Commons Sitting of 7 March 1871

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Letters Patent, appointed.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution in Committee—Ordered—First Reading—Burials Acts Amendment* [66].
Ordered — First Reading — Patents for Inventions* [65]; Elementary Education Act (1870) Amendment* [67]; Poor Law (Loans)* [68]; Customs and Inland Revenue Duties Act (1869) Amendment* [69].
Third Reading — County Property* [29], and passed.

THE CENSUS—EDUCATION.—QUESTION.
MR. MELLYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he has any objection to authorize the District Registrars in Boroughs, when taking the Census, to supply the School Boards of such boroughs with the gross totals of children between certain specified ages, to be fixed by the Education Department; such totals to be extracted from the Census Papers (before they are forwarded to London) at the expense, in each case, of the School Board of the Borough?
MR. BRUCE: Sir, I have received a great many communications on this subject, and I am bound to say that of the different suggestions that of my hon. Friend is the most practicable. I have been in communication with the Registrar General on the subject, who has raised difficulties, as it was his duty to do, to any proposal which might have the effect of interfering with the efficient discharge of the important and complicated duty of collecting the Census Returns. But I am authorized to say that even if arrangements cannot be made—on which point I now give no certain opinion—to give effect to my hon. Friend's wishes, this can be promised—namely, that the required information shall be furnished to such boards as desire it in the month of June or July, and I am told that that time will be early enough.

INCOME TAX—SERVANTS OF PRIVATE FIRMS.—QUESTION.
MR. CRAWFORDasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to a Question put to him by the Member for Preston on the 14th February, respecting applications by assessors of Income
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Tax for statements of the salaries paid to clerks in the establishments of private firms, Whether he has received any letter from the Clerk of the Commissioners of Income Tax for the City of London on the subject, and if he will lay a Copy of such Letter upon the Table of the House?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in reply, said, a copy of a letter received from the clerk of the Commissioners, together with a memorandum issued by the Board of Inland Revenue, should be laid on the Table of the House.

IRELAND—SHERIFFS OF WESTMEATH AND LOUTH.—QUESTION.
MR. MONKasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in reference to the recent nominations of Sheriffs for Westmeath and Louth, Whether he is prepared to state what is the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown for Ireland as to any qualification being requisite for the office of High Sheriff of an Irish County?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, in reply, he had not yet received the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown upon the general question raised by his hon. Friend, which was one of very considerable complexity and great importance. With regard to the particular cases referred to, Her Majesty's Government had no doubt that the present sheriffs of Westmeath and Louth were legally qualified to serve. He did not think it would be well to produce any of the Correspondence on the subject until the matter had been completely investigated, and the Government placed in possession of the completed opinion of the Law Officers in regard to it.

COURT OF HUSTINGS (LONDON) ABOLITION BILL.—QUESTION.
MR. W. H. SMITHasked Mr. Attorney General, If the sanction of the Law Officers of the Crown has been given to a private Bill, intituled "The Court of Hustings (London) Abolition Bill," under which it is proposed to give to the Lord Mayor's Court concurrent jurisdiction with the Superior Courts of Common Law in matters arising within the Metropolitan district; and if the assent of the Crown has not been given,

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what course the Government propose to take with regard to the measure which now stands for Committee as an unopposed Bill?
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL: Sir, in reply to the Question of the hon. Gentleman, I have to state that the sanction of the Law Officers of the Crown most certainly has never been given to this Bill. In fact, I never heard of it till my attention was called to the matter by this Question. On referring to the Bill, I certainly experienced a good deal of surprise at some of its provisions. I find that though it is a Private Bill sent to a Committee upstairs, it proposes to constitute a new Superior Court of Law with unlimited jurisdiction. [Laughter.] I say unlimited, because by one of the clauses it is provided that the jurisdiction of the new Court shall not be confined to the City of London, but shall extend considerably beyond it; the clause authorizing the committal of persons beyond the jurisdiction of the Court. I find that an appeal is given to the Court of Exchequer, thereby adding to the jurisdiction of one of the highest Courts in the kingdom. I have to state that, in my opinion, these provisions are altogether beyond the scope of a private Bill, and ought not to have been introduced. As to the course the Government propose to take, I may say that unless these clauses are struck out I shall certainly oppose the Bill on the third reading.
MR. W. H. SMITH: I beg to give Notice that, on going into Committee of Supply, I shall call attention to the subject.

ALLEGED TREATY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA.—QUESTION.
MR. DISRAELI: I beg to inquire of the Prime Minister, Whether Her Majesty's Government are aware that a Treaty was negotiated last year, between the Courts of Russia and Prussia, referring to the war between Prussia and France; and, if so, whether they were in possession of this information when they instructed Mr. Odo Russell to repair to Versailles and consult Count Bismarck?
MR. GLADSTONE: In answer, Sir, to the Question of the right hon. Gentleman, I have to state, very briefly, that Her Majesty's Government has not
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been informed of the existence of any such Treaty; and, that being so, I need not say that we were not in possession of such information when Mr. Odo Russell went to Versailles.

THE TREATY OF PARIS (1856.)

  QUESTION.
  MR. BAILLIE COCHRANEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, What are the contingencies alluded to in Despatch No. 47 in the Correspondence of the Treaty of March 1856, where Baron Brunow says—
  "On certain occasions when certain contingencies were discussed, he had stated both to Lord Malmesbury and Lord Clarendon that if they were realized Russia would reserve to herself the right to call in question some of the provisions of the Treaty of 1856;"
  and, if there are documents in the office bearing on these contingencies; and, if so, whether they will be laid upon the Table before Friday?
  VISCOUNT ENFIELD, in reply, said: I have to state that I am not aware, nor is the Foreign Office aware, of any of the "contingencies" to which the hon. Member refers; nor were there any Reports or documents on the subject in the Foreign Office.

EDUCATION—NEW REVISED CODE.

  QUESTION.
  MR. DODDSasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether Scholars who at the last examination were presented in Standard 1 of the 1st Revised Code, are on the next examination to be presented in Standard 1 of the New Revised Code (being the same as Standard 2 under the 1st Code), or in Standard 2?
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, in reply, that there was nothing in the new Code to prevent children who were presented under Standard 1 in the Code of last year being presented under the same standard in the new Code. The old Standard 1 had been struck out, and a new Standard 6 had been inserted, so that the new standards from 1 to 5 corresponded with the standards numbered 2 to 6 in last year's Code. Therefore, the rule which prohibited the presentation of a child for examination under the same standard in two consecutive years would be complied with, though children were presented this year under what was

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  nominally the same standard as that under which they were examined last year.

ARMY—YEOMANRY REGIMENTS AND RIFLE RANGES.—QUESTION.
MR. ALGERNON EGERTONasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether any allowance will be made to Commanding Officers of Yeomanry Regiments to cover the expense of hiring rifle ranges, rendered necessary by the new regulations?
MR. CARDWELLsaid, that no allowance would be made, but where it was necessary ranges would be hired by the Control department.

MR. ODO RUSSELL'S DESPATCH.

  QUESTION.
  SIR HEDWORTH WILLIAMSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether Her Majesty's Government has received from Mr. Odo Russell any statement in reference to that passage in his Despatch of November 22, which has been made the subject of inquiry and comment in this House?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, Mr. Odo Russell's attention having been called to certain proceedings in this House he has addressed an explanatory despatch to Her Majesty's Government on this subject, which despatch I will lay on the Table of the House; I have only to say, on the part of the Government, that the despatch is, in their view, entirely satisfactory.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ACT.

  QUESTION.
  MR. A. JOHNSTONasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether section 23 of the Elementary Education Act enables a school in union with the National Society to be transferred to a School Board?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that to the best of his belief, and according to the Legal Advisers of the Government, the section referred to by the hon. Member did confer the power of transfer to a school board of a school in union with the National Society, provided that the conditions required by the section were fulfilled, one of which conditions was that any person interested, including
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  a body corporate, had the right to be heard by the Education Department against the transfer. He presumed that the National Society came within the scope of that provision.

FRANCE—REPORTS OF THE MILITARY ATTACHE AT PARIS.—QUESTION.
SIR ROBERT PEELasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether he has any objection to lay upon the Table of the House, for presentation to Parliament, Copies of the Reports furnished to the War Department by the Military Attaché of Her Majesty's Embassy at Paris, during the last five years, following the precedent established by the presentation to Parliament of the yearly Reports of Her Majesty's Secretaries of Embassy and Legation for the Countries in which they reside?
VISCOUNT ENFIELD: Sir, at the request of my right hon. Friend. I will answer this Question. It will not be in my power to lay on the Table the Reports referred to by the right hon. Baronet. They are of a strictly confidential character, and could not be produced without great public inconvenience, and seriously compromising the persons from whom the information was obtained. The right hon. Gentleman will allow me to remind him that they differ materially from the Reports sent in by the Secretaries of Legation in foreign countries, which refer simply to questions of import, export, trade, produce, and commerce.

ARMY—SMALL POX IN THE GUARDS.

  QUESTION.
  COLONEL WILSON-PATTENasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it is true that a battalion of Guards has been stopped on its way to Dublin on account of the small pox having broken out; and, whether a portion of it has been ordered to Fleetwood?
  MR. CARDWELL: The battalion of Guards going off to Dublin has been stopped for the present in London, in consequence of the small pox having broken out among the men; but it is not yet decided whether they shall be sent to any other place or not.

NEW FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY.

  QUESTION.
  SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether a statement which appears in a leading article in "The Times" this morning—namely, that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Poor Law Board has accepted the office of First Lord of the Admiralty, is true? The statement is so incredible—["Oh!"]
  MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, I shall distinguish in the Question of the hon. Gentleman that which is matter of opinion from that which is matter of fact. Whether the report is credible is matter of opinion, whether it is true is matter of fact. It is true, and I am glad of it.

TREATY OF PARIS (1856)—NEUTRALIZATION OF THE BLACK SEA—THE CONFERENCE.—NOTICE.
MR. GLADSTONE: I have to give Notice with reference to a Motion that now stands on the Paper of this House for next Friday. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles Dilke), whose name stands to that Notice, is not in his place, and probably it will be convenient that I should give Notice that on Thursday I shall ask him whether it is his intention to go on with that Motion on Friday. I am obliged to state, on the part of the Government, that it is not now possible that the Conference should meet again before Friday, and it will be beyond the power of the Government adequately to discuss that subject while the Conference is sitting. I ought to add that I have no reason to suppose that the proceedings of the Conference are likely to be delayed for any considerable time before coming to a conclusion.
DURHAM CHURCH LEASEHOLDS.

  RESOLUTION.
  MR. STEVENSONrose to call attention to the present position of holders of Leases under the Dean and Chapter of Durham, and to move a Resolution. In order that the House might clearly understand the case of the leaseholders under the Dean and Chapter of Durham, it was necessary to trouble it with a short statement of the past history of the system. At the Reformation the extensive estates of the Priory of Durham were conferred upon the Dean and Chapter, which was then constituted by Henry
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  VIII. Part of the lands were then let at rack-rent, but nearly all the rest were of a tenure similar to copyhold, being renewable every 21 years on the payment of three years' rent. Disputes arose between the Chapter and their tenants, the Chapter seeking to convert all the leases into ordinary tenancies; and in 1626 the Dean and Chapter passed an Act, in which they plainly laid down the principles of the management of their leasehold estates. The leases were to be for 21 years; but at the end of seven years they were to be renewed, on payment of one year's improved annual value. On the back of each lease there was an endorsement in a peculiar form—under the year of the date of the lease the figure 7 was written and a line for addition drawn, and the date reckoned on which the seven years would expire. That arrangement had been carried out with such perfect good faith that the utmost confidence existed between the Dean and Chapter and their lessees, and for the last 250 years no tenant had ever been deterred from expending his capital on his holding from any distrust of renewal. No doubt it might be said that the tenant paid the fine on renewal on the basis of his own improvements. But the Dean and Chapter met this by allowing two renewals to elapse before calculating the improved value. On the other hand, the renewal fine had been raised from one year's improved value to one and a half. That, however, was no substantial increase, for the annual reserved rents had not been increased; so that the respective interests of the Dean and Chapter and the lessee had not been substantially altered. He would illustrate the working of this system by the case of South Shields. Two hundred and fifty years ago it was a mere fishing hamlet; afterwards, owing to the cheapness of fuel, extensive salt works came into existence, and to these had succeeded quays, graving docks, shipbuilding yards, forges, and all the manufactures connected with an important seaport town—extensive glassworks, bottle works, and chemical manufactories; so that in 1849 there was property of an annual value of £40,000 a-year, wholly created by the capital and enterprise of the lessees, on ground of which the lessee had nominally only a tenure of between 14 and 21 years. But while the revenues of the Church were

