Commons Sitting of 9 April 1875

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Musical Entertainments * (49); Supreme Court of Judicature Act (1873) Amendment (No. 2) (48).
Second Reading—Marine Mutiny *; Mutiny *.
Committee—Report—Elementary Education Provisional Order Confirmation (Brighton) * (32).

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE ACT (1873) AMENDMENT (No. 2) BILL.
(The Lord Chancellor.)
SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE ACT (1873) AMENDMENT (No. 2) BILL.

  BILL PRESENTED. FIRST READING.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORrose to call attention to the present condition of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act, 1873, and to state the course which Her Majesty's Government intend to pursue in relation thereto, and said: My Lords, I have often experienced your Lordships' indulgence when bringing under your notice subjects which did not possess much interest in themselves; and I have no doubt that I shall receive your forbearance to-night when entering into some matters of detail which are familiar to many of your Lordships, but which, at the same time, I feel bound to bring before you in order that you may have a complete and adequate view of the present condition of the legislation as to the Judicature of this country.
  My Lords, I must ask you to go back for a moment to the issuing of the Judicature Commission in 1867. My Lords, in that year the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the Session had called

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  the attention of Parliament to the subject of Law Reform, and it had particularly noticed the delays and the pressure of business which were accruing in the Courts of Assize and at the sittings for jury causes in the City of London. My Lords, that notice of the arrears of business in those tribunals was followed in the issuing, by the Government of the late Lord Derby, of the Commission called the Judicature Commission. I have seen lately some observations which have been made on the composition of that Commission and on the manner in which it discharged its work. I had the honour of being Chairman of that Commission, and—speaking for those who were associated with me on it—I venture to say, after some experience of Commissions, that a stronger Commission never was appointed, and that no Commission ever devoted itself with a greater sacrifice of time and labour to the work intrusted to it than the Judicature Commission did from the time of its first meeting till the close of its labours. My Lords, it is said that the Commission did not adopt a proper course in not taking evidence. In reply, I will remind your Lordships that there were on the Commission Judges and members of the Bar who on the questions which it had to consider possessed in their own minds all that evidence could have supplied them with. Beyond the knowledge which they possessed all that evidence would have afforded them would have been matter of opinion. On the knowledge which they so abundantly possessed they made those recommendations which have been so often referred to in the first Report of the Judicature Commission. Their first recommendation was that all the Courts of Law and Equity and the Court of Admiralty and the Court of Probate should be consolidated into one Supreme Court, which should possess the authority and power of all those Courts, and should sit in several Divisions. They recommended, in the next place, that a uniform system of pleading and procedure should be adopted in the Courts constituting the Supreme Court. They recommended, again, that uniformity should be adopted as to the sittings of the Court and as to the vacations. They recommended, in the next place, that there should be a rearrangement of the Circuits and Assizes of the country and that arrangements
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  should be made for the continuous sittings for jury trials in London and Middlesex. And they recommended that as to the administrative department of the law there should be consolidation and simplification of the offices with a view to economy of time and money. Those were their recommendations on the five heads I have mentioned.
  But over and above these recommendations there was this further recommendation—that a Court of Appeal should be constituted which should take the place of the Court of Appeal in Chancery and of the Exchequer Chamber. To use the words of the Commission, they recommended that there "should be a Court of Appeal common to all the Divisions of the Supreme Court constantly sitting and easy of access." They did not contemplate that there should be any change in respect to what is called "intermediate appeal." They proposed that there should be two appeals—one intermediate and one final; and the recommendation to which I have just referred had reference to the intermediate appeal. The Commission contemplated that the Court of Final Appeal should remain as it then was. That was the Report of the Commission.
  My Lords, I pass over the legislation which was attempted in 1871, and come at once to what was done in 1873. The measure introduced in this latter year followed the Report of the Judicature Commission as regards the five heads of recommendations which I have enumerated; but it departed from the Report of the Commission with regard to the subject of appeals. It provided a Court of Appeal which was to be the First and Final Court of Appeal. In other words, it abolished the intermediate Court of Appeal, and constituted a Court going altogether beyond what would be required for an intermediate Court of Appeal. Your Lordships will find it convenient to bear in mind the character of the Court of Appeal constituted by that measure. There were to have been in it five ex officio members—the Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, the Chiefs of the three Common Law Courts—nine ordinary Judges of Appeal; and, in addition to that judicial staff, persons who had filled high judicial office and were willing to sit as members of that Court of Appeal. My Lords, that Court of Appeal was intended for England

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  only; and my noble and learned Friend (Lord. Selborne), who in 1873 filled the place which I have now the honour to occupy, when introducing the measure to your Lordships' House, explained that he did not include Ireland and Scotland, because those countries had separate judicatures of their own, and both countries were satisfied with the arrangement which then existed for the final hearing of the appeals from their Courts. The Bill introduced by my noble and learned Friend passed into law, and the time fixed for its coming into operation was the 1st of November, 1874. But the duty was cast on the Judges of framing before that date a complete code of Rules, based on an outline contained in the Schedule of the Act, for the carrying out of the new system when it came into operation. It was in that state of things that Her Majesty's Government found legislation in regard to Judicature when they came into office at the commencement of last year. They found that one of their first duties was one in connection with these Rules which would be necessary for putting the Act in operation, and they found that it would also be necessary for them to consider what course it was desirable should be taken with respect to final appeals in causes coming from Ireland and Scotland—seeing that no provisions were contained in the Act for that purpose. As the time drew near for the coming in force of the Act, and as the preparation of the Rules was proceeded with, it was ascertained that there were a number of details in the measure in reference to which legislative amendment would be required. It was not to be wondered at that in a measure of such novelty and magnitude various points should arise which were not sufficiently provided for by the various sections of the original Bill. The Government ascertained that not only would the Rules require to be prepared, but that some alteration must be made as regarded the provisions in the Act referring to the position of the Judge of Admiralty and the business assigned to the Court of Admiralty; also with regard to Bankruptcy and with regard to the district registries which were to be established throughout the country. The Government in addressing their attention to the question of final appeal under this Act, and the final appeal which
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  ought to be given in cases coming from Scotland and Ireland, resolved to be guided by three cardinal principles. I state this the more emphatically because to those principles Her Majesty's Government have throughout adhered, and from those principles they consider it to be their duty to not in any way depart. Her Majesty's Government considered in the first place that, though there might be cases where appeals would be so trivial or unimportant as not to deserve encouragement, still as a general principle, a double or second appeal should be granted. The second principle which commended itself to Her Majesty's Government was this—that there ought to be one and the same tribunal of final appeal for England, Ireland, and Scotland. The third principle was that whatever provision might be made for appeals, security should be taken that appeals should be heard before an adequate number of the most skilled and experienced judicial minds that you could at any time procure the service of. Applying these principles—which they conceived had already received the assent of Parliament, the Government considered it to be their duty to proceed on what I may describe as the lines pointed out by the Act of 1873. The manner in which the Government proposed to give effect to the principles which I have enumerated was this—They proposed that what may be called the First Division of the Court of Appeal established by the Act of 1873, should be the tribunal by which all appeals from Ireland and Scotland should be heard; and that it should be also the tribunal before which should be heard by way of second appeal any appeal from the English Courts in which the first Court of Appeal was not unanimous, or should have reversed the judgment of the Court below. If the Bill to which I am referring had received the sanction of Parliament there would have been a second appeal, subject to the check imposed against frivolous proceedings by way of appeal; there would have been one and the same tribunal of final appeal for England, Ireland, and Scotland, and in the constitution of the Court itself there would have been a security that no final appeal would be heard otherwise than before anadequate number of the most skilled and experienced judicial minds that you could at any time procure the services of.

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  Those being the propositions as regards the Court of Final Appeal, the Bill introduced by Her Majesty's Government contained those other provisions of detail in respect of which legislation was required in order that the Act of 1873 might be brought into operation. My Lords, I am not going through what occurred last Session—I will come to what has happened in the present one. To the Bill of Her Majesty's Government, so far as regarded the amendments which it might introduce in the Act of 1873, no opposition was offered. The opposition to it which arose in your Lordships' House—and I am not stating this for the purpose of raising any controversy, but merely that your Lordships should have a complete view of the case before you—the opposition was to the provisions in the Bill which raised the question of final appeal. The object of the opposition was to repeal the clauses of the Act of 1873 with regard to English appeals and to prevent the passing of the clauses of the Bill with regard to the Scotch and Irish appeals. Now, my Lords, if the proposal of those who took the view held by my noble Friend at the Table (Lord Redesdale) had been limited to the repeal of the sections of the Act of 1873 having reference to English appeals, possibly the Bill of the Government might have gone through this and the other House of Parliament; because, for the accomplishment of the object which the opposition would have had in view, the sanction of the two Houses of Parliament to the repeal of those clauses would have been required, and anything that might have been done here would not have affected the provisions of the Act of 1873 without the consent of the other House of Parliament: but in order to carry the provisions of the Bill relating to Ireland and Scotland the assent of both Houses would have been required. It was for this reason that Her Majesty's Government—adhering to one of the three principles which they had felt it their duty to propose—that there should be one and the same tribunal of final appeal for England, Ireland, and Scotland—when they saw it was obviously impossible to obtain the assent of your Lordships' House to the provisions relating to Scotland and Ireland, felt bound to withdraw the Bill.
  My Lords, that being the history of
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  the Judicature Act and the subsequent Bills up to the withdrawal of our Bill of the present Session, I now come to the position in which I found myself when the noble Earl (Earl Granville), on the withdrawal of the Bill, asked me what course the Government proposed to adopt with reference to the Act of 1873. That was a very natural question, and I promised to give it an early reply. I cannot deny that Her Majesty's Government have received a very considerable" quantity of advice since that time as to the course which they ought to pursue. My Lords, we have been told that one course which we might adopt would be to allow the Act of 1873 to come into operation as it stands next November. The objections which Her Majesty's Government entertain to that course, and which have led them to decline to take it are these:—If the Act were left to come into operation as it stands on the 1st of November next, it would come into operation with those defects and those inperfections which it was the object of a large part of the Bill introduced during the present Session to remove. But in our minds there is this stronger objection to that course—if it were adopted, it would bring into operation a severance in our appellate system, the effect of which would be to send to one tribunal the final appeals from England, and to another the final appeals from Scotland and Ireland. I say that is a course which Her Majesty's Government naturally declines to take; and, speaking for myself, I will say that I can see nothing which would be so fatal to identity of interests between the three portions of the United Kingdom as to make the Court of Ultimate Appeal for England a different one from the Court of Ultimate Appeal for Scotland and Ireland. Then we have been advised to take another course—namely, to postpone the operation of the Act of 1873 for another year. Now, my Lords, those who offer us this advice seem to me to labour under a very important misapprehension as to the proposals for the amendment of our system of Judicature. They seem to me to look—I will not say merely, but certainly to look mainly—at the question of the ultimate tribunal of Appeal, and nearly, if not altogether, to overlook the great work which the Act of 1873 was in other respects intended to accomplish. My Lords, I have said in this

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  House before, and I now say again—that it would be impossible to over-rate the magnitude of the Act of 1873. Beyond all question, it is the largest measure of law reform which I have ever known to be passed in this country. It covers the whole field of the Judicature of the country, and it pervades every nook and cranny of our judicial arrangements. If the measure were to be postponed, I would ask your Lordships to look at what the consequences would be. I will not say that in expectation of the operation of the Act the arrangements of the Courts are paralyzed; but I will say that in expectation of its coming into operation there is a complete want of the necessary arrangements for the development of our system of Judicature. It was only the other day I had occasion to read with some care the Report of a Commission on the administration of the Courts of Justice presided over by Lord Lisgar. That Report contains most valuable information and most valuable suggestions as to nearly all the offices of the Courts; but in almost every page the Commissioners felt obliged to state that until the Judicature Act comes into operation they will be unable to calculate exactly what will be the amount of work to be done, and what ought to be the changes and retrenchments in the staff of the officers of this or that Court. Almost invariably the Commissioners defer their conclusions till after the coming into operation of the Judicature Act; and finally they recommend that in six months after the date when it shall come into operation there should be a departmental Commission appointed to give effect to the general recommendations they suggest. Again, take the case of the local registries. In the Act of 1873 provision is made for the establishment of these registries. I know nothing which at this moment creates greater interest throughout the country. Applications have been coming from all parts of England during the last two years, asking for the appointment of local Registrars. Again, let me take the business of the Assize Courts. I can well remember what led to the issuing of the Judicature Commission. I remember the late Lord Derby stating that he had read a representation as to the state of things in connection with the Assizes for Lancashire, and he told me that he thought a strong case had
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  been made in reference to the immense amount of business to be done at those Assizes and the deficient arrangements for its discharge. Well, my Lords, lately I myself received a deputation from Lancashire who came up to town to complain that the evils with regard to the business of the Assizes is entirely unredressed and asking that a remedy might be applied. I was obliged to say that although I entirely sympathized with their views, yet until the Judicature Act came into operation it would be impossible for me to say what would be our judicial strength or what could be done in the way of economizing time as expected under that Act, and therefore until then it was in vain to ask for any changes, whether in the way of more frequent Assizes or the sending down of a larger number of Judges. Then take the sittings for jury trials in London and Middlesex. I have not a list before me of the state of business at Guildhall when the time came for closing the sittings after last Term, but I believe I shall not be exaggerating when I say that not fewer than 100 cases remained untried—cases in the highest degree interesting to the mercantile community of that great City, and which are undisposed of from the want of greater judicial strength and the power to continue the sittings. I will not say that this is entirely owing to the fact that the Judicature Act has not come into operation; but I do say that until that Act does come into operation no effective remedy for such a state of things can be applied. Then there is the unsettled question of the exact boundary which ought to be drawn between the jurisdiction of the County Courts and the jurisdiction of the Superior Courts; and in this respect it is impossible to make any change until the Judicature Act is in operation. Besides all this there is the case of Ireland. The system of law and judicature in Ireland being almost the same as the system in England, it is proposed to introduce for Ireland a change similar to that which the Judicature Act will effect in this country; but it is idle to bring in a Bill for Ireland—though one is prepared and ready for introduction—until there is a certainty that, at all events within a limited period, the English Act will actually come into operation.
  I now ask your Lordships to turn for

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  a moment to that portion of the Act which is connected with the question of Ultimate Appeal, and in respect of which it appears to me considerations of urgency must be put on a very different footing. What is the case at the present moment with regard to the two great tribunals of Ultimate Appeal—the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and your Lordships' House? I remember when, not many years ago—only four years ago, when the Act was passed for the appointment of four salaried members of that tribunal—your Lordships were informed that there were at that time in the Council Office in various stages of maturity for hearing upwards of 300 appeals from the Colonies and from India. Your Lordships and Parliament were struck with the magnitude of those arrears, and you passed the Act to which I have referred. My Lords, I find that at the present moment there are in the office of the Judicial Committee, instead of 300 or 400 appeals, about 100 cases as to which appeals have actually been lodged. But when I turn to see what are the arrears of cases waiting for hearing, I find from the official list that for their sittings which commence next week the whole number of cases ready for hearing amounts to ten—six from Bengal, three from the Court of Admiralty, and one from Canada. I think your Lordships will agree with me that the state of things as regards the Judicial Committee is most satisfactory. I now turn to the Business in your Lordships' House. It is somewhat remarkable that the state of legal business in this House is, I will not say without parallel in my remembrance, but I am told by the officers of the House that they do not remember such a state of things before. At the commencement of this Session your Lordships had standing for hearing 24 appeals. Before your Lordships adjourned for the Easter Recess, of these 24, 20 had been heard and decided; one of the remaining four is now under compromise, and one was heard and disposed of to-day. Between the commencement of this Session and Easter, 29 new appeals have been lodged and have to be disposed of; so that your Lordships' House have, in all, to dispose of two appeals remaining over since before Easter, and 19 new appeals set down for hearing—21 in all. My Lords,
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  I remember the time when it was regarded as a satisfactory position of affairs that all appeals which were remanets at the beginning of the Session had been heard before its close; but this year your Lordships see that virtually all the appeals set down for hearing at the beginning of the Session were disposed of before Easter. So much for the business; now for the Judges. In addition to the Lord Chancellor, we have had the presence during the hearing of appeals of three noble and learned Lords who are ex-Chancellors, and of my noble and learned Friend the late Lord Chancellor of Ireland. I think your Lordships will not consider that unsatisfactory either as regards the disposal of the cases or the number of the Judges. My Lords, such being the considerations of urgency in respect of different portions of the Judicature Act, what Her Majesty's Government propose is this. They propose for the present to detach what I will call the more urgent part of the Act of 1873 from that part which is not equally urgent; and they propose to introduce a Bill which will provide for all those amendments in matter of details which are necessary to be made before the Act of 1873 can be brought into operation. I shall to-night lay such a Bill on the Table, and ask your Lordships to give it a first reading. I may here add that as considerable interest has been evinced in regard of the Rules which were to supplement the Act of 1873, though I did not, in the first instance, think it necessary to burden a Bill with them; yet, yielding to the anxiety expressed that they should appear at the same time, I propose that the Rules which have been approved by the Judges should be printed in the Schedule of the Bill which I shall lay upon the Table. Those Rules will give the Bill an appearance of bulk, the cause of which your Lordships will now understand. The Act of 1873 would come into operation on the 1st of November if Parliament took no further action with respect to it. I am not without hopes that if Parliament agree to the Bill which I am about to introduce both it and the Act of 1873 may be in operation before that date; and I think it would be a great advantage if the Act could be brought into operation even before the Summer Assizes. That, however, must depend not only on this,

