for Ireland. As to the time, I think it was a mistake that a Government in a position which I may call in extremis should have filled up an appointment of such vital importance to the Irish Government at a moment when, indeed the responsibility of the choice was theirs, but when the advantages or disadvantages resulting from that choice were to fall entirely on their successors. I think it would have been a wiser course, and one far more advantageous to the public service to have pursued, if the late Government had endeavoured to induce Sir Thomas Larcom to continue in his office a little longer, and had not exposed the new Government to the inevitable disadvantage of coming into Office with a new Under Secretary entirely unversed in the duties of his Department. So much for the matter of time; and with respect to the other point, relating to what I also ventured to call a grave error of judgment, I must say that it appears to me to have been a grave error of policy as well to have recourse to the Horse Guards and to remove from the Horse Guards to Dublin a gentleman who, however eminent he may be as a soldier—and we all know that in that capacity he is both eminent and experienced—yet had never any experience either of civil affairs in general or of the government of Ireland in particular. Such a choice I cannot look upon as having been wise either in Sir Edward Wetherall's own interests or in the interests of the country. My hon. Friend has observed that Sir Thomas Larcom was a soldier in name, and I have no doubt that if he had remained in the military profession he would have been both a gallant and successful soldier. But not to say that he belonged to that branch of the military service which is most civilian in its character, it is idle to contend that he was a military man for any practical purpose when he was appointed Under Secretary for Ireland.
  750
  The truth is that he was for many years of his useful and active life engaged in the civil service of the Irish Government, and that for the last six years previous to his appointment he was employed under the Irish Board of Works. These reasons are, in fact, specially embodied in the Treasury Minute as reasons for his appointment at the time. The fact then remains that the choice of the late Government fell on a distinguished soldier who had not any of those advantages or any of that civil experience which were possessed by his predecessor. I am constrained to say, in answer to the last part of the Question of my hon. and gallant Friend, that the present Government do not, as a matter of principle or of general rule, consider it desirable that this important civil appointment in Ireland should be held by a military man; but that, upon the contrary, they look upon it as necessary for the public service in Ireland that, both in respect of its practical effect on that service and the impression which may be produced on the public mind in that country, the rule should be that this high civil office should be filled by a civilian, according to the custom which obtains in the Government of England at the Home Office. Having said thus much with respect to the general view which the present Government take in regard to this office; I have simply to add a few words as to the view which they take with respect to this particular appointment. In the first place, the present Government are not responsible for the choice which was made by the late Government, who were, strictly speaking, entitled to fill up a vacancy which they had not created. In the next place, I have to state that, in the opinion of the present Government, the very greatest consideration is due to the gallant officer whose case is now before the House. The Government feel sure that Sir Edward Wetherall is wholly blameless in the matter. They feel that he has done nothing whatever which could be regarded as unworthy of his high character and position, and nothing which could disentitle him to receive that equitable and favourable consideration which is due to a distinguished man who, I cannot but think has been placed in a false position. But, carefully subject to these considerations. I have to say that Her Majesty's Government are

  751
  of opinion that the tenure of this high civil office in Ireland by a military officer ought not to be treated by them as a fixed and permanent arrangement, and they hold themselves entirely free to take such opportunities as may present themselves of offering Sir Edward Wetherall such important military or other employment as may be suitable to his rank and claims, and call upon him to accept that employment. That being the view taken by the Government of their duty in this matter, I have only to add that there is nothing which I have said with regard to any part of this transaction which ought to be or can be regarded as in the slightest degree impairing or affecting the character or reputation of Sir Edward Wetherall.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: Sir, my right hon. Friend has made so fair a defence of the conduct of the late Government on this matter that he has left me very little to say on the subject. It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to corroborate his statement, but I may be allowed to observe that I do not believe an appointment was ever made by any Government so little open to unworthy imputations as that of Sir Edward Wetherall. It was, I must confess, a deep source of grief to find that that appointment was treated by the Irish press and public, totally ignorant as they were of the circumstances under which it was made, in a manner which was calculated to give great pain to one of the most upright and honourable men in Her Majesty's service. The same observation applies to the remarks which have emanated from the same quarters in reference to Sir Thomas Larcom. The conduct of that gentleman has been misrepresented in every sort of way. Belonging to the political party to which my right hon. Friend belongs, he was accused of betraying the interests of that party by not retaining his appointment until they acceded to power, and had an opportunity afforded them of naming his successor. That part of the case my right hon. Friend has entirely cleared up. He knows very well that Sir Thomas Larcom tendered his resignation to us over and over again, and that he was requested to remain in the post which he occupied. It was indeed with the greatest surprise that I learned, almost the first day I arrived in Ireland, from Sir Thomas Larcom that it was his in-
  752
  tention to resign. I appeal to my right hon. Friend, who knows the duties of Chief Secretary for Ireland, to judge what would be the position in which I should be placed if he had at once carried out that intention. I did my utmost to endeavour to induce him to retain his office until I became better acquainted with the duties on the discharge of which I had only just entered. He kindly acceded to that request, and the only return he met with from the press in Ireland was being accused of being actuated by unworthy motives, although nothing could be more honourable or straightforward than his conduct. I must say as much with respect to Sir Edward Wetherall, and I will only add to the statement of my right hon. Friend a few particulars in defence of the Government of which I was a member. As soon as I knew that Sir Thomas Larcom intended to resign I consulted the Lord Lieutenant as to the appointment of his successor. We were unanimous in agreeing that the appointment should be made without the slightest reference to political considerations, and I can also assure my right hon. Friend that we felt it our duty to appoint a man who would be agreeable to our successors in Office. These were the motives which actuated the Lord Lieutenant the Earl of Mayo and myself with respect to Sir Edward Wetherall, and I think in the last respect I have mentioned we have succeeded to the utmost of our ambition, for I believe my right hon. Friend will say that in the short experience he has had of Sir Edward Wetherall, that officer devotes himself to the discharge of his business, free from all political bias. That, at least, was the character given of him when we were considering who to appoint, and I believe Sir Edward Wetherall has acted strictly up to that character since he has filled the office. I can only say that neither the Lord Lieutenant nor myself had the slightest previous acquaintance with Sir Edward Wetherall. I did not know him even by sight until the moment when, by the Lord Lieutenant's direction, I offered him the office. In our choice we were entirely guided by the high character we had of Sir Edward Wetherall from several quarters. We inquired in many, civil and military, and heard in all so good a report of Sir Edward Wetherall that at length we fixed upon him. The

  753
  fact of his being a military man came under our consideration, and no doubt we did feel that it was a question upon which some difference of opinion might exist. But that consideration was quite overborne by the other recommendations we had of Sir Edward Wetherall. My right hon. Friend is in error in supposing that Sir Edward Wetherall's duties have been always entirely of a military character, for he has been in Ireland and has been consulted by the Executive upon matters connected with the Government. But now as to the policy of appointing a military man at all; I confess I was surprised to hear it stated that it was in accordance with the practice in this country a civilian should always be chosen for a civil office. Why, who was the last political Under Secretary of State for the Home Department? A distinguished military officer (Sir James Fergusson); and if my right hon. Friend will look through all the civil appointments of other Governments he will find that, beginning with the Duke of Wellington, no difference has been made in filling those appointments whether by military men or civilians. I was surprised, then, to hear my right hon. Friend agree with so false a statement as that contained in the Question on the Paper.
  COLONEL GREVILLE-NUGENTcomplained of this reference to the Question as containing a false statement.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: I intended no offence, but the Question insinuates that it is contrary to the rule of the English Civil Service that an Under Secretary should be a military man, and I controvert that statement. My right hon. Friend says that Sir Thomas Larcom was only an Engineer officer, and was not really a military man. Then, I want to know how it was that my right hon. Friend and the Government with which he was connected so often consulted Sir Thomas Larcom upon military matters? The fact that time after time various Governments in Ireland have so consulted him is unanswerable as showing that the late Under Secretary was really regarded as a military officer; and yet when another military officer is made Under Secretary in his place, objection is taken to the appointment upon political grounds in Ireland, and the gallant officer opposite (Colonel Greville-Nugent) says that Ireland is to be under martial
  754
  law. We do not consider ourselves under martial law in England when a military man is chosen to fill such a post, and the gallant officer must have got this idea from some extraordinary quarter. I contend that the post is one which may be filled equally well by either a civilian or a military man; and if, in either case, the person occupying that post chooses to act unconstitutionally the gallant officer knows that he would not be allowed to retain it many hours longer. I was surprised, then, at the insinuation made against Sir Edward Wetherall that he would take an unworthy advantage of his position.
  COLONEL GREVILLE-NUGENT: I never made any charge against Sir Edward Wetherall; I simply objected to the appointment of a soldier to this office.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: Then, what did the gallant officer mean by saying that Ireland would be under martial law because Sir Edward Wetherall was Under Secretary?
  COLONEL GREVILLE-NUGENT: I never said any such thing.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: Then, how did the gallant officer intend to argue that Ireland was to be brought under martial law?
  COLONEL GREVILLE-NUGENT: I objected to the system of military appointments to such offices.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: The Government will, of course, deal with this question as they think fit, on their own responsibility. All I can say is that Sir Thomas Larcom was a military man, and he remained in this office under seven different Governments, three Conservative and four Liberal; and now for the first time it has been objected that a military man ought not to succeed him, because, forsooth, of the distinction between the engineering branch of the service and that to which Sir Edward Wetherall belongs. I think it was quite unworthy of the Government to take up a position of that kind because there seemed to be an opportunity of getting rid of an official appointed by the late Ministry. I will not believe that the Government will take the course until I see them take it. The appointment was made in a most honourable and straightforward manner. And now let me say a word or two as to the period at which it was made. My right hon. Friend says that it ought not to have been made so