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  thus largely increased by the outlay of the lessees' capital, the Dean and Chapter never pretended to expend a single shilling of their own or do any single duty that fell on a landlord, except the collecting of their revenues. Now, he could not conceive a stronger case of tenant-right, or any defence whatever for now turning round on these lessees and telling them when the first seven years of the leases had expired that no more renewals were to be granted. Yet that was what had now been done by the Dean and Chapter of Durham, and that was the present position of 600 leaseholders in the town of South Shields. The Church lessees were spoken of as a body of men fattening on the property of the Church, which was thus defrauded of a large share of her rightful revenues, and it seemed for a time as if no regard was to be paid to the claims of the lessees, who had themselves created the property of which they were accused of despoiling the Church; and much alarm prevailed among the lessees in consequence. A Committee of that House inquired into the matter and took evidence on the subject, and recommended that consideration should be given to the customary confidence of renewal. No legislative action followed, and the confidence of the lessees was restored, and they went on without fear to expend their capital on their leaseholds. In 1849 a Royal Commission was appointed. They were directed to pay due regard to the rights of the lessees, while inquiring how the property might be improved for the benefit of the Church and the public. The evidence they took proved the restoration of confidence. Mr. Ingham stated that he had sold, for 20 years' purchase, a farm of which the lease had 18 years to run. It was shown that since 1840 new streets, manufactories, and some hundred houses had been built in South Shields, and the Royal Commission reported that in the case of Durham it had been proved that leases with 17½ years to run, had been sold for two-thirds of the value of the fee. They recommended a settlement on the basis of continual renewal, subject to a revaluation every 21 years. Those Commissioners reported in 1850, and in 1851 a Bill was introduced into the other House to carry out their recommendation. The Lords referred it to a Committee. In their Report they said that
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  the lessees had an "expectation of renewal sufficiently definite to be treated as a certainty;" also, "that any injury should be considered and compensated," and they desired that a system of voluntary enfranchisement should be established, which might be made the basis of future compulsory enfranchisement. The Act of 1851 established that system of voluntary dealings under the direction of the Church Estates Commissioners. That Act had been most successful in its operation. The annual Reports of the Church Estates Commissioners showed a large amount of transactions which, being voluntary, were necessarily satisfactory to both the lessee and the Church; and to refer again to the case of South Shields, the rateable value of the borough had increased 70 per cent in 10 years, mainly under the operation of the Act. Lessees had been ready to enfranchise, and the proof of the successful operation of the Act had been shown by numbers of cases in which persons who wished to erect buildings bought the lessee's interest at prices far beyond the value of the mere 14 or 21 years' possession, relying on the continued operation of the Act. For several years the Church Estates Commissioners, in their annual Report, congratulated themselves on the success of the Act. In 1868 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners pushed through a Bill at the very end of the Session, taking power to make arrangements with those Chapters which had not previously transferred their estates. Few of the lessees were aware of the Bill; but they attempted to obtain in it the insertion of clauses requiring consideration to be given to the claims of the lessees. All that they could succeed in obtaining was a recognition of the right of calling for an arbitration of the fee simple and annual value, in cases in which a negotiation for sale or surrender had been actually entered into, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had refused to confirm it. By the Bill the lessees were handed over to the full powers of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and they had already had an indication of what they feared was in store for them by the Dean and Chapter having, under an arrangement with the Commissioners, refused to renew any leases that fell for renewal after the 29th of last September; so that many of the lessees were now reduced to a bare enjoyment of 14 years of the property

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  which they had created. He scarcely thought that "confiscation" would be too strong a word to apply to this proceeding. He might be met with this objection — the lessees knew that this was coming — they should have anticipated it, and provided for it; and he had been referred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act of 1860, which defined the consideration to be given to the tenants' claims of renewal to be an extension of the leases up to 1884. But that Act referred to estates then transferred to the Commissioners, and did not meet the present case. They already had leases running on to 1891; or seven years beyond 1884, and as he had said already, leasehold interests had been freely bought since 1860, in expectation of enfranchisement on the basis of the terms of the Acts of 1851 and 1854—a process which would have wound up the system without any hardship. The Church Estates Commissioners were charged with the duty of doing justice between the Church and its lessees in cases of enfranchisement; but it appeared to him that after the estates should have been transferred, the functions of that body would cease, and their dealings would be with Ecclesiastical Commissioners, with leases running out, and no remedy against any hardships, except what that body might be pleased to allow. He was addressing a House that was elected to do justice to the te-nantry of Ireland, and a Government which, with so bold a hand last Session, remedied its land grievances. The Irish Land Bill of last Session created a presumption of law in favour of all improvements being considered as having been done by the tenants. He had shown that in these Church lands the whole value had been created by the tenants. There were Church leaseholds in Ireland; and in the Irish Land Bill the lessees were declared to have the right of perpetual renewal. He was not asking that right for the lessees in the North, for he preferred an equitable system of enfranchisement; but he quoted the Irish case as a reason for doing like justice to English lessees, and they believed that justice might be done without injury to the interests of the Church. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Resolution.
  MR. PEASEseconded the Motion. If discontent existed in the north of Durham
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  on this subject, it also excited very lively interest in the southern division. The case of the holders of agricultural leases there had repeatedly been before Parliament; because, while there was no active dissatisfaction with the management of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the uncertainty of the tenure of these lands gave rise to a good deal of feeling. He hardly thought his hon. Friend (Mr. Stevenson) went far enough. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners might say that they were only doing what the law required of them; so that a Resolution would have very little effect, and it should be supplemented by a Bill.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That, in order to prevent hardship being inflicted on Lessees of the Church property of the Dean and Chapter of Durham by the running out of their Leases, on which they or their predecessors have invested capital on the faith of the continued renewal of such Leases, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in fixing the terms for enfranchisements or for the purchase of Leasehold interests, ought to have regard to the just and reasonable claims of Lessees arising from the long continued practice of renewal."—(Mr. Stevenson.)
  MR. ACLAND, as one of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, said, it was his duty to reply to the hon. Mover of the Resolution who, he was confident, was not in the slightest degree influenced by personal considerations in introducing it, but was simply discharging a public duty. As to what had fallen from the hon. Gentleman who had seconded the Motion, naturally his (Mr. Acland's) own feelings would lead him not to treat lightly anything affecting the agricultural progress of the country; but that question would be discussed on another occasion. The words of the Resolution were the very words of the Act of Parliament, which 30 years ago resolved that the just and reasonable claims of lessees arising from the long-continued practice of renewal should be duly regarded. The real question was what are the just and reasonable claims of the lessees? On this the opinion of the lessees might be referred to. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners had dealt with 6,000 leases in all parts of England, being a considerable majority of the cases required to be arranged when Parliament took the matter up. They had enfranchised 400 cases in the diocese of Durham alone; and the Church Estate Commissioners had sanctioned 600 enfranchisements on the property of this very Dean and Chapter. With the ex-

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  ception of the agricultural cases, the question narrowed itself to some important property in South Shields. The lessees were a small body, who had benefited by the postponement of the period for seven years longer than Parliament had intended. In 1851 the "just and reasonable claims of the lessees" were recognized by Parliament; and in 1860 the terms were finally fixed and defined. The House of Commons' Committee had advised that the system of renewal by fines should cease in 1880; but Parliament gave four years more; some of them, indeed, are now actually extended to 1891. If any cases of hardship were brought before the Commissioners, it was their constant habit to take them into serious consideration, and if they were unable to come to terms with the lessees who had an adverse interest, they had the remedy by Act of Parliament to go into arbitration. When the lessees had purchased a freehold right in the surface of the ground, they were restrained from going below the surface without consent. It was simply a question of terms. Some 6,000 lessees had willingly accepted the terms offered them, on the assumption that the year 1884 would be the extreme limit of the system. Sufficient ground had not been shown for placing them on a new footing, and he hoped the House would not agree to the Motion.
  MR. MOWBRAYtrusted the hon. Member would not press his Motion to a division. Having for a great number of years been connected with Durham, he was pretty well acquainted with the subject. The object of the hon. Member appeared to be to reverse the policy of the Act of 1860; but the question had been carefully considered by Parliament, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had done no more than carry out their legislation. If the hon. Member's Resolution were adopted, it would not carry the matter one step further. From his experience as a Commissioner he could state that all questions of renewal were fully considered and dealt with, and he objected to any re-opening of the question.
  MR. STEVENSON, in reply, said, that the case of Durham was not met by the Act, which was intended to give an extension of terms to those whose leases expired at an early period. Accepting that principle, the final extension
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  for Durham ought to begin from 1891, to which period they already ran. He would, however, withdraw his Resolution.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

THE PATENT LAWS.

  MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
  MR. B. SAMUELSON, in moving for a Select Committee to inquire into the Law, practice, and effect of grants of Letters Patent for Inventions, said, he was induced to bring this subject before the House because, from an experience of more than 20 years, he was aware of the great evils attendant on the system of Patent Laws. He proposed a Committee of Inquiry in preference to asking leave to introduce a Bill, on account of the great diversity of opinion prevailing as to the best mode of dealing with the subject. The hon. Member for Leith (Mr. Macfie), the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer), and other great authorities, were of opinion that the only mode of dealing with the Patent Laws was to sweep them away altogether. Others thought that by considerable alterations the system of patents might still be maintained; while there were those who maintained—and he confessed himself to be among the number—that the present laws, if administered in the spirit of their original promoters, would be sufficient, and that all that was required was to consider the spirit of the law and act upon it. To ascertain that spirit he might be permitted to refer to the Act of 23 James I., the primary object of which was to abolish monopolies, while at the same time it reserved those granted by the Crown in favour of new manufactures. The whole mischief of the Patent Laws had arisen from the interpretation given to the expression "new manufactures," which had been extended until they had been made to include any new invention whatever. He would not argue the question whether there was any inherent right in inventors to obtain patents; because he thought that patents should be granted on grounds of public utility. Inventors were frequently poor men, who were not in a condition to carry out their inventions without the assistance of capitalists, who, of course, if they advanced their money, expected to be recouped. Many very

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  important inventions could never have been carried out without a system of protection. He would mention, in the case of two important inventions, the sums expended before any return was obtained. In reference to the self-acting mule, upwards of £30,000 were spent before a single farthing was returned to the capitalists; and upon Bessemer's improvements in the manufacture of steel £100,000 were expended by the patentee and his licensees, and seven years of the patent expired before any return was obtained. He might also mention—though it was not a case with which the Patent Laws were concerned—that the Ordnance experiments, exclusive of those which had reference to the Armstrong and Whitworth guns, cost the enormous sum of £250,000 in 10 years. This showed how hopeless it was to expect that experiments of that nature could be carried out by individuals without some protection of the results. There was, however, a great difference between the encouragement of new and important inventions and granting a patent to every frivolous matter which might be brought forward. It might be said of frivolous inventions that they would soon find their own level. He knew from experience that was not the case; and the practical effect of such patents was that they were a decided hindrance to the progress of manufactures, and there was this further evil—that in trades where great competition existed rival manufacturers took out one frivolous patent after another to protect themselves and injure their neighbours. He had in his own case to protect himself in matters in which, if any choice had been presented to him, he should have refrained from doing so. But there was another view to be taken of these small patents. In this country patents for small though not necessarily frivolous inventions were granted. But there were other countries which run us very close in manufacturing competition where they were not allowed. Consequently when our goods went into markets to which those other countries traded, our commerce was impeded by these small patents, to which our rivals were not subjected. There was another evil—patents were recklessly granted again and again, without any examination whatever, for the same inventions which had been before
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  the public for, perhaps, 20 or 30 years. These became stumbling-blocks in the way of the progress of manufactures. The Crown granted a monopoly or privilege, and the individual aggrieved must come forward and at great expense undo what the Crown never ought to have done. If matters remained as they were, abolition, he was convinced, must come, and that he did not think desirable. They must alter the law and change the mode in which it was administered. The first thing done by the change in the law effected by the Act of 1852 was to cheapen patents. To that he had no objection; but it pre-supposed that patents should only be granted where there was really an invention and one of some importance. The intention of Lord Colchester, who introduced the law into the House of Lords in 1851 was that precautions should be taken. Examiners were to be appointed to ascertain two points—whether inventions were sufficiently described and whether they were new; but that clause in the Bill was struck out after it left the other House. Words, however, were inserted to give the Commissioners power to appoint other Commissioners, who, it was presumed, would be scientific men and would perform the duty of examiners; but from 1852 learned societies and inventors had been soliciting the appointment of those additional Commissioners down to 1868, when the Master of the Rolls offered to make three appointments, with this extraordinary condition annexed—that the persons so appointed should have no remuneration. Now, that might be very well if the whole business of the Patent Office were carried on gratuitously. But was that the case? Why, in 1869 the Law Officers of the Crown received, in respect of patents, no less a sum than £10,100; while their clerks received £946. He hoped the Attorney General would explain what were the duties for the performance of which these large sums were received. The Law Officers of Scotland and Ireland received compensation to the amount of £2,850 per annum; while their clerks received £600. There was a strong party, both in and out of that House, who maintained that there would be no remedy for the abuses of patent legislation except the abolition of patents. Now, he was not of that opinion; but he thought it would still be useful that this view of the subject