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  but also on the other House of Parliament.
  Now, my Lords, some explanation is necessary as to an important provision of the Bill—I mean the proposal for an intermediate Court of Appeal; not only is it of importance, but it is of special importance, when you are making large changes in the judicial system of the country and in the law which is to be administered by the primary Courts. As I mentioned, the recommendation as to appeal contained in the Report of the Judicature Commission was for an intermediate Court of Appeal—a Court of Appeal common to all the Divisions of the Supreme Court, constantly sitting and easy of access. We propose that a Court should be constituted, to consist of five ex officio members—the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and the Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Of course these Judges—I speak more particularly of the three Chiefs of the Common Law Courts—having their primary duties to discharge, cannot be expected to sit constantly in the Court of Appeal—they cannot give more than a portion of their time to this duty, though they will be relieved from sitting in the Exchequer Chamber; but in addition to these five ex officio Judges of the Court of Appeal, there will be five ordinary Judges. You will observe, my Lords, the difference between this proposal and that in the Act of 1873. Under that Act there were to have been nine ordinary members of the Court of Appeal—under our Bill there will be five—the two Lords Justices of the Court of Appeal in Chancery, two of the salaried Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—because I think the state of business before that Committee will admit of two of the paid Members being appointed on the new Court of Appeal—and one other Judge to be appointed in the manner pointed out in the Judicature Act. I cannot but think it of great importance that the Court of Appeal which is to watch and superintend the proceedings of the primary Courts, should not sit in various Divisions. Now, as regards the number of Judges who must be present. We propose that with regard to all decrees and judgments which lawyers understand by the term "final" decrees and judgments, and
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  which may be popularly described as decrees and judgments which dispose of the whole question, the Court of Appeal shall consist of not fewer than three members. With regard to appeals from interlocutory decrees and judgments—decrees and judgments deciding questions of practice, or which do not dispose of the whole of the merits of the case—we propose that there shall be, at least, two Judges present. We know from the state of business in the Court of Chancery that all such decrees and judgments may be disposed of in that way. That being the course we propose for intermediate appeals, your Lordships will ask what is to be done with the question of final appeal. The proposal of Her Majesty's Government is to detach for the present the large and comprehensive provisions of the Judicature Act from the question of the Court of Pinal Appeal. We propose to ask Parliament to suspend for 12 months the operation of those two clauses of the Act of 1873 which negative or take away the Appellate Jurisdiction of your Lordships' House; we propose, therefore, that during that time, appeals should run, as they run at present, from the intermediate Courts to this House. But we propose that with a view of carefully keeping alive the control of Parliament over the Act of 1873, there shall be no repeal and no alteration of that Act in respect of the provisions relating to Appellate Jurisdiction. Her Majesty's Government desire to present that question in the next Session of Parliament as a separate and distinct question, unembarrassed and unburdened by the numberless questions which arise in the improvement of our general system of Judicature.
  I might stop here, but I cannot do so without making one or two further observations. I say here also that I do not wish to stir up a controversy or enter on debatable ground; but I consider it desirable that those whose minds are turned towards the question of a Court of Pinal Appeal should have before them all the information I have obtained on the subject. I think it extremely important that whenever this question is to be decided, the public and your Lordships should know, as far as I have been able to make observations on the subject, both the extent of the work to be undertaken by any tribunal of Ap-

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  peal and the principles upon which such a tribunal should be constituted. It may appear somewhat paradoxical to say so, but it has always been my opinion that in regard to the constitution of a Tribunal of Ultimate Appeal the matters generally urged are more of form than of substance. I have always been anxious to secure in any Tribunal of Ultimate Appeal what appears to me to be the substance—the presence of an adequate number of the most competent minds you can obtain. I am not, your Lordships will easily understand, speaking of individuals—I am speaking on a broad question as it has been for 100 years, and as it may be for 100 years to come; and I say I believe that neither in this nor in any other country will you ever find more than a very limited number of persons who, from judicial experience and training, would be desirable, or I may say, competent, for the ultimate decision of great questions of appeal. Whether that tribunal is to be found in your Lordships' House, whether it is to be found in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or in a Court which will be neither inside this House nor inside the Privy Council, appears to me to be a matter, I do not say unimportant, but a matter of minor importance. It appears to me to be a matter, perhaps of sentiment, perhaps of prestige, perhaps of traditionary honour and dignity. But I am anxious that those, whoever they may be, who will have to consider the question, should keep alive the broad distinction between what is substance and what is comparatively unsubstantial. My Lords, it was for this reason that before the Committee of your Lordships' House, which sat in 1872, I ventured to propose, and the Committee adopted, a proposal which inside of this House would have secured, I think, a tribunal which would have preserved equally the prestige and the traditionary honour and dignity of the House. It was for this reason, that when my noble and learned Friend (Lord Selborne) introduced his Bill in 1873 I was content with the tribunal which he pro-posed in that Bill, although it was a tribunal of a different character from that which had been suggested in the Committee. It was for this reason that last Session, in answer to my noble Friend the Chairman of Committees, I stated that in the tribunal which the Government then
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  proposed, I was willing to admit there would be wanting the dignity and prestige which must attach to your Lordships' House; but that there would be secured, on the other hand, the presence of those whose judicial strength would constitute the greatest and best security for a satisfactory disposal of appeals. And, my Lords, I think that is the main and cardinal point to be considered when this question comes to be determined. But I wish to go a little further. I think your Lordships ought to be informed, and ought to bear in your minds exactly what is the work which any Tribunal of Ultimate Appeal will have to discharge in this country. It is very remarkable that if you detach, as we propose you should detach, the question of ultimate appeal from the litigation that may arise before any other tribunal, we are able to tell almost to an exactitude what would be the work that that Tribunal of Ultimate Appeal would have to perform. When I look to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council I find that during the last four years—that is, during the years in which there have been salaried members of the Judicial Committee—there has been an average of 108 appeals disposed of every year. That is a high average—too high an average to be taken as indicating what will have to be done in future years, because four years ago that tribunal having the great arrear of appeals to which I have referred, has had to dispose of more than a normal number of appeals. But I take the number at 108 a-year. Of those appeals there have been 13 from the Admiralty Court. It is not unsafe to suppose that when the Admiralty Courts go to the intermediate Court of Appeal these Admiralty appeals will be reduced by 10 every year. The result will be that, as far as the business of the Judicial Committee is concerned, 98 appeals will have to be disposed of in a year. I find that the average number of appeals disposed of in your Lordships' House in a year is 40. Adding these 40 to the 98 appeals disposed of by the Judicial Committee in a year, there would be 138 appeals to be disposed of in a final stage in this country. Now, how long does it take to dispose of 138 appeals? Your Lordships will be surprised to find how very near a reckoning may be made on that point. I recollect that when Lord Kingsdown presided in

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  the Judicial Committee of the Privy-Council, the allowance that used to be made was that, taking the rough with the smooth in the course of the year, an appeal took a day. I find that taking the last 10 years of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—whether it is that counsel have become more elaborate in their arguments or not I do not know—the average is a day and a-third; and in your Lordships' House—probably owing to the same cause and to the interruption of adjournments—the average is a day and three-fourths. For the hearing of 98 appeals in the Judicial Committee 131 days are required, and for the hearing of 40 appeals in this House 70 days are required, which make 201 days altogether; and if you reckon for the Judicial Committee a sitting in the year of 33 weeks of six days each, you have 198 days:—so that the appeals to be disposed of can as nearly as possible be disposed of by a tribunal sitting as one tribunal in the course of the year. I pointed out to your Lordships that in constituting the Court of Intermediate Appeal we propose that there should be only five ordinary Judges. We leave untouched the four other Judges, whose services were taken under the Judicature Act of 1873—I mean the two salaried Judges of the Privy Council and two additional Judges authorized to be appointed under that Act. Now, in whatever form the matter may be dealt with hereafter, it is, at all events, perfectly obvious that Parliament will have even in these materials ample strength to dispose of the amount of appellate business which I have described. I go no farther than this—I do not desire in any way to anticipate the proposals which Her Majesty's Government will deem it right to make next Session on this subject. I have stated to your Lordships as fairly and as fully as I can the amount of work to be done with the proposals we make for the present Session.
  My Lords, I will conclude by laying on the Table the Bill to which I have referred. I will ask your Lordships to give it a first reading to-night, and I propose to fix the second reading for Friday next.
  A Bill to amend and extend the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873, presented by the Lord CHANCELLOR.
  LORD SELBORNE: My Lords, there are some observations of my noble and learned Friend which I think I ought not entirely to pass without notice. In the first place, my noble and learned Friend said—and said truly—that what the Judicature Commission recommended as to a Court of Appeal was an Intermediate Court of Appeal, leaving the final appeal as it was at the time. The Judicature Commission were not authorized to deal in any way whatever with the question of the jurisdiction exercised either by your Lordships' House or by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: and in their Report they noticed that limitation of their powers. Although it is true that the Act of 1873 did, as far as it dealt with final appeals go beyond the recommendation of the Judicature Commission, it cannot, I think, with any accuracy be stated—nor did I understand that my noble and learned Friend intended to convey that meaning—that it departed from the recommendations of the Commission upon a point which it was within the province of that Commission to deal. My noble and learned Friend has stated the three cardinal principles which Her Majesty's Government desire to keep in view in dealing with the question of final appeal—the first of them being that there should be in substance a double appeal, with safe-guards against its abuse; the second, that some Court of Final Appeal should dispose of appeals from all the three branches of the United Kingdom; and the third, that the Court of Final Appeal should be as powerfully constituted as possible. If there be in this respect any difference of opinion between my noble and learned Friend and myself it is rather as to the manner in which effect should be given to those principles, and the meaning and extent of the first of them, than on any other point. As far as the constituting a Court of the greatest possible strength is concerned, I agree with my noble and learned Friend without the least qualification or exception. Indeed, I flatter myself that Parliament arrived at that result when it passed the Judicature Act of 1873; and, further, that it amply provided by its 52nd clause for all that might be necessary in the way either of re-hearing or re-arguing cases before the final appeal came to be pronounced. That section was in these terms:

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  "Any appeal for any reason may be deemed fit to be re-argued before decision, or be reheard before final judgment, and may be so reargued or re-heard before the greater number of Judges if the Court of Appeal think fit so to direct."
  My noble and learned Friend, in his Bill of last year, proposed to modify that provision by defining the particular cases—namely, those in which the Court of Appeal had differed, or those in which they had reversed judgments, as cases in which a second hearing should be deemed right. When that modification was proposed, though I differed in opinion from my noble and learned Friend, and held that the object he had in view was sufficiently met in the Act of 1873, I was willing to waive that difference of opinion—I did not look upon it as a difference in substance. Passing to another branch of the subject, I may say that I never concealed my opinion as to the desirability of having one Court of Final Appeal for the three branches of the United Kingdom, or that this result would have been ultimately arrived at if the arrangements under the Act of 1873 worked—as I fully believed they would work—well and successfully. At the same time I thought that time and experience might be necessary for that purpose, and that we could, without any serious inconvenience, wait until the matured opinion of Ireland and Scotland had declared itself in favour of their accession to the arrangement which had been adopted in England. My noble and learned Friend said, when I first introduced the Judicature Bill in 1873, that he thought I had done wisely in not proposing in that measure to deal with the subject of Scotch and Irish Appeals; and, on a later occasion, when the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees proposed, during the same Session, to affirm the proposition that there should be one Court of Final Appeal for all parts of the United Kingdom, my noble and learned Friend gave his reasons for not then adopting that conclusion, and showed that there might be sufficient cause for treating the question as to Scotland and Ireland as separate and distinct from that as to England. I gather from what my noble and learned Friend has now said that his present opinion is hardly in accordance with that view; but I have at least the comfort of knowing that our views
  592
  were not far at variance when, in 1873, I explained my reasons for not including the Scotch and Irish appeals in the Bill which in the course of the Session became the Judicature Act. I do not refer to this fact as if I thought that any man is always bound to adhere to an opinion which he has once expressed upon an important subject; but as, at all events, going some way to justify the course which the late Government took in order, if possible, to solve a difficult and important question, if it was to be solved by means of any alteration of the jurisdiction of your Lordships' House. I do not believe that if it had then been proposed to establish one Court of Final Appeal for all three branches of the United Kingdom your Lordships would have been induced to part with your whole jurisdiction—because at that time Scotland and Ireland, which had a right to be consulted, had not given expression to such a kind of opinion as would have justified that course. It will be in the recollection of your Lordships that when the Bill went to the House of Commons, Notice was given of a Motion which would have had the effect of extending the provisions of the Bill to Scotland and Ireland. At that stage of the measure the then Government for the first time received representations purporting to represent the general feeling of the Judges and the Bar of Scotland and of Ireland, in consequence of which they felt themselves compelled to consent to an extension of their original proposal.—[3 Hansard, ccxvi. 1561.] On this being made known to your Lordships, my noble and learned Friend who is now the occupant of the Woolsack objected to the manner in which the change was proposed to be made, and for that reason it was not possible to persevere with it. I cannot but express my deep regret that this premature proposal was then made; for it was contrary to my original judgment as to the best manner of dealing with the question, and I believe that if no such step had been taken at that time it would have ultimately resulted in the spontaneous accession of Scotland and Ireland to the new system. The course was forced upon the Government of the day, and I think I am justified in complaining of those whose pressure then contributed to that step, but who have since gone round to the opposite view.

  593
  I do not think the time has come for examining in detail the proposals contained in the Bill which my noble and learned Friend now asks us to read the first time; but my noble Friend will excuse me if I venture to suggest a certain degree of apprehension that his Intermediate Court of Appeal may be too weakly constituted for the purpose of working the system embodied in the Judicature Act. It will be in the recollection of your Lordships that representations full of alarm were made to this House by an extraordinarily large number of barristers practising in the Courts of Equity, to the effect that in the fusion of the administration of Law and Equity sufficient consideration would not be given to the principles of Equity. I could not but think that in this view less than justice was done to the members of the Judicial Bench, in supposing that they could neither administer nor acquire a knowledge of the principles of Equity. I felt the more confident on this because I had had large experience of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and had seen how Judges educated either in Equity or at Common Law in the English Courts were able, to the satisfaction of India and the Colonies to administer many branches of law with which they had not originally any acquaintance. Another answer made to these representations was that the keystone of the whole arch was the Court of Appeal, in which would meet together the most experienced representatives both of Equity and Common Law—among them being, as not the least important elements, the Lord Chancellor for the time being and the other noble Lords who had previously filled that office. Their assistance would be most valuable to the Court of Appeal upon all important questions affecting the principles of Equity as they were to be administered after the fusion of the two systems. That Intermediate Court of Appeal will now, as my noble and learned Friend has pointed out, have to discharge in the main the great business of appeal, the ultimate business coming before the Final Court of Appeal being comparatively small in amount. One reason why so few cases come to your Lordships at present is that the existing Courts of Intermediate Appeal are powerfully constituted, and in the great majority of cases give satisfaction to the
  594
  suitors. If, therefore, there is to be this intermediate appeal followed by a final appeal, it is of the utmost importance that the Intermediate Court should be powerfully constituted with respect to the representation of the principles of Equity. But when I look at the mode in which it is proposed to be constituted what do I find? The Lord Chancellor is to be ex officio a member; but as long as all the business of the final appeal is to be done in this House the Lord Chancellor will be here and not there. As regards the Master of the Rolls too, he must ordinarily be occupied for the most part in his own Court, and can only occasionally be in this Court of Appeal. There remain the Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Now I have the very highest opinion of the able and learned gentlemen now serving upon the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I quite believe that any one of them would be capable of dealing with equitable cases in the most satisfactory manner. But in order to ensure that full confidence which it is desirable that the profession and the public should have in the constitution of the Court, it is certainly important that a sufficient number of its Judges should have that special experience which is afforded by practice, while at the Bar, in the Courts of Equity. Of those four Judges only two have been brought up in the practice of that system. Altogether this new Court of Appeal is weaker as to Equity than under the circumstances I am bound to say I think desirable. There was one subject on which I think I collected the intention of my noble and learned Friend, although he did not quite clearly express himself respecting it—I mean the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I take it for granted that it is the intention of my noble and learned Friend to retain the present system of the Judicial Committee and its jurisdiction unaltered.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: That is so.
  LORD SELBORNE: The jurisdiction of the Committee with respect to ecclesiastical cases, therefore, remains. I do not know whether that is a public misfortune, but it will carry small comfort to those who were so anxious to destroy the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in ecclesiastical cases. I have observed, on the list of the so-called

  595
  Committee formed for the restoration of the jurisdiction of this House in English Appeals, the name of at least one noble Lord who last year manifested great anxiety to put an end, at the earliest possible period, to the functions of the Judicial Committee as a Court of Ecclesiastical Appeal. I congratulate that noble Lord on the success of his labours; and, if I might presume to offer him my advice, it would be to hesitate another time before he shows equal zeal for the pursuit of two incompatible objects at the same time. It is only due to my noble and learned Friend that I should state my opinion of the course which the Government have adopted. Had I been in his position I would have preferred to let the Act of 1873 come into operation, rather than suspend it either partially or altogether—for I thoroughly and cordially agree with what has been said as to the evil of prolonging a transition state in our judicial system. Under the circumstances, I am certainly glad that my noble and learned Friend has not encouraged the expectation that the Judicature Act can never come into operation. With reference to the particular arrangements of my noble and learned Friend, I think it better to reserve any further observations which I may have to make till a future stage of the Bill. I may only observe in conclusion that it is to me very satisfactory to find that my noble and learned Friend has not, once and for all, extinguished the hopes which have been entertained of a settlement of this great subject, on the footing of the arrangements made in 1873, but that he has taken a course which will refer to the deliberate judgment of the country the great question whether or not we are to have the best possible Court of Appeal without regard to sentimental or political considerations.
  LORD PENZANCEregarded the course which his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack had taken to extricate them from the difficulties arising out of the legislation of 1873 as decidedly, and beyond all question, the best which was open to them under the circumstances. He believed the Act of 1873, as to the greater part of its provisions, would have worked enormous benefits to the community—both in diminishing the delay and reducing the expense—and he believed no benefit could arise
  596
  from delaying the operation of the Act for another year. But the Act contained one provision which he had always held to be most detrimental—namely, that it created one single Court in England, which would hear between 400 and 500 appeals a-year, which would pronounce judgments that were absolutely irreversible for all time, except through an Act of Parliament, and which would decide the law for ever in all cases of a like nature. A Court possessed of that power would be capable of doing an inconceivable amount of harm to the Judicature of this country. His noble and learned Friend, when he introduced the Bill last year, endeavoured to remedy that evil by providing that there should be a second appeal. There was a considerable difference between the proposal then made by his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack and that which was made by his noble and learned Friend who had just spoken, in 1873. Under the Act of 1873, there was to be no second hearing, and the judgment of the Court was to be conclusive; unless it was determined by the Court itself that a case should be re-heard—no power was given to the suitor to insist on such an appeal. That was a cardinal provision in the Act of 1873, and it was that provision which took away the ultimate appeal to the House of Lords. Now, however, there was a very general opinion entertained that there ought to be a second appeal, as a matter of right, at the election of the suitor against whom the decision happened to be given, and not merely at the option of the Court. As to the cases of Scotland and Ireland, it was argued that it was unfair to propose the adoption of one system for them, and of another for England; and that if one Court of Appeal was good for English suitors, it must be equally good for those from the other Kingdoms—that was how the matter, as it affected Ireland and Scotland was put; and the bringing of those two countries as regarded a Court of Appeal into the same category with England was not, therefore, placed upon the footing which his noble and learned Friend, who had just sat down, stated. He confessed, he might add, that he had heard with great satisfaction that his noble and learned Friend (Lord Selborne) was pleased with the speech which had been delivered by the