  755
  closely upon our leaving Office. Why did not the Government act upon the same principle when they themselves went out of Office? Have we not heard of a Lord Lieutenant and several other persons appointed only a few days before they left Office? The fact is that Sir Edward Wetherall's appointment was decided upon before the late Government agreed to go out of Office. It astonishes me to be told that under such circumstances a Government must leave such an appointment to be filled up by their opponents on taking Office. Certainly I have not had much experience in Office, but I have been many years a Member of this House, and to me these are quite new ideas.
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE: I said it would have been more advantageous to the public service had the appointment been delayed.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: My right hon. Friend said it was injudicious. If the appointment ought to have been delayed, will my right hon. Friend, when the present Government go out of Office, fix a time after which they will fill up no offices, but will leave all appointments to their successors? If my right hon. Friend is ready to give such an undertaking, I can understand and respect his present scruples. As it is, I cannot understand them at all. It is, I believe, an invariable practice that all the vacancies which occur within a reasonable time before the resignation of a Government are filled up by that Government; and I think that if my right hon. Friend will only move for a Return of the number of appointments so filled up within the three weeks before the last six or seven Governments have left Office, he will find that he cannot support the imputation he has cast upon the late Government. Sir, the object I had in rising was to do justice to two most distinguished men. As for myself, I have had a brief experience in Ireland, and it is possible that I may have made mistakes there; but I shall always be of opinion that I have taken part in recommending one of the most distinguished men ever appointed to Office in this country, and I venture to add that when my right hon. Friend knows Sir Edward Wetherall better, he will agree with me that seldom, within his experience, has so good an appointment been made.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I might, Sir, have been very well contented, after the temperate, careful, and able statement of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to leave the matter where he left it. But some expressions fell from my right hon. and gallant Friend opposite (Colonel Wilson-Patten), which require some notice by me. My right hon. and gallant Friend opposite has heard the admission of my right hon. Friend near me (the Chief Secretary)—an admission freely made on this side of the House—that in this case there was no imputation of motives whatever. In fact, the character of my right hon. and gallant Friend was on that subject quite a sufficient guarantee. But, having regard to his high character and position in this House, it was frankly admitted by my right hon. Friend that no imputation of that kind could for a moment stand. Yet my right hon. and gallant Friend gave us distinctly to understand—I think I am giving the precise effect of his words—that if Her Majesty's Government thought fit to act upon the principles laid down by the Chief Secretary—namely, that it was not desirable that a soldier, never having had experience of civil business, should be the permanent Under Secretary in Ireland; and if they should make some arrangement which would give to Sir Edward Wetherall an appointment elsewhere, the only motive which could be ascribed to us was, that we took this course because an opportunity was offered of getting a gentleman out of Office who had been put there by the late Government.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: I do not think I said that.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am glad to think I may have misunderstood my right hon. and gallant Friend.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN: If I said so, I withdraw the expression,
  MR. GLADSTONE: I was sure that my right hon. and gallant Friend must have made that imputation inadvertently. Well, Sir, I must entirely adhere to and support the propositions of my right hon. Friend near me. I am distinctly of opinion that it is a wise and judicious measure by which the Under Secretaryship in Ireland has been made a permanent office. The delicacy of the work of the Executive Government in Ireland is extreme, and it is exceedingly necessary that there should be some person of great

  757
  experience, authority, and capacity who should be able to carry on the traditions of civil government from one political Administration to another. I was at the Treasury when the office was made permanent, and I do not in the least regret having been a party to that arrangement. So far I am at one with my right hon. Friend opposite, and so far I differ from my hon. and gallant Friend near me (Colonel Greville-Nugent), for he holds that the office ought to be a fluctuating one, and to change with the Government. I feel obliged, however, to demur to the pleas offered in justifiction by my right hon. Friend opposite in the present instance. In the first place, he thinks that the objection taken by the Chief Secretary for Ireland is, that no Government likely to go out of Office ought to make any appointment whatever. My right hon. Friend did not lay down any proposition so absurd. It may be that it is very proper to make some appointments on the eve of quitting Office. It may be that is an error to make other appointments. The only question is—was this an appointment which it was wise for a Government to make on the very eve of quitting Office? It is not any general rule, but it is the speciality of these appointments on which the objection is founded. My right hon. Friend opposite refers to and claims the practice of England, and says that a distinguished military officer was lately Under Secretary of State for the Home Department; but there is the greatest possible distinction between a political and a permanent Under Secretary. Not only is there that difference, not only has a permanent Under Secretary in every office duties to perform that scarcely attach at all to a political Under Secretary, but my right hon. Friend, when he speaks of Sir James Fergusson as a distinguished military officer must remember that for fifteen or sixteen years he was an active, able, and intelligent Member of this House, constantly giving attention to the general course of its affairs, so that he qualified his military habits by a very large civil experience. It is not to one circumstance alone, but it is to the combined effect of several circumstances we must look in judging such a matter as this. Sir Thomas Larcom began by being an officer of Royal Engineers; he was reared in that corps, from which I venture to
  758
  say, limited as it is, more persons have been selected for civil appointments than have been taken for them from all the rest of the army; but at an early period of his life he left the military profession and educated himself for civil duties. The combined effect of these two circumstances is to create a difference as wide almost as it is possible to conceive between these two gentlemen. There is no reproach to Sir Edward Wetherall; but I venture to say that an ardent and gallant soldier cannot devote the best part of his life to military duties without losing some of his civil capacities; for the habits of military men tend to give them a mode of viewing affairs which is a soldier's and not a civilian's. But in my opinion you commit a slighter error in appointing a soldier to be permanent Under Secretary of State for the Home Department in England than in appointing him to be permanent Under Secretary in Ireland, for it must be remembered that the general spirit of government in England is civil, while in Ireland, unhappily, it is already too military. It has been found necessary to give to the constabulary a military character in a much greater degree than is desirable in a civilized country enjoying political freedom. It is on that account it is desirable a strong civil influence should be brought to bear upon the spirit of Irish administration by the appointment to the office of permanent Under Secretary of a person who has had some experience of civil duties. I think my right hon. Friend opposite overlooked this consideration—that in case the late Government had not gone out of Office it would not have been any great inconvenience to them to have postponed the appointment for three or four weeks; but in making it as they did, they made themselves the judges of who was a fit person to advise and support the new Lord Lieutenant and the new Chief Secretary; they decided who was to be the prop, stay, and adviser of these officers, and that at a time when it was well known that Irish policy was the cardinal point of public affairs, and when, consequently, it was of the utmost importance they should work with those with whom they enjoyed unbroken sympathy. That being the case, I do not think my right hon. Friend on this side has overstated the matter—while rendering the freest acknowledgments to the late Government

  759
  in the most important respects—in venturing to say he considers they have not exercised a sound discretion. For my part, I must entirely concur with my right hon. Friend in all the tribute he has rendered to the great merits and the high character of Sir Edward Wetherall. The anxiety of the Government will be to do him no wrong; at the same time, it will be to reconcile that purpose of doing no wrong or injustice with the fulfilment of their duties to the people of Ireland and to the great public interests which are at stake.

ELECTION PETITION JUDGMENTS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. VERNON HARCOURTrose to call attention—
  "To the situation in which the House of Commons is placed by the absence of any authentic record of the judgments delivered by the Judges appointed to try Election Petitions; which judgments interpret and declare, without appeal, the Law of Parliament, upon which depend the rights of the constituencies, the title of their representatives, and the constitution of the House of Commons."
  He said, that since he gave this Notice he had received a great number of letters from different parts of the country which indicated that an extraordinary degree of interest was taken in this question. He did not intend to raise the grave and difficult question of the policy of the change recently made in the tribunal for deciding election petitions. Whether it would ultimately turn out that the Lord Chief Justice was right when he earnestly protested against the scheme adopted last Session, or whether the House of Commons was right when, by a self-denying ordinance—which he might almost describe in the words of the great Italian poet, when he spoke of "the men who through timidity made the great refusal"—it came to the conclusion that it was unfit to be the judge of its own privilege, was a question he would not ask the House to discuss or decide; that must be determined by the experience of the future. Neither did he intend to raise a question as to the propriety of any particular decision. If anyone was disposed to criticise those decisions he was not that person. Assuming the propriety of the change of the tribunal and the absolute justice of its decisions, the point to which he wished to call attention was the sit-
  760
  uation in which the House was placed by the change which had been enacted. Formerly, a Committee of the House fulfilled the office of jury; it gave a decision upon a particular case; it was no doubt to a certain degree governed by the precedents of the past; but it was also at liberty to decide de novo upon the law as it stood. As soon however as we placed the decision of election petitions in the hands of the Judges we arrived at a new state of things; we got into a region very well known to lawyers, and partially known to laymen—the region known by the name of Judge-made law; when the Judges proceeded to interpret the law, they in fact made the law which they declared. The privileges of Parliament and of the constituencies were now in the hands of the Judges, and yet the House of Commons was absolutely ignorant of their declaration of the law. The other day the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when asked the question, did not even know whether notes had been taken of the judgments, which, being declarations of the law, were the making a law; and the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think it was immaterial whether we had them or not. With that view he could not concur, for, as the Judges had the power of deciding on the composition of the House, and of determining, as had been done in one case, that an individual should not be entitled to sit in it for seven years, it seemed to him it was of the first importance that the House should know the grounds on which their decisions were based. The furnishing the House with the Report without the judgments was like supplying them with the mere decree of a Judge of the Court of Chancery. The public would never be content with the mere decrees given in courts of law; the decisions were taken down by skilled professional reporters, and their reports were authoritative; they were regarded in the light of law, and for the future they governed the law. Now, they knew that Her Majesty's Judges, before whom these petitions were tried, had exercised a very wise discretion, and, in the knowledge that the public would expect the reasons for their decisions to be given, they had entered into these reasons at length. In spite of that, however, they were told that the decisions were not to be laid upon the table. This, too, was the more surprising, inas-