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  should be fully considered by the Committee. That was the opinion of the hon. Member for Leith (Mr. Macfie), who would probably second this Motion, and it was the only point in connection with this subject in which he agreed with him. For his own part, he believed that all that was required to be done could be accomplished by better administration of the present law with probably some slight changes. If the Patent Laws were to be maintained, it was necessary that there should be, in the first place, an examination to ascertain that the invention was new, that it was sufficiently described, and that it was useful. The present law was, on the whole, sufficient to protect all interests if administered in the spirit of those who brought in the Bill, if not of those who passed it into law. With regard to the expense and uncertainty of patent litigation, he felt that it would be difficult to provide any specific remedy for it. It was a difficulty not confined to patents, but inherent in all contentions affecting technical subjects. Hence, whilst he was quite willing that an attempt should be made to render patent litigation easier, or to improve it, he would rather rely on a diminution of the subjects of contention. Patents should not be needlessly multiplied, nor given for processes which, were never intended originally to be made the subjects of patents. Without detaining the House longer, he would conclude by moving the appointment of a Select Committee.
  MR. MACFIE, in seconding the Motion, said, that the House would, no doubt, remember that two years ago he had had the honour of bringing the question of patents under the notice of the House, and at that time entered so fully into the subject that it was not necessary for him now to go over the whole matter. He was glad to think that there was a greater amount of unity in judgment as to patents and the operation of the present law between himself and the hon. Member (Mr. Samuel-son) than he had anticipated. Both desired that what was just should be done, and that what was the truth should be ascertained. But they went further together, for the hon. Gentleman said that if the Parliament of this country were to make certain the proper administration of the law, there would be no necessity for an agitation for the abolition
  1516
  of patents. In that opinion he (Mr. Macfie) almost entirely coincided. A great change had taken place with regard to the administration of the Law of Patents, and especially as regarded the interpretation of the Statute of Monopolies. Originally it was provided that patents should not be given where they were hurtful to trade; but as patents were now administered, they were in a great many instances not only hurtful to trade, but to the general community. Then formerly it was held that mere processes of manufacture and additions to inventions could not be made the subject of patents; patents were only granted to the true inventor; whereas now they were granted to the assignee or the importer of foreign inventions. As much as £200,000 was at this moment asked by a foreign inventor for the right to vend his invention merely in this country. No doubt there was a great difference between the present state of matters and that which existed in the reign of James I., when the Statute of Monopolies was passed. Trade at that time was only carried on on a small scale, and if a patent was granted it was obviously for something of advantage to the public, and if it was used it was seen that it did not interfere with any existing interest. At present, however, the reverse was the case. Let them look at the increase in the number of patents which had taken place of late years. It would be seen from a Return, for which he moved two years ago, that in 1700 there were only 2 patents granted in England; that in 1750 there were only 7; and in 1800 only 96. From that year, however, the number went on increasing, till in 1855 250 patents were granted; in 1860, 523; and he had learned from the Patent Office that for last year the number amounted to no less than 2,491. The increase was much more marked in Scotland and Ireland, because in these countries there were fewer patents granted in the olden times. Thus a vast number of monopolies had been created. He contended that the patent system was unquestionably a great obstacle in the way of our manufactures. He held in his hand the specification of a patent in connection with frills, which had lately attracted notice, and it had recently been decided to be law that where any article has been manufactured on a system

  1517
  patented in this country, or if any part of an article is such, the article could not be sold in this country. For instance, in the case of Betts' capsules, if it had been proved that bottles had been capped by capsules made in conflict with the patent abroad, the articles contained in the bottles could not be sold. His hon. Friend (Mr. Samuelson) had spoken of the many obstacles encountered by a manufacturer from the working of the present Act. In confirmation of that he (Mr. Macfie) need only appeal to the evidence of such men as Sir William Armstrong and Mr. Scott Russell. In the memoirs of Brunei they would find the opinion of that eminent engineer recorded against the Patent Laws. He considered them the great curse of the day, both to the inventors and to the public, and argued that they should be done away with, for the more competition there was the better was it for the public. It was very interesting to observe how the views of men of eminence had become modified and enlarged in reference to this question. He would point to Earl Granville, who was Chairman of the Committee of the House of Lords in 1851 on the Patent Laws, and is strongly against them. His Lordship, in his Report, said—
  "The last witness was the Master of the Rolls, who, notwithstanding the experience he had had as one of the Law Officers of the Crown, was decidedly of opinion that the Patent Laws were bad in principle, and no advantage either to the public or to the inventors."
  All the evidence brought before the Committee—both by those who opposed the Patent Laws and those who were in favour of them—had tended to confirm Earl Granville's opinion that the Patent Laws were indefensible, not useful to inventors, and disadvantageous to the public. In the Reports by the International Jury on the French Exhibition, hon. Members would find a very long and well-reasoned article, in which the most eminent authorities of France declared themselves against the patent system. Mr. Cobden was decidedly opposed to Patent Laws. ["No!"] Well, he had in his hand a transcript from a letter written in 1862, in which Mr. Cobden declared that he had a growing doubt as to the value and justice of the system, whether as regarded the interests of the public or of the inventors. The Earl of Derby, when Lord Stanley, declared
  1518
  in the House of Commons that the Patent Laws did more harm than good, and if called on to say "aye" or "nay" for their continuance, he would say "nay;" but that as the question was one that required careful handling he thought it had better be left in the hands of the Government. In Belgium the feeling was most decidedly against patents. In Germany Count Bismarck had also declared against them, and in Holland patents had been completely abolished. Some might say—Cross the Atlantic, and see that model country, the United States. Well, he (Mr. Macfie) did not quite think that America was a model country—it was a highly protectionist country, and behind the age. But, at the same time, he was glad to see that there was a change of opinion going on, and that the question of the policy of patents was being agitated there, and free-trade principles were beginning to occupy the minds of the people. In England the larger Chambers of Commerce had petitioned the House in favour of an inquiry into the policy of the existence of patents. Liverpool, Newcastle, and Edinburgh had asked the House to go to the root of the matter—that was not to the amendment of the law, but to ascertain whether such a law as this ought to exist at all. From a private letter which he had received from a patent agent, he was told that the reason why Holland abolished patents was that it wished to get an advantage over Belgium. Well, what was good for Holland was certainly good for England; and if Holland was encumbered in the race of commerce and manufactures by the existence of patents, how much more so must be a great country like England. If it was a just principle for Holland to abolish patents, he could not but come to the conclusion that it would be a just thing for England to follow its example. In Prussia there were only 103 patents in a year, while in this country the number was 2,500. Nature intended that men should be mutual benefactors; but the Patent Laws contravened this great principle and induced men of science to conceal their knowledge instead of using it for the advantage of mankind. A licence or royalty was a much worse tax upon industry than an ordinary tax, for whereas the latter was fixed and certain the former was arbitrary and uncertain. Patents, in reality, constituted

  1519
  that property which would not be property without them; but he believed that other incentives might be found to stimulate men to benefit their fellows by means of their inventions. Most manufacturers were inventors, but very few became patentees. The professed inventors were very few, and it was for their benefit that the Patent Laws were maintained. He knew that many working men had been inventors and had taken out patents—perhaps one patent out of five was taken by a working man. The trouble and time which was required to bring an invention into notice was generally more than it was worth—to say nothing how men's minds were distracted, and drawn away from their proper occupations. But were they, for the sake of benefit to perhaps 500 of these deserving persons, to inflict injury on 20,000,000 or 30,000,000? On the other hand, a foreign manufacturer might defy our Patent Laws, or a foreign inventor might license his own countrymen or grant licences in Belgium or Holland, while he withheld them from our manufacturers. If licences were permitted at all they should be made compulsory. The effect of these restrictions was to diminish competition and so to restrict employment; and, on the other hand, to raise prices so as to diminish consumers. His argument was this—that if the nation got the use of inventions without granting patent rights the price would be considerably lower; and that these rights should not be granted, because there were better means of obtaining the knowledge of use of new inventions. He was free to admit that much might be said for well-constituted Patent Laws; but the real question was whether something better still might not be devised. In other words, the question was whether we should not have a system of money rewards for inventors? Another matter for consideration was whether by international negotiation we might not get rid of the injustice to manufacturers in a country where a patent existed when there was no such patent in other countries. It was this country that had led the way in instituting these monopolies called patents; and he trusted that this country would also lead the way to free trade in such matters without, at the same time, doing any injustice to inventors.
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, he rose at that period of the debate because, without going into the merits of the Patent Laws, it might be convenient for him to state the course which the Government proposed to adopt. Last year and the year before, when asked their views as to the appointment of a Committee, proposed by the hon. Member for Leith Burgh (Mr. Macfie), the answer of the right hon. Gentleman then President of the Board of Trade and of the Prime Minister was that the Government would be ready to agree to it. The Government had not changed their opinion. It seemed to them that the position of the question was such that it would be very unwise to discourage further inquiry. The Patent Laws were sure not to be left untouched; there was certain to be legislation, or attempts at legislation, with respect to them; indeed, the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Hinde Palmer) had given notice of his intention that very evening to move for leave to bring in a Bill on the subject. On the other hand, it was evident that the question was not ripe for effective legislation without further inquiry. There had been no Committee of the House of Commons on the question since 1864, and the Commission which reported a few years ago had by no means exhausted the subject. He hoped, therefore, the representatives of the various opinions entertained on the question would think it advisable that this inquiry should be held, and that the appointment of the Committee would conduce to the settlement of this long-vexed question.
  MR. G. B. GREGORYsaid, that though not prepared to object to the appointment of a Committee, he was not very sanguine of any beneficial results. We had had inquiries before, and if the state of the Patent Laws was so unsatisfactory as had been described, he saw nothing for it but total abolition. As to what had been said by the Mover of the Committee, that patents should be granted only when three conditions should be fulfilled—namely, that there should be novelty, a sufficient description, and utility—what tribunal could be established to determine things which were matters of opinion? How could any body of men properly determine the question of utility? Then an invention which was not useful now might at a

  1521
  future time, and under other conditions, become useful. The question of utility really must be one of opinion merely, and yet it was to be absolutely decided before a patent could be granted. The number of applications for extension of the 14 years showed that many patents only came into use so closely as not to pay the patentees during the 14 years, and his experience in past time led him to the conclusion that a patent-right was little more valuable to a manufacturer than a trade mark which was now protected.
  MR. MUNDELLAsaid, that our Patent Laws were probably in a more anomalous state than those of any other country, and might be a very proper subject for inquiry. At the same time, he did not see what was to be gained by it. He was convinced the proposed Committee would furnish them with no more information on this subject than they had already received from the Committee of the House of Lords and the Royal Commission which reported in 1864; and there had been various inquiries outside Parliament. He thought, therefore, that the whole subject of the Patent Laws was ripe for legislation. There was no doubt in the country in what direction that legislation should proceed. The evil was a crying and notorious one, and what was wanted was courage on the part of the Law Advisers of the Crown to apply a remedy. His hon. Friend (Mr. Macfie) had cited the case of Switzerland. It was true that Switzerland had refused to establish a Patent Law, and in Holland it had been abolished. But why? There was not a ton of coal or iron in all Switzerland, and she could not construct a machine there. Every machine which the people of Switzerland required had to be imported from a foreign country. Under these circumstances, it was not to be wondered at that she should be willing to steal from France, Germany, and Italy whatever she could to aggrandize her own manufacturing districts. But who ever heard of the artizans of this country going to Switzerland or Holland for employment? He believed the American Patent Law was superior to any which existed in any other country. The cost of a patent to an American inventor, which was guaranteed to him for 17 years, was 35 dollars; while the cost of a patent to an English inventor for 14
  1522
  years was 875 dollars. That was the first great secret of the defect in our Patent Laws; for he agreed with the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Samuelson) that the greater proportion of the inventors in this country were working men; but no working man could pay the enormous cost of a patent, and he was obliged, therefore, to associate himself with the capitalist, who too often made the bargain on terms not of equality or of mutuality. His hon. Friend had referred to the insignificant inventions for which patents were granted in this country—or even for slight improvements on existing inventions. It was said that the Attorney General examined into the matter before he sanctioned the grant of a patent; but he (Mr. Mundella) would engage that if 10 men applied in different terms for a patent for really the same thing, they would all get it. In America, on the other hand, there was a real previous inquiry, as was shown by the fact that last year the Commissioners refused 5,285 applications for patents, this being about 28 per cent of the whole number applied for. So real was the examination, that of 13,000 patents granted about 12,500 were refused in the first instance, and were only granted upon material modifications being made in the specifications. He agreed that there should be reform in the Patent Laws; but he thought that the greatest blow they could inflict on English industry would be to destroy property in inventions. He hoped that the Government would take care that every shade of opinion should be represented upon the Committee. The condemnation of monopolies ought not to extend to patents by which an inventor was allowed to enjoy for a limited period the exclusive use of his own invention. Were they going to deny to the inventors, who for years had devoted themselves to the perfection of machinery, that they had a right of property in that which they had produced? He could point to hundreds of poor men who had risen to affluence through the property they enjoyed in their inventions. Sir David Brewster once said—"If you once open this question you will find that there are other questions opened at the same time;" and there were other rights created by the law besides patent rights. They ought not to go into the inquiry pledged to any particular view of the question, and

