HC Deb 25 April 1870 vol 200 cc1734-42

Bill considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 (Capacity of an alien as to property).

MR. M'MAHON

said, he objected to provisoes (1) and (2) as unnecessary. The object of the clause being merely to enable aliens to take and inherit real as well as personal estate, it could not be necessary to further enact that the possession of such property should not qualify an alien for any office, or for any municipal, Parliamentary, or other franchise, and that it should not entitle an alien to any right or privilege as a British subject, except those expressly conferred by the clause in respect of property. As it was undesirable to overload the Act with, more matter than was necessary for its proper construction, he would move to leave out 1st and 2nd provisoes.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, that the object of these provisoes was to preserve the distinction between the rights which an alien would acquire under the clause, and those further rights which he would acquire by naturalization. If these provisoes were not inserted, the very fact of empowering aliens to hold real property might be taken as a qualification for municipal and other offices and franchises, and then there would be no need of a "Naturalization Bill."

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. CHARLEY

said, he believed that it was scarcely understood how great a revolution this Bill was about to make in the present state of the law. Under its provisions an alien would be able to acquire real property on the same footing as a British subject; and, as this change was not recommended by the Commission by whom the subject had been considered, he had the less hesitation in giving notice that he would raise the question on the bringing up of the Report.

SIR FRANCIS GOLDSMID

said, he thought the word "affect" in the 3rd proviso was somewhat ambiguous in its meaning, and he would therefore beg to move that the word "prejudicially" should be inserted before "affect" in line 25.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

explained that it was intended by this expression that the section should not take away any existing right or create new ones.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, he proposed to omit the 4th proviso, which gave power to Her Majesty in Council to suspend the operation of the Act as to the enjoyment of property held by aliens, subjects of any State at war with Her Majesty, during the continuance of such hostilities. That proviso was not in the draft of the Bill as originally prepared, and it was inserted chiefly because it was supposed that, in time of war, enemies might get possession of portions of our coast and occasion serious inconvenience and danger by affording facilities for the landing of hostile forces. But under the present state of the law aliens could practically hold property for all hostile purposes by means of leases, and therefore the proviso would not have the intended effect. He therefore moved, in page 2, line 1, leave out 4th proviso.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, it was quite true that the proviso did not appear in the original draft. He would agree to omit the proviso; for, if by any chance or accident, the enjoyment of property by an alien during a time of war should be prejudicial to the country, Parliament had always the power to intervene with a special Act.

Amendment agreed to.

SIR ROUNDELL PALMER

said, he would observe, in reply to the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Charley), that the Commissioners considered the question whether there was any public advantage to be gained by limiting the power of aliens to hold real estate in this country, and they satisfied themselves that there was not. The Bill proposed to afford facilities for expatriation and denaturalization which had not previously existed; but, hitherto, the children and heirs of persons emigrating, though by this Bill they would be aliens, had had a right to succeed to real property left by their relatives in this country; and it would be inflicting great hardship upon British subjects emigrating and becoming naturalized in the countries they adopted, if this right, which had never yet been attended with inconvenience, were now withheld. As far as he knew, real estate might be held by Englishmen in almost every other country in Europe, and also in the United States of America; and, profiting by the experience of other nations, he thought we might adopt a provision the withholding of which might cause serious injury to those who, but for this Act, would still have been our own subjects.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 (How British-born subject may cease to be such).

Amendment proposed—Clause 4, page 2, line 32, leave out "and registration."—(Mr. Solicitor General.)

Amendment agreed to.

THE SOLICLTOR GENERAL

said, he proposed, in Clause 4, line 34, to add, as a separate paragraph— Any person who is born out of Her Majesty's Dominions of a father, being a British subject, may, if of full age and not undo any disability, make a declaration of alienage in manner aforesaid, and from and after the making of such declaration shall cease to be a British subject. The 4th clause was not originally contained in the Bill, but was inserted by Lord Westbury in the House of Lords, and the addition to the clause which was now proposed was necessary to give full effect to its intention.