  761
  much as the evidence taken at the trial of these petitions was forthcoming. In the Bradford case, which was one of great interest, they had a great mass of evidence, but where was the law? He could not understand why the decisions should not be laid on the table, especially as in one case—that of Bewdley—both the evidence and the judgment had been placed before them. He understood that notes of these decisions had been taken, and consequently they could without difficulty be supplied. Now, as a matter of fact, the statutes passed in the House of Commons were sent to Westminster Hall to be made intelligible. When the Statute of Frauds was said by Lord Nottingham to be worth a subsidy, some one remarked that it would cost a subsidy, and the law with which they were now dealing might be subject to a similar remark. The Court of Common Pleas, in a case with regard to securities which came under the provisions of this Act, could not make out what the intention of the Legislature was and after several days' discussion gave the decision one way, because if it was not given that way it must have been given the other. The Court of Common Pleas in Ireland followed the decision of the English court, but acknowledged a preference for the other view of the case. The result of such a state of things, so far as he could observe public opinion, was to excite a great deal of alarm and dismay. Those in the country who desired to see purity of election believed that never at any time were we in so much danger of suffering from electoral corruption. Indeed, they regarded the attempts made by the Legislature in this direction as somewhat resembling the forts at Spithead, about which we had spent so much money and were going to spend so much more, of which it had been said that, having been put up for purposes of defence, they would now serve to guide the enemy safe through the shoals. In fact, it was believed that if a General Election were to be held to-morrow, it would be the most corrupt ever known in this country. He would call the attention of the House I more particularly to the law relating to treating at elections, which was on a most unsatisfactory footing. Mr. Rogers, in his able book, published last year, described the law respecting treating in the following terms:—
  762
  "Although the 17 & 18 Vict. c. 102, has in some respects assimilated bribery and treating, there is a wide difference between the nature of the two offences, both as regards the candidate and the voter. The bribed man votes for the candidate whom in his heart, perhaps, he hates or despises; the other follows the impulse of excited zeal and votes for him who has recommended himself by supposed liberality and hospitality. Bribery is directed to obtain the adverse and to fix the doubtful voters; treating is resorted to to confirm the good intentions and keep up the party zeal of those believed to be already in the interest of the candidate. The distinction between the two offences is, it will be seen, clearly recognized in the above-mentioned Act, by which bribery is made an indictable offence, while treating is not made criminal, and the penalty imposed upon the latter is only half of that attached to bribery."
  That he regarded as a very fair description of the present state of the law; and as long as it continued to remain in such a state the public out-of-doors would never believe that the House of Commons were sincere in their desire to put an end to treating. He was almost afraid of referring to an earlier period of English history, as persons who did so were supposed to be in their political dotage. But, in the first Treating Act, in the reign of William III., the matter was very differently dealt with. Upon that subject Mr. Rogers said—
  "Treating under this statute, therefore, became an offence without reference to its extent, the intention of the giver, or its effect on the election. The objects of the Legislature, it is imagined, were to put an end altogether to treating within certain periods, to estop the candidates from pleading either moderate or necessary refreshment, and to take away from the House all discretion upon the subject which it was found had been exercised in an arbitrary and unsatisfactory manner."
  In the later statutes, however, a different principle was introduced for the first time, and the word "corruptly" was introduced; and thus was swept away the effectual prevention which was supplied by the Act of William. The introduction of that word, which governed the whole of the law in relation to this matter, was, in his belief, the cause of all the mischief which had excited so much well-founded alarm throughout the country. Mr. Rogers said—
  "The word 'corruptly,' it will be seen, governs every clause in this section. What is the precise force to be given to this word is by no means clear."
  He had seen with some interest that there existed a borough in Ireland where it was admitted that the sitting Member had spent upwards of £5,000, and had ob-

  763
  tained only 127 votes, and the question was reserved for the Court of Common Pleas to determine whether that expenditure had any relation to corruption. Such a state of things reminded Mm of a passage in Tristram Shandy, where, after a long and learned discussion upon the difference between affinity and consanguinity, Uncle Toby very profoundly remarks—"What you say may be very true, still somehow or other, I cannot help thinking that a man must be some relation to his mother." He, in the same way, could not help thinking that the connection between the expenditure and its object, somehow or other was in this case clearly perceptible. They were told that the main point in determining these matters was the question of intention. He had always understood that the doctrine of the law in respect of intention was that a man was supposed to intend the natural consequence of his own acts. When a man came to a place he had nothing to do with and spent £5,000 about persons whom he never saw before, was it necessary that they should be able to dive into his heart before they could decide whether the expenditure of the money was intended to influence the votes of the electors? The whole of the evil had undoubtedly arisen from introducing the word "corruptly" into the Act, for the introduction of that word had proved nothing short of a mask under which corruption could be practised almost with impunity. There was another subject on which he was sure there existed a deep and painful feeling throughout the country, and that was the entire failure of the provision to prevent the collusive withdrawal of petitions. He had seen in the Lobby a deputation of working-men from a place the name of which he would not mention. They were almost in despair at the position in which they were placed. He had received a letter from one of them, in which it was stated that, with the suddenness of a gunshot, a petition had been withdrawn which they had every reason to believe would have succeeded; that 600 or 700 of them had memoralized the Judge not to allow it to be withdrawn, but he decided that he had no power to prevent its withdrawal; and that if the House did not, in compliance with a petition they intended to send in, direct a trial of the petition there would be a great miscarriage of
  764
  justice. One of the great scandals of the old system was that on the morning of the race the favourite was scratched. The more money there was on a horse, the greater the certainty of its being scratched on the morning of the race. The more certain a petition was of succeeding if it was proceeded with, the greater the certainty of its being withdrawn. From what he had heard he believed the new Act had not much improved matters in that respect, and he believed that nothing would be accomplished till we had a public prosecutor. As he had said before, the failure was not the fault of the Judges, but the fault of the law they had to administer. It was not necessary he should say that the Judges had administered the law in an impartial and upright manner, and with that learning and intelligence which belonged to them. He thought that the law ought to be amended without delay; and for that reason he had ventured to bring the question before the House, and to ask that, as a preliminary, the authoritative declarations of the Judges as to the present state of the law should be laid before Parliament. He was not an admirer of amateur legislation, and he did not propose to take any further step in the matter; but he asked Her Majesty's Government to take it in hand and deal with it at once. He hoped there was an end of that unconstitutional interregnum when the Government did not govern, and the Opposition did not oppose. We had now a Government with a great majority, and which ought to be able to govern; and we had an Opposition, which, though not so strong as it had been at other times, was under able leadership, and was able and probably willing to oppose. He hoped his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department would not tell him that the question was going to be sent to a Committee. It embraced only two or three short points; and he ventured to say that the Attorney General and the Solicitor General could in half an hour prepare a Bill that would settle the whole thing. No Commission was required in this case. He was sure that it was a subject on which both sides of the House were of one mind; and under these circumstances he hoped to hear a satisfactory statement from his right hon. Friend.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, he thought the House was indebted to his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Vernon Harcourt) for having called attention to a matter of such great interest. He thought the request of his hon. and learned Friend that the decisions of the Judges should be laid upon the table was a reasonable one; and he was happy to say that he believed the Government could comply with it. He was informed that the official shorthand writers, though only required to take notes of the evidence, had, in fact, taken notes of the judgments. Arrangements would therefore be made to obtain the judgments in an authentic form, and lay them upon the table of the House. When they were in the hands of the Government and the House it would be very proper to consider them with a view of seeing what the law was, and whether any amendment was required in it. He must say he was prepared to go a long way with his hon. and learned Friend in his anticipation that it would be found necessary to amend the law, especially as regarded treating; but he did not think they would be in a position to deal with that question till the judgments were before them in authentic form. He was not so sanguine as to concur with his hon. and learned Friend in thinking that a Bill to amend the law could be prepared in half an hour; and he thought that when his hon. and learned Friend had a little more experience in that House he would find that Bills could not be got through quite so rapidly as he seemed to suppose. He believed it would not be possible to make any amendment which could come into operation before the petitions already lodged had all been tried; but the Government would give their attention to the subject at the earliest possible moment after the decisions were laid upon the table. His hon. and learned Friend was under a misapprehension in supposing that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department had intimated that he did not attach any importance to the production of the decisions. What his right hon. Friend had said was that he did not know whether the Government would be able to produce them. As to the appointment of a public prosecutor, he did not hold out any hope that the Government would be able to deal with
  766
  that question this Session; but it was one which had long engaged his attention. For years he had been in favour of the appointment of a public prosecutor, and he hoped the day was not far distant when we should have a public prosecutor, as all the nations on the Continent had at present.

THE COLLECTION OF TAXES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. CHARLES FORSTERrose for the purpose of asking Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether it is his intention to propose any measure respecting the Collection of Taxes similar to that which was introduced in the Session of 1864? He had received strong representations from his constituents as to the hardships inflicted upon them by the existing system. The assessors and collectors were no longer appointed by the vestries, but by the local tax office, and it was not thought right that the vestries should incur responsibility without having power in respect of collection. It was also stated that more collectors were appointed than were required by law or than were necessary, the only result being that the tax-payers had to pay an increased charge. He need not remind the House of the extreme inconvenience entailed upon tax-payers by their being obliged to attend the committees of the Local Commissioners. In one case brought under his notice a gentleman carrying on business in Walsall received a summons on a Sunday to attend the Commissioners seven miles off at ten o'clock next morning, so that he had no time to make arrangements to provide for his necessary business. He knew of another case where a person had been fined for non-attendance at a meeting of one of these committees, he being confined to his bed at the time by severe illness. Although he stated the reason for his non-attendance, he was fined £20, in consequence of some vague rumour that he had been seen at the time at another place. He (Mr. Charles Forster) had himself brought the case under the notice of the Board of Inland Revenue, who, he was bound to say, had immediately remitted the fine, but not until the person aggrieved had been put to considerable inconvenience. In every country except England the Government undertook the duty of collecting their