  1523
  when the Committee reported, legislation ought immediately to follow.
  MR. STEPHEN CAVEwished to say a few words in excuse of the system of granting patents for inventions, which he would separate altogether from the Patent Laws. The opponents of the system seemed to take this position, that the law was such a hopeless deformity on the statute book that no amendment could make it any longer tolerable, and this appeared to be the conclusion of the Commission which sat in 1864, which, he agreed with the President of the Board of Trade, seemed not to go into the root of the matter, but to make certain recommendations of a palliative nature, and to conclude, as if in despair, with an indirect condemnation of the system. So, again, the Law Officers of the Crown—if they followed one of the most eminent of them the hon. Member for Richmond—seemed desirous of getting rid, at a very considerable sacrifice of income, of what they could not but consider an abuse. He hoped the Committee would not deem themselves so much bound by this weight of authority as not to take an independent course; but that they would weigh well the advantages of the present system, and the possibility of amending the laws which regulate it, before they decided to sweep it away altogether. We were too apt in this country to swing like the pendulum from one extreme of opinion to the other, and the British public, feeling the evils of the present practice of taking out patents for every conceivable thing, from a telegraph or steam-engine to the collar of a shirt or the button of a glove—feeling the mischief of trivial, useless, and fraudulent inventions, so called, were just now in a humour to make a clean sweep of the whole system. He could not see the distinction, on principle, between copyrights and patents for inventions, though he admitted that the inconvenience they might occasion to the public might be great in one case, and scarcely appreciable in the other. He could see no reason, on principle, for refusing protection in one case more than in the other, unless we were prepared to say that the owner of any kind of property ought to surrender it to the public, when the public fancied it, without compensation. It should be remembered that the proprietor in this case could protect himself by keeping his invention
  1524
  secret. Who could say that many of the arts which were now lost might not have been preserved if there had been rewards to inventors for communicating their discoveries in earlier days? Might not the everburning lamps of the Rosicrucians; the old art of painting on glass; the artists' colours of Flanders and Tuscany, as vivid now as they were 500 years ago, have become the common property of the world? His impression was that at the root of all the mischief of the present Patent Laws lay the want of a proper tribunal, the members of which, combining legal and special knowledge, should refuse patents which ought to be refused, and, if they did not constitute the Court before whom disputed cases were tried, should act as assessors to the Judge who tried them. He could hardly imagine a system more calculated to enhance the evils complained of than one which, admitting almost every claim, left the opposition to interested individuals, and committed delicate and difficult questions to a jury hopelessly puzzled by counsel. No one could deny the hardship to manufacturers of having to buy up a mass of obstructive patents of modifications of machinery which would naturally occur to those engaged in working it, and of patents which, like bubble companies, were only meant to be bought off. We knew how long the best sewing machine was excluded from this country, and annoyance and obstruction had arisen from patents for various modes of making sugar, the principle of which had long been known and acted upon in the Colonies. He was most desirous to stop this levying of black mail, which might be done by better previous examination and a more competent Court for the decision of cases. He could not, however, reconcile it to himself to take away from the poor inventor what was so often his only possession, and to which he was as fully entitled as the manufacturer to his trade mark, without at least trying the experiment whether a tribunal could not be constituted which would be able to confine the granting of patents to cases of great ingenuity and merit and great public utility. Such a tribunal would cost the country nothing; there need only be a transfer of those fees now paid to the Law Officers, besides which, there was a surplus fund of from £40,000 to £60,000 a-year now paid into the Ex-

  1525
  chequer. He had no great faith in Government rewards to inventors. However carefully dispensed, they would give rise, as selection of another kind probably would, to great dissatisfaction. The Committee should bear in mind two things—first, that an attempt to amend the Patent Laws, even if it failed, would only cause a brief delay, after which a proposal for their abolition would command, in a much greater degree, the public assent than if forced on at the present moment; and, secondly, that the system of granting patents, if not the cause of, was at any rate contemporaneous with, greater activity and fertility of invention, and that in the most useful and important directions, than had been recorded at any former period of the history of the world.
  MR. SAMUDAthought that an investigation of the point would reveal the fact that, on the whole, inventors were losers by their inventions, and this was a point which required very careful looking to, and if inventors gained nothing while the public lost, our system of patents was a failure. He would much like to see the inventors protected in their inventions if this could be done without disadvantage to the public; but he confessed that his doubts as to this being possible were, as in Mr. Cobden's case, "continually growing." The effect of patents, as a general rule, was to embarrass the true inventor, and to give—not a great, but still to some extent—an advantage to an unfair inventor; for whenever an invention was patented which attracted public notice a number of persons made it their business to apply for patents so worded as to interfere seriously with the results which the inventor might have obtained and be working out. If some plan could be devised for preventing the grant of patents to adventurers of this sort, and which were generally known as "fishing patents," which blocked the way of the true inventor, and were only applied for that they might be bought out of the way, and if at the same time you could insure some reward to the real inventor, there would be much to be said for the patent system; otherwise patents would be much better abolished altogether. In any revision of the present Patent Laws, he thought it indispensable to require the full and complete specifications to be lodged at the time of applying for
  1526
  the patent, and thus do away with all limit of time for complete and subsequent specification as now, and again it would be most important to revise and restrict the subjects of patent, and not allow a trifling variation in combination of old and well-known appliances to be patentable. Some such changes as these might work advantageously. He was, however, quite opposed to a special tribunal, sitting in judgment, on the novelty and usefulness of the patent applied for. That must be left wholly to the care and responsibility of the patentee.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, he quite agreed that this Committee should be appointed without any foregone conclusion. It should be free to inquire into the great question whether or not patents should be altogether abolished—a point which was not referred to the Commission of 1864—and, if not, what alteration and improvement could be made in the law? He would not disguise from the House that he very much concurred in the concluding paragraph of the Report referred to—that some of the evils complained of were inherent in the nature of the Patent Laws, and must be considered as the price which the public paid for their use. But, at the same time, he thought that the evils of the Patent Laws were very much exaggerated by the hon. Member for Leith (Mr. Macfie); and he would call the hon. Member as a witness against himself. The hon. Member was asked whether he had personally experienced any inconvenience from the 400 patents that existed in his own trade? and he replied—"Not in the smallest degree." Therefore, he (the Attorney General) could not help thinking that the views that had been expressed on that part of the subject were much exaggerated. No doubt manufacturers had an objection to new inventions, because they found it inconvenient when machinery, that had cost them much money, became out of date, and had to be replaced by newer inventions; but, on the whole, he must say—though he did not wish to prejudge the question—that his impression was against the abolition of the Patent Laws. The object of those laws was the benefit of the public. What were the advantages supposed to be conferred by them? Their purpose was to encourage men to invent, and to publish their inventions. Suppose there were no Patent Laws,

  1527
  what would be the consequences? Let the House remember that there were three classes of inventors—the purely scientific men, who made discoveries from the love of truth, and were quite willing to throw them open to the world; the manufacturers who invented for their own benefit, and took uncommonly good care to keep their inventions secret; and a third class, which the Patent Laws had called into existence—namely, professional inventors, whose avowed business was to gain by their discoveries, and who naturally not only published the results of their efforts, but made very vigorous attempts to overcome obstacles to their general adoption. This class were the creatures of the Patent Laws, and he believed they owed the greater part of their most valuable inventions to them. It seemed to him that it would be a strong and unwise course to destroy those laws, and with them to destroy the class. What were the objections to the Patent Laws? That their influence had been too great—that they had produced a surfeit of inventions, good, bad, and indifferent. On the same ground a farmer might complain that his manure had been too vigorous in its operation—that in the heavy crop of corn there were so many weeds. Well, the weeds were there no doubt; but could he have had the wheat without them? His opinion was that the inconveniences occasioned by bad and useless and obstructive inventions were more than counterbalanced by the good wrought by the useful ones. But if the Patent Laws were to remain, their mode of operation was susceptible of great improvement. The tribunal for the trial of patent cases might be amended by abolishing the jury and substituting scientific assessors. It was a further question, whether it would or would not be well to establish a special tribunal for the trial of patent cases? The process of repealing patents might be facilitated and cheapened. There was another point that had not yet been touched upon. As the law now stood the provisional specifications alone were liable to supervision. As soon as the inventor had filed them it was the duty of the Law Officers to see that they clearly and fully described the nature of the invention. If satisfied on that point the patent was granted, and the inventor could afterwards file any complete specification he
  1528
  pleased, without any control or supervision whatever. Now, it seemed to him that the filing the complete specification, fully and clearly describing the nature of the invention, should be a condition precedent to the granting of the patent, and not subsequent to it. Indeed, he was disposed to think that by doing away with the provisional specification altogether they would get rid of half the useless inventions now patented. There was another question in reference to the nature of the preliminary investigation prior to granting the patent. It was confined, in ordinary cases and in the absence of opposition, to seeing that the provisional specifications clearly described one invention, and only one; but those persons were in error who thought that the task was an easy one. He and his learned Friend the Solicitor General had each a clerk exclusively employed in the work, who reported to them. It sometimes happened that specifications were sent back again and again for correction. His duty involved him in an extensive correspondence with inventors, which was not always of the most agreeable kind, for when they insisted in putting forward inaccurate specifications he always refused to pass them. If they did not describe in his opinion a real invention, he took it on himself to refuse the patent—he had done it very often. Again, persons often tried to crowd half-a-dozen things in one specification—a practice that had to be vigilantly repressed. Frequent attempts were also made to conceal the nature of the patent by the title; but he considered it to be absolutely necessary that the title should give due notice of the nature of the specification, and he always took care that that was done; otherwise persons who might desire to oppose the invention, on the ground that it was not a really original one, would be at a serious disadvantage. An important question arose, however—whether the examination should not be carried further, and comprise, in every case, an inquiry as to the novelty and utility of the invention? A different tribunal would be requisite if that were done; but if the examination was not to be extended beyond its present limits, he thought that the existing tribunal was sufficient. The hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) had described the working of the system in America. It

  1529
  was, however, right that the House should be in possession of the other side of the picture—because it was not true that England in this matter had much to learn from the Americans, or that the preliminary inquiry was of any advantage. With reference to preliminary examinations by the Court, he could not do better than cite the testimony of Mr. Carpmael, who said—
  "If such were the practice" (preliminary examination) "there would be many cases of trades and individuals in trades constantly opposing, so that none but a rich inventor could ever hope to get a patent against such a phalanx of opposition."
  And in answer to the question,
  "Would there be any disadvantages arising from it?" he said, "I should say that it was all disadvantage, and no possible benefit."
  He might also call attention to what had been said by Mr. Woodcrift, at the head of the Patent Office, who said—
  "The Americans pay about £23,000 a-year for preliminary examination, and they are very much dissatisfied with it."
  He added—
  "The system of preliminary examination has been tried and found wanting. It is in operation in Prussia, but does not give satisfaction. It was tried in France, Austria, Sardinia, and Belgium; but, being most unsatisfactory, was abandoned in each country. It is now going on in America at an enormous expense, and the Chief Commissioner wrote to me to say that it was a very inadequate system, and a very unfair one."
  He would also read an extract from The New York Tribune, which appeared in The Scientific American, December 3, 1870, as follows:—
  "The New York Tribune, in a recent editorial referring to patents and inventions, says our Patent Laws seem to need an amendment which will assimilate them in an important respect to the British. The Patent Office here, as there, should simply register claims to have made inventions or discoveries in their order, without undertaking to pronounce upon their novelty or value, and all questions thence arising should be taken directly to the Courts, and there settled. This is the British rule on the subject, and it is much better than ours. Let the inventor make what claims he will, and let the Court determine their validity. Our laws give the Commissioner and his examiners entirely too much power—power which the best functionaries might abuse through defect of information or error in judgment; which the worse certainly do and will use most unrighteously."
  He had called attention to these extracts in order that there might be no foregone conclusion in favour of this inquiry. It was just as well it should not be supposed that the arguments were entirely
  1530
  on one side. Of course, they all agreed that it was extremely desirable that the Committee should represent both sides and different opinions of the House. He trusted the inquiry would be comprehensive and satisfactory, and that it would furnish very valuable data for legislation.
  MR. HINDE PALMER, who had given Notice of Motion for leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Law relating to Patents for Inventions, said, that the Bill of which he had given Notice had been prepared by the light of the information derived from the previous investigations that had been held into the subject of the Patent Laws; and his opinion was that if his Bill, after being read the second time, was referred to a Select Committee, or went into Committee in the ordinary course, it might easily be made amply sufficient to meet all the objections now urged against the Patent Laws and their administration. What he desired to see was their amendment, not their abolition. When he reflected that the greatness of England was so eminently attributable to her manufacturing genius, which depended so much on her improved machinery, and that the improvements in her machinery were coeval with the existence of the Patent Laws, he felt that they ought not lightly to be abolished. The Attorney General had already refuted his hon. Friend the Member for Leith (Mr. Macfie) out of his own mouth; but he had omitted to state that the hon. Member had solicited the opinion of a number of leading manufacturers on the question of useless and obstructive inventions, and they had declared that little or no inconvenience had been occasioned by them. In a former debate, the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) cited, among the authorities in favour of the abolition of the patent right, the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Platt). But that hon. Gentleman, in presiding, in January, 1870, at a meeting of the Manchester Institute of Engineers, had said that, though there were defects in the Patent Laws, there was no reason why they should not be amended, instead of being abolished. Again, while the Royal Commissioners said there were inherent objections in the system, which they did not see could well be got rid of, yet they did not go so far as to recommend abolition; which