  597
  noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack on a former occasion, because last year he had taken the opportunity of reading to his noble and learned Friend some remarks of his own when introducing the Judicature Bill, in which he pointed out, in regard to the proposal for bringing Scotland and Ireland into the same category as England, that it was desirable some delay should occur, and some experience of the new Court of Appeal be obtained, before any such proposal was adopted. Yet, notwithstanding those remarks, his noble and learned Friend last year supported a proposal to extend to Ireland and Scotland at once, and without experience of its working, the very same system which was to be applied to this country. His noble and learned Friend had, he thought, very little ground for complaining of the course which had been taken by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack on the subject. With respect to the immediate point at issue that evening, he concurred with his noble and learned Friend in thinking that his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack would do well to reconsider whether the Court with which it was proposed to begin would be strong enough for the work which would come before it. He believed he might add that the effect of the decisions of the new Court would be very much greater if the splitting up of the Court of Appeal into two or three separate sections were not resorted to. He should like to see one Court of sufficient strength to secure for its decisions that weight and authority with the country which it was so desirable should exist. On the whole, the plan of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack was one which, in his opinion, would give great satisfaction to the country.
  LORD HATHERLEYsaid, he was glad to find that a question the settlement of which had been so long impeded by political feeling was now discussed with the single view to the establishment of as efficient a Court of Appeal as possible. He must, however, protest against the continuance of the delay in the constitution of such a Court. Under the existing system there might be one decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on an appeal from Australia, and the House of Lords might arrive at a different conclusion on an
  598
  appeal from home; and one of the best arguments in favour of having one general appellate jurisdiction for the whole Empire was the advantage of avoiding the conflicting decisions that might very well occur between the Privy Council and the House of Lords. It was a great pity that such a state of things should be allowed to continue to exist, and it was disappointing to all law reformers that a measure which proposed to remedy it should be thrown over. If ever there was a measure that had been thoroughly and exhaustively considered, it was the Act of 1873. As to the eases of Scotland and Ireland, much had been said as to the weight of authority among lawyers being against the transference of its jurisdiction from the House of Lords; but those who could give the best evidence on the subject were the leading counsel accustomed to practice before the House as a Court of Appeal, and in that respect no persons could furnish more valuable testimony than his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack and the noble and learned Lord who had preceded him (Lord Selborne) because of their great experience. Without any feeling of acrimony towards anyone concerned in that matter, he entered a protest against a Bill which had been introduced after so much consideration, and for which even its opponents must admit so much could be said, being entirely dropped—simply on the threat of a Motion that was never made, and without a discussion in that House, and without anybody knowing who those were who had set in motion the peculiar committees that had been formed on that subject. It was deeply to be regretted that under those circumstances the whole matter was to be postponed; and now he was afraid that it might be postponed indefinitely, because ultimately the Government might still further change its mind, and what had been done might be absolutely reversed. With regard to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, he had himself brought in a Bill which led to the appointment of four Judges to that tribunal. The Bill was made a temporary one—for two years only—because it was thought to be so certain that some measure constituting a new Court of Appeal would pass the Legislature in a short time. Happily, however, that expectation did not prevent their remedying the grievance under

  599
  which Indian suitors laboured, and he was gratified at finding that the appointment of those four Judges to the Judicial Committee under that Act had cleared away a mass of Indian appeals and placed the business of the Committee in a satisfactory state. That was a great satisfaction to his mind, because he had been determined that that Act should be carried into effect, although he had met with a good deal of difficulty in doing it. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack had the justice to say that those Judges disposed of 108 appeals in the year, and he had not heard a word of complaint on the part of the suitors of that Court. One word as to the Bill which the noble and learned Lord proposed to introduce. There was a difference of opinion in the profession as to whether the Rules that were framed should be incorporated in an Act of Parliament. For himself, he thought that by taking that course a rigidity that was undesirable would be given to Rules which would require to be modified from time to time as experience and the necessities of mankind required. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack said that he specially aimed at obtaining a Court of Appeal composed of the utmost judicial experience obtainable; but the proposal of his noble and learned Friend would hardly secure that object, because it would take the three Chiefs of the Common Law Courts, who in almost every instance where chosen from the Law Officers of the Crown, and who were therefore of limited judicial experience. He differed entirely, however from the noble and learned Lord as to the necessity of previous judicial experience. Experience gained by practice before the Judges was very valuable in all cases. The late Lord Kingsdown had no judicial experience before he sat in that Appellate Court which his judgments had made famous; and his noble and learned Friend the late Lord Chancellor (Lord Selborne) had no judicial experience before he occupied the Woolsack with so much distinction.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he wished to say a few words to prevent misunderstanding. With regard to the Chiefs of the Superior Courts of Common Law not having had any judicial experience, he should have thought that the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench had had about as long
  600
  judicial experience as any person in this Kingdom; and that, also, the judicial experience of the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer had not been inconsiderable. The noble and learned Lord who spoke last (Lord Hatherley) however, had entirely misunderstood him. When he referred to the necessity of judicial experience, he was speaking of a Court not yet constituted—a Court of Final Appeal—and the manner in which its members ought to be selected. The Court of which the Chiefs of Common Law were members was the Court of Intermediate Appeal, and that he had said nothing about. The noble and learned Lord was also under a misapprehension as to the Rules. The noble and learned Lord did not seem to be aware that the Act of 1873, which was the law of the land at present, had 60 odd Rules in a Schedule, and those Rules did not form clauses of the Act, but were called Rules of Court, which, after the passing of the Act, the Judges would have power to alter. All that was now proposed was to add to those Rules certain other Rules, which it was necessary to make, and to put them all into shape in a consolidated form. In other words, the Schedule of the Act of 1873 would be repealed, and be replaced by another Schedule, containing the same Rules with additional ones. In regard to another matter, he wished to point out that 33 weeks were by those Rules to constitute the judicial year; and although he did not expect that every member of the Court of Appeal would sit on all the 198 days, yet he thought that such a Court ought to be constituted in a way which would allow to individual members the amount of relaxation they required without interfering with the regular course of the sittings. As to the general question of the jurisdiction of this House, views had been attributed to him to which he had never given utterance. His opinion as to that jurisdiction was expressed in the Report of the Committee which sat in 1873, and by the expressions in that Report he fully abided. They were expressions favourable to the manner in which the House had exercised its jurisdiction, and his noble and learned Friend had voted with him in favour of that Report.
  LORD HATHERLEYsaid, he had not so voted.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORreferred to the official paper in proof of what he stated.
  LORD HATHERLEYsaid he proposed a separate Report.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORreplied that that separate Report had been withdrawn, and that the noble and learned Lord then voted with him. Allusion had been made to what he said in 1873 about the course taken by Lord Selborne in not including Scotland and Ireland in the Bill of that year. He would be the first man in the world to admit that he saw reason to change an opinion which he might have on a former occasion expressed. In the present instance, however, he saw no such reason. He said in 1873 that he thought his noble and learned Friend took a very wise course in confining the Bill to England. He was aware that further legislation would be necessary before the measure came into operation, and it was in his belief that in 1874, Scotland and Ireland would be found willing to come in. This would, in all probability, have been the result, but for the sudden and somewhat unhappy change of opinion which had taken place. The remarks he made in 1873 were not really inconsistent with what he maintained to be the principle on which any new Court of Appeal should be constituted—namely, that it should embrace the Three Kingdoms.
  Bill read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Friday next. (No. 48.)

  MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend the law relating to musical and other entertainments in the Metropolis and neighbourhood—Was presented by The Duke of SAINT ALBANS; read 1a. (No. 49.)
  House adjourned at quarter before Eight o'clock, to Monday next, Eleven o'clock.

MINUTES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—NAVY ESTIMATES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—Waste Lands (Ireland) *.
Second Reading—Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation* [111].
Considered as amended—Bank Holidays Act (1871) Extension and Amendment* [30], debate adjourned.

BOARD OF NORTHERN LIGHTHOUSES.

  QUESTION.
  DR. CAMERONasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether his attention has been called to an appointment recently made by the Board of Northern Lighthouses to the secretary-ship to that Board; whether an attempt or attempts had been made by that Board, or some of its members, prior to the resignation of the last secretary, to obtain the sanction of the Board of Trade to a larger salary than had hitherto been paid in the case of newly appointed secretaries; whether, during the absence on various occasions of the last secretary his duty was satisfactorily performed by another official of the Board, who was a candidate for the appointment; and, whether there were any reasons for appointing to the office an advocate of no experience in the work, and overlooking the claims of an experienced servant?
  SIR CHARLES ADDERLEY: Sir, my attention has been called to this subject by the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, who have reported to me that they have recently filled up the vacancy in the office of secretary, caused by the retirement, after 49 years' service, of Mr. Cuningham. Prior to that gentleman's retirement, the Commissioners endeavoured to induce the Board of Trade to increase the salary of future secretaries beyond the amount which the Board had recommended. The amount recommended by the Board of Trade and the amount desired by the Commissioners were both in advance of the salary paid to Mr. Cuningham when first appointed secretary. The Commissioners inform me that during the absence of the secretary, the routine business of the office was done by one of the clerks, but the duties of the office of secretary were not discharged by the official referred to in the Question. The Commissioners state that a large majority of them considered the gentleman recently appointed to possess the highest qualifications in every respect for the office, and it was their act not appointing the official referred to.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) ACT 1872.

  QUESTION.
  SIR GEORGE DOUGLASasked the Lord Advocate, Whether it is his intention during the present Session to take any steps to amend "The Education (Scotland) Act, 1872," with the view of rendering more clear the meaning of its clauses, and there by putting a stop to the litigation which is so general, and which is interrupting the harmony between School Boards and schoolmasters?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE: Sir, several applications have been made for the purpose of obtaining amendment of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1872. I have submitted these to the Government, and the communication which I am authorized to make to these applications and to the Question of my hon. Friend is, that as the Act has come into operation so lately, the most expedient course will be to wait until the Government has had longer experience of the working of the Act before they determine to introduce a Bill for the purpose of amending its clauses. It is matter of regret that the litigation referred to by my hon. Friend should exist between the school boards and the schoolmasters, but the decisions of the Courts in these cases may render it unnecessary to proceed with certain of the proposed Amendments; and it is to be hoped that, in the meantime, a spirit of conciliation may prevent further litigation between those upon whose harmonious acting so much of the success of the schools depends.

MINES—(BELGIUM AND PRUSSIA).

  QUESTION.
  MR. KNOWLESasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If he has obtained the information asked for on Monday the 27th July 1874, namely, if he will lay before the House any information which can be obtained through Her Majesty's diplomatic representatives in Belgium and Prussia as to the functions of the ministers of mines in those countries; whether the inspectors employed act as cheque viewers as well as inspectors on behalf of the State; what are the salaries of such inspectors; and, whether in those countries coal and other mines are owned by the State; and, if so, in what manner those Governments lease their mines, whether
  604
  at a royalty rent or at a per centage on actual profits, and at what average royalty or per centage; and, if so, when he will lay such information before the House?
  MR. BOURKE, in reply, said, that information on the subject was contained in a Parliamentary Paper which had been laid on the Table for sanction. The answer to the first part of the Question was to be found on the first page, and the answer to the other parts on the second page of that Paper.

SPAIN—CARTHAGENA CLAIMS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. RICHARDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, What steps have been taken by Her Majesty's Government to bring under the notice of the Spanish Government the claims of the English residents at Carthagena for losses sustained by them during the insurrection and siege of that city; and, whether there is any prospect of a speedy settlement of those claims?
  MR. BOURKE: Sir, correspondence respecting these claims passed last year between Mr. Layard and the Spanish Government. Since the accession of the present King he had again called attention to the matter, and inquiry into these claims has been promised; and Mr. Layard was informed on the 11th of March last, that they had been referred to the Ministers of the Interior and Marine. The position taken up by Her Majesty's Government has been that the British claims should be dealt with on the same principle as the German claims, for which compensation has been rendered.

INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS—GERMANY AND BELGIUM.—QUESTION.
MR. SANDFORDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether any complaints on the part of the German Government against that of Belgium for the neglect of its international obligations have been communicated to the English Government; and, if they have, whether they have any objection to lay the Papers relating to them upon the Table of the House?
MR. BOURKE: I see, Sir, on the Paper another Question upon this subject, proposed to be asked me by the hon.

605
Member for Wexford County (Mr. O'Clery), and with the permission of the House I will answer that Question at the same time that I answer the Question put by my hon. Friend. Her Majesty's Government are aware that a communication has been addressed by the German Government to the Belgian Government, calling attention to certain matters in regard to which the German Government think the Belgian Government has not fully performed its international duties. A reply to that communication has been sent by the Belgian Government to the Government of Germany. Copies of these documents have been received at the Foreign Office; but they have been communicated to the Foreign Office confidentially, and, under those circumstances, it is impossible to make them public. I may add that neither by the German nor Belgian Government has any appeal been made, in this correspondence, to the Guaranteeing Powers.

UNITED STATES—THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON—CANADIAN LOBSTERS—BRITISH COLUMBIA.—QUESTION.
SIR ARTHUR MONCKasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is true that the Government of the United States have imposed a Duty upon the cans in which canned lobsters are imported into that country from the Dominion of Canada; whether the imposition of that Duty does not amount practically to a Duty upon the lobsters, and is not an infraction of the Treaty of Washington, which provides for the free importation of fish into the United States from Canada; and, whether it is true that the United States Government refuse to admit British Columbia to the advantages of the Treaty of Washington on the plea that she was not incorporated with the Dominion of Canada until after the ratification of the said Treaty, or on any other plea?
MR. BOURKE: No communications, Sir, have been received at the Foreign Office on the subject either from Sir Edward Thornton or the Governor General of Canada. Her Majesty's Government have therefore no official information upon the subject. I am told by my hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the Colonies that these matters have been adverted to in the Dominion House of
606
Commons; but, as I have stated, no representation on the subject has been made from that country. With regard to the latter part of the Question, I cannot say whether the course taken is an infraction of the Treaty of Washington, so far as it provides for the free importation of fish from Canada.

ARMY ESTIMATES—THE SUPERANNUATION LIST.—QUESTION.
CAPTAIN NOLANasked the Paymaster General, If, in Vote 24, Army Estimates, for 1875–6, the first name on the Superannuation List is that of an officer who died in February, 1874?
MR. STEPHEN CAVE: Yes, Sir, it is so. I may say that the Army Estimates are prepared in the War Office, and not in the Paymaster General's Office, but to save trouble I have made the necessary inquiries. The facts are these—Major Adams's pension was granted after the Estimates for 1874–5, Vote 24, were prepared, and, therefore, could not appear therein. But as the Act requires that the names of all persons granted superannuations shall be laid before the House, it was necessary to include the name and pension in the Estimates for 1875–6; and as Major Adams died a few days after being placed on the Pension List, the amount is included in the £8,808 8s. 6d. deducted from the Vote for allowances which have ceased since the date of the last Estimate. It is, in fact, a mere record of the Grant.

FREEMASONS (IRELAND).—QUESTION.
LORD ROBERT MONTAGUasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, When the Return, "Freemasons (Ireland)," granted by the House on March 12th, will be in the hands of Members?
SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH, in reply, said, that owing to the form in which the Return had been ordered, it had been sent in by the Clerk of the Peace made up only to the year 1866, and it was thought necessary to refer again to that officer, in order that the whole Return should be supplied. He must say there had been some unnecessary delay, but it was not due to the Irish Government: he, however, hoped the Return would be ready before the debate on the Peace Preservation Bill came on next Thursday week.

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN LOANS—SIR HENRY JAMES—THE PARAGUAYAN LOAN.—OBSERVATIONS.
LORD CLAUD HAMILTON: Sir, I have received a telegram from the hon. Baronet the Member for East Devonshire (Sir Lawrence Palk) stating that he is unable to be present in the House this evening to put a Question to the hon. and learned Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), which stands on the Paper in his (Sir Lawrence Palk's) name. But I understand that the form of the Question, as originally given, was by your direction, Sir, materially altered; and therefore I think it better on behalf of my hon. Friend, as he cannot be aware of the alteration made in it, that the Question should be deferred until Monday next.
MR. SPEAKER: It is right that I should state to the House why the terms of this Question have been altered on my authority. The Question, as originally presented, embraced the account of a solicitor for certain charges in his client's bill of costs, and all those charges so embraced in the solicitor's account which referred to the hon. and learned Member for Taunton have been allowed to stand; but such portions of the account as were the solicitor's own charges, and of which the hon. and learned Member could have no personal knowledge, have, by my authority, been struck out.
SIR HENRY JAMES: Mr. Speaker, I have to express my regret, under the circumstances, to which I am sure the House will allow me to advert—that the Question of the hon. Baronet the Member for East Devonshire was communicated to the public Press before it could have appeared on the Notice Paper of this House—I have also to appeal to that fairness which I am sure the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn would be the first to display, and to ask him whether he has not the authority of the hon. Baronet to put the Question to me in the shape in which it now stands on the Paper?
LORD CLAUD HAMILTON: Sir, the terms of my hon. Friend's telegram were "Put the Question to-night, or postpone it." He was not, I believe, aware, when he sent the telegram, that it had been altered; but after what has fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Taunton, I think I could not do
608
otherwise than put it. I therefore ask the hon. and learned Member, Whether he was professionally engaged as counsel for the plaintiffs in a case relating to the Paraguay Loan in the Court of Exchequer, entitled "Cracroft and Ohlsen v. Waring Brothers;" and, whether, if so, his client's bill of costs, which has been paid, dated 5th of May 1874, contained the following items:—Attending Sir Henry James with brief, 13 s. 4d.; paid his fee and clerks thereon, £132 6s.; attending him to appoint consultation, with fee, £2 16 s. 2d.?
SIR HENRY JAMES: Sir, I have to thank the noble Lord for kindly acceding to my request. I am quite sure that the absence of the hon. Baronet the Member for East Devonshire is attributable only to unavoidable circumstances. At the same time, I must repeat my expression of regret that the hon. Member should have thought it necessary, after the answer I gave last night, to have communicated this Question in the form in which it appeared in the public Press before he put it on the Notice Paper. I now beg permission of the House, first, to answer the Question as it stands. I believe that on the 15th of February, 1874, when I had the honour of occupying the position of one of the Law Officers of the Crown, I did receive a brief in a cause in respect of the right of certain persons to recover a sum of money for work and labour done in relation to a Paraguayan Loan. I am sorry I cannot afford fuller information on the subject; first, because the circumstances have somewhat passed from my memory, and, also, because the cause was never tried. The matter was made a subject of private arrangement before the time for trial. In relation to the second part of the Question, I think the House will at once see that I am not likely to be cognizant of the contents of any bill of the attorney who instructed me; but it appears to me exceedingly likely that some such items did appear in the attorney's bill. I have now answered, the Question in the terms in which it is put, and I hope, under the circumstances, that the House will allow me to add a few words on the way in which it was framed. Prom the way in which it has been put—from its repetition and publication—I hope the House will grant me at least that personal indulgence. I am anxious now only to say that in determining to

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bring the Motion in relation to Foreign Loans before the House I had no communication of any kind or description, direct or indirect, by way of request or influence, with any person whatever connected with that suit. In fact, I gave Notice of that Motion, on my determination to make it, without being influenced by any person whatever. I brought forward that Motion only in the hope—I may be wrong—but in the hope that I might call attention to what I felt to be a great and growing evil affecting the public; and I think I am entitled to ask from the hon. Baronet the Member for East Devonshire, that if he intends to suggest in this Question that in bringing forward this Motion I have been influenced by any other consideration than that which I deemed due to the public, he will afford me an opportunity of giving a refutation to any facts that are in his knowledge, and not content himself with insinuating that which he does not openly declare.