  767
  own taxes. In 1864 the present First Lord of the Treasury brought forward a measure to enable the Board of Inland Revenue to relieve the tax-payers from the burden of collecting their own taxes. The scheme of the Bill was a most simple one, and met with general approval until the third reading, when by some unaccountable means it was rejected by a majority of 4. He trusted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would signalize his accession to Office by introducing a Bill upon the subject calculated to relieve the tax-payers from the burden they had now to bear. It was just such a subject as a Government, having strong support in Parliament, should address itself to, and the country had a right to expect something at their hands.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I quite agree with the hon. Member for Walsall (Mr. Charles Forster), as to the great anomaly that is involved in the manner of collecting these taxes. It is perfectly true, as he has stated, that the tax-collector is made to serve compulsorily, and is appointed without his consent being obtained. The consequence is that this duty—a most important one—is often placed in very strange hands. I recollect the present First Lord of the Treasury stating to the House that within his own knowledge the office of tax-collector had been filled by a general officer, a retired merchant, a captain of a ship, the head of a grammar school, and a lady. That, I am sure, is not the way in which these taxes ought to be collected. Again, if any defalcations occur, which, unfortunately, sometimes happens, the parish is made liable for their amount, which seems to be a very great hardship. I will not go into detail upon the subject at this hour, but I will just read to the House a short paragraph from Page 29 of the Report which has just been published by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue—
  "In connection with this subject—that is, the addition which may be made to the revenue by a closer and more careful assessment and collection of existing duties—we cannot refrain from repeating an often expressed conviction, that the assessed taxes, if entirely taken out of the hands of parochial officers and intrusted to the sole management of this Department, may be made to yield a much larger quota to the income of the country than at present. And we believe that since we first began to ventilate the subject, a great change has taken place in public opinion respecting the antiquated, cumbrous, and inefficient system absurdly named 'self-taxation,' and
  768
  that there will be no difficulty now in superseding it by a better arrangement."
  Then there is this note—
  "The following conversation, which really occurred between a member of this Department and a parochial assessor, is worth preserving as an illustration:—'A.—I see that Mr. B. is not in assessment for either a horse or a carriage, though you know that he keeps both.' Assessor (who is the principal butcher of the village)—'Well, Sir, you must not be hard on a poor man like me. Mr. B. is my best customer, and if I were to charge him, after so many years that he has gone on without paying any tax, he would give all his custom to X. at once.'"
  On these grounds, and on many others, which it would take too long to state at the present moment, I quite agree with the hon. Member for Walsall that some alteration should be made in the present system of collecting these taxes. But then he has himself stated what is the main feeling in my mind—namely, that an attempt which was made four or five years ago by much stronger hands than mine was most disastrously defeated.—[Mr. FORSTER: Only by 4 votes.] Yes, but 4 is as good as 40. It also seems that in this Session we are to concentrate our polemical powers chiefly upon one single subject. At the same time I do not say that, even under these circumstances, I shall not make an attempt—I do not pledge myself to do it, but I hope to do so—to attack the whole or a part of this question during the present Session, if I see the least opportunity of doing so. The hon. Member must not, however, be angry with me if this and many other subjects worthy of our attention should, from the pressure of business, have to stand over until another year.

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT—CASE OF JOHN KENN.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. COLLINSrose to call the attention of the House to the imprisonment in York Gaol of John Kenn, aged eighty-five, for costs in an action for slander; and to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, power should not be given to the Crown to remit in certain cases imprisonment for debts of this character? It appeared that this old man and his blind and almost equally aged wife lived in a cottage for which they paid 15 d. a week at Knaresborough, where he had formerly been a cowkeeper, but for several years

  769
  past he had given up that occupation. They possessed an acre of land, and managed, by the help of their single cow and of the sum of 50 s. paid them twice a year by Mother Shepherd's Charity, to keep themselves off the poor rates. Somehow or another, either he, or, as he said, his "missus" managed to get up a quarrel with one of their neighbours who, knowing them to be penniless, commenced an action for slander against him in one of the Superior Courts in London. Not having the money to engage a solicitor or a barrister in his defence or to come up to London in person, Kenn was obliged to allow judgment to go by default, and in September or October he was arrested and taken to the Debtors' Gaol at York for costs. Were not some means adopted for his release this old man would have to rot in gaol, and even if he managed to regain his freedom he would be placed in a most unfortunate position, because his only cow had been sold to pay his rent, and he was also in danger of being tried as a fraudulent bankrupt at the next Assizes. There seemed to be no means known to the law for effecting his release without payment of the money. He brought this case before the House in order to avail himself of the opportunity it would afford him of asking the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it was not desirable that the Home Office should have the power to interfere in cases of this kind, as in criminal cases, and remit the imprisonment.
  MR. BRUCEsaid, it was very natural for a humane man like the hon. Member, when instances of this sort came to his knowledge, to wish for some short ready remedy for the grievance; but on the part of the Government he was not at all anxious to increase the powers of the Secretary of State for the Home Department relating to the remission of sentences. He might, however, add that he understood that the Bankruptcy Bill about to be introduced by his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General contained a provision which would completely meet the case brought forward by the hon. Member.
  Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.

  SUPPLY.
  SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  (1.) £6,989 0s. 6d., to make good Excess on Grant for Post Office Packet Service.
  MR. DILLWYNasked for some explanation of this Vote.
  MR. AYRTONsaid, that this Vote and the one which would be next proposed were required for the purpose of closing past accounts; and pointed to a note appended to the Estimate in the hands of hon. Members as explanatory of the arrears of charges, which it was meant to wipe away. The mode in which the Estimates were now dealt with was rather different from what it had been in former years. Some years ago the Supplies for the Civil Service were granted merely for the service of the year, and any excess in those Supplies remained with the heads of Departments for future expenditure in those Departments. Now, however, the money was not voted for the service, but for the particular amount that would come in course of payment during the financial year in each Department. In consequence of the adoption of the now system a final adjustment of balances had had to be made. An Act had been passed—the Exchequer and Audit Act, which was rather a complicated measure, regulating the precise manner in which Votes were to be accounted for by all the officers of the Crown who were accountants, and balance sheets had to be prepared. For that purpose it became necessary to ascertain the exact balance in the hands of every officer engaged in watching over; the expenditure of the public money at the end of the financial year in March, 1868. In order to arrive at that the accounts, for several years past, had to be carefully examined, and many of these accounts were found to result in an excess over the amount available for the public expenditure; while others, on the contrary, resulted in a balance in favour of the Exchequer. The Commissioners of Audit, however, and the gentlemen to whom the investigation of these balances had been specially referred, had arrived at the conclusion that the excess of expenditure over the amounts voted in the different Departments would be covered by the two Votes now laid upon the table. It was necessary to take these

  771
  Votes for the purpose of setting the accounts right; but he was happy to add that the number of accounts in which the balance in favour of the Exchequer exceeded the expenditure were by far the more favourable class. As far as the accounts had been yet adjusted the aggregate balance in favour of the Exchequer amounted to £844,000, being about £440,000 in excess of the total of balances on the unfavourable side.
  MR. DILLWYNsaid, the explanation just given by the Secretary to the Treasury was much clearer than the footnote appended to the Estimate. He thought, however, that to vote this money as if it were actually needed, when there was more than enough in hand, was rather a bungling way of settling the accounts. It would be much better to have an adjustment of the rival balances, and treat this transaction as an ordinary matter of account.
  MR. AYRTONsaid, an hon. Member asked why the Government paid the light dues for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, while they would pay them for no other packet company in the kingdom? It was impossible to deal with the balances in the manner suggested by the hon. Member for Swansea, inasmuch as the Estimates were framed with the object of showing every item expended on the national account, without reference to receipts. Every effort was being made by the Treasury to keep the expenditure as closely as possible to the Votes granted by the House. Other Questions he thought might more properly be reserved until the Estimates for the present year were brought forward.
  Vote agreed to.
  (2.) £400,894 7s. 4d., to make good Excesses on Grants for certain Civil Services.
  MR. ALDERMAN LUSKsaid, that St. James's Palace during the last four years had cost £40,000 in repairs, yet here was another item of £7,704 outstanding for Royal Palaces, which were explained to mean Windsor Castle, Kensington, and St. James's Palaces. How was this? There was an item of £18,000 in the Supplementary Estimates for printing and stationery, yet here was a further item of £8,468 of excess on the same
  772
  head. There was also an excess of more than £18,000 in the Law Courts of Ireland for pensions and retiring allowances. He could not understand why there should be an item of £2,690 for Nonconforming and other ministers in Ireland unpaid. These were not men who could have got on without their salaries, and the amount must have been voted in the proper year. Then there was an item of "miscellaneous expenses from civil contingencies" of £5,053, which was explained to arise from the item for robes, collars, and badges of the various orders of knighthood, though the sum voted last Session for these things was thousands in excess of previous years. The result at which he had arrived was, that it was impossible for anybody to understand how these accounts were managed.
  MR. AYRTONsaid, that these were not monies that were being voted for future payment in a Supplementary Estimate, but an adjustment of accounts for past payments. The item for Royal Palaces referred to unforeseen expenditure incurred before the end of March, 1868. It related to money actually spent, and had no bearing on the Vote of last year. The Vote for Printing and Stationery was also required to adjust the expenditure under the new Parliamentary mode of keeping the accounts. As the new system was not at first properly carried out, it happened sometimes that there was not in law any money applicable to the payment of any deficiency. When these Votes were adjusted it would be impossible for the same thing to occur again. In regard to the Vote for New Robes and Orders it was placed in the Estimates of a subsequent year, though the payment ought to have been a charge upon the Estimates for the year ending March, 1868. The Committee should clearly understand that they were now engaged in an adjustment of accounts, and were not really voting any public money.
  MR. DILLWYNsaid, he was afraid that under these circumstances any reduction in the Votes would be a Motion to pay so many shillings in the pound.
  MR. AYRTONsaid, that they would now start with a clear account for all these heads of expenditure, and what had before occurred would not occur again.
  MR. MUNTZsaid, he was afraid that money had been spent first, and was to be voted afterwards; at least such appeared to have been the practice under the late Government.
  Vote agreed to.
  House resumed.
  Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next.
  Committee to sit again upon Monday next.

  SUPPLY—THE ABYSSINIAN EXPEDITION.—REPORT.
  Resolution [March 4] reported.
  On Motion "That the Resolution be agreed to,"
  MR. ALDERMAN LUSKsaid, he wished to take the opportunity of impressing on the Government the necessity of having more speedy and satisfactory accounts from India. Merchants, even in such small matters as having ships in India, found no difficulty in communicating with them by telegram and giving directions as to what cargoes they should bring home. He could not, therefore, comprehend the peculiar difficulty of communicating with the Government of India with respect to these great matters of account. The Chancellor of the Exchequer ought really to be able to tell them a little more of this Supplemental Estimate than he had done. Those who had experience in business could not understand the difficulties with which he was beset. There was another point which was not alluded to last night, and which he must impress on the Government. The Foreign Office should not send consuls to places where they were not wanted, and they could not be too careful in their selection of those they did send, for many of them were very peculiar men, and we were responsible for them. He hoped they had now heard the last of the Abyssinian war. It was all very well to talk of the honour and glory of the expedition, and of "the banner of St. George floating on the mountains of Rasselas;" but the tax-payers of this country had in the end to pay rather heavily for all these things.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, said, he was sorry he could not give the hon. Gentleman any further information on this subject than he had
  774
  stated last evening. He was not Chancellor of the Exchequer for India, and had no official pecuniary relations with India. He had neither been able to extract from the Indian Government any account, nor any account why they did not render one.
  Resolution agreed to.