  1531
  Sir William Fairbairn, one of their number, and than whom there could be no better authority, thought would be ruinous to the industrial prosperity and inventive talent of the country. Although he signed that Report, it was with the qualification that, in his opinion, it was essential to the wants of the community and to the progress of practical science that the laws should be maintained. While his hon. Friend the Member for Leith (Mr. Macfie) was anxious for a Committee, with the view of reporting in favour of abolition, he (Mr. Hinde Palmer) hoped the Committee would not be of such a complexion as would indicate a foregone conclusion. The working men, from whom had sprung many of the grandest inventions which had enriched and improved this country, were mainly interested in the question. A meeting of skilled artizans had recently been held in Aldersgate Street, presided over by the hon. and learned Member for Richmond, the hon. Member for Leith being present, and both of them advocating abolition. Mr. Galloway, of Newcastle, was to have proposed that the Patent Laws were a hindrance to genius, science, and progress; but, after the discussion, Mr. Galloway moved that protection was absolutely necessary by which the inventor should be secured a legitimate right in his inventions—a resolution which was carried almost unanimously, only two hands having been held up against it. That, he (Mr. Hinde Palmer) believed, was the opinion of the working classes throughout the country, the vast majority of whom were against abolition. Then Mr. Stuart Mill, in his well-known work on Political Economy, had expressed his opinion to the effect that—
  "It would be a gross immorality in the law to set everybody free to use a person's work, without his consent and without giving him an equivalent, because it would be practically making the men of brains still more than at present the needy retainers and dependents of the men of money-bags."
  But the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) himself was of opinion in 1851 that it was as complete a fallacy as was ever uttered to say that the grant of a patent was a concession of monopoly, and he said that patents should be dealt with the same as copyright, to which they were analogous. The Bill which he (Mr. Hinde Palmer) had prepared would grapple with the present
  1532
  defects in the Patent Laws, and if the Committee were granted it would supersede the progress of the measure. He should, nevertheless, persevere with it. The Bill, indeed, might be referred to that Committee, who might find it a very useful foundation for the amendment of the laws. It had not been drawn with the view of providing the substitute which was a favourite idea of the hon. Member for Leith, who thought inventors might be rewarded by the State, instead of being granted patents. That was, in his (Mr. Hinde Palmer's) opinion, an utter fallacy, as shown by the present Earl of Derby, the Chairman of the Patent Law Commission, who, at the British Association in Manchester in 1861, pointed out that no tribunal could be found satisfactorily to decide the claims of inventors, some being rewarded too highly, and vice versâ; while the value and merit of other inventions might not be recognized till after the death of their authors. The Prime Minister himself, too, last July had said that such a system, besides being a heavy demand upon the public purse, would lead to universal confusion. If the House adopted improvements in the existing laws it would, meet, he (Mr. Hinde Palmer) was sure, all the objections on which the abolitionists relied. Instead of continuing the preliminary investigation in the hands of the Law Officers of the Crown, his Bill would entrust that duty to three special Commissioners, as was done so successfully in America—
  MR. SPEAKERsaid, the hon. Member was not in Order in entering into a detailed description of a Bill which was not yet before the House, and which was on the Paper for a later hour. The hon. Member's remarks should be reserved for his Motion.
  MR. HINDE PALMERresuming, expressed his hope that, in the interests of commerce and manufacture, as well as skilled artizans, the House would pause before it did anything to sanction the total abolition of patent rights, and thereby deny all protection to inventive genius.
  MR. PLATT, as a patentee and user of patent inventions, avowed himself in favour of the Patent Laws, and that all objections would disappear if a proper preliminary examination were instituted. It was quite notorious

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  that patents were often granted, embodying improvements similar to those already patented; and it was almost impossible for the Law Officers, in regard to matters of a technical character, to find out the distinctions from the language of the specifications. Owing to her patent system, England was now the test market for inventions, so that English manufacturers were often in possession of important improvements many years before those of any other country. That was a great advantage. He believed it was in the interest of the public that patents should be retained, believing that their tendency was to reduce the cost of manufacture. Many parties engaged in the manufacture of patented articles were strangers to the invention—as for example, Mr. Bessemer, in his invention in regard to steel, had never any connection with the manufacture of steel, and without the security of the Patent Laws the probability was that we should never have heard of that invention — at least for many more years to come. It did not follow that by the abolition of patents they would abolish secresy. He knew a gentleman who had an invention which he kept to himself for 25 years, and this monopoly he would perhaps retain for another 25 years. But under the Patent Laws an invention was certain to become the property of the public after a certain limited time. He maintained then that, with a proper discrimination, the granting of patents was a benefit to the public. What was called a combination patent in a mechanical sense was one of the most dangerous that could be granted. In such cases the parties never disclosed the parts which were new until perhaps in the course of some trial, at a ruinous cost to a manufacturer; and, indeed, it was possible, even in the course of the trial, that the combination might be changed. To prevent such an abuse, the parts in the specifications which were claimed as new should be coloured to distinguish them; and he agreed also that it would be well to do away with provisional specifications, and insist on complete specifications at the time the patent was granted. As to the trials of patent causes, these were almost mockeries. It was next to impossible that the Judges should understand the technical questions that came before them without the help of experts; but if experts sat with, them,
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  no other alteration in the tribunal would be necessary.
  MR. B. SAMUELSON, in reply, said, he would give every assistance to make the Committee perfectly impartial.
  Resolution agreed, to.
  Select Committee appointed, "to inquire into the Law and practice and the effect of grants of Letters Patent for Inventions."—(Mr. Samuelson.)
  And, on March 16, Committee nominated as follows:—Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Mr. GORDON, Mr. ARTHUR PEEL, Mr. GEORGE GREGORY, Mr. HINDE PALMER, Mr. STEWART HARDY, Mr. MACFIE, Mr. CAWLEY, Mr. PLATT, Mr. HICK, Mr. MUNDELLA, Mr. MELLOR, Mr. JAMES HOWARD, Mr. ELLIOT, Captain BEAUMONT, Mr. JOSHUA FIELDEN, Mr. DILLWYN, Mr. ORR EWING, Mr. PIM, Mr. LAIRD, and Mr. SAMUELSON:—Power to send for persons, papers, and records; Seven to be the quorum.
  And, on March 17, Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, Mr. LOPES, Mr. ANDREW JOHNSTON, Colonel WILMOT added.

NATIONAL DEBT.—RESOLUTION.
MR. CANDLISHrose to call attention to our National Debt, and to move a Resolution—
"That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient to make early provision in the Estimates for reducing the Debt not less than £10,000,000 a-year."
It was, he considered, a solemn obligation of the country to get rid of the National Debt. On a former occasion the hon. Member for Knaresborough (Mr. Illingworth) said that as long as money could be borrowed by the State at 3¼ per cent, and employed at 5 per cent, it would be an improvident arrangement to pay off the National Debt. Of that statement he disputed the accuracy. Real property, of which half of the wealth of the country consisted, did not pay, on the average, more than 3 per cent; and railways, in which about £500,000,000 were invested, only yielded an average rate of interest of about 4 per cent. Taxes, again, were not ordinarily paid with money borrowed for the purpose. On all grounds, therefore, he demurred to the statement of the hon. Member for Knaresborough. Another favourite theory was that the National Debt afforded a secure investment to persons unwilling or unsuited to invest money in business avocations. Probably the whole number of our public creditors did not exceed 150,000; but, surely, it would not be said that their wishes and convenience were to be considered at the expense of the 30,000,000

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forming the population of this country? It was but reasonable to deal with the National Debt in precisely the same way one would with private property—namely, discharge it from any incumbrance as soon as the means of doing so came within reach. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech delivered last year, admitted most distinctly that it was our duty to keep an eye on the National Debt and to go on reducing it. Accordingly, the right hon. Gentleman concurred in the following Resolution, which was adopted by the House on the Motion of the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Lambert):—
"That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable substantially and gradually to reduce the National Debt."
As, however, the engagement then entered into by the House and the Government was indefinite, and might result in nothing, he (Mr. Candlish) had ventured to bring the subject once more under the notice of Parliament. During the last 40 years they had literally done nothing in the way of paying off the Debt. On the accession of William IV., in 1830, it amounted to £784,000,000; on the accession of the Queen in 1837 it had increased to £787,000,000, and at the present time it stood at £801,000,000. Between 1832 and 1868 the Debt had seemingly increased by £27,000,000, though he believed there was not an actual increase, because, prior to 1855, the Government made no appraisement of the capital value of Terminable Annuities, and their value, therefore, did not enter into the account of our National Debt. If these were taken into account, he thought it would be found that the Debt had remained substantially the same. In 1855 the present head of the Government took a more rational view of the manner in which the Terminable Annuities should be dealt with, and appraised them, adding the capital value to the Funded and Unfunded Debt. That course had been pursued since, and they were now included in the present Debt of £801,000,000. It seemed a matter of great regret that a reign so illustrious for legislative and fiscal achievements should have been barren of any effort to pay off the National Debt. It was perfectly true that the Debt had had its ups and downs during that period; but it was in the last degree deplorable that such petty incidents as
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the expedition to Persia, China, and Abyssinia should have arrested the purpose of the nation to pay off that heavy national obligation. It might be asked—"Can the Debt be paid?" Of course, there was no obligation unless there was the power. But we had the power. We had utterly lost sight of the vastly-increased wealth of the country by means of which the Debt might be reduced. We had, indeed, displayed so much apathy on the subject, that we might seem gradually to have acquiesced in the notion that it could not be done. To pay off of the Debt had become a standing type of the impossible. But what had our fathers done? Surely, in energy, and effort, and self-denial, we were still their equals. Now, between 1815 and 1820, our fathers paid for interest £31,500,000, and as principal £5,100,000—making a total of £36,600,000 per annum. Between 1820 and 1830 the average annual payment was £29,440,000 as interest, and £4,300,000 as principal—making a sum total of £33,740,000 per annum. Yet in 1870 we only paid for interest and on account of Terminable Annuities £27,000,000, and as principal £4,000,000—or a total of £31,000,000 a-year. Now, while we had been thus diminishing our payments on account of this Debt, the population of the country had been increasing. Our population was 18,000,000 in 1811, 21,000,000 in 1821, 24,000,000 in 1831, 27,000,000 in 1841, 29,000,000 in 1861, and last year it was estimated at 30,830,000. He was aware that it might be said that increase of population did not necessarily mean increase of wealth. But during all this period the wealth of the nation had likewise gone on increasing. According to the estimates made by Professor Levi, an eminent authority well known to the House, the wealth of the country in 1811 was £2,100,000,000, or £116 per head of the population; in 1841, £4,000,000,000, or £150 per head; in 1861, £6,000,000,000, or £206 per head; and in 1870, it had advanced to £7,000,000,000, or £230 per head, and those calculations were substantially confirmed by Mr. Dudley Baxter. With that increase of capital we had become relatively to our Debt richer—it had become less relatively to our means. In 1801 the Debt was 26 per cent of our capital; in 1841 it was 19 per cent; in 1861 it was down to 13½ per cent; in

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1870 it had fallen to 11 per cent. Relatively to the population our Debt in 1821 was £39 10 s. per head; in 1831 it was £32 10 s. per head, and last year it was only £25 10 s. per head. As our property had increased so also our annual income had increased. In 1801 our annual income was estimated at £230,000,000, or £14 7s. per head; in 1841 it was £450,000,000, or £17 6s. per head; in 1861 it was £600,000,000, or £20 15 s. per head; and in 1870 it was reckoned at upwards of £700,000,000, or £23 per head. Our total income for one year was now nearly equal to the whole capital of our National Debt. Our growing wealth, too, had been evidenced by our improved living. As we have got richer we have lived in a better style. In 1820 we consumed 17lbs. of sugar per head, and in 1869 it rose to 43lbs.; in 1820 we consumed 1lb 4oz. of tea per head, and in 1869 it rose to 3lb. 10oz.; in 1820 the consumption of tobacco was 12oz. per head, and in 1869 it rose to 20oz. per head; in 1820 the consumption of wine was a quarter of a gallon per head, and in 1869 it was three-fifths of a gallon. In 1821 we paid 29 s. per head for interest; in 1831 23 s. per head; and in 1870 we paid only 17 s. 6d. per head. Whilst the interest on the Debt had been diminishing, and our means increasing, the general taxation of the country had been reduced. From 1811 to 1821 it was £3 14 s. per head, and in 1870 it was £2 5s. per head; but in point of fact it was now under £2 per head. In 1801 we paid 8¾ per cent of our income for interest; in 1840 we paid 6½ per cent, and in 1870 a little over 3·8 per cent. Five per cent of our income, or 1½ per cent less than we paid for interest alone in 1841, would realize a sum of £35,000,000 a-year—a sum sufficient to pay the present, and extinguish the entire Debt in less than 40 years. Comparing ourselves with our ancestors, it was clear that our ability to pay off these burdens had greatly increased, and at the same time we had been diminishing our contributions. And let us, for a moment, compare ourselves with two other countries—the one the great Republic of the West, and the other a small kingdom in the East. The United States and Denmark furnished illustrations of what might be done in reducing National Debt. Since September, 1865, in the United States,
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a sum of $437,000,000 had been paid off, being at the rate of £16,000,000 sterling per annum. In the year ending the 1st of March last £23,000,000 sterling were paid off. In connection with that fact it was important to inquire what were the relative means of the two countries. From the Report of the Special Commissioners for Revenue in the United States in 1870, it appeared that the wealth of that country was estimated at £4,700,000,000, or £120 per head of the population, whilst ours was estimated at £7,000,000,000, or £230 per head; being very nearly double that of the United States. Were we less capable than the United States of sacrifice and self-denial, or were we not so high principled in reference to our obligations? If we had made the same sacrifices as the United States we should in the past 5½ years have paid off about £30,000,000 of Debt per annum, or a total of £165,000,000. Then one word respecting the little kingdom of Denmark. In 1867 the Debt of Denmark was £14,500,000, and in 1869 it was £13,200,000, having been reduced £1,300,000 within that short space of time, being at the rate of 7s. 6d. per head per annum of the population. If we had paid in the same proportion we should have paid off £11,500,000 per annum. When France entered into war with Germany, she had a Debt of £600,000,000 sterling; he presumed there was no exaggeration in assuming her Debt to be now £900,000,000 sterling, which would entail an annual payment of between £40,000,000 and £50,000,000 for interest alone. If France was capable of enduring such an amount of heavy taxation for the interest of her Debt it was not too much to expect the people of this country, who were certainly as rich as the people of France, to be able to pay £35,000,000 a-year for principal and interest. The Debt of Prussia when she began the war was £100,000,000 sterling: this had probably been increased by another £100,000,000. She would, however, receive £200,000,000 war indemnity from France during the next three years, which sum would extinguish the Debt of Prussia. Which European Power was now stimulating us to enhanced Estimates and increased armaments? It could not be France; and if there were any reason at all for our augmentations it must be appre-