MR. HENLEY

said, he thought that, it would be unfair to impose upon a single magistrate a duty which involved the understanding and the taking cave of documents which he might, perhaps, have a difficulty in understanding. This declaration ought to be made in a petty sessions or a court of record.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, he would remind the right hon. Gentleman that these declarations would frequently have to be made abroad, where there was no person to receive them but the Consul. Single magistrates were already competent to receive very important declarations. The form and manner in which these declarations were to be made were to be prescribed by the Secretary of State, and it would be his duty to insert whatever safeguards might be deemed necessary.

MR. HENLEY

said, he still objected to a single magistrate having thrown upon him a duty which might be so difficult to perform satisfactorily, and which might yet involve so many and such important interests.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

said, that the right hon. Gentleman's objections would be serious if the duties intrusted to the magistrate were judicial, instead of ministerial. The declaration would only be a ministerial act, and he could not help thinking-that a justice here was as good as a member of the Diplomatic or Consular Service abroad.

MR. G. B. GREGORY

said, as they were enabling a British subject to alter his status by a mere declaration, that declaration ought to be filed in some court or office, so that a record of it might be preserved.

MR. HENLEY

said, that people who came now to make declarations before magistrates carried off the paper, because it was their own concern. But where a person changed his whole status there ought to be a record of the act some-where, and it was not fair to throw on the magistrate the responsibility of seeing that that was done in his own house.

SIR ROUNDELL PALMER

said, that by the 11th clause, which contemplated that the form and registration of certificates would be provided for, the Secretary of State was to make regulations which would have the force of law; and the question was, whether it was better to trust the Government to do that, or to maket he rules themselves, and embody them in the Act. He confessed he had no doubt that reasonable regulations would be made by the Secretary of State, should the 11th clause pass.

SIR FRANCIS GOLDSMID

said, that this addition, taken alone, was open to the objection of leaving the law in an anomalous state. As the law now stood, the child born abroad of an English father was an English subject, and the converse ought to be that the child born here of a foreign father was a foreigner. But that was not so. The proposed addition recognized one part of this rule; but it was not thought expedient to alter the law so as to recognize the other. That, in his opinion, was an unfortunate result.

Words added.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 5 (Aliens not entitled to jury de medietate linguæ).

MR. M'MAHON

said, that there was no necessity for the clause, inasmuch as it was no part of the common law that an alien should have the privilege of being tried by a jury de medietate linguæ. That privilege, which was limited to cases of felony and misdemeanour, was conferred by a statute of Edward III., altered by an Act of William and Mary, and subsequently by an Act of George IV.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, that the clause said nothing about the common law. It only said that where an alien was entitled to be tried de medietate, he should, after the passing of the Act, no longer be entitled to be tried by such a jury; but should be triable in the same manner as a natural-born subject.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 6 agreed to.

Clause 7 (Certificate of naturalization).

MR. EASTWICK

moved the addition of words, to the effect that all persons already naturalized, who made a declaration and continued to reside in the United Kingdom, should obtain all the privileges conferred by the Bill. The reason why he offered this Amendment was that persons who had gone through the trouble of getting naturalized would, when the Bill passed, be in not a whit better position than others who had not been naturalized. He thought that those who had been naturalized should obtain the privileges of the Act as easily as possible.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, it was now proposed to give to naturalized aliens a great deal that they never had before, for it really incorporated them into the British body politic; and, therefore, there was no particular reason why they should not take a little more trouble in order to get more substantial advantages. One of the conditions on which aliens would obtain these advantages was residence for a certain time. The time in the Bill was three years; he should propose to alter it to five.

MR. EASTWICK

said, he did not propose that a person who had been naturalized only that morning should obtain the benefits of the Bill. He spoke of persons who had resided in this country continuously for a long time; and it was very hard that they should be placed under the disadvantage of having to take all that trouble over again.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, that section itself enabled the Secretary of State, under certain circumstances, if he thought fit, to naturalize a person at once.

SIR ROUNDELL PALMER

said, it was now proposed by that Bill to give to naturalization political effects which it never had before, except by Act of Parliament. Under those circumstances, he did not see why persons who had obtained a common naturalization should not be subject to the same provisions as aliens would hereafter be on seeking to be incorporated in the body politic of this country.