  COURT OF COMMON PLEAS (COUNTY PALATINE OF LANCASTER) BILL.
  (Mr. West, Mr. Bazley, Mr. Davison.)
  COURT OF COMMON PLEAS (COUNTY PALATINE OF LANCASTER) BILL.

    [BILL 26.] SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. West.)
    MR. CROSSsaid, he believed the principle was a right one. It was much better for the interests of the country that people who lived in such populous districts as Manchester and Liverpool should have the opportunity of suing in this court, without going to Preston for the purpose of having their proceedings passed. Attornies practising in those parts would as soon have their pleadings carried on in London as in Preston. He should like to have some assurance, however, that the present officer of the court at Preston would not be damaged by the Bill, and that time would be given for the consideration of its details.
    MR. BAZLEYsaid, he was convinced that the measure would prove to be of great practical utility. The Bill had the sanction of some of the most eminent legal men in Lancashire. He therefore gave it his support.
    MR. HERMONsaid, he hoped the hon. Gentleman who had charge of the Bill would consent to postpone the second reading.
    MR. WESTthanked his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southwest Lancashire (Mr. Cross) for the favourable opinion he had given, as no one, from his experience of the way in which business was conducted in the court, was better able to form an opinion as to the merits of the Bill. The Bill was generally approved of in Lancashire, and he could assure the House that the present prothonotary would not be subjected to any loss, but, on the contrary, the position of that officer would be improved by the passing of the Act.
    MR. AYRTONobserved that if no objection was made to the second reading of the Bill, the Government must not be understood to acquiesce in all its provisions. There were some clauses, particularly those relating to fees, which required consideration.
    MR. SERJEANT SIMONdeclared his desire to see these ancient courts swept away and local courts established throughout the country, and justice made accessible to all classes. That would best be done by a great and comprehensive scheme of legislation. He abstained from opposing the Bill, on the ground that as long as this court lasted—and he hoped it would not last long—they should make it as efficacious as they could.
    Motion agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday 5th April.

  SEA BIRDS PRESERVATION BILL.
  (Mr. Sykes, Mr. Clay, Mr. Ward Jackson.)
  SEA BIRDS PRESERVATION BILL.

    [BILL 28.] SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    MR. C. SYKES, in moving the second reading of this Bill, stated that on Tuesday next a large number of gentlemen interested in the ornithological history of the country would meet at the Zoological Society's rooms to discuss the subject which he had brought forward, as a farmer's question, and as a merchant seaman's and deep sea fisheries' question. Disclaiming all acquaintance with the natural history point of view, he thought the subject deserving of the consideration of the House.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. C. Sykes.)
    MR. O. STANLEYsupported the second reading. He deemed that the Bill was one which it was important to pass, not only for the purpose of stopping the wanton cruelty of destroying sea birds, but because their preservation tended to prevent the occurrence of many shipwrecks. He had received a letter from Sir F. Arrow, Deputy Master of the Trinity Board, in which the writer stated that the Board attached the greatest importance to the preservation of sea-fowl, as the best of all warnings to seamen when in proximity of land in thick
    776
    weather, and that he quite approved the Bill, but wished it could be extended to prevent the taking of eggs also. With regard to the latter point, he believed that the hon. promoter of the Bill was willing to include eggs within its provisions.
    Motion agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed for Tuesday next.

    BANKRUPTCY BILL.—LEAVE.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, in rising to move for leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate and amend the Law of Bankruptcy, said, that whatever might be the successes of modern legislation, among them could not be reckoned the attempts to legislate in respect to bankruptcy. More than sixty years ago Lord Eldon, speaking of the then Bankruptcy Law, said, that in a number of cases its provisions were little more than stock-in-trade for Commissioners, assignees, and other officials, and the present Bankruptcy Law had been spoken of in terms of condemnation no less strong by the highest legal authorities in both Houses, and by the most eminent commercial men. The failure to deal successfully with this question had not arisen from want of attempts, for the Legislature, for the last half-century, had been almost constantly passing Bankruptcy Bills. There was one passed in 1825, and others again were passed in 1826, 1831, 1842, 1844, 1849, and 1861; and yet, notwithstanding all that legislative activity, it might fairly be questioned whether the Bankruptcy Law at the present moment was in a more satisfactory state than in Lord Eldon's time. Indeed, it might be questioned whether in some respects it was not worse. These considerations led to the conclusion that a sufficient remedy was not to be sought in a mere alteration of details. The time for patching up the Bankruptcy Law had passed. They must now go to the very root of the matter, and reform the system altogether. In recent times much thought and attention had been devoted to the subject. In 1863 a Committee of that House was appointed, consisting of men eminently qualified to deal with the question. That Committee took a great deal of evidence, and reported in 1864. The Report contained a number of va-

    777
    luable suggestions, some of which must form the basis of any satisfactory bankruptcy measure. In consequence of that Report several Bankruptcy Bills were introduced into both Houses of Parliament. In 1866 a Bankruptcy Bill was introduced by the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer), at that time Attorney General, and in the following year another Bankruptcy Bill was brought in by Sir John Rolt, then holding the same office. Last year a Bankruptcy Bill, containing 500 clauses, was introduced by Lord Cairns in the other House, but from causes over which their authors had no control, all these Bills experienced an untimely fate. But, though none of them passed the Legislature, they had greatly facilitated the amendment of the Bankruptcy Law, inasmuch as each of them contained a number of valuable provisions, Therefore, the task he now desired the House to enter upon was rendered comparatively easy, though he did not disguise from himself that many difficulties still remained. In dealing with this question it was necessary to recur to first principles, and they had to ask themselves what was the object of a Bankruptcy Law. It appeared to him that the object could be stated in a few words. The object was to collect the proceeds of the estates of bankrupts, and to distribute them among the creditors as fairly, cheaply, and speedily as possible. That appeared to be the sole object of a Bankruptcy Law, and by attempting to do more they had done less. Previous legislation had departed from that simple principle, and had so far done wrong. From the earliest time of the Bankruptcy Law—that of Henry VIII.—until a comparatively recent period, I the main object of the law had been to punish the bankrupt, who was denied his discharge upon any terms, and was treated more as a fraudulent than an ordinary debtor, or rather as a quasi criminal—and, indeed, at one time, a law was in force whereby, if he had not been able to prove that he had incurred his debts honestly, he was put in the pillory and had his ears cut off; but in later times a reaction had occurred too much in favour of the bankrupt, and judging from the effects of recent Bankruptcy Laws their object seemed to have been to protect the bankrupt against the creditor, to enable him to get rid of his
    778
    debts and liabilities with the least possible trouble or annoyance to himself, to facilitate him in defrauding those to whom he was indebted, and in setting them at defiance; and a witness before a Committee declared that many debtors appeared to think it a duty to their families to take the benefit of the Bankruptcy Law once in seven years. It was right that the House should bear in mind the principal evils of the present system. One of these appeared to be that the Commissioners who administered the affairs of bankruptcy—he alluded principally to those of the principal court of London—though undoubtedly able men and faithful public servants, had failed to obtain the confidence of the public. This arose from various reasons. One was the defective state of the law, which mixed up judicial with administrative functions, which ought to be kept separate. Another reason was that their decisions were not uniform, and, consequently, the result was much uncertainty in the law. Again, they had exercised no sufficient control over their subordinate officers, and scandals had arisen among officials of the bankruptcy courts which were totally unknown in other courts. Then, again, the bankruptcy courts were overloaded by worse than useless officials who have helped to devour bankrupts estates, and the result was that there had been much delay and negligence in collecting the effects of bankrupts, that those effects had been in many cases divided unequally, that in other cases in minute portions and after a long delay. The collection and distribution had been enormously expensive, and the public for these reasons dreaded the Court of Bankruptcy, and creditors were ready to agree to anything in order to avoid that tribunal. Such had been the dread of the Court of Bankruptcy that debtors had held it in terrorem over the heads of their creditors in order to force them into unfair compositions. The necessity for bankruptcy reform was universally admitted; but he would quote one or two figures to illustrate what he had said. The Returns for 1867 showed the total number of adjudications in bankruptcy was 8,994, of which 6,533 were made on the petition of the bankrupt himself. Further, out of these 8,994 cases, there were 5,876 in which, no dividend whatever was