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hension of Prussia—a country who had neither the desire nor the power to land a single soldier on our shores. But if it was otherwise, and we had to enter into a warlike conflict with Prussia, she, at the end of three years from the present time, would be free from Debt, whilst we should enter upon the strife with a Debt of £800,000,000. The question arose—How was the sum of £35,000,000 a-year to be raised? Many ingenious schemes had been suggested for paying off the National Debt. One of which was the reclamation of waste lands here and in the Colonies; another that the State should become its own banker; and another that it should withdraw all its gold circulation, and substitute for it an inconvertible paper currency: but all those schemes were as inadequate as they were ingenious. He knew of no other feasible scheme than the simple one of raising the money by the old-fashioned mode of taxation, and paying off the Debt in hard cash. But was it necessary to increase our taxation in order to do this? The right hon. Gentleman last year was able to put a very glowing Financial Statement before the country, and he at once both answered this question, and gave the key to the position which we then enjoyed in two short sentences. The right hon. Gentleman said—
"I need say nothing of the reductions in the estimated expenditure for the Army and Navy. They speak for themselves, and as the Committee will perceive, it is mainly to them that we owe the financial prosperity which I hope I am not too sanguine in saying now exists."—[3 Hansard, cc. 1613.]
And the right hon. Gentleman added—"The secret of all this financial success is the simplest in the world—it is nothing on earth but economy." The prescription he (Mr. Candlish) would recommend was exactly the one adopted by the Government up to last year—that we should set ourselves to work rigidly to economize. But was there room for economy? A few figures would speedily show. From 1831 to 1840 the Army and Navy of this country cost, on an average, £13,400,000 a-year; from 1841 to 1850 these two services cost £15,800,000 a-year; and during the three years immediately preceding the Russian War, their cost united was only £16,000,000 a-year. But last year the Army cost £15,851,000, and
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the Navy £9,781,000, or together, £25,632,000; being an increase of £9,632,000 over the cost of the Army and Navy just previous to the Russian War. Within those two margins of cost in 1853 and 1871, the resting-place of efficiency combined with economy might, he believed, be found. Then, again, annuities, pensions, and compensations for the non-effective service amounted to no less than £5,300,000 a-year; and though that sum could not be reduced in hot haste by the mere exercise of the will, still there was room for a large, gradual, and early diminution in those enormous figures. A very considerable reduction might be made in these various items, in order to deal with the National Debt; but even if we had to increase our taxation to do it, that taxation, large as it was, was neither excessive nor onerous. The estimate of expenditure for the current year was £67,113,000, and that was generally accepted as the measure of the taxation imposed on the country; but the idea was very much exaggerated, for several of the items coming into this total amount did not spring from taxation. The whole of our Miscellaneous Estimates, amounting to £3,200,000, were not in the nature of taxation at all. There was, in these Miscellaneous Estimates, £1,000,000 for the sale of old stores from the naval and military Departments; £773,000 as a contribution from the revenues of India for military charges; £350,000 for extra receipts in the civil Departments; £21,000 derived from the London, Dublin, and Edinburgh Gazettes; and £594,000 from fees in public offices for specific services rendered. None of these items were derived from taxation. Then there was a sum of £4,650,000 obtained from the Post Office, and about £500,000 from the Woods and Forests, which, with other items, made a total amount of £8,675,000 to be deducted from this gross expenditure as the sum not contributed by taxation, and leaving a balance of only about £58,000,000 as the sum raised by taxation. But of that £58,000,000 at least £30,000,000 was the product of taxes on luxuries—spirits, malt, wine, and tobacco; the total receipts on these and other articles of luxury amounted to about £40,000,000, not a farthing of which could, be said, to press upon the industry of the country. We were not,

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therefore, so over-taxed as to be unable to deal with our formidable weight of Debt. If the Government would set itself to the work of retrenchment in the expenditure on the Army and Navy, and curtail the non-effective charges, he did not think it would be necessary to add anything whatever to the taxation of the country to reduce the National Debt. But if it was made to appear absolutely essential, he thought the country generally would acquiesce in the imposition of an extra 2d. of income tax for the purpose of achieving the great object he had in view. It would redound to the honour of the present household - suffrage Parliament if it took up and carried out the work commenced before the Reform Act, and abandoned by the middle-class Parliaments from 1833. A great advantage accruing from the payment of the National Debt would be that the vast capital its payment would set free would find employment in recruiting the industry of the country; but a yet greater good would be gained to the country by the moral strength resulting from the self-sacrifice necessary to attain so great an end. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution.
SIR JOHN LUBBOCKseconded the Motion. He said, national indebtedness is one of the three great dangers which threaten Europe — namely, pauperism, war, and debt. Poor Laws, in many respects, appeal to our best sympathies against our better judgment. Military enthusiasm rouses some of our deepest passions against our calmer reason; while, as regards Debt, the love of present case stifles the voice of prudence and the sterner dictates of duty. Most European nations had immensely increased their Debts during the last 50 years. Thus, North Germany, in 1815, owed £100,000,000; in 1870, £150,000,000; France, in 1815, owed £70,000,000; in 1870, £518,000,000; Austria, in 1815, owed £99,000,000; in 1870, £300,000,000;Russia, in 1815, owed £80,000,000; in 1870, £300,000,000; Spain, in 1815, owed £100,000,000; in 1870, £225,000,000; Italy, in 1815, owed £50,000,000; in 1870, £257,000,000; and the United States, in 1815, owed £25,000,000; and in 1870, £477,000,000, making a total of £524,000,000 in 1815, and £2,227,000,000 in 1870; and if they included other countries the grand total,
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according to Mr. Dudley Baxter, was no less than £3,845,000,000 in 1870, against £1,530,000,000 in 1815, showing an increase of no less than £2,300,000,000, of which by far the greater part had been incurred during the last 20 years. Their own Debt, indeed, had, happily, not increased during the last half-century, but it was even now much heavier per head than that of any other country. Thus, in England the interest per head was 17 s. 5d.; in the United States, 12 s. 6d.; in Holland, 12 s. 3d.; in Italy, 11 s. 10 d.; in France, 8s. 7d.; in Austria, 7s. 3d.; in Spain, 7s.; in Belgium, 6s. 10 d.; in Russia, 2s. 10 d.; and in North Germany, 2s. 9d. per head. Moreover, if they looked further back in England's history they found that the Debt had, on the whole, been increasing with terrible rapidity. In 1689 it was £664,000; in 1691, £3,130,000; in 1700, £9,407,000; in 1720, £54,000,000; in 1750, £77,000,000; in 1775, £127,000,000; in 1800, £471,000,000; and in 1815, £861,000,000, without including the value of the Terminable Annuities. From that date it began to decline. In 1825 it was £810,000,000; in 1830, £785,000,000; in 1840, £789,000,000; and in 1850 it was £787,000,000. In the Crimean War it rose, and in 1858 amounted to £805,000,000. The subsequent figures were not comparable with the preceding, because they contained the calculated value of the Terminable Annuities. The total Debt, then, in 1860, was £821,900,000; and in 1870, £800,700,000. Political enonomists had long urged the necessity of reducing Debt in times of peace. The practice of funding, said Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, "has gradually enfeebled every State which has adopted it." David Hume, in his Essay on Public Credit, said, roundly, that if the nation does not destroy the Debt, the Debt will destroy the nation. More recent writers, as, for instance, Mr. Dudley Baxter and Mr. De Meschin, have taken the same view. Sir George Lewis expressed his conviction that—
"It is certainly incumbent upon Parliament to take such means as are at its disposal to prevent us from imposing a perpetual burden upon our successors."
The present First Lord of the Treasury, during the Crimean War, made a noble effort to meet the expenses of the war

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out of the services of the year. Speaking of the National Debt, in. 1854, he said, in eloquent terms—
"Any man who has had to do with the administration of the finances of the country must feel how many sore evils it hag given rise to—how many grievous burdens you are compelled to keep upon the people, because of the demands of the enormous, almost overpowering, maw of our Debt; how many good works you are obliged to defer, or, if commenced, brought to a stand; how you are obliged to narrow and pare; and cut down the assistance you are desirous of offering to civilized and honest pursuits, because of the immense and crushing weight of this great, permanent, and standing Debt."—[8 Hansard, cxxx. 373.]
The present Chancellor of the Exchequer had more than once spoken in similar terms; and no wonder. The average interest on the Debt since 1815 had been £30,000,000, in round numbers, making a total of £1,600,000,000 paid since that date for interest alone. In 30 years they would again have paid an amount equal to the whole Debt; and yet, as far as such payments were concerned, they would still owe as much as ever. In fact, not paying the Debt practically meant paying it over and over again. But it was said that if the money which would be required to reduce the National Debt was left to fructify in the pockets of the people, they would make a better use of it, because it would then be applied to increase the national wealth. This argument, if good for anything, is good against any reduction of Debt. But it is obvious that, as it has always been found necessary to borrow in times of war, if we do not repay in times of peace, we shall go on increasing our Debt until it crushes us, and national ruin would be only a question of time. Moreover, it must be remembered that taxes were paid out of income, and that the savings of the people were only a fraction of their income. It was estimated in 1866 that out of an income of £650,000,000 a-year the saving was only £140,000,000. But it was urged that the National Debt was mainly borrowed in Three per Cent Stock, and that individuals can get more than 3 per cent for their money. Three per Cents at 90, however, paid 3⅓, and to that must be added the expense of collecting the sum required for the dividends. The total Revenue last year was £68,850,000, and the expense of collection was £5,000,000. If, then, it cost £5,000,000 to collect £69,000,000, the expense of
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collecting the £27,000,000 required to pay the interest on the National Debt would be £2,000,000; and, consequently, the real annual cost of the National Debt was £29,000,000, and not £27,000,000. It was unnecessary to observe that even this did not fairly represent the cost to the taxpayer, which, even under the best system, was greater than the gross sum received by the State. Without, however, dwelling on this, it was obvious that the real cost of the National Debt was not 3 per cent, but more than 3½ per cent. Now, hon. Members knew that for the last three years the rate of discount on mercantile bills had averaged less than this; depositors in private and joint-stock banks received on an average less. The capital invested in railways, and which amounted to £233,000,000, receives, on an average, barely 3 per cent; and how about land? He should like to ask hon. Gentlemen opposite whether land, after deducting all the local charges, of which the House heard so much a few nights ago, paid a clear 3½ per cent? If this last argument, then, against the repayment of the National Debt broke down—if the arguments in favour of doing so were so strong—then came the practical question—what course ought they to pursue? He need hardly say that he was not going to advocate a sinking fund. No doubt money when allowed to accumulate at compound interest did increase with surprising rapidity. Many proposals to take advantage of this had been made from time to time; and perhaps the most extravagant ever seriously contemplated was that of a Frenchman, M. Ricard, who left 500 livres by will, 100 to accumulate for 100 years, and then to be spent on essays on the lawfulness of interest; 100 to accumulate for 200 years, to form a fund to reward virtue and literary merit; 100 for 300 years, when it could have increased to 226,000,000, to found banks and museums; 100 for 400 years, when it would have amounted to 30,000,000,000, to build 100 towns in France, each with 150,000 inhabitants; 100 for 500 years, when it would have reached four millions of millions, and was to be devoted to various miscellaneous objects—namely, to abolish fees for masses; increase revenues of clergy; maintain all French children till three years of age; found workhouses, hospitals, and asylums; and pay