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

THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPE, in rising to call attention to the scheme for the enlargement and improvement of the National Gallery as provided for by Act of Parliament in the year 1866, and to the present condition of the works which have, in consequence, been undertaken, said: There was a time when questions like the one which I am to-night about to bring under the notice of the House were very popular here, and produced animated conversations, and I trust that the present Parliament will take an interest in them not inferior to that of its predecessors. The National Gallery especially has been discussed time out of mind, although, I am sorry to say, it has too often been fought over in the interests of some Party triumph. I can assure the House that it will be in no such spirit that I shall to-night enter on the first artistic debate of the existing Parliament. On the contrary, I shall
  610
  treat the question of the National Gallery as one which has already become matter of history. England, unlike any other country, I believe, in civilized Europe, possessed no National Gallery, properly speaking, till about 50 years ago, when the Angerstein Collection was purchased. Shortly after, the building which is now the National Gallery was erected in Trafalgar Square, and at that time it seemed to be so much in excess of the needs of the case that its eastern wing was handed over for the use of the Royal Academy, which continued to occupy it till a few years ago. In time, the National Gallery outgrew its small lodgings in the western part of that building, and it then became a pressing question whether the actual edifice should be enlarged, or a new one constructed. In 1864, during the Government of the late Lord Palmerston, and when my right hon. Friend the Member for South Hampshire (Mr. Cowper-Temple) filled the office of First Commissioner of Works, a plan was prepared for the construction of a new National Gallery on the area of Burlington House and Gardens, now occupied partly by the Royal Academy and partly by the University of London, and it was generally understood that if that plan had been carried out the whole of the building in Trafalgar Square would have been surrendered to the Royal Academy. The frustration of that arrangement will, I now believe, be ultimately advantageous to the cause of Art, always supposing that the actual project is realized without mutilation; but, at the period, I much regretted it, for it would certainly have saved a great loss of time and considerable expense. I do not ask why it did not approve itself to the Parliament of that day. The House of Commons rejected it, and the Government was obliged to withdraw the proposal, and it was generally understood that the National Gallery should stop in Trafalgar Square. This brings me to the present state of the question. In 1866, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hampshire, being still First Commissioner of Works, brought in a Bill for the purchase of the land which was considered necessary for the "enlargement and improvement of the National Gallery;" and on the 6th of August, 1866, a change of Government having taken place, and the Conservatives being

  611
  in office, that Bill received the Royal Assent. I wish particularly to call attention to the words "enlargement and improvement of the National Gallery" as defining the object of that measure; for they are the very Magna Charta of my present claim. Parliament then deliberately declared that the National Gallery required to be enlarged and improved, by passing an Act for the purpose. Parliament also found the money for the acquisition of the land indicated in that Act, which has become the property of the nation, at an outlay of about £140,000. My plea, then, is that the country should have its money's worth, and that upon this £140,000 of purchased land shall be constructed a National Gallery alike worthy of the object, worthy of the Empire, and worthy of this great capital. Simultaneously with settling the site, steps had been taken to invite plans and prepare a scheme of limited competition, on the part of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hampshire, who invited selected architects to contend. In the meantime, my right hon. Friend had quitted office, and was succeeded by my noble Friend the present Postmaster General (Lord John Manners). The terms of competition had been arranged by the noble Lord's Predecessor; but the choice of judges was his own work. They were Lord Hardinge; my noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho); Sir William Boxall, at the time Director of the National Gallery, and himself an eminent artist; that distinguished architect, the late Sir William Tite; Mr. Redgrave, the Royal Academician; Mr. William Russell, a trustee of the National Gallery; Mr. Gambier Parry, one of our first amateur artists; Mr. David Brandon, an architect of great repute; and myself. We met, and came to a decision which, at the time, created some discontent, though it was an unreasonable discontent, for it was expected that the judges would have recommended that some particular design should be carried out. It is true that we did not absolutely recommend that any particular design should be carried out; but we did what was practically as good, and, indeed, as I should personally contend, much better: for we indicated the man whom we thought most competent to do the work, thus practically se-
  612
  curing the reward for the worthiest, whilst we untied the hands who were interested in the result, to modify the plan according to circumstances, and we did not fetter employers and employed to crude first thoughts. The competition was a double one, for it invited each competitor to furnish two plans—one for an alteration of the present National Gallery, and the other for the construction of a new National Gallery. For altering the present National Gallery, Mr. Murray, a most meritorious architect, was recommended as having produced a plan which displayed the greatest architectural merit in carrying out that particular object. But for the construction of a new National Gallery—that which the judges themselves, and the public whom they served, felt to be the only right, complete, and satisfactory thing to do—the name of Mr. Barry was mentioned as the architect whose design carried with it "the greatest amount of architectural merit." At the same time, we recommended neither Mr. Murray's nor Mr. Barry's design as it stood for execution. It was very clear that in making that award we indicated our opinion that the Government would act most wisely and consistently in giving Mr. Barry the employment, while we did not wish to fetter either the Government or Mr. Barry by pressing the execution of a plan which, full as it was of merit, seemed capable of improvement. The judges accompanied their award with certain recommendations as to matters of convenience, beauty, comfort, and other points which occurred to them as being necessary to be taken into consideration by those who were to be in charge of the construction of the new National Gallery. The Report of the judges was dated the 28th of February, 1866, and was transmitted to my noble Friend the present Postmaster General. On the 5th of August, in the same year, the Trustees of the National Gallery, having been invited to give their opinion on the subject, drew up a most valuable Report, containing recommendations emanating from their own private experience, bearing upon the building of a new National Gallery. On the 16th of June, 1868, the noble Lord had before him the judges' recommendation of Mr. Barry as the man who had produced the best design, as well as the various Papers and suggestions

  613
  which related either to the general question or to Mr. Barry's plan, which plan, though not satisfactory as a final design, was a most valuable first sketch. Having all these documents before him on that day, my noble Friend appointed Mr. Barry architect of the new National Gallery. The decision gave great comfort to all who had the artistic credit of the country at heart; for, at last, it was hoped and believed that in a few years the new National Gallery would be something that would have a substantial and material existence. On the 24th of October following, Mr. Barry was invited by the Department of Works to prepare his plans, with elevations and sections. Meanwhile, consequent upon a change of Government, my noble Friend had to leave the office which he had so ably and conspicuously filled, and was succeeded, for a short time, by Mr. Layard—an administrator whose erudite zeal for everything connected with Art deserved more credit than, I am sorry to say, he has received. Mr. Layard, as First Commissioner, threw himself into his work right heartily; but a small political revolution taking place inside the Administration, he was, in his turn, succeeded by another First Commissioner of Works—a man of conspicuous practical capacities, but whose enthusiasm for Art never hurried him into aesthetic excesses: I mean, of course, Mr. Ayrton. On the 6th of November, 1869, Mr. Barry sent in his designs. He had been appointed by the noble Lord now Postmaster General, architect of the National Gallery; Mr. Layard had regarded him as such; and the next communication which he expected was, that he should be ordered to carry out the plan for the National Gallery; but, instead of that, he was requested to send in his bill. Mr. Barry could not understand that. To be called upon to send in his bill, looked as if his engagement were to be terminated. That, however, is an episode in the history to which I will not further refer, for whatever may have been meant by this eccentric procedure it practically led to nothing. The matter was then hung up for a time; but on the 29th of September, 1870, Mr. Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, did authorize Mr. Barry to prepare the working designs for a certain fragment of the National Gallery—the portion of it which is now
  614
  so near completion. Whether, by giving that limited order, the Department of Works intended to cancel Mr. Barry's larger commission as architect of the whole building, is a matter upon which I do not enter; though I believe that I may take upon myself to say that no document can be produced which cancels it, and the work which he was then ordered to do is, in fact, quite consistent with the larger engagement of which it forms a portion, and which was always intended to be carried out as the first part of the undertaking. Mr. Barry did carry out his order accordingly, and sent in his plans, which were accepted and set in hand. The work is now nearly completed, and the Gallery almost ready to receive pictures.
  Thus the matter now stands. I have mentioned the name of the architect several times; but I wish the House clearly to understand that I am not speaking as counsel for Mr. Barry, or for any other man. I am simply standing up as the advocate of the National Gallery, and for the completion, in a satisfactory manner, of a great and important undertaking. I must incidentally observe that the man who has done that first part of the work, and done it with great ability and devotion to the public service, would be naturally the man to whom we should look to complete it. Still it is not of the man, of his fame, or of his profits, but of the Gallery itself that I am now speaking. The upshot of the recommendations made by the Trustees of the National Gallery, in their Report of the 5th of August, 1867, was that 4,200 linear feet of wall were wanted for a satisfactory National Gallery. In all these recommendations linear measurement only was taken as the basis of calculation, and the question of height hardly entertained. It would be simply to murder pictures to hang them too high or too low, and the height of the room had afterwards to be settled on practical and architectural considerations. A room should be high enough for the sake of appearance and ventilation, as well as for the comfort of the visitors; but for the proper distribution of the site the linear measurement was the main consideration. In 1867 the Trustees of the National Gallery requisitionized for the Old Masters, to begin with, 2,400 linear

  615
  feet; 3,000 feet being, in their opinion, the maximum area that they would ever want for that branch of the collection. The Raphael Cartoons, which were at South Kensington, but which I am sure the House will agree with me ought to be in the heart of London, and in the National Gallery, required 200 linear feet; a contemplated Loan Collection 300 feet; modern pictures 900 feet; a special gallery for the Turner bequest 400 feet: the sum total being 4,200 feet, besides an unknown quantity for modern foreign pictures. There was also an independent claim set up for a wing of the gallery to be set apart for the National Portrait Gallery; but, as I believe and hope, that collection will be adequately lodged in some of the numerous galleries of the defunct International Exhibition at South Kensington, I venture to drop that item out of the calculation. Well, as I said, the Trustees proposed 4,200 linear feet, and Mr. Barry's complete plan would have given 4,315—not much more than the Trustees themselves had named. It is but just a little over; and therefore, if he has erred at all, he has done so on the right side. The fragment of the National Gallery now being completed gives a length of 1,078 linear feet, and the old building sections for 2,072 feet; together 3,150 feet, or within 1,000 feet of the entire space wanted. This is the case for doing nothing; but against it we must remember that only 1,000 feet of that space is included in the new gallery, and is therefore possessed of the height, width, dimensions, ventilation, and top-lighting necessary in order that the English National Gallery should compete with the national galleries even of second-class European States—that, for example, of so small a power as Saxony, the capital of which has so long been famous all over the world as an Art centre. I have had the pleasure of visiting the new Galleries, and I cannot express how much I admire the spacious, dignified, and airy appearance of the rooms, with a width varying from 30 to 40 feet, with sufficient height but not too much, and with an area of skylight about half the whole superficies of the floors, conforming in their aspects to the recommendations of the judges and of the Trustees. Then, when I left them and entered the old Galleries—no doubt well-intended apartments, but as unlike
  616
  the new ones as the first steamer that started from London was like the Ulster and Munster boats now plying between Holyhead and Kingstown—their dark, gloomy, and cavernous aspect was a most striking contrast.
  The state of the case, to go a little more into detail, is, that the area which has been purchased at an outlay of £140,000 is divided, roughly speaking, into four sections. One of these is the existing National Gallery; the second the space already built over; and the third the portion of the acquired ground lying behind the new building to the northward. These two last pieces together represent the £140,000, and include among other things, in the part which has still to be built over, the old workhouse of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in that narrow lane, which we all know so well when we are running to catch a train at Charing Cross Station, called Hemming's Row. The fourth section, to the north-west, is St. George's Barracks. No doubt it would be a serious thing to remove barracks or other large public buildings; but I believe that I am justified in stating that high military authorities are not so enamoured with the site of those barracks as much to object to their removal to another site rather nearer the river, so that the appropriation of the present ground filled up by the barracks for the National Gallery would be no disservice to our military establishments. But whether or not the the barracks are desirable for the National Gallery, they are not absolutely essential to the scheme of rebuilding. The remaining portion is, as I have said, an area which might be plainly and roughly divided into four parts; the part which had been built over, and then the part which is still to be built over—these are known as sections one and two—then comes as the third section, the present National Gallery; and the fourth is these barracks. One of the lots, we see, is already built over; the next is ready to be built over, and the present National Gallery must go, unless the whole thing is to remain an abortion. Now what shall we get by carrying out the scheme? We shall have possession of a National Gallery worthy of the country; a building well isolated and fireproof, and therefore suited to the safe custody of the Art treasures which will be contained in it,

  617
  If we take, moreover, the area of the barracks, we shall be able to carry out a great metropolitan improvement, by making a wide street running from south to north at the west end of the National Gallery, commencing opposite the College of Physicians, and reaching up to Leicester Square, where it would meet the new street which the Metropolitan Board of "Works are going to carry out there, running to Oxford Street. So the reconstruction of the National Gallery would connect itself with, and lead to a much wanted metropolitan improvement—a main north and south artery running a little to the eastward of Regent Street. This would indeed be a vast gain to the convenience and the appearance of London, and I feel confident that the House will agree with me in the desirability, if possible, of effecting it. I have nothing to say as to the National Portrait Gallery, for the reason which I have already given. I have also, I trust, offered sufficient arguments for the necessity of rebuilding the existing Gallery instead of leaving the poor and inferior range of rooms and the depressed façde which Wilkins was compelled to construct, standing as an eyesore to Trafalgar Square, and a foil to the noble galleries behind.
  These, then, are the general facts upon which I base my case. I have described what is required. I have mentioned the length of time during which the undertaking has been hung up. I have reminded the House of the plans for a new National Gallery to be erected on another site, which were prepared by eminent architects in 1864; of the Act of Parliament which secured the present site in 1866; of the limited competition which settled who should be the architect in 1867; of the architect's own plans, now five or six years old; and I ask what have we gained by this procrastination and this economy? What is the advantage of it to London or to the Empire? I have pointed to Hemming's Bow, and I hope that any hon. Member who feels an interest in the question will go to Hemming's Row, and look at those miserable ruins which were once St. Martin's Workhouse, and which, if the great scheme were carried out, would be pulled down, when the line of buildings would be thrown back, and a fine broad street constructed where there is now a narrow and squalid lane.
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  On the more general question of the congruity of such a Gallery, I find it difficult to speak, for the matter is so plain and obvious that it is a truism much more than a truth, and if I were to dwell upon it, I fear that I should find myself drifting into a lecture more adapted to a Mechanics' Institution than to the debates of this House. The thing is obvious; but is it not something to be ashamed of, if the results of such a truism were to be neglected Session after Session and Recess after Recess? I am not blaming any Party in the House, and above all, the present Government, who have been in office only for a year, and has had many other things to think of. To its Members, when in office before, and practically making up the same Government, were owing some of the most substantial steps that have been taken for the commencement of this good work, and I look now to them to carry it through. I put it as a question concerning the national honour, as a claim of necessity, and as an essential element of educational development, and at the same time a thing that will be eminently popular. Has not every addition to the contents of the National Gallery been warmly greeted by the intelligent public? When the right hon. Member for Tamworth surrendered to the nation on such generous terms the magnificent collection of Dutch and Flemish pictures which had been collected by his great father, Sir Robert Peel; when the hon. Baronet the Member for Lisburn (Sir Richard Wallace) presented the masterpiece of Terburg; when two or three years ago the grand unfinished Michael Angelo was acquired; and when these 14 pictures, including the painting by Pietro della Francesca, were bought at Mr. Barker's sale; how great was the enthusiasm awakened by these several acquisitions to our national collection! If in addition to all this the Government will promise to give the country a national building worthy of the name, they will not only do a wise, a far-sighted, and a generous thing, but, I repeat, they will be taking a most popular step, and win for themselves the gratitude of all those sections of the public, whose good will is worth obtaining. Of course, it is a matter of money, and I know that the grim guardians of the national till are sitting at this moment