    779
    paid, and in half of the 1,649 cases in which a dividend was paid that dividend amounted to less than 2s. 6d. in the pound. Exact information as to the cost of collecting and distributing assets was very difficult to obtain; the most favourable estimate he had heard was 33 per cent, but he was inclined to think that that was far too favourable. In the evidence before the Committee of 1864 of Mr. Clarke, the accountant, this is reported—
    "I see by the account that in respect of the sum of £489,911 paid in dividends there have been incurred expenses amounting to £157,299, and in addition all the expenses of the Court, £126,213?—Yes. Making altogether £283,512?—Yes."
    That was nearly 60 per cent. Referring to a speech of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer), in introducing his Bankruptcy Bill in 1866, he found this statement with reference to 1865—
    "The total assets realized amounted to £856,955 9s. 8d. It was estimated by good authority that, including all costs, no less than £370,000 odd was expended in collecting and distributing that £856,955; while the whole amount of the dividends was only £434,952 12 s. 10 d., so that the expenses of collection and distribution amounted to 75 per cent on the sum divided."—[3 Hansard, clxxxiii. 689.]
    In some cases the expense was even greater; one case had come to his knowledge in which £244 had been spent in collecting £66; and this, he believed, was but one of a great number. Having said sufficient to account for the general dissatisfaction with the present law, he would address himself to the remedy. But before he proceeded to the subject of bankruptcy proper, it was necessary to deal with a preliminary question of much importance—namely, the subject of imprisonment for debt: the weight of authority on this subject was overwhelming. The abolition of imprisonment for debt had been recommended by a Royal Commission in 1832, by the Bankruptcy Commissioners in 1842, and by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1864; each of the Bills also introduced in consequence of the Report of that Select Committee had proposed the abolition of imprisonment for debt. As for the principle of imprisonment for debt, if imprisonment was to be treated as a punishment, it was unjust, because it confounded the innocent with the guilty; if it were treated as a remedy, recent le-
    780
    gislation had made it quite ineffectual. An imprisoned debtor could immediately appeal to the court and obtain a discharge, and in the case of debtors who did not appeal the Registrar attended periodically and released them whether they willed it or not. To revert to the old system was impossible; nothing remained to be done but to abolish imprisonment for debt altogether. But there was one exception to be made to this, and that had reference to the powers of the County Court Judges, who had power to imprison in cases where a debtor had means and refused to pay, or where he had contracted a debt fraudulently. He confessed he desired the abolishment of this power also, but did not see his way clear to doing so, because almost all the County Court Judges were of opinion that if they were deprived of this power the efficiency of the County Court system would be destroyed. The Government, however, had decided to modify the law in this respect by providing that no warrant for imprisonment should be granted except by the Judge in open court, for there was reason to suppose some loose practice had been carried on in the way of committing persons to prison without sufficient evidence; and that the County Court Judges should make a Return to Parliament every year of the number of committals made, that the system might be amended if it was found to work ill. He should be glad to hear this matter discussed, and especially glad if it could be shown that it would be safe to abolish the exceptional power he referred to altogether. He proposed to deal with the question of abolishing imprisonment for debt by a separate Bill, to be introduced a few days hence; the present Bill would refer only to bankruptcy. The evidence taken before the Committee established distinctly two things. First, that the English system of bankruptcy had substantially failed; and, secondly, that the Scotch system of bankruptcy had substantially succeeded. The conclusion naturally pointed to the adoption of the Scotch system, which had been more or less adopted by every Bill based upon the Report of the Commissioners; but the Bill he was now asking leave to introduce adopted the Scotch system more nearly and completely than any Bill hitherto submitted to Parliament. The great merit of the Scotch, system

    781
    was its simplicity; the absence of officialism; allowing the creditors to administer the estates in bankruptcy by themselves, and in their own way without interference and with only the necessary supervision of the court, and the separation of the administrative and judicial functions. Those were the principles the Government proposed to adopt in the Bill he was about to introduce, and he would proceed to state in what manner they would work. The first thing they proposed was, when a man committed certain specified acts of bankruptcy, or being called on to pay a debt, he did not come into court and deny it on his oath, nor pay it, he should be adjudicated a bankrupt, and then his creditors would be called together. A preliminary proof of debts would be taken before the Registrar, in order to determine the right of creditors to vote at that meeting. There would then be three courses open to the creditors—They could accept a composition, and then there was an end of the bankruptcy; they could, if they pleased, agree to a deed of arrangement—and there would be provisions in the Bill whereby the Judge of the Bankruptcy Court would finally determine the validity of all such deeds, so that they might not be contested, as they frequently were in other courts—or the creditors might, if they chose, proceed in bankruptcy. If they did proceed in bankruptcy they would elect a trustee. Now, that trustee was not to be an official of the court; he might be anybody whomsoever they might select. Their choice was absolutely unfettered. They would select their own trustee and decide on the terms of his remuneration. That was essentially the Scotch system. In Scotland the effect of the system had been to call into existence a number of persons who made the office of trusteeship a kind of profession, and they succeeded in proportion to their diligence, capability, and trustworthiness. If a trustee did not manage an estate well, and only realized small dividends, he would not get much employment. It was in this as in other professions. The effect of a similar law in this country would, he believed, be to create a similar profession, so that there would be no difficulty in the way of creditors in the choice of able and efficient trustees. The trustee would receive proof of debts, and would determine thereon subject to
    782
    an appeal to the Judge. He would proceed to realize the estate, to declare dividends, and generally to wind-up the estate. But he would be subject to certain checks and control. One check would be this—The creditors would elect some of their number—in Scotland they were called commissioners, here they would be called inspectors, but the name signifies little—who would keep a watch and exercise some supervision over the trustee: further, his accounts would be audited by the accountant in bankruptcy, and the whole system would be superintended by the Judge. In certain cases where, upon the application of a creditor, the stop seemed to be necessary, power was given to appoint a receiver before the appointment of a trustee, and the Judge would have authority in particular circumstances, if he saw there were no dividends to be realized, to supersede the bankruptcy. Such was an outline of the system they proposed to establish, which he believed was almost entirely in accordance with the Scotch system. In all discussions on Bankruptcy Law certain cardinal questions arose with respect to which he might be fairly asked what course it was proposed to take. One of those questions was, whether or not they should allow a debtor to make himself bankrupt on his own petition. He answered that they did not propose that he should. As long as imprisonment for debt remained, it was but fair that a man should be able to release himself from imprisonment by an appeal to the Bankruptcy Court; but with the abolition of imprisonment for debt it appeared to him that the benefit of any such privilege should cease. Let it be borne in mind that the object of the Bankruptcy Law was not to benefit the bankrupt, but the creditors. It was for the fair distribution of the bankrupt's estate. Therefore, it seemed to the Government that the Bankruptcy Law should not be put in motion by the bankrupt himself, but at the suit of the creditor, and by that provision he believed they should at once get rid of a vast number of bankruptcies in which no dividend was made and by which the Court of Bankruptcy was incumbered. And here he might refer to figures before quoted in order to show that the greater number of bankruptcies, at present, were on the bankrupt's own petition, and scarcely in any of these was

    783
    any dividend taken. There was another question of very great importance, on which he was aware there was a great diversity of opinion, and that was as to the terms on which a bankrupt should be discharged—whether or not his after-acquired property should be liable to his creditors. Now, it seemed to the Government that his after-acquired property should be liable for his debts, but liable only to a limited extent. Let them consider what was the contract to which a bankrupt was subject. It was to pay his creditors in full; and if they stepped in with the legislation for the relief of that contract they had a right to impose conditions and to insist that the after-acquired property should be liable to some extent. But if they made it liable to an unlimited extent and for an unlimited time, they would crush and paralyze the man and prevent him perhaps from ever succeeding in life. They therefore proposed a course between the two extremes—that the after-acquired property should be liable for a certain time—namely, for six years, unless he had paid a dividend to a certain amount, and that dividend was fixed at 10 s. in the pound, subject of course to a certain alteration in the figures. It was provided that it should not be liable at the mere discretion, of creditors, but only upon an order in court; but at the same time any creditor would have the power of releasing his debt, and a large majority of creditors—five-sixths, he believed was the Scotch system—would be able to release the bankrupt altogether. He knew that the fixing of a certain dividend was a very vexed question. The main argument in its favour was this—that by fixing a dividend they encouraged the man to stop before his estate was dissipated, and it was most desirable to do so. It was sometimes suggested that bankrupts would obtain a great quantity of goods on credit for the purpose of swelling their dividends. That was an evil which would sometimes occur, but its possibility did not appear to outweigh the advantages of fixing a certain dividend. The proposition which he made on this point was in accordance with recommendations of the Committee of 1864, and with the authority of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) as appeared by the Bill of 1866. Besides, he thought they would be able to meet the difficulty by
    784
    an increased stringency in the criminal law, and that brought him to another part of the subject. It appeared to the Government that the Committee were right when they recommended that the Court of Bankruptcy should not be a criminal court, but that it should be confined to the administration of the bankrupt's estate, and that whatever criminal offences a bankrupt might commit should be tried by the ordinary criminal tribunals. He believed it to be a sound principle, although they had departed from it in 1861, when they gave to the Court of Bankruptcy a sort of quasi criminal—as it were a censorial—jurisdiction. Power was given to the court to punish offences of a semi-legal, semi-commercial character—offences not against the law of the country, but against a certain undefinable code of commercial morality. For instance, a bankrupt was to be punished for living extravagantly, or entering into imprudent speculations. Now, it appeared to the Government that this censorial jurisdiction, which was admitted on all hands to have failed—he believed it had been scarcely ever exercised, or, if so, it had been exercised with no advantage—should be abolished, and there was a general concurrence of opinion to that effect. They gave the Court of Bankruptcy all the powers necessary to deal with the estate of the bankrupt, and to enforce discovery; but they gave the criminal tribunals all the power to deal with any offence he may have committed against the law. They repealed an Act, the wisdom of which he never could see, which prevented the magistrates of quarter sessions from trying offences against the Bankruptcy Act, so that while they took from the Court of Bankruptcy its criminal jurisdiction they rendered more stringent the criminal law. The question was still under the consideration of the Government, but they hoped to submit the House clauses by which offences against the Bankruptcy Law would be clearly defined. He proposed to enact in this Bill the substance of some of the clauses of Lord Cairns' Bill of last year, which were to this effect—Certain acts of the bankrupt—such, for example, as concealing goods or destroying or mutilating books—were made offences without the necessity of proof of intent. As the law now stood, they must prove, not only that the bankrupt did