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off the National Debts of England and France; and, lastly, the surplus was to be spent at the discretion of his executors. A sinking fund was, indeed, proposed now by no one. But neither was our present system satisfactory. We were slightly diminishing our Debt in two ways—by accidental surpluses and by Terminable Annuities. Of the first he need say nothing; but the latter—that was to say, Terminable Annuities—seemed to him to contain many of the objectionable features of a sinking fund. He objected to them on five grounds—1. They must be continued during war, even if we are borrowing at higher rates;2. They tie up the hands of Parliament;3. They are inconvenient to holders, and consequently are an expensive mode of borrowing; but this objection does not, of course, apply to those held by the Government on account of savings banks, &c.4. They assume that the people have not energy or resolution enough to look the Debt boldly in the face; 5. They diminish greatly the moral effect of a reduction of the Debt. Apart from the mode of dealing with the Debt, he maintained that we were not doing enough to reduce it. Taking the most favourable period, we had, since 1857, paid off £35,000,000, being at the rate of considerably less than £3,000,000 a-year. His hon. Friend (Mr. Candlish) had shown how much more had been done by some other countries. To the cases quoted by him he would only add that of Holland, which, from 1850 to 1868, reduced its Debt by £22,000,000, or at the rate of £1,220,000 a-year—equivalent to £10,000,000 in our case. His hon. Friend proposed that we should set aside £10,000,000 a-year to the reduction of our Debt. Now, was that an unreasonable proposition? Adam Smith, writing when the national income was £10,000,000 and our population only one-third of what it was now, proposed to raise the revenue to £15,250,000, and to devote £6,250,000, or much more than one-third of the whole amount, towards the reduction of the Debt. Sir George Lewis, in 1855, thought that £5,000,000 a-year was "little" to devote to that purpose. The right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Exchequer himself said—
"As far as I am concerned I should be very glad if the House would consent to put on a shilling income tax for the reduction of the Debt."
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A shilling income tax would produce far more than £10,000,000. That was what the right hon. Gentleman considered ought to be done. But what had been done? Last year he had a surplus of £4,337,000. Yet he only proposed to devote £337,000 to the reduction of the Debt, and of this paltry amount he postponed £147,000 to the present year. He (Sir John Lubbock) did not deny that the reduction of the sugar duties was a good thing in itself. A free breakfast table would be a great boon; but his idea of a free breakfast table was the table of a man who was not in debt. Cheap tea and cheap coffee were very desirable, but tea which was not paid for was dear at any price. Moreover, he scarcely thought that our Chancellors of the Exchequer realized the inconvenience of continual changes in rates of duty. Great changes, such as those associated with the name of the present Prime Minister, might be great blessings; but constant changes were very injurious to trade. For weeks before a Budget speech we knew in the City that business was deranged, commerce checked, and speculation encouraged. He wished that for some years our Chancellors of the Exchequer would try how little, instead of how much, they could alter. Moreover, he maintained that we had now a favourable opportunity of reducing the Debt. From 1855 to 1869 not less than £23,000,000 of annual taxes had been repealed, and yet we had a surplus amounting to more than £4,000,000, and continually increasing. Under these circumstances, he ventured to urge on the House that the liquidation of Debt was a national duty and a high moral discipline; that it would be an example to other nations, and would influence the action of individuals. If the nation was indifferent to its Debt, how could we expect that private persons would exercise an exceptional prudence? The course he recommended would also greatly strengthen the country in the eyes of foreign nations, and he did not think the sum proposed by his hon. Friend (Mr. Candlish) was excessive. If adopted, the advantage would be soon felt; in three years we should have relieved the country of a permanent burden of £1,000,000 a-year, and many of us might hope to see the Debt reduced within comparatively narrow limits. The Government had a large

1547
majority, and in his judgment deserved their support; but there was a feeling in the country that in some respects they were too humble—that they underrated the power of the country. England was conscious of strength, and, though not anxious to be feared, was determined to be respected, or, at least, to deserve respect. Now, as regarded the National Debt, he had, he thought, shown that, in the opinion of our greatest political economists—nay, in that of the Government itself—the Debt ought to be reduced, that we had the means of doing so, and that the amount proposed by his hon. Friend was not excessive. If it was to be maintained that the reduction of Debt was inexpedient, let us consider the arguments on which this opinion was based; but it was evident that, on the contrary, it was admitted by all competent authorities that the Debt ought to be reduced; then let us not trifle with this duty—let us not be satisfied with paltry amounts and accidental surpluses, but let us at once make such an effort as might be necessary to effect our object, and let us do so on a scale worthy of a great, a wealthy, and a prudent people.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
"That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient to make early provision in the Estimates for reducing the debt not less than £10,000,000 a-year."—(Mr. Candlish.)
MR. J. WHITEwas quite sure that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer adopted the advice of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish), or that so feelingly addressed to him by the hon. Baronet the Member for Maidstone (Sir John Lubbock), he would soon lose the majority he had at his back. He demurred entirely to the comparison which the hon. Member for Sunderland had made of the debt of the nation with the debt of a private individual. The difference between the two cases was this—a private individual was bound to pay the amount of his debt some time or other; the nation, on the contrary, only granted an annuity, it might be a perpetual annuity. If the nation, in its present condition, were to pay off the Debt that was now owing, it would be somewhat in the position of a gentleman who possessed a large landed estate that was heavily encumbered, and had a large number of children to provide for, and
1548
yet allowed those children to starve, in order that he might be able to pay off his debts. That was our position. One in 20 of our population was a pauper, and how many millions were there just on the confines of pauperism? Recollect that a vast and disproportionate amount of our Revenue was extracted from the poorer classes. The total Revenue now derived from tea, sugar, coffee, spirits, malt and tobacco was £38,300,000, or £11,500,000 more than the whole amount required to pay the interest of the National Debt. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had very wisely begun the removal of the obstructions that were in the way of trade by making an important reduction in some of the taxes on locomotion. That right hon. Gentleman knew very well that taxes on locomotion were taxes on the products of the country. When we had a very formidable competition with neighbouring States in many articles of export, it was the bounden duty of the Government to do all they possibly could to reduce the cost of living and the prime cost of production. Owing to the natural increase of our population, the normal accumulation of our wealth, and the inevitable diminution in the purchasing power or value of gold, our National Debt every succeeding year must press less and less hardly upon the people of this country. Indeed, his hon. Friend (Mr. Candlish) had made a speech which entirely confirmed that view, and the statistics he cited must thoroughly convince the House that his Motion ought not to be adopted. His hon. Friend told the House that in 1811 the amount of the National Debt was estimated at 26 per cent of the aggregate value of the property of the country, and now, in the course of a few years, it was computed to be only 11 per cent. If we did not diminish our Debt, and did not embark in any war, under the process now going on, this national burden might, he (Mr. White) thought, be reduced at the end of this century to 5 per cent of the aggregate value of the whole property of the country. His hon. Friend had spoken of sugar, tea, and coffee as luxuries, but they had become actual necessaries of life, and any Government which would abolish the duties on them would be entitled to the highest praise. He had risen to address the House merely in consequence of the transparent fallacy of the hon. Member for Sunder-

1549
land, and to point out to the Government that they would have very few supporters if they followed the advice of the hon. Gentleman. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to turn his acute mind to see how our fiscal system might yet be so modified as to afford greater facilities for the development of the commerce and industry of the country, he would be richly rewarded not only by the magnificent results, but by the gratitude which he would earn from the people.
MR ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCEsaid, the words of the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken (Mr. J. White) seemed to imply that taxation must be removed from everything before we could apply ourselves to the payment of the National Debt. When the question was discussed last Session, the Chancellor of the Exchequer accepted the proposition that the Debt ought to be substantially reduced. The advantages that would follow from the reduction of the Debt had not been fully appreciated. When we saw what was being done across the Atlantic, how the United States were reducing their Debt at the rate of £20,000,000 per annum, the question of reducing our own Debt could not fail to repeatedly occur to our minds. In 1855 our funded Debt and Terminable Annuities amounted to £805,411,000, in 1870 they amounted to £800,681,000—so that in 15 years we had reduced these branches of the Debt by less than £4,800,000—a very poor result for a great country like this. He was not prepared to advocate an additional income tax for the purpose of paying off the Debt, nor ought any special tax or any special kind of property be selected to bear the burden—it would be most unfair to call upon any one interest only to contribute to this object; but he should be glad to see provision made in each Budget for paying off some portion of the Debt in an open, straightforward manner. What he would like to see was this—every year, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward his Budget, he would be able to mention that a certain amount had been devoted to paying off the Debt, besides what was now required by Act of Parliament. Under the Act, each quarter it was the duty of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt to add up the sums of receipt and expenditure, deduct the latter from the former, and apply one-fourth of
1550
the balance to the extinction of the Debt. But Chancellors of the Exchequers had rather evaded the Act, and the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt had not always devoted one-fourth of their surplus to the prescribed purpose. No doubt the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought he might use the money in a more profitable manner, and, perhaps, the right hon. Gentleman could explain to the House how he had kept within the Act of Parliament. Not possessing the acumen of the right hon. Gentleman, he confessed he did not see how it was done. It seemed to be assumed that 3 per cent should be the minimum rate of interest in this country, and in this way the National Debt was in one sense a protection to the capital of the country—it prevented interest from being less than 3 per cent, because any man could obtain that interest for his money by placing it in the Three per Cents. But was the labour of the country protected in any shape on that account? There was no minimum price of labour. But if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to apply £3,000,000 a-year to the reduction of the Debt; if the Government broker were 300 days in every year to purchase £10,000 worth of stock, what an effect it would have on the securities of the country. The exchangeable value of railway stock and all our various securities would rise to the great advantage of the community. But if, according to the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. White), the National Debt was so good a thing, why not increase it? Notwithstanding its great advantages, however, according to the hon. Gentleman himself, every man in 20 was a pauper, and in this metropolis we had 150,000 or 160,000 paupers. While wealth, therefore, was increasing at one end, poverty was increasing at the other. In order to decrease that pauperism it was, he maintained, essential that some portion of the taxation of the country should be expended in reducing the Debt which would have the effect of fostering its industry. It was contended by some hon. Gentlemen that the National Debt was a benefit, because the country was bound over in a vast sum of money to keep the peace. He feared that the subject of the reduction of the Debt must come many and many a time before the House before any impression would be made upon the amount

1551
of the Debt. But he trusted the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would begin the custom of providing in the annual Budget a sum to be applied to the reduction of the Debt; although he did not desire to see the income tax increased for that purpose.
MR. ILLINGWORTHheld that the present time was inopportune for proceeding with the reduction of the Debt, as the question of the incidence of taxation, showing on whose shoulders the burden of taxation should lie, was still unsettled. Both the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution had referred to the case of America; but it should be remembered that there was this peculiarity in the case of the United States—that its public Debt had been incurred by the existing generation for war purposes, and that it was but right they should recognize the moral obligation to pay it. Happily that obligation did not lie upon us, for it had been incurred two generations back. The hon. Member for Sunderland, in moving the Resolution, had also adverted to the fact that the wealth of this country was pro rata much larger than that of America; but he (Mr. Illingworth) wished that the hon. Gentleman had entered into the question whether the amount of poverty in England did not exceed that of the United States—whether, in fact, there was not among our population ten times the extent of pauperism; for it was clear that those who were in the position of paupers, and immediately above it, must be exonerated from bearing any charge for the purpose of liquidating the public Debt. He objected, he might add, to the analogy which had been drawn between public and private debt. In the case of the National Debt there was no obligation to pay the principal—it was a question of national expediency whether that should be done or not—while in the case of an individual it was a matter of the clearest prudence to pay the sum in which he happened to be indebted as soon as possible, for otherwise the claim for its liquidation might come upon him at a most inconvenient moment. Circumstanced as we were, it was, he maintained, incumbent upon us to remove the restrictions which pressed on the shoulders of industry, and to impose the taxation of the country more generally upon its realized property. For these reasons it would, in his opinion,
1552
be inexpedient to take at the present moment steps to discharge the National Debt in the manner proposed.
MR. LIDDELLthought there was scarcely any feature in our national life so remarkable as the torpor which seemed to pervade the mind of the country with respect to the discharge of our national obligations. He thought it, therefore, incumbent upon Members of this House—and especially those representing large and wealthy communities—to express boldly their opinions with respect to it. He was quite aware that many of the most sagacious thinkers in this country inclined to the opinion that it was a wiser policy to relieve its industry by lightening the burden of taxation than to make sacrifices by imposing or retaining taxes for the extinction of the Debt. But he would venture to ask, with the greatest possible deference, was there no limit to this policy? This policy had been going on now ever since Sir Robert Peel so successfully carried the repeal of the corn laws. Sir Robert Peel's policy was directed to free the commerce of this country from restrictions. He succeeded; and the result had shown the sagacity and foresight of the great statesman. The right hon. Gentleman who now presided over the destinies of this country, following in his steps, and working out his great scheme, set his mind to work to relieve labour; and, though a political opponent of the right hon. Gentleman, he (Mr. Liddell) congratulated him upon the result. But we had been engaged in relieving commerce and labour from the weight of the restrictions imposed upon them by taxation for years, and he should wish to learn, from some high financial authority, whether there were any taxes which were now hampering the productive power of the country? He did not believe that there were; and he was, therefore, of opinion that the time had come when some greater effort should be made to relieve the nation from the great obligation under which she laboured. And when was that Golden Age of financial prosperity to arrive when we should be enabled to relieve—or, at any rate, to diminish — the burden of our Debt? He was afraid that, like the Golden Age of Literature, it had come and gone. Twelve months ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer held a position which he was afraid they would have to wait some