  619
  on the Treasury bench. Still there are some things for which money must at times be found, and the National Gallery is one of these. I am not to be met with the excuse, then, that the National Gallery cannot be built, because there are other important structures to be raised. I know that there are Law Courts rising at the eastern end of the Strand, and that a Natural History Museum is being reared at South Kensington. But I contend that a nation like ours, with resources and a history such as ours, and with a Capital of four millions of inhabitants, ought to be able to build a Palace of Justice, a Natural History Museum and Picture Galleries at one and the same time, if England would be true to its traditional greatness. This, then, is my claim. I have abstained from putting down any Notice of Motion, because I might have been met by arguments derived from immediate and temporary expediency, which would have told against me on the division list, and left it no sure test of the real feeling of the House. I prefer to carry with me the sympathies of the House, which I am satisfied that I have won, rather than encounter the unfair and incomplete ordeal of a division taken on a false issue. I hope and believe, however, that the Government will do the best they can in the matter, and I earnestly invite them to carry out with all convenient expedition this most excellent and popular work.
  LORD HENRY LENNOXsaid, he most heartily thanked his hon. Friend for the public spirit which was manifested in the remarks he had addressed to the House. He had been right in adopting that course; because, in order to obtain the sympathy of both sides on matters of this kind, it was desirable not to introduce any question of a Party character, but to argue the subject on its intrinsic merits. His hon. Friend had also very properly disclaimed appearing that evening as champion for the eminent architect Mr. Barry. He (Lord Henry Lennox) sympathized very much with Mr. Barry on account of that which he called the disappointment of his life; but he could not regard him as having been ill-treated, for no one who held the office he had the honour of holding, and, least of all, his noble Friend the Postmaster General, could for a moment have intended so to deal with so distinguished a man. Only the
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  other day he told Mr. Barry that he looked upon it as a fact that every great architect and most artists met, each of them, with a grievance in the course of his career. That appeared to be incidental to such a career, and it was equally true of public men. How few public men were there who came into that House and won their way to office who had not grievances and disappointments, and did not think that they ought to occupy higher positions than those in which they were placed? Mr. Barry had a grievance. He had not been ill-treated, but had met with a disappointment from ill luck. He was one of the architects who had competed for the greatest work undertaken in this country since the present Houses of Parliament were built. The Commissioners to whom reference had been made reported very much in favour of Mr. Barry, and they also recommended another distinguished architect, Mr. Street. Now, if ever there was a building in the plan of which the question of internal accommodation should have been considered pre-eminent, it was that building which was to be adapted for carrying out the vast machinery of the law. That being so, the Commissioners were of opinion that the façade of the great building in question should be entrusted to Mr. Street, and the internal arrangements to Mr. Barry. For his part, he quite concurred with his noble Friend the Postmaster General that such an arrangement would not be likely to work satisfactorily, and in the result the Law Courts were placed in the hands of Mr. Street, and to Mr. Barry was entrusted the re-construction of the National Gallery. The Commission presided over by Lord Hardinge strongly recommended the proposed plan of Mr. Barry for carrying out that object; but, at the same time, did not think it advisable that the re-construction should be proceeded with at once. It was, however, found that the Collection of Pictures was overcrowded; an addition to the Gallery was required, and Mr. Barry was called upon to make it, the question as to elevation being allowed to remain over for the present. Mr. Barry undertook the duty confided to him, and he (Lord Henry Lennox) cordially reciprocated everything his hon. Friend had said as to the magnificent success which had attended his work. He hoped that

  621
  the new Galleries would soon be open to I the public, for when they were he was certain there would be but one opinion as to their merits, or as to the immense stride we had made in adding to our National Gallery, regarding which he thought his hon. Friend had spoken in somewhat disparaging terms. His hon. Friend pointed to several great works which he thought ought to be at once proceeded with; but he (Lord Henry Lennox) must remind the House that the interests of Art had not of late been neglected, and that it was not Art alone that was pulling at the national purse strings. The National Gallery had boon extended; the Law Courts were being proceeded with; a Natural History Museum, which would cost £500,000, had been sanctioned; a considerable sum, approaching to nearly £200,000, had been expended on the South Kensington Museum; and Museums had been established in Edinburgh and Bethnal Green. It would not, therefore, be just to say that successive Governments had not shown a desire to promote the interests of Art. The present National Gallery was most admirably situated, and when things were at their worst they began to mend. His hon. Friend, therefore, he thought, would agree with him (Lord Henry Lennox) that it was well the façade of the National Gallery had not been patched up and made something less abominable than it was, for nothing could be much worse. He trusted an improvement in due time would be manifested. His hon. Friend had alluded to the purchase of pictures made last year; but that, he thought, was as nothing compared with the eloquent speech in which the Prime Minister proposed that Vote for the acceptance of the House. No one could have heard the speech of his right hon. Friend on that occasion without feeling that the cause and interests of Art would not only not be neglected, but would, on the contrary, be supported and encouraged.
  MR. COWPER-TEMPLEsaid, that although disappointment had been occasioned to a distinguished artist in the manner referred to by his noble Friend, yet, on the whole, the best course had, he thought, been adopted. His noble Friend had intimated that the Commissioners recommended that two architects should be employed—one in respect
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  of the exterior, the other the interior of the new Law Courts. That, he believed, was not the intention of the judges, although such an impression might be conveyed by the language they used. They contemplated that in a work of such magnitude, the architect might avail himself of the aid of a partner of eminence in carrying it out. He did not doubt, however, that his noble Friend the Postmaster General had good grounds for confiding all the work and its responsibility to one architect. With respect to the National Gallery, he hoped his noble Friend the Chief Commissioner of Works would not imitate the long delay which had occurred, and he had no doubt in that case, the time would soon come when the original design as to the National Gallery would be carried out, when the façade facing Trafalgar Square would be removed, and when a Gallery would be founded worthy of the nation, and of the great treasures which it possessed. A large portion of these pictures were gifts, and the least thing the nation could do was to provide a proper receptacle. He hoped that they would soon see the Cartoons of Raphael placed in the Central Hall—which was part of the design of Mr. Barry—where they might be seen to much greater advantage than either at Hampton Court or at South Kensington.
  MR. KINNAIRDsaid, he cordially thanked the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Beresford Hope) for bringing the subject forward; because in all metropolitan improvements, they were behind other countries. He thought they could not have a better time than the present for carrying out the scheme shadowed forth, as every year's delay would enhance the difficulty of procuring a site. He believed that in even the past year, house property had risen in value nearly double. ["No, no!"] In Carlton House Terrace, a house which a few years ago was bought for £12,000, had been lately sold for £40,000. Was not that a great increase? He ventured to declare his conviction that they might have carried out the improvement and widened Parliament Street a few years ago at about one-half the cost which they would now have to incur.
  MR. GOLDSMIDsaid, he must deny that the value of house property had increased during the last 12 months to the extent stated by the hon. Member. From

  623
  personal experience he could say, although it probably was only temporary, that, contrary to the statement of the hon. Member, there was rather a tendency to a decline in the value of house property, even in the most fashionable parts of London, during that period; and it was too absurd to compare property in Carlton House Terrace with miserable property at the back of St. Martin's Church. The decline, in his opinion, resulted from the general depression of trade throughout the country. Of course, he was aware that over a period of 10 years there was a considerable increase in the value of fashionable houses; but of them really it was not now the question. But with regard to the question more immediately under discussion, he (Mr. Goldsmid) would say that he could quite understand the feeling of Mr. Barry, who naturally wished to be the architect of a grand National Gallery; but he thought the course the Government had adopted was a wise course—adding galleries as they were wanted, and not anticipating wants by spending between £300,000 and £350,000 more than was at present required for the accommodation of the national pictures. When the time arrived that more accommodation for the display of the pictures in the National Gallery was called for, then would be the proper occasion to incur increased expenditure and carry the remainder of Mr. Barry's plan into execution. He would urge the noble Lord to use a little more expedition in carrying out the Government works not only connected with the National Gallery, but in other parts of the metropolis. Anyone who saw the slow pace at which the Law Courts were being built would feel the justice of this remark.
  MR. LOCKEthought the building called the National Gallery was one of the worst used of any public buildings. Before the alterations were made, there was a handsome entrance, and staircases on each side, one for the galleries of ancient pictures and the other for the Royal Academy; but for some reason that entrance had been almost blocked up. Had it not been for the interference of Mr. Hume, who succeeded in reducing the height of the building, and thus saved money, there would have been no reason to complain of the structure. The building would have
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  been 12 or 14 feet higher had not Mr. Hume interfered. No doubt, there would be a necessity for an extension of the buildings; but he thought there were plenty of localities in the metropolis where house property was not of any great value. The more they went to the Northern and North-eastern parts of the metropolis, the cheaper they found the houses. The British Museum stood there; and if the land were cheap they might go in that direction, when they wished to erect public buildings. He thought the Government were acting wisely in not making any alteration at present. He was not aware that the National Gallery as it now stood was entirely filled with pictures, and he thought that when it was filled, there would be time enough to consider the question of further accommodation. With regard to the City of London, great and important alterations had in late years been carried out there, and the new, wide, and fine streets recently constructed within the City must be regarded as great improvements. The Corporation of London many years ago had maps drawn showing the improvements required by widening streets, which they had done by degrees when houses were destroyed by fire or become dilapidated. Newgate Street was an example. The Metropolitan Board of Works had not adopted this course some years ago, when he (Mr. Locke), in a Select Committee brought the plan of the City to their consideration. The Metropolitan Board should give their attention to what was required in the first instance throughout the metropolis in improvements, and have a map to show how these could be carried out from time to time.

INDIA—BANK OF BOMBAY.

  RESOLUTION.
  MR. GREGORY, in rising to call the attention of the House to the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the failure of the Bank of Bombay, and the position of the Shareholders in such Bank with reference to the government of that Presidency; and to move, "That, in the opinion of this House, the case of such Shareholders is one for the favourable consideration of Her Majesty's Government," said, the subject related to the ruin of a well-established

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  concern, and to the loss of a capital of £2,000,000, which had been subscribed by innocent shareholders; and the question at issue was, to what extent the Government were responsible for that disastrous result. The Bank of Bombay was established in 1840, on principles similar to those of the banks in the other Presidencies which were established at the same date. Those banks were, to a certain extent, Government institutions, the East India Company, who at that time ruled the country, taking shares in them, and in the case of the Bank of Bombay appointing three of the nine directors by which the concern was managed. Under that system, from 1840 until 1860 the Bank in question, with a capital limited to £520,000, carried on a safe, honest, and profitable business which enabled it to pay the not extravagant dividend of 7½ per cent to its shareholders. In 1860 the Government, however, thought proper to make a change in the business of the Bombay Bank. They withdrew the powers of issue from it, but, in exchange, agreed to make the Bank the administrator of the Treasury balances. That proceeding involved the passing of a new Act, and accordingly the Directors contemplated obtaining an Act on the same footing as that of the Bank of Bengal, and it would have been fortunate for the shareholders if the resolution of the Directors had been carried out. Such, however, was not the case, although about this time the Secretary of State for India expressly pointed out in a despatch that the business of the Bank should be restricted to legitimate banking operations, such as those of the Bank of England or the Bank of Bengal. A Bill was drawn and submitted to the Advocate General of the day, who took some exceptions, and referred it back to the Directors for revision. The result of the matter was, that an important provision which had been originally contemplated was struck out of the Bill—namely, a provision confining the security accepted by the Bank to the guaranteed companies in India; and another provision was inserted, allowing the Bank to invest in the securities of any public company in India, whether guaranteed or not. In that state the Bill was forwarded to the Government of India, and unfortunately they expressed an opinion that it should be passed by
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  the Council of Bombay instead of by the Council of the Governor General. If the Bill had been considered by the Government of Bengal, it would have been considered in the presence of the Finance and Legal Members of the Council, and during its discussion they could have had the advantage of having before them the Act of the Bank of Bengal. Under these circumstances, the Bill was referred to the Legislative Council of Bombay, which was composed of six Members who were officials of the Government, three who were partners in mercantile houses, and three who were Native gentlemen, and it should be borne in mind that the deliberations of the Council were close, no report was given, and their power was essentially an arbitrary one. The Bill was afterwards submitted to the Governor General, and after having passed through the Legislative Council of Bombay it was found to differ very materially from the Act of the Bank of Bengal, and also from the original Act of 1840. Under the new Act the capital was increased to £2,000,000; and instead of, as in the old Act, limiting advances to a sum not exceeding three lacs of rupees to any one individual, repayment of which was to be made in three months, it allowed the discount of any-negotiable security, it gave liberty to make advances on the shares of any companies whatever, and it removed the restrictions against the amount which was to be advanced to any one individual on any uncertain security; but it did contain certain provisions which if exercised might have prevented the mischief which subsequently ensued, because it gave power to the Indian Government from time to time to investigate the accounts of the Bank, and to call for reports and balance-sheets. The Bank was launched in September, 1863, under its new constitution, its president being Mr. Birch, a Government Director, who, during his administration of its affairs, lost for the Bank £1,000,000 or £1,500,000, while he received some £37,000 as a premium on shares or securities that had been handed over to him. Then there appeared upon the scene a Native of Bombay, a small cotton broker, a man who, although comparatively unknown, was at once subtle, designing, ostentatious, and speculative—a man of considerable capacity and of great resources in him-

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  self. This man lived in the most ostentatious manner, and squandered other people's money when he got hold of it. Of him it might be said alieni appetens sui profusus. In process of time this man acquired very great influence over the Secretary of the Bank and others; he, in fact, seemed to draw out what he liked; and he also recommended customers. He obtained for himself loans to the amount of £420,000, and for other people to the extent of £669,000, on which there was ultimately a loss to the Bank of £434,447. During this time no inspection appeared to have been exercised on the part of the Government, there were no balance-sheets, and no bye-laws were passed. Any person reading the Act under which the powers he had referred to were conferred on the Government would see that it was the duty of the Government to have enforced the provisions of the Act, and, at all events, to have insisted that proper bye-laws should be made for the purpose of controlling the action of the Directors. By doing so, they would have prevented much of the mischief that ultimately ensued. But that was not all. The Directors were not satisfied with what they had already done with regard to the ruin of the central establishment; they established branches, and one in contravention of the Act in Bombay itself. The Act provided that no branch should be established in Bombay; but the Directors got the sanction of the Government for that purpose, and thus incurred a further loss of something like £190,000. In April, 1865, the Directors further came to this extraordinary resolution—that they would advance not only on the nominal value of shares of public companies but also up to 75 per cent of the fictitious value to which they had been run up. This caused a loss of £134,000. Although these things were unnoticed by the Government of Bombay, yet rumours of what was going on reached the Home Government, and Sir Charles Wood (now Lord Halifax) became frightened at what he had heard of the transactions, and, accordingly, in March, 1865, he wrote to Sir Bartle Frere, to the effect that he could not help being alarmed at the prospect of a crash, and bidding Sir Bartle Frere to look after the Bank. It did appear extraordinary that the Government of Bombay should have waited for such a requi-
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  sition. An inquiry was then directed to be made by the Governor of Bombay, and a Report was drawn up by the Government Directors, but that inquiry was not only inefficient, but was misleading, because they reported that though it was true that large advances had been made upon shares of all sorts, yet these shares had been deposited only as "collateral security." What was meant was, that notes of hand had been given for the advances in addition to the deposit of shares; but, in truth, the shares were the only real instead of being a merely collateral security. Such a Report, when made by Government Directors, put in motion by the Government itself, was certainly calculated to mislead. The Bank went on until January, 1866, when the Governor of Bombay required another examination of the affairs of the Bank. Accordingly the matter was referred to Messrs. Chapman and Norman, and their Report stated that £320,000 had been advanced on loan at the head office, of which £79,000 had been realized; £176,000 remained overdue, and £116,000 was not accounted for; but it concluded with this extraordinary recommendation—that what they called the policy of forbearance should be pursued. There was a run on the Bank in 1865, and Sir Bartle Frere, being informed of what was going on, telegraphed to the Government of India that the Bank must stop payment, unless he was authorized to support it with a loan of something like £1,500,000, and he put the necessity of making the advance upon the ground of political and financial considerations. The recommendation was carried out; and it was by treating it as a political and financial engine that the interests of the shareholders had been sacrificed by the Government. For instance, in April, 1866, a certain gentleman, whose difficulties had become notorious, and who was a debtor to the Bank to the extent of £220,000, made an application for a loan of £50,000. No doubt, from the magnitude of his transactions, it would have been a serious thing if he had stopped payment. A meeting was called for the purpose of seeing whether the Bank could assist him, and the Chairman seemed to have considered it necessary to apprise the Governor of the Presidency of the application, and the Go-

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  vernor sanctioned the transaction upon the very extraordinary ground that it was going on, and that therefore he could not stop it. He now came to another part of the case on which some light was thrown by a Return which had been laid on the Table. When he last brought forward this case, he stated that the Government in 1864 and 1865 had thrown on the market a quantity of land which they no longer required, and which they were anxious to dispose of. There was a strong impression that that land had been bought by parties who had obtained advances from the Bank, and at a very exorbitant price. He was now in a situation to prove this; the Return moved for was "of all lands sold by the Government of Bombay in 1864, stating the price realized by the sales respectively, the valuations previously made, and any advances made by the Bank of Bombay for the purchase." A Return had accordingly been made of all land sold by the Government of Bombay, the price realized, and the valuations made; from which it appeared that the valuation price was £145,650, and the sum realized £400,000; but it did not go on to state the advances made by the Bank of Bombay for the purchase. But by reference to the Report of Sir Charles Jackson upon the matter, he could supplement that Return, and he hoped the Government would make further inquiries into the matter. He believed he was fully justified in the inference he drew that the sums for the purchase of these lands were advanced by the Bank of Bombay. The profit which the Government had made had been appropriated to the revenues of India, and all he asked was that the amount of that profit should be definitely ascertained, and that a sum equivalent to it should be voted to the relief of the unfortunate shareholders, on whose account he had brought forward the Motion. He had but little knowledge of, or connection with, them; but on his taking up the subject on behalf of one friend, he had since had numerous communications from other shareholders for whom he might excite sympathy if he narrated their cases as they had been detailed to him. The Bank which, as he had said, was established in 1840, was, at that time, considered to be one of the safest, surest, and best managed banks in India; it was one in which trust
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  funds and charity funds might be deposited; and the shareholders were, many of them, men who had spent their lives in India, and who had deposited their hard-earned savings with the Bank, on the strength that it was in the hands of the Government. They were amongst those who had administered our laws, maintained our power and consolidated our Empire, and, through no fault of their own, they had lost their investments. On these grounds he appealed to the House, in the terms of his Resolution, that their case might receive the favourable consideration of Her Majesty's Government.
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEYseconded the Motion. When he was asked to read over the documents, and make himself master of the subject, he saw, as he perused them and gradually gained knowledge of the complicated facts, that though they might be dry in detail and difficult to master, yet they were matters of vital importance to a largo number of our fellow-subjects who had spent the best part of their lives in India in the public service of the Crown. Those facts, as there presented, could be paralleled only by the loss of a well-found ship in mid-day, through the carelessness, incapacity, or wilful blindness of those in charge of her. Those in charge of the Bank of Bombay were Government officials in every sense of the word, for they were imposed upon it by the conditions of its charter, and the shareholders had no power to select or remove them. When the matter was discussed in Parliament previously in 1872, it was said the shareholders came to that House, because they could not resort to legal tribunals; but was there no such thing as Parliamentary redress, if there was an equitable claim which could not be enforced in a Court of Law? He contended that a sufficient precedent existed for Parliament dealing with the matter in the way proposed, for there was no more injustice in charging the Revenues of India with compensation to sufferers from the laches of the Government of India, than there was in charging the Revenues of this country with the compensation paid in respect of the Alabama Claims. In this case, according to information obtained, justice could be done to the unfortunate shareholders by giving them that margin of profit which the Government had made