    785
    that, but that he did it with intent to defraud, and it was often a very difficult thing to prove such an intent. The Bill proposed that certain acts should in themselves be held to be fraudulent, and to be offences, unless the bankrupt himself showed that they had been done innocently. Although that was, he admitted, to some extent exceptional legislation, he believed it would be effective. But as those provisions would probably come better in a separate Bill, he proposed to bring in another measure, the title of which would be, "A Bill to abolish Imprisonment for Debt and to punish Fraudulent Debtors." There was another matter cognate to that to which he would now refer. Complaints had been made that bankrupts by settlements and postnuptial settlements frequently contrived to cheat their creditors. As the law now stood there was great difficulty in upsetting those settlements, because they had to prove—which it was often far from easy to do—that bankrupts at the time they made them were actually insolvent. He proposed, therefore, that all post-nuptial settlements which should be followed by bankruptcy within two years should be absolutely void, unless the bankrupts could prove affirmatively that they were solvent when they made them. The next question—and it was a very important one—was by whom was the law to be administered?—for the best law, unless well administered, will fail. In the country he proposed that the law should be administered by a County Court Judge, subject to the continuance of the bankruptcy districts as long as the present district Commissioners held their offices, after which time they would be absorbed into the County Courts. He now came to the court in London, which would comprise several County Court districts in itself. It had appeared to the Government desirable that the new system should be set in motion and superintended by a superior Judge of the highest authority. He wished to speak with no disrespect of the present Bankruptcy Commissioners; on the contrary, for many of them he had the highest esteem. Still, he thought it almost impossible that those gentlemen, some of whom were advanced in years, and who had been long accustomed to the present system, could be expected to inaugurate the new system with sufficient energy and authority. It was
    786
    therefore deemed advisable that a superior Judge should be appointed, and accordingly it was proposed that Her Majesty should have power to appoint one of the Judges of the Superior Courts of Common Law. The Government were in hopes that no addition to the number of Judges would be necessary, for although the whole number—namely, eighteen—were now occupied, three of them being engaged in trying election petitions, yet the present labours of those three, it was to be hoped, would be soon over; and it was also to be hoped that for some years there would be very few election petitions for them to try, in which case they would be relieved of a great portion of that work, and might be better able to attend to the bankruptcy business. At the same time, as the Government had no wish to impose duties too onerous on the Common Law Judges, there would be power given by the Bill to appoint another Judge, if necessary. The functions of the Judge would be these—He would have to frame, with the concurrence of the Lord Chancellor, rules and regulations for the purpose of regulating the practice in the local courts and in his own court. The Government desired to leave as much scope as possible for rules and regulations, and not attempt to legislate for every conceivable case or point of practice, because if they did so their Bill must run to enormous length. It was far better to allow matters of procedure and detail to be settled by general orders, if they had confidence in their tribunal; and if they had not confidence in their tribunal, they ought not to intrust it with these functions at all. They had empowered the Judge of the Probate Court to frame such rules and regulations, and the system had there been found to work exceedingly well. Again, as to the Judges appointed for the trial of election petitions, Parliament had not attempted to fetter them by legislating for every point of practice, but had left them with the power of framing their own rules and regulations; they had set themselves most diligently to work for that purpose, and their rules and regulations answered very well. It was, therefore, proposed to give to the Lord Chancellor and the Judge in Bankruptcy the power of framing rules and regulations for determining the procedure of the Bankruptcy

    787
    Court. Of course, he would also exercise a supervision over all the officers of his court; and it was to be hoped that none of the fantastic tricks sometimes played by such officials would be again heard of. It was likewise proposed that there should be a power to remove, if necessary, cases of great importance and which would be somewhat too heavy for the County Courts to the court in London; and they further intended to give the Judge the power—and he thought it was a very important one—of summoning juries for the purpose of trying any bankruptcy cause which might arise. For example, sometimes a debtor, on being summoned to court, denied the debt and swore that he had a good defence; in which case the matter was sent to a Common Law Court, and a debtor, by obtaining a special jury, might frequently succeed in delaying the trial for a year. It was therefore proposed to give the Judge in Bankruptcy the power of summoning a jury and trying the question at once. They also proposed to empower the Judges of the Superior Courts of Common Law to send what he might call bankruptcy causes, such as fraudulent preference, and the like, to be tried in the Bankruptcy Court; and in that manner a great amount of relief would be given to what he might term the congestion of causes at Guildhall and Westminster. He now came to the question of appeals. They proposed that appeals should go to the court from which the Judge came, and that its decision should be final, except in cases where the court might think fit to grant a special case, or reserve special points for the House of Lords. Now, of course the plan which he had sketched would involve a certain amount of compensation to those whose services they proposed to dispense with; but he was happy to inform the House, from inquiries which he had made, that he believed the fund of the Bankruptcy Court would be more than sufficient to meet all the claims of that kind which would arise. He would only further say that the Bill which he had to lay before the House would be a Consolidation Bill, containing, he believed, the whole of the Bankruptcy Law, so that the man who held it in his hand would have all the information that was necessary without having to go back to previous statutes. It was also proposed to simplify the Bill as much as
    788
    possible. The Bill of last year contained upwards of 500 clauses; and another Bill for the abolition of imprisonment for debt contained sixty to seventy, making between the two about 600 clauses altogether. Now, he confessed he looked with dismay on the task of passing a measure of 600 clauses. The Government draftsman had therefore been instructed—and he would, no doubt, obey his instructions—to shorten and simplify as much as possible, and he believed that the measure which he would lay on the table would not be one-third of the length of that introduced last year. In conclusion, he could only thank the House for listening with so much patience to what had been necessarily a long and dry statement, but he had endeavoured to be as brief and as clear as he could. He would only say that the Government had been most anxious in framing the Bill to consult the wishes of the commercial classes, and had put themselves in communication with a number of the Chambers of Commerce throughout the country which represented a great amount of the opinion of those classes. They had received from those bodies a number of valuable suggestions, many of which they had adopted. He was not sanguine enough to suppose that the Bill was entirely without its defects; indeed, he looked forward to its being materially improved when it went before a Committee of the House. And of this he felt assured that the Government, in their attempt to deal with that important and difficult question would receive the candid consideration, and he believed he might say the co-operation of both sides of the House. The hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving for leave to bring in the Bill.
    MR. NORWOODsaid, he had never heard so satisfactory an explanation of a measure for amendment of Bankruptcy Law as that which had just been made by the hon. and learned Gentleman, whom he might almost have imagined to be a commercial man with great experience of the abuses of the present system. Without attempting to go into details he might, he believed, say on the part of the mercantile community that the Bill would, as regards its main provisions, meet with their entire approval. The Scotch Law had worked well, and he was glad that its main principles would be embodied in

    789
    the Bill, and the more so as the question of assimilating the commercial laws of the United Kingdom was one of the highest importance. The Irish Bankruptcy Law was not satisfactory in the opinion of many Irish Members, and if that were so, he trusted it also would be assimilated to the present measure. With regard to many of the points just referred to there would doubtless be much variety of opinion in the commercial world; but with respect to the subject of post-nuptial settlements, he, for one, entirely concurred in what had fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman. As to the question of the Judge, however, he confessed it was rather a difficult one. When the present law was enacted Lord Westbury desired that a Chief Judge should be appointed, but he was overruled, and this was certainly a matter which would require the calm and earnest consideration of the mercantile community. He agreed in the broad principle laid down by the Attorney General, that the chief object of Bankruptcy Law should be to enable the assets to be collected and distributed as quickly and as economically as possible. In conclusion, he expressed his opinion with the approval, he believed, of his mercantile friends around him, that this appeared to be one of the most satisfactory measures which had ever been presented to the House of Commons.
    MR. BARNETTsaid, he was anxious to offer his tribute of congratulation to the hon. and learned Gentleman for having introduced this Bill at so early a period of the Session, when there was time to bring it to a successful issue. The existing law had been felt by all persons engaged in trade to be a disgrace to our code for several years past. With regard to the details of the Bill, it would, of course, be premature to offer any remarks at present; but he cordially agreed with those provisions of it which proposed to assimilate the English with the Scotch system of bankruptcy, which, it was admitted on all sides, had worked well. He approved of the abolition of imprisonment, and that the future acquired property of a bankrupt should be made liable. It was desirable that bankrupts' estates should be economically as well as speedily realized, and he hoped the provisions of the Bill were such as would realize both those ob-
    790
    jects; and the costs be thereby greatly diminished. It appeared to him, however, that if all the cases in bankruptcy were to be taken before one Judge great delay must necessarily ensue. It was rather a satire upon the working of the present system that the funds of the wretched estates that had not been distributed to expectant creditors were sufficient with which to pension the officials of the present Bankruptcy Court.
    MR. CRUM-EWINGcongratulated the country on at last having a measure before it which would assimilate the Law of Bankruptcy in this country to the excellent system of Scotland, and paid a high tribute of praise to the Lord Advocate, to whose efforts they were indebted for the Scotch Law, observing that if he had never done anything else, or did anything more, that act alone would place him as a commercial lawyer on the highest pinnacle of fame.
    MR. RATHBONEsaid, he thought there ought to be an official similar to a public prosecutor in bankruptcy cases, because it not unfrequently happened that the interests of the public did not concur with those of either the creditors or the debtor. The interests of public credit and of public morality were often at stake, and surely the commercial morality of a nation like ours was of the highest importance, for if England were to retain her proud position as the centre of the financial operations of the world there must be no recurrence of the commercial scandals which had come to light during the last few years. He regretted, therefore, that the Government had not seen their way to provide some machinery for the protection of the interests of the public in this respect.
    MR. HERMONapproved generally of the Bill, but thought that the provision requiring a bankrupt to show a certain amount of dividend ought to specify a limit in point of time prior to the bankruptcy. He was also of opinion that the Bill ought to contain a clause providing that every trader who became bankrupt should show that he had taken stock and made up a balance-sheet once in every year.
    SIR FRANCIS CROSSLEYthanked the Attorney General for the very able statement he had laid before the House, and he wished at the same time to express his opinion that the Bill he had