MR. EASTWICK

said, he would not press his Amendment.

Clause amended, and agreed to.

Clauses 8 and 9 agreed to.

Clause 10 (National status of married women and infant children).

MR. ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCE

said, the clause proposed that a married woman was to be deemed the subject of the State of which her husband was for the time being a subject. The clause did not seem to be sufficiently guarded. A woman might have married a British subject, and might never have intended that by any force of law she should become a foreign subject; yet, by a former clause in the Bill combined with the present one, if the husband made himself an alien, the wife, although residing with her children in this country, and judicially separated from her husband, who lived abroad, would be made a foreign subject against her own will, and against that of her family, through his changing his nationality, and if she were afterwards to reside in any foreign country, she would be deprived of all the rights, privileges, and protection to which a British subject would be entitled.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

said, it was almost impossible to provide against every conceivable case of hardship; and the question was what rule, on the whole, was most expedient. It appeared that the balance of convenience was in favour of enacting that the wife should take the status of the husband, rather than in favour of enacting that, under certain circumstances, she should not do so. By the latter course we should get into difficult and complicated questions of domicile, of whether the husband and wife intended to remain separated permanently, or only temporarily, and the like.

MR. KINNAIRD

said, he thought it would be very oppressive to a wife resident in England, and separated from her husband, to be forced against her will to become the subject of she knew not what power, through his naturalization abroad. He was surprised that, at a time when the rights of women were so loudly advocated, the House should seem determined thus to curtail them, and that no one but the worthy Alderman (Mr. Alderman Lawrence) had been found to say a word in their defence.

MR. G. B. GREGORY

said, he would suggest that the case might be met by putting the divorced wife on the same footing as a widow in that matter.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, they were now arguing a question of words, not of things. All the real rights and privileges of the parties wore protected by the Bill. The only thing that was altered was the nationality.

MR. OSBORNE MORGAN

said, he thought the question was a much wider one than many hon. Gentlemen believed, and the alteration affected not only the wife but the children.

SIR ROUNDELL PALMER

said, those questions were very carefully considered in the Commission, and it was proposed that they should be settled in accordance with the universal principles of private International Law. It was quite settled as a matter of International Law generally that the status of the wife and that of minor children followed the status of the husband and father. The Bill proceeded on that principle, and no harm could result from that, because it was only political status that was in question; the Bill abolished all distinctions which at present existed between aliens and others as to the enjoyment of property. The Bill not only preserved the rights of children who did not go abroad, but enabled those children who left this country, and wives who became widows, or were divorced, to return to the condition of British subjects if they thought fit. He hoped the House would adhere to sound general principles, and not be affected by theoretical cases in which neither personal liberty nor property was involved.

MR. ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCE

said, he must complain that the Bill did not provide for cases of judicial separation. He was of opinion that the rights of a wife and of children might be seriously affected if the consent of the wife were not required to enable the husband to change her nationality. He could not understand how hon. Members, who talked so much about the rights of women, could, in this wholesale manner, deprive women of rights they possessed, and make them, upon this question at least, mere chattels.

MR. G. B. GREGORY

said, he wished to know in what part of the Bill the national status of a divorced wife was recognized.

SIR ROUNDELL PALMER

said, that the result of a divorce a vinculo was, that the woman was no longer married, and therefore she would have the same power of becoming a British subject as any other independent person.

MR. DICKINSON

said, he thought that inconvenience might occur in some cases; but he did not see what other course could be adopted than that of making the nationality of the wife follow that of the husband.

MR. JESSEL

said, that the object of the Bill was to amend our naturalization law, so as to make it conform more nearly to International Law; and therefore it was necessary to adopt the general rule that the wife should follow the nationality of the husband. He believed that the objection to the clause was a mere theoretical one; except, sentimentally, the legal status of the wife would not be altered by the act of her husband. If hardship should follow from the provision in a case whore there had been a judicial separation, the remedy would be to alter the law in respect of judicial separations so as to make a woman judicially separated a feme sole.

Clause agreed to.

Remaining clauses agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, to be considered To-morrow.