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  by the sales of land and by pandering to the spirit of speculation with the funds of which they were trustees and guardians. For 23 years the Bank was prosperous, and was well-conducted; and the Government of Bombay took the initiative in those changes in its charter which were so disastrous. The Government of Bombay, for its own profit, deprived the Bank of the power of issue; and, in return, gave it a new charter, which was the origin of all the subsequent evil. A careful and guarded charter was changed into a most reckless one, only fit for a bubble company, and it was taken advantage of, for over-speculation followed with the connivance of the Government Directors sitting at the Board. The present Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Salisbury), when Lord Cranbourne, in 1866, accused the Government of Bombay of surreptitiously changing the charter of the Bank; and although the Government of Bombay, which was both a legislative body and an administrative body, knew perfectly well that the bye-laws affecting the Bank had been struck out of the Schedule, they never re-enacted them in a separate form, and they left the Secretary and Directors free to enter, as they did, on a wild course of speculation. It had been said that you could not attach liability to a body of trustees who only stood aside and did not take part in the business, but he challenged the Under Secretary of State for India to show that these Government Directors were not rather in the position of watchmen who deliberately fell asleep or shut their eyes while the spoilers were at work. It was clear that the President and the Directors of the Bank deliberately connived at all the irregularities that were going on, and when it was said that it was the duty of the shareholders to look after their own interests, he would remind the House that the shareholders were not all at Bombay, but were scattered about the three Presidencies, and that some were in England. Moreover, Sir Charles Wood (now Lord Halifax) when Secretary of State for India, in 1865, in his Budget speech, used language which lulled to sleep any suspicions that the shareholders might have entertained. He declared, that notwithstanding all the disquieting rumours that had been abroad, the Bank of Bombay would go on as usual, and
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  that there need be no apprehension in the mind of the public. Was not such a declaration sufficient in itself to lull the shareholders into false security? And that being so, ought they not to obtain a remedy? Yet after this assurance the transactions described that night occurred, which cost the shareholders about £300,000. When matters went wrong, a delay was demanded for political, as well as financial, reasons, and on account of this delay, the shareholders were many thousands of pounds out of pocket. He did not go the length of saying, as some had done, that the Government Directors had deliberately used the money of the shareholders for their own private purposes, but he would say that no one who read the Report of the Commission could fail to see that the Directors had been wilfully guilty of acts which were unworthy of any bank. It ought to be borne in mind that there was not a British subject in India who did not look upon the Bank as one in which the Government was a leading shareholder, and the present claim was set up on the ground that the Government by its own act put the Bank in jeopardy. What the unfortunate shareholders now asked was simply to give some little restitution to those who by the iniquitous neglect of the Government of Bombay had been reduced from comparative affluence to poverty because they rightly believed this Bank to be under Government control.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, the case of the Shareholders in the Bank of Bombay is one for the favourable consideration of Her Majesty's Government,"—(Mr. Gregory,)
  —instead thereof.
  MR. FORSYTHthought that the hon. Member who brought forward the Motion had made out a strong primâ facie case. It was not the case of an ordinary bank that had failed, but a Bank the losses in which were mainly attributable to the negligence of the Government officials appointed by the Government of Bombay. By the Act originally creating the Bank, it was expressly prohibited from entering into dangerous speculations. In 1863 however, an Act was passed which enabled the Bank of Bombay to indulge in any kind of dangerous speculation. The share-

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  holders trusted in the security of the Bank, seeing that it was in a great measure in the hands of official persons appointed by the Government of Bombay, and all they asked for was that the amount by which the Government of India had profited by the sale of land during the cotton mania in India, and which had been purchased by money borrowed from the Bank, should be refunded to them. It was no answer to the demand made, to state that the money could not be refunded, however just it might be to do so, without taxing the Natives of India. Unhappily it was too true that, "Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi." If the Government were responsible, they should not be deterred from acting rightly by the fact that the amount asked for would have to be raised by taxation. The case was altogether an exceptional one, and he trusted it would receive the favourable consideration of Her Majesty's Government.
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTONsaid, that the Resolution proposed by his hon. Friend the Member for East Sussex (Mr. Gregory) was identical with one which had been introduced in the year 1872—namely—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the case of certain shareholders of the Bank of Bombay should receive the favourable consideration of Her Majesty's Government."
  It was, of course, obvious that any additional charge which such favourable consideration might involve should be thrown upon the revenues, not of England, but of India. His hon. Friend had given a very fair history of the cause of the Bank's failure; but it was a noticeable fact that the three hon. Gentlemen who had spoken in favour of the Resolution had one and all admitted that the shareholders had no legal claims whatever, and indeed that might have been expected of Gentlemen who were each connected with the legal profession. He thought he might safely lay it down as a rule that when three lawyers in succession advocated a particular case and made no legal claim in support of it, it was because the smallest legal claim could not be made, otherwise they would advocate it elsewhere. In reference to the present case he would go further and say that even a moral claim had not been made out. There were two reasons advanced in favour of the Resolution. First, it was contended that the Govern-
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  ment of India was responsible, because they allowed certain alterations to be introduced into the charter of the Bank, and were, therefore, responsible for the abuse of the powers they placed in the hands of the Directors, and next, that the Bombay Government being shareholders in the Bank, and nominating Directors to look after their interest in it, they were—to use the words of the Petition presented to the Secretary of State—unlimitedly liable. He would reply to both these contentions. He denied that the alterations in the charter had been introduced at the instance of the Bombay Government. The shareholders themselves took the initiative in that direction, and it was only on account of the strong representations they made that the Government agreed to the alteration. At a special meeting held in November, 1861, they resolved that the Directors should be authorized to take such steps for varying, altering, or annulling the provisions of the Act under which the Bank was constituted and for obtaining the incorporation of the Bank as to them might seem expedient. The shareholders by that resolution placed an absolutely discretionary power in the hands of the Directors, and that step it was which led to the alteration of the charter. He quite admitted that it would have been better if such alterations had never been made, and that after they had been, the Government of Bombay did not perhaps exorcise sufficiently their powers of supervision of the management of the Bank; but, admitting that, it seemed to him almost ridiculous to contend that when the Government placed certain powers in the hands of individuals they were responsible to those who requested them to do so for the abuse of those powers. As well might his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer be held responsible for an accident caused by the incautious use of firearms because he had proposed the levying of a duty on the licence to carry arms. But there was this further fallacy in the argument of his hon. and learned Friends, that they had assumed that the alteration of the charter had necessitated the failure of the Bank. The failure was, in fact, caused by a wild and reckless spirit of speculation on the part, not of the Government, but of the commercial Directors of the Bank. The most legitimate banking transaction

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  would become dangerous if the security on which it was based were worthless; and even under the old charter it was possible for the Directors to discount bad bills and transact business on which large losses might occur. Of this he was certain—that if the Directors of the old Bank had been actuated by the same spirit of speculation as were the commercial Directors of the new, the Bank would equally have failed. A great deal had been said as to the losses alleged to have arisen in consequence of the alteration in the Act, which permitted the Directors to advance money upon shares of companies which were not guaranteed by the Government, but out of a total loss of £1,800,000 only a loss of £440,000 was attributable to that alteration. The failure of the Bank was, therefore, attributable not to this alteration in the Bank Act, but to the conduct of the Directors, who made the most improper use of every power which they possessed. It was alleged that the Government had interfered in the management of the Bank. It was true they had done so, but in what manner? Why, they had interfered with the view of inducing the Directors to place their business on a more legitimate footing, and when Sir Charles Wood wrote to the Governor of Bombay directing that this special power of the Directors should be rescinded, that communication on being shown to the Directors of the Bank was denounced by them as a most tyrannical interference with the affairs of the Bank. The truth was, that the Government Directors, who were appointed to look after the Government interest, had neglected their duty and that the Shareholders Directors, who had been appointed to look after the interests of the shareholders, had equally neglected theirs; and the result was that both the Government and the shareholders had lost all the money they had invested in the Bank. It seemed, however, to be a most extraordinary proposition to make that the Government who represented one set of shareholders should be held responsible to another set of shareholders for the losses sustained by the Bank in consequence of this common neglect of duty by the Directors; and it was most surprising that such a proposition should have been brought forward by three legal Gentlemen who must be aware that it was
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  directly contrary to the law, custom, and practice, of this country. He entirely denied the accuracy of the assertion made by the hon. and learned Member opposite (Mr. Evelyn Ashley), that the Directors of the company were Government officials. So far from that being the case, when the Government endeavoured to secure the election of a safe Director, the shareholders put him aside and chose to elect a speculative Director in his place. It had been stated that the Government were the guardians of the funds of the Bank, but that statement also was without foundation. The hon. Gentleman had further alleged that the alterations in the Bank Act had been introduced by the Court of Directors in a surreptitious manner; but the fact was, that they were all made at the suggestion of the Directors of the Bank acting for the shareholders. His hon. Friend the Member for East Sussex (Mr. Gregory) also made two statements with regard to Sir Bartle Frere when Governor of Bombay which were not altogether just. He said that when Sir Bartle Frere asked the Government to support the Bank, during the time when a run was made upon it, he had stated that he wished it to be supported for political as well as commercial reasons, and therefore, said the hon. Gentleman, it was evident that the Bank was being used as a political engine in the hands of the Bombay Government. That was not the fact. The Bank was supported by the Government on the occasion in question, because had it failed at that critical period wide-spread commercial distress would have resulted, and what an outcry would have been raised had the Government refused to lend the Bank its assistance in such an emergency? After all, the House must not forget that all the depositors and the creditors of the Bank had been paid out of money furnished by the Government, and that, therefore, the only question at issue was raised between the Government as shareholders and the other shareholders of the Bank. His hon. Friend wenton to allege that the sum of £250,000 had been advanced by the Bank to Prem Chund Roychund, the great Indian speculator, at the instance of Sir Bartle Frere. But there again his hon. Friend was misinformed. Prem Chund Roychund, who was a native Director of the Bank and a great gambler, was a man

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  of considerable importance, and it having been stated that unless an advance of £250,000 were made to him he would probably fail, a meeting of the Directors of the chief of the Bombay Banks was held on the 26th of April, 1866, at which it was resolved that the necessary sums should be advanced to him by the banks jointly, the Bank of Bombay agreeing to furnish £105,000 of that sum. The whole of the money was to be advanced, in the first place, by the Bank of Bombay, which was to be repaid by the other banks in stated proportions. [Mr. GREGORY said, those banks subsequently repudiated their liability.] That was perfectly true; but the arrangement sanctioned by Sir Bartle Frere was the one he had indicated. Sir Bartle Frere had stated that the opinion of the Directors of the different banks at the meeting to which he had referred was unanimous as to the necessity for supporting Prem Chund Roychund, and that they had intimated to him that no other course was open to them except to render that person assistance. In criticizing the conduct of Sir Bartle Frere in this matter therefore, it must be recollected that almost the whole of the leading banks in Bombay had represented to him the necessity of the advance being made to Prem Chund Roychund, and that under such circumstances it would have been impossible for him to have declined to sanction the loan being made. His hon. Friend had suggested that because the Government of Bombay had been paid by certain persons for land purchased by them, the Government ought to stand in the same position with regard to the Bank as those persons had done who had subsequently failed, owing large sums to the Bank. A more extraordinary proposition than that he had never heard. His hon. Friend went on to justify his proposition on the ground that the Government had made largo profits from the sale of land in Bombay; but the fact was that while the expenses connected with that land amounted to £2,500,000, only £750,000 had been received in respect of its sale, thus leaving a deficit on the transaction of £1,750,000. He hoped he had made clear to the House that this proposal was one to which Her Majesty's Government could not in any way assent. He might point out to the House that if this was a proposal affecting English
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  revenues, he did not think it ever would have been made; and he therefore must ask them to act with regard to Indian revenues as they would act towards English revenues. He was sure there was not a single Member of that House who did not feel the greatest sympathy with the shareholders for the loss of the money they had subscribed. He was afraid, however, that it was one of the inevitable consequences of financial panic that losses fall on those who are least able to bear them, and he was also afraid was it a law of Nature that in any crisis the weak must go to the wall. No doubt, many persons who had spent the greater portion of their lives in the service in India were suddenly deprived of sums which they had hoped would support them to the end of their fives. But how did they lose these sums? They lost them because persons indulged in wild and reckless speculation; and if hon. Members of that House felt sympathy with shareholders who lost their money in consequence of the reckless speculation of those to whom it was entrusted, do not let them adopt the illogical course of accepting a Resolution which unquestionably must tend to increase speculation and reckless investment. If the House, either directly or indirectly, laid down the principle that, because the Government was a shareholder in any concern, therefore all the shareholders were to have a claim against it, what would be the result? The shareholders of any concern such as this would say to the Directors—"Speculate; give the highest dividend you possibly can; we insist upon that, for what matters it if the bank fails? We have got a claim against a number of shareholders—the Government." Of course, if the shareholders had a claim against the Government, it was clear that all creditors and depositors had an equal claim. Nothing was more clear than that. If the House wished, therefore, to put a stop to such practices as were revealed in Sir Charles Jackson's Re-port, it could not do better than reject the proposal which had been submitted to it. His noble Friend the Secretary of State for India, shortly after his accession to office, had the case under his consideration; he gave it his most careful attention, and in the answer which he returned to the memorial he informed the memorialists he had given every

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  consideration to the circumstances, and that he was afraid he could not comply with their request, neither could he assist them in any other way. He (Lord George Hamilton) felt pretty confident that the decision at which his noble Friend had arrived was one which would be supported by the large majority of that House.
  SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, notwithstanding what had fallen from the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for India, he was still unpersuaded that the Motion was not entitled to the favourable consideration of the Government. There were many precedents which he cited, and which might be advanced in favour of compensation being granted; and, in this case, seeing who the unfortunate shareholders were, and the losses they had sustained after many years spent in service in India, he had a strong conviction that they were entitled to it. He contended that the Government of Bombay were liable to the shareholders; because, although knowing the condition of bankruptcy in which the Bank was placed, they sanctioned large advances to be made by it to the Asiatic and other banks, which had soon afterwards failed, and whose financial position the Government had had ample opportunities of ascertaining. Under all the circumstances of the case, he could not conscientiously oppose the Motion, and should, therefore, give it his decided support.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 104; Noes 37: Majority 67.

MANNING THE NAVY.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, in rising to call attention to manning the Navy, said, in the observations he sought to offer he had no desire to criticize the present or any other Board of Admiralty. He considered the subject which he was about to treat of as one in which the country felt deep interest. What he was particularly desirous to allude to was the defect arising from the absence of barracks, with accompanying frigates as drill ships, in which the men might be accommodated and trained for
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  the Service during the time that they were in port. With regard to the men of the present day, he believed it would be agreed by all naval officers that the seamen of the present day were infinitely superior to the class of men who were employed in it 10, or 15, or 20 years ago. At that time there were 1,100 men in the ship which he joined when he entered the Service, and of the 1,100 at least 500 could neither read nor write, and their habits were different in many respects from those of the men at present in the Service. Their mouths were generally filled with tobacco, and when they came on shore they commonly spent their money in getting drunk. That state of things, however, did not now exist, for under the new regulations the men, when paid, did not get the same amount of leave on shore as formerly. In France, and other foreign countries, there was better training accommodation for their sailors than this great maritime country had for its seamen, and owing to the absence of the necessary training ships the country did not get more than two-thirds of a man's actual work and time, because the rest of his time was spent in making him become what he should be. Before the Russian War, the men who joined were those who had been connected with the Mercantile Marine, and who were good seamen; but now those joining had to be taught. Therefore, what he wanted, as he had before observed, was to urge the necessity of providing regular head-quarters for the Navy—barracks, having frigates in connection with them—through which men and boys could be drafted in proper rotation to vessels which required them. The men in the depots were constantly being employed in dockyard work, and the time was thus wasted which might be turned to good account in re-qualifying them for service on board ship. If, however, they were in barracks, they would have to go through a certain amount of drill, and would, with even a very small amount of practice, learn, at least, how to hold a rifle. He must also insist on the necessity of having seamanship taught when young, for it was impossible to acquire a thorough knowledge of it in advanced years. It would require every year 3,000 boys to keep the Navy up to a strength of 19,000; but as we only got about 2,700, it became necessary to draft into the Navy

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  for boys ordinary second-class seamen. There were from 1,300 to 1,800 boys constantly waiting in guard-snips to be drafted into sea-going ships; and it would be of great advantage to them if they could be removed into barracks as soon as they left the training ships. The system of training ships was most excellent, but where the system failed was, that when boys had to wait for nine months or so upon guard-ships they became discontented more or less. The Estimates were always made out for pure seamen. A pure seaman, however, was nothing under an A.B., and the Estimate, therefore, ought to be made out for so many pure seamen, and so many ordinaries of the first and second class. In 1874 there were 5,063 ordinary second-class seamen, and of others who were rated as men there were 1,193, or in all 6,256 embryo seamen. These, however, were included in the 18,000 who were supposed to be pure seamen; and deducting them, there would only be about 11,000 real pure seamen left. In 1874 there were 221 ships in commission; of these 72 were fighting ships, and 189 were yachts, tugs, troopers, gunboats, and so on. In the 72 fighting ships there were 11,000 seamen, leaving 7,000 men in ships of other kinds. If there were barracks, all these 7,000 men might be re-qualifying for their next ship. Many of the first-class reserve men were also used in the depots to do dockyard work. When he was at Plymouth, he was often asked by seamen to get them on to sea-going ships. One of these, a very smart seaman, when he applied, was asked what he had been doing lately, and the reply was—"Well, Sir, I have been doing horses for the last nine months." It seemed that he had, with a horse, been towing timber round the dockyard; an occupation in which such a man was really wasted. Another thing he complained of was that there was no fixed system by which seamen were taught gunnery—no roster, according to which every seaman was instructed in gunnery. Why, also, should not the non-competent class of men—the stokers, &c.—be trained? In the Hotspur class they were 55 per cent of the number of seamen; yet they would be quite useless in a hand-to-hand fight. If there were barracks, the non-competent men, while living there, could be
  642
  at least trained. As to the Reserve Force, while it was impossible to deny that the material of our Mercantile Marine was as good as ever, he must contend that they did not have the practice which was necessary to fit them for serving on board a man-of-war. There was no captain, he should think, who would care about employing men on his ship who had never been under man-of-war discipline, however willing they might be. We had 10,000 men in the Royal Naval Reserve, each of whom could be obtained at the rate of £15 a-year, including the cost of food and clothing. But why, he would ask, should we not keep the 10 years' men, who were the most valuable class of men whose services we could secure? He saw no good reason why each of them should not get £7 or £8 a-year with that object. Almost all those in Captain Shaw's brigade were such men, and, indeed, they were a class of men whom anyone would be glad to have in his employment. In fact, at present they became signalmen on railways, and occupied other responsible posts. The average number of them who left the Navy every year was 1,163; of these there came back to the Service 935, so that there were 228 of these 10 years' men lost every year. If they could be retained there would be no necessity for calling them out every year; indeed, once in three years would suffice, and in the event of sudden war he was satisfied they would be found to constitute a most admirable force, while if they know they were to receive £6 or £7 or £8 a-year, such a prospect would have a great effect in stopping desertion, which generally began before the expiration of the 10 years. Another thing which he wished to mention was this startling fact—that the pay in the Royal Navy had not really been augmented since the days of Trafalgar. In 1805 the pay of an able seaman was £21 15 s. 6d. a-year, and in 1874 it was but £24 6s. 8d.; but at the former date a seaman got a pint of rum a-day, whilst now he got only half-a-gill, and the slight increase in wages would barely pay for the rum. He admitted that the comforts of the men had been in this time immensely increased; but when wages ashore had risen so much, it was not astonishing that men deserted to get the higher wages. Another thing was that there

  643
  was now no prize money, which had formerly constituted a principal inducement for men to join the Navy. In conclusion, he begged to thank the House for the patience with which they had listened to him, and hoped that these matters would receive attention at the hands of the Government.
  CAPTAIN G. E. PRICEsaid, he thought the noble Lord had done good service by bringing that subject forward. The present system of training boys to supply the waste of the Navy was excellent as far as it went, and it met the ordinary requirements of the Service in time of peace; but in time of war, they would have to draw as they now did for the Naval Reserve, upon the Mercantile Marine. If they were to look to the Merchant Service as a nursery for the Navy, they must encourage some kind of interchangeability between the Navy and the Merchant Service. For that purpose they should increase the nominal strength of the Navy, and allow a certain number of men, either 5,000, 10,000, or 15,000, as might be found necessary, after they had qualified and served a certain time in the Navy, to go on furlough into the Merchant Service for a stated period, say for two or three years. That would be a great advantage to the Merchant Service; and in case a war broke out, there would be a large and a real Reserve of men who could be called to man the vessels of war. In the same way, a Reserve of stokers might be created. There was a Reserve of seamen, but none of stokers; and the same principle might be extended to the Marines. He had mentioned his idea to several Friends who were well acquainted with maritime affairs, and they were of opinion that some such arrangement would be invaluable to the Royal Navy, and also be most useful to the Merchant Service. He was not prepared with any matured scheme; but he thought that the suggestion was worthy of serious consideration.

NAVY—COLLEGE FOR NAVAL CADETS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. BRUCE, who had given Notice that he would move—
  "That it is expedient that there should be further inquiry into the question of the locality and constitution of the proposed College for
  644
  Naval Cadets before any grant of public money is taken for that purpose,"
  said, that formerly the training of those young men had generally been conducted in the vicinity of our great Dockyard establishments. In that arrangement there was a great advantage, because in those establishments the youths had an opportunity of seeing carried out all those mechanical operations connected with the construction, equipment, fitting out for sea, and repairing of ships which were year by year gaining greater importance for their profession. That would greatly encourage their studies and facilitate their education in the drier and more purely literary branches of instruction. Moreover, the Naval Service had great traditions, and the boys who entered it could not be too early embued with its spirit, and there was no place in which that spirit was more rife than in those great establishments which were the homes of the Navy, and where all its various grades and branches were concentrated. Their constant contact there with the officers of the Navy would inspire those boys with that pride in their profession, which was one of its most valuable characteristics, and which he trusted the Navy would always retain, whatever might be its mechanical developments. Before fixing the site of the proposed College, therefore, it was desirable to consider carefully the evidence as to the suitability of the places recommended. The Britannia training-ship was now stationed at Dartmouth, a place which he considered objectionable as a site for the College, because it was entirely removed from the great Dockyard establishments of the country, and because it was a small place. The harbour in certain states of the weather was inaccessible, and it was close to one of the roughest parts of the British Channel. He did not come forward as the advocate of any particular locality, but, from his own experience, he thought that such a place as Portsmouth, where there were large Government establishments, a roadstead in which training-ships would be always safe, and where the boys could at all times of the year be exercised, was eminently suited for a training establishment. There was besides a large quantity of land belonging to the Government which could be utilized as the

  645
  site of the proposed College without any cost. He had no doubt there were other places which might he recommended. All he wanted was that the advantages offered should be carefully-considered before a decision was come to. Perhaps, it would be an advantage if the College could be opened to boys for the purpose of being trained for the Merchant Service, on payment of a small fee, the experience of our public schools in destroying exclusiveness having shown that it was desirable to have boys who were destined for different professions educated together.
  MR. SHAW-LEFEVREsaid, he thought that if the Britannia was to be retained, there would be much to say in favour of keeping her at Dartmouth; but as it had been determined to do away with that training-ship, and establish a College on shore, the question was very much altered. The distance of Dartmouth from London was an important consideration, for it was desirable that the College should be under the immediate supervision of the Board of Admiralty; and in connection with the Britannia a thorough supervision had not been found practicable. Moreover, the distance of Dartmouth from the homes of most of the boys would cause many of their parents a serious expense; and it was not a place which one would choose on account of any advantages in regard to climate, as it would be found too relaxing. Although he had not the same interest in Portsmouth as the hon. Member who had last spoken, he believed it to be one amongst a number of places which were well worth considering. Amongst the others he would name as examples the Isle of Wight, the north side of the Solent, Weymouth Bay, and Branksea Island. The only argument in favour of Dartmouth was that they had already some small institutions there, as an hospital and a playground; but these were so small that they ought not to be allowed to interfere in the settlement of the question. Turning to the speech of the noble Lord the Member for Waterford (Lord Charles Beresford), who had addressed the House in a manner which gave considerable promise upon a different subject, he understood the first point to which he had called attention to be the length of time which many boys were kept unemployed after the period of their train-
  646
  ing. That had always been found a considerable difficulty at the Admiralty. There were 7,000 boys, of whom 3,000 were in training ships, and great difficulty was experienced in finding places for the remaining 4,000 in sea-going ships. A proportion of 4,000 boys to 18,000 seamen was very large. It was recognized as necessary that 3,000 boys should enter every year, in order to keep up the supply of 18,000 seamen, which showed that the waste of seamen must be very great. The point which the noble Lord had brought before the House, whether something could not be done for the better training of those boys in the interval between leaving the training-ships and finding places in seagoing vessels, was well worth the consideration of the Government. The training ships, no doubt, furnished admirable material for the Navy, but after all it was a question of some importance whether we should rely entirely on the training of boys, and not encourage the entrance into the Navy of men from the Merchant Service. It might be said that in the present condition of the Merchant Service it would not be easy to get the men we wanted, and complaints had been made last night of the difficulty of procuring men for the Merchant Service itself. But when we considered the large number of men in our Mercantile Marine, there could hardly be any extraordinary difficulty in the matter. One obstacle was the difference of wages for continuous-service men in the Navy and Merchant Service. The wages of non-continuance men in the Navy, however, were still lower, and as long as that remained so, he feared there would be no use in trying to get men to enter from the Merchant Service into the Navy. It was, therefore, a matter worthy of the consideration of the Admiralty, whether some greater inducement than was held forth at present should not be offered. Very great advantage to the Navy would be derived from the building of naval barracks at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Devonport. If the men, when brought ashore, were placed in naval barracks, they could be better trained than they were now, and we should be enabled to get rid of some of the stationary and depôt ships now in use which ran away with a great deal of money for repairs. He thought the noble Lord had done good service in

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  bringing the question before Parliament.
  LORD HENRY SCOTTsaid, it would be a great advantage to the country and to the Navy itself if a little more information were given as to the best site for the Naval College before Dartmouth was definitely decided on. No doubt an admirable site could be found at Dartmouth, though it might be thought that the climate there was of too relaxing a nature. But a point which should have great weight with the Admiralty was that the Naval College should be somewhere in the vicinity of some great naval station, dockyard, or arsenal. If there was one spot more than another where an opportunity would be given of seeing what the Navy really was, what our naval establishments really were, and the quality of those great ships which were rather machinery than anything else, it would be found in the neighbourhood of great dockyards like Portsmouth or Plymouth; whereas, if Dartmouth should be selected, the boys would never see Her Majesty's Ships from year's end to year's end. There was ample room between Portsmouth on the one hand and the Southampton Water on the other along the shores of the Solent to find a better site for a Naval College than on any other part of the Coast. This was a subject upon which it would be well that the Government should give full information before a large expenditure was incurred.
  MR. HUNTsaid, the House was indebted to his noble and gallant friend the Member for Waterford (Lord Charles Beresford) for having initiated a very interesting discussion with regard to the state of the Navy and the way in which it was to be manned. For his own part, he felt very much gratified that his noble and gallant Friend should have taken such a part in this debate, because he considered that the practical experience of a naval officer on such subjects was exceedingly valuable both to the House and the Government. In a great deal of what his noble and gallant Friend had said he went entirely with him. He felt there was a great want of proper employment and training for these young seamen when they were first rated on leaving the training ships, and the Admiralty were taking steps to provide a remedy. It was their intention not only that brigs should go out in the winter
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  as well as the summer for the purpose of training these young lads when first rated, but that another and a larger ship should be provided to supplement the accommodation furnished by the brigs. It was no doubt a great fault that those boys should spend so much time in harbour, and it had long been felt that when they were first rated—for they were only boys at that time—they did not acquire such habits as were desirable if they were not sent to sea at once. But that was the result of a system very valuable to the country—that of having a Reserve in our ports. Supposing the plan were adopted of sending them to sea at once, then we should have no Reserve. But if we wanted to have sufficient men for our ships in time of need, we must have a number of young seamen sometimes employed "to do horse," to use the phrase quoted by his hon. Friend. It had been proposed as a remedy that we should build naval barracks, which would promote the efficiency of the men by the training they would receive there. No doubt, a more perfect system than the present one might be devised, but then all the pros and cons would have to be considered. The establishment of naval barracks would be a matter of considerable expense, and would meet only one of the difficulties, but not that of not sending these young men to sea. If they were kept in those barracks they would not be acquiring habits of seamanship more than at present. His noble and gallant Friend had touched on the question of the pay of the seamen, which, he said, had not been raised since the Battle of Trafalgar. That, though accurate as regarded the seamen generally, was not accurate as regarded the petty officers, who had received a considerable increase. And, besides, there was now a great inducement held forth in the shape of additional pay to seamen in the Fleet who conducted themselves properly and discharged their duties meritoriously. Therefore, it was open to any seaman to obtain a higher rate of pay than the pay at first fixed. But that the rate of pay was sufficiently attractive to the class of men who were inclined towards a seafaring life was proved by the number of men who joined again for a period of 10 years. He entirely approved of the desirability of retaining men who had already served 10 years in the Service, in respect of

  649
  which his noble and gallant Friend had stated that out of 1,100 men in one year, 900 joined again for a period of 10 years. That was a large percentage. His recollection, however, entirely bore out the statement of his noble and gallant Friend, for that was very nearly the proportion in which men did re-enter the Navy, and he thought it was a very satisfactory state of things. It went to show that the pay now received by the Navy was sufficiently attractive to induce men to continue in the service. The hon. and gallant Member for Devonport (Captain Price) thought there might be a system of interchanging men between the Navy and the Mercantile Marine, but he feared there would be considerable difficulty in such a scheme. He (Mr. Hunt) had, however, endeavoured to establish a system by which we might train boys for the Naval Reserve, at the same time that they were training for the Mercantile Marine. That he thought a practicable system, for let the seamen of the Mercantile Marine once acquire the use of arms, and then we should have a force we might rely on in the event of a war. The subject of the proposed establishment of a Naval College had been introduced in a very able speech by his hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth (Mr. Bruce). He pointed out the advantages which would be derived from establishing a Naval College for cadets in the neighbourhood of one of our great arsenals, and he naturally enough preferred Portsmouth. No doubt there would be great advantages in having a College there, where the young officers would see ships in the course of construction, but a great many points had to be considered. It must be known to the House that Portsmouth had its disadvantages, and as a matter of experience, it had been found necessary to remove the Britannia training-ship from Portsmouth first to Portland, and afterwards to Dartmouth. The question had been under consideration for a long period of years, and it was matter of surprise that a decision had not been arrived at sooner. There was at the Admiralty an immense number of particulars about every possible place, from the River Orwell almost to Penzance. Every conceivable place was reported on with regard to the object in view—namely, the education of
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  naval cadets. The result arrived at by the gentlemen in charge of the duty was that four places should be taken into final consideration—Portsmouth, Portland, Poole Harbour, and Dartmouth. The objections to Portsmouth were that the harbour would not be available for boys learning how to manage small boats, being constantly traversed by vessels of all sorts, and there was also the contiguity to places to which it was not desirable boys should have ready access. Portland, as he had said, was tried when the Britannia was removed there from Portsmouth. That had also been under consideration; but the sea was so generally rough at Portland, that boys got drenched to the skin when they went out, and there was a very great difficulty in landing. It would be an exceedingly bleak place for a College. It had also to be remembered that there was a convict prison at Portland, which was objectionable; the country about was very limited, and those amenities generally looked to for walks and recreations were not to be found there. Then with regard to Branksea Island, it was very well worth consideration. It had many advantages but it had this disadvantage, that it was an island, and it would be a great objection, if the College were placed there, that it could only be reached by water. With regard to Dartmouth, he quite saw the force of the objection on the ground of its remoteness. He did not wish to underrate that objection, but they had to consider the pros and cons, and after carefully considering the matter he had come to the conclusion that, on the whole, Dartmouth was the best place. It was known to the House that a very able Committee had looked into the question; they spent some time at Dartmouth, and when they returned, he spoke to one of its Members, who said they could not have a better place than the high land immediately above the boys' gymnasium and bathing place. He was not acquainted with the exact site, but he went down there during the Easter Recess, and he must say it would be very difficult to find a more beautiful site. It seemed to possess every advantage. The harbour was landlocked; the water was almost always smooth, and there was little or no interruption from vessels passing up and down the river. These were great advantages where boys were learning to

  651
  handle a boat or manage small sailing vessels. There was also the experience of the Britannia on the score of health. He was also told that the site he had looked at was much less relaxing than in the valley of the river. The walks in the neighbourhood were very beautiful, the general healthiness of the place was good., and in every respect, except that of remoteness, it was unexceptionable. On the whole he was satisfied they could not do better than choose it; and his Colleagues, naval and civil, had arrived at the same conclusion. Although satisfied as to the salubrity of the place, he had requested the Medical Director-General to make a special report upon the site. The Admiralty were offered a sufficient quantity of land at a not unreasonable rate; and he believed that any one who went down to the spot would be satisfied that a wise selection had been made.
  GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOURsaid, that the best information on record on the training of boys for the Navy would be found in the Proceedings of the Royal Commission of 1866 on the recruiting of the Army. The evidence of Admiral Eden, then one of the Lords of the Admiralty, was taken in great detail, and the cost of training boys was then ascertained, and, although the average was now put down at only £10 in the Estimates, yet he believed that the inclusion of establishment and all other expenses would bring the total cost per boy up to £65 a-year. It would be well if the Admiralty would direct their attention to the ample supplies of fine young lads trained up by the fisheries of the east coast of Scotland, which he believed would furnish a large number of boys admirably suited for the Navy. Under the far more favourable feelings towards the Navy as compared with that which existed in former years, when sailors were so harshly treated and so little eared for, he felt confident that boys from the fisheries to the number of 2,000 or 3,000 could easily be induced to join the service. A little encouragement to parents, the granting of family tickets, even for a few shillings a-month, would have a great influence on boys and parents. The permission to go back to their villages and to be landed along the coast by one of the vessels of war, so readily made available, and again taken up at the end of the leave,
  652
  would entirely change the distrust, which still remained against naval service, into one of liking. This excellent source of supply well deserved to be encouraged. It would be easy to raise up the fisheries by improved harbours to double the strength in boats, men, and boys, now existing, and if in that improved condition, the Navy might always rely on procuring as fine lads as could be desired. He would also recommend the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War to adopt the same system of training for the Army as existed in the Navy. The Royal Commission of 1866 on Recruiting advised this mode of providing men for the Army to be considered, and now that so much was said about inefficient and insufficient numbers of recruits, he hoped that this recommendation, like many other suggestions of that Commission, would, not remain in a state of neglect.
  ADMIRAL EGERTON, as a naval officer, thought that at the end of 13 years it was time that the desirability of this proposed Naval College was settled, and although Dartmouth might not be the best place in all respects, still he should be glad to accept the decision of the Board of Admiralty on that point. He did not think it would be any great disadvantage to the College being fixed at Dartmouth that it would be so far away from the Admiralty. On the contrary, good would result from its being removed from the direct personal supervision of the authorities at Whitehall. A capable teacher would have greater freedom in carrying out his own ideas, and would be more likely to be successful than if he were open to constant interference.
  MR. GOSCHENthought the hon. Member for Portsmouth (Mr. Bruce) had done good service by bringing the question of the Naval College before the House. He was glad the First Lord of the Admiralty had given them the reasons which had led to the selection of Dartmouth, and it must be admitted there was considerable weight in them. He concurred with the right hon. Gentleman in thinking that Portsmouth would be an undesirable position for this institution, which would be a school rather than a college. When the Royal Naval College at Greenwich was founded, it was not considered desirable to place naval cadets there, and the objection to Greenwich applied with still greater

  653
  force to Portsmouth. The remoteness of Dartmouth as the site of the College was, no doubt, to some extent, an objection, not only with regard to its supervision by the Admiralty, but also on account of the distance of the cadets from their parents. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would not proceed further until he had thoroughly satisfied himself from the Report of the Medical Inspector of the Navy that the site was in every respect satisfactory. In that case the establishment of the College was, in his opinion, a wise step. He was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman proposed to give further facilities for the training of ordinary seamen in sailing ships, as the importance of such training could not be exaggerated. When he (Mr. Goschen) was at the Admiralty, he found it advisable to attach to a squadron like that in the Mediterranean a sailing vessel in which ordinary seamen might be trained, and the greatest advantages were derived from that system. If the right hon. Gentleman would attach sailing ships to some of the other squadrons, it would be a further step in the right direction. In his opinion great good would arise from the point which had been raised by the noble and gallant Lord the Member for Waterford (Lord Charles Beresford). The continuous service system must be at all hazards maintained, but there were difficulties in the way of naval barracks. The pre-sent receiving ships were, however, most costly in every way.
  MR. ALGERNON EGERTONsaid, with reference to the remark of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kincardineshire (Sir George Balfour), that the average cost of training boys for the Navy might be taken at £70. The Admiralty entirely concurred with the hon. and gallant Gentleman as to the naval qualification of the men and boys engaged in the Scotch fisheries, and one object of the recent cruise by some of the Members of the Board was to endeavour to get them to join the Naval Reserve. The hon. Member for Portsmouth (Mr. Bruce) objected to the Dartmouth site on the ground that it was near a convict prison; but the nearest prison was at Dartmoor, and that was 40 miles off.
  Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.

SUPPLY—NAVY ESTIMATES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
(1.) £1,106,581, Victuals and Clothing for Seamen and Marines.
MR. SHAW-LEFEVREsaid, he wished for some explanations relating to an increased share of the expense of Indian troop-ships now borne by the Admiralty. They were employed by the Indian Government for seven months, and then the men were sent to the depot ships for five months. They were, however, practically at the disposal of the Indian Government, and could not be used in any other way. The claim of the Indian Government to be relieved from a portion of this charge was not a new one, but upon the whole it was, he thought, fair that the Indian Government should pay for the whole year.
MR. HUNTsaid, he feared there had been a disposition now and then to press too hardly on the Revenues of India. He had looked into the matter, and when he found that the Indian troopships were only employed for seven months, it certainly seemed to him exorbitant to charge them for the whole year. A satisfactory arrangement had been concluded with the Indian Government, by which the expense to which the hon. Member had referred would be borne in equitable proportions between the Government of this country and the Government of India. He hoped, in return, that the Indian Government would make some allowance under other heads.
GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOURthanked the right hon. Gentleman for the acknowledgment he had made as to the hard pressure put on Indian finances. It was not only by the Navy, but by the Army that this pressure had been applied, and as he thought unjustly applied. The Imperial Government had seen fit to deprive India of its own Navy and of its own European Army; and then had pressed India to meet charges which would not have arisen if these forces had been kept up by India; or, at all events, the extraordinary expenses which both Departments now demanded from India for measures suited for Imperial reasons, and not for Indian purposes, would not have been incurred by India for its own services. It was creditable

655
to the Conservative Party for having effected the arrangement to which he had referred, and which he had himself long since advocated.
MR. SHAW-LEFEVREalso considered the explanation of the First Lord of the Admiralty satisfactory.
MR. SAMUDAwas about to direct attention to the position of assistant-engineers in the Navy, when—
MR. ALGERNON EGERTONrose to Order, and said, he thought the subject could not be discussed on the present Vote. It related to Vote 1, which had already been agreed to.
THE CHAIRMANsaid, he could not see in what respect the question could be raised on the Vote under consideration. In any remarks the hon. Member might desire to make he must confine himself to that Vote.
MR. GOSCHENsaid, that there was always a great desire on the part of the House to facilitate the passing of the 1st Vote; and it was impossible after the general statement on a Vote, to enter into particulars. If the ruling of the Chairman was good, those who objected to any item would be placed in this dilemma—either they must in future refuse to agree to Vote 1 on the night the Navy Estimates were introduced, or deprive themselves of the opportunity of raising questions which might be of great interest and importance.
THE CHAIRMANsaid, his only wish was to facilitate the business of the Committee as much as possible, desiring that each Member should have full liberty to discuss every topic arising out of the Vote proposed. The hon. Gentleman the Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Samuda) would have several opportunities of bringing forward the subject to which he had referred; but in Committee it could be done only on Vote 1, which had been disposed of.
CAPTAIN NOLANthought that Vote I having been passed for the convenience of the Minister, the line of exclusion ought not to be too rigidly drawn. If it were, the decision would prevent private Members from raising questions which they wished to discuss.
MR. HUNTsaid, he was anxious that no technical difficulty should be placed in the way of his hon. Friend bringing forward the subject to which he had alluded.
MR. SAMUDAsaid, that was the
656
only opportunity he would have of calling attention to the position of the engineers. Unnecessary restrictions were, in his opinion, placed in the way of their advancement, and all he asked for was, that those who were capable of taking the position of chief engineers might be advanced to that post without being obliged to wait until they reached the age of 40; and that when they were retired they might be relieved from the humiliation of signing a paper declaring that they had been pensioned, like warrant officers or cooks. He hoped the subject would receive the consideration of the Admiralty.
SIR JOHN HAYhoped that the Chairman would reconsider his decision with reference to the limits that should be put upon the discussion on Vote 2 for Victuals, inasmuch as it was of considerable advantage that the Vote for Men should be allowed to be taken on the evening when the Estimates were first brought forward, leaving all minor points relating to that Vote to be discussed on Vote 2.
THE CHAIRMANsaid, that the rule he had laid down was that most conducive to the dispatch of Business. No doubt, a certain latitude might have been occasionally allowed by his Predecessors in the Chair, and he had not, perhaps, been strict enough in enforcing the rule, being reluctant to interfere. The rule, however, was imperative that after the first Vote upon which the general discussion was had, was taken, the speakers on all future Votes were to confine themselves to the matter of the particular Vote under discussion at the time, and when his attention was called to the fact that that rule was being infringed, he felt bound to say, that he adhered to the opinion, that it was an inconvenient practice to exceed the limits of any particular Vote, after the first, in discussing that Vote.
MR. GOSCHENasked the First Lord of the Admiralty for an explanation of an increase in the items in respect of the allowance in lieu of provisions for the Royal Naval Reserve, and the Coast Guard Service. He desired to know, also, whether any progress had been made in elucidating the subject of lighting Her Majesty's Ships; and, further, why there was an addition to the amount for clothing the Second-Class Reserve?
MR. T. BRASSEYwas of opinion that the engineers were not sufficiently paid, and that a solution of the difficulty would be found in diminishing the number of engineer officers in the Fleet, and employing a considerable number of skilled artificers to perform the manual labour in the engine room.
MR. HUNTsaid, he was not inclined unnecessarily to limit discussion on naval matters, but he thought that the remarks of hon. Members on the present occasion had been extended to all the provisions, rather than the victuals of the Navy. He was, however, glad of the opportunity of saying that the very difficult question with regard to the engineers was under his consideration, although he was not yet justified in announcing his decision respecting it. In reply to the questions of the right hon. Gentleman the late First Lord, an increase of £5,466 had been caused by the addition of 4,000 men in the Naval Reserve; and of £3,867 for the Coast Guard, because it had been found that the amount hitherto taken was not sufficient; but there had been no change in the regulations. The system of lighting the ships on service was under consideration, and experiments were being made with regard to a new system; but the question was not yet ripe for decision. The increase in the Vote for clothes to the Naval Reserve was owing partly to an increase in the numbers of that Force, but mainly to a suit of clothes being given to such men as chose to reenter that service at the expiration of their first term.
Vote agreed, to.
(2.) £183,916, Admiralty Office.
MR. GOSCHENasked the reason for changing the titles of the officers in the Constructor's department; and, whether the business at the Board of Admiralty was conducted with the same formalities as it used to be?
MR. HUNTsaid, that no formal change had been made in the mode of conducting business at the Admiralty; but he was led to believe that the naval Members of the Board were now consulted on many matters on which they were not consulted by his two immediate Predecessors. With regard to the titles of the officers in the Dockyard, it was represented to him that the title of Master Shipwright did not convey a just
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idea of the importance of the office, and it had therefore been changed into that of Chief Constructor of the Yard.
MR. E. J. REEDasked, whether the effect of the establishment of a Council of Construction had been to concentrate or diffuse responsibility?
MR. HUNTsaid, that both in the Admiralty and the Dockyards, those at the head of the Constructor's department were responsible generally for construction. The engineers were responsible for the engineering part of the work, subject to the Constructor.
MR. SHAW-LEFEVREobserved that the newspapers had stated that the post of the late Solicitor to the Admiralty was not to be filled up at present. He ventured to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should take that opportunity of considering whether some of the work performed by the Solicitor might not in future be performed by the Permanent Secretary, who was of very high legal attainments, and who, by the appointment of a Naval Secretary, had been relieved of much of his work.
MR. HUNTsaid, that, consequent upon the death of Mr. Bristowe, which he much regretted, a temporary arrangement had been made. No permanent arrangement would be entered upon until inquiries, which had been set on foot before that event happened, had been completed.
MR. CHILDERSexpressed his approval of the arrangement.
Vote agreed to.
(3.) £188,505, Coast Guard Service, Royal Naval Reserve, &c.
MR. T. BRASSEYsaid, it was very satisfactory to find that the rules and regulations which had been made by the late Government were approved by the right hon. Gentleman. He hoped to see a gradual increase in the number of gunboats and drill stations for the training of the men of the Reserve during the summer months. There were many places in which drill stations might be established with great advantage to the requirements of the service.
MR. GOSCHENwished to know the number of the Royal Naval Reserve for whom it was intended to provide?
MR. HUNTsaid, it was intended to employ a certain number of gunboats for training purposes during the year,

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and he hoped, in future, to increase that number, as he was exceedingly anxious that the men should learn to work guns afloat. With regard to the question as to the number of men to be enrolled in the Naval Reserve, there were 12,500 of the First Class, and 5,000 of the Second; and, as he had said the other day, they proposed to enrol 500 boys in a Third Class; but whether they would get the number they hoped this year, he did not know. He hoped, however, that they would come up. This would make 18,000 in all, and they hoped, from" the manner in which the men were coming in, 16,900 being on the books already, to have 18,000 this year; and he further hoped that, with the increased facilities for drill, they would obtain an efficient body of men for that branch of the service.
MR. GOSCHENhoped the right hon. Gentleman would adopt some measure of present increase of pay as an inducement to boys to join the service, which, in his opinion, would operate better than the prospect of pensions, which, however small, would, in their accumulation, become a heavy charge upon the country.
MR. E. J. REEDwas of opinion that small gunboats would prove of very great use for training purposes at many places where drill stations might be established.
CAPTAIN G. E. PRICEhoped that proper opportunities would be given for instruction in gunnery to those under drill. In that view 9-inch guns might be advantageously employed, under supervision, for training exercise.
MR. GOURLEYwished to know how the men of the Naval Reserve were to be found in case of a war breaking out? At present they did not turn up for drill in a satisfactory manner, and the question was, where were they to be found when a pressing call for their services might arise. The men employed in the shipyards might be made available and utilized for the requirements of the Service should urgent occasion arise.
SIR JOHN HAYhoped the Admiralty would not lose sight of the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Devonport. He also wished to draw attention to the importance of having a Reserve of stokers, in case of any emergency arising.
MR. CHILDERSsaid, that when he was at the Admiralty the separate
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Coastguard Department was abolished, and that nothing had been more inconvenient than the voluminous correspondence between that Department and the Admiralty Office, and he therefore hoped that care would be taken to guard against any such system in respect to the Reserve Office.
MR. HUNTassured the right hon. Gentleman that the communications which took place between the Admiralty and the Reserve Office were of the shortest possible character, and every pains were taken to prevent any unnecessary expense. With respect to the employment of men employed on shore, it was intended to relax the regulations of the Naval Reserve so as to include in it men who had been actually at sea, but this would not extend to shipwrights who had not served on board. It was not to be expected that a man would lose his sea legs the moment he left a ship. He could not actually state the percentage of the men who did not attend drill, but it was taken into consideration in the Estimate. The question of having a Reserve of stokers—a most important question—would be considered.
Vote agreed, to.
(4.) £107,324, Scientific Departments.
MR. HANBUBY-TEACYsaid, that Greenwich College was doing good service; but its usefulness would be much increased if, instead of having so many officers idle upon half-pay, they were placed upon full pay and allowed to pursue their studies in foreign languages, navigation, and other subjects. It was much to the detriment of officers that they were often kept at home on half-pay, instead of doing some kind of professional work.
MR. R. W. DUFFagreed in the suggestion, and thought that a larger sum should be allowed than £150 for the library and allowance to librarian at the College.
SIR MASSEY LOPESobserved that the number of officers studying at Greenwich College was now 230, as compared with 194 last year.
MR. GOSCHENsaid, that the hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Massey Lopes) had not answered the point respecting full pay. He (Mr. Goschen) thought it was immensely to the credit of commanders and captains that at their age

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they should go through the very hard work of the Royal Naval College.
MR. HUNTexplained that neither from the authorities of the College, nor from any officer in the service who had been there, had any representation reached him to the effect that captains and commanders should be placed on full pay, and it was not for him to originate a measure which would largely increase the Votes.
Vote agreed to.
(5.) £75,548, Victualling Yards at Home and Abroad.
(6.) £64,644, Medical Establishments at Home and Abroad.
(7.) £18,868, Marine Divisions.
In reply to General Sir GEORGE BALFOUR,
MR. HUNTsaid, they had very little difficulty in filling up the numbers of that force, which was but a very few men short at the present time.
Vote agreed to.
(8.) £73,330, Medicines and Medical Stores, &c.
MR. GOURLEYsaid, he took objection to the item of £15,500 for carrying out the Contagious Diseases Act, and asked for an explanation of how so large a sum was to be expended?
MR. ALGERNON EGERTONsaid, he had not the details of that portion of the Vote before him; but he could state generally that the money went to support two hospitals at the naval stations.
MR. WHALLEYsaid, he had spent some time at Portsmouth and Devonport Hospitals in making inquiries relative to the working of this Act, and he was convinced that no public money was better expended and for better purposes. The Act had worked well in the social interests of those districts where it was in operation.
MR. GOURLEYobjected to public money being used to legalize vice.
Vote agreed to.
(9.) £15,904, Martial Law and Law Charges.
(10.) £148,823, Miscellaneous Services.
MR. SAMUDAsaid, he wished to call attention to the smallness of the sum (£2,000) proposed to be set apart for torpedo experiments, which he regarded
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as being of great and growing importance. He thought the Vote ought to be greatly increased on account of that importance.
MR. WHITWELLasked for an explanation of the great increase of the Vote for "officers and seamen."
MR. E. J. REEDsaid, that the two vessels of extreme speed proposed to be built by the Government would be valuable in the use of torpedoes. He did not, however, think that the experiments upon torpedoes should be pushed too far, as with fast vessels, which might be used also as dispatch boats, it would be easy when required to develop by their means the best kinds of torpedo warfare. If they took any urgent measures for developing torpedo warfare they would be conferring very great benefits on other countries.
MR. GOSCHENwished to know whether the charge for torpedo experiments was separated from the charge for maintaining the Vernon, which had been set apart for instructing officers in the use of torpedoes?
MR. HUNTsaid, that torpedo experiments were conducted by the War Office and the Admiralty together. The War Office Vote for the purpose amounted this year, he believed, to £4,500, in addition to the sum taken in the Navy Estimates. But that by no means represented the expenditure on the torpedo system. Independently of the Vernon, which was the torpedo school ship, the Admiralty had been fitting vessels of different kinds for the purpose of torpedo warfare, partly experimental and partly otherwise, and the fitting of those vessels came under the Dockyard Vote. One ship would cost £5,000 to have her fitted out, another £1,000, and preparations were made to adapt vessels of a smaller size for the same purpose. The question was a very interesting one, and every year was assuming greater importance. It was not desirable to go into particulars in discussing the question, but every attention was given to the matter by the Admiralty and the War Office. We had Reports from our naval attaches both in America and the Courts of Europe as to the experiments in these countries, and we were regularly receiving information on the subject.
In reply to Sir HENRY DEUMMOND-WOLFF
MR. HUNTsaid, that there was one naval attaché to the Courts of Europe. He was not fixed at any one Court, but travelled from place to place.
Vote agreed to.
(11.) £888,211, Half-Pay, Reserved Pay, and Retired Pay.
SIR JOHN HAYcalled attention to the fact that this Vote had increased by £200,000, which was an addition to the dead weight of our naval expenditure. The good intentions, moreover, of those who proposed it, and owing to whom it had been incurred had not been realized, as the country expected they would be. He would take an opportunity of bringing the subject before the House on a future occasion.
Vote agreed to.
(12.) £681,781, Military Pensions and Allowances.
(13.) £284,529, Civil Pensions and Allowances.
(14.) £172,090, Army Department (Conveyance of Troops).
SIR JOHN HAYasked for some explanation.
MR. HUNTsaid, it was partly incurred in sending troops and stores to foreign stations.
Vote agreed to.
House resumed.
Resolution to be reported on Monday next; Committee to sit again upon Monday next.

BANK HOLIDAYS ACT (1871) AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 30.]
(Mr. Ritchie, Mr. Wheelhouse, Mr. Kay-Shuttle-worth, Sir Colman O'Loghlen.)
BANK HOLIDAYS ACT (1871) AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 30.]

  CONSIDERATION.
  Order for Consideration, as amended, read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now taken into consideration."—(Mr. Ritchie.)
  MR. WHALLEYsaid, he would move the adjournment of the debate on the ground that they ought not to proceed with the Bill at that late hour (12.45). It was re-introducing a system of Saints' days into this country, and was an interference with the trade of the Kingdom.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Whalley.)
  MR. E. J. REEDsaid, he took the same view, and should therefore support the Motion.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Debate adjourned till Tuesday next.

  WASTE LANDS (IRELAND) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. MACCARTHY, Bill to promote the Reclamation of Waste Lands in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. MACCARTHY and Mr. ERRINGTON.
  House adjourned at a quarter before One o'clock till Monday next.