    791
    brought forth was one which would give great satisfaction to the commercial community. At present it was found that the Bankruptcy Law was so eaten up with officialism and expenses that a debtor had only to threaten his creditors that if they did not accept the composition he offered he would go through the Bankruptcy Court in order to induce them to accept whatever he chose to offer. The plan shadowed forth by the Attorney General was, that a man might not make himself bankrupt, but that his creditors must judge whether they would make him a bankrupt or not, and when they had made him a bankrupt they were not to hand over all his effects to officials, but they were themselves to have the power of handling his effects. He thought that was just what was wanted, and he was sure that the Bill would meet with the hearty support of the mercantile community. He looked on the brevity of the Bill as not the least of its merits.
    MR. CROSSalso expressed his approval of the measure in general terms, and thanked the Attorney General for the courtesy which he had displayed towards the members of the Chambers of Commerce who had waited upon him on the subject. The main principle of the Bill, that of placing the liquidation of a bankrupt's estate in the hands of mercantile men instead of in the hands of lawyers, would, he felt assured, be hailed with satisfaction by the commercial community. He sincerely trusted that the learned Attorney General would be more fortunate with this Bill than his predecessors had been with the Bills which they had brought forward. One of the great features of the Bill was that it separated the administrative from the judicial functions of the Court of Bankruptcy. At the same time he regretted that no provision had been made for seeing that the bankrupt who committed a fraudulent act should be brought before a court of justice, because he did not at present see whose interest it was that such a person should be punished. He should also like to have some information respecting the County Courts. This Bill would throw a great deal of extra work upon them, but he knew that if the present arrangement were continued the extra work would be a great deal more than they could manage.
    MR. MORLEYsaid, he hoped that
    792
    the hon. and learned Attorney General would lose no time in placing the Bill in the hands of hon. Members, so that, consistently with a due consideration of the measure, as little delay as possible should take place in the passing of the Bill through that House. He believed that no Bill which the Government had introduced this Session would give so much satisfaction to the country at large as that which had been shadowed out by the hon. and learned Gentleman that evening. He was convinced that the proposal to appoint a Chief Judge would be most acceptable, especially in the City of London, where the judgments of the Commissioners had so varied that the mercantile community would be thankful to have an authoritative decision in Basinghall Street. He likewise rejoiced at the declaration of the Government that the time had come when imprisonment for debt should cease. At the same time he was rather glad to hear that the Attorney General was not prepared to put an end to the power of the County Court Judge, to deal with cases of contempt, and those of traders who should refuse to obey any order he might make in respect to their debts. He approved of the separation of the administrative from the judicial functions of the court, but thought that some means other than those existing were needed for originating proceedings against fraudulent debtors. He believed that the Bill pointed to the appointment of a public prosecutor, and he should be happy if such should be the result of the discussion which would take place upon the measure.
    MR. CRAWFORD, on the part of the commercial community with which he was connected, begged to assure the learned Attorney General that his Bill would meet with a very warm reception, and that it would be fairly and candidly considered. He concurred in what had been said by his hon. Friend the Member for Bristol (Mr. Morley), in regard to the Bill, because a very long experience and personal acquaintance with him in business matters had satisfied him that there was no person more capable than he was of forming a correct opinion on the matter of Bankruptcy Law.
    MR. JESSEL, as a lawyer, could not coincide with several Gentlemen of mercantile experience who had spoken in praise of the measure. He recog-

    793
    nized in the lucid statement of the Attorney General many features of the old Law of Bankruptcy which had to be abandoned because they had completely failed. They must recollect that the Bankruptcy Law in this country was very old. From the statute of James down to the statute of William IV. the administration of bankrupt estates was wholly in the hands of the creditors, who appointed assignees, who acted much as they thought fit, and without any official interference whatever. The result was that the place of a bankrupts' assignee became one of great profit. He recollected having heard a story of a boy who, having been asked once in a bank parlour what he would like to be, replied, "a bankrupts' assignee," and that was a class of official on whom checks must be put, if the new system was to succeed. He would not give a decided opinion upon the Bill until he saw what checks were provided in this respect. As to what lawyers called, "the order and disposition" clauses in bankruptcy, they were a law, in short, for enabling the creditors of a bankrupt to take other people's property. If a bankrupt happened to have in his possession property belonging to other people over which with their consent he exercised acts of ownership, the creditors might divide it among them. This had always appeared to him to be a scandal and an abuse. The original pretext for this law was that the bankrupt being in ostensible possession of property which had induced persons to give him credit, those persons had a right to share it. But the Judges interpreted the reason of the law to be something quite different. Moreover, the law was inconsistent, for if the owner of the property took it out of the debtor's possession before he committed an act of bankruptcy, or if the owner took it away afterwards without notice of the act of bankruptcy, the creditors had no remedy. This law had been used for the robbery of innocent and ignorant persons, and he trusted that in Committee it would be wholly swept away. Another point was, the effect of what was called a certificate of discharge. The proposal of the Attorney General, that a man's future-acquired property should not go free, was a very old one. Under the Insolvent Acts, which applied to non-traders, future property of the insolvent became liable to
    794
    his old debts by an order of the court; but these provisions, as lawyers knew, were an utter failure, and therefore he could not be sanguine of the success of the present proposal in respect of traders. A provision prescribing the amount of dividend to be paid had also been tried. Under the Law of Bankruptcy which existed prior to the change in the reign of William IV. a certificate protected a bankrupt once, but, if he became bankrupt a second time, he had, in order to be protected, to pay a dividend of 15 s. in the pound. Again he appealed to the experience of lawyers whether that provision ever had any practical operation. It had been found utterly useless; it did not prevent men from becoming bankrupts three or four times, nor did it enable creditors to become possessed of their after-acquired property. Great results, therefore, could not be expected from an experiment which had been tried, but which entirely failed. As to the discharge of a bankrupt, our law appeared very defective. In modern times that discharge was often illusory. Instead of being a complete discharge from all liabilities arising from contract, it was a discharge only from such liabilities as could be proved as debts under the bankruptcy. Now, in these days men incurred a vast amount of liability which could not be proved as a debt. For instance, in a recent case a bankrupt, who was an honest bankrupt, and had given up every farthing, happened to be a shareholder in several companies. They were supposed to be solvent; at all events, they were going concerns. But the assignees of the bankrupt wisely declined to take to these shares; as the law stood, the bankrupt had no means of freeing himself from them; and the result was that, within a short period of his bankruptcy two of those companies were wound up, and the official liquidator put this unlucky bankrupt on the list of contributories, and gave him the alternative of paying or of going through the Court of Bankruptcy a second time. He hoped the Attorney General would make provision for such a contingency, and would take care that all liabilities arising from contract, whether proveable under the bankruptcy or not, should be barred by the certificate of discharge, subject, of course, to any provision as to future property if the House should determine in favour of

    795
    such a provision. As he understood the Bill, arrangements were to continue, but under the present law you could not have satisfactory arrangements. The trustees under the deed of arrangement did not, as regarded third parties, stand in the same position as assignees in bankruptcy. The trustees could not take advantage of a fraudulent preference against the man who had been a party to the fraudulent preference, and any Amendment and Consolidation Bill ought to provide that it should not be necessary to make a man a bankrupt in order to defeat the claim of a person who had obtained from him unfairly a preference over the other creditors. It was now necessary, in order to bring an action, to make a man a bankrupt. With regard to settlements by bankrupts, he thought the suggestion of the Attorney General a solid improvement in the law, but it should include all voluntary settlements, and extend to deeds of arrangement, the trustees of which should have the same right as assignees to call on the bankrupt to show that he was solvent when he executed the settlement. Again, it was to be hoped that the whole system of dealing with, the freehold, leasehold, and copyhold estates of bankrupts—a system which was cumbrous, expensive, and annoying in the extreme—would be amended. He would not now go into details upon this point, but hereafter would suggest some clauses which he hoped the Attorney General would consider improvements and would be inclined to adopt.
    MR. MUNTZsaid, he thought that the remarks of the hon. and learned Member would have been more in order if the Bill had been in Committee. He rose merely to thank the Attorney General for the measure he had proposed. It would meet the wishes of a vast number of the commercial classes, and especially of a large class in the town he represented; and if it passed this Session, which he trusted it would, it would relieve the country from one of the greatest grievances of the day. The present law was nothing but cheating made easy. It was a premium on bankruptcy, and a few weeks after having passed through the court many persons were seen riding in carriages.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, in reply, expressed his thanks for the cor-
    796
    dial co-operation which had been promised him from both sides of the House. There were only one or two points that required his attention. He had been asked how he supposed that one Judge would be able to deal with all the questions that would come before the court? His answer was, that almost all the business would be conducted by the creditors themselves, and that very little would be left to the Judge, who, he trusted, would not find much employment. It would be the duty of the Judge to exercise a general superintendence and to decide all questions of law that might be submitted to him. He had also been asked how it was proposed to deal with a bankrupt who obtained a quantity of assets immediately before his bankruptcy. Such a case would be met by the provisions of the criminal law, and when it was asked who would conduct the prosecution, he could only reply that that was a part of the great question of the appointment of a public prosecutor—a question which he hoped before long would engage the attention of the House. With respect to the opinion of his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Jessel), who was entitled to speak with great authority on this subject, he believed that his hon. and learned Friend's fears, on the score of there not being sufficient check upon the trustees, were without foundation. He had adopted those checks which in the Scotch system had been attended with perfect success. One of those checks was the appointment of a committee, another was the liability of the trustee to an accountant, who would audit his accounts; and a third was his own professional character, which would, of course, be at stake. He was inclined to think with his hon. and learned Friend that voluntary settlements should be placed on the same footing as post-nuptial settlements. In conclusion, he could only add that he would thankfully avail himself of the assistance offered him by his hon. and learned Friend in reference to some clauses of the Bill.
    Motion agreed to.
    Bill to consolidate and amend the Law of Bankruptcy, ordered to be brought in by Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL and Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL.

    DROGHEDA WRIT.
    MR. GLYN MR. GLYN moved that Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown in Ireland to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Burgess to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough of Drogheda, in the room of Benjamin Whitworth, Esquire, whose election has been determined to be void.
    COLONEL TAYLORsaid, that although he had in the earlier part of the evening presented a petition from Drogheda, praying that the Writ might be suspended, and although he believed there were grounds for suspending the Writ, yet he did not think, after what had passed on the previous evening, with reference to Bewdley, that he should serve any useful purpose by opposing the Motion. There did not appear, in the present state of the law, to be any precedent for directing a Commission to issue in cases where the only grounds of rendering an election void were violence and intimidation. It was to be hoped that in any alteration of the law, such as had been suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Mr. Vernon Harcourt), provision would be made to meet the case of elections which had been disgraced by such scenes as those which had characterized the late election at Drogheda.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. SULLIVAN)said, that after a careful perusal of the evidence concerning the late election at Drogheda, he had failed to discover the slightest reason which would warrant the suspension of the Writ. The election had been set aside on the ground that certain outrages, interfering with, the freedom of election, were committed on the day of polling by a mob in a certain quarter of the borough. That, however, was not such a system of intimidation as was likely to interfere with the freedom of election in the future. He regretted, therefore, that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Taylor) should have made the observations which had just fallen from him.
    MR. STAVELEY HILLsaid, he found sufficient justification for the remarks of his right hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Taylor) in the Report of the Judge, who stated that a system of intimidation was organized and carried out in the late election, that such
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    system of intimidation was subversive of the freedom of election, and that outrages were committed which were calculated to deter, and which did deter, some of the electors from recording their votes.
    Motion agreed to.
    House adjourned at half after Eleven o'clock till Monday next.