1553
time before seeing again. Then he had a magnificent surplus, and he reduced the income tax by £1,250,000, and took off half the sugar duties amounting to £2,350,000 more, and of which nobody complained, thus throwing away, in his opinion, a great opportunity; because, if he had retained these taxes, he might have made a considerable impression on the National Debt in a very few years. A good deal had been said in the course of the discussion of what had been done by America to reduce the charge which she had incurred in the late war, and he admired her efforts in that direction. But if America, with her restrictive tariff could pay £16,000,000 or £17,000,000 a-year, in how much better a position ought not we to be who were subjected to no such incubus? He did not wish that taxes should be imposed for this purpose, but only that when there was a surplus, it should not be applied to remitting taxes which did not hamper the industry of the people. They had heard much of the loss of the prestige of England—in language which he believed to be very much exaggerated; but it would be curious to trace how far the influence of England abroad was lessened by the existence of this Debt, and the absence of any commensurate effort to reduce it. Foreign statesmen might say—"England is a noble country, and we have no wish to quarrel with her; but we intend to vie with her commerce, and for that purpose a seaboard is necessary. We do not mean to be very scrupulous how we get one. We shall listen to no remonstrances from England, because she is hampered by the dead weight of £26,000,000 a-year of interest on Debt, and will not therefore go to war." It had been said that the Debt prevented us from engaging in war; and, if so, that was the best argument he had heard in its favour. The fact, however, was we had slumbered under our Debt, and had not made the patriotic efforts to reduce it which had been made by other nations. Successive surpluses, when they accrued, had been frittered away in remitting taxes which did not press upon the national industry. If hon. Gentlemen opposite, who were sometimes fond of agitation, would agitate for the payment of the Debt, he believed they would find a response from the working classes, for it interfered with their social comforts, by enhancing
1554
the cost of many articles of almost prime necessity, and thereby lessened the real value of their labour in the markets of the world.
MR. T. E. SMITHsaid, he thought it would be difficult to convince the working classes that they would be benefited by paying every year, not only the interest of the Debt, but a considerable portion of the capital. He was confident that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not propose the reduction of the Debt without fully considering the circumstance of the time when it was proposed to do so; and would consider whether we had sufficient money which we could not employ in a preferable manner, and whether our position in a future emergency would be injured by the largeness of the Debt. He denied that the Debt, large as it was, affected the credit of the country; on the contrary, we were in a much better position to bear the burden than we formerly were. Our annual income had increased so enormously that the public creditor had now three times the security that he formerly had, and if the country had to borrow any large sum he was sure that it would be obtained with greater facility than at any former time. For instance, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have no difficulty in raising the debt to £1,000,000,000, if he could show that he had a good investment for the additional money—such as the purchase of the railways for the State.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I have listened with much interest, and I hope with much instruction, to the debate; and I must say that, in a great deal that has been said, I cordially concur. If I ventured to criticize the speech of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish), I should say that I feel more certain of the general conclusion at which he arrived than I do of many of the premises by which he supported it; for I do not feel the most implicit confidence in all those estimates by which he calculated to a million the income and property of the country; nor in the various divisions, subdivisions, and multiplications to which they have been subjected in his acute and ingenious brain. Nor can I follow the hon. Member in some of his statements with respect to the remissness of former Parliaments in dealing with this subject. The fact is, that within a few years past,

1555
we have had statements made of the amount of our Debt entirely erroneous and misleading, from the simple fact that while a considerable portion of the Debt has been paid off by Terminable Annuities, it used to be the practice, from some inexplicable reason, to omit that portion from the calculations of the Exchequer, and thereby to represent the Debt in former years as less than it really was. I therefore venture to point out to the hon. Member for Sunderland that at the time of the peace our Debt, instead of being £800,000,000, was nearly £900,000,000. Since that time we have added £80,000,000 to the Debt—namely, £20,000,000 for the emancipation of the slaves, £40,000,000 for the Crimean War, £10,000,000 for the Irish. Loan, and £9,000,000 for the Abyssinian War. I have provided myself with an accurate account of the state of the Debt at the present time. The funded Debt is £738,000,000, and the unfunded, I am proud to say, only £4,000,000. The Terminable Annuities, estimated at 11 years' purchase, amount to £50,000,000—making altogether about £793,000,000. It follows, therefore, that since the close of the War, and adding the £80,000,000 I have mentioned, the Debt has been reduced from £980,000,000 to £793,000,000—a reduction not very far short of £200,000,000. Consequently, it is not fair to accuse those who went before us of having done nothing for the reduction of the National Debt. Nor can I admit that we are doing nothing in that direction, for we are paying off £50,000,000, or rather more, by Terminable Annuities; and during the course of this year we have paid off £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 of Debt, not including in that the payment of the £1,000,000 which were expressly set aside for the purpose of repaying advances made by the Bank of England. Still, I agree with the general view of the hon. Member for Sunderland as to the propriety of always reducing the Debt as far as circumstances permit. The counter proposition seems scarcely arguable. Erasmus wrote an Encomium on Folly; but I can imagine no task more hopeless than delivering an encomium on debt. When the hon. Member for Sunderland says that it is the duty of the Government to place £10,000,000 a-year on the Estimates for the purpose of paying off the Debt, he stopped short of the difficult
1556
task of demonstrating how that amount was to be raised. Nor am I much moved by the example of America, quoted by the hon. Member. It certainly is not the duty of the Finance Minister of this country to indulge in criticisms on the finance, of our neighbours; but I venture to submit to those who are struck with the boldness and vigour of American finance that it may be a question whether it would not have been wiser for the Americans first to restore her currency to the metallic basis, and then endeavour to lower the interest of the Debt, rather than have asked the country to pay off the Debt rapidly. I apprehend that that that would have been the course adopted by an English Finance minister. Then the real question is not whether we ought to do what we can towards the payment of the Debt, but whether the hon. Member for Sunderland counsels the House well, when he advises us to place on the Estimates £10,000,000 every year to pay off the Debt? That proposal seems to me liable to many objections. Admitting the expediency of paying off the Debt, I am for the easiest and least offensive manner possible of doing so, and I think the mode proposed by the hon. Member the most difficult and most offensive. We have had a proof of this in the course of the present discussion, for many hon. Gentlemen have mentioned numberless taxes which they would rather have repealed. The hon. Member, therefore, whenever he made his proposition would, instead of meeting with a ready assent to pay off the Debt, find everyone who had in his mind a tax which he thought ought to be repealed, running his tax against the paying off of the Debt. Then there is another objection to any such way of paying off the Debt, and that is that taxation presses very much more heavily in one year than another; that the country is not only in a different state, but that the demands on the Revenue are greater or less in one year compared with another; but the cast-iron process of the hon. Member, for making a certain annual reduction, makes no allowance for those varying circumstances. The hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Alderman W. Lawrence) appeared as a mediator between the two controversial parties; and while agreeing with the hon. Member for Sunderland that it is the duty of

1557
the Government to reduce the Debt, is equally of opinion that it is the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make no provision for meeting that obligation. The comparison of public and private finance made by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Sir John Lubbock), does not hold good. With regard to a nation, you might increase or diminish the revenue, but the expenditure is in some degree fixed. The case, however, is different in respect to private finance, for there the revenue is fixed and the expenditure is variable, according to circumstances. With a nation, paying off the Debt is increasing the burdens of the people, whereas an individual can discharge his debts merely by the exercise of economy and self-denial. My hon. Friend also raised another question—whether the Government does more wisely in attempting to pay off the Debt by means of Terminable Annuities, or by placing this sum upon the Estimates; and my hon. Friend threw his authority into the scale in favour of the course recommended by the hon. Member for Sunderland. I will answer my hon. Friend's arguments seriatim. In the first place, he contends that Terminable Annuities go on in time of war, so that we are at the same time paying off Debt on the one hand and borrowing money on the other. But that is by no means necessary, because such are the advantages of Terminable Annuities, as we now employ them, that it is within our power, in any time of emergency, to stop those annuities and arrest payment altogether. I also apprehend that the advantage is considerable in regard to the payment of Debt, as we can put the thing in a train that goes by itself, almost as a matter of course, and we thereby avoid quarrelling when we come to ask for the sums to be voted. Then it is said the affair is removed from Parliamentary control. In a certain sense this is not so. No doubt, Parliamentary control is not invited, because the sum to be paid off the Debt is mixed up with the interest; but if this were carried beyond a certain limit, Parliament would soon find that Government played fast and loose with it, and Parliamentary control would not fail in such a case. My hon. Friend said, also, we lost the opportunity — if I understood him, of showing that energy that would be displayed by having a Parliamentary
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fight over the question every Session. That, Sir, is quite true; but I am quite sure that he is too good a political economist not to know that energy is not a good thing in itself, but only good when you cannot get a good thing without it. So, my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland also thought we might lose the moral effect of a great effort and noble spectacle in paying off all our debts. No doubt it is a very fine thing to give a great moral spectacle. When people get into distress and misery they have the opportunity of showing a great moral spectacle, and the results no doubt are great; but, for my own part, I prefer giving no such spectacle, simply because the calamities which give the opportunity of developing those high qualities do not exist. I shall continue to think we do not unwisely by paying off our Debt in a moderate way by Terminable Annuities. The truth is, that of all economical and financial authorities the worst are those who, ignoring the existence of any alternative, strive to make out a splendid case for themselves; but it appears to me that the right management of financial affairs consists not in this adoption of a certain particular theory or view, but of that sort of tolerant moderation that tries to accommodate them all, carrying none to any excess or violent extremes. I am, therefore, in moderation, for the reduction of taxes; I am, in moderation, for the reduction of Debt. The problem of the reduction of Debt is really this—how to get into the hands of the Government a large quantity of stock which they can cancel and pay off. That may be done in various ways, and if my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, content with the discussion he has raised to-night, will give me his confidence for about six weeks longer, I will undertake to show him, when the proper time arrives, that I have had the opportunity of making some slight impression on the Debt of the country.
MR. CANDLISHsaid, he was satisfied with the discussion which had taken place, and would withdraw his Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

EDUCATION—SCHOOLS (DRILL AND GYMNASTICS).—RESOLUTION.
MR. R. TORRENSmoved a Resolution for instruction in military drill and instruction in rate-aided schools. The hon. Member, in support of the Resolution, referred, to the example of Switzerland, which adopted this practice of giving military instruction and drill to young men attending school, which became the foundation of a general system of military efficiency and economy; and referred to the important aid to the national defence which would ultimately be afforded by the adoption of his Motion.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
"That, in the opinion of this House, instruction in military drill and gymnastics should be given in all State-aided and Rate-aided Schools to boys over eight years of age; and that a Rule to that effect should be introduced into the 'Revised Code.'"—(Mr. Robert Torrens.)
MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, that he did not suppose that the object of his hon. Friend was more than to draw attention to the advisability of encouraging drill at the elementary schools. But, in fact, the new Code was more favourable to the scheme than he supposed. The Government was fully aware of the advantages of drill to the children themselves, apart from any possible ulterior advantages to the country; but they must remember that the large sums of money voted for the purposes of education were primarily for such purposes. The Code acknowledged for the first time the usefulness of drill, and by the 24th section they allowed two hours of drill per week for 20 weeks in the year to be equivalent to the amount of attendance at school; but he could not consent to make drill compulsory in state-aided schools. As soon as they were satisfied that "the three R's" were taught in their schools, the Government would be glad to encourage additional instruction in the other elements of education.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

EDUCATION—SCHOOLS (DRILL AND GYMNASTICS).—RESOLUTION.

  PATENTS FOR INVENTIONS BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. HINDE PALMER, Bill to amend the Law relating to Patents for Inventions, ordered to be brought in by Mr. HINDE PALMER, Mr. MUNDELLA, and Mr. THOMAS HUGHES.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 65.]

  BURIALS ACTS AMENDMENT BILL
  Acts read; considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Resolved, That the Chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Burials Acts.
  Resolution reported: — Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. CAWLEY, Mr. HOLT, and Mr. BIRLRY.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 66.]

  ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ACT (1870) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. DIXON, Bill to repeal the cumulative voting Clauses of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, ordered to be brought in by Mr. DIXON, Mr. BAYLEY POTTER, Mr. JACOB BRIGHT, and Mr. MUNTZ.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 67.]

  POOR LAW (LOANS) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. RUSSELL GURNEY, Bill to make further provision in reference to Loans obtained under the Poor Law Acts, ordered to be brought in by Mr. RUSSELL GURNEY, Mr. COWPER-TEMPLE, and Mr. CANDLISH.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 68.]

  CUSTOMS AND INLAND REVENUE DUTIES ACT (1869) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. BOURKE, Bill to amend the Act of the thirty-second and thirty-third years of Victoria, chapter fourteen, section nineteen, with regard to the definition of the words "male servant," ordered to be brought in by Mr. BOURKE, Mr. CROSS, and Mr. BECKETT DENISON.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 69.]
  House adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock.